Endgame is boring and really kills all the fun...

[JunKeteer]

Like most games with big maps that the player is supposed to percieve as big, you would only travel to the other side of the world maybe once per playthrough, if at all. You would have a fundamentally different experience based on where you started, rather than being able to teleport wherever you want. Arriving in a faraway land would be an actual change of scenery for up to several hours rather than a 20 second trip, since going to the other side of the map would only ever be for an important reason and a long stay.

To have it work in BL, they need more 'events' in between towns - whether it's some sort of travel/logistic difficulty, ambushes, tougher roaming bands of enemies, more variety in battles (troops, formations, AI tactics), etc...The current map is dense but there's nothing in between them nor any 'challenge' going from Charas to Baltakhand besides that 'waste' of time.
It would be great to start a playthrough in Vlandia and seemingly be 'stuck' there because I'm too poor, ongoing wars, logistic risks, etc...so when I finally am able to get to somewhere like Sturgia (not that far away), it'll feel...fresh.

It's like this most prominently in Kenshi, to an extent the Arma series, and some of the newer Asscreed games. Having a gigantic map is kind of pointless if you can traverse the entire thing in seconds.

At least in Kenshi, there are things/outposts to discover along the way (and varying degree of enemies) because the world in that game is more inherently hostile than it is in BL. Yes, eventually the whole map becomes 'small' once you play it enough - same goes for RDR2, Witcher 3, Skyrim, Cyberpunk, or any other large open-world games; but they at least had things/opportunities on the side to potentially distract/drag you from the simple A to B travel that we only have in BL.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

At least in Kenshi, there are things/outposts to discover along the way (and varying degree of enemies) because the world in that game is more inherently hostile than it is in BL.

I don't actually think so. A fully explored kenshi map actually has fewer settlements on it than even warband, and most of the map is completely empty space, at least on the default settings, and that's part of the pacing of the game. Even if you max out running speed on all your characters, going from the north of the map to the south takes about 5 minutes, and that's excluding all the logistics of packing up and moving that far. Even if you send side characters to go on afk runs to get stuff, you have a "home" area that you stick to for hours at a time.

What separates Kenshi from all the other crappy open world Skyrim clones of the last 10 years is that Kenshi actually uses its scale as part of the gameplay. Without all the vast empty space between settlements there wouldn't be a feeling of "oh no I'm screwed" when you get stuck in the wild with a broken leg which will take you weeks ingame to crawl to safety, or a feeling of "I'm going on a massive dangerous adventure" when you spend months ingame preparing to move your party to a different province. This would also be impossible to simulate with an MnB style overworld.

When I say the MnB formula has inherent limitations this is what I mean. The overworld saps most of the immersion and prevents more interesting features from being implemented. It will always be a bunch of menus connecting battles until they seriously rethink the core gameplay.

 

[JunKeteer]

I don't actually think so. A fully explored kenshi map actually has fewer settlements on it than even warband, and most of the map is completely empty space, at least on the default settings, and that's part of the pacing of the game. Even if you max out running speed on all your characters, going from the north of the map to the south takes about 5 minutes, and that's excluding all the logistics of packing up and moving that far. Even if you send side characters to go on afk runs to get stuff, you have a "home" area that you stick to for hours at a time.

What separates Kenshi from all the other crappy open world Skyrim clones of the last 10 years is that Kenshi actually uses its scale as part of the gameplay. Without all the vast empty space between settlements there wouldn't be a feeling of "oh no I'm screwed" when you get stuck in the wild with a broken leg which will take you weeks ingame to crawl to safety, or a feeling of "I'm going on a massive dangerous adventure" when you spend months ingame preparing to move your party to a different province. This would also be impossible to simulate with an MnB style overworld.

There are lull moments for sure in Kenshi, but as you mentioned, that is also part of its charm; even if there is a low count of settlements and fixed 'boss' spawn locations that, if condensed, seem very small, especially if you play the game long enough. You still have to prepare/train your squad, get enough food/inventory management, and set off to whatever the player chooses to do or go; and whatever encounters that you may or may not choose to be involved with (and consequences).

