Bannerlord’s early game is brief and easy. Your rise from nobody to Calradian Legend should not be pre-paved for you. Notables shouldn’t fall over themselves to offer you men. Nobles shouldn’t embrace you as one of their own before they’ve even met you. Success is something that should be earned, not inevitable. So with that in mind this mod makes a number of changes, large and small.

• Troops: Historically, troops mostly equipped themselves, so personal wealth dictated caliber of gear. Poorer troops strive for essentials like a good weapon and a helmet - possibly a shield if they fight in the melee. Wealthier troops will deck themselves out in the best their culture’s smiths make. Calradia has four distinct social classes, the peasantry or freemen, the artisans and craftsmen, the professional warrior class, and the minor nobility. Each culture’s trees are designed to be imbalanced but powerful when the right tactics are employed - I have an article for each culture.
• Recruitment: You can always find mercenaries in the taverns from all walks of life. From lowly rabble who are out of work, to the wandering remnants of the Vaegir Guard. Recruiting from notables, though, requires that you earn that right. There is no single path to it, however. You can befriend notables through questing (and the mod Small Talk), you can join a faction, improve your clan tier, befriend the ruling lord, and the biggest thing of all - you can have your own fief. This mod also improves the AI’s calculations when recruiting to be precise so they never get stuck trying to recruit soldiers they don’t have access to. (The AI plays by the same rules as you).
• Clan Tiers: Don’t expect to be tier 4 by the end of the first year, the thresholds have been pushed back. There are also 12 tiers now, instead of 6 so you can potentially have a lot of companions. Just don’t expect to pass the ruling clans so quickly.
• Joining a Kingdom: Hitting clan tier 2 makes you eligible but does not give you the right to join whatever faction you want. Whenever a clan offers you vassalage you can take it, but to give it to you on demand you’ll have to befriend the faction leader. How good your relation with the faction leader needs to be depends on if you’ve married into that faction’s nobility. If you’ve married a sister off into the ruling clan or married someone from the ruling clan into yours, it’s very easy to join that faction.
• NPC Relations: First - prisoner donations relation gains have been nerfed - SIGNIFICANTLY. Making the game harder is not always popular, but donating prisoners is cheesing the relation mechanic as the relation gain does not mirror the meager value of prisoners. You will also see your companions respect you for strong leadership - is it weird that a companion will have a -1 opinion of you after you’ve paid them on time and kept them alive through WILD battle after battle? No more - though this is a smaller impact than some other mods do. Not everybody will just love you for existing, make Small Talk with them if you really want to bond. I’ve also snuck in some boosts - do the little things right will accumulate into a relations boost periodically.
• Order of Battle: You will always have Order of Battle available to you. For two main reasons. One, when joining a battle in progress soldiers would still form up. TW’s logic behind breaking a much needed feature is just plain wrong - there is no surprise attack mechanic in the game. Two, this also prevents companion formation bugs and ensures you can always update formations and aren’t stuck in smaller skirmishes with alignments you chose when the leader of an army.
• Mercenary Work: You can now get mercenary offers even after clan tier 1. You can also get them while you’re enlisted as a mercenary if the offer is at least equal to what you are making now. How likely you are to get offers depends on your clan tier (though even at tier 1 you are more likely to get them than vanilla). Requesting mercenary work requires at least a 0 relation with that hero, your relation with the faction leader doesn’t matter unless you are asking them specifically.
• New Gear: New gear has been added - it will take time before I get all of it in this mod. I am not a 3D modeler so I have to call in favors or pay for it.
• Minor Fixes: There is a lot of gear in the game with wrong values - some of it has been tweaked. Notably are a few helmets whose armor values did not align with that style of helmet’s variants. Also the Noble warsword pieces - made from Thameskene - from Sturgia whose damage was inferior to every other sword in the game, despite their cost and material, were updated to align with the vanilla patterns for length and heft. You also won’t have a banner on the campaign map until you hit clan tier 1.
  
  

I design my mods to stand alone fine, but the vision is playing them all together… Small Talk and Succession especially were made to pair with this mod As is True Noble Opinions.

A quick note about each of the troop overhauls…

I plan on writing more eloquent pieces for each faction but I am short on time today.

Aserai

Their elite warriors are raised as slaves before becoming the feared Mamlukes. Their strength lies in their mobility with both mounted archers and skirmishers as the harsh Nahasa Desert necessitates greater mobility.

Battania

Battania is unmatched at range. Their kern and skirmishers aim to NOT engage the enemy infantry for as long as possible - instead keeping them at bay for a prolonged period of time to give their archers an opportunity to soften them up. They also have mounted units and plenty of spears to keep enemy cavalry at bay.

Khuzait

There was a time when every steppe warrior was expected to be mounted, and while they boast the most feared mounted archers in all Calradia they have begun fielding elite infantry as siege warfare becomes increasingly prominent.

Empire

The imperial factions are the most balanced with plenty of ranged units, strong infantry and an elite heavy cavalry. Their legionnaires are also some of the best in all Calradia.

Sturgia

Sturgians are born and bred in the snow - they prefer fighting on foot and while the Druzhina may take the field on horseback, they prefer fighting on foot - and in fact are the deadliest infantry on the continent when they dismount.

Vlandia

Preferring to fight on horseback, men from lower social classes will also take to horseback. Vlandia boasts the best crossbowman too. While their lighter cavalry units typically harass the enemy, their Banner Knights prefer to run down exposed enemy formations like grass.

I have tested extensively - while I am not done, each of the factions plays well, but there will be times where micro management will yield incredible results while F1 + F3 will lost you the battle.

Have questions or want help? Join my Discord.

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I do now! Buy me a coffee.

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If you haven't already check out my other mods!

Succession Laws & Civil Wars
Commanders & Conquerors
Small Talk
Unlanded Clans
No More Clones
SandBox Siblings
Calradian Clans