Warband Review

The sequel to Mount & Blade (2008), Warband is a medieval combat simulator developed by Taleworlds Entertainment (2010). Set in the medieval world of Calradia, Warband is most notable for its combat mechanics in arena tournament, siege warfare and battlefield scenarios. Warband is also notable for its modability. cf. Best Warband Mods.

Warband primarily differentiates itself from M&B via a player-controlled faction. Thus, Warband features Kingdom management. In addition, Warband features relationship management and factional reactivity. [1]

The heirarchical, freeform design of Warband was influenced by Braben's Frontier: Elite 2.

Warband was one of the few great games to come out during the Dark Ages of Computer-gaming. And the reason is simple: Warband was not developed by a big-name mainstream game-development studio or wannabe.

In indirect opposition to the Reddit RPG Games churned out during the Dark Ages, practically every aspect of Warband was made in good taste.

Warband simulates melee, ranged and mounted combat in a medieval world rendered in real-time 3D. It simulates the tracking and spotting of foes, warband composition strategy and the tactical command of warbands in sieges and on battlegrounds.

You build your character level by level, stat by stat and proficiency by proficiency. And you can do so for up to 16 warband companions as well.

Warband doesn't tell you what to do. There is no story and no main quest to follow -- it's a sandbox that strictly focuses on gameplay.

It could be said that Warband simulates the journey from pauper to prince, but to become a King one must first be a soldier.

Warband Builds: Character Creation

You hear about Calradia, a land torn between rival kingdoms battling each other for supremacy, a haven for knights and mercenaries, cutthroats and adventurers, all willing to risk their lives in pursuit of fortune, power, or glory... In this land which holds great dangers and even greater opportunities, you believe you may leave your past behind and start a new life. You feel that finally, you hold the key of your destiny in your hands, free to choose as you will, and that whatever course you take, great adventures will await you. -- Taleworlds Entertainment, 2010.

A Warband build is nothing more than a number of character levels attained along with the attributes, skills and proficiency ranks assigned.

Players create one character at the start of the game by answering four multiple-choice questions. Furnishing a character background, the answers chosen determine the starting stats and equipment of the character; that is, they determine the foundation of the character build and suggest its potential, but they do not dictate build progression or build outcome.

But it is common to create a character that is going to be focused on a martial discipline for the first several levels by choosing a few answers that result in a specific martial focus (e.g., archery), and then assigning attributes, skills and proficiencies to reinforce that focus. Likewise, one can create a utility-support character in the same manner. It would then take several levels of building for the one to become the other.

Martial aka combat characters should be backed up by Intelligence-based utility-support companions whereas Int-based utility-support characters should be backed up by martial companions.

In Warband, it is recommended to create a character that can actually defeat enemies in combat, since killing or capturing enemies rewards the most experience points by far. But how would support characters tally killcounts when they don't invest in Strength or damage-scaling skills? Answer: flat-damage Crossbows.

Yes, levels are attained by gaining experience points. When characters "level up" they get more attribute, skill and proficiency points to assign to their character. Just like Dungeons & Dragons.

The higher the level, the higher the experience point demands to reach the next level. It is pretty easy to reach 20th level but much harder to reach 40th, so you really want a good character locked in by 10th and a great one powering along by 20th. Because you won't be able to turn around a poorly built 20th level character without a lot of labor.

Intelligence-based utility-support build

Travelling Merchant
Shop Assistant
University Student
Lust for Money & Power
Intelligence +4
Proficiency: Crossbow
Skills: Path-finding, Spotting, Surgery, Trainer

That will give you 14 skillpoints at level 1 and +4 to the most useful skills when you achieve 10 ranks in them (for 14 total in each Intelligence skill). This is the comfiest way to play Warband: as a commander who sits back and snipes with a crossbow. You are a scout, a doctor and a teacher as well. Your build will not level as quickly as warriors or archers, but your warband will be stronger than theirs.

Warband Warrior Build

Veteran Warrior
Page at a nobleman's court
Smith
Personal Revenge
Strength +4: Power Strike and Iron Flesh
Proficiency: Any melee weapon

The warrior build is a stock-standard, hard-to-kill grunt that barely has time to command his troops during battle because he's always in the thick of it, maxing killcounts. When controlled by skilled players, this is the kind of build that dictates battle outcomes single-handedly.

