AI Army compositions makes no sence at all to the players Recruiting capability 1.4.2 Beta

Users who are viewing this thread

Any one else notices since 1.4.2 how lord come back which strong armies.

like battanian and Vladian having 30-50% cav right back after a defeat when cav should theoretical be rare for both of them.(Rare from a player point of view since vladian cav is a special unit and battanian don't have much horses to upgrade their infantry into cav).

before this patch lord have come back with some hightier units to fight me but nothing out of what I could recruit if I was them with all the recruiters fully unlocked but my frech kingdom can't survive when the ennemie keeps comming back with infinit amount of high tier units, We player's can't compete with the attrition Even when loading saves with perfect battles.

Did they Increase the magic recruitment due to kingdoms still getting destroyed quickly.
 
Last edited:
I am a strong believers that lords should have the same restrictions as the player when it comes to recruiting. Instead of giving them magic power which would need to be nerfed or buff, how about making the kingdoms fight for war goals and counting the manpower has the amount of troops in each army meaning instead of having game long war the ai would take breaks because they achieved their war goal or simply need to replenish their armies

since the player kingdom would be limited to that as whell
 
I have not noticed any difference between 1.4.1 and 1.4.2. When lords respawn, they get 25% of their army automatically. What they get is determined by the template, which is different for every faction. Generally they get mix of low and high tier units. Other then that, they need to recruit the rest. How exactly recruitment and upgrading work I don't know, but they should build armies that have about 40% of tier 1 and tier 2 units.
 
When lords respawn, they get 25% of their army automatically.
It's actually only 10% that's filled automatically. They will also usually pull a few troops from their garrison, then recruit the rest the normal way by going from settlement to settlement. Their relations with notables are not yet set, so they get to recruit from the first 3-5 slots from most allied notables for the time being as a workaround. Each troop gets passive xp equal to (Troop Level + 5) per day. So for instance, recruits are level 6, so they would get 11 xp per troop per day.
 
I am a strong believers that lords should have the same restrictions as the player when it comes to recruiting. Instead of giving them magic power which would need to be nerfed or buff, how about making the kingdoms fight for war goals and counting the manpower has the amount of troops in each army meaning instead of having game long war the ai would take breaks because they achieved their war goal or simply need to replenish their armies

since the player kingdom would be limited to that as whell
I agree and I've brought up these problems a lot too. It just makes the game feel fake and empty that the AI is hardly effected my massive losses.
I understand why they gave help to the AI but I think they need a better fix that makes them take war breaks and go recruit and level troops more naturally.

I have not noticed any difference between 1.4.1 and 1.4.2
There's not a difference in this between the 2.

It's actually only 10% that's filled automatically. They will also usually pull a few troops from their garrison, then recruit the rest the normal way by going from settlement to settlement. Their relations with notables are not yet set, so they get to recruit from the first 3-5 slots from most allied notables for the time being as a workaround. Each troop gets passive xp equal to (Troop Level + 5) per day. So for instance, recruits are level 6, so they would get 11 xp per troop per day.
Whatever it is doesn't matter it's still makes the game suck more. Everyone who plays the game to the point where they personally take on AI factions has a gripe with this mechanic. Saying "It's not 75% sucky it's only 65%" doesn't mean anything.
They should get 0 troops at spawn and only get existing recruits in villages/towns or pull from garrison. They should get no denars unless they actually get them from taxes or battle loot. If they run of out troops and money and can't get more, GOOD that's what should happen if you lose over and over.
 
They should get 0 troops at spawn and only get existing recruits in villages/towns or pull from garrison. They should get no denars unless they actually get them from taxes or battle loot. If they run of out troops and money and can't get more, GOOD that's what should happen if you lose over and over.

