AI Lords literally never surrender. Why?

[ManWithKnife]

This is absolutely insane. These poor soldiers are outnumbered 70 to 1, yet the lord believes he can win the fight. Why? Even looters are smart enough to surrender against odds this bad, so why do the Lords always insist on fighting to the death?
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I really hope this doesn't stay in the game forever

 

[five bucks]

Even a lord with cowardly personality traits will happily fight 1v200000

 

[Zerosaiko]

Because they know they can take you.

Honestly, even the surrender that does exist is weird. If you were trying to intimidate the lone survivor of a caravan into surrendering, whether you had 50 troops or 200, they'd still have the same chances of saying "nah, you can take this over my dead body".

 

[geala]

Indeed. There are problems in the game which are easily solvable (like armor), then there is this, bad AI, on the campaign map and on the battlefield. It is as if there are very primitive and strict rules for behavior, and personality and relations of the agents do count for nothing. Couldn't there be variants and at least a random generator, "if trait A + relation B, y chance to do variant1 (fight), x chance to do variant2 (surrender), z chance to do variant3 (bribe).", or so?

I'm no programmer and don't know how difficult or elaborate that would be. But the bad AI is the most prominent reason for me to feel bad in the game.

 

[Brano]

There is too much "radar" visibility in the game. Everyone knows about everyone dozens of miles away. In real life, such encounters would be rare if not at all. It is rather ridiculous that my actual warband of 150+ is chasing and is able to catch group of 20 sea riders

 

[Nawari]

What is especially infamous in this game is the lack of fun...

 

[Brano]

I, as player, should have option to set up a camp with my 150+ warband and send/lead small detachment of cavalry to patrol and hunt for such tiny groups. It would be also more believable/convenient to train my companions. Bandit hideout raids are fine with me as concept, but they need more randomness, new locations and at least some basic fortifications so I can train my engineering with using ladders and simple hand held ram or balista to break thru a wooden palisade. Or use fire to burn them out

 

[Sir Frederic]

At some point I think I made the suggestion that you could have the option that by outnumbering him you could make a truce with that person. For X amount of days that noble cannot fight offensively

It's actually so ridiculous that if you find an enemy with zero healthy units, all starving, he won't give up.

 

[froggyluv]

Indeed. There are problems in the game which are easily solvable (like armor), then there is this, bad AI, on the campaign map and on the battlefield. It is as if there are very primitive and strict rules for behavior, and personality and relations of the agents do count for nothing. Couldn't there be variants and at least a random generator, "if trait A + relation B, y chance to do variant1 (fight), x chance to do variant2 (surrender), z chance to do variant3 (bribe).", or so?

I'm no programmer and don't know how difficult or elaborate that would be. But the bad AI is the most prominent reason for me to feel bad in the game.

It’s not hard at all. Kids were creating more emergent AI reactions on their Commodore 64
‘S back in the 80’s using BASIC

 

[Madeloc]

This is absolutely insane. These poor soldiers are outnumbered 70 to 1, yet the lord believes he can win the fight. Why? Even looters are smart enough to surrender against odds this bad, so why do the Lords always insist on fighting to the death?

Indeed, that is what everyone is saying about Bannerlord, the lack of diplomacy, leading to uselessness of relation level, which itself should be linked to the traits.

And yet those concepts of relation / traits are great and would not need insane algorythms to make something - even basic - reflecting the notion of RELATIONSHIP (which implicitly is linked to traits).

That would not be hard that if your lord asks to spare him/her this time, next time, he "owes you one" if it's you who is in difficulty. Or in the case of :

It's actually so ridiculous that if you find an enemy with zero healthy units, all starving, he won't give up.

that if the lord is cruel / devious, he sacrifices a part of his unhealthy units to escape, he is honorable, he tries to negociate something out with you, and if you show yourself mercyful or cruel, that would have an impact on your traits.

There should be at least something simple enough to make so as to have the AI's behaviour senseful rather than senseless, stupid.

