Be a soldier: a new mode taleworld never has

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That's very fair presented I think. A thing related to this is the sort of liner progression of the game, you get in you grabbing power, and you obtained power, becoming powerful. It's abit too simple only a journey to power imo.

They already established that? Well I am kinda hijacking the topic, it might just be in this thread. Sorry for that, just trying to throw some rough bricks.

One thing I like about this kind of way of life is that it provides another option and make you feel more in the game, as you are standing close to the fundamentals of the world. It feels like a good idea without good applications. Like if only as a early game option then sure it feels like not a necessity.
True, its not a necessity. Just a different path to the same destination (absolute power)

I really love the roleplaying aspect of it and with advanced enough AI it could be a really fascinating experience.

The quality of the AI can totally make or break the experience. I thought that Bannerlord AI would be leagues ahead of warband with utilisation of formations by AI, smart leaders who used the terrain and used better tactics.

But they did nothing of the sort so even if they did magically implement the Freelance feature now, the stupidity of the AI would sap the fun out of it because how can you be immersed in battle if everyone acts like a retard?

Imagine being a soldier but in battle you truly feel like you are a part of an autonomous (doesn't need your guidance to make sensible decisions), living army that uses functional tactics and adapts to their opponents moves. Imagine if the AI could be smart enough to actually impress you with their tactics.

Like watching a HistoryMArch video but you are a soldier in that moment and you are one of the soldiers taking the orders as part of your unit.

FYI:
HistoryMarch is a YouTube channel which presents ancient wars and battles in an animated form, using the appropriate historical texts covering those events as the source. They essentially bring the warfare strategies and battles to life.

One of their videos:

No open word, sandbox game set in antiquity has been able to offer me such an experience, and I believe through the use of modern AI (e.g. OpenAI) and Machine Learning my dream can be actualised.

Here is a nice video exploring these innovations:



But I had been hoping that TW could possibly develop AI advanced enough to give the illusion of such competence. That's all.

Obviously Warband AI, even with mods was not advanced enough.

If only Bannerlord AI would have been more refined and ironed out, units more cohesive, commanders more measured and thoughtful, formations being better fit for the situation/varied and maintaining their shape better... just much more sophisticated than what it is now. That would be enough.

But this is an incredibly niche dream which I know is not what most fans are looking for, I guess i'm still yet to find a game that can truly provide such an experience. Hopefully something comes up before I die lol. Total war AI is one of the best from a commanding perspective but the games combat design is different to the TW formula which is what I prefer, where you are in the thick of it if you catch my drift and you are your own person outside of battle rather that a whole nation.

TLDR:
Went on a ludicrous tangent my bad. But essentially my hopes are for someone to make a revolutionary mod that overhauls the AI which would work really well with a fight as a soldier mod and general gameplay. I will be really happy once the AI becomes much more competent at using battle tactics, formations and takes into consideration the terrain and relative enemy unit type and numbers. (doesn't need to be perfect, just much better than now)
 
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It's a bad idea anyway and I hope people stop liking Freelancer (:iamamoron:) and take command responsibility. This is not a FPS, go play multiplayer if you want to be a stupid bannergrunt.
There are lot of people asking for this feature. Including myself. If you don't like it, go be a lord and take charge. Maybe I just want to be soldier. Maybe I'm bored to take charge. Why do you care?
 
There are lot of people asking for this feature. Including myself. If you don't like it, go be a lord and take charge. Maybe I just want to be soldier. Maybe I'm bored to take charge. Why do you care?
+1

I guess most players don´t want this feature because they want to be a soldier all game but it would be another option for the early-mid game.

I would prefer beeing a soldier instead of chasing looters or searching for the same quest I can repeat over and over forever.
 
There are lot of people asking for this feature. Including myself. If you don't like it, go be a lord and take charge. Maybe I just want to be soldier. Maybe I'm bored to take charge. Why do you care?
You are playing the game in a wrong way and have to be corrected. It's like eating a pizza, but you are only eating the pineapple and throwing away the rest. Stop eating the pineapple! And why are you eating a pineapple pizza anyway? Disgusting.

Really?! Well... hopefully, within our lifetimes, we'll be living the dream. :grin:
It's too complex to make a good tactical AI that wouldn't fall for some stupid exploit or another. I would expect formation AI mods to be at about the Warband mod level. Not great, not terrible.
 
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A good freelancer mod for Bannerlord would definitely need to be expanded upon, and not just be a carbon copy of the original Warband mod. As much as I love the idea of starting as a follower and working your way to the top, I found the Freelancer mod to be incredibly stale from the lack of events outside of battles and sieges. I believe that the mod Aut Caesar Aut Nihil for Warband would be the best example to follow for a good Freelancer experience.

