Empire Unit Guide: Troops Ranked Worst to Best in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord

continuing or maybe concluding our series on our unit guides we have the final one in the series the imperial unit guide now um up to this point there have been a number of changes to all of the factions and their units so before we get started go ahead and let me know in the section comment section below what you guys would prefer do you want an updated unit guide for each one which i think we probably will do by the time the game actually officially launches in march or april or do you want me to do an updated one video catches all of the little updates and kind of um uh reevaluate the ones that have drastically changed an example would be the britannian oath sworn has had some tweaking to its equipment that would change its gray that we've given it before so go ahead let me know in the comment section below if this is your first time jumping into one of these videos essentially what we're going to be doing is going through the entire empire unit roster starting with tier two tier one is a recruit and everyone kind of shares roughly the same traits and i'm going to grade these or rank these either low medium or high and i will be comparing them versus their other counterparts across the various other factions so before we get started in my typical fashion of liking to um front load the information my overall consensus with the empire is that it is a faction that has amazing armor but low to medium damage output we're gonna see this um kind of put across almost every single portion of their roster and i will also say that the one big advantage of empire is that they're very uniform almost every single um equipment uh loadout is the same from one two and three there's three typical equipment loadouts and usually they vary from some of the other factions to factions with the empire it's all the same per three for a couple exceptions in here so let's get started with our empire unit guide and dive in on our first tier in tier two and tier two for the empire is a really strong start before we actually jump in though i do want to give a quick shout out to my little tantan and his mod equipment in encyclopedia it's enabled me to do a really big nice drill down on all these unit guides you can find a link in the description but it'll allow me to go through every variation of the battle and civilian equipment as well as allowing me to average all of the armor across the sets in case there's any variations from set to set now starting with the imperial infantryman we have a very strong tier 2 infantry soldier and the benefit of having a strong tier 2 infantry soldier is this allows you to have strong soldiers that will make it to tiers 3 4 5 so on so forth so having a weak one just makes filling in the gaps later in the game very difficult so they have best the best overall armor across head body arm and legs it's just very nice very solid but they have around mid-range damage they have with the iron spatha which brings in about 55 swing damage everything else having in the higher range for britannia and 60 or the lower range around a 50 50 152 so they're just about a mid-range now the biggest downfall to the imperial infantryman is that he is one of the only ones with out a spear and this is going to be a point of contention until we get into the later tiers in four and five but that brings our imperial infantryman to the table here very strong i'm going to give this one a high rank because it is again a really solid tier 2 well-rounded infantry soldier now moving over to the imperial archer we have an interesting dilemma this is the only true tier 2 archer that uses a bow the rest either use a crossbow in the example of valentia or they use a throwing weapon for pretty much everyone else or they just don't have something to compare or it's in the noble line and that's i guess worth mentioning if you've never watched one of these videos the noble line i compare outside of the usual rank and file and they get their own section that will go into at the end of everything but the imperial archer here all said and done i mean it's still the best tier 2 archer because there's no other competition it has a decent enough bow with the hunting bow it's just a nice you know base tier one hunting bow nothing crazy here and again still solid armor at 8 12 2 and 12 comparing to the other throwing classes that actually have pretty meager armor now one downfall and this is a downfall that we're going to be seeing repeated across almost all the archers is there's only one stack of arrows so keep that in mind as we move forward into the other ones but i would give this one a high rank because again it is the only one in its um field and also has a nice spike club so it can do some good damage to armor in the mid to late portions of the game but just to recap here imperial infantryman high grade or high rank and the imperial archer a high rank as well let's move into tier three another strong showing here with tier three starting with the imperial trained infantryman um one note that i've got from you guys is wanting these to be a little bit more concise and a little bit quicker so i'm trying to get through tiers two and three to get to four and five faster because of the bigger meteor portions of the army list and let me know in the comments section below if that's if this is a pace that you're enjoying but overall for the uh trained infantryman we again have that same exact not even conundrum but the same exact cookie cutter that we're gonna see with the best armor across every body piece and across every single other faction but again mid-range taking a look here we're now with a spatha with a narrow fuller bringing us at a swing damage around 64. everything else is very close like 65 is slightly above it but it's still above it um and other things okay 61 so on and so forth like azeri has 61 on its hammer or mace so at least the azerite has crushing damage that it can take advantage of but it does less overall i guess you could say damage compared to the spatha with narrow fuller in addition now we don't get a spear we get simple javelins we get throwing ability at tier 3 for our trained