Dev Blog 20/06/19

[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_95_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="290" /></p> <p>In Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, players are able to engage in a number of hostile and criminal activities. However, just as in real life, these actions have consequences. And while some of the more obvious actions may be engaging an enemy in a pitched battle or laying siege to a castle, in this week’s blog, we focus on some of the more unconventional options that players have at their disposal.</p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/115

 

[Bjorn The Dead]

In Warband, the AI lords may raid every single village on the map and unlike the player, they can still recruit soldiers from those villages, in other words, they don't get the relation hit that the player gets for their evil actions. Not only that, but if the player raids their villages, he/she gets a relation hit with the owner, but if it's the other way around, in other words, if the AI lords raid the player's village, their relationships with the player stay intact, which makes no sense. Is the player assumed to be perfectly fine with that? In short, there are no consequences for the evil actions of the AI lords.

In Warband, Lords don't recruit soldiers in villages. They go to their castle and their soldiers just increase there. So there is no recruitment mechanic for AI lords in Warband. However in Bannerlord:

Another major change we have made is that AI lords now recruit troops in exactly the same way as players. And while, on the surface, this may appear to be a massive benefit to the player (as there are no more magically regenerating doom stacks!), it also means that you will be competing with fellow lords for fresh recruits.

There's also the fact that good relationships between the player and the AI lords have absolutely no effect on their actions, they don't even reconsider before raiding their friend's village, and things get even more strange if you play a female character. Even your husband may raid your villages and you may have to fight with him. Again, none of these make any sense at all.

Yes, you are just a friend to that lord but his faction is at war with your faction. What do you expect? I see no immersion breaking point there imo.

Stop Raiding option is good but shouldnt be instant as its already too easy to kite around enemies on the world map which ruins pretty much all tension and stakes there. Its hard to get your gang of unruly rape-y, steal-y, pillage-y men to just stop what their doing at the drop of a dime. There should be possibility that you'll leave some troops behind if you choose to run immediately and add other more relaxed exit options with penalties respectively

This is a must thing to have in the game. Maybe when stop raiding, the party might have some speed debuff for a time.

 

[SenorZorros]

Good to see there are more options for harassing your opponents. However, in medieval times knights generally harassed every village regardless of allegiance. Will there be an option to levy troops and collect "special tithes" from your own fiefs? and if so, will villages treat you different depending on how much you demand. I'd love to see villages and towns become uncooperative and maybe even rebellious if they think they have a weak lord which will let them get away with not paying their tithes and taxes and not supplying the required levies for the lord's army.

In campaign logistics blog they mentioned this:

Commanders can send out forager parties which will scour the countryside for food, confiscating any resources they come across. They can also send out raiders to attack villages directly, which will not only loot resources but also wreak havoc on the region and damage its economy.

I hope it answers your question.

This seems to be more aimed at raiding enemy villages though and mostly as a part of a campaign. I was talking about oppressing your own peasants instead of helping your enemy oppress theirs.

 

[JuJu70]

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

 

[FBohler]

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

WB+mods+VC+heir system.

I'm totally fine with it... but does it take 10 years to relrase such a game?

 

[fadohacolu]

With relation and influence penalties, even when raiding enemy villages, it still seems no more worthwhile than raiding in Warband. It still seems to be only useful if the player is desperate for resources. I just really hope the AI suffers the same consequences as the player- nothing more infuriating than having your villages sacked and being unable to respond in kind without serious penalties while the AI walks away free and clear.

On the other hand, it doesn't go very deep, and as others have said it doesn't add much depth to the 'evil' playthrough.

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

Don't forget the better graphics! Except those are already outdated, so... yeah.

 

[DanAngleland]

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

Bound to be better in quality, and different in the details. Bannerlord in general clearly is of better quality than Warband. The fact that the thousands of mods for Warband have covered virtually any idea one could have for this type of game means it is pretty much inevitable that a lot of Bannerlord features are going to be based on previously tried mod ideas, however well or not they have turned out in those mods.

