I see a lot of complain about last hotfix but i don't see any Bug report on Customer Support forum exept one from @Lesbosisles, can the people who spotted/have issue do it so this is on top of the list when they come back to work tomorrow ? (Can't play currently otherwise i would do it)
Thanks Patwick - have logged a new thread under Customer Support regarding the diplomacy issue, titled 'AI only declares war against whichever faction the player has joined'.
Silver lining: it just occurred to me that the broken diplomacy of 1.4.1 (specifically, AI factions staying locked in their original wars indefinitely, barring any player intervention) provides precise insights into each faction's relative capabilities against a single neighbour. Having a safe border (as Vlandia and Khuzait do, on the edges of the map) is immaterial: every border is safe apart from the sole warfront prescribed by the game's starting conditions. These are: Khuzait vs Northern Empire, Vlandia vs Sturgia, Battania vs Western Empire, Aserai vs Southern Empire.
The fact that Northern Empire borders with Sturgia, Battania, Western Empire, Southern Empire, Khuzait does not matter. They will only be fighting Khuzait, and lose, 1v1. If anyone has a fresh 1.4.1 playthrough where Northern Empire does not get rolled by Khuzait, I'd be interested to hear it (in fact, I expect in most instances that Northern Empire will be the first faction to die out from just this 1v1).
The fact that Sturgia could struggle to reinforce far-away Tyal against Khuzait, horrible geography and travel times, etc, is mostly irrelevant in 1.4.1. They will only ever be fighting over the Varcheg/Omor region, to hold off Vlandia, their locked foe - and they will lose. Again, if anyone sees a playthrough in 1.4.1 where Sturgia doesn't falter in their 1v1 against Vlandia, I'd be surprised - please, share.
Aserai vs Southern Empire appears evenly matched, very slightly favouring Southern Empire.
Battania vs Western Empire appears evenly matched.
None of this will come as a shock to anyone who's been playing the game for a while, but Khuzait is far too strong. I wouldn't say Northern Empire is necessarily weak: the other Emps have the same troops and manage just fine against a single foe. Either Vlandia is too strong, or Sturgia is too weak; perhaps a bit of both but I'm inclined to blame Sturgia's infantry focus and lack of cultural campaign mobility to offset it. Importantly: these outcomes do not stem from factions being surrounded, or war-crazed leader AI (Raganvad can't get dogpiled in 1.4.1 unless you join Sturgia).
Some modest proportion of the game's snowballing woes since launch could perhaps be attributed to starting conditions that give Vlandia and Khuzait free land to nibble on from their comparatively weaker starting rivals. Those early wins go on to dictate the tempo of the entire game, with Vlandia and Khuzait building on early victories (more wealth, more fiefs, higher tier armies). Perhaps the next beta branch should include targeted nerfs to Khuzait campaign performance (e.g. reduce the campaign movement speed on cavalry from 10% to 2%), and buffs to Sturgia's (giving them their culture bonus, so they can successfully pick their batles at least on home turf, might be enough on its own).
This is going to be a very lengthy post which will cover numerous topics, but it is my hope to provide useful information and ideas to not only the developers but the community at large. I apologize in advance if this post reply would be better-served in a different section of the forum, but I felt it to be best here since I am currently using the beta branch. I have taken the time to read through each post on this thread, so I am quite aware of what is happening at the current time of writing. I would appreciate feedback of any constructive kind, so let's get started.
-Introduction-
I am on my first play-through, am currently at level 23 on day 1664, and I am playing on the easiest difficulty with a little over 200 hours. I have played through the story and formed my own kingdom and am now clan tier 6. I have a single mod, which is the Defection Overhaul mod that prevents vassals from leaving the kingdom randomly and instead creates a reputation-based system for doing so. I will spend a bit of time discussing this mod and my settings; if this is not of interest to you, skip to the Moving On portion.
