After playing a bit more I noticed that if some faction has a poorly manned city/castle, they often get a war declared on them and all armies then march on that fief, even if it is quite far away from their border. It's logical that would happen, but it would also stand to reason that reinforcing that fief would be the first priority of the lord. But a lot of conquered castles don't have any garrison, just the militia, which are quite poor soldiers and there is just like 100 of them. Maybe adding small number of higher tier militia would also help. Because right now they basically don't stop any army.
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SP - World Map My thoughts on the Faction Snowball effect. Campaigns should go on forever!
- Thread starter Koartz
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duchuy613
Veteran
Are you sure they just didn't get caught? Either that or they behave differently if the player is from their own faction because I literally stood there looking at four parties of Battanian lords running around like headless flies. Or maybe their scouting skill was too low and couldn't see each other at night.
No that was intentional. I even attacked armies together with the AI that was nearby. They came closer with me together to attack. Really cool when it works.
But as you said there are also plenty of situation where there just 5 lords randomly running around like bandits despite being much bigger together as the thread.
But as you said there are also plenty of situation where there just 5 lords randomly running around like bandits despite being much bigger together as the thread.
Well i personal perferee the army System over the Warband Way. Its just the better Way. Maybe if and Empire Assambles and Army to send it to the Enemy, the attacked kingdom shoud assamble one as well on order to meet them in field.
I my last game as Sturgia, every time the Sturiganm Army marched to Vlandia, the Vlandias sent their own army. I had several awesomme 500 vs 500 battles.
It seem to work fine
Limbojack
Veteran
I think the snowballing issue might be a tad more complex than this. Yes, I'm sure both a bad AI and the current army system plays a role in it, but they are by no means solely responsible for it. That being said, the amount of snowballing seems to have been reduced with the later patches and especially the change to clan defections in 1.0.5 has helped a lot. Again, there are so many systems that interact with each other, so your approach is most likely a bit simplistic.
Broxogar
Recruit
The issue isn't really any of those things.
The issue is that there is absolutely no disadvantage to expanding your territory. You just wind up with more money, more lords and bigger armies.
That's the nub of it - things like attrition / army size / lord behaviour are all symptoms - not the cause.
The issue is that there is absolutely no disadvantage to expanding your territory. You just wind up with more money, more lords and bigger armies.
That's the nub of it - things like attrition / army size / lord behaviour are all symptoms - not the cause.
duchuy613
Veteran
If you have any idea as to what those reasons are, feel free to share your thoughts.
Isn't it the same in Warband tho? I don't think there ever was a disadvantage to have a bigger kingdom in Warband. The only obvious different between Bannerlord and Warband campaign is the worse AI for the lords as well as the massive army steam rolling everything with no counterplay unless you have an even bigger army. At least in Warband, the war party can be split up thanks to the massive difference in move speed between the parties, which actually allow AI lords to divide and conquer them.
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durbal
Sergeant
Thread winner.
Limbojack
Veteran
I don't have to as there's already half a dozen well-written and well-thought off threads about that topic. If you had read any of them, you'd see issues such as defections being a huge bother, leading to scenarios where one city lost to war could mean two extra cities and several castles lost by one of your clans defecting to the enemy or sieges not lasting long enough before assaults happen, therefor allowing factions to simply roll over weakened enemies with a battering ram despite the city having tier-three walls.
A lord had a duty of protection to his subjects, which the game's don't seem to be aware of. I think they're farmers at heart, where they want nothing more than to fertilise the soil with the flesh of their villages' youth !
Maybe population should be more realistically simulated, and lords should be aware of the consequences of war. If battles weren't just a matter of win/lose but rather 'at what cost' (and I don't mean money), maybe there wouldn't be so many aggressive plays from the AI. As it stands, they'll take just about any encounter they can win, regardless of whether they'll still have an army standing afterwards (which, even from a purely strategic perspective, is stupid).
To keep things dynamic, rather than deplete a population meter, you could rather fill a revolt meter and face popular uprising (until some demands are met). This would force the AI to deal with their own territory for a while, and stop trying to grab the neighbour's. Or even simpler, make recruiting cost money but also reputation from the village, or have that reputation not be payed upfront but when the villagers die under your command before x battles (meaning you treated them as fodder).
Maybe population should be more realistically simulated, and lords should be aware of the consequences of war. If battles weren't just a matter of win/lose but rather 'at what cost' (and I don't mean money), maybe there wouldn't be so many aggressive plays from the AI. As it stands, they'll take just about any encounter they can win, regardless of whether they'll still have an army standing afterwards (which, even from a purely strategic perspective, is stupid).
