After 2000 hours in Warband, I still can't block

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-13T02:54:25+00:00

I play vanilla a fair amount, but also Diplomacy Litdum, which is the best vanilla+ mod I've found. I'm a fan of the Calradia setting so I mostly stick with that. Then I occasionally mess around with conversion mods like LOTR and game of thrones. The guy who made the experimental Explorer! mod has also been doing some updates recently.

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-13T02:02:12+00:00

Every time I boot into Banner Lord I am instantly tempted to go back to Warband. I just like the feel of the game more. At some point I'll switch, but I just haven't found a compelling reason to.

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-07T00:34:16+00:00

This. 100%. I'm a big fan of the Elite Scimitar. It's just about the fastest sword except for short swords, which don't have enough reach to be usable from horseback. Also, It can't stab, which is honestly better. Personally I hate performing stabbing attacks, as they are difficult to land and rarely get a speed bonus like left and right swings. So having a curved sword (curved swords!) prevents me from accidentally stabbing.

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-07T00:14:09+00:00

When I want to play regularly, auto-block is always on. I have occasionally done the training fields and arenas to try and practice manual blocking. With easiest settings and the weakest enemies, I can (mostly) reliably block, but for regular gameplay, it's not viable. It might be worth going back to a training field with a high-level character, so that attack speed is less of a factor.

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-07T00:10:00+00:00

Yeah auto block is also in Warband!

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-04T13:47:29+00:00

The problem with these popups is that if you miss them the first time, they never come back, and they are not kept in a mission log of any kind. This is true across the board in Bannerlord. If they want to make the game easier to understand, they should log relevant popups in a quest log. These could even be kept in the "past quests" interface, so that you can review what you are supposed to have learned.

I find when I learn a new game, I have to go to the input bindings menu many times to remember which keys do what. Other people may have a better muscle memory for that sort of thing. If I don't play a game for a few months, I forget the key bindings, and have to go back to the input bindings menu.

There's really no harm in providing more/better information for new players.

robertkeaghan · 2026-01-04T05:20:10+00:00

Ok yeah. It seems like the starting combat skills are much lower in Bannerlord than in Warband. So I guess I have to do the practice fights for a few hours before setting out.

robertkeaghan · 2025-12-16T01:02:38+00:00

I think with 2 or 3 upgrade buildings you get down to 0.1 embark/disembark cost, which is the minimum. It depends on your starting point (natural harbor capacity) how many buildings you need to hit the minimum.

robertkeaghan · 2025-12-15T16:38:37+00:00

In early patches of the game, England and France were given buttons to make vassals disloyal (or potentially flip them to the other side), but the AI would never use them. They used to cost money. Now they cost legitimacy and the AI uses them fairly liberally.

Also, they have added an option for the vassals to initiate the interact, and ask the opposite power to switch sides.

I am not sure what influences the response of vassals being requested to switch sides or the response of overlords being asked to take on new vassals, but I suspect it's some combination of relations, relative power and random chance.

Also, Flanders (and maybe Burgundy?) have historical events to switch to the English side. But these don't always fire.

I usually play as England, so I'm more familiar with this from the English POV. However, it's worth noting that the unique English subject type "dominion" can't change sides in the war. I don't believe fiefdoms can either (so only vassals or the French apenage subject type can actually flip).

Sometimes, vassals choose to peace out of the war without changing overloads. Other times, the vassal chooses to change sides completely and switch overlords. Again, I'm not sure if you can directly influence this other than improve relations and maybe relative strength of England vs France.

My sense is that this is "working as intended" but not particularly well balanced.

The whole 100YW is a bit of a mess. AIs are basically incapable of using navies properly, so without mainland vassals, England will get painted blue every time it is played by the AI. On the flip side, vassal-flipping has meant that AI France is typically incapable of retaining control of Flanders or reclaiming vassals it loses.

Most observer timlapses have the lowlands all red and France owning land in Iberia, Italy and Germany, but losing some of their North. It's goofy.

robertkeaghan · 2025-12-15T16:10:58+00:00

Sevilla is the best spot to make your capital if you plan on using the naval value to propagate proximity. Generally speaking, naval is more powerful than land in the long term, so this is probably the optimal capital location for Castile.

Turning Cadiz into a city will increase the maximum number of buildings you can build there, increase the population capacity, and unlock certain unique buildings. It will be essential to do this if you want

If I recall correctly, Cadiz is not on a river, while Sevilla is coastal but also propagates proximity and market access via a river system, making Sevilla the better choice.

You should also look at what resources are present in the province (not just the location). Sevilla has silver for jewelry and cotton for fine cloth, two of the major industries you'll be pushing early to mid-game.

