What happened to map position based battle terrain?

[ArturMorhghain]

The lack of communication after announcing this isn’t super surprising with their track record. Not the greatest of communication plans.

Of things we know are coming but aren’t in, this is what I hope for the most. But I have a feeling realism is going to get the better of my hopes.

 

[Pejot]

Taking into account that tactics and economy is non existent withing the game currently then there's no difference where You fight. All the battles end up with a mess and after 5 of them You've seen all of them. Formations are useless and the only thing You need is top tier troops ordered to attack in rare cases You would like to take the attack on yourself (due to stupid reinformcent system). I don't care about this feature as long as they don't implement any strategy into the game. Cities and castles are just map markers. There are no natural paths on the map that can be secured, blocked or anything. If i want to fight on plain terrain just for fun then custom battle is way better then playing the actual game. If i just wan't to fight then MP is better than SP cause other players are challenging and AI is useless.

It's been more than a year since EA started and they recently implement mostly cosmetics while the core of the game is lacking as hell.

 

[badman]

Taking into account that tactics and economy is non existent withing the game currently then there's no difference where You fight. All the battles end up with a mess and after 5 of them You've seen all of them. Formations are useless and the only thing You need is top tier troops ordered to attack in rare cases You would like to take the attack on yourself (due to stupid reinformcent system). I don't care about this feature as long as they don't implement any strategy into the game. Cities and castles are just map markers. There are no natural paths on the map that can be secured, blocked or anything. If i want to fight on plain terrain just for fun then custom battle is way better then playing the actual game. If i just wan't to fight then MP is better than SP cause other players are challenging and AI is useless.

It's been more than a year since EA started and they recently implement mostly cosmetics while the core of the game is lacking as hell.

True, the game has many problems which should be easier to fix before they even start on this terrain thing, hopefully they are prioritising other things.

 

[Tirdezan]

Just gotta suspend disbelief in this particular case.

If they were to make it to-scale for a Europe-sized map, they would need about ten thousand scenes instead of 150, and we would all be waiting for the terrain system until the heat death of the universe.

What i don't understand is, can't be a automatic scene former algorithm done? For that particular scene at the video, just a (only one) river and a bridge should be enough. And they are both at the same side of that river. For example if they are close to a mountain, a steep slope should be enough. It always will be very hard to form scene one by one by hand ofc.

 

[danEN]

Been away a while from the game, I noticed some time ago they were developing battle scenes to be matching with the map terrain, can't find anything about it anymore, what happened? was the feature scrapped?

They announced the game 8 years too early, what did you expect

 

[badman]

What i don't understand is, can't be a automatic scene former algorithm done? For that particular scene at the video, just a (only one) river and a bridge should be enough. And they are both at the same side of that river. For example if they are close to a mountain, a steep slope should be enough. It always will be very hard to form scene one by one by hand ofc.

Isn't this basically what we had in warband?

 

[Mad Vader]

What i don't understand is, can't be a automatic scene former algorithm done? For that particular scene at the video, just a (only one) river and a bridge should be enough. And they are both at the same side of that river. For example if they are close to a mountain, a steep slope should be enough. It always will be very hard to form scene one by one by hand ofc.

If Total War games can do it, so can others. But Taleworlds decided not to do this.
Their reasoning is probably* that handmade maps will always be of superior quality to automatically generated maps. However this takes a lot of effort and does nothing to help full conversion modders with their custom world maps (these modders will be forced to make their own handmade battle maps because there's no way to generate them on the fly, even theoretically).
So you could say that Taleworlds made a short-sighted, wasteful decision.

*Edit: another reason not to generate maps on the fly is performance - perhaps Taleworlds calculated that generating a map and loading it would take too much time.

 

[Calabanar]

Pejo has a great point though. As nice as this feature is, the fact all battles are the same despite terrain means that this feature, although adding to immersion and hopefully looking good (in addition to adding sorely needed map diversity), wont make battles any better…

Which makes the whole affair kind of… pointless.

I had stopped playing Bannerlord for 3 months and got into 1.6.0 yesterday… I think I’m going to stop here again: one shooting vlandian vanguards with a mediocre spear (27 dmg + 2%) isn’t rewarding… and if it isn’t on current maps, it won’t be with 150 more.

 

[TKnight]

Not only battles are the same because of the terrain , but the AI is lacking a ton too, its clunky.

(You can often see some archers not reacting to near threat or you can see ai perfectly landing a blow to you when you are charging on them behind.

Furthermore , more foot battles are just so bad, you can't fight an AI 1 to 1 if there are more enemy/friendly ai near you , either few enemy ai will focus you , which will let you have no room to counter attack , since they will spam you with constant attacks , until some friendly ai will help you.

