Mount Blade Train Peasants

24.08.2019

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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/MountAndBlade

Mount And Blade Train Peasants

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Mount & Blade is an indie Action-Strategy RPG developed by TaleWorlds Entertainment and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a sandbox-style game, set in the medieval-ish land of Calradia, where you begin with a lame horse, a rusty sword, a bent crossbow, and some tattered rags, and are then expected to impress a king of your choice and conquer the world for him (or whatever else you feel like, really). You can hire mercenaries, train them, trade between cities, fight bandits, and even become a vassal to a lord and be granted a village, castle, or town.

Mount&Blade » Zendar Town Square - Mount&Blade Discussion » The Apprentice Guild. Click 'train peasants,' your advisor will estimate how long, then you have a test where you fight with one or two of them. So I have no clue if you can train more at a time. I assume it just effects the speed at which you train, but i'm not sure. Train peasants: You will be asked to train a militia to defend the village against bandits. Mount and Blade Wiki is a FANDOM Games Community. View Mobile Site.

The game has both third person and first person view, the former better for melee and the latter better for ranged weapons. The combat uses a physics engine that determines the speed of a swing, relative to the target, and gives a percentage bonus (or penalty) to the damage of the attack based on its relative speed. Missiles like arrows all travel in arcs and bows are less accurate the longer the shot is drawn, accounting for fatigue.

Released in late 2009 in Eastern Europe and May 2011 in North America and the rest of Europe was Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword, effectively a mod for Warband developed by the Ukrainian group SiCh Studio and Russian Snowberry Connection (former Snowberry Connection). It adds early guns, a historical (fiction) setting, improves town-management and gives more options than just 'put a single ladder with room for 1 guy up the wall' in sieges as well as a storyline to follow.

A proper sequel, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, serves as a prequel to Mount & Blade: Warband with an engine overhaul and gameplay improvements. The game's release date is unknown but according to Frank Eliott, known as Captain Lust, a former developers and PR manager, there will be public beta testing.

In addition to its modding community and the mods own pages, Mount & Blade also inspired This Notched And Rusted Blade, a machinima made with the Anno Domini 1257 mod.

Tropes appearing in mods which don't have their own pages now go at the bottom of the page.

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Present in Mount and Blade / General Series Tropes

Mount And Blade Train Peasants

24-Hour Armor: No matter how high its encumbrance is.
- Averted with NPC lords, who switch to civvies when resting in a castle or town.
- The player character will also take off his helm and weapons while visiting.
Acceptable Breaks from Reality: It might not be very historically correct to have Vikings fighting Mongolian horse archers, but boy is it fun.
Action Girl: Lady Isolla of Suno, Arwa the Pearled One, and a few of the companions (Ymira, Klethi, Deshavi, Katrin, Matheld). And the player, if they so choose.
Actually Four Mooks: The game does this on the world map, but the actual number of troops + prisoners is displayed alongside the sprite, and as you get closer, you can see the number and type of troops in each party. The exact same system is applied to each of the parties in game, including the player's one.
Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
- Items you buy are generally really expensive, especially high end armor. But if you sell said gear back to the merchants later, they'll only offer you a tiny fraction of the cost. The trading skill mitigates this, but either way unless you obtained said loot from fighting, don't expect to get back what you paid for it.
- The above applies mostly to arms, armor, and horses, however. Trade commodities can be profitably traded between cities, assuming you know the best locations to buy and sell a given good.
Adventure-Friendly World: The constant wars between the various kingdoms create opportunities for wandering adventurers to make a name for themselves, and the bandits that pop up in the absence of any effective police force (because most of the kingdoms' resources are going into fighting the wars) ensures there are plenty of targets for guilt-free looting and level-grinding.
The Alleged Steed: The one you start with, usually. The description given lists it as 'swaybacked,' implying old age, overuse, or injury in its past life (or any combination of the three).
The All-Seeing A.I.:
- Computer-controlled ranged troops see perfectly through fog, shooting at you long before you get close enough to see them. Fortunately the same applies to your hirelings.
- Lost track of where the enemies are in battle? Just follow the AI! They know exactly where those last remaining horse archers are. They also know exactly when the final enemy is slain, even if it took place a distance away.
  - Or you can just open the minimap and see where everyone is.
Amazon Brigade: While it's pointless to use one in late game, it's possible to assemble one early on. All your female PC needs is to do solo runs against outlaw warbands (hey, nobody said it would be easy!), until she liberates and recruits some peasant women. Then, with her following, she can liberate more women (and perhaps hire a female NPC or two). Sure, at first the troop are little more than pretty cannon fodder, but survivors will eventually grow into Sword Sisters, and that's about as Amazon-esque as women in this game can get. As a bonus, Sword Sisters are among the strongest non-mounted units in the game, and have the fastest upgrade progression.
Amusing Injuries:
- Can occur when your character or your horse is impaled with a lot of arrows and thrown weapons. Nothing like riding a horse that has five thrown spears sticking out of it, while your character becomes a human pincushion with multiple arrows sticking out.
- Better still, if your horse's injury is a single arrow between the eyes, you get a unicorn.
- Take out a mounted enemy while he's charging full steam. Watch the rider end up rolled over by his mount's corpse.
Anachronism Stew:
- As far as all the medieval weapons and armour go, they are portrayed very accurately, including their proper names. The only exception to this rule would be that they come fromslightlydifferenttimeperiods of The Middle Ages).
An Axe to Grind: Axes have a bonus against shields and throwing axes are one of the signature weapons of Nord Huscarls.
An Entrepreneur Is You: Trading goods is one way to make money, and Warband allows investing in personal enterprises.
Animal Motifs: Each kingdom has a particular beast sign in their menu. Swadians have the lion, Rhodoks the bear, Vaegirs a snow leopard, Khergits a wolf, Nords a raven and the Sarranids have a falcon.
Annoying Arrows:
- Played straight except for headshots, usually. Though there's still sometimes the amusing sight of one of the tougher units charging on with an arrow sticking out of his eye. Hey, at least the flinching animation can interrupt the attack animation of an incoming cavalier and save your life.
- Rarer when full damage is enabled; two arrows are usually lethal unless their target is wearing plate armor.
- Still played straight for the player, in that they'll never actually kill you (outside of With Fire and Sword, anyway). Then again, neither does anything else.
- Horses can take quite an amount of punishment, sometimes needing 3 arrows to the head before dropping.
Appeal to Force: King Graveth won the Rhodok election by coming in armed and announcing that there was a Swadian raiding party that was coming to kill the electoral council, and that he'd only defend them if they elected him immediately. Graveth lauds this; he despises the patricians of the towns and considers their democracy a sham.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
- Averted, the limit is based on skills and renown. It's still strangely specific, but at least it's based on something.
- That said however, there are mods out there that lets you adjust how many troops are present on the battlefield. So if you have 150 men, and you want all of them out there, you can modify the number so that all of them can be on the field at once. However, this trope also comes into play, because increasing it too much will slow your computer down during these fights, hence why they attempted to limit the number of troops at any given time, and as troops were killed and taken off the field, more could be presented in the form of reinforcements. But if your computer can handle the increased numbers, said fights become truly epic.
Armor Is Useless: Averted, though with cheaper armor at lower levels you might think this is the case.
Armor of Invincibility: In game combination of Iron Greaves or Plate Boots, Gauntlets, and (especially) Plate Armor and a Winged Great Helmet. Though many favor substituting the last one for a Great Helmet because of its' nearly-as-high protection, cheaper cost, and less likelihood of screwing with ranged shots. Not activated in the base game is Black Armor, which fit this trope so much it was Dummied Out. Though it was later re-imagined and re-imported into With Fire & Sword.
Army of Thieves and Whores : The various bandits (particularly the Looters and Mountain Bandits), the deserters... and theoretically even you and your own party - if you decide to playas a bunch of bad guys.
Artificial Stupidity:
- Enemy and ally AI is lacking. Riding close by enemies attempting to reach your archers will cause them to either drop their own bows and pull out melee weapons, or turn around and leave their back unshielded, letting your own archers nail them.
- Cavalry doesn't understand how to use the jousting lance properly, which is particularly noticeable in tournaments, where you can typically find a trio of knights stuck in a corner on their horse, poking at each other for 0 damage with the lance.
- The chance of archers shooting you in the back, or the guarantee of a guy on a horse stabbing you in the back? Smarter then you think...until they realize your cavalry forces suddenly show up en masse behind them because they were too distracted by you.
  - Note that they still do this even if you have a tower shield pasted to your back, falling back into stupidity.
- Played straight if you auto-resolve a battle. Unless you outnumber the enemy group vastly, you're going to suffer quite a few casualties on your side, including supposedly 'elite' troops. You're almost always better off just jumping into the battle, and if you don't really feel like fighting, just hang back and watch your guys slaughter the enemy forces, especially if they're mostly low level units.
- Also played straight if you use the cheat to let the computer takeover your character. While interesting to watch, your character then becomes incredibly stupid and can barely hold his own against peasants. Which is odd considering how competent they usually control the cavalry forces, both yours and the enemy's.
Ascended Extra: The Khergits were a type of bandit until an update turned them into a proper faction.

