Apr 04, 2011 Trading goods is a great way to make money in Mount & Blade: Warband. In this post, you learn example price ranges and thresholds (to buy under X, to sell over Y) for the most profitable goods. You also learn an example trade route that goes around all Calradia in Warband. Apr 10, 2020 Similar to past Mount & Blade games, you make a lot of money by purchasing cheap items at one town or village and selling them elsewhere for a profit.

1. Mount And Blade Warband Wiki
2. Mount And Blade Warband How To Make Money From Castles
3. Mount And Blade Warband How To Make Money

• It is beyond argument that one can gather a lot more money by being a murdering psychopath than a wise and caring lord. This is because the game automatically respawns traders, fishermen, and villagers going to market, and restores villages and monasteries to prosperity in a matter of weeks.
• Share Denars are the currency in Mount&Blade, Warband, and Bannerlord. They are used in quests and in everyday Calradian life. They are minted from gold, silver, and possibly copper.
• Money from ransoms can vary, depending how big the army was, if you captured a noble, or how good it is if it's a soldier (in classic Mount&Blade, all soldiers are worth 50 denars).

This guide will teach you many of the ways of making enough money to start your own kingdom in A Clash of Kings 7.1 for Mount and Blade: Warband.

Intro to Money: Why You Need $?

In ACOK, I find the limiting factor in success is primarily income. You need money to pay your troops, buy new ones, buy food, buy armor for your poor pathetic companions, and ultimately to buy Champion Plated Warhorses for your elite lvl 50 companions. For me, going bankrupt ends in me reverting to a previous save. I personally found ACOK to be EXTREMELY difficult in the early game, and that's one every easy mode (1/4 damage, 1/2 damage to allies, poor AI combat, etc.).
In this guide, I will teach you about many of the ways to make money in ACOK in order to be successful and dominate Westeros and Essos.

Your Character

If you have a character you like from a previous build of ACOK, go ahead and import. I won't judge you.
If you're new to the game, then I will do my best to advise character creation to make the game (slightly) easier.
Once you create your bearded, scarred, big-nosed lump of brawn (or Bronn ;), you need to create a backstory and stats. The most important stat to me is STRENGTH. That means you were the son of a noble, a noble in training, a squire, and you're setting out for personal revenge (I think). Your starting strength should be ~11, riding should be 5, and you get a horse.
When investing starting stats, max out strength. Next, max out melee strike damage. After that, shield (up to 3 eventually). The rest (a point or two) maybe athletics so you can run backwards without falling over as often.
Starting Out: A Hat, a Coat, and a Sword
So now you have your backstory and a horse. Great! Now get mobbed by bandits while you have low armor. As a default, I suggest stabbing the head when you have a weak weapon and a better-armored enemy.
Talk to the merchant, get a pile of quests, and wish him well. Promptly ignore the quests unless you're suicidal. Check the tavern before you leave the Weeping Town and grab Brynden Storm. He'll be your medic. Create a new battle group called 'Non-combat' or something, and at the beginning of every battle, tell him to retreat. That way, after the battle, more of your troops will be alive (surgery trait) and you'll get health back. Plan on putting Maron, Berenger, and Arratos into the non-combat group. Saathos and Serol if you can tolerate their rebelliousness also shouldn't fight.
With your starting money, you need enough armor and a weapon to win tournaments. Make sure you have enough strength for any given weapon. Halberd is my favorite (reach and piercing damage), two-handed mace is find (blunt damage), or you can actually get by with your starting shield and a slightly better sword (arming sword) if you're ok with stabbing people in the head.
For armor, you want the best value. Pig/sallet/armet helmets (55 armor), plated gauntlets (15?), and plated boots (16 armor?) are good value. For body armor, something like plated chainmail is fine. Buy body armor last so you don't overspend.
Your starting shield is good enough. You want to hit first anyways.

