NERF OP KHUZAIT - after 3 months still same story

[Apocal]

I use a mod that does limit Archer damage but doesn't completely negate it. That is good enough, maybe even a little too far. Archers now seem almost irrelevant, to the point where shock infantry is actually OP in the mod. Making high tier armor completely no sell it would probably be too much. Maybe a 50/50 chance or something.

Well, the aim I was looking for (before they said they were going to rework armor) was making it so melee was mandatory. Even giving bow damage a 50% chop made it so that you didn't really need to engage in melee, it just took a few more (not 50%) archers to kill them.

As for Horse armor I didn't say it wasn't used just not to the extent in the game, and certainly not without consequences, that is Armored horses running just as fast and tirelessly as those without armor. The Mongol Empire was atypical of steppe nomads since they had an industrialized base to produce such armor, and even then as Mr. Plano stated it was mostly things like leather or felt or cloth armor with metal over certain parts. The Strategikon mentions similar that only certain parts of the horse are armored. The horses that were completely armored weren't meant for HA's to ride on but for shock cavalry to use after enemy had become disordered. Compare that to the game where horses are galloping about to and fro with armor that is more protective than that available to people.

Well, none of the horse archers in Bannerlord use fully armored horses with the exception of Aserai Heavy Mamelukes. The typical set is the leather steppe barding that is 38 armor on just the head, neck, chest and loin/croup: steppe bandit raiders (sometimes), Khuzait horse archers, heavy horse archers, Kheshigs and Khan's Guard plus maybe Karakhergit. Bucellariis have very low horse armor (I think 18?) while the low-tier Khuzait troops have even less than that.

Horse armor not affecting anything helps cavalry catch up to HAs. The alternative of making armorless HAs actually faster would be pretty infuriating to play against. Any horse armored enough to last in pursuit is too slow to catch up. But if you take light cavalry, guess what HAs are exceptionally good at unhorsing with their arrows?

But overall it was very difficult for heavy Western armies to confront mobile steppe armies, and I don't think an effective tactical system ever emerged until Western states and armies became more consolidated after the 14th and 15th centuries.

The Mamelukes developed one in the late 13th century.

 

[rhautala]

I posted this in another thread (end game issues) but thought it was relevant here as well. I have spent much of my playthrough trying to find ways to defeat the Khuzaits:

I joined the Aserai early on as a vassal to have a good start in building my prestige, etc. Eventually, two kings died and because I had made so many friends/built a good rep in my faction, they voted me the new king. This was very helpful as I could decide things like when to go to war, when to declare peace, who to give fiefs to (including myself of course - though there is a limit to that). Who to switch fiefs between.

Depending on how unpopular some of my decisions were, it would cost me more or fewer prestige points. Thankfully, I fought in a lot of battles and have a ton now. Also more gold than I can spend (I started as a trader since I like to have gold early on to pay for troops/upgrades/etc).

The Khuzaits have been a pain the whole time, so I built up a high-level cavalry to counter them when we went into battle. So, now in the end game, I have mostly crushed every faction (the Battanians still have a city and a couple of castles) except the Khuzaits. "It's good to be king" because my vassals have no strategy when it comes to declaring war or ending it. If I followed their suggestions, our faction would be at the mercy of the Khuzaits.

I tried strategically declaring war and peace, but they always seemed to be able to pull together large armies and take my fiefs faster than I could take theirs - even though in battles, my faction usually did well thanks to my cavalry tactics, infantry shield walls and archer formations. Ground battles really do factor in the terrain, army formations and tactics - probably the part I like best in Bannerlord so far. When they harried my troops with their cavalry, I attacked with mine. Often I would harry them first with a combination of lancers and horse archers. I stayed away from their main troop body until I had reduced as much of their cavalry as made sense. Eventually, the rest of my army would advance to attack their ground troops. My cavalry was led by me the entire time (ie. follow command).

Still, I finally got frustrated as I feel like the Khuzaits are just too overpowered, so I decided on a new tactic to finally wipe them out.

