Possible solution to balance Khan's Guard?

[five bucks]

Yes lets make up absurd stuff.
I understand now, that you want troops from factions that you dont play nerfed. So you can stomp them easily. I bet you cant deny that

You refusing to answer the question proves that you know the answer makes my argument for me.

I'll answer the question for you, since you're incapable of doing it. Here's what you would have said:

"Yes, I would nerf an elite cataphract if it instantly won the battles. Why? Because it would take all the challenge out of the game, and I would not like to force myself not to use the unit just to have challenge."

The exact same logic applies to Khan's Guard. It's so much stronger than other units (beating every other T6 troop at a 2:1 ratio or better!) that it takes a lot of challenge and tactical decision making out of the game. You have to force yourself not to use them if you want challenge, so you miss out on game content and damage your own immersion. This is a bad thing and does not need to exist.

And now you can see why game developers would nerf something in a singleplayer game.

Which by the way, is fairly common practice in singleplayer games. Perhaps you think you know better than the majority of game designers who ever made a game? They were all just mistaken, and only you were smart enough to figure out that there's no good reason to nerf something in a singleplayer game?

 

[anoddhermit]

Yeah my favorite faction is Battania but I won't use Fians or the culture forest speed bonus - both are way, way too strong to the point that it feels silly.

 

[Bluko88]

Long Story short, Khan's Guard should be the class of Horse Archer that fights well on foot as well as act as a horse archer, not be a horse archer that smokes other cavalry when they get tangled up. The issue is the min/maxers and speed runners will ALWAYS fight for them to not get touched so they don't have to re-learn how to play the game

All I'm going to say is I'd be a lot more impressed if someone conquered the map using only Vlandian Pikeman, and without abusing auto-resolve to do so heh. Gonna be a lot of replenishing ranks...

There isn't really a difference in how you play the game with KGs vs. without.

It is either the sense of progression or cool factor at having a full T6 party that drives it. The players who manage to amass KGs in numbers worth caring about already have a firm enough grasp of the mechanics to beat the game. There woudn't be anything new they'd need to learn. It would just feel less interesting because it wouldn't be the power fantasy or RP.

Which is why people slag on Druzhniks, in spite of the fact they are not even bad and will endlessly debate between BFCs and KGs.

The real minmaxers and speed runners generally don't bother. Especially the speed runners, lol. There is literally no reason to give a **** what sorta troops you're fielding outside of general categories if you're speed running.

Druzhinniks are definitely not very good on horseback, much in the same way I'd say Banner Knights kind of underperform for T6 as Cavalry.

I really don't find the balance issues excusable. I mean if balance is irrelevant why not just have the final perk of Steward make all units upkeep free, "Spring of Gold" Trade perk just give you 25K a day. I get it: some units are going to be better than others, that's a given, and also part of the rock-papper-scissors you expect a game like this to have. I don't believe it's fair for someone to invest a lot of time getting an all T6 Cavalry Party of say Banner Knights, Elite Cataphracts, Druzhinnik Champiosn, Vanguard Faris - only to discover they would have been much better off with KGs.

Only reason this isn't more of a glaring issue is that the A.I. rarely amasses large number of Khan's Guard (though if it did might be more apparent) AND because it doesn't use HA particularly well. The A.I. always sends HAs in to skirmish even if they are far too under-strength to do so. So many times they'd be so much more useful held in reserve for defense...


Thing is it's not hard to modify units. Heck it only takes mere minutes at the most if you know what you're doing. Only time consuming part is actually testing it.

After some more finagling/testing this is what I'm going with now:

Also saber-only Khans are still pretty strong in melee mode (assuming you redistribute skills):

Spoiler: Saber-only KG (holding fire) vs vanilla T6 Cavalry

This is exactly why Khan's Guard having Glaives is just absolutely bonkers. They are a well-armored high-skilled unit, they don't need to be mounted "shock troops" on top of that.

 

[Apocal]

Which by the way, is fairly common practice in singleplayer games. Perhaps you think you know better than the majority of game designers who ever made a game? They were all just mistaken, and only you were smart enough to figure out that there's no good reason to nerf something in a singleplayer game?

