We need better Wanderer game start spawn system.

[xdj1nn]

So far we've been having to handle the full rage RNG at each game start which basically brought me down to literally having to stare at character creation screens uselessly for if you don't spawn certain wanderers from the get go, the game can get excrutiantingly annoying over-time (it also totally breaks some builds by making them not viable due to a lack of companions to compensate for missing skills)

I mean, we got Spicevendor and Swift which are both quintessential for the entirety of the game (both caravan runnings at the early-mid, and governors by late game). We also have on average at least 2 decent party leaders for each culture, which we should also turn into caravaneers as early as possible to raise their trading scouting and stewardship for leading war-parties later down the line. If the game fails to spawn at bare minimum 2 Wanderers between Spicevendors or Swift and at least 3 Party Leaders, your save is virtually corrupted and you must restart because for those to spawn overtime's excrutiangly unlikely.

Why are we being shoehorned this lunacy's beyond my comprehension capabilities, really. This should be changed, either force spawn certain classes at all times, limiting the amount of RNG, or add some form of us manually creating/spawning those through in-game questing / actions. As is it's yet another form of "save-scumming" forced upon us all...

It should also be a priority fixing the crashes related to Wanderers, the reason why this has been a known since 1.7.2 (from my experience) and never fixed is also quite hard to understand

 

[Old-Bull]

It would be nice if they spawned at all. In 1.8 you get the starter wanderers and thats it. I've been trying to find a wanderer to make into a clan leader(that might have kids) and they're all 45 years old at a minimum.

 

[xdj1nn]

It would be nice if they spawned at all. In 1.8 you get the starter wanderers and thats it. I've been trying to find a wanderer to make into a clan leader(that might have kids) and they're all 45 years old at a minimum.

the aging system has too many dependencies to be reliable in these EA builds they're giving us. If anything regarding wanderers or clan members breaks, the entire game comes crumbling down over-time.
I'm currently experiencing non-sense crashes through the use of mods but that are ultimately caused by TW's lack of shield coding. The game doesn't crash, it force crashes through their message and Butterlib doesn't detect any errors coming from the mods or compatibility at all.

Basically most crashes are shoehorned when the app could easily handle it on it's own, not sure if they've done that to increase error reporting through feedback or if they were just lazy, but the reality of it is that most of us don't send those reports for 2 main resons:

1. It takes forever to send the reports, you'll almost always waste good 5 minutes to finish sending them.
2. Most of us are using mods, and they've implicitly time and time again said that they "don't support mods" which likely makes 99% of these reports useless because they probably ignore all of them.

I'm on the verge of giving up again because I can't for the life of me get a clean gaming experience without crashes while using what I consider quintessential features (through the use of mods). The only choice to "test" if the game even runs decently would be to purge all mods I'm using and trying to go full vanilla, but the game sucks as full vanilla due to 3 main reasons: Fun factor is nearly non-existant due to thorough nerfing of methods we used to speed up boring portions of a playthrough; There's just way too much grind involved on everything; There's absolutely no logical game-loop for mid and late game, while late game's just non-existant (there's absolutely nothing to do other than what you've already been doing since early-mid game)

The excrutiating grinding's the griefest offender due to how extensive the list is and how we cannot combine grinding in any effective ways to push multiple needs in a single task. The list goes as:

• Grind game starts to get useful Wanderers. (that means wasting up to hours only creating the same character over and over again and praying for the RNG to give you the Wanderers you want/need while tanking endless loading screens)
• Grind your character to achieve the build you want (takes hours on end, and at higher levels, grinding simply becomes so slow it's impossible to have fun trying to level certain skills, except for smithing, smithing sucks at all times and requires the player to waste companions in the process)
• Grind income
• Grind relations
• Grind each companion skills you need separately (for the best possible outcome, you'll be grinding 9 companions, and they level much slower than the PC - basically PC + Comps means days of RL time to achieve anything decent).
• Grind influence
• Grind high tier equipment (most of the time you'll spend here is amassing enough gold + actually finding the gear for sale or endlessly killing lords to drop "Rusty" versions of it)

And even after all of these are done, you'll find yourself under chore tasks because if you don't AI will basically ruin your revenues by Raid spamming your fiefs on the other side of the map, declaring random uncontrollable wars out of the blue removing your workshops, and those crap low tier clan mercenaries joining kingdoms on the opposite side of the map insta ravaging your caravans because they joined as your caravan was passing by their parties. So, you'll be babysitting stuff 99% of the time cancelling any viable venue of achieving objectives you set yourself to do, or, you sacrifice income consequently forcing you to grind battles to compensate...