Another blog thread, another snarky remark from JuJu. What's behind it, I wonder?

 

[HUMMAN]

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

Now imagine what would  bannerlord+mods be 

 

[Yaga]

I hope that the track in the screenshot is a real road rather than a Warband one. We need roads with a consistent impact on ai pathfinding and improved travel speed.

The village livestock look like mice at the feet of the player’s horse. The scale difference between ai parties and the map icons for locations has always been part of the M&B UI, but still seems odd.

+1
+1

 

[CKyHC]

I hope that the track in the screenshot is a real road rather than a Warband one. We need roads with a consistent impact on ai pathfinding and improved travel speed.

The village livestock look like mice at the feet of the player’s horse. The scale difference between ai parties and the map icons for locations has always been part of the M&B UI, but still seems odd.

+1
+1

yes you need a world of real size 

 

[Roccoflipside]

Did everyone else miss the part where thy said penalties only count if you raid a village you're not at war with? Or maybe I misread something... But I'm under the impression raiding a village you're at war with now causes no penalty, or at least much reduced

 

[Rabies]

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

WB+mods+VC+heir system.

I'm totally fine with it... but does it take 10 years to relrase such a game?

Apparently it does!

To be fair, though, I think the new politics and clans mechanics are going to make a big difference, especially to the mid-game.

In Warband, you join a Faction, and you have to spend ages running around doing repetitive quests to improve relations with other Lords and your King so that you'll be awarded Fiefs. And you fight in battles mainly as a way of leveling up your skills and Renown and your soldiers - they don't have much purpose beyond that. In Bannerlord, the more prominent economic system is hopefully going to mean that battles have a much more direct objective, and you'll also be using the Influence system to rank-up your Clan within the Faction in much more obvious way. So that part of the game should feel a lot more intuitive and meaningful.

I have literally no idea about Warband mods because I've only ever played Native unmodded. Are here any mods that do something similar to Bannerlord politics in Warband?

 

[John the Roleplayer]

Did everyone else miss the part where thy said penalties only count if you raid a village you're not at war with? Or maybe I misread something... But I'm under the impression raiding a village you're at war with now causes no penalty, or at least much reduced

I think that's how it should be. In wartime all assets of the belligerents are fair game. Since serfs are direct subjects of their respective lords, they are too. The idea of classifying people as civilians and avoiding harm to them is a modern one.

 

[TheGreatGorman]

How about a scouting penalty while raiding? I doubt there were volunteers willing to give up the chance of plunder to screen for enemy forces, especially in smaller forces.  What about an option where a larger force within a certain range is given the option to attack a plundering force with a detachment. The type of troops selected to sally forth (troop type, skill, leadership etc.) will determine the enemies willingness/ability to flee or fight. Fleeing in a rush could result in leaving behind a portion of the men and loot while fighting off the advance force could either buy needed time to escape or give the main army time to reach the village (represented by a slow trickle of more troops onto the map.)

Bjorn the Hound mentioned the recruiting mechanic above (specifically where AI lords and the player compete for soldiers). I hope there will also be an inflation mechanic that is also tied to desertion, maybe counteracted by leadership strength. Being able to adjust troop wages would be necessary I would think. Higher wages, higher morale; higher leadership traits, higher morale and vice versa. High relationship with the Lord will give better and more recruits but gold should be do the same! Leaders offering much higher than average wages should find hedge knights and peasants alike flocking to enter their service.

 

[JuJu70]

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

Another blog thread, another snarky remark from JuJu. What's behind it, I wonder?

Just don't like when someone's trying to BS me.

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

Now imagine what would  bannerlord+mods be 

I'd like to see BL released first

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[vicwiz007]

I hope that the track in the screenshot is a real road rather than a Warband one. We need roads with a consistent impact on ai pathfinding and improved travel speed.
The village livestock look like mice at the feet of the player’s horse. The scale difference between ai parties and the map icons for locations has always been part of the M&B UI, but still seems odd.