Attack Its Weak Point: There are several ways you can exploit this:
- For example, if the enemy is holding up their shield, you can attempt to circle around them and hit them from behind so long as you're not the only target around them.
- If they're heavily armored but not wearing a helmet, a head strike will do massive damage, and with a strong enough weapon, can One-Hit Kill them.
- When approaching an enemy formation you're better off picking at their flanks rather than a headlong rush in the middle of them.
- If shooting at a target with their shield raised, one may go for a foot shot, less damaging, but at least does some damage.
- Horses can take a fair amount of punishment, but given that they gradually slow down as they take damage, are a large target, cannot block blows by themselves, and a de-horsed rider is rather slow in its plate armour on foot, it's no wonder many soldiers will go for them first.
- You can also raid enemy villages to weaken their economy, deny them building up their armies for a while, and loot things. Occasionally this will force the enemy to attack you in an attempt to save their village.
Authority Equals Asskicking:
- A common occurrence with the faction lords, who after all lead armies as part of their job description. Specific levels of asskickery vary between individuals, but most can outfight their own elite troops. If you see someone with distinctive armor riding around the battlefield scything down your troops with an actual scythe, it's probably a lord.
- Of course, them being so distinct (and you not actually being bound by any rules of chivalry until after the battle, what with being a player character out to win,) this lets the player home in on them quite easily; especially if the Lord has already suffered several defeats in a row and is leading an army of recruits. It's not hard to single out the one guy in full heraldic platemail on a horse amongst an army of barely-trained militiamen on foot with spears! (Cue the player's bag of bodkin arrows.)
Automaton Horses:
- Horses are basically treated like any other equippable item, never tire, never panic, and are perfectly willing to run headlong into obstacles like walls or trees at full speed unless steered clear by the player. They can be injured in battle, though, and have a chance of becoming lame or dying when they run out of Hit Points. They also have their own AI while not being ridden and will bolt off if hit.
- As of Warband, warriors with long spears or pikes (you can tell which will serve this function—they can't be used on horseback, and compare the image of that to that of the soldier type in question; also some mods call such arms a 'pike' or such troops a 'pikeman') can and will cause your horse (or an AI horse for that matter) to rear back and stop on a dime, if they are pointing it at you and/or stabbing it forwards, or at the very least, you're riding head-on at said person(s). One can only imagine how well this barely-noticed change in mechanics could serve in multiplayer....
  - Any spear-like weapon has that effect in Warband, not just pikes...the pikes are just REALLY long, so it gives more room to work with. Also any spear or lance can be foot-couched by pressing X while unmounted. This causes tremendously magnified damage to any unit who runs into the tip while couched...not quite as OP as a mounted Couched lance, but way more then you'll likely do otherwise (greatly increases the speed-based damage bonus), and can even take out a charger in 1 hit, if they're coming at full speed.
Badass Army: Any force composed of top-level units. They will make hay out of a lord's army. You can even wipe out several hundred men with your tiny force of 50-90 elite units, especially if they're mounted or waiting for the enemy atop a nice, tall wall.
Being Evil Sucks:
- Downplayed, its's easy and profitable to do 'dishonorable' missions, such as assassinations, kidnappings, and starting wars, with little consequences aside from ticking off the victims. However, dishonorable acts such as pillaging villages or kicking around the local peasantry will draw the ire of the local Lord, who can usually (at least early-on in the game) kick your tail pretty soundly.
- In Warband, you also have to take into account the opinion of your companions: many come from the peasantry and aren't too fond of watching their kind get murdered and looted, especially as they are supposed to take part in the pillaging.
Being Good Sucks:
- The benefits of having a high honor are dubious at best. You have to turn down often needed rewards for quests, release valuable prisoners, skip lucrative quests, refrain from beating down on the peasantry, and make enemies of the 'dishonorable' nobles across the realm. All to make friends with some 'honorable' ones. And prior to Warband, it didn't even properly do that.
- Honor does have one benefit, namely becoming marshal. If your honor is high enough, a lot of lords will like you enough to vote for you to become marshal without you having had to bother doing a million quests for them, saving you time that can be used to make the money you're missing out on from dishonorable acts by battling, which also trains your men and keeps morale high. The dishonorable lords never go below -3 relation with you no matter how high your honor is either, you need to do other things to make anyone hate you more than that.
BFS: Obviously, the two-handed swords, but a few weapons used to be way oversized.
- Straddling the line between this and Blade on a Stick, the Shortened Military Scythe is a scytherblade facing upwards.
- The Sword of War is the longest non-polearm in the game, needless to say, it's a very big sword.
- The War Cleaver, which is rather shapeless, beyond the notch on top, while not heavier than most other two-handed swords, it's weight is distributed to make it hit harder than say, a generic greatsword.
Big Damn Heroes: Can be done anytime you help a friendly force when you see them fighting the enemy on the field map. The more outnumbered they were prior to you joining, the bigger the relationship boost if you win the fight.
Black Cloak: Whenever you sneak into an enemy controlled city, you wear one of these, along with a staff and throwing knives.
Black Knight: Patched out, but they used to roam around with the best armor in the game and having a cadre of followers. Unfortunately, this made them crazy dangerous even to lords and kings, which threw off world balance rather fast.
Blade on a Stick: Spears are best used only against cavalry, and most other polearms are best used only by cavalry.
Boom, Headshot!: Doable with every ranged weapon in the game for double damage.
Boring, but Practical:
- Hunting down bandits and deserters for loot may be more fun, but if you're looking to turn a consistent profit or support a larger force, commodities trading and enterprises are much more reliable sources of income.
  - That said, the 'trash mobs' are a better source of exp for your units rather than using the training field. Sure, they could get killed, but you get much better exp killing bandits and you can get loot as well, and prisoners if you knock enough of them out. And the units that survive repeated fights can get promoted to better units faster.
- Mounted players using a polearm may get into the habit of using the 'couched lance' charge attack as much as possible. However, you're usually better off just doing a drive-by stabbing, as a regular attack can sometimes do enough damage to kill enemy units, especially low level or weakly armored ones. And simply attacking with it can be faster than waiting for the couched lance cooldown.
- The Crossbow. It can't really be made into a viable primary weapon on par with regular bows, requires two slots unlike the throwing weapons, and can't even be used on a mount. So what's the upside? It requires basically nothing to get working. You just need the strength to pull it back, and that's about it, allowing you to put your stats and skills into more important things, such as increasing army size and morale or boosting your profits with trading and bartering.
Born in the Saddle: The Khergits were originally steppe nomads before settling down in the lands they currently occupy, and their armies still have a heavy emphasis on cavalry.
Bow and Sword, in Accord: Commonly used by NPCs and the default setup of the player. Useful as there will be situations where getting into melee or standing off at range is inadvisable or even suicidal. NPC archers and crossbowmen always carry melee weapons and sometimes shields, and the highest level ranged attackers can be used as middling infantry in a pinch.
Boxed Crook:
- You can recruit captured looters, bandits, and their ilk into your warband. Since they tend to be lower-tier troops and take quite a bit of extra effort to level up compared to recruits and mercenaries, they're often useful for little more than cheap cannon fodder to preserve the rest of your army.
- Also, while the basic units (Looters, etc) are extremely cheap (1 gold per unit per week), their advanced levels (Mountain Bandit, Forest Bandit, etc) are extremely expensive (up to 35 gold per unit per week), and separated by a mere one level of advancement, making them impractical to level and Overrated and Underleveled if you bother with it.
Cast of Snowflakes: The face generator allows an impressive array of variations, and the game makes good use of it. In addition, soldiers of the same type will have slightly different equipment, differentiating them further.
Chainmail Bikini: Averted, armor looks similar on women as it does to men. However, in training fields and arena melees, men wear knee-length trousers and women wear bikinis.
Choice of Two Weapons: You have four weapon/shield slots to do everything you need done.
Civil War: You can be involved in one if you support one of the claimants against the current leader of the faction. The war goes on until you either decide to stop supporting them, or you takeover all of the rival's castles and towns. And should the claimant win, they become the new faction leader.
A Commander Is You: Pick (and mix, if you have the patience) units from a choice of different factions:
- Swadians: Balanced, Elitists. (Most powerful Heavy Cavalry and overall balanced force)
- Rhodoks: Technical, elitists. (Most powerful Defensive force in the game, but requires carefully organized formations of their Sergeants and Sharpshooters to excel (which is why the computer controlled Rhodoks tend to get rolled easily when not defending castles). Sergeants counter heavy cavalry (spears) and keep arrows and melee(huge shields and heavy armor)away from the sharpshooters, who kill everything else easily. Slower then a pack of huscarls or swadian knights at winning, but basically unstoppable with no real weaknesses if used properly).
- Nords: Brute force, elitists, huscarl specialists
- Khergits: Rangers, horse archer specialist
- Vaegirs: Rangers, technical (their top-tier infantry and cavalry are shock units and lose in prolonged melee)
- Sarranids (Warband): Technical; the faction requires a fundamentally different mindset from the others^note.
Commissar Cap: Various Russian and Prussian units wear this in the Napoleonic Wars DLC.
The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Other lords do not lose anything after being captured, avoid being captured 70% of the time, and are all equipped with some of highest level equipment (even the the most minor lords are armed to the teeth). They also recover their armies rather quickly even if you wiped it out just moments earlier. Granted, they're not always high level units, but they also don't have to walk around to various villages to recruit.

