Does the AI get instant armies?

[Dionaea]

I'm a vassal though, Khuzait went to war with the Vlandians so I went and started besieging a Vlandian castle and of course got attack spammed for some reason even thought he castle location is an open spot between mountains the battle spawned in a forrested mountain rich area and we actually lost a few men, and not unconcious but permanently death (Usually at that point I reload and use cheats and eventually start a new character because I can't deal with having a single death in my army it breaks my hollywoodian roleplay experience in my head and once I resort to cheating I lose interest in the campaign as well) anyway I got so angry that I captured and executed the Vlandian lords leading the army but now even my own allies are angry at me.


Time to start a new campaign I guess

 

[drallim33]

Why's this false? As durbal will tell you, the average days to escape is a geometric distribution and is just the simple equation of 1/p where p is the probability to escape each day. Chance of escape per day in a player owned dungeon is 3.75%. So, (1/0.0375) = 26.67, which is where you get the stated average. It's not an edge case, simply because we are only talking about the chances the moment a lord is deposited in a dungeon. I think you're misconstruing what people are saying about this.

It's false because of all the reasons I already mentioned.

• Most of the time you won't be placing in a player owned dungeon, just the nearest one which is almost always AI owned, 13.3 days average not 26
• That's if you can even make it there before they escape
• Also assumes you're not in an army so you have personal control over the prisoner not the AI
• So this 26 days is just not happening for 99% of all prisoners ever taken in the game

It's a rare edge case that is pointless to bring up. Seems like you're just arguing for the sake of it, deliberately missing the point and calling me a troll.

If they actually keep escaping after 2 days it might be a bug. Otherwise it's just one time bad luck. The snippet of code is literally right there.

It's not a bug or bad luck, it's actually very common, and by design.

I've actually quoted mexxico's statement where he acknowledges this issue like 6 times in this very thread haha. I think you're just messing with me at this point.

Yes you've quoted it ad nauseum but it doesn't seem like you've read it yet.

"We know this escaping thing is disturbing. When new heroes are added to game these probabilities will be decresed very much. Currently there is no replacements so it is risky to reduce daily escape chance to 2.5%s this can cause kingdoms to lose lots of settlements after losing one big army battle."

This is not an acknowledgement of the whack-a-mole issue with AI getting free armies. It sounds like they intend to introduce new, fresh lords to replace ones you execute/imprison. This only shifts the problem to new lords. It will actually be worse than it is now because even executing them won't help.

It is not fixed yet only escaping probabilities are a bit decreased (at 1.3.0). It will be fixed when replacement heroes are added to clans. I reported this to responsible people and waiting their addition. Thanks for patience.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...andomly-escaping-my-party.400136/post-9393523

It's just going to be whack a mole with "replacement heros" instead of escaping lords.

please use the information that Bannerman provided with direct quotes from developers

If you read what I said, you'd see that I did use those numbers. And they say that keeping a prisoner for 26 days is rare, and only happens in very specific circumstances. The overwhelming majority of prisoners will escape in the first few days.

You can see in the quote of Mexxico that Bannerman provided, he says that lowering the escape rate to 2.5% increased snowballing once a faction lost a major battle. I think its safe to assume he can say that because he tested it.

No that's not what he said. He said it is risky. Which means he probably didn't test it much if at all, you only call something risky when you don't know the outcome.

Well I have tested it and it makes almost no difference. Here is a game after 500 days, vanilla

And here is another game, 500 days, but with 2% prisoner escape rate during war, 8% during peace

Khuzait got big like they always do. Northern Empire and Sturgia get smashed, like they always do, and everyone else traded blows. I did nothing to affect the outcome, just sat in Lycaron with an empty party. In vanilla Battania got it worst with only 3 towns left, in modded it's Northen Empire with only 3 towns.

Where is this snowballing that everyone is so afraid of? If this shows us anything it's that Khuzait autocalc is OP. Nobody could stop Monchug's doomstack.

Is there ANY evidence at all that keeping prisoners for a sane amount of time causes snowballing? I'm going to consider this theory debunked until someone proves otherwise.

