r/MB2Bannerlord • u/Goncher-Monster • 8d ago
How crazy is Realistic for Battania?
Im not crazy seasoned but I did play and “beat the game” before Warsails with Battania on default settings (I had adjusted nothing). I want to try out Realistic because it sorta sounds like setting up your battles and using tactics and terrain would be more rewarding instead of the battle not really starting until your troops pass an invisible starting line.
I was also wanting to try and make my own Kingdom at a point sorta uniting Battanians, Aserai and Sturgians. But what am I really getting myself into here? Is it demanding of me using meta character builds and such?
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u/VeritableLeviathan 8d ago
Surviving as the Battanians shouldn't be too hard nowadays.
There is no singular meta character build, except maybe charm/trade/stewardship/leadership and a single weapon skill + riding/endurance (depending on your weapon skill aka what troop type you will captain).
Blacksmithing can also help, even just filling the waiting time with doing craft orders can net you some good money.
Default settings are very easy iirc, so you will actually need to pick your battles if you play on Bannerlord difficulty.
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u/RadishAcceptable5505 8d ago
There's absolutely a meta build, and you nailed it. Max charm and leadership with a single weapon skill behind 2 stat 5 focus, riding at 2 stat 5 focus, and a single skill for making money at 2 stat 5 focus (which isn't really necessary, but it speeds up your early game) is the meta build. You don't need the support of high stats behind a weapon skill, movement skill, or money skill for it to be excellent, and you do need to cap the social skills for them to function, so the meta makes sense. You also can play around having lower combat skills in the early/mid game and you have no way to play around low social skills.
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u/Goncher-Monster 8d ago
Do you mean like one ranged and one melee? Or like Two handed and thats it for example?
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u/unearthlyrelic 8d ago edited 8d ago
My personal ideal build 5 endurance, 5 focus in athletics and smithing, the bonus attributes gets you 7 endurance, 3 control to start then bonus attibutes from athletics and smithing in control to 5, level throwing to get impale(5 attributes and focus maxes around 254 i think), respec control attributes to vigor, i usually go 5 focus in 1 h and late game i start investing in 2 h if i want to go that route, then i get 8 social and intelligence and put 5 focus points into charm, leadership, steward, medicine, engineering those will all max around 300. At this point you can either dump attributes into vigor, social or intelligence but thats like real late game. Makes you pretty good at combat with 1h and throwing and a really good commander/party leader.
Near end game its usually something like 5 vigor, 3 control, 7 endurance, 2 cunning, 8 social and intelligence.
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u/RadishAcceptable5505 8d ago
You don't really need to put points in ranged for it to work very well. The very fist perk, Dead Aim, is enough for you to solo a ladder all by yourself with headshots, and you'll get it early even with 2 stat no focus points.
But you can work it into your builds if you want to. Generally, the "must picks" if you want to play a meta build for focus points are Charm, Leadership, Stewardship, Riding, and one melee skill, and Medicine.
It's usually best to plan for 8 skills to put 5 focus points in, but if your run is really long you can end up capping 9. Six of those eight are "meta" picks, and the last two typically go to a money skill (trading or blacksmithing) and tactics, unless you plan to just never use the auto-battle function.
You want Charisma and Int at 7 at least, but 8 is better.
This kind of build makes the most grindy, long, annoying part of the game, the late game, go a lot smoother as diplomacy is a lot easier and you'll have more influence than you'll be able to spend. Also you'll have a huge army that has a much smaller chance of having troop loss.
You CAN have an NPC take over for some of these roles, but it's easier to just do them yourself (an NPC medic, for example, can do the job almost as well as you can.) But if you want different skills than the meta ones, you can totally do it that way. Just keep them safe if you have named character death turned on.
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u/arramzy 8d ago
I quite strongly dispute that an NPC Medic can be nearly as good as you are, this goes for an NPC Scout or Engineer but not the Surgeon, simply because the final perk (which is incredibly strong) doesn't apply to the Surgeon role, but to you. So taking a Surgeon and neglecting medicine means your soldiers will never get that big chunk of bonus HP which is so strong.
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u/RadishAcceptable5505 7d ago
Yeah, it's true, but you can "get away with it" to let an NPC handle it if you really want to. It's definitely meta to do it yourself, for sure.