I have found this mod to be absolutely essential, as without it the vassals would leave the kingdom and take their fiefs with them. Since it is essentially impossible to give yourself every fiefdom to yourself, this posed an enormous problem, hence using this mod. To the developers, please be aware that in its current state, it is impossible to build an empire which is lasting without this. It is worth following this mod's logic, and I will summarize my settings here. I believe these to be "fair" settings for defection. In recruiting vassals, they (more often than not) come from factions which you are or have been at war with at some point, and they generally do not like you. As such, all vassal relations are at minimum some negative value based on their honor. Here are the settings that I use and believe are a good base-line. I have had just one lord leave due to poor reputation with their clan.
Player's Kingdom - Minimum Leader Relation with Player
Defection: -50
Leave: -30
Leave as Mercenary: -40
These are the base-line relations (Honor 0). I believe that defection to another faction should take significantly less reputation than simply leaving, and paid mercenaries should leave less often than non-paid others.
In case this is slightly confusing, the formula for each of these is this:
Defection, Leave, Leave as Mercenary = Base - 10*Honor
(Ex. 1: for Deceitful defection, it is -50 - 10(-2) = -30)
(Ex. 2: for Honorable leave, it is -30 - 10(2) = -50)
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-Moving on-
With the mod discussion out of the way, I would now like to turn attention to core game-play. With the latest beta patch, I have noticed far greater stability in the level of faction chaos in terms of war-mongering. Prior to the beta, I was constantly fighting battles. On easy, this is doable, but on realistic I cannot imagine this being sustainable. It took quite a bit of time, but finally
the three empires were destroyed
and all that were left were the Vlandians (Strength 23,000), the Khuzait (Strength 11,000), and my own kingdom (Strength 8,000). These numbers are before the latest beta patch of beta e1.4.1 hotfix on 30/05/20. I am unsure of the corresponding strengths after the beta branch was applied; however just before applying the beta, I had noticed these (rough) changes: Vlandians (Strength 15,000 --> Strength 45,000), Khuzait (Strength 10,000 --> Strength 30,000), and my own kingdom (Strength 15,000 --> Strength 45,000). As you can see, all strengths went up by roughly a factor of three. I am unsure of the exact values, but these are close approximations.
As I said, the stability in the level of faction chaos has been significantly increased. Prior to the beta, I had a constant stream of 3-5 armies roaming around and doing their thing (albeit quite randomly). However, immediately after patching to beta, I noticed something which startled me a bit: All of my armies disappeared. For a few weeks in-game, this was the case. I thought something was seriously wrong, but I also noticed that the number of sieges from all factions had dropped to near-zero, and began to think maybe all army creation was bugged (perhaps due to the mod I use). Then something happened: a siege occurred in one of my cities or castles, and an army formed near it to defend. What I can say is this: it appears that armies now form in a reactionary way instead of random. Your vassals wait to form armies so that your troops can be more mobile, and they also form armies to attack fairly nearby settlements instead of whatever they choose. This did not exactly happen before applying this beta branch.
Following this post by Dean Beecham I spent two years in the game doing nothing, and I observed the exact same results. My kingdom was still standing solid. This actually blew my mind, since before this beta, my kingdom would have suffered greatly if I stepped out for even a single year, let alone two. I have to seriously commend the developers here for slowing the rate of battles and sieges down. It is great to be able to have glorious battles, but the constancy of them was getting very draining. Now I am able to actually play strategically and methodically as a kingdom ruler instead of having to run back and forth between battles, sieges, and back-caps which were all-too-frequent.
As of the writing of this post, things in my kingdom are stable for the first time. People are saying that peace declarations do not occur, but I have had them occur several times, but they are indeed rare. I must be fortunate, as I have yet to have my vassals declare war yet. Instead, I have had war simply declared on me (indeed, randomly), but the peace/war system appears to be working to an acceptable level. However, there is a serious bug with it, and I will discuss that now.
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-MAJOR BUGS-
Accepting peace while besieging a settlement:
This one has forced me to revert saves on numerous occasions. If you are besieging any settlement (and possibly raiding, though I have not had this happen) and a peace declaration appears, clicking on this and accepting the peace will cause the UI to stall out. Upon returning to the world map, the UI for settlements appears but with all text options absent on the left-hand panel. There is no option to leave, and the user must reload to a previous save before the peace offer occurs. That is a bug in itself, but it presents a larger issue: the peace offer will not likely occur again. So, if the user accepts this (rare) peace, they are out of luck if they do so while besieging a settlement. To avoid this bug, stop the siege before accepting, and everything will work as intended.
