Sieges are still too easy though. The defenders in a siege should have a large advantage, but as of right now, they don't. As a matter of fact, it seems easier for my archers, who are attacking, to kill the archers of the defenders during a siege. The defending archers just stand in open spaces on the walls and get sniped. This should not be the case. As of right now, just having a similar amount of soldiers as the defenders in a siege is almost a guarantee of winning the siege. It should take 2 to 3 times the amount of defenders to win a siege if you are the attacker in my opinion.
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Rapid strength growth of kingdoms in 1.3 beta?
- Thread starter ProsteCech
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Yes this is an important problem. In simulations defenders have 1.5x-5x advantage (average is 3x) changing according to wall level and built siege engines / rams / siege towers. However we could not get same or closer advantage at mission side it is like 1-1.25x in mission side. There is nothing I can do at this area, different people are working on mission side and I reported this problem several times for last 1 year. Even I offer them to start attacker agents with 70% health or do another cheat (I know these are not good solutions) if they cannot get close this 3x ratio anyhow. One another problem death/wounded men ratio is changing so much in different scenes currently. I think some scenes have much better advantage while others have not. Defender AI should be very clever and especially archers should use advantage of merlons to succeed this 3x death ratio in missions and it should be not so easy to do (so thats why I adviced some cheats to mission team). In Warband there was only one ledder / siege tower and number of attackers going inside fortification per minute was less compared to Bannerlord thats why sieges were harder for attackers not because of better defender AI.
Fortifications should be hard to capture and player should lose more troops while doing this, in opposite player should be able to defend a fortification with less men. I know game is hard currently (at 1.3.0 at least) and this will make game harder but it is not realistic / challanging to take a castle / town with losing same men even less men (because player effect) with defenders.
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Parkerg12
Recruit
I think people need to note if they are using a fresh play through or a old save and state the starting version. with the amount of modified mechanics I can imagine it is causing a lot of weird edge-cases and bugs. I can imagine my 14k prosperity cities from an old save may cause some issues in 1.3. (I have also found running around selling super javelins at 50k+ each really messes with cities economies or at least appears to.)
I've lost more men attacking villages with their stupid low walls creating funnels than I have attacking castles.
durbal
Sergeant
Tell them to add boiling oil to the murder holes and at the walls...
@mexxico Why not make all siege weapons of defenders fire version by default? They do have really high base damage. Also if some npc defender soldier could throw that fire pottery(whatever its special name) to where high density of attacers like we can, that could help the defender side and as durbal said, they are not using murder holes.
Earth Dragon
Sergeant
So the issues with many if these mods is they don’t actually fix anything: they are more akin to cheat codes that just ignore functions versus properly “fixing them”. So folks saying “it’s obviously not that hard. Look at this mod” are giving these modders a little too much credit.
TW is also in a bit of a no win situation right now. They’ve shown their system is a bit complex with a lot of intricacies, which is good. But with that, many of these adjustments that are done are showing that it is easy to throw things out of balance.
Add this to the fact that you have a quarter million people with their own lists of what should be added/fixed first. In this way, the modders job is easy, because no matter what they do, someone is grateful. While TW has no way to come out completely on top. Just look at how many people were having convulsions over the fact Sturgian numbers weren’t fixed in 1.2. Yet, there were crickets after this was mentioned to have been addressed in 1.3.
More players probably need to take a deep breathe, step away for a bit and let a couple patches roll out, and then jump in and see what’s what.
To me, if the notes include info that the AI is set to “load up on troops” and they weren’t doing that before, the next in game month of play should yield a MASSIVE increase to amount of bodies all these factions had.
Why they decide to all dogpile on the smallest faction, player controlled or otherwise, is a seperate issue. If you hadn’t noticed, this was going on before. It doesn’t make sense for many angles, it needs to be addressed, but it is a seperate issues coming to light due to the adjustment of the AI in a different front.
If I take control of the Eastern most three fiefs of Aserai territory as part of the Southern Empire, then break off to form my own kingdom along with my pals in Razih breaking off from the Aserai, it is sensible that the Aserai want their turf back, and the Southern Empire wants to retake their expansion. But why are the Khuzait making it easier on them also declaring war? Wouldn’t it behoove them to take advantage and attack the Southerners to put down their rival first and worry about the weak upstart later?
Diplomacy needs to be addressed, but it is a seperate issue that is being flung to the forefront due to another fix. And this thread is honestly confirmation of why a “roadmap” is not always the best idea. If Diplomacy was further done the line, this should have pushed it closer to the top
TW is also in a bit of a no win situation right now. They’ve shown their system is a bit complex with a lot of intricacies, which is good. But with that, many of these adjustments that are done are showing that it is easy to throw things out of balance.