infantryman which is really solid and very strong i really like this but you do have to keep in mind if you're sticking with a pure imperial army um imperial trained infantrymen you're going to want in their own category and we'll discuss it when we go to four and five and it's simply because you want them to use their javelins it's not going to circumvent their functionality as it were but it's worth noting that you want to put them in their own category we'll talk about it a little bit later but i think outside of that the the only difference here is you don't have a spear you have 70 one-handed and 70 throwing everyone else for the most part i think it's three of the six other factions have a spear and they have 70 pole arm and 71 handed so you're basically swapping that scale to get throwing in there now moving over to our trained archer we're going to see the first time that they get actual competition from kazate because it actually has a tier 3 archer but again very similar situation oh and by the way imperial trained infantryman high rank if that wasn't obvious enough um but the imperial trained archer here moving back to that very good armor uh it's it's kind of the big thing for the vampires to have decent enough armor but the bow is okay it's still mountain hunt mountain hunting bow so it's not that awesome but you are only having one stack of arrows it is such a hamstring to the archer to only have 20 shots on this is the sole purpose of this unit so i'm going to give this a mid rank by comparison to the other arches in the tier 3 bracket when there's only other one but at least that other one has more arrows at its disposal and the imperial train archer just kind of is lackluster for it being an archer so recapping real quick high rank on that trained infringement very solid great armor mid-rank though on the imperial trained archer just because it just kind of can't really bring what it's supposed to do to the table as strong as other ones in its class getting a bit spicier here as we move into tier four and this is where we get some real big changes to the dynamic of things so starting with the imperial veteran infantryman we have the exact same thing you guessed it the best armor in class the damage overall is about the same we're on a fine steel pair miriam and that's giving us 72 swing damage which is just about mid-range if not the bottom end of mid-range and when i say bottom end of mid-range i mean that there's like one other person who does less damage than the perimerian so take that as you will when it comes to damage but i honestly feel that that's okay the infantryman is supposed to hold the line having really strong armor and at least moderate to low damage is totally fine by me as long as you have other things that can help out cavalry being one of them which the imperials have in spades now the other thing i was going to talk about is the pilla or pilum if you're looking at this from a historical standpoint so this is a throwable weapon and the reason i say put the trained infantryman and the veterinary infantrymen and even legionaries in a separate category veteran and legionaries together train of three minutes apart because you have to press hold fire for veteran infantrymen or else they will throw the pila and if they do that is a one shot one use one throwable weapon so they lose the quote-unquote spear functionality of the pila if they do this in addition too the pila is extremely short so even if they do use it as a spear it has limited reach and functionality to the point that they would probably pull out their sword over their spear they're typically supposed to use whichever one has a higher skill or fits the situation better and that situation is dictated by range to the enemy now one handed 100 and one and pull on 100 means it's at a tie and they'll probably because of reach go for their sword over that spear so keep that in mind it's a one-shot weapon only have um fire will on if you want them to throw that pila with your trained infantryman throw the javelins that's the point of them you don't need to hold on to those for any point or any reason now another big thing about the veteran infantryman is that you get access to a nice good big shield so that is a nice huge advantage that you get at tier four which makes them a overall high rank now moving over to the monaviaton we have the beginning of the two-handed weapons for the empire so they have the best armor but they also have the lowest damage that is a bit of a hamstring when it comes to the class itself the two-handed weapon class and i think the monaviaton is very strong but it does have a pull arm where almost everyone else has a two-handed weapon the only other class that doesn't or another faction that doesn't would be the fault i'm sorry no that's a two-handed weapon as well i'm thinking of it's romfalia which we'll get to in a bit but the monaviaton being a pole arm means it has a very long range so this makes it devastating against cavalry that is charging into you so the monaviaton is essentially going to be your anti-cav versus all of the other factions have a very long spear in their infantry soldier at tier four so that's how you're really going to be using the monaviaton versus the other factions who use their two-handed weapon infantry as more of a shock infantry break the line i mean the sturgeons you even have it called line breaker so having that different difference is huge because they are very tanky especially compared to the other two-handed infantry variants and they do have a very large reach over their two-handed weapon counterparts so you do have to factor that into this so i give these guys a high rank because they are so tanky and because they can fit that anti-cavalry role that the veteran infantrymen can't fit as well so they do have an actual place in your army versus the two-handed infantry i feel like they're always a nice to have but never a compulsory option so kind of look that as you will when it comes to building out your empire roster now the veteran archer is where we start to take a bit of a dive for the empire roster at tier four overall terrible armor i mean their armor for almost everything else is better than the veteran archer i think