Too many bandit parties. Which helps kill the game.

[[Rei]]

I'm sure this have been posted and said already, but I just want to add to the story that there are way to many bandit parties come mid & late game.

This, I believe is also ONE of the reasons, as there are multiple, on why lords and then factions die way to fast. Seeing as if one lord gets defeated and starts out with 0 units. He then gets captured by looters/raiders etc. If you take a second too look at your in-game feed you see it all the time.
As I said, I believe this to be one of the key points in game ending in 500-600 days. As I'm not fully invested, this was one I could think of from the top of my head but other forum users has also been making great suggestions in other threads wich should not be overlooked.

Hope the devs can get on this ASAP as this is the most pressing issue atm, seeing as it completely kills all the drive to play atm, and also for them to find the other best balancing changes for this other quite extraordinary game that we're all so passionate about!

As of writing moment 1.0.5 just got released (on a saturday!), where the devs adress this in one of their points, just hope more are coming!

 

[blazerules]

I'll admit I do see x captured by looters/bandits way more often than I should.

At first I chuckled, but it's a common occurrence. Considering how many swarms of looters and bandits you eventually get as lords dont seem to bother clearing them out I'm not surprised.

 

[[Rei]]

I'll admit I do see x captured by looters/bandits way more often than I should.

At first I chuckled, but it's a common occurrence. Considering how many swarms of looters and bandits you eventually get as lords dont seem to bother clearing them out I'm not surprised.

It's quite fun to see the mighty Raganvad, ruler of the north getting captured by looters.

 

[MrDayz]

I'll admit I do see x captured by looters/bandits way more often than I should.

At first I chuckled, but it's a common occurrence. Considering how many swarms of looters and bandits you eventually get as lords dont seem to bother clearing them out I'm not surprised.

This might be because of the fact that lords wander around with their 5+80w armies.

 

[[Rei]]

This might be because of the fact that lords wander around with their 5+80w armies.

Might also be one of the reasons yes.

 

[hallavar]

We need a lot of bandits party because we need to xp our troops.

If we had fewer bandit party we would have to search all over the map for them and it would make the game more slow that he already is.

The main issue is that killing those bandits don't give us enough xp, so we have to bash them over and over.

A solution : more xp per bands
more great bands
less 5/6 looter bands.

 

[[Rei]]

We need a lot of bandits party because we need to xp our troops.

If we had fewer bandit party we would have to search all over the map for them and it would make the game more slow that he already is.

The main issue is that killing those bandits don't give us enough xp, so we have to bash them over and over.

A solution : more xp per bands
more great bands
less 5/6 looter bands.

Completely diagree with you. You clearly dont see my point, and have you even reached to the point we're discussing?

 

[hallavar]

Completely diagree with you. You clearly dont see my point, and have you even reached to the point we're discussing?

There is 2 pb here, weak lords party that get destroy by looter/bandit.
And another pb which is that they is too many groups of bandit/looter.

That's what I understood from your previous posts
You can adrress the first pb as Taleworld tryed to do by strengthening the lord (that picks in their garnison where they run out of troops)

The secound one, for me isn't a pb because bandits is the most effective way to level up your new troops, as far as I know (no training camp).

And to answer your question, no i didn't go that far, I think I my most advanced party on the 300 day in game.

 

[Ichon]

This might be because of the fact that lords wander around with their 5+80w armies.

This definitely contributes. Also, the fact some of the bandits are actually really tough. I think I have had more difficult fights against bandits than any other opponents. Partly because the Lord's armies war so often they are often surprisingly weak especially if you can time when you catch them out while bandits start strong and just get stronger. Mountain bandits group that grows to 40+ with 20 highwaymen cavalry consistently are able to kill several of my highest tier troops every single battle which is far better than most of the Lords do. The arrow accuracy and range are part of that- the arrows are launched way before most of the soldiers start raising their shields and are accurate enough to catch cavalry who turn even briefly to stab at someone passing.

Taking out a Bandit hideout sometimes takes me longer than taking a castle! Granted mostly due to the artificial mechanic of only being allowed to attack with a small party and only being able to attack once a day but still...

 

[[Rei]]

This definitely contributes. Also, the fact some of the bandits are actually really tough. I think I have had more difficult fights against bandits than any other opponents. Partly because the Lord's armies war so often they are often surprisingly weak especially if you can time when you catch them out while bandits start strong and just get stronger. Mountain bandits group that grows to 40+ with 20 highwaymen cavalry consistently are able to kill several of my highest tier troops every single battle which is far better than most of the Lords do. The arrow accuracy and range are part of that- the arrows are launched way before most of the soldiers start raising their shields and are accurate enough to catch cavalry who turn even briefly to stab at someone passing.

Taking out a Bandit hideout sometimes takes me longer than taking a castle! Granted mostly due to the artificial mechanic of only being allowed to attack with a small party and only being able to attack once a day but still...

Only thing I can add to that is that you gotta tell your guys to raise their shields if you want that. F3 > F2 should do the trick. Took me a while to figure that out. Hideouts become easier after that.

 

[Ichon]

Only thing I can add to that is that you gotta tell your guys to raise their shields if you want that. F3 > F2 should do the trick. Took me a while to figure that out. Hideouts become easier after that.

Thanks- didn't notice that, will try a Hideout with all melee now and see how differently it goes.

