Khuzait still snowballs

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Basically Khuzaits barely have any foot soldiers. Most of them are cav or cav archers się they are fast as **** and they always choose their battles. Autocalc is also in favour for them cause cav units get buff in autocalc and there is no counter for that. So an army of Khuzaits cav has advantage also in even numbered battles.

The AI cheat to upgrade cav without the need of horses in inventory is another thing that gives them advantage.

This simplified Auto-calc that just give khuzaits a battle bonus apparently even in sieges etc is to me a major, major flaw of this game. Ive been screaming about how an oversimplified auto calc system is a game killer -forever now- but it didnt have to be this way.

Lets look at history again since this is based off semi-quasi historical fiction - apparently the Huns (whom the Khuzait seemed based off of) had terrible footwear that were basically useless for anything besides riding horses. Is that in anyway used in auto calc to help temper their horse advantage? When is terrain and weather etc gonna start being factored in?

A game like this simply needs a more advanced auto-calc system to give us more interesting results in AI vs AI battles
 
This simplified Auto-calc that just give khuzaits a battle bonus apparently even in sieges etc is to me a major, major flaw of this game.

20% cavalry strength bonus at sieges removed at 1.5.5 but it had nearly no good effect on snowballing because main reason is Khuzaits has higher cavalry ratio and higher speed at map and they are decider at map meetings with enemies. At 1.5.6 snowballing slowed down even we did not changed anything related speed bonus, starving and poor clans are decreased at 1.5.6 and this made factions more resistant to powerful factions. We proved that in snowballing post by collecting nearly 20 samples from different players. You can check results there. At 1.5.7 maximum speed bonus of cavalry troop ratio will be lowered to 40% from 60% and cavalry ratio of other factions will slightly increased so things will be a bit better. If you mod Bannerlord and lower this 60% cavalry speed bonus to 0% you will see Khuzaits snowballing totally stopped.

Ql_Sl.png
 
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20% cavalry strength bonus at sieges removed at 1.5.5 but it had nearly no good effect on snowballing because main reason is Khuzaits has higher cavalry ratio and higher speed at map and they are decider at map meetings with enemies. At 1.5.6 snowballing slowed down. We proved that in snowballing post by collecting nearly 20 samples from different players. You can check results there. At 1.5.7 maximum speed bonus of cavalry troop ratio will be lowered to 40% from 60% and cavalry ratio of other factions will slightly increased so things will be a bit better. If you mod Bannerlord and lower this 60% cavalry speed bonus to 0% you will see Khuzaits will be same with other factions.

Thats cool and all that you found the speed bonus gave too great advantage to khuzait and by reducing it -nullified that problem. But is that an interesting gameplay solution is my argument? Meaning the Horsemen SHOULD have a speed advantage but there should be other auto-calc mitigators that counter these advantages and perhaps world events, weather and terrain that would slow the horsemen down. Wouldnt it be far more interestingg if other factions say developed a counter unit to the Horse Archer rather than again just a speed nerf?

Dont get me wrong i appreciate and know you have to deal with a huge clamoring for nerfing the snowballing khuzait but at what cost to interesting gameplay?
 
Thats cool and all that you found the speed bonus gave too great advantage to khuzait and by reducing it -nullified that problem. But is that an interesting gameplay solution is my argument? Meaning the Horsemen SHOULD have a speed advantage but there should be other auto-calc mitigators that counter these advantages and perhaps world events, weather and terrain that would slow the horsemen down. Wouldnt it be far more interestingg if other factions say developed a counter unit to the Horse Archer rather than again just a speed nerf?

Dont get me wrong i appreciate and know you have to deal with a huge clamoring for nerfing the snowballing khuzait but at what cost to interesting gameplay?

