A better way to Earn high Tiered troops

[Magello]

Playing the game right now I don't really feel any kind of real satisfaction from earning a high tiered army. The soldiers are better but they really come pretty easily and far cheaper than I think they should. They just don't really feel like a good progression from villager to legionnaire. I am suggesting TW makes these soldiers harder to get into your army and far more expensive to have. Not necessarily adding new mechanics but small changes to make the soldiers feel more earned, rare, and a reward.

• Increasing the experience needed to upgrade soldiers especially from tier 2-3 and then from tiers 3-4 and to tier 5 should be really drastic.
  • At a minimum the experience required should be tripled most likely five times what they are now. As of right now I can have tier 4 and 5 soldiers in my army in less than one hour just by killing looters. This make zero since and really make the soldiers feel interchangeable as if one dies I can just replace them really quickly.
• Increasing the cost of the tier 3-5 soldiers in pay and food.
  • It is really easy to pay for these soldiers as well just by killing other parties and selling the loot. These are professional soldier tiers and should be a lot more expensive. This could keep the player from being able to field and entire army of tier 4 and 5 without major money and could help to curb the amount of cash the player has laying around in midgame.
  • A professional well trained solider eats more than the average peasant or militia style solider and this should be reflected in an increase in food consumption depending on tier with tier 4 and 5 eventually needing twice as much food as a tier 1 soldier. And having a larger morale penalty for have less varied food for them to eat.

These really seem like small changes which should not be hard to change, maybe the food consumption one because I do not know how BL figures these. I feel these would really make to expand the game and give the player another way to judge their progression and accomplishment. Having a full group of high tiered soldiers should feel like a real accomplishment which the player needs a good foundation to maintain.

Just some ideas here to help with progression and pacing in the game so let me know what you think. The ideas are not major but I feel they could have a lasting impact for some players.

Thank you for reading.

 

[veronicaaltoids]

if you have high relationship with the village, you can recruit some "noble troops" , and they have different troops tree to level up

but even these high level soldiers are so weak, ware weak armor, and so easy to die in battle
I don't see any point to increase wages or food consumption

 

[guiskj]

I would wager that troop skills need to be rebalanced after the change of how good the AI is at combat went from unit level (in case of troops, its tier) to the skill level related to the weapon the unit is fighting with.

So we went from a tier 6 unit being crazy good at combat with any weapon, to only a skill level of 300 being the max for AI effectiveness. Considering that achieving 300 in any skill is crazy hard and that no NPC has this skill level, be it Heros or troop units, what we have here is a system where the very best of their AI when it comes to combat will never be seen by the player.

My suggestion is that TW drop this crazy linear progression for AI combat of Skill Level / 3 and use a logarithmic distribution (inverse of exponential) where the AI combat peeks at 300 skill, but the bulk of its effectiveness is already in display at much lower skill levels.

Or just rebalance the Skill levels of troops and Heroes so that the full potential of the AI is unlocked for high tier troops and high level NPCs.

 

[shikaka]

Playing about 30 hours before becoming bored, I am hardly the most experienced player to criticize the idea, but let me add my two cents.


A few Warband mods actually do this. Most Brytenwalda based mods and also the Viking Conquest DLC.
While I understand what they want to achieve (players should use mid-tier troops in combat), in practice it doesn't work.

What happens:
- early game becomes a bit harder with low-mid tier troops only
- but in the meantime, it becomes more grindy too: you have to catch double or triple amount of looters to get the same effect
- but you will still do it! It is crystal clear for everybody, that currently low tier troops are useless. This will _not_ change the army the player uses, only add some additional grind. This is also visible in Viking Conquest: it takes considerably longer time to get 200-400 top tier troops than in native, but when you do get them, the AI will not be able to stop you. You can safely assault 6-800 strong cities with 150-200 heavy infantry (and good surgery).



I have a feeling that having a top tier army is not rewarding because they are simply not around for long. Troops are actually too efficient in killing, bigger battles are such blood orgies what you cannot even see in Hollywood movies. I experienced like ~300 dead in... two minutes? I didn't even have time to position my troops for a nice flanking attack
In smaller scale battles it regularly happened that I looked away to snipe a bazooka-rock thrower, and when I turned back 12 looters and 10 of my own peasants were dead. In ... 15 seconds or so?
With these lightning fast battles, minimal survive chance/horrendous losses, the troops should be easy to train.

