Medicine is hard to increase, I agree completely. There need to be more opportunities to increase it, and it should increase faster through normal means (wounded units). But I think in some sense you're way overprioritizing medicine in the early game. The personal effects are nice but certainly not necessary to make a solid character. Maybe you'd be better off putting it off until you have a larger party and can starve them or just naturally gain medicine through regular gameplay. Focusing on it is bound to make you hate it considering how slowly it increases.
Too many bandits in sandbox starting area!
Sometimes it seems like bandits are everywhere, sometimes it feels like they're nowhere to be seen. In the early game when I have rather low scouting, I tend to have a harder time finding bandits rather than seeing far too many of them.
? I guess I'm just confused because it doesn't line up with reality. I don't know the average bandit party size precisely, and it likely fluctuates throughout the game, but I'd have to imagine it's around 20 or lower. Despite the fact that some villagers will have a negative predisposition towards you, you'll get at least one or two recruits per village. Make a dozen village trips and you'll have around 20-30 units. So long as you replace them as they die, slowly you'll develop a more experienced, small party.
My personal strategy is to usually recruit some vlandians because they can become horsemen. I prefer trading as early game income because it's satisfying and gives good EXP early on, so a fast party means I can hunt down bandit parties more easily and can get around faster for trading purposes.
I'll admit, there aren't a whole lot of ways to play out the early game. Trade is, as far as my experience goes, the only super viable way of getting through the early game somewhat rapidly. Just hunting bandits to progress takes a lot of time, and you
could build up your party to a reasonable size and hunt down neutral minor factions but the money is hit-or-miss and party costs are quite high. There definitely need to be more methods to earning money in the early game and advancing through that stage in general.
The rocks are a little silly for sure, especially in contrast to your usual starting equipment. The starting bow is so slow and so bad that the rocks are really quite scary. Your best bet though is to use your troops. The first thing I learned switching from Warband to Bannerlord is that you really need to use your troops in the early game as your meatshield to earn EXP in your combat skills. If you're taking on looters by yourself in your slow, rinky-dinky horse and your **** bow, expect to get pummeled by rocks. It seems like you're almost shocked that looters might be actually difficult when you're playing with a very linear, solo-oriented, troops-never-die mindset. Let your troops do the work for you, and supplement them. Don't try it the other way around bcs rocks'll **** u up.
The culture perks are bad, except battania.
I guess I just have to disagree. The Battania perk is quite useful given the number of forests that exist, and some culture perks are bad, but some of them definitely have their draws.
Vlandia's 15% increased income as a mercenary is great for a player like me who usually avoids joining a kingdom as a vassal. I like to ensure that I have loads of money before I start my own kingdom, that I have the most cracked party that I can want, and that I have the maximum number of parties on the map. That costs a lot of money, and 15% more money for my influence gain is a meaningful difference. And because I quest a lot in the early game and get my learning rate for Charm as high as I can in character select as well as early game, it means that I get access to some incredible perks as a mercenary that significantly improve my influence gain.
The Sturgian perks are pretty weak honestly. 20% more relationship penalty for kingdom decisions isn't all that bad, but 25% less recruitment and upgrade costs don't add up to much. For example, a Vlandian recruit upgrading to a Vlandian Pikeman (tier 5) costs 114 denars. If you're cycling out let's say 400 units per year (not unreasonable at all for infantry units if you fight frequently in wars vs other lords), the maximum costs are around 45,600 denars just to upgrade these troops from tier 1 to tier 5. Obviously not every troop will make it to tier 5, but for more experienced players, most non-noble units will hover near tier 4 or 5 because of high level recruitment and frequent replacement for lost troops. So the costs might more reasonably be 30,000 denars per year. Factoring in the Sturgian bonus, we get a cost of 22,500 denars. That's 7500 denars per year which isn't great. I believe a Bannerlord year consists of 120 days (30 days per season), so 7500 denars over the course of 120 days isn't particularly great. It does add up over the course of a playthrough, potentially to hundreds of thousands of denars, but over that same period of time, such an amount of money might be trivial.