 

[xdj1nn]

they respawn too fast, but they still are suppose to follow the same rules.

consider your character is high level, has high relation with notables of the town and enough money to buy food and recruit troops. How many soldiers would you get ?

also remember they can use/move the garrison troops in some cases, same as the player.

they are still far from working this problem (prisoner, how fast to respawn, recruitment AI, training armies for XP, money balance, etc), but that is the basic system

they are supposed**** to follow the same rules, thing is they do not. They spawn with instant army, it's too cheesy... They should never spawn with any units under their disposal, instead being forced to either take from garrison or recruit from the town they spawn in, if in a castle they should be forced to rush to the villages to take troops. As is, TW seems to be over-protective of their vulnerability to bandits, which seems to be in the game only to annoy the player and break economy due to focused spawns over specific areas of the map (not to mention endless spawns). Should bandits get wiped, then only they should only be able to spawn if there's a camp nearby, if not, then they should spawn in a different area in the middle of no-where, slowly move back to a random village vicinity, and then start trying to create a camp, camp created they start to spawn again in bulks...
As is, anything we do has little to no effect, so the best option is still to completely ignore bandits unless you are lucky to find them fighting villagers (which weirdly enough seems to be a rare event, I rarely encounter bandits fighting peasants, if at all).

 

[Blood Gryphon]

It's false because of all the reasons I already mentioned.

• Most of the time you won't be placing in a player owned dungeon, just the nearest one which is almost always AI owned, 13.3 days average not 26
• That's if you can even make it there before they escape
• Also assumes you're not in an army so you have personal control over the prisoner not the AI
• So this 26 days is just not happening for 99% of all prisoners ever taken in the game

It's a rare edge case that is pointless to bring up. Seems like you're just arguing for the sake of it, deliberately missing the point and calling me a troll.

It's not a bug or bad luck, it's actually very common, and by design.


Yes you've quoted it ad nauseum but it doesn't seem like you've read it yet.

"We know this escaping thing is disturbing. When new heroes are added to game these probabilities will be decresed very much. Currently there is no replacements so it is risky to reduce daily escape chance to 2.5%s this can cause kingdoms to lose lots of settlements after losing one big army battle."

This is not an acknowledgement of the whack-a-mole issue with AI getting free armies. It sounds like they intend to introduce new, fresh lords to replace ones you execute/imprison. This only shifts the problem to new lords. It will actually be worse than it is now because even executing them won't help.


https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...andomly-escaping-my-party.400136/post-9393523

It's just going to be whack a mole with "replacement heros" instead of escaping lords.


If you read what I said, you'd see that I did use those numbers. And they say that keeping a prisoner for 26 days is rare, and only happens in very specific circumstances. The overwhelming majority of prisoners will escape in the first few days.


No that's not what he said. He said it is risky. Which means he probably didn't test it much if at all, you only call something risky when you don't know the outcome.

Well I have tested it and it makes almost no difference. Here is a game after 500 days, vanilla

And here is another game, 500 days, but with 2% prisoner escape rate during war, 8% during peace

Khuzait got big like they always do. Northern Empire and Sturgia get smashed, like they always do, and everyone else traded blows. I did nothing to affect the outcome, just sat in Lycaron with an empty party. In vanilla Battania got it worst with only 3 towns left, in modded it's Northen Empire with only 3 towns.

Where is this snowballing that everyone is so afraid of? If this shows us anything it's that Khuzait autocalc is OP. Nobody could stop Monchug's doomstack.

Is there ANY evidence at all that keeping prisoners for a sane amount of time causes snowballing? I'm going to consider this theory debunked until someone proves otherwise.

