I agree at 100%
During my live stream, yesterday I found out that Bannerlord's current reinforcement system in big battles (more then a 1000 troops) is broken and it is even more broken with the new order of battle system of the 1.7.0.
This, like troops using siege equipment appropriately,
is something TW has to address - because as long as they don't larger battles are just fundamentally broken with tons of troops just magically popping out of no where.
The most sensible thing to me is to fight battles in stages. Whatever your battle size limit is that's how many troops you can deploy, and you fight the stage until there's a winner/loser. Then you go onto to the next round, etc. until one party/army is ultimately defeated.
Yes with each stage the battle would be reset, but that's a small price to pay for not having troops spawn out of nowhere. Only real problem is with sieges really, but I mean if you can retain the map conditions (equipment destroyed, towers deployed, etc.) then honestly it's fine. A little immersion breaking, yes, but it's helluva lot better then magically spawning troops.
Even if you can't retain battle map conditions I'd rather essentially start over, then have enemy/friendly troops just magically pop into existence.
I cannot tell you how frustrating is to be behind enemy walls, flanking the enemy by the gates, and oh 20 more enemy troops literally spawned in front of me and instant-kill me. This is why I don't show this game to anyone I know, because stuff like this is just so embarrassingly bad. I mean sieges basically reset whenever the player joins an ongoing one, so why is fighting the siege in stages such a cardinal sin?
Quite frankly the maps should have been built with an "out-of-bounds" safe spawn zone, where reinforcements spawn and then make their way into the battlefield. Granted yes clumping at the edge of the battlefield is a potential issue, but because this is a game, there's just unfortunately gotta be some limitations like that. Ideally you could have multiple spawn points to circumvent this.
All I know is something has to be done. I mean we already sort of have stages with Keep Battles now, and it use to be players would create archer only parties, start battle, get a few kills, retreat and just rinse and repeat. Dunno if that's been fixed (I don't have patience for that kind of cheese), but obviously it was a "feature" here at one point.
I guess it's a pick your poison of what's less immersion breaking, frankly to me nothing is as tacky as having NPCs that spawn right in front of you. Stages/rounds wouldn't be perfect, but they'd be a lot cleaner/neater. Also large historical battles were rarely decided in 5 minutes, they were almost always fought in stages. Like you would start off by skirmishing or maneuvering. Might attack a formation, back off, attack somewhere else etc. Yes there would probably be some moshing, but not the "mass of angry bees" this game is so prone to.
Might not be a bad idea to have a poll for preferences (granted probably been done before); do you prefer troops spawn in battle? do you prefer to fight battles in stages without spawns? neither?