How wars should IMO go vs how they actually go

[Yertyl]

How wars should IMO go

• one kingdom builds up its armies over a period of time, and once it feels significantly stronger than a neighbor, declares war
• armies clash, both sides suffer losses, lords are imprisoned
• if one side has a lot of soldiers left over, they take fiefs, suffering significant losses in the process
• once both sides run out of men and gold, peace is made and lords are released
• kingdom spends a significant amount of time licking its wounds and rebuilding its troops, then considers declaring war again

How wars do go

• kingdom declares its fifth war this year
• armies run around aimlessly, but sometimes clash, both sides suffer losses, lords are taken captive
• " (...) has escaped your army" "(...) has been ransomed" "(...) has escaped from their prison"
• losses are immediately replenished because recruits are everywhere
• "Hey, didn't I already defeat you 3 times already in this war alone? Well, fourth time is the charm I guess"
• at some seemingly random point one side decides they've had enough, makes peace with one party, and immediately declares war on the next

My point is: The combination of the abundance of recruits, especially for the AI lords that get 10 for free, and how extremely easily lords escape from captivity, makes wars feel like a meaningless meat grind. Defeating a 1000 man army and taking five lords captive does not feel significant at all when you basically know that four out of those five will have escaped within the next three minutes, and will be back with another 1000 man army in five.
I assume that this has a lot to do with wanting to prevent snowballing, but I feel it's not the best option to make wars an endless, meaningless whack-a-mole. So I would propose the following alternative:

1. Significantly lower recruit spawning rate and lord escape chance. This would have the IMO welcome side-effect of making the player care about losing regular (non-noble, non-cavalry) units too.
2. To make attackers not snowball too hard in a single war, make units/armies cost more upkeep in gold, food and/or influence the further away they are from a friendly (or neutral) fief. Money, supply, and men tended to be the limiting factors for attackers more than defenders immediately rebuilding armies after a defeat.
3. To make kingdoms not snowball too hard overall, make weaker kingdoms band together against a stronger neighbors.

Now, this leaves open the option of a single kingdom growing strong enough to defeat all its neighbors combined. But at this point, I feel like that fraction actually deserves to rule all of Calradia -- and having that risk (or reward, depending on how you see it) is a better option than having all wars feel like a constant, pointless meat grind.

 

[Apocal]

I assume that this has a lot to do with wanting to prevent snowballing, but I feel it's not the best option to make wars an endless, meaningless whack-a-mole.

It isn't.

It is for reasons of player interest; people play M&B for the massed battles, so the campaign is built to provide them in abundance. You can instantly end much of the snowballing by throttling party sizes to a fraction of their current sizes (~220 at clan tier 6 with decent Stewardship) but they want the big numbers.

1. Significantly lower recruit spawning rate and lord escape chance. This would have the IMO welcome side-effect of making the player care about losing regular (non-noble, non-cavalry) units too.
2. To make attackers not snowball too hard in a single war, make units/armies cost more upkeep in gold, food and/or influence the further away they are from a friendly (or neutral) fief. Money, supply, and men tended to be the limiting factors for attackers more than defenders immediately rebuilding armies after a defeat.
3. To make kingdoms not snowball too hard overall, make weaker kingdoms band together against a stronger neighbors.

I like no. 1 and no. 3. I don't like no. 2 because there isn't a good way to display that information to players and it seems like too many players currently have issues affording their parties without exploits like 200K javelins.

 

[Yertyl]

It is for reasons of player interest; people play M&B for the massed battles, so the campaign is built to provide them in abundance. You can instantly end much of the snowballing by throttling party sizes to a fraction of their current sizes (~220 at clan tier 6 with decent Stewardship) but they want the big numbers.

I am currently fighting a way with Vlandia in which I have imprisoned at least 15 lords personally, but am still unable to make a significant dent (i.e. take a city), because they just keep escaping and respawning with another army of T1-2 units. I am constantly destroying groups of units, just so they escape 5 minutes later, and come back 10 minutes later, at roughly the same rate at which I can whack them down.
It is absolutely not in my interest, and makes even spectacular victories feel meaningless, because you know that even if you destroy a 1000 man army, half of them will be back within the next 10 minutes anyways.

