I dont know how I feel about the current state of this mid game. Everything just seems to be... easy. I'm sure the difficulty can be raised, but here are some problems I had with the game from gamescom and this vid.
- In the castles blog released over a year ago, they mentioned layered sieges, and we got to see the cool layout in the vid(though the scene wasnt in line with the map) yet the AI never actually took advantage of that, preferring to hold the outer wall until ultimate retreat.
- WTF are the lords doing in counter??? It was really cool to see lords sort of gang up in defiance in front of the castle gates(between the defenders and attackers on the map) so I assumed maybe there would a local resistance of nearby lords joining the defense... and then nothing. Even when the player lead the assault on the castle, there were literally 4 lords making an army of 400+ that just didn't join. Unless it is an unfinished feature, I don't know what to say other than disappointed. We got to see the siege camp of the attackers so I was hoping maybe when the lords attack, not only will the nearby lords join, but the defenders will sally with lords, thereby making the attackers the defenders holding the choke points in the siege camp. Or perhaps once you lead an assault, the nearby lords will in turn join in the scene, only coming from behind as opposed to being held up in the walls.
- Horses and Infantry formations mean jack all. Especially in the gameplay from rocket beans (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-4Zd3YWVGI&t=837s), in the pitch battle where they were outnumbered by over 100, the Khuzaits literally by just having horsemen absolutely destroyed the empire army. Because of how the AI handles spears, referring to the combat ai in a dev blog also over a year ago, the individual AI and the Formation AI just arent working together, allowing for easy pickings from the mounted Individual AI.
- Moving back to sieges, I was kind of really sad to learn that when a besieging army is attacked, not only does the garrison of the besieged castle not join in side of their faction, but the battle dosesn't take place in the siege camp, or even in view of the castle/town(for authentic and immersion reasons).
Moving to the interface, while a step up from Warband, personally I feel that it is simply too informative. While Warband was very "learn it yourself" Bannerlord seems to be "No, not that way, follow me". There is too much hand holding and the UI suffers. For example, while I like the army feature of having different armies form up, the management is just stupid. Influence has simply too much influence in that regard(hear me out). From what we have seen from gamescom, as soon as you spend that influence to convince a lord, he will join no strings attached. On top of that, because it literally only takes 1~ day to form an army of 500+, sieges(oddly enough) take way too much time. While it dosent seem to be the case for the AI, the fact that the player can tell how far other lords are means that he can essentially quickly form an army(given he has enough influence which you seem to get in bulk even only after 1 battle. This means countering sieges is easy as opposed to warband where either you as marshal, or the AI as marshall, can call for the bannermen, but because there are so many things such as lords rutting more men, or my favorite; "I am not accompanying the realm because I can do greater deeds" you are never guaranteed an army that can go toe to toe with the enemy marshall.
-Next up, the army compositions. What the actual, no words. In most of the vids I watched with large army battles, in the feed its literally just "x recruit" forever. Where are the professional armies, where are the minor factions aiding their faction? But above all else, what is the tactical AI?? Referring back to that rocket bean video, it was cool to see the horse archer delegated formation wreak havec among the archers, but why did infantry proceed to advance without any protection? There would be no point other than suicide which is what happend. Although it looked cool seeing cavalry smash from both the side and the back, there was simply no challenge.
-Lastly, Although I dont want to assume I cant help but worry with what they did with the massive massive battles. What do I mean? In Warband you had the vassal who would lead the entire army, and late game whoever that was, you would have an army lead by one dude facing off(whether it be to stop a siege, start one, or raid a village) and the other faction with another massive army. From personal experience in native, the most i've had was 3600 vs 2800. Crazy numbers, but if we use the logic of bannerlord, the marshal system has been replaced with the army system. So even though you might have in general more large scale battles 500~ vs 500~, it feels like there will be no possibility for decisive battles. Its a shame, and I know maybe in late game when you get very influential lords in all factions(lords facing off each leading 2000~ men each, it still isnt necessarily a decisive battle, because if we once again refer to the war page of bannerlord, in the relative strength in which I assume is manpower, both vlandia and the empire had 9000~ each, so even though whoever wins the 4000 man battle, that army would be hard pressed to continue any further ventures into enemy territory due to loss.
Anyway, just my analysis, love to hear any arguments or clarifications.