When I say the MnB formula has inherent limitations this is what I mean. The overworld saps most of the immersion and prevents more interesting features from being implemented. It will always be a bunch of menus connecting battles until they seriously rethink the core gameplay.

I agree, the only way to even get away from just the menu-town-after-town-travelling 'waste of time' between the battles is through a core gameplay change with complexities and better random variables, which won't happen (massive DLC-like change would be needed).

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

It becomes a problem because the lord's parties get much bigger, everybody has 130 to 260 troops, making battles even bigger and even more tedious


It was on a 1.8 save that I no longer have (deleted everything do to crashes), had Rhotae, Amitatys and Jalmarys, all of which I garrisoned with vlandian sharpshooters and sturgian heavy axemens, while my party was almost pure fian champions. It was lategame and the cities were between 5k and 7k of prosperity, at most 7.2k before starvation


Well there is a reason why PC users hate when the game has to be cross platform, same thing happened to skyrim where console compatibility meant the game was very limited, hence the different worldspace for cities. A lot of bannerlord's issues can be tied to console compatibility



if armies are smaller than less villages to recruit from is not an issue. If a kingdom can muster 5 2k+ troops armies when the game can at most render one thousand troops on the screen then maybe the armies are too numerous/too big

Like I said; I prefer it bigger, especially by late game, because it adds to the challenge and prevents me from just steamrolling everything. If you're finding the bigger battles tedious, then I'd say the issue for you would have to be too fundamental for mere numeric adjustments to fix or you just got bored due to repetition. I'd lose out if they made enemies even smaller and less likely to have top tier troops because I'd greatly appreciate a maintained or greater level of tactical challenge during the late game.

As far as I know, that's basically high to very development so it stands to reason they'd be able to keep you in the black.

I'd say Skyrim's fundamental issues is less to do with compromises for consoles and more to do with design philosophy. Nothing fundamentally changes if horses are slowed down, there's less clothing to wear, or towns are interior cells but a whole lot does change when spellmakers are removed, levitation is removed, dungeons are homogenized and mostly linear, etc. and I'd apply it likewise to Bannerlord; any shortcomings you find with Bannerlord are mostly going to be issues with the design rather than its technical performance. Like, if Bannerlord were made with PS1 era graphics (etc.) but otherwise kept the same in function, would that really change anything beyond how it looks (and make loading times much faster, presumably)? Whereas, if they cut features or didn't implement this or that because they wanted it to be different (for some reason or another), would it matter if they were in (insert most technically demanding thing at the moment)?

I actually think it's better that battles happen in multiple waves. The fact you can get away with mostly Fians whereas I can't on PS4 implies that the balance resultant from having to fight multiple waves (with only a third of the non-PS4 troop limit) implies battles are actually more demanding and sophisticated when such limitations are in place. It'd be great if you (or other non-PS4 users) could use a slider or something to determine rendering limits just to experiment with this theory of mine. It certainly would explain the discrepancy between my own anecdotes and others around here besides skill issues (i.e., I'm a newb or they're extremely good) or exaggerations.

I agree, the only way to even get away from just the menu-town-after-town-travelling 'waste of time' between the battles is through a core gameplay change with complexities and better random variables, which won't happen (massive DLC-like change would be needed).

Personally? I'd rather they make it more "about menus" since just about every strategy game I've played that operates on a level above tactical is basically a series of menu flips on a superficial level. Any changes along the lines of more scheming, plotting, domestics, etc. is basically stat management and menu flipping. I can't say I'd dislike that when what I'm suggesting is basically to go into menus to do things you can't currently do lol.

I don't think being able to wander around open spaces outside of battles adds anything to the gameplay experience. As beautiful as the cities and villages are in this game, they don't actually add anything outside of their use in battles. This isn't TES where you have to run around numerous shops to trade goods, repair gear, rest at the inn, etc.; this is more like RTK where you traverse an overworld and conduct business on a political/military level with the occasional personal when not conducting invasions or defenses. Yet, for some reason, a lot of love and care was put into designing these places even though you only have a practical reason to see them during battles. And, given the core of the game and where I'd like it to go, I can't say I have any ideas on what these beautiful places could be good for besides some light dating simulation elements or "family events" and the like. There's just no good reason to not do everything not related to battles in menus besides posing or looking cool in peaceful areas.