Contemptible Cover: The reception to the cover's use of not-Aragorn (dubbed 'Frodogorn' by the fanbase) and the general blandness of it was ... less than enthusiastic.
- Uncanny Valley: Frodogorn is not an actor, but rather a render.
Continuing Is Painful:
- Just escaped capture? Well, you can try not reloading a save, but you will have likely lost valuable and rare equipment, a sizable chunk of money, and all of your soldiers and companions. And your companions could be waiting for you in any tavern on all of Calradia.
  - Gets nastier if it happens to be bandits who captured you in an isolated area, thats a long walk back with likely even more of the bastards spawning to rob you of your dignity. And then we get Steppe Bandits in and near the Khanate who make the above a walk in the park.
- Doubles as The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard, as while other lords spend a sizeable amount of time in captivity as well, immediately upon becoming free they regain their entire army and do not have any disadvantages.
Cool vs. Awesome: See the entry for 'Acceptable Breaks from Reality' above.
Cosmetically Different Sides: Generally averted, but when a Sarannid Mameluke force and a Swadian Knight one charge into each other, it becomes apparently they have practically the exact same stats with Sarannids being slightly lighter armored and faster and Swadians being heavier armored and slower, That is to say, a Sarranid Mameluke will get somewhere one second before a Swadian Knight and said Knight will take one more wind gust to take down.
Crippling Overspecialization: The Khergits are an all-cavalry faction. They're amazingly powerful in the field, but they suffer horribly in siege warfare...and siege battles are the most difficult and the most important battles in the game.
Critical Existence Failure:
- Characters become bloodier as they take damage, but their performance is unaffected.
- Averted for horses: they become progressively slower as they are injured, and a knockout can leave them permanently crippled.
Cultural Posturing:
- The citizens of Rhodoks are supposedly very proud of the fact that they live in the only Elective Monarchy in Calradia.
- ...That King Graveth usurped by telling the politicians 'Vote for me or die'.
Dangerous Deserter: In spades. From a technical point of view, they are very similar to regular groups of bandits, but are often far more numerous and better equipped. They can be a Demonic Spiders style threat early in the game, but become less intimidating after the player levels up considerably and creates his party. Still, large groups of advanced troops (40 nords warriors in full mail armor for instance) remain a threat for a pretty long time.
Death-or-Glory Attack: One of the cheats is this. It deals a serious amount of blunt damage to the enemy and has no cooldown, mash it to instantly win. The problem? Said cheat is Control Alt F4. Slip and accidentally let go of the control key and wave your progress goodbye.
Decapitated Army: If an enemy lord is knocked out, their troops will drop any tactics and default to charge at the closest enemy, which usually is easier to deal with than an orderly formation. They will be most likely to run away too. Handled differently for the player - the battle cuts and either a new one ensues with the player character heavily wounded, or the player is forced to use the autoresolve option, with unpleasant results.
Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- Calradia is a sexist land (though it is only briefly touched on before Warband) where even the lords that have been established through dialogue as being just and honorable have no qualms with raiding caravans, burning and plundering villages and attacking helpless traveling farmers, provided they belong to an enemy faction.
- The Steppe Bandits more so than the actual Khergit lords themselves, as they're always hostile.
- Subverted at times depending on your companions, who may have reservations about raiding villages or killing defenseless farmers (in part due to either coming from similar backgrounds or knowing them personally).
Department of Redundancy Department: Certain item modifiers are part of the default names of equipment, leading to things like a Ragged Ragged Outfit or a Strong Strong Bow.
Difficult, but Awesome: 'Chamber' blocking: effectively cancelling out an enemy's attack by attacking from the same direction with good timing. If you get good enough at it, you can block couched lance damage (which is almost guaranteed a kill if you don't have a shield, and can't be blocked normally without one) with a dagger.
Disc-One Nuke: A character with the 'Lady in Waiting' background starts with a Spirited Courser, an enhanced version of the fastest horse in the game (only a Champion Courser is faster) at the cost of a hit to other starting equipment (and starting equipment is wretched for every background and will get upgraded after a battle or two no matter what). By comparison, every other character starts with either a Swaybacked Saddle Horse, a debuffed version of the second-worst horse in the game, or a Sumpter Horse, the worst horse in the game.
Disney Death: Neither the player character, the namedNPCs, nor any of the lords can be killed in battle - they're only knocked unconscious and taken prisoner, and either are ransomed or escape. Your hirelings can be killed, but even then you can learn a surgery skill granting a chance that a soldier who would've been killed will be merely knocked unconscious instead.
The Dreaded:
- Typically any armies you run into that vastly outnumber yours, such as a marshal leading a large war party to invade. If a nation has one or two of these huge armies, expect to see their enemies constantly flee.
- Your own character can become this, and once you've managed to get a decent-sized army most enemy groups will avoid you unless they vastly outnumber you. You defeat a noble enough times, they'll often start to run away in spite of any advantages they have.
- Dark Knights in the Warband 'Native Expansion' mod. You can control when or if they show up, but when they do, their force is one to be reckoned with. They will probably dish a Curb-Stomp Battle on you if you're not leading a massive force yourself against them due to their heavy armor, heavy-hitting weaponry (even with high defense on easy they can probably knock a quarter of your health off in one hit), and most of them are mounted. Encountering them with an insufficient force will certainly make you understand how the enemy forces you fight against feel when you steamroll through them.
Dream Team: The Player Character plus the assorted heroes recruited in taverns, especially in the lategame when their skills are fully leveled up and they have been provided with the best gear.
Drill Sergeant Nasty: Lezalit. Ymira points it out if you have both of them in your army.
Drop the Hammer:
- In Warband, the Rhodok's array of hammers. They also deal a ridiculous amount of damage and ignore shields completely making them quite popular in multiplayer siege battles for clearing besiegers off ladders or holding of a tide of attackers pouring forth from a siege tower.
- Hammers also explicitly ignore a certain degree of armor, and the more armor you're wearing, the more armor it ignores. So wearing a full set of extremely expensive plate that even archers have difficulty penetrating means that hammers will do considerably more damage to you than other weapons.
Dude, Where's My Respect?:
- Mostly averted, in that lords will stop asking you to deliver letters for them once you're rich, powerful and famous. Generally. Also averted in the tournaments where, if you defeat enough opponents, you can stay in the game even if you lose.
- Can be played straight if you take over a fort or city, and then don't get to keep it if you ask for it. While you usually get dibs if you conquered it, especially by yourself, once in a while your faction leader will reward the town/fort to someone other than you.
Dummied Out:
- Firearms and things that were in earlier releases but patched out. They can be brought back by changing a single value in the module.ini file^note.
- Same with the black knight armor, though the Black Knights themselves are still out.
Dungeon Town: On occasion, arriving at a town means you will find that there's a group of bandits in it, causing you to have to liberate the town.
Easter Egg: There's samurai equipment hidden around in hard to spot chests.
Easy Logistics: Averted. Troops will become unhappy and eventually desert if they don't have anything to eat, and they'll have low morale if all they have to eat is one kind of food. Overworld map speed is brought down by excess weight from loot. The latter can be addressed by keeping extra horses in your inventory that are used as load animals, but having too many horses will negate this effect, allegedly because larger amounts of horses are harder to control. Also, wages and unit promotion primes, which at the end game add up to a hefty amount.
Elective Monarchy: Rhodoks. In-game, they're no different from any other faction in this respect, though Lord Kastor of Veluca (the claimant to the Rhodok throne) bases his claim on the fact that King Graveth violated the rules of the election by coming armed onto the grounds where it was being held. (No, he doesn't want a new election, he wants to take the throne from King Graveth by force.)
Endless Game: There is no set victory condition. Unless you select the retirement option (or your save is corrupted), there isn't even a way for the game to end as losing a battle won't kill you, though there still are situations where it's better just to reload or start a new game. It's not until With Fire and Sword that the player character can actually die.
Enemy Exchange Program:
- Villages that changed ownership still produce troops of the faction they originally belonged to, even when that faction no longer exists. When a faction is defeated and its lords disperse, they also retain and are able to recruit troops of their original faction even in service of their new masters.
- When a lord is awarded a fief or fortress that is not originally from its faction, their armies become mixed.
- If you have mixed troops, and those troops are originally from factions that are currently at war, you'll find your party morale nosediving because of the mixed feelings your soldiers have towards their comrades.
An Entrepreneur Is You: Aside from all the money you pull in from plunder and rewards, you can also fund enterprises like flour mills, breweries, and smithies to make a little extra cash on the side.
Evil Uncle: King Harlaus of Swadia and King Yaroglek of Vaegir, according to their claimants' stories.
The Exile: Indicting a lord from your faction of treason is the only reliable way to put said lord out of play permanently. Other kings can also order exiles for their own lords, but these just join a different faction (hopefully yours) instead. If an exiled lord is friends with no one, then they can be exiled away from Calradia.
- Rulers of factions that don't exist anymore (hold no fiefs or armies) leave the realm.
Exposed to the Elements: People wear the same things they always wear even in snow and desert areas.
Failure Is the Only Option: Sometimes, a hero from your party, displeased by your actions or other heroes he can't deal with, will leave, saying he enjoyed the travels and company but now want to lead his own life. It's guaranteed to fail. Whenever you meet them again, they'll always tell you what they tried didn't work, that they miss the time where they were working for you and want to join back. It doesn't mean they won't leave later and fail again.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Every faction is one.
- Kingdom of Swadia - Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of France, Kingdom of England.
- Kingdom of Rhodoks - Kingdom of Spain, City States of Italy, Papal States, Confederacy of Switzerland, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Kingdom of Scotland.
- Kingdom of Nords - Kingdom of Denmark, Kingdom of Sweden, Kingdom of Norway, Viking Tribes, Scotireland.
- Kingdom of Vaegirs - Empire of Bulgaria, Grand Duchy of Moscow, Novgorod Republic, Kievan Rus'.
- Khergit Khanate - Mongol Empire, the Huns.
- Sarranid Sultanate - Umayyad Caliphate, Sassanid Persia, Mamluk Sultanate.
- While not made as explicit, the Old Calradian Empire has strong hints of both Imperial Rome and Byzantine Rome...and everyone wants a piece of its legacy.
- Some historical characters mentioned in passing also have similar matches - for example, Alixenus the Great (a book on whom bolsters your Leadership) or Galerian (an ancient doctor and philosopher, similar to Galen).
First-Person Ghost: Averted. You can see your arms, legs, and torso during first-person view. Even when you die.
Fluorescent Footprints: A variation — in the world map, tracks of NPC parties are depicted as bright arrows, giving more information on the party leaving the tracks on mouse-over (the information available depends on your or your highest-skilled party member's tracking skill).
Flynning: Averted. The battles are full of realistically rough and hard-hitting swings, stabs and parries.
Foe-Tossing Charge:
- With a sufficiently heavy horse, a high Riding skill, and relatively flat terrain, you can simply ride through a throng of enemies instead of around them.
- Zig-Zagged. Charging the enemy (especially alone where you don't have to worry about enemies) is a great way to disrupt the discipline of the enemy, since you will stun the ones you hit and draw a lot of aggro, thereby giving your hirelings the upper hand. But doing it is also just about the fastest way to get yourself killed if you screw up, since hitting enemies will slow you down. If you lose your momentum, the enemy will swarm and trap you, making escape extremely difficult, if not impossible.
Friendly Enemy: If you're in the habit of letting enemy commanders go after battles, you could very well discover that you're on better terms with your enemies than with your allies.
Friendly Fireproof:
- Played straight for melee weapons, averted for ranged weapons.
- Strangely, averted for all weapons by default in Warband's multiplayer. Since multiplayer is more arcade-like than singleplayer, it's strange this relatively hardcore option would be only available there. Confusingly, many server admins will kick you for accidentally killing your teammates, which raises the question why they don't disable that option if it upsets them so much.
Full-Circle Revolution: In the backstory. The Rhodoks threw out the Swadians and decided that they were done with nobility, but soon local strongmen built castles, started collecting taxes and tolls and called themselves lords. By the time of the game, even the Elective Monarchy is now won by force of arms instead of the will of the electors.
Game-Breaking Bug:
- Putting points into your shield skill allows you to raise your shield faster and also increases its coverage (making it 'larger'). But it does this for all shields, yours as well as those carried by other characters. Especially annoying for archer characters, who need to be able to reliably shoot around enemy shields.
- You may also want to avoid the 'lend companion' requests that lords sometimes make if you have a rebellion in progress. These requests can include the claimant, and if the rebellion then ends while the claimant is away, the whole structure of the faction breaks down.
  - Also in the claimant quests is that if someone other than the rebels finishes off the original faction, the ending is bugged.
- Accidentally fall onto a rock while fighting bandit camps? Your now completely helpless unless you are an archer because said rock makes you permanently considered falling (You have the falling animation but don't go down) and thus cannot control yourself.
Game-Favored Gender: Goes both ways in different games. In the original, starting as female will give you better skill-point options. In Warband, female characters need far higher reputations to become lords and don't receive a fief with it - which is severely detrimental when becoming a lord is required to access the later game. On the other hand, Warband retains the female-only Disc-One Nuke start of the Lady-in-Waiting background with her Spirited Courser.
Game Mod: Many, from historical (Mongolia, ancient Greece, The Wild West, 1200s Europe, WWII China, the Russian Civil War) to fantasy (The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire), to the gang-filled streets of Glasgow or even some original new scenarios expanding the Calradian setting of the vanilla version (from The Low Middle Ages to the far future of Next Sunday A.D.). See the mod section below for actual mod names and links.
Gang Up on the Human: Zigzagged. During actual fights, they will only specifically go after you if you're attacking them and are the closest target. Otherwise the enemy will go after whichever one of your own men is closest to them. Played straight in the sense that your towns will often get raided, especially by lords who don't like you very much. Even if it's on the other side of the map.
Gender Bender:
- Gender from the neck-down is altered by what armor is being worn. Also appears in some Fantasy mods (men with female voices) as an unintended consequence of the way the game handles the genders.
- To be more explicit, the game allows to have up to sixteen different genders, which represent some physical and visual differences. For example, in the Phantasy Calradia mod mentioned above, male Orcs, female Orcs, male Drow, female Drow, male Dwarves, female Dwarves, etc are technically specific genders. The issue with the customized gender is that their members are considered as female by the game information (which doesn't prevent the game from giving them actual ladies as wives). It becomes especially weird if the mod is set in a non-original universe. For example, in Star Wars Conquest, Chewbacca and Yoda are female.
Geo Effects: Mountainous battlefields allow for lots of this. Cavalry units cannot charge up a slope, and ranged units, obviously, cannot shoot through hills. A sound tactic against mostly cavalry armies is to station your troops on the peak of a slope, or behind a river.
Glass Cannon:
- One particular build for skilled players in multiplayer: The biggest polearm/hammer your money can buy, and absolutely nothing else. The wind behind a crossbow bolt will kill you, but until then you can easily outrun everyone while everyone that even comes by gets thrashed by whatever you picked.
- Any light cavalry with guns qualify, being fast and deadly.
The Goomba: Looters. Their sticks and knives barely do any damage even to crappy armor, and they're woefully inaccurate with the rocks they throw. A single swing of pretty much anything tends to be enough to kill them. Finally, they tend to be pretty slow on the overmap, so, combined with the above, lets you get some early levels and money by soloing these guys and selling what little they have in nearby towns.
Grail in the Garbage: Due to the randomness of items, sometimes you can find a really good lower tiered weapon or piece of armor for sale on merchants that has really good stats on it and isn't too expensive. If you have high looting, you may find them from defeated armies as well.
Gray and Grey Morality: No single character in the game is entirely good, at least not by modern moral standards.
- This even extends to all your companions. Lords are generally overbearing and look down on anyone else, scholars are to a man, constantly insulting anyone who isn't another Scholar and argue with each other over differing views, peasants are very loose with morals, and professional soldiers tend towards the type that enjoy it.
- The playable characters in Custom Battle mode are, according to their backstories, mostly criminals or greedy sellswords.
- Claimants to the throne have each their story about why they should be kings. The current kings, however, also have their side of the story and their reasons. It's up to the player to decide which story is worth more.
Grid Inventory: And everything takes up one slot regardless of its size or weight.
Guns Are Useless:
- Averted in With Fire And Sword, where guns are extremely powerful: the gun you start the game with will kill most bandit-type enemies in one shot, and getting hit by a gun with your starting armor can easily kill you. The drawback is that they take a very long time to load, even with simple pistol weapons, and if you're on foot, that's a very bad thing (on a horse, you can at least continue to dodge effectively).
- On the other hand, especially early on, said guns can also be rather inaccurate; it's possible to miss a bandit at point blank range. But even as you gain firearms experience and better weapons down the line, there's still the chance that not every bullet would reach its mark, making every shot count.
Hard-Coded Hostility: The game has major factions which can be joined by the player and a faction of several kinds of bandits and deserters, who are always hostile to the player and the major factions.
Hard Head: NPCs and redshirts saved by the surgery skill are knocked unconscious and make a full recovery within a few hours (days at most) with no lasting effects, even if they got a spear to the gut or an arrow through the eye.
Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Sword Sisters have what seems to be a 50/50 chance of going into battle without a helmet (the better off to show their flowing hair, presumably). Along with various recruited bandits and Khergit Lancers, they are the only unit type to do so. This makes them predictably vulnerable to arrows to the head.
Hired Guns: You can find mercenaries inside the taverns of towns. Though they are much more expensive to hire and pay for than basic recruits from villages, they are also more competent in battle right off the bat. They also don't benefit or suffer the morale penalty that regional soldiers do, such as hiring Swadians when you're actively attacking the Swadian empire.
Hitbox Dissonance:
- Shields are immaterial unless the block key is held down, lots of minor discrepancies as well.
- Sort of fixed in Warband, non-blocking shields will still block arrows, but not the ones that are instant death headshots, the ones that make you buy the shield in the first place.
Hit Points:
- Everyone has them, though sometimes in a very odd way. My horse seems to have a spear through its head, why is it still running around?
- Shields also have hitpoints, after they are exhausted they will break (they are fixed after the battle, but move down a notch on the quality scale).
Honor Before Reason: The Rhodoks claimant Lord Kastor of Veluca himself admits that King Graveth is a hero for saving the council from a raiding party, but claims he shouldn't be king because he violated the law against bringing weapons to the council meeting. It also doesn't help Graveth that he approached the defenseless council armed, told them of the war party, and then told them he wouldn't save them unless they made him king immediately. At least, according to Kastor...
Horny Vikings: Nords are an aversion, being settled-down and more similar to Danish-like Vikings or proto-Normans. The 'Sea Raider' type of bandits fill the niche of the more classical, northerner Vikings, being stereotypical Rape, Pillage, and BurnProud Warrior Race Guys. Both Nords and Sea Raiders use normal undecorated helmets, mainly the conical and 'spectacled' Scandinavian-esque ones. This doesn't really stop either type from screaming things like, 'I will drink from your skull!' though.
Horse Archer: Most Khergit troops. Building a player character into one is difficult but rewarding.
Hydra Problem: Disney Death combined with destroying a faction will become this. When all of a faction's fiefs have been conquered, said faction will be deemed extinct. When this happens, ALL the lords of that faction, excluding the king, will just join a different faction. Considering that for 85% of the game your Right-to-Rule (a hidden stat that dictates how likely you are to recruit lords to your cause) will be well below that of the remaining monarchs, this eventually leads to battles against +15 lords at the same time once enough factions have been defeated.
Hyperspace Arsenal: Attempted aversion, as you can only ever carry at most four weapons on your person. Doesn't quite work, though, since you can still stroll around and fight without any impediment with four pikes (or other such unwieldy items), one in your hands, another glued to your back and the other two presumably tucked neatly up your butt.
Impoverished Patrician: One background choice. It grants you with a banner and slight fame boost (which affects max army size).
Inevitable Tournament: Sort of. The fighting tournaments in the large cities aren't mandatory, but placing bets on yourself and then winning goes a long way towards paying your Redshirt Army's salary.
'Instant Death' Radius: A sufficiently strong player character with a sufficiently long polearm can do this, offing beelines of enemy infantry without them landing a single hit. Not as easy to perform in cramped melees, such as in sieges.
In the Back: While it does not give you extra damage^note, hitting people from behind goes a long way in improving your kill count. For the arena fighters, for example, it works wonders.
In-Universe Game Clock: There's an internal game clock, though it only takes a few minutes for a day to pass. Not so much in battle, where time doesn't change no matter how long you fight.
Invisible Wall: All over the place and still characters can occasionally clip through scenery into places they're not supposed to be. Most ridiculously in some of the cities, where there are Insurmountable Waist HighBroomsticks.
Invulnerable Civilians: Except if you defend yourself when they revolt.
It's Always Spring: Even though the game does have an internal calendar that tracks the days and months going by, seasons never change.
It's Up to You: The NPC factions will never gain much territory on their own. Either they'll be defeated by an enemy force piecemeal, or they just lose interest and don't bother taking more than one fort. This means that you'll end up having to do the bulk of the work if you want to conquer other countries.
Jerkass Has a Point: The 'dishonorable' lords and nobles will scold you for taking the 'honorable' option of letting enemy commanders go away free after defeating them. Enemy lords, once free, can simply raise a new army and resume whatever they were doing earlier, be it plundering trade routes or razing villages, and it would benefit everyone on your side if they were simply taken out of the picture — especially if they have several fiefs and are capable of fielding armies over a hundred strong.
Jousting Lance: Naturally present as a weapon choice in tournaments, though of limited use in actual combat.
The Juggernaut: Full-plated knights on Charger horses can quickly turn into these if you don't have pikes. They can live through almost anything below a headshot with a siege crossbow, the horses are even tougher, and they can charge straight through a clog of warriors without losing speed, while swinging a large weapon into anyone they missed.
Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Averted. The game has a complex system of price calculations, which includes supply and demand (selling several times the same supplies to the same merchant results in progressively reduced gains, goods suffering from a shortage can be sold more expansively), as well as taking in account whether a good is needed or not by the local workshops. It basically means that it is indeed possible to gain money by buying supplies in a city to sell them elsewhere; there's actually a feature in the market's menu allowing to estimate which goods can be more profitable to bought here.
Karma Houdini: Roughly every rival lord battling with you. They will come over and fight you with clearly inferior units to your own, just in advantage on numbers, to have their troops slaughtered en masse, but they almost always avoid capture. The player, on the contrary, is always captured if he's defeated.
Keep the Reward: An option in quite a few quests. Though it only gets you honor, which is a mixed bag (Lords have a higher default disposition if your character has a similar honor score). ^note Most of the quests that give you a choice in reward, especially if you got them from a village, don't give very big monetary rewards. They do, however, give increased relations, and letting the villagers keep the reward, increases the relations even more. This is essential to keeping a large and well trained army, as higher relation villages give 5x as many troops, often times two or three ranks higher (which is just about the gap between Redshirt Amy and just strong enough to not get killed.
Keystone Army:
- Averted with enemy lords. Their troops will still attack without him, and you have to kill/rout the rest of them in order to win.
- Played straight with the player. If you lose all your health in combat, in the base game without mods the battle ends instantly with auto-resolve taking care of the rest of the battle, usually not in your favor. Some mods allow you to avert this, letting your troops continue the battle until one side or the other wins.
Knight in Shining Armor: YOU, if you want. Though you'll find that shiny armor is quite expensive and makes you move at a snail's pace if you get de-horsed
Lady Macbeth: A female PC can become this to a noble as a way of gaining power.
The Lancer: Bunduk and several of the recruitable hero characters. Literally, since they can become lancers in the classical sense of the word, on horseback of course.
Last Stand:
- Played straight during sieges, especially if it's the last fort/town the enemy has. Since unlike a field battle there's nowhere for the defenders to run to they will literally fight to the death to stop the attackers from taking over.
- Can also be invoked during a field battle should you be the last person standing and are facing off against a much more numerous foe. You can usually take quite a few soldiers out yourself before they're likely to overwhelm and defeat you, especially if they have a lot of archers or mounted units.
Lazy Backup:
- Combine the fact that your side automatically loses if your character is knocked out with the fact that sieges are done in stages and losing at any stage ends the siege unsuccessfully, and you can get into some seriously weird situations where your guys retreat, dragging your unconscious body out of the castle, through the town, up the walls, and down the siege tower ramp, just because you got knocked out by literally the last defender in the last room of the castle. And then they dismantle the tower, so you have to build a new one.
- Warband and With Fire and Sword avert this. Getting KO'd in any battle, even single phase battles, causes it to auto-resolve based on the remaining troops on both sides. You only get captured if your army is completely defeated. You might still lose due to the auto-resolve being a $%#^, but it at least can be construed as your troops being demoralized and fighting worse then normal and it at least eliminates the chance that a single defender will hold a castle against an entire army just because the leader was KO'd.
Leaked Experience: Normal exp is granted for killing things yourself, and then battle exp is granted for being on the winning side. Battle exp is shared among all members of the army, even if they didn't actually appear on the battlefield. A viable strategy for leveling up troops that are yet too weak to survive actual combat.
Leeroy Jenkins: Your army's default battle behavior is full-on charge. Depending on the circumstances, this may not be the wisest strategy. Some lords will also do this as well, sometimes foolhardily charging headlong into your units, all by himself if he's the only mounted unit you're fighting against.
Left-Justified Fantasy Map: The compass says the sea is to the north, but the companion's little pieces of lore contradict the compass (which does nothing anyways) in terms of what is in what direction (they roundaboutly indicate the sea is in the west). The compass says the permanently snowy part of the map is to the east while the companion's references to direction put it in the north, so the companions are the more reasonable one.