Chapter 1: Bandits and Tournaments

There are a few ways of making money early, but only one good one.
You could fight bandits, escaped slaves, outlaws, etc. Make sure you save first and having enough soldiers to win. Early fights when you have bad stats and no money are difficult. I advise against this.
Missions pay terribly. You might travel to 15 different villages to collect 4-5 cattle and you get paid in wool. I advise against this.
Selling your body isn't bad. If you want to go join Tywin Lannister's retinue, go for it. While you're in retinue, you can't access your companions, but they cloth you and pay you a bit. It's fine, it's safe.
The way to make money is tournaments. All tournaments are now one-on-one pools, and you often lose a battle and still win the tournament. If you bet the full $500 on yourself, you can make $6500 when you win, plus $200 for winning, PLUS sometimes a weapon or a horse or EVEN MORE money. Again, this is per tournament. Talk to the arena guy during the daytime to find out where tournaments are. Avoid mean-spirited people along the way, and fight in tournaments. If you keep losing, read the next paragraph.
After you win a tournament, you have a little bit of money. Keep traveling between tournaments, and check each tavern for companions. In tournaments, you'll be fighting your companions. So if you have 7 companions, you'll only be fighting your poor companions if you're a jerk, take their weapons away before the fight. You're a bad person. Really, you should win anyways because of their low starting stats.
As you make money and accumulate companions, it's OK to take the occasional battle with bandits. Use their looted gear to equip your companions. As your combat capable companions (not Brynden, etc.) gain experience, they can become your best troops. Garrett, Lyneria, Titus, and Roderick are archers. All others can be trained as heavy cavalry. Ideally, I give them war mace, shield, and a two-handed mace for fighting on foot, but don't spend much money on them.
When you have >10k gold (so basically 2 tournaments), go to Chapter 2.

Chapter 2: A Machine for Capitalist Pigs

Ever heard how you need to have money to make money? That's about to come into play.
In each town, you can build one (1) productive enterprise. Talk to the guild master, and as long as you didn't do anything STUPID, he'll let you invest. Again, in ACOK 7.1, relation of 0 is enough to build.
Go to King's Landing, and build a Velvet factory for 10k. You can look at the different prices, but this should be a safe-ish investment. The guild master should predict ~500/month. If there's a better offer you can take it, but Velvet is usually fine.
Once you have your first factory, you have an income. Congratulations! You can now afford to pay your companions and feed them uncooked wheat. Hey, one step at a time right?
Keep traveling between towns and fight in tournaments. In each town in Westeros, build the best-paying factory/enterprise. It's often velvet. Just pay top dollar for whatever pays the most. I'll pay 10k for 500/month before I'll pay 5k for 400/month. It's a long game, and enterprises are relatively reliable. They'll make you enough money to cover feeding your army and upkeep for a cheap army.
Once you have a productive enterprise in almost every town (literally every town), go to Chapter 3. You want every single town covered because later, when you're at war, you won't get money from businesses in enemy towns.

Chapter 3: Battle on a Budget

Now you should be makings at least 5k/month from your enterprises. You can start recruiting an army. You want to hit >100 troops with >20 heavy knights and still make 1-2k profit/month.
Army recruitment involves some personal preference, but I'll give you my thoughts and rationale. I spent my first 10h of ACOK 6.2 fighting the Reach and getting my ♥ kicked. I couldn't get through their heavy armor. Most troops in the game have Strike of 2 and non-armor-piercing weapons. They can't get through Reachman armor either. Therefore, I recruit from the Reach.
First, get ~20 Reachman pikes for small skirmishes. At the beginning of a battle, enemy cavalry will charge. Fight them off with your companions. If you just go around killing horses and let your companions finish off the dehorsed enemy, that's fine. Once they're no longer a threat, use the pikes to hold the enemy infantry while you and your companion cavalry go around the flank and crush the archers. Once the archers are gone, help out your pikemen. If you don't think your pikes will last that long, flank and save the pikemen first, archers second.
Upgrade your pikes slowly all the way to heavy reachman knights. Again, 20 is a good starting number if you can pay them. Group them with your companions and make a strong heavy cavalry force.
Once your have ~30 melee units, it's ok to make some Reachman crossbows. They have enough armor and armor-piercing weapons to fight enemy archers and weak unshielded enemy troops. 10-20 crossbows max, and don't rely on them.
If you want archers, Westerland archers are easily accessible and good enough. Generally, Westerlands have very average troops in all categories, and their archers are good enough.
Once you have an army of around >100 with >20 heavy reachman knights and can pay everybody, go to Chapter 4.
If for some reason you don't like juggling your army or don't have enough enterprise income, you could ultimately go around with just the 20 heavy reachman knights and do OK in Chapter 4, but a bigger army is better.
As you play, you'll be leveling up and leveling your companions and army. Here's what I do:
Strength to 30. Max out Strike damage at 10. Shield to 3 so you can use the best shields.
Then: charisma to 12 or 15 and leadership to save money. Prisoner holding too.
Also, agility and intelligence to ~12 for athletics, master weapon, and Trainer.
Note: You can get agility and intelligence from random events. Run from bears for intelligence (in the game, not IRL. Bears will catch you and eat you because they're faster than you. Shout loudly at bears with your arms up and looking scary). If you trip, regain your balance for agility (safer IRL than running from bears).
If you're patient, wait for events for all agility and intelligence. However, intelligence helps you level up faster, so a few points in intelligence after max strength might be valuable.
Trainer is useful because you will always be the highest-level character, so you can train more effectively than anyone else.
Your Companions:

As previously stated, archers are Titus, Roderick, Lyneria, and Garrett. Max out damage with 30 strength / 10 power draw and buy better bows (masterwork dragonbow bow with large bag of bogekin arrows in Essos is best, but a longbow and some extra arrows is a good start). No horses.
Anyone else who is fighting:

Stats: Strength to 30, Strike to 10, shield to 3, riding to at least 3/maybe 5, weapon master to 3/5, then agility and each one should specialize to looting / foraging / agility traits.
Equipment:

• Two-handed weapon: at least a 2-handed axe, at best a two-handed mace (44b damage!).
• One-handed weapon: at least an arming sword, at best a Heavy War Mace (the weird Essos spikey thing that does piercing damage).
• Shield: At least literally anything that can be used while mounted, at best a Reinforced Heraldric Steel Heater Shield (the cooler-looking one, but they both have the same stats).
• Horse: At least: Palfrey. At Best: Champion Plated Warhorse (not realistic for a long time).
• Armor: At least: chainmail, mail gauntlets/boots, mid-30's helmet like the open-faced sallet. Best: pig-faced helm, plate gauntlets/boots, plated chainmail (don't waste all your money on Full Plate for companions for a long time).

Non-combat:

• Brynden: Intelligence. All medical abilities.
• Arratos: Intelligence. Engineer, won't matter for a while. 30 intelligence, engineer, then other intel abilities.
• Maron: Intelligence. Path-finding/tactics, then maybe another.
• Berenger: Trader. 30 charisma and 10 trade before anything else.
• Saathos: don't recruit him yet, but ultimately Persuation.
• Serol: don't recruit him yet, but ultimately Persuation.

Brynden will be busy with ACOK SOM (School of Medicine), but Maron and Arratos will have extra ability points in addition to their dedicated rolls. Path-finding and tactics are critical for battles and running from scary armies. More tactics = more of your soldiers and fewer enemies on field at once. It's OK to have both Maron and Arratos get tactics and path-finding because those are the most important, but make sure at least one of them covers the other intelligence skills (like tracking). Saathos and Serol don't play well with others. By Chapter 11, you'll have so much money you can bribe them to stay with you if you really want them.
Conclusion:

• You: Heavy armor (the heaviest available), heavy horse, max melee damage, steel shield, and a bit of leadership/inventory.
• Companions: Heavy melee cavalry on a budget, max damage output, 1-2 agility party skills, and archers get Power Draw instead of Power Strike. Companion archers can be terrifying with 10 Power Draw and Masterwork Dragonbone Bows.
• Army: 20 Heavy Reachman knights, and >80 other guys. Arrow fodder/replacements, and also a larger army means you'll fight fewer enemies/wave.

