1.8.0 balance and stupid changes.

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LDominating

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So 1.8.0 made not 2 but 20 steps backwards in terms of balance.
Khuzaits and Vlandia conquer 50% of the map because ONCE again,20% in simulations has proven to as effective as me coming back and regretting.
Tier 2 are less likely to spawn combined with more DIZZINESS from a battle and the ****ing,I just can't believe they did such a stupid thing,AI having tracking and wallhacks AF.

https://tw.greywool.com/i/g6XB4.jpg hopefully it works,if not I'll reupload it.

They were CHASING me since I entered Sturgian lands from Epicrotea,came from Narnia through the forests like ****ing wolves and caught me up with me and engaged in that spot since I had to micro manage but I clicked too near the mountain and got screwed.

You lose one battle and party,just reload or start a new campaign,you won't find looters to fight and you'll be full of T1 and maybe T2 noble troops,goodluck beating a party that has 65% cavalry composition,thanks Talrworlds for not actually putting some nerfs on cavalry upgrades.

Right...they also for some reason removed Sturgian Heavy Axeman or main infantry line from the Sturgians,I found this the hard way when they lost against recruits and T3 troops at maximum...taking more casualties..fml.

Generally the 1.8.0 is a huge setback in terms of balancing the factions.
Especially with the reinforce or 2 armies 1 fief.
 
I’ve done several playthroughs, and have not seen Khuzait or Vlandia do well.

Aserai was dominating once, the Northern Empire smothered on one run, and The western empire became the top dog on another.

The big issue is dog-piling. This is just more common to happen to factions in the center versus those on the fringes. But on the second run, the Western empire was consistently at war with 2-4 factions. There seems to be no reason for this.

I’d like to see more AI kingdoms picking fights with stronger opponents when they are engaged in wars already, versus trying to take what scraps it can from those weaker
 
Yeah I found the Southern Empire has DOMINATED each play through since 1.8 (I restarted a couple times cause of mods etc).

I’ve joined this play through and we’ve just steamrolled through the Aserai and Khuzait lands
 
Yeah I found the Southern Empire has DOMINATED each play through since 1.8 (I restarted a couple times cause of mods etc).

I’ve joined this play through and we’ve just steamrolled through the Aserai and Khuzait lands
Same, SE dominated the central areas (and Sturgia gone as always); first time for me one kingdom did that since EA.
Main reason is the frequency to stack multiple armies for sieges which you can't beat the odds as you could before going 1v3 or 1v5 even; now it's 1v10 ratios. Seems AI armies lack complexity for additional objectives even with multiple warfronts so they all end up with the same target even if the castle is on the opposite side of the empire.

I also thing that low loyalty = 'never' construction also severely impacts defense capability of most castles/towns now; with the fact you can raid towns after defeating them too and how often certain holdings change kingdoms near daily.
I still hate that 'not governor' culture loyalty penalty is stupidly high (-3) and is just artificially forced for rebellions as there lacks any other way really for rebellions. You almost always have to have a companion/member matching the culture and have to have that fairgrounds and festival upgrade maxed out. Plus that loyalty drift BS which makes all of those upgrades/perks even more meaningless.
 
Why wouldn’t people be really pissed off about being under foreign oppression? If the French just waltzed in and took over your city and told you you had to start speaking French and eating baguettes would you just be okay with it?

You can definitely train governors to counter much of that. I generally have a militia master and a security/loyalty specialist to stick where I need them. If playing the story, your brother is in a great spot to set up as a militia master, allowing him to roam around and train up some other skills once he rushes 120 extra bodies into the castle over the first month.

The AI just needs to know how to deal with these things better
 
Why wouldn’t people be really pissed off about being under foreign oppression? If the French just waltzed in and took over your city and told you you had to start speaking French and eating baguettes would you just be okay with it?

Since I really want my EU passport back, if the French marched into London, It would be a relief!
 