Siege towers still do not work in an optimal way:
I know this is well-documented at this point, but I want to spend some time on this. From my observations I have noticed one key thing, and that is the AI appears to be trying to use the ladder on the far right of the tower first, and then trying to use the others. I can understand this from a coder's perspective. We want to check if the "first" ladder is being used, and then proceed to use the others. The reason this causes problems is that it appears all of the AI are "ticking" at the same time as soon as a spot on the first ladder opens up, and so they all rush towards that spot, even if they were just about to get onto a new ladder. I can see a few ways to fix this, assuming this is indeed the problem, but the primary solution I have would be to lock in the AI to the next ladder once they saw the ladder is full. They are prevented from checking the previous ladders once they are locked in.
For example, suppose we have the six AI soldiers attempting to climb a ladder. At the first tick, all see the first ladder is available (all soldiers assigned 1), and would normally rush to climb it. The problem is that they would push each other out of the way. Instead, pick the closest soldier and have him/her climb it, and all remaining soldiers see the first ladder is full and will see it as full until the third ladder is also full. Now, all remaining soldiers are assigned 2 and would rush to climb the second ladder, so instead choose the closest soldier once more and give them this spot. Now the soldiers see the first two ladders are full, and the same logic is applied to allow the closest soldier to the third ladder to climb it, and the process repeats. The key here is to prevent the AI from constantly checking to see if the first ladder is occupied because that seems to be where the AI keeps piling up. Again, I don't know for certain if this is the issue, but it seems to be from close inspection and numerous sieges performed.
Formations are "bugged"
I put bugged in quotations because I can understand why the game logic is working this way, and there is a way around it. Essentially, having any cavalry in an infantry formation will cause that formation to attempt a cavalry level of spacing. This makes shield walls, etc. extremely ineffective and outright impossible. The AI will attempt to space out considerably and such formations are doomed. To avoid this bug have your troops dismount (F5 by default) before moving them into a specific formation. I have not had this method fail me since hearing about this solution from someone else (sorry, I forget who it was, but thank you random internet stranger!)
Perks/Attributes are mostly broken
Again, I know this is well-documented, but I have to mention it because it is so crucial. I can understand that a few of them won't work, but such a vast array of them seem to be inactive that I don't even know what to trust right now. I just assume none of them work except for the ones which clearly do. The two which are absolutely essential are being able to set up battle plans before the battle (deploy troops etc.) and being able to use any bow on horseback. I am seriously disappointed that these two do not work, but I trust that they are high on the developer's list and will leave it at that.
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-MINOR BUGS-
Siege engine icons are not showing properly
As the title suggests, not all siege engine icons display properly. Their locations can still be interacted with, however, so it is possible to build as normal.
Many chairs/benches/stools are bugged
It is often an endless loop of attempting to sit down. I have noticed this in many areas, most notably within keeps. To avoid this bug talk to a nearby NPC (repeat if this does not work immediately).
Certain in-game games are bugged
I am sure that this is documented elsewhere, but I am unable to complete a game of at least MuTorere in at least the keep in the city of Myzea. I have not tested other games or in other locations. I will do so and either update this post and/or make formal reports
Strange walking bug/glitch
This one, while hilarious, is quite strange. In at least the keep in the city of Myzea, it is possible to cause the AI to "bug out" when attempting to play a game of Mu Torere, and perhaps other games. To activate the bug, simply ask one NPC to play a game (you have to find one which will say yes), and then wait for that NPC to go and sit down at the game table. Then, tell them you're done and they will not get up and leave (some might, but I have not had them get up to leave). Now, go and find another NPC and ask them to play (again, you have to find one that will say yes). They will be unable to walk to the game table and will simply stand and orient themselves as if they were to begin to walk. Finally, tell them you are not interested in playing, and they will walk at about 300-500% speed to a different location and sit down.
