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Multiplayer can still be lots of fun. Most anything can seem OP if a player is good enough. Teamwork is still the most important thing, and I hope it stays that way.

Looking forward to whatever comes next for singleplayer.

Nakh said:

Well, it looks like devs come closer to their target, which is to invalidate every source of income outside of battle loot.

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Yesterday's hotfix was supposed to address some inflation problem, likely what you guys are having a hard time with.

Like others on the forum, I suffer from restart-itis (not just in M&B), so I've yet to make it to the late game. Especially since I've only heard poor things about the state of succession, immortal lords, and infinitely regenerative armies, I don't feel like I'm missing much.

Can y'all speed through and report back if anything is changed?

Hans 77 said:

It's awful, they shouldn't be such financial black holes.

Historically, castles were the centers of administration for the surrounding area and a way for the nobility to cement their control over a region. The nearby lands belonged to the owner of the castle and homage was paid to him in the form of taxes/tribute. I understand from a game balance standpoint if the creators don't want to make them as profitable as other settlements, but owning a castle shouldn't be a toxic investment.


As far as increasing castle scene immersion, at risk of echoing earlier sentiments posted above, I believe what the atmosphere desperately needs is increased and purposeful NPC actions and interactions. Soldiers should be seen drilling -together, as a unit, either practicing with their weapons in the form of sparring (melee) or target shooting (ranged) or exercising in some capacity. Off-duty guards could be seen off to the side hanging out with one another, maybe drinking, joking, or flirting with some peasant women. Mounted units are performing reconnaissance on the exterior of the castle grounds, riding the outskirts of the area to screen for threats -because you can never be too vigilant. Plus, commoners residing at the castle in a non-military role would ideally be engaged in some kind of action, be it stable boys leading a horse holding it by the bridle, or a cobbler busy repairing boots.

In terms of NPC interaction with the player, my ideal scenario is where where they have meta knowledge of the events of the game -instead of some scripted response, for example a soldier remarking on the events of outcomes of the kingdom's latest battle -or even battles/sieges which recently took place between foreign kingdoms, the notoriety of which has even reached this particular settlement. It would be really cool if the NPCs commented on the player's most recent battle! Likewise, perhaps they could bring up gossip of any recent caravan attack by bandits or outlaws. The NPCs could remark on the state of the garrison, their response determined by a measure of troop quantity plus the average tier level of the garrison. Even dialogue related to settlement prosperity or the latest construction taking place would be a really nice touch.

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Yeah those dialogue ideas would be great. Much better than currently, where I approach a guard sitting in a chair at a table full of food and weapons, talk to him, he stands up to say, "Can't talk right now, I gotta keep an eye out for trouble," and then he sits back down to stare at the castle keep.

Every single guard I've seen in castle scenes seems to be more like a prison guard, "keeping watch" on the interior of the castle, and even then, hardly ever from an actual vantage point.

I think part of the reason blunt and pierce damage is so (edited from overwhelming lol) UNDERwhelming is that cut damage is just so high. It doesn't really matter that pierce damage increases the best with the speed bonus or that armor is least effective at blocking blunt damage because most weapons that deal cut damage just deal so MUCH cut damage.

Couple this with the fact that every single weapon swings in an arc of over 180 degrees, dealing max or near max damage in the vast majority of that arc, and you'll find that cut damage ruins the gameplay of certain weapons being situationally better than others. Even if pierce damage was on par with cut damage (compared to currently being very underwhelming) it is already much harder to land a hit. The two together mean I rarely thrust a sword unless a swing might hit a wall or an ally.

Imo, right now the main variable that makes some weapons better than others is simply the damage value. Especially in MP, the balance between swing speed and length is made less important by the fact a person can run away from an opponent, start swinging, spin around for an almost guaranteed hit since the swing is so wide, and keep spinning in the same direction to continue running away. If that wasn't as easy then the balance between length and swing speed (and handling) would be more important, possibly even more important than the absolute damage value.

But because cut damage tends to be at an absolute value so much higher than blunt or pierce, it is my experience that damage type is often overshadowed by the damage value alone or the bonus against shields perk that comes with axes.

Julio-Claudian said:

Come to think of it, hunting expeditions could be pretty fun in this game. Tracking bears or boar through forests to improve Scouting and Ranged skills etc.