Why wouldn’t people be really pissed off about being under foreign oppression? If the French just waltzed in and took over your city and told you you had to start speaking French and eating baguettes would you just be okay with it?
Yes, realism aside, implementation is too forceful in game. Otherwise, why am I able to recruit from tied villages then? Why are my workshops not poorly affected if I buy one in town? Why is there a loyalty drift multiplier both on the positive and negative end? No assassination attempts walking in town?
You can definitely train governors to counter much of that. I generally have a militia master and a security/loyalty specialist to stick where I need them. If playing the story, your brother is in a great spot to set up as a militia master, allowing him to roam around and train up some other skills once he rushes 120 extra bodies into the castle over the first month.
That's the point, if I'm Khuzait, and decide to join Vlandian, I immediately need or am compelled to hire either a companion from Battanian or Empire or marry that culture.

Assume 4 companions take your party lead roles and 1 spicevendor, by clan tier 4, that leaves 2 slots left. The fact I'm given town/castle after the next in all my playthroughs, it doesn't really work within that companion limitation.
Sure for SP, do whatever I want, be whatever level of efficiency, etc...but then why punish the absence of efficiency, whereas they should've designed the systems to you reward efficiency.

I just don't know why TW are stubborn on the solution some suggested with hiring a separate town chief/governor/bailiff/etc.. (re some Warband mod/diplomacy). Then tweak their wage for same culture or whatever, add another layer of 'roleplay', another gold sink reason, assimilate the leader/governor skills and perks into one, etc...
 
They were CHASING me since I entered Sturgian lands from Epicrotea,came from Narnia through the forests like ****ing wolves and caught me up with me and engaged in that spot since I had to micro manage but I clicked too near the mountain and got screwed.
Yeah, they have the Battanian perk, they can see you in the forest and move faster through them too. It's really good and you should copy them.
You lose one battle and party,just reload or start a new campaign,you won't find looters to fight and you'll be full of T1 and maybe T2 noble troops,goodluck beating a party that has 65% cavalry composition,thanks Talrworlds for not actually putting some nerfs on cavalry upgrades.
The game is certainly balanced around the player re-loading the game if they lose. The "no looters" is a concern if you lose you party, recruit a large amount of troops and now are too slow to move and find them (they are still everywhere forever though). You can do weird stuff though like buy cheap gear and donate it to troops (with the perks) to level them up or of course have back up troops in a garrison or just use smaller parties to hunt bandit and swap the out at you garrison. Oh and if you don't have money or a garrison, you are still very undeveloped and need to build up and be careful. Really, if you choose iron man, you've signed up for this :poop: ?. I only play on iron man sometimes and I always play very differently because I don't want to eat the sandwich. I like not-iron-man because I can try all kinds of dubious ventures and just re-load if it's too much, or I can do 1 battle 10X over until it's PERFECT!
Right...they also for some reason removed Sturgian Heavy Axeman or main infantry line from the Sturgians,I found this the hard way when they lost against recruits and T3 troops at maximum...taking more casualties..fml.
I still see the sHAMs, infantry always takes heavy losses anyways, nothing new
I’d like to see more AI kingdoms picking fights with stronger opponents when they are engaged in wars already, versus trying to take what scraps it can from those weaker
Agreed. It's annoying that they don't capitalize on bad situation of their enemies who have thier land. I know they have chance too, but really they should always be looking to take advantage. Often you can be steamrolling a faction and nobody else joins in even though the factions has their land. Then, later when you are forced to take it to remove faction 1, faction 2 finally declares war on you. Why didn't they just take it back when it was much easier?
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Generally the 1.8.0 is a huge setback in terms of balancing the factions.
I don't think they actually did much to "balance" but the map actually changing because of the army team ups is good IMO. However the vassals defection bug means that all factions will have problems once they get big, including the players, it basically ruins mid game+ completely.
You've got 4.2 speed.....
 
You've got 4.2 speed.....
Yea they were slower than me,I could have evaded.
Problem is I thought I lost them before Balgard,near Ok castle.
The A.I has had this aim hacking and tracking issue since ever.
Raid a village for a few days,run into the middle of nowhere and wait for a much powerful lord to show up tracking you like they are locked on you
This has been overloaded in the A.I somehow bloodhounding you when you enter their territory,I.E walking pass their villages and just chasing you across the map.
It's hella annoying because an army disbanded(reason I had 40 men I was recruiting back)and then 200(x3 party)men rushed me out of nowhere after I just killed a Lord of theirs.
They had 65% cavalry...and not the ****ty Vlandian or Khuzait that either lack armour or ride midget horses and get lynched...no they had the best melees,the Druzhinik and Cataphracts,high level at that,I barrely was dealing 10-15dmg to them :smile:).
Jumpscare Bannerlord moment,I tell you!


