Having fun in Bannerlord ?(some general toughts after 100+ hours of gameplay)

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Dyler Turden

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Hello everyone, i just wanted to write down some issues\problems of gameplay with Bannerlord (English is not my first language,be patient.)
So, as i stated in the title, i hit 100+ hours of gameplay in Bannerlord (i know the most of us did it) and what is worring me the most is the simple fact that the game becomes boring very shortly in mid-late game. What causes this boring feeling?
-1)Battles and AI : the AI is still at a very early stage in my opinion,or at least i hope it. Soldiers who run from battlefield don't defend themselves, and they can be up to 1 third or more of the total troops. So basically when i go 100vs 150,having my morale always higher than 70 ,i will fight a 100vs100 battle, because 50 of them will fly away after a few minutes and they will not try to do something if they get attacked. At the same time, in the described scenario ,lot of my men will try to run behind the enemies fleeing , wasting my troops doing nothing because the enemies are faster(or just can't be reached cause they're too far away).
Big battles are too much disorganized , and they usually end too fast..more strategies are available confronted to Warband, but still i'm not satisfied because it' s still too much a big clash and not a tactical skirimish. Combat AI is also far away from being smart, not just when fleeing, but in general, also when the level is maximized by the elite tier of the troop and the campaign settings (challenging..hmm not really).Better not mentioning the Siege AI :grin: but we all know TW is working on it.
-2)World Map and Campaign AI: apart from the snowball effect of some factions, that is still not fixed, the worst thing imho is the fact that the battles between Armies or simple parties feel .. useless. I will try to express myself as clear and simple as possible in this part,because i feel like these are the biggest issues in Bannerlord, and i hope to see a real improvement. So,after you start winning some big battles in your mid\late game,you start growing your own kingdom or your power inside an existing kingdom. All the battles become too much easy to win, you probably repeat the same strategy dozens of times, without losing a single fight.Lot of times some of your vassals or companions will do some stupid ****,so all you have to worry about to win the war against a faction is protecting some friendly retard ally when he goes 100 vs 500. Oh,and also you will have some of your cities being besieged again and again, by armies you just destroyed 5 minutes ago and they already came back with the same amount of men to besiege again your damn city..and here comes the feeling of fighting useless battles i was talking about before. You also feel like the only possible solution is to keep conquering their fiefs, until their faction will get completely destroyed so they finally stop besieging your ****ing city :LOL: The ultrasonic speed spawning of armies , make all your efforts in winning a big battle feeling like useless. You don't give value to the men you had to lose, you don't think "Alright, i lost half of my army but i stopped them from besieging my Town for a looong time" and you stop feeling the "epicness" of conquering a difficult castle.I have a saved game where i had to execute more than 30 enemy Lords to expand my kingdom, because i had 0 vassals and 6 cities.
3)Kindgom management: right now it's very poor. Policies are ok, but many options are missing (bug of declaring war, bug of keeping the city for you). And lot of options should be added: making a strategic alliance against an enemy, commanding your vassals and companions (defend this, patrol there ecc.) , some general military strategies (be aggressive and attack every time you can, be more defensive and just patrol your fiefs). I don't think these are impossible things to achieve. There are some mods like improved garrisons where you can have parties made of soldiers( another cool thing to add) and you can send them guarding a road ecc.

Conclusion: this way Bannerlord It's too much about grinding, too much random in a kingdom strategy or just in the events of your campaign.What happens in the campaign map, is more a random mess than a living world. It was acceptable in Warband, but i hope this will change in the final stage of Bannerlord.
I also want to give some tips: keep balancing the economy like you're trying to do, until it reaches the situation where there are like 4 or 5 levels of wealth depending on Clan's amount and quality of fiefs and other factors.The clan parties will hire soldiers in a certain number and period of time based on the level of wealth,making the waiting phase way longer than before especially for the poor clans.During a war, some clans will lose or gain richness and influence, so this also need to balanced to avoid the snowball effect.
 
I recently started a heavily modded campaign, because the experience for me was much like you described. And it helped a lot to get me immersed.

The only point where I got really frustrated was when I, as a vassal of Vlandia, helped out King Derthert in a fight he was loosing. Together we slightly outnumbered the enemy. So while I was setting up my formations, Dethert charges the enemy head on and gets his troops obliterated.

Apparently TW are working on the battle and campaign AI, so I'm hopeful that things will change.
 
I recently started a heavily modded campaign, because the experience for me was much like you described. And it helped a lot to get me immersed.

The only point where I got really frustrated was when I, as a vassal of Vlandia, helped out King Derthert in a fight he was loosing. Together we slightly outnumbered the enemy. So while I was setting up my formations, Dethert charges the enemy head on and gets his troops obliterated.

