The lore of this game is just useless flavor text unless you do something about it.

[five bucks]

@five bucks

Okay ya' really boring me repeating yourself now and as I knew would happen, some lad with a stiffy wanted to come in and give a history lesson on another thread, derailing it. How surprising that it happened again. I don't agree with you, the lore is bad and needs a lot more improvement. Whether that's with more influence from history or not. Toodle-doo now.

All you did was say something that was blatantly wrong (that BL lore is nothing like history) and all I did was correct you. If you don't wish to be corrected, don't say the wrong thing on public forums. Toodle-doo to you too

 

[Farticle]

 

[geala]

The thing is that this is just wrong. Bannerlord doesn't have "little resemblance to history". It is literally real history/life copied directly and then with the names, timeline, and events shifted around a little.

The Roman Empire began as a tribe who overthrew a kingdom and founded their own city with the legendary founder Romulus. This tribe became a republic with tribunes, but due to decline of republican values eventually became an empire, that conquered the Celts and spanned almost the entirety of the continent barring the far north, and also spread to the shores of the southern sea. Eventually, having difficulty maintaining their empire, they had to hire out recently migrated foreigners to act as mercenaries, including William Iron-Arm, who rebelled and took a large western chunk of the empire for himself. After a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Mankizert which involved Byzantines, Turks, Arabs, Normans and Varangians all fighting, the emperor was deposed, and it became apparent to all that the empire was in rapid decline.

What? Although the larger flow of history is ok, every statement above per se is not correct, except perhaps Manzikert 1071 AD, which is quite a late period of Roman history I'm not very familiar with.

Anyone who thinks Bannerlord lore has "little resemblance to history" either doesn't know Bannerlord lore that well or doesn't know history that well.

TW took a lot of inspiration from different human cultures and historical entities but Bannerlord does not resemble history at all. Because there never ever after the 3rd century BC was a period of similarly powerful "states" competing with each other. That is pure fantasy.

And it is necessary fantasy because the game has to be balanced. I try to imagine the huge amount of whine threads if we had really differently sculpted factions and not just one T6 a bit better than others.

So it is a pity that BL is so bland and dull, but the similarity of the factions has a reason.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

The thing is that this is just wrong. Bannerlord doesn't have "little resemblance to history". It is literally real history/life copied directly and then with the names, timeline, and events shifted around a little.

Exactly, all the marketing for this game spelled this out explicitly as well, often specifying the exact century and region they were emulating. Something like Morrowind is "inspired" by history, but in bannerlord it's equivalent to unlicensed sports games where the players are all named Ristiano Chronaldo or Roja Federar.

The reason people always talk about history in discussions about bannerlord is because bannerlord is just an empty analogue to history. It's very clear what the vlandians and khuzaits are supposed to be, so everyone just goes straight to the root and talks about the thing they're based on.

 

[Goyyyio]

@five bucks

Okay ya' really boring me repeating yourself now and as I knew would happen, some lad with a stiffy wanted to come in and give a history lesson on another thread, derailing it. How surprising that it happened again. I don't agree with you, the lore is bad and needs a lot more improvement. Whether that's with more influence from history or not. Toodle-doo now.

Well, he's five bucks, and he's already used it all in Wikipedia lessons. If Bannerlord is real life like you say then why the hell are the places are called different, and the land isn't called earth or Europe, and instead is called Calradia lmfao. Besides, real life history is not the point of these threads. Jesus Christ guys I understand you spent a lot of time in YouTube videos learning useless pieces of information and now you have to do something about it but don't spam in a thread dedicated to something else.

Again History vs Bannerlord Lore isn't the point, Bannerlord Lore Writers vs Design Team dissonance is the point.

 

[Brano]

Some npcs don't even want to play board games, because " It is not right time now" Probably staring into wall is more fun than I admit

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

Well, he's five bucks, and he's already used it all in Wikipedia lessons. If Bannerlord is real life like you say then why the hell are the places are called different, and the land isn't called earth or Europe, and instead is called Calradia lmfao. Besides, real life history is not the point of these threads. Jesus Christ guys I understand you spent a lot of time in YouTube videos learning useless pieces of information and now you have to do something about it but don't spam in a thread dedicated to something else.

Again History vs Bannerlord Lore isn't the point, Bannerlord Lore Writers vs Design Team dissonance is the point.

You're going to need this for when he inevitably responds with more waffle unrelated to the discussion.

