Bannerlord is missing many good features from Warband and VC

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Eh, they were upfront that the bright monochrome factional colors weren't a temporary stopgap.
Well that makes me very sad. I knew that banners and such would all be monochrome but I didn't think every last dude would have the same colors. I hope to god that can be fixed with mods. I really don't see the point to this when they already have banners over their heads. I get some people turn that off for immersion, but imo "immersion" is not an option when every guy is wearing the same stuff, like unless it's a unit of elite warriors like legionaries, there should be a good amount of variation in color and equipment.
 
Well that makes me very sad. I knew that banners and such would all be monochrome but I didn't think every last dude would have the same colors. I hope to god that can be fixed with mods. I really don't see the point to this when they already have banners over their heads. I get some people turn that off for immersion, but imo "immersion" is not an option when every guy is wearing the same stuff, like unless it's a unit of elite warriors like legionaries, there should be a good amount of variation in color and equipment.
There was a mod which allowed all of this and various banner and uniform colour overhauls which use it as a base but it stopped working on 1.4.3 or 1.5.0. Hopefully it gets resurrected.
 
wow i never played the first one so i had no idea it had all of this damn i hope bannerlord starts getting some of this im happy for the bug fixes and all that but its been 5 months of bug fixing patches its time for some big content patches
5 months out into early access. not long at all.. Subnautica. 2 Below zero been in early access 2 1/2 years. Btw subnautica will scare your pants off lol just saying.
 
Multi color faction insignia and multi color faction banners are implemented actually.

But only in custom battles..

SUGGESTION TO THE DEVS:

Mono color faction banners. Multi color clan banners. Clans coat of arms will stay but clan banner's colors will be multi color. Each of them will have different flag pattern.

The friendly identification bubbles on the soldiers will be like the current system (mono faction color with clan insignia).

The only thing that changes will be the clan banners (on the field), their appearance in the encyclopedia and banners within castles and cities (both faction banner and clan banner will be presented).

In the battle, half of the soldiers carrying flags will carry the faction banner and the other half will carry the flags of the clan to which they belong.

In addition, the world map will have two flags (faction banner and clan banner) with the number of flags of the respective unit side by side or one on top of the other.
 
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How do you do it?
The mod that every banner/uniform colour mod is dependent on hasn't worked for a while.

I don't. For gameplay reasons I prefer the current way of doing things. But it isn't technically difficult or anything.

If you look SandboxCore/ModuleData/spitems you will find the different armors now broken out by type into their own XML files.

(that's probably why the mod is broken, btw)

In those files, some items (definitely not all) have a flag called "UseTeamColor." Set it to to false and you won't have faction-colored units any more. Alternatively, if you're more code-minded it shouldn't be hard to mash something together that will create a broad range of 'team colors' so units on the field will have much more variety.
 
Multi color faction insignia and multi color faction banners are implemented actually.

But only in custom battles..

SUGGESTION TO THE DEVS:

Mono color faction banners. Multi color clan banners. Clans coat of arms will stay but clan banner's colors will be multi color. Each of them will have different flag pattern.

The friendly identification bubbles on the soldiers will be like the current system (mono faction color with clan insignia).

The only thing that changes will be the clan banners (on the field), their appearance in the encyclopedia and banners within castles and cities (both faction banner and clan banner will be presented).

In the battle, half of the soldiers carrying flags will carry the faction banner and the other half will carry the flags of the clan to which they belong.

In addition, the world map will have two flags (faction banner and clan banner) with the number of flags of the respective unit side by side or one on top of the other.
I love that idea, in fact I thought about that a long time ago but then I just stopped playing Bannerlord so I forgot about it. Make a post in the suggestions part of the forum, would you? Because that NEEDS to be a feature imo.
 
We can finally cross one of the features off this list.
“We recently added a new way to follow parties on the world map to make things a little less tedious when performing certain tasks. To do this, you simply need to hold down the Left Alt key and click on the party that you want“
 
Yes as the other game I am enjoying is 2 years early access. .. I love this game.
Was more talking about the pace of content patches in the last 9 months. That is to say, playable gameplay content that has been added, such as major new mechanics.
 
