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[Rolan7]

That's a good point with not flooding the lands with too many of the same industry.
Honestly what I do is select each option and see what gives the best profit at this moment...  Which is kinda dangerous because the profit can change a lot if caravan routes for the raw materials or finished goods are getting disrupted.

But eh, free money!  I haven't had profits go negative ever, so I don't think it's a huge deal.

[Robsoie]

Yeah but then they suddenly stopped assaulting Sargoth and went for Albuquerque Castle instead, while the Nords were besieging Dhirim.

Ok, yeah, most moronic indeed. That is just the WORST bullshit when they just randomly stop sieging shit.

It's not moronic, in the middle of the siege the lords are loyal to their true King and so answered his calling for much more important matters :

King Harlaus wishes to inform you the great lords of Swadia will be gathering in Praven for a feast, and invites you to be part of his exalted assembly.

[miauw62]

Eh, a dyery was about 500 denars a week but a brewery was over a hundred and cost less, so I went with that

E: feast = tournament most of the time, so hell yes I'm going to that feast :p

[WealthyRadish]

I would say one productive enterprise is nice early for the storage (it's easy to fight loads of sea raiders for excellent free companion gear, having a place to store it is helpful), but there are a few that will pay themselves off and provide profit somewhat quickly. A velvet one in Rivacheg will make loadsa money over time if you can afford the initial payment, an ironworks in Curaw will take advantage of the cheap and plentiful iron, and a brewery in Dhirim will take advantage of the insane amounts of grain there. Generally, if you want a productive enterprise in a town, a brewery will be the most consistently profitable if the city doesn't have special conditions. But if you're savescumming tournaments at 1/4 damage, money is the least of your worries.

Having a large monthly income from productive enterprises is nice when you start your kingdom, since you'll need a disproportionate quantity of men to defend your holdings to what you can support off of them.

[Ozyton]

Tip: When you start a battle, all your equipment should be in a chest on your starting position. Load it up with ammunition and some weapons to get flexibility on field. This way you can have nearly endless supply of throwing weapons or just switch to a bow/crossbow (with nearly endless supply of ammunition too!) when a siege or something comes up, change weapons on fly and stuff. Dunno about armor.

Better yet, if you open the box then close it it automatically replenishes your ammo. The box doesn't show up in sieges though, where it'd be a bit more useful.

[Kot]

Better yet, if you open the box then close it it automatically replenishes your ammo. The box doesn't show up in sieges though, where it'd be a bit more useful.

It doesn't? Huh. Well, it appears that mods fix that tho, as I explictly remember sniping 300+ Swadians alone on a town siege. If you meant it doesn't appear in siege defense, then yeah, I don't recall it being anywhere. That's not a big problem in sieges IMO (unless you're stuck with distinctively melee siege) as there's going to be a lot of arrows stuck in walls and ground (what a fucking shame we can't use the arrows that get stuck in shields) and shitton of various ranged weapons on corpses around, while in open battles it might be harder, especially if you're a dirty horse archer and don't want to jump off your horse for scavenging (you can try to pick up things from ground on horse, it requires some skill though (but man, those Napoleonic Wars battles where you ride on a horse and steal dem infantry muskets so you can be so damn annoying, and I think opening the box is easier since it's kinda high compared to corpses).

[miauw62]

Hm. I've etablished myself as a Swadian mercenary, and have decent relations with quite a few Swadian lords, in addition to a party size of slightly over 70, 40 of which are cavalry (10 swadian knights, almost 30 swadian men at arms, half of which can be upgraded at any time). Also a lot of surgery points on all my companions, so my dudes don't die a lot.

Not entirely sure where to go from now on. We're at war with both the Rhodoks (who I'm regularily completely wrecking when they come into our land to loot towns) and the Nords, who travel in twos and which I can't really do shit about while all of our lords are trying to capture Yalen (not Veluca, for some reason.)
We have captured two towns of the Khergits, however.

Not entirely sure what to do from here on. I have a few industries, which combined with my mercenary payment give me about 1500 denars a month, which is still 500 too little to pay for my army upkeep. (I'm sitting on over 20k denars, though, so its not that big of a deal.)

[Descan]

Build more industry, build up your army, and then work on your relations with the lords of a faction you want to usurp? So that they will join you when you talk to them before battles (Not always guaranteed I think)

Build up your companions that you want to keep, AND some that you don't care to keep in your party. Use the ones you want to keep (i.e. their skills and such) as your party, and when you go independent you can set the rest out as Lords to help you on the world map, with fiefs of their own.

[Kot]

Build more industry, build up your army, and then work on your relations with the lords of a faction you want to usurp? So that they will join you when you talk to them before battles (Not always guaranteed I think)

It's actually pretty rare unless you're visibly better than their old senior. You need them to like you (even if they don't at time of war, you can easily farm some by capturing and relasing them), you need to be more powerful than their faction (you won't be unless you fuck all of lords sideways until they have size ~50 armies), you need to have a claim (like you're supporting one of claimants or you farmed some of that claims using companions or something), and lot's of other stuff and even then they're incredibly picky. And if you fail, you can't try again for a whole month. Honestly, you're better off just capturing the whole place and making your companions lords.

[WealthyRadish]

Hm. I've etablished myself as a Swadian mercenary, and have decent relations with quite a few Swadian lords, in addition to a party size of slightly over 70, 40 of which are cavalry (10 swadian knights, almost 30 swadian men at arms, half of which can be upgraded at any time). Also a lot of surgery points on all my companions, so my dudes don't die a lot.

