Deleted the game and will not come back until at least something changes

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Slow and methodical battles in Bannerlord will work only if TW increases their strategic impact.

Right now individual victories barely accomplish anything, enemies just constantly spam new armies of low-level trash that you absolutely cannot auto-resolve against because that system is completely broken. Slowing down battles will just make wars even more grindy and tedious than they currently are.

Currently there's only one way to make battles somewhat meaningful - execute everybody you defeat. But this opens the whole new can of worms.
 
Slow and methodical battles in Bannerlord will work only if TW increases their strategic impact.

Right now individual victories barely accomplish anything, enemies just constantly spam new armies of low-level trash that you absolutely cannot auto-resolve against because that system is completely broken. Slowing down battles will just make wars even more grindy and tedious than they currently are.

Currently there's only one way to make battles somewhat meaningful - execute everybody you defeat. But this opens the whole new can of worms.
Yes. It seems like the AI can conjure up armies out of nothing. Why have a complex economic system in game when it doesn' tie in with the main prospect of the game: battles?

But I think that battles in general are a bit too grindy. Morale should break much earlier allowing for decisive battle outcomes. Currently every victory between armies which are at least somewhat similar in numbers end pyrrhically. Even battles in which you hold a clear advantage can end up not being worth it because your losses (whilst alot smaller than the enemies) don't make it worth it.
 
RTS and RPG developers now are just too scared of people saying their game is easy, even if making it "harder" means obliterating the high skill ceiling and making the main difficulty your own irl patience.

Grinding (i.e. repeating the same easy tasks to make numbers go up) should always be the least efficient way to play the game, even if the player has infinite irl time and patience. Just like in the newer total war games and most paradox titles, there are different tactics you can use, but grinding just beats them all and makes them obsolete.
 
I'd appreciate if from now on the OP could count to 10 and breathe deep before posting, and Goyyyio to stop trolling and spamming, especially using AI generation, in which case there isn't even creativity to be impressed by.
 
I understand what the OP says, but don't completely agree. Having just recently come from Warband where you could run roughshod over 10 looters relatively easy. I was shocked to see how hard they are to deal with, especially in the early game. I've been playing the game on the Bannerlord setting and just recently bought the game. 1 you are relegated to use bows early game to survive even 5 looters. 2 those hobos are extremely accurate with stones in a most irritating way. 3 the swing speed and accuracy a hobo has vs a man on a horse is uncanny, I mean expert even. 4 with short spears those hobos will still hit you with short axe.

However, after playing for a bit I adapted and just accepted that the stones are accurate and the more armor you wear the less damage they do. Recently I discovered a long two handed weapon with outreach their short weapons pretty effectively provided you don't just wade into a horde of looters. The light and heavy lances are long enough to evade their weapons, even with a short spear if you head straight into a looter you can hit him before he hits you, most the time. Javelins are pretty easy to dodge if your on foot. If you look closely you can see if its on target or off target and you can move to evade them. Finally you have to find and attack the stray looters so the others cannot counter attack you, isolate them, pick of the ones hanging in the back throwing rocks. Also your shield is your friend, since they are so quick and accurate you have to shield up when your close and time your strike to hit when they have their back to you or just be first. For the most part at this point in my game looters are relatively easy do deal with.
 
I understand what the OP says, but don't completely agree. Having just recently come from Warband where you could run roughshod over 10 looters relatively easy. I was shocked to see how hard they are to deal with, especially in the early game. I've been playing the game on the Bannerlord setting and just recently bought the game. 1 you are relegated to use bows early game to survive even 5 looters. 2 those hobos are extremely accurate with stones in a most irritating way. 3 the swing speed and accuracy a hobo has vs a man on a horse is uncanny, I mean expert even. 4 with short spears those hobos will still hit you with short axe.

