I wish we could disable reinforcements.

[bm01]

During non-simulated battles there's always attackers and defenders. The defenders usually find a hill near their spawn point and the attackers try to, well, attack them. This works fairly well for battles that fall under the size limit, but for larges battles the game adds reinforcement waves. The thing is, the defenders are heavily favored because they're already near their spawn point. In fact, it's even possible to win while being outnumbered 2 to 1 without losing much troops thanks to that. The waves lose moral and flee even before reaching the archers.

Personally I'm no longer even playing battles that are over the size limit when I'm the attacker. It's even worse when I don't have full control because the AI just move back and forth in the middle of the map while getting sniped by archers. I mean, you just have to try to understand. Anyway, I don't think it's something that can be fixed. Even moving the spawn point of the attackers closer to where the battle is happening doesn't sound like a good idea. I think it'd be better to simply disable reinforcements and do multiple battles, one after another.

I'll probably try to make a mod that does that but in the meantime, how to handle these battles?

 

[Pejot]

Unfortunately except retreating over and over there's not much You can do.
Personally I think that those battles should be splitted to many different battles without reinforcement.
This will cause more loading screens etc. so probably ko chance for that.

 

[Depressinho]

I don't think there's really a good way to handle those, i usually try to snipe the enemy general to make them charge but there always the chance to get sniped yourself, you could also retreat scum and try to work your way around it like that if you have good archers/crossbows, even that is hard though considering how durable shields are

 

[Kniggit]

Before I upgraded my video card I was playing on the smallest battle size. I seem to remember being able to take a defensive position with my superior force, and to break the standoff I would take the random horse archers I had in my army (I primarily prefer foot archer soldiers), tell them to follow me and go strafe the enemy army until they run at me, and then retreat behind my line of waiting archers.

Alternatively, you can start the battle, take your position, and just wait it out. Go grab a drink, make some food, check the mail, whatever you do, just crank your sound up. When you hear the battle music start you know it's time to get back and resume command.

 

[Nuts]

I find my reinforcements usually surrounded by enemy troops. For some weird AI reasons the collateral damages turn out to be moderate. Anyways, I don’t intend it to happen when I put my def army nearby. I would appreciate if reinforcements approach from any side lanes and not to pop out from the middle of nowhere

 

[Pejot]

I find my reinforcements usually surrounded by enemy troops. For some weird AI reasons the collateral damages turn out to be moderate. Anyways, I don’t intend it to happen when I put my def army nearby. I would appreciate if reinforcements approach from any side lanes and not to pop out from the middle of nowhere

They are special medieval parachute corps shot from allied catapults.
I recently lost a battle due to my mistake in taking reinforcement into account and finding myself between two enemy lines. They cut through back of my troops like knive through butter.

 

[Genlador]

This can be really annoying, especially when helping out an ally army in battle. I am in command of all my troops, but the allied AI just charges the enemy, I try to help by attacking a flank, the allies get killed, allied reinforcements spawn far away and I get slaughtered by the enemy reinforcements (it can be avoided if you have mobile troops, but with Sturgian tropps against Vladian enemies, no chance). I just resorted to letting the allies die without my help, then hope I have enough to handle whatever the enemies have left.

 

[bm01]

Just to showcase how broken and easily exploitable that mechanic is. Roughly 200vs200, but I temporarily lowered battle size to 200 to compare the performances. I know there are way better examples on this forum, but anyway. Notice how 1/4th of the AI just fled.

 

[durbal]

Yup, reinforcement mechanics absolutely are terrible through and through. If there were a way to dynamically move the spawn point up that'd help.

 

[Tal-roth]

I couldn't agree more!! It puts you in the position of either not entering battles over your limit or increasing your limit and the battles becoming unplayable due to stuttering and freezing.

A very unfortunate situation. I am enjoying Bannerlord a lot but this is one of the key stumbling blocks late in the game with huge armies clashing. My trusty old 780 cannot handle two Doomstacks of 2000+ soldiers colliding head on and having the enemy reinforcements spawn in right on top of me with my own reinforcements seemingly miles away is ridiculous! The 780 has done remarkably well otherwise IMO.

Hope they can come up with a better mechanic, I would definitely prefer multiple small battles and multiple loading screens over the current situation.

 

[pww217]

It's handled mostly the same way as Warband except they don't spawn at the map edge, which they probably should.

It's not a bad system itself. The AI handles it poorly, so it's the AI that needs fixing. It needs to know when to regroup and when to keep moving forward. The way it works now, they waddle between the two while archers pick them off.

