Mount&Blade/Footman

Way of the Foot Soldier:

Fighting on foot is by no means easy, you lack the speed of cavalry but you’re able to attack single opponents more easily, not held back to doing horse archery or mere ride by attacks. If you’re interested in something challenging then keep reading, if you want to keep doing ride by attacks or horse archery go to their areas.

I'll start off with advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages: Disadvantages:
 * you can quickly change direction.
 * can easily take advantage of an enemies’ weak points.
 * can participate in "melee pits" or snipe people from afar with a bow/crossbow.
 * slow move speed compared to horses
 * can be run over
 * more vulnerable to archers

That's it for A/D, now onto some builds and weapon A/D

There are many different builds for melee fighters.

Knight: A knight is a person with heavy armor, a good shield, good sword (usually) and an incredibly tough body, they’re the people who are first to charge in and those who defend the weak.

Knights usually opt for high str and some agility, choosing iron flesh, power strike, shields and athletics (to compensate for heavy armor). Knights are very tough but are also slow, you cant do many evasive moves and so much rely on blocking so there isn’t really any strategy or tips to it, just block every attack that comes your way.

Swordsman: A Swordsman is he who lives by the sword and dies by the sword, those who are powerful with many swords and quick on their feet.

Swordsmen usually opt for a balance of str and agi at least in the end, or opt for higher agi for more move speed choosing athletics, weapon mastery, power strike and sometimes iron flesh. Swordsmen are incredibly fast sword fighters and so must use that speed to their advantage, ill list a few useful things below.

Backstep: This is a sudden dodging maneuver. To back step first wait beyond the enemies range (so they cant hit you) for them to start an attack, just before they use it (they'll come at you) step backwards to avoid it, after which you can move in to attack, a 2h sword is ideal for this but it can be done with any weapon, even a bow.

Side Step: side stepping is less useful, its best used against spears. Same as above but sideways.

U walk: U walk, it’s like it says, a U :) simple as that, but doing it isn’t that easy, it’s designed to take down multiple enemies by moving in a U shape. Start at either end and walk along the U attacking at the closest point and repeating it. The U will mess with the enemies AI making it harder to hit, with high agi you'll step out of the way of EVERY attack before it hits.

Arrow Dodger: pretty simple thing to do; move from side to side if you see archers aiming at you. Move sideways just before they fire, and once they've released the arrow, move inthe other direction. The arrow will be aimed in the direction you were perviously heading, increasing your chances of dodging it.

Tips:
 * don’t get surrounded! Run long before they can do it.
 * try to pick off enemies.
 * try to start melee pits, that is where heaps of melee enemies come together to kill each other, circle around the enemy with some of your men (cavalry?) and rush the enemy.
 * when you have allied infantry nearby, you can do the following trick to easily kill lots of enemy melee units: hide behind your melee infantry, so that enemy units target them instead. Then, move around their flank, staying close to your allies (for example stand so that you have all your friendlies to the left, closest one within arm's reach). The enemy infantrymen will, for some reason, not pay attention to your flanking maneuver and you can kill a multitude of them with slashes on their backs (e.g. if your friendlies are on your left, do right-left swings to hit the backs of your enemies). Take a step back and forth after every couple of swings to make sure the enemies don't turn their attention to you.

Barbarian: Barbarians are the equivalent of the Spartans but faster and stronger.

Barbarians usually opt for very high agility and some str. They need to dodge, though they also need a decent str early on (11 at least) for their weapons. Barbarians prefer athletics skill over all others, with weapons mastery 2nd and power strike 3rd.

Barbarians fight similar to Swordsmen but don’t have the luxury of any armor or the use of a shield, this means they need to use the above techniques far more often to survive, I would recommend the use of a 2h sword or a long 1h with a shield, you'll want as much range as you can to keep away from all those mindless drones swinging at you wildly.

Lancers: As the name suggest, use polearms. I wouldn’t recommend it on an unmodded game, its pretty simple use the swordsmen techniques and formations at your starting point, you'll want VERY high power strike and athletics, you want to kill on your first hit because of your slow attacking speed. If you don’t kill cavalry with the first hit you’re going to get trampled.