 

[Magello]

Playing about 30 hours before becoming bored, I am hardly the most experienced player to criticize the idea, but let me add my two cents.


A few Warband mods actually do this. Most Brytenwalda based mods and also the Viking Conquest DLC.
While I understand what they want to achieve (players should use mid-tier troops in combat), in practice it doesn't work.

What happens:
- early game becomes a bit harder with low-mid tier troops only
- but in the meantime, it becomes more grindy too: you have to catch double or triple amount of looters to get the same effect
- but you will still do it! It is crystal clear for everybody, that currently low tier troops are useless. This will _not_ change the army the player uses, only add some additional grind. This is also visible in Viking Conquest: it takes considerably longer time to get 200-400 top tier troops than in native, but when you do get them, the AI will not be able to stop you. You can safely assault 6-800 strong cities with 150-200 heavy infantry (and good surgery).



I have a feeling that having a top tier army is not rewarding because they are simply not around for long. Troops are actually too efficient in killing, bigger battles are such blood orgies what you cannot even see in Hollywood movies. I experienced like ~300 dead in... two minutes? I didn't even have time to position my troops for a nice flanking attack
In smaller scale battles it regularly happened that I looked away to snipe a bazooka-rock thrower, and when I turned back 12 looters and 10 of my own peasants were dead. In ... 15 seconds or so?
With these lightning fast battles, minimal survive chance/horrendous losses, the troops should be easy to train.

All very true, I guess to fully utilize anything attempting to make the game harder, then the armor system in the game would need to be corrected and the combat balanced. I don't really see this happening with the current mass model TW appears to be using. Don't get me wrong the ultra death warrior who doesn't need to worry about troop placements or having a balanced army to counter certain troops are probably happy and can be fun in its way.

I should most likely just enjoy native for what it is for now and wait for the mods to add in these things or get serious myself with modding.

Thank you for the feedback.

 

[shikaka]

All very true, I guess to fully utilize anything attempting to make the game harder, then the armor system in the game would need to be corrected and the combat balanced. I don't really see this happening with the current mass model TW appears to be using. Don't get me wrong the ultra death warrior who doesn't need to worry about troop placements or having a balanced army to counter certain troops are probably happy and can be fun in its way.

I should most likely just enjoy native for what it is for now and wait for the mods to add in these things or get serious myself with modding.

Thank you for the feedback.

I was thinking about your original idea though, and while I don't necessarily agree with the solution, I agree that it is not optimal that lower tier troops are useless.

There are some games where it is not the case though. For example if you know total war games, each faction has top tier units, but they have filler too, which the players actually use. (there are a few exceptions, like the white hun armored horse archer army)

Now, why do players use units which are not just worse than their top units, but worse than the comparable unit of the opposition?
- there are no units in the game which are good in all situations (legions are awesome, but when charged by cavalry, even some crappy auxilia spearman is a great help for them.), there is actually niche protection
- elites can only be recruited in high level cities, which is not a problem when recruiting them, but reinforcements on a campaign will be close to impossible. With low-mid tier units, this problem never appears
- elites are expensive. Just fired up my current Viking Invasion 2 save. Teulu bodyguard is 35 gold/man (563/16 man unit). Armored sword is 7 gold/man, light spearman is 1,6/man. There is actually a meaningful choice choice here. For ~1100, you can field 32 heavy cavalry, 16 heavy cavalry+70 heavy infantry, or 16 heavy cav + 35 heavy inf + 150 spearman.
- battles actually last long enough to bother with tactics (well, not in the base game, but in mods :d)
- similar units (two units of spearman) can be commanded separately



Out of these concerns, a few are not valid for Bannerlord. I don't think players would be happy with heavy infantry having a x7 wage multiplier compared to light spearman. Or horseman costing not 150% of light infantry, but twenty times more (35 vs 1,6 is roughly x20)

But some could be considered:
- upgrade the troops only at your castle (or a mercenary camp, before getting a castle), so that elites cannot be replaced on a campaign, only _after_ a campaign
- some niche protection would be nice (heavy infantry should not be able to stand in for spearman in _all_ cases)
- better control of more units (eg. shieldwall, anti-cav and flanker infantry, so 3 groups) would do good for non-high tier troops, so they would not get slaughtered in the shieldwall. Theoretically, you can do this, but the control was always quite hard for me (not in Bannerlord, TW games in general)


Also, I think the aim of TW is to create a good personal fight simulator, not a tactical game from first person perspective. The latter would be necessary to find uses to not top tier, lightly armored units.

