An endless war, shaky moral.

As I last left off, I had lost a battle and had my companions captured. Getting them back was priority one, and in one siege I was able to recover all of them, plus add another castle under Nord control. Unfortunately as soon as I left the castle, it was taken by the Rhodoks; the start of a very tiring trend.

With almost every other kingdom having declared war on the Nords, armies were spread thin and cooperation was lacking. While my personal force (100+ men now) was more than enough to strike down almost any army, there was only so much we could do, and every siege included a ‘downtime’ while the engines were built. Usually while I took one castle, two others fell, and multiple times I had to abandon a siege just to save one of my own holdings.

I reasoned the only real progress to be made was to finish off Swadia, as with them eliminated I could afford a ‘rest’ period and simply protect against the other kingdoms. Eliminating Swadia proved rather difficult however. For starters, two of the remaining castles they owned were siege tower-required ones, meaning a very lengthy (40 hours with Eng 6) prep period. In 40 hours a lot of bad things can happen, and if you abandon the siege, the timer resets. Multiple times I would try to get other lords to help me, and while they initially agreed, they always seemed to wander away before the fighting actually happened. I managed to capture one of the two at one point, but whenever I went to siege the other something always came up.

The other worrying thing was that the other Nord lords were losing the war in the east. First Denim was captured, then it’s surrounding castles. This left Uxkhal and my own city of Suno in Nord control. The Veigar cities of Curaw, Khudan, and Reyvadin had also been lost. In essence, things were almost back to square one in terms of territory control, with the major difference being that other nations controlled the north, rather than the Veigar’s themselves.

The backbreaker came when Swadia dropped a siege on Praven. I moved my forces inside the city to defend, yet then the battle finally got underway it was my 112 against 483 Swadians spread across seven different lords. Their first push was crushed, as my archers rained down on the men climbing the ladder, and those who made it up were quickly cut down on the walls. However, as wave after wave kept coming, my archers were slowly picked off the walls (or simply ran out of ammo), and the ladder defenders were getting thinned out. Each time the ladder got cleared, I hoped that was the final wave, yet every time another came, with fresh archers to pepper us and more men to throw against us. Ultimately I was the last man standing, cutting down enemy after enemy until I was surrounded and defeated yet again.

Not only had my companions been captured once again, but Swadia also managed to retake its capital city. At this point the war had broken spirits, and a retreat back to the Nords original home seemed inevitable.

(At this point I retired the character)

I’m sure I could have recovered and continued, but I’ve opted instead to stop here and go all out with the Floris mod pack for the next game. The biggest killer was the lack of diplomatic options and any real way to influence my allies. Once a kingdom reaches a certain size, there is only so much you can do, and without help, it’s very slow going.

The mod pack fixes many of these issues, along with generally expanding the game overall with more items, more/different units, and a host of other additions. This time, rather than joining an existing kingdom, the goal will be to start small and slowly build up wealth and power through mercenary work. Then, when the opportunity presents itself, start my own kingdom and see how that goes. With that in mind I’ll try to stay friendly to all other lords, and only pick on one nation in terms of combat and plunder.

I won’t be doing story-style write-ups, but should something of particular interest happen, I’ll be sure to mention it. This little mini-series has been enjoyable to write however, so perhaps I’ll do another in the future. If I do, I think I’d like to go all out and include more detailed week-to-week progression, along with screenshots and other info. For now though, I’ll just play out the next game and get a feel for what the Floris pack brings.