There is a common concern, across much of these forums, that troop leveling is just too slow. The process of turning recruits into a capable military force, able to meaningfully sway large battles, is a long drawn out process of farming (mostly) free kills from Looters and the like. Even with all the right tricks in place - separating out groups, only sending in the recruits, using Looters only to build up to T3 or so - there is no denying that the process itself is repetitive. While the AI can afford to lose stack after stack on the campaign map, I suspect a vast majority of players will simply never lose their full army. Ever. The timesink of rebuilding a full army from scratch makes it simply not worth the effort, resulting in savescumming to dodge 'mistakes' (a method rendered mandatory by the game's Charm mechanic for quests, marriage, etc - once you've accepted savescumming for Charm, it just slips into regular gameplay).
It goes without saying: the Leadership perks (Raise the Meek + Combat Tips) and garrison XP (especially in castles, as it would give castles a niche role as troop training facilities) need to be fixed to apply to the entire stack rather than single units. This would go a long way towards speeding up the leveling of fresh troops, making defeats endurable and perhaps in turn creating a more 'realistic' campaign experience.
The point I wish to address is different, and regards the experience gained by troops in battle. Even after passive experience is fixed, I would still want 'battle-hardened' to be a thing. As I understand it, in the current meta, troops gain experience from doing damage.
Your newbie archers emptying their full quivers throughout a battle? Tons of experience.
Your newbie cavalry mowing down fleeing enemies at the end of a battle? Tons of experience.
Infantry has no recourse to easy experience.
The shieldwall does not deliver much damage. It does not move fast enough to earn any kills once the enemy has routed. Inevitably, a gap forms between your increasingly experienced archers/cavalry, and your underleveled infantry - compounded by the fact that infantry suffers the most casualties in any fight. The meta encourages you to view your infantry core as expendable (which is fine, perhaps even realistic), while also making them the hardest thing to rebuild. Passive exp, once fixed, will apply uniformly to all unit types. It will not redress this imbalance. Sturgian playthroughs are challenging for a multitude of reasons - geography, low kingdom prosperity, no culture bonus. From the player perspective, their infantry focus is just as detrimental. An infantry-heavy army levels slower in battles, moves slower on the map, and requires much more frequent replenishment than archer-heavy or cavalry-heavy.
I don't really have a good solution for this, only suggestions. Please feel free to add your own - or indeed, to counter if your perspective on the merits of infantry vs alternatives differs from mine.
It goes without saying: the Leadership perks (Raise the Meek + Combat Tips) and garrison XP (especially in castles, as it would give castles a niche role as troop training facilities) need to be fixed to apply to the entire stack rather than single units. This would go a long way towards speeding up the leveling of fresh troops, making defeats endurable and perhaps in turn creating a more 'realistic' campaign experience.
The point I wish to address is different, and regards the experience gained by troops in battle. Even after passive experience is fixed, I would still want 'battle-hardened' to be a thing. As I understand it, in the current meta, troops gain experience from doing damage.
Your newbie archers emptying their full quivers throughout a battle? Tons of experience.
Your newbie cavalry mowing down fleeing enemies at the end of a battle? Tons of experience.
Infantry has no recourse to easy experience.
The shieldwall does not deliver much damage. It does not move fast enough to earn any kills once the enemy has routed. Inevitably, a gap forms between your increasingly experienced archers/cavalry, and your underleveled infantry - compounded by the fact that infantry suffers the most casualties in any fight. The meta encourages you to view your infantry core as expendable (which is fine, perhaps even realistic), while also making them the hardest thing to rebuild. Passive exp, once fixed, will apply uniformly to all unit types. It will not redress this imbalance. Sturgian playthroughs are challenging for a multitude of reasons - geography, low kingdom prosperity, no culture bonus. From the player perspective, their infantry focus is just as detrimental. An infantry-heavy army levels slower in battles, moves slower on the map, and requires much more frequent replenishment than archer-heavy or cavalry-heavy.
I don't really have a good solution for this, only suggestions. Please feel free to add your own - or indeed, to counter if your perspective on the merits of infantry vs alternatives differs from mine.
- Give infantry units a significant amount of experience for receiving damage, not just dealing it: An infantry shield wall that just holds the line while archers pound the enemy, or cavalry swoops in, is 100% doing its job. This would make it much easier to level infantry lines specifically.
- Reduce the experience requirement for leveling up infantry lines: Level faster, but also die faster (as they already do) - a low experience requirement embraces infantry cores as expendable.
- Reduce the wage cost of infantry: As it stands, T5 infantry cost the same per day as T5 cavalry - many of which actually have perfectly viable melee loadouts when unhorsed. Sure, the T5 cav costs you an extra horse + heavy horse along the way - but that price ends up being a very small consideration (especially in midgame onwards, where your real concern is: "how many battles can I win decisively, before this army starts to need fresh blood?"). Overall, not a fan of this approach, as it pushes even further the idea that infantry is an inferior, cost-effective troop type... but then again, the game has no T6 infantry. So they are, in Bannerlord currently, designed as an inferior, cost-effective troop type.
- Treat the army as a team and spread out the experience evenly (thanks to GitiUsir): Distribute experience evenly to every soldier in the battle. Battles would give experience according to number and quality of enemies compared to number and quality of friendlies.
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