Bannerlord is good, but after more than 50 hours you know that most armies start looking alike by mid-campaign. Vlandian knights and Imperial infantry fight the same battles, AI clans remember nothing from previous encounters, and spears in close combat are just attractive wooden sticks.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord army and troop mods address this. Some change things so fundamentally that your next playthrough feels entirely different.
Living Armies
ISKL’s Living Armies tackles a specific problem: vanilla AI clans keep fielding the same troops even after you spend a year crushing them with heavy cavalry. It gives factions a memory: clans analyze actual combat experience and gradually adapt troop composition and equipment to current threats.
- Five combat specializations: anti-cavalry, anti-ranged, shield wall, siege specialist, and skirmisher
- Veterans: troops from victorious clans appear with higher-tier equipment
- Defensive adaptation: clans taking heavy losses start choosing shields and protective gear
- Frontline memory: a clan can adapt differently to different enemies
- Terrain adaptation: armies change according to where they fight most often
- Imitating the winners: defeated clans can adopt their conquerors’ tactics
- Experience fades gradually, so clans react to present threats rather than decade-old wars
- Full MCM support
✅ What changes on the campaign map: Troops stop acting like dummies. A clan repeatedly crushed by your cavalry eventually fields spearmen and changes its approach. That is what I have always missed in the base game: some sense that the enemy is thinking.
Niriil’s Troop Tree Reforms
Niriil’s Troop Tree Reforms rebuilds every faction’s troop trees, addressing issues its author, and most experienced players, have long considered broken: practically indestructible shields, useless close-range spears, and cavalry smashing straight through pikemen when it should not. Every troop type gains a clear combat role, making army composition genuinely important.
- Four infantry types: swordsmen with one-handed weapons and shields, spearmen with shields, two-handed shock troops, and skirmishers with throwing weapons and shields
- Much weaker shields that two-handed axes and skirmisher javelins can actually break
- Hand-reworked spears: higher damage and proper resistance to cavalry, but ineffective at point-blank range
- Cavalry upgrades require more horses; couched lance charges are reserved for elite nobles
- Distinctive factions: Vlandian heavy cavalry, Battanian skirmisher waves and aggression, and Sturgian walls of heavy spearmen
- Recommended alongside RBM’s AI Module version 3.8.8 and Unblockable Thrust
✅ What changes in battle: You can no longer ignore army composition. A shield wall will not survive a rain of javelins: skirmishers break it apart. Shock troops finally do their job, and spearmen facing cavalry are no longer a joke.
TroopTree Forge — Procedurally Generated Troop Trees
TroopTree Forge tackles a problem no other mod solves: new kingdoms created through rebellions, diplomacy, or custom starts all share the same troop tree. It generates a distinctive tree in-game as a faction forms, based on the kingdom’s name and culture.
- Instant generation when a kingdom is founded, without restarting
- Stats, equipment, and upgrade paths tied to faction culture
- Customization through the castle menu: secondary culture, troop type, elite unit, and naming traditions
- Clan troops that develop alongside the player’s clan
- War Sails support, including Nord units and naval troops for all factions
- Automatically uses other mods’ items during generation
- Finished rosters saved as XML for use as standalone mods
✅ Why it matters in long campaigns: Every new kingdom becomes a distinct opponent. A Sturgian rebel faction gets its own troop tree, different from the original faction. Your kingdom’s troops develop as it expands: more towns mean higher available tiers.
Dynamic Armies (Troop Tree Overhaul)
Dynamic Armies, or DARM, does what vanilla Bannerlord never managed: each faction fights in its own way rather than fielding a little of everything. It reduces the number of unit types per faction while making them more specialized, using Open Source Armory assets for varied equipment.
- Reworked troop trees emphasizing faction identity
- Fewer troop types with greater specialization
- Open Source Armory assets for visual variety
- An emphasis on tactical depth rather than unit numbers
✅ How opponents change: Each faction needs a different approach. One relies on infantry pressure; another wears you down with horse archers. Fighting each should feel different, something the base game barely offers.
More Unit Tiers
More Unit Tiers addresses a persistent Bannerlord problem: progression abruptly stops at tier 6, and power jumps between tiers feel too sharp and unjustified. It adds intermediate and higher tiers, reaching tier 10 for some factions, making recruitment and development noticeably smoother.
- New units within existing trees
- Intermediate tiers filling gaps between tiers 3 and 6
- Historically accurate equipment
✅ What it adds to campaigns: Your army develops without sudden leaps. Progression remains satisfying much longer than in vanilla, where a few battles take you from militia to elite knights.
Retinues — Custom Clan and Kingdom Troops
Retinues gives both player and AI clans something Bannerlord has never had: personal troops that grow with the clan throughout a campaign. It is a complete system, with equipment unlocked through participation in battles and combat experience, rather than simply a set of extra units.
