Plz fix broken simulation! 19 cavalry vs 7 looters one heavy cavalry die!

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The case of elite units dying in objectively safe and overwhelmingly favorable auto-calc battles has been a meme since long before Bannerlord.

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Though in this instance, I actually like that auto-resolving battles is dangerous and unpredictable, because it promotes active gameplay from the player. There is a high chance you'll be punished for using auto-calc, so instead of just simulating the best part of a Mount&Blade game (the combat), you are incentivized to take an active role in the struggle.

And that is good game design.

Auto-calc should remain how it's been for over a decade: A very unwise risk taken by the player, often resulting in disaster, thus prompting them to take a hands-on role in future fights. And a source for funny memes.
It just boggles me how you can think that punishing the player for skipping something they gain no enjoyment from in a video game is "good game design".
First, please see the first 30 seconds of this video.
Keep in mind that when Reggie says "battle" here, he means challenge.
A player with 100 banner knights fighting against 10 looters isn't challenging. The player could be completely terrible, or even AFK, and still win. So there's no challenge, and thus, no fun.
And if you're not having fun... Why bother?

None of us are asking for autocalc to be a viable option in close battles. Close battles are indeed the "best part of Mount & Blade." But curbstomp battles are one of the most boring, unfun parts.

There is no benefit gained by forcing the player to engage in them, by punishing them with losing troops. It is the antithesis of good game design: because it's ANTI-fun. The time I spend in six curbstomp battles, I could instead be spending fighting one actually close and exciting large battle.

The only reason I've seen you give here is "memes". And honestly, I think most players would happily erase all memory of those memes in favour of having an autocalc system that lets them skip boring one-sided battles without losing troops.

On the argument that "it's always been like that"-- well, I spend most of my posts saying that mechanics from Warband should work the same in Bannerlord. But not this time. Why? Because older isn't necessarily better. FUN is what matters.
The best part of Mount & Blade is not the 500th time in a campaign that you've steamrolled a party with less than 5% of your strength. TW might imagine it encourages active gameplay but it doesn't -- it encourages people to **** right off and play something else that's less out-and-out grindy.

That's because TW doesn't actually play this game, so they think a number of things are fun when they really aren't.

It isn't even like it actually forces the player to do a damned thing except wait a minute or two to resolve the fight 'live.' You can literally hit "Join your troops" and tab out, then come back when you hear cheering and (assuming your party has the bare minimum necessary) never take losses against parties you greatly outpower. It is 100% a waste of time that could be saved with an autocalc that had a built-in threshold for party power required to cause casualties.

Of course, that ties back into the intended playstyle (mixed quality parties, semi-frequent wipes, etc.) vs. the typical player playstyle (max-tier, max size party, never losing, few casualties). You can get by never fighting looters after the very start of the game, without caring too much about your troops' survival and (IMO) that is a much more fun way to play but it isn't by any means the most common way to play Bannerlord.
+10
It's a convenience feature
@Antaeus Yes, but a specific type of convenience you have to admit, which is: cutting out the part of the game the player doesn't enjoy.
Autocalc isn't just there to reduce the overall length of the game, because that would make no sense- if the player didn't want to be playing at all, they wouldn't be using autocalc, they would just quit. True?
Player is given the option to autocalc for one very clear reason: Getting to the more fun parts of the game.
It must have risk, otherwise it just becomes a lazy exploit that kills the game. You can have your short cut, but you have to be prepared for the possibility that it might cost you.
Close battles? Sure, autocalc should be incredibly risky.
But lopsided battles? They don't have any meaningful risk. So why should the autocalc version of them?
Why is preventing the player from being "lazy" - in an entertainment product which is primarily played for people looking to relax - so important that it should take precedence over fun?
The Warp Zones in Super Mario Bros. didn't take away your powerup for using them to skip all the way to Zone 8. Creative Mode in Minecraft didn't delete random blocks as a punishment for switching from Survival. Even Dark Souls didn't punish you for skipping Upper Blighttown. Why were these things in those games? To give players the option, entirely at their own individual choice, of skipping parts of the game they didn't find challenging or enjoyable.
So I have to ask: Why is it so important to you, to force other players to do things they don't want to, in a game they bought?
It's also exploitable. I've recalculated/reloaded an auto-siege over and over to see the spread of results. You end up with a bell curve of casualties - the majority of results clustered around the same place, but occasionally you end up with a result well outside the bell curve, even better than you could get if you managed the battle yourself.
For starters, surely you can agree savescumming is the exploit in this instance. Not the autocalc itself.
Secondly, the un-deserved successes you are describing are just the flipside of the same thing we are complaining about: excessive random chance in autocalc results. If there was less randomness, the player would be experiencing less undeserved results, both in their favour and against.
I'm sure the devs could tinker with it and change the probabilities, but it seems to me like a pretty mundane thing to waste their time on. It might not be perfect, but it certainly isn't broken. Th rest is subjective.
It's definitely worth spending their time on if it makes the game more fun and less boring.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/broken - "not working properly".
If autocalc is intended to allow players to skip battles they don't find fun, but nobody is using it because it punishes them for doing so, and thus nobody is using it for its intended purpose, then it's not working properly.
 