EDIT: I am curious what the intended design philosophy is going forward, because I suspect many M&B fans have divergent ideas on where the series should go and even its fundamental identity. I view it as a grand strategy game with RPG/action elements, for example, and therefore think mainly about expanding it as a strategy game.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I would be really interested by a mod that takes place mostly within scenes. So instead of an overworld there are just different large maps with a few villages or a big town in them, and all the gameplay is contained within them. All the suggestions people make, like assassins or hunting or even the 4X type stuff in your post would make way more sense. It would be a fundamentally different game, but I feel like the MnB formula is just a brick wall, hamstrung by the overworld-scene-menu division which was a technical limitation back in the 2000s but a needless restriction nowadays.

There was a Warband mod that tried to do just this. I forget the name of it, but it essentially replaced the world map with a big grid of connected battlefields. So you march your army to the map edge and it loads the next tile. It wasn't very well-suited for Warband since each battle map couldn't be that large, but the idea might work for Bannerlord which supports much larger maps.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

EDIT: I am curious what the intended design philosophy is going forward, because I suspect many M&B fans have divergent ideas on where the series should go and even its fundamental identity.

I think one of the biggest sources of frustration around here is that Taleworlds has never laid out their design philosophy for the game. I'm not really sure that they even have one. They seem to add features on a piecemeal basis to address immediate issues without seeming to fit them into any kind of grand design. The devs will often say how this or that feature request doesn't fit into their "vision" but they've never fully articulated what that vision actually is.

I view it as a grand strategy game with RPG/action elements, for example, and therefore think mainly about expanding it as a strategy game.

And I'm just the opposite. I view it as an action RPG with strategic elements. I wish Taleworlds would clear up what kind of game this actually is.

I really wish Taleworlds did what a lot of other devs do and have some senior developers livestream themselves actually playing the game and talking to fans about it. I really want to see how Armagan plays the game. Maybe I'm playing it wrong.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I think one of the biggest sources of frustration around here is that Taleworlds has never laid out their design philosophy for the game. I'm not really sure that they even have one. They seem to add features on a piecemeal basis to address immediate issues without seeming to fit them into any kind of grand design. The devs will often say how this or that feature request doesn't fit into their "vision" but they've never fully articulated what that vision actually is.

And I'm just the opposite. I view it as an action RPG with strategic elements. I wish Taleworlds would clear up what kind of game this actually is.

I really wish Taleworlds did what a lot of other devs do and have some senior developers livestream themselves actually playing the game and talking to fans about it. I really want to see how Armagan plays the game. Maybe I'm playing it wrong.

Yeah, I can imagine. All we can do is guess, speculate, and judge for ourselves. I "suspect" it's meant to be a simulation overall but it's a unique hybrid-genre game so it attracts all kinds of players of widely varying tastes so, at some point, they can't please everybody since the effort of pleasing one group will likely ire the other groups. My grounds for my suspicion is how little control the player has over the stuff that goes on in the game compared to conventional strategy games, and how the player can just as easily be screwed over by the mechanics (like forced to rubber stamp unwanted government policies or wars) as they can exploit it. Furthermore, they put in a lot of work to have a functioning international economy and a means of interacting with it. However, as you said, they may not have explicitly said what they're going for whereas other games I refer to (especially RTK and Nobunaga's Ambition) make it clear what they're about (in those two cases, being "historical simulators" intended to immerse you as either an officer or ruler rather than be "gamey" and give you loads of things to play with relevant to your station but not necessarily all that deep in any one of those things).

And I can totally see how it can be played like an ARPG--it's just I flip it over because I spend most of my time thinking and playing it like a strategy game where economics, development, and other forms of number crunching and map reading are essential with the battles themselves just being a (very fun) means to an end. Plus, I REALLY enjoy the dynastic simulation side since I'm a sucker for games that let me get married, have kids, play as them, and potentially do that forever (maybe they're more common on PC, but they're very rare on PS4).

