Development Priorities

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While Bannerlord may be moving in the right direction, I think many participants on these forums (including some of the staunchest defenders of the game) have at times been worried about the pace of progress. Those expecting an acceleration post-refactor will have been somewhat disappointed. As someone who moved to the sidelines of Bannerlord a while back, I still peek into these forums for updates from the regulars (you know who you are!), to gauge how much has changed. I am not expecting significant additions of content: CK3-style Court systems, TW-style Non-Agression Pact / Defensive Alliances / Military Alliances, etc. would all be nice, but I recognise that they would be brand new features in a game that is still knee-deep in Early Access fixes.

What I do expect, and I think many others as well, is much faster iteration by the developers on tasks that are both quick to deploy and, honestly, blindingly obvious issues with the current game's meta. To their credit, several of this game's developers do pay active attention to these forums. The sole purpose of this thread is to provide a recap of what are in my view the simple, easy-to-implement, high-impact changes that should constitute part of the patch cycles sooner rather than later.

1. Archers Dominate Too Easily: This has been an obvious flaw in the game's combat meta since the very start. Massed archers or crossbowmen trivially decimate any army and remove the joy of mastering combined arms warfare. It doesn't matter what faction you pick: even if it's a faction with poor ranged (say, Sturgians), you'll still get excellent results bringing 80% archers. Total War's best franchises all rely on finding effective ways to balance infantry, ranged, cavalry and where applicable, artillery. Bannerlord's battle meta really ought to strive for that depth.

Suggestion: Reduce damage of bows and crossbows significantly, iterating in increments of 10% nerf. With each damage nerf, increase the ammunition of ranged units commensurately so that your archers can still put out the exact same amount of damage in protracted battles as now; only, they will need someone (infantry!) to tie up incoming forces. This will also make positioning/repositioning relevant: your archers need an angle from which to fire into enemy troops when the infantry lines crash into each other.

2. Faction Troops need More Flavour: This issue is somewhat related to the previous one. With Ranged being so dominant in Bannerlord's combat meta, there is often little need for much, if any, infantry or cavalry. Assuming we address the domination of archers, the game could still benefit from a substantial differentiation in each faction's strengths and weaknesses. From a replayability perspective, I would ideally want to be telling myself: this playthrough is Sturgian, my infantry core is going to demolish things but my ranged firepower will be lacklustre. This other playthrough is Vlandian: cycle-charging with cavalry will be instrumental to victory. In general I'd favour more extremisation of each faction's strengths and weaknesses (paired with meaningful morale penalties for too much mixing and matching of troops across cultures).

Suggestion: This is really down to the developer vision for what each faction represents, and this may differ from my understanding. I say this because I think of Battanians as the archer faction (given how amazing Fians are), but the absence of any non-Noble ranged option actually means the Battanians often have the least ranged firepower in any engagement! At a guess, I'd say the original vision for faction key strengths was: Vlandia = Lance Cavalry, Sturgia = 2-Handed Shock Infantry, Battania = Longbows, Khuzait = Horse Archers, Aserai = Mounted Skirmishers, Empire = Shielded Heavy Infantry. Whatever the vision was: take the relevant units of each faction and dial up their skill point allocations and gear to 11. If need be, dial down the skill point allocations and gear of the faction's weaknesses commensurately for balance purposes. If you can make it possible to achieve heroic victories with very different combined arms ratios by playing to the strengths of each faction, you've just improved the game's replayability sixfold.

3. The Smithing Money Printer needs to Stop: The option to smith javelins worth more than a town's annual income is nonsense, and makes a mockery of the game's economy. I understand the devs want gear to exist as a money-sink for the player. I personally think this is a mistake, as it is responsible for one of the game's most fundamental cognitive dissonances ('wait, I'm still in rags but this troop I've leveled on Looters is now in heavy plate armour worth hundreds of thousands? And he's working for 12 denar a day? Okay then...'). If they insist on gate-keeping high-level gear behind exorbitant prices, then some sort of affix for player-crafted gear is required to ensure it can not be used to trivialise the game's money management aspects. Building up fief prosperity, caravans, trading, doing quests, war spoils, tributaries - so many aspects of the game are negatively affected by the existence of such a powerful, immersion-breaking shortcut to wealth.

