A few "points" on why combat(armour) is more satisfying when using realistic combat mod compared to vanilla

[DennyWiseau]

Short answer is that armour matters much more.

You value your experienced troops not only because of their skill but also because of their equipment. This is especially evident when you find yourself in a harder battles where you are either heavyly outnumbered or the ratio of experienced/armored to unexperienced/unarmord troops is either in your favor or against you. I have often found that when more than 80% of my lowgrade peasent army is wiped out, the remaining 20% will be the most experienced and well equipped men that despite being outnumbered are able to win the battle if they dont get surrounded. This also make you pick and choose your battles more carefully as the enemy armor composition actually matters insted of just the army size alone, like its the case with vanilla right now.

Also the feeling of being able to completly stomp looters singlehandledly in heavy armor without takining much damage is really satisfying, you actually progressed more signifcally through the game.

The biggest problem with vanilla combat is the "brain dead" nature of it, everybody will just yolo into an "blob" of a overhead hackfest until one side gets surrounded and wins, It feels very unsatifying and also get extremly repetetive.

 

[Callum]

As someone who hasn't tested the mod yet, can you explain to me how this affects the pace of the game? By this I mean, do battles take much longer to complete, and how much of a knock-on effect does this have on progressing through a campaign?

 

[Calabanar]

@Philozoraptor This thread might interest you.

 

[svelok]

By this I mean, do battles take much longer to complete

I thought this was an interesting question so I decided to quickly test it.

So, Realistic Battle Mod has a couple of modules - a combat module, an AI module, a troop tree overhaul, and a couple more highly specific submodules. I activated just the combat module for this, with no other mods. Custom battle, default settings, 250v250 (a pretty large battle), hit F6 and started a timer; then did the same on vanilla, with the same map. I also noted down how many kills each type of unit got, since it seemed like it might differ by a lot.

In vanilla, it took 38 seconds of running before archers engaged. It went on for an additional 3 minutes and change, with one side routing around 3m40s. Kills (averaged across the two sides) were 29 for archers, 54 for mounted archers, 36 for melee cavalry, and 72 for infantry. The winner had 80 survivors left (mainly archers followed by both types of cavalry), which manifested in the scoreboard primarily as a big gap in infantry kills (114 on the winning side to just 29 on the losing side) - the kills per unit were pretty similar across the other three types.

With RBM combat module, it took a similar 33 seconds of running before archers engaged, and went another for another 6 minutes, with one side routing around 6:20; about 70% longer than vanilla. Kills (averaged) were just 8 for archers, 91 for mounted archers, 55 for melee cavalry, and 56 for infantry. Winner had 60 units left, exclusively cavalry, all archers and infantry dead. This time the gap manifested mainly in mounted archer kills, which were 126 to 56.

So at least at this scale, RBM makes battles a good bit slower - although for a 500 unit battle, six minutes might be a more appropriately dramatic length! Foot archers seem to struggle in particular, however: 62 archers only managing to bag 8 kills is so low that in an actual campaign you'd probably dump them for more infantry. You might get different results with smaller battles and higher/lower tier unit comps, though.

 

[Apocal]

As someone who hasn't tested the mod yet, can you explain to me how this affects the pace of the game? By this I mean, do battles take much longer to complete, and how much of a knock-on effect does this have on progressing through a campaign?

Field battles take roughly 60% longer, depending on the map and enemies. It does almost nothing to the length of battles against most small bandit parties. However against high-tier armies, the length can easily double or triple, if you're playing cautiously. Sieges can drag out quite a bit longer than that.

It doesn't have any appreciable affect on campaign progression because most players don't/won't continuously engage in large-scale battles. Far more time is taken up in maintenance and bookkeeping tasks, like running quests, dropping off loot, catching up with friendly and neutral lords, traveling around to recruit, etc. so whatever issues with pacing you're concerned with due to increasing the average length of battles, don't worry. Players spend far more time doing boring **** already.

 

[DennyWiseau]

As someone who hasn't tested the mod yet, can you explain to me how this affects the pace of the game? By this I mean, do battles take much longer to complete, and how much of a knock-on effect does this have on progressing through a campaign?

The battles arent that much longer but they are better paced imo. In the beginning when both lines meet the initial fighting time is longer untill one side gets the upper hand(kill more men) which is when it comes down to the last standing (heavy armored) "veterens" with better morale, which will either get overwhelmed or manage to kill opposing side if they are of bad enough quailty/too hurt and flee/get cut down. But as a rough estimate I would say that battles are normally 30%-50% longer depending on how many armored troops are on each side and terrain. I am also using the AI module of the mod so that might have an influence beacuse the ai might be more prone to fallback or reposition after initial skirmishing compared to vanilla, cant say for sure.