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Most definitely. Viking Conquest even had an extremely rudimentary form of hunting. C'mon Bannerlord, you can easily do better than that!

Hunting would be a way to:
- improve combat skills, mainly ranged, but also hand to hand, especially against animals that would charge the player (boars)
- obtain food without spending money, even make money from selling meat/hides
- increase roguery skill (through poaching)
- increase relations with a lord if you go on a hunt with them, either inviting them on a hunt in your own lands or aiding their own hunt they invite you to (requires some good relation with them already and requires a successful outcome)
- wound or kill lords in a hunting accident; this shouldn't outright have negative consequences, but rely on player's rogue ability to get away with it
- RP

Personally, one of the largest issues with the smithing skill is that it feels out of place given the scope of the game. Rather than remove it, I'd prefer it get tweaked alongside adding other trade skills that add/improve gameplay. Hunting is an easy example of a comparable addition that won't necessarily need it's own skill in the character sheet.

Back to strictly smithing, I think one easy fix is to adjust the prices of all weapons to be something more realistic. Not like IRL realistic, just make sense gameplay wise. How does it make sense that I can either pay the recruitment cost and wages for an army capable of besieging a settlement, or buy one non-bejewelled weapon of historical unimportance? If it was a ruby encrusted sword of noble lineage, sure I could shrug my shoulders and believe that, but that's not the case. Weapons and armor are horribly overpriced as a whole, especially when considering the cost of upgrading troops, and I think that is a contributor to the insane prices player-made weapons can achieve.

One thing I also forgot to mention about smithing is that I hate how later on you'll find player-made items for sale in towns and as prizes in tournaments. It's not clear to me if those are the actual items I created, or if the weapons are just added to a discrete list of potentially spawned items. I would imagine the latter, and I don't like that. It doesn't make sense.

I don't like how I feel like I'm missing out when I play a 2H character without smithing; there is a clear lack of 2H weapons in the economy (until later), and they are always way overpriced.

Since it's relevant, and I haven't seen anyone else post similar thoughts, I'll copy and paste my post from another smithing thread:


I like the idea of being able to design and acquire customized gear, but the implementation is very out of place.

1. I agree with the idea that realistically, if someone is in the role of leading a clan, kingdom, or army, they wouldn't be spending much time if at all blacksmithing. That is a trade skill. I do like the idea of diverse gameplay that includes more aspects of the culture and lifestyle of what our character may be experiencing in this world. To that end, implementing trade skills can be successful. (edit: Sure the game is called "Bannerlord," but obviously people want to do more than just run a fiefdom.) But what is so special about blacksmithing that my character would be doing that, but not hunting or fishing? Medieval royalty literally had whole forests restricted for their private use, but there is very little player interaction with the natural world in Bannerlord. Sure, blacksmithing specifically serves the purpose of giving the player more character customization and attempts doing so in an immersive way, but as others have already suggested, it would be way more immersive to place an order with a blacksmith NPC with options specific to the culture of the settlement and Tiers levels capped at the level of the local blacksmith.

2. My view on stamina is kind of a moot point because really I'd prefer the change mentioned above, but if we absolutely must stick with blacksmithing as a player skill, the devs should replace the stamina system with what happened with taxing cities in Warband: when you initiate the action, time should automatically advance to simulate that action taking time to accomplish; the time needed to finish the task should be viewable before initiating. This is really what stamina is supposed to simulate right? Because players shouldn't be able to bust out multiple armories worth of equipment overnight, sure yeah. But right now it feels backwards. Rather than taking time to accomplish, we have take time to recover. What? It doesn't make sense. Maybe it would if there was a larger stamina system in the game, affecting our travel speed, spent in battles, gained back better with food diversity, etc. Since that larger system doesn't exist, blacksmithing currently plays as being some kind of hobby of guilty pleasure the player can do if they want to make a "custom" weapon with components of random cultures the character had no way of experiencing and thus learning. I do like the idea of learning components only after smelting a crafted weapon. (edit: in order of what makes the most sense, after smelting a weapon, the player should have a chance of either learning a component that weapon utilizes, a related component from the same culture as the smelted weapon, a related component from the same culture of the town the player is smithing in, or a related component of the same weapon type. No matter what, giving low level smiths the ability to unlock high level parts is obviously broken and leads to snowballing of the skill, and its associated revenue, very quickly.)

