Khuzait still snowballs

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Nah, it is just the lack of a feedback mechanism of any kind. Factions that win get stronger and stronger factions win (more settlements, more clans = more strength), so it doesn't take long before the first losers get rolled and the rest aren't capable of competing against the strongest. In Warband this wasn't the case because faction strength wasn't really determined by settlements. Every AI party got 100% free troops without having to run around recruiting and defections were (effectively) random, not targeted with the weak factions losing clans and the strong factions gaining them, like in BL.
 
Nah, it is just the lack of a feedback mechanism of any kind. Factions that win get stronger and stronger factions win (more settlements, more clans = more strength), so it doesn't take long before the first losers get rolled and the rest aren't capable of competing against the strongest. In Warband this wasn't the case because faction strength wasn't really determined by settlements. Every AI party got 100% free troops without having to run around recruiting and defections were (effectively) random, not targeted with the weak factions losing clans and the strong factions gaining them, like in BL.

But isn't that a real world mechanic.

As in, in a real feudal society, the more lords and landowners who swear fealty to you, the more resources you can call on in war. The more your strategic reach increases.

There are so many historic precedents of powerful feudal lords essentially snowballing their local regions. France at the end of the 100 years war is a great example. Gathering up previously semi-independent or English aligned lords (e.g. Brittany), overrunning English possessions and eventually most of Burgundy too.


That said, I've now started 4 games since 1.5.6 and I'm on my second on 1.5.7 and the only snowballing the Khuzaits have done is when I'm playing with them.

In my current game, I'm 700 days in, and all factions still have their original cities. They've changed back and forth a bit, and rebellions have returned Vlandian cities to them from Battania, Empire cities have swapped about, but essentially the Empire is the empire, and everyone else is static. The only significant change has been that I have taken a chunk of the southern empire with the Khuzaits. The haven't expanded anywhere else.

This is ideal, as the world is largely in balance, except for then the player engages, which throws the balance out of whack - and butterflies in Africa - someone might snowball. Or might collapse. But it requires a human player to sew the chaos.

So I'm starting to feel like the Khuzait (or any other faction) snowball issue is not an issue, but rather it's just a confirmation bias story we tell whenever they start taking a few cities. I hope the developers don't spend too much more time on balance, and look at emersion aspects or battlefield mechanics.
 
But isn't that a real world mechanic.

As in, in a real feudal society, the more lords and landowners who swear fealty to you, the more resources you can call on in war. The more your strategic reach increases.

There are so many historic precedents of powerful feudal lords essentially snowballing their local regions. France at the end of the 100 years war is a great example. Gathering up previously semi-independent or English aligned lords (e.g. Brittany), overrunning English possessions and eventually most of Burgundy too.


That said, I've now started 4 games since 1.5.6 and I'm on my second on 1.5.7 and the only snowballing the Khuzaits have done is when I'm playing with them.

In my current game, I'm 700 days in, and all factions still have their original cities. They've changed back and forth a bit, and rebellions have returned Vlandian cities to them from Battania, Empire cities have swapped about, but essentially the Empire is the empire, and everyone else is static. The only significant change has been that I have taken a chunk of the southern empire with the Khuzaits. The haven't expanded anywhere else.

This is ideal, as the world is largely in balance, except for then the player engages, which throws the balance out of whack - and butterflies in Africa - someone might snowball. Or might collapse. But it requires a human player to sew the chaos.

So I'm starting to feel like the Khuzait (or any other faction) snowball issue is not an issue, but rather it's just a confirmation bias story we tell whenever they start taking a few cities. I hope the developers don't spend too much more time on balance, and look at emersion aspects or battlefield mechanics.
Nice POV agree ^.^
 
But isn't that a real world mechanic.

As in, in a real feudal society, the more lords and landowners who swear fealty to you, the more resources you can call on in war. The more your strategic reach increases.