Parties with high cavalry ratio will still have a speed bonus at 1.5.7 however 60% is so much and it damages balance so much. Other than this still we need to find negative bonuses for Khuzaits because even speed bonus is reduced 40% they are still faster. As a result 40% is better than 60% as cavalry speed bonus for gameplay and overall faction balance.

cavalry speed bonus : if your party has x% cavalry troops party speed increases by 0.6x%(1.5.6) 0.4x% (1.5.7)
 
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20% cavalry strength bonus at sieges removed at 1.5.5 but it had nearly no good effect on snowballing because main reason is Khuzaits has higher cavalry ratio and higher speed at map and they are decider at map meetings with enemies. At 1.5.6 snowballing slowed down. We proved that in snowballing post by collecting nearly 20 samples from different players. You can check results there. At 1.5.7 maximum speed bonus of cavalry troop ratio will be lowered to 40% from 60% and cavalry ratio of other factions will slightly increased so things will be a bit better. If you mod Bannerlord and lower this 60% cavalry speed bonus to 0% you will see Khuzaits snowballing totally stopped.

Ql_Sl.png
Ah yes I wanted to post that too, that if it is a siege battle, mounted troops are not calculated with an higher modifierer. Only field battles. But for that you have although replied that there will come differences based on terrain.

I would even go deeper and would also make differences between shock troopers, shield wearers, light cav, heavy cav, Archer, crossbowmen, pikeneers and skirmishers though.
 
Parties with high cavalry ratio will still have a speed bonus at 1.5.7 however 60% is so much and it damages balance so much. Other than this still we need to find negative bonuses for Khuzaits because even speed bonus is reduced 40% they are still faster. As a result 40% is better than 60% as cavalry speed bonus for gameplay and overall faction balance.

cavalry speed bonus : if your party has x% cavalry troops party speed increases by 0.6x%(1.5.6) 0.4x% (1.5.7)


I know that speed is the major issue here but You can also tell the the biggest benefiting of AI cheat for upgrading cav are Khuzaits that have biggest cavalry in the game. This allows them to speed up getting high tier units. And they got both high tier and cav bonus in auto calc.
 
Parties with high cavalry ratio will still have a speed bonus at 1.5.7 however 60% is so much and it damages balance so much. Other than this still we need to find negative bonuses for Khuzaits because even speed bonus is reduced 40% they are still faster. As a result 40% is better than 60% as cavalry speed bonus for gameplay and overall faction balance.

cavalry speed bonus : if your party has x% cavalry troops party speed increases by 0.6x%(1.5.6) 0.4x% (1.5.7)
Any chance we can remove "Grazing rights" from Khuzait in 1.5.7? One thing I'm seeing in my 1.5.6 is that Khuzait aren't loosing rebellions, or even having them nearly as much as other factions. Examining their loyalty gains I blame the "Grazing rights" as the main reason they don't suffer as much. They also obtain a lot of rebel clans too. Not sure if maybe they didn't despawn correctly but the Khuzait currently have 4 new clans(rebel), some of with they have landed in culturally appropriate towns, making their loyalty even more resilient.


 
Any chance we can remove "Grazing rights" from Khuzait in 1.5.7? One thing I'm seeing in my 1.5.6 is that Khuzait aren't loosing rebellions, or even having them nearly as much as other factions. Examining their loyalty gains I blame the "Grazing rights" as the main reason they don't suffer as much. They also obtain a lot of rebel clans too. Not sure if maybe they didn't despawn correctly but the Khuzait currently have 4 new clans(rebel), some of with they have landed in culturally appropriate towns, making their loyalty even more resilient.




Grazing rights gets nerfed in 1.5.7. It will grant only +0.5 loyalty and -0.5 village grown.
 
Overall though, there isnt any real historical evidence that armies with cavalry AND footmen move faster than those with just footmen.
Not accounting for useing horses to pull equipment which of course the footmen army also would have.

But haveing 40% of your army dont make your army move faster overall, as the 60% on foot dont move faster than they normally do.

Basic - the weakest chain in the link.

Now a pure army of cavalry would of course be much faster.