However, after playing for a bit I adapted and just accepted that the stones are accurate and the more armor you wear the less damage they do. Recently I discovered a long two handed weapon with outreach their short weapons pretty effectively provided you don't just wade into a horde of looters. The light and heavy lances are long enough to evade their weapons, even with a short spear if you head straight into a looter you can hit him before he hits you, most the time. Javelins are pretty easy to dodge if your on foot. If you look closely you can see if its on target or off target and you can move to evade them. Finally you have to find and attack the stray looters so the others cannot counter attack you, isolate them, pick of the ones hanging in the back throwing rocks. Also your shield is your friend, since they are so quick and accurate you have to shield up when your close and time your strike to hit when they have their back to you or just be first. For the most part at this point in my game looters are relatively easy do deal with.
You get what I mean, nice. I also had to adapt, best way is just to get a simple xbow since they're pretty accurate even with 0 skill and ride around & shoot till they die. Soloing group of bandits can be done on foot too, when you have javelins and reduce their numbers to something you're more comfortable fighting. Or ride and use a sword on throwers and spear on melee wielders. Thing is, realism or not, I still don't believe they should be able to hit this well on a horseman in full trot, especially not hobos. Hitting a horse since it's big target, yes, but horseman himself? Only when they get lucky.. Try hitting a horseman riding when you play as footman with 1h weapon and see how hard it is. Doable? Yes. Overhead hits work best when timed right. Doing it on daily basis? When you get really handy with your chosen melee, many hits, and that's you, a trained soldier. Every hit? Absolutely not. I'd stick with the "pro baseball player" explanation and keep this ability to t4/5 soldiers. If we're down to realism, they ought to be as skilled as trained and experienced they are. I don't mind getting my ass handed to me by t5 grizzled veteran that smacked 10s of others, but some peasant shouldn't be that good. This has to be done differently, with spears and pikes, using simple swords or axes to murder cavalry en masse just sounds wrong. Riding them into shieldwall with spears sticking out like a big hedgehog ought to get them killed and it often does, but how many times I saw my cav getting swatted down by a single (!) guy with a sword... That's literally their perfect target! Or getting shot down by archers. That's their main dish, basically unarmed guy incapable of defending self (though this is more a problem of their AI since they don't use shields well and drive straight at them instead of going sideways). Game still needs work and balancing done. Tbh I think TW just overshot enemy's accuracy + haven't figured armor protection yet and it stuck because people apologise it with "realism", there's some things pointing to non-realistic approach like Puppeteer troops and such (who in their sane mind would stand still somewhere only with 1h weapon and without a shield, to get impaled by arrows?). There should be more settings at start of new game, like damage done to enemy (not just your troops), accuracy etc to finetune it to your liking, that would be best. This way you could keep the "realistic" setting if you like it, or have more arcade-ish approach, or something in between like WB was.
 
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People say this about a lot of different strategy games, that they want slow tactical battles, but I've yet to see a good implementation of it that doesn't just devolve into a slugfest with low infantry damage like RBM. This is also at odds with the player wanting to actually get into combat and not just move flags around for 20 minutes.

The reason real battles lasted for hours or days is that they wouldn't actually be in melee for that long, with the majority of the army in reserve. Ive never seen this implemented in a game because the AI never makes tactical withdrawals, once a unit gets into combat it just fights to the death or until it routs and gets massacres anyway. It never gets into a 2 minute scrap and pulls back it's infantry when it's not winning.

Without an AI that actually tries to survive the battle with minimal casualties, or doesn't just commit everything immediately, long battles are never going to be fun.
So ........... build that superior tactical AI, make battles a puzzle to solve, with some reference to " realism " and historical units and their best use etc, make victory a satisfying slow burn, or like a key turning in a lock, " and they will come ".
I'd buy it.

And if not TW, who ?
 
So ........... build that superior tactical AI, make battles a puzzle to solve, with some reference to " realism " and historical units and their best use etc, make victory a satisfying slow burn, or like a key turning in a lock, " and they will come "
I don't think you can make battles a slow burn and also a satisfying puzzle, i think those two things are an oxymoron.

A game like Ultimate General is pretty slow and also very forgiving for both you and the AI. Kill rates are slow as hell, and you have to rout enemy units 2-3 times before they stop being a threat and you can't run them down, so every battle just ends with the enemy gradually becoming less and less combat effective rather than a decisive blow. It's an interesting way to do battles but it feels more like attrition than tactics.

I don't think the battles are too fast. I think there's nothing interesting to do in battles other than putting your archers somewhere and smashing your infantry blob together while your cavalry does the cha-cha. If you watch stratgaming videos, most of the time when he tries something resembling tactics, or splits up his infantry, he just loses.

