1 year since early access and spearmen still don't use spears by default, it's disrupting a number of mods

[order_without_power]

By default, spearmen use their non-spear secondary weapons (eg swords) against enemy infantry and only use their spears against enemy cavalry.

This is disrupting a number of mods which are assembling phalanx and pike formations. I'm not the creator of such a mod but there are a number of these creators who can relate to this issue.

Because spearmen don't use their spears by default, the only way to make the spearmen in the phalanx/pike formation use their spears against enemy infantry was to remove their non-spear secondary weapon.

However, this led to another issue. Now that the spearmen don't have a secondary weapon, when enemies got too close for the spears to hit them, the spearmen could not fight the enemies.

Me and many others have tried modifying the code to change the priority of melee weapon usage by AI troops. But we have all come to the conclusion that this behavior is hard-coded in the C++ engine and that it cannot be modified through C#.

Therefore, it is only you, TaleWorlds, who can resolve this issue. Happy 1st anniversary of early access.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

This simply isn't interesting or in line with the guidelines for gameplay design that Taleworlds has in mind. They prefer to let the AI decide for the player in this aspect; imho a mistake.

This suggestion has been repeated (like so many others) by many of us players who had access to Bannerlord in the closed alpha-beta period (2019-2020) as well as the new batch of players post EA release.

As for my experience, I posted this thread advocating for bringin back from warband the magic command button (or make a v.2.0 for Bannerlord) in September 2019 and subsequently this thread as a poll where the result is quite revealing.

Happy Anniversary ? ?

 

[Mad Vader]

Happy one year closer to death release! Sweet, sweet release.
Let me play TW's advocate - let's say they want to keep some individual AI weapon switching, because most players don't want to get involved in micro-managing their troops. Now if you allow manual override of this, what happens to the weapon switching AI?? If it gets completely disabled by manual overrides, you remove their super clever AI which should react cleverly to changing threats for the rest of the battle.
How do the super clever weapon switching AI and your manual overrides work together? You may need a "switch weapons at will" alongside "use primary weapon" and "use secondary weapon".
There, I answered it for you, you don't have to do a thing.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Aren't we supposed to come from here?
Replace warband F3 with a primary weapon - secondary weapon variant + F4 at will.

 

[Mad Vader]

Well crap, I'm one of those dumb players that never used "use blunt" to cheese prisoners.
However it's not dumb to remind what Bannerlord needs to do, since it's completely different from Warband and Warband doesn't matter because none of the devs played it.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

meme video

The solution of giving the bot priority before the player in the use of the spear-lance-pike with the troop on horseback and the secondary when on foot; I don't see it at all. With this system the polearms in infantry vs infantry scenarios are not effective. That's why that switch weapon command button controlled by player is needed, imho.

 

[order_without_power]

As for my experience, I posted this thread advocating for bringin back from warband the magic command button (or make a v.2.0 for Bannerlord) in September 2019 and subsequently this thread as a poll where the result is quite revealing.

If we want real immersion, we can let the AI use spears by default and then let them switch to their secondary weapons when enemies get too close, without any user input. Thus, the AI will have a degree of independent decision-making and we won't have to micro-manage them.

 

[YouMoMCallME]

Happy Anniversary !!!

 

[vonbalt]

For a time in the realistic battle mod troops armed with spears were selecting them as their main weapon, combined with the submod that improved spear effectiveness and it..was..glorious

not perfect of course but i had spearwalls decimating any enemy coming close to them and the clash of spearwalls against each other was a sight to see, loved every bit of it while it lasted, a few updates later troops starting using their other weapons more and the magic was gone..

 

[YouMoMCallME]

For a time in the realistic battle mod troops armed with spears were selecting them as their main weapon, combined with the submod that improved spear effectiveness and it..was..glorious

not perfect of course but i had spearwalls decimating any enemy coming close to them and the clash of spearwalls against each other was a sight to see, loved every bit of it while it lasted, a few updates later troops starting using their other weapons more and the magic was gone..