It is common for game designers to leave unbalanced aspects (cheese) in their games. They are generally referred to as a first order optimal strategy (FOOS) and are usually put in place intentionally.

First Order Optimal Strategies

This is, admittedly, another post inspired by Extra Credits over at the Escapist , however, it is something that is important to keep in mi...

www.realityrefracted.com

First Order Optimal Strategies And Narrative-Inspired Heuristics - The Thoughtful Gamer

With board games becoming more and more popular, I suspect many developers and publishers have spent a lot of time thinking about how to create positive first impressions for their games. In fact, this is one of the areas where I am slightly concerned about the future of modern board gaming...

thethoughtfulgamer.com

I mean if balance is irrelevant why not just have the final perk of Steward make all units upkeep free, "Spring of Gold" Trade perk just give you 25K a day.

Because it doesn't allow a player to feel clever for having learned something about the game. Most players never reach those final perks, especially the Trade one.

(Although, honestly, Spring of Gold could just dump 25K in your lap per day and still not be particularly unbalancing. No one with Trade 250 or whatever is going to need money and anyone else will make about 30-60% of that just fighting lategame armies consistently.)

 

[Antaeus]

We all like to look at units individually, but we should be looking at how they are deployed by the game.

Are their many occasions where AI armies include more than a scattering of Khan's Guards or Fians? Even in large Battanian armies you rarely see more than a handful of Fians. And Kuzait armies tend to be full of Qangli. Balance has been achieved through AI behaviour.

So the issue is whether the player should have access to so many noble troops? Or should there be artificial limits on their recruitment?

In earlier iterations they became rare units to recruit. But sometime around 1.8 they became easier to recruit. This suggests to me that the Devs are happy with them how they are. My gut is that they make the game very easy, so perhaps they should be more expensive to limit their use.

 

[NPC99]

why not just split the Khuzait Noble Line in two?

KGs are only an issue when the player exploits them. I avoid exploits as they break immersion for me. However, everyone plays games differently, so, it would be wrong to ban alternative play-styles and exploits. IMO the split Khuzait Noble Line looks a good idea for a mod. I suggest you publish it.

 

[five bucks]

It is common for game designers to leave unbalanced aspects (cheese) in their games.

The discussion is about whether game developers nerf things in single player games at all, and why they would do that. Leaving some instances of cheese un-nerfed intentionally in a balanced fashion, despite potentially nerfing other things, is a separate question which is only tangentially related and not really useful in this discussion.

They are generally referred to as a first order optimal strategy (FOOS) and are usually put in place intentionally.

Except you appear to have not read the link to see it doesn't apply here.

The example given is mage vs fighter. The mage is harder to use, but with better results for a skilled player. The fighter (the FOOS) is easier to use, but with worse results for a skilled player.
Same applies to the second link's example of the "big money" strategy, which is simple, but is said to probably lose to experienced players. Or the spamming a single combo in fighting games, which I shouldn't even need to explain.

Both your links give the impression that FOOS is not really an unbalanced aspect. Instead, it's one that is balanced by skill requirement: low skill floor, but also low skill ceiling. It is not something that actually gives close to the best results possible in the hands of a skilled player, so it doesn't invalidate the need for skill.

But in Bannerlord, the Khan's Guard is simply all-around better. Whether you're skilled or not. So, it does invalidate the need for skill. It was pretty much all anyone used in Bannerlord Online from what I understand, until that mod nerfed the Glaives into lances.

In addition, the other stated benefit of the FOOS is to provide an easier option to get through the game, but Bannerlord already provides this with difficulty settings. You don't need a specific troop to be massively OP to make the game easier for newbies, they can just turn player and troop damage down to 25%, boost their speed, boost their recruitment, etc. Using faction specific troops as a difficulty setting is nonsensical.
In fact, if we want to make Bannerlord easier for new players the battles and troops aren't even really the hard part anyway (since the player can usually outrun parties they can't take on), the hard part is the horrible lategame game design that isn't intuitive or functional. So logically, one would start with that.

