WTF is up with that "Native Expansion" mod?

[Shabby_Ronin]

I'm not 1 turn in and the whole freaking land is swarming with large, angry, well equipped mercenary armies that hound your every step. How can anybody play that?

Alot of the features look cool but that is nigh impossible to me.

I thought L&R was tough, anybody played "Native Expansion" and know how to survive?

[Cougar109]

I love it, personally my favorite mod. It's tough at the start no doubt and damn near impossible if you're not smart about it. Numbers are key so the first thing is you need to cash so find a tourney or two or simply do a few matches as they can earn you a bit of cash. Once you've got some cash start recruiting whatever factions you plan on using, make sure you have the training skill. After you pick up about 30-40 recruits hit the training grounds and level them a bit more, once they're all up a rank then start hitting the city taverns and finding any villages that may be overrun with bandits, those are still easy pickings in the mod. That'll net you cash and plenty of XP, then start working on the bandits that hang around the Swadian/Rhodok border and you'll be good to go.

[Shabby_Ronin]

What do you mean training grounds, I thought that was just where the PC practiced beginners moves.

[Ishoss]

Kill those (ruthless?) bandit guys, they're a bit stronger than the looters from vanilla but you should be able to handle small bands of them when you got some good equipment. You get money for good equipment from tournaments.

[gambit]

^Im curious about the training grounds too. I thought it was more of an anytime you want tutorial as well

[Shabby_Ronin]

Hey, I have a question, how successful can I be as a newb with that horsemen faction?

Something about a Mongol-like horde appeals to me.

[Cougar109]

There's one training ground in each nations border, I think literally called training grounds. You head there and you have a list of options. You can spar with up to 4 of your troops the more you spar at once the more XP there is possible to gain, if you win the spar you and all your melee troops gain experience; there's the archery training where you stand back and shoot pots from a distance of your choice, again success gains you and your archers experience, and a riding obstacle course which gives you and I think your cavalry some experience. Great for early on in game to get your troops up a rank or two real quick, especially for a mod like Native Expansion which quadruples the beginning difficulty.