Battle tactics in this game are so bad and dumb

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talior3

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I am literally limited to 10 types of formations, unable to save these presets, unable to separate units of the same type into different formations, unable to name or design formations in any way, and I have to do it in real time as if it's a mindless shooting game.

Literally 0 room for pre-planned formations and tactics, and 0 liberty. It's just an idiotic place unit here and that's it type of thing.
 
I'm not entirely sure what the complaints are...

You can have different unit formations e.g. shield wall, loose, square etc. And you can have up to 10 different unit groupings - which you can manage, and switch on the fly. So you can set your heavy infantry into shield wall and your cavalry into loose if you so choose. Or split your heavy infantry into two groups and have one with shield wall and one loose. It's actually very flexible.

Do you want army formations as you do in Total War? As in select your army, click a formation and the whole army reshuffles? If you do, that's not the type of game Taleworlds want to produce, same goes for pre-battle setup - it's not the type of game Taleworlds wants to make. I kind of support them in this, I've played Total War for 15 years... I play Bannerlord because it is not a Total War clone.

If I had one thing I could get on the battlefield, it would be the ability to issue specific attack orders. Cavalry attack those archers. Archers attack those infantry. Rather than the difficult micro you have to do to achieve this. Otherwise I'm ok with things being real time.

However, there are mods that can help you in all of this.
 
I am literally limited to 10 types of formations, unable to save these presets, unable to separate units of the same type into different formations, unable to name or design formations in any way, and I have to do it in real time as if it's a mindless shooting game.

Literally 0 room for pre-planned formations and tactics, and 0 liberty. It's just an idiotic place unit here and that's it type of thing.
It's called fast paced action.... yeah it's completely pointless and fascinatingly dull like much of the game.
 
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I am literally limited to 10 types of formations, unable to save these presets, unable to separate units of the same type into different formations, unable to name or design formations in any way, and I have to do it in real time as if it's a mindless shooting game.

Literally 0 room for pre-planned formations and tactics, and 0 liberty. It's just an idiotic place unit here and that's it type of thing.
Yeah it needs to be revised with more robust, rewarding gameplay in mind. If it isn't.... well I hope mods can fix it, if not I guess warband forever.

We're supposed to get some kind of pre-battle placement at some point, I've been really grumpy about it all year and they say they're working on it. I haven't got a confirmation if it will include any kind of pre-planned or saved formations, which I also asked for. Doing it all in real time is kinda M&B's thing, but I do agree there should be pre-battle placement and formations, because t's just crappy to have scramble every single battle to move and format the entire party so they don't completely **** up at thier basic roles.

You can have different unit formations e.g. shield wall, loose, square etc. And you can have up to 10 different unit groupings
Right but really it's only SW and loose. Ranged NEEDS loose to shoot properly, everything else is "do you want shield or move faster?"
Skien used to be useful for making ranged focus fire head on but nowadays they don't fire properly, it can still be used to 'block' a cav charge but that's not any different the doing the same with SW or square to bunch up un-shielded troops up closer to trap them.
The other formations don't do anything useful and many don't even obey thier description for many groups, because they change depending on group.

I have my own tricks and tactics but I don't think any of it is how TW thinks the player would do battle.

f I had one thing I could get on the battlefield, it would be the ability to issue specific attack orders.
eeef yeah, that'd be amazing and allow you to actually synchronize attacks as a force, and of course easily remove pestsy units. TW doesn't like it so far though, hope they change thier mind.

It's called fast paced action.... yeah it's completely pointless and fascinatingly dull like much of the game.
Those comments form that guy(I'm not gonna @ him because I can't recall the exact posts) haunt me everyday. How can it be fast paced action if it's also "You get hit: you have to quit"? Oh your guys got hit first, then they all die first and you have to spend the next 2 hours (or possibly much more) doing repetitive sequences AGAIN, every time you don't have flawless victory. How is that fast paced TW? You get like 30 seconds of action then you get an hour of busy work. UNLESS you do all the stuff TW doesn't want in thier 'face paced action" game to ensure you have flawless victory every time.