Leitmotif: Every musical cue for the Khergits makes use of a single melody. The same for the Nords as well. The Swadian and Rhodok themes have more variation and subtlety and the Vaegirs seem to lack a motif altogether.
Lightning Bruiser: High level cavalry units in general fit this trope. They have high amounts of hp and defense, and while on a horse are much faster than foot soldiers. And the ones equipped with a lance can often 1-shot almost any unit, including your own character if they're on the receiving end of one.
Loads and Loads of Characters: Your companions and the various lords and ladies of the five factions.
- In numbers: 16 companions, 5 kings, 5 claimants to their thrones (with the only female AI fighter that is not a companion or Sword Sister), 20 lords in each of the five factions (make it 100) and a few ladies (who only stay in their castles and give missions but won't fight; about one for every three lords). All of them are named and have a few traits. Warband added another faction with another claimant and ruler, and added about 10 unmarried women to each faction for Male players to romance.
Low Fantasy: A borderline example. The land of Calradia is a Constructed World, but there's no non-human races, no magic or supernatural elements, and no overarching evil. You play as a wandering human hero and must make a name for yourself in a world of feuding, ethically questionable warlords with only guile and a good swordarm, and the only 'evil' is the warlord or nation you are currently aligned against.
Luck-Based Mission:
- The arena and tournament matches are this to an extent due to every participants' equipment being randomly assigned. It is possible for the player to be doomed to a loss at the beginning if he is assigned equipment he is not proficient with, or worse, a bow. (Though waiting until someone goes down or, if you're good enough, shooting them down first, before nicking their melee weapon can create an effective bow/melee combo.) Warband helped this a little bit, by allowing players to wield Throwing weapons in the melee and giving archers in the Arenas a tiny dagger.
- At the beginning of the game, where you start is randomised, so you may have the misfortune of spawning right next to a party of mounted bandits.
- Any quest that requires you to go outside a town and search for someone (bandits, thieves, particular enemy units to be taken prisoner), since you aren't guaranteed to actually find them. While they are somewhere on the map, asking NPC's for help usually won't get you much initially, since said bandits also move around on the map and will run from your big army once you find them.
- And heaven help you if you get the 'Enemy Spies' mission at low levels. The spies are not only faster than you, they're a single person(making them nearly impossible to track), they can easily travel all the way across Calradia, and they get a three hour head start. Given that the player is usually outfitted for battle, not high speed pursuit, there's a significant chance you'll never see them again.
- And it really helps to be lucky enough that the AI doesn't decide to gang up on you. Which it will. Even if all five spawns have to charge across the entire damn field to do it.
Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: With skill, shields are capable of emitting arrow-stopping force fields.
Magic Pants : All undressed characters.
Magikarp Power:
- Ymira may seem completely useless, being level 1 and having nothing but a kitchen knife to defend herself. But, precisely because she's level 1 and has very few pre-assigned skill points, with patience she can be trained to be highly effective in any area the player chooses for her.
- A horse archer PC doesn't really start to work too well until the mid 20s or so, but at that point it can solo entire armies.
- With time, denars, experience, luck and a couple levels on Surgery, any recruit will turn into a fearsome ultimate tier unit that can go toe to toe with all but the mightiest of lords, as well as solo squads of lesser units.
- The 'Peasant Woman' unit. It is useless. Its upgrade, the Camp Follower, is just as useless. The next upgrade is also useless. The upgrade next to that one is slightly better, but still not worth the effort. And finally the last upgrade, the Sword Sister, kicks ass.
Marathon Level: Sieges, or field battles that happen with hundreds of soldiers. A single battle can drag on for hours. Oh, and if enough soldiers remain on each side, another round ensues, with no opportunity to save or even quit to the desktop in between.
Medieval European Fantasy: Every kingdom in the game is broadly based on at least one culture that would have been familiar to medieval Europe. The Fantasy Counterpart Culture entry has the specifics.
Men Are the Expendable Gender: Played straight for the most part, as the vast majority of armies are comprised of men. Averted with female villagers you can rescue, as they can become a decent fighting force if you can level them up to sword sisters.
Mighty Glacier: Anyone on foot with heavy armor. They could get outrun by a limping turtle, but getting close is asking to get your face splattered by a big damn weapon, and they shrug off anything that isn't just as big.
Mook Chivalry:
- Entirely averted. Once de-horsed, infantry will frequently swarm you from all sides, sometimes so thickly you can't move. The only defense is to backpedal and hope your shield will hold up until The Cavalry arrive to spread them out a bit.
- Can often lead to Big Damn Heroes moments as you try to hold until your infantry arrive to reinforce you.
Morale Mechanic: Morale affects how aggressively your army fights and reduces the chance of your troops deserting, and is decided by a number of factors, including your leadership skill, how many battles you've won, what types of food you give as rations, which companions you hire and whether or not you're at war with the faction a particular unit associates with.
Mounted Combat: Some soldiers have horses, which they will ride into combat and fight from the back of. So can the player.
Moveset Clone:
- Swadia and Vaegir share a troop tree layout and wider range of units. Swadia has crossbowmen while the Vaegirs get bowmen, Swadia's cavalry and infantry is better armored but less damaging. However, the similarities end there, and their tactics are completely different (Swadia is the Jack-of-All-Stats faction, while the Vaegirs are GlassSpeedsters.
- In Warband, the Sarranids also share the Swadian/Vaegir pattern of promotion.
- Meanwhile, the Nords and Rhodoks have similar similar troop trees: tier one units can either become marksmen or infantry, and neither have any cavalry. While the Rhodoks have very powerful tier-5 crossbowmen and infantry, giving them a very good defensive mindset, the Nords eschew tier-5 marksmen in favor of the tier-6 Nord Huscarl, which is arguably the best heavy infantry in the game, as well as the only tier-6 unit available.
- Conversely, the Rhodok troop tree is a direct copy of the Swadian infantry tree, just with no cavalry support and with Rhodok infantry being generally better equipped (particularly Sharpshooters).
Multi-Melee Master: Each weapon proficiency category covers several different types of weapons.
Multiple-Choice Past: How you choose your stats.
Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
- Each NPC companion has two others that they don't get along with, and will eventually make this known to you. If multiple members of the party are antagonistic and/or morale is low, some may eventually leave (take your stuff back before they do).
- Warband adds another layer of complexity in the system: each party member dislikes a specific party member (causing a progressive drop in morale) if he/she serves as an emissary to support rights of the player to reach the throne. Note that this relation targets someone with which he/she has usually a neutral relation and is described as the emissary using a particular argument that offends that character's sensibilities.
- With Fire and Sword has an even more complex system of relations inside the party: some party members like one other, some like two others, some dislike only one, some others dislike two or even three, and those feelings are not always reciprocal (there is even the example of Ingri-Algidras: Ingri dislikes Algidras but Algidras likes Ingri).
My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
- Every time you lose a battle, you get taken prisoner and dragged around for a while; however, whenever an NPC Lord loses, he gets away 80% of the time, and then he's nowhere to be seen.
- When you're incapacitated in battle, your troops immediately retreat and lose morale, no matter how close you are to victory. However, enemy armies will happily continue fighting after their commander receives two arrows to the head and smashes into a tree.
- While the player must recruit members of his party, AI lords and kings are instantly assigned troops as needed, even though they only occasionally stop at villages to recruit base troops. But at least this cheating goes both ways and also applies to lords allied with the player.
  - Lords get troops based on their fiefs. More fiefs means more troops. Kings, on the other hand, get troops based on the fact that they're kings. So if you manage to defeat a King's sizable personal force (200+ troops), then when they escape, they'll disappear for a few days and show up with their entire force replenished. Particularly devastating if you're trying to take the king's last city, and they keep respawning to smash into your forces.
Nerf:
- Horse archer player characters can no longer access an infinite supply of arrows by running to and from their baggage thanks to a patch; you have the arrows you start with and any spares you left in your baggage train. This prevents players from simply picking off entire infantry armies on their lonesome at level one.
- Of course there's nothing to stop you from picking up your (or their ammo) ammo off the ground or pulling it out of enemy corpses to re-use (only gun ammo can't be recovered). It's basically the only way to make un-modded thrown weapons viable as a ranged option, due to their tiny stack sizes.
- Also - couched lance damage - a form of attack that in the original M&B would allow a starting player with a half-way decent polearm to solo entire armor-clad armies was sadly remved from Warband.
  - Not removed from Warband, just made more difficult to achieve. The player has to manually aim the lance whereas aiming was automatic in the original.
No 'Arc' in 'Archery':
- Averted. Arrows, bolts, and thrown weapons need to be properly aimed taking into account distance, relative speed and altitude, and weapon arcing. The game's log rates the shot's difficulty if you hit, based on these elements.
- The arc is much, much more pronounced in third person view, to the point that you have to aim well over the head to hit someone at point blank range.
Nominal Importance: Named NPCs are either kings/king claimants or 'hero' characters like you: they are knocked out in battle instead of suffering perma-death like nameless NPCs and can be leveled up and equipped much the same way you are.
Non-Lethal K.O.: It's okay that your soldier just had a lance rammed through him by a horseman, thanks to your surgery skill he's only unconscious. Justified with blunt weapons, which are designed to knock the enemy out rather than kill them, making them useful for taking captives.
No Stat Atrophy: Averted, characters over a certain age start to lose stats when knocked out. The fan backlash and the speed with which a tweak was found that disables this feature demonstrate just why this trope is an acceptable break from reality.
Obvious Beta: Justified. TaleWorlds started selling while it was a beta and used that money to fund the rest of the game's development.
Offscreen Teleportation: AI Lords will frequently recruit and fully train troops from nowhere, and for a few days after they've been released from capture, no one knows where they are, until they end up at a castle, often one all the way across the map from where they were, with a full complement of troops. One wonders how news travels so fast. Or how every AI Lord knows the location of every other AI Lord of his faction at any time.
Omnicidal Neutral: Conquering the entire map as a masterless warlord was the closest you could come to winning the game before Warband.
One-Handed Zweihänder: Averted with two-handed weapons. Played with in the case of the bastard (hand and a half) sword, which can be wielded in one hand while on horseback, but is always wielded ambidextrously while on foot.
One-Man Army:
- The player character. While getting between more than one enemy is almost always ~~death~~ capture, it is quite effective to run ahead of your army and slaughter enemy troops by hit and run tactics (lightly armoured troops will normally die in one hit), often killing a platoon of enemies before they are in range of your men.
- This is also sometimes a cause of the Artificial Stupidity, as sometimes the enemy stay in formation and wont dare to fight you until they meet the rest of your army.
- Its quite possible to kite enemy armies on your own, on foot no less, in Warband provided they have no cavalry, projectiles or good polearms.
- You can also do this by waiting on top of a small ramp used to invade a town or castle, ready a 2-handed, preferably block-breaking weapon, and cut down quite a few of the enemy yourself as they walk one-by-one into your weapon with just enough time to raise it again in between.
One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others: AI Nord forces rarely have cavalry. Which makes it especially easy to spot lords who are on horseback.
One Stat to Rule Them All: Intelligence. Not only does it cover the majority of the game's most useful skills, but every point in it also grants twice the usual amount of skill points.
Orchestral Bombing: A part of what makes Napoleonic Wars so epic is the ability of direct dozens of colourfully uniformed soldiers to storm the enemy while Van Beethoven's Ode To Joy, Dvorak's the 4th Movement of the New World Symphony, Grieg's In The Hall Of The Mountain King, or Vivaldi's Summer, just to name a few, blast out of the speakers. It may be Anachronism Stew, but damn does it set the mood.
Padded Sumo Gameplay:
- K.O. each other's horses in a jousting tournament? You might as well try to kill the other guy by starvation.
- Or drop your blunted practice lance and resort to old-fashioned fisticuffs, something the other guy is not smart enough to do. Then again, he's also not smart enough to swing the damn thing side-to-side and bludgeon you upside the head with what is effectively a stout tree branch. (But yet again, neither are you.)
Pause Scumming:
- In any battle whether you are fighting in a battlefield or sieging/defending a castle, you can notably increase the number of troops on your side making attacking armies that are 7 times your size a walk in the park.
- The battle size can be changed from anywhere between 30 to 150 (without mods), so you start a battle with the minimum size -pause- then set the size to max, you then unpause for a second and pause again so you get a decent number of reinforcements and the enemies get nothing, reset the battle size to the minimum and the enemy only get reinforcements in small groups after most of them are down.
- Averted in that it can't be used in a keep or for fighting in the streets as the number of soldiers is set to a fixed amount after winning the primary attack (usually around 4 versus 5).
Peninsula of Power Leveling:
- The forest at the Rhodok/Swadian border (the 'Woods of Ehlerdah') is infested with lots of bandits and deserters in terrain that often works against them (A hilly area against a primarily archer and mounted force when the AI can't understand to put its archers at the top of a hill). It is noted in-game by some companions as being thick with outlaws.
- The mountainous region at the borders of the Vaegir and Swadian kingdoms also hosts entire droves of bandit bands. These Mountain Bandits are a little hardier though, and also one of the few highwaymen types that use light cavalry units in addition to infantry.
  - Sea Raiders, in Warband, are a large source of good equipment, money AND experience. To elaborate: each Sea Raider is worth about 130 experience points (quite a lot for M&B), they all have good equipment like mail armor, axes, bows, decent shields and helmets allowing the player can farm them for large amount of cash (or keep better items for himself). The downside is that Sea Raiders carry said decent armor and very damaging throwing weapons and some of them even long bows. Careful players can ride around them, dodging projectiles, until they all exhaust their ammo. And the best part: you can do this all by yourself, meaning only you get all the experience and more items can be found after the battle
Plot Armor: Any named character can only be captured, not killed. Only Kings (finish a rebellion quest) and Claimants (Fail a rebellion quest or by defeating the usurper's kingdom) can be removed from play permanently.
Power Equals Rarity: Loot will rarely contain items with the highest quality modifiers. Lordly armor and Champion horses are so expensive that even kings apparently can't afford to make much use of them.
Power Up Let Down: Various recruited bandits other than Looters promote to the 'recruit' unit from the same region they originate (eg. Steppe Bandits become Khergit Tribesmen, Taiga Bandits become Vaegir Recruits, and so on), which are usually 7-10 levels lower than the bandits were. This is especially pronounced with Sea Raiders, which are level 16 and are decently skilled melee and ranged fighters with decent armor and shields, while Nord Recruits are level 6, are melee only, have virtually no armor, and only might have a shield. Also, unlike the units they promote to, bandit units are 'neutral', meaning that they don't lose morale when at war with their home country.
Pretext for War: One mission type is having a noble ask you to find reason to start a war.
Proud Warrior Race Guy:
- Several, notably Baheshtur and Matheld.
- Naturally, the Sea Raiders and (to a lesser extent) the Nords and Khergits.
Purely Aesthetic Gender:
- Very slightly averted, in that gender will affect a player's initial stats. However, the female NPCs are oppressed, and the female player character is not (in gameplay anyways, escaping such is an option for motivations in the background questions at the start of the game).
- Also there is a huge difference in captured female and male peasants. Male farmers will train up to become mercenaries like the ones commonly hired in taverns who are useful but expensive, while female peasants will become Sword Sisters, a rare but cheap and fairly powerful mounted unit.
- Warband has a different method of courtship for each gender (males must woo a lady and convince her guardian to let the marriage take place), while females have to court roaming lords.
Purposely Overpowered:
- Cavalry dominates most battles without conditions working against them (hills, sieges).
- Warband's multiplayer sieges remove the siege from being a negative condition; circle round the whole castle and get all the ladders up on the wall or charge through the sally port and butcher anyone in the courtyard.
- Nord Huscarls take a long time to train, but are by far the best infantry in the game, able to fight greater numbers and win with few if any losses.
Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The player can recruit troops from all the factions as well as mercenaries to create one big motley crew - and as he can recruit from his own prisoners and those he rescues from the enemy pretty much any unit can end up in the player's service, including bandits and raiders. The companions recruitable include everything from impoverished nobles to petty bandits, including a daughter fleeing from an arranged marriage with no fighting skills whatsoever.
Rain of Arrows: Basically what happens if you get enough archers (or crossbowmen), and one of the best tactics you can use if the map permits.
- Practically the only way to win when defending in multiplayer sieges is to do this for as long as the timer goes, or until some idiot leaves a door open.
Rain of Blood: Get a guy in close combat for long enough and they will look like they took a dip in a crimson sea.
Ranged Emergency Weapon: Throwing knives require no skill in throwing to use and take up only one of your four weapon slots (opposed to the two taken up by a bow or crossbow and its ammo) but do poor damage. Their primary use is to give a sword/shield/lance user some range. Many infantry units have a chance at having proper throwing weapons at creation.
Rape, Pillage, and Burn: This can be done to villages, and the AI will do it to them frequently.
Recruiting the Criminal: You can get bandits and such into your party if you take them prisoner and then recruit them after dragging them around for a while to crush their morale.
Recurring Traveller: Tavern regulars.
Redshirt Army:
- Your soldiers, as well as the soldiers of every other lord.
- However, if your soldiers somehow survive long enough to reach their maximum levels they can become the Men of Sherwood.
Retcon: A few things, like the black armor and the city of Zendar, got removed in later versions.
A Round of Drinks for the House: Buying booze for everyone in town increases your reputation for that town.
Royals Who Actually Do Something:
- Kings and lords actively participate in combat but cannot be permanently killed, only knocked out and captured. You'll still want to aim for them first when you can, they are almost unilaterally the best equipped enemies and so can deliver the most beatdown on your own troops. Mostly. They also have the highest skills, most especially Tactics, which can result in you being badly outmatched if you lack a good tactician of your own.
- In the Warband standalone expansion, while the kings and lord can still do stuff, they'll mostly participate in feasts... unless they are your enemy - then they'll take their armies and go kick your ass.
Save Scumming:
- Averted, you automatically fail most tasks that have a random component to them for a short amount of time after reloading a save. The game actually takes it farther than that: you will fail even if it's otherwise impossible to do so!^note You will discover this fact at the worst possible moment.
- That said however, it can be played straight with sieges and battles where you're not sure about the outcome. If you save prior to a fight, and lose, or suffer a Pyrrhic Victory in which you lose a lot of men to win the battle/siege, you can reload and try again.
Screw the War, We're Partying!: As of Warband, the aristocracy will often call for feasts in the middle of a war when they would much better spend it on the field of battle. King Harlaus in particular has gained a reputation as a party dude with the fandom, which is used as the reasoning for why Swadia tends to get eaten up by its surrounding nations despite having high-quality game-breaking units.^note
Set Swords to 'Stun': Practice weapons knock opponents out instead of killing them. Mounted sword users can deal non-lethal damage with a pommel strike. Also, a handful of weapons like spears or poleaxes have one way of attacking that is nonlethal (as long as it deals blunt damage its fair game).
Sex Sells: There's really no explanation for this◊ promotional screenshot.
Shareware: A legacy of its open beta past. The game can be downloaded for free, but the game stops after a certain amount of in-game time or reaching level 12. Buying nets one a registration key and unlocks the rest of the game. One can start new games, though.
The Siege: Occurs anytime a castle or town is assaulted by an enemy force. Or you're assaulting theirs.
Simple Staff: One of the game's basic weapons.
Sinister Scythe: A realistic example with war scythes, with a shortened version for ease of use.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Companions that leave will also leave with whatever gear they had on them. So if you don't want to lose it, strip them of it before kicking them out of your party.
Spiritual Successor: To Sid Meier's Pirates!.
Spy Speak: One quest type involves identifying a friendly spy in this manner.
Squad Controls: The player can give certain orders like 'Charge,' 'Follow Me,' 'Hold This Position,' 'Fire at Will,' etc., either to their warband as a whole or to each individual predesignated group of soldiers. This allows for some tactical flexibility, such as having your infantry engage the enemy head-on while you lead your cavalry around their unprotected flank.
The Squadette: Captured / rescued female peasants can fight in your army and eventually become Sword Sisters once fully leveled.
Start My Own: You can potentially proclaim yourself king of your own kingdom if you don't feel any of the current monarchs or their rivals are worth fighting for. It's not exactly easy, though, since it means essentially taking on an existing kingdom all by yourself if you haven't been busy laying the groundwork long beforehand.
Stat Grinding: With weapon proficiency only (you get 'free' points on each level up as well). Thankfully it increases rather fast with a decent weapons master skill, and one of the main purposes of arenas is to get this skill up to basic competency. One quirk is that mounted archers build proficiency stupidly quick, as the the increases are based on the supposed difficulty of a shot (How far the target is, how fast you are moveing, bonus for head shots), but fails to account for how easy it is to hit shoot as a large mob during a full gallop (which you should be doing) and have it hit someone.
Staying Alive: Thanks to the surgery skill, your veterans can survive some nasty wounds. Somewhat justified in that healthcare in the middle ages was almost nonexistant.
Sticks to the Back: Most of the larger weapons.
Storming the Castle:
- The most common method of expanding your territory.
- Combined with All Your Base Are Belong to Us is what makes multiplayer Siege games so awesome.