 

[Beaowulf]

whats funny is that this all ties together with some poor design choices, the leveling system and renown system, you need large groups on bandits on the map to actually gain renown in the early game and level up your soldiers because they decided to make advancement in rank soly tied to kills, in warband it was kills+after battle experiance, where after a battle every soldier got X amount of experiance, and then the trainer skill gave good amount of experiance to all troops. there are perks that give XP yes but they only give the maximum of 30xp to a single soldier in a stack. so they need large groups of bandits, but then that affects the lords not being able to recruit and going bankrupt, wich causes the snowballing, wich causes the games to end early before the player can get up, because we are busy trying to chase that band of 10 looters across the map because its the only way to get stronger troops other than waiting 20 days in town to get a single soldier to rank 2. and in that time some factions have lost half their territory. this whole design is flawed as well because you have to make the choice between your character gaining XP and your soldiers gaining XP

 

[IrishFlogger]

whats funny is that this all ties together with some poor design choices, the leveling system and renown system, you need large groups on bandits on the map to actually gain renown in the early game and level up your soldiers because they decided to make advancement in rank soly tied to kills, in warband it was kills+after battle experiance, where after a battle every soldier got X amount of experiance, and then the trainer skill gave good amount of experiance to all troops. there are perks that give XP yes but they only give the maximum of 30xp to a single soldier in a stack. so they need large groups of bandits, but then that affects the lords not being able to recruit and going bankrupt, wich causes the snowballing, wich causes the games to end early before the player can get up, because we are busy trying to chase that band of 10 looters across the map because its the only way to get stronger troops other than waiting 20 days in town to get a single soldier to rank 2. and in that time some factions have lost half their territory. this whole design is flawed as well because you have to make the choice between your character gaining XP and your soldiers gaining XP

Bringing back battle experience would be a great fix, and it would compliment a bandit spawn rework quite well.

I'd also like to see bandit spawns tied to some level of kingdom disparity, not just random placements.

 

[Karl_Magnus]

They need to bring back Bounty Hunters and Town Patrols to reduce the numbers of bandits/looters stacks, but also Deserters.

The deserters in M&B1 were a good way to fight against better quality units (meaning better renown and loot) without it being enemy lords and in the case of M&B2, also mercenaries. It's necessary to make stacks of better quality, late game, not more numerous and frequent, that's just weird.

Thanks- didn't notice that, will try a Hideout with all melee now and see how differently it goes.

btw if you have patience and really want to get rid of big hideouts, you can go in and take out 3-4 isolated enemies in there, leave and come back the next night. There is no consequence in leaving the area, and enemies you kill won't be back unless they're just wounded. It takes some time in some cases, but you can keep busy with looters and bandits wandering in the area. They really need to let us choose the units we want to bring in, though. I don't want my healer and weaker heroes with me on a mission where they can't take out even one enemy in a 1v1.

 

[Ichon]

They need to bring back Bounty Hunters and Town Patrols to reduce the numbers of bandits/looters stacks, but also Deserters.

The deserters in M&B1 were a good way to fight against better quality units (meaning better renown and loot) without it being enemy lords and in the case of M&B2, also mercenaries. It's necessary to make stacks of better quality, late game, not more numerous and frequent, that's just weird.


btw if you have patience and really want to get rid of big hideouts, you can go in and take out 3-4 isolated enemies in there, leave and come back the next night. There is no consequence in leaving the area, and enemies you kill won't be back unless they're just wounded. It takes some time in some cases, but you can keep busy with looters and bandits wandering in the area. They really need to let us choose the units we want to bring in, though. I don't want my healer and weaker heroes with me on a mission where they can't take out even one enemy in a 1v1.

I forgot about the deserters and bounty hunters. That would be great to see make some comeback. The occasional piece of high level gear you just couldn't find in a store was great as well.

The 80+ hideouts take forever to clear going 5-6 at a time as often of the 5-6 that you can clear consistently with 0 damage only 3-4 are kills so to clear 80 it takes just under a month as the wounded heal in 2-3 days meaning you have to take them out repeatedly and chase off the other bandits. Once you get the 80 down to 30ish you can clear it in a single rush if you make no mistakes but even 1 arrow/javelins you didn't see means another few days.

After having done hideouts exclusively for the past 8 hours of realtime I have gotten quite a bit better at them but the main stumbling block is that when there are large numbers of bandits the hideouts have 2-3 areas with 10+ bandits and I have not made it past those groups without losing 2-3 in my attack party yet. I did clear a 40+ in a single rush last night but it was with the 'perfect' group of companions and high level soldiers from my party that got randomly selected and I had to take out the boss and his 4 henchmen by myself. I think that was only possibly due to 1 of the henchmen bugging out and just standing still.

 

[Mishka]

I highly disagree, bandits numbers are just right, and nicely balanced by the fact that there is little of them at the beginning, and ton at the late game.

1) You really need those to exp your troops and unlike looters, bandits are a good way of getting some more expensive equipment as well, mountain bandits are even a reliable source of war horses.
2) One of the easiest ways to get positive relationship with villages and lords is to protect villagers when they get attacked by bandits - again, the more of those opportunities there is, the better.
3) They move so slowly that its really hard to get caught by them at any point for both the player and AI lords, so even with tons of them running around, every single encounter is voluntary. The only units that have trouble running from them are the villagers and again - that creates very nice opportunities for the player and something "to do" for lords.

Now your main argument is, that too many lords are killed by them - that has nothing to do with their numbers, AI for lords is currently (ver. 1.0.5) absolutely screwed up. They dont recognize when they run out of food and so they starve, they dont recognize when they have wounded units and so they rush into battles they cant possibly win - THAT is the problem, has nothing to do with number of bandits on the map.