Besides Fian/Khans Guard spam, there's hammer and anvil like you mentioned with shield infantry+cavalry of choice.
Shock infantry can be worth building around depending on the factions you're facing as they shred higher tier infantry and cavalry, but fold to massed hordes of cheaper stuff as well as projectiles. If you need a shield wall cracked or cavalry charge minced they're your guys if properly protected. I prefer the imperial one for the polearm and availability, but definitely use the one that matches your captains skill set.
I've been toying with a 3 layered attack sequence of horse archer flank->lancer charge to make a mess of formations->small infantry force to mop up said mess. When it works you can have 5 recruits with 17 kills between them, but sometimes you just feed your infantry to the slaughter. Still working on it, but setting sergeants command sometimes has it pull it off itself to good affect so there's something there if I can figure out my timings and commands.
Otherwise I usually just play king of the kill with 50% archers, 35% shield infantry, 15% shock infantry. Relatively fool proof which is nice since my micro can be god awful at times.
I'd have to double check, but I believe you can use excess companions to fill out roles in your clans other parties on top of yours.
So you can have leadership/tactics leader with 4 party roles filled for 5 per party instead of 1.
Also for caravans, even if they are taken, that translates to 15k gold to give your clan member a bunch of levels strewn about scouting/trading/riding/stewardship/medicine/tactics/leadership all of which is useful for either passive leveling for stat points, making further parties, and governing.
Otherwise you can use them as is tradition in warband; as reusable super soldiers, though now you get the added benefit of captain bonuses.
Thats the best part I forgot to mention
Their armor is superior to Fians as well, the only thing Fians have over them iirc is doubling as shock troops and being recruitable from castle villages.
Which is nothing to sneeze at, but the raw stats-to-gold efficiency is super nice as well as bandit tag for roguery perks.
Oh yea I was just looking at body armor which is kinda neglectful. Equivalent t4 Fian has almost double the head armor of Forest Bandits helm if they have it at all so definitely not as cut and dry.
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If you can, have your kingdom vote out any policies that grant security/loyalty and vote in ones that decrease it.
Drag the local lords around in an army so they cant run down bandit parties and hideouts flourish, nor sit in cities to raise security.
Assuming owner culture is different this should be enough in my experience, though may take some time to bear fruit as loyalty ticks down.
Its the small things like this that win the greater war, its nuts.
Now that whole army is no longer being formed+2 lord parties gone just because you can do some fancy riding.
The most sure fire way to win wars is you let a huge enemy army siege a town, call an army, wait for the battle to start, then break in with the army. Huge surefire way to beat a bigger force something the AI can't do.
To add onto this, archers have infinite ammo in sieges.
Assuming you hold a chokepoint and they can fire, they theoretically can kill every single troop in game in a single battle if no retreats, though your frontline will eventually fall in practice.
Everyone elses solutions work, but Battania was my first Vassal run and my solution was relatively simple.
I carried as many Fians as I viably thought I could and I broke the enemy on the castle walls they chose to die at. Even on Bannerlord difficulty, you can absolutely chew through armies twice the size of your garrison. For context, in almost every troop analysis I can find, Fians are ranked at the top next to Khans guards, even among noble lines and it definitely seems true in practice.
You can also donate troops to said garrison and make someone else pay their wages, very helpful if a particular fief is getting slammed over and over again.
I ended up with a solid screen of fiefs in the southern valley leading from Vlandia to Battania and simply became the shield while everyone else was the sword.
Finally, make sure you leverage your clan parties. You essentially can run a mini-kingdom in true feudal fashion by keeping them in your army and making your lands a bulwark, particularly with the battanian forest buff making it easy to ambush lords heading to armies or raiding.
Its actually gotten to the point where I'm afraid to leave and establish my own kingdom because Battania is sitting on 10k+ strength even without my 2-3k lmao.
(Sidenote, take back those towns for a shot at getting them yourself. Losses can be opportunities as well, its how I ended up with Husn Fulq on my Aserai run almost immediately)
[[Awaken the woods]]
No disrespect meant, 46 games is not enough to base a performance off of.
For one specific iteration of a wider archetype, 46 seems plenty to me with proper analysis.
Statistically 46 is not enough. With how much variation there is in this game I would refer to the minimum of 75 that everyone uses when performing any sort of research. But keep downvoting me because I’m right. Lol
Thats the rub.
Its less about being right and more being realistic, even with say 4 minutes for one game, 43 games is just over 3 hours of continuous play with no breaks or time allotted for matchmaking.
Thats somebodies entire weeknight dedicated just to playtesting one deck.
Have to find a middleground, particularly this early in standard.
And if it takes any possible hostility out of this, I didnt downvote, just comment.
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