It basically has:
- A unique rank up system that uses "progress points" instead of experience to rank up, which can be obtained through different ways that I will mention.
- Daily Trainings, Hunting, and Patrolling (could either go smoothly or be ambushed) are options through which you can passively earn progress points.
- Moral decisions that will either improve your reputation or give you progress points at the expense of losing reputation. Ex: Prevent fellow soldiers from pillaging a village or join them.
- Unique interactions with other soldiers that will either make you gain or lose progress points. Ex: Fistfight with some random drunk or snitching on a sleeping sentry.
- Once you reach a certain rank, you have the opportunity to command a certain amount of soldiers in battle. This could be tied in with the Sergeant system in Bannerlord.
- The opportunity to be recommended by your commander into elite divisions, such as Praetorian Guard. For a medieval setting, this could be the equivalent of joining the king's retinue. Similar to the Praetorian Guard experience in the mod, the player would be given a greater insight and involvement in the political realm as they carry out the duties of the king.
 
You are playing the game in a wrong way and have to be corrected. It's like eating a pizza, but you are only eating the pineapple and throwing away the rest. Stop eating the pineapple! And why are you eating a pineapple pizza anyway? Disgusting.


It's too complex to make a good tactical AI that wouldn't fall for some stupid exploit or another. I would expect formation AI mods to be at about the Warband mod level. Not great, not terrible.
To be honest, I will try to believe what you are saying is irony. It just like troll.
 
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You are playing the game in a wrong way and have to be corrected. It's like eating a pizza, but you are only eating the pineapple and throwing away the rest. Stop eating the pineapple! And why are you eating a pineapple pizza anyway? Disgusting.


It's too complex to make a good tactical AI that wouldn't fall for some stupid exploit or another. I would expect formation AI mods to be at about the Warband mod level. Not great, not terrible.
We still eat the whole pizza, we just want an extra flavour added. XD

"It's too complex to make a good tactical AI that wouldn't fall for some stupid exploit or another. I would expect formation AI mods to be at about the Warband mod level. Not great, not terrible."

Total war AI is good but can still fall for exploits that's not really what I'm talking about, my desire for Bannerlord was for there to have been noticeable improvements from warband.

What I am looking for is good illusion of competence due to refined fundamentals, so comprehensively better AI. If a modder can make BL AI better than Warband Ai that would be great, if they make it at warband level that is still better than now so that would be alright, just not revolutionary.

My dream is another thing entirely, truly, only Machine learning combined with modern AI can potentially succeed in making it possible because it would be incredibly sophisticated. I'm not expecting TW or any modder to meet that standard. But I do hope that TW has a health dose of curiosity about modern AI and Machine learning - maybe one day they will dabble with these innovations because they apparently work very well in open world environments. The infrastructure in TW games would be conducive for testing and experimentation. (at least certainly the battle aspect)

So yea just want to make myself extra clear, I'm not expecting TW or any modder to improve the Bannerlord AI to a high enough standard to actualise my dream any time soon. That would be insane. :smile:
 
A good freelancer mod for Bannerlord would definitely need to be expanded upon, and not just be a carbon copy of the original Warband mod. As much as I love the idea of starting as a follower and working your way to the top, I found the Freelancer mod to be incredibly stale from the lack of events outside of battles and sieges. I believe that the mod Aut Caesar Aut Nihil for Warband would be the best example to follow for a good Freelancer experience.

It basically has:
- A unique rank up system that uses "progress points" instead of experience to rank up, which can be obtained through different ways that I will mention.
- Daily Trainings, Hunting, and Patrolling (could either go smoothly or be ambushed) are options through which you can passively earn progress points.
- Moral decisions that will either improve your reputation or give you progress points at the expense of losing reputation. Ex: Prevent fellow soldiers from pillaging a village or join them.
- Unique interactions with other soldiers that will either make you gain or lose progress points. Ex: Fistfight with some random drunk or snitching on a sleeping sentry.
- Once you reach a certain rank, you have the opportunity to command a certain amount of soldiers in battle. This could be tied in with the Sergeant system in Bannerlord.
- The opportunity to be recommended by your commander into elite divisions, such as Praetorian Guard. For a medieval setting, this could be the equivalent of joining the king's retinue. Similar to the Praetorian Guard experience in the mod, the player would be given a greater insight and involvement in the political realm as they carry out the duties of the king.
Very good points, I totally agree.
 
To be honest, I will try to believe what you are saying is irony. It just like troll.
I feel like he is playfully reprimanding us for our tastes. But isn't completely disapproving of them, like he can understand where we are coming from at least a little bit.

Don't know why I have this gut feeling though, I suspect his profile picture has something to do with it and the tone of his responses. :unsure:

I'm probably like totally wrong and he thinks we are scum. ?
 