Realistic Battle Mod at this point, the only salvation for the dumb AI

 

[froggyluv]

Realistic Battle Mod at this point, the only salvation for the dumb AI

Strongly urge TW to contract up that modder or team as he seems to have good vision of quality combat

 

[YouMoMCallME]

Strongly urge TW to contract up that modder or team as he seems to have good vision of quality combat

I think Taleworlds should either hire the author of mod "Realistic Battle" or take his work and add to Bannerlord with some improvements. (If the author of the mod will not mind)

 

[order_without_power]

For a time in the realistic battle mod troops armed with spears were selecting them as their main weapon, combined with the submod that improved spear effectiveness and it..was..glorious

not perfect of course but i had spearwalls decimating any enemy coming close to them and the clash of spearwalls against each other was a sight to see, loved every bit of it while it lasted, a few updates later troops starting using their other weapons more and the magic was gone..

Damn, we got so close... So close...

In Soon™ I trust.

 

[Doktor Barber]

not sure why you would want to use spears for infantry vs infantry, mount and blade spears have only ever been useful for or against cavalry just by how the combat works

 

[vonbalt]

not sure why you would want to use spears for infantry vs infantry, mount and blade spears have only ever been useful for or against cavalry just by how the combat works

Because it's cool, fun and historically accurate? spears were the dominant weapon in warfare for thousands and thousands of years before the invention of firearms.

If they improved the performance of spears it would be worth it to use them in inf x inf combat, right now they are.. mediocre to say the least even against cavalry.

 

[Philozoraptor]

For a time in the realistic battle mod troops armed with spears were selecting them as their main weapon, combined with the submod that improved spear effectiveness and it..was..glorious

not perfect of course but i had spearwalls decimating any enemy coming close to them and the clash of spearwalls against each other was a sight to see, loved every bit of it while it lasted, a few updates later troops starting using their other weapons more and the magic was gone..

Oh I forgot to tell people that they can get this behaviour back

Just go to config and chnage
<OneHandedThrustBonus>3.34</OneHandedThrustBonus>
<TwoHandedThrustBonus>3.34</TwoHandedThrustBonus>
<ThrustModifier>0.3</ThrustModifier>
into
<OneHandedThrustBonus>1</OneHandedThrustBonus>
<TwoHandedThrustBonus>1</TwoHandedThrustBonus>
<ThrustModifier>1</ThrustModifier>

However cav is going to spam lances at point blank range vs other cav if you revert back.

As for realism in spearman behaviour, spearman should switch to secondary weapons once enemy gets close enough because sword and co are much batter at point blank range (IRL, in RBM we buff spears to the point where they are viable in point blank range), problem is that this would take total of 1 second in bannerlord, however it would be interesting if second rank kept using polearms while first rank switched to shorter weapons.

 

[vonbalt]

Oh I forgot to tell people that they can get this behaviour back

Just go to config and chnage
<OneHandedThrustBonus>3.34</OneHandedThrustBonus>
<TwoHandedThrustBonus>3.34</TwoHandedThrustBonus>
<ThrustModifier>0.3</ThrustModifier>
into
<OneHandedThrustBonus>1</OneHandedThrustBonus>
<TwoHandedThrustBonus>1</TwoHandedThrustBonus>
<ThrustModifier>1</ThrustModifier>

However cav is going to spam lances at point blank range vs other cav if you revert back.

As for realism in spearman behaviour, spearman should switch to secondary weapons once enemy gets close enough because sword and co are much batter at point blank range (IRL, in RBM we buff spears to the point where they are viable in point blank range), problem is that this would take total of 1 second in bannerlord, however it would be interesting if second rank kept using polearms while first rank switched to shorter weapons.

oh nice to see we can tweak that

Indeed it would be awesome if TW improved formation's AI to the point were each rank would chose a weapon more suitable to the task, flanks would be more worried about cavalry, troops would try to keep optimal distance instead of hugging each other etc

right now we have those cool formations but the AI seems to be more suited for duels or free-for-all, the main advantage of formations in RL was cohesion and teamwork but in game it's each bot for himself only forced to walk in line or a square, i think this is why in vanilla troops perform better if you just tell them to charge.

 

[Philozoraptor]

Though hugging helps with formation cohesion, dueling breaks formation (thats why we gave it only to 2H polearm units in RBM).

 

[Gandamula]

We have all infantry mixed in one large group, is useless to chose any weapon, let they do it.

 

[vonbalt]

We have all infantry mixed in one large group, is useless to chose any weapon, let they do it.

That's only the default, you can create other groups to place different units if you like to micromanage more.

i'm all for improving the AI to have smart decisions but i also would like more control, we had more control in which weapon out troops should use in warband than bannerlord..