Creating a kingdom without first becoming a vassal is quite tricky, if that's what you're looking to do. Normally when you're a vassal it's just a case of taking loads of towns for yourself until the king finally denies you one and you have an excuse to betray him (alternatively you can betray him to his face when the time is right, and defeat his army immediately, thus sometimes starting the independence war with the king as your prisoner). If anything, just having a single holding to stockpile troops in ahead of time is extremely useful.

But as an unlanded merc, there are a few things that are fairly essential before you can suddenly no-CB some struggling faction and take a weakly defended town.

Spoiler: 6 weird tricks monarchs just HATE usurpers for! (click to show/hide)

-You'll need loads of right to rule, so you don't get dogpiled by every other faction (and so you can get other lords to join or even defect to you), so just send every companion you come across on the mission (someone will complain about your choice in emissary, but they'll get over it). Either high honor or dishonor is also helpful, to give positive relations with lords through your reputation.
-Another essential is a good surgeon (having multiple surgeons isn't useful, just pump Jeremus full of nothing but INT, he's worth not having Matheld or Artimenner for), since it's essential to making sieges economical against horrible odds and without help (especially if you aren't playing with handicap bonuses).
-You'll need high relations with a cluster of villages of your faction of choice, so you can rapidly recruit a new army after you take your first holding, and loads of high level companions with high trainer skill to transform them from useless grunts to garrison fodder within a couple days.
-Massive charisma and leadership are practically essential, though if you weren't planning for it, it's probably too late to hit 10 leadership. Leadership is the single best skill in the game, and maxing it is extremely helpful both economically and militarily.
-An army capable of winning offensive and defensive sieges while grossly outnumbered is of course needed to survive and expand. The nords are the best for both these things; nord trained footmen are IMO the best unit in the game for their cost and ease of training (it's not difficult to quickly train hundreds of them to garrison a holding), while nord huscarls are the best at winning offensive sieges with a limited party size. Cavalry are the worst economically for both these.
-And finally fat stacks of dosh to see you through the hell of fighting off sometimes thousands of men repeatedly and constantly recruiting and training replacements. If you've got that many cavalry and are hemorrhaging money already with low leadership, 20k probably wouldn't see you though the period.

[Robsoie]

If you didn't planned your character to be a Charisma -> Leadership one, considering that :
- each 1 point of leadership = +5 army size limit
- each 25 points of renown = +1 army size limit.
(edit : of course for mods it may be different)

You will need to grow renown a lot to keep up in army size, as to emulate the effect of 1 point in leadership , you will need 125 renown.

For leadership 10 , you'll emulate that by example with 1250 renown.
(of course you can have leadership 10 and 1250 renown, you'll crush mostly anything with +100 troops to your army max size)

And remember that you gain levels more and more slowly, so at some point you may get more troops from your accumulated renown faster than trying to increase your leadership, as you basically need 3 levels (and give those 3 points to charisma each time) to add 1 new point in leadership.

Note that renown isn't limited if i remember well, you can go way higher and get much more max troops

[Descan]

You can game the system of emissary complaints (If someone complains about someone else going out, before the complainer goes out to raise your Right to Rule, they won't allow you to send the complainer when you ask) by sending out each persons complainer first. In a chain and such. And you can skip some if you don't have them in your party.

[miauw62]

I already have both Matheld AND Artimenner, aaaaaaa.

I have a few infantry troops in my party (mainly to provide cover for the archers), but I guess I'll just become a Swadian vassal and rescue other lords from tight situations to build relations for a while. While establishing more industries, I guess.

I might let Matheld and Artimenner go (or send them out first for right to rule), I can always recruit them as lords later on. (I think?).

I might also seek out a book merchant for a leadership book, I guess. This money probably won't be doing much for a while.

Luckily half of the rhodok lords seem to carry an insane amount of prisoners, so I can upgrade and replenish my armies for free when I defeat one.

I guess I'll also start building charisma now. I've sort of neglected leadership since my current party size already pushes my economical limits (I'm probably still making a profit after food and spoils of war/tasks are counted, but green numbers are reassuring.)

[WealthyRadish]

I mean, Artimenner's alright, but he starts high level and engineering can be put on any INT companion. Matheld's also good with her low level and starting stats/skills, but man, Jeremus is a medical machine, and can get another 2 or 3 INT skills maxed in addition to the 3 medical skills, if you can refrain from giving him anything but INT and party skills. Between Jeremus and Borcha, you can get most of the good party skills at a very high level using only 2 companions, freeing other companions for combat or noble training.

You can keep people who hate each other in a party for quite a while and temporarily manage it with the dialogue options when they complain, but eventually one of the offenders will leave the map permanently (though they'll come back eventually with mods like Diplomacy).

Edit: One of the best things about leadership is the wage reduction, 50% at level 10 (I'm not sure if it's multiplicative with garrison wage reduction, though). The party size and morale are also great, and ultimately personal combat skills lose their usefulness over time, which is why I like high charisma and leadership. Something like 9 STR, 12 AGI, 27 CHA, and the rest in INT or STR is probably ideal.

[SalmonGod]

I'd kinda like it if they separated social and combat stats in M&B 2.... with combat being such a huge part of the game, it feels stupid to have to sacrifice your ability to engage in it enjoyably in order to efficiently lead a kingdom.

Instead, make them two completely separate point pools, and instead of choosing whether you want to be more combat or social oriented, your points are spent on choosing what styles of combat and leadership you pursue.