Recent content by Ciderglove

I came to pretty much the conclusions being discussed in this thread about a month ago and stopped playing. It's sad to see that the devs have done nothing since then to fix it.

Crowquills said:

You never told your units to attack/charge.... what the hell do you expect. Try that again and tell them to charge 2 secs before the cavalry hits or after the cavalry hits and they are swimming inside you. Square formation sucks. I tried to make it work but it always fails incredibly compared to shield wall. Formations do need to be more dynamic when enemies close in, that's for sure!

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Your insulting tone is confusing. Why are you surprised that people expect formations to work in a logical way? Napoleonic square formations (for example) did not suddenly charge at cavalry two seconds before impact; the formation itself was effective.

I am sure that you have all kinds of clever techniques to get around problems with the mechanics and win fights, but I don't think they are very interesting. The main reason that people are making and contributing to these threads is that the game is in an early access state and so needs a lot of improvements. The problems with infantry combat will not be solved by every player around the world following your clever advice about cheesing various formations; they will be solved by the developers making fixes to fundamental mechanics.

Yes it's Early Access, but the brainlessness of the campaign AI does cause concern. It is very clear that no work has gone into it in the last eight years - so what hope is there that things will improve in the next one?

If it is true, as people are saying, that you only see high-tier equipment at clan tier 5, then that is ridiculous. How are the Imperial cataphracts buying their armour if they aren't from Tier 5 clans?

In Warband, the best armour was in shops from the beginning of the game, but it wasn't unbalanced because you couldn't afford it until later. What's wrong with that system?

IngegnerTommy said:

I'm surprised this topic is seen as relatively low-priority by the community, infantry vs. infantry encounter are a bloody mess lasting a couple minutes at most and formations are pretty much useless. M&B Bannerlord is a game with HUGE potential both as vanilla and as mod-base, but to me this is a major flaw that i'm hoping can be fixed, and i'm waiting for that before commiting to a campaign..

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Agree completely. The fact that infantry are useless and that any AI can be beaten by a player army of 50% archers and 50% cavalry is the only reason I'm not playing the game.

If your influence can go negative, that's probably a bug. Post it in the bugs subforum.

To be more specific, OP means that Phycaon needs a bridge spanning the river to the West to make it less tedious to get to Lycaon/Poros.

After his ridiculous Evolution/Development post and now this, GreenLight7 needs to be banned.

Step 1: Get on a horse and use a Voulge with two hands.
Step 2: Get 15 men on horses to follow you.
Step 3: Charge head on into the horse archers as they come up on your flank and stay right on top of them, chopping them to pieces.

Hugo_Stiglitz said:

No doubt. BTW is there somewhere to see how much or caravan(s) is/are making? I found my shops at the "Other" UI panel in Clan. Under the "Party" tab in clan it shows my Companion's party is 75/75 but nothing on how much coin is being generated.

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Hover over the 'Income/Expenses' numbers on the right hand side of the Clan Screen. If your caravan is making a profits, there will be an entry for '+100 from caravan', and if it is making a loss the entry will say '-100 for caravan wages'

Basically, yes, the money system is broken. But I don't know if it would be solved either by reducing the amount you get or increasing the amount you spend. Something fundamental is not working.

Stratigo said:

What's the last Roman history you've read? I must admit I have been rather lax and lazy this past year since I've gotten my Masters, but I did read through "Visual Evidence for Roman Infantry Tactics" A week ago. Here, have a full citation:

Taylor, Michael J. “VISUAL EVIDENCE FOR ROMAN INFANTRY TACTICS.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 59/60 (2014): 103–20. www.jstor.org/stable/44981974.

Feel free to read it yourself. I didn't find myself fully convinced to be honest, but it was an interesting read. It's a bit heady though, involving the examination of artistic reliefs, epigraphs, and other such works of art, which is a bit in the weeds if you aren't already sort of well educated on the base subject. It assumes familiarity with textual analysis.

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I'm afraid I'm unable to let go the thing about Greek hoplites not fighting in formation. If it really is true, as you say, then you need to explain it properly, given the sheer mass of evidence to the contrary.

You say that there is no evidence that any non-Spartan cities engaged in any kind of hoplite drill. That is an enormous claim. Are we to understand that, in the dangerous and violent ancient world, some states put no effort whatsoever into military training? It seems far more likely that, through things like the gymnasia of Athens and the Campus Martius of Rome, Hellenic city states had organised civic military training.

