Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – How to Deal with Strong Factions

This bootleg brings you some advice on how to deal with factions that become too powerful.

Guide to Dealing Strong Faction

All credit goes to bikhthor!

What’s This?

Many have noted that in its current state, the game tends to create a ‘snowball effect’ in which a faction becomes much more powerful than the others, creating a superpower that’s difficult to handle once you have progressed and have your own kingdom.

I have managed to somewhat counter this, so this is a short guide on how to do it. It’s more a list of things that I did and that I was bored enough to write. You can call this a work in progress, maybe.

I am going to suppose that you already have your own kingdom and control a couple of settlements.

Starting The War

Obviously, you are going to have to go to war with the Big Boi. As of now, the Declare War option is not activated yet, so you will have to raid a village to start the war. If you want to summon an army for this war, be aware that raiding the village will take 200 influence points, so you may want to form the army before raiding anything, because you will not be able to do so if you have negative influence.

The important thing here is where to start the war.

You should raid a village that is:

• Close to a castle/city with a small garrison. You are going to besiege said castle/city next.
• Closest to your kingdom as possible. You don’t want your kingdom to be too disperse.
• Not in the frontier of the Big Faction and another one.

Attack The Weak and Avoid The Strong (Duh)

You shouldn’t avoid all contact with the enemy, just the big, fat armies. If you find a lone party that you can handle without much casualties, go for it, and, crucially, capture the lord. This has been a useful tactic in M&B forever, and also now; the enemy is not going to have a lot of troops if there is no one to command them.

Whenever you capture a lord, take them to the dungeon of your capital. They are less likely to escape a city that your party.

Reinforce Your Important Positions

Yes, I said your capital. You should pick a couple of cities to be the core of this operation. While you are going to let the enemy conquer whatever they want, mostly, you should try to have at least a city that’s well protected, to rest, regroup, and, if needed, to take troops from.

The enemy is not going to target only your newest acquisitions. This means that you need to leave large garrisons at the start of the war in the places that you don’t want the enemy to take. You can play with that factor, in the sense that usually they will not attack your best defended spots, so you can sort of decide where they will attack you by leaving certain places undefended. This will lure their armies to those undefended places, and they will leave the important, strategic places alone for you to take/for them not to take.

General Strategy: Hit And Run

Cities and castles that have been recently conquered won’t have strong garrisons. You can conquer those easily. Whenever you do that, loot the thing and wait close, but not inside. Two things can happen then:

• If a big army appears to reconquer it, get the hell out of there and besiege another city/castle. This will either make the big army move to you, leaving the recently conquered spot alone and developing its militia, or leave you enough time to conquer this other place without much difficulty.
• If a lone party tries to besiege the fortress, face them in the open field and capture the lord.

By repeating this process, you are going to drag the enemy into a war of exhaustion where they have more to lose than you. If you are doing this right, you will also be growing your kingdom faster than they can take it from you.

Reinforce The Other Factions

At first, leave the frontiers of the big faction alone until they go to war with another faction. When that happens:

• Go to war with the smaller faction too.
• Conquer the frontier castles/cities of the Big Faction.
• Leave them unprotected so either:

• The big faction comes to recover them, moving their armies far from other place.
• The smaller faction gets them and becomes stronger. You are at war with them too, but this resulting chaos will tend to even the playing field, weakening the Big Faction more than you.

Another thing that will probably happen when the Big faction goes to war with another one is that they will, basically, mop the floor with them. This is not that bad. When they conquer new places, they will be less protected, so you can target them for your “Besiege, loot, run” strategy.

Bonus: Make The Enemy Clans Treason Their Faction

A more direct way to weaken the big faction is to go directly to their lord, and try to convince them to join your kingdom. This is made by convincing them by choosing conversation options, the same way you do when you are trying to marry (which means you can save and reload until you are successful).