Are you looking at the two images you posted? LMAO that is a clear and massive difference. The top map all kingdoms have at least a 3 town foothold in THEIR homeland. The bottom looks ridiculous with battania and khuzait not near their homeland. In the top khuzait have 14 towns (all near their homeland), the bottom has 18 (all over the map). Your point is not clear and obvious, you def didnt debunk this, honestly with these examples if anything I think they prove Mexxicos point that there will be more snowballing, thanks . You are assuming just as much as I am about what he meant by "risky" and how much testing (if at all) was done, lets drop it. I definitely agree with you about the Khuzait OP autocalc due to way autocalc works with horses, id be interested in seeing a autocalc that considers the size of the army greater instead of the 1v1 duke off I believe someone discovered it to be (assumption).

they are supposed**** to follow the same rules, thing is they do not. They spawn with instant army, it's too cheesy... They should never spawn with any units under their disposal, instead being forced to either take from garrison or recruit from the town they spawn in, if in a castle they should be forced to rush to the villages to take troops. As is, TW seems to be over-protective of their vulnerability to bandits, which seems to be in the game only to annoy the player and break economy due to focused spawns over specific areas of the map (not to mention endless spawns). Should bandits get wiped, then only they should only be able to spawn if there's a camp nearby, if not, then they should spawn in a different area in the middle of no-where, slowly move back to a random village vicinity, and then start trying to create a camp, camp created they start to spawn again in bulks...
As is, anything we do has little to no effect, so the best option is still to completely ignore bandits unless you are lucky to find them fighting villagers (which weirdly enough seems to be a rare event, I rarely encounter bandits fighting peasants, if at all).

I said this up above, lords need to spawn with some % of their armies so they aren't constant looter prisoners (if you think this wasn't a massive problem, you were not playing). Now i think that 25% might be a bit to much, with the fact most AI will either run immediately to begin to recruit or fill up by garrison, it could probably be brought down 10-15% if the party was all above 1st tier (since they will be filling up the rest with recruits and to ensure we aren't fighting pure recruit armies the whole game). Although, adjusting this now might be pointless with the new lords feature coming. I am interested to see how they impact the game, we just don't know enough about how they will be implemented to be able to know if its for the better or worse.

 

[xdj1nn]

I said this up above, lords need to spawn with some % of their armies so they aren't constant looter prisoners (if you think this wasn't a massive problem, you were not playing). Now i think that 25% might be a bit to much, with the fact most AI will either run immediately to begin to recruit or fill up by garrison, it could probably be brought down 10-15% if the party was all above 1st tier (since they will be filling up the rest with recruits and to ensure we aren't fighting pure recruit armies the whole game). Although, adjusting this now might be pointless with the new lords feature coming. I am interested to see how they impact the game, we just don't know enough about how they will be implemented to be able to know if its for the better or worse.

They shouldn't. The AI should be tweaked to be smarter when dealing with looters, kite them, try to recruit from Towns, etc. The problem here is the AI, literally, not the resources available, nor the bandits/looters. They are suicidal... I've even completely disregarded personal secondary parties due to that, because our Companions are completely imbecile on decision making, they waste their parties under 2 in-game days by doing retarded stuff like attacking an 1000 men army with their 30 guys party, making super dives into enemy territory to raid some insignificant village, etc......

 

[Blood Gryphon]

They shouldn't. The AI should be tweaked to be smarter when dealing with looters, kite them, try to recruit from Towns, etc. The problem here is the AI, literally, not the resources available, nor the bandits/looters. They are suicidal... I've even completely disregarded personal secondary parties due to that, because our Companions are completely imbecile on decision making, they waste their parties under 2 in-game days by doing retarded stuff like attacking an 1000 men army with their 30 guys party, making super dives into enemy territory to raid some insignificant village, etc......

No doubt the AI needs a pretty heavy pass. I'm simply stating that cause for the change, which, for me, it did accomplish fixing (i dont see rulers as looter prisoners anymore). The good news I think is that they are simultaneously working on a large patch and providing updates to the main/beta. Don't forget they will be implementing an Alpha at some point which will likely be the first big update (assumption). We can only hope there has been enough time to identify these issues with AI and find the appropriate solutions (its good to know they are against just letting the AI cheat, they are only doing it for quick fixes to game breaking issues, like the one i mentioned above).

