Beta Patch Notes e1.5.6

[sabatonsky]

So far so good. Rebellion system is nice, provides a set back for kingdoms that tend to spread far too quickly (like Khuzaits).

And while on the subject of Khuzaits there really needs to be a simulated battles re-work. They pretty much melt any army. And I don't mean "win", I mean for every troop they lose in simulation opposition lose 5-10ish. For instance, a solid Sturgian army of about 900 encounters Khuzait one of about 850 troops. Both aren't full of rookies but no all elite either. Khuzait walk away with 650 troops (lost barely 200, and most of those are wounded, not dead). I mean stuff like that only happens when you set lowest difficulty and you are leading the army. I though it was only with Sturgians but nope, Khuzaits do that to pretty much anyone. It's not even a battle, unless it is siege or you are personally combating Khuzaits, they just don't seem to lose and nobody really can catch them when they don't wanna fight. Then they get an all elite army and it gets absolutely ridiculous (which is when, I imagine, the steamroll truly begins).

One time I've seen them kinda lose in about 20 campaigns (I've just let it run, didn't do a thing) was when by some odd circumstance Southern Empire, Northern Empire and Sturgia all declared war on them and they didn't have any other wars going on. And even then they stood their ground admirably. So apparently what it takes to defeat Khuzaits is concentrated effort of 3 kingdoms who have nothing else going on.

Other factions are more or less well balanced. Battanians seem to pull harder since they have 3 cavalry units they can easily get and their kingdom is dense (not a lot of territory but lots of fiefs) so they defend easily and attack well. But still, even tho they're strong I've seen them lose plenty. Aserai also tend to pound Southern Empire a lot but generally get halted (either because they declared war on Vlandians in the meantime or Western Empire). It really seems to be a recurring theme, that more cavalry = more win. Hence why Sturgians and Empire who have the least (both have only 1 proper cav unit only as noble line) tend to lose the most.

So yeah, just that one thing (Khuzaits) cause I'm kinda sick of them ever since cavalry simulation buff. They already have massive speed advantage because of leading mounted army, cavalry archers which A.I simply don't know how to deal with and they have a good starting position (on the edge of the map), this was just overkill. Maybe add cavalry nerf when fighting in forests, hills, snow or something?

Other than that, I'm quite happy with the game (I mean, I wouldn't have 425 hours in it if I didn't). Sure I'd wish development was a bit faster but hell, we can't always get what we want and modders (tho I know this should not be the answer) seem happy to flesh it out some.

Thats cause by the AI cheat... well to some level that is. Khuzaits just build their armies with lots of horses which are... kidna hard to counter by the AI. plus the speed bonus they get. rather dreadfull if you ask me . ANYWAY: the way AI cheats is they ignore the need for horses in their recruitment. It was to be implemented (the need for horses) but i dont think it has been. so Khuzaits just spawn horses from thinn air for their armies. I think if the p[roper recruitment for the AI was implemented, and the change of cultural perk as well, we could see much different khuzaits. which is good, cause i hate the horse ****s

 

[Lornloth00]

I used to use this mod to control the parties, Party AI Overhaul and Commands, it give us a complete control of our parties, but I ask why it isn't native, why our parties are running without any purpose throug the map, not defending our settlements,giving troops to other clans, causing problems etc. It's a very bad implemented feature,and I don't see any intention of TW to improve it.

Yes, this. Parties are torching villages causing relation loss. The game ought to give the player more influence over companion parties. This should be native. BTW great patch.

 

[Highest of all Landers]

The load times in this patch are horrific. This is a mess.

There is a huge memory leak. I opened the task manager and Bannerlord was using 9.5 gb of ram, saved the game, loaded that save and reverted back to 2 gb.

It seems to be related to items, every time it will use more and more memory until simple actions like saving or post battle loot takes several seconds.

 

[Brocephus]

There is a huge memory leak. I opened the task manager and Bannerlord was using 9.5 gb of ram, saved the game, loaded that save and reverted back to 2 gb.

It seems to be related to items, every time it will use more and more memory until simple actions like saving or post battle loot takes several seconds.

I noticed things were slowing down over time but, for me, it didn't seem like loading a new game fixed it. I had to restart.

 

[bm01]

Thats cause by the AI cheat... well to some level that is. Khuzaits just build their armies with lots of horses which are... kidna hard to counter by the AI. plus the speed bonus they get. rather dreadfull if you ask me . ANYWAY: the way AI cheats is they ignore the need for horses in their recruitment. It was to be implemented (the need for horses) but i dont think it has been. so Khuzaits just spawn horses from thinn air for their armies. I think if the p[roper recruitment for the AI was implemented, and the change of cultural perk as well, we could see much different khuzaits. which is good, cause i hate the horse ****s

It's a multilayered problem. Obviously movement speed is huge since it allows them to choose their fights, but as I said earlier, cavalry also has a 20% strength bonus in simulated battles. Combined with the fact that a Khuzait recruit has 50% to become a mounted unit as soon as his first upgrade since the AI ugprade their troops in a completely random manner, it makes it mathematically stronger from the beginning.