That would be interesting. I am wondering if the root of their issue causing fandom divide is actually sharing too much, too soon, and thus inflating fan expectations to a boiling point while also setting an unreasonably high standard for communicativeness when most games companies I'm aware of maintain a professional distance. Still, it would be interesting to see how it's "meant" to be played, especially in a long-form let's play or something.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

And I can totally see how it can be played like an ARPG--it's just I flip it over because I spend most of my time thinking and playing it like a strategy game where economics, development, and other forms of number crunching and map reading are essential with the battles themselves just being a (very fun) means to an end. Plus, I REALLY enjoy the dynastic simulation side since I'm a sucker for games that let me get married, have kids, play as them, and potentially do that forever (maybe they're more common on PC, but they're very rare on PS4).

I can't deny that, on paper, the dynasty aspects seem really cool, but for something like that you really have to build the whole game around it from the start. Here it feels tacked on like so much else. The timescales just conflict too much. To make sure that the second and third generations have something to do, you have to slow things down so much that it becomes a drag on your main character. If you speed things up to make the first character's lifetime fun and engaging, then you run out of game before the next generation is ready. I'm really not sure how the two can be reconciled in a satisfying way.

That would be interesting. I am wondering if the root of their issue causing fandom divide is actually sharing too much, too soon, and thus inflating fan expectations to a boiling point while also setting an unreasonably high standard for communicativeness when most games companies I'm aware of maintain a professional distance. Still, it would be interesting to see how it's "meant" to be played, especially in a long-form let's play or something.

Nobody has ever accused Taleworlds of sharing too much. They've always been notoriously tight-lipped throughout the entire development of the game. The one guy that shared too much was the old community manager who promised the game would be out in 2016, and he's not working for Taleworlds anymore. I think the expectations came mainly from the fact that Warband was this little indy game made by a tiny crew and it was awesome, so Bannerlord would be a modernized version made by a much bigger crew with all this time to work on it, so naturally it would be that much more awesome.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I can't deny that, on paper, the dynasty aspects seem really cool, but for something like that you really have to build the whole game around it from the start. Here it feels tacked on like so much else. The timescales just conflict too much. To make sure that the second and third generations have something to do, you have to slow things down so much that it becomes a drag on your main character. If you speed things up to make the first character's lifetime fun and engaging, then you run out of game before the next generation is ready. I'm really not sure how the two can be reconciled in a satisfying way.

I think that's a skill issue; as in, if you're too good at the game, you're unifying Calradia too quickly lol. Thankfully, I never had that problem during my first playthrough so it lasted 48 years ("as intended?") though I'll have to see (when the patch is done/out) how my second will go since I've gotten better at the game. If I end up suffering a similar skill issue, I'd push for ways to make the game harder and take in-universe longer to unite
lol, or otherwise self-impose challenges or something.

Nobody has ever accused Taleworlds of sharing too much. They've always been notoriously tight-lipped throughout the entire development of the game. The one guy that shared too much was the old community manager who promised the game would be out in 2016, and he's not working for Taleworlds anymore. I think the expectations came mainly from the fact that Warband was this little indy game made by a tiny crew and it was awesome, so Bannerlord would be a modernized version made by a much bigger crew with all this time to work on it, so naturally it would be that much more awesome.

I think ANY kind of news update of this kind are more than I'm used to. Maybe my standard for development studio sharing is basically radio silence while most people expect monthly updates--I don't know since I don't normally follow news anyway. But... well, I still suspect TW may have screwed themselves by raising community expectations too high. Well, "screwed" is over-stating it since I'm sure Bannerlord's made bank and people like me are here precisely because it was good enough to make me want to look for people on the Internet to talk about it lol. But "screwed" with the active longstanding fan community at least.

My window of time was around when Warband appeared on PS4 and I took a chance on it to the present, and when I look back at my time with Bannerlord over December and half of January I'd say I got pretty much what I expected and more. However, I wasn't following the news month by month or swapping theories with forum mates nor playing the early access and thus looking at everything as placeholder/temporary--if I did, my expectations might have been drastically different.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I think that's a skill issue; as in, if you're too good at the game, you're unifying Calradia too quickly lol. Thankfully, I never had that problem during my first playthrough so it lasted 48 years ("as intended?") though I'll have to see (when the patch is done/out) how my second will go since I've gotten better at the game.

