semipr0
Regular
Starting Summary: I was not a M&B player before Warband, I'd have to say as fantasy RPG war games go its really done pretty well with what its got. But theres some areas of improvement that are just beyond most peoples capability to mod around. So I'm going to throw this out there for the TW Devs and the TW Community to poke at. But I think there are a lot of things that could be done in regards to either a large patch or a Warband 2 stand alone title that would take this game out of "good" territory and put it into "great" territory.
Lord AI/Lord Party AI
Lord AI - I gotta say this is probably the most frustrating part of Warband for me and I'll give the following example as why.
I'm a vassal of the Kingdom of Nords, I come upon Boyar Mleza attempting to loot Ismirala after the Nords have taken that castle. I have somewhere in the area of 160 troops, Boyar Mleza has somewhere in the range of 42. Now the AI's reaction on the world map is appropriate, it runs away, but when I eventually catch him, everything from there pretty much goes into areas of stupidity that I really feel detract heavily from the WB experience.
The AI should be tactically assessing the numbers and variance in troop tier between himself and myself and making attempts to negotiate with me to not attack him. Instead of that, basically my option is....Surrender or Die and he says "well if you're so willing to die, then let it be so." Oh yes, your 42 troops are going to absolutely murder my 3:1 advantage in numbers not to mention the fact that difference between your Vaegir Recruits/Skirmishers and my crack cavalry units is rather BLATANT.
But this just isn't even something the AI takes into account in pre-fight discourse. They don't even try to escape..really, once on the field, Boyar Mleza just trots on out at the head of his band of retarded savages and just gets mowed down by elite cavalry and to be frank its not even difficult even on the highest difficulty settings when you're dealing with a troop tier imbalance and a numeric advantage of this type.
So largely, there should be a major rework of pre-combat encounters where the python is actually doing a comparative analysis of the two parties and the party at a disadvantage is in a weak negotiation position. It happens to me when its opposite, where I've got the entire campaign of King Yarlogek's army suddenly jumping me I get a bunch of options...I don't want to fight you, I surrender, blah blah blah. Why isn't this applying to every lord on the field?
This applies to sieges as well, its simply too pat and trite. Why is there even a link to request a meeting with the castle commander? You could have 2500 troops outside a castle with 40 guys in it and the commander will say the same thing every time "Surrender? Hah, we can hold these walls til we die of old age!"....or til you die from 150 archers street sweeping your walls before the siege tower even gets there, which is more likely...idiot.
Lord Party AI - WB Lords LOVE to loot villages depending on their personality. Problem is, the idiots are usually looting villages of settlements their Kingdom is about to siege and overrun. Starting off the new acquisition at an immediate 7 day disadvantage which makes no tactical sense whatsoever. I was sieging Reyvadin in a game and Jarl Olaf wanders over and proceeds to loot and burn Ayyike and Uhlruhban. Gee thanks Olaf thats going to make things AWESOME for us when we take this city.
I mean I can understand going behind the lines and looting villages to hurt the enemy economy, but obviously if your kingdom is sieging a major center, leaving the villages alone is probably a good idea since they're about to flip over to your side anyways.
Whats more Kings are stupid. This varies from game to game depending on how personalities alter. But largely, in many, many games now. I've only seen Ragnar pick one Marshal that was just flat out awesome at what he was doing. Course I say this from a certain level of bias. Most of the Marshals I've been subjected to over many games seem to wander aimlessly for awhile, oh we're going over here, no wait we're going back the way we came, oh someones attacking a castle we'll go there, no wait we're going to go attack this city and meanwhile, captain whats your name, the guy whos making our entire army look stupid in your totally elite skills, please go get me some cattle or scout three completely unrelated locations.