I feel like he is playfully reprimanding us for our tastes. But isn't completely disapproving of them, like he can understand where we are coming from at least a little bit.

Don't know why I have this gut feeling though, I suspect his profile picture has something to do with it and the tone of his responses. :unsure:
Very perceptive on all counts, I'm just messing with people. I don't even own or play the game, to max my trolling level.
Play the game as you like and hope the game/mod design supports your playstyle as far as you want to take it. Ideally you should be able to win the game with your soldier playstyle only (=special victory conditions) without needing to resign and start over just because there's only one (tedious) way to win.
 
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Very perceptive on all counts, I'm just messing with people. I don't even own or play the game, to max my trolling level.
Play the game as you like and hope the game/mod design supports your playstyle as far as you want to take it. Ideally you should be able to win the game with your soldier playstyle only (=special victory conditions) without needing to resign and start over just because there's only one (tedious) way to win.
 
This is what the Freelancer Mod from Warband did. Honestly I am completely shocked it wasn't added as a feature for Bannerlord considering how popular it was in Warband. There is a similar mod on the Nexus but they don't have it working as seamlessly as they had it working in Warband and it appears there might be a few bugs a well. Not sure if this is because the modder isn't sure how to get it to work like Freelancer or if it is a game engine limitation or even if no one skilled is actually working on adding a mod for this until the game is released. So many modders have abandoned their modding efforts due to the frequent patches that it is actually getting hard to find decent mods for the game.
 
This is what the Freelancer Mod from Warband did. Honestly I am completely shocked it wasn't added as a feature for Bannerlord considering how popular it was in Warband. There is a similar mod on the Nexus but they don't have it working as seamlessly as they had it working in Warband and it appears there might be a few bugs a well. Not sure if this is because the modder isn't sure how to get it to work like Freelancer or if it is a game engine limitation or even if no one skilled is actually working on adding a mod for this until the game is released. So many modders have abandoned their modding efforts due to the frequent patches that it is actually getting hard to find decent mods for the game.
Thanks for mentioning the mod, I was not aware of it. I found it on Nexus and will test it out, from reading the posts I gathered that it does have quite a few bugs (as you correctly stated) so for anyone wanting to get it you have been forewarned.

link to mod for anyone curious: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2632?tab=files
 
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You are most unwise to call out those pure of gameplay, for they will strike you down like a looter with a rock.
Here's a last offer for you, take it or leave it.
The Freelancer mode is tolerable under two conditions:
- You are not lead hiking or fighting hopeless battles by a braindead lord AI - it's best if the lord that commands you has a special AI that makes him do a variety of things (if possible also steered with your input as you get ranks)
- You should not play as soldier for too long, the Freelancer mode should look like a long tutorial gently introducing you to fighting and the game in general, so you can assume command of your party more naturally, to paraphrase you. So, no design support for playing as Freelancer far into the midgame.

Also, as BG pointed out, you live in a wrong timeline. The parallel universe you want to live in split from this one some time ago.
You know I have never understood this kind of thinking.

Bannerlord, like Warband, is largely a single player experience at least as far as anything that would be effected with something like a Freelancer mod or feature. At the end of the day is it kind of up to the individual player to determine what is a good experience for them. If you wanted to do an entire 100+ hour play through in Warband as a "Freelancer" why is that an issue?

It is kind of like me when I play. I generally always have my damage turned down to 1/3 because my roleplay is that I am just that strong of a fighter, generally I have my army and my allies at 2/3 damage because I roleplay that I am a military genius that almost never loses a fight. I don't like dealing with castle and town management where I am running out of food and such so I have mods that make it so I don't have to. Finally, tend to modify skills like say leadership, because I think it is silly to only have like 20 leadership after I have been leading an mercenary band of 100+ soldiers around for 300 days simply because I can't call allies into an army to get leadship XP. Some would say this is cheating but since it effects no one else expect me and it gives me an gaming experience I enjoy enough to have played over 300+ hours in Bannerlord so far, I dont' care what others think.

As for the Freelancer mod, I used to love it from a roleplay perspective. I mean it is much more likely that some who has spent time as a soldier would actually use that experience and the contacts he made in the army to start up his own mercenary band than it would for some poor destitute man, wearing rags and wielding a rusty weapon to have the ability to rouse some random villager, with no military experience, to pick up his pitchfork and join him fighting battles and wars. Honestly I have never liked the start of either Warband or Bannerlord, well no start that was a Mod that had Freelancer added.
 
