I admit it now, it's immersion breaking for me that my recruits mostly just die...

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Dearmad

Dearmad

Veteran
Old Guard
I would NEVER recruit with a leader that churns through troops like I do, and HAVE to in this game. And I'm trying to be somewhat careful of their lives (RP reasons). The death rate is just a lot. I'd like to see a lot more injury that maybe even is long term so I have to pay for a soldier- or even pay to muster them out permanently- who is not on duty, but the constant death rate just doesn't represent battles that allow me to believe in the story of my character anymore.

If I came to a town, took 6 guys, and two weeks later came back again and five are dead and I get 6 more... no. Just. No.

Progress of skills can be slower, and death of my men less common (with greater injuries, longer injuries, or incapacitating injuries added), but as it is, it just turns the game into a soulless numbers game.

There I said it.
 
I know. But I challenge that it has to be that way... Not many things would need to change. Same casualties on the battlefield, but sort them differently. I for one would not mind the challenge (economically and logistically) of seeing about half my men damaged and not battle ready, and yet I an not able to recruit more unless I dismiss those men. So the *choice* of having to dismiss maybe veterans in favor of fresh recruits would be interesting, and paying for veterans who recover but aren't fighting seems reasonable to me.

It would increase rp aspect, increase the choices we need to make that matter, and overall help the game, I think, in surprisingly positive ways.
 
For RP reasons, on my Empire play through, I have my Archers Fire on packs until 1-2 die (Depending on group size) and then tell them to hold fire and charge the Infantry in (with the fresh recruits) to train them. I very rarely lose any troops during these training exercises, as most of the looters will be at 1 hit till death anyway.

If you just run untrained soldiers into the frey, realistically many would panic and die, or make mistakes that wound them, and the level 1 recruits are basically farmers, who maybe had some fighting training at home once a week or something. They aren't born fighters.
 
I get your point, but Looters... you're fighting looters. Even bandits makes it much worse. And "training" in that way is just busy work in this game after about 60 days. It's just. IDK. The way it works now takes sooooo much nursing it's just not flowing.
 
I don't think recruits need too much more changing, I think they're fine as the super basic, emergency unit. IMO, t2 is the only time they're anywhere near 'battle ready'.

I think its the Leadership skill needs to be changed. I miss having the old Trainer skill to rank us up. And knowing that AI lords apparently get passive xp, I'm puzzled by why players can't get the same. And why don't we get training fields either?

Do the devs seriously think its fun to grind your recruits on looters again and again? It might be fine early on, but you'd think a player could move on to greater things by the time they become a vassal.
 
Castles' training grounds need to be a lot more effective at getting troops to T3 and I would suggest it be capped there. With xp for T4 and up obtainable only via perks and battlefield.

The only annoying thing would be if the AI was allowed to decide the recruit's upgrade path. A simple way to get around the progression pathway dilemma is for the xp gain cap to be removed so a recruit can gain the xp necessary to get to T3 but still remain a recruit until the player returns to "promote" them.

Like a Passing out parade.
 
I'll echo Julio in that giving recruits a basic shield when they have a 1H weapon is a help for them. It doesn't suddenly turn them into super soldiers of throw off game balance, it just helps them not fall over immediately if anything looks in their direction. They'll still get comfortably beaten by higher tier troops but it stops them all dying instantly to archers.

In my mind the peasant unit is the completely ungeared rabble who can't afford or don't own shields. Once someone is recruited (for most factions) they're given basic equipment, they're just not skilled in using it yet.
 
It's not all that difficult to level your recruits to T1 or even T2 on groups of looters, if you babysit them a little (draw looters away with yourself and let recruits kill them piecemeal), at which point they are much more survivable. And once you have healthy base of high tier troops, just assign recruits to their own group and let them stay and charge behind your main infantry line. They won't die too often.

Also, having good surgeon makes a large difference in survival rate of your troops.
 