3. The scale sliders on weapon components do NOT coincide with believable (realistic-ish) changes to the stats. For example, a larger, heavier pommel should not increase swing damage. The real purpose behind a hefty pommel is to bring the balance of the weapon away from the tip of the blade which allows for easier manuevuring of the point: a bigger, heavier pommel allows easier, more precise stabbing. Also, because the balance of the weapon is shifted away from the tip, swing is actually less, even though the overall weapon weight is heavier. Neither of these, which are the main function of a heavy pommel, are reflected in sliding the scale in the game. Another example of wtf stat changes is handle size: a larger handle size allows the hands to be spread more apart on (edit: a 2H) weapon, creating a more efficient lever action and thus faster swing speed. But sliding scale up on the handle decreases the swing speed. But of course, that's because no matter what, the character will be swinging that sword like a baseball bat...

Grumpy181155 said:

Sorry but I think most people are only asking for a semi realistic supply and demand.
The problem is now that prices you buy at are not that much different for what you can sell at and there is no rhyme or reason as to why the prices are what they are. For example you would expect that, by shopping around, you would be able to buy desert horses in the desert at a price that when you sell them in the north west (again by shopping around) you should be able make a profit. In the game I have just started there is a surplus of desert horses in the south, 30+ is most towns and villages, but the sale price in the north west where they are at war and there are few horses is less than the purchase price. I've also sat outside a city that has just changed hands where there is no food and a -11 food requirement and they are only offering 8 for grain. You might find that fun but most of the people in this thread don't.

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I think most of the issues you've encountered are a result of the prosperity-based multipliers for item prices. My understanding is that prosperity represents a combination of population and quality of life, so a high prosperity is supposed to represent high demand. That variable still most definitely needs some tweaking, but the recent changes improve the long-term health of the economy.

Gelimer said:

Now in 1.4.2 you have to avoid buying too large quantities because of hidden tariffs.

If you trade only one type of goods, like grain, you buy it for 9 denars and when you arrive at the town you want to sell it, it says you can sell it for 17, it is valid only for the first few batches.

If you sell 1000 units, maybe the first 50 will be sold at that price of 17 but the price drops quickly as you sell more units because the game does not treat it like you sold 1000 pieces in one go for the price of 17 a piece. No, the game treats it like you sold every single piece of these 1000 separately and for each piece sold the price continually drops as they get more of that type of goods to a point where it is cheaper than what you bought it for..

So basically the best way is to buy goods at their cheapest market value like grain for 9 or fish for 9-10 and dont invest more than 1-2k on it so you limit the loss that you incur as you sell too much of it in that city.

Otherwise if you buy in bulk for cheap, you need to sell a bit here and there small quantities in different cities.

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I knew I had the right idea! Lol

I'm sure the reason it is so much better than bulk trading all of a sudden is the tweak to item pricing in response to mass starvation in the game. A few highly prosperous towns would grow into prime selling locations for caravans and end up hoarding all the goods. I enjoy this new balance so far.

Still, the most profitable trade good by far is player made weapons... even early game, with the right amount of luck.

Apocal said:

Pucluc (Khuzait) works and so does the wolves and sheep one -- Aserai?

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Wolves and sheep is the Battanian game.
The Empire's game is the easiest to consistently win against the AI imo

Wulfsdottir said:

Wait... there are MORE than one game?
Did a good thing that i registered to the forums.

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Yes each culture has their own and the premise of the game is inspired by their respective culture. The 3 imperial factions have the same one because even though different factions, they share a singular culture.

Bannerman Man said:

Yeah, me too. I'm guessing custom battle mode was either created earlier in development, or quickly thrown together just before launch, and certain parameters were hardcoded rather than properly synced up with singleplayer. I think I recall reading somewhere that custom battles would be one of the last features to get full attention during the development cycle.

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If it's true they are waiting to update custom battles until the end, that is a huge mistake in their roadmap imo. As long as they are representative of the SP AI and game mechanics, custom battles are so helpful for players to not only become familiar with the functionality of the game, the balance of unit types, specific troop types (right now only with mods), etc., custom battles also allow beta testers to test the current state of all combat mechanics in the sense of: is this working the way it meant to, and do we enjoy it? The easier it is for the beta players to try everything out, especially in customizable, repeatable settings, the easier it is for us to give adequate feedback for the state of the game.

