Ok, I finally got a castle with a village. I now have two villages and the castle and the game does change a bit of character now that I need to administer them. Leaving a garrison to defend the castle weighted up against how many units I can afford and how many I need for my army, it adds a little bit to the game. Just to be on the sour side :p : It is a bit retarded there is no stable in the castle where I can keep my warhorses while I wait for my char and heros to get the skill needed to ride them.

I found having a castle is a good wau of building up an army of elite troops. As soon as my units max out on their tech level, I place them in the garrison while I take the other untis to battle and training. By keeping a small army, my level 21 char and 6 heros add a couple of thousands XP to the recruits, enough to get them to tech level 3 or thereabout where they stand a good chance in battle.

I am however a bit concerned about the Nord huscarls' effectiveness. The Vaegirs attacked the castle with a 500 men strong army, and I had 140 men defending, 30+ were huscarls who went in first to defend. They massacred the much larger army like I couldn't believe it.

There is no such things as an ultimate unit in this game. Every unit have a counter. It is normal to see a butcher if you happened to field units which are inherently strong against the others.

Also, sieges and defenses are not played exactly the same. You must adapt your planning a lot to do well in them versus normal battles in open fields.

I suggest that you raise the AI level in the options. You sound like you need it.

The units aren't exactly balanced, though. Most players agree that Swadian Knights and Nord Huscarls are simply the best units in the game. The knights are strong in almost every situation, and the Huscarls beat anything if they can get to it.

Of course it's the player that tips the scales, though :)

Well, I certainly don't remember having any real difficulty against any units. Yeah, the knights are really well armored, but they lack good speed. Just outmaneuveur them, you've won.

Sure, the Huscals are great... I didn't fight with or against them much, but aren't they completely owned by ranged weapons?

Etc.

The huscarl shields, sheer power and (iirc) quick movement make them excellent against enemy archers. They have trouble with mounted units on flat terrain in general, but keeping them together usually works just fine.

Thing is, as a general rule the player always wins. The AI by itself makes a marginal difference. That's what I meant when I said the player tips the balance :)
The measure of a unit is therefore not so much determined by how tough they are to fight against, but how useful they are to fight with. That's where Swadian Knights and Huscarls win out by a pretty big margin.

i dont see the point of castles they might as well be make-shift forts you cant even sell anything!

What I do when my huscarls face enemy cavalery is: I order them to halt (preferably on a slope if possible, the steeper the better), close together. Others say I should spread them but I found that by having all the huscarls hugging each other the wall becomes much more difficult to breach. The Swadian knights are the toughest but if I succeed in trapping them with my infantry they're pretty much done for.

Also, it's important to remember the difference between how successful the player is against the enemy and how successful your army is. In one battle that I ultimately lost, I won one skirmish all alone against 5-6 Vaegir cavalery units and 15-20 infantry/archers. All by outmanouvering their cavalery, getting them to crash into trees or each other. A lone Swadian knight wouldn't be able to do much damage at all against that force.

EDIT: I really, reeeaaaally would like to see the AI for the cavalery done better. Ordering your cavalery to charge should mean they ride through the enemy ranks, off to a good distance before turning and charging again. Now they don't. They ride up to the infantry and stay there for melee fights which is very, very poor thinking.

Lol. :hysterical:

angry axe: Castles are good for four things: You get some tax from them, you can keep prisoners there (with a prison tower you can further reduce the risk of them escaping) and you can keep those expensive units as garrison which cut their wages in half (I think) and with each castle there is a village for you to develope and demand more tax. Since you are upgrading the villages (you want to do this) they slowly become wealthier. My first village started as poorer than poor and is now average, whatever that's worth for a medieval village :p

And _r.u.s.s.: Which version of DOSBox are you using? Since this won't work on any DOSBox for Windows, you must use DOSBox for Linux, obviously.