Suggestion: Implement some affix system for player-crafted gear to ensure it is only as profitable, at top-end, as any of Bannerlord's other roads to riches. Or more simply from a balance perspective: make it never be profitable at all, but instead boost the damage potential of master-crafted weaponry significantly. Those in pursuit of the most powerful personal character should still eagerly explore smithing for that edge in battle.

4. The Khuzaits are OP: The Khuzaits have spent the entire Early Access being far too powerful, for reasons that are well-known: a strong geographic position with their back to a map edge (so their economy rarely gets raided), 20% cavalry autocalc bonus, choosing their engagements (because of mounted ratios + culture bonus), etc. I won't belabour this point as it's really flogging a dead horse (we wish! amirite?... i'll see myself out). As I understand it, Mexxico has already acknowledged this issue, and it's one they're looking to address soon.

Suggestion: I think ongoing tests by Mexxico were showing that Khuzaits are still decent (as in, still actually conquering stuff and -never- getting deleted from the map) with the 20% cavalry buff and their cultural speed buff removed. It would take even more to push Khuzait into territory where they might actually be one of Calradia's losers. Personally, I'd like some more entropy in my campaigns. Evidence shows the cavalry autocalc buff was counterproductive to campaign balance: so for now, take it out and delete their culture speed buff. Replace with a horse-related culture trait, like -20% cost to all horse purchases. Even that would probably be more valuable than the Aserai caravan trait...
 
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While Bannerlord may be moving in the right direction, I think many participants on these forums (including some of the staunchest defenders of the game) have at times been worried about the pace of progress. Those expecting an acceleration post-refactor will have been somewhat disappointed. As someone who moved to the sidelines of Bannerlord a while back, I still peek into these forums for updates from the regulars (you know who you are!), to gauge how much has changed. I am not expecting significant additions of content: CK3-style Court systems, TW-style Non-Agression Pact / Defensive Alliances / Military Alliances, etc. would all be nice, but I recognise that they would be brand new features in a game that is still knee-deep in Early Access fixes.

What I do expect, and I think many others as well, is much faster iteration by the developers on tasks that are both quick to deploy and, honestly, blindingly obvious issues with the current game's meta. To their credit, several of this game's developers do pay active attention to these forums. The sole purpose of this thread is to provide a recap of what are in my view the simple, easy-to-implement, high-impact changes that should constitute part of the patch cycles sooner rather than later.

1. Archers Dominate Too Easily: This has been an obvious flaw in the game's combat meta since the very start. Massed archers or crossbowmen trivially decimate any army and remove the joy of mastering combined arms warfare. It doesn't matter what faction you pick: even if it's a faction with poor ranged (say, Sturgians), you'll still get excellent results bringing 80% archers. Total War's best franchises all rely on finding effective ways to balance infantry, ranged, cavalry and where applicable, artillery. Bannerlord's battle meta really ought to strive for that depth.

Suggestion: Reduce damage of bows and crossbows significantly, iterating in increments of 10% nerf. With each damage nerf, increase the ammunition of ranged units commensurately so that your archers can still put out the exact same amount of damage in protracted battles as now; only, they will need someone (infantry!) to tie up incoming forces. This will also make positioning/repositioning relevant: your archers need an angle from which to fire into enemy troops when the infantry lines crash into each other.

2. Faction Troops need More Flavour: This issue is somewhat related to the previous one. With Ranged being so dominant in Bannerlord's combat meta, there is often little need for much, if any, infantry or cavalry. Assuming we address the domination of archers, the game could still benefit from a substantial differentiation in each faction's strengths and weaknesses. From a replayability perspective, I would ideally want to be telling myself: this playthrough is Sturgian, my infantry core is going to demolish things but my ranged firepower will be lacklustre. This other playthrough is Vlandian: cycle-charging with cavalry will be instrumental to victory. In general I'd favour more extremisation of each faction's strengths and weaknesses (paired with meaningful morale penalties for too much mixing and matching of troops across cultures).

Suggestion: This is really down to the developer vision for what each faction represents, and this may differ from my understanding. I say this because I think of Battanians as the archer faction (given how amazing Fians are), but the absence of any non-Noble ranged option actually means the Battanians often have the least ranged firepower in any engagement! At a guess, I'd say the original vision for faction key strengths was: Vlandia = Lance Cavalry, Sturgia = 2-Handed Shock Infantry, Battania = Longbows, Khuzait = Horse Archers, Aserai = Mounted Skirmishers, Empire = Shielded Heavy Infantry. Whatever the vision was: take the relevant units of each faction and dial up their skill point allocations and gear to 11. If need be, dial down the skill point allocations and gear of the faction's weaknesses commensurately for balance purposes. If you can make it possible to achieve heroic victories with very different combined arms ratios by playing to the strengths of each faction, you've just improved the game's replayability sixfold.