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The current results are not an effort to simulate 'reality', dev said...

Also when examining your screenshot I realized someone changed power calculation formula. It was not like this before. There was higher strength difference between tier-0 and tier-5 troops like 10x as it should be. Because 5 villagers cannot win aganist 1 tier-5 troop. I checked and see it is changed at 1.4.0 but I could not find who changed it. Asked info about this at office comunication channels but probably I will not get any answer (communication is not so good there). I am placing an image to show you old formula. Thats why players are losing high tier troops at simulations aganist even looters. However if we make this 10x like in old days probably it will be worse for snowballing but for better and equitable gameplay we need to change formula as in old days
Full answer ...
 
A player with 100 banner knights fighting against 10 looters isn't challenging. The player could be completely terrible, or even AFK, and still win. So there's no challenge, and thus, no fun.
+1, and that's the core point for me. When you're well past the point where looters are any problem in player battle, you shouldn't have to sit through it, gaining neither meaningful challenge nor enjoyment from it. That's at least one legit auto-calc application where it fails spectacularly in the current implementation.

If in the end-game I'm forced to choose between being bored to death and being actively punished for not being bored enough, what kinda game am I even playing?
 
A player with 100 banner knights fighting against 10 looters isn't challenging. The player could be completely terrible, or even AFK, and still win. So there's no challenge, and thus, no fun.

If you have the means and resources to field an army of 100 Banner Knights, then why would you be fighting looters in the first place?

At that point, the loot and exp given by them would be negligible, plus it's not like the looters are picking a fight with you, you would be the one seeking an engagement with them.

By mid-to-late game, the player has numerous financial and troop development systems at their disposal, and they pretty much full autonomy to choose which battles they fight and on their own terms. Thus, if there's a battle they think will be insignificant or boring, they don't have to fight it.
 
I have never tried... But at high level Tactics, isn't autocalc alot more reliable? I mean, that´s all Tactics really do - improving autocalc. It means, with low tactics, your charachter is a horrible tactican, at the level to hold fire and stand ground, let looters hack 3 mins, F1, F3
 
If you have the means and resources to field an army of 100 Banner Knights, then why would you be fighting looters in the first place?

At that point, the loot and exp given by them would be negligible, plus it's not like the looters are picking a fight with you, you would be the one seeking an engagement with them.

By mid-to-late game, the player has numerous financial and troop development systems at their disposal, and they pretty much full autonomy to choose which battles they fight and on their own terms. Thus, if there's a battle they think will be insignificant or boring, they don't have to fight it.
Looters are by far the most effective way to train up a large number of recruits. So my actual party has ~50x T7 cavalry, ~150x T5 horse archers, ~100x T5 crossbowmen, and then I'll get ~50x T1 recruits. Guess what the only effective way to train up those recruits is? That's right, looters. And it isn't usually an option for me to give all my elite troops to a companion party for the looter battles, to keep them safe from the broken autoresolve (for one thing, my companion parties are often full, or not within talking range).

So, my only effective option for training up these recruits is to manually fight every ****ing looter battle, keeping my elite troops out of the fight, and watching as my recruits kill a few looters before the latter scramble and run out of their reach. Over, and over, and over.

I'm on day 2200+, and am level 36 (without any gameplay-affecting mods). That should give you an idea of how much looter grind I've experienced in this campaign (let alone my others).

It's bad gameplay by any sane standard. A properly working autoresolve would avoid this.

I have never tried... But at high level Tactics, isn't autocalc alot more reliable?

No, high-level tactics isn't exempt from this problem. It maybe only happens 10% of the time instead of 20% of the time, or whatever. It's still a frequent problem.
 
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It would be foolish for Taleworlds to neglect or worse encourage poor auto-calc calculations as we need it MODS need it for anyone who needs battle results to play out realistically for Strategic gameplay.
 
i mean, I don't want to spend 80% of my playtime killing looters

A simple solution is to choose a formation 'zero' that keeps units out of the fight (would be great for non-combat companions if playing with death on as well).