Warband Archer Build

Steppe Nomad
Steppe Child
Game Poacher
Personal Revenge
Strength +4: Power Draw
Proficiency: Bows

Archer builds make crossbowmen seem useless in comparison due to the scaling damage of Power Draw, but this playstyle requires much more skill and stamina from players due to bow RoF and reticule focus loss during targeting. Optimal archer builds can inflict 205 damage headshots. This build mows down foes in sieges and on battlefields.

The above builds are for early-game playstyle focus. Hybrids will work as well.

cf.

Warband Objective

Amounting to sandbox-style gameplay there is no obvious or over-arching objective to Warband: the character can remain a lone wolf, lead a warband or become King of Calradia.

However, the following campaign progression is often adopted:

Skirmish and scavenge for a bit of XP, loot and coin ("denars")
Form a warband and set to building wealth and Renown [2]
Accept an offer of vassalage from one of six Kings (thereby becoming a Lord with a fief)
Build Honor and Right to Rule as Lord [2.1]
Break out on one's own to become King (found one's own Faction-Kingdom)
Award Lords and companions fiefs (thereby strategizing with multiple warbands)
Attempt to conquer Calradia by annexing every town and castle

Thus Warband suggests three main phases: scavenger, warlord and conqueror-king. The scavenger phase is the hardest, the warlord phase is the most fun, but imposing dominion on Calradia becomes a major burden.

There are two main modes of gameplay that players constantly switch between in Warband: strategy mode and tactics aka battlefield mode.

Warband Strategy Mode

In strategy mode players move their character across a three-dimensional worldmap in real-time. This overland map represents the continent of Calradia, complete with grasslands, hills, forests, deserts, tundra and mountains. Dotted about the landscape are the villages, towns and fortresses that constitute Calradia's six kingdoms or factions, which are pre-established.

The map can be trucked, zoomed and rotated. The player character is represented by a 3D model on-foot or on horseback. Movement is simply point and click. As the player moves about or rests to recuperate, time passes and the world turns: alliances are forged and broken, wars are declared and peace treaties are signed, and bandits are on the hunt for easy targets.

A feedback overlay, message log system and pop-up windows allow players to keep up with events as they unfold.

In order to form a warband players hire recruits from villages and companions from town taverns. Players can recruit and build up to 16 Warband companions whose stats and equipment can far exceed recruitable Warband units, which are tiered in troop-trees. The player can eventually make each companion a Lord with their own fiefs, garrisons and warbands; one companion can even become Marshal.

Several variables modify the movement speed of warbands in strategy mode (march speed): time of day, warband size, morale, terrain type, path-finding skill and "on-foot or on horseback." The more ranks warbands have in path-finding, the faster they move across the map.

Map-mobility is of the essence: there is nothing more frustrating than slow-moving warbands that can't even catch up to a group of bandits.

Two other mechanics are at work as well: tracking and spotting skills. The more ranks the warband has in such skills, the more info tracks reveal and the wider the detection radius becomes. Warbands are all but aimless without tracking skills and all but blind without spotting skills. [3]

Players use the map to search for other warbands as well as villages, towns and strongholds of the six Kingdoms. Like the character, these landmarks are indicated by 3D models. Business can be conducted at villages and towns (trade, info-gathering and quest-hunting).

As they move about the map, players can engage or avoid other warbands. Faction-based warbands can be friendly, hostile or neutral, but bandit mobs are always hostile to the six factions.

Bandits include looters, sea raiders and horsemen of the steppes. Neutral manhunters keep such raider-mobs at bay. If not, manhunters become the prisoners of bandits, but players can kill the bandits, recruit the freed manhunters into their warband and then upgrade them all the way to Slaver Chiefs, who can in turn capture the bandits and sell them off to slave markets.

There are no dungeons to delve or treasures to be discovered in Calradia. Indeed, the map is basically non-exploratory in nature because there is no fog-of-war; the world is known from the outset though a degree of Calradian lore is furnished by companion remarks based on warband worldmap position.