3. The Smithing Money Printer needs to Stop: The option to smith javelins worth more than a town's annual income is nonsense, and makes a mockery of the game's economy. I understand the devs want gear to exist as a money-sink for the player. I personally think this is a mistake, as it is responsible for one of the game's most fundamental cognitive dissonances ('wait, I'm still in rags but this troop I've leveled on Looters is now in heavy plate armour worth hundreds of thousands? And he's working for 12 denar a day? Okay then...'). If they insist on gate-keeping high-level gear behind exorbitant prices, then some sort of affix for player-crafted gear is required to ensure it can not be used to trivialise the game's money management aspects. Building up fief prosperity, caravans, trading, doing quests, war spoils, tributaries - so many aspects of the game are negatively affected by the existence of such a powerful, immersion-breaking shortcut to wealth.

Suggestion: Implement some affix system for player-crafted gear to ensure it is only as profitable, at top-end, as any of Bannerlord's other roads to riches. Or more simply from a balance perspective: make it never be profitable at all, but instead boost the damage potential of master-crafted weaponry significantly. Those in pursuit of the most powerful personal character should still eagerly explore smithing for that edge in battle.

4. The Khuzaits are OP: The Khuzaits have spent the entire Early Access being far too powerful, for reasons that are well-known: a strong geographic position with their back to a map edge (so their economy rarely gets raided), 20% cavalry autocalc bonus, choosing their engagements (because of mounted ratios + culture bonus), etc. I won't belabour this point as it's really flogging a dead horse (we wish! amirite?... i'll see myself out). As I understand it, Mexxico has already acknowledged this issue, and it's one they're looking to address soon.

Suggestion: I think ongoing tests by Mexxico were showing that Khuzaits are still decent (as in, still actually conquering stuff and -never- getting deleted from the map) with the 20% cavalry buff and their cultural speed buff removed. It would take even more to push Khuzait into territory where they might actually be one of Calradia's losers. Personally, I'd like some more entropy in my campaigns. Evidence shows the cavalry autocalc buff was counterproductive to campaign balance: so for now, take it out and delete their culture speed buff. Replace with a horse-related culture trait, like -20% cost to all horse purchases. Even that would probably be more valuable than the Aserai caravan trait...
Very well put.

1- Bang on, however I would add if archers do get a damage nerf, they need to fix their targeting so they do not stall aiming at a target they cannot hit.

2- Definately. This also goes for how AI of each faction fight, most of them are tediously repetetive.

3- Smithing needs this nerf, however this is also about the only reason to get it, it needs ALOT more depth. At the very least making patterns obtainable by smelting that weapon. It is a grind already, smashing out items constantly to randomly get the last axe head, or javelin shaft, is mega frustrating to creating specific weapon types.

4 - Mexxico has done heaps on this, however I am wondering why past experience and current modded solutions are not being leveraged? Numerous mods exist which massively balance this and I assume it was an issue in at least one prior release? One particularly compelling solution was revolutions mod which caused some factions own cities to rebel when they were treated as slaves/loyalty fell.
 
Suggestion: Reduce damage of bows and crossbows significantly, iterating in increments of 10% nerf. With each damage nerf,.......
Although I agree somewhat that low tier archers need some damage reduction, I feel I cant overstate that Lack of defense and survive-ability of all troops in general is the much bigger problem then archer damage. Nobody's going have more fun if a herd or recruits kills all their infantry/Cav because the archers didn't kill them. And that already will happen, it'll just happen 10X more if archers have less damage. There's absolutely no check and balances to the damage formulas and balances of troops tiers ATM. An arrow should not do 7x the damage because you're riding a horse into it. A little wimpy dude with spear cannot stop a charging horse by doing 2 damage to it. Low their archers should wreck recruits and t2 -t3 stuff, but be useless against higher tier troops. High tier troops should be dangerous and be worth dozens of lower tier units.

ALso **** smithing. It's should just be ignored until IF they make it a NPC function.
 