There is no good reason why the Khan's Guard needs to be so overpowered.

Because it doesn't allow a player to feel clever for having learned something about the game. Most players never reach those final perks, especially the Trade one.

(Although, honestly, Spring of Gold could just dump 25K in your lap per day and still not be particularly unbalancing. No one with Trade 250 or whatever is going to need money and anyone else will make about 30-60% of that just fighting lategame armies consistently.)

Whoever feels clever from recruiting Khan's Guard and seeing them massacre every other troop in the game and saying "wow, I'm so smart for figuring out these troops are good"! would probably also equally enjoy someone jangling keys in their face. The answer is blatantly obvious.

If Khan's Guard were nerfed to a more reasonable state, there would still be "best" troops for certain situations, and players would still get the opportunity to work out which ones. If anything, it would be much more rewarding, as the answer would require some basic thought.

So: are you saying you actually support Khan's Guards being this broken? Or are you just arguing about quibbles for the sake of it?

 

[anoddhermit]

We all like to look at units individually, but we should be looking at how they are deployed by the game.

Are their many occasions where AI armies include more than a scattering of Khan's Guards or Fians? Even in large Battanian armies you rarely see more than a handful of Fians. And Kuzait armies tend to be full of Qangli. Balance has been achieved through AI behaviour.

So the issue is whether the player should have access to so many noble troops? Or should there be artificial limits on their recruitment?

In earlier iterations they became rare units to recruit. But sometime around 1.8 they became easier to recruit. This suggests to me that the Devs are happy with them how they are. My gut is that they make the game very easy, so perhaps they should be more expensive to limit their use.

Whether players should have so many noble troops is a separate issue. The issue is simply that Fians might as well be a tier 7 unit and Khan's Guard might as well be a tier 8, and both of them are too strong outside their main role as archer and horse archer as shock infantry and cavalry. They have no counters, nothing to give you trouble such that you'd really need the support of other units.

More expense won't fix it, since easily steamrolling makes you tons of money from selling loot. They would still easily pay for themselves if you doubled their cost. They'd have to have an absurdly extreme wage to make it a meaningful limitation.

No amount of tactical wizardry makes other units worth using if you're after power/optimization. Some people like going for power or optimization, but if there's an obvious answer and it's as simple as stack on or two clearly overpowered troops it's much less interesting. The best defense of Fians if they're being charged by lancers or something is just having Khan's Guards kill the lancers, not having defensive infantry or normal heavy cavalry. But the fians would still kill the lancers just with higher casualties than you'd like. And then you might wonder why bother using Fians instead of just having more Khan's Guards. Maybe for sieges, I guess.

There aren't any other units that trivialize battles to the same extent. They are overpowered to the point they're not enjoyable to use and I house rule them out which means effectively Khuzait and Battania don't have noble units I can use if I'm playing a themed campaign - not a big problem for Khuzait but a problem for Battania because that pretty much leaves me with nothing but infantry since Battania's regular cavalry are bad and they have no non-noble archers.

It's not like normal exploits where you can simply not use it and it makes no difference, since they take up the space something less overpowered should be taking.

 

[Apocal]

Except you appear to have not read the link to see it doesn't apply here.

It does apply, unless you believe BL solely consists of its tactical battles and nothing else.

Running around with a full party of Khan's Guards is suboptimal play. You don't need them to win if you know how to play Bannerlord. The actual Korean RTS gigabrain MLG optimal SP play is world's away from stacking KGs (or any T6 unit) in their party. It also involves running around damned-near about to go broke (or even going broke) all the time, so I'm pretty sure no one on the forum does it. The closest is maybe Ananda?

So: are you saying you actually support Khan's Guards being this broken? Or are you just arguing about quibbles for the sake of it?

I'm mostly neutral on it, ever since TW said they weren't going to change them and then doubled down by making even easier to acquire noble troops. People who dislike it can mod it or just not use them, players who enjoy the huge power fantasy aspect can have that. It doesn't affect anything in a single player game.