The only M&B engine game which tried to go into this direction is Blood&Gold. You can hit backspace, bring up the tactics menu, and you will not see your individual guys, but your 5 units. You can move them in the actual battlefield with dragging them on the tactics menu map. You drag them somewhere, close the menu, and they start marching there on the actual battlefield. It is a bit clunky (eg. the tactics menu doesn't show you the terrain, just the unit positions), but I think it is a user friendly way to put some tactics into a fighting game. Definietly easier than key combinations.

 

[McDadden]

I really like the idea of only being able to upgrade units in a castle or city. Seems only logical. I don't like the idea of increasing wage costs. I could see increasing the initial upgrade cost though to space out the time for upgrading batches of troops.
At the end of the day, if you don't like certain aspects of game design (xp grind and such) you can always mod away to your hearts content. You're sure to find like minds that want the game to function the same way you do.

 

[clovis_sangrail]

These really seem like small changes which should not be hard to change . . .

On what do you base this assumption? Your years of experience as a software developer?

 

[mexxico]

There are 2 OP perks at game currently which gives too much passive xp (raise the meek and combat tips) Their values are daily +15 xp to all troops and daily +30 xp to tier 1-2-3 troops. If you have these maybe it made progress too fast. These perk’s effects will be lowered with 1.5.7 As example if you have +30 xp giving perk your 100 tier-1 troops be all tier-2 at 1.5.6 in only 8-9 days even you don’t fight any. This can be a preference for some players but it is not good for gameplay.

Also tier-1 to tier-2 needed xp amount is currently about 250 and tier-4 to tier-5 is about 1100. Others are numbers between 250-1100 in 1.5.7 tier-1 to tier-2 will be 300 (about 1.1x of 1.5.6) but tier-4 to tier-5 will be 1500 (about 1.4x of 1.5.6 value) others change between 300-1500

 

[guiskj]

There are 2 OP perks at game currently which gives too much passive xp (raise the meek and combat tips) Their values are daily +15 xp to all troops and daily +30 xp to tier 1-2-3 troops. If you have these maybe it made progress too fast. These perk’s effects will be lowered with 1.5.7 As example if you have +30 xp giving perk your 100 tier-1 troops be all tier-2 at 1.5.6 in only 8-9 days even you don’t fight any. This can be a preference for some players but it is not good for gameplay.

Also tier-1 to tier-2 needed xp amount is currently about 250 and tier-4 to tier-5 is about 1100. Others are numbers between 250-1100 in 1.5.7 tier-1 to tier-2 will be 300 (about 1.1x of 1.5.6) but tier-4 to tier-5 will be 1500 (about 1.4x of 1.5.6 value) others change between 300-1500

I'm happy to hear this, thanks for the heads up.

Please consider my other point of AI combat proficiency for troops and heroes as a way to also increase the feel of progression for troop upgrades.

If the desire from TW is to keep the AI proficiency still be Skill/3, please rebalance the troop skills so tier 6 and 7 are much closer to 300 in their main weapon skill.

Another possibility, and one I like even more, is to have the AI proficiency progression not be the linear Skill/3, but a logarithmic function so that much of the AI prowess is unlocked by skills 0-200, and only minor increments are seen 200-300

The reason for this request is that at present I don't think a single unit, troop or Hero, has a weapon skill of 300+ meaning the player can never face the AI at its best.

 

[Sigaretovic]

@mexxico
Do you know if there are any plans on making high tier units more expensive? I think having a high tier army is too cheap.
Edit: i mean both the upgrade and upkeep

 

[mexxico]

@mexxico
Do you know if there are any plans on making high tier units more expensive? I think having a high tier army is too cheap.
Edit: i mean both the upgrade and upkeep

I do not think it changes

tier-0 : 1
tier-1 : 2
tier-2 : 4
tier-3 : 7
tier-4 : 11
tier-5 : 17
tier-6 : 24 (not sure)

As you see daily wages per troop are increasing too much with tier and what I see from streams players generally having problem paying wages especially if they have 50%+ high tiers. You can say it is normal but some players even started to not upgrade their troops even they reached needed xp. This is not something good for gameplay. Reaching an xp level should be something player is waiting for.

