Mount and Blade: The Merchant Prince

I seem to be addicted to this game now. Anyway, I made this new character of noble birth and who had a childhood as a merchant. So I increased his intelligence and charisma. I also increased his trade and leadership skills and placed points in most of the charisma and intelligence related skills. The good thing about being of noble descent is that I have a pretty good riding skill so I can use the better horses at the start.

Well Mount and Blade is technically an RPG but it's combat is very action - sim. You can certainly beat enemies of way higher level as long as you dodge and attack at the right moment. However, when you yourself are surrounded by butcher knife wielding farmers, you still can lose even if you have a the latest armor and skills. Even though my character isn't a macho barbarian, he can pretty much hold
his ground against enemies.

What I first did for my new character - The Don, was to train him in the training grounds. The training grounds give 100 xp per level you beat and it does help in training your various weapon skills. If you complete the melee combat training, you're bound to go up to level 2. I actually made the Don once but didn't go to the training grounds. I recruited some peasants but was immediately ambushed by sea raiders and I was killed (though there was 2 enemies left) and I decided to restart the game but this time, take a few more extra troops and train myself up before venturing in the world.

The amazing thing about riding and starting with a staff is that you can be a lancer right from the start. In those movies where you have knights jousting, you can pretty do that in this game. All you have to do is have a polearm (spear, pitchfork, quarterstaff) and a fast horse. You charge your horse towards the enemy and try to aim the lance (takes some skill actually) at the person. If you do it right, you'll be able to do a huge amount of damage (usually kill them outright).

I started this merchant prince with a large army right off the bat. I recruited 10 Nords and bought linen and sold them at another town for a good profit. I also managed to get a charger horse (a horse that's really quick and does good trample damage) and get myself a decent spear (instead of that wooden quarterstaff). I got to pick a banner at the start of the game unlike my first character. I'm not really sure if I could become a lord or even king later on but my primary goal of this character is to amass a huge amount of wealth and bring a large army along. Now, The Don has an army of 15, with a horse archer hero and some mercenary cavalry to complement his Nord Footmen. Let me see if The Don will achieve his dreams of wealth and fortune.