The impression I get is that they've made it this way intentionally to inflate play-time and to create a false impression of depth because the base game lacks on every single feature too much, and the AI is too bad. The hope I have's that they are secretly and silently working to flush out a decent experiencne, but as is the game's crap, and if improvements aren't made, well, Bannerlord's doomed and we'll all be depending upon the hard work of mod creators, yet, if mods keep causing so many crashes, we may end up without even that as alternative.

 

[Old-Bull]

I've only played vanilla and it has got much better.

Having said that, the mid-late game does get boring and repetitive. The game needs alliances, civil wars, and some type of faction personality to make the factions feel different(good/evil).

 

[five bucks]

I've only played vanilla and it has got much better.

Having said that, the mid-late game does get boring and repetitive. The game needs alliances, civil wars, and some type of faction personality to make the factions feel different(good/evil).

Considering Bannerlord is heavily based on real life, I wouldn't want to see entire factions cast as merely good or evil, but I would like to see some rulers' personality come through more in their actions and decisions. For example, Raganvad is canonically a bit of an *******, it would be nice if he acted like it in gameplay more.

 

[xdj1nn]

Considering Bannerlord is heavily based on real life, I wouldn't want to see entire factions cast as merely good or evil, but I would like to see some rulers' personality come through more in their actions and decisions. For example, Raganvad is canonically a bit of an *******, it would be nice if he acted like it in gameplay more.

no changes to Ragnvald's behavior would make a dent of a difference if they keep Sturgia as the Calradian Slums... Srsly, 2 villages per town on average, crap terrain, lack of any exclusive resources, fiefs spread across a massive forest and one of their castles literally being within Battania/Vlandia with no land connection to their own lands.
Lorewise they say Sturgia's like a treasure for pelts, which isn't true, the resource can be found in other places which makes their entire market useless considering the low production output and low food output due to being arbitrarily handicapped by the devs. As I've said time and time again, Sturgia's like a merge of Kievan Rus, Novgorod (northern russia) and Scandinavia, the reason why Novgorod and Kievan Rus didn't produce fish was because they were in-land with little to no coasts, Scandinavia, having similar cold climate, always produced loads of fish and among those there were more expensive ones like Salmon. Balancing wise (in-game) if Sturgia's to share commodities with other regions, they must have ++ sources of food or a secondary commodity on surplus. All TW had to do was increase the amount of coastal villages attached to Towns and Sturgia wouldn't 100% of the time remain under 3k prosperity on average. The last alternative would require them to properly introduce mechanics that enhance trading for certain regions / cultures, if that was done properly Sturgia could mimic Viking Age scandinavians by trading with literally everyone, though that would demand boats and fluvial trading routes to work

All things considered, if kept like this, Sturgia'll always be poor and broke, which's the main reason why they were 99% of the time completely wiped, because they didn't have enough $, didn't have enough sources of recruitment and didn't have coherent land mass. Add to that the crap AI and you get the "default" Sturgia for most of the EA results: Wiped within a couple years, 100% chance of losing Tyal to Khuzaits or Northern Emp, 100% chance of losing Omor to any nations that aren't Battania or Northern Empire (western empire, vlandia over-time, southern empire and Aserai basically are 10x more resourceful with loads of recruitment zones and a crapton of propesrity snowballing, meaning they have infinite armies and infinite resources), 50% chance of losing Varcheg to Vlandia, and like 50% chance of getting border castles captured by Battania. They basically either get fully destroyed by 10 in-game years, or are left with their worse fiefs + Revyl (the isolated one that has only 1 access path). Varnovapol is a trap because their fish source is on the other side of the mountains in the middle of their massive Taiga Forest (meaning villagers making it to the town's a miracle that happens once per campaign), Sibir sits on it's own 3 villages with no other source of produces, and Balgard lacks food. Sincerely, it's like the faction was intentionally sabotaged by the devs, every little detail of Sturgia (terrain, fiefs, fief placement) seems to have been hand-picked to make them crap. (all of that not taking into account the crap troops they have) Anyway, I always questioned why Sturgia's even in the game due to such observations, Nords in Warband were infantry gods (you could, through proper strategy, dominate everyone except for Khergit with only Nord troops using a pure infantry-centric army) and Vargir in Warband had the godly archers + mediocre horse-archers, sturgia has got nothing going for them, their t6 isn't infantry and has crap stats + crap gear, meaning they lose in-game battles, and since they have a low ratio of arch to inf and cav to inf, that basically translates into the Auto-Calc basically destroying them every single time.