 

[xdj1nn]

No doubt the AI needs a pretty heavy pass. I'm simply stating that cause for the change, which, for me, it did accomplish fixing (i dont see rulers as looter prisoners anymore). The good news I think is that they are simultaneously working on a large patch and providing updates to the main/beta. Don't forget they will be implementing an Alpha at some point which will likely be the first big update (assumption). We can only hope there has been enough time to identify these issues with AI and find the appropriate solutions (its good to know they are against just letting the AI cheat, they are only doing it for quick fixes to game breaking issues, like the one i mentioned above).

if we only knew "bannerwhen"... At any rate, there's a plethora of place-holders in the current stages, and balancing around that many place-holders is a waste of time, though I think they're doing it to appease the "gIvE uS sTuFfS" nutjobs.;..

I'd prefer approaching this EA differently than what they are trying to do, I'd be more open about schedules and predictions, and focus the player-base into testing and giving feedback on things that I think could be improved. This way it would be much more like a massive beta testing which could give way better results than what I expect them to deliver with their current "running" of things. Remember that they're basically doing whatever they want and have already ignored critical problems that MP players have been begging for change since the Beta, some of those pleads go as far back as 9 months ago... So Idk, I still do not trust their judgement for the most part, one can only hope that they prove me wrong to be suspicious/skeptical. Even the balancing changes already implemented give me pause, like nerfing income sources, giving AI necromancer abilities, etc...

 

[Blood Gryphon]

if we only knew "bannerwhen"... At any rate, there's a plethora of place-holders in the current stages, and balancing around that many place-holders is a waste of time, though I think they're doing it to appease the "gIvE uS sTuFfS" nutjobs.;..

I'd prefer approaching this EA differently than what they are trying to do, I'd be more open about schedules and predictions, and focus the player-base into testing and giving feedback on things that I think could be improved. This way it would be much more like a massive beta testing which could give way better results than what I expect them to deliver with their current "running" of things. Remember that they're basically doing whatever they want and have already ignored critical problems that MP players have been begging for change since the Beta, some of those pleads go as far back as 9 months ago... So Idk, I still do not trust their judgement for the most part, one can only hope that they prove me wrong to be suspicious/skeptical. Even the balancing changes already implemented give me pause, like nerfing income sources, giving AI necromancer abilities, etc...

I agree about the EA process, they could definitely be more transparent. I disagree about the balancing changes, so far all of them have been necessary to make the current state of the game playable. Nerfing income was needed because after a few years money was irrelevant, start with a % of troops was needed to stop AI being constantly captured by looters (at least one of the reasons). I think you are getting confused, they are a studio of 90 and can work on two things at once (updating current state/beta and building big patch/alpha). We only get to see what is happening to the current state/beta, which is why i agree that if they are more transparent about the longer term stuff people might stop *****ing about balancing vs content, when in reality they are actually getting both.

 

[xdj1nn]

I agree about the EA process, they could definitely be more transparent. I disagree about the balancing changes, so far all of them have been necessary to make the current state of the game playable. Nerfing income was needed because after a few years money was irrelevant, start with a % of troops was needed to stop AI being constantly captured by looters (at least one of the reasons). I think you are getting confused, they are a studio of 90 and can work on two things at once (updating current state/beta and building big patch/alpha). We only get to see what is happening to the current state/beta, which is why i agree that if they are more transparent about the longer term stuff people might stop *****ing about balancing vs content, when in reality they are actually getting both.

I disagree on the focus they are giving, and still find it a waste of time to balance a three-wheeled car, it's pointless, temporary, and can't really be done, though it's kind of necessary to improve the current EA state, so what I've said was that I'd focus on more pressing matters that are not included in the "new content" spectrum, those are still about balancing. Did you even read everything I've written?

Of course you didn't, I think I may have better explained in another thread... I'll seek it out later and post here too

 

[Stuntman Bob]

Yeah I think its still a thing. I was sieging a city after defeating and releasing lots of lords. Checked city garrison only militia and garrison. Half way into building siege camp 7 parties instaspawn and zerg rush me lol.

