I brought it up because everyone here agrees that Warband was fun. You need common understanding as the basis for discussion.
Warband was indeed a fun game, but again I'm not sure who you're quoting who claims that they found it fun only
because you could get gamebreaking stuff relatively easily if you already knew what to look for.
Me personally, I liked it because some elements of it were actually better balanced than Bannerlord is now, parts of it that were meant to be challenging were more challenging (like higher tier enemies vs. a levelled player) and parts of it that weren't meant to be challenging were less challenging (like low tier enemies vs. a levelled player), and because it has a bunch of features that Bannerlord is still missing.
Taking looters and making them an actual threat wouldn't make the game fun for those people. It would just make an already not-fun thing they do as work while getting to the fun parts into something even more not-fun.
I'm a bit confused here because I already agreed that looters shouldn't be challenging for a mid/lategame player.
My stance is that in the mid/lategame, T5/T6 troops and nobles should provide the challenge, while T0/T1 is something you murder your way through, when you are well equipped and leveled.
Maybe you think when we say "challenge" we want every single thing in the game to be challenging at all times? Because that's not what I'm saying. But I am saying that grind, luck, and exploits should be reduced in the game, and replaced by a good scale of challenges for each level of player progression.
It is a genuine challenge because the AI isn't given free influence and something like 94% of its troops are cheat-free in the late-game, using strategies that are fairly intuitive (go for the weak settlements) but the AI isn't a player: losses don't sting the way they do for a player, where losing stuff means spending time rebuilding. Potentially a lot of time if the AI speed-sieges your kingdom in half.
Yeah, so give the players more sensible and skill-based ways to avert their armies being destroyed/fiefs being taken, or to rebuild in the event of failure. Rather than dumbing down the AI or allowing exploits to continue to exist.
Your scenario of the AI intelligently targeting the player kingdom when they're the biggest threat would be so, so much more fun and much less of a slog if:
* You had more control over your vassals and kingdom. It sounds like your war declaration changes made the AI intelligent on a "macro" level at targeting the biggest kingdom (no matter how they choose to do that), but on the "micro" level they're still stupid, choosing targets without good reasoning. So all AI factions are directed the right overall way when attacking, while your faction is undirected every which way when defending, and the net result is a big disadvantage for the player kingdom. It would be much better if you could just
tell your vassals "go to that particular place that needs defending". Or if they were smarter.
* Potential defectors and mercs approached you, as it was in Warband for defectors, instead of having to chase them to every corner of the earth to talk to while also being the only one intelligently defending the faction's borders.
* You could delegate the process of rebuilding your own armies and getting reinforcements better.
* You could help your raided fiefs recover.
* Being a ruler and Influence were more useful in changing the outcome of a vote so the player ruler was less at the mercy of stupid AI decisions.
* Lords went for longer periods of peace so the player has grace periods to recover and doesn't get dogpiled so much. The frequent war merry-go-round isn't realistic anyway.
* Getting peace was easier (and this is on its way).
* Battlefield tactics and morale were more impactful, so that if you're facing a doomstack on realistic difficulties, rather than needing exploits, you can make use of high-tier troops whose tier actually matters, flank attacks, shock charges, braced spears, etc to achieve low casualties and high kills.
That particular scenario doesn't need to define this whole debate either. I should probably walk back my original statement a bit, the AI doesn't have to be
exactly as smart as the player, but the point is we don't want it to be so flat out stupid and exploitable. In general I just want to see Bannerlord have less luck, less grind, smart
er AI, and more player control. Do you agree with that?