As is, we got no faction specialized on Infantry (because there's no t6 inf unit at all), and the theoretically infantry-centric faction (sturgia) has their units inferior to Empire's Jack-of-all-Trades, can't survive lines of crossbows from Vlandia, nor can they win against Battania's Skirmisher/Infantry hybrids. It's really odd that this wasn't addressed at all for 2 years.

Anyway, everytime I remember how sturgia sucks in BL's meta, I get annoyed and end up repeating my rants about it. Sorry for that.

PS: And the only reason they've been surviving on latest patches' because TW nerfed AI snowballing, but they still remain exceptionally handicapped on all aspects of the game, it's not even funny, it's straight stupid.

 

[five bucks]

no changes to Ragnvald's behavior would make a dent of a difference if they keep Sturgia as the Calradian Slums... Srsly, 2 villages per town on average, crap terrain, lack of any exclusive resources, fiefs spread across a massive forest and one of their castles literally being within Battania/Vlandia with no land connection to their own lands.
Lorewise they say Sturgia's like a treasure for pelts, which isn't true, the resource can be found in other places which makes their entire market useless considering the low production output and low food output due to being arbitrarily handicapped by the devs. As I've said time and time again, Sturgia's like a merge of Kievan Rus, Novgorod (northern russia) and Scandinavia, the reason why Novgorod and Kievan Rus didn't produce fish was because they were in-land with little to no coasts, Scandinavia, having similar cold climate, always produced loads of fish and among those there were more expensive ones like Salmon. Balancing wise (in-game) if Sturgia's to share commodities with other regions, they must have ++ sources of food or a secondary commodity on surplus. All TW had to do was increase the amount of coastal villages attached to Towns and Sturgia wouldn't 100% of the time remain under 3k prosperity on average. The last alternative would require them to properly introduce mechanics that enhance trading for certain regions / cultures, if that was done properly Sturgia could mimic Viking Age scandinavians by trading with literally everyone, though that would demand boats and fluvial trading routes to work

All things considered, if kept like this, Sturgia'll always be poor and broke, which's the main reason why they were 99% of the time completely wiped, because they didn't have enough $, didn't have enough sources of recruitment and didn't have coherent land mass. Add to that the crap AI and you get the "default" Sturgia for most of the EA results: Wiped within a couple years, 100% chance of losing Tyal to Khuzaits or Northern Emp, 100% chance of losing Omor to any nations that aren't Battania or Northern Empire (western empire, vlandia over-time, southern empire and Aserai basically are 10x more resourceful with loads of recruitment zones and a crapton of propesrity snowballing, meaning they have infinite armies and infinite resources), 50% chance of losing Varcheg to Vlandia, and like 50% chance of getting border castles captured by Battania. They basically either get fully destroyed by 10 in-game years, or are left with their worse fiefs + Revyl (the isolated one that has only 1 access path). Varnovapol is a trap because their fish source is on the other side of the mountains in the middle of their massive Taiga Forest (meaning villagers making it to the town's a miracle that happens once per campaign), Sibir sits on it's own 3 villages with no other source of produces, and Balgard lacks food. Sincerely, it's like the faction was intentionally sabotaged by the devs, every little detail of Sturgia (terrain, fiefs, fief placement) seems to have been hand-picked to make them crap. (all of that not taking into account the crap troops they have) Anyway, I always questioned why Sturgia's even in the game due to such observations, Nords in Warband were infantry gods (you could, through proper strategy, dominate everyone except for Khergit with only Nord troops using a pure infantry-centric army) and Vargir in Warband had the godly archers + mediocre horse-archers, sturgia has got nothing going for them, their t6 isn't infantry and has crap stats + crap gear, meaning they lose in-game battles, and since they have a low ratio of arch to inf and cav to inf, that basically translates into the Auto-Calc basically destroying them every single time.

As is, we got no faction specialized on Infantry (because there's no t6 inf unit at all), and the theoretically infantry-centric faction (sturgia) has their units inferior to Empire's Jack-of-all-Trades, can't survive lines of crossbows from Vlandia, nor can they win against Battania's Skirmisher/Infantry hybrids. It's really odd that this wasn't addressed at all for 2 years.

Anyway, everytime I remember how sturgia sucks in BL's meta, I get annoyed and end up repeating my rants about it. Sorry for that.

PS: And the only reason they've been surviving on latest patches' because TW nerfed AI snowballing, but they still remain exceptionally handicapped on all aspects of the game, it's not even funny, it's straight stupid.

