SP - General From playing long games. 2000 days ingame so 2nd generation is in play. Bit ranty/salty

[Zorion_no]

Basically for me in general post about 600-800 the game "just isnt fun enough" its generally then the issues start to show.
I still stick it out and do 2k days games and even longer.
Just curious am I playing it dfiferent than the devs do or whats going on?

My issue is that there is per se no real point in "legacy" or heirs to put it that way, by the time they are old enough to join in the fun there is little to no lands to conquer.
And most of the other realms are mostly reduced to "pestlords" that never defect and keep on raiding villages and selling the raided booty to the town that said villages are bound to gg..
Like why are those lords who are hostile towards the faction allowed to enter the towns under our control?
Dont recall seeing this in Warband.

4 of the attached original clans that was with the Northern Empire is still with them, even after they lost their last holdin some 1k days(closer to 1500 days ago..)
They need to add a -1 relation to the king for the clanleaders if they dont have land pr day, and once it hits a threshold they will defect to other factions.

Wars last to long and the factions are too keen on wars.
Like literally in the 2k days, I've had say under 100 days of peace, constant war gets abit stale aswell, no downtime.
Need to add in timed peace and end of the tribute.
+ in general more calculations to what makes peace desirable.
As it is now generally speaking there just isnt enough will to end wars until we've conquered all the lands of the enemy and then its still at 0% until we get enough of their lords behind bars - then there is peace and since they have kept on raiding villages - they get tribute for said peace.
Pretty sure that this wasnt how Rome in general dealt with conquered tribes/kingdomes.

With the lack of peace, it also seems that the ai dont defect on their own, I do notice that when we've had peace vs 1 faction, or it have had peace abit, the lords start to defect.


Given the lack of intrest for peace it also means there is no point in legacy play per se, as there isnt enough for them to conquer or do more or less.
Either you need to speed up the lifecycle more than you do, but then you'd also need to up the skill-learning aswell(which you should already tbh, should give attribute pts pr 2nd and not 3rd lvl up at the very least).

Ideally with more frequent peace and a fixed duration for said peace, being in 100's of days mean that you would then "slow down" the game so there is a point to the legacy system, now I just dont find that there is any point to it(besides free armyleader/governors etc).

I think what my rant is more about is a more detailed map on what your planning on some of theese issues, not in detail etc, but there is tons of mods that fixes alot of theese issues, and for being a vanilla(no mod player) this is kind of irking me that a 1 man dev team make better diplomacy system, better attrition/warfatigue.

End rant.

 

[CalradiaWorldCup]

Like many others, I have experienced the same gameplay, with wars constantly raging, and little incentive to play past my next generation. I have noticed some changes as Bannerlord is patched and balanced. Perhaps the addition of "global holidays", where all of Calradia is at peace for a certain amount of time, as well as higher ranges for prosperity (which currently seems to have little effect on AI lords), much lower prosperity for nations/holdings constantly at war, and vice versa.

 

[Zorion_no]

Like many others, I have experienced the same gameplay, with wars constantly raging, and little incentive to play past my next generation. I have noticed some changes as Bannerlord is patched and balanced. Perhaps the addition of "global holidays", where all of Calradia is at peace for a certain amount of time, as well as higher ranges for prosperity (which currently seems to have little effect on AI lords), much lower prosperity for nations/holdings constantly at war, and vice versa.

My biggest issue is that the lords have no intrest regards for "building" so to speak.
Like if there is 2-3 cities on the verge of revolts, I would think that those clans would be intrested to stop war so they could focus on keeping it in check or avoid that revolt.

I think one way to make there be less wars though is to up the amount of Influence needed to go to war, so that they this way will be "forced" to not go to war cause they dont have the influence to do so

The issue is that 1 man teams of modder have fixed issues like this, where you dont have chain wars on and on.

Dont get me wrong the game is kickass for me up until about 600-800 then we've gotten to big and the other empires are not as much if at all war, and mostly declareing on the faction I'm in.
Should be a better scripted instance behind the war, and not "forced" conditions like it is now.

Like if you save-scum when a faction declares war, it will be like 1 day, and either that or another faction will declare war, which dont feel right, like the system of warband where there was a causis belli behind it and a small prep-time aswell typically for when war was to erupt.
Endless tributes also really dont seem right, no peace-time stinks, like seriously you've taken their lands, prisoned their lords, we get peace after a long annoying war.. boom 2 days later now that they got all their lords out of jail - WAR.... Just dont feel right.
Stuff like this have already been tweaked by modders, so it kind of makes me wonder about whats up with this, should I cave and just use the mods?(prolly) But I dont want to use it in EA so I can report on issues as much as possible and not report false - cause of mod/conflicts etc).