Bannerman Man said:

It's not just the AI though. Damage calculations are different for custom battles as well. That's what I was told when I made the same mistake some weeks ago (see here and here). That was back in April though, and it's possible things may have changed since then (custom battles do feel different now), but unless someone can confirm that the modes are identical I wouldn't trust any custom battle results.

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Gotcha. I wish there was more consistency across the parallels. I don't understand why they would need something different for custom battles other than starting conditions for the AI.

I tend to just pick a route to hit a bunch of different towns. I buy whatever seems cheap. If it seems on the cheap side, but by a small margin, I just buy a few of that item. Maybe even just one to either use as a reference for price point or bump the morale from food variety if the trade good is food. Then I sell at the next town or the one after that if the price margin is good.

I prefer playing as a Battanian, so I usually spend at least some time in Battania. In that region (including the neighboring Vlandian, Sturgian, and Imperial towns) I've found that I can usually find neighboring towns that allow me to make a 300% gain on iron ore, hardwood, and meat. Notably, butter and cheese bought at Poros sells near triple or more at nearby town, name starts with a Z, to the west. Good starter coin.

I've seen much better gains travelling farther distances for butter, salt, oil, wine, and horses, but almost every time I plan big trips for a single item, the price drops by the time I get there because a caravan unloaded before me.

I get the most money trading by hitting town after town buying anything cheap, only selling later for at least double, and then betting my gains on any tournaments I find.

AnandaShanti said:

I din't know where I read this or if I just misunderstood, but is playing the board game supposed to raise relations? I just beat Nayantai and did not get more relation from his clan. Is there some other rule? I did a quest with his dad that gave me +7, can you only get + relation once a day or such?

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I've played only once against a noble in a town keep, and I got a +1 relation. I can't remember what version I was on, but I believe it was last week's 1.41

Edit: played and won

Maximum997 said:

Just use face direction to prevent arhers running in circles like morons.

It makes your archers like 5 times more effective

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Little things like this are a good way of pointing out how the apparent effectiveness of a unit depends on more than just its damage potential in relation to other units, and why I'm not a fan of using the AI in testing. That is inherently testing with the added variable: how effective the AI commands.

Bannerman Man said:

I'd be very careful about using custom battles as definitive proof of anything, as I don't think custom battles use the same combat AI and combat parameters as singleplayer campaign mode. I'm positive that was the case upon release, but they may have made some changes between then and now to make it a better representation of singleplayer. Unless someone can confirm that battle conditions in either mode are now identical I would hesitate to draw any conclusions from custom battle tests.

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Exactly.

Any definitive test purely on the balance of troops would be between two players commanding troops. I don't think it's useless to test with the AI though. It's just that if a clear winner emerges between cav vs archers, it may just be that the AI can more effectively use one over the other in its current state, and changing the AI behavior would then be the proper course of action rather than adjusting stats or gear of troops. Knowing this is a variable is important when making observations and drawing conclusions.

William7667 said:

I dont think everything should be balanced as equal in all situations I dont want every soldier to be balanced to the point that it doesn't matter whether I take archers cavalry or spearmen or it doesn't matter if I am empire vlandian or aeseri because they're all the same as one another, I want them all different. put simply yes some things should beat others, some archers should be better than other archers some cavalry should be better than other cavalry, every faction should shine in their own way .

So what if the empire has better footmen or battania has better archers or the aeseri has the best cavalry that is only an issue for multiplayer and the single player game shouldnt be balanced around multiplayer, balance the multiplayer seperately, I've seen loads of single player games ruined over the years by trying to balance them for multiplayer. Balancing for pvp ruins the pve experience balance them separtely.

Archers in general at a distance should beat unarmoured Heavy armour in general should beat arrows, and long spears ( the two handed kind) should in general beat cavalry . So what I would like to see is for single player only.