Apparently TW are working on the battle and campaign AI, so I'm hopeful that things will change.
Thanks for the reply. I hope they're working hard on these elements too.
What mod are you using? Right now, i started a campaign with: Bannerlord Tweaks, Improved Garrison, Fighting Together Relationship. In this phase of the game, mod compatibility is really hard to find.
 
Now that they fixed 1h skill, and it actually gets pretty crazy at high levels, it almost made me want to play again (did an almost full modded playthrough before). Once they fix 2h I will do another one, because those fast swingy 2h axes will be crazy fun :grin:
 
Thanks for the reply. I hope they're working hard on these elements too.
What mod are you using? Right now, i started a campaign with: Bannerlord Tweaks, Improved Garrison, Fighting Together Relationship. In this phase of the game, mod compatibility is really hard to find.

Sure, after an update getting the mods to work again can be difficult, but for me almost all mods worked fine.
I'm using:
Ranged Rebalaced - makes bows and crossbows do cut damage, this means they are much weaker against armour. only longbows and stronger crossbows still do pierce damage. (be careful tho, as it changes xml files. always make backups)
Prevent Escape - essential to reduce the grind
No more Recruits - allt recruitable troops start at tier 2 and with sensible equipment. No more recruit armies melting to archers

And then a bunch of quality of life mods and light combat mod collection with that
 
Sure, after an update getting the mods to work again can be difficult, but for me almost all mods worked fine.
I'm using:
Ranged Rebalaced - makes bows and crossbows do cut damage, this means they are much weaker against armour. only longbows and stronger crossbows still do pierce damage. (be careful tho, as it changes xml files. always make backups)
Prevent Escape - essential to reduce the grind
No more Recruits - allt recruitable troops start at tier 2 and with sensible equipment. No more recruit armies melting to archers

And then a bunch of quality of life mods and light combat mod collection with that
Hello, i answer after some days. I installed 20+ mods (a package called EPIQQ mod collection, it was then removed from nexus mods because it contained other mods from other modders without consent). They were tested by this guy to work all together and make a super-different experience. I tell you some of them: Prevent escape and light combat mod (2 of the mods you told me)
Stronger spears(name speak by itself),
Improved Garrions ( can recruit automatically from your fiefs and auto-train them inside cities and castles)
Kaos Wages (reduce or increase wages for you and AI)
Modular party sizes ( increase the party sizes of you and AI, while reducing wages with Kaos wages to make bigger armies and garrisons for everyone)
Realistic battle (look for it, too long to explain)
Xorberax cut trough everyone (one of the most popular)
Xorberax deadly horse charges
Diploamcy fixes
Noble troops ( this is a must have, add lot of troops and make some balances, improving Sturgia troop quality and lot more).
Fight aggressively ( AI stop runnin away and they fight lot more aggressively, this mod surely raise the difficulty)
I was playing these mods and more with 1.30 version. Now i updated the game to 1.41 and testing them with new version. Some of them can't be played because they never got updated.
It's ridicolous, anyway, the fact that this game is a looot better when played with the right mods, developers should look at many ideas of the modders community and steal them. I hope in the future they will make more mod packages that change a lot the gameplay , playable with other mods like GOT or LOTR that change the lore and ambient of the game.
 
Regarding Battles getting Samey: Obviously the first choice is improved AI battle plans and execution though that is the hardest to pull off in real time 3d worlds ask any dev anywhere. Some other more viable options are more varied battle scenes in which attacker/defender would have clear terrain benefits at battle start -such as one party being on terrain directly over another in an Ambush type situation. A 3rd idea is to make ID'ing the makeup of an enemy troops much harder. That being -when you Alt over an enemy army on the map you can easily tell whether you're going up against 500 Peasants or 500 Cataphracts -so the decision whether to or not attack very easy. How about if you couldnt tell unless you either got dangerously close or you sent out a scouting mission -in a real scene like you leading a small scouting party in which you yourself may be caught by the camps roving guard - to access that information.
 
I think I will be laughed out of the thread but aside from the many things you all already pointed out, there are two that just keep stopping me from enjoying the game.

1) The graphics for the character just look too goddamn ugly. I'm ok with the general inbred looking theme that should supposedly portray a rough medieval world, but it's just too much, and aside from that whenever I look at my character and he seems like the love child of Shrek and Lord Kroak I just don't feel immersed. Mind you this has nothing to do with character creation, I even use the char creation mod, this is the armors being designed so they make the wearer look disproportionate

2) The mounted combat isn't cutting it for me. I have hundreds of hours on Warband, I'm ok with understanding it maye take some getting used to Bannerlord, but there's just something wrong with trying to hit stuff from horse (especially against infantry). I remember when I first played the origina M&B (pre-warband) and fighting on foot or on horse just felt natural and fun, it's after all what launched the game back then. This isn't it, the mounted combat imho needs a lot of attention.
 
The 1.4.1 eternal wars kinda ruined the fun I was having, but diplomacy fixes' war attrition script saved me.
 
