Bannerlord Armor System as a bottleneck for tactical gameplay

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t5 unit is wort about 10 recruits
this is the issue. t5 unit is worth 5 recruits or less (depending on faction and how you'd like to calculate unit effectiveness). while costing 6 times the recruit wage.



100 legionaries vs 500 recruits of different factions.
the empire and the sturgian recruits routed the legionaries with ~250 losses.

the legionaries killed 340 vlandian recruits and lost 36

the legionaries killed 354 khuzait nomads and lost 26

the legionaries killed 358 battanian volunteers and lost 84

the legionaries killed 354 aserai recruits and lost 82
 
When you show me battle where you have wiped out floor with equal or higher number of t5 AI units using low tier archer spam with "crappy bows", then I will agree that you have a point and there is something wrong with arrow/armor balance.
Try the strategy challenge and tell me if you can beat the current best score and how you did it. If you object to the test conditions (map size, map choice) then tweak them and let us know

The fact is that for the vast majority of the game 100% ranged in a line while not touching the mouse/keyboard is more effective than a micromanaged mixed army, and that's anti-fun.

 
Does armor need a buff? Imo yes.

Currently wearing the beat armor in the game, using 30% damage (easiest) and it feels right when you are hit and take 10 damage versus the 30 you would normally take.

Nobles should be tanks, you should yourself become a tank, high end infantry should be durable.

All this talk of weak spots in armpits etc how often are you hitting an armpit with a bow? I'm pretty sure it isn't 20% of the time. We already have the weak spot it's called your head and we get rewarded by hitting it, as do ai's. Leave it at that no need to make it more complicated. This makes cav more effective as with their height advantages it's easier to hit a head.

Cavalry should be vulnerable to archers in the sense that the horse is a massive target and normally not very armored. If anything they need to debuff horse health, and buff armor. That way cheap cav loses horses becomes stranded, while a cataphract can charge through to destroy the archers its armor protecting them, with your t4/t5 crossbow and t5/t6 archers doing decent damage to them (10-20 damage).
 
this is the issue. t5 unit is worth 5 recruits or less (depending on faction and how you'd like to calculate unit effectiveness). while costing 6 times the recruit wage.



100 legionaries vs 500 recruits of different factions.
the empire and the sturgian recruits routed the legionaries with ~250 losses.

the legionaries killed 340 vlandian recruits and lost 36

the legionaries killed 354 khuzait nomads and lost 26

the legionaries killed 358 battanian volunteers and lost 84

the legionaries killed 354 aserai recruits and lost 82

This video is nine months old and not representative of the current state of the game. It’s actually worse now, because in the videos recruits either use spears or one handed cutting weapons. Meanwhile in the current version recruits often use scythes as two handed weapons for example, which wreck everything in melee.
 
this is the issue. t5 unit is worth 5 recruits or less (depending on faction and how you'd like to calculate unit effectiveness). while costing 6 times the recruit wage.

You have to use full quote:

...t5 unit is wort about 10 recruits. Not considering any tactical advantages like surrounding and so on.

Also right after that:

If 5 or more recruits could not down a t5 unit when they gang up on him, there would be something horribly wrong with the game balance.

Yes, if you send 5 recruits against 1 t5 unit at once and gang it, it will go down. As it should.
 
1) Bipolar ambigiously suggests that sometimes they work and sometimes they dont. The AI dont deploy archers properly most of the time, but even despite that they still shred infantry.

They don't shred my infantry. No matter how AI deploys them. AI archers are so pathetically easy to counter that it's not even fun.

2) I literally said par from balance, what do you mean?

I mean that you contradict yourself in two sentences.

3) Archers not dying and thus accumulating into the hundreds shows that their survavability far surpasses infantry because they arent getting into fights or shot at enough to even need spears or shields most of the time. Infantry get **** on even if they have shields.

And what problem do you have with that? They are ranged units, they are not supposed to get in to fights. Only difference is that player can do it much better then AI. In both protecting his own archers and engaging enemy archers.

Archers are units that normally take casualties only when player looses battle. Which of course is not very often. Game is rigged to favor the player.

4) Have you actually seen the amount of armour that cataphracts have? Lamellar on top of scale on top of mail.