I think the most frustrating thus this rant, is that regardless of all the threads posted on this or similar topics there is little to no info on whats planned, I get it that we cant expect details fully, but some "overhead info" we're looking into dialing down the amounts of war, or "we like it like this so get used to it"(then I would go use mods)

 

[Zorion_no]

Well well, it would seem that I have indeed "played it wrong" from how Taleworlds apperantly must play it.

I started a new play.

I just let everything around me burn more or less.
I have my character defend my stuff, the 3 parties I have, I fill up with in all fairness vs other lords in the realm - Quality(My is Excellent troops mostly). 3 parties I just let follow the armies of the realm, they get captured every so often though.

I just defend my lands, and usually end up with 10-16 prisoners in my dungeon(talk about ****ty AI in targetting what to raid huh).
Sometimes I do join sieges or help defend besieged castle/towns.

But mostly I tend to my business, and well while there is still not enough peace, atleast when there is 3 factions declareing war, there will be 1 of them we get peace with.
Still they do want to keep on 2 fronts though(They need to do something about the AI ganking the faction that the player joins, its "not fun" when its always and thus kind of prevent there from being any periods of peace more or less post 600 days.

I just dont get it why they think that war is the only source of enjoyment, I mean for those warmongers they can play skirmish battles, or they can just keep on prolonging the wars if they want to.

So yah if you the player are in the fights all the time, and thus are "winning", the faction just dont want peace, as they see no reason to stop.
You leave, they(your lords) get beaten the **** out of them, and some lords get captured, they will soon enough want peace.

Thats why I stopped meddling as much, and now are just doing my thing, tradeing, keeping the city flourinshing etc.

Still feel the game is too "warmongering" vs how it was in Warband while short most of the time, you could have abit of peace atleast, to have a feast or similar(we need feasts in Bannerlord!)(No butter for Derthert!)

 

[echoco]

I've pretty much played my recent games as a mercenary with 20-50 men at most, hopping between factions and observing AI behavior. The more I look the less impressed I am. I agree about the wars, but I have noticed its a bit random. In some games Vlandia was ganked on, in the current one they rule and noone declare war on them. Southern and Western Empires is like you said, always attacked and didn't have time to recover before another faction declare war on them, or they declare war on someone else.

I don't know how much work TW put into the strategic AI. There really need to be some internal drive, trade, resource or the likes are what usually drives confllict. I don't know if factions actually were programmed with these in mind.

For example.
Vilages already trade with towns. Towns should also trade with each other and share their wealth within own kingdom. If a town is low on food, ore or other necessities or its properity is low then the chance of declaring war should be higher with the goal to attack some castle/town nearby with the resurce it needs.

 

[Zorion_no]

I've pretty much played my recent games as a mercenary with 20-50 men at most, hopping between factions and observing AI behavior. The more I look the less impressed I am. I agree about the wars, but I have noticed its a bit random. In some games Vlandia was ganked on, in the current one they rule and noone declare war on them. Southern and Western Empires is like you said, always attacked and didn't have time to recover before another faction declare war on them, or they declare war on someone else.

I don't know how much work TW put into the strategic AI. There really need to be some internal drive, trade, resource or the likes are what usually drives confllict. I don't know if factions actually were programmed with these in mind.

For example.
Vilages already trade with towns. Towns should also trade with each other and share their wealth within own kingdom. If a town is low on food, ore or other necessities or its properity is low then the chance of declaring war should be higher with the goal to attack some castle/town nearby with the resurce it needs.

I like your thinking about why tere is a declaration of war.

Now it seems in the long games that its a first rng chance roughly each 7 days, but who declares war on you is also rng - this due to savescumming, and you see that its Battania, you reload then its Vlandia, reload, its Northern Empire, or reload and no one, then few days later war again.

More or less constantly there seems to be atleast 2 factions on 1 to a point, when it gets weak enough, or one of those 2 attackers get attacked by somene else - peace.
Then the one who got ganked now retake lands etc.