So it's a conundrum:
1 Play the way TW clearly intends for 1 pump of fun and hours of side work inbetween.
2 Play it like it's a (clunky) RTS and you bet your house, car and *** that you're gonna win and stomp the AI 100% with no mercy despite limited tools.

Neither of them are fast paced action!
Please TW we want a A-rpg/RTS/STRATEGY game!
We don't want to just smash troops into each other for 30 seconds and call it a day.
 
Neither of them are fast paced action!
Please TW we want a A-rpg/RTS/STRATEGY game!
We don't want to just smash troops into each other for 30 seconds and call it a day.

But therein lies the problem.

All I want out of Bannerlord is the fast paced action it already has. But I'd like a little more ability to tell my men what to do, and I'd like battles to be more decisive and less repetitive/grindy - so ironically I need them to be less frequent.

But what I don't want is 85 billion levels of immersive RPG boredom quest blah tinkers and vagabonds. Sure the NPC characters could be fleshed out a little, but I don't need that. I just want the fast paced action to be the best it can be.
 
But therein lies the problem.

All I want out of Bannerlord is the fast paced action it already has. But I'd like a little more ability to tell my men what to do, and I'd like battles to be more decisive and less repetitive/grindy - so ironically I need them to be less frequent.

But what I don't want is 85 billion levels of immersive RPG boredom quest blah tinkers and vagabonds. Sure the NPC characters could be fleshed out a little, but I don't need that. I just want the fast paced action to be the best it can be.
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with liking the system the way it is. It was the design choice after all. I personally wouldn't mind the current action if it didn't always turn into a slugfest. With no weapon orders and AI behaviour orders (volley, spear brace), the tactical AI eventually boils down to "Charge!", something that can get quite problematic when the unit cohesion breaks (basically always for AI) and they trickle into just "whoever hit first wins".

That being said, I guess we will see with both the new terrain system and the in the works "pre-battle deployment" phase that has been in the works for years.
 
I am literally limited to 10 types of formations, unable to save these presets, unable to separate units of the same type into different formations, unable to name or design formations in any way, and I have to do it in real time as if it's a mindless shooting game.

Literally 0 room for pre-planned formations and tactics, and 0 liberty. It's just an idiotic place unit here and that's it type of thing.
i think you bought the wrong game...
 
What battle tactics? Just engage and enjoy the slaughter. You want a mix of Total war and Bannerlord for the price of one?
 
And to do so, you have to perform the 'Flight of the Bumblebee' with your keyboard.

It's just muscle memory like any other game. Once you've done it a few times you can do it without thinking.

Also, if you're in an army battle, you can issue your first commands before a battle while the army overview is on screen.

So before a battle starts I hit 1-F1-F3, 2-F1-F3 (I put both infantry and archers in loose so they move through each other's formation easily), 3-F2-F6. Then I start the battle and orders are carried out without any panic - while they're sorting themselves out I'm off scouting.
 
It's called fast paced action.... yeah it's completely pointless and fascinatingly dull like much of the game.
I was basically going to write that. Yeah, it's definitely no wargame or even something like Total War.
I would kill (not literally) for a simple pause system, pseudo-isometric view with the ability to give orders and queues of commands to the various units. Pressing f6 f3 f2 f1 f5 f22 f2041 like a madman is not my idea of immersive gameplay.
 
What battle tactics? Just engage and enjoy the slaughter. You want a mix of Total war and Bannerlord for the price of one?
I'd settle for having Warband Floris or Viking Conquest with better graphics. Doing Mount & Blade with functional vaguely realistic battlefield tactics has been done before - it should have been done again.

But what I don't want is 85 billion levels of immersive RPG boredom quest blah tinkers and vagabonds. Sure the NPC characters could be fleshed out a little, but I don't need that. I just want the fast paced action to be the best it can be.
This is a fair beef. For instance: I think that the entire smithing skill is a gigantic waste of time - it should have been a make-an-order system for specialty weaponry, not a simulation of actual smithing where you spend years and years doing nothing but honing the craft + refilling stamina bar.