Giving mounted units a strength bonus isn't necessarily a bad idea, but they then need to be more expensive for everyone. However, forcing the AI to buy horses to upgrade their troops is unlikely to be sustainable, depending on how flexible or static the economy is. Settlements may simply not produce enough of them. Forcing the AI to spend more money would also have an impact on pretty much everything else.

Until some testing is done, I think it would be fair to remove the strength bonus mounted units have. Also, the AI should aim at a certain balance between mounted / ranged / melee units based on their culture, the lord's personality, and potentially the kingdom situation. Currently it seems to be based on the shape of the troop trees and nothing else, and changing these troop trees in the future will have unintended effects.

 

[sabatonsky]

OR make a special tier 3 anti cavalery unit. Or get AI to use pike walls... or implement any freaking anti cav startegy, its not like people on horses charging at you is a new invention!

 

[bm01]

OR make a special tier 3 anti cavalery unit. Or get AI to use pike walls... or implement any freaking anti cav startegy, its not like people on horses charging at you is a new invention!

Simulated battles don't care if the unit is using a tier 5 weapon or stones. Only the tier of the unit matters.

 

[Halvdan]

As far I have seen, Khuzaits dominate the east side 100% of the time, while Battania dominate the west side 60-70% of the time (Vlandia sometime crush Battania).

Sturgia is probably now on Aserai level, not OP but strong.

I still notice in my playthroughs that Sturgis troops are under armored. They're supposed to be the heavy infantry of the game. However they're early infantry is actually weaker than many other nations. I'm okay with them having crap archers and negligible cavalry. however they should have the best infantry lines in the game and they don't

 

[Halvdan]

Sturgia's supposedly heavy infantry is less armored than most other nations.

I mean if you really wanted to play to the strength of the nation they built the story of they're lower to your infantry should be heavily armored if not with the best arms.

Either that or give them some sort of throwing weapon as they cannot rely on their archers they could at least have some close range attack such as a couple throwing axes for early infantry units.

 

[Brocephus]

Made it to tier 4. The war against the Khuzaits seems to be more difficult than ever. It's just a hamster wheel of war and fief changes with the horse assholes eventually pushing.

Feedback on 1.5.6:

Positive:
Emissary system is interesting. Nice to have something automated since we're usually busy trying to fight off the horse assholes.
New prisoner recruiting systems works nicely.

Negative:
Mid-game recruiting difficult and tedious.
Fief felt like they were changing hands too often. A lot of churn against the inevitable wall of horse assholes.
Still need a way to sort troops by level and type.
Caravans are captured too easily (even in times of peace).
Companions are captured too easily. Need a way to give them orders such as patrol or stay at a fief.
Need more summary information for party: Total troops and of each category.
Companions should travel to home fief after escape.
Armor feels like it has little to no effect for the PC but somehow I have to hit looters 4 times at full speed to kill them.
Wars seem to be starting too easily. Never any downtime to work on relations, etc.

 

[Jet Jaguar]

Positive:
Emissary system is interesting. Nice to have something automated since we're usually busy trying to fight off the horse assholes.
New prisoner recruiting systems works nicely.

I love this new system as well, could it be possible to have them auto recruit units and send them to your garrison? It would be fantastic if there was some way to auto recruit soldiers up to a limit set by the player, so we don't have to travel the whole map trying to recruit troops.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

There could be way more balancing for the Khuzait VRS AI, but there is some improvement in my game. They seem to have a harder time holding fiefs outside of their area for sure. They're still very aggressive and expansive but there is much more back and forth. The quality of there forces after a few defeats is not as strong as it used to be IMO which is welcome change to me. Perhaps they're taking from or loosing their garrisons and running out now. I am seeing the rebellions as 2 edged sword for them though. They expand, take a city in Imperials areas, the city is taken back, has low loyalty, rebellion procs and if un resolved the new clan joins the khuzaits as they are at war with the other faction. Of course the town will get taken back most likely but it is interesting and if new clans start to add up...... well more to loot for me I guess

I kinda think a change to the t2 tribal warrior would do a lot, as I read others say too. Either making it a foot archer, or removing it's Cav bonus from auto calc, or just letting the foot soldier be the sole 2t unit.

 

[Lord of Banners]

New glitch/exploit I just found. You can form a caravan with a companion. And then afterwards assign them as governor, but the caravan will still move around the map until disbanded. Not sure if it’s trading or not

 

[froggyluv]

I kinda think a change to the t2 tribal warrior would do a lot, as I read others say too. Either making it a foot archer, or removing it's Cav bonus from auto calc, or just letting the foot soldier be the sole 2t unit.

