Mount & Blade Bannerlord - Empire Strengths & Weaknesses (Overview)

thank you hello YouTube and welcome back to another dare to game video today we're playing Mountain blade Banner Lord and we're doing another strengths and weaknesses video and this one is for the Empire and now mind you it is important to remember that although all three factions of the Empire are extremely similar and will share all all the same basic strengths and weaknesses they are three separate factions and should not be treated as one so basically the Imperial region is the largest in the game it stretches from well it's basically encircled by these lakes and rivers and stuff so it's this whole central region here it borders the well basically every single faction that borders the uhlandians over here the botanians right here the sturgeons up here the kuzites over in the East and then the azerite to an extent because there's a giant Lake between them but the azerite to the South so you are surrounded by every single faction and then it's important to remember that you yourself are three factions so you have the northern Empire the southern Empire and the Western Empire uh and so it's important to remember that it is all three but it is an extremely large region with with a lot of resource sources so it it's in my opinion probably the easiest playthrough even though you start totally surrounded by potential enemies but let's just dive on into it and start off with the strengths for the troops in the Empire alright so just starting off for uh our troop strengths we have an Archer variety and both of them are pretty solid so you have top tier uh tier five archers and the two options are your Imperial Palatine guard which is a traditional uh bow and arrow Archer and then the Imperial Sergeant crossbowman which is a crossbow Archer and now this is a great strength because you have the option for both when you go to somewhere like landia who has the best uh crossbowman in the game these ones are slightly inferior to them because their crossbow is not quite as powerful but you also have the option of a pretty solid bow and arrow Archer which flandia does not have and whereas you take up somewhere like the azerai who have a very good bow and arrow Archer they don't have crossbowmen so the Empire has both neither one of them are the best in class in the game but both of them are very very close so it makes them very competitive in the Archer segment I find typically that although either could be used for both I like to have archers in the open field like bow and arrow archers in the open field better and crossbowmen are better for defending castles a strong force of crossbowmen Defending Your Castle makes it so most of the enemy troops are dead before they even get to the walls I typically like to go with them and I think it's a great strength that the Empire has uh either option both in a pretty good Supply so that is uh the first strength for troops the next one is their heavy shock Cavalry the Imperial Elite cataphract again they're not as good as the flandian banner Knights but they are either second or third place some people will say that the flandian vanguards are also better than the cataphracts I say that they're real close I'd say the cataphracts probably have an advantage because their horses are extremely well armored as are they plus the cataphracts have the nice long it's a longer Lance than the vlandian Lance even though they can't couch it so you know both have strengths and weaknesses but other than the blandians there's no competition for the Imperial Elite cataphract for shot Cavalry in the game they are top tier excellent troops extremely powerful they are the noble troop tree so you have to find the Imperial vigla recruits and recruit them up and since the wiggler recruits don't start with a horse you are going to need the war horses to upgrade them so there are weaknesses and downsides to the cataphract but they're such a good shot Cavalry that you can amass in extremely large numbers because of the size of the Empire that I've had extremely powerful Cavalry based armies you know working with the Empire so I think the elite cataphracts are an extremely good troop strength another one is the Imperial legionary which is a class of heavy infantry so they're a sword and shield infantry typically equipped with the pilum which you can see as on his back which can be used as a pole arm but typically is best used as a throwing weapon they also have a shield a sword and very heavy comprehensive armor so they're some of the best infantry in the game the only infantry that outclasses them is going to be the sturgey and heavy axemen and spearmen both of which are superior to the legionary in pretty much every way again that still leaves every other faction that has inferior infantry and again because these are the regular ones straight from the recruits it is really easy to get a giant army of these guys going on and once you do again it's hard to beat them so the Imperial legionaries are definitely a strength for the Empire and finally for troop strengths we have the Imperial bucelari which are their mounted archers these troops are fine they're definitely not the best in the game but they exist so that's an advantage over sturgia the battalions and the vlandians who uh the flambians don't have any mounted skirmishers at all and the battanians and sturgeons don't have mounted archers so you know it's a serious advantage over all of them the only competition for the Empire then is the kuzites who have the best mounted archers in the game and the azerai who are probably also better than the Imperial mounted archers but at least you have them in the Empire as far as general things about the bucillary specifically know their greatest weakness is that their horses aren't armored so they're really easy to take down enemy archers will take them out especially like crossbowmen are very quick at taking out busulari and then you just have regular archers on foot admittedly High Athletics for a mounted unit since they have 100 