Control Calradia in about 10 years, the snowball problem, game difficulty and presenting my playstyle

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GMBarak

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Hello friends,

I create a YouTube playlist where I show my playstyle which shows how to gain control over the entire map in about 10 years at the hardest difficulty level with no exploits. This gameplay shows why it's not a problem that the AI is getting bonuses in money and units and keeps sending armies at you. For me, each of the times when the AI is sending these armies, it's like it's sending a gift of about 50K gold. because these armies get destroyed with minimum casualties, usually between a ratio of 1 to 30 and 1 to 60 casualties, and we get loot and prisoners + relationship improvement from releasing prisoners.

The gameplay can be found here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAp4bioX1esuOOfSzh-GqZ5ZkbHfZkp9U

This gameplay also shows why the snowball is not really an issue. since you get to build a strong kingdom so quickly with a strong army,
you can just go for the empire that snowballs, destroy their armies and take their fiefs, it just adds a challenge to an easy game.
This also shows why a tougher difficulty level might be needed.

And it also shows why the bug TaleWorld inserted in the updates and insist on calling it a feature is actually one of the most annoying bug in the game, throughout the gameplay you can see the hero get hit in battle while giving orders:
https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...ork-in-previous-versions.444583/#post-9718039

So this is my play style in short:

1. Focus on building a strong elite army with focus on large number of fian champions and elite cavalry.
2. Store your units in your clan members' parties
3. Make your clan members follow you all the time and don't let them join other clans army so that they will not do nonsense like:

3.1 raiding villages of enemy lords you want to improve relationship with
3.2 getting captured or involved in a battle and losing all or some of their elite units.
3.3 donating the troops you worked so hard to train and recruit to other clan fiefs.

and this way you can preserve your elite units in their parties.

4. Also, in each of these occasions take all units and prisoners from your clan parties and return the units to them after the event:
4.1 siege attack
4.2 battle (so you will get the prisoners and can release them for improving relationship)
4.3 take all valuable prisoners from them before entering castles and towns.
4.4 never let them enter a friendly ally lord fief. (they will donate your units to his garrison)

5. This army will get very expensive so you must fight max amount of battles with large armies and sell loot and prisoners or you will get bankrupt.
6. try to place only low level troops (tier 1-2) in garrison so that that fiefs will be profitable.

7. after creating a kingdom get mercenary clans and, at start, at most 2 ally clans so you can take for yourself all fiefs that you want.
8. make mercenary clans leaders always near to you by making them run after you to join your army or be part of your army so that
once they leave you, you can run after them to recruit them again.
9. this way, you get your elite 600-800 troops clan army + 2-3 good mercenary clans always with you and it's either of these two:

9.1 everyone declare war on you - in this case you just make a lot of money from destroying their armies and improve relationship with their lords until they want peace.
9.2 you are at war with only 1-2 kingdoms - in that case you just take over their fiefs in between destroying their armies.

10. once you get all the fiefs you want (in my case it's about 10-12 towns) let all clans who want to join your kingdom join.

Please let me know what you think.

Thank you :smile:
 
OP, considering that your playstyle consists of abusing the most broken OP things in the game as much as possible, it would not be a good idea to base the balance of the game on that experience.

For example, you spam Fian Champions in your parties. The only reason you can do that and have it be super effective and murder every army is because it's really easy to recruit elite units right now, and because armor is extremely weak.

Taleworlds has said they will be buffing armor effectiveness in future, which will make Fians less powerful; and it's safe to assume they will be reducing noble unit recruitment as well, since noble units are supposed to be rare; so that will make your playstyle much less effective.

So, it would make no sense to balance the whole game around a playstyle that exploits the most broken parts. Because then normal playstyles would be imbalanced.
 
OP, considering that your playstyle consists of abusing the most broken OP things in the game as much as possible, it would not be a good idea to base the balance of the game on that experience.

For example, you spam Fian Champions in your parties. The only reason you can do that and have it be super effective and murder every army is because it's really easy to recruit elite units right now, and because armor is extremely weak.

Taleworlds has said they will be buffing armor effectiveness in future, which will make Fians less powerful; and it's safe to assume they will be reducing noble unit recruitment as well, since noble units are supposed to be rare; so that will make your playstyle much less effective.

