Bannerlord: How to Survive When Making Your Kingdom

Ever wished you could rule your own kingdom? Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is the game for you! In the game, you start as a mere vassal and slowly make your way up to being the monarch of a prospering nation.

Of course, it’s easier said than done. After all, keeping all your subjects happy and repelling hostile nations is no easy task, especially for a beginner.

As such, we’ve created this guide to help you and give you various pointers to help rule your kingdom a lot easier.

Tips and Tricks to Maintaining Your Kingdom in Bannerlord

Running a kingdom in Bannerlord is very challenging as there are quite a lot of factors to keep in mind. However, we have a lot of tips to help make things easier for you.

Ranging from the best skills to how to keep other kingdoms at bay, we’ll try to cover the most important topics for maintaining your kingdom. Let’s get started.

Invest in Social Skills

You might start out thinking that fighting skills are most important, but they’re not useful for ruling over a kingdom. Instead, you want to invest in Social and Intelligence skills.

Charm, Leadership, Steward, and Medicine are all important for maintaining your kingdom. They will help you recruit soldiers, keep people on your side, and help you keep morale high!

You should apply the same logic to the companions and wives you choose. Consider picking low-level companions as they can be easier to mold as you see fit.

Build up your companions so that they will make good leaders and they will be a massive help to running your kingdom.

Know Your Limits

A frequent trap new players fall into is they try to make their kingdom too large from the start. This leads to a weak kingdom that has too many bordering nations across the map.

Of course, those bordering nations will pounce at the chance to take out your weak fiefs for themselves.

To avoid this, focus on one fief at a time. Slowly build up a fief and make it a truly powerful part of your kingdom, then you can consider expanding your kingdom with another.

Basically, don’t spread your resources thin over too many different locations!

On that note, you want to have a large amount of money when starting out. You will need this to recruit vassals and maintain your fiefs. Try to save at least a million or two when starting your kingdom.

Train Your Armies

Experienced fighters are drastically better than less experienced fighters. As such, you start training your armies even before you start your own kingdom.

Level up your parties but also level up troops from clan parties!

A fantastic way to train your troops is by using the Paid in Promise and Giving Hands perks from the Steward tree.

These perks allow you to donate armor and weapon for experience. Dispose of unwanted equipment and bolster your soldiers at the same time.

Stock Up on Food

You should stock up on food, especially when you are expecting to be attacked by other kingdoms. Once a siege happens, you won’t be able to get more food, so store food before this happens.

A starving nation is weak and has low morale, which can quickly lead to disaster for your kingdom.

You should also keep a good Militia as you don’t have to feed them. Besides, they’re a low-cost fighting force that will greatly help defend your nation.

Basically, a garrison can be starved out but the militia can’t! However, you will need to keep your loyalty above 25 or they won’t fight for you.

Be Diplomatic

If you find yourself embroiled in a war that you have a low chance of winning, consider making peace with the attacking kingdom.

It will cost money and maybe hurt your pride a bit, but it’s best to ensure your kingdom’s prosperity! Similarly, you might want to treat prisoners well or even let them free when you capture them.

Holding prisoners will cause you to lose relations with the prisoner’s clan. When relations drop too low, the clan will start raiding your villages. This can greatly hurt your supply chain and starve your kingdom in the process!

Be very mindful of keeping a friendly relationship with neighboring kingdoms and clans so that your kingdom can prosper in peace.

ALSO READ: Terraria: How to Get Lucky Horseshoe