Greetings,

First of all, thank you for taking the time for writing about these topics.

1. Archers had always been an important aspect of warfare. Although we do not think a massive balancing is needed, we are always keeping an eye on what could change and how possible changes effects the game in simulations. We will be making further armor and balance changes within troop trees. Before making any more changes we would like to see how it will be received within the player base. If we feel that there is an imbalance towards archer heavy parties, I can assure you that we will take necessary actions.

2. We are trying to focus on the strengths of each faction and show them in a meaningful way. This, of course, does not mean that they would demolish the battlefield their special units. If players somehow make their parties/armies based on these units to some extent of the game it is good enough for us.

There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on ( Still needs to be thoroughly tested before it is good for the public builds) and we may make some more changes on troop weapons and troops if it is necessary but each change requires heavy testing to see how they synergize with every element of the game.

3. We are aware of the crafting system is being used for making easy money as of now. The crafting system will see some changes and pricing changes on weapons are also being worked on. I can't get into details but hopefully, it will turn out in a way where it will satisfy both crafters and traders.

4. Khuzait's being too dominant in the early stages (ergo snowball) of the game is something we know of. Our design team is doing some changes and testing to balance it out.


If I am to give a more general reply since they are more or less about the game balance, it is an extremely demanding task to balance out a game with so many different aspects into it. We do not want the community to do the testing for us that is why we are working so hard to find and examine each outcome of every small touch and change that we can possibly do. At the same time, we are keeping a close eye on player feedback as well. Hopefully the outcome will be able the please as many players as possible :smile:
 
Greetings,

First of all, thank you for taking the time for writing about these topics.

1. Archers had always been an important aspect of warfare. Although we do not think a massive balancing is needed, we are always keeping an eye on what could change and how possible changes effects the game in simulations. We will be making further armor and balance changes within troop trees. Before making any more changes we would like to see how it will be received within the player base. If we feel that there is an imbalance towards archer heavy parties, I can assure you that we will take necessary actions.

2. We are trying to focus on the strengths of each faction and show them in a meaningful way. This, of course, does not mean that they would demolish the battlefield their special units. If players somehow make their parties/armies based on these units to some extent of the game it is good enough for us.

There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on ( Still needs to be thoroughly tested before it is good for the public builds) and we may make some more changes on troop weapons and troops if it is necessary but each change requires heavy testing to see how they synergize with every element of the game.

3. We are aware of the crafting system is being used for making easy money as of now. The crafting system will see some changes and pricing changes on weapons are also being worked on. I can't get into details but hopefully, it will turn out in a way where it will satisfy both crafters and traders.

4. Khuzait's being too dominant in the early stages (ergo snowball) of the game is something we know of. Our design team is doing some changes and testing to balance it out.


If I am to give a more general reply since they are more or less about the game balance, it is an extremely demanding task to balance out a game with so many different aspects into it. We do not want the community to do the testing for us that is why we are working so hard to find and examine each outcome of every small touch and change that we can possibly do. At the same time, we are keeping a close eye on player feedback as well. Hopefully the outcome will be able the please as many players as possible :smile:

Thank you for commenting and bringing light through this information.

200.webp

quid pro quo
 
If I am to give a more general reply since they are more or less about the game balance, it is an extremely demanding task to balance out a game with so many different aspects into it. We do not want the community to do the testing for us that is why we are working so hard to find and examine each outcome of every small touch and change that we can possibly do. At the same time, we are keeping a close eye on player feedback as well. Hopefully the outcome will be able the please as many players as possible :smile:
May I ask why not? Isn't this the point of Early Access? Much of the community is desperate for any way they can help increase the speed of development. This would seem to be an avenue where you have many passionate people keen to lend a hand, why not utilize it?

And should you respond can I also ask why it does not appear that you are using lessons learnt from previous titles? granted there are many things to balance, but weren't many similar issues encountered and overcome in some form previously?
 
May I ask why not? Isn't this the point of Early Access? Much of the community is desperate for any way they can help increase the speed of development. This would seem to be an avenue where you have many passionate people keen to lend a hand, why not utilize it?

And should you respond can I also ask why it does not appear that you are using lessons learnt from previous titles? granted there are many things to balance, but weren't many similar issues encountered and overcome in some form previously?