The rough guidlines I'd like to see are

Archers should massacre un armoured troops at a distance but should in turn be massacred once the distance is closed they are expert archers and shouldnt usually be expected to beat well trained soldiers in melee.
They should be cheap to equip but struggle to hurt anyone in heavy armour I'd give them more arrows if their light or un armoured ( two quivers full ) and a slightly faster rate of fire. If the archers were heavy armoured a lower rate of fire movement speed and one quiver to encourage the use of lightly armoured archers. High tier archers should also get a damage and aiming buff for close shots ( under 30 yards )

Heavy Armour should slow your movement and attack rate a bit but make you relatively immune to arrows and you should take reduced damage from swords.
Axes, hammers, maces and spears should be the main way to damage someone in heavy armour but it should be very expensive armour 10k per soldier

Heavy Cavalry should move fast and their charges should smash through all but long spears which need two hands to hold but they should be very expensive requiring a warhorse priced around 15k with armour around 20k for the horse and 10k for the cavalryman. Archers should struggle to hurt them. Walls of long spears should murder them if their daft enough to charge one and long spearmen although they wont usually kill a knight outright with one thrust (unless the knight was daft enough to run into him at full speed) should often be able to unhorse him leaving him to be beaten to death by axe and mace men. Heavily armoured men should move slower and should not be able to outrun a pack of mace wielding lightly armored men.

Un armoured or light armoured cavalry could still charge but might struggle to smash through as much and they should still be vulnerable to archers.

Now as to the issue of spamming 200 heavy cavalry, well peasants and normal recruits shouldnt be allowed to be heavily armoured cavalry the stuff costs a fortune, who would give some peasant farmer what amounts to a hundred years wages to ride around in, the first thing he would do would be to run off and sell it and retire to a life of luxury.

The mechanism is in the game already there are noble recruits, only they should be allowed to be heavy cavalry and they are already difficult to get in high numbers. The game could easily restrict the numbers so you would value and protect your limited number of expensive troops.

If you run your heavy cavalry into some spearmen and lose say twenty you'll have lost near a million and are you really going to send your thirty heavy cavalry worth over a million into a siege and possibly lose half of them when a seige engine collapses. Or would you keep them at the back and send in some cheap cannon fodder first that you can afford to lose.

So to sum it up yes heavy armour will make troops better especially v archers but it shouldnt be as commonplace as it is now as whole armies with heavy armour should be very expensive and require a large supply of noble recruits which are a rare and limited resource. Each army will probably be able to afford a small company of heavy armoured troops either melee or if their lucky and rich cavalry and there will be an increased role for long spearmen axes and maces.

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I agree with pretty much everything you say.

Imo though, the point of these tests of having only cavalry vs only archers of similar tier battle in equal numbers is that it is a conservative test of archers vs a hard counter to archers. If archers are scientifically proven (or as close as we can get) to beat their hard counter, they aren't balanced in the game, SP or MP. I totally agree that there should be counters to everything. Even if a unit (i.e. heavy cav) is balanced so that it beats everything 1v1, they can still be balanced within the SP experience by being hard to get in high numbers.

Look at Captain mode of MP: different troop types have different quantities based on how well they perform compared to everything else available. That makes sense, and the idea carries over to SP as well, for both balanced gameplay and historical realism. Sure it's possible the troop numbers given in MP's Captain mode take into account (to some unknown degree) the influence of a player being one, but I would imagine the main influence is the AI's ability to perform as one of those troops. I think most people would agree. So from that, it should be obvious that from a purely gameplay perspective, in most cases, a fewer number of cavalry should be equal in performance as a larger group of archers. Of course the idea of cavalry being a hard counter to archers is taken in context of an actual battle which pretty much always includes infantry in the mix.

Bronk the Raven said:

Sure, I agree. But what are we actually testing? The balance of archers in the game? Or the balance of PLAYER-CONTROLLED archers? I think the first because the AI uses them too, and in the case of a player supporting an AI ally, the AI occasionally uses archers against other AI troops in SP.

My point is that no matter what unit the player uses, the player can use that unit more effectively than the AI (at least players who know what they're doing). So always testing the balance of archers vs other unit types with the player on one side and AI on the other is inherently introducing a bias of how effectively the AI uses whatever unit type the tester has them control.

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One option to remove player vs AI bias is to set the player controlled side to follow their sergeants (F6 or F7, I forget), but ideally we would be testing with more control over the battle conditions: terrain, elevation, formation, and kind of splitting the forces and other tactics, etc. Giving the AI both sides removes control and thus repeatability.