sturgia is the only one who gets mildly outclassed by the veteran archer in the armor department but here's the biggest thing this is an archer i want to shoot arrows and i want to do it really well well he has a terrible bow with a simple short bow in addition to that he has one stack of barbed arrows everyone else gets two stacks and if not better a stack of arrows and a better bow so he's really again lackluster at what he does it's bad when sturgia has a better archer than you so the imperial veteran archer i mean i really can't say more about it it's i'm giving it a low rating because of those things it doesn't even make up for it in skills which is unfortunate it doesn't have oh it's got a really great bow skill so at least it's going to fire more often or more damage something like that it doesn't have that benefit now moving over to our imperial crossbowman we have this only competing against one other crossbowman from philandia now it actually has good armor blondia just barely has a little bit better armor above the imperial crossbowman in fact we can um we can actually bring this one up i think it's the hardened crossbowman at this point yeah so it's just barely above um but i will say what i like about the vlondian crosswoman is it's a little bit more dynamic it has a nice big huge pavis that it can use to defend itself it's got this ridge tipped arming sword so it has a little bit more functionality when it runs out of this one single stack of bolts which of course the imperial crossbowman has as well so it has in addition that not a good crossbow 85 pierce damage on this bad boy versus the hickory crossbow of this one at 93. so bad crossbow decent armor but no shield i find that the vlanian hardened crossbowman just doesn't uh i'm sorry stacks up better against the imperial crossbowman which i'm putting at a mid-rank because it still does do its job which is shoot bolts decent enough it just can't really do anything outside of that so to recap here for tier four we have the imperial veteran infantryman at high rank the monaviaton at a high rank then the veteran archer at a low rank with the crossbowmen at a mid-rank as well let's move over to the biggest the baddest in tier 5 for the empire and tier 5 is a very strong showing for the empire let's get started with the imperial legionary because this is i think the one that you think of the most when you go into empire infantry because it has the best armor now not only does it have the best armor it also has the best armor for its weight at 34 weight everyone else has at least 10 more weights to catch up to that now i don't know if that actually affects the speed of the unit overall for the ai but i know for your character it drastically does and having 130 athletics on top of that means these guys are going to have some wheels on them to get down range nice and fast they do also have the pila so they'll be launching that downrange you do have to turn off fire at will so they'll retain that if you want to use them uh that pilaf for an actual pull arm anti-cav um spear situation but in addition to that they also have the lowest damage keeping that fine steel perimerian as from the veteran infantryman that they had they do get a nice benefit here though tiers 2 or i'm sorry they have two other equipment sets that give them maces now that is huge the carotid mace allows them to do a lot of really good damage especially it to other tier v heavily armored infantry that can really just crack them open so i really like that in my mind that really kind of tips the imperial legionary above the rest because they have really amazing armor they have got good shields they at least have a throwability and pull arm with the pila but that mace just allows them to threat up outside of their brackets so much better and there's really nothing better than them so i'm all about it so imperial legionary gets that high rank from me moving into the elite monaviaton though we get a little bit of a weird situation so this is like the first time the armor's been dethroned in the um infantry category for imperial the imperial elite monaviator has the second best armor of its class um it's outperformed by i believe the azeri i'm sorry yeah azeri palace guard let's bring that up real quick yeah these guys just are veritable tanks so you can see this is the kind of competition these guys are going up against and also the heroic linebreaker just got some new armor as well in the most recent set of patches so it as well got changed from the ulfhedonar or uh yeah the the wolfheadnar the to this guy which is just a beast so the monaviaton has not really been touched since the game came out and it kind of shows here hits armor was tweaked i think in patch 1.3 1.4 and it still just can't stack up to the rest of the units that have gotten a nice passover on this including the falksman which no longer has a falx now has a rhomphilia at its uh top end so the elite metablaton still has its monopoly on which is great it's cool but it's still it's not a great tier v weapon and it has a fine steel spatho so at least it has some functionality and it gets a pila so it can throw a weapon so it does have versatility which i think still keeps it strong it's just the low damage of the menavalian doesn't compare to especially the wrong folia on the uh britannians i think it just does so much damage so banaviatan in my mind gets a mid-rank because it doesn't do what it's supposed to do in that it's a two-handed shock quote-unquote infantry unit as well as everything else but everything else it can do it does very well 130 pull-arm 131 handed so it still can threaten things especially if you're doing sieges stuff gets up close and personal it's got a fine steel spatha to actually threaten back with when you take a look at the mamalu guard it just has the executioner's axe which is still a very strong really great weapon but it's harder to get those two-handed weapon swings in especially if you're doing a really close melee or a siege warfare so it's important to kind of note that moving over to our palatine guard we have another awesome archer on the list and this one has 160 bose skill the only thing that compares to that in the non-noble line would be the