To a large extent, I agree with this (though I'd give them a basic bodyguard core of 5 light cavalry to not end up chain-captured by Looters). I know everyone on these forums seemed to hate the way defeated Lords could only afford Recruit zergs at launch, but I personally found it deeply encouraging. It was the logical consequence of enemy Lords failing to perform in war, and gave me the impression that Bannerlord was aiming for a thoroughly realistic simulation, with AI and Player following (broadly) similar rules. The way I saw it back in April, their constant return with Recruit armies was the product of poor AI: their AI in battle wasn't able to challenge moderately good players, and their campaign AI was too aggressive (too little time spent rebuilding/training up their army).

The fix I hoped for: more work on the AI.
The fix we got: freebies for AI, to the degree that constantly farming the enemy for no losses has ZERO impact.

I do not believe the devs when they claim that the AI just gets 10% and the rest is from their own assets: garrisons, paid recruitment, etc. Somewhere along the road, they've broken the AI's ability to go bankrupt. I think 1.4 introduced a mechanic whereby AI Lords could simply ignore wage payment to avoid desertions*: I'd bet that's where there's a broken code block resulting in infinite spending capabilities for AI Lords. Money means nothing to AI, so after every defeat they go through villages, take 5 slots' worth of recruitment, pay every level-up including horse/heavy horse out of thin air, and rush back to war. After Merc'ing to Clan Rank 5, chain-smashing Khuzaits day-after-day relentlessly for years and seeing zero impact on their army composition or campaign performance, I'm pretty convinced of this.

Edit: Added the precise feature that I am worried about, from the 1.4.0 patch notes:
  • Some lords which have a risk of going below critical money limits will stop paying wages and suffer the morale penalty only. This way they will at least keep enough money to buy food and avoid starvation. Their troops will still desert eventually if their morale drops too low.
I'm thinking perhaps Leadership + food + partial wage payment is enough to keep morale from dropping to desertion levels. Meaning that theoretically bankrupt Lords are not affected by it, in practice.
 
Last edited:
smashing Khuzaits day-after-day relentlessly and seeing zero impact on their army composition or campaign performance, I'm pretty convinced of this.
I have also extensively fought the Khuzaits for a long time and they are my main example of the AI not being effected at all by losses. Mochump does not really have that many fiefs in my game. He doesn't have all that much money, However he constantly filled his garrisons with 500+ troops, that the towns couldn't even feed. How is he doing it? I beat him so many times and he never slows down. The very first time he loses in the game, there is a slight downgrade to his troops but after that he just bounces back fresh as daisy forever. After a long time of beating Khuzaits and taking back all the fiefs they had won + 1 more for spite I made peace with them to have a break. They immediately declare 2 wars and just go right back into it. They just lost 3 game years of progress and one of their starting towns, they should be re-building. Nope, what they spawn with is fine for attacking 2 factions at once and claiming more towns at opposite ends of the world.

I feel like the original "they come back with all recruits" complaint was so grossly misunderstood by the Devs. It's not "oh no recruits" it's "why are they back already? Don't they know they have only recruits?" I don't like that the AI is constantly in armies either and think this adds to the problem. I hope they add more personality to the lord so some are martial and want to join armies, some want to patrol fiefs, some want to have a feast, some want to go it alone for glory! The AI making a huge army to take a town should be a special event, not the constant state of the game.
 
I think this is a problem since the last update. It makes winning or losing battles almost pointless since they come back with almost the same army a few days later and makes wars on multiple fronts in hardest difficulty even more of a slow grind.

The AI should not have any recruitment bonus over the player, they can already recruit considerably faster and dont seem to ever go broke whatever they do.

I hope they come back to the previous system where winning decisive battles actually matters and actually gives an advantage. Winning an attrition war is about depleting their best troops normally ( aside from depleting their finances which doesnt seem to work when i tried it ).

I think it is a problem especially for smaller factions who managed to win an early major victory against a larger one because as it is , it is just a matter of who has more men and this is not right which is by the way why i am hoping for more chokepoint maps and autocalc to take terrain into consideration ).
 