Player warbands may not build anything anywhere on the map; not even a fort that can store items or garrison troops. Every village, town and stronghold is a permanent faction-owned fixture that can only be gained, improved or lost.

However, players may at any time choose to raid villages or lay siege to fortifications. Villages cannot be occupied by factional troops (only bandits), but towns and strongholds come under player control after successful sieges, which also brings the associated village/s under player control.

Mousing over warbands or settlements calls up a window that displays name, kingdom and prisoners in tow as well as troop type and number. This allows players to gauge the strength of a garrison or warband, pre-engagement.

Engaging with warbands or settlements calls up dialogue mode. In dialogue mode the two parties can parley, trade info or trigger battle. And this brings us to tactics mode:

Warband Tactics Mode

There are four types of tactics aka battle mode: duel, skirmish, battlefield and siege. Duels and skirmishes are minor battle modes that only feature player characters whereas battlefields and sieges are major battle modes that can involve the armies of two or more Lords; that is, around 600 combatants max. Duels are conducted in formal tournament arenas whereas skirmishes randomly trigger in towns (waylays aka ambushes).

In battle mode the worldmap switches to a 3D landscape environment (a battle scene) that is presented just like an FPS "level". In battle scenes Warband is switchable between first- and third-person perspective.

The Battlefields of Warband

For battles staged on open terrain, the battle scene reflects the position on the map from which battle was triggered. Thus, battles can be waged in rugged terrain, thick forests or dead-flat deserts which can and do favor some military units over others. For example, cavalry excels on desert and grassland terrain whereas skirmishers excel in rugged or heavily-forested terrain.

Battlefields are limited in size: they are artificially walled-in and do not seamlessly transition into the greater world. Likewise, forces are capped in number by battle_size in rgl_config. Since the max is 653 units taking the field, reinforcement waves are employed to represent bigger battles (which is a bit clumsy but keeps things interesting in that different unit-types may enter the fray, forcing an adjustment).

Pre-battle, Company Order is important in tailoring warband composition. Since there is a limit on how many units of a company can physically take part in battle scenes, troop-types need to be reordered in the shuffle-list by moving their icons up or down the list; the troops at the top of the list partaking in battle, the troops at the bottom not prioritized.

Battles are not just about defeating the opponent quickly: company order and in-battle command can be used to train specific troop-types to the next tier in the troop-tree, with veteran units drawing the aggro while new recruits get easy flanking opportunities, aka easy XP.

In taking the field, each side starts off at opposite ends of the battle scene. Some warbands immediately charge or at least get into firing range (bandit types), whereas others assemble in formation or may attempt to occupy more advantageous ground before attacking (Lords' armies). The player can choose to charge, fire from range, assemble in formation or get into a better position as well.

The object of battles is to kill, capture or rout the enemy. Subject to proximity, player warbands may also retreat from the field, but with penalties to warband morale.

Only recruited military units can be killed in battle, not player characters, their companions or rival Lords or Kings. Defeated PCs are enslaved but eventually escape their captors, losing their army but not their companions. Fiefs can be lost, however, if a rival lays siege to them while the PC is shackled. The would-be hero's campaign then continues, such as it is.

Defeated AI Lords and Kings can be captured for ransom or released with honor, but never executed. They can also escape the PC's dungeon.

In battle, players not only take control of their character as an individual unit (as in any FPS or OTS action game), but also assume the role of commander by assigning units positions via minimap flag-placement and giving units basic orders via hotkeys or a battle control menu that can be called up over the action (an overlay).

Warband battle control command has a finer resolution than one might expect in that any number of units can be assigned to a "class of troop" (the yellow panel), effectively allowing that group (or even an individual unit) to be separately controlled in battle by simply checking a box and issuing an order.

For example, mounted archers can be directed to flank an enemy even as heavy cavalry line up for a charge. Or sniping skirmishers can be sent to a hilltop while a shieldwall pins down the enemy in the foothills.

Level 1 melee build with default gear, going up against 10 looters:

Both character control and warband command take some getting used to, but it is very satisfying and rewarding when you get a grip on them.

