5 stupdi questions from a new player

1. Go to the M&B wiki. You can google it and find it; not allowed to post links here, but pretty easy to find.

2. Elite troops in vanilla are simply the top tier troops for each faction. Basically the final promotion for each of the infantry, archer, or horsemen line. Note that not all factions have a full troop tree, and some of the factions so called "elite" troops are actually trash. Again, look at the wiki and consult the Taleworlds forums for a bit more information.

3. Your troops are divided into 3 groups by default; cavalry, infantry, and archers. You can change which group they are part of in the party screen, and designate new groups as well (although all troops of the same type are grouped together). You can then use the number keys to issue orders (via the function keys) to each group of troops individually. So you can tell the archers to stand their ground; tell your infantry to stand ground but move up 10 paces to shield the archers, while you tell the cavalry to follow you as you flank.

4. Destroying bandit lairs are the best way to cut down on the number of spawns. The lair spawns near a major town, and the lord of that town will usually give you a mission to hunt down the bandit lair and destroy it. This is very profitable, so you should do it whenever you aren't busy with something else. There is no way to completely stop their spawning, but late game the bandits will run from your party anyways.

5. When you get a companion, talk to them (via party screen) and ask them to tell you about their skills. This will bring you to their character screen where you can see and improve their skills.

Add to 4: Ransoming bandits is just another way to get money. Even if you throw all of them that were captured in prison their numbers on the map won't go down, so just sell them for a profit.

Add to 5: http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Heroes As you can read here on how to make the "best" group of heroes to join you. You can also see that not all heroes like each other and won't be happy if you have the person they dislike in your party.

6: You can tell your king that you want to be released from your oath. You then also get the option to keep all Castles and Towns you own, but he wont like that and you will be at war with Swabia, so unless they are fighting in other wars that aren't going well you will face their entire army taking your stuff. In the diplomacy game i was running i declared independent from Nord with Dhirim, Praven, Kelredan Castle and another castle close to Dhirim as my property. Of course the king wasn't happy and we were at war, but i talked to him right after i said i left and made peace straight away, as Nord was fighting 2 other wars next to the war with me. The only issue i found is not having the manpower to go to war against another kingdom, i released my heroes as vassals, took the other heroes in my party and even got 2 other lords who were looking for a new king.

So in your case i wouldn't declare independent as you only have 2 castles. Get your relations up and try to get ownership of at least 1 town before you start your own kingdom.

7: Yep, thats part of the game. As you might have noticed that in battles 8 out of 10 times the enemy army is chasing you at first, before they engage in fighting others. Or in tournaments where they all focus on you. This is the same with player owned fiefs, some lords constantly attack your villages(i have noticed that in most cases it is always the same 2 or 3 lords, while the rest don't bother). In another game running Native Expansion i had gotten Dhirim and Praven again(i really am fixed on getting those 2 as vassal of Nord), and we were at war with Khergit Khanate, and they would repeatedly siege Dhirim with a garrison of 600 man and leave Uxhall alone that was also taken from them by us and had only 130 man as defenders. But Uxhall wasn't player controlled and Dhirim was.

The best thing to do is straight after you get your 1st village is building a watchtower, this will increase the time needed to loot the village with 50% and thus more time to take it out. In Native Expansion you get to build a few more buildings as well and have the time needed to loot to increase to 75% than normally.

Villages and castles are generally not good fiefs to hold; villages make decent coin... but only if they haven't been raided to the ground, which they generally always are. You will have enemies; some lords start out at -3 to you, and other lords get pissed at you no matter what you do. These lords will preferentially raid your properties. Castles, meanwhile, make very little income, especially considering the amount of troops you need to garrison them. I would not even bother holding these two types of fief personally.

Towns are the fiefs you want to hold, because they make more base income than villages, and they also rake in a lot of cash from tariffs on caravans. A good strategy in vanilla is to start out by destroying bandit lairs and killing Sea Raiders for cash, and using that money to build enterprises (usually the dyeworks, as they bring in the most income in almost all of the towns). Once you can maintain an army of elites off of that, you can then join a faction and take an enemy city. Most of the enemy garrison is usually trash troops that can be destroyed by Huscarls or even dismounted Knights. Once you have a good base of towns with good garrisons and reserve troops, you can easily rebel and start your conquest of Calradia.

I would also refrain from making your companions into lords; in order for them to be any good, you need to train them up and equip them before you release them as lords (they will never upgrade their equipment or level afterwards), and if you're going to go to that much trouble, they are better off in your party, contributing Training experience to the rest of your troops (so you can train a horde of Swadian Knights in minimum time). Do take the time to get to know the lords around the realm. Do honourable things like saving villages and refusing the reward, or letting defeated lords go. This will automatically raise your relations with Good Natured and Upstanding lord; these are the guys you want on your side, because they're incredibly easy to get to 100 relations (at which point it will lock in there) and therefore the safest lords to give properties to when you lead your own faction.

Yep, the king won't declare war to you if he can keep your fiefs. Only when you keep them(and thus starting your own faction) he will declare war as he wan''t the fiefs back.

If you let the king take your fiefs, you can only siege towns and castles until they declare war on you personally. This can be done by attacking lords (give them your demands), attacking patrols and caravans and taking hostile actions against towns. Be adviced that you only have a party of max 100-130 soldiers, while they will unleash the full force of the entire kingdom on you.

I would advice on starting a game where you become vassal of one of the kingdoms, then get your relations with the other lords of that kingdom up and when they taken a town ask if they would support you to get ownership of it. In most cases if you havn't had anything else before they will gladly support you(and if you have a positive standing). I wouldn't declare independence unless you have 2 towns and 2 or 3 castles and that the faction your with is in a war with someone else or maybe 2 other kingdoms. This will increase the change that your former king would accept peace without demanding a huge amount of money or one of your fiefs. And from there you can start building up your own faction.

With the diplomacy mod you can actually continieu to level up your heroes once you released them as vassals, but they will have only small armies.

If you let go a captured lord you gain honor. When you send out a companion to support you as king(praise your name) you get right to rule. The advice is to have atleast 50 right to rule, before you start your own faction.

And this forum is for all M&B versions currently out. Only at taleworlds they have seperated them. Paradox bought the game from Taleworlds, but didn't developed it.

That's correct. Normally you will get a notice after a few days that the faction is eliminated and after that it can take weeks before the last Lord switched sides. I don't know if this is extended if the king is imprisoned. Some mods like Native Expansion allows defeated kings or queens to switch aswell. I know in Diplomacy-mod the former Kings/Queens of a kingdom remain neutral and maintain no army, so they roam the lands alone at high speed. If you talk to them, they will give a short answer or something like that and you can't really interact.