Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Jumping the gap

Well... things happened between last episode and this episode. The plan was solid. It was simple.

We had planned to grind up some Influence to start a war with the Battanians and... well, somehow we found ourselves knee-deep in the corpses of Aserai soldiers.

And, of course... if we know anything about the Western Empire, it's that they're a bunch of fanatically opportunistic militants... so of course, seeing us way down south tied up with the Aserai, they opt to declare war.

Now, with all this war going on... it seems like we're long overdue to create a second party from our Companions.

This honor goes initially to Hespedia, though we'll eventually settle on our younger brother Varic being a consistent party leader.

Part of creating a party is the ability to outfit them with troops that are part of your existing military. For Hespedia, we do this... but as they seem to get defeated fairly often, it's not something I'll be putting a lot of high-level troops into for the future.

This may change in time, as they lead more and more... since they DO grind up the same exp for the same skills we do as party leader.

With leadership though, comes loss.

Of course, this also means that when they lose they're often captured and we will get prompts to pay for their release. We could leave them to rot in prison until they bust themselves out, or we can pay the (usually) minor 2-5000 Denar asking price for them. Either way, it means that we now have to re-create the party... and that's a bit of a hassle.

I would love a toggle just saying 'automatically re-create party' for certain Companions, but for whatever reason the developers didn't think to provide that functionality. Perhaps a future update will give us something like this, and if not...there's always mods!

That said, we progress the game a while from here, fighting several minor skirmishes before the Western Empire once again try to besiege Ortysia. They really want this city. Good god.

Thankfully, an army shows up to help fend them off and we are able to turn them back this time.

Having crushed that attempt, it's time for a little tit-for-tat, and we head up to Lageta to take it.

We get a really cool night map again this siege, which I always love.

Also - I just have to say... there's something extremely satisfying about throwing axes down onto a press of poorly equipped enemies.

After taking Lageta, we skirmish again with the army that arrived a little too late to stop us, and soundly beat them into the ground (thanks to another army of ours bringing 1000 troops in)... so we end the session with another Empire prisoner!