You know I have never understood this kind of thinking.
Let me explain.
I learned from experience that, indeed, you should let others enjoy the game as they want to play it. (Although your kind of roleplaying verges on cheating, therefore avoiding the challenge set by the game designers. But Bannerlord is not balanced at this point, so things like avoiding tedious grinding of skills is justified.)
My objection to a soldiering run is mainly psychological. I assume that whoever wants to play like this, really wants a medieval CoD where you can run around happily killing people, avoiding the responsibilities of command. This motivation is immature from my point of view and that's what makes it reprehensible. I assume that a mature adult would take responsibility and enjoy having more control over his playing experience, picking their own battles and making their own choices, instead of being shuttled to battles beyond their control.
So what I really want to say is: stop being ****ing children and embrace adulthood. Also, get off my lawn.
While immaturity may not be the real motivation of some players, who merely want a more casual experience, I suspect it is still the case for many. So that's my beef with it.
My dream is another thing entirely, truly, only Machine learning combined with modern AI can potentially succeed in making it possible because it would be incredibly sophisticated. I'm not expecting TW or any modder to meet that standard. But I do hope that TW has a health dose of curiosity about modern AI and Machine learning - maybe one day they will dabble with these innovations because they apparently work very well in open world environments. The infrastructure in TW games would be conducive for testing and experimentation. (at least certainly the battle aspect)

So yea just want to make myself extra clear, I'm not expecting TW or any modder to improve the Bannerlord AI to a high enough standard to actualise my dream any time soon. That would be insane. :smile:
This is interesting thinking about machine learning, but just shuttling the data around may be the biggest problem, apart from any other performance hits.
If the ML data is in a cloud somewhere, each playing session would start with downloading the latest data and end with uploading some. I'm not sure how many players are willing to put up with this or even want an AI that may well beat them most of the time (which explains why game designers are not making better AI their priority).
The best use may be during development - you put up the AI against hotshot beta testers and see it adapt, then can this knowledge into the released game.
It's how it was done in the old days manually - Sid Meier would release the latest beta to Brian Reynolds (the local hotshot), who would find a way to beat it. Then Meier would review the battle strategy, find a counter and code it into the AI.
Imagine Taleworlds doing something like this. Sadly, I can't. But motivated modders can do it IF the game has enough players when it's done. Small audiences attract fewer modders, so it's indirectly still up to Taleworlds to enlarge the player base so more quality mods, including tactical AI mods, will be made.
 
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Machine learning is a job that required much computing resources that most players's machine can not handle. And there is no game can use machine learning to improve AI now. But it is interesting may be possible in the next 10 years.
 
Let me explain.
I learned from experience that, indeed, you should let others enjoy the game as they want to play it. (Although your kind of roleplaying verges on cheating, therefore avoiding the challenge set by the game designers. But Bannerlord is not balanced at this point, so things like avoiding tedious grinding of skills is justified.)
My objection to a soldiering run is mainly psychological. I assume that whoever wants to play like this, really wants a medieval CoD where you can run around happily killing people, avoiding the responsibilities of command. This motivation is immature from my point of view and that's what makes it reprehensible. I assume that a mature adult would take responsibility and enjoy having more control over his playing experience, picking their own battles and making their own choices, instead of being shuttled to battles beyond their control.
So what I really want to say is: stop being ****ing children and embrace adulthood. Also, get off my lawn.
While immaturity may not be the real motivation of some players, who merely want a more casual experience, I suspect it is still the case for many. So that's my beef with it.

This is interesting thinking about machine learning, but just shuttling the data around may be the biggest problem, apart from any other performance hits.
If the ML data is in a cloud somewhere, each playing session would start with downloading the latest data and end with uploading some. I'm not sure how many players are willing to put up with this or even want an AI that may well beat them most of the time (which explains why game designers are not making better AI their priority).
The best use may be during development - you put up the AI against hotshot beta testers and see it adapt, then can this knowledge into the released game.
It's how it was done in the old days manually - Sid Meier would release the latest beta to Brian Reynolds (the local hotshot), who would find a way to beat it. Then Meier would review the battle strategy, find a counter and code it into the AI.
Imagine Taleworlds doing something like this. Sadly, I can't. But motivated modders can do it IF the game has enough players when it's done. Small audiences attract fewer modders, so it's indirectly still up to Taleworlds to enlarge the player base so more quality mods, including tactical AI mods, will be made.
"The best use may be during development - you put up the AI against hotshot beta testers and see it adapt, then can this knowledge into the released game."

Exactly what I had in mind. I agree with your response as a whole there's certainly going to be a plethora of technical challenges to overcome.

As for the possibility of the AI being too strong I would hope there would be methods to reducing the tactical AI's difficulty because near-unbeatable AI would certainly put off almost everyone and rightfully so.

Maybe during development they could develop different variants of the AI each some of which have received lots of training and other variants training to a lesser degree then judge themselves which one would be most balanced and fitting to use in the main game. (idk if this is possible really, but nevertheless I'm sure that something could be worked out especially as machine learning technology continues to be further researched)
 
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