Another big factor is the fact that lords escape prison extremely quickly. This allows them to spawn with 10% of their retinue and they also receive passive XP to all their troops. Meaning once they escape after a day or two they don't come back with a recruit army because most of their recruits are already leveled up. Lords should be imprisoned imo for around 30-35~days. Then everyday after that they should have a 5-10%~ chance to escape. This will allow the player time to reform their army or go on the aggressive, maybe take a fief and possibly vote to end the war if the enemy AI has most of their lords in prison with no way of defending their lands. They should be more willing to declare peace and pay tribute.
 
They shouldt probably have something like a bonus to upgrade their units but it's son boring atm...

You fight a noble one day... Next day he's back (with bad units, but you have to fight again...)
 
I agree with all this,i dont even remember when was last time i engaged AI in open field as it doesnt makes any sence atm to fight them,only besiege and in order to do that,even for a castle you need 800-1000 troops cuz sieging is so f***ed up you need to break the walls and 'till then 3-4 armies will come to fight you.I believe devs know exactly what needs to be done they just need some years to implement them....
 
Ok by some of the people having the same problem as me I think this may be a new problem because I too do remember fighting almost every lord in one kingdom and freeing them and them coming back with mostly recruit and now even the King of a fallen kingdom with out a fief just roaming around his old capital with 200 troops that are not low tier

it makes guerrilla tactics useless
 
Melee cavalry also seem to head for the densest pack of enemies - at least on F4 - which worked in Warband when you could just plow through them. Now you've just got dead cavalry, and not a lot of casualties to show for it. I'm honestly baffled how Campaign is supposed to be played on any setting other than the easiest.
 
Melee cavalry also seem to head for the densest pack of enemies - at least on F4 - which worked in Warband when you could just plow through them. Now you've just got dead cavalry, and not a lot of casualties to show for it. I'm honestly baffled how Campaign is supposed to be played on any setting other than the easiest.

Use delegate command on your cavalry. Don't use charge or advance in large battles. Cavalry AI is programmed to target certain formations in certain order. And there might be difference between heavy and skirmish cavalry. Heavy cavalry should target skirmish cavalry first, then archers, then infantry. Or something along those lines.

If you just charge them, they will go for the closest target. You can still effectively use it, but it requires babysitting. If you want to just fire and forget them, use delegate command.
 
I wished the Battanian roster didn't have as much cavalry as it does. Makes their armies weirdly lore unfriendly.

And I do dislike the artificial nature of AI being able to build up armies so quickly without issue. Let them play by our rules. If they get destroyed and can't fight for a while? Good. Less whack a mole, and battles are more meaningful. A defeated lord needs to go to their garrison, get men and then get recruits.

Better yet, unless cruel or desperate, lords should focus on training their troops to at least t2 rather than sending them back in to die again.
 
A defeated lord needs to go to their garrison, get men and then get recruits.

That's what the AI does. That is the cause of them respawning so quickly with high-tier units. You notice it if you have a spouse who runs her or his own party; they'll get wiped then dip into your garrisons for more troops. One time, I saw my wife's party had like 45 Khan's Guard out of 110 people in it and thought, "Man, the AI is getting a lot better at recruiting and training."

Nope, came straight out of my garrison, which was mostly drained dry by that point.
 
That's what the AI does. That is the cause of them respawning so quickly with high-tier units. You notice it if you have a spouse who runs her or his own party; they'll get wiped then dip into your garrisons for more troops. One time, I saw my wife's party had like 45 Khan's Guard out of 110 people in it and thought, "Man, the AI is getting a lot better at recruiting and training."

Nope, came straight out of my garrison, which was mostly drained dry by that point.
They get that and their 25% boost don't they? I'd rather they lose that 25% boost. Unless a player can get a perk granting them the same ability, I'd rather see that go. If it makes recently defeated lords weaker, good. They should be.