The Aserai perks, for all the hate you have for them, honestly are viable for specific portions of the game. If you're hard focusing on getting Everything Has a Price in Trade, 10% less trade penalty is a big difference-maker. 30% cheaper caravans also menas a more reliable return on investment. If you're going to play in the Aserai area, no speed penalty significantly improves speed which, again, speeds up your trading. Battanian forest speeds won't make much of a difference here. And yeah, daily wages are up 5%, but that's quite the tiny amount of gold to pay for pretty sizeable advantages in trade. I'd probably take 5% more troop wages if it meant that my caravans were far cheaper to get up and running, and I have a sizeable headstart towards getting the most powerful perk in the entire game as well as loads of others.
Here's a good example of how a trade-focused style synergizes with the Aserai perks. With Aserai bonuses, a caravan only costs 10000 denars. This means that if you want to get three caravans up, it'll cost 30000 gold instead of 450000. Big enough that I could get 4 caravans running for less money than it would take to run 3 normally.
Furthermore, because of my improved trade penalty reduction, I'll level trade faster.
I'll get quicker access to perks like Insurance Plans which return 5000 gold per caravan destroyed.
I'll get improved renown from Artisan Community or Great Investor which leads to faster clan tier promotions.
I'll get Spring of Gold which more than makes up for the 5% increase in troop wages if I maximize the profits. In the VERY late game, I have a 400 man party of exclusively noble units, most of whom are tier 5 or 6. I have Talent Magnet so I have 5 parties on the map if you include my own. Including all those parties, my wages are 9409 denars per day. 5% of that is 470 denars. Even in the ultra late game with
five parties, one of which is comprised of around 400 high tier noble units, Spring of Gold will pay out that percentage by more than double.
And of course Everything Has a Price.
And sure, you don't need the Aserai perks to get max trade or Spring of Gold, but it makes a big difference to add 10% to your trade penalty reduction (I don't believe it's added but rather multiplicatively factored in, but the difference is still noticeable in my personal experience).
The Empire cultural perks seem like they'd need a pretty complex analysis that I'm not currently up to the task of doing, but suffice to say that 20% less garrison costs can be meaningful, and 20% hearth growth costs aren't very meaningful. Examining my decent city of Galend, it has a prosperity of 6814. Not the highest of my cities, but not bad. Galend gives me 2778 in taxes. Its villages give me 1574 denars, and that's with three villages. It seems pretty evident that cities make more money so long as they're relatively prosperous (oh, and the hearths of these villages are no joke either, as they're all above 1000). The current wage for Galend's garrison is 3154. If we gave the Empire perk bonus of 20% less costs, it would go down to 2523 denars. That's 600 denars difference in the garrison of Galend alone, probably quite a bit more than enough to pay for the 20% lower growth rate of villages. At the very least, it's not definitely awful, but perhaps you have a more sufficient analysis.
The Khuzait perks are just kinda bad, but that's the numbers talking mostly. Their bonuses could be more reasonable with numbers tuning (perhaps 5 or 10% less town income for a 25% bonus in cavalry recruitment and upgrade costs).
So no, I don't think every single cultural perk set is bad except for Battania.
Roguery, like above it really annoys me that it's only purpose is basically +money but it costs a bunch of money and campaign time to raise it up
Agreed. I don't think Roguery is fully implemented into the game in any meaningful way yet, hopefully that changes.
Steppe bandits are too fast.
I've never done a Roguery playthrough bcs of how slow and tedious it can be, so who knows. Perhaps a perk should be added that causes bandit parties to not run away from your party. Would be cool perhaps.
Ranged troops suck at shooting horse archers.
I don't personally have the same experience. With a strong archer line and proper direction-facing management, Vlandian crossbowmen and battanian fians can seriously devastate horse archers. Even vs the Khuzait, the numbers killed vs lost aren't particularly close. I'll have battles where around 200 or my archers have to deal with around 200 mostly tier 3-6 horse archers and I might lose a dozen archers before half of their horse archers have died. I am minmaxing and usually have close to max or max tier archers, but with my experiences, it just seems unlikely that archers really do have such a hard time even at tier 3 or 4.
It's too hard to kill you husband now!
Um, never considered that, but respect to you and your playstyle lol. Perhaps they should introduce a poisoning method or something.