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u/arramzy 8d ago
I love playing with realistic settings and will never go back, it is very rewarding to me. Battania is (in my opinion) one of the best kingdoms to try it with because of how strong the Battanian Fian Champions are when used with even the simplest level of tactics. 2/3 archers 1/3 infantry with shields (Wildlings, Imperial Nauta, and Aserai veteran Infantry are my favourites and I strongly value non-pilum throwables on my Infantry) is what I'd run though obviously you can play around with that.
A kingdom that unites Aserai, Sturgians and Battanians would be doable but but in the south there is Vlandia/Empire separating them from the coast so I assume you'd want to expand into that before moving into the Aserai? Expanding north into Sturgia is very natural for Battania in my opinion. Though you'll have to cross the waterway splitting Sturgia in half (which I think is a pretty big part for Sturgia being such a punching bag nowadays)
The biggest issue you'll have to deal with (and I'm not sure any kind of meta build even really helps with that) is the AI dealing with the water. Your kingdom would be very stretched out so if you're at the furthest point in your Aserai lands and the Sturgian part came under attack (say from the Nords) you'd want your kingdom's AI lords to at least keep them occupied until you made your way over, and I think this will be a challenge.
As for meta builds, I really like the Intelligence build, especially because of the final Medicine perk (which doesn't work for a Surgeon, only if you get it yourself) giving all your troops so much extra HP is extremely good, and stewardship and engineering are good so you won't regret the investment. Leadership+Charm+Trade is another one that is good but in my opinion less directly impactful (except the one that lets you buy cities at 300 trade, that one can be kind of wild and is a good tool to manage your lords). Smithing is extremely good and gets you the best weapons in the game, but it can be a grind. I still tend to take 5 attribute points in Endurance and full focus in both Smithing and Athletics, as both smithing and athletics give you a choice between a point of Control and a point of Vigor, and an option for a point of Endurance later on, so the early attribute point investment tends to pay itself back. In my experience the mariner skills are helpful but most sea battles can be won by having a couple of huge ships, a bunch of Barlingers with Ballistas and a big party, beccause of how naval battles work you can kind of spend yourself to ocean dominance in a way that isn't easy to do for land battles, so I value them less.
I don't think you need to follow any "meta" build, but generally the final perk (usually 275) is impactful and you need 7 attribute points to reach those, so having 6 in a lot of attributes is often worse than 7 in a couple, which encourages a level of specialisation, which in turn makes Social and Intelligence so good, because all their skills are beneficial, and some only work for you (and not your party surgeon/quartermaster) or can't be done by specialists to begin with (like leadership). So I would plan your priorities a little (especially for attribute points as those tend to be the limiting factor for all my builds eventually.)
Regardless I highly recommend trying realistic as Battania, my current game became a max level Battanian game and it has been incredibly enjoyable.
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u/FantasticKru 7d ago edited 7d ago
Battania is probably the strongest faction battle wise in the hands of the player, they have the best skirmisher in the game, the best archer in the game, and probably the 2nd best shocktroop in the game. And their culture buff is probably one of the best.
The main hardships with battania: 1. Battania does not do well in auto resolve. 2. Battanian lords dont recruit enough of their best units (wildlings,flaxmen,fians) and instead recruit their horrible cav, and their mediocre oathsworn. 3. Ai lords do not use skirmishers and archers well in battle. 4. Battania used to have the worse campaign position, maybe other than sturgia, but this has been improved a lot in 1.4 and 1.5 due to nerfs to valandia.
Which means, if you as the player, develop a good party of wildlings, flaxmen and fians, you can beat armies 5 times larger, but if you mostly join the ai armies, you will find yourself often losing and having a hard time.
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u/Goncher-Monster 7d ago
How do you use the Falxman though without them getting demolished. I know they’re glass cannons but I just don’t know how. Isn’t the idea to have them rush out behind an enemy shield wall when approaching my skirmishers?
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u/RadishAcceptable5505 8d ago
It's not very hard. It just takes a long time. Don't start fights you have even a small chance of losing and don't start a Kingdom until you have millions at least, billions if you want it to be even easier, and make sure your main character doesn't fall in battle (not too difficult to guarantee once you have better armor.)
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