Agreed. Sturgia needs both economic buffs and troop buffs (fixing armour would be a great start!) And maybe even take a clan from Vlandia and give it to them.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

@xdj1nn Basically what we talked about the other day... a hybrid system of scripted + random companions.

Scripted: Essentially a warband 2.0 system of premade companions distributed by generational batches that spawn every X amount of time. Maybe 30 companions in two batches (10+10 +10 just an idea) which bring that point of immersion introduced by the personal stories and quarrels between them (You move close to Sargot->companion X tells you a story / Companion X doesn't like companion Y).

Random Gen (Distinguished Service mod style): Essentially what the mod proposes; random companions which we can choose and assign attribute and focus points to at will.

(*) Keep Bannerlord wanderer system but decrease the spawning stock and give a buff to the it's stats.

Making this happen is feasible, plausible and certainly appreciated by the Community as it has been brought up several times at the proposal/feedback table. Obviously it is only in Taleworlds hand to implement it officially. Moreover, what would take the most time of all would be to write/design the encrypted character backgrounds (1-2 weeks at the most for a professional result).

 

[Ningauble]

no changes to Ragnvald's behavior would make a dent of a difference if they keep Sturgia as the Calradian Slums... Srsly, 2 villages per town on average, crap terrain, lack of any exclusive resources, fiefs spread across a massive forest and one of their castles literally being within Battania/Vlandia with no land connection to their own lands.
Lorewise they say Sturgia's like a treasure for pelts, which isn't true, the resource can be found in other places which makes their entire market useless considering the low production output and low food output due to being arbitrarily handicapped by the devs. As I've said time and time again, Sturgia's like a merge of Kievan Rus, Novgorod (northern russia) and Scandinavia, the reason why Novgorod and Kievan Rus didn't produce fish was because they were in-land with little to no coasts, Scandinavia, having similar cold climate, always produced loads of fish and among those there were more expensive ones like Salmon. Balancing wise (in-game) if Sturgia's to share commodities with other regions, they must have ++ sources of food or a secondary commodity on surplus. All TW had to do was increase the amount of coastal villages attached to Towns and Sturgia wouldn't 100% of the time remain under 3k prosperity on average. The last alternative would require them to properly introduce mechanics that enhance trading for certain regions / cultures, if that was done properly Sturgia could mimic Viking Age scandinavians by trading with literally everyone, though that would demand boats and fluvial trading routes to work

All things considered, if kept like this, Sturgia'll always be poor and broke, which's the main reason why they were 99% of the time completely wiped, because they didn't have enough $, didn't have enough sources of recruitment and didn't have coherent land mass. Add to that the crap AI and you get the "default" Sturgia for most of the EA results: Wiped within a couple years, 100% chance of losing Tyal to Khuzaits or Northern Emp, 100% chance of losing Omor to any nations that aren't Battania or Northern Empire (western empire, vlandia over-time, southern empire and Aserai basically are 10x more resourceful with loads of recruitment zones and a crapton of propesrity snowballing, meaning they have infinite armies and infinite resources), 50% chance of losing Varcheg to Vlandia, and like 50% chance of getting border castles captured by Battania. They basically either get fully destroyed by 10 in-game years, or are left with their worse fiefs + Revyl (the isolated one that has only 1 access path). Varnovapol is a trap because their fish source is on the other side of the mountains in the middle of their massive Taiga Forest (meaning villagers making it to the town's a miracle that happens once per campaign), Sibir sits on it's own 3 villages with no other source of produces, and Balgard lacks food. Sincerely, it's like the faction was intentionally sabotaged by the devs, every little detail of Sturgia (terrain, fiefs, fief placement) seems to have been hand-picked to make them crap. (all of that not taking into account the crap troops they have) Anyway, I always questioned why Sturgia's even in the game due to such observations, Nords in Warband were infantry gods (you could, through proper strategy, dominate everyone except for Khergit with only Nord troops using a pure infantry-centric army) and Vargir in Warband had the godly archers + mediocre horse-archers, sturgia has got nothing going for them, their t6 isn't infantry and has crap stats + crap gear, meaning they lose in-game battles, and since they have a low ratio of arch to inf and cav to inf, that basically translates into the Auto-Calc basically destroying them every single time.

As is, we got no faction specialized on Infantry (because there's no t6 inf unit at all), and the theoretically infantry-centric faction (sturgia) has their units inferior to Empire's Jack-of-all-Trades, can't survive lines of crossbows from Vlandia, nor can they win against Battania's Skirmisher/Infantry hybrids. It's really odd that this wasn't addressed at all for 2 years.