Credit to u/dropbbbear on r/mountandblade (I DID NOT MAKE THIS LIST, I COPY PASTED IT WITH HIS CONSENT)

Bannerlord has made some great improvements to the Mount&Blade series in terms of graphics, field battles, moddability and overall polish, and I'm very thankful to Taleworlds for that. But in terms of stuff to do and immersion, it actually feels heavily lacking compared to M&B: Warband (from 10 years ago) and M&B: Viking Conquest Reforged (from 6 years ago). That isn't good for a sequel.

To be fair, Bannerlord is only half of the way through Early Access, so missing content makes sense. But what's worrying is Taleworlds' complete silence on what content the game will actually have at the end of Early Access.

So, this is a list of WB/VC features Bannerlord doesn't have which have not been mentioned on Taleworlds' roadmap, meaning they may have been forgotten about, and aren't coming back unless people ask for them. Some of these features are small, but combined they made WB and VC more immersive and entertaining than just killing looters and map-painting.

WARBAND MISSING FEATURES

  • Feasts: Parties the player and AI lords could hold for other lords. They helped slow down factions who were conquering large parts of the map too quickly by giving them something to do other than be at war 24/7. They gave the player another way of gaining relation with lords and ladies, gathered them all in one place for convenient talking/flirting, and feasting had a related quest where you gathered food from all around the map to make your feast impress the other lords. Feasts made Calradia feel more like a real world, and gave us Harlaus butter memes.
  • Lord strategic dialogue: The AI can often be quite stupid while on campaign. In Warband, you could actually tell lords to go somewhere and attack or defend it, which helped mitigate AI stupidity.
  • Manhunters: They spawned in Warband to hunt down bandits when their numbers started getting too high. In Bannerlord, this system could be tweaked: allow the player to spend money to put a Bounty on bandits in the area of one of their villages, and Manhunters would begin spawning there and hunting any threats to your village's prosperity, allowing you to go do more important/interesting things.
  • Quests: Exciting quests like the Prison Break quest where you rescued a lord from captivity and fought your way through the dungeons to freedom, or the Tax Collector quest where you gathered money from a town for a lord which might result in a riot, and many more.
  • Handcrafted companions: Think Jeremus, Ymira, etc. These companions had in-depth backstories and reactions to world locations, interacted with each other, and they had personalities you could get attached to. You could also make companions into vassals for your kingdom, which was useful if you had angered too many existing nobles.
  • Village improvement options: Build manors, messenger posts, schools, etc. This allowed the player to focus on building up a specific village to improve their strategic options in that area.
  • Courtship: Ladies had likes and dislikes, you could learn poems suited to their personality from poets and hear gossip, there were romance quests. Rather than just trying to roll the correct RNG on a skill check, Warband courtship was more like trying to build a relationship with a person.
  • Dueling lords: You could challenge a lord to a duel (or be challenged by them) if they insulted your honor or competed with you for a lover. This would give more intrigue to the player in their interactions with lords and ladies and add a fun extra challenge.
  • Deserters on the map: These guys were more interesting to fight than looters and bandits because they had better, military-grade equipment.
  • Tournament Armor/Weapons: All fighters in a tournament recieved gear of equal quality in Warband. In Bannerlord, gear quality is variable, so you can get a weapon in the tournament that is almost totally useless against some armors.
  • Books: You could buy these and read them to level skills. This would be a good gold sink, and also be a realistic way of letting the player level skills that are difficult to do in the early game; for example, read a book about siege engines to level your Engineering skill, without having to start a whole siege.
  • Lord personalities affecting behaviour: For example, warlike lords would constantly start fights with other factions, and calculating lords would leave allies to fend for themselves in fights. This influenced the player's choice in vassals and added another layer of strategic depth.
  • More battle maps: Bannerlord seriously lacks variety in field battle scenes.
  • Permanent message log: The current message log resets after an event, leading you sometimes to wonder what the hell just happened?
  • Follow option: You could auto-follow caravans or lords without actually getting locked into their party, which made the mid-game a lot less tedious.
  • Actual redheads: It's pretty silly that Bannerlord has a whole Celtic faction, but no real gingers. Is red hair bugged? I know DCC Mod adds in red hair.
  • Miscellaneous small things: Some lords being sexist (would be less likely to give you fiefs and they could insult you for being a woman, but you could duel them to defend your honor), more food variety (eg. sausages/chicken), Sargoth being in the north instead of the south, greater variety in equipment between cultures (eg: right now Aserai use a lot of Sturgian armor), and last but not least, "It's almost harvesting season!" These all added to immersion in Warband's medieval world.
VIKING CONQUEST: REFORGED