Simple fact here is its almost random assignment. The ONE Marshal that Ragnar appointed while I've played Nord side a a start up vassal or mercenary was Jarl Turegor, who NEVER buggered about and ran in circles going off to save one village for the sake of getting the campaign to the target and the targets were always the right targets. Every time he called a campaign I was like...well if I was the marshal I'd be taking "X"...and every time he hit my decision right on the mark. other than that, Olaf, Knudarr, Turya, Haeda and god knows how many others just run around like idiots....really making me want to use the ctrl+click cheat and just go do the crap myself.
Also, I want to know how 99 RTR, 65 fiefs and 21 Lords still continues to return non-recognition, from other Kings, as a monarch. Its really freaking annoying. I get like 60 some odd RTR off companion missions and getting married, after I turn and go independent (usually after the King I'm sworn to starts giving fiefs I take to his cronies), I end up rocketing up to 99 RTR pretty fast converting lords I have good relations with to my cause. So...effectively I have max RTR, and even kingdoms I have good relations with and good relations with their ruler, refuse to acknowledge me as a fellow monarch. This is inane and half the reason I want to just wipe everyone off the map and go "Whos king now *****es...eh?" but thats hardly fun, the fun part is in the cut and thrust of alliances and politics and working against and with other kings in my own best interests but I can't even do that cause I can't get past even being recognized, much less anything better than a non-aggression pact if the kingdom in question is attacking another kingdom and is worried I might take advantage of that.
Sieges:
Siege NPC AI needs a lot of work talking actual battle scene AI. Everythings fine til I breach the walls, but once I'm up there, the siege is over. Why is this? Cause the castles reinforcements are more focused on MY army forcing its way onto the walls than where I AM personally. And I can literally stand at a casement and wait for them to climb the stairs up to the walls and cut them down from behind and only about 1 in 10 of them even TURN AROUND. Whats worse I can stand back and pick off their archers at the reinforcement point and like 1 in 10 of those archers recognize me as a threat and this is with combat AI set to GOOD.
Thats not GOOD its retarded.
Now this is also flying in complete counter point to the open field battle AI. And the reason I believe this is the case is because even with a cavalry press at the front if I flank a group, the NPC enemies WILL recognize I am a threat and either turn towards me or attack me, regardless of the larger press at the front. But in siege battles, I believe the game is using very basic bot waypoints for AI pathing and because of this, sieges are no where near even close to difficult when you've got a thinking player in the mix because theres no way I'm going to stand on the wall and grind my way through a press of enemies when I can simply jump off, murder an archer line, change my angles and then take out nearly everything coming up to the wall from behind without it reacting.
So effectively siege AI needs a lot of tweaks, not just that, but if you're going to use bot pathing then the bots should at least use multiple routes, especially if theres two or three accesses to the walls, but they all just do the same thing, same way up, same direction every time. Whats even sillier is the AI doesn't appear to realize that it, too, could jump off the wall and flank the back side of my forces. So seriously once I'm on the wall and I clear the wall archers my entire army is just a big distraction while I go on a butchering spree. Fun? Sure. Exciting? Not really. Challenging? Not in the least.
Rivals:
One of the main things I don't understand about Warband is how come I'm the only logical outcome as a potential rival to the throne of Calradia? And I don't mean the Kings, they're obviously rivals but, what I'm saying is I feel like a large part of the game was missed out on and I'll explain myself.
When I generate my character, 5 other advanced AI's should spawn at the same time, in the same basic situation as me, the player. And these AIs are all potential rivals for my position with lords and kingdoms and potential rivals to the kings of these kingdoms. Effectively there should be several "hero's" wandering around, working with kingdoms, sworn as vassals or flat out taking territory for themselves without even bothering with the whole vassalage routine. The reason I say this is because it adds an element of unpredictability to the game, a changing variable that basically forces the player to think and play smart because if they don't, some AI hero is going to make them look like yesterdays news.
