Bannerlord Tactics, Pre-Battle Tips and Tricks, Volume X: Train Infantry Into Spartans

Welcome back future Emperors, Khans, Jarls and Sultans, in this episode we continue our series covering some of the pre-battle strategy that is necessary for you to succeed in Bannerlord. I cover several important subjects that will help you with Kingdom, a summary of how I form my army composition, what troops I like, how much of each kind and then a little on army and noble management. I recommend the playlist for those who REALLY want to get better at the game and dominate.
As requested, in this episode we help players train their infantry from shaking, inexperienced footmen into battle-hardened, elite warriors in a quick, relatively safe manner.
Please comment, like and subscribe if you're interested in more of my ultra-late-game campaign, that may end up ending in utter despair, but that's the challenge of it. Any challenge where success is assured is no challenge at all.
My campaign is an extremely late-game campaign where I am resolved to give no peace to these scum Kingdoms attacking me - seven of the eight have been at war for years, with only Sturgia at a neutral stance. My family of warriors is now large though and with what remaining strength and valor we can must, we stand against the map of Calradia.
Join me on this adventure if you like huge battles, the use of advanced tactical maneuvers and intense Bannerlord gameplay, and subscribe to my channel if you want to follow along. This campaign is very lightly modded:
I use four mods:
Lord Retinue Uptier(Makes the enemy forces stronger, much less peasants and lower ranked troops)
www.nexusmods....
Improved AI Troops(Also makes enemy lords and their armies tougher by giving them a higher daily xp rate. This means you'll routinely face armies with HUGE numbers of the highest tier units, sometimes four or five times the normal amount in vanilla Bannerlord): www.nexusmods....
Death for all: This mod allows you to set the rate at which nobles die more often. I want both a harder challenging late-game but also a more realistic game. If you're cut down with a massive aserai two-handed axe, you shouldn't just be injured 99.9% of the time. It's a very customizable mod so you can just a little more death or set the death rate so high you get several deaths every battle. The number I often like is '10', some deaths but not a massacre of nobles...
www.nexusmods....
I also use the Dismemberment Plus Mod: It's highly customizable and works seamlessly with the new beta(and versions back to 1.28). I thoroughly recommend it if you enjoy carnage!:
steamcommunity...
I've also used Realistic Battle Mod in the past and highly recommend it for Ai and battle realism BUT I find the pace too slow for my taste and the AI is actually rather predictable after a half dozen battles. Still I wanted to put a plug in for it here, it's a GREAT mod and highly configurable. www.nexusmods....
Much of the music and inspiration for this and other videos in the channel are inspired by Epic History TV - probably THE best channel on youtube(and the internet for that matter) covering the Napoleonic wars. With amazing work Epic History TV takes you through the dramatic and incredibly story of Napoleon covering all of his most famous battles. I HIGHLY recommend it.
Epic History TV:
/ @epichistorytv
#bannerlord #war #medieval #bannerlordgameplay #bannerlordmod

[@wesselbooi]

Just wrecked Vlandians with your ring defence tactic. Didn’t do it perfectly, but managed to kill 1500 with our 1000 👌 we had about 600 troops left before they routed 😅

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Love this type of comment more than any others - fans of the channel and fellow enthusiasts using their own tactics and mixing in things they've learned here to mangle the enemy in difficult situations... Absolute music to my ears... Keep it up!

[@wesselbooi]

@@HeadlessHorsemanProductions Feels good to improve in this hard ass game. Think I am almost ready for the extra difficult enemy army mods!

[@tofu1639]

I feel you my range only run I’m outnumbered by so much but I prioritize shield damage with me and my companions so when the shield wall pushes they explode. You would think 300 infantry with 200 cavs would reckt my line but I usually have half of the army routing before they even touch my line.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

@@tofu1639 SHIELD damage! I would not have thought to use that but on some level it makes genius sense! Of course, the enemy is going to be non-stop holding up those shields... I'm only an episode or two in, but we'll see what I can do here(both fun and a challenge). I'm NOT starting over a campaign but I CAN respec some characters..

[@Evan_VLC]

After ive been watching ur videos ive won way more battles. So thank you so much and keep up the amazing content

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Love it brother, no other comment makes me so happy!

[@hawk16-85]

You should totally consider doing a full campaign series or make a series out of your current one. Would like to see your decision making on the fly both in battles but also navigating every other aspect of a world conquest campaign.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

For the time being, juggling so many projects(and life), the closest thing to a full campaign is the peasants revolt, which covers elements from character build, trading goods, reinforcing castles, strategic overviews AND battles... Maybe later this year for an actual full campaign, for now, hope that satisfies you!

[@hawk16-85]

At the rate you’ve been posting videos I’m happy regardless! I’m glad I found your channel as I’m learning the game

[@Ofek.Kadoori]

You deserve much more credit and viewers

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Well the channel is BOOMING by my own perception(100 new subscribers a day), but I appreciate your sentiment and hope we continue to form a bedrock of tacticians and enthusiasts here. Thank you brother.