The problem I have with this is that the faction you are with dont care for defending what you have, but instead send armies into the hearthland of the factions to conquer, which typically ends up in defeat since the other faction have 1 army + a score of loose lords attacking that party typically, and thus the army they sent to take our town/castle dont meet challenge and take it..
Dont get me wrong they do play defense sometimes, but often "too late" so they dont reach it when its besieged.

But yah overall the desire for war is imo "too high" if you have starveing cities looted villages and are at a 2 front war you are loosing, but since the faction per se is still powerful or more so than 1 of them, but not combined(currently our ranking is like 8k, vs Khuzait 6,7k and Norther Empire 5,7k, which mean the combined power of those 2 though is much higher than ours, not to mention on multiple fronts, yet there is 0% desire for peace with either..).

They should make a more indepth source of the "motivations" of the ai for us so we could more easily get the results we want, do it mean we need to raid like crazy, to force the peace etc.

 

[echoco]

From one of the patch note war delcaration is on a timer after peace is declared, it's too patched together to be a coherent system. To me the fundamental base of the game need to be redesigned into one coherent system rather than little fixes that are patched together to fix a hundred different things.

I'm not 100% sure but I think AI only react to sieges after the attacker had built a camp. I agree it's too late by that point unless an army is nearby or the attacker is taking their time.

Yeah there needs to me a much more integrated and indepth cause for declaring war.

 

[Emax]

As much as I love this game, you are not wrong on many of these points.

All of my playthroughs I tend to aim for the sky, so to speak. Looking to conquer everything. (To be fair, the main questline does nudge the player in this direction)

But every time I reach that inevitable dull point late game, I start to ponder if the game in its current state might be more fun if you just stay small, like a roving band of mercenaries with one or two fiefs. The battles are really where its at. That and 'growing' characters (for me).

I think I will start a new sandbox campaign and test this out.

Perhaps there needs to be some pacing changes with the game so that its not so feasible for the player to conquer everything with their first character. It needs to be challenging enough for it to take 2 or 3 generations.

 

[Zorion_no]

I changed my play up abit tbh as I said, and it did help as in one of my theory that the game is "meant to be played differently"

1. sticking back and guarding my lands, let the others do the main wars, I deal with the raiding lords that pest my land.
2. if the enemy is far enough that you dont need to safeguard your own lands - raid them!(should you care for relations, just release the lords when you capture them, and they will soon forget your raiding.

Raiding imo seems to play too big part in the desire for peace, which also means that they need to do something about the defection rate or lack of it as I've pointed out in another post(or when you conquer the whole world which I have on 1st character, you have tons of pest lords).

My suggestion for paceing, is "radical" perhaps that they need to dial down to 1 or 2 at most active lords on the map pr clan, instead of the 3-4 parties they have now.
By halveing the forces available at any time, siegeing will be that much more risky business.

Afaik some mods that are out there that add "fatigue" means that wars arent as long, and thus peace is more frequent - this also from my understanding slows down the paceing.

There is that balance of course, but overall atm, I think its not right(atleast from my subjective feeling).

Again doing the 2 steps I mentioned did help alot for my enjoyment.

 

[CalradiaWorldCup]

I think that the game is fairly forgiving in terms of different playstyles. I like to get to mix it up a bit, between engaging in the constant battles and warfare which allows for battle related skills to grow, and hanging back and building an elite army to garrison in my town. Some players really prefer to not lose a single top tier troop in battle, understandably, I have found the game is best when not worrying about losing ground and troops, going through multiple armies rapidly, gaining/losing fiefs. Gaining towns for a while can be beneficial to increase relations with the recruiters for future use, then letting it be lost or giving it away to not have to maintain it. I found the game much more enjoyable when I played it to its strengths sandbox style, never reloading a save and just going with the flow.

However, the constant declaration of wars definitely feels off, with what feels like an average of 3 days in between wars of my kingdom or the kingdom I'm in not being at war. Usually we are at war with at least 2 factions nonstop. I also appreciated what Warband did, with lords refusing to join armies for various reasons. While it did handicap kingdoms especially the ai to an extent, it added flavor to the flow.

 

[Zorion_no]

I think that the game is fairly forgiving in terms of different playstyles. I like to get to mix it up a bit, between engaging in the constant battles and warfare which allows for battle related skills to grow, and hanging back and building an elite army to garrison in my town. Some players really prefer to not lose a single top tier troop in battle, understandably, I have found the game is best when not worrying about losing ground and troops, going through multiple armies rapidly, gaining/losing fiefs. Gaining towns for a while can be beneficial to increase relations with the recruiters for future use, then letting it be lost or giving it away to not have to maintain it. I found the game much more enjoyable when I played it to its strengths sandbox style, never reloading a save and just going with the flow.