Anyway, everytime I remember how sturgia sucks in BL's meta, I get annoyed and end up repeating my rants about it. Sorry for that.

PS: And the only reason they've been surviving on latest patches' because TW nerfed AI snowballing, but they still remain exceptionally handicapped on all aspects of the game, it's not even funny, it's straight stupid.

Apparently you can farm companions doing a village quest - some lost daughter, who you can then recruit. There is a recent thread here. So if you farm the quest in Khuzait villagers you can find " The Swift "..... I have not tried it yet myself.

Sturgia should have a very handy, very lucrative, virtual monopoly on furs / pelts, and plenty of fish ........ and slaves. The slave economy was huge in Viking - Varangian culture. Sturgians raiding a Battanian or Empire village should reap big rewards selling slaves on to Khuzaits and Aserai, say, likewise their prisoners of war. And depopulated villages would erode Battanian, Empire, etc, prosperity in turn - " economic warfare ". Sturgia would stand as The Slaver Kingdom, with a " dread " reputation, like The Golden Horde, and Barbary Corsairs. This could open up interesting Diplomatic dynamics, let alone economic ones ............. amidst despairing cries of " the Sturgians are coming ! "

 

[xdj1nn]

@xdj1nn Basically what we talked about the other day... a hybrid system of scripted + random companions.

Scripted: Essentially a warband 2.0 system of premade companions distributed by generational batches that spawn every X amount of time. Maybe 30 companions in two batches (10+10 +10 just an idea) which bring that point of immersion introduced by the personal stories and quarrels between them (You move close to Sargot->companion X tells you a story / Companion X doesn't like companion Y).

Random Gen (Distinguished Service mod style): Essentially what the mod proposes; random companions which we can choose and assign attribute and focus points to at will.

(*) Keep Bannerlord wanderer system but decrease the spawning stock and give a buff to the it's stats.

Making this happen is feasible, plausible and certainly appreciated by the Community as it has been brought up several times at the proposal/feedback table. Obviously it is only in Taleworlds hand to implement it officially. Moreover, what would take the most time of all would be to write/design the encrypted character backgrounds (1-2 weeks at the most for a professional result).

your posts are works of art, that's all I have to say! I think we should try to build a common-grounds suggestion mega-thread with your thorough detailing. There's plenty of stuff that should be in the game that doesn't seem to be taken with any degree of consideration or seriousness by TW, I was thinking compiling our ideas into a single post and try to push it for at least a Dev feedback...

 

[geala]

Isn't it possible to reskill the companions in the current version, or only the player? Generally I don't think that the player needs perfect solutions for any of his/her tasks. I usually made me one (good-looking) core companion with Character Manager/Detailed Character Creation/Character Reload and took the ungifted rest as they were. What I miss the most is that government activities level according skills.

A few scripted companions with a personality, own agenda and reactions to the player's deeds would be a nice addition of course for roleplay and immersion, but is this doable in this system?

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

It would be nice if they spawned at all. In 1.8 you get the starter wanderers and thats it. I've been trying to find a wanderer to make into a clan leader(that might have kids) and they're all 45 years old at a minimum.

Hmm, I have notice one thing in 1.8.

If you dismiss a companion they will die. So, I tried hiring and dismissing everyone, and then let the game run for a few weeks. Alot of new wanderes spawned.

So, during the normal course of the game you could probably just hire and dismiss any wanderer you run into that you do not expect to find a use for, inorder to refresh the pool.

 

[five bucks]

Isn't it possible to reskill the companions in the current version, or only the player? Generally I don't think that the player needs perfect solutions for any of his/her tasks. I usually made me one (good-looking) core companion with Character Manager/Detailed Character Creation/Character Reload and took the ungifted rest as they were. What I miss the most is that government activities level according skills.

A few scripted companions with a personality, own agenda and reactions to the player's deeds would be a nice addition of course for roleplay and immersion, but is this doable in this system?

I just checked, and you are right: you can reset your companions' perks in the current version by paying large sums of money. Which is nice I guess.

However you cannot reset their skill experience level, attributes, or focus points.

So if you have a companion whose skill points are all in Roguery, which is totally useless to the player as a companion, you cannot reset their focus points for a different skill.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

your posts are works of art, that's all I have to say! I think we should try to build a common-grounds suggestion mega-thread with your thorough detailing. There's plenty of stuff that should be in the game that doesn't seem to be taken with any degree of consideration or seriousness by TW, I was thinking compiling our ideas into a single post and try to push it for at least a Dev feedback...