[@FightingFriends]

Zerging is a reference to the Zerg from StarCraft. Cheap disposal units used in mass. The real world term is “Human wave tactics “ it is as old as time but was most recently the favored tactic of Iran during the Iran Iraq war in the 1980 Russian and Japanese armies used them a lot in Ww2 but the use of them in the age of explosive munitions and belt feed weapons requires a stupidity that is beyond my comprehension.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Thanks for that additional 'enrichment' - I know it was used to horrendous effect for the first real time in WW1, and with machine guns, barbed wire and mud, lead to the most grisly losses ever seen in warfare... I hope humans learn to get their 'output' of war through games instead of real life in the future...

[@Ofek.Kadoori]

Dude your videos are the most entertaining I've seen in years thank you so much

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Mighty high praise, thank you bud. Enjoy!

[@Pierre-gk5ky]

I typically prefer to get my skirmisher corps on my left flank, so that when they move up to shoot the enemy in the flank as they are engaging my shield wall, they are shooting into the enemy’s exposed right side rather than their left, where shields are more likely to incidentally block shots.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Yep, something I'm still working on doing consistently. Thanks for the reminder! Hopefully I can add this to future episodes.

[@csfelfoldi]

Honestly what I do is just force recruits or goods from enemy villages and the ones that resist have all the low level troops thrown at them. It wont get them as high but you can easily clear the critical tier 1-2 trash units quickly and after that they have enough skill to level up normally in battle without being dead weight.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

This is EXCELLENT advice and something I'll keep in mind when I do my next campaign. A growing legion of experts are congregating here, these days...

[@FightingFriends]

7000 nice.

[@pronouncedseven652]

Something I learned recently.. troop tiers upgrade as a unit.. meaning.. say you have 100 peasants but only five of them made 100 kills you can upgrade all 100 units of peasants. Hope that makes sense 😂 The opposite for Nobels and companions. The system doesn’t count individual kills for troops.. counts them as a whole and receives experience as a whole.

[@pronouncedseven652]

And with this is mind you’d want to wait to upgrade units until you can* upgrade most of them.. because if you have a bunch of higher grade troops getting all the kills your lower levels guys will take much longer to upgrade.. maybe even wait to upgrade them all in one shot so that 100% of the experience goes to them.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

This is something I have to test more but it sounds like a genius tip. You're saying basically don't upgrade a group of units until they are ALL ready to upgrade ya?

[@pronouncedseven652]

Yes mostly all ready.. as long as you are protecting them like you talked about in this video.. otherwise I would just upgrade big groups.. because as you know the higher tier means better survivability.

[@pronouncedseven652]

As long as you have the perks that give passive experience to 1 and 2 tier troops.. there’s no need to wait for 100% of the troops to be ready. I take both perks that give 2 + 2 passive experience to 1 & 2 tier troops.. = 4 experience per day. Couple that with the perk that gives you +50% conversion of tier 1 & 2 prisoners and you can easily Feed the “In a Square” Meat Machine

[@pronouncedseven652]

Oh… and the perks that give troops experience for discarding, weapons, and or armor. Easy to keep mostly all high ranking troops.

[@CyborgDoge]

I was doing some dominating I killed like 200 with 120 and lost like 1 guy. Also what is the best armour set that money can buy? Another way is to scrap armour or weapons from a couple of the steward perk

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

Most of my armor isn't bought, it's from battles. You'll occasionally find legendary gear in shops, but more often in biiig battles... Losing one dude in that kind of battle is elite!

[@Theaksten]

7k in 4 years? That's professional.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

I actually forgot what this was referring to?

[@lasunbarada-realtorri1265]

Lol i feel like he got smoked by them calvary tho lol

[@lasunbarada-realtorri1265]

Lets talk about that two handed sword tho. How you make that 😂

[@gabedecartago905]

How to lvl up infantry without heavy losses... my dude since the dawn of time infantry is meant to take massive losses

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

But you gotta get those guys experience BEFORE they take massive losses. Napoleon was a master of preserving his infantry in battles through timely cavalry charges and decisive strikes in order so he could form his legendary 'Old Guard'. This vid is just a way for players to start to form their OWN old guard.

[@gabedecartago905]

@HeadlessHorsemanProductions cheers man good video

[@pronouncedseven652]

How I keep my Infantry numbers up is I’ll stay with a whole bunch of low level infantry troops as prisoners.. with the perk that increases the speed at which you can convert tier 1,2, and 3 tier troops.

[@HeadlessHorsemanProductions]

A great tip, thanks mate.

[@pronouncedseven652]

I call it feeding the Meat Machine! 😂

[@pronouncedseven652]

As troops get knocked out instead of dying they level up.. it works very well.