Castles, Cities, & Villages (Fief) Management Guide - Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord 

When the dude you are fighting for gives you a city on the front lines of an enemy empire, and then takes the army to fight another empire, leaving you to deal with Army of that empire

Man this game is rough around the edges, but I am glad to support such a complex and fun game. I wasn't super impressed the first few days, but I am having a lot of fun now. I hope they finish this masterpiece.

I would love to be able to create a bandit faction. And make hideouts around the map, to disrupt trade and such maybe even bandit villages and such. Kind of like pirate tows in sid meier's pirates

It's be great if a game like Bannerlords could implement something like the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor in the future.

Food is the most annoying part imo. The effect of prosperity on it is ridiculously massive, my towns and castles have zero food stocks even with irrigation and maxed out granaries.

If u want the highest tier units, kill the thugs in town. Say a settlement has 3 merchants and 2 gangleaders, pick one gangleader and kill his thugs a few times. The merchants and other gangleader will dramaticly improve relations to the point u can always come back to this settlement and get the full recruitment roster. This requires good civilian equipment on u and your followers.

I love the way you broke down the management system and your style of presenting it. Look forward to more.

What do you mean "You People" bro

Hello my friend. you have the most calm and best voice I have seen on any of the mount and blade bannerlord tutorials. Thank you for your calm presentation. From Jack.

Steward Skill is the best skill imo. Easiest to level up, give you boost to fief and party size. fiefs give me a passive gold way way more than than caravans do. Also the influence perks give you more fiefs hence more gold and more party size.

thanks mate! :) got my first castle today and was confused on the food supply, I thought I must bring it in, which would be a damn of a hassle. Will see how towns work tomorrow too, so great tips. I was actually really happy to see the villages become a part of the economy. Warband was shallow in estate management.

BEST STRATEGY FOR SIEGING LARGE GARRISON CITIES: you do NOT build any siege tower or battering ram (i'll explain later) 1. you build 4 trebuchets, when one is complete, you press ''pause'' and click on it and ''take it to reserve''. Do this for all 4 trebuchets. 2. you build 4 onagers, same story you take them back to reserve 3. you pause game and place the 4 trebuchets you have in reserve (all at the same time), you let them destroy all balisstas and the entire wall Should any trebuchet get taken out, you replace it with a balista from your reserve 4.Every time your siege engines destroy an enemy balista, you kill 5 of their men. Since the enemy replaces balistas one by one, you constantly have a 4vs1 siege situation where you kill 5 of their men every time you kill a siege engine. do this until the garrison has only around 100 militia left (because at this point the militia starts replenishing everyday making it ineffective to wait any longer and lose precious food supplies, TIME TO ASSAULT 5.During the assault face you can use 2 strategies which are highly dependent on your army composition: case 1 FEW ARCHERS: you want your troops to only engage through the gaps that were created in the walls instead of climbing a siege tower or carrying a battering ram, this way you will not lose soldiers that get singled out or shot down while moving slowly. You can do this by using ''charge'' (it's that simple) case 2 A LOT OF ARCHERS: you want to spread out your archers in front of the castle in a loose formation (f3, f3) and pepper the enemy down as much as possible. Once this is done, let them hold fire to draw their weapons (f4) and do the same as in case 1. for me to take out a garrison of 400 i lost 21 men myself, and 5 in another siege, it depends all killed though but here is the catch if you call all your clann members to join you place your high quality troops in their armies and place crap in yours you will only lose crap soldiers from your main army Also: the larger your army, the shorter it takes to construct the siege engines (high engineering skill also helps)

Thanks for releasing this video, really useful. I'm looking forward to the full release of this game

Bro. I’m playing as the sturgians and the dang vlandians won’t stop declaring war on us. I got so pissed I started executing every hero I caught lol.

+ sub! Everything is detailed and technical, just what I need.

Damn, you deserve more subs. Thanks for the videos, I really dig your approach. Well done!