 

[JunKeteer]

I mean, the AI don't often get full stacks of EC or KG's or Fians, as that can be very boring for sure, but as a player, there is also some 'challenge' to defeat that army if the AI somehow manages to ever get to that state; provided they don't just auto replenish immediately either.
The issue is, with how easily/noticeably stronger certain units can be and also significantly more exploitable for a player, it completely trivializes yet another simple feature in the game; the 'challenge' to build an army/party that works and can afford. Right now, money really isn't a factor in being able to manage full stack of whatever OP (ie KG) unit, nor are having to require certain perks or skills too.
AI battles aren't smart still but the HA AI at least sort of do that cantabrian circle thingy on their own so even that aspect doesn't involve any player input tactics-wise. Just F1+F3; or F6 if you're lazier. If they were 'dumber', and need a lot more player input to make efficient/less deaths, one can see that as being the counterbalance when it comes to KGs.

 

[Agroplode]

You refusing to answer the question proves that you know the answer makes my argument for me.

I'll answer the question for you, since you're incapable of doing it. Here's what you would have said:

"Yes, I would nerf an elite cataphract if it instantly won the battles. Why? Because it would take all the challenge out of the game, and I would not like to force myself not to use the unit just to have challenge."

The exact same logic applies to Khan's Guard. It's so much stronger than other units (beating every other T6 troop at a 2:1 ratio or better!) that it takes a lot of challenge and tactical decision making out of the game. You have to force yourself not to use them if you want challenge, so you miss out on game content and damage your own immersion. This is a bad thing and does not need to exist.

And now you can see why game developers would nerf something in a singleplayer game.

Which by the way, is fairly common practice in singleplayer games. Perhaps you think you know better than the majority of game designers who ever made a game? They were all just mistaken, and only you were smart enough to figure out that there's no good reason to nerf something in a singleplayer game?

The defeat of all Calradia is set in stone, from day 1, its just a matter how fast I want to do it. That is how smart the game designers are, You making ignorant statements on my behalf dont serve anybody.

Learn to play the game and you will never think about Khans Guard again.

No more F1+F3

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

The defeat of all Calradia is set in stone, from day 1, its just a matter how fast I want to do it.

I do find it amusing how the world of calradia is essentially utopian before the player arrives. There is no evidence of war at the start of the game, no raided villages, no armies, very neat borders. But the player is an immortal with an insatiable bloodlust and nothing to do besides conquering the world, and the longer you're around the worse things get.

Incidentally I did once did a solo campaign riding around killing lords, and after executing rhegaea I got bored, so I cheated myself a bunch of khan's guard and put on some god mode cheats. The gameplay was barely any different, which says a lot about how easy it is in the lategame, and how balancing units is way down the list of things to do to make it challenging.
I think khan's guard are ridiculous but more because they obsolete the roleplay aspect of having different wings of the army, not because they fundamentally impact the game.

 

[Antaeus]

Whether players should have so many noble troops is a separate issue. The issue is simply that Fians might as well be a tier 7 unit and Khan's Guard might as well be a tier 8, and both of them are too strong outside their main role as archer and horse archer as shock infantry and cavalry. They have no counters, nothing to give you trouble such that you'd really need the support of other units.

More expense won't fix it, since easily steamrolling makes you tons of money from selling loot. They would still easily pay for themselves if you doubled their cost. They'd have to have an absurdly extreme wage to make it a meaningful limitation.

No amount of tactical wizardry makes other units worth using if you're after power/optimization. Some people like going for power or optimization, but if there's an obvious answer and it's as simple as stack on or two clearly overpowered troops it's much less interesting. The best defense of Fians if they're being charged by lancers or something is just having Khan's Guards kill the lancers, not having defensive infantry or normal heavy cavalry. But the fians would still kill the lancers just with higher casualties than you'd like. And then you might wonder why bother using Fians instead of just having more Khan's Guards. Maybe for sieges, I guess.

There aren't any other units that trivialize battles to the same extent. They are overpowered to the point they're not enjoyable to use and I house rule them out which means effectively Khuzait and Battania don't have noble units I can use if I'm playing a themed campaign - not a big problem for Khuzait but a problem for Battania because that pretty much leaves me with nothing but infantry since Battania's regular cavalry are bad and they have no non-noble archers.