1/ Build an army near a city, declare war, take the city (and anything nearby as time allows). As soon as things turned against me, I declared peace against the wishes of my faction and at the cost of high tribute.

2/ Before the tribute could provide too big an advantage to the enemy (I assume it allows them to build large armies/etc.) I would quickly run to some of my garrisons, buy/transfer men as needed and repeat.

3/ My faction is finally at a point where we have the superiority in men. However, at this point, it is a grind and I am pretty well done. Even now, I may lose ground as they seem to be able to pull in fresh armies faster than I can (even with unlimited gold). Plus, it is a pain in that my companions randomly are starting to die of old age (including my main character who had skills I had built up deliberately). I am now playing as my brother. The only thing I like about this is a chance to use his bow skills (something my main character did not have).

So, long story short, I have enjoyed this first playthrough (many hours). I have learned a lot about the mechanics of the games (e.g how to use the formations options in ground combat). I learned that when attacking a bandit base, my 10-man group will not use their ranged weapons unless I actually press the F4 command (what a difference that made LOL).

Sadly there is not much left to do except start over with different options. I could declare my own kingdom and have the two remaining factions probably gang up on me, but don't think I will (this time).

What I would really like to see is more family type game options (especially for the end game - the ability to train up successors is still very limited). I have kids from my wife and there is potential there. My wife sadly died, but it seems I could go find another one now that I am playing as my brother. Some diplomacy options (like the old "feasts) would be great to build rep with the remaining lords, etc.

Multiplayer will be good I'm sure once some more mods are created.
Sorry for the long post, but I thought some would find it interesting.

 

[geala]

An interesting but to some extent exhausting thread. I admire Apocal's patience in dealing with posters who should examine bow mechanics, constructions and history of archery a bit more before offering stark opinions.

To the Khuzaits, they are really a p.i.t.a. I recognized it just quite recently because I usually only played on the western side of the world prior, and not to the end of campaigns. Not very original idea, but the 20% autocalc bonus should go, and perhaps something about party composition could be done, to help the AI?

In manual battles I don't mind their horse archers so much. I find the combo, together with able lancers and a strong infantry more of a problem. If the Khuzaits wouldn't be so dump to send cavalry only for a long time but attack in combination with their infantry sooner, manual battles would be more problematic. In cases they did, or when terrain was bad, I lost a lot of soldiers (and my first companion) or even lost the battle against parties only a bit stronger than mine, despite I'd quite good units in my party.

I use a mod which makes armor better (Realistic Battle Mod) but I got the feeling that it does not help a lot against Khuzaits who are armored quite well partly. Especially my foot archers could not kill as fast as in vanilla of course, while in vanilla my shields do shine better, so horse archers might be worse performers in comparison in vanilla.

My first steps now were to get rid of the 20% calc bonus and take shields away from most Khuzait infantry. Let's see how it works.

 

[Yukmouth++]

I dont give a Flying f**k if horse archers being op is historically accurate or not, this is a game and its being ruined by khuzait. There is nothing remotely fun about playing against a Bunch of cavs ****ing running away from you while shooting you. Also, Khuzait's Power on the world map and their AI is out of this world compared to other faction. Its ruining the God damn game.

 

[Old-Bull]

I dont give a Flying f**k if horse archers being op is historically accurate or not, this is a game and its being ruined by khuzait. There is nothing remotely fun about playing against a Bunch of cavs ****ing running away from you while shooting you. Also, Khuzait's Power on the world map and their AI is out of this world compared to other faction. Its ruining the God damn game.

Maybe they should introduce a new difficulty setting even easier than super easy so we don't have to listen to crying kids all day that refuse to find the tactics that work. Have you tried Minecraft? Someone told me that game doesn't even have horse archers.

 

[Ganeic]

Maybe they should introduce a new difficulty setting even easier than super easy so we don't have to listen to crying kids all day that refuse to find the tactics that work. Have you tried Minecraft? Someone told me that game doesn't even have horse archers.