Chapter 4: Essos is Rich

With your army, head to Essos. You've probably been here for tournaments, but now with your army you can hang out. First, pillage the Dothraki and Slaver Camps. Make sure your companions are equipped and troops are fed, then sell the rest. Make ~2k/ raid, and you won't upset anybody.
Westeros enterprises should cover upkeep, so the rest is profit. Once you have 20-30k gold (or sooner if you'd like), you can join the Gold Goblet trade. Buy low and sell high. I've bought at 100 and sold at 8000 before. Aim for buy <1000 and sell >2000. Buy at Pentos sometimes, and sell at Tyrosh frequently, but the prices vary. Don't be afraid to stay a night and observe prices. This is where Berenger is critical to improve your profits. Couldn't find Berenger? Fine, use Maron. No Maron either? Maybe Saathos, idk. You should have at least 3 trade skill from somebody. 6-7 skill is better.
So now you should be wandering around Essos, killing Dothraki and Slavers for food and buying/selling those Gold Goblets for gobs of gold. What should you do with all that money? Don't dump it all on equipment for your companions, no matter how tempting. You should get full plate and the best weapon (balanced halberd on foot, Heavy War Mace on horse, or some people like those heavy 2-handed axes on horseback), companions get plated chainmail and maces and discounted everything else.
Instead, take your money to Chapter 5.

Chapter 5: Compound Interest is the Most Powerful Force in the Universe

Take your pillage winnings all the way to the bank. Literally. The Iron Bank of Braavos. Keep 20-30k gold to invest in goblets, maybe another 20-30k gold for any impulse purchases, and put the rest in the bank. You make 2%/week. That's a stupid amount of money. And the money makes money on its own. You can be out buying prettier armor and color-coordinating horses for your companions and the money will sit there getting fatter.
Keep pillagings Essos and trading goblets until you have $1M in the bank. Yes, I said a million. It'll happen pretty quickly. Maybe $2M, but $1M should be enough for a while. Once you have a million in the bank and 100k gold on your person, move on to chapter 6.

Chapter 6: Cry Havok! And Let Slip the Dogs of War

With your newfound wealth, build your army to 200 men with 40-50 heavy knights. Make sure the heavy knights are listed first in field battles, and you should be able to crush most armies.
Now you want to make money from a town. For that, you need to conquer a town. It's wise to start conquering for someone else. By now, 'Aegon' (#spoiler) should have invaded. I like to join him. It's fun, trust me. Get everyone to like you, do favors, rescue lords, defeat enemy armies running around, etc. Get popular.
Now that's you're a Targaryen, do any final changes to your army for a siege. You have 200 men, 50 HEAVY knights, companions with heavy plate armor and two-handed maces (if not, buy them, trust me). The rest of your army you have choices. I would get at least 40 Westerland archers and the rest can be Stormlander Hammerman (or Ironborn Household Guards, or Dragonstone Halberdiers), but Reachman generic pikes are fine for now. You'll be attacking a town.
Aegon should be at war with the Reach, the Stormlands, and/or the Westerlands. If not, give him time. It won't take long. Now, pick a target in the Reach. It needs to be accessible by ladder, because by the time you build towers, the entire Reach army will fight you (you CAN win 200 men vs 2k, but it's not easy). Anyways, pick Tumbleton or Ashford, because they're profitable AND close to the Targaryen other holdings. The Weeping Town is also a legit target, but with less room for expansion. For hard most, Take Hull from Stannis Baratheon.
Once you pick your target (probably Ashford, I'll bet 1M gold), clear out any nearby armies then open your army composition menu ('p'). Put the archers at the top (companion archers in the archer group), then companions (separate group), then Heavy Knights (cavalry group), non-combat at the bottom, and infantry in the middle. Build ladders using Arratos' engineering skill. Fight disease by hiring maesters with all that gold. Have your camp set on fire and reload a previous save (it's OK).
In battle, have everyone follow you and cease fire. Stop at a good arrow range where you can see many target enemy soldiers, then tell your archers to hold their position and open fire. Stand behind your archers with the rest of your army. Once the enemy archers are thinned out, you can advance. You go first (you have the best shield), tell your companions to charge, cavalry to follow you, and infantry either follow or stay. You and your companions can break through armor, so head up the ladder and start chopping with that Balanced Halberd I keep telling you to buy. You can let a few companions go first, then still reach through with your halberd and still get kills. Eventually, you should kill the enemy faster than replacements can show up. Press the attack, and tell your cavalry to 'Charge' once you reach some open space. If you get stuck, you might have to flank around with either your cavalry or your companions to attack the rear of the enemy blob. I frequently jump down from a wall on my own, run around the back, and chop through 30 enemy guys until I reach my army so they can follow me again.
If you there is open space into the walls (meaning you didn't attack Ashford, shame on you), you can bring your archers to the top of the walls to fire down on the enemy. Westerland longbowmen are fine for this.
Eventually, you'll have a town. Say you want to keep it. Run around telling all the other lords you want that town. Tell Aegon. You'll probably get it if the lords like you. Congratulations! Chapter 7 has some closing thoughts.

