Recent content by Bramborough

How did Warband not have this problem? Mainly, Trainer skill, which stacked with companions too. Okay, I can kinda see how they wanted to get away from that...was possible in lategame to very rapidly level up large numbers recruits into the mid-tiers without ever even entering a battle.

But another big factor was Shared XP among the party. The high-tier troops' kills helped the newbies level up this way. In Bannerlord, the high-tier troops essentially steal XP from the low-tiers because obviously they're dealing much higher damage much more quickly. Which then leads the player to nonsensical, artificial practices like putting Recruits in a separate formation and letting them brawl by themselves against Looters while all the veterans just sit back and watch.

So okay, I can live without (eventual) OP passive training like the old Trainer skill. But shared battle XP seems eminently reasonable to me; not that hard to do, and would help the troop training situation without trivializing the process in late game.

Another money source is Smithing; kinda surprised it hasn't been mentioned (lol, Dean Beecham ninja'd me while I was typing). Some people consider it rather exploitive, because the sale prices for some of the crafted weapons get rather outlandish. TW will (and should) probably rework Smithing to counter the excesses, but for now, it's a pretty darn good moneymaker (and I think still will be even after it gets balanced better).

In a nutshell: Don't sell off looted weapons. Buy some hardwood to get going (need it to make charcoal), and smelt down looted weapons for materials (various grades of iron and steel). Then use those mats to craft weapons (2H swords, 2H swing-damage polearms, and javelins are most lucrative: damage is a big factor in sale price) to sell. Don't worry about difficulty level; the stat penalties for crafting at higher difficulty than your skill are rather minor. The first few weapons you make won't sell for much, but you'll unlock weapon components and soon be able to craft stuff that sells quite well.

I don't use any mods at all...and have never had a Bannerlord savegame fail.

Sometimes I've chosen to start a new playthrough because of newly-patched features or fixes that could only come into play with a fresh game, but that's a little different. Have never had a savegame that got corrupted such that it just crashed or failed to load at all.

I dunno, maybe I've just been lucky. Shrug.

I don't remember the specific number, but in my longest playthrough (14 game years) I think it was somewhere in the high 20's. That character hit at least 25, but am sure didn't get to 30. This was roughly during patches 1.0.7 up to beta 1.2.0.

RexDart said:

What happens when you deposit a lord in an ally's dungeon, versus stashing him in your own? Will the dungeon owner leave him imprisoned until he escapes, or can he/will he just cash him in?

I sometimes wonder, when I have a captured faction leader, what the best thing to do with him is vis-a-vis winning the war, forcing a favorable peace treaty, etc. Should I:

1. Deposit him in the nearest dungeon available.
2. Deposit him in my own dungeon, though it might be far away and he might escape en route.
3. Gift him to my own king?

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Upfront: I don't know the answer, so take my speculation with a grain of salt. But I suspect the answer might be "put him/her in the nearest own-faction castle dungeon". Reason: castles don't have ransom brokers. If you pop the lord into a town dungeon, then that town's AI owner only has to visit and cash the prisoner in. But if in a castle, then the AI owner has to a) visit his/her castle, b) take the prisoner lord into party, and c) transport the prisoner to a town to ransom. I somewhat suspect that chain of linked actions is probably beyond the parameters of the AI? Maybe? Maybe not? (obviously, this rationale wouldn't apply if the nearest dungeon is in your own player-controlled town.)

All that said, it's probably still better to lug the prisoner to one of your own dungeons if at all feasible. It's better to know instead of hope that the prisoner won't be ransomed off prematurely.

Obtw, was surprised in my current playthrough (1.4.1) that I held Raganvad in my own (castle) dungeon for almost a month. So yeah, they still need to do more work on how long captured lords stay in chains...but it is slowly getting a little better.

Not waiting for anything; still just playing. Probably quitting soon and going on to something else...but not really because of the (many) problems in the current EA. Rather, it's been 300+ hrs, just normal burnout like with any game. Shrug.

Doesn't mean I'm blind to all the issues or saying it's all okay. Yeah, lots of stuff sorely needs to be fixed. Just didn't stop me from playing...and won't be the reason for stopping either. (That said, the issues probably will keep me from picking Bannerlord back up before full release).

Just as a tangential aside...many use the term "unplayable". It's an objective, absolutist term that can only mean that a game just won't start or crashes so often that it literally can't be played at all, however good or bad the gameplay is otherwise. That's clearly not the case here, at least for the vast majority of players. Otherwise, we'd all have Steam stating "Play Time: 0.0 hours"....and wouldn't even know of all the problems because we wouldn't have encountered them while playing the game. "Unplayable" doesn't mean the same thing as "Not worth playing...to me...because of all the problems."