The problem as others say its the cavalary bonus on the map, and not directly its cultural bonus.
But again since the composition of the Khuzait army is so mount-centric its why they can blitz-krieg and cherry-pick their fights.

The problem though isnt as much this or that, but the failure of the devs to actively do anything about something that have "ruined" the game more or less since start(they have done alot in the latest patch, but it fixes for everyone, but overall it still dont fix the core issue of the "Khuzait-problem").

Ideally what they should do is pro-longe the siege-times that would help abit so that 1 * 1000 man army of theirs will then face down the 2 or 3* 400-600 armies of the others.
+ retreating armies should have a severe impact to speed(or desertions)(that would also fix the issue of Khuzait then meeting up with their other parties and now suddenly outnumber their enemies and pounce back)

This is a game, its meant to be fun, and not historially accurate.

But overall its not "fun" when 1 or 2 factions dominate the map(Battania also seems to be abit powerful) every faction should be able to "dominate" based on abit of luck and rng etc.

Ideally they would also bring back from Warband causis belli, so that could halt the warmongering going on, and ganking we see at times(Northern empire usually gets roughed up on all sides + Southern Empire).

Just try to play any non Khuzait-faction and you will notice you as the player have to work overtime to keep progress.
Khuzait and Battania when I play them, I just sit back and dont have to actively partake in sieges etc, and they will dominate, if I join in the sieges it just accelerate the conquest).
 
I never have Khuzaits snowball in my plays. They tend to raid and than fall back after loosing some. In my current game I'm stugians and I just took the last Val stronghold. Asaria just declared and as I pushed them back down into there area they sued for peace. The empire is in a Shambles with mainly the Western left. If anything I'm snowballing the game.

Here is a hint.....don't fight on there terms. Take them to Forest, Rivers, Towns, Bridges and even the Valleys on the map. IF they are moving they loose there benifets and you can wipe them fast cause they have pretty much little to no armor. Hell one play all I did was Shield wall to the back of the map with my archers on a hill and they where dropping cause there horses where getting hit too. Than when they become ground troops they extremly suck. I had a miss of Sturgians and Batt with mailnly using a lot of skirmish units to javelin them down with high tier bow man in the back.
 
Parties with high cavalry ratio will still have a speed bonus at 1.5.7 however 60% is so much and it damages balance so much. Other than this still we need to find negative bonuses for Khuzaits because even speed bonus is reduced 40% they are still faster. As a result 40% is better than 60% as cavalry speed bonus for gameplay and overall faction balance.

cavalry speed bonus : if your party has x% cavalry troops party speed increases by 0.6x%(1.5.6) 0.4x% (1.5.7)
Can you please completely nullify their snowball until a proper solution is Found ? Game has been unbalanced since release now, let us Enjoy sandbox for a while. Every campains ends with Khuzait snowballing. Please quickfix them into the Ground until you are ready to bring them back balanced
 
I never have Khuzaits snowball in my plays. They tend to raid and than fall back after loosing some. In my current game I'm stugians and I just took the last Val stronghold. Asaria just declared and as I pushed them back down into there area they sued for peace. The empire is in a Shambles with mainly the Western left. If anything I'm snowballing the game.

Here is a hint.....don't fight on there terms. Take them to Forest, Rivers, Towns, Bridges and even the Valleys on the map. IF they are moving they loose there benifets and you can wipe them fast cause they have pretty much little to no armor. Hell one play all I did was Shield wall to the back of the map with my archers on a hill and they where dropping cause there horses where getting hit too. Than when they become ground troops they extremly suck. I had a miss of Sturgians and Batt with mailnly using a lot of skirmish units to javelin them down with high tier bow man in the back.
You are off topic, we are talking about ai vs ai
 
Parties with high cavalry ratio will still have a speed bonus at 1.5.7 however 60% is so much and it damages balance so much. Other than this still we need to find negative bonuses for Khuzaits because even speed bonus is reduced 40% they are still faster. As a result 40% is better than 60% as cavalry speed bonus for gameplay and overall faction balance.

cavalry speed bonus : if your party has x% cavalry troops party speed increases by 0.6x%(1.5.6) 0.4x% (1.5.7)

And this won't change a thing. Sadly, you approaching this problem from a totally wrong point of view and until that changes this will not get any better. This is a pure design problem and you are tweaking it as a purely mechanical one. Nerfing the horse in a game called mound and blade is just plain wrong. What this game is still sadly missing are the most important items to solve Khuzait snowball problems.