Right now as things go I beat down a bunch of sea raiders and I've got more reknown than half the lords of a kingdom. I push an entire kingdom vs kingdom campaign and fight in every battle I've suddenly got as much reknown as a king of any faction. Making reknown harder to come by though is the EASY answer. The BETTER answer is to actually put me in contention with smart AI's that are set to do the same thing the player does. Make a name for themselves, attempt to unify all of Calradia under their banners. Rather than a bunch of "companions" that are do-nothings unless I hire them, and 5 claimants which are do-nothings unless I take up their cause. Shouldn't someone OTHER than me potentially be doing this stuff too? I think the game should generate a set amount of random heroes that basically wander about doing the same things you would do, with variants in what they choose to do depending on personality. Would definitely make the game more interesting.
Lots of people talk about multiplayer campaign mode but this game is just far too long term in play for multiplayer campaign mode to work, so there should be computer controlled AI's that are competing with the player for the same goals and gains the player is competing for. Simply to make it more realistic. Hercules was definitely not the only hero of his time, merely one of the best. So how about forcing me to be the best, rather than assuming, straight out of the gate, that the minute I arrive in Calradia my success is nearly assured because I'm the only person using my brain in the entire country.
Lots of Land:
Ever notice everything north east of Khudan is more or less empty? How come theres not like a bandit "kingdom" over there? Theres sure a lot of bandits. I've often felt it would be a rather interesting addition to Warband to actually add a couple bailey's and maybe even a small city over there that are completely bandit controlled and if the player felt they wanted to establish a kingdom without actually, yanno, being an aggressor right out the gate, they could take that land first and establish themselves to a certain degree as a potential rival to the other kings without actually, yanno, having to serve another king outright then turncoat on them.
Cause the way things stand right now, if you just take cities/castles right out of the gate as soon as you can, even with like 68 RTR you will never get another kingdom to recognize you as a legitimate monarch unless they are in dire straights and that recognition opens the doors to them being on better terms for you.
Opening up areas of the map that are largely empty and filling them with bandit towns giving the player a place to start at without handicapping them for taking land from an established kingdom with no RTR at all, might be an idea to give people more interested in competing with the Kings than pretending to be allied with them til the time is right a place to start out and build up their reputation and RTR a bit before actually venturing into the fray too early.
Also these towns could serve as bonus points with your empire/king if you conquer them as a vassal, basically expanding the kingdom at no cost to kingdom relations. So they'd have fair use either way.
Amazing Recruitment Via Osmosis!:
I saw this in a recent game. I'd completely wiped out the Vaegirs, but just before we finished them off they allied with the Khergits so the Khergits declared war on us. So after finishing off the Vaegirs we went to work on the Khergits and lo and behold after awhile we'd taken EVERYTHING except Malayurg Castle and the entirity of the Khergit lord base was there. I convinced Ragnar and some other lords that were resting at Narra to join me so we could finish it off (I wasn't marshal so I had to do a ghetto campaign) and we all went and Haeda laid siege to the castle (he apparently has negative 900 engineering cause we waited like a week and a half) and while we're waiting for someone to apparently teach Haeda how to read the blueprints for a siege tower or perhaps there just weren't enough trees around...I dunno...for some reason, Ragnar accepts a peace agreement with the Khergits, so they've got one castle, one village and about 30 lords all piled up in there.
Now not once did any of these lords leave this castle, ever. And I'd beaten every single one of them down almost, personally, in random encounters and sieges. So most of these guys ended up at Malayurg castle with nothing. About two game weeks later...and I'd been hanging around Malayurg to ensure the Khergs weren't up to anything sneaky. Ragnar calls a feast at Tulga and I'm like...fine I'll go. So once I get there, I convince him to declare way on the Khergits again, cause they're weak and its time to attack, he agrees, so we go.
Now Ragnar and most of the other lords are pretty slow so I end up getting there first and I literally heard Flight of the Bumblebees in my head as I got close to the castle cause 30 Khergit Lords suddenly swarmed out of the place all of them with 80 - 100 men in their armies and I was like WTF...I tried to run away but they immediately caught me and they were like surrender or fight, so I chose to fight, my 232 men versus 2170 KHERGITS!
