Game breaking faction/kingdom snowballing balance problem

[Karl_Magnus]

You get 1 influence per day for patrolling in that army... and if you got starving parties in that army you get even more influence ... what do you want more ? Easy influence and a little time for taking a coffee ... If you run out of food leave the army ...

I'm not sure what the point of that comment is, but it doesn't make sense. They take food from towns and villages, then it becomes expensive or creates a shortage and starts demolishing your settlements' economy.

He's not talking about himself, he speaks of the AI.

.

Surely the problem will be dealt with at some point, the devs are aware of these issues and I don't know why everyone is repeating things that has been talked about over and over again.

For the time being, enjoy what you can from the game, if you want it fixed, go play another game for a month and come back to enjoy the progress they made on patching the game until then.

 

[dia151]

I'm not sure what the point of that comment is, but it doesn't make sense. They take food from towns and villages, then it becomes expensive or creates a shortage and starts demolishing your settlements' economy.

He's not talking about himself, he speaks of the AI.


Surely the problem will be dealt with at some point, the devs are aware of these issues and I don't know why everyone is repeating things that has been talked about over and over again.

For the time being, enjoy what you can from the game, if you want it fixed, go play another game for a month and come back to enjoy the progress they made on patching the game until then.

i am enjoying the game, wouldnt play it if i didnt, but i think its ok to repeat and go on about the stuff that devs are aware of.
If you are a dev and have 100 people playing your game. 80 are talking about problem B, 10 about problem C, 7 about D, 3 about E. which problem would you first investigate and try to solve? assuming they are equally "solvable".
Rhetorical question, anway, we're gettting off topic.

Yeah campaign ai needs major rebalance and fixing, but i still enjoy the game.

 

[klinGiii]

I'm not sure what the point of that comment is, but it doesn't make sense. They take food from towns and villages, then it becomes expensive or creates a shortage and starts demolishing your settlements' economy.

He's not talking about himself, he speaks of the AI.

I'm not sure what your point is.

He said it doesn't make sense to create armies when in peace , i said influence gain. Even the AI gets it. You should read dude ... Don't know how they "demolishing" the economy but ... kk

 

[Northcott]

After downloading the recent patch, the political landscape shifted. While the Western Empire was starting to steamroll my game, suddenly every other nation was at war with them and chipping them down.

Either I lucked out, or this patch tweaked something important.

 

[Karl_Magnus]

I'm not sure what your point is.

He said it doesn't make sense to create armies when in peace , i said influence gain. Even the AI gets it. You should read dude ... Don't know how they "demolishing" the economy but ... kk

It's not something that would happen in reality, to just have massive armies wandering in time of peace, that's what he means by it doesn't make sense. Lords in M&B1 used to chill in their castles and towns, have feast, participate in tournaments, etc. All of this will come eventually, but it's not interesting to grind for influence doing nothing, there should be other ways of gaining influence.

And they do create economy issues, they need all the food in an area to keep the army going, it makes food prices go up a lot, and it hurts a town prosperity because the prosperity is affected by food shortages. It wouldn't be such an issue if instead of just doing circles in an army, lords and kings would actually try to make their settlements prosper by bringing in food to stop the hemoragy when towns need something to eat.

''But muh influence points, bruh''
Yeah, yeah...

 

[wookdaddy]

+1 the game is basically over by the time you are powerful enough. Maybe have every faction with an equal number of towns or at least troop size? Having one faction start with 6 towns and another with 9 doesn't help much if you are so weak for so long. Some factions just need flat out BUFFS too - the Sturgians are only good at infantry which is the weakest in this game. Pit them against anyone with strong cavalry and decent archers and they lose most of the time.

 

[Cash666]

Shouldn't we wait for perks to be fixed before touching balance like this?

 

[Karl_Magnus]

Shouldn't we wait for perks to be fixed before touching balance like this?

I feel like that is an important thing to be looked at, too. And it's also impossible to make companions level some skills (or maybe it's just me not figuring this one out), that would be nice too.

 

[Cofic]

Shouldn't we wait for perks to be fixed before touching balance like this?

I think both are very important for the game to be "seriously" playable and worth investing a lot of time in.

 

[Cash666]

I think both are very important for the game to be "seriously" playable and worth investing a lot of time in.

I feel like that is an important thing to be looked at, too. And it's also impossible to make companions level some skills (or maybe it's just me not figuring this one out), that would be nice too.

Don't misunderstand me, I think it is vitally important. What I mean is that these perks will also affect balance issues like this, better- or WORSE. If they fix this first it may have to be fixed again.