I just want enough RP to cover all the roles that necessitate running a crew of armed dudes: noble, mercenary, caravaneer, bandit, gangster/smuggler, rebel. So I don't care how many quests total there are - I want there to be quests that actually matter, like noble intrigue that starts rivalries and wars etc.

I want npc relation to matter and I want selling off my sister in marriage to a Khuzait warlord to be worth it and I want marrying the only legitimate child of the last Emperor to be more than just 2 sets of randomized skill checks... and also for it to have the slightest impact on the game when she births an entire litter of princelings.

Related understatement: It's not unprecedented, for instance, for Roman gangsters to have gone into politics and vice versa. Bringing back street fights and allowing the player to accumulate territory to either police or extort could add an interesting dimension to the gameplay. But I'm sure it's "too complicated".

So before a battle starts I hit 1-F1-F3, 2-F1-F3 (I put both infantry and archers in loose so they move through each other's formation easily), 3-F2-F6. Then I start the battle and orders are carried out without any panic - while they're sorting themselves out I'm off scouting.
You do you, bro, but that sounds like cancer and I can't bring myself to do it. Loose formation almost never made sense in IRL warfare and the fact that it's almost always the best option in BL is a factor of bad collision/animation physics more than tactics.
 
I was basically going to write that. Yeah, it's definitely no wargame or even something like Total War.
I would kill (not literally) for a simple pause system, pseudo-isometric view with the ability to give orders and queues of commands to the various units. Pressing f6 f3 f2 f1 f5 f22 f2041 like a madman is not my idea of immersive gameplay.
thats literally how u win tho.
 
Those comments form that guy(I'm not gonna @ him because I can't recall the exact posts) haunt me everyday. How can it be fast paced action if it's also "You get hit: you have to quit"? Oh your guys got hit first, then they all die first and you have to spend the next 2 hours (or possibly much more) doing repetitive sequences AGAIN, every time you don't have flawless victory. How is that fast paced TW? You get like 30 seconds of action then you get an hour of busy work. UNLESS you do all the stuff TW doesn't want in thier 'face paced action" game to ensure you have flawless victory every time.

This depends on difficulty settings though. You can opt for easier recruiting & lower friendly damage if you really dont like the tedious process of rebuilding an army
 
This depends on difficulty settings though. You can opt for easier recruiting & lower friendly damage if you really dont like the tedious process of rebuilding an army
No I want the opposite. I want good control over troops in battle and for types and tiers to actually matter so it's not just smashing guys into each other other unitil you win (or 100% 1 sided destroying the AI with zero losses HA like I do). I want the lazy sloppy unsatisfactory parts of the game improved. All of them.
 
This depends on difficulty settings though. You can opt for easier recruiting & lower friendly damage if you really dont like the tedious process of rebuilding an army
Dealing with the arbitrary buffs to the NPC's and dumb 1-1 KD combat by giving the player arbitrary buffs isn't a solution. If I wanted to watch boring, predictable and unrealistic battles with nice graphics - that I have no real control over - then I'd watch reruns of Vikings or The Last Kingdom rather than play BL.

Is it really a "game" if your most meaningful contribution to combat is hitting the recruit and upgrade buttons? Or by cheesing the game's design flaws by setting everyone on "loose" formation and then letting the AI handle it from there.

What's the point of a tactical medieval battle simulator if it doesn't simulate medieval battle tactics?
 
Dealing with the arbitrary buffs to the NPC's and dumb 1-1 KD combat by giving the player arbitrary buffs isn't a solution. If I wanted to watch boring, predictable and unrealistic battles with nice graphics - that I have no real control over - then I'd watch reruns of Vikings or The Last Kingdom rather than play BL.

Is it really a "game" if your most meaningful contribution to combat is hitting the recruit and upgrade buttons? Or by cheesing the game's design flaws by setting everyone on "loose" formation and then letting the AI handle it from there.

What's the point of a tactical medieval battle simulator if it doesn't simulate medieval battle tactics?

The complaint was that after a difficult battle, you need to rebuild your army for a looooong time. You are kinda besides the topic here
 
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