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[Ezzran]

If he can get another horse, and train up most of his units to be either Horsemen or Rhodok Crossbowmen (or Vaegir Bowmen) he should be able to do okay regardless. In my experience, the game has no idea what to do against a person on a horse. And since Rhodoks don't have horses....

[Flying Dice]

Yep. If you're on a horse and the enemy is either <10 cavalry or exclusively foot, you can usually pull a win if you're careful, even at low levels. I've won 1v20 fights (and possibly worse) against well-armed enemies just by kiting the cav and then picking off the spread out foot that have been chasing me, at maybe level 5-6. If you've got a horse with decent stats and a weapon with good reach, you're pretty much untouchable for AI if they can't get a surround and don't have dozens of archers.

[dogstile]

If Rhodoks are good at something, its using crossbowmen. Maybe i'm just underestimating him because i'm used to full damage.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Rhodoks are full defence. They're the hardest faction to seige because of their heavily armoured units and the fact their infantry mainly use polearms and shields. 
In a field battle you'll want to stand still and let the enemy come to you so they get cut down, trying to lead a charge rarely works for the Rhodoks.
If you're trying to take a castle with the Rhodoks it's best to order them to hold their ground and stop the ranged units from firing. That way the ranged units of the defenders should spend all their ammo on your shields and you can then lead the attack with ranged advantage. 

So each faction have their own little niche which you can exploit,
Rhodoks - Defence, best for holding up in castles. Slowest in the overland map.
Nords - Assualt, best for taking castles. Decent in field battles. Lack of horsemen and decent archers will limit your tactics a bit.
Swadians/Sarranids - Heavy horsemen charge, best for running down infantry in field battles. All-round balanced units.
Khergits - Mobility, fastest overmap speed. Good on the bigger flatter maps if the horse archers don't get stuck on each other. Terrible at seiges, both attacking and defending. Try to "lead" seigers away from your castles so you can enagage them in a field battle. Make for the best "freelancer/bandit" playthrough.
Vaegirs - Archers and light horsemen. Never really found them all that impressive in vanillia Warband. Good if you stick some archers on some hills and then flank with horsemen.  Decent for holding up in castles but your lack of good infantry means you'll have trouble keeping the attackers from your archer lines.

[Flying Dice]

Let's say that there is a good reason why I always do my raiding in Vaegir territory.

[dogstile]

I just hit the Rhodoks pretty hard almost every chance I can get. Not only is it hilarious watching them try to kill my mounted units (they seriously needed to give the AI a brace ability with those spears) but when I get the towns they own, I feel like i'm the only one in the world who can use them properly (forming a line of spearmen with the crossbowmen behind them).

Generally works quite well, even on sieges.

Edit: Except against Khergits. I swear I take 5x the amount of casualty's no matter what I do with those guys.

[Ozyton]

Finally got WB, and my first online session was disappointing, mostly because of the slightly different melee throwing off my timing combined with a poor connection. :|

Yeah, that's what I've noticed as well; the only server with more than 3-4 people for the native module was EU, so I was the only one with triple digit ping.

Have you thought of checking the servers after people get off work/wake up/etc.? Going off Eastern time here, I just checked the servers now at 11 PM where I imagine some people have stopped playing or gone to bed and the two most populated Native servers are a siege server and a battle server, both US servers with ~67 and ~33 players respectively.

Overall, the most populated server currently is a NW siege server with ~125 players (I assume not NA due to the high ping), followed by an NA cRPG server with ~65 players.

I should have checked the list earlier today but I was busy doing something. But, multiplayer is great. cRPG is a decent multiplayer mod to play as long as you can deal with the trolls and the... community... which mainly consists of trolls actually from what I've seen >_> . Still fun to get large battles of guys in a big melee all with their own personal equipment =) plus it's the most populated one you don't have to spend money on, and the pings are decent unlike what I've found while playing NW. cRPG servers I get under 70 ping usually while NW rarely goes under 110.

[Jacob/Lee]

Nords - Assualt, best for taking castles. Decent in field battles. Lack of horsemen and decent archers will limit your tactics a bit.

Nord huscarls are the single best infantry unit in the game, and Nord infantry in general seem to be a bit tougher than other faction's units of the same rank. If anything without a shield comes at a huscarl line they'll get an axe in the face before they even step 5 feet into throwing range.

The Khergit Khanate are the greatest threat to the Nords in field battles, simply because cavalry are better than infantry in every possible way when it comes to open-field battles.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I would say Swadians would be the greater threat to the Nords than the Khergits. Mainly because the huscarls are able to eat so many arrows with their shields. A Swadian charge can cut down pretty much anything, if they don't get bogged down in the fighting that is.
Khergits should in theory really flatten everything (as the steppe hordes they're based off did) but due to their AI and the way horses work they generally get stuck in the fray and get slain pretty easily. I had some success ordering horse archers to attack and then retreating back and repeating that, worked well enough but took too much effort to really be useful. 

The Tartar in With Fire and Sword seem to be much better horse archers. I'm not sure if it's their gear or if they got their AI bumped up but they seem to do so much better than in Warband. Plus they can use a shield while firing a bow, which is awesome.

[Jacob/Lee]

Lancers are scary when you're holding a huscarl line. I have seen some ugly things before, like a Sarranid mamluke 1-hitting a huscarl. You're probably right on the Swadians, since they have a lot more lances and big melee weapons than the Khergits.

[Rakonas]

I would say Swadians would be the greater threat to the Nords than the Khergits. Mainly because the huscarls are able to eat so many arrows with their shields. A Swadian charge can cut down pretty much anything, if they don't get bogged down in the fighting that is.
Khergits should in theory really flatten everything (as the steppe hordes they're based off did) but due to their AI and the way horses work they generally get stuck in the fray and get slain pretty easily. I had some success ordering horse archers to attack and then retreating back and repeating that, worked well enough but took too much effort to really be useful. 

The Tartar in With Fire and Sword seem to be much better horse archers. I'm not sure if it's their gear or if they got their AI bumped up but they seem to do so much better than in Warband. Plus they can use a shield while firing a bow, which is awesome.

Technically the khergits do flatten most of everything, but just like in real life they're shit at taking castles, and therefore are limited.

[umiman]

Real life as in... the Mongol invasions that didn't conquer almost the entire known world? Which definitely included castles, in which they were notorious for doing?

[Ozyton]

There's a reason anybody who plays this game hates fighting horse archers.

[Megaman]

Really the Khergits are an innacurate depiction of Mongols. They weren't the absolute only ones with horse archers, and they most certainly didn't only employ cavalry. In fact, they Vagiers probably would have horse archers as well, if they're supposed to be slavic.

[Rakonas]

Real life as in... the Mongol invasions that didn't conquer almost the entire known world? Which definitely included castles, in which they were notorious for doing?

Castles were still their greatest enemies as was most evident in Hungary IIRC, where the abundance of fortified cities and castles meant that even though the mongols controlled the countryside, they failed to ever truly take over the country. The Mongols still needed to besiege fortifications like everyone else and were stronger on the open field by a large margin.