2170 KHERGITS AND THEY HADN'T LEFT MALAYURG CASTLE FOR TWO GAME WEEKS AND THEY WERE ALL BEATEN DOWN TO NO MEN AT ALL PREVIOUS TO THE PEACE AGREEMENT.
Suffice it to say I was quite annoyed and it took a lot of tactical retreating to spread that group out enough to take it on in pieces, which was more feasible for me. But...my point here is...unless I use the Diplomacy mod, I've gotta go all over the freaking place to get troops. The AI Lords don't have to do ANYTHING, they can just park at a castle or a city center and they just regenerate troops up to their max troop count or wherever they're comfortable at to go out raiding and ranking up their troops.
Shouldn't these AI lords have to go recruit too? I mean even if the AI lords were ALL using the Diplomacy mod, only the lord of Malayurg Castle would have had access to the constable. It seems like a rather silly dynamic to allow the AI to regenerate troops as if troops just spawn out of the ground around a castle and I on the other hand have to go wander around and recruit from villages or at least send out recruiters to do that for me, then I still have to train the troops and thats whats even worse.
These NPC AI lords can apparently recruit AND train troops COMPLETELY by just sitting in a castle. I mean had 2170 Khergit TRIBESMEN come out of that castle I'd have been unconcerned but there were Lancers and Veteran Horse Archers and all kinds of high tier troops in those groups and like I said those guys hadn't left Malayurg since we backed them into it 2 weeks before that.
Anyways thats just some current things I wanted to drop down as ideas, I really do like this game, don't get me wrong, but there are so many things about it that make it too easy, or make no logical sense, that to really capitalize on its ever growing popularity, you really have to up your game in regards to making it more challenging, more realistic and more feature rich...and you can't depend on modders to do this for you. This is something that has to come out of TW Development. And its something I'd love to see happen. Cause a really big patch with a whole bunch of feature upgrades and AI tweaks would make this probably the most gigantically amusing waste of my time in a long time (I just love all the elements of what the game is trying to do in one package) but right now, after the initial OMG this is so hard and getting over that and learning the mechanics of things...well its just not even challenging any more. I just play it cause its the only game really in its class thats doing what its doing.
So...not saying Warband sucks, far from it, just saying I'd like to see it live up to its greater potential.
Lord AI/Lord Party AI
Lord AI - I gotta say this is probably the most frustrating part of Warband for me and I'll give the following example as why.
I'm a vassal of the Kingdom of Nords, I come upon Boyar Mleza attempting to loot Ismirala after the Nords have taken that castle. I have somewhere in the area of 160 troops, Boyar Mleza has somewhere in the range of 42. Now the AI's reaction on the world map is appropriate, it runs away, but when I eventually catch him, everything from there pretty much goes into areas of stupidity that I really feel detract heavily from the WB experience.
The AI should be tactically assessing the numbers and variance in troop tier between himself and myself and making attempts to negotiate with me to not attack him. Instead of that, basically my option is....Surrender or Die and he says "well if you're so willing to die, then let it be so." Oh yes, your 42 troops are going to absolutely murder my 3:1 advantage in numbers not to mention the fact that difference between your Vaegir Recruits/Skirmishers and my crack cavalry units is rather BLATANT.
But this just isn't even something the AI takes into account in pre-fight discourse. They don't even try to escape..really, once on the field, Boyar Mleza just trots on out at the head of his band of retarded savages and just gets mowed down by elite cavalry and to be frank its not even difficult even on the highest difficulty settings when you're dealing with a troop tier imbalance and a numeric advantage of this type.
So largely, there should be a major rework of pre-combat encounters where the python is actually doing a comparative analysis of the two parties and the party at a disadvantage is in a weak negotiation position. It happens to me when its opposite, where I've got the entire campaign of King Yarlogek's army suddenly jumping me I get a bunch of options...I don't want to fight you, I surrender, blah blah blah. Why isn't this applying to every lord on the field?
