It's time to install... The Governator.
We kick off today's episode by choosing a governor for our primary city of Ortysia.
We pick Boscoric the Tracker, as he's culturally Vlandian - as I had assumed that the city was.
Note that (-1) Loyalty change - I missed this when I did it, and it's a herald of things to come. Those of you who've played Bannerlord know exactly what's going to happen here, and it's 100% my own damn fault.
So, take it from me - when you go to assign governors, pay attention to the stat changes! Normally I'm way more careful than this, but I was distracted and that will end up biting me in the rear - but I'm giving away spoilers now, so back to the actual current events!
So, after installing our new governor and bulking up our party with some raw recruits, we head off to make some trouble and as part of that, we run down Gilvard of the Brotherhood's party. 94 folks that will not be raiding our towns for a bit. Nice!
We manage to snag the first kill of the session, absolutely one-hitting an Imperial Heavy Horseman, which is pretty satisfying!
Unsurprisingly, the Brotherhood forces aren't putting up much of a fight. These merc companies are often pretty low-quality, as we've seen in prior episodes. Still, it's quite fun and we get some good exp from it!
When the dust settles, we've removed 94 units from play at the cost of 3 soldiers. Not a bad trade!
We also get to upgrade 51 troops, a bulk number that hasn't happened in a while since we stopped getting totally wrecked back in our own mercenary days.
With one battle solidly won, we head down to Hertogea Castle to join the siege there.
We lose more folks here, as their defending units are semi-capable... but it's still a crushing victory all in all. We had troops to spare.
Immediately following this victory, I put into action something I said during our first battle - I want to start to be a little more involved in tactically moving our forces on the battle map. And, what better way to try that, than to pit my forces against an army that's nearly double our size?
They end up pulling in that other party of 58 as well, so I'm facing off against 372 with my paltry 171 party. If I were to simulate this battle, I'd almost certainly lose. If I were to get in and just say 'Charge!' I'd probably lose there too.
But we're going to be trying something different, so bring it on!
I was hoping that we'd be on a bridge map, as I was standing at the foot of the bridge - but when we spawn in it is thickly forested terrain instead. Could this be a problem for us? Hmm, we'll have to wait and see.
Once again, we're going to have to set up commanders as we've been in some sieges and such that have let us 'borrow' other commanders and that clears out our normal settings - so we quickly take a peek at folks' stats and assign leadership appropriately.
Because we're going to be a bit more tactical about this, we take some extra time prior to battle to arrange our troops and set some default formations - like putting our clump of archers into a Loose formation.
We also set our two cavalry forces into a Skein formation (a wedge, so we can make the most of our charges).
With those initial preparations complete, we begin the actual battle. Our infantry is told to hold position, and our archers are told to Hold Fire.
We want to have the enemy close before we loose our volley of arrows. No wasted ammo - I intend to have a high percentage of hits here!
But, before that even happens - let's throw our cavalry at them!
Our initial hit is devastating! A sea of green (aka, all deaths are enemy deaths), while we hang back and watch the battle unfold. Ahh, the life of command.
We want to make the most of our cavalry by keeping them together into packs and using their charge to smash enemy lines, so we pull both groups 3 and 4 back to allow them to re-form into formation.
At the same time, we finally allow our archers to Fire At Will. The enemy is closing fast, and this first volley should be a hell of a hit.
And, it is. As we make contact, I finally also pitch into the battle. They're aggressively trying to harry my archers, so I'm going to make them bleed for it.
We're beginning to take a few losses, but this is still so overwhelmingly in our favor that I'm not even worried about it.
Having absolutely wrecked their first wave, we pull our cavalry back to get back into formation prior to our next charge.
Our infantry line has taken a hit, but it's still holding so we're fine.
Fully back into formation, it's time to charge again - this time we're heading out with the cavalry.
We repeat this process - pull the cavalry back to form back up, send them out in a solid wall of horse. Hit and run, again and again.
The result? Well, the result speaks for itself:
In 8 and a half minutes, we've taken FIVE losses. We've killed 127 and wounded (and will be thus ransoming) 235.
Ho-ly Shit.
What an utterly crushing victory. This is one for the books, for sure. It may be the most resounding ass-kicking we've ever handed out. I almost feel bad for that army.
Almost.
We move on from there to fight several more battles, including a siege where I briefly man a Trebuchet. I don't know how the fuck to aim this thing, so it's a pretty small bit of action - but it does look cool.
At this point, we've stacked up something like 5 battle wins. Not too shabby!
And, then it's time to test our mettle again with another evenly matched battle that we're going to fight out tactically.
Our infantry line is again fairly small, so we're going to have to rely on a lot of hit-and-run tactics with our cavalry... but that's fine because we love hit-and-run tactics with the cavalry!
This group was a little more prepared, but still, even so... they get absolutely demolished.
I'm really enjoying personally giving commands so far! What a day of victories. So many wins (not all of which I talk about in the blog), and two new castles as fiefs! Which is where we're going to end for today.
Until next time friends, Happy Gaming!
Check out the video! The link is below.
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