Its not that I'm too good or conquering the world too fast, its just that the rate of progression that I would find satisfying for playing my main character is too fast for a generational game and vice versa.

If I was playing this as a purely generational game, I'd want my first character to make it up to maybe clan tier 2 or 3 in his lifetime. His son pushes the clan to tier 4 and and maybe by the 3rd or 4th generation gets to be Tier 6 and in charge of a whole kingdom. But that slow of a progression would feel horrible in practice.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Its not that I'm too good or conquering the world too fast, its just that the rate of progression that I would find satisfying for playing my main character is too fast for a generational game and vice versa.

If I was playing this as a purely generational game, I'd want my first character to make it up to maybe clan tier 2 or 3 in his lifetime. His son pushes the clan to tier 4 and and maybe by the 3rd or 4th generation gets to be Tier 6 and in charge of a whole kingdom. But that slow of a progression would feel horrible in practice.

I'm not sure how I understand since I don't think I'm deliberately dragging out the timeline, so I'd assume you're just much better at doing the loop of setting up a country and uniting all Calradia--unless you conclude your playthroughs at a much earlier point? Because generations do pass when you try for unification (although I have seen... Strat Gaming? Demonstrate it being done as quickly as 16 years, but that's an exceptional amount of skill on his part rather than the norm) especially if you ever stumble and fall (after all, my 48 years were mostly smooth without serious setbacks but I was on the edge, so it could have gone on for much longer if a few things didn't work out like I wanted them to).

I think for generational play, it's enough to die and reincarnate for me and I think the time it takes to unify Calradia (especially as your own ruler) is enough of a timesink to make it happen organically (at least at my current skill level). I don't think the game should be designed to pad itself out in length; I think taking a long time should be a natural consequence of being sufficiently challenged. That's part of why I'd like to see menu-based schemes take place where you could sabotage walls, agitate commoners (decrease loyalty of cities), arranged timed defections, etc. since this could be a powerful double-edged sword that could screw you as much as you screw your adversaries on top of adding stuff to keep up with between (major) battles (I put in the qualifier because I wouldn't count auto-calculated squishes to be "proper battles" compared to, say, 500 vs 500 or other high number battles of roughly equal strength).

 

[sh1ny4]

Like, if Bannerlord were made with PS1 era graphics (etc.) but otherwise kept the same in function, would that really change anything beyond how it looks (and make loading times much faster, presumably)? Whereas, if they cut features or didn't implement this or that because they wanted it to be different (for some reason or another), would it matter if they were in (insert most technically demanding thing at the moment)?

That's a good point, I think I would enjoy it even less whereas it wouldn't change anything if the same thing happened to warband. But consoles have undeniably been scope limiters.

I haven't played a lot with lower troops limit per battles as I hate from the bottom of my heart the reinforcement and the waves it induces, and I didn't find them to be any harder than bigger battles, just less messy. If anything when you have good troops the enemy attacking by wave is beneficial to you as you don't get submerged by the number.

Like I said; I prefer it bigger, especially by late game, because it adds to the challenge and prevents me from just steamrolling everything. If you're finding the bigger battles tedious, then I'd say the issue for you would have to be too fundamental for mere numeric adjustments to fix or you just got bored due to repetition. I'd lose out if they made enemies even smaller and less likely to have top tier troops because I'd greatly appreciate a maintained or greater level of tactical challenge during the late game.

It's not really the big battles that I find tedious, but the fact that we keep doing them again and again, just against weaker troops.
I remember fondly some massive battles I did, where I had to play even more carefully as I wasn't part of the army thus didn't knew what they were doing and almost got exterminated.
What I dislike is that such battle has no influence on the opposing kingdom, it's as if it never happened to them and you need at least 5 of these battles before they calm down a bit. Every single war...
And same thing for sieges, doing a few is awesome, doing 100 in a row ? no thanks

 

[froggyluv]

I

There was a Warband mod that tried to do just this. I forget the name of it, but it essentially replaced the world map with a big grid of connected battlefields. So you march your army to the map edge and it loads the next tile. It wasn't very well-suited for Warband since each battle map couldn't be that large, but the idea might work for Bannerlord which supports much larger maps.

