AI issues/game breaking bugs :
1. Troop behavior in field battles :
A. AI sends in one row of infantry to engage player shieldwall. The remaining infantry mill around in the back while dying to archers. No attempt is made to flank/overwhelm the player shieldwall or to engage the archers. AI infantry simply walks in circles while it dies to player archers
B. Cav cannot hit anything and can be ignored. Cav charging an exposed flank of player archers will not kill a substantial amount of archers before dying
C. Skirmishing infantry (wildlings, etc.) do not know that they are skirmishers. When mixed with sheildwall troops, they will run up front and die in melee.
D. Empire and Aserai armies will often move back and forth between two nearby hills while dying to player ranged fire.
F. AI armies/parties do not assign captains and do not benefit from captain perks.
2. Troop behavior in siege battles
A. Defending troops start a long walk away from their 'defensive' positions. Attacking archers often can get in place and kill the defenders as they trickle up to the walls one at a time
B. If the attacker breaks two breaches in the walls (with trebuchets, for example) and focuses attacks on one breach, defenders from the un-attacked breach will run outside in an attempt to reposition and die to archer fire.
C. Sieges force melee engagements in tight quarters (on towers or in breaches). This tight-quarter combat is a massive advantage to the player who often has high- tier units. The AI do not have any way to use the walls as a force multiplier.
3. Army Behavior
A. Large armies will chase small parties that they cannot catch, wasting huge amounts of time.
B. Small armies will walk past large enemy armies to begin a siege, get stuck in the siege, and get wiped.
4. Wanderers
A. Wanderers continue to teleport across the map instantly. As a player, walking from Marunath to dautistica to hire the only scout, getting to vostrum, and seeing that scout has teleported to ostican. This is not a feature that any player wants.
B. Wanderers still spawn with attributes and focus that do not make any sense
5. Marriage is currently bugged if the target faction is at war (related to either the clan leader or potential spouse being in an army, I believe)
Design problems:
1. Early game -
A. Due to the way trade goods spawn in, the early economy is deflationary. This means that trade is generally not a viable way to play, outside of some cheeky quick flips.
B. AI lords aggressively snap up all of the recruits on the map, meaning that recruiting and hunting bandits is generally not viable for a decent chunk of time
C. Having Nomadic traditions (75 riding) and to a lesser extent sweeping wind feel absolutely mandatory to being allowed to play the game
D. The result of the above is that the only thing to do the first 10-20 days is to kite looters with a horse an a bow. Despite the nerfs, it's still effective. It's also even more boring and grindy than it used to be. The only thing worse than 1 hour kiting looters with a horse + bow? 2 hours doing it before being allowed to play the game.
E. AI lords do not have access to many of the game's most powerful skills, and therefore cannot challenge a player that has a general understanding of the game.
2. Late game -
A. Clan expansion: Due to the war/tribute mechanics, the 'only'* way to grow a kingdom is to hire clans. This means that with 2-3 million denars and 200 charm the game is 100% won. The only question is how to get these things. Winning fights against the odds is not even meaningful - Being able to beat an entire faction with just the player's one clan result in every enemy kingdom declaring war on the player.
B. Recruiting clans is not meaningful or immersive - it is just a matter of grinding cash. Set up caravans and let the game run overnight? You won.
C. There are no mechanics to stop the player from snowballing. Once you are the strongest faction in the map, your clans can defend and slowly expand your kingdom while you go from fief to fief sieging without getting pressured at all
D. Generational systems are irrelevant, as the 'gameplay' portion of the game is 3-5 years, with a full conquest taking 6-10 years, depending on the patch.
*You can, of course go with the exploit route of never declaring a kingdom and just buy the map. You can also save up enough seed money to buy peace with everyone except for 1 faction and just win wars with your clan vs a kingdom one at a time due to weak AI. These are things that should probably not be possible with good design.
Suggestions:
1. First and foremost, the game has to fight back.
2. Prioritize the AI issues. The game should provide a challenging experience, and feel lived-in for those of us who also want to role-play.
3. Full rework of the clan recruitment system. Recruiting a clan should be a big deal. Passing the charm check could unlock a chain of quests that conclude with the recruitment of the clan. Examples: Win three army vs army fights while outnumbered by over 100 troops, Conquer target clan's 'ancestral' territory and gift back. Capture and hand over 10 lords of rival clans, etc.
4. Give AI lords support skills (or wanderers) that match their culture: Medic for Aserai, roguery for sturgia, etc.
5. Implement anti-snowball mechanics: Clans of eliminated kingdoms being absorbed into AI kingdoms, AI kingdoms merging/allying, etc.
Very nice list, here is some of my feedback on this:
AI issues/game breaking bugs :
1: Can't say I experienced any of these, but they do seem bad. I did not know that about E specifically. This might be a design choice though. The point would be to give player a big power spike for having captains. I am not saying I agree with this, just what it could be.
2: Again, never really paid too much attention to this. Not really sure how to address 2C, it's kind of the whole point of sieges and choke point.
3: I have seen this, ridiculous. Needs to be updated.
4: Not really a big issue for me with the teleportation. They don't move often. When it happens it's pretty unlucky. As to skills/attributes, to me they are too predictable. Literally the same evertime. I wish there was some randomization. In Prophesu of Pendor, each companion had a set amount of skill points, +5 distiributed randomly on top. So you get in theory someone with normally 5 bow skill end up with 10 (though this would be ridiculously unlikely). I think randomization is key for good replay value.
5: Never seen this, but bad if there is some bug
Design problems:
1A: I like the first week or two. The trading becomes really interesting. But for me part of the fun is the randomness and unpredictability. Buy oil for 70 then go to some other town and find price of 700!!!! After this interesting period the trade become very boring. Always same thing. Buy olives in Vlandia, furs in the north, horses in Aserai etc.
1B: never really seen this being so bad. But I guess I don't recruit aggresively enough.
1C: Don't agree here. Nice to haves but not necessary at all
1D: I don't feel the need to do this ever. If the purpose it to level up, there are tons of ways to doing repetitive things like fighting forever in the arena, going around to take part in tournaments, doing trading circles around the map. You can sit around and starve your army to gain medicine. You can run around doing quests to get charm. You can literally do something like play board games for dozens of hours for money, etc. So there is nothing special about doing cirles as cav archer around looters.
1E: this is true. This is pretty much true for most games. AI either lacks all player options or cheats (money, experience, extra troops from nowhere etc) It's very hard to make an AI that is both "smart" and fun to play against. Some powerful skills/stats are hard for AI to employ smartly.
2. Late game -
This is the weakest part of the game. Agreed with all points. So much so that I pretty much never finish a sandbox campaing. As soon as I get to a point where vicotry is assured and the only thing remaining is a slog, I just start over. As a complete tangent, I recently read that many generals during WW2 felt this in the last year of the war. Both sides kind of knew who would win in the long run, but what remained was a brutal slog. This is in contrast to ordinary soldiers for whom the struggle was real even in literally the last day of the war as they could always lose (ie die or get really hurt).
I support all the suggestions!
The one about AI lords getting companions is quite a good idea, though this would require 100s of wanderers. I would like this if wanderers were more varied and their death chance was higher.