You say that the Spartans marched to music in formation, which other armies didn't. But that is slightly disingenous; it makes it sound as if marching in formation was part of what made the Spartans distinct, when in fact it was that they marched silently to music.

It is certain that, by the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, non-Spartans were fighting in phalanxes. This is certain because the Theban tactic of drawing their hoplites up in much deeper formations than normal would not make sense unless fighting in formation was not already the norm.

It also seems highly doubtful that the non-Spartan soldiers at Thermopylae in 480 BC did not fight in phalanx formation. If they had fought in loose order, the battle would have been over far more quickly than it was.

So when exactly, in your understanding of all this, did non-Spartan cities decide to stop throwing hundreds of lives away fighting suicidally without formations? Come to think of it, when exactly did the Spartans decide to do it?

Is it possible that, when you say that no Greeks other than the Spartans fought in a phalanx, what you actually mean is that the Spartans were much better at it than everyone else? I do find this all very confusing; the enormity of the claims you make is in striking contrast to how casually and brusquely you make them.

ShadInqu said:

Peple seem to be discussing several different problems simultaneously, which leads to confusion. The issues that lead the the current bad situation with battles are separate:

1. All ranged combat is overwhemingly OP. The talk about looter stones, Imperial crossbowmen last week, forest bandits etc. are all symptoms of a much larger problem. I played Warband&mods in the couple of weeks before the release, and the difference is staggering.
   • Create a character in Warband with no ranged skills and try to hit something beyond 20m away, let alone land a headshot. Yeah, that's what I thought. In Bannerlord, a character with 0 skill, whether player or companion can pick up a ranged weapon and start chaining headshots like nothing. Starting with near perfect accuracy is OP.
   • Warband you needed a heavy skill investement into power throw/draw and horse archery to actually do damage. A novice with a hunter's bow could land headshots on a heavily armored knight and do virtually no damage. Bannerlord, ranged gamage starts massive from the get go, skills only slightly increase it. And also for some bizzare reason, blunt weapons like stones do tonnes of damage to heavy armor.
   • Crossbows had a low-ish skill requirement in Warband, but you still needed Strength and reloading was slow. Also, if you wanted horse archery, you were locked out of the most powerfuld bows crossbows. Bannerlord has an early perk that lets you shoot anything from horseback.
   • Overall ranged combat needs an major look at. Low skilled bow/thrown weapons need to do far less damage against armored opponents. Low skilled ranged weapons need to be far less accurate
2. The second issue is fantasy recruits with swords and shirts. And nothing else. It's odd, it has no historical parallels anywhere. I don't understand why people say "meat on legs", that wasn't a thing either. If a lord went to the trouble of recruiting manpower, they usually expected them to at least not dieinstantly. Shields were one of the most basic ways of protection so there's no reason why most troops shouldn't start with one.
   • So yeah, recruits need a more varied weapon selection (far fewer swords, more spears/clubs/axes/throwables) and they absolutely should have some kind of basic shield.
3. The third issue is campaign behaviour. There's 2 parts to it:
   • First is overzealoous lords who raise and army and promptly rush into battle again with 2/3 of their army being raw recruits. This is clearly unitntended behaviour and needs a fix.
   • The second is game mechanics. "Let's make my recruits into trained troops by chasing some bandits" said no lord in history ever. Troops even have names like "Trained Footman". Chasing looters is not training. Aand even for the player, after a while it feels like busywork, keeping you from the "fun" activities. Castles and towns need some kind of "training grounds", where troops could be trained (spending time and money), rather than rely on notables in settlements to roll what you need.
   • Another part of the issue is bandit behaviour. The bands <10 men are usually too fast and not worth chasing for most lord armies (or the player for that matter, outside very early game). Bandits needs some kind of consolidatiom mechanic, where if a band hasn't had a successful attack on villagers/caravans in a while, they try to merge with another bandit party in the vicinity, or failing that, go to the hideout and merge there.
4. Then there's battle AI issues but these are minor in comparison.

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This is a superb post. Everyone needs to read it.

This thread is really enjoyable. I hope GreenLight7 comes back.

Cybercoco said:

This is oxymoron. A theory ceases to be a theory when it is proven. It is called a theory precisely because it hasn't been proven.

And the self awareness of people in this thread is very comedic.

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I think you are operating with a faulty definition of 'theory'. Ideas that haven't been proven are 'hypotheses'. Ideas for which there is enough evidence to believe that they are our current best model for understanding something are called 'theories'. Hence the Theory of General Relativity is not 'unproven'; it is our best model (for now) for understanding big space stuff.