with fire and sword mount and blade wiki

If the army that is raiding the village is not very strong, the villagers will fight to assist you, although their resistance will not be very powerful. Building a Watch tower will lengthen the time it takes for a village to fall, thus allowing you to come to their rescue.

If the village is attacked, only the farmers are there to defend it. Unlike fortifications, villages cannot hold a garrison. For every 10 relation, you can recruit one higher tier of troops. at 10 you can get 0-11 at 20 you can get 0-16).

If it is 4 or higher, your relation will be divided by 2, then added to 6 to determine your maximum (e.g. If your relation is between 0-3, you can get 0-8 recruits. If you have 10 or more reputation with the village while at war with its faction, you can still recruit from them, but this will result in less morale for that faction's troops. You get another chance to recruit any time your reputation with the village changes, so recruit before helping a villager or progressing on a quest and recruit again after the reputation changes to gain additional volunteers. The troops you get are always from the faction the village is originally from. This fee is static, regardless of troop quality if the proposed volunteers are of a higher tier, they will still cost 10 denars each, thus saving some upgrade money. If you decide to recruit them, you will pay 10 denars each to help them with their equipment. The amount and quality of the volunteers depend on your renown and reputation with the village. Unless the villagers dislike you, you can ' Recruit Volunteers' to your party. The reputation only lowers when you actually enter the loot screen, so if you accidentally choose the wrong option you can pick 'Forget it' and avoid the reputation penalty. You can buy goods from the village or force them to give you their supplies forcing them will lower your reputation with them.

With fire and sword mount and blade wiki