Well it technically does if you count skeletons riding spiders and and shooting =P. And lightning strikes can spawn skeleton on horses that also shoots.


Best thing to use against horse archers?... More horse archers... works every time. If they bring 60 horse archers I bring 200. Or let em skirmish and let your regular archers shoot them down one by one while you chop some others down personally. Eventually they run out or their main force arrive.

Sure they can beat an army of 1500 with their 900 armies if you have like 0 cav and auto resolve.

Best anti Thing you can do is to attack their homeland and claim their territory forcing them to recruit other troops wherever they can. givng you access to those cheep sweet tier 2 horse archers for all your and your vassals needs.

 

[Yukmouth++]

Maybe they should introduce a new difficulty setting even easier than super easy so we don't have to listen to crying kids all day that refuse to find the tactics that work. Have you tried Minecraft? Someone told me that game doesn't even have horse archers.

Game is not a sandbox when the only way to play it is to play it like khuzaits does. There are supposed to have many ways of enjoying the game. Khuzait are forcing down a way of playing down our throats. On Warband Khergit were well balanced compared to Bannerlord = they were good on open fields and they were **** in sieges. For some fked up reason, they are good at both on Bannerlord, they take one castle after another. Lets say you start a campain in which you want to focus on infantry units in order to put pressure on ennemies through sieges, it doesnt work against khuzait because they siege castles just as fast as you do and win their sieges all the time (unless you abuse bull**** bugs or unbalanced stuff like selling javelins). They need to balance it like Khergit = they give you a hard time when you fight them on open field and trash in sieges, especially against factions such as Empire, Vlandia and Sturgia which are clearly supposed to dominate sieges with their heavy infantries.

 

[Old-Bull]

Awesome. The autocalc bonus on sieges is gone in 1.5.5 and HA's damage is greatly reduced for lower tier horse archers( -20 percent to damage/reload speed with 0 riding skill that scales up to normal damage with 100 riding skill).

This will definitely help.

In combination with the incoming changes in 1.5.6, the Khuzait snowball is about to be a thing of the past.

 

[Zorion_no]

Overall I'm just perplexed why the devs are so reluctant to just adjust the overall map bonus to Khuzait troops though the culture bonus.

Like have you ever just tried removeing the culture bonus, and instead give them something else that is useless?
Or even just adjust the bonus down.

While all the incomeing changes seems to be "good", it still dont change the fact that Khuzait forces choose when to fight
*They are outnumbered they can in most cases outrun any other party ---> which then means they then suddenly merge with their 2nd army
*They now outnumbered the other party ---> demolish their enemies.

Balance of power is now shifted heavy for Khuzait.

 

[Apocal]

Like have you ever just tried removeing the culture bonus, and instead give them something else that is useless?

Yes.

Removing the bonus alone didn't work. You had to remove the culture perk and the cav bonus in autocalc for it to actually do anything. And even then, it didn't actually stop the snowballing, just slowed it down.

 

[Yukmouth++]

The speed bonus sure is way too op. Vassals cant pick them Up

 

[Apollo52]

I know the devs have acknowledged and responded to this situation, but I need to relaese some of my feelings and thoughts. This is going to be a useless rant.
I've been playing Mount & Blade since 1.011 and I'm a biblical/veteran fan of the series. I like the khuzait/khergit culture and gameplay a lot. Before Bannerlord there was something off about horse archers and khergits, mainly the AI. With the relase of Bannerlord, seeing how improved the horse archer AI was, I was amazed. I was hyped about the khuzait soundtracks, culture, armor, names and everyting. I did three playthroughs with khuzaits and after some time, I realized that there was a problem;
The game was too easy for some reason.
I play without game-changing mods, only responsive soldiers mod with the hardest difficulty possible, which is realistic, no damage reduction or whatsoever. After playing with different factions, I realized that every playthrough that I played ended up with the sole purpose of stopping the Khuzait invasion.
At this point I want to talk about the main reason that I am writing this,
The stupid excuses to this situation that some players have given;

