they're pretty much there intentionally to slow down your progress, yes the game is supposed to be hardcore at least in the start, however robber knights are beatable

- generally they deter players from gaining an army in the starting point (before 100-120 units) for the most part there's very few enemies that are dangerous outside of factions, the sons of the mist for example are like the only other enemy faction that poses a threat to you... you'll need 200 veterans to take them out or a lot of archers etc...

- so you have to decide what's more important to you, and winning battles is not important early game, developing yourself is... leveling up your character, that requires doing quest and building relationships with everyone... you'll find some people start the game off without units except companions... or smaller armies, that way you can out run the robber knights with either matching speed or beyond matching... they'll stop following you if you're too fast

- the way you should think about it is paying police and paying government... they're the travel police etc, border patrol... you enter their land you pay the fee the tax etc... so if you're trading then find easier trade routes to profit... like using boats for example, you can make a lot of money just flying back and forth, you only pay the boat fee to avoid the knights, once you acquire 100 strong units they'll back away due to fear

- now let's say you wanna serve the reach or stormlands, or a faction that is near the hot zone... this is a more trickier situation because the knights will stupidly attack you despite being surrounded by 1000 of your faction units and faction vassals... that part of the game is unrealistic lmao... but good news is you will always win those battles however you'll affect your faction strength due to casualties, yeah that means leeching onto your friends like a scared girl and her strong husband but that's part of the game, once you acquire enough units you're good !

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TLDR : so yeah either avoid them with speed by travelling lightly with only companions or small calvary units etc (probably get 10-30 people) also don't forget leveling your path finding on your companions, trade routes with boats to avoid the hot zone

or play outside the hot zone (like play around in the North) until you get an army strong enough to scare them away... for beginners I'd recommend that, fight for the Starks
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that's my experience I'm no expert or anything, if anyone else has a better way I'm interested... if there were no robber knights you could basically run around westeros taking out all enemies and making bank walking back and forth with salt iron or furs and wool bags, cha CHING BA BING NARCOS MONEY

But there's already so much barring the player's progression. Troop upkeep and recruitment cost is so expensive that the player has to spend the first 80 days trading in order to build up the funds to hire an army at all, let alone build up one strong enough to deter the knights from chasing you. With them around, the player is also bottlenecked into the northern territories, and gets punished immensely for trying to side with any faction south of the Riverlands. The second you have an army, it gets mowed down by 35 late game knights who can outrun any army on the map. It's boring and frustrating and drags the game out way longer than it should be. Beyond that, they aren't even an actual faction that opposes you and the AI, just an obvious roadblock meant to bar progression. Please add an option to remove them.

(280 days in, i have one castle :D) - in base warband im sure i had Wercheg (northern Nord city) at like day 80

i now have 200 men, hardhome and the westernlands have most of the entire map... crap....

Yes dude, download something like Morgh's editor and change the troops in the robber knight party template, or change the robber knight troop or both. You can also edit their faction relations so the major factions will actually see them as bandits.
And if you don't want to download an editor for some reason you can go into the troops text file, find robber knights and edit them manually but you'll have to look up what the text lines mean. Google how to edit warband troop text and something will pop up

Originally posted by Alex'O'Lucky:

(280 days in, i have one castle :D) - in base warband im sure i had Wercheg (northern Nord city) at like day 80

i now have 200 men, hardhome and the westernlands have most of the entire map... crap....

took me like 300 days to "get good"... in terms of my own castle, decent eco, can build armies now, gear etc

vanilla warband is like 5 days for max loot and full gear lmao

Originally posted by Tankripper475:

With them around, the player is also bottlenecked into the northern territories, and gets punished immensely for trying to side with any faction south of the Riverlands.

first time I made a Dornish character

it's not easy lol but it can be done... but I reckon the majority of people don't main the game like I do, 20-30 characters last two years

people have to stop comparing AWOIAF to other mods... awoiaf is intentionally supposed to be "hardcore" (assuming you play default settings) + gore

you're supposed to feel helpless and suffer for the first 200 days or so, the grind is hard and tough... but once you get past that point you have your own castle own eco... you know your faction and how they operate... telling you dude it's possible

people who just complain about certain features just don't understand how to beat them, someone I knew was crying about the falling down feature if you walk backwards or the "morale feature" where troops will leave if the morale sucks, but he believed you can march human beings 5000 days without rest lmao

That doesn't excuse the poorly designed and blatantly contrived nature of Robber Knights. Progression is already long enough as is, and the cascade of glitches and crashes drag out a campaign even longer than it should be. Vanilla is easy to snowball, yes, but that's because the devs want to usher the player into the meat and potatoes of the game swiftly. They wouldn't be so infuriating if they were an actual faction or you could turn them off (like every other mechanic that you just listed).

I don't like the Robber knights. Although, I have had success with a smaller force beating them. Making camp just before they come to attack. The don't fair well once they get slowed down by the camp barricades. You can also try to fight them in trees or amass atop a hill. Anything to breakup and slow down their charge.

grab a fast horse a a long 1 handed sword and a bow u can solo any amount, by just kiting them in circles killing all the horses then shooting the knights

also cant you just counter calvary with a bunch of spearman (peasants) lmao
spearman stop horses in their tracks entirely

I love them - they usually have huge prison trains of all tiers so any time I need new army I go for hunt:p

A couple small, harmless cheats go a long ways to making this mod a bit more bearable at the start! Just sayin'