You're exaggerating. Only some parts of body are covered in scales or lamellar. And there are parts that are not covered by anything. Parts of arms and legs, eyes, crotch. And then there are gaps between scales and lamellas.

Literally nothing conventional is going through that,

If that sentence was true, they would newer bother to invent plate.

and as I said, weakspots consist of mail armpits and small eyeslits I suppose. And considering that 95% of the time you are going to be hitting random heavy armoured ****, it isnt a stretch to expect them to take little to no damage from low tier weaponry including bows. From a balance perspective, how hard they are to actually obtain, somehow finding Viglas and then somehow ranking them all the way up, they should be extremely overpowered in the same vein that Fians are. You even admitted that Fians are overpowered in a roundabout fashion, yet a handful of tier 2 archers should be able to take out a cataphract with a few feather pokes apparently.

This is getting repetitive. Why don't you actually demonstrate example. Take bow and arrow of a t2 archer, take it's skill to calculate damage, decrease it by average distance, then take elite imperial cataphract, get it's chest armor value, calculate effectiveness against piercing, get the resulting damage that goes through, divide it's health by it to see how many arrows t2 archer have too shoot to down a cataphract so that we can see how overpowered t2 bows are.

Or make a test by placing single cataphract in front of t2 archer and count how many arrows it takes to kill him. Run it couple of times and make an average to even the hits in to different parts of body with different protection.

5) ? If you are low level you wont be fighting many high tier units and whats extra funny is that this crumbles your argument about 'muh challenge' earlier on to justify noble armor being trash. That point comes across as very null and void now that you are afraid that some targets might actually require some input to put down. Which is it? Challenge good or bad?

There's difference between "challenge" and "nothing conventional is going through" that you advocate for.

6) It can somehow take less than that though, and no I dont think its outrageous that 5 recruits will struggle to take down a tier 5. Consider the effort and time taken to obtain a tier 5 unit than literally 5 trash peasants. A few clicks vs constant battles, constant money, constantly not losing battles.

Except you're going to loose couple of those recruits doing so. It's not 5:0 equation. Not to mention other stuff like party size limit, food consumption, movement speed and so on. You can't win in Bannerlord by using recruit spam.

You arent looking at the larger picture and this is your problem.

7) You are right, in my ideal Bannerlord, armour would be buffed to the extent that Fians dont automatically delete everything they hit. But lower tier weaponry would be impacted more.

You're not going to be deleted by a singe hit from Fian in high tier armor. You're probably not going to be deleted with 3 arrows either.

If you let Fians fire at you until they do you in, then that's problem of tactic, not armor.

8.) Thats an outrageous comparison though. Im not under the belief that low tier archers can beat high tier infantry on an absolutely equal playing field, the imbalance doesnt have to be THAT stark for it to still be a problem worth addressing. You didnt tell me to match up t5 archers vs t5 infantry because you already know the outcome of that. :ROFLMAO:

Yes I know, because I did it before:

1. I order my t5 infantry in to shieldwall.
2. t5 archers lose.

Fians are exception because they are very good at melee. But you get what you pay for when using them. They are elite.

9) What I still dont understand is why you are happy to use a scapegoat of player spamming archers as to why there isnt a problem when itself exposes issues. Why isnt player spamming infantry also overpowered as hell? Maybe there is a reason for that.

Yes, because using infantry is pretty straightforward and doesn't require more complex AI. Infantry needs to close to melee, which means they are always going to both dish and take hits. Using archers properly requires to keep them in situations where they dish damage without receiving it. That's the whole point of archers. And AI isn't very good at that.

Fian spam works by shooting AI before it closes the distance and engages in melee. And that's trivial thing to do because AI doesn't close distance well to begging with and doesn't use shieldwall properly. It will happily place recruits without shields in to front ranks.

Hell, playing RBM where archers are massively nerfed they are STILL very powerful and a determining factor in victory. It just shocks me how people can defend archery in native Bannerlord, jesus christ.

"Very powerful" is your subjective opinion.
 