 

[Midnitewolf]

The best option is the make everything an option. Honestly I am not sure why the game doesn't have more toggles than it does. Lords escaping to fast, just toggle (or use a slider) to make an adjustment. Want armies to cost more to upkeep, just toggle (or use a slider) to adjust wages and food consumption. Want weaker kingdoms to join together, just toggle "weaker kindoms unite". I mean this game is primarily a single player experience and offers almost full customization through modding so why didn't the devs just put a gazillion factors on toggles or sliders so that each person could customize their experience fully?

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

The best option is the make everything an option. Honestly I am not sure why the game doesn't have more toggles than it does. Lords escaping to fast, just toggle (or use a slider) to make an adjustment. Want armies to cost more to upkeep, just toggle (or use a slider) to adjust wages and food consumption. Want weaker kingdoms to join together, just toggle "weaker kindoms unite". I mean this game is primarily a single player experience and offers almost full customization through modding so why didn't the devs just put a gazillion factors on toggles or sliders so that each person could customize their experience fully?

Options are good but they can also be a lazy clutch and excuse not to fix a game issues. Even now there are some who will say "armor doesn't work? well just reduce the difficulty DUH", but that's not good enough, it's annoying and unrewarding for heavy armored MC and troops to take too much damage and die too fast to lower tier units.

I would like a option that actually make the AI have to buy everything and have harsher consequences for low moral/ no food/money and less recruits unless they actually solved issues. Bannerlord was supposed to make the AI play on even group with the player but that didn't happen at all.

 

[McDadden]

I like suggestions 1 and 3. I don't think the second would work considering you carry your own food around. I do think ai lords should have to purchase horses to upgrade and cav units should have a lot more upkeep in both food and gold than they currently do to compensate for their power in battle live and auto resolve.
I do think agree with the op that a lot of the army spam is due to anti snowball, but I also agree with apocal that people want large battles and so the devs made sure we had em. I just think they got a little heavy handed with how that was implemented and so the battles don't have any weight to them.

 

[vonbalt]

It's awful when you have a few noble prisoners to ransom and then peace is declared and everyone walks free, the AI should priorize keeping them prisoners during war only ransoming if they want some of their own back in an exchange, then when peace is declared they should change their stance to ransom everyone possible to make some sweet cash.

 

[Pensaci]

I wish to add 2 things that was significant to my observation.


One is the subject of war goal or purpose of war. Currently the war is very one-dimensional, basically the weakest spot that location gets the attack, regardless of history regardless lore/culture regardless distance/geography, tbh regardless anything really. A scenario is a faction(kingdom?) just took a location from the enemy in the west, then is declared war by a new faction from the east. The new faction came to took the exact location, across the map.

It's a mix of "Why to war" and "War to win". Currently the state of war is everything always resolving around a fief or some fiefs, with one side or both side have no winning strategy in mind. I can understand the war not as a mean or method, but itself the goal/purpose as the end or even way of life, or like say we call it necessity for gameplay/player service, yet still then the problem turns into a sustain ability, it's the same thing in the end.


The other thing is everything happening instantly and unstoppable. A far out scenario is a weakened faction finally reached peace with one defeating faction, only to start a new war with a well-shaped faction in an instant. Besides the condition and evaluation that should have prevent this, please recognize this that, everything just happened in a day with only coloured text appearing at the bottom left UI, which is also minimized. A major event that can lead to huge consequences is flying by, and with player has no organic way, say dialog options or emissary/diplomatic measures, to participate/intervene to get in the situation or no way at all.
Well, But, you can however start a war and only then you are in, by brute force.

Like demolishing the whole building to fix a small measurement error. It's a way I do not understand. I feel like something is wrong, but couldn't comprehend with the conflicting signals.

