AI is terrible

[Glasera]

Now i've been trying to keep my mouth shut to not offend anyone but its always the same, AI is terrible, as if it's from ninety cent steam game. I just witnessed sturgian spearman losing against sturgian hunter in a spear duel without landing a single hit while receiving nine to ten hits, this literally made me snap.
Infantry AI is the worst when especially two groups face each other, formations arent working properly, battle scene becomes a real ****show where it looks like 2 seperate groups of apes trying to hit one another with a piece of wood while mindlessly bashing each other, and the worst part is one group suppose to be more skilled (higher level)
but in reality they both perform the same, with just one of them standing longer because of the better armor.
(similar with the scene where some low level infantry managing to beat max level bowman in a bow duel)

Also why mounted troops have this solo charging fetish? (dont tell me to assign a captain for them

Little after on the battle field we are just left with those fantasy movie scenes where medieval battles seem like they are just 1v1 duel ?

There are more lot to say but these imo are the most important issues that needs to be fixed

I remember the early access, and after all this time AI performs even worse

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Yeah 😏
Problem starts with the default (zero skill) use of weapons being very good, so that +doesn't really do anything for them, swinging a little faster does not help the AI much when the AI can easily block as often as needed. Problem continues with the AI not really knowing how to make use of length differences in weapons, usually longer will work out better for them even in situation where shorter/faster should be better. It also doesn't know when it will be block by a friendly and such.

 

[bbaydogdu]

I agree with you and I would like to point out that AI is absolutely terrible on the campaign map.

 

[Cullam]

The rbm mod does improve the AI battlefield behavour, but I´m not aware of any AI campagin improvement mod.

 

[IceNoVa]

Combat AI is pretty underwhelming even on challenging, but that might just as well be a low barrier to allow for players to actually compete. I wouldn't expect all that much from a common soldier anyway, quality is usually stumped by quantity anyway at max damage settings.

Also changed the title of the thread to not include any profanity. I get the frustration, but typing in anger is not the way to go, especially when you want to discuss actual issues.

 

[Apocal]

I remember the early access, and after all this time AI performs even worse

Almost like they are doing it on purpose...

 

[Ser Jon]

Yes, it is. Anyone who tries to say that it isn't, has blinders on. The AI is atrocious, but I don't see it changing at all.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

What happened to that really challenging combat AI the lords had in the first couple weeks of the EA? Is the combat AI completely hard-coded so that mods can't turn it back on? I mean it must be or mods would've already done so, but damn I want that back.

 

[froggyluv]

What happened to that really challenging combat AI the lords had in the first couple weeks of the EA? Is the combat AI completely hard-coded so that mods can't turn it back on? I mean it must be or mods would've already done so, but damn I want that back.

Yeah its a travesty - could only have been a console decision. Placating casuals to feel like demi-gods at Level 1 -fricken sad commentary

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Yeah its a travesty - could only have been a console decision. Placating casuals to feel like demi-gods at Level 1 -fricken sad commentary

Maybe it was too computationally heavy for big battles or something. That's the only legitimate reason I would accept for dumbing it down so much

 

[JunKeteer]

Maybe it was too computationally heavy for big battles or something. That's the only legitimate reason I would accept for dumbing it down so much

Suspected that was always the case, and it also drastically shortening any single battle to that ~5 minute (10 min if you're lucky) time.
As if there is some trailing script error or something which is why it seems like it's always the large army battles that crash often and/or the siege ones. Though it is drastically better than EA to their credit.

And why late-games tend to crash more than the first couple hours of a new playthrough.

 

[Lucius Confucius]

Suspected that was always the case, and it also drastically shortening any single battle to that ~5 minute (10 min if you're lucky) time.
As if there is some trailing script error or something which is why it seems like it's always the large army battles that crash often and/or the siege ones. Though it is drastically better than EA to their credit.

And why late-games tend to crash more than the first couple hours of a new playthrough.

I do not understand all these crash reports. I have crashed like 5 times in 800 hours of play, and that was when using mods. Bannerlord is the most stable game I have ever played. Why are you crashing, what's your pc specs? Or are you using a lot of mods?

 

[JunKeteer]

I do not understand all these crash reports. I have crashed like 5 times in 800 hours of play, and that was when using mods. Bannerlord is the most stable game I have ever played. Why are you crashing, what's your pc specs? Or are you using a lot of mods?

Far cry from being the most stable game; unless you play some other really poorly optimized games. 800 hours, so probably a couple hundred 1000v1000+ battles at least or something and only crashed 5 times?
It's a lot less frequent now than 2 years ago for sure - but for me, I'd say probably still a good ~10% chance it crashes; more so the longer the game file goes (ie ~15 years in or so). Even if I change it so they only spawn 250v250 at a time, doesn't seem to make a different. Unmodded, obviously, once even a benign mod is added - can just be invalidated by that.
As to the why? Who knows - I don't have a 2022 PC but it's still as 'new' as the game was released in EA (Nvidia 2080, i7 9700K, 32gb ram; both baseline and OC'd).

 

[stevepine]

Thing is... A.I. is one of the harder things to get right in any game. Really good AI in games is sadly RARE these days.

Developers just don't make the effort usually. Now... throw a company with the 'company culture' of Taleworlds into that mix.

We all know TW are both incompetent and arrogant with the development of Bannerlord.