For me it's more the looters to bandits ratio as well as the size of the groups and the troop mix. Looters are the easiest to level on but they're really boring and there's loads of them. Most of the bandits to the north and west use arrows or javelins which decimates anything without a shield so you can't really level on them. I've never managed to get the speed to even see a steppe bandit. But desert bandits I genuinely enjoy fighting and are pretty good for levelling, they're all melee and have some cavalry so it's more interesting.

But also the group sizes are tiny even when i have an army of 200 most groups are still single digit so you spend more time chasing things than actually fighting things and the enemy running away doesn't help for levelling melee troops that can't catch them. It might be nicer if they joined up with others if you chased them and if looters or bandit groups got an overhaul. The non faction combat atm is fairly uninteresting even without the levelling problems.
 
I don't think the recruits need to be any better, because they are the weakest and most basic unit. They don't have a shield, because TW wants them to be weak. That way, when you challenge an army that has a lot of recruits in party because you beat them recently, it makes it easier to fight them again. I am not against passive xp, I agree there should be more ways for the player to get passive xp, and the leadership skill really can't be raised until one is leading armies. It is up to the player to protect these recruits. I really have not had many problems with this because I do my best to keep them from getting beat. I hardly ever have any recruits in my party anyway since I generally only recruit troops that are at least tier 2. This is hard to do early in the game, but is viable later in the game.
 
It could be easily fixed with better passive training like it was for a minute when the Raise the Meek perk was giving 30xp a day to low level troops, but then they went and dropped it down to 2xp a day. So we're forced to fight the world's most boring troop, looters, all game long.
 
Dearmad said:
I know. But I challenge that it has to be that way... Not many things would need to change. Same casualties on the battlefield, but sort them differently. I for one would not mind the challenge (economically and logistically) of seeing about half my men damaged and not battle ready, and yet I an not able to recruit more unless I dismiss those men. So the *choice* of having to dismiss maybe veterans in favor of fresh recruits would be interesting, and paying for veterans who recover but aren't fighting seems reasonable to me.

It would increase rp aspect, increase the choices we need to make that matter, and overall help the game, I think, in surprisingly positive ways.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree but TW isn't going to step away from the formula that made Warband a success.
 
Last edited:
Lord Irontoe said:
I think they already stepped away from that formula. They seem to have forgotten many of the things that made Warband so great
Click to expand...

The core gameplay is almost identical. Open world, fight out battles in third or first person, recruit troops to fight for you, do a few quests, become a vassal or make your own kingdom and paint the map.
 
Apocal said:
The core gameplay is almost identical. Open world, fight out battles in third or first person, recruit troops to fight for you, do a few quests, become a vassal or make your own kingdom and paint the map.
Click to expand...
Sure, its identical in the broad sense, but when you get to the details of how you actually go about those things in the game, it plays out very differently. Just about every single mechanic of the game works very differently from how it was in WB, and not just in superficial ways. The whole game flow feels very different to me. If I didn't know anything about Bannerlord, and someone gave it to me in a plain package with no branding on it, I'd assume it was made by a different developer.
 
Lord Irontoe said:
Sure, its identical in the broad sense, but when you get to the details of how you actually go about those things in the game, it plays out very differently.
Click to expand...

The main difference for me is that it is slower and harder to become powerful in Bannerlord. Whereas in Warband I could do it a bit quicker and easier because the party sizes in general were much smaller, which meant I and my companions had a much bigger impact on the battle.

As with the thread topic, the recruiting of troops is mostly the same, with the only significant change being a la mode selection. There is still the same interaction of Do Village Quest --> More Access to Recruits, with the same ability to recruit from neutral standing and similar breakpoints for unlocking more/better troops. There was no morale mechanic tied to losses that made them reluctant to join if they thought you were going to throw their lives away. You didn't even have to return them at any point, ever.

Like I said, troops are expendable and they'll probably never change it because most people who play wouldn't find it as fun as crashing their troops into other troops.
 
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