It's not like normal exploits where you can simply not use it and it makes no difference, since they take up the space something less overpowered should be taking.

I don't get it.

I've already dealt with AI recruitment of them functioning correctly. You're just upset that they make you the player too strong? You've answered your own problem. Just don't recruit them. But you want to take the units away from other players who enjoy them because you just can't not recruit them? Harsh.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

The closest is maybe Ananda?

I almost go broke some times, it's true. I still grab KG early because I only like to do live battle and I want to fight any size of enemy, but it's not the fastest thing to do. For actual speed, Auto-calc is a great equalizer of troops. Usually this works against the player because the player has superior troops/special types, but if the player doesn't bother then it doesn't matter. It's always the elephant in room for these "troop is OP" topics, that even if TW nerfed everything good into the ground, players can (and already do) speed run the game essentially just playing like the AI does but with a little more smart use of money and influence. And of course you can auto-calc and execute too and by pass even more. So the "X is OP" is really just asking for something fun to be removed for no function at all.

 

[anoddhermit]

I don't get it.

I've already dealt with AI recruitment of them functioning correctly. You're just upset that they make you the player too strong? You've answered your own problem. Just don't recruit them. But you want to take the units away from other players who enjoy them because you just can't not recruit them? Harsh.

As I said in the last sentence, they are taking away from players who want balanced units in their place. And as I also said, not recruiting them does not result in getting more balanced units, so it is not a solution to the problem.

There's a clear difference between exploits you can just completely ignore because you have to go out of your way to use them anyway, and imbalanced troops which you have to go out of your way to avoid. Imbalanced troops results in multiple factions having fewer units to choose from for someone who wants a balanced experience. I cannot avoid Fians and Khan's Guards as if they're not filling recruitment slots other units would take, as well as being the only T6 option for two factions and for one faction the only archer.

Balancing Khan's Guards and Fians wouldn't solely be taking something away from one group of players, it'd be giving more balanced units to other players.

I could be a jerk about it and tell the people who want imbalanced Khan's Guards and Fians to just lower the difficulty level or learn to play, but instead of misrepresenting people's intentions or insulting them instead we should ask: What exactly is it that they're getting out of Fians and Khan's Guards that would somehow be ruined by a balance pass? Is there a way to make both groups of players happy here?

For example, perhaps if there were a perk or something that gave players access to overpowered versions of noble units, that I could avoid easily enough compared to the current situation. A single perk slot is a relatively small loss to not having archers if you play Battanian.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Lol, there's nothing wrong with Fians. Oh no is the 1 t6 archer better then the other archers? OH NO HOW CAN I PLAY THIS!
Oh no can the t6 archer defeat the t5 infantry who have horribly programmed combat AI and can be defeated by literally anything else too? Oh no, better get that steam refund!

No way the problem could be the utter lack of useful combat AI and UI for controlling non-ranged units to make then actually perform competently!?

 

[anoddhermit]

Lol, there's nothing wrong with Fians. Oh no is the 1 t6 archer better then the other archers? OH NO HOW CAN I PLAY THIS!
Oh no can the t6 archer defeat the t5 infantry who have horribly programmed combat AI and can be defeated by literally anything else too? Oh no, better get that steam refund!

No way the problem could be the utter lack of useful combat AI and UI for controlling non-ranged units to make then actually perform competently!?

They can also defeat T6, and the T5 can defeat T5, so referencing tier is mischaracterizing it as a complaint that higher tier units beat lower tier ones.

Every version of the unit dramatically outperforms other archers of equal tier while also easily defeating most infantry of equal tier due to the advantages of having a two hander.