What i think would make a big difference is preventing shielded infantry from instantly turning around while being shot at or while their formation is in combat. Flanking engaged infantry should be devastating and a solid rear charge should basically end the battle. The "fun" of the battle should then be about trying to get your infantry, cavalry or archers behind the enemy infantry while the enemy is doing the same. I coded something like this in warband and it worked fairly well. I also think different lords should command their units indiviually so its not just a gigantic indistinguishable shieldwall every single time.
 
This maybe is a controversial opinion, but I don't think that M&B's core idea of combining real-time combat and real-time tactics works particularly well. It never did in Warband and it definitely does not in Bannerlord. I believe this is the main reason why 90% of players use super basic tactics like "archers on a hill behind shield wall" or even plain F6.

Actively participating in a battle makes it very difficult to control your troops at the same time and it puts your character in danger (and we all well know that AI really likes to throw when your character goes down in combat). On the other hand, playing as a "hill commander" basically turns Bannerlord into poor man's version of Total War with much clunkier controls.

There are several ways to fix this. The easiest is to implement some sort of a active pause feature. You press a button, the game pauses and switches to bird's-eye view that allows you to issue commands Total War-style. I don't particularly like this method because it ruins the flow of battles. Having to constantly pause and unpause would be very tiresome after a while.

I think a better way is to implement some sort of pre-battle planning ala old-school Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon titles. Basically, you plan all your tactics before the battle even starts and during combat you only have limited options like "go-codes" and such. This approach separates tactics from personal combat and allows you to focus on both at different times.

I do realize that this is a very drastic change that requires creating basically a completely new game, but hey, a man can dream.
 
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This maybe is a controversial opinion, but I don't think that M&B's core idea of combining real-time combat and real-time tactics works particularly well. It never did in Warband and it definitely does not in Bannerlord

I mostly agree, but I do think the general idea ks salvagable. Warband was better than bannerlord because for the most part it accepted that battles were a total mess of every soldier doing their own thing. You would find a good position, skirmish for a bit, maybe kill the enemy archers with your cavalry, and then charge. Gigantic battles with 5 reinforcement waves were rare enough that they didn't ruin the game, and you would typically win anyway even if you used zero tactics. This was fine in my opinion, basically just dynasty warriors.

The mistake they made with bannerlord was hearing players say "the best part of warband is the big battles!!!" Without realising it was the equivalent of a child saying "the best part of a big meal is the ice cream!!!". The battles in warband were basically a gimmick or like a bonus level in lego star wars. They were dumb hack-and-slash fun totally divorced from the blocking and feinting of smaller fights. The tactics were part of that, it was cool to ride around with cavalry to do a rear charge even if it wasnt much better than just F1 F3.

The solution is to provide more opportunities for the player to just ride around being a dumbass in battle. Bannerlord is trying to force you to be king of the universe all the time, and it completely cannibalises the combat because you have to babysit all the dumb kingdom management systems in ugly menus rather than just riding and chopping like the game's namesake tells you to.
 
Slow and methodical battles in Bannerlord will work only if TW increases their strategic impact.

Right now individual victories barely accomplish anything, enemies just constantly spam new armies of low-level trash that you absolutely cannot auto-resolve against because that system is completely broken. Slowing down battles will just make wars even more grindy and tedious than they currently are.

Currently there's only one way to make battles somewhat meaningful - execute everybody you defeat. But this opens the whole new can of worms.

Yeah but does no one remember the massive snowball issues we had on EA release? We all hated that, and for the most part it has been resolved. The trade off is that yeah, individual battles don't mean as much.

I think there's a fine balance to be had. And I actually can sympathize with the devs here. There must be literally thousands of agents every second in a game of Bannerlord, adding up to thousands and thousands of variables. Tweaking one thing can absolutely have a negative impact down the line that everyone will hate, and that is hard to predict.

For what it's worth I love the battles in these games and don't mind the length at all. I absolutely don't need them to be 45 minute slog fests like a MOBA. Mount and Blade is still totally unique in the simulated sandbox with fun real time army combat it provides. Perhaps the best way to solve this issue is some more realism related difficulty options for new games though.
 
Yeah but does no one remember the massive snowball issues we had on EA release? We all hated that, and for the most part it has been resolved. The trade off is that yeah, individual battles don't mean as much.

I think there's a fine balance to be had. And I actually can sympathize with the devs here. There must be literally thousands of agents every second in a game of Bannerlord, adding up to thousands and thousands of variables. Tweaking one thing can absolutely have a negative impact down the line that everyone will hate, and that is hard to predict.