 

[xdj1nn]

I agree about the EA process, they could definitely be more transparent. I disagree about the balancing changes, so far all of them have been necessary to make the current state of the game playable. Nerfing income was needed because after a few years money was irrelevant, start with a % of troops was needed to stop AI being constantly captured by looters (at least one of the reasons). I think you are getting confused, they are a studio of 90 and can work on two things at once (updating current state/beta and building big patch/alpha). We only get to see what is happening to the current state/beta, which is why i agree that if they are more transparent about the longer term stuff people might stop *****ing about balancing vs content, when in reality they are actually getting both.

here you go, from the other thread:

All the "politics" system is broken atm. They should prioritize that feature instead of making questionable balancing tweaks, but then again it's probably because they have nothing to show for on the diplomacy side, so they are just sugar-coating it with those silly nerfs or giving AI cheating capabilities. If I was leading their teams I'd be focusing on other more concerning balance issues like player progression (XP gain, rate, caps), quests (rewards, difficulty, availability), AI (less stupid decision making), and some place-holder war system (so there's no retarded war declarations / peace agreements, and forcing peace agreements to last longer). As it is they are focusing way more on the more insignificant balance issues than they should... I mean, who cares if caravans make money? At the end-game you'll be swiming on money, and Lords already get to swim on money by Early-to-Mid game stages. In fact AI lords are too damn OP imo, it's too common to see them sitting on millions of gold and tens of thousands of influence points (which's broken, because due to that the AI starts to behave ridiculously concerning "internal politics)

Their balancing efforts have been way more focused on ruining the player experience than to actually make the game what it's supposed to be (AI playing on the same grounds as the player is). If those things aren't temporary (which is my greatest fear) this game will inherit every single bad thing about Warband, making the Vanilla garbage and forcing us to, in the future, exclusively play mods. I mean, I already have to resort to mods to make it even a bare minimum enjoyable. Just added the Collision Fix mod along with the "Fix the damn spears dude", and already found that I was playing the game in an unplayable state. (translating into the fact that even combat, which's in theory the strong-point of their EA, being broken)

 

[Blood Gryphon]

here you go, from the other thread:

Maybe i didn't express myself well enough, I think we agree in general about improvements to EA and many of the existing issues. I think our difference is solely that fact I believe due to the nature of the changes being minor so far, we aren't seeing the majority of the work being done behind the scenes and are only witness to the minor balancing changes they are implementing in the mean time (assumption). I think its safe to assume this as Mexxico has stated many of these balances are temporary until key features are implemented, like kingdom management for example. I think we need to wait until alpha is released to see some of the major changes necessary, but as with any brand new feature brought into a sandbox game it will have its own issues.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Also, to be fair, you have to consider that it can't be easy for the Devs to be all working at home on lockdown. There's no way that they can be working as efficiently as if they were all in the office together.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Yes you've quoted it ad nauseum but it doesn't seem like you've read it yet.

If you read what I said, you'd see that I did use those numbers.

On the contrary, from your post here it's clear there's some misunderstanding on your end of what mexxico's post means. Here is the picture again (ad nauseam):

Best case numbers outside of a dungeon are 22.5% escape chance per day. That's best case.

Look closely at the part where he describes the player advantage. In the green comment text in parentheses it states "(7.5%-22.5% mobile party, 3.75% settlement)." The mistake you've made in your post is not applying the 0.33x multiplier for player parties. Using the numbers in the code's comment you get a worst case scenario of (1/.225) = 4.4 days average time to escape from a mobile players party and a best case scenario of (1/.075) = 13.3 days. Now, 45% * 0.33 is not 22.5% as shown, so the worst case scenario might actually be better than stated.

Now you might say, "but 4.4 days is practically nothing! You could never make it back to your settlement in 4.4 days!" Well I just did a quick test and I was able to make it from Baltakand to Odokh in less than 2 days with a walking speed of roughly 6.1, and then down to Razih in another 2.5, for a total of just over 4 days. That's a pretty significant distance. Think about how far you could walk in 13.3.

So if I have to walk 4 days to my settlement I can expect to safely get there with around half of all the lords I've taken (worst case scenario). Then, you can roughly expect to keep half of those lords for ~26 days. That means very roughly 25% of lords will be imprisoned for 4+26 = 30 days. 25% is not 1%, so it's not an edge case.