"ThiS is HisToriCally AcCuratE"
"tHey hAve ConQueRed euRope With hoRseS yoU KnOw )))"
"thEy aRe mEanT to bE OP ))))"

Whenever I see this stuff, I get furious with rage. I like the "endless scourge of nomads, my horse and my wife are the same person" vibe too. BUT this is a game with a design behind it. "This is not Mount&Blade: Khuzait Invasion". This inbalance and these responses have made me hate the khuzaits. In guides and youtube videos you see people saying that vlandian culture bonus is the best and things like that.
Hear me out bois, those are all lies. If you pick khuzaits, you can't lose any fight if you can decide which battle you are going to pick.
I understand the horse archers being a pain, that's cool. I don't like fighting against them but I can manage that. But the real problem is the map bonus, simulation bonus and the location advantage. I only saw the khuzaits losing territory in the very first playthrough at day 1 of the relaese which was very fun times if you remember, the game ending in 90 days kind of times.
Please balance might favourite faction. Nerf it to the ground if you want, but make it enjoyable so every gameplay with every faction can at least stand a chance.

TLDR; Khuzaits are OP, and any opinion who says that this is normal should not be taken seriously.

 

[Zorion_no]

"ThiS is HisToriCally AcCuratE"
"tHey hAve ConQueRed euRope With hoRseS yoU KnOw )))"

Whats funny though I totally agree with you.. is that those claim that Khanate conquered Europe kind of dont know history.

They ate land until they actually hit "civilized/militarized" societies of Europe.
With mounted cavalary and what not, not to mention real castles with fortifications etc.

Prior to that what they conquered, without being offensive, was fairly easy prey.
Alot of their conquest was also "false" in a sense, that the ppl surrendered due to the horror stories.

I still dont think the devs though "get it" that its not just about auto-calc that make them so op, the culture bonus coupled with their army composition makes it "too good".

As I've said before and you did - they decide when to fight or not.

When I play other factions I "need to put in some effort" to get progress on the world map, when doing Khuzait I can just do whatever I want and see the steamrolling commence.

This is next part is mean critique I know, but --> yes lets fix the apperance of the sheep.. instead of fixing a crazy unbalanced faction.

I know they are doing more changes since they've "figured it out" so it will come in 1.56(which ideally would arrive soon(tm))(but most likely not)

 

[Apocal]

Hear me out bois, those are all lies. If you pick khuzaits, you can't lose any fight if you can decide which battle you are going to pick.

Any culture can get the same effect in player hands. Just don't use anything but mounted units in your party for that sweet +1.5-3.0 map speed boost via the Cavalry bonus. The Khuzait culture bonus is only 10% of the cav bonus, which isn't nothing, especially for AI vs AI but if you're a player -- of any culture or faction -- you should be able to stack Cav (or mounted infantry) bonus high enough to run down any equivalent AI party.

I sure as hell wasn't getting caught in my Sturgia playthrough and that was before the buff to the mounted infantry bonus.

 

[Yukmouth++]

"ThIs iS hIsToRiCalLy AcCuRaTe"

Jeez. And i thought Khuzait was a fictional faction created by Taleworlds. I've heard of Mongols, but never heard of "Khuzaits". I suppose Calradia isnt fictional as well then, i'm gonna go watch the Earth map and see where "Calradia" is positioned, might go visit it some day !

For christ sake people its a FICTIONAL faction. It doesnt need to be 100% LIKE the faction they are inspired from.

 

[Yukmouth++]

Any culture can get the same effect in player hands. Just don't use anything but mounted units in your party for that sweet +1.5-3.0 map speed boost via the Cavalry bonus. The Khuzait culture bonus is only 10% of the cav bonus, which isn't nothing, especially for AI vs AI but if you're a player -- of any culture or faction -- you should be able to stack Cav (or mounted infantry) bonus high enough to run down any equivalent AI party.