Chapter 7: Where Do We Go Now? Where Do We Go?

Now you have a town of your own! You might make 100k gold/week from that town. It varies wildly. I don't understand those mechanics. Ask someone else.
You can keep fighting for Aegon and take more towns, but he'll limit you eventually. While you're a Targaryen, get Elite Targaryen archers. They wreck medium-armored troops.
Keep fighting, and start releasing captured lords sometimes, and you'll gain honor and right to rule (I think). With enough honor, lords will have 100 relation with you before they even meet you! Starting your own kingdom is now an option.
If you're not sure about starting your own kingdom, you can take a town on your own, declare independence, hold the town for 24 hours, then give up and run away back to Aegon and beg for forgiveness. Why 24 hours? Because if you hold certain towns for 24hours (most of the Reach, especially), you can steal a Valaryian steel sword! (Also Dawn at Starfall)
Whether you have your own kingdom or not, it's generally good to hold ~3 towns, maybe 1 castle, and maybe 2 villages. The villages you can max relations and restock troops. Castles give +50 troop capacity. Towns get money. Too many holdings increase corruption and become financially unstable. Holding Braavos is helpful because you can safely visit the bank. If you want to be extra safe about founding your own kingdom, stay with Aegon until you have 1M in hand in 5M in the bank. That's 100k/month in interest!
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There are a lot of obscure mechanics in Warband that a very large fraction of the playerbase is unaware of. Even veterans of this game do not necessarily know how everything works. This guide attempts to bring some of these obscure mechanics to light. I haven't proofread anything yet, but hopefully you can learn something.

Introduction

Even after 1000 hours, I am still learning new things about this game. Is that a good thing? If you asked me, probably not. There are so many obscure mechanics -- some of which are extremely important, mind you -- that the game doesn't explain clearly, and so a huge portion of the playerbase may not even know about most of these things. Because of this, I figured I should write a guide that explains them.
Difficulty Settings - Campaign AI and Combat AI
All of the difficulty settings are pretty self-explanatory, save for the AI settings.
Campaign AI affects many things:
In format:
Poor / Average / Good (i.e the values on respective difficulties would be 6/4/2)
Economy:
Player tax inefficiency becomes more severe as campaign AI difficulty increases. The player can hold 6/4/2 'core' fiefs, i.e fiefs that do not suffer from tax inefficiency. Each 'non-core' fief increases tax inefficiency by 3%/4%/5%.
Lord Armies:
Overall, on good campaign AI, and to some extent average, enemy kingdoms will be significantly more powerful and it becomes essential to take lords prisoner.
Campaign AI mainly determines how fast an AI Lord can recruit troops. In code, this is technically done by determining the cost of recruitment. On Good Campaign AI, a lord will be able to completely recover from defeat after just a week or so. Whereas on poor campaign AI, you can easily get away with never taking a single lord prisoner throughout your entire game, on good campaign AI, I would recommend that you take enemy lords prisoner -- even upstanding and good-natured ones -- to prevent a constant stream of enemies.
Campaign AI also determines a Lord's wealth (I think? Or it might just be a side effect of drastically lower recruitment costs) and their army's XP rate -- both of these primarily determine their army's troop quality.
It is a common myth that max AI lord party size is determined by campaign AI difficulty. In fact, it is determined by the 'ideal party size' variable, which is determined by the player's level. In other words, max AI lord party size is the same across all difficulties and scales with the player's level. Practically speaking, though, Lord armies will generally tend to be bigger on good campaign AI because Lords can reach their max party sizes faster because of their outrageously buffed recruitment speed. Additionally, these death stacks will have far more room to upgrade their troops.
Behavior:
Campaign AI determines how biased lords are against the player in several ways. On Good campaign AI, lords will be less willing to follow a player marshal, less likely to join the player's kingdom, more likely to declare war on a player kingdom, and (I think) more likely to attack the player's fiefs.