So, it would make no sense to balance the whole game around a playstyle that exploits the most broken parts. Because then normal playstyles would be imbalanced.

True, and thanks for the review.

About the Fian champions being very strong, I agree, but it does make the game enjoyable IMO, and if you look at the realistic perspective, there were battles in history where the longbow was abused to defeat a superior in size army, like the famous Battle of Agincourt (1415) although at that battle the terrain served a decisive contribution to the battle result as well.
 
True, and thanks for the review.

About the Fian champions being very strong, I agree, but it does make the game enjoyable IMO
To each their own, to me it's a bit boring to see the archers just mow everyone down in under 3 minutes battle after battle. I'd prefer the deeper tactics that a variety of viable troops in the game would bring.
and if you look at the realistic perspective, there were battles in history where the longbow was abused to defeat a superior in size army, like the famous Battle of Agincourt (1415) although at that battle the terrain served a decisive contribution to the battle result as well.
You're right about the terrain. Also, the English had sharpened stakes set up in front of their position, and the French charge was highly disorganized, with some men-at-arms off walking their horses instead of joining the charge.

At Agincourt, the English longbowmen didn't shoot directly through high quality armor suits to kill people wearing them in 2-3 hits, like what happens in Bannerlord. Quite the opposite. They either shot through the gaps in the armor, or shot the unarmoured French horses out from under them, and the French then had to walk a kilometre to the English lines under a constant hail of arrows. Once they made it to the English - and the fact they made it shows that their armor was effective -, the English archers and men-at-arms killed them with melee weapons.

From the realistic perspective, none of the bows in Bannerlord should be as effective against armor as they are, especially not the regular bows. Various sources from the Crusades say you could fire ten arrows into high-quality padded mail and not penetrate it, and double mail was considered nearly arrow-proof.
 
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At Agincourt, the English longbowmen didn't shoot directly through high quality armor suits to kill people wearing them in 2-3 hits, like what happens in Bannerlord. Quite the opposite. They either shot through the gaps in the armor, or shot the unarmoured French horses out from under them, and the French then had to walk a kilometre to the English lines under a constant hail of arrows. Once they made it to the English - and the fact they made it shows that their armor was effective -, the English archers and men-at-arms killed them with melee weapons.

From the realistic perspective, none of the bows in Bannerlord should be as effective against armor as they are, especially not the regular bows. Various sources from the Crusades say you could fire ten arrows into high-quality padded mail and not penetrate it, and double mail was considered nearly arrow-proof.
impressive analysis, and I agree with you on most of it, I hope someone from taleworld will read and make improvements to make the game more realistic.

but I think that we need to be more specific when addressing Taleworld. we need to help them. to say something like: please reduce X by Y when attacked by Z, etc...
 
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They need to add more anti snowballing mechanics such as civil wars, update on the rebellion system, coalitions, etc.


Noooooooooooo please nooooooooo

All this stuff just slows the game down. Every game that has anti-snowballing mechanic feels like it's just a crude attempt to lengthen an average playthrough by devaluing player achievements. Why should the player be punished for blitzing the map? Why should the player be forced to retread the same ground over and over because of civil wars and rebellions?

I think the main reason people didn't like the khuzait snowballing in older patches is because it meant the lategame was just khuzaits, and people wanted more variety. Therefore the solution is more variety in gameplay, not an arbitrary mechanic designed to wipe out player progress if they play the game too efficiently.
 
impressive analysis, and I agree with you on most of it, I hope someone from taleworld will read and make improvements to make the game more realistic.

but I think that we need to be more specific when addressing Taleworld. we need to help them. to say something like: please reduce X by Y when attacked by Z, etc...
That's true, feedback needs to be specific and constructive.
 
i was streaming all settlements runs with fians from 1.5.9 to 1.6.2 and i think it gets boring after a while, as it takes out the challenge.
i need to say you are not even halfway through calradia at year 1092. in my understanding, you didnt "gained control over calradia" as there is still so much missing, especially the aserai territory which is the strongest take, so far, you only messed with factions which are having no chance at all against the fian. your losses will increase as soon as you hit a big army of faris/ha. its not that you will loose the wars, but the outcome is with a bit more losses. i do think your take is a bit misleading.
i also need to say that your strats on the battlefield could be more effective, but thats minor as the fians do everything anyway.
 