You might also say, "no one is going to walk all the way back to their settlement when they're on the offensive!" But that's actually part of the point. Mobile party escape chances are lower so you can't capture all the lords of a faction then take 2-3 settlements before they've had a chance to escape. You can always drop them off in a friendly settlement that's closer for a higher chance of escape, but at that point you've relinquished control of the lord and they'll probably get sold before they escape.

And before you say it, obviously AI parties have higher chances for escape, but they end up selling many of their imprisoned lords anyway so the escape chances are less relevent. That's a different issue than escape chances.

No need to reply and say 25-30 days is not the average you'll see in a real in-game scenario because no one made that point in the first place and no one is refuting your point that conditions are never perfect either.

Personally, I actually don't have much trouble getting lords to my settlements most of the time, especially if I'm on the defensive which you've neglected entirely. So bam, counterpoint.

It's a rare edge case that is pointless to bring up. Seems like you're just arguing for the sake of it, deliberately missing the point and calling me a troll.

I actually addressed your point when I said this:

Sure obviously when you factor in the separate chance to escape from a mobile party the math changes a bit, but no one anywhere said it was 25-30 days when taken as a whole. Everyone specifically said it's 25-30 days if imprisoned within a walled settlement (or "dungeon" in Blood Gryphon's case).

And yes, there may have been some confusion around "a settlement" as opposed to "your settlement," but Blood Gryphon already stated that they were going off memory alone, so I brought in some precise numbers from the devs to clarify.

Look, all I was trying to do in the first place was get the dev's words out there so people have accurate information. I didn't even intend to keep arguing, but you kept insisting the lords were escaping almost immediately in 99% of cases, accusing people of making things up in the process, so I kept pointing to the code so people don't get the wrong idea (maybe a tiny bit of a pride thing too, haha). I also realize I'm continuing to derail this thread by continuing to respond to you, so sorry to everyone for that.

I acually don't have an issue if you think the escape chance should be lowered and snowballing is a non-factor. You are entitled to your opinion. However, overly-dramatic hyperbole is not useful feedback to the devs, and is in fact counterproductive because it can cause confusion as to whether or not there is a problem or bug.

Also, apologies for implying you were trolling me if you were in fact being dead serious.

This is not an acknowledgement of the whack-a-mole issue with AI getting free armies.

But that's not what you were talking about originally when you said:

They escape way too fast and I've seen no acknowledgement of the issue. On the contrary, it keeps being implied that the fast escape rate is necessary. Well I don't agree that it is necessary, I think this assertion needs to be challenged, especially after changes that have made garrisons bigger, which should make sieges more costly.

You were talking specifically about escape chances, not AI getting free armies. But that point has also been acknowledged in another comment of mexxico's I quoted in my original comment in this thread.

-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)

They know 25% is a lot and will be lowering it to 10% soon. Give it time. Many of these patches are about bringing the major issues within the tolerance levels of the majority while they work on implementing all of the features. Just because they've made a balance decision for now doesn't mean they won't address it again later.

I agree with Gryphon on your test about snowballing. The second picture shows the factions are able to conquer much further away from their territory. Plus, there is variance to any campaign, so one test can hardly be considered conclusive. Also, snowballing was the number one issue for a lot of people a couple weeks ago. This has been toned down, but the devs are not going to continue to micromanage the numbers to strike a perfect balance at this point.

 

[Bannerman Man]

I'd also like to point out that because of the way the code is written the difference between having 0 healthy party members and 1 healthy party member makes the chance of escape drop from 45% down to 37.5%. Because it is exceedingly unlikely that you'll ever have 0 party members healthy at the time of the daily tick (as it takes a very short time to recover 1 wounded troop), the effective maximum escape chance is more along the lines of 37.5%.

When you multiply 37.5% by the player advantage of 0.33x, you get a maximum escape chance from a mobile player party of ~12.4%.
This makes the average time of imprisonment for a lord range from ~8 days to 13 days in a mobile player party in almost all cases. That's much more favorable to the player than some people are making it out to be.

Mexxico has also stated that a 1 day immunity to escape would be a good idea.