Mount And Blade Warband Wiki

TL;DR, don't play on Good Campaign AI unless you want a challenge, because the AI cheats a lot. On good campaign AI, a lord will essentially be able to spawn an army out of thin air, and in the late game, it wouldn't be unusual to see Harlaus walking around with nearly 100 men-at-arms.
Combat AI
But what does combat AI do? It turns out that combat AI is a lot more simple to explain and a lot less cheaty than campaign AI.
On poor combat AI, the AI is stupid. They will delay their swings, giving you an opening to attack them. They will not feint and they are generally poor at blocking. Their sole tactic on the battlefield is bum rushing into your shield wall. I would not recommend playing on this difficulty. I played on poor combat AI for my first 800 hours, and it resulted in some very bad habits which I'm still trying to break. You will not get that much better at combat playing on this setting since everyone, even elite troops, are pretty much punching bags. This is probably the most noob setting to turn down, even worse than the damage settings IMO.
Average combat AI is a balance, I'd recommend it for new players.
On good combat AI, the AI will have no delay on their swings, will feint extremely frequently (several times before an attack), and is very good at blocking. This allows them to operate to the full extent of their stats, and everyone will fight as if their lives depended on it. It will be a challenge to take down even a single elite troop if your weapon proficiency is not good.

AI Behavior

How do lords interact with the player?
Lords have personalities. These personalities are: Upstanding, Good-natured, Martial, Calculating, Pitiless, Quarrelsome, and Debauched.
The better their personality, the more loyal they are as vassals, but the harder it is to convince them to join your kingdom. Ideally, you want all of your vassals to be either Upstanding, Good-natured, or Martial.
Their choice of dialogue depends on their personality, so once you memorize the different dialogue it becomes easy to know their personality.
Interestingly, AI Kings will not allow you to become their vassals under normal conditions if you have high right-to-rule -- they consider you a potential rival/threat to their realm's stability. You can still become their vassal if you take land first before asking.
AI Lords that dislike you will do everything in their power to attack your villages. The only exception is the Good-natured lord, which will never loot any village, ever, including villages owned by other AI lords.
If a sadistic (evil/debauched) lord dislikes you (-20 relations or less), they will hire assassins that attack you in taverns. They function exactly like a Belligerent Drunk does except they attack you without notice and you do not have to look at them for them to attack you.
Which skills can AI Lords use?
If you plan on making a companion into a lord (which you can do if you ask them 'Would you be interested in holding a fief?' when you have your own kingdom set up), you might want to invest into these for them. I highly recommend checking the wiki first, however, because companions have personalities as well. And you will lose a chunk of relations with every lord in the game if you make a commoner companion into a noble.
AI Lords use 4 skills:

• Pathfinding
• Trainer
• Tactics (helps them in autoresolve)
• Leadership

How are autocalc battles, both between you and an AI and AIs versus other AIs, calculated?

