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

[Delinard]

Personally what I believe to be the right approach would be to make big battles less frequent but more impactful and interesting. Currently even those multi-thousand troop battles become... Boring and tedious after a while. They lose their shine pretty quickly because you've seen one or two and you've basically seen them all. What is more, you often barely finish one big battle, and another one is just on the horizon.

Well that's actually a problem with the campaign map itself, there are alot of lords and alot of settlements, every faction size is doubled/tripled compared to warband, which means that your impact is also lowered.

This was "fixed" in Calradia Expanded: Kingdoms because most of the factions are generally smaller, so big battles have more impact since more % of the kingdom's lords will be participating.

 

[five bucks]

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.

For vanilla, I think this issue (archers not getting enough kills) when more realistic armor is introduced can be rectified by making a handful of changes:

* Slightly increase the damage arrows do to shields. Although arrows wouldn't really break a shield in real life, a lot of arrows sticking out of a shield made it difficult to use to the point you might want to put it down, so this is kind of realistic. Of course, shields should still be the counter to arrows, just slightly less so.

* Make melee cavalry better at charging, so they are a proper threat. (This is relevant, bear with me)

* Introduce spear bracing, as a counter to the threat of melee charges. Only two-handed polearms can brace, and cannot be used with shields; so there is a good reason to use shieldless troops if they have a braceable polearm.

* Change some units in the troop trees into pikeman units with braceable polearms, and no shield. (one good example candidate to change could be Battanian Skirmisher>Vet. Skirmisher>Wildling). Now there are more shieldless troops running around on the battlefield for archers to shoot at. As it stands right now, out of the 120 different troops in the main factions, 67 of them have shields; every faction has a shield-bearing unit at T2 (and both Aserai T2 units have shields!).

If armor becoming realistic makes ranged infantry go from "overpowered" to "underpowered," then hopefully this should help. If not, then arrow damage can just be incrementally buffed back until they're balanced relative to melee troops.

 

[Askorti]

Well that's actually a problem with the campaign map itself, there are alot of lords and alot of settlements, every faction size is doubled/tripled compared to warband, which means that your impact is also lowered.

This was "fixed" in Calradia Expanded: Kingdoms because most of the factions are generally smaller, so big battles have more impact since more % of the kingdom's lords will be participating.

I believe that it's not the size of kingdoms that is the biggest problem, it's their replenishment rate. Whether a kingdom is big or small at any one point does not matter much when they can just replenish their numbers within the span of a week and have another go at battle.

To make an example. If a kingdom can have at any one point 2000 troops, split into two armies of 1000, but has a hard time replenishing them, that's two big battles and then a longer while of rest.
If a kingdom has at one point 1000 troops put together into one big army, that's one big battle, but then they replenish, and another big battle, they replenish again and another big battle ad nauseam.

 

[Sigaretovic]

As someone who prefers the newer Total War battles that are much quicker and allow me to complete VH and Legendary playthroughs in a reasonable amount of time, I asked the question because I would really dislike the other extreme of those 1-hour battles in this game. And as with TW, I like to play all of my battles in Bannerlord and worry about what sort of knock-on effect adding a couple of minutes to each battle could have on a playthrough. But, as you and others have pointed out here, the length of battles in the mod seems to be quite reasonable in my opinion, and I am tempted to download it and give it a try.

Good to see you more often here. Its appreciated.

I'm triggered by your last sentence, where you say you're tempted to try this mod. I think it would be a excellent idea (forgive me for my modesty) that some of you try out a few mods for a few days to get a different feel for this game. To feel what a different design decision could do to this game. Have fun with the mods!

 

[Philozoraptor]

However one issue I still have is that with RBM there is no good niche for lightly armoured troops, you basically just want elite units with heavy armour. The heavy armour doesn't slow down or tire units enough that lightly armoured troops can kite or outmaneuver them which should be the natural answer to them.

As you mentioned stamina is needed to make light units relevant in some way, but not just a stat added by mod. AI needs to understand that it has stamina so it can decide between skirmishing , running away or standing and fighting.

And even if that would be included I am not sure how often light troops defeated heavy troops under right conditions 1v1 (historically) since given their difference in gear light troops were cheaper and probably much more numerous as a result.

 

[Calabanar]

I take it noone believes heavy units dealing less damage because of encumbrance is a good way of improving lighter troops' performance?

 

[ShakenSpeare]

I take it noone believes heavy units dealing less damage because of encumbrance is a good way of improving lighter troops' performance?