Mbad though, should have specified that.
 
Ok, so just to keep some things straight:
  • Npcs have a mandatory 2 day cooldown after they escape or get ransomed before they can do anything. They sit in their castle/town hall during this time. Escape chances are determined by the percentages found in the screenshot here.
  • After the 2 days is up they spawn with 10% of their party capacity filled (and an absolute max of 19 troops). These troops have an average tier of ~3.
  • To get troops they pull from their garrisons and buy troops from notables and taverns. They pay the same price as the player for these troops. They do not spawn any additional troops after the initial 10%, and there is nothing else giving them free troops otherwise. It usually takes npcs 5-7 days to recruit up to party limit, but this can be a bit shorter or a lot longer depending on the state of their kingdom. Their parties will obviously still be majority tier 1 at this point.
  • Npcs respawn with only a few horses initially, but will buy and sell horses from settlements just like the player. They generally don't keep many horses on them, and as a result, are usually quite a bit slower than the player party (Khuzait being the exception). They don't use horses for upgrades, but aside from Khuzait they don't amass cavalry troops that quickly anyway. The silver lining to that is that horses are more easily obtainable for the player (as you don't need to compete for horses with the npcs).
  • Npcs have the ability to recruit troops from allied notables as if they were on 'very easy' setting. This is because their initial relations with notables are not set yet. Once they are set this cheat will be removed according to a dev.
  • They have an 'aggressiveness' score that is determined by their Valor and Mercy traits. I don't entirely know how that factors into their behavior though. Caravans and Villager parties have 0 aggressiveness if that tells you anything. The variable is used extensively in the behavior functions of the MobileParty class.
  • Npcs pay the same price for wages as the player, but stop paying wages to retain enough gold to buy food when their gold is too low. The unpaid wages create a morale debuff instead (same as the player), but currently it looks like the morale system has some issues that prevents it from generally going low enough to cause desertion. This is true for the player and his clan parties/garrisons as well.
  • Npcs pay the same price for troop upgrades as the player.
  • Npcs obtain money in the same way that the player does. While players get 25% of their fief's prosperity as tax, npcs get 30%. They get their battle loot turned directly into gold, and get a good market price for the conversion (50% full value). They get tariffs from trade with their settlements at the same rate as the player. They also get money from ransoming troops/lords. They don't get workshops or caravans however. Here is a (likely outdated) breakdown of npc income by type.
  • Each troop of an npc gets passive xp equal to (5 + Troop Level) per day. This means a recruit gets 11 xp a day and will take (279/11) = 25.4 days to upgrade. A tier 2 unit will take 29.6 days to upgrade. Tier 3 will take 34.2 days. Tier 4 will take 39 days. Tier 5 will take 43.8 days. So, for a stack of troops to go from tier 1 to tier 4 passively it takes 89 days, which is over a year game time. They obviously also get xp from battles like the player. The amount of passive xp they get might be lowered in a future patch (and become leadership based instead) according to this post here.
  • Factions start the game with a total party capacity in the range of 1500-2000 troops. This means that destroying a single army likely only represents 30-50% of their total forces in a given moment, which is why you often see multiple armies while beseiging a settlement for a prolonged period of time (they are mostly different lords). This total capacity only grows as the game goes on (except for losing factions with a lot of defections). Hiring mercenary companies will add a few hundred more troop capacity per company.
My experience with the game is not entirely the same as what some other people are reporting, but I won't bother going into detail about it.