azrae master archer who also has 160 bow skill this time though the bow is upgraded a nice step warbo very strong other things have the recurve bow around this damage range is at 62 this has got a nice 66. but again low ammo we got bodkin arrows which are solid but only 24 shots so that is a little bit of a hampering but it also still has amazing armor and decent melee so i do give this a high rank because it does have a lot of survivability from that good melee and that good armor and the huge step up and damage from the bow is massive i just think it needs more arrows it really is lackluster in that arrow department and especially like i said if sturgeon has got more arrows than you and a variably much worse bow and loadout it's a bit of an issue but a mid or i'm sorry high rank on the palatine guard because it still is an impressive high bow damage and accuracy archer for the imperials now the busillarii which i'm sure i'm mispronouncing is a different case this has some very stiff competition it has the best non-um noble line horse archer to deal with in the heavy mama luke uh calvary let's go to mom luke heavy cavalry this guy is a just a beast he's got a sword he's got a shield he's got a really good bow he's got some really great arrows and he's got a very fast horse and it just doesn't compare with this character i mean this guy has got a terrible horse at tier v with the charger his bow is a step reef curved bow which is nice he gets two stacks of arrows which is better than even the palatine guard had but he just has a sword so as far as horse archers go he's great if he's just shooting bose stay an arrow stationary but if he's on his horse he's trying to be mobile he just can't compare to this character or anything from the kazate as well and because eight we gave that a medium rank because our mid-rank because they have a noble line that just crushes the horse archer department so while this character is not or the bus laurier is not terrible on its own it has the lowest armor of the three has the slowest and lowest maneuverability of the three so it really kind of um uh doesn't stack up to the competition as well so it has a very limited functionality we looked at this character and it has a sword a shield a bow and arrow so it can do more in close combat if it runs out this character if it runs out it still got a sword so it's not going to be as as strong so i think all those things make for a low rank for the boosted lary just because of that and it is unfortunate i do think it's if i'm only looking at this roster i think it's great because it does bring a nice decently armor i mean that's i say lowest armor but it's still a good amount of armor on a horse archer to the imperial roster but everything else that is in its category just outclasses it moving over to our last unit here the imperial sergeant bowman now this is going to be compared to the velandian sharpshooter since there's only one in class we can take a look directly and it does have better armor so it's got a little bit more survivability than the vlondian sharpshooter and you'll remember when we did the vlondian archery range when we talked about their crossbowmen we compare them to all the other archers because it's the only fair comparison you take a look at this you have two two actual tiers where there's no other crossbowmen in here but when we take a look at the imperial roster they have archers they can compare against so we just did the cross women on a one-to-one now the other issue here is the imperial sergeant while having better armor has a lower damage bow this is the hickory crossbow this is the same crossbow that the hardened crossbowman had the vlanian sharpshooter has a bound crossbow 100 pierced damage versus the imperial's 93. so you do get better armor you get lower damage output but you still have solid melee ability here because you retain the fact that you've got a sword and now you gain a small um if not effective shield so i would give these guys a mid rank if i'm comparing them strictly crossbow to crossbow if i'm comparing them to other archers like we did for vallandia i would give them definitely a low rank they just don't have enough uh arrows to shoot down range everything else outclasses them when it comes to skill and bow and arrow or even crossbow in this case so that is something to kind of consider when you're looking at them across other archer variants so just to recap here real quick legionary is at a high rank we have a mid for the monaviaton then the uh palatine guard brings us back up to high lucilaria dropping us down low with a low rank and then the sergeant crossbowman with a mid-rank let's talk about our noble line to quickly conclude our video now the noble line for the imperials just got a pass and 1.4 i want to say are 1.3 i'm not sure which one a 100 percent but the visual recruit just got a reduction in its overall loadout its helmet changed and drastically it used to be a nice really cool current style helmet it is no longer that way but it is still a pretty solid unit for a tier 2 infantry soldier now it is of course meant to progress into your cavalry so it's not long for being on foot i give it a mid rank for just simply being a decent strong tier 2 infantry soldier that compares very well to other tier 2 infantry soldiers now moving up to the equitae we get a very strong first showing of cavalry and i give this one a mid-rank and i'm really trying to get quickly down to tier six because that's that's the one we really care about when we're talking about noble lines um but i give it another mid-rank i find that the um gallant for the vlondians just stacks up better against it the vlondian just has more armor to deal with has better skills and has a better horse you're going to find that that's going to be a big issue with imperial going forward now as we move into the heavy horseman we're going to get a high rank because this time the heavy horseman has better equipment both armor and weapons than vallandia and a really tanky horse here with a half scale barting but its biggest attractor yet again is that imperial charger blondia already gets access to the vlondian corsair as early as tier three so from now on tiers four five and six for