For what it's worth I love the battles in these games and don't mind the length at all. I absolutely don't need them to be 45 minute slog fests like a MOBA. Mount and Blade is still totally unique in the simulated sandbox with fun real time army combat it provides. Perhaps the best way to solve this issue is some more realism related difficulty options for new games though.
Preventing snowballing by nerfing the impact of battles is fine as a stop-gap-measure. But as a terminal solution it is ridiculus. It's been three years now and TW hasn't managed to fix the snowballing issue without breaking the game. And nerfing the outcome of battles to a point where they don't matter any more is gamebreaking in a game where battles are supposed to take center stage.

I personally think that more politics in the game like peace treaties (that take a set time to run out), alliances and effects like war weariness within the factions would solve that problem. Actually having to have a reason for war, one that has to be either fabricated or provoked through action (could be a quest for the player) would limit the amount of wars going on. And giving these wars an actual end-goal like conquering a specific settlement would limit the timeframe they take.

But I guess stuff like that is too complex™ unlike simulating an entire economy with trade routs and calculating damage by impact speed and the actual angle you are hitting your opponent.
 
Yeah but does no one remember the massive snowball issues we had on EA release? We all hated that, and for the most part it has been resolved. The trade off is that yeah, individual battles don't mean as much.
That was more an issue of their auto-calc sims, and certain culture stats; still not solved - just hidden behind all these 'bandaid' solutions. So any tiny change/tweak they make completely messes up the balance; ie the double army siege 'recently' messes whatever balance they had even 2 years ago, Sturgia still shafted by map layout, etc...
I think there's a fine balance to be had. And I actually can sympathize with the devs here. There must be literally thousands of agents every second in a game of Bannerlord, adding up to thousands and thousands of variables. Tweaking one thing can absolutely have a negative impact down the line that everyone will hate, and that is hard to predict.
I get that, it's also one of the benefits of EA, an EA that had probably millions of 'testers' and was 3 years in duration. But they got bogged down by systems/features incomplete, slow reaction to feedbacks, constant bugs/crashes, juggling the workload with the console ports, etc...they bit way more than they could capably chew.
For what it's worth I love the battles in these games and don't mind the length at all. I absolutely don't need them to be 45 minute slog fests like a MOBA. Mount and Blade is still totally unique in the simulated sandbox with fun real time army combat it provides. Perhaps the best way to solve this issue is some more realism related difficulty options for new games though.
It needs to be longer, not 45 minutes, not even like RBM mod - but there's no reason why they can't be just that 25% longer (ie +2 minutes). You know, where maybe infantry have better staying power as a position if one wants to micro some maneuvering; or where archers could more frequently actually run out of arrows and maybe see that 'downside' to them.
 
This maybe is a controversial opinion, but I don't think that M&B's core idea of combining real-time combat and real-time tactics works particularly well. It never did in Warband and it definitely does not in Bannerlord. I believe this is the main reason why 90% of players use super basic tactics like "archers on a hill behind shield wall" or even plain F6.

Actively participating in a battle makes it very difficult to control your troops at the same time and it puts your character in danger (and we all well know that AI really likes to throw when your character goes down in combat). On the other hand, playing as a "hill commander" basically turns Bannerlord into poor man's version of Total War with much clunkier controls.

There are several ways to fix this. The easiest is to implement some sort of a active pause feature. You press a button, the game pauses and switches to bird's-eye view that allows you to issue commands Total War-style. I don't particularly like this method because it ruins the flow of battles. Having to constantly pause and unpause would be very tiresome after a while.
Agreed with your identification of the problem, but the active pause with RTS view is the best solution. It gives the player agency to do tactics alongside fighting. It doesn't remove control and has been proven in other games to be just what most (non-casual?) players want.
If someone thinks it disrupts the flow, then don't use it and go with the flow. Let the AI control your troop formations or set them to do stuff and then go fight.
Some people actually dislike the fighting part because they are inept at it, and would gladly play hill commanders. They need to have fun too.
 
You guys know that warband had a setting to lower damage taken by player character hidden in the options and the default was 1/4 damage taken?

I didn't know about this setting in warband untill I was about 200-300 hours in, and by then I was so used to it I couldn't change back.