Godspeed.

 

[Csatádi]

The northern empire uses a laurel wreath as the civil crown and a jeweled late Roman helmet as the battle crown.

I didn't get any of these when becoming the ruler of the northern empire. Would have been cool.

The western and southern empires use more overtly monarchic Byzantine crowns, and the sourthern battle crown is straight up modeled on St Stephen’s crown of Hungary, which is Byzantine in origin.

Just a little detail: the Hungarian crown is a mixture of a Byzantine open crown and a western style top that closes it.

 

[Brano]

Trying to balance everything is for me one of many design flows of this game. Anyone remember first Rome total war game? It wasn't balanced faction wise at all. It was up to you to pick up the challenge. So if you wanted kind of easy start, ofcourse you went with romans because they were the best. When you wanted a bigger challenge, you went for more obscure factions. Game even told you that when chosing faction at the beginning of campaign.

 

[JunKeteer]

They just haven't touched any 'lore' aspects besides what was already there at the beginning of EA. I mean, they've added armor pieces here and there (which TBH - a lot still doesn't get used by the player or units), but nothing in terms of 'flavor' text.
Any bit helps, even in a sandbox game for a player to create their own contexts from it. Yes, I could make it all up on my own or 'pretend' but, with what the base game has, is very challenging to create that narrative vs other games where the stories pretty much come or write themselves for most players.
The only difference between clans is literally just how their clan name is spelled (and culture I guess); they are all the same otherwise.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

Trying to balance everything is for me one of many design flows of this game. Anyone remember first Rome total war game? It wasn't balanced faction wise at all. It was up to you to pick up the challenge. So if you wanted kind of easy start, ofcourse you went with romans because they were the best. When you wanted a bigger challenge, you went for more obscure factions. Game even told you that when chosing faction at the beginning of campaign.

Yeah I would honestly like something like this. Where in a play-through, a random or random faction(s) started off (or received a multiplier after clan tier X) more powerful than the other. This perfect balancing just feeds into the whole world revolving around the player and the player being the only life-force in the game. It would be up to the player to follow along with the strongest for an easier time, or fight against it.

 

[Brano]

Books are missing. There is a lot written in game Encyclopedia, but for me it is not immersive enough to read. I like the story telling in books like elder scrolls frenchise did. Reading books could be considered as time spent resting and giving experience to particular player stats like charm, medicine, engineering,tactics...

 

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

You mean those policies, some of which still don't work and the game is coming out in a few days? A game that has been in development for a decade and people seem grateful that they will be adding 'new features' like crime and weather to the game, features that they stated were in the game during development.

Imagine releasing the game finished, and not playing it off as something we should be grateful for their continued support of the game through patches.

I would much rather they didn't touch the game after release and let modders do the rest, rather than continuing to break the game every patch and expect the players to do their QA for them for free.

I get your cynical take, but at the end of the day, I'm resigned to the fact I'm a consumer and not a developer here.

I disagree about them not touching the game. End of the day, despite the skills of modders, it's still their codebase and they know it best (for better or for worse). I find a lot of their implementations to be better thought out and presented than modders in certain aspects, most recently with the banners. The more they add natively the better it'll be.

I want to see bugfixes but I would much rather work with an existing, first-party system than rely on spaghetti-code that may not play nice with other mods. So adding a way for different styles of government natively to build off of as a framework would be much preferred than having someone else's vision for that implemented in a system that doesn't necessarily support it.

The policies not working is really ****ing annoying though, as well as not being able to marry a ruler, like what the ****.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

I’m confused, didn’t you say you rather they didn’t touch the game after release and should leave it to modders? Now you want TW to listen? Can you make up your mind?

See response to below. Not sure why you copy and pasted someone else's comment. Either way, here is a copy and paste of my response.

I’m confused, didn’t you say you rather they didn’t touch the game after release and should leave it to modders? Now you want TW to listen? Can you make up your mind?

Aigh, exactly. TW stated they were going to continue patching it after release, so as I said, I would much rather they didn't and left the game alone, but again to be clear, they won't do that so the next best thing is to complain enough that they cop on and fix it.

Now git.

I disagree about them not touching the game. End of the day, despite the skills of modders, it's still their codebase and they know it best (for better or for worse). I find a lot of their implementations to be better thought out and presented than modders in certain aspects, most recently with the banners. The more they add natively the better it'll be.

I get you. I guess its 50% me being pedantic and 50% TW not giving us a clear roadmap.