Succession Crisis: Each realm has a pretender to the throne that the player can choose to back against the current holder.
Suicidal Overconfidence:
- The combat AI will charge into any enemy. Even if COMPLETELY outmatched (IE: Peasants vs Knights) Averted on the overmap, though, unless they vastly outnumber your army size. In which case the trope is played straight, as your ten high level cavalry units and yourself will probably wipe out those forty looters pretty quickly.
- Some of the more hilarious parts of this are watching peasants gleefully charge fully-armored swordsmen one-after-another, with the swordsman 1-hit-killing each one. Or heavily-armored footmen trying in vain to chase down horse archers...
- Finally averted in the Warband extension. Now, enemies will run when their morale is low and when they understand that the battle is lost. Small parties of bandits that you chased will still try to take their chance against large armies rather than just trying to bribe you, tough.
- All said, it's played straight when you do catch up to people on the overworld map. You can ride your army of 100+ cavalry right up to a dozen unarmored, shirtless looters, demand that they 'surrender or die,' and they'll immediately retort with something along the lines of 'I'm not afraid of you! Now you die!'
Super Not-Drowning Skills: There's a few spots where water reaches over your character's head (especially in earlier versions) without visibly inconveniencing him or her in any way.
Take Your Time:
- While all non-rebellion quests have a time limit, with the exception of orders given by your faction's marshal, they are all very generous (such as a month to deliver a letter somewhere a day and a half away at most)
- Apparently even those were too restrictive to some players, as relatively few quests in the expansion have any limit.
- The record being the wedding 'mission', with a time limit of 360 days. Since a wedding require total peace, a feast, and the presence of both the betrothed, her father, and you, all this time actually come in handy.
Theme Naming: For most of the original game's development, Marnid and Borcha were the only companion NPCs. Marnid and Borcha, Mount & Blade.
There Are No Tents: Averted. You have the option of setting up camp anywhere and anytime on the world map. While camping, you can still engage in some minor actions, like trying to persuade captured bandits to join your party, or reading books. The only downside is, that unlike cities, villages and castles, your camp won't protect you from wandering hordes of bandits (if they're passing by and bump into you).
Thriving Ghost Town: Very obvious when you choose to explore a town, castle, or village. Some of the villages look barely enough to house twenty people whereas you can be recruiting a half dozen volunteers from them every day. A village with nearly max disposition can offer 70+ recruits with frightening regularity.
Too Dumb to Live: The AI will always provide you with endless hilarities by following this trope.
- Both sides during a multiplayer siege battle will treat a defender who repeatedly opens the sally port door this and will promptly ban the offender for their stupidity/poor sportsmanship. On certain servers such shenanigans might be rewarded with friendly arrows to the back.
Took a Level in Badass: Rescued peasant women can fight for your army and rise in rank until they become Sword Sisters, heavy cavalry sporting full plate armour.
Training the Peaceful Villagers: A possible quest for each village.
Useless Useful Non-Combat Abilities: Persuade is used for about two, three quests in the whole game and even there only has a limited impact. It does have some use for keeping many companions though, as you can persuade companions who want to leave because of others to stay. It's more useful on certain NPCs, since you can send them on diplomatic missions to other Lords to butter them up about you and make it easier to earn Fiefs or recruit them should you form your own nation.
Values Dissonance: Deliberately invoked. You're told up front that, as the game is heavily based on the Middle Ages, the most powerful people in Calradia tend to be of noble birth and male. Indeed, in the early stages of the games, most NPC's will treat a female character like a joke. Of course, there's really no penalty for playing as a girl, and in fact there are several achievements that require you to accomplish certain impressive feats with a female character.
The Vamp: According to Hakim Sultan, Arwa the Pearled One is this; a woman who seized power in the Sarranid Sultanate by charming the old Sultan, Ayzar. Arwa claims it was more her managerial skill.
Velvet Revolution: High persuade and relations with a kingdom's lords will allow you to convert most lords to your side during a rebellion, leaving you only the capital and current ruler to attack.
Vendor Trash: A byproduct of the looting system. Firstly, you can only get things that your opponents wield (Looters will not magically yield plate armor, for example). Secondly, the quality and quantity of loot is determined by your Looting skill (which serves no other purpose). Thirdly, the more troops and companions you have the less loot you get. The net result is that post-battle looting tends to yield dangerously subpar equipment only fit for selling off. You have a much better chance of finding high quality items by using that money to go shopping.
Vestigial Empire: At some point in the distant past, all of Calradia was united under a single empire. It's long since broken up, but some people still remember their ancestors' roles within that empire fondly. And, of course, the whole reason that all the factions are fighting in the first place is because each monarch wants to reforge the empire in their own image.
Video Game Cruelty Potential:
- Want to level up your allies, but have a battle they aren't going to win on their own? Dismount enemy cavalry and knock down infantry by trampling them to make them easy pickings for your men.
- Or massacre helpless villagers, loot their homes and steal their cattle.
Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
- Sure, you can raid villages, shake down peasants, and cut down farmers for easy money. But it can and WILL draw attention from, at the very least, the local Nobles. And early in the game, a noble with several dozen of the best troops in the game at his side will be more than you can handle! Even later in the game, raiding villages enough will have entire kingdoms ready to attack you on sight!
- It also takes a while, during which you're helpless, the village is constantly reporting your location to any friendly lord within range, and enemy lords can and will form parties to kick your ass.
- Villages are also the most common source of recruits. If you make them all hate you and then get your army wiped out...
Violation of Common Sense:
- Jumping down onto the spikes around a castle wall will result in less damage than avoiding the spikes (assuming you don't get stuck in the object).
- Openning the maingates or the sally port in multiplayer sieges is pretty much this, its generally a foregone conclusion on the Mahdaar Castle map that if the sally port is breached before the final minute, the defenders will lose as the attacker's spawn is right outside it and the besieging side will just keep sending cavalry through in a constant stampede.