Thank you for the kind words, however I am only one of many others who have been giving feedback and although it is true that I have carried out threads with heavy feedback load, in the end Taleworlds do whatever they want to do; no more, no less.

[...] And I get that you have your own vision of what the game should be... but so do we. And while we do use player feedback to help us inform our decisions and shape the game, it doesn't necessarily mean that we will just implement everything suggested. [...] ( Callum official statement)

There have been hundreds of macro threads during these three years (pre release alpha-beta period June 2019-March 2020 + >2 years of EA) where overwhelmingly a vast part of the community was telling them... hey! not this way... we want this... not what you are proposing... and Taleworlds has rejected it without looking for alternatives or solutions that satisfy both sides.

There are hundreds of threads talking about pre-made classes in MP, providing the player with focus fire-engage enemy formation mechanics, messengers and a long etc (to name a few) that while it is true that Dejan, M.Arda, Callum, Duh, mexxico, Mray and a few other devs have brought to the debate table; unfortunately there is always the blocking wall where the decision makers dismiss a big % of the proposals.

Ultimately, and returning to the topic at hand here, I wonder - Could they do it and have it implemented in a short period of time? No doubt about it. Are they interested in doing that?

The answer is self-evident at this stage of the game develoment .

 

[Lord Irontoe]

While I would greatly prefer hand crafted companions, if we're stuck with these procedurally generated clones then they should just make a ton more of them and let NPC clans hire them too. Let them do month-long contracts with lords before going back to the tavern, and let them remember the experience and relate their work history when you hire them. Maybe their past relationships with other lords can translate to a relations boost or some other effect. Let the roguish ones lead bandit parties. There are lots of interesting things that could be done with the current system but we're stuck with the dullest possible implementation.

 

[xdj1nn]

While I would greatly prefer hand crafted companions, if we're stuck with these procedurally generated clones then they should just make a ton more of them and let NPC clans hire them too. Let them do month-long contracts with lords before going back to the tavern, and let them remember the experience and relate their work history when you hire them. Maybe their past relationships with other lords can translate to a relations boost or some other effect. Let the roguish ones lead bandit parties. There are lots of interesting things that could be done with the current system but we're stuck with the dullest possible implementation.

The AI handling of them is erratic. I've used mods that allow for that, but it ultimately inflates the amount of AI resources and creates a virtual inflation of army sizes to realms. Basically, overtime, you'll need to take 50 prisoners from a single clan to completely disable it's capability of fielding armies. If coded to limit companion uses, than I think players should fall in line under the same rule (IE: can only have 2 comp for parties, 4 for party roles, while governors / caravaneers are limited only by the clans companion limit, no cap other than how many comps u can hold).

The problem with that it's the fact that it revolves around a single in-game feature/detail that creates a lot of legwork to balance, so I'm not sure if spending time & resources there's a good idea when the game still lacks on countless other departments that compose it's core loop...

As is, hard-locked companions to fill specific classes with backstories and personalities' a must (not having them is a downgrade from Warband), or at bare minimum doing static wanderer backstories for each nickname with personalities + hard-code force spawn of at least one of each during the course of a campaign + giving them appearances that make sense (frostbeard always having a beard, or fairhair always having non-curly hair, or bull always being strong, ironbelly always being fat, etc.) could work as a substitute, yet it would also need a fail-safe to completely ban wanderer clones, always only a single of each nickname type can be alive, if they disappear (has been lost) or die, than it can spawn again (they'd also need to create new unique nicknames for cultural variations of Ragged / Tracker, etc).
If slapping companion "creation" it wouldn't need to be "created" but rather it could be RNG yet it's a nominal companion that can only exist when promoted from distinguished services, basically troops that manage incredible feats of battle would naturally gain a position of prestige in older societies, having it RNGed wouldn't hurt, but RNG for comps can only exist if we have at least one static choice for build tailoring, otherwise it makes for crap gameplay.

Bannerlord's lacking depth when compared to Warband for 2 simple reasons: Companions being generic and Lords being forgettable, plus no meaningful interactions with neither when it comes to "social", we just barter and there's no dialogue nor do their AI behave uniquely. The original promise were voiced lords and comps, that's no where to be found.

What'll happen is that we'll eventually get the game we want, but maybe not from TW, rather from a mod creator who has time and patience to basically fix their game. You can be sure that when PoP's fully developed for Bannerlord, if Bannerlord isn't done properly, that the game will deserve a renaming to M&B: Prophecy of Pendor. Just saying.

Thank you for the kind words, however I am only one of many others who have been giving feedback and although it is true that I have carried out threads with heavy feedback load, in the end Taleworlds do whatever they want to do; no more, no less.



