How can I speed up the early game? I've been playing for

>>379187163
You don't. It's a long game of conquer until you become a god.

>>379187163
Ctrl + space if you haven't realised yet
Increasing your relation with villages lets you recruit more and better soldiers. Game's still fairly slow anyway

>>379187273
What do I do in the meantime then?
I've been raiding caravans for like a hour straight now

export and import stats abuse

>>379187163
Just enable cheats and give yourself 20k if it's that slow.

You should def be able to take over a castle with ladders with that amount of men.

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>woman on the cover
how the FUCK did the sjw get away with this?

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>>379187472
DO YOU HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST STRONG WOMEN?

>>379187392
>raiding caravans

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>>379187603
What's the matter, can't stand the sight of a strong nord woman?

Some mods have substantially tougher defences but I don't think conquering stuff takes too many troops in native. As long as they're high-end troops, 100 soldiers should be perfectly adequate.

As to how to get 100 fully trained soldiers, get trainer skill on yourself and all of your companions. Don't upgrade units until all of the units of that type can be upgraded (say, if you could upgrade 23 out of 24 T3 units to T4, the 23 "already upgraded" units share the experience they'd be getting with the final one).

Moreover, in native (less so in many mods) the best way to increase your maximum unit capacity is through renown acquired by winning battles you're not "supposed" to win. Garrisoning your forces and beating up large groups of sea raiders alone or with companions is the best way to do that, although assaulting garrisons or attacking armies while outnumbered would also do the trick.

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>>379188006
I hope you mean hispanic woman, anon.

>>379187163
>impregnate wenches
>acquire business
>befriend peasants
>beef up trainer
>infinite army

>>379187392
I'd rather not raid caravans or villages, reputation and honour are the one thing that's difficult and time-consuming to make up. If you're not fighting in any wars, you might even consider disbanding your forces and riding around winning tournaments, trading and then investing in businesses in cities.

>>379187392
Go north and grind sea raiders. You want to accumulate reputation and level up until a faction wants you.

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>>379187163
You could of taken a Kingdom already if you had a rhodok army backing you up.

>>379187163
Join a faction and get granted a town. You can do this by generally being useful and just ask people who have high relation with you to follow you to enemy strongholds. Keep conquering for them and request the castles/towns be awarded to you. Eventually the King will refuse, in which case you can choose the option to rebel against him and all of the towns/castles you've been granted will turn over to you. Once this happens, considering a town may have a garrison of say 300 men, go to it with your "100" (more is better) men and defend that town with your life. Keep repelling attacks until they fuck off, and set lords free always. Eventually the lords from that faction (make sure you make everyone your friend before doing this, and increase your right to rule) will defer to you, in which case you should immediately accept them and use their armies to conquer more.

By the way, to increase your right to rule hire every single companion in the game just to send them off on the message that you're a good king, and keep the ones you want. Once you've done this with every companion, your right to rule will be sufficient so that the entire game does not team against you. Once the faction you've rebelled from offers peace (after repelling probably many many attacks to your main town), you should probably accept it and focus on attacking other factions that do not surround you. When lords defer to you, even if you don't want to accept them, you can leave them in your court and they will not go anywhere.

t. guy who conquered calradia pretty quickly

Also the pace kicks up. Your first few towns/castles conquered take a lot longer than the second half. Once you get going, you will steamroll the whole game. Finally, get extremely good relations with one or two villages. I don't know if you know this, but a village with 99 relation with you will offer around 40 recruits in one go, and not only that, but they offer them upgraded footmen/veteran footmen.