 

[DanAngleland]

It's awful when you have a few noble prisoners to ransom and then peace is declared and everyone walks free, the AI should priorize keeping them prisoners during war only ransoming if they want some of their own back in an exchange, then when peace is declared they should change their stance to ransom everyone possible to make some sweet cash.

Yes, I agree that prisoners should not be automatically released upon making peace. If a faction wants its lords back, it should either be made a condition of an actual negotiated peace deal or else they should approach the individual enemy lords (such as the player) and negotiate for the release of each lord, for gold or other things.

 

[vonbalt]

Yes, I agree that prisoners should not be automatically released upon making peace. If a faction wants its lords back, it should either be made a condition of an actual negotiated peace deal or else they should approach the individual enemy lords (such as the player) and negotiate for the release of each lord, for gold or other things.

Indeed, they should never just be released when peace is declared unless this is explicitly negotiated in the peace deal and peace should be negotiated in that sweet bartering screen that's barely used instead of just "let's declare peace, everyone agrees? i'm gonna pay you 100 denars as a tribute for you to ****off" lol

 

[Midnitewolf]

Options are good but they can also be a lazy clutch and excuse not to fix a game issues. Even now there are some who will say "armor doesn't work? well just reduce the difficulty DUH", but that's not good enough, it's annoying and unrewarding for heavy armored MC and troops to take too much damage and die too fast to lower tier units.

I would like a option that actually make the AI have to buy everything and have harsher consequences for low moral/ no food/money and less recruits unless they actually solved issues. Bannerlord was supposed to make the AI play on even group with the player but that didn't happen at all.

My point is that much of the game really is just a set of values. It is like the play damage option at the begining of the game. Why is it locked at 1/3, 2/3 or full? Why can't it be a slider? I might find 1/3 too little but 2/3 to punishing so why not a slider to make it 1/2?

Same goes for anything. If I feel party wages are too high and I am not enjoying the game because of it, why not have a slider in the option to change party wages? If I don't feel tourneys are rewarding enough, why not a slider to make them more rewarding? If I don't feel towns and castles produce enough food, why not a slider for that? If I don't like the leveling rate of progression how about a option to add more attribute or focus points per level or increase the experience rate overall?

All these things are already addressed by mods. I can download Bannerlord Tweaks and have dozens of toggles and sliders that let me adjust my SINGLE PLAYER experience specifically too whatever I find fun but why do I have to rely on a Mod that next updated every patch, might have bugs or might now work well in some way with the native code? Why can't the devs just add this functionality?

I mean in another post I had a conversation with one of the Devs, Mexxico and we were discussing how friendly lords could actually go in to your fiefs and rob your garrison of troops. His question back to us when we said we didn't like this was asking us if we wanted him to disable this however his follow up was, "Don't ask me to make this a toggle because this will be 100% rejected". Why? Obviously it could be made to be a toggle or he wouldn't have mentioned it so why can't it be a toggle? It is my single player experience so why can't I just choose whether I want to have this feature enabled or not?

So honestly, I like I said, I really don't understand why we don't have an "Advanced Configuration" menu with tons of toggles and sliders just to customize my game play experience WITHOUT having to resort to a mod.

Also, you mention armors and a slider being a lazy clutch for not fixing game issues but really that is all you need. I mean if you feel armor isn't protective enough, add a slider that increases the effectiveness of armor? Swords doing too much damage? Just need a slider to fix that too. All of this is just parameters and all the modders do to fix these issues is change the parameters. So, so much could be fixed by a simple slider allowing you to customize your own game.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Also, you mention armors and a slider being a lazy clutch for not fixing game issues but really that is all you need. I mean if you feel armor isn't protective enough, add a slider that increases the effectiveness of armor?

Because I want a HARD challenging game and then I want to break it in half and grind it into dust! I don't want easy sliders or to mod the game values myself to make it easier. You're already misinterpreting the problem, it's not as simple as "armor doesn't protect" it's the entirety of their armor and damage formulas and physics make units get killed by anything in stupid ways all the time. It doesn't make the game challenging or deep, it just takes a big **** on you, a big stinky EA **** that I've been smelling since last March and it's about time for them to clean it up!

