SP - General Battle Atmosphere

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NOTE: This a copy from my old post. Some of these points still stand.

One the crucial points of improvement that I personally am expecting from Bannerlord is the battle atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, alot has been done, and by far, it is better than Warband at this point. However, I do believe that there are things that can still be added/changed to make it more immersive, breath taking, raw, full of emotions, chaotic. The sheer size of the battles, graphical upgrades, sound upgrades and numerous small ones already make a great deal to the atmosphere.

Please do note, my vision of the battle atmosphere may not (most likely not) reflect actual, realistic battle atmosphere, and is more influenced by movies, series and other games. That being said, the idea is not to try to turn into a "movie" game, rather bring some fitting elements that the game could benefit from, especially at this point.

This list is no particular order, rather just what came in my mind first.

Game of Thrones. The battle of Bastards.
By far one of the greatest battle scenes in tv history.
Let's dive into it.


More voice types.
Note the first charge of the Northerners. The sheer amount of different people create a very varied base of different voices and sounds on the battlefield. I believe a larger base of voices for the game would do much good, but obviously, the real question is what is enough. But understandably, if you have 1000 troops on the battlefield, and only have few voice types to begin with, it will very quickly sound bit silly/dull/repetitive when you hear the same sounds all over again, repeated by 1000 troops.


Horses
The impact of the horses are very notable, and they should be. Horses have gotten an upgrade in Bannerlord, and the new animations do a lot of justice. I do hope however, that horses will take damage/fall/die when they hit something at full speed, as currently, it does work a bit silly. They are big animals, and they have a huge impact where ever they go.

Battle sounds
Giving an "umff" to certain sounds can also be beneficial, instead of very dry ones. Obviously, the point of what is realistic and what is not will be of subject at this point.


Kindom of Heaven

Alot of great scenes.

Shield sounds
To me, these are a good reference.

Horse sounds
We can clearly hear more varied horse sounds, some of which id like to hear in the game as well.


Alexander the Great

Arrows
Love the arrow sounds. Makes them sound scary.

Spears/pikes
Make note. Spears and pikes are effective against cavalry. I really hope to see the change in-game aswell. Cavalry must be afraid of spears and try not to make a full frontal charge against them.


Other notes

Banners, banners, banners.
I don't believe they were taken away completely. I really do hope so atleast. Please don't take them away. They really did at so much more into the atmosphere.

Battle stretches
What I mean by this is that the fighting will stretch along, instead of being in one big plot. That was a major issue in the previous titles. However, I have seen much improvement, but it still seems to be there somewhat according to some videos.

AI
A lot of things tie down to this one thing. AI. It's crucial. It's extremely crucial. It determines how the player sees and feels the battle. If AI acts stupid, the enemy possesses no danger whatsoever, what's the point in battles instead of simulating them? I can't stress this enough, good AI can and will do wonders. Without doubt, it will take a lot of work to be done in a way that it behaves as it should, but the time invested will pay back with smiles and thanks from the fans.
 
The lack of sound is one of the things i noticed right away, two 500 people strong armies running one against the other with no sound at all is just...weird. I love your suggestions. I want to hear soldier scream when they rush agaisnt each ther, some shield clashing, some yelling and war cries, horses and all that.
About banners, when starting a custom battle with the Aserai, my character started with a beautiful banner in his hands, but it disappeared after a minute.
 
All of these are good points, lots of us from Warband are used to armies just mindlessly charging at each other. But it would be nice to implement real battle strategies like Roman triple axis and split apart the units more to prolong battles and have organized charges.

Sound design has the most potential by far as everything sounds a lot more crisp. Just adding more variety would be better like you said.
 
One note on the horses, they are, if anything, a little weak compared to what they should be given the state of the game. You mention that spears and pikes are effective as shown in the scene from Gladiator but I want to make a note here that in the game an unarmored horse hitting a spear basically dies, and if it doesn't it really only takes about another jab or an arrow to take it down. The thing people seem to complain about with the cavalry is the heavy cav because they just rush in and smash things, which is actually precisely what they are supposed to do and is precisely what they did in real life. That heavy armor kept the horse alive and the heavy armor of the rider kept him alive so the only real way to bring down heavy knights like that in a charge were traps, such as the Frisian horse, or other guerilla warfare type traps that could be hidden then raised immediately when the cavalry got too close. The biggest thing I think that needs to be noted is that if you want the cavalry to just "die" on contact with the spears because they are so heavy then there needs to be a damage mechanic where any troops hit by the corpse of the horse also take damage and/or are knocked down, which is what would really happen if you managed to instantly kill a horse in full charge.

Other than that note though it sounds good, I haven't really noticed a problem with the men screaming in battle but that may be due to my battle sizes, I tend to play on 1,000 man battles and the din of screaming men and clashing arms makes for a cacaphony of death while you strive back and forth in the shield wall.
 
+1 +1 +1
I strongly agree with the banner, the game has clothe simulation it would be nice to have them as option on our lance, and i would add standard and standard bearer amongst the troop, i like to play without ui during battle, and having them would be neat, having a bonus/malus on morale for troops attached to a standard bearer would be great too :smile:
 
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