i was streaming all settlements runs with fians from 1.5.9 to 1.6.2 and i think it gets boring after a while, as it takes out the challenge.
i need to say you are not even halfway through calradia at year 1092. in my understanding, you didnt "gained control over calradia" as there is still so much missing, especially the aserai territory which is the strongest take, so far, you only messed with factions which are having no chance at all against the fian. your losses will increase as soon as you hit a big army of faris/ha. its not that you will loose the wars, but the outcome is with a bit more losses. i do think your take is a bit misleading.
I agree, I think taking the all the fiefs in the entire map should take about 4-5 more years, so it can be done in about 13-14 years. I already took over the map when fighting the Aserai a number of times, in other not recorded gameplays, its not so hard, I just destroyed 2-3 600-800 men armies with about 1:40 ratio and took a castle/town in between again and again until I took everything they had moving from left to right across the map. if enough people want, I will continue the gameplay and do just that.

also keep in mind that I delayed getting more than 2 noble clans to my kingdom until my clan owned 14 towns, which is not the fastest way to take over the map.

i also need to say that your strats on the battlefield could be more effective, but thats minor as the fians do everything anyway.

I would be happy to hear your advice and your thoughts on how to improve it, it's one of the reasons I am posting this thread and made this gameplay. maybe a video? or even just describe here how you would do it better.
 
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Noooooooooooo please nooooooooo

All this stuff just slows the game down. Every game that has anti-snowballing mechanic feels like it's just a crude attempt to lengthen an average playthrough by devaluing player achievements. Why should the player be punished for blitzing the map? Why should the player be forced to retread the same ground over and over because of civil wars and rebellions?

I think the main reason people didn't like the khuzait snowballing in older patches is because it meant the lategame was just khuzaits, and people wanted more variety. Therefore the solution is more variety in gameplay, not an arbitrary mechanic designed to wipe out player progress if they play the game too efficiently.
I agree.
 
I agree, I think taking the all the fiefs in the entire map should take about 4-5 more years, so it can be done in about 13-14 years. I already took over the map when fighting the Aserai a number of times, in other not recorded gameplays, its not so hard, I just destroyed 2-3 600-800 men armies with about 1:40 ratio and took a castle/town in between again and again until I took everything they had moving from left to right across the map. if enough people want, I will continue the gameplay and do just that.

also keep in mind that I delayed getting more than 2 noble clans to my kingdom until my clan owned 14 towns, which is not the fastest way to take over the map.



I would be happy to hear your advice and your thoughts on how to improve it, it's one of the reasons I am posting this thread and made this gameplay. maybe a video? or even just describe here how you would do it better.
i highly doubt that it only will take 4-5 more years as there are much things staying in your way and there is going to be the point where you cant handle everything on your own anymore. as soon as you hit 60 of the 120 settlements, things will get hard to control and you need to be all over the map to control the world war + the possibility of rebellions happening, which is unlikely if you do have the policies going. not saying that you will fail, but this takes time. i need ~3000 days to get everything done, but i use other strats which are less effective than yours, especially at the beginning. but still. with you being at year 1092 i would say 10 more years at least to control whole calradia +- 1 year.

considering the strats you already pointed out the overwhelming strength of fians. i think you can use them in a way more effective way on the battlefield by going with a classic shield wall/high ground strat. so shield wall on the infantry (legionary) and a line of fians in the back of them having the high ground. this is only useful if you are the defender, so you want to be in a defending position on the matches, forcing the enemy to approach you.
with that, you dont need armies anymore. you having 400 people is enough to take most of the armies with ~1000troops, except aserai high tiers.
thats my 50 cents on that. you are totally fine with your strat aswell.
 
