Multiple times I would try to get other lords to help me, and while they initially agreed, they always seemed to wander away before the fighting actually happened. In 40 hours a lot of bad things can happen, and if you abandon the siege, the timer resets. For starters, two of the remaining castles they owned were siege tower-required ones, meaning a very lengthy (40 hours with Eng 6) prep period. Eliminating Swadia proved rather difficult however. I reasoned the only real progress to be made was to finish off Swadia, as with them eliminated I could afford a ‘rest’ period and simply protect against the other kingdoms.

Usually while I took one castle, two others fell, and multiple times I had to abandon a siege just to save one of my own holdings. While my personal force (100+ men now) was more than enough to strike down almost any army, there was only so much we could do, and every siege included a ‘downtime’ while the engines were built. With almost every other kingdom having declared war on the Nords, armies were spread thin and cooperation was lacking. Unfortunately as soon as I left the castle, it was taken by the Rhodoks the start of a very tiring trend. Getting them back was priority one, and in one siege I was able to recover all of them, plus add another castle under Nord control. As I last left off, I had lost a battle and had my companions captured.

Mount and blade floris companions