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-Additional Considerations and Thoughts-
Prisoners escape far too easily
There appears to be very little difference between putting your prisoners in a dungeon or leaving them in your army. I have noticed a slight difference, but it should scale with how many of your own troops are around and how many other notable prisoners there are. For example, if there is a single noble in a dungeon of a keep with 900 defenders, there should be practically zero chance that they will escape. If there are 20 notable prisoners in that same keep, there is a higher chance any one of them can escape, but still a very low chance per day. If there is one notable prisoner in a keep with 10 defenders, there is a significant chance they will escape, but still quite low. If there are 20 notable prisoners in a keep with 10 defenders, there would be a much higher chance of escape. Any prisoner in your army should have a decent chance of escape (say 1-10% per day) during night hours, and half or a third of that during the day. The same goes for keep prisoners, but those are my basic ideas here.
Changing follower Gear/Perks/Attributes
I understand the logic behind not being able to change a follower's gear/perks/attributes while they are not near you, but it should be possible to change these things if they are in the same army as you. Dismantling an entire party just to give them better gear is not ideal and creates several logistic problems for the player.
Allow friendly parties and armies to reinforce player-owned settlements
As far as I have experienced, friendly parties and armies do not currently reinforce any of my owned settlements. It is up to me to place troops in the garrison. I am not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but it is very limiting and generally not advantageous for me to own any fiefdoms. I advise that this be altered to have the AI treat my settlements like any other NPC-owned settlement.
Force nearby parties to join your army instead of auto-engaging the enemy armies
This one has been on my list of annoyances for a while now. Essentially, if I am near an enemy army and forming an army myself, nearby friendly parties will engage the army on their own instead of simply joining the army I am making. Often times, I am forced to join the fight ASAP so that the party does not get destroyed. Usually, I am waiting on a few more parties to join to achieve an optimal success in the fight, and this sort of behavior disrupts my plans of engagement.
Slowed battles and siege rates have lead to more involved sieges
This is something I have noticed with the lower battle rates, and I am finding it to be flat-out awesome. The lower battle rates mean that there are generally fewer armies and things to go defend. This means that you as a player have time to actually give full-blown sieges. Before applying the beta branch, I had to go go go! between settlements and generally did not have time to build a full siege and shred the walls. Now, it is actually worth my time to bombard the walls and crack them. As I stated earlier, two years of doing nothing led to not much of a change in my empire, and so that alone convinced me that I had time to spend besieging settlements. What this means is that you no longer have to simply rely on battering rams, siege towers, and a group of anti-siege weaponry to protect yours during a siege; you can just break the walls and charge in with a minimal force. Before the beta, I would absolutely have to bring many more men than the defender count of a settlement, but now I am able to take a long time to break the walls down and go into a siege with an entirely different mechanic. Sure, there were times before beta when I would do this, but it takes a long time to break walls (even level 1 walls take a few days). Now, I have besieged a few settlements with just 4 trebuchets and charged in.
After several sieges, here is my suggested build order for smaller assaulting armies (enemy build speed seems to increase with your assault capabilities being higher for some reason)
1) 2 trebuchets to crack enemy siege engines and hammer walls while the rest are building
2) battering ram
3) normal/fire catapult for fire rate and to hit walls a bit (keep in mind the trebs are doing work the whole time against both)
4) first siege tower
5) 1 trebuchet or a normal/fire catapult (I recommend a catapult since they tend to target either walls or siege engines in the actual siege)
6) final siege tower
If you lose any of these, build it back as soon as you are able. If you get approached by a sizeable army during the siege process, you can engage the assault if you are able and then ideally defend the settlement from behind the walls/sally out on your own time. TIP: Make sure you have plenty of food before assaulting any settlement so you can spend as long as you need to in the siege. Generally, the enemy will not have food or not enough to survive for very long (especially later on in lengthy wars).
**Potential End-game Spoiler**
I want to point out what I consider to be one of the largest issues in the end game, and I would like the developers to seriously consider changing this. When you defeat the three empires, each one you defeat falls in a way completely different to all other non-empire factions: their vassals go to other kingdoms instead of roaming the map endlessly. This sounds reasonable on paper, but here is the key problem: it allows the other empires to form armies more easily and readily. They essentially reap the benefits of your fighting, and all you really get are the settlements. These settlements will likely be captured by one of the very vassals which joined the opposition, making the gain moot. I propose that they simply move about just the same way as all other non-empire factions, or they choose to join your kingdom. Personally, I do not care which happens, but them just randomly joining the remaining factions creates extremely difficult situations for the player—none of which are enjoyable.