Battanian perk?
They were Vlandian,but what perk.
Anyway,if you're mistaking it for a Scounting perk,there's no such perk that does it in this manner.
Lords also have **** Scounting,actually I don't think I've ever seen a Lord with over 50 Scounting to appear in their Biography.

It's also weird when I see people say Scounting does something for caravans.
I mean it might increase their speed but...not that much to be considered.
Just put Trade/Tactics and optionally Medicine on your caravans and make sure the trader has a horse for 0.1 bonus ms.
 
Yeah that is annoying, it's very finicky to move around parties, an auto juke would be really good as the AI seems to know how to avoid you!

The picture I quoted showed battanians. The one I said "your speed in 4.2" later show the vlandians.
Ah no,the Battanian one was supposed to be a post about a bug I think.
They were 5-6 parties waiting in that village,I don't know if they were inside or merely outside.
Not waiting for an army,or recruiting since there were no more recruits..just waiting.
 
I still hate that 'not governor' culture loyalty penalty is stupidly high (-3) and is just artificially forced for rebellions as there lacks any other way really for rebellions.
The rebellion triggers right now aren't good, but it's hard to think of better ones within the context of Bannerlord's game mechanics that don't end up super unfun and avoid either making the world super rigid (no one can ever conquer anything) or being totally irrelevant (rebellions never actually trigger). Oh, and that don't require a huge overhead of development work (it's a very niche mechanic to start spending hours and hours on.)
 
The rebellion triggers right now aren't good, but it's hard to think of better ones within the context of Bannerlord's game mechanics that don't end up super unfun and avoid either making the world super rigid (no one can ever conquer anything) or being totally irrelevant (rebellions never actually trigger). Oh, and that don't require a huge overhead of development work (it's a very niche mechanic to start spending hours and hours on.)
It's because there's only one trigger for it (low loyalty), and to make it impactful, they tuned the culture penalty for it's frequency all for the sake of 'balance'. My playthrough so far, Sturgia has been wiped out completely for years and the occasional rebellions come up but they ultimately do nothing (whether intentional or not). Be nice at least to see a rebellion happen where it 'spreads' disloyalty to nearby occupied towns and does a cohesive rebellion that could maybe have a 5% chance to actually work and revitalize a kingdom.
Right now, due to how AI manages their castles/towns, it's essentially just a regular countdown timer.
 
Recent playthroughs
- Sturgia, Batania, Western/Northern Empire are reduced to only a few holdings
- Vlandia and Southern Empire usually top kingdoms
- Aserai and Khuzait maintain starting strength

We really need Kingdom mergings or destructions as we have same old issue of Kingdom remains just ruling clan
and 3 mercenary companies they somehow maintain despite having no holdings.

Defensive alliances between weaker kingdoms be nice as well.
 
It's strange because I have had a few playthroughs where certain factions get stampeded; notably the Western Empire/Battanians/Khuzaits/Strugians with Vlandians/Northern/Southern/Aserai dominating but I'm starting to wonder if it's purely luck based on which kingdoms are getting defections.

It felt like in my first 1.8 playthrough the Aserai picked up most of the Battanian clans and picked up a lot of southern Empire/Vlandian territories the Khuzait clans left across various factions which left them vulnerable and the Southern gobbled them up and then I decided to test making my own kingdom so I left the Sturgians (with them I expanded into Western Empire territory we had various castle around towns which we owned like Lageta, Rhotae, Amiatys & Jalmarys and also managed to get most of Battania before being pushed back by Vlandians to just the eastern side ) then the Sturgians self destructed and lost everything to the other factions, I take it I was probably what balanced the Sturgia with the other super powers and me leaving left them weakened and easy prey (I had up to 4 parties at the time)and they only managed to keep Sibir towards the end, they also had a lots of defections from lords that joined them or those that were unhappy since at least 3-4 of the Sturgian cultured clans had left them for other factions. It was strange having a kingdom with barely any of their own culture in it.