What I meant to say is that we don't want to purely rely on the community for testing. EA should not mean that we would be able to throw community anything that comes up to our minds. Some ideas might be risky, some might just be solved with internal testing and micro tweaks. From my point of view EA is the next step where we take the community's approval right before the feature/fix in our minds goes live. The community deserves more than being lab rats for this case :smile:

The reason that there are things that seems to work in our older titles but not in EA is that; Although it may not look like it some features are based on entirely different structures. So simply putting in the approach/codes from the older titles may not necessarily work out. Then again there are also new structures that affects the base game or simply prevent older designs from working properly. This is not always necessarily true but we have to act and plan like it is in order to prevent bigger problems that might hurt us in the long term.
 
Although I agree somewhat that low tier archers need some damage reduction, I feel I cant overstate that Lack of defense and survive-ability of all troops in general is the much bigger problem then archer damage
Exactly
There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on
Oh yeah;
- The community would appreciate more developer statements like this one.
EA should not mean that we would be able to throw community anything that comes up to our minds. Some ideas might be risky, some might just be solved with internal testing and micro tweaks.
Understandable
 
2. Faction Troops need More Flavour: This issue is somewhat related to the previous one. With Ranged being so dominant in Bannerlord's combat meta, there is often little need for much, if any, infantry or cavalry. Assuming we address the domination of archers, the game could still benefit from a substantial differentiation in each faction's strengths and weaknesses. From a replayability perspective, I would ideally want to be telling myself: this playthrough is Sturgian, my infantry core is going to demolish things but my ranged firepower will be lacklustre. This other playthrough is Vlandian: cycle-charging with cavalry will be instrumental to victory. In general I'd favour more extremisation of each faction's strengths and weaknesses (paired with meaningful morale penalties for too much mixing and matching of troops across cultures).

Suggestion: This is really down to the developer vision for what each faction represents, and this may differ from my understanding. I say this because I think of Battanians as the archer faction (given how amazing Fians are), but the absence of any non-Noble ranged option actually means the Battanians often have the least ranged firepower in any engagement! At a guess, I'd say the original vision for faction key strengths was: Vlandia = Lance Cavalry, Sturgia = 2-Handed Shock Infantry, Battania = Longbows, Khuzait = Horse Archers, Aserai = Mounted Skirmishers, Empire = Shielded Heavy Infantry. Whatever the vision was: take the relevant units of each faction and dial up their skill point allocations and gear to 11. If need be, dial down the skill point allocations and gear of the faction's weaknesses commensurately for balance purposes. If you can make it possible to achieve heroic victories with very different combined arms ratios by playing to the strengths of each faction, you've just improved the game's replayability sixfold.
Its all well and good to differentiate factions, but its worth bearing in mind that no one is limited to a single faction for their troops. If you ended up making one faction's infantry too good, then every other faction's infantry will seem useless in comparison. It will be just like Warband where you just make a multinational army of huscarls, sharpshooters and knights again. Not that that's a bad thing mind you, but with so many units around it would be a waste if there was an obvious best unit (at least aside from nobles).

Morale loss would be fine to have back, but I still think at least making all units fill out some sort of niche would be better.
 
Greetings,

First of all, thank you for taking the time for writing about these topics.

1. Archers had always been an important aspect of warfare. Although we do not think a massive balancing is needed, we are always keeping an eye on what could change and how possible changes effects the game in simulations. We will be making further armor and balance changes within troop trees. Before making any more changes we would like to see how it will be received within the player base. If we feel that there is an imbalance towards archer heavy parties, I can assure you that we will take necessary actions.

2. We are trying to focus on the strengths of each faction and show them in a meaningful way. This, of course, does not mean that they would demolish the battlefield their special units. If players somehow make their parties/armies based on these units to some extent of the game it is good enough for us.

There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on ( Still needs to be thoroughly tested before it is good for the public builds) and we may make some more changes on troop weapons and troops if it is necessary but each change requires heavy testing to see how they synergize with every element of the game.

3. We are aware of the crafting system is being used for making easy money as of now. The crafting system will see some changes and pricing changes on weapons are also being worked on. I can't get into details but hopefully, it will turn out in a way where it will satisfy both crafters and traders.

4. Khuzait's being too dominant in the early stages (ergo snowball) of the game is something we know of. Our design team is doing some changes and testing to balance it out.


