most people are "circumventing" the flaws by a combination of multiple mods + cheating. It's not ideal, nope, but then again we're having virtual 1 to 2 weeks expiration dates for each playthrough due to the patching and how bad it is to keep the same save after some of those patches. It's better to go for short bursts, but it gets old after 3 or 4 cycles. I for one am VERY burned out of BL, but since I've moved all other games to sluggish HDDs, I've been kinda dealing with it and still play frequently, but can't endure over 1h at a time because it's too repetitive and there are many "grief-inflicting" issues with the game currently. From crashes (caused either by vanilla itself or mods) to bad performance, to nonsensical game behavior due to RNG or pure lack of "luck". The worst RNG thing tbh is the "roll" for companions. 9 outta 10 game starts I only get useless companions to spawn, and that's a REAL issue because I don't see new ones spawning fast enough nor can I force new spawns in any way shape or form.That's where I think the game is currently lacking a lot.
Bannerlord was fun to me to the point I was a vassal and my kingdom was in constant war mode.
Winning the war out of an stalemate was kind of fun. But then loosing the war and not being able to do anything about it isn't.
There are not enough features for the player to interact with the world. Meaning mostly politics.
If the player had the option to circumnavigate some inbalances then the inbalances wouldn't be that much of a big deal.
In my campaign the Kuzhait steamrolled everything including the Southern Empire which I was part of.
Couldn't do anything about it and subsequently set Bannerlord aside.
1.4.1 is also broken pertaining wars because the new "vote for war" system is really badly implemented, so lords keep declaring completely retarded wars for no reason, most of the time hindering their own kingdom and causing irreversible losses. The voting for new wars is practically a constant stream of spam, they'll do it up to 3 or 4 times a in-game week, sometimes forcing the realm into a FFA war instance by declaring war on literally anything that moves on the map.
The constant wars wouldn't be so annoying if the AI could handle, strategically speaking, defense. In turn they declare war on 5 kingdoms, and rush deep into enemy territory like idiots, and lose most of the army to "attrition", either by running out of food or by failing on maintaining a decent morale, they'll capture a fief that is indefensible and when they are returning, enemies have captured multiple core fiefs. Soon enough more than one lord will bail the ship and join another nation, and there's where the snowballing starts. The losing faction enters in a self-destruction spiral, and if it survives it does with at most 1 or 2 fiefs, while the steamrolling ones blob like crazy. They don't tend to keep "new-coming" vassals for long, but then again after they get ridiculous amounts of territory it doesn't really make a difference.
The game needed many sub-mechanics to deal with all of these issues, from improved AI to severe punishment for ruler-blobbing (they tend to keep most fiefs, which in any strategy game would cause internal instability and rebellions, not to be seen in BL what-so-ever at this point, and I have no idea if they intend to add such a thing)
Then there's the pace and ease of capturing, AI never fails to capture fiefs, they can only lose to other AI by battle-field. Capturing fiefs is not punishable enough (armies tend to do it as if siege assaults were a walk in the park, they take almost no losses at all), and their priority queue seems really odd... They prefer to capture a single fief and lose 5 than to defend 1 fief consistently. Most of the time the AI will defend ONCE, and then ignore any new threats. This one could be amended by making assaulting fiefs a high-risk high-reward, through forcing massive losses on assaults, and programming the AI to evaluate if it's better to starve the fief out and capture it passively (which should be the predominant warfare anyway). Warband had this same bad mechanic, but I hope TW makes things less nonsensical by giving these serious thought. 100 men garrisons should be enough to hold off at least 1 assault from a 1k army. So, supposedly we get something more believable pertaining sieges? Many problems would go away, and the pace of the game would start to be more in tune with their desire to add aging and inheritance. So far, Aging is but a gimmick, and having kids pretty pointless because unless you deliberately handicap yourself, you'll never take more than 5 in-game years to basically capture the entire map.
I've suggested once to make heartbeat quests for your own fiefs, add mechanics of "ruling" / "being a lord" and not just having you do fetch for a peasant. Imo that's the biggest flaw in BL so far, you're still treated as a random mercenary by everybody even if you own their ****ing lands hahaha Also, village and town issues should be brought to you "in-court", and not having you strolling to the village to solve their problems... They should petition for help.
So, to conclude I'd say that the game is like a Onion, there are layers upon layers of things that should be there, but currently it's as if all of the Onion is missing but the core and the peel, and by playing it you peel it, and when you do you find nothing but bare-bones. My biggest fear is that when the game gets "done" it remains practically the same with one or 2 layers of the Onion only (which's very possible, WB was VERY (TOO) MUCH LIKE THAT)
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