I don't know for him but warband had a few points making the endgame better imo:
- fewer town, but harder to take. There are almost as many town in the three empires than there were in the whole game in warband. This leads to two things :
- it's much more tedious since you do the same thing for much longer (and since the towns are pretty easy to capture you can be sure that they will be taken back by the enemy, so you have to do it again and again)
- you don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is no time you're thinking "just one faction, one war and I've done it" because kingdoms do not disappear, just one faction means several years of war because you can't count on your allies, there is too many castles/cities to take. and you know that it will take way too long.
- battle variety: fight the swadian or the khergits, it's incomparable. fight the empire or sturgia ? same thing. The only factions that feel different are battania and the khuzaits, and even then not by much.
- capturing/defeating lords had an impact. You didn't have hordes of imperial recruits to fight endlessly because the cousin twice removed from the noble you've just captured somehow can build and army in his stead. And he did not escape so easily too
- Feeling of progression. high tier troops were hard to get until the mid game, and having a complete army would be even later in the game. But they were very strong and were worth the investment, both in price and time. I can sustain 100+ tier 6 noble troops before reaching clan size 4 in bannerlord, yet feel like they aren't worth neither the time nor the price unless I mod the game.
- on the same point, armor used to be useful and worth the price, a tier 6 armor in bannerlord protects me against 4 bow shots instead of two without it, for the price of 200k+ gold, and the improvement in melee combat is only a few months old...
- less painful leveling,with more variety. Getting the focus points is fine, but the attribute points system is terrible, and I won't even talk about the perk, most of which are useless and the ones that aren't are just OP
- relations were useful, now they just seem to vary the price you have to pay to marry someone
- companions could be leveled and doing so truly made your troops better.
- even in late game you could be afraid of fighting your foes. want to take a battanian town ? no problem, just throw more troops. want to take a late game rhodok castle ? now this is terrifying, although some of the reasons why are very bad design, namely the single ladder and the fact that the battle would end at you getting knocked out.
I personally disagree with many post here saying that warband was better because muh feasts, but while bannerlord is overall much better warband still had some superior designs from time to time. I will keep playing bannerlord over vanilla warband anytime, but I shouldn't have to use so many mods to have a decent late game
I have been playing diplomacy 4. litdum this week and I have to say that outside of the combats it feels much better than bannerlord, and even then some parts are better (armor, spears bracing for NPCs, some commands bannerlord doesn't have, ability to deploy pavise shield, overall better AI). Yes it is modded so not really comparable but modded warband is what set really high expectations on bannerlord, leading to the state of the forums.
I once modified the troop trees on my end to make them more like warband (so basically very specialized, not every factions has cav/horse archers, archers or even infantry in the base tree) and yep, changed a lot the endgame when combined with a mod to make armor work. I actually had to adapt my strategy to the enemy instead of the "F1 + F3" or "archers behind shieldwall" that are all you need to win a battle in bannerlord