If I am to give a more general reply since they are more or less about the game balance, it is an extremely demanding task to balance out a game with so many different aspects into it. We do not want the community to do the testing for us that is why we are working so hard to find and examine each outcome of every small touch and change that we can possibly do. At the same time, we are keeping a close eye on player feedback as well. Hopefully the outcome will be able the please as many players as possible :smile:
I'm really glad to hear all of that! I'm glad you're working on more holistic/progressive means to balance and I agree archers are important! I use archers and horse archers a lot because they're more 'functional' then other units ATM, but I'd much rather use a diverse warband and I look forward to armor and AI changes to make them more useful!

When you're ready to let use try the armor changes I'll be waiting to put them through a gauntlet! I push my MC through hell and back!
 
Wow, a new dev that I didn’t take in my stalk list yet. Noice!
We will be making further armor and balance changes within troop trees.

There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on ( Still needs to be thoroughly tested before it is good for the public builds)
Armor change was a topic that I created a thread on so nice to see that you guys are working on it. The problem isn't archers. The problem is infantry and cavalry being not useful as they should be. If infantry can use shields properly and have good armor and if cavalry don't miss their target most of the time, archers wouldn't feel that powerful. Here is the thread with some video evidence that arrows shouldn't be that much effective on armor. https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/realistic-approach-on-armors.429501/

Also nice to see some of the topics you guys are working on now. I don't see the point of keeping it as a secret or for a surprise. For me, seeing what is being worked on makes me excited for future updates.
 
What I meant to say is that we don't want to purely rely on the community for testing. EA should not mean that we would be able to throw community anything that comes up to our minds. Some ideas might be risky, some might just be solved with internal testing and micro tweaks. From my point of view EA is the next step where we take the community's approval right before the feature/fix in our minds goes live. The community deserves more than being lab rats for this case :smile:

I appreciate where you are coming from, but I think that many if not all members of the community would be more than happy to be lab rats if it meant a faster progress in development. In my opinion anything that takes a developer more than one hour to test should be just fed to us at this point.
 
Its all well and good to differentiate factions, but its worth bearing in mind that no one is limited to a single faction for their troops. If you ended up making one faction's infantry too good, then every other faction's infantry will seem useless in comparison. It will be just like Warband where you just make a multinational army of huscarls, sharpshooters and knights again.
I think useless is a bit of an over exaggeration yes some factions will have better infantry but to compensate for this they have say worse archers. Ask yourself this if every faction is the same then why even play different factions?

It will be just like Warband where you just make a multinational army of huscarls, sharpshooters and knights again.
I think you're forgetting that npcs can and often do this.
 
Greetings,

First of all, thank you for taking the time for writing about these topics.

1. Archers had always been an important aspect of warfare. Although we do not think a massive balancing is needed, we are always keeping an eye on what could change and how possible changes effects the game in simulations. We will be making further armor and balance changes within troop trees. Before making any more changes we would like to see how it will be received within the player base. If we feel that there is an imbalance towards archer heavy parties, I can assure you that we will take necessary actions.

2. We are trying to focus on the strengths of each faction and show them in a meaningful way. This, of course, does not mean that they would demolish the battlefield their special units. If players somehow make their parties/armies based on these units to some extent of the game it is good enough for us.

There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on ( Still needs to be thoroughly tested before it is good for the public builds) and we may make some more changes on troop weapons and troops if it is necessary but each change requires heavy testing to see how they synergize with every element of the game.

3. We are aware of the crafting system is being used for making easy money as of now. The crafting system will see some changes and pricing changes on weapons are also being worked on. I can't get into details but hopefully, it will turn out in a way where it will satisfy both crafters and traders.

4. Khuzait's being too dominant in the early stages (ergo snowball) of the game is something we know of. Our design team is doing some changes and testing to balance it out.


If I am to give a more general reply since they are more or less about the game balance, it is an extremely demanding task to balance out a game with so many different aspects into it. We do not want the community to do the testing for us that is why we are working so hard to find and examine each outcome of every small touch and change that we can possibly do. At the same time, we are keeping a close eye on player feedback as well. Hopefully the outcome will be able the please as many players as possible :smile:
Thank you for responding. Your efforts are appreciated. :smile:
 
I think you're forgetting that npcs can and often do this.
I forgot to specify multinational power gamey armies. NPCs don't really go around picking and choosing the obvious best units the way players do. Again, more of a player side thing.