1. Numbers.
2. The levels of their troops.
3. Level of the Tactics skill.

Equipment and so on has no role in autocalc. From what I understand, all that matters are those three.
Do AI Lords have wealth?
The answer is yes. They use their wealth for recruitment (and possibly upgrading). Unlike the player, they have to manually collect money from their fiefs. This is why you'll see them sitting outside of their villages. It's also why AI Lords become poor if they have too many fiefs -- because they don't have the time to travel around the map to collect taxes. For this reason it is best to arrange your vassals in a way where they only have a few fiefs and they are all right next to each other.
An AI lord's village will lose wealth if you loot it, preventing them from collecting taxes. But that barely does anything compared to just defeating them in battle and forcing them to rebuild their army. A fief's wealth cannot go below 0.
The AI lord's economy functions completely differently from the player's economy. AI lords cannot have enterprises. As far as I know, their only source of income is their fiefs (They may, but I am not certain if this is true, get some money from looting villages).
AI Lords lose wealth by recruiting troops, and possibly from upgrading them.
Do Lords have to pay upkeep?
The answer is yes. Lords pay wages to troops based on this formula: ((Troop_level^2)+50)/30. They do not have to pay extra money for cavalry or archers. If they cannot afford their troops, their troops will either get disbanded by the lord or desert from the lord's party.
Which troops desert from a lord's party is random. The lords disband low-level troops and non-faction troops first.
You may have noticed the small parties of fiefless lords. They aren't making money, so how can they have armies? The answer is that Lords don't only have a maximum party size, they also have a minimum party size. If they are below this, they will gradually get troops via free recruitment while sitting in a walled fief until they have a few dozen troops, say 30-50 or so. However, because they have no money, they will not be able to upgrade their troops or recruit any more above that minimum. And when they do get money, they will have to pay for all of their troops' wages, including the ones they got for free.
Hypothetically, an AI lord's army can be of an infinite size, because they can go over their max/ideal party size by rescuing prisoners. However they will eventually start struggling with desertion or they will have to disband the prisoners.
As far as I know, AI lords do not have any system of debt. Their fiefs definitely don't.
What is certain, though, is that Lords have to pay for recruitment above the minimum party size. How much this costs depends on Campaign AI difficulty. This is why on Good Campaign AI, a Lord can spawn an army out of thin air.
If all your lord has is castles then he won't have any wealth to build up his army since the wealth of castles goes towards maintaining their garrisons. Villages might not be good for the player but they are really good for the AI. A good setup for an average Lord is 1 castle and 1 village. Castles mainly help them raise their maximum party size, +40 each, rather than providing wealth. It should also be noted that a castle's wealth is based on its village's wealth -- this also applies for when the player owns the castle.
The interesting thing is that AI Lords do not pay for their garrisons. Instead, an AI Lord's fief's strength is determined by the fief's Prosperity. Coupled with the fact that AI Lords do not suffer from tax inefficiency, a lord could theoretically have every fief in the game and each garrison would be fully stocked. Actions that lower the Prosperity of a town, such as destroying caravans, will, in the long-term, result in a weaker garrison, but this is not practical knowledge to the player. It does generally mean, however, that places that are bandit-infested, have been sieged countless times, and so on should have weaker garrisons, at least if the town's situation remains consistent throughout the entire game.
Do Lord armies use food and morale?
No, they don't use either.

Mount And Blade Warband How To Make Money From Castles

How do AI Lords manage their armies and garrisons?
As stated before, AI Lords do not pay to reinforce their garrisons.
AI lords' troops need XP to be upgraded. An AI lord will add 30% of (Trainer+2)*500 xp/every 2 days. Lords have trainer skill between 2-7, on average this is around 3 or 4. So the average lord adds ~375-450 xp per day. Each point of trainer is worth 75 xp/day. This is rather meager -- a Player Character with 10 in trainer adds 80 xp to each unit. I don't know for certain if it costs an AI lord money to upgrade a troop, but I highly suspect and assume that it does.
How is a Lord's troop quality determined?
The short answer is that an AI Lord's number of elite troops depends on his wealth (an AI Lord requires wealth to upgrade). Again, because higher Campaign AI will reduce recruitment cost, Lords will have more money as a side effect (saving money is gaining money in this case) and they will have more money to upgrade troops with.

Skills, Stats, and Proficiencies

Mount And Blade Warband How To Make Money

Without tweaks or cheats, the attribute cap is 63, the skill cap is 10, and the proficiency cap is 699.
I'll get right to the most important tip: the +4 bonus player gets for leveling party skills doesn't require a companion to have the skill!
If you have 10 pathfinding, you will get the 10(+4) even if not a single companion in your party has a point of pathfinding. You can test this by starting a new game, importing a character with 10 in every skill. You will notice that you have +4 in every party skill despite no companions being in your party. This means that if you are playing a brainy character, you will only need a couple of INT companions so that you can get them to 10 in the party skills that you don't plan on leveling.
If you need advice on leveling companions, I would suggest two things: Bandit camp quests and hunting down bandits with just your companions in your party.
Approximately 1/5th of strength is added to your damage output. This means that every 5 points of strength will increase your damage by about 1.
Every point of agility gives you an increase in movement speed approximately equal to 1/4 or 1/5ths of a point of athletics.
Every point of agility gives you 0.5%+ attack speed.
Persuasion increases the chance of routed enemies surrendering, meaning they become prisoners in your party without you having to fight them.
Every 100 points of proficiency increases attack speed by about 15%. Additionally, with melee weapons, every 100 points of proficiency increases damage by 5%.