(I wish they redone the AI completely , making it take into account your near friendly troops so the AI will distribute their forces equally or at least more equally to enemy forces.)

Also making the Ai take more intelligent fight routes , now it feels like formations are breaking the AI , since if a group of melee fighters for example , are in a formation , they will ignore you ,even if you are melee near them , yes they will aggro for 2-3 seconds with 3-4 warriors (of course) and give you a hard time to land a hit ,since all of them will attack constantly , making you only block... and after just going back to formation and continue ignoring the player.

(There should be something done about the melee fights ,I barely get any good fights , only huge meat on meat wall with brainless spamming of attack button in the enemy pile)

(this is what i wanted , if im playing as a Footman (or anything close to that type of style)

(This type of ai fights should really occur if there are no formations or after a formation is broken)

 

[Danny5]

It's weird how warband A.I were bad, but bannerlord is worst!

 

[yangot]

That's Total War 1v1 combat system, which is bad.

 

[five bucks]

True, the game has many problems which should be easier to fix before they even start on this terrain thing, hopefully they are prioritising other things.

The terrain system (particularly, the aspect of it where being in a certain map region makes the player spawn in a certain part of a certain scene) probably isn't a huge amount of work for the people working on the game's code. They might already be finished, even.

It would however be a huge amount of work for the scene designers, who will take some time to finish all the scenes; but the only other job they have to do is designing town/castle/tavern scenes, and the game needed more field battle scenes made anyway, so there's no big opportunity cost.

Considering the ship is probably 75% sailed, I think we don't need to worry if it's a good use of TW's time.

 

[Askorti]

(this is what i wanted , if im playing as a Footman (or anything close to that type of style)

(This type of ai fights should really occur if there are no formations or after a formation is broken)

Absolutely freaking not. Bannerlord tries (and fails for the most part) to bring in the feeling of what medieval battles looked like. And if there is anything that medieval battles were NOT, it was a bunch of dudes duelling each other in a complete mess.

Sure, there's a lot to be desired from what the battles in Bannerlord are like, and much room for improvement, but your idea as far as the AI choosing "partners" for the bots to fight is completely wrong and should never come to life. I'm sorry, but it's an abysmal idea.

I do agree that the AI should be made to better choose its opponents, but not like this.

 

[Mad Vader]

The terrain system (particularly, the aspect of it where being in a certain map region makes the player spawn in a certain part of a certain scene) probably isn't a huge amount of work for the people working on the game's code. They might already be finished, even.

It would however be a huge amount of work for the scene designers, who will take some time to finish all the scenes; but the only other job they have to do is designing town/castle/tavern scenes, and the game needed more field battle scenes made anyway, so there's no big opportunity cost.

They also need to design/fix siege scenes and keep scenes and I don't think they are done with the settlement scenes as there are new ones in every patch. I'd speculate that there IS a huge opportunity cost because they planned so many regions.
Also note that all these battle maps need to be tested with multiple entry points. You can imagine how certain configurations would make troops stuck in the scenery. Of course this could be left to the players to test, but they need to release the maps first - they can't do this on release day.

Considering the ship is probably 75% sailed, I think we don't need to worry if it's a good use of TW's time.

We have no evidence either way and no way to gauge progress with the battle maps until they release something. It could be 1% or 99% as well for all kinds of silly reasons.
(We also can't tell if they are putting their people to good use. Would you trust TW to be efficient with this? Nope.)

 

[badman]

Not only battles are the same because of the terrain , but the AI is lacking a ton too, its clunky.

(You can often see some archers not reacting to near threat or you can see ai perfectly landing a blow to you when you are charging on them behind.

Furthermore , more foot battles are just so bad, you can't fight an AI 1 to 1 if there are more enemy/friendly ai near you , either few enemy ai will focus you , which will let you have no room to counter attack , since they will spam you with constant attacks , until some friendly ai will help you.

(I wish they redone the AI completely , making it take into account your near friendly troops so the AI will distribute their forces equally or at least more equally to enemy forces.)

Also making the Ai take more intelligent fight routes , now it feels like formations are breaking the AI , since if a group of melee fighters for example , are in a formation , they will ignore you ,even if you are melee near them , yes they will aggro for 2-3 seconds with 3-4 warriors (of course) and give you a hard time to land a hit ,since all of them will attack constantly , making you only block... and after just going back to formation and continue ignoring the player.

(There should be something done about the melee fights ,I barely get any good fights , only huge meat on meat wall with brainless spamming of attack button in the enemy pile)

(this is what i wanted , if im playing as a Footman (or anything close to that type of style)

(This type of ai fights should really occur if there are no formations or after a formation is broken)

So you want battles to break down into multiple duels instead of infantry holding the line and attacking as a unit?