Eventually I wanted a fresh start since my kingdom wasn't going too great (admittingly I made it with just a castle and one town with three bribed clans and we couldn't defend the castles since it was pretty late in the game with factions in the 18,000 troops region against my 2,000 or so) so I started a second save with me joining the Khuzaits since I tend to play a lot of Vlandia and Sturgia and I ended up in a few wars mostly fighting the Northern/Aserai until suddenly the Battanians had started steamrolling into Sturgian territory and got Omor & Varcheg after recruiting at least 3/4 different clans from different factions and they're doing so with like 3 armies at once full of troops amounting 600+. So I'm sitting here trying to build up Sibir and suddenly they at war with us (yeah I know this stuff happens) and here I am looking at my allies who amass two armies of 400 to face around 1800 troops. The difference in numbers overall factions wise was 9000 to 7000 but I'm trying to figure out how they're making such big armies taking Balgard, Takor, Varnovapol whereas my faction is struggling to fight back and amass a large army. I have made sure to pick up useful Policies to up influence and everything for the clans but it doesn't seem to be helping.

It feels like there is something wrong with allied ai decisions and these constant multi army streamrolls are getting a little out of hand since my faction lost the Sturgian lands (all the way to Takor Castle) nearly instantly.

Kinda tiring if I feel the need to play Vlandia/Aserai to get a good playthrough which I tend to do a lot the former.
 
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I don't think so, the new upgrade prefer system can fix the unbalance of the troop trees with more mounted soliders, now even khuzait will have infantary dominated party, and the new AI of the Armies can make wars more random. but I agree there's some balance issue brought by the new update, which make the game too random
 
Yeah I found the Southern Empire has DOMINATED each play through since 1.8 (I restarted a couple times cause of mods etc).

I’ve joined this play through and we’ve just steamrolled through the Aserai and Khuzait lands
It’s actually kind of funny because when I jumped in with the Southern the first time, they got beat down by mainly Aserai and the Western Empire. It was such a lost cause I restarted.

I rejoined them this latest run, and now I’m running their colors in Tyal, which was takable because the Sturgians won their first war against the Vlandians and pushed further West, and then won their 2nd war against Khuzait, taking Balakhand and some Imperial castles the Khuzait took from the Northern Empire.

I’m short, the OP is just off on this one. Battanian seems to be the only culture right now that is consistently getting cracked over the head. The Empire generally reduces itself down to 2 factions after awhile, but which two isn’t always the same.

Things seem like they are in a decent spot. Not perfect, but decent
 
Ah no,the Battanian one was supposed to be a post about a bug I think.
They were 5-6 parties waiting in that village,I don't know if they were inside or merely outside.
Not waiting for an army,or recruiting since there were no more recruits..just waiting.
Oh okay, I've been seeing this a lot too. Lord parties seem to just wait at villages for a long time, both thier own/allied or enemy villages too. Makes for a fun early game of btfo minor clans just standing around and not re-filling their troops!
It's because there's only one trigger for it (low loyalty), and to make it impactful, they tuned the culture penalty for it's frequency all for the sake of 'balance'.
Yes this bugs me too. It's just right so that if a faction has it's matching/original lands they can ignore all town/village issues and not have a rebellion ever unless it's repeatedly sieged (the same certain towns almost always will be). But when the player owns them (unlatching culture) it is endless petty quests to keep it straitened out until you're a ruler and can pass policies that let you ignore them forever lol.

The AI should have to constantly spend it's time walking around the map solving these issues too, if the player does. Same with all other functions that the player must spend campaign time on. Marriage, vassal recruitment, hiring mercs: MAKE THEM SPEND TIME!

Kinda tiring if I feel the need to play Vlandia/Aserai to get a good playthrough which I tend to do a lot the former.
Yeah these factions are very well positioned to take off if the player helps them. The Khuzait used to be good too but I haven't backed them in recent versions so not sure. For making a faction I think starting in vlandia or Khuzait at the the back of the map works out really well for me. However the vassal defection bug ruined my 1.8 campaign and it's on pause till it gets fixed.
 
We really need Kingdom mergings or destructions as we have same old issue of Kingdom remains just ruling clan
and 3 mercenary companies they somehow maintain despite having no holdings.
As always a mod is the solution, works also on 1.8.0. When a kingdom doesn´t own a fief it will be destroyed after a certain ingame time passed.

Should be in vanilla of course...
 
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