 

[Kea Black]

I've lost the count of the times I was almost killed by a reinforcement wave suddenly spawned rigth at my position while I was battling a group of enemies

a solution could be to spawn reinforcements on the other side of the borders of the map (the ones used for retreats), not in the middle of the map, the starting troops spawn points should not be changed, only the reinforcements ones, this way the reinforcements should spawn away from battling troops

or at lest mark the spawn point in some way, like putting some banners/tents or something similar near the spawn point (for the player one could also be spawned a chest to access the inventory, like it was in warband, it would be a very pleasant return)

some sort of timer/counter on display to know when enemy reinforcements will arrive could also help, can be used by the player to order a "cautionary" retreat before the reinforcements spawn

 

[Pejot]

I couldn't agree more!! It puts you in the position of either not entering battles over your limit or increasing your limit and the battles becoming unplayable due to stuttering and freezing.

A very unfortunate situation. I am enjoying Bannerlord a lot but this is one of the key stumbling blocks late in the game with huge armies clashing. My trusty old 780 cannot handle two Doomstacks of 2000+ soldiers colliding head on and having the enemy reinforcements spawn in right on top of me with my own reinforcements seemingly miles away is ridiculous! The 780 has done remarkably well otherwise IMO.

Hope they can come up with a better mechanic, I would definitely prefer multiple small battles and multiple loading screens over the current situation.

Unfortunately there will be a big problem with multiple battles. Current mechanic deciding what troops will spawn takes into account only the order in your party screen. This leads to battles where only inf spawn. I had a siege where none of my ranged spawned cause they where at the bottom. They spawned later where inf was more needed and led to many unnecessary losses. This is another mechanic that should be reworked and based on % part specific units are in your army. From what I saw when you lead army it takes only your party order to spawn troops from every party in army

 

[drallim33]

It's very easy to use this to cheese the AI. Even if you are the attacker you just ride up with a small group of skirmishers and shoot some arrows at the defenders. Once they take a few hits they will charge. Basically guarantees victory since they will be spread out over the entire map while your entire army stands in one spot.

This can be really annoying, especially when helping out an ally army in battle. I am in command of all my troops, but the allied AI just charges the enemy, I try to help by attacking a flank, the allies get killed, allied reinforcements spawn far away and I get slaughtered by the enemy reinforcements (it can be avoided if you have mobile troops, but with Sturgian tropps against Vladian enemies, no chance). I just resorted to letting the allies die without my help, then hope I have enough to handle whatever the enemies have left.

Yes this is the only option really. Attempting to help with their charge is a trap.

 

[stevehoos]

The spawn points in battles need to be moved back. The maps are big and the armies start right on top of each other.

 

[paladinx333]

The spawn points in battles need to be moved back. The maps are big and the armies start right on top of each other.

I was thinking that reinforcements should start out off of the playable portion of the map and then run onto the battlefield from there. Nothing breaks immersion faster than seeing a wave a reinforcements teleport into battle fifty feet away.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I absolutely agree and would like to disable them too. Alternatively, being able to set the spawn point, or having them spawn close to their formation would help. I have to opposite problem where I'm on the defense, get a good position, being to massacre and then watch helplessly in horror as troops spawn in the middle of enemy blobs. You can try to play around this and mounted unit have a fair chance of dancing through the blob but I wish it could be changed.

In warband and it's mods I always felt that reinforcements completely undercut any good tactics and positioning and encouraged the f1-f3 knight spam over using your brain. I found info on this forum to disable the reinforcements and really enjoyed playing without them. I'm always grossly out numbered and it's so much better to just deal with the initial enemy spawn then go into a fresh map. SO I'm hopeful at the least we'll be able to turn off this stuff in the later versions of Bannerlord, even if we have to do it ourselves.

 

[bm01]

So 7 months in, and it appears this is still an issue... Unless I missed something?

Back then I experimented with spawn points but not knowing where the reinforcements will come from created a whole bunch of other issues, and reinforcement coming from outside the playable area still wouldn't work well when fights happen near the border.

 

[Kipsta]

Feels like one of those issues people who only dip their toes in the game(majority) will never see as a crucial problem, but for long-time players it is borderline game breaking. Of course it's never going to be fixed, because the majority doesn't care about this issue.

 

[bbaydogdu]

You know what's worse? Defenders usually take position somewhere behind their spawn point. When my troops reach them and start pushing them back their reinforcements spawn right behind my frontline and my troops are getting encircled in seconds. Reinforcement spawnpoints atleast should be dynamic.