That makes me also think that when you help a lord, heavyly outnumbering the ennemy and that they say "oh, you saved my life here" :
- lol, first, if you haven't existed to help, that wouldn't have changed anything, that lorsd was winning anyway
- second, to TW : that's a lie !!! Even if you really saved that lord's life, he doesn't actually give a damn to it and won't spare you when he have the chance to

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

This is absolutely insane. These poor soldiers are outnumbered 70 to 1, yet the lord believes he can win the fight. Why? Even looters are smart enough to surrender against odds this bad, so why do the Lords always insist on fighting to the death?

Because it's clown world logic for everything the AI does and TW would rather make endless loops then more content to fill out the game!
Why WOULD a Bannerlord NPC surrender? They face NO CONSEQUENCES at all for losing their entire field force.
1 The lord has almost no chance of actually dying in the fight
2 they get to respawn with free troops out of thin air
3 they often spend almost no time in cool down/jail
4 their clan has back up members to send out IMEADIATLY
5 The AI gets troops so fast and easy they can lose 1-2k sized armies and just keep sending more armies like it's nothing every other day forever.
6 Even if you lock em all up the Ruler can hire all the merc clans HONK HONK
Consider this, even if you could let an enemy army surrender and leave peacefully from a siege, it would actually be faster for them to just lose the battle, respawn and re-build the entire army and attack again, then to just have say a "10 day cool down" for being allowed to leave in peace. That's how completely overblown and CHEATY the AI's "simulation" (of what? Cheating bots?) Is.

 

[Helerek]

Because it's clown world logic for everything the AI does and TW would rather make endless loops then more content to fill out the game!
Why WOULD a Bannerlord NPC surrender? They face NO CONSEQUENCES at all for losing their entire field force.
1 The lord has almost no chance of actually dying in the fight
2 they get to respawn with free troops out of thin air
3 they often spend almost no time in cool down/jail
4 their clan has back up members to send out IMEADIATLY
5 The AI gets troops so fast and easy they can lose 1-2k sized armies and just keep sending more armies like it's nothing every other day forever.
6 Even if you lock em all up the Ruler can hire all the merc clans HONK HONK
Consider this, even if you could let an enemy army surrender and leave peacefully from a siege, it would actually be faster for them to just lose the battle, respawn and re-build the entire army and attack again, then to just have say a "10 day cool down" for being allowed to leave in peace. That's how completely overblown and CHEATY the AI's "simulation" (of what? Cheating bots?) Is.

1. He has 2% chance of death. That's a lot tbh.
2. They respawn with small army and recruit mostly recruits.
3. That is terrible truth and should be fixed. In warband a noble had to fully heal from 1 health to gather army again?
4. Correct, but most of them have inferior skills and should affect their performance (currently doesn't).
5. Recruit spam isn't that threatful (unless 50% of that army is top tier crossbow/cavalry for some reason).
6. That's sad truth.
That's not truth, they would gather an army, wander from 5 random villages. Then think. Then go to a point. Think again. Besiege. Drop the siege. Think. Besiege another settlement. Think. Abandon Siege. Sign peace.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

1. He has 2% chance of death. That's a lot tbh.
2. They respawn with small army and recruit mostly recruits.
3. That is terrible truth and should be fixed. In warband a noble had to fully heal from 1 health to gather army again?
4. Correct, but most of them have inferior skills and should affect their performance (currently doesn't).
5. Recruit spam isn't that threatful (unless 50% of that army is top tier crossbow/cavalry for some reason).
6. That's sad truth.
That's not truth, they would gather an army, wander from 5 random villages. Then think. Then go to a point. Think again. Besiege. Drop the siege. Think. Besiege another settlement. Think. Abandon Siege. Sign peace.