There's still a possibility that this code never made its way into the 1.3.0 release which might be the cause of the discrepancy that some people are reporting.

As a side note, the chance of escape from a non-player owned settlement and from the mobile player's party under optimal conditions are both 7.5%. This means there's virtually no reason for the player to drop a prisoner off in a non-player owned settlement if you can keep 81+ members of your party healthy.

 

[durbal]

There's still a possibility that this code never made its way into the 1.3.0 release which might be the cause of the discrepency that some people are reporting.

It's in there.

The 'player advantage' is shortsighted and obfuscates game mechanics too much (i.e. not all dungeons are the same and make sure you only put prisoners in your dungeons). Players only care about lords escaping from prison because they keep fighting the same lords and their zombie armies. A player advantage doesn't fix that. Players have enough of an advantage in all aspects of the game anyway. Make prisoner escape chance the same for every unit. If there's a problem that arises from that, then that problem needs to be resolved directly. I don't like the idea of AI armies being pawns in the player's game. They need to be real actors -- knights, kings and queens -- or else it impoverishes the feeling of being part of a dynamic world.

 

[Bannerman Man]

It's in there.

Thanks for the confirmation. Can I ask where in the code you found it? I haven't really looked anywhere other than the xml files.

The 'player advantage' is shortsighted and obfuscates game mechanics too much (i.e. not all dungeons are the same and make sure you only put prisoners in your dungeons). Players have enough of an advantage in all aspects of the game. Make prisoner escape chance the same for every unit. If there's a problem that arises from that, then that problem needs to be resolved directly.

I see where you're coming from, and I agree the player is generally overpowered, but with all the complaints of lords escaping too easily the devs might feel it's necessary to appease players. Maybe if enough people raise the issue the devs will either bring AI numbers down to the player's level or get rid of the player advantage altogether.

 

[durbal]

Thanks for the confirmation. Can I ask where in the code you found it? I haven't really looked anywhere other than the xml files.

Exactly in the method that mexxico posted.

TaleWorlds.CampaignSystem.SandBox.CampaignBehaviors namespace. You'll need to use dnSpy or some other .NET decompiler to view it.

I see where you're coming from, and I agree the player is generally overpowered, but with all the complaints of lords escaping too easily the devs might feel it's necessary to appease players. Maybe if enough people raise the issue the devs will either bring AI numbers down to the player's level or get rid of the player advantage altogether.

The problem is that it's the wrong approach. As I said, the issue is not just that lords are escaping too frequently. Nobody cares if a lord escapes from prison too fast as much as they care about fighting their endless zombie hordes that result from it. This is especially a problem with sieges which generally involve AI armies. The player advantage does not help so much in those cases and they'll still be fighting the same zombie hordes over and over. It just hides details from the player and so the result will be the same complaint: why do I keep fighting the same lords over and over?

Think about it this way: you fight a battle with your faction's army and 50% of the prisoners go to AI lords. You move on to siege. During the siege, you notice a few of the AI lords you just defeated are already back to defend because AI lords leak prisoners -- as @drallim33 put it -- 'like a sieve'. So eventually you capture the castle, and you move into the castle and drop off your prisoners. Oops, that's still an AI settlement! You march on with your army to the next target and notice that some of the lords that you just dropped off into prison have already escaped again. Cue the complaint again: why do I keep fighting the same lords over and over?

Hiding key details like this just deepen problem. Remove the player advantage. Players don't need it and it just obfuscates key game mechanics. Fix the endless zombie lord armies. No more bandaids please.

 

[Bannerman Man]

TaleWorlds.CampaignSystem.SandBox.CampaignBehaviors namespace. You'll need to use dnSpy or some other .NET decompiler to view it.

Awesome! Thanks!

The problem is that it's the wrong approach. As I said, the issue is not just that lords are escaping too frequently. Nobody cares if a lord escapes from prison too fast as much as they care about fighting their endless zombie hordes that result from it. This is especially a problem with sieges which generally involve AI armies. The player advantage does not help so much in those cases and they'll still be fighting the same zombie hordes over and over. It just hides details from the player and so the result will be the same complaint: why do I keep fighting the same lords over and over?