There are so many historic precedents of powerful feudal lords essentially snowballing their local regions. France at the end of the 100 years war is a great example. Gathering up previously semi-independent or English aligned lords (e.g. Brittany), overrunning English possessions and eventually most of Burgundy too.
It isn't really a reflection of real life though, because for much of the Hundred Years' War, France was many times bigger, more populous and wealthier than England but still got carved up because feudal kingdoms weren't hiveminds in the way M&B factions are. The effectiveness of just being plain bigger was blunted by the disadvantage of the French monarchy's issues with actually asserting meaningful control over their vassals. That's why a good chunk of them flipped to being English vassals or managed to wrangle pseudo-/semi-independence out of whatever deal they struck with the crown. Speaking broadly, feudalism of that sort led to sort of weakness in centralization and royal authority where the most common reply to the king's orders was, "Yeah sure, but what's in it for me?", the next most common was, "No" and "**** off" certainly made the top ten.

In short, in real life, they couldn't necessarily parlay their greater paper strength into real advantage -- in fact, it actually contributed (in a very real sense) to their apparent helplessness in the face of a kingdom a fraction of France's size. A similar dynamic allowed the First Crusades to gain and maintain a foothold in the first place: going by "paper" strength, either the Seljuq Turks or the Fatimids should have alone been able to crush them, but for disunity in both of them.

As an aside, someone will probably say how that sounds so interesting, and how much emergent gameplay that would create but in practice we already have the unruly vassals, with the faction leader riding a tiger made of his squabbling underlings, and people hate it because it takes agency away from them. Vassals taking away the king's ability to make decisions and enforce his will would turn out to be one of those features that's much better to read about in some humorously well-written AAR than actually play through, for most players. (Or to inflict upon the AI king as a player-vassal.)

So since reflecting real history wouldn't be actually fun, there should be something like a Threat meter or Aggression timer seen in games such as Total War or Crusader Kings, where aggressive expansion is punished by increasing the array of enemies against you.

So I'm starting to feel like the Khuzait (or any other faction) snowball issue is not an issue, but rather it's just a confirmation bias story we tell whenever they start taking a few cities. I hope the developers don't spend too much more time on balance, and look at emersion aspects or battlefield mechanics.
I haven't yet posted my 1.5.8 snowballing test results but the short version is that snowballing, as a meaningful impediment to slow twenty-year pacing, is gone. It has been gone from a ten year pacing (840 days!) since... September or so. It is up to mexxico to decide if he wants to push that out to thirty, forty, fifty or a hundred years (but given he said that he didn't have time to spare on the issue any more, I doubt it) so I can only speak for myself when I say that I actually don't care if factions snowball past that point because:
  • 1) Like 95% of players will never reach that point.
  • 2) Those that do will have ample resources with which to jump in and effect any outcome they dislike.
  • 3) The campaign team has other areas that need attention much more badly.
 
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Real world feudal gameplay would be a frustrating slog of whack-a-mole and back stab. I don't mind there being escalating political consequences for excessive expansion (Total War style). If we had capital cities there could also be a distance penalty for loyalty that might have the same effect.

In Total War these kinds of limiters tend to end up giving AI factions a natural barrier of control and relations which they struggle to get past. But then in Total War games there are also dozens of times more factions to mess with on the map too, so I'm not totally sure if it would work.
 
dude its simple....go into war with them and start execute the leaders...there problem solved..dont know why u guys make a big deal of it...
 
Real world feudal gameplay would be a frustrating slog of whack-a-mole and back stab. I don't mind there being escalating political consequences for excessive expansion (Total War style). If we had capital cities there could also be a distance penalty for loyalty that might have the same effect.

In Total War these kinds of limiters tend to end up giving AI factions a natural barrier of control and relations which they struggle to get past. But then in Total War games there are also dozens of times more factions to mess with on the map too, so I'm not totally sure if it would work.
Yeah, that's why I said it was a balancing (or feedback) mechanism that we needed, not just "nerf Khuzaits, specifically."