There have been hundreds of macro threads during these three years (pre release alpha-beta period June 2019-March 2020 + >2 years of EA) where overwhelmingly a vast part of the community was telling them... hey! not this way... we want this... not what you are proposing... and Taleworlds has rejected it without looking for alternatives or solutions that satisfy both sides.

There are hundreds of threads talking about pre-made classes in MP, providing the player with focus fire-engage enemy formation mechanics, messengers and a long etc (to name a few) that while it is true that Dejan, M.Arda, Callum, Duh, mexxico, Mray and a few other devs have brought to the debate table; unfortunately there is always the blocking wall where the decision makers dismiss a big % of the proposals.

Ultimately, and returning to the topic at hand here, I wonder - Could they do it and have it implemented in a short period of time? No doubt about it. Are they interested in doing that?

The answer is self-evident at this stage of the game develoment .

I still have hopes

 

[Lord Irontoe]

The AI handling of them is erratic. I've used mods that allow for that, but it ultimately inflates the amount of AI resources and creates a virtual inflation of army sizes to realms. Basically, overtime, you'll need to take 50 prisoners from a single clan to completely disable it's capability of fielding armies. If coded to limit companion uses, than I think players should fall in line under the same rule (IE: can only have 2 comp for parties, 4 for party roles, while governors / caravaneers are limited only by the clans companion limit, no cap other than how many comps u can hold).

The problem with that it's the fact that it revolves around a single in-game feature/detail that creates a lot of legwork to balance, so I'm not sure if spending time & resources there's a good idea when the game still lacks on countless other departments that compose it's core loop...

I wasn't thinking that they'd be able to lead their own parties for AI clans, mainly just being part of the lord's party to give them some extra perk buffs and maybe build some relationship with that clan. But you're probably right that even that might be too computationally expensive for what it actually adds to the gameplay. I'm just trying to find something worthwhile in this crappy system.

What'll happen is that we'll eventually get the game we want, but maybe not from TW, rather from a mod creator who has time and patience to basically fix their game. You can be sure that when PoP's fully developed for Bannerlord, if Bannerlord isn't done properly, that the game will deserve a renaming to M&B: Prophecy of Pendor. Just saying.

I have no doubt on that. I'm actually more hopeful about the smaller mods that can focus on one aspect of the game and flesh it out in detail. I've been using Fourberie in my current playthrough and its a perfect example of the kind of mod that I've been wanting to see more of in Bannerlord. It basically adds a full-featured Roguery playstyle to the game that Taleworlds promised and never delivered. It has the alley gang takeovers, criminal enterprises, schemes and assassinations and a bunch of roguery focused quests. Even if Taleworlds ever did get around to implementing the criminal playstyle, they're already so far behind what Fourberie's doing now that they'll never catch up.

 

[xdj1nn]

I wasn't thinking that they'd be able to lead their own parties for AI clans, mainly just being part of the lord's party to give them some extra perk buffs and maybe build some relationship with that clan. But you're probably right that even that might be too computationally expensive for what it actually adds to the gameplay. I'm just trying to find something worthwhile in this crappy system.


I have no doubt on that. I'm actually more hopeful about the smaller mods that can focus on one aspect of the game and flesh it out in detail. I've been using Fourberie in my current playthrough and its a perfect example of the kind of mod that I've been wanting to see more of in Bannerlord. It basically adds a full-featured Roguery playstyle to the game that Taleworlds promised and never delivered. It has the alley gang takeovers, criminal enterprises, schemes and assassinations and a bunch of roguery focused quests. Even if Taleworlds ever did get around to implementing the criminal playstyle, they're already so far behind what Fourberie's doing now that they'll never catch up.

I use it too, although it's not well integrated yet, maybe the author will find more immersive ways to make it work, or if a miracle happens TW will implement something similar.

Super detailed mods that used to focus on a single specific mechanic were mostly turned into OST during Warband's golden age, and as such, super insane overhauls would make use of those in a mega-compilation altereted accordingly to their setting intent. PoP's not a prime example of OST usage because the author likes to do everything himself with his team, but we had stuff like the Game of Thrones mods which had extensive use of OST mods. Same for Floris which was the ultimate vanilla enhancement mod carrying tons of OST along with great unique improvements.
I'm more looking forward to ppl managing to flush out what TW couldn't with mini-mods that will ultimately become part of top quality overhauls.