This applies to sieges as well, its simply too pat and trite. Why is there even a link to request a meeting with the castle commander? You could have 2500 troops outside a castle with 40 guys in it and the commander will say the same thing every time "Surrender? Hah, we can hold these walls til we die of old age!"....or til you die from 150 archers street sweeping your walls before the siege tower even gets there, which is more likely...idiot.
Lord Party AI - WB Lords LOVE to loot villages depending on their personality. Problem is, the idiots are usually looting villages of settlements their Kingdom is about to siege and overrun. Starting off the new acquisition at an immediate 7 day disadvantage which makes no tactical sense whatsoever. I was sieging Reyvadin in a game and Jarl Olaf wanders over and proceeds to loot and burn Ayyike and Uhlruhban. Gee thanks Olaf thats going to make things AWESOME for us when we take this city.
I mean I can understand going behind the lines and looting villages to hurt the enemy economy, but obviously if your kingdom is sieging a major center, leaving the villages alone is probably a good idea since they're about to flip over to your side anyways.
Whats more Kings are stupid. This varies from game to game depending on how personalities alter. But largely, in many, many games now. I've only seen Ragnar pick one Marshal that was just flat out awesome at what he was doing. Course I say this from a certain level of bias. Most of the Marshals I've been subjected to over many games seem to wander aimlessly for awhile, oh we're going over here, no wait we're going back the way we came, oh someones attacking a castle we'll go there, no wait we're going to go attack this city and meanwhile, captain whats your name, the guy whos making our entire army look stupid in your totally elite skills, please go get me some cattle or scout three completely unrelated locations.
Simple fact here is its almost random assignment. The ONE Marshal that Ragnar appointed while I've played Nord side a a start up vassal or mercenary was Jarl Turegor, who NEVER buggered about and ran in circles going off to save one village for the sake of getting the campaign to the target and the targets were always the right targets. Every time he called a campaign I was like...well if I was the marshal I'd be taking "X"...and every time he hit my decision right on the mark. other than that, Olaf, Knudarr, Turya, Haeda and god knows how many others just run around like idiots....really making me want to use the ctrl+click cheat and just go do the crap myself.
Also, I want to know how 99 RTR, 65 fiefs and 21 Lords still continues to return non-recognition, from other Kings, as a monarch. Its really freaking annoying. I get like 60 some odd RTR off companion missions and getting married, after I turn and go independent (usually after the King I'm sworn to starts giving fiefs I take to his cronies), I end up rocketing up to 99 RTR pretty fast converting lords I have good relations with to my cause. So...effectively I have max RTR, and even kingdoms I have good relations with and good relations with their ruler, refuse to acknowledge me as a fellow monarch. This is inane and half the reason I want to just wipe everyone off the map and go "Whos king now *****es...eh?" but thats hardly fun, the fun part is in the cut and thrust of alliances and politics and working against and with other kings in my own best interests but I can't even do that cause I can't get past even being recognized, much less anything better than a non-aggression pact if the kingdom in question is attacking another kingdom and is worried I might take advantage of that.
Sieges:
Siege NPC AI needs a lot of work talking actual battle scene AI. Everythings fine til I breach the walls, but once I'm up there, the siege is over. Why is this? Cause the castles reinforcements are more focused on MY army forcing its way onto the walls than where I AM personally. And I can literally stand at a casement and wait for them to climb the stairs up to the walls and cut them down from behind and only about 1 in 10 of them even TURN AROUND. Whats worse I can stand back and pick off their archers at the reinforcement point and like 1 in 10 of those archers recognize me as a threat and this is with combat AI set to GOOD.
Thats not GOOD its retarded.
Now this is also flying in complete counter point to the open field battle AI. And the reason I believe this is the case is because even with a cavalry press at the front if I flank a group, the NPC enemies WILL recognize I am a threat and either turn towards me or attack me, regardless of the larger press at the front. But in siege battles, I believe the game is using very basic bot waypoints for AI pathing and because of this, sieges are no where near even close to difficult when you've got a thinking player in the mix because theres no way I'm going to stand on the wall and grind my way through a press of enemies when I can simply jump off, murder an archer line, change my angles and then take out nearly everything coming up to the wall from behind without it reacting.