IngoB said:

gaining indepence as a separate kingdom

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Found your problem.

In current EA state, proceeding to independent kingdom is asking for tears. The kingdom management, diplomacy, and a host of other mechanics for that stage of the game just aren't there yet. Not merely "only partially implemented" or "poorly balanced"; not there at all. They told us as much pre-release in devblogs. Of the 8 bulletized points you listed, I think this explains at least 4 or 5 of them.

I am NOT suggesting that you somehow made a mistake or played poorly by creating a kingdom. Instead, I criticize TW for allowing kingdom creation in the first place. They knowingly (and, to be fair, openly) left a void in the game...and in EA, I don't necessarily have a problem with that in itself. But then they gave us a door (via the main quest) through which the player can step into that void anyway. That's the decision I find completely inexplicable. (and now in 1.4.1 they've given us a "sandbox" route to do the same thing even faster...like that's gonna help...).

Marriage is the one and only game event that I plan in advance to save-scum. Even if the displayed success chances are accurate (a highly dubious assumption in itself), the cumulative probability of passing six persuasion checks in a row is far less than 10%...for a one-shot-or-you're-done attempt.

Any game mechanic or event which so heavily incentivizes players to save-scum their way past it (including those who rarely or never save-scum otherwise) is one which needs some close review and revision by the devs at some point.

My hope is that this is another EA placeholder stopgap, and they've already got something much better planned before or at full release.

ejnomad07 said:

Character Creation pretty clearly tells you when you get a trait to start with. Go make a character and read them. Example picking you treated people well gives you all but one positive trait.

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Huh...indeed they do. Skimmed through them all again, I'd never registered that; guess that's what I get for only focusing on the left side of the screen for focus/attribute points.

I did also notice, all the trait selections occur on the various choices in the Young Adulthood step...didn't see any trait characteristics in any of the other choices before/after (not with a Vlandia culture start, anyway).

Thanks for schooling me.

I think it's a little better than it was a couple patches ago. Probably enough that you should have another try to see what you think yourself.

By no means am I suggesting that the situation is completely fixed and TW doesn't need to do any more on this.

I'd also like to see a little more visibility on how these traits are generated during character creation, and what actions make them switch between -1, 0, and 1. I'm sure that info is out there somewhere, but I have yet to stumble across it, and it certainly isn't very transparent in game.

As an example, my current character started with Honor, Mercy, and Generous at start. I'm now just Generous. I have zero clue what I did in character creation to start with those traits, nor whatever I did to drop to neutral in two of them.

Didn't read all the thread, I'm sure this has probably already come up.

Some of the same factors which make it hard for Aserai to expand (distance, limited access routes to/from their "home" area) also make it difficult for other factions to invade them. No, I've never seen Aserai steamroll like several other factions routinely do...but I've never seen them get wrecked like Sturgia often does, either. In all my playthroughs (5 or 6 by now, I guess) across the various patches, Aserai has pretty much maintained their starting size (17 walled fiefs), plus/minus a couple.

Callum said:

• Increased distance between friendly troops. This improves the spacing inside combat and reduces friendly troops hindering themselves

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If this is what's making Shield Walls now look like Loose formation, then I think y'all might've gone just a tad bit overboard with this particular change. Looks rather incongruent, and makes transitioning between "anti-ranged defense" to "commence melee" rather awkward. Can we dial it back toward a happy medium?

soldier123222 said:

If you think about it gAmE Is iN eArlY aCcEsS
just kidding, don't mean to disrespect
Thing is, the game is great at the sandbox aspect, main storyline being supposed to be playable at a stable rate when the game is fully launched, y'now.

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Yeah, agreed. Was just pointing out that looking for marked NPCs on the main map isn't the most reliable method, because some of them aren't marked, that's all.

Dean Beecham said:

Best thing to do is just go around the map doing what you want if you pass any leader that can help you with the story you will see a little blue light beside them .just ask them about the battle .

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Fwiw, this isn't always true. On any given playthrough, I've found that 2 or 3 out of the 10 weren't marked with the blue "!" on campaign map. I don't know what set of circumstances results in an AI NPC getting marked with the ! for this quest....but "eligibility" apparently isn't the only factor. Probably just bugged...like much else in the main quest.