Bannerlord has this setting as well, but it's shown to the player as soon as he starts the campaign, and the avrage warband vet would considers himself a pro and sets the setting to realstic, even if he played on 1/4 in warband, unbeknownst to him in some cases.I did this too, and and found the combat frustrating.

Just swallow your pride and lower the damage taken by player character if you want to participate in combat. Seriously, nowadays I play on 50% dmg taken and I'm enjoying myself far more.
 
You guys know that warband had a setting to lower damage taken by player character hidden in the options and the default was 1/4 damage taken?

I didn't know about this setting in warband untill I was about 200-300 hours in, and by then I was so used to it I couldn't change back.

Bannerlord has this setting as well, but it's shown to the player as soon as he starts the campaign, and the avrage warband vet would considers himself a pro and sets the setting to realstic, even if he played on 1/4 in warband, unbeknownst to him in some cases.I did this too, and and found the combat frustrating.

Just swallow your pride and lower the damage taken by player character if you want to participate in combat. Seriously, nowadays I play on 50% dmg taken and I'm enjoying myself far more.
I'm used to playing WB on normal dmg, found that pretty much instantly (have also played on 50% for a bit tho), but WB's normal is much lower (very few things instakill you from full hp, it takes more hits when you get mobbed etc) than Bannerlord's "realistic" dmg where you die almost instantly. I also play on 50% here to enjoy moar.. I liked the WB balance tho, top armors protected you well at normal dmg. Tried messing around with mods, there are 1/2 and 3/4 for everyone on battlefield including player, but 1/2 is just beating beef and 3/4 isn't noticeable.. Armors don't work as they did in WB. Point of this whole rant was the superb accuracy tho, that stays no matter the dmg done to player.
 
You guys know that warband had a setting to lower damage taken by player character hidden in the options and the default was 1/4 damage taken?

I didn't know about this setting in warband untill I was about 200-300 hours in, and by then I was so used to it I couldn't change back.

Bannerlord has this setting as well, but it's shown to the player as soon as he starts the campaign, and the avrage warband vet would considers himself a pro and sets the setting to realstic, even if he played on 1/4 in warband, unbeknownst to him in some cases.I did this too, and and found the combat frustrating.

Just swallow your pride and lower the damage taken by player character if you want to participate in combat. Seriously, nowadays I play on 50% dmg taken and I'm enjoying myself far more.
It seems to me that the op is not complaining about damage per se. It's that the lowest rank of enemies are too accurate with rocks and those rocks do too much damage, and fighting while on a horse you have to cheese the game to be able to hit anyone because spears and lances can't outreach a scythe or 1 handed hammer.
After I started playing with full damage on Warband years ago I never went back to lowering the damage. I wanted some kind of tension during fights.
I do have to agree that rocks feel way too powerfu,l and fighting from horseback is extremely wonky for me because hitboxes are inconsistent at best. I personally feel like hitboxes are probably from knees to mid chest and that's why it's so hard to hit anything on horseback. I can never land a head shot and if I don't aim low, like really low, I just end up whiffing, just my 2 cents. 🤷‍♂️
 
I do that every new game. Maybe you just need some practise
It’s impossible without cheats to solo more then 7+ looters . Trust me I’m better then 99 percent of players and I can’t take more then 7 looters bum rushing me it’s near impossible .
 
It’s impossible without cheats to solo more then 7+ looters . Trust me I’m better then 99 percent of players and I can’t take more then 7 looters bum rushing me it’s near impossible .
My brother in Christ, just kill one and ride away, then repeat.

edit: And use a better weapon than a sword, jfc
 
Since the 1.2.0 update, this woe of mine is solved - seems like the stink has paid off lol, you can finally charge into a group without dying 100% of times. Makes riding a horse (and investing into couple of battle brothers riding with) you much more enjoyable. They do seem to be more accurate with throwing weapons though, as a trade off. Also, the movement changed, before you had most speed when you ran forward, sidesteps and backwards were slower, now it's more fluent, but I'd have to test it more.

My brother in Christ, just kill one and ride away, then repeat.
I think he meant on foot.. When they mob you it's certain death. You can solo groups on foot too, but that requires throwing weapons and thinning their numbers to 1-2 before they get to you. Seems like they also removed harpoons, was always my favourite throwing weapon, now I couldn't find it in usual towns (Sturgia).
 
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