Add this to the fact that you have a quarter million people with their own lists of what should be added/fixed first. In this way, the modders job is easy, because no matter what they do, someone is grateful. While TW has no way to come out completely on top. Just look at how many people were having convulsions over the fact Sturgian numbers weren’t fixed in 1.2. Yet, there were crickets after this was mentioned to have been addressed in 1.3.
More players probably need to take a deep breathe, step away for a bit and let a couple patches roll out, and then jump in and see what’s what.
To me, if the notes include info that the AI is set to “load up on troops” and they weren’t doing that before, the next in game month of play should yield a MASSIVE increase to amount of bodies all these factions had.
Why they decide to all dogpile on the smallest faction, player controlled or otherwise, is a seperate issue. If you hadn’t noticed, this was going on before. It doesn’t make sense for many angles, it needs to be addressed, but it is a seperate issues coming to light due to the adjustment of the AI in a different front.
If I take control of the Eastern most three fiefs of Aserai territory as part of the Southern Empire, then break off to form my own kingdom along with my pals in Razih breaking off from the Aserai, it is sensible that the Aserai want their turf back, and the Southern Empire wants to retake their expansion. But why are the Khuzait making it easier on them also declaring war? Wouldn’t it behoove them to take advantage and attack the Southerners to put down their rival first and worry about the weak upstart later?
Diplomacy needs to be addressed, but it is a seperate issue that is being flung to the forefront due to another fix. And this thread is honestly confirmation of why a “roadmap” is not always the best idea. If Diplomacy was further done the line, this should have pushed it closer to the top
Would it be possible to make the crenellations have a larger hit box? So it's possible for defenders to be hit but it's much harder. Idk if that's possible but to me that seems like an easier way to keep casualties down until the walls are breached. The attacking archer could still hit the defending archer but they'd need to thread the needle so to speak.
I don't know about that. I actually play with Bannerlord Tweaks which is modded to allow for much larger garrisons with my cities now sporting 800-1000 troops between garrison and milita and too me, the game is a lot more exciting. Often times I find that having a 1200-1400 man army isn't enough to insure a successful siege and have found myself having to retreat numerous times unless I allowed time for Trebs to actually break down the walls. Just siege towers, a ram and near parity numbers were no longer enough to guarantee a win. Personally I like it better like this because for the most part, the game is way too easy. Hell I have no issues at all wrecking AI armies much larger than my own on realistic damage, 150 vs 250 while taking less than 20 casualties so anything that makes the game more challenging is a step in the right direction.
Don't know if this is possible but in case some defender allies stand next to attacker army they should spawn behind them so attacker in this case needs to defend the rear while attacking the walls.
Another thing is that some hard coded behaviour causes defender troops to leave their post to help in another place. This way they let the attacker go inside using the way that was previously defended quite good. They should keep their place to the last man.
Second thing siege engines on the walls should get some boost to accuracy and prioritise destroying ram and siege towers. This should make it more often to destroy siege tools leaving only single way inside.
Next thing remove barricades that are close to walls. Or make them a siege engine that need to be built from campaign map with low chance of success and at cost of troops dying.
Next increase HP of both gates. They are destroyed too fast. Unit's defending the gate should be closer to it and in wider formation stopping attackers from surrounding them.
There should be also smaller defender groups in every narrow passage forcing attacker to breakthrough them if they succeed in taking the walls.
If possible allow defender to shut the doors to towers so attacker needs to destroy them in order to pass or kill archers on tower.
Edit:
Boost the morale of defenders. They are defending their homes, wives and children an yet they start with morale below 50. That makes them run as soon as attacker takes the wall.
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Avoid the cheating AI at all costs, the problem is the militia units are very poor quality and can't compete with elite armies. At the same time though, in 1.3, garrisons are way too big and nobody in their right mind would garrison a town to the point of which the taxes do not cover the costs. Either buff taxes to 50% of prosperity or increase the quality of militia, maybe both. Another thing I've noticed is the map design. Some are just plain bad for defenders, mangonels can't hit siege equipment, and the AI is very wonky when aiming them. I've noticed in the few times when defending, the AI would swing it back and forth then miss by a mile at whatever they were aiming at. I think we need a proper engineer unit that can man these for both attackers and defenders.