Athletics but their riding is 120 and their bow is 140 and one-handed is 130. they do have the advantage of starting off with two Quivers of arrows and have decently good armor so like I said I consider the Imperial bucillary to be a strength but they are definitely outclassed by most other mounted archers in the game alright so then for weaknesses uh the main one I would say is the lack of a convincing two-handed infantryman and so the closest thing that you get in the empire for that is the Imperial Elite manavliaton which is their Spearman basically they're equipped with a spear uh oftentimes a one-handed weapon and they're throwing Plum they can be useful I've used them effectively in defensive formations against uh Cavalry and because they've got that pole arm they can be used for it but they're not good line Breakers so they're really bad at breaking through enemy infantry lines and they're they usually you know typically use their spear which uh makes them outclassed by most other people most other factions infantry who will use an ax or sword or something and and I find the Monopoly Italian to be a pretty bad unit just in general I think they die too easily for how much it takes to get them to this point but so that's a weakness they don't have a good two-handed infantry then the other ones are just uh General weaknesses like the legionaries although very good are expensive and they're still outclassed by the sturgeon infantry the cataphracts are very good but they're expensive and they're outclassed by the blandian heavy Cavalry the sergeant crossbowmen again are quite good crosswoman but they're outclassed by the blandian crossbows and the uh Imperial Palatine guards are pretty good but they're outclassed by the kuzate as uh azerai and The battanian Archers so the Empire is I love the way that the game balanced it because all of their troops are pretty dang good and they specialize really well but none of them are the best every single troop you have even the best Imperial troops are outclassed by a different factions troops General strengths are that they have pretty dang good troops General weaknesses for the troops are that none of them are the best troops then outside of troops we do have some general strengths to the Empire um the first one is there are lots of settlements because you have three different factions of the Empire and all of them are pretty large uh you have lots of towns and villages to recruit Imperial troops from so if you're doing a playthrough where you're specifically trying to use just Imperial troops uh there's never a shortage of them you can quickly fill up however many troops you can carry and they're constantly responding even if you're at War there will be Villages that have not been looted so you can get lots of troops so that's a general strength of the Empire another one is there is a large economy because there's three different ones and you can as long as you're not at war with uh you know you're in one faction that's at war with another there are plenty of settlements where you can buy all sorts of goods you can make a hell of a good trade profit from them because you can find almost any resource for sale uh somewhere in the Empire and and there are lots of horses so unlike the blandians who have a constant horse shortage among other factions uh there are plenty of horses in the Empire so I never find it hard to keep myself supplied here another Advantage is that the empire in general just has good armor and weapons you can see a I think that it's probably the coolest looking armor this is probably my favorite current set of Imperial Armor here but they all look excellent but more importantly they also function very very well when you're looking at rankings of different armor pieces and everything Imperial High tier Imperial stuff like this ranks near the top it's it gives you very very good protection and typically isn't nearly as heavy as certain factions like the sturgeon heavy armor or the blandian heavy armor which can get quite weighty so the Empire has good high quality weapons and armor and their armor offers decent protection for how much it weighs lastly as we talked about in troops just in general the troops may be they're basically a jack of all trades and a master of none the troops are versatile they don't specialize as well as other factions troops do which is why they're outclassed but all of them are pretty dang good so they're very versatile you can use them in a lot of different things the cataphracts for example example are you know top tier shot Cavalry but they can also be used as infantry and that goes for basically every troop in the in the Imperial line you can use them for whatever you need them for and they work pretty well at it uh then on the other side we have General weaknesses so the main one of that is that the high-end units do require a lot of training so it takes a lot of XP and there and also a lot of time and money to get them up to the highest tier so that's a weakness it's not fast to get any of them to the top uh another one being early infantry lacking pole arms so when you look at their earlier infantry uh well I mean so you look at Imperial infantrymen they're pretty bad troops in general but they're only tier two once you get to the trained infantrymen you have a nice large supply of uh little throwing javelins but again no pull arm which makes them very weak against Cavalry it's not until you get yourself to the the infantrymen and then the legionary where you even have the pilum but that's not a pole arm it's like I said it can be used as one but not very effectively because it's not long and it's mostly just used as a throwing weapon the monopolitan is the only way where you're going to get those Spears which are going to make your infantry a lot more effective against Cavalry but like I said overall they're not a very good unit that's they're the Empire's infantry are very weak against uh Cavalry which is a big weakness for the Empire and uh another one is just of the lack of extra weapons we saw this with