 

[Sigaretovic]

I do not think it changes

tier-0 : 1
tier-1 : 2
tier-2 : 4
tier-3 : 7
tier-4 : 11
tier-5 : 17
tier-6 : 24 (not sure)

As you see daily wages per troop are increasing too much with tier and what I see from streams players generally having problem paying wages especially if they have 50%+ high tiers. You can say it is normal but some players even started to not upgrade their troops even they reached needed xp. This is not something good for gameplay. Reaching an xp level should be something player is waiting for.

Thanks for the reply. In my experiences so far its quite easy to upgrade and pay for upkeep. But the biggest reason i would like it to be more costly is this :

I think its weird that i can upgrade troops at extremely low costs, giving them armour and weapons that i can only get for myself in the mid game (without using exploits).

 

[CaptainLee]

As you see daily wages per troop are increasing too much with tier and what I see from streams players generally having problem paying wages especially if they have 50%+ high tiers. You can say it is normal but some players even started to not upgrade their troops even they reached needed xp. This is not something good for gameplay. Reaching an xp level should be something player is waiting for.

Pity. I hold off tier 5 usually as the wage hike usually isn't worth it early game (Empire). It also makes zero sense I should be able to train Legionary infantry in a few weeks from scratch in my own party but.... meh. Condensed time frames and showing off everything too soon seems to be a deliberate design choice.

 

[mexxico]

Thanks for the reply. In my experiences so far its quite easy to upgrade and pay for upkeep. But the biggest reason i would like it to be more costly is this :

I think its weird that i can upgrade troops at extremely low costs, giving them armour and weapons that i can only get for myself in the mid game (without using exploits).

Yes this is something game cannot explain. I am not dealing with item prices or these stuffs but it annoys me too.

@CaptainLee explanataion to your problem is above. Upgrading troops will be slower with 1.5.7.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Seeing all this makes me hope for a mod that makes troops much harder to level up and pay. Its clearly not what TW is going for, and I don't imagine all too many players would like it either.

But dammit, I want there to be a reason for lower tier troops to exist.

 

[Althix]

I think having a high tier army is too cheap.

cheap? well, basically you trade income from a town for the upkeep of the single party. which also includes workshops income. i currently run 5 parties, but yes, as it now when towns are more or less fully developed my clan also making a good amount of denars. but before that with 4 parties and 4 towns i was making around 400 denars+ a day.
so no, upkeep of the party is not cheap, especially if we consider food, which also will cost you ~ 20k for 30 days if you wanna level that steward skill.

 

[Sigaretovic]

cheap? well, basically you trade income from a town for the upkeep of the single party. which also includes workshops income. i currently run 5 parties, but yes, as it now when towns are more or less fully developed my clan also making a good amount of denars. but before that with 4 parties and 4 towns i was making around 400 denars+ a day.
so no, upkeep of the party is not cheap, especially if we consider food, which also will cost you ~ 20k for 30 days if you wanna level that steward skill.

In my opinion having a standing army should be expensive. Most of us are living above our paygrade. Were Upstart war lords running around with a bunch of high tier troops from the start. If a player can do that, i call it too cheap.

 

[Magello]

Yes this is something game cannot explain. I am not dealing with item prices or these stuffs but it annoys me too.

@CaptainLee explanataion to your problem is above. Upgrading troops will be slower with 1.5.7.

Thank you for the input and I am excited to try out the changes. I understand this is just one of many things which are trying to be balanced against a bunch of other mechanics and it is good to hear there has been some discussion going on.

 

[Magello]

In my opinion having a standing army should be expensive. Most of us are living above our paygrade. Were Upstart war lords running around with a bunch of high tier troops from the start. If a player can do that, i call it too cheap.

I was actually thinking having a standing army should be a mid to late game mechanic. After you have established a solid money stream, than maintaining an army is a money sink. It sounds nice, paying to outfit your army with mainly tier 1 to start and then paying to upgrade to a professional expensive army. Having to unlock a baggage train and veterans/companions to keep order.

Sounds fun, expensive, and a great feature to look forward to.