And like I said, it is up to what he (the player) considers decent damage. I've never been one-shot (from full health, obviously) by a scythe while wearing good armor (25-30ish or more per location) unless I was riding towards it at a full gallop. So it depends
Decent damage for the lowest possible NPC and the fact that nobody reasonable would consider a oneshot on a highest tier troop merely "decent" is the point. He was talking about an NPC since the beginning. Not what a player character could achieve.
That's true that I'm not playing Mount and Blade like most players. But neither is anyone else on this forum. The majority of players who played Warband never gained a fief. They never married. They didn't read a book, form their own kingdom, duel a lord as a woman, complete a claimant war or any of a bunch of Warband's activities.
True. Supports my argument further though, because those players you mention wouldn't find it easy to attain oneshots with masterwork 2-handed swords from horseback either. They probably never even get one. Whatever way you look at it, the point is only a very small amount of players would find it easy to quickly attain a masterwork 2h sword and know how to use it effectively from horseback.
With that said, nothing about getting one-shot weapons required much game knowledge beyond "Dyeworks in every town."
You only know that because you've played the game for a long time and/or you searched a guide from someone who had played the game for a long time. In other words, not easy to attain. You would also presumably be skipping a normal sized army and armor to buy the sword quicker just for the purposes of this argument, something your normal player won't do. Just admit you were wrong man.
Hell, Warband explicitly directed players towards couched lances during the tutorial and even the most terrible of those could blow anyone off their feet in the game.
Like I already said, Warband balance was indeed not perfect and lances illustrate the overall point I've been making that easily attainable high damage is bad for weapon balance.
They are doing it to help onboard more people from SP to MP.
Fully willing to accept this as a very likely reason but I would like sauce please if you're going to state it as a definite.
 
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Decent damage for the lowest possible NPC and the fact that nobody reasonable would consider a oneshot on a highest tier troop merely "decent" is the point. He was talking about an NPC since the beginning. Not what a player character could achieve.
He didn't say the scythe one-shot the cataphract though. The scythe isn't capable of one-shotting a cataphract without a speed bonus, right now. That's why I asked what he meant by "decent." It could be fifteen damage (and yes, people complain about peasants/looters dealing fifteen damage to well-armored troops), it could be forty or two hundred.
You only know that because you've played the game for a long time and/or you searched a guide from someone who had played the game for a long time. In other words, not easy to attain. You would also presumably be skipping a normal sized army and armor to buy the sword quicker just for the purposes of this argument, something your normal player won't do. Just admit you were wrong man.
I could just as easily say, "Long hafted blade or lance costs less than 1000 denars" to the same effect. Or the long axe with overhands if you were defending a siege. And Warband told you outright that Dyeworks were the best thing to run in every town; you just asked the guild master and he said it. Anyone who spoke to him and compared wound up independently discovering that dyeworks were the best in every town.

Edit: before one of the old guard jumps down my throat, yes, yes, ironworks in Curaw, exceptions, etc.

(Also, skipping the normal party size? Why?)
Fully willing to accept this as a very likely reason but I would like sauce please if you're going to state it as a definite.
I can't find it now, but it was a pre-EA article about the closed beta.
 
Try the strategy challenge and tell me if you can beat the current best score and how you did it. If you object to the test conditions (map size, map choice) then tweak them and let us know

I am playing Kenshi right now, which is like MB but on a tidal moon meanwhile waiting for game to be updated.

The fact is that for the vast majority of the game 100% ranged in a line while not touching the mouse/keyboard is more effective than a micromanaged mixed army, and that's anti-fun.

Then don't do it. I have already said it before, archer spam is overpowering only when player use it. AI archers are not overpowered.

It's an issue with AI, not with archers or armor. Stop exploiting AI and issue will disappear.
 
A bold conclusion. How do you support that?

Well read last 5 pages of this thread as well as that other post about archers been stupid. It all full of me supporting that conclusion.

Basic premise is simple:
Archers are overpowered when used by player. They are underpowered when used by the AI => logical conclusion: problem is in the AI and not the archers or armor.
 
Well read last 5 pages of this thread as well as that other post about archers been stupid. It all full of me supporting that conclusion.

Basic premise is simple:
Archers are overpowered when used by player. They are underpowered when used by the AI => logical conclusion: problem is in the AI and not the archers or armor.
You make a lot of unfounded/incorrect claims in this thread that you refuse to support.