1. More complex diplomacy and truce periods - Khuzaits have fewer factions right next to them and 2 of those are stretched away from them(Sturgia and Aserai) - At the same time, SE and NE fight constantly on multiple fronts with factions concentrated quite close to their core lands. You managed to push their collapse from 2 years to 7-12 years but you can still see it coming. There is no peace for either of them ... at all.

2. Empire and other factions, but Empire mostly, have no notable buffs. Their defence options and economy options are as those of Khuzaits regarding town development, trade and taxes. Level 3 buildings(and same buildings at that) for everyone is just plain wrong.
When you combine that with more and closer neighbours you get extremely weak Empire that can't even get an ally or a truce period to catch a breath.

Hope you think about those options :smile:
 
And this won't change a thing. Sadly, you approaching this problem from a totally wrong point of view and until that changes this will not get any better. This is a pure design problem and you are tweaking it as a purely mechanical one. Nerfing the horse in a game called mound and blade is just plain wrong. What this game is still sadly missing are the most important items to solve Khuzait snowball problems.

1. More complex diplomacy and truce periods - Khuzaits have fewer factions right next to them and 2 of those are stretched away from them(Sturgia and Aserai) - At the same time, SE and NE fight constantly on multiple fronts with factions concentrated quite close to their core lands. You managed to push their collapse from 2 years to 7-12 years but you can still see it coming. There is no peace for either of them ... at all.

2. Empire and other factions, but Empire mostly, have no notable buffs. Their defence options and economy options are as those of Khuzaits regarding town development, trade and taxes. Level 3 buildings(and same buildings at that) for everyone is just plain wrong.
When you combine that with more and closer neighbours you get extremely weak Empire that can't even get an ally or a truce period to catch a breath.

Hope you think about those options :smile:
I think I have mentioned location as part of the problem as why Empire get beat a lot so i can agree with that. I am not sure but longer peace between war declaration might help as Empire touches more kingdoms but I am not sure how the code relates to that. But as far as snowballing say what you want but 1.5.6 is better than 1.5.5 and before so if @mexxico has already helped the problem in just one patch I would be a little more patient, he just started working on it now so we can't take this back to 1.0. In one patch the snowballing seems to have been pushed back around 5 years longer than before so think hat he could accomplish in a couple more patches. But there is a forum thread on this, why not voice your opinions and suggestions there, A few of us have done extensive testing of 20 year simulations and the results are very promising.
For just one attempt he has made to stop it, he has made a huge difference, heck in 20 years I have yet to see any kingdom totally gone and Sturgia now can be seen with 3 or 4 towns in the 20 year tests. I am encouraged by the progress so far.
 
The devs have already said they're working on snowballing, and that it's not actually that bad on virtual playthroughs without players. I noticed in your map that you've started taking chunks out of the Empire. Perhaps the Khuzaits might not move so quickly if you weren't weakening the factions that they're fighting?

Players don't always consider that their own actions might exacerbate snowballing problems, as they move to build their own empires, they're weakening the very factions that might otherwise stand a better chance. Again, in the post directly above this, the player's kingdom has literally gutted any ability that any of the remaining empire factions might have to resist the Khuzaits - and in a sense, the player is also snowballing the map.