+1

How would you possibly scale everything to match parties? The most important part, the parties moving around the map, have to be the largest and clearest symbols. I think it would look much worse if the cows and whatnot were the size of the player, not to mention how annoying it would be to try to see things if this was done everywhere.

 

[NPC99]

I hope that the track in the screenshot is a real road rather than a Warband one. We need roads with a consistent impact on ai pathfinding and improved travel speed.
The village livestock look like mice at the feet of the player’s horse. The scale difference between ai parties and the map icons for locations has always been part of the M&B UI, but still seems odd.

+1

How would you possibly scale everything to match parties? The most important part, the parties moving around the map, have to be the largest and clearest symbols. I think it would look much worse if the cows and whatnot were the size of the player, not to mention how annoying it would be to try to see things if this was done everywhere.

There isn’t an obvious solution. The world map is a UI not a scene. However, the increased number of Bannerlord’s map symbols to mark village enterprises etc. accentuate the incongruity. Warband’s campaign maps are mean affairs, which must be constructed with minimal polys or the game crashes (most mods below 100,000-140,000 polys). That rationing forces packed maps, which some players prefer for crowded activity and action. However, Bannerlord allows bigger maps, which could allow mods to experiment with more consistently scaled parties and location map icons. I’d be interested in such a mod even though it risks undermining the game balance Taleworlds will have built into their current approach.
Smaller player party icons might also be interesting as there is nothing wrong with making distant parties harder for the player to spot - why should the players map vision bend around the horizon?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Parties are already hard to spot in the game's logic because of the spotting skill. Forcing the player to also look for the parties manually is a bit silly.
There is nothing wrong with having the characters be comparatively huge in my opinion. The map is basically a glorified menu and its primary purpose should be showing information. I feel like the map is comprised of 3 separate parts:
1. The landscape, trees and grass meshes
2. Towns and villages
3. Parties

If the objects are scaled to within these categories, anything else is fine. So as long as the trees are more or less in proportion with the mountains, and the towns and villages are vaguely in proportion with each other, it looks good. But earlier in development they had huge trees which were taller than mountains and it looked terrible.

 

[Lord Kinlar]

In Warband, the AI lords may raid every single village on the map and unlike the player, they can still recruit soldiers from those villages, in other words, they don't get the relation hit that the player gets for their evil actions. Not only that, but if the player raids their villages, he/she gets a relation hit with the owner, but if it's the other way around, in other words, if the AI lords raid the player's village, their relationships with the player stay intact, which makes no sense. Is the player assumed to be perfectly fine with that? In short, there are no consequences for the evil actions of the AI lords.

In Warband, Lords don't recruit soldiers in villages. They go to their castle and their soldiers just increase there. So there is no recruitment mechanic for AI lords in Warband.

Wrong. This is from the module system of 1.171:

in module_dialogues:

  [anyone,"lord_tell_objective", [
  (party_slot_eq, "$g_talk_troop_party", slot_party_ai_state, spai_visiting_village)],
  "We are recruiting new soldiers from {s1}. {s14}{s15}", "lord_pretalk",
  [(party_get_slot, ":ai_object", "$g_talk_troop_party", slot_party_ai_object),
    (str_store_party_name, s1, ":ai_object")]],

in module_scripts, this is called by the script "party_set_ai_state":

#Currently called from process_ai_state, could be called from elsewhere
  #It is used for lord to (1)Court ladies (2)Collect rents (3)Look for volunteers
  ("troop_does_business_in_center",
...
#Recruit volunteers
    (try_begin),
(is_between, ":center_no", villages_begin, villages_end),

        (party_get_slot, ":troop_type", ":center_no", slot_center_npc_volunteer_troop_type),
        (party_get_slot, ":troop_amount", ":center_no", slot_center_npc_volunteer_troop_amount),
        (party_set_slot, ":center_no", slot_center_npc_volunteer_troop_amount, -1),
      (party_add_members, ":led_party", ":troop_type", ":troop_amount"),
    (try_end),

Lords do recruit soldiers from villages unless their party is completely destroyed. Except, the script completely ignores the relationship between the center and the AI lord, quite possibly the relationship is not even taken into account or stored anywhere in the game.