imperial only gonna be the imperial charger and that is going to be very unfortunate because it just it kind of makes them a little lackluster as a calvary unit because there's no higher tier imperial quote-unquote um horse i think that tail worlds could just simply put a different horse on the top ones and who cares if it's not culturally the same it just needs to have the ability to threaten upward now into the cataphract we jump back into mid because the volandian champion and now we're taking a look at the druznik for the um russians for the sturgians and we have uh the guard i believe it is for kazate is it kagan is that was that is that what that is at that point is that that's the one uh uh keshig keshig sorry um so we definitely have a lot more competition in this realm especially opening up into sturgia and having a lot better armor on some of those units so the imperial cataract's still good but it has lost its mace it used to have a mace on one if not two of its equipment loadouts and they have lost that as of some of the more recent patches so their ability to threaten into armor has been drastically reduced and that goes very well here for the elite cataphract now you probably guessed it they have the best armor leaps and bounds above the other i mean the other top tier i think was like 55 body armor they've got 73 so you can see that they just have such a strong blood out of armor but again it's the same thing that we get from the infantry just medium damage they do have a nice imperial lance that is much longer than the other ones and they have changed this to the imperial ants from the cataphract lands that they had before the cataphract lance was a two-handed lance that you did you could not brace so that has changed and in that as well we have lost the mace on these characters so the equipment loadout for the elite cataphract used to be better i would say i think it was better as of like 1.5 but it has changed recently to kind of create some balance between all the heavy shock cavalry units in the game especially across the noble line ones and it has still a terrible horse with the imperial charger and that makes it very unfortunate so i unfortunately have to give this guy a mid-rank whereas if we had looked this i think three patches ago it would have been a different story but now their skills even are not they don't stack up let's take a look at a banner knight and we're going to type in also the druznik champion so taking a look at these three you'll see that it used to be that the polearm skill was higher on the cataphract but lower on the banner night now if you look at the let's look at the skills that matter 200 writing 200 one-handed 260 polar well this is 200 writing 221 handed into 60 pull arm and it's a lance that is not that much lower in reach uh the volunteer the imperial lance is longer but not that much longer so you're basically losing 20 skill for a longer lance more or less in addition like i said london corsair here is just a much better horse even looking at the druznik we have a character that's got 221 handed so it still has better one-handed than the elite cataphract which i'll be honest was needed this character this unit was in terrible shape and has finally kind of been brought up to snuff a little bit here still not as amazing as it once as uh the other ones but is a lot better than it once was so you've got a unit now that has no ability to threaten into armor with maces and just 20 less one-handed is kind of lackluster here so just to quickly recap mid-rank on the vigila the mid-rank here on the equity high rank on the heavy horseman then mid rank on the cataphract and mid rank on the elite cataphract and at that it brings our video to a close on the unit guide now i'm gonna flash up all the ranking systems that i've given to everything so you can see all the mid low mids and highs that i've kind of doled out to everyone and my overall consensus on the imperial unit guide or i'm sorry unit roster is that it has changed it used to be that they were disproportionately better than every other um class more or less i mean you had some things that would do a lot better when you take a look at the noble lines for say the battalions and having all their archers just crushed everything else but the palatine guard has been scaled back in its armor same thing with the veteran archer same thing with the bussilari eye the legionary um i think it was the veteran infantryman or the legionary lost the veteran infantryman lost its um javelins and gained the pila and the imperial instrument lost its javelins so and the imperial elite malavia monaviaton has had its armor changed i think around like i said in one three one four same thing with the crossbowmen so there's been a toning back of the imperial armor at the same time though i feel like it's not been able to catch up and everything else has moved up in its damage output to the point where yes you do have the best armor across the entire roster on average with all of its units but i feel like especially with the archers there's just so many glaring holes it needs to have more stacks of arrows or there needs to be something like just a higher quantity of them to fill out that gap of less arrows being used per archer so take that into consideration when you are building your imperial roster or maybe if you want to make a mix roster you now know that the imperial legionary is the end-all be-all of tanky frontline infantry but hopefully we will see more changes to these uh units as the dame game gets closer to official launch i'm sure that this is going to last two times we did this all the units changed the day or two after the guide came out so be on the lookout for that let me know in the comment section below how you want me to deal with updating these guides do you want me to just to do a whole new rewa re-guide for everything or do you want me to just to do one catch-all video that mainly touches on the ones that have changed drastically in their unit grade because of some of the changes from tail worlds but as always guys thank you so much for watching here today have a good one don't forget to like subscribe comment below all that kind of fun action but have a good one then take care