Thanks for the guide will help loads in the future great videos man its people like you inspired me to start my new channel man! much love!! and true game is still in early access.

nice guide I was looking for; right on time

Really wish they implement village management aswell..like in warband where you could build building in the village.

Damn man. Like I said a week or two back, your content is great. You’ve been to the point and giving really helpful advice. Also mad props to border collie man for the save file

Addicting so far I really wish there was a way I could become leader of an existing faction tho tbh Like through politics and sh

What I'd love to see would be your cities/towns grow and change size overtime depending on how well your kingdom is doing, like some time you go visit your towns, they have bigger border walls and new buildings being plopped as a result for your city doing well.

I like taking out the recruits from the garrison and at least level them up once or twice before returning them. It gives me a better defence and since I normally dump all my top tier troops in the garrison a small army while I go around and recruit my preferred troops.

Hey man I watch you because you have some of the best tutorials out there. This is old info though now that they have just put out a huge mechanical update.

Thank you so much for making this video !!!

I really appreciate this video man, it helps me a lot to manage my Castle :)

I usually take the recruits and tier 2 troops from the castle/town I get given, leave my own soldiers and try to level them up by auto resolving battles with looters

Wow, finally I have found someone who has my same problem... This is happened to me with 2 of my companions and I did not understand if it's only a graphical bug or they have lost their perks...

The day this comes out for linux is the day the rest of my life is put on hold.

Good info, one thing to note is that many perks are not working atm. Hopefully this will change as development continues.

“God damn peasants.” 😂😂 Thank you, another great video. My new favorite game.

I have no towns but working with castles. I would lower garrison and do irrigation so my castle can feed itself. Once I had a stockpile of food I would start a project to make more food. Once food has either stabilized or became positive the loyalty will go up. I'll put a govenor of the same culture to get more loyalty. If there is not enough food prosperity will fall but it's ok if ur getting project done to fill the need. U can add garrison to increase security but every 20 men take 1 food

I wonder how much of this is changed but great guide thanks

Great video!

Learned you can drag and drop equipment in the first minute, I almost had to take notes for the following 20.

Nobles in your dungeon do actually get ransomed eventually. You will get a message that says "barter offer accepted" and that is your prisoner being bartered to the enemy faction. Unfortunately, you have no control on whether or not you want him to be bartered for or not it just gets automatically accepted

Caravans can help bring items to your town. Its pretty random what they sell and this is perhaps anectdotal, but I think I've noticed an increase in prosperity when setting up caravans in the towns you own

I don't think I've ever seen the AI try to break the walls. They always build a ram or maybe a tower but more often then not they just attack the town and use ladders.

I’ve been given a few crappy fiefs but they refuse to give me anymore so I’m trying to give them away but it never works when try, the vote succeeds but nothing happens and not sure if it’s a bug or I’m just not doing it right

One thing I like to do with my Garrisons i taking them out for training during peace time. Most Garrisons tend to be quite trash teir troops and the xp gain for being in a garrison is so low that its almost never going to level units up in time for when you need them. So by taking forces out to train and leveling them up albiet makes thr Garrison more expensive, but you find that by having a high teir garrison allows you to defend your castles and cities SUBSTATIALLY easier even when massively outnumbered.

Awesome, thank you.

Worth the watch for the Banner Editor alone.

When I add money to the reserves the game adds 20 days to the construcion time of the building currently under construction. Is it a bug or what?

If you make a party or a caravan, can you influence where they go? Say you have a city and want it patrolled, can you do that? I remember Warband had a mod that let you set a patrol, I think even with waypoints. For a caravan, can you set it so you get a steady supply of some good into your city? It would be nice if you have hardwood but need iron or vice versa (or you need both being Aserai). I heard a smithy really improved the amount of high quality gear that is available.

If you wait in the town until your villagers show up you can click on them and donate troops (up to 60 max) if you dump troops into your villagers and militia within the villages you can effectively have a village with 60 militia plus 60 villagers. Bandits will leave your villagers alone and even if a big group attacks if you give them tier 4+ troops you should win easily. Only have to worry about enemy raids at that point.

