Manor Lords: [Achievement Guide] Mercenary Captain

At start, you will want to make enough money since it’s the only way to hire mercenary. I recommend doing the following things:

1. Spawn with Rich Iron Deposit
2. Focus on Trading
3. Tear Down Bandit Camps

This grants you a huge amount of income no matter in the short terms or long run. High value goods, such as sidearm, polearm, and helmet require Iron to craft. If you spawn at a region which doesn’t have many irons, restart a new game until you get one.

Sell as many goods as possible to generate money. This is where Iron comes in handy: Suppose we have 1500 Irons in total. This grants us 1500 x 4(Iron Slab selling price per unit) which equals 6000. Sounds great right? Things aren’t that easy however.

This gives you extra money and you can decide to contribute it to either Treasury or Regional Wealth, it’s up to you. Additionally, defeating bandits gives you more Influence which helps you claim regions more quickly.

All the trading income increases your Regional Wealth. You cannot use this type of money to hire mercenary. You have to turn that into your Treasury money through Taxation. I recommend set the tax rate between 10-15%.

How about a high tax rate, like 40-50% or above? You can do that but it prevents more family from moving into your settlement.
Less family = Less Workers = Less production in goods, which results in less money.

• Brigand – Fast, Agile, but weak (the weakest) mercenary unit. Raiders, good for flanking, distracting, and dealing with bandits.
• Light Mercenary Archer – Average mercenary ranged unit. Meat shield against Brigands.
• Heavy Mercenary Archer – Good armor. Very good at fighting Brigands.
• Light Mercenary Infantry – Average mercenary unit. Good for attacking, supporting, and holding grounds.
• Light Mercenary Spearmen – Good armor. The only melee mercenary that can do armor-piercing unit in the game.

Sorry I forgot to take screenshots at this point : (

• Local Thugs – Brownish-red background, with an axe and another weapon
• Brigands For Hire – Green background, with a bear in the middle
• The Brotherhood of the Forest – Light greenish-yellow background, a tree with roots in the middle
• The Wayward Sons – Blue background, with a yellow Lilium. The only group that has Heavy Mercenary Archers.
• Battle Brothers – Red background, with an arm holding an axe
• Flock of Crazy Geese – Beige background, with a rope hanging a roasted goose
• Greencaps – Dark blue background, with a green woollen hat and three arrows
• The Ravenous Vultures – A red vulture in the middle. Most expensive.

1. Enemy Retinue – This will be your highest priority. Target it with Mercenary Spearmen and support your spearmen with Mercenary Infantry. 1 Spearmen + 1 Infantry should do the job.
2. Flanking & Feint – Brigands are best for this task. Distract a portion of enemy army to buy time for your main force, or strike enemy units from sides while their flanks are undefended. Avoid using Brigands against enemy regular melee units unless necessary.
3. Flanking Archers – When enemy units are engaging your melee units, quickly move archers to their sides and toggle the “Fire at Will” ability. This will lay a huge stress on enemy’s morale. Combine it with the 2nd tactic.
4. MORE FLANKING

   – Flank whenever you can. Flank like it’s the purpose that you were born into this world. If one of your melee units is engaging, move the other ones to enemy’s side and FLANK!

All battles can be easily won by playing these tactics, except for the last one. Once you start claiming the last region that the opposing Baron is holding, he will send a troop that is double the size than usual.

According to my memory, he has:

• 2 Retinues
• 2 Light Mercenary Spearmen
• 3-4 Light Mercenary Infantry
• 3 Light Mercenary Archers
• 1 Brigand

I had Local Thugs, Brigands Fort Hire, The Wayward Sons, Greencaps, and Flock of Crazy Geese. I defeated him twice with quite different outcomes, one being I almost lost the battle. So tactic plays an crucial role here, a little luck as well. Normally you can do it with 4 to 5 mercenary groups. The more melee units the better.

Practice it first in small battles, I am sure you will learn it with ease.

The mercenary mechanism is bugged at this time and thus make this achievement much harder to get.

The AI will, most of the time, hire a mercenary group to attack bandits in a game, usually soon after a bandit camp spawns. The worst of all is that it tends to hire the most expensive one in the mercenary pool. If the mercenary hired by AI is disbanded or leave the map, you will lose access to that specific mercenary unit for the rest of the game. (As you may notice here, the AI and players share one mercenary pool)

This happens early in the game as you still trying to earn some money. It depends mostly on luck that the AI hire the cheaper/weaker mercenaries, so you can hire the better ones later. The only method I have found out so far to fix it is to declare war and defeat that unit on the battlefield. However, this reduces your influence and the game takes longer to finish.

This is the reason that I recommend you do a lot Load/Save. My technique is when a bandit camp shows up, I instantly pause the game and hire all the mercenaries available (but you need to have 1000+ in advance in your Treasury), then save the game. Repeat this until the camp is destroyed. (To be more precise, once the bandits roaming around the camp are defeated, the AI won’t hire mercenary to attack it)

Disbanding your own mercenary won’t have problems. They will be available next month. Be sure to save game and make multiple saves at each point where there’s a chance that something happens and ruins your entire playthrough.

• Make Money ASAP, the more the merrier
• Play Battles with Tactics
• Save game regularly

Please leave a comment if you have any question, I will be there to help you 😀