We Buy Anything: Any shop in town will buy any item. So will villages, for that matter (though they usually don't have a lot of money). And book merchants.
We Cannot Go On Without You: The battle ends as soon as you are knocked out, no matter how close you are to victory. This doesn't mean you lose, but your men will retreat and lose morale. While you can send your men in to fight without you, this is something you should NEVER do as they are much less effective when unled (an army that can inflict a 10-1 casualty rate on the enemy in a proper battle can easily suffer a 2-1 casualty rate if you use autoresolve for the same battle).
Wimp Fight: If two AI in the arena spawn with bows next to each other, they will proceed to punch eachother for minimal damage until one is KO or (more likely) someone kicks both their asses.
Wizard Needs Food Badly: A lack of food causes morale penalties and eventually desertion.
Worthy Opponent:
- Releasing an enemy lord that you just defeated will earn you honor, and most lords will raise their reputation with you. However, some will see this as an insult and releasing them will actually make them hate you more. A high reputation with an enemy lord will sometimes allow you to avoid a fight with them at the cost of a small reputation hit with them. But it's very useful if you're outmatched and are simply trying to get back to friendly territory.
- Averted with the player character being defeated; they will always be dragged around as a prisoner.
You All Meet in an Inn: Companions and mercenaries are acquired in taverns.
You Will Be Spared: If you let lords go free, they may give you the quick and painless variety.
Zerg Rush:
- Swadia's main advantage is their overwhelming numbers, with a sizeable number of cavalry attacking the enemy first, followed by an extremely large number of ground troops that gang up on soldiers thanks to starting a full town bigger than every other faction, although it itself is liable to be Zerged on the strategic scale thanks to it's larger size.
- Rebel factions deal with this a lot. Chances are lords won't join the Rebels until dozens of in-game days after the faction is created, and players will have to risk being ambushed to meet with lords to convince them. If the player wants to capture castles and towns without help they should be prepared to turn tail and run or crank the battle difficulty down when a large group of soldiers comes to stop them or take back their areas.

