Playing Mount and Blade 2, I went Vlandian (The Normans) culture and have built up a nice little mercenary group. We've been going after roving bands of bandits and raiders while buying goods at one place and selling them to another that wants it for 2x or more the price. Selling off prisoners and their gear has helped too. Hiring mounted prisoners has also helped as the enemy archers have other horsemen to shoot at instead of just me. I was able to make a nice 20K Denari but then a series of unfortunate events destroyed my army and separated me with my companion. I was a prisoner of some raiders for a bit before I could escape. I reunited with my Companion (a shield maiden) and hired a couple more companions (a really decent pole-arm foot warrior and a healer I gave a bow to). I am rebuilding my army with Valandians and hiring some former bandit prisoners. One of the mountain passes in the northern part of Vlandia was just covered in raiders until I took out their hide-out. Now its less dangerous to bring an army of 50 troops through.
I am trying to be a good lancer, riding horseback and hitting with a lance can be really tough. I am starting to get the timing down. I usually end a battle with 1 or 2 kills (usually after the enemy routs), but my final battle last night before bed I got 8 kills! most was during the battle with a couple during the rout! Not sure what happened but wow was it great! But then the baby woke up so I had to save my game and go to bed. I still need to learn how to couch the lance, I only know how to stab. I'll have to google it later.
Tip for new players, if you want an easy time early game, go horse archer. Just leave your army in reserve and just ride circles around looters. It herds them into a dense group which makes nearly every arrow hit a target, earning you a lot of XP. After you're out of arrows you can send your army to finish them up and then use melee weapons on horse back during the rout to level that up too. I didn't set up my character for archery so I have pretty much only been using a lance, but watching some youtubers, it looks like shooting fish in a barrel.