How to Become the Owner of a City or Village in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord

One of the standout features of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is the immense freedom of action in a medieval world. This includes governance: in the game, you can become a king and lead your own kingdom or follow a ruler. Either way, this involves owning land. In our guide, we will tell you how to obtain a city, castle, or village in Mount & Blade 2 for your use.

Any land—be it a city, castle, or village in Mount & Blade 2 — is a treasure worth its weight in gold. They are necessary for the kingdom to exist: without property, you cannot rule.

Property brings in gold, allows you to station your troops, recruit new ones, and in cities, you can trade and hold meetings with lords.

Land is available to the player either as a king or as a vassal. You can become a vassal by swearing loyalty to the leader of any kingdom. For this, your clan must be level 3 or higher. In the game, the clan level is determined by the Renown indicator (Renown) — it can be earned in battles, tournaments, winning board games against lords, and so on.

As a vassal, you should pay attention to the Influence indicator (Influence) — it will be decisive in matters of land. And in many other matters as well.

At some point, your state will be at war. When capturing a city or castle during the war, the state holds a vote: among the captors, the one deemed worthy to govern the place is determined. This is decided by the highest number of votes. Everyone can vote: both those who participated in the capture and the other lords.

Thus, if you participated in the capture, you can compete for the throne of the city. To do this, you need to go to the «Kingdom» tab (Kingdom, the rightmost button in the lower-left corner. Default key: K) from the world map screen. There, within the game's day from the moment of the territory's capture, a vote will take place: if you do not enter there within 24 hours, you will not be able to participate in the elections!

If you plan to win the election, you need support. And here you need to remember about friends: you will have their votes only if you ask them to support you. And to ask for such, you must be on good terms and spend influence points. However, keep in mind that your victory will spoil relations with those who could not win against you.

It is not necessary to serve someone to capture lands — you can take them yourself. It's simple: you must besiege and capture a city that belongs to a hostile state. The only problem is the siege itself.

Cities and castles are guarded by large armies, and you will need a lot of troops or very good tactics (preferably both). You can try to take a city through a long-term siege, forcing the inhabitants to starve until they surrender, but this method will likely take even longer than the first. And you will have to restore the ruins yourself.

In any case, when capturing land, you should choose a target: city or castle. Individual villages cannot be captured. Each large settlement is connected to 2-3 villages that sell goods in the city. These villages will also become yours.

As a rule, the garrison in cities is significantly larger, and in the middle or even at the beginning of the game, taking it will be very difficult. As your first possession, it is worth using a castle, as they are easier to capture and guarded by a smaller garrison.

We will not cover the conduct of battles in this guide: the game provides enough material for learning combat. We strongly recommend not avoiding it — understanding battles in Bannerlord can be challenging at first.