Recent content by aggravatedAardvark

I just wanted to add: I've experienced the same thing in large battles when the reinforcements come in mid-battle. The reinforcements can be mixed into formations of the wrong type.

It does not always happen. I have a hunch that it happens when I change the formations in the order of battle setup screen (add/remove active formations, e.g. consolidate all infantry into formation 1, or make 2 formations of melee cavalry so I can have a group on each flank which isn't normally needed in smaller engagements), but I haven't tested vigorously.

Also playing on 1.7, no mods.

MArdA TaleWorlds said:

I would like to see the save file to see if we can reproduce it. Can you also check if you have a folder under this pathway?
C:\ProgramData\Mount and Blade II Bannerlord\crashes\
Please note that ProgramData is a hidden folder.

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Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I don't have a \crashes folder under C:\ProgramData\Mount and Blade II Bannerlord. Only \logs and \Shaders

If it helps, I've uploaded a save made just before one of these crashes through upload.taleworlds.com, with the URL of this thread and my username. File name is Crash Test.sav. If you're trying to reproduce it, in this case the crash occurred after winning a battle against Calatild's army (though as mentioned, on reloading and trying again I couldn't get the crash to repeat).

Edit: to second a point snuggans made, this only started happening for me after a couple hundred days in game. Did not occur early game.

Agree will pretty much all of this. AI parties should enter settlements that are about to be sieged to help defend (unless too weak to make a difference or not enough food). The besieger should consider starving the defenders out as a viable tactic instead of switching targets, and send raiding parties out to scavenge for more food for themselves (unless there's a lot of enemies nearby). Also other good suggestions.

Blood Gryphon said:

Also on a side note, I think the AI armies need to act more defensively when their kingdom strength is lower (making them the weaker faction). Wars right now feel like two attackers who defend if they happen to be near by and not already on their way to siege something. Weaker faction armies should patrol and focus on fighting enemy lords/armies (before the enemy sieges something) to try and even out the faction strengths and then once evening out the strength they switch to sieging the enemy faction. It hurts to see armies of the weaker faction walk by losing battles in their territory to go siege a far off target just because that target was recently taken and has no defenders in it.

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Kind of on this topic of patrolling and focusing on field battles, I do like that in your OP the 500 Vlandian army was deliberately following the Sturgian army (if I'm reading that correctly). Maybe this behavior could be expanded and given a higher priority? For individual lord parties as well, if they don't already do that.

Basically I'm suggesting that if a party (army or individual lord) spots a stronger, slower enemy party in their territory, they should follow that party for a while instead of just fleeing or ignoring them (I mean really, would you just ignore a big group of enemies in your territory?). This would make it much more likely that two or more small parties are in the same place and can combine forces to take down a large enemy in their territory. This would also make it so that diving deep into enemy territory becomes quite dangerous unless you're a small, mobile party that can outrun most others. Or just too massive to be dealt with.

As the player too, this would make entering enemy territory feel much more dangerous and exciting I think. Because once you pick up a tail that's faster than you, you better GTFO or hope you don't run into another enemy. Could add a lot to gameplay.

Having small mobile parties collect around and then swarm stronger enemy parties in the field could also give weaker factions a better way to deal with invaders. Combine this with entering settlements to defend and you might have a decent basis for a defensive AI. (Would probably also need a few other considerations like prioritizing food production and stockpiling, etc.)

mexxico said:

Yes it is late for deciding adding that big features. Sometimes I think how we can add alliances feature and I realize different problems. Thats why I cannot join discussions for now. I need to think all problems all together. For example : what will be side effects or costs of announcing a new alliance, what will happen if one alliance is ended - suddenly war peace calculation scores will change and this will trigger new wars to start, so there will be more war peace declerations (which is not good for stability of game / bad for gameplay). How will be diplomacy screen ui for allied factions? What will happen when alliance is declared if there are existing wars or tribute payments including factions which declared alliance. There are tons of different problems and we need to find answers to them before start coding. Also if we can not solve these problems in a good way we cannot add this feature thats why I cannot give 100% guarentee for adding alliances feature for now.

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I can see these may not all be easy problems to solve.

On the one hand, immediately having wars/peace declared when an alliance breaks up or is formed kind of makes sense. The other factions may be opportunistic in declaring a war on a faction that suddenly lost its ally, or suddenly want to sue for peace because now they’re facing a much bigger combined enemy. Also, renegotiating tribute in these situations also makes sense.

But I can see that this might destabilize the war/peace systems and be bad for gameplay if it all happens too suddenly, especially with multiple alliances to consider.

If it’s too complicated to implement (and balance!) full alliances, what about a version with reduced scope specifically designed with the goal of reducing snowballing? Where the only alliance possible is a defensive pact against a stronger enemy: i.e. a strong faction (Faction Strong) declares war on a weak neighbour (Faction Weak). Faction Weak would then start looking for a third faction to form a defensive pact with (Faction Pact), to help it fight off the attacker. Faction Pact would only agree to enter this pact if:

• Faction Strong is the aggressor
• The difference in strength between Faction Strong and Faction Weak is past a certain threshold
• The difference in strength between Faction Strong and Faction Pact is also past a certain threshold (i.e. this would be a mechanic to get two or more weaker factions to gang up on a faction that is starting to snowball)
• Faction Pact has an active border with Faction Strong (i.e. they would be worried that they’re next if they don’t do something now)
• Faction Pact is currently at peace with Faction Weak
• Faction Pact can be convinced to declare war on Faction Strong per the usual war/peace score voting, but instead considering the combined strength of Faction Weak and Faction Pact instead of the individual faction strength. This would bring all the factors that are normally considered in war/peace declarations into play and so hopefully prevent most of the possible weird unbalanced scenarios.

The only effects of the defensive pact would be:

• Both factions in the pact declare war against Faction Strong. They would not coordinate against any other faction (allowing the war/peace scores and tribute calculations to behave normally otherwise). If another faction does decide to complicate things by declaring war against a faction in the defensive pact, that faction in the pact would prioritize the war against Faction Strong in war/peace declarations and so likely seek peace with that new faction.
• Faction Strong can only declare peace if they declare peace with both factions in the defensive pact at the same time (treat them as a single faction in Faction Strong's war/peace calculation), but maybe using the individual factions strengths to calculate tribute scores to avoid problems when the defensive pact ends.

This would essentially simulate an alliance of necessity only, against a larger nearby aggressor, with the two factions in the defensive pact otherwise still distrusting each other.

Consideration could be given to the defensive pact lasting maybe one season or so past the declaration of peace. This would only affect the war/peace calculations of Faction Strong because the defensive pact is only formed against them, and would not take effect if Faction Weak or Faction Pact were the aggressor.

Armies helping each other can be optional, if that creates issues. The main idea is to force a snowballing faction to take on a more powerful combined enemy more often to help balance things out. This is similar to the “top dog” factor in the war/peace declarations, but maybe implementing this as a separate mechanic gives another lever to pull when trying to balance that. I'm thinking the top dog factor might easily be lost in all the other factors that go into the war/peace declarations.

Thoughts?