Controls

Campaign Map
Hold down CTRL+SPACE while moving on the campaign map to speed up game time.
CTRL+Left click on items to buy and sell quickly at merchants.
Battles
If you attack in the direction you're being attacked right as soon as you're about to get hit, you'll parry the strike. This is known as the 'chamber block'.
Press E to kick. Pretty useless, usually.
Pressing Backspace in a battle will give you a minimap and allow you to control your troops by clicking on the minimap.
You can also hold down F1 in a battle and you'll be able to drag around a rallying point, which allows you to control your troops. You can make separate rallying points for each group.
Certain weapons, especially throwing weapons, have multiple attack types/styles. X swaps between them. Try it with a throwing axe or jarid.

Tips and Tricks

Keeping horses in your inventory will reduce the party speed penalty for carrying heavy things. However, if you carry too many, it will just slow you down and take up needed inventory space. I personally prefer 3 horses.
If someone in your party has high First Aid, you can heal lame horses by keeping them in your inventory. This is important because there is a chance of your horse dying if it gets downed in combat while lame. Unfortunately, you will not recover positive modifiers (such as Spirited) after healing your horse.
Similarly, your shield can get damaged if it breaks too many times. I believe that it can break completely as well if it keeps breaking after getting damaged. Unlike horses, you cannot repair/heal shields.
The recruitment option for a village is reset by a relations change. What you can do is recruit, then take a quest and recruit again, then fail the quest and recruit again, then take another quest and recruit again, then fail that quest and recruit again... You can easily get 50+ recruits from a single village this way. Most of your companions will complain about failing a quest, but unless they are already extremely unhappy, they won't leave.
Additionally, if a village has low prosperity, you can ask the villagers 'How is life here?' and one might ask you for a donation of 300 denars in exchange for 1 relation point with the village. While this does not appear to be a meaningful amount, as I discussed above, a relation change with a village allows you to recruit from them again.
If you have high relations with a village, there is a chance of you getting higher tier troops from recruitment with them. If you are really lucky, you could even end up recruiting elite troops, like huscarls from a Nord village, without having to train them. I have heard of two stories of getting 50+ Huscarls from a village, and one story of someone getting dozens of Swadian knights from a village.

Brief Overview of Warband's Meta

There are two mainstream metas for character and companion combos:
For combat characters supported by INT companions, you generally want to build your character as a heavily armored horse archer with a melee weapon as a side weapon. So you could go Bow+Arrows+Arrows+2H sword, or Bow+Arrows+Sword+Shield. Horse archer builds excel in prolonged battles, and theoretically, as a player, you could solo an entire army by yourself if you had enough arrows with you. I do not recommend getting 10 horse archery, most pros I've seen suggest 4-6 as the ideal amount of horse archery.
For commander characters supported mostly by combat companions, you want to prioritize three skills, the 'Trinity' of skills: Surgery, Pathfinding, and Trainer.
For commander INT characters I would still put a few points into trainer on each of your companions. And your couple of INT companions should have 10 trainer for sure.
If you go INT, you'll want to be using a crossbow. You should also give your INT companions crossbows.
CHA is probably the worst stat for the player character to focus on. A CHA build is useful for newer players, since 10 Leadership allows your armies to be larger and require less weekly upkeep. But an experienced player will have no issues with party size or money. I would consider a CHA build a 'training wheels' build.
All skills in Warband are useful to some extent, but not all are equally useful for the Player. The 'non-meta' skills are Power Throw, Tracking, Persuasion, First Aid, and Trade.
For Tracking, just have a companion with a few points in it.
For Persuasion, it helps you marry earlier, helps you hire mercenaries cheaper, and helps you convince lords to defect to your kingdom. It also allows you to convince routed enemies to become your prisoners. The only one that really matters from a meta perspective is the defection.
For Trade, it really helps to have a trading companion but the player should absolutely never invest into Trade unless you plan on RP'ing.
For armies, the meta is pretty simple.
In the field, Swadian Knights > everything. Heavy cavalry dominates the meta, both in Native and nearly every single mod I have played. If you do not like the heavy cavalry meta, I would suggest the Viking Conquest DLC.
As far as sieges go, it's all about those Huscarls and Rhodok Crossbowmen. Swadian knights will work about as well as huscarls, but they are far more expensive.
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