(Sorry for the huge block of text; I wish there was a way to at least add line spaces after each bullet point)
 
Ok, so just to keep some things straight:
  • Npcs have a mandatory 2 day cooldown after they escape or get ransomed before they can do anything. They sit in their castle/town hall during this time. Escape chances are determined by the percentages found in the screenshot here.
  • After the 2 days is up they spawn with 10% of their party capacity filled (and an absolute max of 19 troops). These troops have an average tier of ~3.
  • To get troops they pull from their garrisons and buy troops from notables and taverns. They pay the same price as the player for these troops. They do not spawn any additional troops after the initial 10%, and there is nothing else giving them free troops otherwise. It usually takes npcs 5-7 days to recruit up to party limit, but this can be a bit shorter or a lot longer depending on the state of their kingdom. Their parties will obviously still be majority tier 1 at this point.
  • Npcs respawn with only a few horses initially, but will buy and sell horses from settlements just like the player. They generally don't keep many horses on them, and as a result, are usually quite a bit slower than the player party (Khuzait being the exception). They don't use horses for upgrades, but aside from Khuzait they don't amass cavalry troops that quickly anyway. The silver lining to that is that horses are more easily obtainable for the player (as you don't need to compete for horses with the npcs).
  • Npcs have the ability to recruit troops from allied notables as if they were on 'very easy' setting. This is because their initial relations with notables are not set yet. Once they are set this cheat will be removed according to a dev.
  • They have an 'aggressiveness' score that is determined by their Valor and Mercy traits. I don't entirely know how that factors into their behavior though. Caravans and Villager parties have 0 aggressiveness if that tells you anything. The variable is used extensively in the behavior functions of the MobileParty class.
  • Npcs pay the same price for wages as the player, but stop paying wages to retain enough gold to buy food when their gold is too low. The unpaid wages create a morale debuff instead (same as the player), but currently it looks like the morale system has some issues that prevents it from generally going low enough to cause desertion. This is true for the player and his clan parties/garrisons as well.
  • Npcs pay the same price for troop upgrades as the player.
  • Npcs obtain money in the same way that the player does. While players get 25% of their fief's prosperity as tax, npcs get 30%. They get their battle loot turned directly into gold, and get a good market price for the conversion (50% full value). They get tariffs from trade with their settlements at the same rate as the player. They also get money from ransoming troops/lords. They don't get workshops or caravans however. Here is a (likely outdated) breakdown of npc income by type.
  • Each troop of an npc gets passive xp equal to (5 + Troop Level) per day. This means a recruit gets 11 xp a day and will take (279/11) = 25.4 days to upgrade. A tier 2 unit will take 29.6 days to upgrade. Tier 3 will take 34.2 days. Tier 4 will take 39 days. Tier 5 will take 43.8 days. So, for a stack of troops to go from tier 1 to tier 4 passively it takes 89 days, which is over a year game time. They obviously also get xp from battles like the player. The amount of passive xp they get might be lowered in a future patch (and become leadership based instead) according to this post here.
  • Factions start the game with a total party capacity in the range of 1500-2000 troops. This means that destroying a single army likely only represents 30-50% of their total forces in a given moment, which is why you often see multiple armies while beseiging a settlement for a prolonged period of time (they are mostly different lords). This total capacity only grows as the game goes on (except for losing factions with a lot of defections). Hiring mercenary companies will add a few hundred more troop capacity per company.
My experience with the game is not entirely the same as what some other people are reporting, but I won't bother going into detail about it.

(Sorry for the huge block of text; I wish there was a way to at least add line spaces after each bullet point)
I'm completely skeptical about any of that being true in consistent way. Just because a Dev says it works as certain way doesn't mean it's coded in properly or that it's been verified to work properly. If someone with skills could look under the hood and see what the AI does after defeat and why that'd be interesting.

The AI doesn't have enough downtime and doesn't weaken enough from sequential defeat. Their bottomed out condition is too efficient and they won't ever back off from attacking the player. This makes the game suck more then the snowballing did.
 
I'm completely skeptical about any of that being true in consistent way. Just because a Dev says it works as certain way doesn't mean it's coded in properly or that it's been verified to work properly. If someone with skills could look under the hood and see what the AI does after defeat and why that'd be interesting.

...that's literally what the dev did.
 
Back
Top Bottom