landia too you don't see uh the troops carrying uh a large variety so you go through the infantrymen they have a throwing weapon but they don't have a pole arm like I said and then the infantrymen and the legionary they have the pilum which is excellent against Shields but they only have one so you don't get a lot of throwing weapons your archers don't uh come with tons and tons of arrows I mean like I said the Palatine card guard has two Quivers which is nice but the veteran Archer only has the one as does the trained archer in the Imperial Archer and the sergeant crossbowman only as the one quiver of bolts so they're they're good enough troops they diversify well but they don't fully utilize what they could they all have empty weapon slots that could have been used to make each of these troops better and the final General weakness is just being surrounded by enemies uh like I said I still consider the Empire to be the easiest playthrough because of the overwhelming resources and uh troop variety and availability but the downside is you know let's say you side with the northern Empire you're surrounded by two different factions of the Empire to the South which can be hostile uh you have the battanians directly to the West the sturgeons directly to the North and the accusates directly to the East and of course also the possibility of being at war with the azerite to the far south and the vladians to the Far West so it's just you don't have any safety net or like areas where you know you don't have to worry so when you're playing it's really easy to constantly be just running back and forth putting out fires on defense instead of being able to turn the tide so it is a weakness starting off surrounded by a whole bunch of different enemies and as far as our combat strategy goes I find with the Empire the best way to go is very balanced and that makes sense considering how their troops are made none of them are the absolute best in the game but all of them are pretty close you know they're they're taking the number two or three spot on each list so the way that I like to balance my Imperial Army is uh 25 heavy Cavalry 25 mounted archers 25 infantry and 25 archers so like I said really balanced and then what I'll do is I'll take my legionaries and I'll put them in an infantry Shield wall I'll put my archers right behind them typically I like to focus on the crossbowmen with the uh Empire uh just because they do have the greater range and the stopping power on the bolts and I typically find that against certain factions it will be easy enough to defeat them just with crossbowmen and against the other factions where your archers are going to suffer more so against like koozades or something like that where they've got really high Mobility archers which will pick yours off it doesn't make a difference if you use the Bowman because then you you lose them either way so I I typically stick with the crossbowman if I can until I get late game and have so many troops that it doesn't matter and then like I said I put my crossbowmen in the castles and I keep my archers out on the field uh but yeah so I'll do the Infantry Shield while on the front I'll put my archers Loosely spaced behind them then I'll have my mounted archers out skirmishing which is good for distracting a lot of your enemy Cavalry and I will have controlled Cavalry Charges so much like I did with the blandians I'll keep my 25 of my cataphracts I'll keep them in a controlled block over to the side and I'll use them to charge and then break off and reform and then charge and break off and reform I find that that's very effective the legionaries in a shield wall are extremely good troops only outclassed by the sturgeon heavy infantry and The Archers are more than capable of taking out pretty much all enemies as long as they're protected which the legionaries do quite well so I find that a balanced method works extremely well for the Empire again making them a really good starting faction for beginners other than that for Castle Defense it's best to focus on legionaries and to crossbowmen they just make the best defenders the Palatine guards are also fine avoid monopolitans they're just not a good troop especially for defending a castle and for offense it's going to be more of the same I like to have a heavy emphasis on archers because they're good at taking off picking off enemies on the wall but also enough legionaries to be able to take the walls and move on in uh the major downside in sieging is they don't have a good two-handed infantry so busting through the gate you need a battery Ram otherwise it just takes all day so that is really the empire in a nutshell in Banner lord they're very balanced they're a good jack of all trades they're extremely easy to start as because of their huge size and and resource Surplus but they can be challenging especially if you're playing on an appropriate difficulty level so that's the Empire hope you enjoyed this video hope if you're looking for this sort of stuff that this was useful but that's all for today and we'll see you next time thanks for watching another dare to game video If you like this video please leave a like and a comment if you haven't already be sure to subscribe to the channel if you like my content and would like to support this channel consider becoming a member today for as little as 1.99 a month it makes a huge difference but in any case thanks for watching and have a nice day I'll see you next time

Channel: Dare To Game

Views: 34,007

Keywords: mount and blade 2, mount and blade 2 tips, mount and blade, mount and blade bannerlord guide, bannerlord campaign, best tacitcs to use, best units, bannerlord tips, mount and blade 2 bannerlord, mount and blade bannerlord, best faction, bannerlord empire campaign, bannerlord empire troops, bannerlord empire guide, bannerlord empire armor, bannerlord empire tactics, bannerlord empire lore, bannerlord empire experience, bannerlord empire build, bannerlord empire factions

Id: fLSC-4eo0_k

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 11 2022