1 No that's almost nothing and it's even lower then that. You can paint the whole map and only like 2 will die in live combat with you.
2 And that's cheating stinking garbage, they should get NOTHING and have to deplete thier garrisons or suffer the wrath of the looters! Don't you ever knock out an army of 10 guys, let them all go and then they spawn with a party and that's like 200 free guys from nowhere! It indefensible and lazy and many other unpleasant things! Boo boo boo
3 doesn't matter, they make an army the raid you villages and siege your stuff and you have waddle back and forth swatting them!
5 NO, I have to go defeat them all anyway because they can still siege your towns and raid you villages. If has nothing to do with threat to my party, it has to do with wasting my time for never ending stupid fights because they give them too many troops constantly and make them spend zero time to ever do anything.
YMMV but I have constant conga lines form every direction coming to take my stuff until I completely defief them and/or literal keep entire faction in my prisoners and drag them around for the rest of the game.
Every single victory need to yield much much bigger time to progress, as is everything just feels like wasting so much time doing the same exact thing over and over and over. You have to do the same battles at least 10X more then you should to wipe out a faction, because of so many cheats for the AI and not making them actually participate in the world to get and raise troops or take care of thier fiefs.

Anyone who likes conga lines of armies, line up and I'll dissect your attempt to defend this.

 

[Helerek]

1. Almost nothing, but still something. If it was any higher they would all die out in a matter of few days and we don't want empty Calradia. If you want higher death chance just execute them.
2. What. Ofcourse AI has advantage, because otherwise it would be too easy. If you design game to be equal for palyer and AI then the AI will die out in span of 1 year against a player. Since they will die out wait 6 days, gather army again, die to looters, empty garrisons and before they are ready to counter-attack then a player already destroyed 5-6 fiefs with simply starving/making holes in them.
3. Personally I just ignore it and they stop most of the time or my nobles handle them. Beside if your village reaches a reasonable size then they won't be able to raid against decent militia force.
5. You can just ignore them and many of the times they either break siege or retreat, because they lost 800 units in siege/siege preparation and then get caught.
I remember "conga lines" and they were piss easy to defeat/imprison due to 300-400 recruits in an 600-700 vlandian army. What I did was just simply ignore them and watch them follow me as I besiege castle > town > town > castle, until they engaged me and lost. Making me capture 4 fiefs and a 2nd army, while the enemy did nothing to my kingdom. Damn that's pretty unfair I guess?

 

[Sir Frederic]

2. They respawn with small army and recruit mostly recruits.

This would not be a problem if it were not that, by losing all the fiefdoms, the western empire for example. all the nobles spawned in zeonica. With that small number of soldiers they have the speed to hunt down villagers and continually plunder Zeonica's villages to exhaustion. I saw in a game a Zeonica village go down to 10 prosperity.

Whoever owns the old capital of a ruined kingdom is doomed to have the least prosperous city in the game.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

He has 2% chance of death. That's a lot tbh.

Almost nothing, but still something

..........

If you design game to be equal for palyer and AI then the AI will die out in span of 1 year against a player.

SO? That would be good. Doing the same battle over and over is garbage.

Personally I just ignore it and they stop most of the time

YMMV but that sounds like BS, most parties absolute can and will raid your villages if you don't intervene.

You can just ignore them and many of the times

No, now they can team up so even a weak army or several lords can suddenly get bolstered and complete the siege quickly.

remember "conga lines" and they were piss easy to defeat/

This has NOTHING to do with anything I'm complaining about. I have never ever said it's too "hard" do defeat anything, I've said it's too repetitive (this mean doing the same thing over and over) and everything feels like a waste of time because there's no pay off for defeating large armies, it would be a better game if it took much longer for them to have ANY troops to do ANYTHING again.

 

[Helerek]

..........

What? 2% is a lot in nobles case. Let's look at some bigger numbers to understand how much 2 % actually is.
1 year in Calradia lasts 4*30 = 120 days. Let's say that 60 days of those are war times. Let's say said noble fights only 6 days of those year. So we get 6 tries at 2% chance, which equal to around 11,4%. Now that's pretty high chance to die. almost 12% a year to die. What is the opposite of dying to the noble tho? It's having a child and staying alive long enough for said child to reach it adulthood. If the situation above repeats itself for 18 years, we will end up with 18 * 6 = 108 deaths in combat, which equals to ~ 89% for said noble to die. Now let's not forget this applies to every noble in said clan. On average a noble gets about 2-4 children. Now let's look how it would change if we raised it to 3%. The death chance would skyrocket to about 96%. A single % point reducing his survival chance, by more than 50% down to 4% chance to see his children. Ofcourse if we assume that he fights only 6 our of 120 in game days.