And yes, the design of WB/BL with just six factions does make this balancing issue even more difficult because you can have a faction that is clearly superior but still hugely vulnerable to being ganged up on or the fear of a player faction running around with an alliance to effectively create a super-faction, which is probably something holding back alliances from being implemented.
 
Has anybody ever suggested "separatism" as a "solution" to late game world domination? Maybe once the entirety of a culture's clans belong to the same faction, the game would start rolling (depending on many factors, like relationship) for a much larger scale "rebelion" (more like a separation) that would restore that culture's original kingdom. Say 100% of the Sturgia lords are now in the Khuzait. At some point, especially if they aren't on the best terms with the Khuzait leadership, with too few fiefs and money (and design/programming should ensure this always eventually happens to one or two cultures), they "rebel", separate from the Khuzait, restoring their original Sturgia kingdom, keeping the fiefs then controlled by Sturgia lords?
 
Yes, very often. None of the devs reply to the suggestion, either for or against.
Well, at least they haven't expressely discarded it like they discarded the ordering of formations to target specific formations. While such ordering could present challenges that might not be economically viable to tackle (yet another redo of the troop AI engine which we all remember took longer than most players' patience), I believe the recently implemented rebellions are a framework upon which they can build much more easily and quickly if they want to implement a "separatism" feature.

I strongly believe separatism can solve the "snowballing" issue completely and absolutely without focusing so much in buffing or nerfing individual factions and/or game mechanics. It wouldn't actually prevent the snowballing, but it would implement a life cycle for kingdoms that would make it so the very domination of the whole map by a kingdom would be what's going to "destroy" it (by splitting it in two or three).

Couple that with a bit more work on the journal, maybe with the creation of a dedicated "world history" journal with the rise and fall of kingdoms and a long term Bannerlord playthrough could become literally ****ing epic.
 
dude its simple....go into war with them and start execute the leaders...there problem solved..dont know why u guys make a big deal of it...
Because There is multiple ways to Play this game. Its a sandbox, not a Khuzait leader exécution simulator. Factions need to be balanced AI vs AI with 0 player intervention
 
Another reason for which I believe separatism (or some other form of kingdom "life cycle" implementation) is necessary is because snowballing is a realistic and inevitable phenomena. It's more or less desirable to a certain extent. It would be the opposite of fun if a kingdom (especially the player's) can't become stronger regardless, and a stronger kingdom continues to expand and eventually conquers other kingdoms. I see it like allowing a person to grow old and die, reproducing before the end, instead of forcing its age to stay the same so they don't grow nor die. Let kingdoms grow, conquer and eventually die, leaving offspring that will keep the game interesting indefinitely.
 
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I think the AI just needs a tweak to gang up on the strongest faction like what was done in Warband.

I remember in Warband the factions would go to war with a nation because they were too strong. If Bannerlord adopted this, then you could get to a situation where the Khuzait would be at war with every faction in the game. Irrespective of how many battles they won, they'd definitely lose holdings and power. There would be too many sieges for the Khuzait to defend them all.

Using the power bar, clans within a Kingdom should have an increased desire to go to war once one nation has more than 10% more power than anyone else. This would be tied to a inversely proportional desire to make peace with everyone else.

This would also make it a lot more difficult for the player near the end of the game as well, since the nations would align against you.
 
I think the AI just needs a tweak to gang up on the strongest faction like what was done in Warband.

I remember in Warband the factions would go to war with a nation because they were too strong. If Bannerlord adopted this, then you could get to a situation where the Khuzait would be at war with every faction in the game. Irrespective of how many battles they won, they'd definitely lose holdings and power. There would be too many sieges for the Khuzait to defend them all.

Using the power bar, clans within a Kingdom should have an increased desire to go to war once one nation has more than 10% more power than anyone else. This would be tied to a inversely proportional desire to make peace with everyone else.