Additional Tropes found in Mount and Blade: Warband

American Kirby Is Hardcore: An inverted example. The American and European boxarts depict roughly the same scene, but the American boxart has a bunch of bright light added and has a clear sky, with expressions indicating it is set during preparation for battle and is drawn slightly more 'realistically'. The European art is much darker and stylized, set during battle and has an overcast sky. Rating differences are likely behind this (The ESRB rating is Teen, while the PEGI rating is 16+).
Artificial Difficulty: Whereas the original M&B was fairly sensible in this respect, WB has situations where you're arbitrarily denied reinforcements or the use of some of your weapons.
Cartography Sidequest: Downplayed. Warband Steam version has an achievement for visiting each of the towns, but only the towns (not the castles and villages). It still requires to travel across the whole continent.
Cosmetic Award: The Steam version of WB now has 74 achievements.
Cycle of Hurting:
- An especially outrageous case of this occurs when the player finds himself in a besieged city that has no hope of defending itself. It is impossible to leave the city by stealth or to surrender, the only options available on the city screen are to join the battle or send the troops in on their own. And due to the fact that the developers though it was a good idea to not allow the player to access the main menu during battle, the only thing you can do is throw all your troops in vain at the enemy and then let the enemy knock you out as well. Only after being defeated and captured are you allowed to load a prior saved game.
- Or you can simply Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and end the game process, and then reload.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Arrows fired from horseback while moving now actually pick up momentum in the direction of the horse's movement, forcing veteran horse archer players to unlearn what they have learned.
Diminishing Returns for Balance: It can seem that gaining renown at higher levels/troop sizes can be difficult. However, if you fight a much larger army with a smaller one, and win, you can still gain a lot of renown, and the bigger the difference in size the better. This works even if you're by yourself or with a very small party, and get attacked by a group of say, 40 bandits. However, keep in mind that unless you're using high level units and utilizing them where they work best, such as cavalry in an open field battle without hills or a river, it can be difficult to fight off a larger force. Hence why winning with a smaller group earns you bigger renown.
Game-Favored Gender:
- While the starting stats still favor females, the politics system favors males and up front tells you at character creation that non-noble non-males are the equivalent of a Self-Imposed Challenge.
- This extends into the plot, with the two female Claimants both having sexism as a major part of denying their claim to their thrones. Hakim in particular has little more excuse for why Arwa is unfit to rule than 'Women are evil seducers who are too incompetent to run the Sultanate, and the previous ruler either had more kindness than sense to name Arwa his successor, was seduced and deceived by her, or possibly both.'
Game Hunting Mechanic: Seems to have had one planned at some point: The game allows feudal lords to host feasts at their towns or castles, and wandering poets tell you about the benefits of performing well in the tournaments held during town feasts, as well as on the hunts held in castle feasts. Tournaments are an essential part of a feast, giving the player something to do besides talk, as feasts themselves are rather plain. They also provide the means to impress a potential spouse and/or lord in town. Castle feasts however, are the exact same, rather plain feast, but sadly devoid of any entertainment, despite the poets' claims.
Hitbox Dissonance: The shield bug is gone, but is replaced with a forcefield that blocks projectiles as if the shield was up even when it's not.
Left-Justified Fantasy Map : Since the Warband expansion retconned the geography, the game now plays this trope straight to some extent : The sea covers both the north and the west (though the cold area is still to the east).
Mook Maker:
- Bandit parties are now spawned by bandit hideouts, which can be assaulted to temporarily clear an area of banditry.
- Leaving hideouts alone is a singularly terrible idea: bandits spawn from the hideout based on your party size, and at regular intervals, so that if you leave the area alone for too long, you'll have a dozen groups of 40+ bandits that, when they see you, will gang up on you, resulting in 400+ bandits attacking you!
Moveset Clone: The Sarranids have the same troop tree layout as the original 2 factions, with Vaegir-style archers, elite light infantry, and heavily-armored Mamluke Cavalry who are a direct answer to the Swadian Knight. Their unique tactics make for a Sakura-type.
Obvious Beta: Played completely straight with the expansion, down to debugging info and messages in the vein of 'this feature is not yet implemented' being shown in the 'final' version. To their credit, though, TW have been cranking out patches at an impressive rate.
Perpetual Beta: Two years and a standalone expansion pack later, the developers are still fighting critical issues in the singleplayer campaign.
Purely Aesthetic Gender:
- Averted. Women have pretty much the same stats and gain experience at the same rate as men, but the new political system is heavily geared towards males and women have a pretty hard time climbing the social ladder.
- Women actually get Renown faster, though, so building a continent conquering army as a woman is actually easier. Males have better chances when they join a faction instead of making their own.
Retcon: Calradian geography went through yet another complete overhaul, and all the NPCs act as if the new faction had always been there.
Right in Front of Me: If you start your own faction, you can ask various town Guild Master's about your own foreign relation policies, and they will give criticism about their king, evidently without realizing you are the king.
Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Enemy forces that have low morale will attempt to escape from the battlefield. They will also no longer put up any resistance, so if you're quick enough you can kill a few of them before they can all escape.
Shout-Out:
- Several achievement names are references to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The jumping animation of the player character seems pulled straight from the Camelot scene.
- If you happen to get into a bar brawl, drawing a bow in the tavern will result in the tavern keeper shouting 'No shooting, no shooting!'
- One of the Sarranid villages is Rushdigh, named after this guy.
Simple Staff: One of the weapons you can use in melee is the humble quarterstaff.
The Starscream: in Warband, you can ditch the pretender (to whom you are normally Dragon-in-Chief) at any point of the rebellion quest and take over whatever you conquered under them. You can even take over the entire kingdom, if you give the pretender the boot right before the last battle with the remaining loyalists of the old king. The downside to that is that you don't automatically get all the loyalist lords back if you take over (they accept the pretender as their legitimate liege lord on defeat, but not you).
Suicidal Overconfidence: Enemies can now actually flee the battle, but they'll still try to fight against impossible odds first until they get their noses bloodied.
Updated Re-release: Despite being initially marketed as a stand-alone expansion (and lately even as a full sequel), the game is more of a further development of M&B, albeit with significant improvements in many areas.
Voluntary Vassal: This is an alternative (faster, but more risky) way to become a landed vassal. Normally, you sign up to one of the kingdoms as a mercenary, then swear fealty as a landless vassal, then get a burned-down village, and generally wait a LONG time until you can receive a castle or a city on some conquered territory. With this method, you conquer a castle or a city as an unaligned warlord, proclaim your own kingdom and immediately ask one of the kings to accept you as their new subject. You will be accepted and keep the castle or city you conquered.
Walking the Earth: You'll probably spend most of your time in the field, looking for enemy warbands to defeat.
Wholesome Crossdresser: There is a wide array of feminine clothing that, yes, males can wear. They grow breasts while doing so.

Ascended Fanfic: The DLC is more or less the Brytenwalda campaign ascended as an official Mount & Blade DLC and ported by Brytenwalda developpers.
The Low Middle Ages: The campaign is set in British Isles of the era.
Underrated and Overleveled: In the 'Last of the Tuatha de Danaan' storyline, you can recruit Bran mac Caliacas, the youngest son of a leader of a village out in the least inhabited end of Connacht in Ireland. He is level 31 and has 380 in all weapon skills, and huge ranks in several combat skills. He hopes one day to earn enough money to buy a farm and marry a girl.

Armor of Invincibility: Black Armor with an Armet helmet. These two items together can make you insanely tough to kill off, even with gunpowder or an enemy cavalry charge.
Artistic License – Geography: The game's portrayal of Eastern Europe and Western Asia is highly inaccurate, for starters the Baltic Sea is somehow pulled into the maps west rather than being directly north to Poland and looks nothing like it does in real life. Multiple towns have very strange distances in relation to each other.
A-Team Firing:
- A firing line of rookie troopers can fail to hit an entire army. A natural consequence of using black powder muskets, which historically were that inaccurate.
- That being said, elite soldiers as well as a properly managed character and companions can quickly invert this trope, pounding down masses of deathly accurate fire.
Base on Wheels: When you have enough men, you can order your army to construct a wagon fort to provide you protection if attacked at the cost of maneuverability and speed. It can even be rolled along with you as you move on the world map, albeit at a far slower pace than the norm.
Black Knight: The appearance of Black Armor, especially when coupled with an Armet. Considering these two items are the best armor in a game, you and your companions are advised to Invoke this trope regardless ofyour moral or political alignment.
Blown Across the Room: A decent bodyshot with a pistol can send a bandit corpse flying a foot or two, and it goes up from there until some routed brigand gets shot in the back with one of the bigger muskets and gets sent flying forward like he was hit by a car. However, it was fixed. Enemy soldiers usually slump down and ragdoll reasonably.
Cadre of Foreign Bodyguards: King Jan Kashmir of Poland heavily relies on German Imperial soldiers so supplement his native soldiers, and they cut a villainous figure if you are fighting against Poland and later even if you are playing for Poland, when King Jan reacts to an attempted uprising by using them and more allied armies from the German Emperor to try and overthrow Poland's republican institutions and create an absolute regime. Karl X of Sweden also uses considerable amounts of Scottish soldiers, but they are not a discrete Praetorian Guard or as uniformly antagonistic.
Call That a Formation?: Units can be arranged to 1-4 deep lines. Suprisingly, Units tend to remain and/or reform the formation unless told to charge.
Cartoon Bomb: Grenades introduced in this version of the game look like this. Justified as these kinds of bombs were the first and only available explosives in the time period the game is roughly based.
Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Tons, and as a mercenary you can indulge in it as well even though it might not be the most prudent choice> in addition, Every single one of the three main story quests features you being betrayed in some fashion by an ally. The Polish-Lithuanian quest probably tops the list because almost every single plot-important Commonwealth character will betray you, including one who is actually the good guy.
Day of the Jackboot: Attempted by King Jan Kashmir of Poland in the penultimate missions of The Deluge questline, on his own government nonetheless.
Drop the Hammer: The plot quest for the Cossack faction involves looking for a unique mace (the 'Black Mace'). When discovered, it happens to be one of the most powerful one-handed weapon of the game.
Eagle Squadron: Prominently featured for almost every faction. The Kingdom of Sweden employs vast numbers of Scottish soldiers and commanders as well as the leader of Brandenburg, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth receives considerable support from the Imperial army and employs Registered Cossacks, and the Crimean Khanate is propped up by expeditionary forces of its' Ottoman Liege. Note that while the Poles can recruit Scottish soldiers and the Swedes can recruit Germans, those are highly limited and not likely to feature them heavily.
Early Game Hell: Featured particularly prominently, even in comparison to other games in the series. Like them, you start out as a low-level scrub armed with third rate equipment and the clothes on your back for protection, making you a glass cannon who is incapable of taking on regular troops. Unlike them, even most of the low level outlaw trash you depend on to level up now have guns that can tear through an unarmored you almost as easily as your own shots can tear through them.
Expy: The party members heroes of the game have the same background as those from Mount & Blade, the same appearance or the same skills. Or all this in the same time.
Gender Bender: Putting female clothing on your male character will cause him to sprout breasts.
The Hero Dies: Your hero always ends up dead at the end of The Deluge questline; the only difference is how it happens and what you leave behind. At the most extreme case, this happens in the quest's 'golden ending' at the hands of a single assassin after you've conquered the entire map. Because apparently someone who is functionally immortal in the game, has cut their teeth fighting the Badass Army of Sweden and spreading an empire from Siberia to Prussia can die suddenly at the hands of an assassin you would probably be able to beat down in actual gameplay.
Historical-Domain Character: The faction leaders are historical characters from the 17th century.
The Horde: The Cossacks and Crimeans/Ta(r)tars both fit to greater or lesser degrees, but unlike most cases these are played realistically. If you deal with them in any great detail, you will see that they are a lot more than raiding barbarians.
More Dakka: Most battles tend to begin with every single musketeer firing off their first shot at once. In the bigger ones, this first salvo tends to be a wall of bullets that takes down an entire line of soldiers.
The Musketeer: Avaible as a unit as well as player charater. With some training, your companions also.
Obvious Beta: Continuing a TaleWorlds tradition, the initial release sees bugs and absurdities abound and key features missing. It's a little better presented than Warband's initial release was was but it's still clearly incomplete.
Pistol-Whipping: Doesn't do much damage, but it can be done by switching to melee mode while using a firearm. Muskets do have a bit of range like this, and pistols themselves are surprisingly quick to swing, so you're not completely defenseless.
Quick Draw: One of the big advantages of pistols. Sure, they take a little while to reload, but once reloaded they're fast to aim, letting you put a bullet on someone's kidney before they've even gotten a proper backswing.
Shout-Out: The Three Musketeers are mentioned by an NPC. Also, one of the books you can buy (the one handling the power of the state) was written by a certain Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu.
Shown Their Work: One of the skill books in the game is Art of War by Niccolo Machiavelli. While the title suggest it should be a tactical manual, the book instead increases Trainer skill, since it's a manual of how to raise and train your army.
Sword of Plot Advancement: The Black Mace is the subject at the center of the fittingly-named 'Secret of the Black Mace' Cossack storyline, which revolves around you and several others trying to discover it. When you actually do find it, it averts a typical cliche of this trope by being the Infinity +1 Sword of all the melee weapons in the game.
Too Awesome to Use: Grenades. They're expensive as all hell and don't refill like bullets or arrows do, but they hurt more than anything else in the game in a big radius, so even without skillpoints in grenade throwing you can wipe out several troops with just one. If you're willing to spend points in it, though, the radius starts getting seriously big, so you can soften up a siege/wagon fort considerably, if not wipe it out completely in the latter case.
Ultimate Blacksmith: The Weapon-Master, Armor Master, and Horse Master guilds/craftsmen that can be found in the town square of forts or cities. If you are willing to pay through the nose, they can guarantee you the finest kinds of equipment in the game save for the Black Mace. Somewhat subverted in that the items you buy cannot have modifiers, which means that versions of the same equipment available from random marketplace spawns can be superior; it's just that they are 'random' while the guilds offer you guaranteed quality at a guaranteed time. Oddly enough, there's one in every city, which tends to clash slightly with the usual portrayals of this trope.

