Brytenwalda Conqueror aka Britannian Unification

Brytenwalda Guide for Warband.

Brytenwalda Conqueror

Having established an economic foothold, filled up our garrisons and won over our people, we can now dream of conquering Britannia, Caledonia and Hibernia (roughly the equivalent of England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland: the British Isles).

Or, to put it differently, we can attempt a Unification of the British Isles: creation of a Britannian Empire.

For my Hero, who is Christian, this will be a Holy Britannian Empire because the Pagans (Woden: Norse) are being converted to Christianity and killed in overworld scripts for +Devout.

I say "dream" because the Dark Ages British Isles, as represented in Brytenwalda, is comprised of six cultures and 30 kingdoms or factions that oscillate between waging war, forging alliances and signing non-aggression treaties, thereby changing the factional landscape of the British Isles. It changes trade routes and it changes who we're at war or at peace with. A few factions have been eliminated already; one of them, by my hand (Lindisware). That said, even though they don't have a home, Lords of Lindisware are still getting about and are capable of fielding non-trivial nuisance armies.

There are a few reasons why total domination is more difficult and time-consuming to attain in Brytenwalda, and they are as follows:

• While it's pretty easy to field a sizeable army of squishies, it's expensive and time-consuming to train them up into troops with staying power. At this point, I don't even bother training to elite level; I get them ready-made or I do without. Third-tier troops in great numbers are tough enough and not too expensive. In some cases, Elites are six times more expensive to maintain than the tier below them.
• Defeated Lords refield armies very quickly. Much quicker than in Native. And they're big armies.
• Vassals are not easy to come by. In Native, providing we have built Renown to respectable levels, disgruntled Lords from other kingdoms will appear in our Court, ready to defect from their King and pledge allegiance to us. Well, that hasn't happened yet in Brytenwalda. In Native, I was finding 20 Lords at a time queuing up in my Court, ready to defect. My Court was jam-packed with them. Eventually, my banner flew over greater-Calradia as a result of accepting their pledges, as per Lilura conquers Calradia. It was like a sea of Lilura-Lords.

While we don't have vassals queuing up in our Court, we do have Heroes to whom we can grant fiefs (as per Native), and we also have the ability to deploy multiple patrols and allocate them to particular areas (as in Floris). This is very important because we can't be everywhere at once. It's pretty easy to protect one town, two castles and several villages that are in close proximity to one another, but as our kingdom expands, it becomes physically impossible to protect our fiefs. All it takes is one Lord with 20 men to sneak in under our radar, and the next thing we know our villages have been burnt to the ground. This can take away 50,000 scillingas per week from us, which is non-trivial. We also lose all of the village's upgrades! It's awful, and I wish I could just build a wall to keep them out.

It's good that I have this river, though, because it acts sort of like a wall: the enemy can only come at me from the west or across a bridge in the south (and I have no aggro coming up from the south):

However, I have now expanded beyond that comfort zone (Warpath).

Which means I NEED patrols. Lots of them. Like, 30 with armies of 100 each.

Now, remember those Mercenary Captains which I said worked kind of like Lords/vassals for us in our Warlord phase? Well, they can be manually assigned their own Company, independent of our Court. This can be handy, too.

The problem is, we need a lot of patrols if we are to secure areas of our Kingdom because their AI is lacking.

We go on another warpath:

Pengwern's Caer Daun castle sacked:

Bernaccia's Loidis town sacked:

Then, Pengwern, my bitterest enemy, besieges Ceasterfeld (my westernmost stronghold taken in the previous post) with 857 men, led by their King:

And his Hand:

What followed was a nine-phase battle (and that at Maximum Battle Size) that yielded per-phase Renown of: 40, 30, 30, 25, 19, 13, 8, 3, 0 (total: 168). 

Why does Renown go down per phase? Because with each phase we are reducing enemy numbers by much more than ours are being reduced. And yet, the final phase was the hardest. All Heroes were out for the count, and we only had a couple hundred squishies left to take on what turned out to be... light cavalry! It sucked.

These are our casualties of the 9th and final phase:

Left: Confronting the army.
Right: After defeating the army.

Ergo, we lost 79 men for good whereas they lost 857. This was a fight to the death; no Pengwern unit routed under their King. You can see we also captured 95 of theirs, including the Lord and the King of Pengwern, who will fetch a handsome ransom:

In fact, just one day later:

Now, why didn't I just jump into my stronghold of Ceasterfeld and engage in siege warfare as a defender - since it's much safer? Answer: I didn't have the time to wait for Pengwern to build their siege equipment; I had other concerns back in Loidis.

Current Kingdom (white box) and possible future annexation (red polygon):

Now, I'm sure the reader (at least, those familiar with Warband) can see what's on the horizon for me, gameplay-wise: A HEAVY, EXHAUSTING & REPETITIVE GRIND.

It would take months of Warband gaming to Conquer Britannia. So, I think I'm going to stop my Brytenwalda commentary because there is not much more to see. During the Warlord phase, I already swept over the entirety of Britannia, so I've seen its landcape, its enemies and acquired the best its itemization has to offer. There is really not much more to do except annex, consolidate, annex, consolidate, rinse repeat until Conquered. Admittedly, there are a few aspects of Brytenwalda that I have not covered, namely naval warfare and diplomatic take-overs. But even with their employment, this is going to take too long.

Ergo, I'm done.

Back to: Brytenwalda Guide (Part I) --- Warband Best Mods (Index) --- cRPG Blog (Master Index).