To keep things dynamic, rather than deplete a population meter, you could rather fill a revolt meter and face popular uprising (until some demands are met). This would force the AI to deal with their own territory for a while, and stop trying to grab the neighbour's. Or even simpler, make recruiting cost money but also reputation from the village, or have that reputation not be payed upfront but when the villagers die under your command before x battles (meaning you treated them as fodder).
duchuy613
Veteran
Well, the defecting issue is fixed, but there's still massive snowballing. As for the siege, in my opinion, it's always a massive party sieging a fort with much less troops. No amount of siege can save a 400-troop town to defend vs a 600+ force without player interfering, assuming the game uses the same auto calculate system, and that's the case in Warband as well. Especially when the lords running around with their bandit AI not daring to reinforce the town unless they have the same number of troop.
duchuy613
Veteran
This is a great idea, tho it'd probably take a lot of effort to program all that interactions.
I totally read this wrong at first
The simplest way to implement something to this effect, would be having recruitment cost money + reputation with the notable. That way you don't even have to track where your soldiers come from, the cost is payed upfront. Instead of bleeding reputation when your troops die young, you pay upfront.
As for replenishing that reputation, I think looter bands are spawned by villages, so killing them should quite easily be able to award reputation with the notables of the same village (even if they do move around, lorewise you could say they're a bunch'a bastards who stole cattle from the village).
Limbojack
Veteran
I don't know. In my 1.0.5 campaign, the snowballing has been rather manageable. At least nothing compared to my earlier campaigns.
I think you misunderstood me. I don't need the defenders to win the siege, but for a siege to be deadly enough for the attackers so they're forced to actually upgrade their siege camp, which would give the defenders allies more time to lift the siege. And oh, let the AI sally forth whenever a sieging army is attack outside its gates.
Everything you said is completely wrong
I have seen lords with low numbers waiting for reinforcements and when the reinforcements come they do fight.
I have even seen some lords intentionally holding bigger armies just so other lords can keep their siege going.
duchuy613
Veteran
They only wait for reinforcements when the enemy is sieging. In open field, they just run away.
And I'm pretty sure they're not holding enemies back on purpose, they just got caught.
So I installed the tweaks mod and there has been no snowballing, it's currently 1089. There has been a few cities in that time that changed hands, but all of the factions are doing fine, and one faction just retook 2 of the cities they initially lost. So, the idea that it can't be done is false as it has already been unofficially done via modding, I think he simply buffed garrisons.
Also if you install the bannerlord tweaks mod, all he did was tinker with garrison values and buff other settlement attributes to compensate for the increased garrison size (food, etc.) and the map essentially looks the exact same as it did in the beginning, a few settlements changed hands, but the Aserai retook their two lost cities from early on, Battania has 1 extra settlement and Northern Empire took the northern settlement from Khuzaits, all the others have their same areas and everyone is still warring and doing fine.
You and I are actually on almost the exact same page here. It is way to easy for a lord to gather very large armies and it takes way too long for castles and towns to build up decent sized garrisons. Further, it is very easy to take a castle/town with 1:1 odds when you should need significantly more troops to take a castle/town as to defend it. I would almost go as far as saying the defenders should get like a 20% bonus to damage/defense just to make it harder to take a castle at least in light of how easy it is to pull 500-800 man armies together.
As for a player is shooting for an independent kingdom, they should allow the player to call his clan parties to make up an army even if he is not a vassal. That would give the player access to 5 parties of 60 + his own party of around 80 by Clan Tier 2. That is up to 380 troops which should allow him to take a weakened castle even if the defenders were toughened up.
As for influence, usually I am swimming with it pretty quickly. It think my level 17 character has like 3200 influence already and earn like 40 influence a day passively. I can basically summon any amount of available nobles at a whim and so can most to order lords in my Kingdom. Considering there really very few things to use influence on, they really need to make more influence sinks, adjust influence gain or just make things that cost influence most costly to make influence meaningful. One thing I wish they would add as an influence sink, is the ability to use influence to override decisions. For example, in an castle/town election, if they don't list you are a candidate, I would like to be able to spend 1000+ influence to make myself a candidate. Another would be to campaign to remove someone as a candidate and/or maybe promote someone you want relationship with as a candidate. Another sink might be to just being able to use influence to build relationships with other lords, i.e. pay 100 influence to X lord and gain 2 relations. There is so, so much that can be done with the Influence system.
I also agree about the lords not having anything to do. They need other activities to keep them out of wars. Maybe if bandit bands get too big, they start to actually raid villages or disrupt prosperity and trade to your Castles/Towns. In that case, you and the other lords would have to hunt down all the large bandit parties in the area. Of course those banquets, tournaments, solo raiding, etc are go things for the lords to be doing as well.
Finally I mostly agree about how armies should react. Once a castle/town is captured, they shouldn't immediately move on to another castle/town. Instead they should either sit in the city for like 5 days to defend it against it being retaken and/or patrol around the castle/city for the same period for the same reason, then they should disband to go take care of other things. I would also say that maybe any party that is reduced to 30% of their max party size should immediately disband to go build up their forces.