Channel: ItalianSpartacus

Views: 65,985

Rating: 4.9453177 out of 5

Keywords: bannerlord gameplay, bannerlord, bannerlord review, bannerlord pc gameplay, mount and blade 2 bannerlord, mount and blade 2 bannerlord gameplay, mount& blade 2: bannerlord, let's play bannerlord, mount &blade ii: bannerlord, mount and blade 2, mount and blade 2 gameplay, mount and blade 2 review, mount and blade 2 tips, bannerlord tips, playthrough, video game, italianspartacus, tips, unit guide, culture, best units, best troops, best cavalry, empire unit guide, empire units

Id: RYBT38eGNJ0

Length: 32min 6sec (1926 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TheItalian567]

Finally slapping together my Empire Unit guide here! Today I'll be covering all of the Empire units then grading them, "Low, Mid or High" based off of values such as their overall armor, weapon damage, and skills compared to the six other factions units in the same category!

Here's a link to the summary if you want a quick reference sheet: https://imgur.com/a/3aiHUg3

Enjoy guys!

[u/goboks]

It might be a lot of work, but I would redo these completely when the game comes out of EA and it looks like changes have settled down. Wouldn't want to watch a half hour on each faction with mostly outdated info in it to have to watch a correction/update as well.

Another interesting idea would be a best of video. Like the best x at every tier. Basically make an editors choice troop tree. X would be whatever categories you think make sense, so instead of just ranged you could do archer and crossbowman.

I'd also factor in upgrade costs when you redo these. To me, one of the big advantages of the noble lines of Vlandia, Aserai and Khuzait are that you don't need a horse and then a war horse to upgrade them. Horses are a relatively scarce resource, so that is a big deal to me. Viglas really suck that way and I try to only recruit at tier 3 so I don't have to buy the horse. I can't remember if Sturgia needs both or if there first noble cav just uses a war horse.

[u/Loyalist77]

At last

[u/[deleted]]

Once again, I love your guides. Thanks for making!