In controlling their character players need to get a feel for the wielded weapon's attack-type, speed and range/reach. Wield-speed, damage and ranged accuracy are adjusted by character proficiency. In addition, players must get used to how armor modifies mobility and "soak", how much of a battering their shield can take and so on.

Level 1 archer build with default gear going up against three looters:

Players can test their skills on no fewer than 108 distinct unit-types, wield 135 weapons, off-hand 10 shields, wear 60 armors and ride a dozen horses. Most arms, armor and mounts are constituted by several stats and have several quality modifiers, culminating in masterwork, lordly and champion. Certain arms also have special perks or flaws that may outweigh raw stats in certain scenarios.

Warband employs momentum-based damage: weapons inflict more damage if the wielder is moving towards the target as the weapon strikes; much more if the wielder is mounted on a speeding steed as the weapon strikes, aka speed damage bonus or penalty. And since armor-weight limits runspeed, the lightly-clad can inflict more damage in one mighty blow than the heavily-clad, but the heavily-clad has more staying power versus mobs, and may be able to inflict more total damage over battle duration.

Steep terrain, river beds and dense forests can stop horses dead in their tracks, as can battlegrounds littered with boulders. Otherwise, cavalry reins supreme due to its combination of speed, power and soak. A peasant mounted on a mere saddle horse presents a much greater problem than one that is on-foot. Now consider 200 knights on charging warhorses.

The three main forms of cavalry are lancers, horse-mounted archers and sword and board knights. Lancers are all about the 500 dmg couched lance charge; horse-mounted archers are about circling the enemy, wearing them down and heading them off; and sword and board knights are about grinding up entire armies. Dismounted sword and board knights are also strong enough to employ on the frontline in sieges.

In Warband, the height of foolishness is deploying melee-only infantry against Khergit Veteran Horse Archers on open desert terrain; there is no starker contrast between units than that.

The pinnacle of Warband infantry is the Nord Huscarl in shieldwall formation, which only Khergit Lancer charges can impact. Nord Huscarls move like the wind and hit hard in melee or from range, making them the most fearsome unit outside of heavy cavalry.

Siege Warfare in Warband

In siege warfare the battle scene reflects the town or stronghold being besieged. This includes the approach (outside the walls), the stone or wooden walls themselves and the interior of the fortification (its courtyard and throne room).

Each town and stronghold differs in exterior and interior layout. While all fortresses are designed for defense some Warband castles are shockingly effective in repelling assaults. When besieging such castles without the right units and tactics, don't be surprised if your once mighty army is reduced to a rag-tag band in quick order.

During siege warfare player warbands are either beseiging or defending a faction fortification. Naturally, defending a settlement is easier than assailing one since defenders have battlements for protection. As a rule, castle walls grant a height advantage and a wide range of attack whereas assailants are forced to funnel uphill under no cover during their approach, then climb up ladders and makeshift siege towers in single-file while hell is raining down upon them.

Assailants that manage to fan over ramparts are certainly going to be in better shape, but the interior still limits their ability to assemble in efficient attack formations, forcing them along narrow wall-walks and up and down staircases while they continue to get stung by archers perched in towers. Such situations are grave: the defenders are getting 20 attacks per second from multiple positions whereas the assailants are only getting in one or two from one position.

In siege defense archers are King. But not just any old archers: Vaegir Marksmen. And not just a few, but two-score. Such archers can mow down many of the heavily-armored grunts before they breach the walls.

In siege offense crossbowmen are King. But not just any old crossbowmen: Rhodok Sharpshooters lined up behind Rhodok Sergeants that are off-handing sturdy shields.

Once the snipers have thinned out the most threatening archers, the grunts can charge over the walls to clean the place out.

In Warband what limits ranged attackers is ammo quantity: each unit can only fire about 20 times before it defaults to a squishy melee unit (though Rhodoks remain tough).

***

Overall, players can profoundly impact the outcomes of both field battles and sieges through control of their character and command of their warband.

Criticism of Warband

My main criticism of Warband is given in Calradia Conquer. Note that many of my criticisms have been fixed by Warband mods.