 

[Kribble118]

I loaded up warband to see how it compared, 60 days in of waiting, only castles have exchanged hands a few times, not a single city taken, the AI managed to declare peavce and start new wars in those times, mostly against swadia of course. but I think the biggest thing in Bannerlord is that the AI seem to be able to take cities way to easily. I think garrisons need to be much larger than they are, some cities have only 150 garrison and then 150 militia, wich are probably terrible, there needs to be larger amounts of proffesional guards, because armies are riding around with 600 men easily taking towns, I remember in warband it would need every single lord to make an 1k army, in this its not nearly as many lords to reak 1k, and 600 men armies are very common. if TW really want to stop the snowballing they need to increase the wieght at wich the AI considers peace, and start the game with no factions at war, in every single game and in the videos posted above. LAGATA is always the first city to fall 100% of every game ive played battania always takes 3 cities from the western empire pretty much within the first season

I agree, garrisons while they are similarly sized to warbands garrisons, they now have half really **** tier troops and half decent troops. Taleworlds needs to find a way to make sieges a little more difficult and give towns more ways to defend themselves.

 

[MightyMark]

I think the way AI and the player defend castles/towns in this game is terrible. If I want to join a defense of a town I have to almost lose half of my men just to enter the town/castle. Why would I do that? Its not worth it and so the AI would not break into the castle either. This makes the towns and castles very easy to take as the AI literally do not defend them unless the army attacking them is quite small. Also, to properly defend a keep I have to sit in there and predict which one is going to be attacked. In warband; they literally just enter the castle to help defend it which is less realistic however, it works alot better in the game. I would suggest a drastic change to the defense system.

 

[Zairoh]

also i noticed when at peace, my faction still continues to create armies almost constantly. They create armies then go around our territory just patrolling between villages and cities never actually engaging in combat, which even if they wanted to would not be able to since a large army is always slower than a 20 men bandit party, but what is the point, all they do is waste everyones food and then disband. Why does the AI forces those armies so much, there is definetly an underlying issue there that needs to be fixed.

I also make sure I have A LOT of food of every type to keep my troops happy. You get influence when you help feed the others armies. (.5 a day I think?), plus daily influence by being a part of that army, AND large influence from winning battles in that army. Then that influence ticks away into money.

Being a Merc can pay well with that and the insane loot.

 

[Tiberius60]

This picture is from day 256, BUT the Western Empire has vanished after ~100 days or less.
- All my 5 tries to play the campaign the first empire that is destroyed is the Western Empire. lol
This picture is from 1.05.

 

[Zairoh]

This picture is from day 256, BUT the Western Empire has vanished after ~100 days or less.
- All my 5 tries to play the campaign the first empire that is destroyed is the Western Empire. lol
This picture is from 1.05.

Had the same experience. Been switching sides to keep the power balance, but western just gets steamrolled....

 

[Sgt.Laeffy]

Has anyone done another 1.05 test? The telling year is about 1085 to 1090. That's around when any given empire would seize total control in 1.01. So if it goes on much further than that without much snowballing, than they have fixed something.

 

[SpecialT]

I have tested it again now and around the year 1085-1090 some fractions become very strong. It's not as bad as in the patches before, but still it can happen that until the year 1090 1-2 factions were completely wiped out

 

[Cash666]

I have tested it again now and around the year 1085-1090 some fractions become very strong. It's not as bad as in the patches before, but still it can happen that until the year 1090 1-2 factions were completely wiped out

This is how it should be IMHO. Empires should be actively trying to conquer the land don't you think? they haven't even implemented proper civil unrest yet anyway.

 

[Sgt.Laeffy]

This is how it should be IMHO. Empires should be actively trying to conquer the land don't you think? they haven't even implemented proper civil unrest yet anyway.

Yes it should most definitely be like that, but later into the game. The devs have said this themselves.

The problem is that it can happen so early before the player has amassed enough renown or what have you, to lead an effective army against a behemoth kingdom. If it happened later, allowing the player to say, take a few holdings from a smaller kingdom and grow their renown to a point of being able to compete against stronger forces than it wouldn't be as big of an issue. But by then, (1080-1090) there is a solid chance that there aren't any kingdoms left to compete with the other massive steamrolling kingdom in question. And if another kingdom can't do it, the player sure as hell can't.

 

[Gunmars]

Here is another timelapse of e1.0.5. Start of game to 1090, roughly 3 hours of no player interaction sim. This is the third run I have done for comparison between patches. I have done others since launch of game and can say the issues is getting better, still not flawless but much better.



In my experience just running these no player interaction sims there is definitely a trend of Factions that are weaker then others. From strongest to weakest for a best chance at a good sim while player progresses to Clan Rank 1 to join as mercenary.-

1- Vlandia
2- Southern Empire
3 Battania
4- Khuzait
5- Aserai
6- Sturgia
7- Northern Empire
8- Western Empire

By the time 1090 rolls around if one faction is dominant, not even taking a major city but castles seems to put them at a massive numerical advantage the opposing AIs can't counter, especially when they make poor decisions all the time like running their armies pass weaker enemy armies laying siege to a castle or city to raid a town. In the sim time lapse in this post I joined Battania as a merc to see the War stats and Khuzait had almost double the manpower of the Northern Empire, the next strongest faction. With this current AI and balance I don't see a plausible way for AI to effectively fight back against the dominant faction. Actual AI diplomacy, better threat awareness and decision making needs addressed. Random war and peace deals give a faux perception of political intrigue but it's way too off balance to be effective for long term campaigns.