When a compnaion is in your party you can see their active skills. I had a companion lead a caravan and after that I could no longer see his active skills and I could before. Elys the governor wasn't in your party. I also believe that "Auto Allocate Perks" is for future perks points that a companion will unlock. I have that option disabled and all it allows me to do it choose a perk when they level. Although it would be neat to be able to completely edit a companions perks when you recruit them, I think that would make each companion less unique.

Twice now I’ve been defending a siege in a castle and had all of my garrisoned troops get the wounded debuff while watching the siege building/attack phase of the defense. While the militia had no issue. Was this due to to the castle running out of food? If so, how do I give food to a castle to keep my garrisoned troops alive.

Bonus to hammers is probably a reference to Civ series of games where production icon is a hammer and players will say hammers when referring to production.

I know it's probably wrong video to ask about it, but HOW CAN I have solid army? I mean, all I have, it looks like a bunch of bandits (steppe raiders, a bit of khuzait tribesmen, different mounted units). I want to have different kinds of troops, but they all end up spawning mixed in the battlefield. How do I get that cinematic good-looking army with +/- same clothing/armor/weapons, which looks disciplined and scary?

So my raideds (horse archers) lvl'ed up to tier 5, but the highwayman (Horse Cav) wont, they both wer maxed exp before I put the in and I put them both in at the same time, the Raiders upgraded in one day but the highwayman won't after a week

AFAIK companions or married spouse can be assigned as governor. But none of them I meet so far has such high Steward levels or these specific Skill levels (none in fighting skills at all) as the one in this video or is this governor obtained via a mod? I'd love to get one in my clan to govern my city. D:

Hi, Thanks for the video. I am struggling to have a financial healthy city. Some of my cities are fully developed, good loyalty, good food, but the garrison and other costs are way beyond what the city produces. What should I do? Gangs in the City: Are the beneficial or should I eliminate them?

IDK if anyone else has mentioned this however you can offer up prisoners, mainly only vassals of the enemy when doing barters with other lords. I generally use it a lot when brokering peace between my small nation and other large ones. Usually pick up a lot of enemy lords on the long road of finding the enemy ruler. That is if I can keep them prisoner long enough before the magically disappear from my prisoner list at 1% health and less than a day cycle later are running from me again at 100% health and a bunch of troops....

@ItalianSpartacus If you recruit troops from a City/town, do you have less troops in the city/town to defend if someone sieges it right after you have recruited them?

I do not think the militia of the town has something to do with the militia of the settlements, I might be wrong tho and where did you read the bug about the training fields? It would be a shame if this doesnt work properly, but havent tested it so far, so your answer could save me some annoying testingtime :)

How do i get Daily Production/construction up from zero? This game explains nothing and google is not help.

I exported character attributes in a txt file to check why their perks are greyed out. They actually have spent points on perks, the game just doesn't show which while they are governing a fief or leading a party. So just a visual bug afaik.

when was this video done because of the RU-vid change u can see the date, or you can somehow? please let me know, i wonder because there where updates done to the game

Q: DO prisoners in cities/castles turn to hirable troops with time (like they do in party) ? i have like 2k troops as prisoners and i dont want to just sell them but also i dont want to "recruit" them by myself by 100's

The section starting with 0:30. That is a nice town, it has very nice graphics. Does it appear in the game ? Or it's just a cinematic trailer ? I just wanna explore that kind of medieval towns, villages. Thank you !

Wanna get this since played Warband a lot. Just seems like many stuff not been implemented into it yet. Better experience to wait and play with more content in it imo

The garrison passive training buildings are currently not working in my game. I get no level up whatsoever in my garrison even though they've been there forever..

Very good video. Is there option to set appear troops in garrisons by automatic?

