It's funny iirc there was a whole dev post about not only individual ai, but group ai and battle tactics. I guess all that went by the wayside when Taleworlds decided consoles couldn't handle it because I can see no other reason to dumb the ai down so bad.
Either that or hope you get lucky during battle and a lance to the head kills him off without the consequences. But unfortunately the chances of that happening are very slim.
This isn't Dark Souls, this game is a power fantasy you're suppose to get op at some point. Second if they didn't want players power gaming why would they leave in exploits like smithing? It trivializes making money and you can literally buy every settlement if you want. The reason that this system is so bad is because no one at Taleworlds thought about the ramifications of making such a change. My guess is they saw some complaints and said hey here's an easy fix and this is the end product.
You just had to take it that extra step didn't you.
It's almost like that.
Yeah at first I hated the feature but after awhile I realized that it actually made sense and frankly you could push through with just a hit to morale so it wasn't the worst thing ever.
The bonus was 81% if you had 10 points in surgery plus the 4 point bonus so 4% x 14 = 56% + base value of 25% = 81%. But you have to put 30 points into intelligence so I guess that was the trade off and realistically you couldn't get the full bonus till you were are like level 30+. Engineering was pretty op too instead of 2+ days for a siege you could do it in 8 hours iirc. Hell the game is a power fantasy so complaining about an op skill is kind of pointless, the pc was always op by the end of the game.
I do know that this is the way it works for lords but whether companions do the same that's a question only a developer could answer.
Do you actually do a 50 year play through? I could never get past 10.
It's funny I've been playing PoP so much lately that I've almost finished a campaign as soon as I'm done with that I plan on doing a VC play-through. But I can't touch Bannerlord in it's present state. If VC was set a couple of centuries later I would play it all the time but unfortunately it's not my personal favorite medieval time. But there are so many interesting ideas in VC and for me it is still less frustrating than Bannerlord. I think I can echo @Kentucky 『 HEIGUI 』 James feelings in that Taleworlds either doesn't understand what fans want or they just doesn't care.
I can't speak for others but I put in over 1k hours back during ea, but at some point I got disgusted with the lack on going lack of communication and the poorly thought out features and the lack of player input so I just quit. I even quit the forums for awhile but after I was less salty I came back. I'm still not pleased with where the game is and I refuse to play it again until I feel it gets better but at least I'm not bitter like I was, my suspicion is that some people couldn't or wouldn't step away for awhile. It's difficult to not feel some bitterness when this is my favorite game franchise of all time maybe others have the same attitude.
Anything would be better than to have the player roam the world map looking for a needle in a haystack.
My take on all of this is that I think the issue is people see the possibilities with the game but when it comes up way short of what they're expecting then they start complaining. I don't think the idea is that the whole game is **** it's just that there are key mechanics in this game that are poorly developed or not thought out. Modding can only fix so much so it comes down to Taleworlds to fix or change the big issues.
Either that or each town has an information broker who can tell you more information and even whereabouts of someone you're looking for.
I remember when we got the new control layout to "make it easier for players who use a controller to use" ie we're trying to make it console friendly and I ask a dev flat out whether we would get the old layout back. I was told yes, and when that never happened I decided that Taleworlds didn't give a
Who knows, they make a change like this without explanation. They don't have any way for players to get info except run around the map. You'd think that a company that has been making games for 10+ years would be able to figure out something better but here we are. I love the M&B series but Taleworlds are just bad at actually developing game mechanics.