That doesn't make all that much sense, all that added weight to someone would make them hit harder, not softer. Armor wouldn't make someone adjusted to it any more clumsy, and yes all that armor would make you tire more quickly, but the presumably superiorly trained heavy troops' cardio would probably balance out with the less training of light troops. And this game doesn't even really simulate stamina.

 

[Apocal]

Honestly, if armour gets a buff with the drawback of making troops move noticeably slower and perhaps reducing raw damage output slightly to simulate encumbrance (something along the 25% malus for the best armour set possible in Bannerlord), then I don’t even think stamina would be necessary. It would also be interesting for heavy armour to hinder missile reloading speed, that way light archers could have a real purpose instead of just being fodder: once more, better damage output and more mobile—> a true skirmishing force!

There would have to be a massive discrepency in output to make up the damage difference between low-tier archers and he high-tier ones. Otherwise, it will be light archers get into range of mailed and lamaed archers then take way more casualties in the first volley of arrows.

I take it noone believes heavy units dealing less damage because of encumbrance is a good way of improving lighter troops' performance?

I think trying to improve light troops' performance (level the playing field, so to speak) works at cross-purposes to improving armor's effectiveness and increasing the impact of high tier units/companions. As it stands now, light troops are already plenty effective enough. Trying to carve out a forced skirmishing niche isn't going to work when battles are flatly won by killing the enemy.

 

[five bucks]

However one issue I still have is that with RBM there is no good niche for lightly armoured troops, you basically just want elite units with heavy armour. The heavy armour doesn't slow down or tire units enough that lightly armoured troops can kite or outmaneuver them which should be the natural answer to them.

Is that really a bad thing though?
You spend quite a bit of time and money on investing in high-tier armored troops (or armor for yourself). They should be better overall in a fight than lightly armored troops. Both from a realism perspective and a gameplay perspective.

Armor slowed those wearing it down, but not massively. Mail, depending on the coverage, could weigh 7kg-15kg. A full suit of lamellar or coat-of-plates was 15-20kg. When evenly distributed across the body, this was not actually that cumbersome. Watch this video of a 20-30kg suit of full plate for comparison.

Lightly armored troops "kiting" were not the "natural" answer to heavily armored troops in real life. They ran away not because it made them more effective, but because they had to: they would lose in a straight fight to an armored man. They would choose to be armored themselves, if not for the cost.

I miss the stamina system from Brytenwalda. I hope in the future there will be some kind of fatigue system

Don't get your hopes up for that in vanilla. While personally I kind of like stamina systems too, a LOT of veteran M&B players are VERY strongly opposed to the concept. On top of that, TW seems reluctant to introduce any kind of new mechanic, let alone controversial ones. Of course, modders can introduce it easily enough.

Just in general I think a lot needs to be done about how different units have their optimal use so the endgame of combat is not just "get the strongest units and they beat everything."

That could be solved by changing the designs of the different types of unit, to create clear advantages against other types of unit; soft counters.
For example, pikemen are strong against cavalry (something that is going to happen when TW adds pike bracing). Two-hander infantry are strong against infantry who have large shields. Large shield infantry are strong against ranged infantry.
Ideally, these soft-counters would be balanced so that T4 units can beat the unit type they counter even if it's T5, and T3 units can go even with T5 units that they counter.
That way, simply getting your units to T5 won't be enough to win every battle. You'll also need to know which units work well against which other units, and commit them appropriately, or else you could lose your high-tier knights by charging them into the enemy's mid-tier pikemen.

I also think party size should be limited by unit value rather than numbers, make the player choose between numbers or quality. It would give us incentive to use lower tier troops

Players already get two big incentives to use lower tier troops, which are: "Higher tier troops have significantly more upkeep" and "I literally can't use higher tier troops yet because they haven't got enough XP". The player spends plenty of time using low tier troops.

Does the game really need to make everything a perfectly equal choice? I appreciate the importance of balance but this is more a question of progression than balance. It's kind of like you're saying that there should be more incentive for the player to use their starting horse instead of a Pureblood.

I agree with Apocal's post. Nerfing armor with the goal of balancing it relative to unarmored units will be counterproductive to making unit tier more important.

 

[chillsing]

That video is quite unrealistic thought, these guys performing 30 seconds stunts haven't been walking for days or several weeks. They don't give a single **** about energy conservation because they ain't in a life or death scenario and they have plentiful access to good food & water on demand. There's no way they can run and close the gap between them and somebody wearing no armor. So yes "kiting" is super legitimate just see what the best professional boxers do. Conservation of energy matters more than anything else.

 

[chillsing]

I've played with RMB weeks ago and have another problem with it other than massive battles being prone to crash (memory leak perhaps?)