You literally cited a battle (Crecy) with a cannon where the French had no commander and were killing each other on purpose (French knights were killing their crossbowmen for being cowards) while the English slaughtered them with cannons and a half-million arrows to 'prove' that 11th century archers pierce high-end 11th century armor.

Why should I take anything you say more seriously than a magic 8 ball's results?
 
How come shields take such a beating from arrows and don't fall apart? They take a lot of beating from most anything really.
Wouldn't calradians just make armor out of shields and be near invincible? Shields are pretty tuff in BL compared to warband.
I don't really care but it's kinda weird how every attack in the game does some amount of damage even to max armor, but shields barely get scratched.
 
You make a lot of unfounded/incorrect claims in this thread that you refuse to support.

You got it backwards. It's you who make lot of unfounded/incorrect claims in this thread that you refuse to support.

See? This primitive childish tactic of attacking the person instead of his argument works both ways. So I recommend you to refrain from using it if you want to have a meaningful discussion. It's tactic usually used by people who run out of arguments anyway.

You literally cited a battle (Crecy) with a cannon where the French had no commander and were killing each other on purpose (French knights were killing their crossbowmen for being cowards) while the English slaughtered them with cannons and a half-million arrows to 'prove' that 11th century archers pierce high-end 11th century armor.

Oh, so French lost because they killed their crossbowmen? And who killed their knights? Or they first killed their crossbowmen and then surrendered to English?

...makes sense. English fians were OP and French armor sucked. French king and his developers forgot to boost it before the battle. And when French knights issued letter of complain to English king requesting him to nerf his archers against armor, he laughed them down. So they gave up.

Why should I take anything you say more seriously than a magic 8 ball's results?

I don't give a damn about what you take. This is a free forum to discuss a game. You can take or not take what ever you want.
 
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Basic premise is simple:
Archers are overpowered when used by player. They are underpowered when used by the AI => logical conclusion: problem is in the AI and not the archers or armor.
It isn't a question of AI, just archers being too effective past a certain critical mass. I don't think anyone wants to devs to fix things so all the AI parties run around with uniformly lopsided parties that match player party comps.

Better to just curb the offending element.
 
It isn't a question of AI, just archers being too effective past a certain critical mass. I don't think anyone wants to devs to fix things so all the AI parties run around with uniformly lopsided parties that match player party comps.

That's not what I am suggesting at all when I am talking about AI.

Make AI use shieldwall properly and half of the effectiveness of the Fian spam would disappear instantly. And that's really the simplest change that can be done to improve AI against archer spam. AI can also be made to charge player instantly when it detects archer spam, instead of it's typical dances with skirmishing. Skirmishing against the Fian spam is about the worst thing possible AI can do.

However proper shieldwall advance might as well be enough. If player goes all the way to collect 300 fians, he as well might get rewarded for the effort since that's not a trivial task. You're not going to dominate battlefields with t2/t3 archers, that's for sure. You can't do it even now.

It did work in Warband after all, didn't it?
 
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He didn't say the scythe one-shot the cataphract though. The scythe isn't capable of one-shotting a cataphract without a speed bonus, right now. That's why I asked what he meant by "decent."
I didn't reply to you for asking him what he meant by decent. I replied to you because you said you consider oneshots "decent damage" for the worst possible NPC combatant against the best troop in the game. We are having this discussion because your definition of "decent damage" in Bannerlord indicates there is something wrong with the game's damage model.
I could just as easily say, "Long hafted blade or lance costs less than 1000 denars"
You already did say lance and I responded to that twice already: Warband's weapon balance obviously isn't perfect (because some weapons can attain easy oneshots), which illustrates my point in the whole reason we're talking about this.
Anyone who spoke to him and compared wound up independently discovering that dyeworks were the best in every town.
When you talk to the guild master he dumps an entire Excel spreadsheet's worth of confusing figures on you. The values he gives you for dye and other things don't even explain what they're referring to (are the numbers demand to be filled, or stocks)? So basically, you have to figure out the game's trade system and workshop system before you can even think about exploiting the profitability of dyeworks. More importantly, after hopping ingame just now, each dyeworks costs 10000 denars. So you'd have to earn the sword's value 2x over just to begin building dyeworks. And then you have to git gud at horseback combat for the speed bonus. None of this is easy, just save us both some time and admit it.
I can't find it now, but it was a pre-EA article about the closed beta.
Thanks.
 