I think useless is a bit of an over exaggeration yes some factions will have better infantry but to compensate for this they have say worse archers. Ask yourself this if every faction is the same then why even play different factions?
I don't think making all units useful and viable means making them all the same. Sorry if I didn't make that point clear. I think we can still have unique units that aren't straight up inferior to other units in every aspect.

Sure, a combination of stats and equipment could make a unit the most ideal for a role, but that doesn't mean they're good at everything. A legionary can be heavily armoured and carry maces and a fearsome pila, but are the slowest and lack a good spear to fight cavalry with. In contrast, an Aserai Veteran Infantry man can be skilled in spears, javelins and a variety of one handed weaponry, but lack in that legionary's insane armour. The legionary will be the better infantry grinder, but that doesn't make them straight up superior to the Aserai Veteran Infantry man. See what I'm getting at?

In this sort of equation, I would say that yeah, Sturgia should get infantry that can outslug other infantry in head to head fights.

Still, an objectively worse archer would be fine as long as they make up in a different way. Like maybe they use a weak bow, but they make up for it by carrying a shield and a variety of melee weapons they can use well. They are still the worst archer, but at least they will hold their own in close combat. They'd make terrific siege units.
 
There will be a big armor value and equipment change we are working on
If this includes changes to the armour formula that would be amazing.

There are a lot of systems that seem good but just plain old arent working. Like all the high tier armours being unavailable. As items can only be made in a town within a certain multiple of town prosperity, however due to a change in item price calculations this system broke. Why hasnt it been fixed so people can better test these high level armours and give the best assestment of the current system before it gets changed?

Obviously there is a need for internal QA but if you were to bring larger balance changes into the beta and just let people know you are looking for their feed back on those changes, you would get it in spades. Obviously you wouldn't be able to avoid an individual having a meltdown over their particular thing getting nerfed even if it is just in the beta branch. It still seems far more productive though to engage in that process. As long as you are not afraid to completely withdraw certain changes and maybe implement them later or not at all.
 
What I meant to say is that we don't want to purely rely on the community for testing. EA should not mean that we would be able to throw community anything that comes up to our minds. Some ideas might be risky, some might just be solved with internal testing and micro tweaks. From my point of view EA is the next step where we take the community's approval right before the feature/fix in our minds goes live. The community deserves more than being lab rats for this case :smile:

The reason that there are things that seems to work in our older titles but not in EA is that; Although it may not look like it some features are based on entirely different structures. So simply putting in the approach/codes from the older titles may not necessarily work out. Then again there are also new structures that affects the base game or simply prevent older designs from working properly. This is not always necessarily true but we have to act and plan like it is in order to prevent bigger problems that might hurt us in the long term.
This makes a lot of sense. Maybe at some point an alpha version can be released for those of us willing to be lab rats :wink: , I know it was discussed having an alpha early on, has this idea officially changed?

Also if you don't mind what areas of the game are your focus? This will help us direct questions to you that you'll be able to answer (like campaign map/ai related issues/idea for Mexxico).
 
Greetings,

First of all, thank you for taking the time for writing about these topics.

1. Archers had always been an important aspect of warfare. Although we do not think a massive balancing is needed, we are always keeping an eye on what could change and how possible changes effects the game in simulations. We will be making further armor and balance changes within troop trees. Before making any more changes we would like to see how it will be received within the player base. If we feel that there is an imbalance towards archer heavy parties, I can assure you that we will take necessary actions.

I guess it depends how you define important, but historically archers have not been the dominant on the battlefield. From Ancient Greece through the Roman Empire through the middle ages and into modern times, with a few notable exceptions, infantry is the core of any army. The majority of cavalry was light cavalry, used for scouting and skirmishing, and the riders dismounted before battle. Heavy cavalry was dominant, but also expensive and rare for most of history, and was almost always used to support a larger infantry force.

Archers were considered harassment units throughout all of these periods. It wasn’t until the 1200s when armies composed mostly of archers dominated. This is when the Mongols obliterated everything with horse archers. Not long after, massed archers on foot armed with the English Longbow repeatedly defeated heavy cavalry, but again with support from infantry and cavalry, or a significant terrain advantage.

For a GAME, I would think that you’d aim for none of the troops types to be strictly dominant, and from a historic perspective, archers least of all.
 
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