 

[Brano]

I'd like to get companions while doing quests. Like now we have (maybe not working anymore) bug, where I can hire runaway daughter after the quest. Just quit the village and re-enter and I can speak to her to join me. She could be low stat companion I can shape like I want her being young and naive
Or another quest where merchant is asking to go raid bandit camp to rescue his associate or smtg like that. Sad thing is that after defeating camp boss this associate doesn't appear at all and quest automaticly ends. This way I could obtain a trade oriented companion by speaking to him with such dialogue option.
What about village or town notables? They have quite good stats. Why not hire Johnny The Brewer after I buy the only business he runs?

 

[Wheem]

It would be nice if they spawned at all. In 1.8 you get the starter wanderers and thats it. I've been trying to find a wanderer to make into a clan leader(that might have kids) and they're all 45 years old at a minimum.

That's not entirely correct. From my observations with 1.8, the game will always maintain 32 unhired wanderers. This means that there will be 32 at the start of the campaign, when the player has 0 companions, and 1 more will be spawned each time a companion is hired (seems to generally happen around 1 game-day after hiring them but may delay a little if saving and reloading). Presumably, this means that the supply is "unlimited," so long as the player hires and dismisses existing wanderers that they aren't really interested in. That feels a little gamey to me, though, and will obviously cost time and money. Simply having a, "I'm not interested in ever hiring your services" dialogue option that would despawn the character would feel a little better, be more intuitive, and save some money.

I don't mind the idea behind the current wanderer system, but I think the execution could use some tweaks. It's far too easy to end up in a situation where, like the OP complains about, there just aren't many/any companions that the player is interested in. I've previously used the example of a Battanian player that wants a Battanian companion to be a captain for their Battanian archers. In that situation, there's only one option (the Battanian version of "The Ragged"), and no guarantee that he will ever spawn in a given game. There are numerous potential solutions: add some number of hand-crafted companions, certain types of existing wanderers being guaranteed to spawn, changed/improved starting skillset for some existing wanderers, more wanderer "classes" being added, etc...

It may also be nice if the player could talk to an NPC in a tavern, arena, etc...and "put the word out" that they're seeking someone with a certain skillset, which would spawn in a companion of the proper type. There could always be an extra fee tied to such a system if necessary.

(all of that not taking into account the crap troops they have) Anyway, I always questioned why Sturgia's even in the game due to such observations, Nords in Warband were infantry gods (you could, through proper strategy, dominate everyone except for Khergit with only Nord troops using a pure infantry-centric army) and Vargir in Warband had the godly archers + mediocre horse-archers, sturgia has got nothing going for them, their t6 isn't infantry and has crap stats + crap gear, meaning they lose in-game battles, and since they have a low ratio of arch to inf and cav to inf, that basically translates into the Auto-Calc basically destroying them every single time.

Sturgia's troops most definitely aren't crap. Sure, their archers aren't great compared to those of the Battanians...but they're still archers, and are definitely capable of getting kills. Their infantry is only "bad" at tier 4, with the rest actually being really good. And even the tier 4 Spearmen perform fine vs low tiered opponents, with their fast-but-low-damage sword seeming to mostly have issues dealing with more heavily armored enemies (though I would still like to see the unit get some improvement, since it often feels like somewhat of a downgrade from the excellent and cost-effective tier 3 Sturgian Soldier).

The various flavors of round shields used by Sturgian infantry are also extremely effective against enemy missile fire. It seems like very few shots will hit their legs, even if they look somewhat exposed, and the shields have some of the best "hit points" available.

From my experience with 1.8, Sturgia is oftentimes pretty dominant in the early war with Vlandia, especially if the player joins in and actually fights in the field battles. I joined the Vlandians as a vassal on day 33 of my current campaign, and the Sturgians were absolutely swimming in Heavy Axemen and Heavy Spearmen. Up to that point, they had been stomping all over the Vlandians in field battles, and had taken Caleus Castle from them as well. In fact, I think the only reason that we eventually managed to win that war (returning everyone to their original territory and receiving 470 denars/day tribute) was that we narrowly caught Raganvad's party on its own while he was raiding a village. If he had been together with the nearby Sturgian army, instead of having to fight us piecemeal, I think our army would have been swept aside pretty easily.

Sturgia's main problem still seems to come from fighting multi-front wars (perhaps exacerbated by financial problems). In my current game, the Khuzait declared on them near the end of our Vlandian-Sturgian conflict, but only managed to take a single castle, which was later reclaimed by the Sturgians. But when a second front opens up while they're already "bogged down," it seems like they eventually get picked apart. That's true for any faction really, but I think Sturgia's east-to-west size and frequent snow cover makes things a bit worse for them than for most other factions.