So effectively siege AI needs a lot of tweaks, not just that, but if you're going to use bot pathing then the bots should at least use multiple routes, especially if theres two or three accesses to the walls, but they all just do the same thing, same way up, same direction every time. Whats even sillier is the AI doesn't appear to realize that it, too, could jump off the wall and flank the back side of my forces. So seriously once I'm on the wall and I clear the wall archers my entire army is just a big distraction while I go on a butchering spree. Fun? Sure. Exciting? Not really. Challenging? Not in the least.
Rivals:
One of the main things I don't understand about Warband is how come I'm the only logical outcome as a potential rival to the throne of Calradia? And I don't mean the Kings, they're obviously rivals but, what I'm saying is I feel like a large part of the game was missed out on and I'll explain myself.
When I generate my character, 5 other advanced AI's should spawn at the same time, in the same basic situation as me, the player. And these AIs are all potential rivals for my position with lords and kingdoms and potential rivals to the kings of these kingdoms. Effectively there should be several "hero's" wandering around, working with kingdoms, sworn as vassals or flat out taking territory for themselves without even bothering with the whole vassalage routine. The reason I say this is because it adds an element of unpredictability to the game, a changing variable that basically forces the player to think and play smart because if they don't, some AI hero is going to make them look like yesterdays news.
Right now as things go I beat down a bunch of sea raiders and I've got more reknown than half the lords of a kingdom. I push an entire kingdom vs kingdom campaign and fight in every battle I've suddenly got as much reknown as a king of any faction. Making reknown harder to come by though is the EASY answer. The BETTER answer is to actually put me in contention with smart AI's that are set to do the same thing the player does. Make a name for themselves, attempt to unify all of Calradia under their banners. Rather than a bunch of "companions" that are do-nothings unless I hire them, and 5 claimants which are do-nothings unless I take up their cause. Shouldn't someone OTHER than me potentially be doing this stuff too? I think the game should generate a set amount of random heroes that basically wander about doing the same things you would do, with variants in what they choose to do depending on personality. Would definitely make the game more interesting.
Lots of people talk about multiplayer campaign mode but this game is just far too long term in play for multiplayer campaign mode to work, so there should be computer controlled AI's that are competing with the player for the same goals and gains the player is competing for. Simply to make it more realistic. Hercules was definitely not the only hero of his time, merely one of the best. So how about forcing me to be the best, rather than assuming, straight out of the gate, that the minute I arrive in Calradia my success is nearly assured because I'm the only person using my brain in the entire country.
Lots of Land:
Ever notice everything north east of Khudan is more or less empty? How come theres not like a bandit "kingdom" over there? Theres sure a lot of bandits. I've often felt it would be a rather interesting addition to Warband to actually add a couple bailey's and maybe even a small city over there that are completely bandit controlled and if the player felt they wanted to establish a kingdom without actually, yanno, being an aggressor right out the gate, they could take that land first and establish themselves to a certain degree as a potential rival to the other kings without actually, yanno, having to serve another king outright then turncoat on them.
Cause the way things stand right now, if you just take cities/castles right out of the gate as soon as you can, even with like 68 RTR you will never get another kingdom to recognize you as a legitimate monarch unless they are in dire straights and that recognition opens the doors to them being on better terms for you.
Opening up areas of the map that are largely empty and filling them with bandit towns giving the player a place to start at without handicapping them for taking land from an established kingdom with no RTR at all, might be an idea to give people more interested in competing with the Kings than pretending to be allied with them til the time is right a place to start out and build up their reputation and RTR a bit before actually venturing into the fray too early.
Also these towns could serve as bonus points with your empire/king if you conquer them as a vassal, basically expanding the kingdom at no cost to kingdom relations. So they'd have fair use either way.