Was the most revolutionary mod yet imo -that was Ruthvens mod. the thing I really liked about it is you could see Warparties just steadily marching to different places at a slow pace -as a convoy actually would. And they didnt just insta -see you, they had to actually spot you with line of Site so you could actually stealth follow them and try and get an idea of whats going on. Tension was risen by 500% from just merely this.

Hope he continues on that

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

That's a good point, I think I would enjoy it even less whereas it wouldn't change anything if the same thing happened to warband. But consoles have undeniably been scope limiters.

I haven't played a lot with lower troops limit per battles as I hate from the bottom of my heart the reinforcement and the waves it induces, and I didn't find them to be any harder than bigger battles, just less messy. If anything when you have good troops the enemy attacking by wave is beneficial to you as you don't get submerged by the number.

Well, it's tough to say if something else I'm doing, like setting allied troop spawns to "Homogoenous" and having low tier troops placed up arranged in ascending order from the top, might also be a factor but I can say it can be a real punch in the gut when I'm on top of the enemy, beating the initial wave, and then a wave of infantry mobs behind my left flank and I gotta pull out or they're getting steamrolled from behind, or maybe a company of horsemen ride in, or maybe they form a new formation in another spawn point, etc. and since enemies always have their best troops go first, that means the first wave is usually the most important but not always and they certainly have a higher likelihood of being all top tier in large enough numbers.

Not only that, but missile units are also significantly affected since they're very likely to run out of arrows (even Fians) with the waves going on.

It's not really the big battles that I find tedious, but the fact that we keep doing them again and again, just against weaker troops.
I remember fondly some massive battles I did, where I had to play even more carefully as I wasn't part of the army thus didn't knew what they were doing and almost got exterminated.
What I dislike is that such battle has no influence on the opposing kingdom, it's as if it never happened to them and you need at least 5 of these battles before they calm down a bit. Every single war...
And same thing for sieges, doing a few is awesome, doing 100 in a row ? no thanks

You already said what influence those initial victories have; they're reduced to crappy draftees after that and become weaker and weaker as you smack them around, to the point where the very late game is a one-sided gradual steamroll since your enemies can no longer effectively resist you while the early part of the unification phase is slow and indecisive thanks to this. I prefer it to be slow in the "early late game" and SLOWLY snowball from there, but it does eventually happen.

Frankly, what annoyed me most was the insane crash rate during sieges; I actually enjoy them, but waiting 5 minutes to reload the game and siege battle due to an annoying crash (that I prepared for by taking 30 seconds to save...) that could have occurred at the very end of the battle is a real grinder on my patience lol. Doesn't help you have to manually control sieges even when you're going to win with near-zero casualties just because the auto-calculator would kill 30+ top tier troops if you don't. I stopped caring about that near the very, very end... but this is why I'm especially interested in crash clean up related to battles.

But, aside from all that, I think a fundamental issue with varying mileage is repetition; people like me enjoy the slow grind and dislike it when the overworld's rapidly changing colors while other people would rather it be a handful of decisive battles per war and maybe a couple wars to conquer a kingdom before one final lightning war to unite the other half of the continent. Since I mainly play Bannerlord as a strategy game, I'd rather it be difficult enough to be slow and gradual rather than so decisive it's fast-paced.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I'm not sure how I understand since I don't think I'm deliberately dragging out the timeline, so I'd assume you're just much better at doing the loop of setting up a country and uniting all Calradia--unless you conclude your playthroughs at a much earlier point? Because generations do pass when you try for unification (although I have seen... Strat Gaming? Demonstrate it being done as quickly as 16 years, but that's an exceptional amount of skill on his part rather than the norm) especially if you ever stumble and fall (after all, my 48 years were mostly smooth without serious setbacks but I was on the edge, so it could have gone on for much longer if a few things didn't work out like I wanted them to).