Think about it this way: you fight a battle with your faction's army and 50% of the prisoners go to AI lords. You move on to siege. During the siege, you notice a few of the AI lords you just defeated are already back to defend because AI lords leak prisoners -- as @drallim33 put it -- 'like a sieve'. So eventually you capture the castle, and you move into the castle and drop off your prisoners. Oops, that's still an AI settlement! You march on with your army to the next target and notice that some of the lords that you just dropped off into prison have already escaped again. Cue the complaint again: why do I keep fighting the same lords over and over?

Hiding key details like this just deepen problem. Remove the player advantage. Players don't need it and it just obfuscates key game mechanics. Fix the endless zombie lord armies. No more bandaids please.

I know, I understand that point. But that brings us all the way full circle on this topic and the broader picture. Snowballing was a major issue upon release. Lords having no troops and getting captured by bandits was a major issue upon release. So these "bandaids" were put in place as a stop gap to stablize the game, and an unfortunate side effect was having to fight the same lords over and over again. It's much easier to tweak a few numbers to get the game in a "balanced" state than it is to program all new behavior for AI, especially if the original AI behavior will be better suited to the eventual state of full release. This means certain sacrifices to playstyle and game flow might have to be made for the time being. When diplomacy and line of succession are added then they can go back and work on these issues for real.

I know the common response to that is, "well why did they release the game in this state if they weren't ready to?" I am of the opinion that they chose a date for EA 8 months ago and stuck to it to prevent more "Bannerlord when?" hysteria from happening. When that date drew closer they had to disable or pull a lot of half finished features that weren't ready for primetime, as well as add placeholder systems, in order to have a nice neat package to push out, and as a result the game feels underdeveloped. And also because of this, there are a lot of unintended behaviors and bugs that snuck in and disrupted any balance the game may have had. So they've had to spend much of the last month pumping out small temporary measures using as little effort as possible to bring the game stability under control and give people something to play. The more often people raise issues the more the devs feel they need to tweak things again to placate them while they work on the new features.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing new features sooner rather than later because the state of the game on release is not the state of overall development, it's just hidden from the public. And since I think this way I have a much easier time accepting the game for what it is and I believe the developers have a clear vision for what they want the game to be, even if they don't keep us updated on progress. They know how we feel about these things and what we see isn't due to incompetence from my perspective.

Does that make sense?

Edit: Someone just now posted a thread titled "Is This Game Dead?" I mean come on, get over yourself! <== thats not directed at durbal.

 

[durbal]

Awesome! Thanks!

I know, I understand that point. But that brings us all the way full circle on this topic and the broader picture. Snowballing was a major issue upon release. Lords having no troops and getting captured by bandits was a major issue upon release. So these "bandaids" were put in place as a stop gap to stablize the game, and an unfortunate side effect was having to fight the same lords over and over again. It's much easier to tweak a few numbers to get the game in a "balanced" state than it is to program all new behavior for AI, especially if the original AI behavior will be better suited to the eventual state of full release. This means certain sacrifices to playstyle and game flow might have to be made for the time being. When diplomacy and line of succession are added then they can go back and work on these issues for real.

Usually a shortcut is the longest path.

I get the issue they had with snowballing. But they just traded it for a possibly worse issue, and the way they handle it through the 'player bonus' as an ostensible means to just shut up the players about prisoners escaping doesn't even address the fact that people largely care that they escape because they're tired of the zombie lord instaspawn armies. I mean, look at this thread's title for crying out loud. I'm not bashing the devs or have any ire toward them, but it's not helpful to defend their choices under the guise of 'they were trying to help' or some such thing. Of course they were. And their approach was ok-ish for the time being, but ultimately was found to to be fundamentally flawed. Sucks. Even the most talented people often have failed designs and they're talented because they realize it and make appropriate changes (which the devs have done to a good degree). But the player bonus is indefensible to me and you'd have to be disingenuous to think it's a) a good approach to solve the instaspawn zombie armies and b) healthy for the game as a whole.