Thank you for your review.

i highly doubt that it only will take 4-5 more years as there are much things staying in your way and there is going to be the point where you cant handle everything on your own anymore. as soon as you hit 60 of the 120 settlements, things will get hard to control and you need to be all over the map to control the world war + the possibility of rebellions happening, which is unlikely if you do have the policies going. not saying that you will fail, but this takes time. i need ~3000 days to get everything done, but i use other strats which are less effective than yours, especially at the beginning. but still. with you being at year 1092 i would say 10 more years at least to control whole calradia +- 1 year.

well, the "forgiveness of debt" and giving fiefs to the clan with corresponding culture could definitely help against rebellions. focusing on using choke points and taking the map from left to right could also help. I don't know how many more years it will take, maybe I will continue the gameplay and we will see.

considering the strats you already pointed out the overwhelming strength of fians. i think you can use them in a way more effective way on the battlefield by going with a classic shield wall/high ground strat. so shield wall on the infantry (legionary) and a line of fians in the back of them having the high ground. this is only useful if you are the defender, so you want to be in a defending position on the matches, forcing the enemy to approach you.
with that, you dont need armies anymore. you having 400 people is enough to take most of the armies with ~1000troops, except aserai high tiers.
thats my 50 cents on that. you are totally fine with your strat aswell.

it's when you have a slope, like a mountain or a hill, sometimes you can provoke them to come to you by going to them, start shooting and then run towards a nearby hill. what you are suggesting is definitely a good strategy.

I am not only using the fians, I am also attacking with elite cavalry from the side and from the back when they move to engage my archers.
so they have to chose: defend themselves from the cavalry attack when approaching the archers (with shield wall) and get killed by the archers, or defend from the archers and get killed by the cavalry.
 
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Please let me know what you think.
I think that's some basic vanilla **** playstyle, which is fine, but describing it as a "your style" is kinda exaggerating.

This gameplay also shows why the snowball is not really an issue
TW added heavy anti snow balling measures many updates ago now. The issue now is more the potential stagnation and repetitiveness of mid/late game because of the anti-snowballing measures.

I create a YouTube playlist where I show my playstyle which shows how to gain control over the entire map in about 10 years at the hardest difficulty level with no exploits.
I looked at the last 2 videos of your playlist and I'm seeing very colorful map, it does not appear you gained control of the map. I would say you are still in mid game, you have a growing faction and are doing well, but you have yet to encounter the war/peace stalling your own vassals can do as you faction starts to become very large. Now whether that faction will take the map in the next 10 years, who can say? However the issue is more with the lack of satisfaction and interesting gameplay many plays report during this part of the game.

I can take the entire map with just my party in about 10 years (probably less), but that has little to do with the gameplay issues bannerlord has and most player's wishes.

I can even use policies to securely hold the entire map indefinitely, of course this is the opposite of the type of late game play, player expect.

8. make mercenary clans leaders always near to you by making them run after you to join your army or be part of your army so that
once they leave you, you can run after them to recruit them again.
This is a solid tip.
 
Hi Ananda_The_Destroyer,

Thank you for your review,

Please let me know what you think.
I think that's some basic vanilla **** playstyle, which is fine, but describing it as a "your style" is kinda exaggerating.

This gameplay also shows why the snowball is not really an issue
TW added heavy anti snow balling measures many updates ago now. The issue now is more the potential stagnation and repetitiveness of mid/late game because of the anti-snowballing measures.

I create a YouTube playlist where I show my playstyle which shows how to gain control over the entire map in about 10 years at the hardest difficulty level with no exploits.
I looked at the last 2 videos of your playlist and I'm seeing very colorful map, it does not appear you gained control of the map. I would say you are still in mid game, you have a growing faction and are doing well, but you have yet to encounter the war/peace stalling your own vassals can do as you faction starts to become very large. Now whether that faction will take the map in the next 10 years, who can say? However the issue is more with the lack of satisfaction and interesting gameplay many plays report during this part of the game.

You are right in what you say, Indeed I might have been misleading in the title, The reason I made this that I keep seeing people complaining about the AI getting bonuses and the AI keep sending armies at you and was aiming to show that even in the hardest difficulty, this is not actually a problem, also, I wanted to show how I overcome the clan parties doing none-sense by micro-management and how to use them effectively and show an overall effective play style. I didn't see other use it in their posted gameplay so I wanted to present it and see what people think.

I can take the entire map with just my party in about 10 years (probably less), but that has little to do with the gameplay issues bannerlord has and most player's wishes.