Again limit their horses by any means necessary - a barren season of strangley unripe fawns...whatever. Oh and for what reason on Gods green earth are they still using that pedantic +20 Cav Auto calc bonus. My 6yo could whip up a better more nuanced auto calc system than an across the board +20...awful

 

[Medivhtratos]

Again limit their horses by any means necessary - a barren season of strangley unripe fawns...whatever. Oh and for what reason on Gods green earth are they still using that pedantic +20 Cav Auto calc bonus. My 6yo could whip up a better more nuanced auto calc system than an across the board +20...awful

Found the method where the troop powerlvl will be calculated. Changed it to even terms. That reduces their snowballing speed bit. I'm in year 2 now and they only have achieved 2 new towns.
Nice addition: programmed 3 lines of code and now my companions don't die in battle anymore(though the screen says that they died). But it will not work for family members(death and birth enabled).


The only problems that I have is
1. Marriage, brother also marriage my spouse
2.if I leave both in a town, because of security reasons, they won't produce children XD(see point 1)
3. If my spouse is with me, even after 2 years, she won't get pregnant(will wait 2 more ingame years, after that I will report this as a bug)

 

[bm01]

Removing the cavalry bonus seems to be indeed the best solution.

Just for testing purposes, I wrote a small mod this night and forced the AI to buy and consume horses when upgrading troops, then let the game run for a few hours. It mostly nerfed Vlandians, probably because they don't have any village producing horses. Kuzhaits weren't affected as much. Overall parties had less mounted units, but it didn't seem to have much impact on the economy for some reasons (probably need more data for that). Most parties couldn't buy enough war horses though, for the late upgrades.

Still, I think it's better when the AI has to play by the rules.

 

[Apocal]

Removing the cavalry bonus seems to be indeed the best solution.

Just for testing purposes, I wrote a small mod this night and forced the AI to buy and consume horses when upgrading troops, then let the game run for a few hours. It mostly nerfed Vlandians, probably because they don't have any village producing horses. Kuzhaits weren't affected as much. Overall parties had less mounted units, but it didn't seem to have much impact on the economy for some reasons (probably need more data for that). Most parties couldn't buy enough war horses though, for the late upgrades.

Still, I think it's better when the AI has to play by the rules.

Can you post the mod somewhere? I'd be interested in running a few other test runs with this but I wasn't sure if I correctly implemented it.

 

[bm01]

Can you post the mod somewhere? I'd be interested in running a few other test runs with this but I wasn't sure if I correctly implemented it.

Sure, but I integrated it to another mod I made and it's a bit dirty since it was just for testing purpose. Here are the two relevant files.

bm01/DontStopMeNow

Contribute to bm01/DontStopMeNow development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

bm01/DontStopMeNow

Contribute to bm01/DontStopMeNow development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Then just register the behavior in your MDSubModuleBase class:

protected override void OnGameStart(Game game, IGameStarter gameStarter)
{
    if (game.GameType is Campaign) 
    {
        ((CampaignGameStarter) gameStarter).AddBehavior(new BuyHorsesForUpgradesBehavior());
    }
}

Just two things, villages are ignored, they only buy in towns; and it's possible that they sell some of the horses they've just bought because of the second part of the code in "PartiesBuyHorseCampaignBehavior" (as I said it was just a quick test).

 

[Apocal]

Sure, but I integrated it to another mod I made and it's a bit dirty since it was just for testing purpose. Here are the two relevant files.

bm01/DontStopMeNow

Contribute to bm01/DontStopMeNow development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

bm01/DontStopMeNow

Contribute to bm01/DontStopMeNow development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Then just register the behavior in your MDSubModuleBase class:

protected override void OnGameStart(Game game, IGameStarter gameStarter)
{
    if (game.GameType is Campaign)
    {
        ((CampaignGameStarter) gameStarter).AddBehavior(new BuyHorsesForUpgradesBehavior());
    }
}

Just two things, villages are ignored, they only buy in towns; and it's possible that they sell some of the horses they've just bought because of the second part of the code in "PartiesBuyHorseCampaignBehavior" (as I said it was just a quick test).

Got it, thanks.

 

[froggyluv]

Found the method where the troop powerlvl will be calculated. Changed it to even terms. That reduces their snowballing speed bit. I'm in year 2 now and they only have achieved 2 new towns.

You seem nose deep and well acquainted with the source code - can you tell me -how hard would it be to simply add terrain stipulations to things like auto calc code? Meaning -if an AI vs AI battle were to take place on open plains for example - then and only then would the +20 Cav bonus come into play. Seems like 1970's level hexagon boardgame strategy level yet for some reason they play this zero sum game of all or nothing