There's also the fact that good relationships between the player and the AI lords have absolutely no effect on their actions, they don't even reconsider before raiding their friend's village, and things get even more strange if you play a female character. Even your husband may raid your villages and you may have to fight with him. Again, none of these make any sense at all.

Yes, you are just a friend to that lord but his faction is at war with your faction. What do you expect? I see no immersion breaking point there imo.

What do I expect? I expect that they would behave in a realistic manner. For instance what happens when you've caught your husband raiding your village,

- "What the hell are you doing?!"
- "We are raiding this village."
- "Surrender or die, ex-husband!"

Yeah, totally makes sense, not immersion breaking at all.

 

[panem]

What a great blog.

With relation and influence penalties, even when raiding enemy villages, it still seems no more worthwhile than raiding in Warband. It still seems to be only useful if the player is desperate for resources. I just really hope the AI suffers the same consequences as the player- nothing more infuriating than having your villages sacked and being unable to respond in kind without serious penalties while the AI walks away free and clear.

On the other hand, it doesn't go very deep, and as others have said it doesn't add much depth to the 'evil' playthrough.

so in essence everything the same as in WB+mods.

Don't forget the better graphics! Except those are already outdated, so... yeah.

If you are not at war with the kingdom of the target, hostile actions are considered to be criminal acts and thus increase your criminal rating in the region. However, if your criminal rating exceeds a certain point, the other kingdom will be provoked to declare war. Otherwise, you may be able to repair the damage and atone for your sins by paying compensation.

bad Lords usurped and great their own name, 
when bad Lords surround king, then adulate but join criminal acts,
as a result, king become claimant.

good lords support kingdom and great the name of king.
when good Lords surround king, then word to kingdom where go wrong and let everyone law-abiding.
as a result, kingdom get stronger.

Did everyone else miss the part where thy said penalties only count if you raid a village you're not at war with? Or maybe I misread something... But I'm under the impression raiding a village you're at war with now causes no penalty, or at least much reduced

I think that's how it should be. In wartime all assets of the belligerents are fair game. Since serfs are direct subjects of their respective lords, they are too. The idea of classifying people as civilians and avoiding harm to them is a modern one.

good refugee looking a save place for alive or
bad refugee "Forcefully Taking Supplies" ...

Lords do recruit soldiers from villages unless their party is completely destroyed.

what if claimant have right to rule?

But of course, it isn’t just settlements that are subject to hostile actions. Caravans and villager parties moving on the campaign map can also be attacked, coerced to join the player or forced to hand over a portion of their items and gold.

Therefore, sent patrol to keep your own territory been save is very important,
cause caravans and villager will provide living capital to town/village.

however, only one person unable to do it well or ineffective
Bannerlord (King > Duke > Marquess > Earl > Viscount > Baron) not only have the right to get tax but have to keep the territory been save,
When good Lords being attack, they may told their King to send man for protection.
When bad Lords being attack, they may get the booty (caravans lose money, bad Lords gain money, village not enough supporting to grown up, hunger villagers become refugee) and let raiding keep going.

1) robber get booty from villagers/caravans.
2) bad Lords get booty from robber.
3) villagers lack of supply and become robber.
1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,....

 

[FBohler]

I have literally no idea about Warband mods because I've only ever played Native unmodded. Are here any mods that do something similar to Bannerlord politics in Warband?

I'm no expert on WB mods as well, but I see lots of people saying many features are already present in mods.

I assume these features are totally scattered in WB, so BL is doing something very meaningful by compiling and balancing everything into a quasi AAA standard.

But I'm really afraid that all these systems may play very similarly to Warband despite having so intricate operation under the hood.

Besides Influence, Clan and Heir systems, I can't see anything really new or disruptive.


Oh, of course there is the combat, that is looking really great and fluid, but it seems Mordhau nailed it in a fraction of the time schedule.