Players, when defending a castle, should also be notified of how the battle is going, where the defensive points are, and when something important happens. I'd really like a tactical overhead camera. You also NEED to allow players to enter a siege defense while it is ongoing without the massive penalty to losing troops. Why go defend a castle when i lose half my army to get inside? Introduce a new mission type where you need to go from outside the walls to inside the walls with your entire army as quickly as possible. Until then, make it like warband, where a party has to physically stop you from entering. Another thing - make the AI target more than just siege weapons, but the rams and towers too in the minigame. This will help greatly.
Dabos37
Sergeant Knight at Arms
One of the biggest problem for AI siege defenders is the square formation in gates which is weird and too easy to flank. Increasing the formation width looks like an easy change to make It impossible to flank these men and could help.
For some reason, these men in the gates just attack people coming in front of them and you can flank and kill them pretty easy without almost any resistance.
Defenders could also use ballistas much more effective against attackers and try to target big groups to inflict heavy casualties to attackers.
For some reason, these men in the gates just attack people coming in front of them and you can flank and kill them pretty easy without almost any resistance.
Defenders could also use ballistas much more effective against attackers and try to target big groups to inflict heavy casualties to attackers.
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Nokturnel
Regular
^ This
Diplomacy really needs to be addressed first before any snowballing or economy fixes are even implemented. The AI isn't very good at knowing when to declare war/peace, there aren't much options for the player when it comes to war/peace to begin with. There's no alliances yet. Reputation/Relations with Lords currently does absolutely nothing as they'll still leave your Kingdom even with +100 Reputation/Relations with you and they sure don't mind declaring War on you even if they have good relations with you. Trying to balance the snowballing when the AI is so erratic/dumb is not going to help.
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There is no way this is true. I also use bannerlord tweaks and the garrisons are 800 plus men. If I attack with 1200 men, it is guaranteed I will win and lose at most, 100 soldiers to death, with maybe another 150 injured. That is 250 soldiers when I should lose the siege outright. 1200 men is not enough to take a castle or town that has 800 defenders.
I think that it should be harder to kill archers on the wall, it should be easier for them to kill soldiers who are climbing ladders (easy to destroy the ladders or knock them down too). Even with a siege tower, it should be a disadvantage to use it. Should take some serious casualties. The door should be stronger and not break so easily to the battering ram, there should be some things they can do to slow or stop the battering ram. When they break through the main gate, the inner gate should be much stronger and defenders should be able to do some real damage via the murdering hole.
BuckleUpBones
Recruit
While some are saying it’s too 'easy' others are saying it’s too 'hard' (or stay as was).
Maybe more modes, player to set…
AI faction max troop limit.
Maybe more modes, player to set…
AI faction max troop limit.
- Same as player.
- 50% greater than player.
- 100% greater than player.
- 300% greater than player.
- Same as player.
- 50% greater than player.
- 100% greater than player.
- 300% greater than player.
- Same as player.
- 50% greater than player.
- 100% greater than player.
- 300% greater than player.
redphoenix596
Recruit
people still like to play the game though before the major diplomacy rework is introduced. and a small balance fix to buff the AI etc is not a big deal to do. Small balance tweaks etc don't take an enormous amount of time from the devs, but make a huge difference in the pleasure of playing the game in its current state.
redphoenix596
Recruit
agreed, some ways to make the ai harder is very good!
I wouldn't like a tactical over head camera. But there could be npcs shouting "They came over left side of the walls with the siege tower", "Outer gate has been breached". Something like this would give the idea what is happening in the battle to the player while it would be also immersive.
That would be really cool! It would provide information while also adding immersion, I like it a lot.
I agree with everything you say, except for the point on the roadmap. It's not like it's a binding legal contract, they can change it if need be. Honestly as far as I am concerned I would just like to see something like what mexxico is already doing, but for the whole game and in a more organized manner (and of course I wouldn't expect a developer to be in charge of that). Just some bits of information on the what general direction they are going to pursue at this time, I feel that it would help test the right things in the game (e.g. no point posting about democracy not working properly if we already know that it's a placeholder. Same with perks.).
This is a huge problem but isn't the fact that sieges are advantaged to the attacker a symptom of a greater problem and not THE problem itself? I mean, isn't the issue that you designed a game all about war with tons of castles and towns to siege, where the AI is incapable of functioning in a balanced matter in the main core of your game? Shouldn't AI (formations, behavior, combat, dealing with elevation, etc etc) and siege design themselves be looked at?
It's not too late to go back and make a game that actually works on the core gameplay it was designed on. We're only in early access the game isn't complete now. It sounds like you guys are trying to "band aid" a problem but aren't looking at actually just making the core of the game (Combat, Battles, Sieges, the main content of the game) function as it should.
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