Clearly, infantry units sacrifice survivability against projectiles for having two handers w/out shields - regardless of that I think two handed weapons are too strong but that's another issue. The issue is they are an archer that's a better archer than all other archers and as such they do not make the same sacrifice. Noble archers get bigger offensive upgrades in equipment than noble cav, most which get only armor upgrades - Noble Cav often get the same lance as they have at T5 at T6, and many if not all of the same one handed weapons. The nature of the unit also reduces the offensive impact you get just due to downtime with units that require cycle charging. Meanwhile Khan's Guard and Fian get far higher offensive uptime with bigger offensive upgrades, while still getting defensive upgrades too.

You can try to characterize everything as an AI problem to hand wave all this away, but it's not like the only solution to balance issues is more advanced AI. I don't dispute the AI could be better but you're never going to get amazing AI with this many units - especially without taxing performance. There are clear equipment related disparities and dynamics of unit balance that can be addressed without needing to improve the AI, and just pointing to bad AI doesn't make those disappear. It is not a reasonable objection to calls to balance these units in other ways to just complain about AI.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

It doesn't matter at all. It's not street fighter, the consideration is the player versus the environment not x troops VRS y troops. The AI is bad with all units and the player can use any units they want. Improvement to all troops AI performance and player UI would go a long way though.

 

[anoddhermit]

It doesn't matter at all. It's not street fighter, the consideration is the player versus the environment not x troops VRS y troops. The AI is bad with all units and the player can use any units they want. Improvement to all troops AI performance and player UI would go a long way though.

The player uses X troops vs. Y troops in the game environment. That experience can be improved by improving troop vs. troop balance, among other things. The player can use any units they want but that doesn't mean someone cannot have a better experience if there are better reasons to use various units over others in certain contexts. Different people play games for different reasons, and this game is clearly made with more than one of those reasons in mind.

We could change all units to a single basic archer, infantry, cavalry, horse archer unit. Is that fine because the consideration is only player vs. the environment and not X troops vs. Y troops? See the absurdity?

There are good reasons players want reasonable - not perfect - balance of troop vs. troop, and part of that is precisely how battles play out in the player vs. environment domain of the game. Another part is of course the aesthetic and roleplaying dimension (I'm not claiming it's a deep RPG but it's not like it makes no difference to the gameplay experience) - it's understandable why people want some faction vs. faction balance and for the set of troops specific to factions to have sufficient degrees of synergy and diversity to make engaging those factions or playing with units of a single faction enjoyable.

None of this asking for a perfect game or ignoring AI issues, or claiming that you can't play the game in more mechanistic fashion. But Bannerlord is clearly aiming at being more than that, and the developers have made changes on basis' that go beyond that, so players are justified in raising issues beyond that mode of playing the game.

 

[five bucks]

It does apply, unless you believe BL solely consists of its tactical battles and nothing else.

Running around with a full party of Khan's Guards is suboptimal play. You don't need them to win if you know how to play Bannerlord. The actual Korean RTS gigabrain MLG optimal SP play is world's away from stacking KGs (or any T6 unit) in their party. It also involves running around damned-near about to go broke (or even going broke) all the time, so I'm pretty sure no one on the forum does it. The closest is maybe Ananda?

Elaborate on the exact nature of this strategy.

I'm mostly neutral on it

Right, so you're arguing for the sake of it.

People who dislike it can mod it or just not use them

Mods aren't available on console, the more mods we have to use to fix the game the more potential there is for crashes and conflicts, TW is paid to fix the game, and forcing yourself not to use something in a game is immersion breaking and robs you of content, which is the whole reason SP games get balanced at all.

players who enjoy the huge power fantasy aspect can have that

Power fantasy is fine and good, but players who want power fantasy in battles can turn down the difficulty to achieve that. As I said, balancing difficulty with faction specific troops is stupid.

It doesn't affect anything in a single player game.

It forces players to either choose between having their immersion broken and missing out on game content, or taking challenge away from themselves, as previously stated. If I want to do a Khuzait or Battania playthrough, I don't want it to be a cakewalk.

Right now I'm doing a Battania run and literally forcing myself not to recruit Fians. Because if I do, they machine gun down all the enemies before my Battanian infantry even gets a chance to reach them.

This is not a good thing! I want to use noble troops without them just effortlessly nuking everything! The challenge level should be sensibly balanced, why is this even controversial???