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Concluding remarks
Thank you to anyone who has either read this post in part or in whole. I apologize for anything which is unclear and/or posted in the wrong location. I know about formal bug reports, but I wanted to post here so certain things were more visible and to paint a picture of some of the larger issues in one place. This will also serve as a platform for me (and hopefully others) to make formal reports of the major and minor bugs. This is a fantastic game, even if it has some quirks and bugs. I think it says a lot about the community that so many are active on the forums. What I suggest is that we all have gratitude with the developers, and in general practice patience towards them and the community as the game develops. I understand that we have purchased a product and want and expect certain things, but we are all a part of this together, and we should all act appropriately and without any entitlement. This thread has been pretty good and very respectful until the developers took a bit of time for holidays and then a small group of people became quite vocal and toxic. We can and have been better than that, so let's be supportive of not only the developers and the game, but also encourage one another to be thoughtful and respectful as the community evolves alongside the game.
Thank you for your time and attention. I hope that you all stay in good health!
-Concomitant
Nice points! To add to the discussion, here are my 2 cents on Vassal Attrition.
1. Never create a scenario where there's 0% chance a vassal leaves. Even at 100 relationship, and 100 fiefs, a vassal may leave. However, the chance the vassal takes fiefs with him/her will go down the higher the relationship and the larger the power gap between the vassal and the rest of the kingdom, ie if they're strong and you're weak, they're more willing to take their fiefs with them. There are many plausible reasons someone would leave a kingdom, such as aspirations for a throne - they want to rule their own kingdom or for love or whatnot.
2. A story to explain the defection would make this mechanism feel less like a mechanism (calculated formula) and more like a storyline. "There are rumors that Muisner has left your kingdom in a fit of rage after being rejected by your daughter," "Nokan considers himself more fit as king than you and has taken his fiefs with him and declared himself the rightful ruler of the Kingdom of Do," or "Gwen is starting a family and has let you know that your penchance for war is not a fitting environment in which to raise a child. She welcomes you to come visit any time." Etc etc. If these reasons were injected into the game in its current state, such as with a mod, all of the defections wouldn't be annoying, and some would be entertaining.
3. Multiple defections by the same individual rather accurately reflect human behavior. If you've worked in companies long enough you'll know that those who quit a job and come back usually do not stay for long. They tend to be the ones who are always looking for a better deal and are willing to move to get it - they are either always unhappy where they are, or are constantly looking for a better deal immediately. However, if highly unpopular, then a modifier can be applied such as a 90% reduction in defection chance for each time that person has defected.
A bit of background:
In my experience (now have 750 hours in Bannerlord, on my 15th major run and have beat the game twice), it does not seem like there is a formula behind attrition of vassals. I can have a vassal with -20 relation and zero fiefs stay for 100 in game days. I also have had vassals where I pumped them up to 100 relation immediately and got them several fiefs leave, rejoin, and immediately leave again (this was prior to the nerf for council policy).
Overall, the game is still winnable with the current level of attrition of vassals, but it is quite challenging. I was tracking my net vassal gain for my 13th run and calculated it at net +1 vassal for 10 hours of gameplay. I would recruit around 11 vassals and lose 10. However, ALL I did was run around and try to chat up every vassal and their mother.
2. A story to explain the defection would make this mechanism feel less like a mechanism (calculated formula) and more like a storyline. "There are rumors that Muisner has left your kingdom in a fit of rage after being rejected by your daughter," "Nokan considers himself more fit as king than you and has taken his fiefs with him and declared himself the rightful ruler of the Kingdom of Do," or "Gwen is starting a family and has let you know that your penchance for war is not a fitting environment in which to raise a child. She welcomes you to come visit any time." Etc etc. If these reasons were injected into the game in its current state, such as with a mod, all of the defections wouldn't be annoying, and some would be entertaining.
Great post, I specially like the quoted part, I am a storytelling lover.