So, naturally... when it comes to an area like A.I - something which needs real time, care, focus and attention and some really smart coding...
Well.... of course it sucks.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I do not understand all these crash reports. I have crashed like 5 times in 800 hours of play, and that was when using mods. Bannerlord is the most stable game I have ever played. Why are you crashing, what's your pc specs? Or are you using a lot of mods?

On version 1.0.3 on PS4, I'd say the game consistently crashes 25% of the time at some point during sieges and maybe 1-5% during regular battles and a similar percentage whenever loading up a scene (and the chance of an infinite loading screen when leaving). Haircutting is practically a coin toss as well. Bannerlord's about as stable as Kingdom Come: Deliverance was back when it was new for me lol. I'd say it is the game's most serious issue because it massively prolongs my playthroughs since it takes 3-5 minutes to reboot and reload the game plus however many seconds to load up battles and scenes.

 

[Lucius Confucius]

I would like the challenging combat AI, perhaps as a performance option with a warning that increasing the AI skill, may decrease performance, if that was the reason they never implemented it.

Far cry from being the most stable game; unless you play some other really poorly optimized games. 800 hours, so probably a couple hundred 1000v1000+ battles at least or something and only crashed 5 times?
It's a lot less frequent now than 2 years ago for sure - but for me, I'd say probably still a good ~10% chance it crashes; more so the longer the game file goes (ie ~15 years in or so). Even if I change it so they only spawn 250v250 at a time, doesn't seem to make a different. Unmodded, obviously, once even a benign mod is added - can just be invalidated by that.
As to the why? Who knows - I don't have a 2022 PC but it's still as 'new' as the game was released in EA (Nvidia 2080, i7 9700K, 32gb ram; both baseline and OC'd).

You shouldn't be crashing due to performance issues with that setup, but maybe the overclock is causing some weird behavior? I have heard that overclocking can cause stability issues.

Recently I have gone around 40+ hours with My Little Warband mod, and no crashes even in campaign. For me, Bannerlord is very stable, don't know why. My setup is a 3060 with 8gb ram. i5 5600 or 5700k, can't remember which. 16gb ram.

On version 1.0.3 on PS4, I'd say the game consistently crashes 25% of the time at some point during sieges and maybe 1-5% during regular battles and a similar percentage whenever loading up a scene (and the chance of an infinite loading screen when leaving). Haircutting is practically a coin toss as well. Bannerlord's about as stable as Kingdom Come: Deliverance was back when it was new for me lol. I'd say it is the game's most serious issue because it massively prolongs my playthroughs since it takes 3-5 minutes to reboot and reload the game plus however many seconds to load up battles and scenes.

Console explains much, there I can understand that there are a lot of crashes, since it hasn't gone through the rigorous EA that PC did.

 

[froggyluv]

Maybe it was too computationally heavy for big battles or something. That's the only legitimate reason I would accept for dumbing it down so much

They’ve got the code for both - not hard to implement better ai for tournaments and simplify for huge battles as well as make relative proximity AI skill adjustments along the way. Again I think the consoles have a lot to do with this but they’d never publicly admit it

 

[Dodgy]

If only the strategic AI was any better than the single agents.
I decided to try and play as a faction member only, assisting as best as I could but without creating my own army and capturing fiefs myself.
It's infuriating to see your faction's army heading to besiege the last city held by another faction and trying to chase after each single party of 10 men or so running around like mosquitos... (They had become so poor because in a previous war I had captured every single lord/lady, about 70 of them I believe? and held them as prisoners forever. At some point I started thinking that the more you capture, the more they'll keep spawning out of thin air, it certainly felt that way).
How is it that they don't defect/disappear/are still able to recruit cavalry and run around as 6-6.2 speed parties trying to raid each and every single fief you own? Even capturing all of them is such as slow and annoying process, deciding to fight you even with the odds being 255 vs 11.
They should value their lives and decide to surrender to avid the % of dying.
It makes the game such a boring meaningless and senseless grind. Use autoresolve and despite those odds, you risk losing some of your best troops in the process.

Ages later, the army runs out of influence and disperse, the 1 fief faction has "won" the war with their excellent strategy...

The faction leader/members also give way too much importance to being at war with fiefless factions, preventing them from wanting to declare war on anybody else because they have "too many enemies"... it's almost as if the game was designed to get to a stalemate that lets you grind useless battles endlessly with those ghost factions that keep suiciding around your fiefs trying to annoy you.
How can they even think about declaring war on somebody when they have no fiefs and can hardly put together an "army" of a couple hundreds recruits?

Also the voting system can't be kept as is. Every time the decision to declare war or peace is asked, there's always a 100% in favour or against that you can't influence (unless you are the ruler).
What is the point of having it? I am not saying you should always be able to as a vassal, but if there's no value in your vote or no ability to use politics to influence other faction member's votes, what is the point? Same about wanting to pass any laws... always everyone in favour or against with the ruler wanting the opposite.
Another gimmick to make it look like the game has "features".

 

[Philozoraptor]

Tweaking the AI of individual soldiers and entire formations is definitelly doable. What is really hard to mod is making AI properly switch their weapons (spear from distance vs sword in close quarters, etc).

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Tweaking the AI of individual soldiers and entire formations is definitelly doable. What is really hard to mod is making AI properly switch their weapons (spear from distance vs sword in close quarters, etc).

Tell me about it. The most depressing thing in this game is getting ko'd and watching the fight through your soldiers' eyes. It's amazing any of them get any kills. The amount of times I see them ride around in open ground swinging their glaives at nothing only to ride into a mob of infantry and choose that moment to switch to their bow is utterly demoralizing to me.