The only reason they uploaded a Post Release Plan was, I believe, to quell the crowd so there would be less hate on their social media hype posts.

But there should be a clear roadmap of what and quite importantly when the features would be implemented. The when is not as important when the game is in early-access, but you should not morally be okay with TW sending out and unfinished game and saying there will be features (which were supposed to be in the game already according to original dev logs) added after - sometime in the future.

That's is just disgraceful, and if we are to go off past experience with this company who said the EA would be a year, only to miss that deadline, cut features, miss another deadline, cut more features and now they say "Okay the game is REALLY coming out this time, but some features are to follow....promise xoxo".

That's why I would ideally rather they clean it up as is, release it and then bugger off - I don't trust them to keep their word and there ain't no way they can implement all the bug fixes, crashes, multiplayer mess, lore and balance within another year, on top of all the new bugs and general QA they are going to need to do following console release.

 

[Grank]

Some npcs don't even want to play board games, because " It is not right time now" Probably staring into wall is more fun than I admit

Do people even play those? They're neat little additions but I don't see the point of playing them more than once except for quests.

 

[Brano]

Frankly I tried them all...and they are fracking boring. I miss simple gambling game of dice. Like in Kingdome Come game. I even found a gambler npc in Talmberg castle village who looked....like me! I was playing against me...true story

 

[xdj1nn]

Do people even play those? They're neat little additions but I don't see the point of playing them more than once except for quests.

I don't for 2 reasons: stalemate rules plague most of these board games, AI won't bulge nor commit mistakes
When I want to do the quest Inn and Out and avoid being BSted charged I simply use the cheat to win the game instantly. It's not like I don't know how to win, but rather the fact that AI will keep circling without ever making a mistake which in turn makes the game last forever if you don't forfeit or use console cmd...

Frankly I tried them all...and they are fracking boring. I miss simple gambling game of dice. Like in Kingdome Come game. I even found a gambler npc in Talmberg castle village who looked....like me! I was playing against me...true story

yep, most of them are similar to noughts and crosses / tic-tac-toe - where the game never ends or always ends in a stalemate no matter what you do if both peers are fully focused / do not get distracted... And the AI was made so they play as if their mother's life depended on it, so, yeah, each time I tried the game for real it took me 30 minutes to finish because AI kept cheesing...

 

[murtega]

Encyclopedia entry for Sargot claims the city was founded on the ruins of an imperial city and it was really like that until 1.9.0 came out and they for some reason switched the town map with another, where there are no ruins whatsoever anywhere in the city and it tells you all you need to know about how much damn TWs give about the lore they'd written.

 

[xdj1nn]

Encyclopedia entry for Sargot claims the city was founded on the ruins of an imperial city and it was really like that until 1.9.0 came out and they for some reason switched the town map with another, where there are no ruins whatsoever anywhere in the city and it tells you all you need to know about how much damn TWs give about the lore they'd written.

Sargot's in the wrong place too - the correct placement is in what is now Sturgia, right next to Flintolg Castle (battania) - it's a hot mess tbh...
That's also one of the reasons they've added the "sargot is a general broad term for something something settlement - sO iT cAn bE AnYwHeRe!!!"

Their lore's just filler content - yet there's absolutely nothing that connects one game to the other besides some town and settlement names and the "resemblance of map shape" within half of sturgia all the way down to Jaculan - The central town that was the most disputed and used to be the goat in WB (Dhirim) is no where to be found because it would be right in the middle of a mountain they've placed between battania and vlandia... - It would also be impossible to explain how tf the Khergits and consequently the taiga & steppes were so close to Vlandia - nothing there makes any sense because they didn't give a rats arse about continuity... They could've pulled it off IF they had opted to super-scale the map pretending the OG was a "downscaled" version - that way it would've been possible to make all places the same, yet with more settlements in-between.

Also Charas' supposed to be Shariz from WB - gl making sense of that hot mess' geography (Shariz had oasis nearby, Charaz looks like a town about to be swallowed by waves due to the entire surrounding terrain being coastal sands, not desert sands, coastal as in a 50km deep beach, not to mention it doesn't produce fish, instead they have olive plantations, on sand )

 

[murtega]

All the rant here also reminded me how Ingalther, who is 42 when game starts, claims he was a young squire in Battle of Pendraic, that happened 7 years ago when he was bloody 35. And this is the main quest of the game...