  • Ship travel and ship battles: This added an entire new dimension to combat and travel on the world map. It would make infantry-focused factions more viable if they could quickly make a boat to travel by river, like they did in real life. In fact, it seems like some Bannerlord factions like Sturgia are already designed as if boats were in the game; Sturgia's territory is cut in half, making it difficult for them to efficiently move their forces around.
  • Ambush attacks: This added further immersion and strategy to overworld combat, and would be a great use for the Scouting, Tactics and Roguery skill trees.
  • Hunting boar and deer: A fun diversion, and another way for the player to find food while on campaign, or make money, or gain relation with other lords by going out hunting together during a feast. Sneak up on the boar, and then either catch it before it escapes, or kill it before it gores you!
  • Minigames: Working as a farmer, miner, or lumberjack, which added a way of making money that wasn't just fighting or trading.
  • Setting camp: In VC, your camp could provide basic fortifications if you were attacked in the field, and also provided a morale bonus for resting.
  • Dog companion: A doggo friend who could even help in battle. This was teased for Bannerlord literally 5 years ago, and is unused in game files, but hasn't been mentioned since.
  • Robbing lords: You could take good equipment from captive lords for a large relationship penalty.
  • Custom start, custom end goals: You could choose to start as a king/noble to skip the earlygame grind, and you could set smaller victory goals such as making a certain amount of money or being a powerful warlord. This allowed the player more roleplaying freedom in choosing their own path, rather than the current endgame which is always to become a lord, start a family, and own all the cities.
I can add in dialogue with other lords, the current dialogue with lords is sort of empty. You can't really talk to them about them at all. Kinda Sad
 
Concerning the custom start, this is something we can do pretty easily if activating cheats. You need to invest about 10-15 min to prepare everything. Not as suitable as it was in VC but take into account that we are able to do it if you miss a lot this feature.

I have started a new campaign as NE vassal, having Argoron as my initial fiefs. I am having a lot of fun currently stopping the Khuzaits snowballing before it happens. I have started as clan tier 2 with only 5000 denars and 0 influence, to make it more challenging, and avoiding any possible temptation to load a save game after a defeat.

Concerning the main opinion, I am really missing Manhunters and deserters on the map. These are not great features but give a lot of life to the campaign map.
 
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Concerning the main opinion, I am really missing Manhunters and deserters on the map. These are not great features but give a lot of life to the campaign map.
Agreed. Like a lot of things on that list they don't seem big but actually do make a difference when they're constantly on the world map. The world map feels less alive when the only things you ever see are lord parties, caravans, and looters, looters, looters, looters, looters...
 
Agreed. Like a lot of things on that list they don't seem big but actually do make a difference when they're constantly on the world map. The world map feels less alive when the only things you ever see are lord parties, caravans, and looters, looters, looters, looters, looters...
It's in the code, but broken and not used, for towns and castles to hire parties from their militias to go out and hunt the looters when they get too high.
TW is obviously doing a ton of revisement to their code since the major breaks to the mods have been them literally changing/deleting functions and even entire classes. But we are now getting things such as prisoner rescues and keep battles, both which were in previous forms of the game, so its obvious they are working to add stuff back in.
 
The problem with any list like this is the complete and utter dismissal of features that were replaced in other ways.

You no longer can Help decide where the army goes on campaign like in Warband.

But with the new influence system, this what determines how much sway you have to just call up lords and their men to join you on campaign. The more influence you have, the more you’re able to influence.

There is a huge difference between “feature lacking” and “implemented differently”.

At the time of posting, over a third of the bullet points in the OP fell into this category. Now, skimming through quickly, we’re talking over 60% are either in game or an adjacent feature is in game (board games vs jobs as a side distraction/extra way to earn money)

But this is par for the course at this stage.
 
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