Here are some famous mods (non-exhaustive list):

Technically, With Fire and Sword is a non-free mod, which changes the setting to the Khmelnitsky War as described in Polish historical epic Ogniem i Mieczem (the wars with Cossacks, Tatars and Sweden in the second half of 17th century), with storyline based on the novel Black Mace by Alex Trubnikov.
The Last Days (of the Third Age of Middle Earth), one of the Lord of the Rings themed mod, is one of the most successful mods for the non-Warband version of the game.
Solid & Shade makes the Calradian setting become a Dark Fantasy world inspired by occultism, Edgar Allan Poe, and Classical Mythology, in which the player is a Necromancer warlord.
Sword of Damocles and Sword of Damocles: Warlords are two parallel mods. The first expands the setting by adding several factions and an invasion of Calradia from a Roman-like army. The second is set forty years latter and involves the factions (the original and the new ones) occupying a continent which has been colonized between the two games.
Light & Darkness: Heroes of Calradia is a heavily story-driven mod set in a sort of alternate Caldaria with actual Fantasy elements. The plot itself belongs to the High Fantasy genre.
Europe1200 is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
Star Wars Conquest is Mount & Blade literally Recycled In Space
1866: A Mount & Blade Western is a Western-themed mod.
Phantasy Calradia is a kind of Crossover between Mount & Blade and Dungeons & Dragons (especially with a Forgotten Realms feeling).
The Reckoning is set in 2019 in the USA after a Zombie Apocalypse. It focuses on a war bewteen various factions, including US Army remnants, Confederacy nostalgists, Neo-Nazis, Rednecks, Church Militants, several raider factions, etc.
Rigale increases the aversion of Easy Logistics.
Prophesy Of Pendor is a very difficult mod, set in an original universe, and consisting in uniting the whole map by eliminating all factions (rival kingdoms and wandering bandits parties), except the Noldor elves, who need to be befriended.
Lots of New Companions adds hundreds of new companions, including weak fighters with highest level party skills, strong fighters with low party / leadership skills, and balanced fighters intended to be promoted as vassales. It also adds new skill books, more advanced fief / kingdom management options, and knighthood orders as minifactions.
The Wedding Dance is set in a new map with new factions (although it is still called 'Calradia'), in which the player character is a sibling of the legitimate ruler of the whole Calradia (the empress being actually a companion in the player character's party). The goal is still to conquest the whole continent, with the addition of wedding (the player character spouse becomes a party member), Siege Engines, and war chariots in open battles.
Freelancer adds a feature allowing the player character to joins any lord's army as a single unspecific soldier, and eventually being promoted after enough battles (following the default units tree).
The Floris Mod Pack, which incorporates a number of different mods (including Freelancer mentioned above) to overhaul the game and add new features, items, character interactions, and options for an expanded troop tree, better AI (for both your army and your foes), and additional enterprises.
The Eagle and the Radiant Cross is a mod that transports Calradia into the renaissance era.
Kengeki Gaiden is a discontinued mod set in an alternate Calradia inspired by medieval Japan.
Gekokujo is a historical mod set during in 16th century Japan.
- Gekokujo - Daimyo Edition is a standalone mod based on the original Gekokujo, that adds more content and improves historical accuracy.
The Red Wars is set in the Calradian year of 1923, after a communist revolution in Vaegir and Khergit states.
Gangs of Glasgow is set in our era in Glasgow, involving urban warfare and riots. The major factions are town workers, Glasgow police, and a huge gang of thugs.
1860's Old America is set around the American Civil War, though like 1866, extends the map to include Mexico and the western frontier.
- 1755: Old Fronter, also from the creator of Old America, transports the player to the French and Indian War and is rife with shout-outs to The Last Of The Mohicans.
- 1776: American Revolution is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
A Clash of Kings is a mod based on Game of Thrones.
- A World of Ice and Fire is another mod based on Game of Thrones.
1429 : La Guerre de Cent Ans ('1429: The Hundred Years War') is a mod reenacting the Hundred Years War and beginning in 1429.
Suvarnabhumi Mahayuth, a historical mod set in 16th Century Indochina.
Warsword Conquest, a total conversion mod set in the world of the world of Games Workshop's former flagship franchise, Warhammer. Featuring eighteen different factions to fight for or against: the Empire of Sigmar, Bretonnia, the Warriors of Chaos, Orcs, Dwarfs, High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Lizardmen, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts, Beastmen, Skaven, Kislev, Araby, Nippon and Pirates. Also features revamped tournaments and economy, large roving bandit armies, race-exclusive equipment, naval battles and a litany of hireable companions including some familiar faces like Gotrek & Felix.

Additional Tropes found in Mods lacking their own page

Alternate History: No matter how historically accurate the starting situation is and how much research the developers have put into the mod, each history-themed solo mod eventually turns very ahistorical, thanks to the Wide Open Sandbox gameplay and unpredictability of the AI.
- What If?: Same thing with mods based on a third-party IP (Start Wars, The Lords of the Rings, Warhammer, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc).
Alternate Universe: With the original Calradian setting.
- The Wedding Dance is an extreme example of this. Its setting is explicitly called Calradia, despite being a whole new map with brand new factions.
- Kengeki Gaiden is set on Warband worldmap, involves six faction which have the same starting location, and each of the sixteen companions are still in the game. Everything gained a Wutai flavour (companion clothings, factions and places names, etc).
Battle Couple: In The Wedding Dance, getting married (there are male specific romanceable NPCs if you play a female player character) add your spouse as a new companion (initially low-level), who also has the advantage of having no hostile relation with any other party member.
Chainmail Bikini: The Wedding Dance is infamous for adding a lot of armours of this kind (including Chainmal Monokini). The high tier ones protect as much as much as plate armours.
Easy Logistics: Rigale aims to bring this trope's aversion Up to Eleven. For example, troops become tired if they march outside for too long without resting, either in a camp or in a town; building a camp needs wood logs (number proportional to party's size). Also, using ammunition on the battlefield really consumes then. Another features is the necessity to have several different food items in the inventory, or the troops will quickly become sick of dysentry.
Expanded Universe: There are a lot of mods which retain the Calradia setting while adding new factions/new landmass, or are set in another period of Calradia history.
Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: The Red Wars is World War II transposed in Calradia.
Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Mods which add new factions to the original Calradian setting or which are set in a brand new fantasy setting do this a lot (cf the Sword of Damocles dyptich).
- In The Wedding Dance:
  - The Sway of Foment, Kingdom of Orlan, and Prid Empire are three classical fantasy factions of European inspiration, which respectively are inspired by England, France, and Holy Roman Empire.
  - Pontus Politeria is an Ancient Gromish faction turned into a matriarchy.
  - As implied by its name, Valkyrie Kongerike is a Norse-inspired faction turned into a matriarchy.
  - The Calradian Empire (your own faction) is a combination of 16th and 19th centuries' Germany and Austria.
- In The Red Wars^note, the six native factions remained, while some new have been added:
  - Nordic Union is Finland.
  - Swazi Reich is a Kaiserreich and Nazi Germany combination, with black uniforms, eagle and swastika symbols, and spiked helmets.
  - Rhodokian Socialist Workers Union is Italy.
  - United Vaegir Federation is USSR, with red flags, stars, hammer-sickles, commie music, 'White Vaegirs' wandering bandit parties, and a faction leader named 'Iossif the Steel Man'.
  - Peoples Republic of the Khergit is a mix of Communist Mongolia and Communist China.
  - Sarranid Islamic Confederation is a military alliance of Middle-Eastern like countries in the desertic arid areas of the map.
  - Kingdom of Helvetia is a weird Prussia/Poland/Switzerland mix.
  - Confederate States of Balion is USA.
  - New Albion is Canada.
- Kengeki Gaiden alters the native faction to turn them into Japan-oriented ones.
Guide Dang It!:
- The promotion trees and favored equipment of various units in Gekokujo are not explained anywhere in advance, and especially if you have a mixed army, what equipment which Ashigaru Skirmisher gets can seem random, even though whether Ashigaru Skirmishers have bows or guns is determined solely by what region they were recruited from (only Oda, Otomo, Tokugawa, Shimazu, Ryuzoji, and the Ikko Ikki get gunner Ashigaru units, while all other regions' Ashigaru skirmishers will be archers). This is, however, a very important distinction as Ashigaru tend to get unimpressive Power Draw skill levels and relatively weak bows, especially compared to Master Archer or Hatamoto Archer Samurai units, while guns aren't dependent on a skill like that and a massed formation of gun users, even if they're just Ashigaru, can be extremely dangerous. Similarly, which two of the four possible Hatamoto level final promotions (Guard, Cavalry, Gunner, or Archer) are available for Samurai units depends on where they come from, and unlike Native factions, other than their final promotion, they're identical, which means that you can easily wind up recruiting Ji-zamurai without knowledge of what their final promotion is, and thus, how best to promote them.
- Also in Gekokujo, that some lances even can be couched - the AI rarely uses mounted lancers, tournaments are entirely on foot, and such weapon use in Japan isn't nearly as famous as in Europe, so it's not readily apparent, but the Fukuro Yari, Su Yari, Jumonji Yari, and Katakama Yari, but NOT the 'Yari Pike' version can be couched.
Gratuitous German: The sheer amount of mods that attempt to add Germany-based factions or units into the game and fail at properly utilizing German spelling and grammar is astounding.
Hero of Another Story : The popular Floris Expanded Mod Pack, which includes a variety of quality of life and variety mods, includes the titular companion Floris, who literally has his own story. He starts just shy of level 30, already clad in endgame tier armor. He is Duke of Holland, owns the Floris King franchise of dining halls, and one of his assignments involves him traveling to Dhirim to check on the development of his autobiographic theatre play. His signup fee is 20000 denars, which is the in-universe equivalent of three king ransoms. And if you request him to go on a mission to support you as King of Calradia, he strongly implies he has already beaten you to the punch.
Historical-Domain Character: Of course, in historical modules, most of lords are this.
Jeanne d'Archétype: Lots of New Companions includes a companion named Joan, who is an obvious Calradian Jeanne d'Arc: not only she is an Action Girl with a suspicious similar name wearing a plate armour, but she also gave her support to the player character after receiving the divine revelation that he is the rightful ruler of Calradia, and she has been especially designed by the modder to be promoted as a marshall.
Loads and Loads of Characters: Lots of New Companions adds hundreds of new companions to the Vanilla Warband setting.
Nice Hat:
- New headgear is a common feature in several mods. The Wedding Dance explicitly tells in its new features' list that the mod adds lots of 'silly hats'.
- The Red Wars has top hats, military and civilian caps, fedoras, fez (headgear of Sarranid troops), and a lot of military helmets inspired by the 20th century's first half.
No Historical Figures Were Harmed: While Gekokujo is set in 1587 Japan, the various Daimyos are only referred to as 'Great Lord [Dynasty]'. While this is not strictly inaccurate, it avoids actually giving any of their real names.
Public Domain Soundtrack: 1429 : La Guerre de Cent Ans has 'O Fortuna' and 'Douce Dame Jolie'^note among its main menu themes.
Rocket-Tag Gameplay: In mods where firearms exist and are common, ranged combat tends to be very decisive in comparison to Native, as most units go down in one or two bullets.
Shared Universe: In The Wedding Dance, the companion Fawzia states that she is an exiled D'Shar princess from Pendor, implying that The Wedding Dance and Prophesy Of Pendor are set in the same universe.
Shout-Out: For a mod focusing on recreating a realistic Sengoku Era Japan, Gekokujo is probably the least likely place you'd expect to find, fight with and even marry the likes of Ran, Meiling and Lunasa
Soundtrack Dissonance: Gekokujo soundtrack originally contained Metal and Japanese Pop Music. It is a serious mod about Japanese history... Eventually averted with 3.0, which replaces the soundtrack with more period-appropriate music. However, the old tracks are still in the mod folders, if anyone wishes to enforce this trope for themselves.

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