The effects of character creation answers are not known immediately. Yes, you can see how your stats are impacted after answering all four questions but you can't return to the questions from the character sheet and not all stats are shown, anyway. And you can't see what equipment you get before beginning the game.
Warband campaigns build up momentum too quickly. It is too easy to build up wealth and power. Devaluing nuanced skirmishing, charging cavalry is too fast and strong. But since that is true to medieval military history, a way to tame cavalry would be to make Calradia more mountainous, wooded or rivered. Or introduce pikemen.
There are no formations other than lines (though units can be commanded to spread out or huddle close).
Builds do not delve deeply enough into a particular role; they are (or become too early) samey.
Quests should be selectable from a menu instead of randomly offered (because some are tedious and others are fun).
Treasure-hunting and dungeon delving could have added a lot more variety to campaigns.
The user interface is not crisp and clear enough, and the fonts are too small (at all resolutions and aspect ratios). The UI wastes a ton of screenspace.
The command panel in battle mode (Backspace key) is not clear due to its transparency and color scheme. If the battle takes place at night you can barely make out the options.
You cannot view the equipment of military units, only their stats.
In-game, Warband allows players to modify the difficulty rating via six variables. In this kind of game difficulty should not be tailorable in-game.
You cannot name savegames. And you cannot start a new game if your save slots are full. You also only get nine (9) save slots, which is ridiculous for a PC game (you need to use a file manager to copy them out as backup).
There are no at-a-glance graphs that compare faction strengths and wealth.
If you make a companion a Lord, there is no way to ask for his whereabouts unless you already have other Lords.
Unit movement has path-finding issues. Ragdoll physics can be glitchy.
There is no proper Ironman mode that kills off the character and companions.
No units confer party skill bonuses. For example, caravan guard could have conferred +1 trade while in the warband. Or skirmishers could confer +1 spotting. That sort of thing.
Castles have no economy.
In-game Game Concepts ("help menu") only covers five subjects!
Players cannot build a fort to store items or garrison units.
Archers cannot fire flaming arrows in sieges.
There is no auto-loot based on item value.
Say you want to transfer 70 of 200 cavalry into a garrison. Well, you must mouse-click 70 times.
Weakling looters should not be able to use rusty daggers to block the blows of Heavy Great Long Bardiches wielded by characters with scores of 10 in Strength and Power Strike.
Lord-companions are dumb. I gave Alayen (a Vaegir) 100 Vaegir Knights when I awarded him a fief. Was his Warband comprised of ANY such knights when he set off to tail an enemy Lord? Of course not. He took slow-moving infantry, which means he couldn't catch up to the Lord. But he kept chasing...
You cannot give companions equipment or view their stats once they have been conferred Lordship (if you can give them troops, you should be able to give them equipment and view their stats as well).
If you annex a faction's last remaining fortification and then abandon it, leaving it entirely undefended, the faction will not take it back. Instead, the faction will die out after its cowardly Lords attempt to raid a few of your villages.
The AI "cheats"? The power of AI faction regeneration: Assume the easiest difficulty setting and an AI faction with one castle and one village. That means the King and all his Lords have been relegated to one fief, yet it takes only 2 weeks for that faction to regenerate an 800-man army from zero. On the other hand, factions are cultures so this simulates the willingness of the people to back their rightful King, who is of their culture. Whereas the player character is an outsider -- not even Calradian.

Warband Conclusion

Warband is a great game that has given me hundreds of hours of enjoyment for over a decade. It's a game I've always come back to though action games are getting a bit much for me nowadays, and I prefer to relax by playing turn-based strategy games instead.

I didn't mention the sound and music in Warband: the sound effects and music tracks are many, varied and memorable. The warcries, the clash of steel on steel, the bone-crunching hits -- it's all so well done.

Even though the warcries are somewhat repetitive, they remain amusing. I am quite fond of them.

[1]

Kingdom management consists in assigning ministers, granting Lords fiefs, garrisoning units, collecting taxes, running enterprises, guarding caravan routes, building reputation with towns and villages and improving and defending fortifications and fiefs.
Relationship management includes Faction, Lord, courtship, settlement and companion relations. In the case of villages, a good reputation can result in more or higher quality recruitable units.
Example of factional reactivity: You chose to annex a Swadian fortification because its garrison had been weakened. However the Swadians were allied with the Nords. And your warband consists of 80 Huscarls, which are Nord units. Thus, your Huscarls incur a 50-point morale penalty to relect the fact that they are waging war against an ally (the penalty would be much steeper if the Huscarls were besieging a Nord fortification).