Tactics doesn't level at an appreciable rate. It's worse than medic/roguery. No idea what a high tactics player character would actually do.
 
If you have the means and resources to field an army of 100 Banner Knights, then why would you be fighting looters in the first place?
Because I also have 100+ riff-raf units I want to level up to t2-3 and stick in a garrison, however I started a huge war and need good units with me to kill lord parties too on the way! SO I have 100 Khan's guards and 100 vlandian recruits....
Now of course realistically I just go into live battle plus only fairly large bandit parties will fight me anyways, but still if TW wanted it to be in anyway useful, letting me choose "I send my 100 recruits to fight the 80 looters" would be the way to go... I don't think that's their goal though. Plus with exception of you 1st fief, you probably want to pre-gather all garrison units before war and have a plan on what fiefs you will take and what goes where in a timely manner to get it all rapped up and secure. Of course many player don't do that and even listen to the 'game' "Oh Istania says it time to make a kingdom durp durp durp" and get in a pickle.
 
There's a thing I'm not sure I get in this debate.
I don't know anything about coding and stuff but :
If there is an autocalc, there is some kind of randomness in the results?
If there is randomness, the possibility of an improbable result exists?
I understand that some feel the probablility of loosing high teer troops in present version autocalc is too high, and this I imagine can be modified by some kind of mathematic formula in the code, but there seems to be an expectation for certainty to win without any loss of troops, at some level of troop superiority.
At what precise point should this limit of dominance be set?
In any case, it will be arbitrary, and we will be frustrated if just under?
 
I have never tried... But at high level Tactics, isn't autocalc alot more reliable? I mean, that´s all Tactics really do - improving autocalc. It means, with low tactics, your charachter is a horrible tactican, at the level to hold fire and stand ground, let looters hack 3 mins, F1, F3
The autocalc advantage from Tactics is 20% at 200. Not worth it.
 
The only way I've found to level Tactics effectively is to spam sacrifice troops, the more the better. I did exactly that to hit 150+ Tactics before beginning leveling other skills so it would have the maximum learning rate. The passive bonus is negligible, some of the perks help but nothing addresses the complaints here.

It's simply not worth it, especially with Cunning being generally bad because Roguery isn't good and Scouts are a dime a dozen.

What does happen is you can auto-resolve 95% of your battles, you get so many prisoners it's a bonanza of future nobles, there's so many wounded that medicine actually levels. But it doesn't matter because you'll still take so many losses that you have to participate even if only to push F1 F3 because your master of Tactics is still worse than simply saying "charge".

It's an effective strategy for farming prisoners and medicine, and that does help make it more viable, but the losses are just unbearable once you're dealing with armies.
 
If you have the means and resources to field an army of 100 Banner Knights, then why would you be fighting looters in the first place?

At that point, the loot and exp given by them would be negligible, plus it's not like the looters are picking a fight with you, you would be the one seeking an engagement with them.

By mid-to-late game, the player has numerous financial and troop development systems at their disposal, and they pretty much full autonomy to choose which battles they fight and on their own terms. Thus, if there's a battle they think will be insignificant or boring, they don't have to fight it.
Well one reason is they are harassing my peasants and haven't you heard looter.... I am the law.

In all seriousness changing the auto calc to favour parties versus looters would help many aspects of the game.

1) cleaning house is a simple, auto calc of my 300 versus you 10/20/30 no losses on my end. I would use it more now get some exp for tactics.
2) ai parties now lose less troops cleaning house so have better parties when fighting you the player making those fights closer and cooler as they are losing less troops to looter scum.

The autocalc system should have a point where if you are fighting certain parties e.g looters villagers it's a easy win gg have your loot and continue.

While versus other parties this never occurs e.g lords / deserters / bandits.

Why as I also join my troops f1 f3 get a beer and return to find a better result than an autocalc will ever provide.
 
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Seems pretty clear to me that they need to tweak the algorithm. @Antaeus I am a little puzzled by how sternly you are defending it in its current state. Right now there is no reason at all to ever autoresolve a battle, unless you want to level surgery as someone else said. Just sending the troops to charge in a real battle will always give a better outcome, and not just a slightly better one at that (which is the way it worked in Warband and I was fine with that).

@MadVader if memory serves Pendor at some point actually had some conditions where units would perform better in autocalc than in battle, barring some very clever strategy from the player. I remember recruiting Berserkers to hunt Noldors before their own autocalc was buffed :smile: that would definitely not have gone well in a non simulated battle. I honestly enjoyed it, it gave autocalc some meaning and a niche application.
 