I just started playing, and got given the city that was fought over back and forth for like 76 days straight. So when i saw my loyalty at 6, the construction at 0 and the building that makes construction a completion rate of Never? Lets just say i took a break from the war to just sit there and try to get things right

Can you update this exact video? It seems a lot has changed in the past 3 years and I'd appreciate your knowledge on managing a city. Thanks.

Do I have to physically be in the town / castle to manage it? I currently have a castle and a town, but they are on opposite ends of the map at the moment.

I dont know if anyone has said this yet, ransoms are in the game. Im unsure of the requirements of them happening but i think if your CLAN itself is at war with a faction and you have their nobles you have a chance for a ransom.

IS the NPC gov skills still bugged? Because my gov still does not get skill points sitting on the throne..

Thank you

Thanks a lot ! You save me ! :p Can you make a video about managing and leading army ? plz

Why some of the projects are in grey even though they have level 1, 2 or 3?

Please tell me that the background music is from KCD and I'm not going crazy confusing Bannerlord with KCD

Is there any way to build something like a watchtower or messenger post? My castles get attacked without me being notified lol

The question I've yet to find a satisfactory answer to is, how does one improve the conditions of a village? Even when my city is prosperous and thriving, all surrounding villages seem to have the "This village has fallen on hard times" descriptor when visited. Anyone know what changes this?

Very tough to get gifted settlements under an existing faction. Those with higher prosperity and influence will always get awarded cities. Best strategy I've heard about and used is to never join a faction. Here is the caveat: to start your own kingdom, you need a settlement or a castle, and you must be independent. However, you forfeit said castles and settlements that they gifted you when you leave the that kingdom (in order to become independent). Key is to never join a faction. Talk to nobles, gather banner pieces, take a small castle. Then start your own faction. Take a city or two, make peace by offering gold or prisoner nobles. Take a city or two from a different faction, rinse, repeat. If you charm is high enough, you can simply annex many cities. I have gained 5 settlements by war, and 3 cities by diplomacy/charm (convincing nobles in kingdoms that are losing wars, to join you). Somewhat of a bug they are working on with how many nobles will defect your kingdom and how easily, but if you gift settlements to other families- they will manage the city for you, stock garrison, build improvements, etc. Not feasible to manage every city like this when you have a even 3+ cities. You will be running around the map constantly stocking garrisons to defend, while you other cities are gettting attacked during war-time. Travel time is too much (even on very easy horse speed) to defend properly. Multiple play-throughs and testing have led me to this conclusion- but just my opinion. Despite all the work they are putting in, factions will still snowball too quickly and you will find yourself fighting kingdoms with 10,000+ men if you take too much time in the beginning and join other kingdoms and mess around. Think of the beginning of the game as a race, and the AI is pretty damn fast with recruiting/stocking/waging wars. They are constantly doing this, and all you will do is get behind in my experience. TLDR: Don't join a kingdom. Rush main questline and start your own kingdom before other factions gain too much strength and snowball. Convince nobles to join, gift them settlements to increase relations and defense capability of kingdom. Managed to get 8 cities, armies of 1300+ all by the year 1088. No cheats. Key is to never allow the AI time enough to get that strong. Strong enough to ruin your play through. If you want my save or some of my buddies' saves to demonstrate late-game kingdom management let me know via DM. Great video here and would be happy to share.

I believe the irrigation daily project has a different effect in castle management than town management, giving a bonus to village growth rather than food production

My city of Askar in the south is always starving. It's peaceful down there with no raided villages and it has several food producing villages near it, the city is fully upgraded as well. I can't figure out why it's always starving. Are the villages not able to produce enough food to sustain it? I went ahead and set up 3 caravans down around it as well, thinking that may help, but it didn't. I even went halfway across the map and bought up all the food, about 400 units worth and sold it to the city, and it didn't help 1 bit. Not sure what to do.

Is the player the governor if you dont select anyone to be the governor?