- Custom troop trees
- Elite Retinues troops with recruitment limits
- Equipment unlocked through combat experience and battle participation
- Bannerlord 1.2+ support
✅ Why use it: Your soldiers stop being a random bunch gathered from the nearest tavern. They reflect your campaign, and the longer you fight, the more formidable your personal force becomes.
Troop Editor
Troop Editor is an in-game visual editor for players who find ready-made troop mods too restrictive. Edit vanilla units and create complete custom trees while playing, without manually changing XML.
- Visual troop editing through the game interface
- Custom units and upgrade paths
- Export your results and keep your custom units with you
✅ Who it suits: If you want a completely personal roster for a particular roleplay concept, or simply dislike another modder’s stat changes, Troop Editor gives you control without fiddling with files.
Warlords Battlefield — Bannerlord Branches Troop Overhaul
Warlords Battlefield is the largest mod in this selection. While the others rework existing content, it adds a huge amount: 30 new clans, 750 new units, and 250 new weapons, alongside expanded troop branches for major factions, minor factions, and bandits.
- 30 new clans with their own troops
- 750 new units with expanded upgrade trees
- 250 new weapons
- Versions with and without RBM support
- Requires a new game to work properly
✅ What changes on the map: Calradia becomes more populated and less familiar. Each unfamiliar clan brings its own troops and identity. Sieges stop featuring the same familiar soldiers on every wall.
Enhanced Troops Reforged
Enhanced Troops Reforged addresses Bannerlord’s long-standing equipment jumble, with Nords in leather and Vlandians wearing Imperial greaves. It completely re-equips every unit using assets from OSA, OTA, EOE, and Anno Domini, avoiding fantasy pieces and mismatched gear. Every faction looks the way it should.
- All troops fully re-equipped with historically appropriate gear
- Cultural authenticity for every faction without exception
- Sensible visual variety within each faction
- Customized helmets and accessories
- Compatible with existing saves
✅ How it affects the game: This may be the first mod you want simply for screenshots. The battlefield starts looking like a historical reenactment instead of a costume party mixing incompatible armor from different periods.
Vanilla Recruitment Overhaul Reworked
Vanilla Recruitment Overhaul Reworked adds no new units; it changes recruitment itself. It divides the standard tree into five branches: militia, tiers 0-2, around 5% of troops; irregulars, 1-3, around 30%; regulars, 2-4, around 25%; professionals, 3-5, around 20%; and nobles, 4-6, around 15%. Mid-tier soldiers become the army’s backbone rather than a temporary stop before another upgrade.
- Five separate recruitment branches instead of one
- Some vanilla units renamed and moved into more logical branches
- “Shadow” copies of certain units, identical in stats but belonging to another branch
- Compatible with Enhanced Troops Reforged and RBM Troop Overhaul
- Requires ATC, Adonnay’s Troop Changer
✅ How recruitment changes: You no longer need to chase only tier-6 elites. A solid army of tier-4 and tier-5 troops can perform well already, removing that sense of stockpiling units pointlessly before their final upgrade.
Mod installation recommendations
Troop mods rarely conflict directly, but load order and dependencies matter. Keep these details in mind before installing.
- Read Requirements on each mod page. Living Armies needs Harmony, ButterLib, UIExtenderEx, and MCM; Enhanced Troops Reforged needs a whole list of armory packs.
- Load Enhanced Troops Reforged after RBM and armory mods, but before Smart RBM Patches and Smart Item Culture Assigner. The wrong order creates equipment conflicts.
- VRO will not run without ATC, Adonnay’s Troop Changer.
- When updating TroopTree Forge from an earlier release, manual installation is preferable to Vortex.
- Niriil’s Troop Tree Reforms works correctly only with RBM’s AI Module version 3.8.8, not a newer one. Without it, spearmen will not behave as intended.
- Load Living Armies after MCM.
- Warlords Battlefield requires a new game: do not add it to an existing save.
- Before combining multiple troop-tree mods, check their pages for compatibility patches.
Army and unit mods often clash with other balance changes, including RBM, so load order is crucial. If you are unsure how to arrange them, the Bannerlord Mod installation guide explains the logic behind it.
Which Bannerlord troop mod should you install first?
It depends on your biggest frustration. For AI that fights intelligently and responds to your tactics, Living Armies is the clear choice. If all factions feel alike, try Niriil’s Troop Tree Reforms or Dynamic Armies. For better visuals without a fantastical equipment jumble, Enhanced Troops Reforged changes army appearance immediately and noticeably.
For building your own kingdom: Troop Tree Forge and Retinues together give you an army that develops alongside your campaign. VRO works well with Enhanced Troops Reforged, changing recruitment without disrupting vanilla balance.
Army mods change faction balance, but work best within a considered setup. Reworked troops look better with new armor, fight more interesting battles with changed weapons, and inhabit a livelier world with town and bandit mods. My full Bannerlord collection guide explains how to combine everything without breaking the game.
If I missed a mod you think belongs here, send it my way. I will check it personally and add it if it meets the standard. To bring these ideas together, use my Bannerlord mod collection guide to plan the rest of your setup.