 

[sirable]

Instead of stealing your garrison, it would be pretty sweet if friendly lords would track you down/send a messenger to bargain for those troops. Say x amount of denars depending on the unit tier, plus a little influence. Limit the amount to a third of the garrison or something, so the place isnt defenseless.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Because I want a HARD challenging game and then I want to break it in half and grind it into dust! I don't want easy sliders or to mod the game values myself to make it easier. You're already misinterpreting the problem, it's not as simple as "armor doesn't protect" it's the entirety of their armor and damage formulas and physics make units get killed by anything in stupid ways all the time. It doesn't make the game challenging or deep, it just takes a big **** on you, a big stinky EA **** that I've been smelling since last March and it's about time for them to clean it up!

You seem to be missing the point. With sliders you can also make things harder, enough to make it as challenging as you like, not just easier. No matter what formula they use, it is all just based on a value of some type. I am not a modder myself but have goofed around with mods long enough to realize this.

For example just to simplify what I mean I am going to make up some stuff.

Lets say the default value of armor effectiveness currently is 100. Then if you gave it a value of 150, it would be 50% more effective overall.
Lets take it further. Give armor a effectiveness based on damage type so you have to following.

Armor vs Piercing = 100
Armor vs Blunt = 100
Armor vs Cut = 100

So with a slider you could just chose a balance that felt right to you. Example:

Armor vs Piercing = 130
Armor vs Blunt = 90
Armor vs Cut = 180

Now armor becomes somewhat more effective against Arrows and Spear, somewhat less effective against blunt and really effective against swords.

Further there is a velocity mechanic in the game. If the damage value for velocity is 100, a simple slider could either lessen or magnify the effectives of velocity on a weapon.

You could further break it down into weapon types so that velocity has different values for each weapon.

My point is, that by just changing the values in the formula can completely change how the game plays. Modders are constantly doing this sort of thing which is way mods can have such a dramatic effect on how the game plays, so much so that it often doesn't feel like the same game and the game is designed to actually work like this.

My point is, why should we have to rely on a mod for a custom game experience. It wouldn't be too hard to add an advanced configuration menu so that we could individually tune the game to our liking. You could get that hard, soul crushing experience you want while someone looking for a bit more casual fun could tune the game down and we wouldn't have to rely on a Mod to get it there.

 

[vonbalt]

Instead of stealing your garrison, it would be pretty sweet if friendly lords would track you down/send a messenger to bargain for those troops. Say x amount of denars depending on the unit tier, plus a little influence. Limit the amount to a third of the garrison or something, so the place isnt defenseless.

Now that's a cool feature and make more use of that bartering interface we barely use in the game.

 

[CrazyElf]

Options are good but they can also be a lazy clutch and excuse not to fix a game issues. Even now there are some who will say "armor doesn't work? well just reduce the difficulty DUH", but that's not good enough, it's annoying and unrewarding for heavy armored MC and troops to take too much damage and die too fast to lower tier units.

I would like a option that actually make the AI have to buy everything and have harsher consequences for low moral/ no food/money and less recruits unless they actually solved issues. Bannerlord was supposed to make the AI play on even group with the player but that didn't happen at all.

The challenge here is that for the AI to not be a pushover if this were to happen, the AI would have to be as intelligent as a player. Otherwise they would suffer disproportionately from the morale and other penalties.

To an extent we see this during sieges already when the AI routinely is short on food.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

The challenge here is that for the AI to not be a pushover if this were to happen, the AI would have to be as intelligent as a player. Otherwise they would suffer disproportionately from the morale and other penalties.

To an extent we see this during sieges already when the AI routinely is short on food.

They deserve it. **** the AI.

 

[five bucks]

I really don't even mind if the AI has to cheat a little to be kept up with the player, it happened in Warband to a big extent. What matters even more than an in-depth perfect and totally fair simulation is first and foremost having a fun game with good game design and pacing, and enemies that provide a challenge. Also periods of peace are a factor in pacing.