The real problem with snowballing is that it is bound to happen whenever the player asserts it self on the map. The player is growing their own kingdom, or their own faction's power. They are taking from other factions ability to defend themselves. In this situation the factions that are farthest from the player will take advantage - and exacerbate the snowball. It is inevitable. In fact, I don't get why people want the map to stay basically the same, except for their own expansion. They shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

The only real way to prevent snowballing is to either 1. Have the player not expand or 2. Introduce mechanics to make expansion undesirable. The first point would break the game. They've started working on the second by adding rebellions, the impending alliance system should improve the situation somewhat more.


In my current playthrough, I literally couldn't do a darn thing to influence the game as a merc for Southern Empire... they made atrocious strategic decisions, any SE army I joined would get mobbed and destroyed, and I must have been captured like 9 times in 3 years, and had to rebuild my force each time.


I went tk Rhagea, resigned from the SE, and took my clan members straight to Aserai and signed up there as a merc... and the Aserai seem capable of actually coordinating. They've taken Sargot and Charas from Vlandia while also defending Quyaz from a surprise Battanian attack... and it was mostly the AI doing it all. I helped, but I only have one 100-man war party, so there's only so much I can affect.


I don't know who **wouldn't** snowball against crap-tier generals like in the Southern Empire.
 
Funny you say that. In my current playthrough the Southern empire has disintegrated in the face of the Khuzaits... who had made it all the way to Poros. But since then, the Northern empire has pushed the Khuzaits back out of the empire almost entirely with the exception of a couple of castles.

I've joined the Western Empire and we've almost overrun Sturgia...

I think there is a really difficult strategic space in the open lands of the empire east of Poros. There is a large area with few mountains and few defensible choke points. This makes the empire hard to defend from that direction with many possible approach routes for multiple enemies to come from.

On the other hand the empire's northern borderlands have a fantastic set of choke points with only a couple of predictable approach paths through the mountains which are easier to manage.


Overall though, there isnt any real historical evidence that armies with cavalry AND footmen move faster than those with just footmen.
Not accounting for useing horses to pull equipment which of course the footmen army also would have.

But haveing 40% of your army dont make your army move faster overall, as the 60% on foot dont move faster than they normally do.

Basic - the weakest chain in the link.

Now a pure army of cavalry would of course be much faster.

This is an interesting point. Historically, you're correct in that there isn't a lot of evidence that mounted armies were faster in the strategic space, but actually quite a lot of evidence that they were often a hinderance. A person on foot can at a strategic level, out pace a person on horseback thanks to a human's ability for endurance. I think it was Caesar who commented that a horse marches to death long before a person, and won't tell you when it's about to fall over. Horses require additional logistics, and to maintain speed, a great many extra mounts to cycle through. Mongol armies were mobile horse farms with many mounts per person.

In the tactical space however... horses always offered speed and mobility and having them was almost always some sort of benefit/.
 
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Snowball Snowball Snowball Snowball Snowball Snowball Snowball XD I say lets divide this game on two parts one part with the REALISTIC SNOWBALL of the khuzaits for people closer to the history like me and the other part make all khuzaits on foot with sandals for the people like you. Agree for the Aserai, it seems that they are acting like a true angels in this game, such a "innocent" faction. And don't give me the bulls..t with the 50% of the map late game because late game is sooo far and leveling system is sooo slow and now the world map speed is also slow. Example: 125 men khuzaits with 60% cav is chased by 385 sturgian army with more than 60% on foot and yes they are catching me. I forgot to mention that I have also 300+ steppe horses and 50+ warhorses in my inventory? People like me who have jobs and can play this game 2 3 hours per day will dumb any save in the middle of the game. I'm not going to live in this game you know. What do you think should we play one game/faction whole year? I don't think so. Instead of nerf the khuzaits buff the other weak factions - are you kiddin me? Main 1.5.7 thanks but no thanks I'll w8 for the next one :wink:
 
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The fundamental underlying issue with snowballing is related to geography & cavalry-related bonuses. Without addressing these issues, any measures are just artificially delaying the inevitable snowballing effect which given enough time will occur as assuredly as it did prior to any measures being taken against the problem in the first place.
 
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