I think for generational play, it's enough to die and reincarnate for me and I think the time it takes to unify Calradia (especially as your own ruler) is enough of a timesink to make it happen organically (at least at my current skill level). I don't think the game should be designed to pad itself out in length; I think taking a long time should be a natural consequence of being sufficiently challenged. That's part of why I'd like to see menu-based schemes take place where you could sabotage walls, agitate commoners (decrease loyalty of cities), arranged timed defections, etc. since this could be a powerful double-edged sword that could screw you as much as you screw your adversaries on top of adding stuff to keep up with between (major) battles (I put in the qualifier because I wouldn't count auto-calculated squishes to be "proper battles" compared to, say, 500 vs 500 or other high number battles of roughly equal strength).

I've never even come close to unifying Calradia. That's not even a goal for me. Mainly I just **** around and play until the playthrough gets boring. That's usually when I have a small kingdom that's fairly secure, which only takes around 10 years or so of gametime. By that point I have no problem smashing huge armies so it becomes a struggle just to find a good fight. You maybe get a couple good fights at the start of a war if the enemy's been at peace and can come with all their strength, but after that its nothing but the B and C squads coming with their crap tier armies over and over again. When I start to feel like a bully for beating up on the enemy is when the playthrough's run its course.

I think every world conquest game eventually runs into this problem in the late game, but I think the good ones are able to pace it out a lot better.

 

[JunKeteer]

I've never even come close to unifying Calradia. That's not even a goal for me. Mainly I just **** around and play until the playthrough gets boring. That's usually when I have a small kingdom that's fairly secure, which only takes around 10 years or so of gametime. By that point I have no problem smashing huge armies so it becomes a struggle just to find a good fight. You maybe get a couple good fights at the start of a war if the enemy's been at peace and can come with all their strength, but after that its nothing but the B and C squads coming with their crap tier armies over and over again. When I start to feel like a bully for beating up on the enemy is when the playthrough's run its course.

Pretty much where I stop - I'd like to think a majority here probable stops around then which is where the late-game issues come. Painting the whole map just doesn't have that time-reward pay off as you might get from other games.

I think every world conquest game eventually runs into this problem in the late game, but I think the good ones are able to pace it out a lot better.

Good ones have multiple features developed at pacing it or widening that early bit so it doesn't ramp up as quickly to the 'late-game' as it does in BL. Instead, they tried to cover all bases/checklist features and we're left with this shallow game. Why bother implementing all the mess with dynasties, longevity (babies), self-correcting balances, aging/death, etc...if you then essentially 'give-up' fixing it by just adding that toggle button to disable it as a solution.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I've never even come close to unifying Calradia. That's not even a goal for me. Mainly I just **** around and play until the playthrough gets boring. That's usually when I have a small kingdom that's fairly secure, which only takes around 10 years or so of gametime. By that point I have no problem smashing huge armies so it becomes a struggle just to find a good fight. You maybe get a couple good fights at the start of a war if the enemy's been at peace and can come with all their strength, but after that its nothing but the B and C squads coming with their crap tier armies over and over again. When I start to feel like a bully for beating up on the enemy is when the playthrough's run its course.

I think every world conquest game eventually runs into this problem in the late game, but I think the good ones are able to pace it out a lot better.

That explains a few things; because most of those 48 years were spent uniting the continent. For reference, I founded my kingdom in 1098 (so, 14 years?); secured it in Nahasa in 1104; died in 1113; and spent 1114 to 1132 waging wars across all Calradia as my daughter with the tipping point being around 1122 when I united Vlandia and Battania along with the Nahasa Desert.

It's actually a bit more complicated; you've noticed the general war pattern of fighting their best initially followed by draftees, but this pattern repeats itself with every new war so you'd be well challenged roughly once or twice per war and could end up fighting numerous wars to unite a corner. Furthermore, I've noticed A.I. are programmed to fear hegemonists and try to gang up on them; when Emperor Nemos Comnos of the Western Empire united most of Eastern Calradia and started pushing into Vlandia, my vassals were trying to force me to intervene explicitly to stop him. I ignored them, figuring they'd recede a bit (I was right) and it'd be better to gather strength first, and eventually committed to a huge war once they attacked me (and it began my push into Western Calradia, where I generally peace'd out with the Western Empire to focus on Vlandia and Battania (and Sturgia intervening) and was also when things got REALLY tough strategically).