I cant say for certain how progress of vanilla campaign is different because I havent played a long vanilla campaign since snowballing was fixed. But I have had many campaign 500 days+ that were all somewhat similar. It dosent seem to have much of an impact as far as I can tell but if anything it seems to make faction expansion abit slower. I 've had campaign 600 days in where the faction were more or less still equally matched but with at least half making territorial gain against others of 1 or 2 towns.

Overall I'd say it prolongs/extends both battles and the campaign experiencesomewhat , but not too much it feels pretty natural and balanced tbh.

 

[DennyWiseau]

So at least at this scale, RBM makes battles a good bit slower - although for a 500 unit battle, six minutes might be a more appropriately dramatic length! Foot archers seem to struggle in particular, however: 62 archers only managing to bag 8 kills is so low that in an actual campaign you'd probably dump them for more infantry. You might get different results with smaller battles and higher/lower tier unit comps, though.

Always depends on gear, In custom battle all units are tier 3. So genrally bow at tier 3 vs armor of tier 3 bows will not do too much damage( they will stil shread tier 2/1 though) however tier 5/6 bow or crossbow are able to kill tier 5/6 armored infantry well in my campaign games

 

[11hunter22]

I have a question: is this mod compatible with troop overhaul mods (or even better, total conversions).
I ask that because I really dislike the look of the native troops, especially peasants in their vibrant colorful clothes.

 

[Callum]

These are some really interesting answers, thanks for that! (the additional breakdown of timings was also really nice so thanks @svelok !)

I was curious because I play quite a bit of Total War and the difference between the older games and the more modern ones can be anywhere up to an extra 40 mins for a battle, which obviously has a huge impact on how a campaign progresses. But to hear that the mod doesn't affect looter battles at all and has quite a minimal, and possibly even beneficial, impact on battles and sieges is nice to know.

 

[Philozoraptor]

As someone who hasn't tested the mod yet, can you explain to me how this affects the pace of the game? By this I mean, do battles take much longer to complete, and how much of a knock-on effect does this have on progressing through a campaign?

500 vs 500 melee troops takes maybe 3-5 minutes longer (2H troops kill and die faster). In theory you could prolong combat more if you put two groups with mail armor, shields and swords only against each other.

 

[Philozoraptor]

I thought this was an interesting question so I decided to quickly test it.

So, Realistic Battle Mod has a couple of modules - a combat module, an AI module, a troop tree overhaul, and a couple more highly specific submodules. I activated just the combat module for this, with no other mods. Custom battle, default settings, 250v250 (a pretty large battle), hit F6 and started a timer; then did the same on vanilla, with the same map. I also noted down how many kills each type of unit got, since it seemed like it might differ by a lot.

In vanilla, it took 38 seconds of running before archers engaged. It went on for an additional 3 minutes and change, with one side routing around 3m40s. Kills (averaged across the two sides) were 29 for archers, 54 for mounted archers, 36 for melee cavalry, and 72 for infantry. The winner had 80 survivors left (mainly archers followed by both types of cavalry), which manifested in the scoreboard primarily as a big gap in infantry kills (114 on the winning side to just 29 on the losing side) - the kills per unit were pretty similar across the other three types.

With RBM combat module, it took a similar 33 seconds of running before archers engaged, and went another for another 6 minutes, with one side routing around 6:20; about 70% longer than vanilla. Kills (averaged) were just 8 for archers, 91 for mounted archers, 55 for melee cavalry, and 56 for infantry. Winner had 60 units left, exclusively cavalry, all archers and infantry dead. This time the gap manifested mainly in mounted archer kills, which were 126 to 56.

So at least at this scale, RBM makes battles a good bit slower - although for a 500 unit battle, six minutes might be a more appropriately dramatic length! Foot archers seem to struggle in particular, however: 62 archers only managing to bag 8 kills is so low that in an actual campaign you'd probably dump them for more infantry. You might get different results with smaller battles and higher/lower tier unit comps, though.

Those 60 archers migh have lot of assists which are not shown on scoreboard.

 

[XDaron]

I have a question: is this mod compatible with troop overhaul mods (or even better, total conversions).
I ask that because I really dislike the look of the native troops, especially peasants in their vibrant colorful clothes.

Blood **** and Iron is compatible and balanced with realistic battle in mind, but I highly recommend also combining with the spear performance module because many of the unit's in that mod only carry spears,
Noble troops also has a compatibility patch for realistic battle
mods like Bannerlord Overhaul - Troop and Item Overhaul work, but they won't be balanced since the new armor values don't apply to items added

 

[Philozoraptor]

I have a question: is this mod compatible with troop overhaul mods (or even better, total conversions).
I ask that because I really dislike the look of the native troops, especially peasants in their vibrant colorful clothes.

