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[Mighty Midget]

Ok, since it seems there are a few here on AB who are talking about/playing this game, I decided to open up a topic for us to collect all your ideas, hints, tips or general opinions on this game.

To me, it now seems they kinda rushed it a bit, forgetting to create a world where anything interesting happens.

The battles are awesome but alas, they are over in a couple of minutes, if that long. I do miss the pre-battle stage, with deployment, planning and all that, I also miss the prolonged battles where the forces retreat for the nightfall and wait for the dawn to keep going, the size of the battle isn't only a matter of how many units you can shove into the battlefield but also it's duration and, as I said, the tactical element is absent unless I'm missing something here.

One thing I wonder about is this:
Early in the game, the recruits level up fairly quickly. Take them to the training field and they level up after a couple of sparring rounds. Later, however, they need perhaps as many as 10 rounds before leveling up. What's up with that?

Currently trying to build an army of:
20 Nord infantry (army backbone), possibly supplemented with Rhodok spearmen, but not sure at all about their actual usefulness against cavalry.
10 Swadian Knights
10 Rhodok xbow men and 10 Veagris Archers

Trouble is, now it takes several battles for even the recruits to level up. Any idea how this XP works?

[The Fifth Horseman]

I'd guess that the experience requirement for each subsequent level is increased compared to the requirement for the prior one. It's commonplace in all games where characters/units/whatever gain experience points.

[red_avatar]

I honestly don't get the attention this game received. Yes, the combat is great (although, it's still repetitive after a while) but the rest of the game is meh. The map is bland and boring, there's very little going on in the world, there's no story to at least give you an incentive to play, going from town to town gets dull after a while, trading takes too long to be worth the effort, you can only carry 30 arrows into battle which sucks since being an archer is the coolest thing, etc.

It just lacks anything to push you onwards. The game is actually the most fun at the start of the game, when you can focus on fighting instead of the boring army management. Well, I guess I can't complain for $8 but I was hoping for more strategy and tactics.

[Eagle of Fire]

You guys pretty much sum up what I think too. The game is great until you get around level 10. Then the game become way too easy.

The only way to get around it is to increase the difficulty. But since you are now an armored tank, it simply keep the difficulty roughly at the same level. Even sieges are too easy now.

[Mighty Midget]

5th: Not sure if we understand each other here. In this game, each individual soldier keeps track of his own XP, and I would have thought the thresholds for each level would be the same for each say, Swadian recruit. Currently I have a Nord who refuses to become a veteran even though he has been in every fight from the beginning, recieving his share of the training and so on. I've had 5 Nords from the same "recruit class" leveling all the way up to becoming Supermen but this one chap is still not leveling up.

To the rest of you: Unfortunately, I share your view on how this game is meh beyond the fighting scenes. It seems this title will depend 100% on mods coming from fans to become something even remotely interesting. Too bad, really.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by Mighty Midget

5th: Not sure if we understand each other here. In this game, each individual soldier keeps track of his own XP, and I would have thought the thresholds for each level would be the same for each say, Swadian recruit. Currently I have a Nord who refuses to become a veteran even though he has been in every fight from the beginning, recieving his share of the training and so on. I've had 5 Nords from the same "recruit class" leveling all the way up to becoming Supermen but this one chap is still not leveling up.

There may be a random factor somewhere in there, or there's a cap on how many soldiers can reach a given rank.
Not sure if it rings any bells, but the X-Com trilogy had a similar thing - you had to have a certain number of soldiers to get Sergeants, certain number of Sergeants to get Captains and then a number of Captains to get a Commander.

[Mighty Midget]

I don't know, but you might be right. For all I know, the game has a cap on the total level count, which would be retarded. Of course, they could have implemented that to avoid throwing the game off balance, but it's already off balance. Two words: Mounted archers.

I'm thinking about doing an experiment: I'm getting a hero trainer, then wait and see if all recruits level up at the same time, if I stay away from fighting. It will take a good while, but at least I'll get to see if there is such a cap.

[Doubler]

Well, it's just how much emphasis you put on the negative as opposed to the positive. The criticisms here are valid, but the game offers a lot too.

Also remember that as far as ARPG's go, M&B is almost completely unique in setting and orientation. Part of the popularity might simply come from the fact that people were starving for something like it.

[Mighty Midget]

It's unique alright, and after reading the responses the game got, it seems that people were indeed starved. I'm not saying the game is terrible, it isn't, rather that the vanilla version is dull and off balance:

I faced an army of 69 men, some 20 cavalry and the rest were infantry and archers. I had 20 Nords, from veterans to 4-5 huscarls and I lost one veteran while wiping out the enemy army. It was cool but ridiculous.

[Eagle of Fire]

If you have a lot of recruits and place them at the bottom of your list, they won't participate in the battle unless you need reinforcement and you actually need them. It is normal that most of your units leveled fast at the beginning of the game if you used all of them in every battle. I think units only level if they actually kill a unit, otherwise they get no or very little XP. And of course they get XP when you train them with the trainer skill too. That's how I level my troops anyways.

Also, there is some troops which are insanely powerfull against others. Like Rhodok infantry against Khergit troops for example. Or knights in sieges are also insalely powerfull (versus other units) because they are so armored they can shrug off a lot of arrows before dying.

Also, nudging the difficulty a notch will help you have a bigger challenge. There is several options to tweek in the option menu. One of them is the amount of damage dealt in the game. The default is ridiculously low... If you try a "realist" setting then you'll see that you won't be able to solo a 80 man army like I used to do when I began playing.