Like, when you actually become the big guy, that's when you can expect eternal war and to be challenged for real again. I couldn't hold both my far eastern territories around Danustica and my new western territories because it'd take too much time to mobilize from one end to the other (even when cutting through the Western Empire to do so) so I ended up deciding to "sacrifice" the east so I could focus on uniting the western coat before using that as a stage to push east. It ended up working, but it was very difficult in the short term since I had to defeat a lot of tough enemies before things became a little easier, but the difficulty was quite suspenseful because I was losing ground not only in the far east but also around Lageta while pushing west into Vlandia. Eventually I managed to pull it off, but the hard part wasn't over until I united roughly 2/3rds of Calradia, or, in other words, Vlandia + Aserai + Battania + Sturgia + the former starting territories of the Western Empire.

I don't know if the kind of difficulty I'm describing sounds appealing, but it is the sort of thing you miss out on by concluding playthroughs after establishing a country. That strategic pressure plus a (rough rate) of a few tough big battles per war (mileage definitely varies based on size of enemy and activity of vassals/allies). I think it's worth experiencing if you're like me and find what I described euphoric lol.

Pretty much where I stop - I'd like to think a majority here probable stops around then which is where the late-game issues come. Painting the whole map just doesn't have that time-reward pay off as you might get from other games.

Good ones have multiple features developed at pacing it or widening that early bit so it doesn't ramp up as quickly to the 'late-game' as it does in BL. Instead, they tried to cover all bases/checklist features and we're left with this shallow game. Why bother implementing all the mess with dynasties, longevity (babies), self-correcting balances, aging/death, etc...if you then essentially 'give-up' fixing it by just adding that toggle button to disable it as a solution.

Have you actually played on to unite Calradia (and if you have but not for years, in a recent version of the game)? If you haven't, then you're just going off on other people's words and taking them at face value. Maybe my first playthrough was the exception rather than the rule, but I suspect many players (perhaps most) just never get to the point where they're being strategically pressured to degree I've described and simply assumed the late game would be a repetitive series of easy victories to the finish line.

The toggle almost certainly exists for players who lose interest in continuing if/when they die. Many strategy games have similar options since not everybody likes dealing with mortality.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Personally? I'd rather they make it more "about menus" since just about every strategy game I've played that operates on a level above tactical is basically a series of menu flips on a superficial level. Any changes along the lines of more scheming, plotting, domestics, etc. is basically stat management and menu flipping. I can't say I'd dislike that when what I'm suggesting is basically to go into menus to do things you can't currently do lol.

The difference is that those games are forced to be in menus because they're highly abstract games where you control a country, not third person games where you control a character. In EU4 and total war for example it's not even clear who you, the player, are supposed to be, because even when the general dies you're still controlling the army.

There are a crapton of menu games now and all taleworlds has done / can do with the current MnB formula is slap on a pared down, mediocre version of an already creatively bankrupt genre onto their game.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

The difference is that those games are forced to be in menus because they're highly abstract games where you control a country, not third person games where you control a character. In EU4 and total war for example it's not even clear who you, the player, are supposed to be, because even when the general dies you're still controlling the army.

There are a crapton of menu games now and all taleworlds has done / can do with the current MnB formula is slap on a pared down, mediocre version of an already creatively bankrupt genre onto their game.

Maybe it's because options for strategy games are limited on consoles, but I'm appreciative of fresh water in a dry well.

Furthermore, I don't see a point in all the 3D rendering outside battles, events, and cutscenes since it's all really just for flavor. This isn't an open world medieval fantasy where you take quests or talk to eccentric NPCs in their homes or etc.; this is a game that's chiefly focused on war and politics. It's nice they went to the trouble for the purpose of using them for battles, but the main way forward I see (from the perspective of viewing M&B as grand strategy games with ARPG aspects) is menu-flipping strategic and domestic gameplay.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

The problem is that you can't have the scale of managing a country in the abstract alongside third person battles without creating a massive rift between the two. There is so much more you could do with battles (and the manoeuvring preceding battle) if they happened in larger maps that the player stays in for longer.