This is very interesting! do you have a gameplay which shows it?
I , and I believe many others as well, would like to watch and learn, I am reminding you, hardest difficulty, no exploits (like smithing), no reload.

Thank you :smile:
 
Taleworlds has said they will be buffing armor effectiveness in future, which will make Fians less powerful; and it's safe to assume they will be reducing noble unit recruitment as well, since noble units are supposed to be rare; so that will make your playstyle much less effective.
TW hasn't done anything but make noble troops easier to get. Their decisions regarding that have been nothing but back tracking the early conception of noble troops and from comments made in here and the patch notes they fully understood exactly they are doing when they allow castle village notables spit out noble troops easier than before.
They need to add more anti snowballing mechanics such as civil wars, update on the rebellion system, coalitions, etc.
Why? The AI hasn't snowballed in nearly a year.
Please let me know what you think.
Yep, that's the golden path, except I don't use mercs. Instead draw clans in from the start but keep them from taking towns by taking castles instead until I appear on the ballot again.

The clan only army used to be even stronger BTW. There was an oversight or bug that wouldn't consider those separate parties as far as loot division, so every clan party pulled down a full share.

You could legitimately make 100K per battle from loot + daily clan party payout.
 
This is very interesting! do you have a gameplay which shows it?
I , and I believe many others as well, would like to watch and learn, I am reminding you, hardest difficulty, no exploits (like smithing), no reload.

Thank you :smile:
I don't have full gameplay streams but maybe I'll try an iron man stream sometime and stick it on youtube now that I have better bandwidth. I do like to make extra saves for ease of reporting bugs, of witch there are plenty though.
Here's my explanation of how I end the game out as the sole owner of the map. In short I rush Khan's guards and murder every one in the field and execute them on the spot.


TW hasn't done anything but make noble troops easier to get. Their decisions regarding that have been nothing but back tracking the early conception of noble troops and from comments made in here and the patch notes they fully understood exactly they are doing when they allow castle village notables spit out noble troops easier than before.
All true but I agree with @five bucks that there will likely be a revision and reduction to the ease/amount or noble troops for the player. It's been pretty consistently called out as a negative and "too easy" "why bother with normal troops" blah blah. I would hope TW is doing the "don't just increase it 10% increase it 150% and see how it works" thing that's been brought up as a game dev thing. That said Sharpshooter's are just around the corner from fian land anyways....
 
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TW hasn't done anything but make noble troops easier to get. Their decisions regarding that have been nothing but back tracking the early conception of noble troops and from comments made in here and the patch notes they fully understood exactly they are doing when they allow castle village notables spit out noble troops easier than before.

Why? The AI hasn't snowballed in nearly a year.

Yep, that's the golden path, except I don't use mercs. Instead draw clans in from the start but keep them from taking towns by taking castles instead until I appear on the ballot again.

The clan only army used to be even stronger BTW. There was an oversight or bug that wouldn't consider those separate parties as far as loot division, so every clan party pulled down a full share.

You could legitimately make 100K per battle from loot + daily clan party payout.
Thanks for the review.
 
I don't have full gameplay streams but maybe I'll try an iron man stream sometime and stick it on youtube now that I have better bandwidth. I do like to make extra saves for ease of reporting bugs, of witch there are plenty though.
Here's my explanation of how I end the game out as the sole owner of the map. In short I rush Khan's guards and murder every one in the field and execute them on the spot.

well, I see that you have chosen the path of the dark side of the force :wink:, as you know, The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural...
although I would suggest using regular voice, since this distorted voice is a little bit harder to understand...
That gameplay would be interesting... :smile:
 
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Noooooooooooo please nooooooooo

All this stuff just slows the game down. Every game that has anti-snowballing mechanic feels like it's just a crude attempt to lengthen an average playthrough by devaluing player achievements. Why should the player be punished for blitzing the map? Why should the player be forced to retread the same ground over and over because of civil wars and rebellions?

I think the main reason people didn't like the khuzait snowballing in older patches is because it meant the lategame was just khuzaits, and people wanted more variety. Therefore the solution is more variety in gameplay, not an arbitrary mechanic designed to wipe out player progress if they play the game too efficiently.
Because it's supposed to be a semi-historical game? What's the point of the game if there is no challenge.
 
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