The sweet taste of victory
Ahhh, there's nothing better, is there? Victory. Finally.
We've waited so long to be able to participate in battles with allied armies and actually succeed and now, finally, it's happening!
We begin our Bannerlord run today in the newly conquered city of Husn Fulq - which we utterly stomped the Southern Empire for. We need to do a bit of healing before heading back out on the warpath, but thankfully it doesn't take too long before we're healed enough to let the rest of the mending happen as we move.
Poor Nogand gets the short end of the stick and is left to mend as we ride. It's the price he pays for having such a massive health pool - he can take a ton of hits but needs a lot more time than the average to hit 100% again and we're steamrolling the Southern Empire, so I don't exactly want to just wait around forever!
So, we head out and join Hurunag's army as it sets siege to Odrysa Castle. Taking this castle will effectively cripple the Southern Empire's presence in the southern half of the map, so it's a pretty smart decision to take it out. The associated city it's tied to will suffer with its loss, making for another easy target later if we choose to take it.
we take a moment as the siege begins to pause and explore a command tent in the battle map. I haven't looked inside one of these before and since I can't effectively attack the archers on the walls until our ladders or siege equipment is up, this is as good a way to spend some time as anything.
The inside is pretty well decorated, including a training manual on one of the tables, which I thought was a really cool touch.
None of the items were interactable, but I didn't expect them to be so that's fine.
Both the battering ram and the siege tower - which may be the first siege tower we've seen so far? - make it to the walls without issue. Barely a scratch on either of them.
Since we've participated in bashing down doors a few times, I thought it'd be fun to instead assault the walls with the folks going up our siege tower.
We're greeted by a dense knot of soldiers as soon as we scale the wall. Soldiers that most of my troops are just... ignoring and pouring past!
I'm absolutely not going to leave a clump of troops like this at my back though, so I stay to pick a fight and soon enough some of my troops come back to get in on the action. For once, our polearm's ability to be used as a spear actually comes in handy, as it allows me to take a few cheap shots while still being protected by my shield.
We push down from the walls and secure the city gates. A melee breaks out as defenders rush to stop us, but they're not remotely equipped to deal with the tide of death descending on them, and it's clear that we are resoundingly the victors of this fight.
249 losses to 14 on our side again reinforce what I've been saying about militia forces manning your garrison. They're only fractionally better than not manning it at all. If you find yourself owning a castle - for the love of god, pack it full of actual units. It's going to cost a lot, don't get me wrong, but it's worth it. Even if you let them all go when you're not actively at war and then build them back up when you are. A proper garrison can turn the tide of one of these assaults.
With a new castle as part of our ally's holdings, we head back out and smash through a few more quick battles.
For those of you keeping score at home, this puts us at 4 crushing victories this episode so far.
We take to the battle map again, since we've done a couple of simulation victories in a row and face off in a fun map that I don't think I've actually fought on before. There's a big water feature here, and the enemy troops end up wading into the lake up to their chests in an effort to counteract our cavalry.
It's honestly a really smart move - had they done it earlier in the battle they may have been able to take more of us with them. In this case, it wouldn't have won them the fight... but it definitely would have delayed their loss. Anything that slows cavalry and nullifies or reduces the value of their charge is a pretty strong advantage that you should definitely take if you can.
Had they the right army composition, sticking a wall of pikes in here backed up by crossbowmen and archers would have been a heck of a hard nut to crack. Thankfully, they didn't, and it was fairly easy (if slower) to crush them.
We manage to loot a really decent banner from the battle too, which increases our troop movement speed by 8%.
It's not worth switching for my character - who's equipped with the Standard of Wrath, which improves melee damage by 10%, but it is still very good.
And, as it turns out, it's a pretty good thing I participated in the battle as shortly after our Khan decides to make peace with the Southern Empire. I'm sad that we have to stop when we've had such wonderful momentum... but it's probably a wise decision. You don't want to expand so fast that you can't get your new populations under control and properly protected.
This does give us a chance to pick up a new companion in Onira though - Lulya the Leopardess. She tells us the story of her life on the streets picking pockets for her mother, most of which went to basically a pimp who at some point decided that his cut of the pick-pocketed loot wasn't good enough and beat her mother to death.
But of course, there's a twist. The man wasn't just some gangster, it was her father. She decided not to kill him and instead just leave, trying to find a new life for herself with what skills she'd learned along the way.
We add her to our roster, and spend some time in the city taking care of smithing and such before war finds us again.
The Aserai decide to take a crack at us and manage to swipe Husn Fulq from us in the process. Bold. Stupid, but bold.
We head down to help take a castle on what was previously our South-western border, and spot an ally desperately outnumbered, so we rush to aid them before they fall and arrive just in time.
It's a pretty evenly matched balance of power, so we take this one to the battle map as well. The more I personally kill, the better our chance of victory.
They do very well, all things considered. The kills-to-deaths ratio of this battle might actually be among the closest we've seen this entire episode. 46 of ours dead, and 70 of theirs dead. Aserai fight much like we do, and aren't the soft-bellied things that the Southern Empire are.
With this victory in the bag, we head to the closest city to offload some of our prisoners and heal up. Next time we will be proceeding with our pushback against the Aserai.
Until then friends, Happy Gaming!
Check out the video! The link is below.