I gave up around 180 hours in, choppy simulations/egregiously long load times (when it was running fine when I started....), a lot of general problems with diplomacy options, captured lords escaping dungeons within in some cases a few hours, maybe a few days, broken skill perks, no option to take a castle for myself....

Just became too much for me to keep enduring so now I'm waiting for the official release to dive back in.
 
Stop torturing yourself and get some mods.
You can copy & paste my list:
Game is 3x better with mods.

I used many of the one you listed ,thanks for sharing. By the way, i just decided that i will stop playing the game again modded or not. Too many problems, too many things to balance and fix, mods are not enough, and using many mods will make compatibility problems.

Regarding Battles getting Samey: Obviously the first choice is improved AI battle plans and execution though that is the hardest to pull off in real time 3d worlds ask any dev anywhere. Some other more viable options are more varied battle scenes in which attacker/defender would have clear terrain benefits at battle start -such as one party being on terrain directly over another in an Ambush type situation. A 3rd idea is to make ID'ing the makeup of an enemy troops much harder. That being -when you Alt over an enemy army on the map you can easily tell whether you're going up against 500 Peasants or 500 Cataphracts -so the decision whether to or not attack very easy. How about if you couldnt tell unless you either got dangerously close or you sent out a scouting mission -in a real scene like you leading a small scouting party in which you yourself may be caught by the camps roving guard - to access that information.
I know the parties AI is really hard thing to program, with real time events and simulations happening all the time. Still , i hope they can reach better results with the final game, and the tips you gave would be really cool to be implemented.

I think I will be laughed out of the thread but aside from the many things you all already pointed out, there are two that just keep stopping me from enjoying the game.

1) The graphics for the character just look too goddamn ugly. I'm ok with the general inbred looking theme that should supposedly portray a rough medieval world, but it's just too much, and aside from that whenever I look at my character and he seems like the love child of Shrek and Lord Kroak I just don't feel immersed. Mind you this has nothing to do with character creation, I even use the char creation mod, this is the armors being designed so they make the wearer look disproportionate

2) The mounted combat isn't cutting it for me. I have hundreds of hours on Warband, I'm ok with understanding it maye take some getting used to Bannerlord, but there's just something wrong with trying to hit stuff from horse (especially against infantry). I remember when I first played the origina M&B (pre-warband) and fighting on foot or on horse just felt natural and fun, it's after all what launched the game back then. This isn't it, the mounted combat imho needs a lot of attention.
About point 1), graphics and models in general are not my interest,since i have an ugly graphic card :grin: but i understand what you say, is not just about texture quality, is how they are made.
Point 2) totally agree with you , i tried to modify gameplay with some combat mods but in the end it became really hard to balance them all together.So,i will stop play for these and many other reasons, i want to wait major updates. Few hours of 1.41 modded were enough for me to stop playing.

The 1.4.1 eternal wars kinda ruined the fun I was having, but diplomacy fixes' war attrition script saved me.
i use it too, it helps a lot but that's not enough to give me a realistic feeling of a continent at war

I gave up around 180 hours in, choppy simulations/egregiously long load times (when it was running fine when I started....), a lot of general problems with diplomacy options, captured lords escaping dungeons within in some cases a few hours, maybe a few days, broken skill perks, no option to take a castle for myself....

Just became too much for me to keep enduring so now I'm waiting for the official release to dive back in.
Oh man, i can feel you, as i said before definitely too many problems and lot of balancing work to do.I give up for some months, i will be back with major updates or the final release.
 
I have 400 hours in so far, and I'm still having a great time. I have chronic restart-itis, and have been the ibn Kosca, the dey Kusco, the Koscheii, and the Koscheiving clans a couple of times each.

I haven't used any mods yet because i have no idea what the update cycle is this month, or if we even have a cycle.
 
I have 400 hours in so far, and I'm still having a great time. I have chronic restart-itis, and have been the ibn Kosca, the dey Kusco, the Koscheii, and the Koscheiving clans a couple of times each.

I haven't used any mods yet because i have no idea what the update cycle is this month, or if we even have a cycle.

400 hrs w/o any mod! Bro, if you'd added some mods, those hours would've been a lot more fun! (But of coz, play style differs for everybody!)
 
400 hrs w/o any mod! Bro, if you'd added some mods, those hours would've been a lot more fun! (But of coz, play style differs for everybody!)
Exacatly, mods are really fun but then it's really hard to come back to vanilla version :grin: anyaway, i played 170 hours with mods and 50 without
 
400 hrs w/o any mod! Bro, if you'd added some mods, those hours would've been a lot more fun! (But of coz, play style differs for everybody!)

There's a few mods I'd really love to grab (Revolutions, logical-type smithing mods, etc), I know that as soon as I start playing with them, the game will get a good update and I'll have to start over.
 
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