- For towns in Mount&Blade: With Fire & Sword, see Towns (With Fire & Sword).
Towns are the commerce and industrial centers in Mount&Blade. They are supported by raw materials by the surrounding villages and trade caravans from other towns. The player will interact with towns frequently to rest, sell loot, purchase goods and equipment, and establish businesses.
In the original Mount&Blade, there were 18 towns in Calradia. Mount&Blade: Warband added one more faction, the Sarranid Sultanate, along with its four new towns to bump the total up to 22.
(Note, Zendar was a neutral city positioned between the Nords and Vaegirs that players began the game in. It existed until patch 0.950 when it was removed from the game.)
In order to take control of a town, you must besiege it or convince the owner to join your faction. Once you have successfully won control of a town, you can manage it and station a garrison there. Each town also grants control of two or more villages.
Actions in Town
Periodically a town may be hosting a Tournament:
- Join the tournament: Victory will improve your reputation with the town as well as offering good betting profits.
If the controlling faction isn't hostile, you can do the following at a town:
- Go to the castle: This lets you enter the keep of the castle, where you can interact with any nobles who are currently in the castle.
- Take a walk around the streets: From here, you can talk to the villagers, trade with the merchants or visit the Guild Master (who will give you quests).
- Visit the tavern: Here, you can recruit mercenaries or heroes, interact with travellers, and talk to ransom brokers who will buy your prisoners. You can also approach the tavern keeper and pay 1000 denars to make the residents like you more, by buying a drink for everyone.
- Enter the arena: Here, you can compete in melee tournaments. You must fight a large group of men and survive. You will gain some gold depending on how many men you have knocked unconscious. This ranges from 5 denars (if you knocked 3 men unconscious) to 250 denars (if you are the last one standing).
- Go to the marketplace: At the marketplace, you can buy or sell arms, armor, horses, food or goods. Also, you can assess the local prices, which tells you some good ways to make money quick by trading.
- Wait for some time: If you own the town, this is free, but if you do not own it then it will cost you 1 denar per 4 troops in your party per night.
- Buy land for a Productive Enterprise: This was added in a recent update. The option appears if you talk the guildmaster.
If you own the town, you can do the following as well:
- Station a garrison here: You may put soldiers from your party into the town as garrisons. They can help to defend the town if people want to siege it, and make it less likely for prisoners to escape. You may also put captured prisoners in the city.
- Manage this town: You may build a messenger post (which lets you know when enemies are nearby) or a prisoner tower (which reduces the chance of prisoners escaping).
If you are also a monarch of your own faction, you gain one more option (this is disabled if the town already is the capital):
- Move your court here: You may relocate the royal court of your kingdom to this city. This requires Velvet and Tools.
Guild Master
Guild masters allow you to do multiple things within a town. If your reputation with the town and the owner of the town is above zero, or you are the ruler of the town, you may buy land within the town for a Productive Enterprise, which will earn a profit based upon a myriad of factors each week.
Guild masters can also give you jobs and quests, which increase your reputation with the town. Some of these quests can help improve the prosperity of the town, which influences goods prices and taxes. A full quest list can be found on the quests page, but some of these jobs are:
- Escort caravan
- Bring ale/wine to tavern
- Rescue kidnapped girl
- Deal with looters (multiple small groups of nearby looters)
- Hunt down bandits (find and kill a small, fast group of bandits)
- Deal with troublesome bandits (kill a medium sized group of nearby bandits. Very troublesome in Khergit or Sarranid towns where you will fight all-horsemen bandits)
- Bring cattle herd (to another town)
- When a faction is at war, a city may want you to silence warmongers preventing peace within the warring factions, giving you many Denars for doing so.
Guild Masters also give you information about the politics of Calradia, as well as informing you of the general prosperity of the town and surrounding areas. They also guide you as to which towns are most dangerous for your own trade enterprise.
Mount&Blade: With Fire & Sword replaces Guild Masters with Mayors and lets you build buildings and employ men for special jobs through him.
Buildings
In Mount&Blade and Warband, you can construct two buildings:
- Prisoner tower: Decreases the chance of escape for imprisoned lords. Captured lords have a 50% chance to escape in your party and a 30% chance to escape while in prison. A prisoner tower reduces this chance to 5%.
- Messenger post: this building is identical to the village improvement; it notifies you of nearby enemy movement even if you're far away.