Real lords will start joining you slowly, and much more rapidly if you manage to defeat another faction (effectively replacing it on the world stage).ДЇorming your own faction is the hardest thing in the game. You will probably have to use your companions as 'lords' but they're bad compared to the real lords. The other kings hate new kingdoms and you're pretty much weaker than them in any war that breaks out. If you leave the fief behind by asking the king to leave first, things go a little better for you, but not great. Now for forming your own kingdom, sadly that will destroy most of the relationships with your current faction and the lords in it if you try to take your current fief with you. You build up lots of relation points with them and when you ask them to rebel they usually say yes. In fact, one of the recommended ways to have a rebellion be successful is wage war against the original faction, but release all the lords you capture.

Another way to raise lord relations is to defeat them in battle, capture them, but then release them. The lord relations also go up based on quests for them or assisting them in battle. If you meant faction relations in general, those are raised by assisting that factions groups in battle or doing quests for the cities in that faction. If he says yes, you're aligned! Hurray! If he says no, then do some quests for him and raise your renown past 200. What about your companions? What are you having them do?ДЇor faction alignments, go ask the King of that faction if you can be their vassal. Eventually I want to get to the point where I establish my own kingdom, is there a way to do that without throwing away the connections I've already built?I prefer more cavalry in my army composition, but your strategy is quite solid for what you are using. This seems to be working pretty well but I'm sure there are a couple things that I'm missing.ДЄlso, how do you choose which faction to align with? I'm a vassal of the Rhodoks, my wife is a fairly well-connected Nord woman. When the battle starts I position my crossbowmen at the top of a hill, have my infantry form a defensive line 10 steps down the hill, and then harass the enemy on horseback (I use the lance with my horse, love it) while my crossbowmen rain death. Anyone have some advice about army management and strategy? My army is about 2/3 Rhodok crossbowman and 1/3 Nord infantry with maybe 1 or 2 cavalry units.

Mount and blade warband getting started