It did work in Warband after all, didn't it?
It didn't work like that in Warband. Archers just flatly put out less damage and armor did better at deflecting it. You could still get rekt by riding straight into them but it was a lot less effective than just fielding a huge mass of Swadian Knights or Mamluks.

I didn't reply to you for asking him what he meant by decent. I replied to you because you said you consider oneshots "decent damage" for the worst possible NPC combatant against the best troop in the game. We are having this discussion because your definition of "decent damage" in Bannerlord indicates there is something wrong with the game's damage model.
No, only for me (as the player). I don't know what he does. That's why I asked him. My personal scale of damage is unit-type agnostic. But like I said, scythes aren't actually one-shotting cataphracts in Bannerlord regardless.
When you talk to the guild master he dumps an entire Excel spreadsheet's worth of confusing figures on you.
If you found that confusing, it sounds like a personal issue. The same with it being hard to get a speed bonus for hitting someone; you literally just ride your horse at them. That's all. Like, I'm not actually mechanically skilled at this game but it wasn't hard to land a hit on someone from horseback in Warband and I'm shocked anyone thinks it was. It is a little trickier in Bannerlord because you basically have to look at the ground but it is clearly meant to be something you learn in the tutorial and pull off reliably from the start of the game.
 
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It didn't work like that in Warband. Archers just flatly put out less damage and armor did better at deflecting it. You could still get rekt by riding straight into them but it was a lot less effective than just fielding a huge mass of Swadian Knights or Mamluks.

I would like to see some data to back that up.

Archers put up comparable damage, armor have similar effectiveness and I had plenty of fun time sniping Swadian Knights and Mamluks in sieges, two shooting them with war bow and an average 4-5 power draw skill. About equivalent to a Vaegir archer (the best archer in the game). The only reason why you could not do it in field battles was that AI was using their shields.

The funny raise shield - drop shield advance was among the first things that I have noticed when I have switched from Warband to Bannerlord. Suddenly ranged fire became effective against enemy. You would newer be able to do it in Warband. I still remember sound of breaking shields when I used Vaegir archer spam, with very few kills. In Warband you had to break a shield before you could start hitting enemy. Or position your archers in such way, that they would shoot from unshielded side. But that wouldn't be possible with archer spam.
 
It didn't work like that in Warband. Archers just flatly put out less damage and armor did better at deflecting it.
This. You could sit in front of archers with average bows in high-tier plate, on full damage settings, and only take 0-1 damage per arrow. It was literally 200 hits to kill.
No, only for me (as the player). I don't know what he does. That's why I asked him. My personal scale of damage is unit-type agnostic. But like I said, scythes aren't actually one-shotting cataphracts in Bannerlord regardless.
I just said that you asking him was never an issue, the issue was with your definition. Look, whatever, this is going in circles.
If you found that confusing, it sounds like a personal issue.
Confusing because there was nothing given to tell you whether those numbers referred to supply or demand. Why did you cut out that part of my post when it answers what you just said?
The same with it being hard to get a speed bonus for hitting someone; you literally just ride your horse at them. That's all. Like, I'm not actually mechanically skilled at this game but it wasn't hard to land a hit on someone from horseback in Warband and I'm shocked anyone thinks it was. It is clearly meant to be something you learn in the tutorial and pull off reliably from the start of the game.
This isn't just hitting someone, this is getting the speed bonus too. And you don't just ride your horse at them, you have to time your swing right and do the direction properly (while steering the horse in circles around crowds of enemies and not bumping into anything), otherwise you get -20% damage instead of +128%, or you veer into a rock and get mobbed. It's not the hardest thing in the world but it does take some practice and add to the effort required.

So are you going to reply to the part about the cost of the dyeworks, or are you just going to cherrypick the weakest-looking parts of my post from the context that makes them solid arguments (again)?
 
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