Hello reader,

I have been playing mount & blade warband for a while and I chose to be a female character. Just for the extra difficulty. I married this guy from the Swadian Kingdom so I became a vassal of the Swadian faction. I conquered a castle but that was given to someone else. The next two castles that I solely conquered on my own I managed to keep. Even though the enemy would come in at large to try to steal it away. Nobody would want to help me of course. Unless I lied and told friendly lords to go some place, pretending there was something for them there. Anyhow, every time the villages belonging to the castle, Harlaus kept them for himself. Or he would give them to someone else. Now with this large army we were campaigning around and conquered town after town after castle and castle and thus towns as well. Did I get ANYTHING out of it? Nope. I kept helping my allies to the point of having my army be severely exhausted and tired.

Now at the end they were besieging a castle. What happened is: All the lords quickly left the siege except for my husband. So they just left him to his fate. I couldn't turn away like that so I helped him with conquering that castle. We had quite some casualties, but we managed in the end with a lot of effort. What does King Harlaus do? He just awards it to some asshole that ran away and left us to our fate. Not only that, throughout the campaign, harlaus was never seen at all.

I hoped to at least gain something for my efforts, but nope. All I wanted was a little village. I mean, a town would have been amazing, but that's just wishful thinking. How on earth can I get a village? As a female you are not awarded one from the start, so it's kind of annoying. I want to secure my income, but if I get nothing, there's nothing I can fund my army with. I even believe I am the 2nd in having the most troops. I understand the prejudice against women, but this is going a bit extreme. I would almost break my alliance with harlaus, but that'd be bad. I also want to increase my relationship with the other lords, but they just say: We got nothing for you. You can go over there and check things out if you want.

Do I look like a tourist to you? Gee.

You have two big difficulties. The first is, of course, that you're a woman. The second thing is that you chose probably the worst monarch.

Both King Harlaus and King Ragnar are very greedy when talking about fiefs (especially Ragnar is that greedy that a lot of his own vassals will leave him because of this). King Yaroglek and Sanjar Khan are normal. King Graveth likes keeping towns for himself, but he's fair about castles and villages and if he likes you, he'll give you a lot of them. And if Sultan Hakim has Shariz, he'll be generous as well.

Should I leave from his rule? I did so much for him and conquered so much...

Hm. If you aren't playing the realistic mode, I'd suggest to save and try to leave. But that's dependent on your relationships with other factions and monarchs/vassals. If they're really deep in the negatives, rather stay with him.

Only the Rhodoks hate my ass. Well and the faction I am at war with.

Well, if it isn't the Sultanate, Hakim still owns Shariz and you have a bit of renown (so he'll accept you), I'd suggest you to try to join him. However, I warn you, I don't have that much experience with female chars leaving a monarch. :P

The second one first.
The best most reliable source of income is investing into business.
In each town, you go see the mayor and ask to invest into city. Investment size and income varies, but weavery+dyeworks is generally (always?) the best. Invest 10K, get back a few hundred per week. Ten of these is enough for a sizable force.

Then the first one.
There's a few factors deciding if you get a fief.
First, a huge bonus if you're the one who captured it.
Second, a negative bonus if you already have a fief. Since you have two castles, this weighs in heavy.
Third, how much the other lords (and king) like you. Even one or two lords hating you can tilt the balance off.
Fourth, you running to as many lords as you can and asking them to support you getting a fief. I think speech skill helps here.

The best way I can think of offhand, is strip one castle of defenders and let the enemy take it.
Then you only have one fief and have a better chance getting a new one. If you lose both, you might even get a town (assuming there's one to give.

The last thing.

After you get your finances in order, it's time to get payback for your shoddy treatment. Find the Swadian contender for the crown and throw in support for.. I think it was a she, whatshername. Bad monarchs are best replaced with better ones.

AFAIK, The average profit of VWD is 460-500 (based on the price of raw silk, dyes and velvet there), so it's about 4,8% return rate. So you'll start getting the net income after 21 weeks. <span class="bold">The wiki</span> has this one well written. Isolla of Suno. ;)

Or just take over the bastards kingdom, and forge your own kingdom. I kinda cut my own path out of the Swadian Kingdom, and had lords from every faction join me in the end. Right now in my current game, I own all of Swadia, a few Rhodok Castles, a few of the Nords, and even some in the Khanate, and only the Nords seem to hate me. Ragnar and I have met in the field a few times when he tried to conquer a castle that belonged to one of the lords who followed me(My wife's father no less!)

But note it's much harder that way. Not being able to persuade other lords to your side.
I've played this way too much already, but still remember how darn hard it was the first time I tried. Trying to grab troops whichever where I can, all neighbors declaring war, running out of money. There goes my kingdom, sigh.

If I were to try the long game now, I'd do it somewhat like this.

1. Do easy odd jobs for lords, villages and towns. Travel around, find the companions you want. Win tournaments. Kill bandits and raiders until decently equipped. Start investing into towns.

2. Level 10+
Join a faction. Do odd jobs for the lords so they'll all like you enough. Gather wealth and invest into every town. Gather more wealth.

3. Level 20 or thereabouts. Leave the faction. Find the usurper of the same faction and declare for her. Decently easy to get some lords to join you when they like you already. Win. Leading an army, a good way to win a lot of fights and get prestige. Get loads of wealth and a town.

4. Strip town of good defenders. Leave the faction. Get hostile with the faction, grab your town back.

5. Survive.

His path is probably much easier then mine, but I play a straight up world domination type.

The first game that I played really frustrated me trying to get all my lords to actually work together and dominate everything. Second game I said screw it and recruited no one for my own kingdom. Took a castle, built a jail, threw every enemy lord into it. Never let any of them out... I would rush out and take enemy castles/towns and leave a 20 man garrison behind of the worst troops. Then while enemy lords rallied to siege it back... I would beat them down and imprison them.
It turns out the game is pretty easy when the faction you are at war with has only one or two lords. Two wars at once wasn't all that bad.

The one down side is you have to be really really good at winning sieges without taking losses. You will be single-handedly siegeing down everything.

What's your strategy for sieges? Mine is either expect heavy losses or tell my troops to hang back while I climb almost to the top of the ladder and shoot the enemy with arrows just past the range of their melee weapons and kill them all myself.

Mine is to have plenty archers and crossbows in one group that doesn't attack but just shoots.
Footmen and horsemen attack and pull back to draw out the enemy for archers to shoot.

When archers are out of arrows, the fighters pull back and archers attack.
Then when the archers are down, the fighters attack until I get reinforced with more archers.

I've found it best to have lots of fast firing archers at the top of troop chain,
so the battle opens with massive archery fire. Then a bit of footmen and crossbows and rest of archers.

The heavy foot and knights at the bottom.
So when I throw them in, all my archers have already shot everything they got.

Usually pretty heavy losses, but no huge amount of deaths thanks to high surgery skills.