I sure as hell wasn't getting caught in my Sturgia playthrough and that was before the buff to the mounted infantry bonus.

Yeah. You, The player, will know that if you stack horses you will be fast enough to catch the Khuzait lords. Doesnt translate to the AI though. Southern empire and Sturgia doesnt catch them for **** when it comes to the speed on the world map. You talk like its all about player's individual skill. Yo. Even if i start the game, buy food and just wait in a damn town for 3 years doing nothing to intervene, the game should be BALANCED just like ANY game should be. Based on this logic it should be ok that in world war II games the German players gets beaten all the time because "hIsToRy"

 

[Apocal]

You talk like its all about player's individual skill.

That was a response to Apollo52 saying that the only legit culture perk to pick was the Khuzait one.

 

[Zorion_no]

That was a response to Apollo52 saying that the only legit culture perk to pick was the Khuzait one.

But again you and others dev included seem to miss that AI vs AI the composition of troops in Khuzait + the bonus on top -> means that they will outrun or catch up to any other party.

This in term mean that the 1v1 Northern Empire v Khuzait army where NE would have won if it was any other faction, but dont cause they cant catch up.
Then the Khuzait meet with new parties of their own, now they have the advantage - NE army decimated.
Couple of dances with this, and you'll see Battania, Sturgia, SE all declare war on NE in some way or order to pounce on NE lands.

Overall they could fix this if they had kept the old Warband "causis belli" you have to have a legit reason to trigger war, and not just predatory instincts of the AI.

As for player impact, yes I'm fully aware of this, I have noticed the times I join NE for instance early on -> Then they dont snowball as much if at all.

Besides if the way to deal with 1 faction is to force player to comprimise their playstyle thats not really seen upon as generally fun is it?
May be to some.

But lets hope the 1.56 changes will fix it.

 

[Old-Bull]

But again you and others dev included seem to miss that AI vs AI the composition of troops in Khuzait + the bonus on top -> means that they will outrun or catch up to any other party.

This in term mean that the 1v1 Northern Empire v Khuzait army where NE would have won if it was any other faction, but dont cause they cant catch up.
Then the Khuzait meet with new parties of their own, now they have the advantage - NE army decimated.
Couple of dances with this, and you'll see Battania, Sturgia, SE all declare war on NE in some way or order to pounce on NE lands.

Overall they could fix this if they had kept the old Warband "causis belli" you have to have a legit reason to trigger war, and not just predatory instincts of the AI.

As for player impact, yes I'm fully aware of this, I have noticed the times I join NE for instance early on -> Then they dont snowball as much if at all.

Besides if the way to deal with 1 faction is to force player to comprimise their playstyle thats not really seen upon as generally fun is it?
May be to some.

But lets hope the 1.56 changes will fix it.

Or maybe they want to make the game realistic.

I chased down about 20 different Khuzait war parties just last night(some of them smaller than me), while using a Battanian party consisting of 20 archers, 2o infantry, and about 40 cavalry.

If you want to catch Khuzait on the map, maybe you should recruit a faster army instead of trying to make the developers change something that's true to history and completely realistic.

 

[Apocal]

But again you and others dev included seem to miss that AI vs AI the composition of troops in Khuzait + the bonus on top -> means that they will outrun or catch up to any other party.

Uh, no, I've never missed that.

Regardless of snowballing, how do we slow down khuzaits parties for other AI parties to catch? They have in my experience always been able to run away from or easily catch sturgian/empire AI parties. I’d be very interested to see what the average party speed is for each of the factions.

My feeling is that the only way is to adjust the party templates/troop trees (I don't know which controls how the AI builds their parties) so the Khuzaits have a lower portion of mounted units, comparable to other factions.

(edit: to be clear, I said "feeling" because I haven't tested this at all)

I just haven't personally messed around with that stuff because it is easier (for me) to turn off their culture perk than figuring out how the AI builds its parties.