T5 Infantry being able to drink tea while 15 low tier units whack at him for a bunch of 0s, 1s damage. It doesn't sound very realistic to not get remotely hurt a little being hit by a slab of 4lb of metal repetitively. Nor does it create interesting game play winning a siege automatically the moment some of T5 infantry have successfully made it on top the ladder.

The game currently does have a noticeable effect with armor it's part why legionnaires are the dominant infantry because they spawn with a mace 50% of the time. But units still die to easily to recruits and I think a very simplistic fixe would be to give more health to higher tier infantry so the armor augment their effective health. Arrows would still need to be nerfed thought.

 

[Calabanar]

I guess you are right.

This gives me an idea though, what if most troops wore light-medium armour, but you could upgrade it for a hefty price (say 5-10 times the normal upgrade price)? That could be an interesting mod with the DRM style troop trees, though I have no idea how one may achieve that.

 

[Apocal]

That video is quite unrealistic thought, these guys performing 30 seconds stunts haven't been walking for days or several weeks. They don't give a single **** about energy conservation because they ain't in a life or death scenario and they have plentiful access to good food & water on demand. There's no way they can run and close the gap between them and somebody wearing no armor. So yes "kiting" is super legitimate just see what the best professional boxers do. Conservation of energy matters more than anything else.

Any argument that begins with considering the condition of troops is going to necessarily give advantage to the dudes who aren't moving as much and can rely on a more passive defense, like armor.

 

[five bucks]

That video is quite unrealistic thought, these guys performing 30 seconds stunts haven't been walking for days or several weeks. They don't give a single **** about energy conservation because they ain't in a life or death scenario and they have plentiful access to good food & water on demand.

Leaving aside that people travelled a lot more by foot in the medieval period and were more used to it, when armies met for pitched battle it typically wasn't immediately after a week-long continuous 24/7 march. There's something called "having a break". You don't really see the troops having a break in Bannerlord, because it would be annoying for the player to stop moving and set up camp at the end of every single day, but you can presume that it's abstracted into longer travel time.

Both the unarmored and armored troops would have been walking for "days", be in a life or death scenario, and both of them would have the same access to food and water, if you want to make a fair comparison. Therefore, being equal, those things are irrelevant.

The point stands, the slight reduction in mobility of armor was not enough to make them equally effective to unarmored opponents. Instead, they were superior. That is why nobles paid huge sums of money to get armor, and why the Roman Empire distributed lorica segmentata/squamata/hamata on a wide scale to its legionaries, who steamrolled the lightly-armored Celtic tribes.

There's no way they can run and close the gap between them and somebody wearing no armor.

They don't need to if it's a battle over territory where the enemy running away means you win, and they already don't in Bannerlord anyway unless they have a better Athletics stat (or multiplayer with its arbitrary speed values) so it's a moot point.

So yes "kiting" is super legitimate just see what the best professional boxers do.

Apples to oranges. Professional boxers aren't covered head to toe in metal armor and thick padding that will protect them from being bashed.

It doesn't sound very realistic to not get remotely hurt a little being hit by a slab of 4lb of metal repetitively

also this

T5 Infantry being able to drink tea while 15 low tier units whack at him for a bunch of 0s, 1s damage

I agree that in some ways, RBM's damage model and Warband's do go too far overboard for good gameplay.
Damage should never be 0. 1 should be the minimum damage.

The game currently does have a noticeable effect with armor it's part why legionnaires are the dominant infantry because they spawn with a mace 50% of the time.

The main complaints people have are that ranged attacks are far too powerful against armor, and blunt damage attacks are a bit too powerful against armor, and also slashing polearms do too much damage in general (including to armor). But yes, some weapons actually have reasonable damage modeling against armor right now. However that doesn't mean it works well in general.
Speaking of legionaries:

 

[Philozoraptor]

That video is quite unrealistic thought, these guys performing 30 seconds stunts haven't been walking for days or several weeks. They don't give a single **** about energy conservation because they ain't in a life or death scenario and they have plentiful access to good food & water on demand. There's no way they can run and close the gap between them and somebody wearing no armor. So yes "kiting" is super legitimate just see what the best professional boxers do. Conservation of energy matters more than anything else.

Kiting 1v1 is irelevant in formation vs formation, BL simply does not have the scope to represent 50-100 skirmishers in loose formation harrasing 2 000 men strong main marching formation on the flanks. Skirmishing works if the desired target is moving slowly for whatever reason, the moment charge happens its either fight or flight. Not to mention that bows / crossbows are generally better (longer range, more ammo, faster projectiles, better armor penetration) at range than javelins, so they counter the javelins, even more so if skirmishers wear light armor (historical accuracy vs gameplay, thats why high tier units including skirmishers in RBM always wear decent armor, on all body parts, they just suck without it).