The main problem is that the towns and keep dont go outside and work the fields and produce no food. I got 2 citie, 3 keeps and as soon as the prosperity hits 4000 u cant keep food stocked and then all the garrison starts deserting. Even if u remove the garrison they still starve. And im always bouncing from 1 to the other defending. They just need to fix the town food production, villages should just for stocking the granary for sieges and winter. i have the same city, maxed out everything villages defended and can barely keep 100 garrison due to starvation lol.

Can you explain the character trait system? How to get them. What are their pros and cons?

I'll delete this if IS brings it up in the video. But how do i get rocks, arrow baskets and firepots in MY castles and cities... they never spawn if i own it ? any idea ? (i have level 3 walls) Also my castle has -1 production, so i cant even build production buildings.

I have a full level 3 city and I have not seen any of the garrison troops increase their tiers so I think it's not working at all as far as passively promoting your garrison troops.

Wait what is this at 1:26 ? My game UI Looks completely different.

Not sure if it's a bug but I've found mercenaries in the lords keep.

I have a castle and after upgrading it has zero production. Why is this?

I hate that everytime a Settlement falls or anything my leader of the kindom starts to hate me. In a war I always get the first castle, the combiened army leaves and I get over run by huge enemy armies, that sucks alot because the own faction does not bother to help and to creat an own armie is not enough to defend multible attacks

have 85 hours on my save and now I can't even open it because of bugs and such. but if I am able to open it, it crashes when the game progresses to the next day

Hi. Guys. I have a castel with 0construction. I cant figure out how to fix this to be Abel to uppgrade the castel

Okay is it just me or is the wedding system kind hard to pull off? I triede Many times to find a spouse, but i can't Seem to get it right. Is there some kind of trick to it?

googles first video guide result is garbage compared to your's. You laid it flat out, and thank sweet jaby beezus you catagorized the subjects in the video, so I don't have to watch fo 30 min when im trying to play now. Idk if I'll ever watch ur vids, but thats worth a sub. at least for a bit. good job bruh.

Alright so I had an Elite Equite and Vlandian light Calvary as prisoners. I fought an enemy faction and now I am able to recruit. Wonder what triggers it.

Question: why do I constantly find 30-50 paesants in my castle's garrison every 5-10 in game days? (Friendly lords do not donate them). This kills my food all the times! Please help!

i got a relationship level of 16 with this one guy from vlandia and when i helped siege a castle i did not have enough influence to see if i could get it myself but i go to the vote and there is 100% on that guy i am friends with and i was at 0% but i got the castle in the end, i think he wanted to give me it as a gift (there are many perks of being nice and/or merciful)! it was just one castle with one village so it was not too big a loss for him, i have the improved garrisons mod and i have about 140 troops guarding it (which is enough for now as it is peace time and i still need more income to keep all the soldiers payed)

Also try not to fill your garrison unless you’re at war and if you keep noble prisoners in your settlement/castle the kingdom you’re at war with will try to siege it more than others. I had all my garrisons filled to max and my food supply would diminish along with loyalty and prosperity. This is for those struggling with money of course lol. And open shops! Good easy money maker. Also in addition to your amazing info the guys that require horse can upgrade but you have to have horses or war horses for it. I would take my Khuzait prisoners fight enemies and upgrade them as long As I had horses. Bandits too. Think leadership and stewarding need to be max. The leadership inspires them to fight for you I think

what does loyalty do? I had reach 0 and nothing happened.

Could you possibly create a guide on gangs and all that they entail?

Quick performance question: Cpu meets minimum requirements with a small margin Have 8gb RAM But it seems that my gpu is a potato However i do have 6k VRAM Would i be able to play the game? Im fine with playing on low settings

loyalty is the main effect and garrison levels .. you get given castle/city by the AI right out in the middle of ..anyway if you want to change a vote on something and its 100% against keep voting for or against it..4 no votes will alter the result by about 10/15% so to alter result will take about 20 votes ...

The daily defaults only works when you are not building anything else, right?

Last time i played Governors didnt gain xp to anything.. so how do i get a good governor except from marriage ? i mean .. you can barely gain xp with social/int skills .. ok steward is doable.