One of the modules is troop overhaul (its recommended even if you play with other overhauls because it fixes tournaments). Then there is BSI and DRM both fully compatible with RBM (and also compatible with RBM unit overhaul since they replace old units for new units, so no worries).

 

[Maelstrom8]

I'm a bit between vanilla and RBM right now, but I voted for vanilla for now. I love the concept of Realistic Battle Mod and would like to use it, but I don't really think I can. There's a small wee problem - mod compatibility. I use a modpack for 1.5.9 and it's large. It features a lot of armor and weapon mods on top of faction/troop mods, along with tweaks to make the gameplay experience much more challenging but also fun.

RBM modifies SPitems.xml (such as items and modifiers). Unfortunately, I have Calradia Expanded and Kingdoms, CA Eagle Rising, Tetsojin, Huaxia Kingdom, Amazons of Calradia, The Valkyrie, Calradia at War (Custom Spawns) then I have Reskin Rearm, Open Source Armory, More Troops Mod, and all of the other stuff - which also modify items. Some of the mods have compatibility patches but I'm not sure it's worth it to try to add RMB to this list.

I could take the time find which of these mods have compatibility patches and also see what's it's like to put RMB very last but it might just be really imbalanced lol.

 

[Calabanar]

I'm a bit between vanilla and RBM right now, but I voted for vanilla for now. I love the concept of Realistic Battle Mod and would like to use it, but I don't really think I can. There's a small wee problem - mod compatibility. I use a modpack for 1.5.9 and it's large. It features a lot of armor and weapon mods on top of faction/troop mods, along with tweaks to make the gameplay experience much more challenging but also fun.

RMB modifies SPitems.xml (such as items and modifiers). Unfortunately, I have Calradia Expanded and Kingdoms, CA Eagle Rising, Tetsojin, Huaxia Kingdom, Amazons of Calradia, The Valkyrie, Calradia at War (Custom Spawns) then I have Reskin Rearm, Open Source Armory, More Troops Mod, and all of the other stuff - which also modify items. Some of the mods have compatibility patches but I'm not sure it's worth it to try to add RMB to this list.

I could take the time find which of these mods have compatibility patches and also see what's it's like to put RMB very last but it might just be really imbalanced lol.

So you prefer the native armour values? Or do you just prefer to play without RBM solely because of compatibility issues.

 

[Maelstrom8]

So you prefer the native armour values? Or do you just prefer to play without RBM solely because of compatibility issues.

Hmm, a bit of both, but the most important bit here is that I haven't tried it yet, and I can't do so with my current mod setup. There's too many mods in this modpack that conflict, personally. They're all using outdated <1.5.9 versions of mods, you can't really update any of them or add other mods to the list unless you know what know what you're doing, else the whole thing will break. Tried messing around with some RBM compatibility stuff but it won't work, not without heavy tweaking.

I'm just going to create a secondary directory for 1.6 and try it out there with some light mods, so I can at least prepare to move a bit forward in patches.

 

[danEN]

how anyone can play this game without RBM is a mystery

 

[Philozoraptor]

Hmm, a bit of both, but the most important bit here is that I haven't tried it yet, and I can't do so with my current mod setup. There's too many mods in this modpack that conflict, personally. They're all using outdated <1.5.9 versions of mods, you can't really update any of them or add other mods to the list unless you know what know what you're doing, else the whole thing will break. Tried messing around with some RBM compatibility stuff but it won't work, not without heavy tweaking.

I'm just going to create a secondary directory for 1.6 and try it out there with some light mods, so I can at least prepare to move a bit forward in patches.

Well at some point you will have to update to 1.5.10 / 1.6.0 and that is going to be bye bye to half the mods on your list probably. You can give it a try at that point.

 

[geala]

I always use the RBM AI module and spear overhaul but I stopped using the Combat Module, mainly because of what it does to shields which break a lot too fast for my taste, and because I play with CA - Eagle Rising. Although I think armor should be stronger and RBM is well thought out, I also think that there is too much top armor around on normal units to make armor that strong. In the old days I solved this mainly by removing all T5 units from the game. RBM and De Re Militari is a good combo, on the other hand.

 

[Maelstrom8]

Well at some point you will have to update to 1.5.10 / 1.6.0 and that is going to be bye bye to half the mods on your list probably. You can give it a try at that point.

Honestly dying to try RBM so I am actually slowly working on a 1.6 modlist now, thanks to a post about working mods for 1.6 on the Eagle Rising discord.. I got about 25 mods strong. Trying to push a bit further, though. I miss some mods already, like Calradia Expanded, Custom Spawns and some of the faction ones but got most of the essentials.

Definitely going to have to do my own compatibility tweaks with every mod that I had that touches weapons, armors or ranged weaponry.