Amazing Recruitment Via Osmosis!:
I saw this in a recent game. I'd completely wiped out the Vaegirs, but just before we finished them off they allied with the Khergits so the Khergits declared war on us. So after finishing off the Vaegirs we went to work on the Khergits and lo and behold after awhile we'd taken EVERYTHING except Malayurg Castle and the entirity of the Khergit lord base was there. I convinced Ragnar and some other lords that were resting at Narra to join me so we could finish it off (I wasn't marshal so I had to do a ghetto campaign) and we all went and Haeda laid siege to the castle (he apparently has negative 900 engineering cause we waited like a week and a half) and while we're waiting for someone to apparently teach Haeda how to read the blueprints for a siege tower or perhaps there just weren't enough trees around...I dunno...for some reason, Ragnar accepts a peace agreement with the Khergits, so they've got one castle, one village and about 30 lords all piled up in there.
Now not once did any of these lords leave this castle, ever. And I'd beaten every single one of them down almost, personally, in random encounters and sieges. So most of these guys ended up at Malayurg castle with nothing. About two game weeks later...and I'd been hanging around Malayurg to ensure the Khergs weren't up to anything sneaky. Ragnar calls a feast at Tulga and I'm like...fine I'll go. So once I get there, I convince him to declare way on the Khergits again, cause they're weak and its time to attack, he agrees, so we go.
Now Ragnar and most of the other lords are pretty slow so I end up getting there first and I literally heard Flight of the Bumblebees in my head as I got close to the castle cause 30 Khergit Lords suddenly swarmed out of the place all of them with 80 - 100 men in their armies and I was like WTF...I tried to run away but they immediately caught me and they were like surrender or fight, so I chose to fight, my 232 men versus 2170 KHERGITS!
2170 KHERGITS AND THEY HADN'T LEFT MALAYURG CASTLE FOR TWO GAME WEEKS AND THEY WERE ALL BEATEN DOWN TO NO MEN AT ALL PREVIOUS TO THE PEACE AGREEMENT.
Suffice it to say I was quite annoyed and it took a lot of tactical retreating to spread that group out enough to take it on in pieces, which was more feasible for me. But...my point here is...unless I use the Diplomacy mod, I've gotta go all over the freaking place to get troops. The AI Lords don't have to do ANYTHING, they can just park at a castle or a city center and they just regenerate troops up to their max troop count or wherever they're comfortable at to go out raiding and ranking up their troops.
Shouldn't these AI lords have to go recruit too? I mean even if the AI lords were ALL using the Diplomacy mod, only the lord of Malayurg Castle would have had access to the constable. It seems like a rather silly dynamic to allow the AI to regenerate troops as if troops just spawn out of the ground around a castle and I on the other hand have to go wander around and recruit from villages or at least send out recruiters to do that for me, then I still have to train the troops and thats whats even worse.
These NPC AI lords can apparently recruit AND train troops COMPLETELY by just sitting in a castle. I mean had 2170 Khergit TRIBESMEN come out of that castle I'd have been unconcerned but there were Lancers and Veteran Horse Archers and all kinds of high tier troops in those groups and like I said those guys hadn't left Malayurg since we backed them into it 2 weeks before that.
Anyways thats just some current things I wanted to drop down as ideas, I really do like this game, don't get me wrong, but there are so many things about it that make it too easy, or make no logical sense, that to really capitalize on its ever growing popularity, you really have to up your game in regards to making it more challenging, more realistic and more feature rich...and you can't depend on modders to do this for you. This is something that has to come out of TW Development. And its something I'd love to see happen. Cause a really big patch with a whole bunch of feature upgrades and AI tweaks would make this probably the most gigantically amusing waste of my time in a long time (I just love all the elements of what the game is trying to do in one package) but right now, after the initial OMG this is so hard and getting over that and learning the mechanics of things...well its just not even challenging any more. I just play it cause its the only game really in its class thats doing what its doing.
So...not saying Warband sucks, far from it, just saying I'd like to see it live up to its greater potential.