 

[Calabanar]

Not only battles are the same because of the terrain , but the AI is lacking a ton too, its clunky.

(You can often see some archers not reacting to near threat or you can see ai perfectly landing a blow to you when you are charging on them behind.

Furthermore , more foot battles are just so bad, you can't fight an AI 1 to 1 if there are more enemy/friendly ai near you , either few enemy ai will focus you , which will let you have no room to counter attack , since they will spam you with constant attacks , until some friendly ai will help you.

(I wish they redone the AI completely , making it take into account your near friendly troops so the AI will distribute their forces equally or at least more equally to enemy forces.)

Also making the Ai take more intelligent fight routes , now it feels like formations are breaking the AI , since if a group of melee fighters for example , are in a formation , they will ignore you ,even if you are melee near them , yes they will aggro for 2-3 seconds with 3-4 warriors (of course) and give you a hard time to land a hit ,since all of them will attack constantly , making you only block... and after just going back to formation and continue ignoring the player.

(There should be something done about the melee fights ,I barely get any good fights , only huge meat on meat wall with brainless spamming of attack button in the enemy pile)

(this is what i wanted , if im playing as a Footman (or anything close to that type of style)

(This type of ai fights should really occur if there are no formations or after a formation is broken)

No.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Not only battles are the same because of the terrain , but the AI is lacking a ton too, its clunky.

(You can often see some archers not reacting to near threat or you can see ai perfectly landing a blow to you when you are charging on them behind.

Furthermore , more foot battles are just so bad, you can't fight an AI 1 to 1 if there are more enemy/friendly ai near you , either few enemy ai will focus you , which will let you have no room to counter attack , since they will spam you with constant attacks , until some friendly ai will help you.

(I wish they redone the AI completely , making it take into account your near friendly troops so the AI will distribute their forces equally or at least more equally to enemy forces.)

Also making the Ai take more intelligent fight routes , now it feels like formations are breaking the AI , since if a group of melee fighters for example , are in a formation , they will ignore you ,even if you are melee near them , yes they will aggro for 2-3 seconds with 3-4 warriors (of course) and give you a hard time to land a hit ,since all of them will attack constantly , making you only block... and after just going back to formation and continue ignoring the player.

(There should be something done about the melee fights ,I barely get any good fights , only huge meat on meat wall with brainless spamming of attack button in the enemy pile)

(this is what i wanted , if im playing as a Footman (or anything close to that type of style)

(This type of ai fights should really occur if there are no formations or after a formation is broken)

Sorry to say that I'm on the antipodes when it comes to my opinion of your explanation.

I think your suggestion is a step backwards from what we have in Bannerlord, which is already bad inmho (+ info here). We need formations with a minimum of cohesion, the more discipline (troop tier) the more cohesion, not formations as fragmented as the ones in Native, let alone hyper-fragmented as the ones you present in your image.

I wouldn't want to be that green dot

Your solution would be plausible for a clash between cavalry (melee - heavy/light), but certainly NOT for melee infantry formations.

 

[Mad Vader]

It's a new formation order, instead of "charge!" you can order your troops to "mingle!".

 

[badman]

I wouldn't want to be that green dot

Your solution would be plausible for a clash between cavalry (melee - heavy/light), but certainly NOT for melee infantry formations.

I don't like the idea but to represent it properly I think he's saying the AI would choose one target each so all those units would pair off into duels, so that green dot actually would not be surrounded unless the battle goes badly and he became outnumbered.

I think this might work in a samurai mod or similar, since some cultures actually did fight that way at certain times. But it shouldnt be the default thats for sure.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I don't like the idea but to represent it properly I think he's saying the AI would choose one target each so all those units would pair off into duels, so that green dot actually would not be surrounded unless the battle goes badly and he became outnumbered.

I think this might work in a samurai mod or similar, since some cultures actually did fight that way at certain times. But it shouldnt be the default thats for sure.

AI already does that with bots so far. Each agent searches for the nearest enemy target like a terminator. What would happen with the other guy's explanation would be something similar to what we saw in Asassins creed, where the bots are waiting to form a 1v1 duel.



What the game needs in my opinion are cohesive attack and defense lines according to the unit's tier, where each enemy kill fills the advanced line gap and tilts the formation to the flanking side.

Sorry for the ****ty graphics

The back rank bots should wait their turn, and will advance maintaining a combat order where the whole unit works as a team not individually as unfortunately it does today. Ofc...Not to mention the detrimental factor of the damage-protection formula which makes battles last less than 4 minutes.

Moreover, I leave you this video where the fallback order is compared, an order that nowadays doesn't work as it should by the way.


Yes... Warband did better although it should be the other way around.

Sorry for the graphics and the offtopic ? ?.