This would also make it a lot more difficult for the player near the end of the game as well, since the nations would align against you.
That reminded me of the "Growing Power" (or something like that) diplomacy penalty in Total War games, which made it more likely for factions to wage war against bordering expanding factions. After all, they see what's going on and realize "they're next". There's also a "Small Faction" (definitely not the exact name) diplomacy bonus for factions with few cities that mostly kept to themselves.

That's a really good mechanic and AFAIK some form of it is always implemented into most (if not all) strategy games. It seems to work the exact opposite in Bannerlord, though, with factions avoiding war with the strongest faction (it's a stronger faction than them), which makes sense (in the short term) individually speaking, but helps the snowballing of the leading faction(s) collectively speaking.

Couple that with other mechanics and some fine tuning and there's definitely much that can still be done about the "snowballing" issue.
 
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Just done a trade game 1.5.7 with minimal involvement with any faction fighting and after 1433 days Kuzait are being beaten by Sturgia who have twice the towns they do. Kuzait gained Syronea, but lost Baltakland (although I bought Amprela off Monchug straight after they took it from NE about 900 days in so they might have been up 1 more town). I'm much happier with the balance now as it fluctuates more at one point Vaandians were up by 6 cities, now it's the Sturgians who are and only the NE has been wiped out and the Battanians are down to 2 cities, but holding. Obviously just one game, but for me at least it feels least it feels like they have gone a long way towards fixing the snowballing thing esp where Kuzaits are concerned as they never got above 9 cities.
 
Because There is multiple ways to Play this game. Its a sandbox, not a Khuzait leader exécution simulator. Factions need to be balanced AI vs AI with 0 player intervention
lol 0 player intervention??so why even bother play the game?and if there is multiple ways to play the game.....khuzait leader execution simulator kinda is a way to play the game no? sorry but you are not making any sense to me...its our "job" to conquer the world otherwise why are we playing?watch the AI playing simulator kinda is not for me...
 
lol 0 player intervention??so why even bother play the game?and if there is multiple ways to play the game.....khuzait leader execution simulator kinda is a way to play the game no? sorry but you are not making any sense to me...its our "job" to conquer the world otherwise why are we playing?watch the AI playing simulator kinda is not for me...
What is it you dont understand about the word MULTIPLE ?
 
In my opinion it is a problem related to the armor and the way it is conceived in the game.
The relationship between archers (projectile and missiles in general) and armor is to the advantage of the first category.
In the thread I explain in detail what the problem is and how to solve it.
For any faction's actual snowball problems, several factors must be considered.
But one thing I ask you to do: do not limit yourself to make "tweaks" in the numbers (give weapons, armor values or AI) of this faction or that other, because the problem is not in what is there and seen but in what is missing.
There is a lack of mechanics to help balance the game.

For example in the thread below I talk about the armor system which in my opinion should be revised.
In other threads, which you can find under my profile, I talk about other mechanics:
- support / supply lines and logistics. (in addition to the camps)
do you go too far into enemy territory without protecting your supply line? the enemy cuts it and you are forced to retreat.
(therefore weak and numerically disadvantaged factions can defend themselves against numerous but not very careful opponents).
- geographical coverage and marching formations.

There are many other mechanics that I propose and some relate to the movement and combat system and you can find them in the link following the one relating to the armor system.

JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)

MEGATHREAD: darksoulshin's suggestions
 
In my opinion it is a problem related to the armor and the way it is conceived in the game.
The relationship between archers (projectile and missiles in general) and armor is to the advantage of the first category.
In the thread I explain in detail what the problem is and how to solve it.
Virtually every battle is fought using autocalc and autocalc doesn't take any of this into account. It doesn't even distinguished between ranged and melee troops, let alone specific types of equipment. Except horses, that is.
 
on the armor - there used to be the AdS mod - armor does something, where you could alter the % bonuses on weapon types, Nerfing archers to reasonable level.

Also best way to deal with Khuzait is to simply attack them on your own xD
 
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