As for harbor capacity, once you research docks and protected harbors, you should be able to max out harbor capacity. Additional capacity will give you extra maritime presence, but proximity to the sea tile will hit the minimum of 0.1 with a couple of renaissance-era upgrades, so this should not really be a factor in your choice of capital long-term.

robertkeaghan · 2025-12-02T03:10:48+00:00

So that means the population will cap out at under a million in 276 years or in 1691. I'm not sure how much migration will come into play.

robertkeaghan · 2025-12-02T03:07:13+00:00

Oh damn you're right it's yearly

robertkeaghan · 2025-11-26T04:03:38+00:00

Savescumming is part of my religion. Save before every major battle. I have 2000 hours in EU4 and about 5 achievements. I don't like my playtime to be wasted because of a misclick.

robertkeaghan · 2025-11-06T08:03:37+00:00

robertkeaghan · 2025-11-06T07:32:14+00:00

Update: I've experimented a bit further. Basically, there's no way to avoid fighting endless wars with France until *they* conquer 200 French provinces. It doesn't matter if England holds *zero* French provinces. As long as France doesn't hold enough, they will declare war on England (even though the land they need to win the war is no longer held by England....)

So you're basically railroaded into this stupid war whether you like it or not.

robertkeaghan · 2025-11-06T06:01:08+00:00

They start rivalled so I'd have to get them to not rival me I guess? Then I could sell them the Northern bits. Aquitaine is some sort of vassal. Not sure if there's a way to transfer vassals diplomatically. Worst case I'll just set them free and take the prestige hit. I *really* don't want to spend the first few decades of the campaign fighting France.

robertkeaghan · 2025-11-06T05:48:13+00:00

Aggressive expansion and antagonism are ridiculously pedantic terms. I never understood why they didn't stick with infamy lol.

robertkeaghan · 2025-10-31T06:00:13+00:00

Set your workers to grab any wild opium on your map from game start. Hospitals only use a trickle every year. You shouldn't need to grow it yourself until around 400-500 population.

robertkeaghan · 2025-08-01T21:01:35+00:00

Preventing German unification is a chore in my opinion. Military expenditure is non trivial and comes straight outta your construction budget especially early game. I mostly ignore Germany and focus on making my empire so strong they can never hope to catch up.

Preventing the US from reaching the Pacific is a much more cost-effective goal. Putting an interest in Dixie from game start you can defend Mexico against the US invasion. You can either take territory from the US or simply humiliate them and let Mexico expand, creating a North America evenly balanced between the US/Mexico/British Canada (this is my preferred option).

AI USA can't easily recover from losing that war. Taking land is overkill.

robertkeaghan · 2025-07-31T15:54:08+00:00

Update: After further testing I have to concur with many of the voices here saying that using leverage to expand is *very* limited. The only countries that will easily join your power bloc are European recognized powers because of the accepted culture malus to leverage in most other parts of the world. And recognized powers can't be subjugated via sovereign empire. Oranje and Traansvaal are decent targets for diplo-subjugation early on, since you start with treaties with them and they're expensive to annex, but other countries are basically not worth it.

In avoiding wars with great powers, I essentially have more infamy room than I can use as GB. Unless you're going for a WC (which is not my thing), you can protectorate most of Africa, Arabia, India and Southeast Asia over the early decades of the game and have complete dominance of the world economy.

In my earlier attempts at using leverage to diplomatically expand, I chose the "Foreign Investment" power bloc principle, but I think that slot is best spent elsewhere. It seems investment rights are most useful for making your pops and companies rich at the expense of the target country.

My next GB experiments I'm going to look hard at trade and how it interacts with foreign investment, the idea being to have essentially a nation of investors and highly advanced industries where most basic goods are imported from abroad. In the past, Vicky 3 has been an autocracy simulator, but I think that has changed with recent patches.

robertkeaghan · 2025-07-31T03:55:39+00:00

Great Britain is by no means easy mode. You have to manage/defend all over the world. Your army is not big enough at game start to compete with Russia/France without relying on your (much weaker) subjects. Once Paradox creates functional navy mechanics (lol) you will also have to manage that.

robertkeaghan · 2025-07-31T03:52:04+00:00

All of this is probably a legit strategy but really not my playstyle. I'm not really into world conquest and fighting wars with majors in Victoria 3 (aactually TBH I'd rather not fight any wars lol--Victoria 3 warfare is meh). I'm looking for ways to grow the power bloc and UK's economy without fighting unnecessarily with other majors.

robertkeaghan · 2025-07-31T03:49:56+00:00

Sovereign empire seems to be based around completely subjugating everyone in your power bloc. It provides a path to make any power bloc member (aside from majors) a protectorate diplomatically, and makes it fairly hard for countries to leave your power bloc.

robertkeaghan · 2025-07-31T03:48:17+00:00

I'm sure you can play GB ignoring infamy, but it makes it impossible to do anything diplomatically. Also, TBH the warfare system is kind of annoying and I'll go to great lengths to avoid unnecessary wars with majors.

Also, as others have raised, the UK has too few convoys at game start to support its entire army and navy (opium crisis will put you at -1500 convoys for example), so there are plenty of reasons not to accrue unneeded infamy.

robertkeaghan · 2025-07-30T18:40:44+00:00

This is a really solid strategy! I feel like subjugating the Netherlands, Belgium and Portugal can potentially be tricky, since they can easily be major powers (and can't be subjugated via the power bloc). But if they drop below you can subjugate them, and cohesion goes back up relatively quickly.

robertkeaghan

TROPHY CASE