Ideally these tests would be done player vs player with specific testing conditions in mind.

flavior flavius said:

The tests are done for the current state of the game, not for an indeterminate future state. Mass archers are too strong in large battles currently and they need nerfs in that regard. If and when the AI learns how to do shieldwall we can re-evaluate.

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Sure, I agree. But what are we actually testing? The balance of archers in the game? Or the balance of PLAYER-CONTROLLED archers? I think the first because the AI uses them too, and in the case of a player supporting an AI ally, the AI occasionally uses archers against other AI troops in SP.

My point is that no matter what unit the player uses, the player can use that unit more effectively than the AI (at least players who know what they're doing). So always testing the balance of archers vs other unit types with the player on one side and AI on the other is inherently introducing a bias of how effectively the AI uses whatever unit type the tester has them control.

Apocal said:

This would only matter if the AI were capable of using shieldwall. As far as I can tell, it is not -- no disadvantages when you're only dealing with enemy archers and yet they only raise their shields at around 50 meters, then drop them at about 5 meters so archers can get one final devastating volley off.

Then losing in the melee somehow. (???)

Players can style all over archers, but if you just want to style over archers, might as well use a counter that doesn't lose half its numbers in the process.

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flavior flavius said:

.Right... here is a video of 500 Battanian heroes (tier 4) completely wrecking both 500 Khuzait Lancers (tier 5) and in a separate test 500 Vlandian swordsmen (tier 4)

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A. I think for these tests to be definitive, they should be done in a range of quantity of troops. It's hard to really say who has a clear advantage when increasing numbers across the board. I think 15v15, 60v60, and 150v150 is a decent spread to see how numbers alone affect the results, all else equal.

B. Another variable that others have mentioned is the AI. There is little value in these tests unless they are done with AI archers vs player opponent (cav/inf) and then again with player archers vs AI opponent. A player wouldn't have sent infantry charging like that not in shieldwall in the video. And maybe the AI won't either... eventually.

C.

kweassa said:

(7) Granting med~high grade armor the amount of realistic protection people want, will effectively trivialize ranged units in the game down to non-use, because a player can just freely spam something like 200-men T6 armies with armor impenetrable to arrow fire, and just futz up the entire game balance

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C. I disagree. It can be done if it is implemented in the way I suggested: increase armor resistance to CUT damage only. To prevent player spamming of archers who use pierce arrows, the numbers can be tweaked so that cut arrows do more damage to unarmored dudes than pierce arrows, yet pierce arrows do much better against armor than cut. My reasoning for this is to improve the relationship of armor with all weapons in the game, not just archers.

I think there should also be, coupled with the armor change, a much slower improvement rate for units with a general bump in the gear of low level units (+shields and spears or two handed spears for all recruits, have peasants as a class below that only used in dire situations), possibly decreasing the armor of some mid tier units, adding a real population pool to recruit from that has a much higher max recruitment pool (which includes a variety of tiers in logarithmic quantities) and a much slower refresh rate. Within the scope of the game, it is ridiculous that you can train a peasant into some kind of battle-hardened veteran through experience alone in just a few days, maybe weeks/months, not to mention being able to upgrade a troop to have high tier gear for only a few denars in the middle of nowhere. For the sake of longer play throughs stretching across multiple player generations, I think this is needed, but at the current state of the game, I appreciate being able to speed through the game because clearly we are the beta testers, and we need to test as much as we can. Since my suggested change to armor would kind of require a decrease in experience gain to prevent players from spamming high level troops, this change should come later imo, after most of the features of the game are implemented and balanced. The armor change really is just a balancing tweak.

Interesting test results. Great video, haha... @Apocal sorry maybe I missed it, what kind of formation are you using for the cav charging, and would you mind trying tests with these variables:

1. different formations selected before charging; I expect loose to be best and shield wall 2nd best
2. manual charging them with move order that sets them on a collision course; I can't tell for sure, but I think this helps the cav charges


My biggest gripes about archers currently:

1. If you get a successful hit on an AI archer, they can shoot you back before you can release another arrow. It doesn't make sense. The simplest fix I see (without implementing a new system of attack speed fatigue based on health missing) is to just increase the stagger from being hit with missiles. Another option would be to implement a system of removing arrows/javs/etc from your body, and give a movement and attack speed penalty if there any in you, but that's something beyond the scope of archer balance.