About the deffecting problem I think it's now aggravated by the change that you cannot recruit other lords while they are part of an army that is 90% of the times you get to talk to them. I'm not sure if this change came in 1.4.1 or if it was always that way but now are lots more armies due to wars... I think I remember trying to convince lords in armies before but not sure. So as vassals deffect frequently and taking lords to your kingdom is nearly impossible (based on my recent gameplays) the challenge of the game has raised more than desired, now becomes tedious and boring.
Returning to the storytelling part... I would love to see a "dethrone mechanic" it will enrich a lot the stories, If you can be elected as the new ruler after dethroning (and possibly executing) Raganvad or Derthert.
I have been playing the patch a bit longer and realized a few things. The combo of more wars and larger troop numbers (kingdoms now have 20-30% more troops than before the patch and more parties) has thrown the economy off-balance. Resources, even food, get depleted, and when 3 wars are occurring at the same time, you often have every single village being pillaged., further reducing the supply of various goods and raising their prices. While I personally love the economics of Bannerlord, with a realistic depiction of the effects of war, too much war and too many parties around the map mean that the economy tanks far too easy.
I have been playing the patch a bit longer and realized a few things. The combo of more wars and larger troop numbers (kingdoms now have 20-30% more troops than before the patch and more parties) has thrown the economy off-balance. Resources, even food, get depleted, and when 3 wars are occurring at the same time, you often have every single village being pillaged., further reducing the supply of various goods and raising their prices. While I personally love the economics of Bannerlord, with a realistic depiction of the effects of war, too much war and too many parties around the map mean that the economy tanks far too easy.
Maybe the devs should consider reducing the number of parties per mercenary faction? Currently each minor faction has 4 parties. Maybe it should be reduced to 3? What do you think? Seems to me like mercenaries are overrepresented in wars. Although they do help weaker factions out and thus slow down snowballing.
Maybe the devs should consider reducing the number of parties per mercenary faction? Currently each minor faction has 4 parties. Maybe it should be reduced to 3? What do you think? Seems to me like mercenaries are overrepresented in wars. Although they do help weaker factions out and thus slow down snowballing.
I certainly think that the number of troops on the map, which was more or less OK at 1.40, is now too big. It is not scaled to the economy and has a limited added value given that battles sizes are capped anyway. Sure, reducing the max number of parties per clan and mercenary faction would be a good approach.
Returning to the storytelling part... I would love to see a "dethrone mechanic" it will enrich a lot the stories, If you can be elected as the new ruler after dethroning (and possibly executing) Raganvad or Derthert.
Yesssss. Like if your influence becomes much higher than the ruler's it may begin to trigger supporters who will discreetly show their support. Perhaps though, one of them may be the king's agent .
I just have a question, is the issue related to Ai Kingdom not declaring war except on player faction known to the dev team (Since last Hotfix apparently) ? We discussed it here and a Thread was made on Tech support
Here you have. To reproduce the issue you just have to open the kingdom panel as mercenary and you will see how 2 wars are insta-declared (you have to play the time and wait 5 seconds or so). If you not open the Kingdom panel when playing as mercenary, then nothing happens. But if you join a faction as vassal, then new wars get declared after few seconds even if you do not open the kingdom panel.
the thing is they said they would bring the new beta this week but they still pushing out patches to fix the current beta...it feels like what he said..that they will not give us new beta this week either
What was preventing new Beta patch was the issue with too many wars i guess, now that we have daily tribute and 20 Days truce that should be ok (I guess they put back truce period so they could move on with development even if it's just temporary).
Now there might just be this issue we just discussed about AI war behavior that might cause problem, hopefully it's not anything too hard to fix (If the dev team do find that this is a bug and not some isolated problem) because it was induced by a Hotfix.
So i don't know when but at least we're on the right track compared to end of the last week.
Including my save as well, neutral Clan Tier 2 parked just in front of Unqid. Speak to him and join as vassal, you will see war declarations involving Aserai almost immediately. Alternatively, ride over to Rhagaea and serve as vassal; watch Southern Empire immediately enter wars. Wait around joining no one; no new wars will occur. Other factions will continue with their original wars, never making peace and never initiating new wars with one another. Tested post hotfix from today.
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