I stick to Bannerlord difficulty which means I take full damage from everything and that’s pretty much resulted in every game becoming a battle commander/politician build. Works well since I tend to rush through early-game ASAP and enjoy playing the scheming vassal in the mid-game.

How I play the vassal varies though. Sometimes I’ll be a imperial marcher lord, holding a couple fortresses against the Battanian and Vlandians. Other times I’ll be a small semi-independent princedom that needs to constantly play it’s larger neighbors off one another to survive by defecting to new factions every so often, or a Tywin Lannister-type build where I become the richest noble in the land and bankroll all of the other clans. My favorite so far though is the pretender campaign, where I RP my vassalage to a foreign ruler as them backing me for the throne in the faction that has my culture in exchange for future “favors” if I win.