2. Movement speed at full draw is too fast. Force archers to make more use of the new mechanic of nocking an arrow vs always having to draw from quiver (warband) by penalizing movement speed on the draw.

3. Archers with polearms as a secondary. Really this is a broader concern of mine, but I personally find spears on the back distasteful. Firstly, it makes no sense. With 2h swords/axes, even if people didn't wear them like too often, at least you could. Same for bows held by wearing it (aka being squeezed by the draw weight). Secondly, the spear on the back gets in the way of the 3rd person camera. Thirdly, spears shouldn't be secondary weapons. If they aren't in your right hand, a spear should be in your left hand. If it's neither, it's most likely on the ground or something similar. Using a bow and a spear should involve dropping one of either, imo, especially since the AI can now interact with collectables. Of course, if spears were more useful, then spear-armed infantry (not swordsmen with spears) would be more useful and probably better at protecting archers from cav.

4. Switching between weapons is too fast. Just add an animation of sheathing the wielded weapon, and an adjustable gap of time between the end of the sheathing animation for the current weapon and the initiation of the unsheathing animation of the next weapon. Idk why it isn't already like this instead of weapons snapping from our hands to our bodies automatically as we reach for the next one. Obviously this will add more time to get to the "previous" weapon instead of the "next." Maybe I'm missing something that's already there, but I wish we could discretely select which weapon to wield instead of only cycling through them.

5. I think armor should be more effective than it is currently against cut damage. You can't effectively chop/drawcut through metal, at least through metal specifically designed to be resistant to it. That's why people went for the gaps (especially with thrusts), but of course, simulating gaps in armor and the tiny hitboxes that would require would be too much. And yes, certain armors can literally be penetrated or bent inward enough to be damaging. I think it's simply enough to have pierce damage do better against armor than a similar value of cut damage, but that only works if the difference is strong enough... I think the level of damage dealt from an arrow should mostly come from the bow (as currently), but the type of ALL the damage the arrow deals (including the value derived from the bow) should be based on the arrow type. I can't tell for sure if that's the way it is currently because armor is so poor at protecting against cut damage. Imo it should be such that you can have various broadheads, potentially some that deal quite a bit of damage to poorly armored opponents, but are ineffective against armor and "bodkin" type arrow heads that overall deal less damage, but are more effective against armor than the broadheads because of the damage type. Armor piercing shouldn't be derived primarily through increasing the damage value, as currently...

Extra:
"Hey Bronk, I like your point #5, but what about axes?"

In the case of axes, which deal cut damage yet are effective against armor, I think damage shouldn't be exclusive to one type; axes should deal blunt damage in addition to cut damage with the disparity between the value of cut damage and blunt damage based on the width of the axe head. Larger vs smaller axe heads should deal more cut vs more blunt damage, respectively. In lieu of adding multiple damage types with discrete damage values for a single attack to the game, I think axes could be balanced against a flat increase of armor protection of cut damage by adding an armor penetration value to weapons. Basically, instead of adding damage to the attack, the value would be subtracted from the armor before damage is applied. This would allow 2 different weapons with the same damage type and value to deliver the same damage to an unarmored opponent, yet behave differently with a heavily armored opponent. This could simulate the differences between axes and swords, blade edge type, blade width/geometry and any kind of relevant RPG element.

Gambles said:

The thing is they kind of want a realism to the whole thing but none of it makes any sense as they have no realism in other areas. Take for instance the fact that you can endlessly recruit men from your local villages as days go by and they just keep refilling in the recruit bars. There is no population, if you were to take the militia from the village and put them into the garrison, realistically that doesn't mean that village needs more food it's still the same amount of men they're just in the castle now. There's just the unrealistic endless amount of people, you can't fight a war of attrition if you have an endless supply of men.

That's really the basis for many of the games problems. Why can lords lose battle after battle after battle 10's of thousands of men and then come back with thousands more again and again and again with zero repercussion? They put these arbitrary limitations with starvation, 'realistic' trade economy's, growth, prosperity, but none of it makes even a lick of sense if you have literally zero realism as far as manpower goes. It just doesn't work lol

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I was literally thinking this lol... good point. Having a real population that works with the systems in place is what this game needs at this point. There should be a much larger recruitment pool with a much slower refill rate, and a way to have them level up as they sit in the recruitment pool. So by the time they get recruited, a healthy composition is available, rather than 150 peasants.