However, the constant declaration of wars definitely feels off, with what feels like an average of 3 days in between wars of my kingdom or the kingdom I'm in not being at war. Usually we are at war with at least 2 factions nonstop. I also appreciated what Warband did, with lords refusing to join armies for various reasons. While it did handicap kingdoms especially the ai to an extent, it added flavor to the flow.

Yah the lack of peace imo tanks the game experience over all.

Then I'd rather have it revert to that old patch of everyone being at war with eachother, that felt bit more fair, than the ai not haveing war, but ganking on the kingdome the player is tied to.

Note that if you leave the faction, the declaration of war/peace on that kingdome seems to be "better" - as in they will go for peace.

I think my problem is that I'm the type that likes to keep stuff in our kingdomes.

Note - my towns/castle rarely ever get sieged, and I've yet to loose the sieges I've been defending against(mine or the kingdomes).
I had a horrible 2,4k army on my doorstep that ended up with 4 of their lords dead, and so most of their troops.
I had only my garrison and myself(clan rank 6 decent leadership/steward so fairly many troops in my party + garrison was 300+, Milita about 400).

I stopped bringing companions into battle, they die to much even if I got crazy good gear on them or decent at the very least.
I just get 1 from each faction with decent skills - Governors.
Wife - Baby-maker!
Companions are also left in "save towns" that is very unlikely to be sieged in the kingdome so they work wonders on relations with other lords who stop by + important citizens in that city.

My problem though is that I liked how warband in most cases it would stop after a time of war, if they lost a "significant city" or had too many lords imprisoned.

The lack of peacedealtime even if its a mere 30 days also dont make sense to me(mods fixes stuff like this and all the other things I've listed, but I dont play'em during EA + I think most of the features I "want" should be fai
rly basic, since they in some form was in Warband).(have 30 of their lords imprisoned, currently siegeng 3 of their cities, peace - then another ai declare war on us instant.. no downtime, oh and the one we made peace with earlier, who now got all their lords out for free virtually since it havent been a day before they declare war.. do.. boom.. 2 front ..)

Causis belli should also bring back, so there would be less warmongering.

I get that it "needs to some degree" be more war on the kingdome the player is in, since we are such a huge benefit to it, but it feels abit "too much" atm, given that the intrest in peace is non-existent.

I did manage to get peace just as an experiment though when it was 0% intrest..

I had 3k influence, and kept on proposing peace, until the other lords didnt have enough influence to refuse it..(Just as vassal).

 

[Zorion_no]

Playing the latest beta, and once your kingdome hits a certain point they just dont want peace at all ever.
This chain-war stuff once you hit that point, is annoying/tedious/boring/repetitve.

Atleast in Warband you could do a mission for a mayor and thus end a war.
Got to be some more mechanics to halt the wars, so they dont keep on rolling forever.

Some kind of "warfatigue" for nations so they want to take a breather to rebuild etc.
Would also get rid of some of the issues with the pest-kingdomes that never give up.

I think they need to add in if x% of the lords are captive they are forced to peace, this would also help vs the defeate pest-kingdomes that never ends, they never try to siege, they just keep on raiding the village, and selling the pillage to the town connected to it(this bs needs to be done with already, so annoying).(fine if they "sneak in the % chance got to be much higher than it is for them to be caught)

Again this is a ranty thread but this is one of those things that kills the fun for me once you get to it.

The new changes in the latest beta just "stalled it abit" but once you got to that point - boom.. ai rarley declare war upon the others, and gank up on the kingdome you are in.
While its "good that they do per se" they cant hold the things they capture, so its just a war of attrition that grinds down slowly, if you the player take some stuff and hold it, then it just speeds things along, until they have 0 holdings and 0% intrest in peace..

The desire for war is just "too high".

I've decide that unless the next version that comes along, dont fix this issue, I'll have to use mods that do, just "isnt" fun when its like this.
The beaten kingdomes after 100-300 days of no income(besides raiding) or not holding lands should scatter to the remaining factions instead, which prolly would have given the other nations abit better chance overall, not to mention they can still afford to have 3-5 mercenary companies at all time aswell in this, maybe up the pay for the mercs abit, so they go bankrupt faster and are forced to leave.