@MadVader if memory serves Pendor at some point actually had some conditions where units would perform better in autocalc than in battle, barring some very clever strategy from the player. I remember recruiting Berserkers to hunt Noldors before their own autocalc was buffed :smile: that would definitely not have gone well in a non simulated battle. I honestly enjoyed it, it gave autocalc some meaning and a niche application.
Yeah, but using autocalc against the Noldor was an exploit. Autocalc should be a time saver only, not valid "tactics". That said, regardless of the formula, any autocalc has a potential to be abused like that - you just need to figure out which enemy troops perform worse in autocalc than live.
 
Seems pretty clear to me that they need to tweak the algorithm. @Antaeus I am a little puzzled by how sternly you are defending it in its current state. Right now there is no reason at all to ever autoresolve a battle, unless you want to level surgery as someone else said. Just sending the troops to charge in a real battle will always give a better outcome, and not just a slightly better one at that (which is the way it worked in Warband and I was fine with that).

I'm not sure I am defending it in it's current state, I'm postulating that you should expect casualties from an auto calculator and that there should be risk involved in any short-cut.

I'm balancing that with my personal experiences - that I have been downed by looters myself while in Noble armour, and I have lost random high tier units to looters who got themselves isolated. This builds a case of plausibility - as in any auto calculator must be plausible - and in my experience, that means it has to have a scalable % chance of occasional units dying.

Anything else, is as MadVader suggests above, a lazy exploit. I'm against a built in mechanic operating as an exploit.
 
Well, I am not really advocating for something like the Berserkers vs Noldors, I agree that it's a bit exploity. However I do think that right now the slider is too much in favor of deaths compared to real battles, and I honestly don't really think that dying to looters in end game armor should be as much of a thing in real battles to begin with (but that I believe is a dead horse that has already been beaten in other threads).
 
All I see is people complaining because the game doesn't work like they want it to. Take away all the long-winded arguments and explanations and that's all it is. They want to win a low-end battle by auto-calc with no punishment or inconvenience. Well too bad, you can't. There isn't a single game that possesses this feature that won't punish you somehow at times for using it.

So suck it up and keep playing. This long thread is irrelevant. Warband never changed it, and Total War certainly didn't in all of it's years... So get over it. It's clearly here to stay even if you do waste another dozen or so threads over another year's time.

Sounds pretty entitled to me. And before anyone wants to spend time responding to me with more arguments, data, or just plain insults, just don't. Your only reinforcing my stated opinion. You got a ****ty auto-calc result. Boo hoo. Reload and try again, or don't use it if it bothers you so much.

Devs should be fixing actual problems. Not wondering how to tweak a simple feature that has been the same way it is now forever and on everyother game that features it. Your Elite Cataohract loss....isn't worth such meaningless effort. Just use a command code for ****s sake. No one cares that you played the game with your big boy pants on and that you did it without cheat codes. And if they do, then they are just as retarded as this thread is.
 
Imagine if they made auto calc for the player a minni game where you troops get divided into cards or such and the tactics skill/perks gave you bonus cards or buff or such and you had to choose which card to count the AI enemies card like "10 infantry" and you counter "10 archers" then it plays out in short and on until one side give up or is out of cards..... that would at least be fun.
 
All I see is people complaining because the game doesn't work like they want it to. Take away all the long-winded arguments and explanations and that's all it is. They want to win a low-end battle by auto-calc with no punishment or inconvenience. Well too bad, you can't. There isn't a single game that possesses this feature that won't punish you somehow at times for using it.

So suck it up and keep playing. This long thread is irrelevant. Warband never changed it, and Total War certainly didn't in all of it's years... So get over it. It's clearly here to stay even if you do waste another dozen or so threads over another year's time.

Sounds pretty entitled to me. And before anyone wants to spend time responding to me with more arguments, data, or just plain insults, just don't. Your only reinforcing my stated opinion. You got a ****ty auto-calc result. Boo hoo. Reload and try again, or don't use it if it bothers you so much.

Devs should be fixing actual problems. Not wondering how to tweak a simple feature that has been the same way it is now forever and on everyother game that features it. Your Elite Cataohract loss....isn't worth such meaningless effort. Just use a command code for ****s sake. No one cares that you played the game with your big boy pants on and that you did it without cheat codes. And if they do, then they are just as retarded as this thread is.
Uh no. Autocalc is not the same as it was in Warband. If it was I wouldn't have a problem with it myself, in fact ideally I would like it to be tuned to get there.

Also, I don't appreciate your tone. If you think that this thread is of low quality this is no way to try and improve it. You are pretty much ****ting on people just for having a different opinion.
 
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