Long story short, its hard to represent niche of javelin skirmishers in BL properly. One such situation is countering the cav charge (javelins scale with bonus speed from charging horses much better than arrows/bolts), other is disabling shields, finally you can probably use them relativelly well in ambush. Cav counter might kind of work in RBM but requires lot of effort on side of player commander, disabling shields work well - thats why so many regular melee units have javs in RBM, ambush is not currently in game.

Edit: I really wonder where the idea of 1 damage from low tier troops in RBM comes from. I am covered with my character with best armor and in melee the lowest damage seems to be 3-4 (if its axe, spear or mace its generally much higher), only case I can think of when 0-1 damage can happen is worst archers in game vs super armor from long range, but those bows and arrows are simply meant for hunting and maybe gambeson armor.

 

[chillsing]

I wasn't looking to debate for hours on internet forums. I personally don't give much a damn about realism if it's in the way of game play.

But okay, I was wrong to assume fighting in inflexible heavy armor could be anything but exhausting. I see now that gymnastics, pirouettes, backflips, whatever can be realistic. After all your video is video is proof of actual medieval battle and modern science & combat sports are irrevelant as you say.

But if Taleworlds pay attention to this thread I want them to know RBM isn't perfect. I would hate for it to be directly implemented into the game.

 

[black_bulldog]

I wasn't looking to debate for hours on internet forums. I personally don't give much a damn about realism if it's in the way of game play.

But okay, I was wrong to assume fighting in inflexible heavy armor could be anything but exhausting. I see now that gymnastics, pirouettes, backflips, whatever can be realistic. After all your video is video is proof of actual medieval battle and modern science & combat sports are irrevelant as you say.

But if Taleworlds pay attention to this thread I want them to know RBM isn't perfect. I would hate for it to be directly implemented into the game.

No RBM isn't perfect but I think most people in this thread (and I'm guessing a lot of long time M&B players) would agree that armor in BL isn't working as it should. I don't care about realism and people arguing about realism in a video game are getting sidetracked. The focus of the discuss should be if I have a troop whose got top tier armor he should take more hits to bring down and should have a much greater chance of survival in a battle as opposed to a mid tier troop. As it stands in vanilla there is almost no difference in ability to survive between t3 and t6. There has to be a justification for the cost difference and atm there isn't.

 

[five bucks]

I wasn't looking to debate for hours on internet forums. I personally don't give much a damn about realism if it's in the way of game play.

But okay, I was wrong to assume fighting in inflexible heavy armor could be anything but exhausting. I see now that gymnastics, pirouettes, backflips, whatever can be realistic. After all your video is video is proof of actual medieval battle and modern science & combat sports are irrevelant as you say.

What you're doing here is not providing any evidence of this supposed "actual medieval battle and modern science", and using strawman arguments.
If you don't want to argue, then leave your post at "I wasn't looking to debate for hours on internet forums" and nobody will blame you. But if you are going to argue, then don't tell us off for doing it properly.
Oh, and saying mail is "inflexible" is just plain wrong.

But if Taleworlds pay attention to this thread I want them to know RBM isn't perfect. I would hate for it to be directly implemented into the game.

It sure isn't perfect but it is an improvement over vanilla in most ways.

 

[Apocal]

I wasn't looking to debate for hours on internet forums. I personally don't give much a damn about realism if it's in the way of game play.

Then why would you bring it up to support your opinion on gameplay in the first place?

As for gameplay, the last thing I want to see is a bunch fo dudes in cloth shirts who take about ten minutes to train able to hold their own against plated, mailed and coted troops that took my IRL time to get geared up. It puts progression a treadmill of sidegrade silliness that means most of your effort preserving your troops is wasted.

And ultimately it just reinforces the already existing meta of "horse archers are better than literally everything else" because you can bet for damned sure they'll be better at the whole skirmishing bit, along with being able to casually run down the guys attempting to harass them on foot.

 

[chillsing]

Guys ok I get it, I'm not a medieval expert I already agreed that I was wrong. I know now people can be just as fast and agile wearing armor as those who do not. I don't know why must this conversation continue maybe you need your pp to be sucked on I don't know.

Now just game play perspective; I know units are mostly made of papier mâché but RBM does a 180 degree turn and make em way too though.
How is it fun having lower tiered units literally do 0 or just 1 damage to higher tier units?