SO? That would be good. Doing the same battle over and over is garbage.

How it would be good if it would be doing the same battle over and over, just enemy has less skilled warriors and lower quantity of them?

No, now they can team up so even a weak army or several lords can suddenly get bolstered and complete the siege quickly.

Didn't really experience this in any of my playthroughs. Most of the time they just tried to defend or chase my bigger army or stopped sieging my fiefs, because they lost so many units on my militia/garrison. Even stood outside of a Vlandian town with 400 defenders being besieged by 1200 aserai troops. I was like, "bruh this gonna end badly for us (vlandian at the time)". The defenders lost around 200 units and attackers dropped down to 400 and got ganked up by 4 vlandian nobles.

This has NOTHING to do with anything I'm complaining about. I have never ever said it's too "hard" do defeat anything, I've said it's too repetitive (this mean doing the same thing over and over) and everything feels like a waste of time because there's no pay off for defeating large armies, it would be a better game if it took much longer for them to have ANY troops to do ANYTHING again.

I mean that's basically core of the gameplay. Literally what you are supposed to do late game in bannerlord native. I agree the grind and repetitive part of late game is bad, however I don't see any reasonable way to fix it. I understand your problem is with lords that get captured don't have a meaningful effect on enemy, since he can just create new parties instantly and still be capped with 4/4 parties. By simply using another family members to fill out party leader role. This could be nerfed and balanced somewhat, but I am afraid it would make the game way too fast paced and too easy to progress. If we defeated an enemy army with a meaningful consequences as I said before. A player would be capable of taking 4-6 fiefs, before the enemy/AI manages to gather their troops back.

One of the solutions to above would be to slow down recruitment of units and reward player for defeating the enemy army in the field by slowed down recruitment of their troops > smaller created parties and basically making it a meaningful victory (rather than a repetitive grind). On the other side increasing the garrison capacity of towns/castles to make it more challenging than a mere 400-600 units defending. After all as an attacker we can starve or even use siege engines to obliterate enemy.

I hope talewords or some modder slows down or puts it in somewhat a reasonable line the enemy nobles respawning instantly. Maybe by not allowing the lord to create a new party for 3-5 days after one of his parties was recently defeated?

 

[MostBlunted]

Never had an enemy lord surrender against me, sometimes bandits when they are outnumbered like 23 vs 257, sometimes.

I like this AI decision making:

"We have nothing, only minor armor and weapons and there is a ****ing army, as it seems, like around 200 guys, heavily armored, maybe 75 on horses! What should we do?"
"Fight of course"
"Sure, makes sense!"
"Yolo!"

Meanwhile on the other side:

"There a few dudes that seems to be bandits, but we want to take this town!"
"Yea, but dude X asked us to fight them!"
"Sure, makes sense! What´s our strategy in this fight, if they fight?"
"What? You all just charge, we are an army and there are like 20 guys?! Just kill them!"
"So we go in without you?"
"No! Then we could lose 1-2 heavy armored knights on horses, they are no random things we can easily get everywhere! I´am not that stupid! I´ll lead the charge!"

Bandits:


At the end, everything makes sense of course.

 

[Sir Frederic]

It is in Portuguese but has subtitles. A graphic description of the Nobles of Calradia

 

[lukethisup]

Lord AI has virtually non-existent survival instincts. A man surrenders in hopes of avoiding dying that day in battle, but there's no desire to stay alive with any NPC outside of retreat orders (which is also extremely basic and just turns all fleeing enemies into non reactive, linear runners).

This is by design though, and nothing will ever change it within the scope of this game before we see it released. It's all part of the Vision™