Warband Engine

Warband's 3D engine is notable for its hardware scalability: the game can run on rigs that range from toasters up to graphics workstations. For example, Warband supports square-pixel SVGA 640x480 4:3 and DirectX 7.0 as well as 16:9 1080p in DirectX 9.0 (>=). Systems do not even require Pixel Shader support to run Warband. [1.1]

Warband fonts and 2D art assets were cleary designed for 4:3 resolutions: in 16:9 resolutions they are squashed (horizontally-stretched).

A ton of interlinked scripts govern Warband game mechanics. Strategy mode (world map) and Tactics Mode (battle scenes, towns and villages) are linked to by code and scripts: they are not seamlessly integrated as worldspaces.

Take bandit mobs for example. They roam about near villages but they can't be observed physically entering the villages aka instigating a raid. Unlike Lords' raids, you can't guard a village from bandits by camping outside a village and killing any nearby bandits (aka patrolling). What determines whether bandits raid villages is simply a percentage chance (3% chance refreshed per 72 hours per village of Calradia): the bandits on the world map do not correlate with village raids. Therefore, Warband isn't really a true simulation. If it was, players would be able to guard a village from being raided in the first place, not just go in and free the village after the fact.

You are able to, however, observe bandits raiding caravans, and then intervene to save caravans (which are town prosperity generators). But not villages (which are rent-income generators).

Both strategy and tactics engine modes (worldspaces) can handle scripted cutscenes and dialogue overlays. The engine is also capable of hosting dungeon crawls and naval battles in tactics mode, but such battle scenes are handled by the arena battle scene, which has size and mechanics limitations.

Warband's engine has great potential; its mechanical framework could furnish a masterpiece of campaign design. However, in terms of tactics, strategy, exploration and role-playing, no Warband mod pushed the engine to its limits.

[2]

The Renown score of the player character is what triggers vassalage. It also increases the size limit of your warband. Renown is built most efficiently by defeating large forces with much smaller ones [*]. The max Renown in a single battle is capped at 50. To build Renown efficiently simply assemble a Sarranid Mamluke or Slaver Chief warband then steamroll, capture and sell off Sea Raiders to slave traders. This also builds wealth via loot and gold, but the most efficient way to increase wealth is by raiding villages for commodity-loot.

[*] Force strength is measured by number of units on the battlefield, not their quality or equipment. Thus a well-equipped first level character can take out 30 bandits single-handedly, thereby gaining great Renown. 20 Mamlukes or Slaver Chiefs that roll over scores of sea raiders also make solid Renown gains.

[2.1]

Honor is most easily gained by releasing captured Lords on the battlefield and cleaning bandits out of villages but refusing rewards. Right to Rule is most easily gained through companions and by signing peace treaties.

[3] Two other notable warband-mechanics are at work on the worldmap: morale and food supply (which are linked). Morale drops when warbands are not fighting and winning. If morale drops too low, members of the warband begin to disband due to the lack of momentum. Thus it is not possible to sustain a big warband for long if no battles are being waged. Food variety also contributes to morale. Big warbands are in constant need of food, which means frequent stops for provisions at towns and villages.

[1.1]

Warband Graphics settings:

texture detail
use pixel shaders
use vertex shaders
fake reflections
enable blood
display bits
antialiasing
sample quality
shadowmap quality
shader quality
postfx dof
postfx hdr
postfx autoexp
flora degrade distance
flora lod detail
enable lighting
enable particles
enable blood
enable character shadows
enable accurate shadows
number of corpses
grass density
anisotropic filtering
enable environment shadows
realistic shadows on plants
number of ragdolls
character detail
character shadow detail
blood stains

Warband Gameplay settings:

realistic headshots
verbose casualties
verbose experience
verbose damage
verbose shot difficulty
combat speed
friend combat difficulty
combat ai
campaign ai
combat difficulty
battle size (630 unit max)
lance control
display labels
display targeting reticule
display attack direction

cf.

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