I'm slowly starting to hate the Vlandians

[OpenMindedPl]

Mate, there is very simple way to win the battles against Vladians, as someone has mentioned before- just touch them by killing 3/4 by Your bow and they will instantaneously start rushing forward.
Then archers and cavarly charge on their back will finish the job

 

[somethinglightthat]

I don't know what it is about Sturgia that's so cool, but it is. That said, I don't really like the way they fight. I usually use Imperial infantry.

“Patience is a conquering virtue. The learned say that, if it not desert you, It vanquishes what force can never reach; Why answer back at every angry speech? No, learn forbearance or, I'll tell you what, You will be taught it, whether you will or not.”
Geoffrey Chaucer

 

[Dionaea]

By losing that Fian and being angry enough to quit, you "lost" the battle without literally losing it, if that makes sense.

Nope, I quit to main menu, I didn't lose, when I load the game the battle still has to be fought and I've lost nothing and the Vlandians gained nothing

 

[Meraun]

Savescum & cheats don't kill your roleplay fantasy?

Taht hurt..

Didnt you know Veterans never die in Wars?

Soo, wahts the Point of this Post again?

 

[110951667]

The tactic you described, retreat after the first engagement + having their range infantry to skirmish, is quite common in my playthough used by every other factions as long as their composition of army has lots of unmounted units.

They all do it because they lost a lot of men in the first engagement and therefore their reinforcement arrived. The AI loves to retreat their melee infantry when reinforcement arrived. And they will always come back.

What cause your trouble seems to be that you didn't have enough range power to counter the enemy's skirmish during the gap between two passive engagements or you were too impatient to wait.

In case you don't have sufficient range power to counter that skirmish, you can also try putting your range units to a safer position and have your melee infantry to build a shield wall. So far the shields are still overpowered against the missiles, so the casualty you may have to suffer during this gap would be minimal.

 

[arsenic_vengeur]

This can also happen in smaller battles with no reinforcements involved.

First you kill their charging units mostly infantry then you go to their range units positionned 50 meters behind and during that march you can lose many troops.

The worst is when your units chase fleeing infantry instead of dealing with remaining archers.
The solution i found is to disrupt their shooting with cavalry charging or horse archers can also do that by luring fire on them. When you charge them even ifyou dont kill them they will stop shooting as they switch to melee, giving you infantry time to get closer.

 

[Cornelis]

do an entire army of crossbowmen lol

 

[Niomedes]

They are the only faction that uses tactics in battle that really frustrate me,

Was fighting a big battle against them with my army of 700+ versus their 1000+ and things where going well at first with my sturgian infantry holding their own against the Vlandian infantry and cavalry alternating between square and shieldwall and backed up by supporting archer fire, but then Vlandians started doing what they always do against me: retreat their infantry and have their crossbows have a shoot out with my infantry and archers and I got impatient and marched my infantry forward and charged my cavalry in. When their reinforcement wave came, their infantry partially bypassed the shieldwall and ran straight for my archers now that my formations where slightly different due to my impatience.

And it always happens against Vlandians, they will charge, pull back frustrate me with their lack of suicide charging and I'll start making mistakes and they'll get behind me with a good chucnk of infantry, rush my archers and encircle my shieldwall whilst I'm losing oversight because I'm seeing too many white and red skulls and am too busy trying to read if any of my favorite troops are among the fallen and what type of casualty they are...

When I saw the first red skull next to a fian champion* I exited the battle to main menu so I can save scum, but I don't really want to fight this battle again as it was quite lengthy so I guess I won't be playing bannerlord for a while until I'm mentally ready to play a lengthy battle again against a frustrating non suicide charging enemy, if I suffer red skull casualties of troops I'm attached to in that battle I'll savescum and temporarily turn on cheats and ctrl alt f4 cheat win the battle. I'm tired of seeing my men die because the AI is denying me my hollywoodian victory


* my army is very diverse I started out as a bandit lord only recruiting mountain and forest bandits and sea raiders. After joining sturgia, I started recruiting sturgians, and then during the many battles because the AI can just spam attacks I had to recruit from prisoners and rescued troops. of my original 40 forest bandits only 17 are left, supplemented with sturgian, battanian and imperial archers, of my highwaymen only few are left, and my once mighty sea raider chief shieldwall is almost exclusively Sturgian now.

I don't get the problem. Isn't it a good thing that the AI is now actually using tacticts and strategy ?

 

[WhiteEyedSh4rk]

Sounds like the battle system is working perfectly, that allmost makes me wanna play singleplayer again

 

[Dionaea]

What cause your trouble seems to be that you didn't have enough range power to counter the enemy's skirmish during the gap between two passive engagements or you were too impatient to wait.

I don't get the problem. Isn't it a good thing that the AI is now actually using tacticts and strategy ?

The problem is that things where taking too long and I wanted to get back to the campaign map and got impatient and decided to mop the AI up and hurry things along because I basically won, and in doing that I messed up my battle lines allowing the Vlandians to kill one of my elite archers making me rage quit over that one unit. Had I kept everyone where they where and let the battle play out with me just going afk to make some coffee, things probably would have worked out as intented and that unit wouldn't have died.

I was defeated by my impatience because the AI didn't suicide rush and in all my games it's always only Vlandia that refuses to suicide rush, which is why I hate them. Don't forget this is a game where you are constantly facing endless hordes of AI armies, often lords you defeated and captured only a few days before, and that escaped only to come back with big armies. During the mid game you fight so many battles you become tired of it, kind of like how at one point during a total war campaign when you are facing too many stacks every time you click "end turn" when all you want to do is build your kingdom and the war becomes a tedious interruption so you just autoresolve everything and use the auto win console command (not possible in games after medieval II, in the other total war games you just start a new campaign when the attack spam becomes too much of a chore)

 

[Niomedes]

The problem is that things where taking too long and I wanted to get back to the campaign map and got impatient and decided to mop the AI up and hurry things along because I basically won, and in doing that I messed up my battle lines allowing the Vlandians to kill one of my elite archers making me rage quit over that one unit. Had I kept everyone where they where and let the battle play out with me just going afk to make some coffee, things probably would have worked out as intented and that unit wouldn't have died.

I was defeated by my impatience because the AI didn't suicide rush and in all my games it's always only Vlandia that refuses to suicide rush, which is why I hate them. Don't forget this is a game where you are constantly facing endless hordes of AI armies, often lords you defeated and captured only a few days before, and that escaped only to come back with big armies. During the mid game you fight so many battles you become tired of it, kind of like how at one point during a total war campaign when you are facing too many stacks every time you click "end turn" when all you want to do is build your kingdom and the war becomes a tedious interruption so you just autoresolve everything and use the auto win console command (not possible in games after medieval II, in the other total war games you just start a new campaign when the attack spam becomes too much of a chore)

maybe that's down to personal preference then, but I personally would love for battles to actually take longer. I had my best experience with Bannerlord so far today when I participated in a battle between 1000 Aserai and 1400 Vlandians that took about 20 minutes and went from a well organized affair of the infantry lines fighting in the center of the field to a completely unorganized mess of a melee with troops fighting over the entirety of the map. I'll probably remember the utter fun and chaos that battle was, me and my personal guard breaking through the Aserai Center, the pure horror I felt when I was surrounded by 20 dudes who killed my horse and Dethert's constant shouts about charging already for at least the rest of this week.

I don't know where the developers want to take the game as of yet, but it looks like they want to have these major battles, and I sincerely hope that their focus is in providing us with these giant, decisive engagements. If so, your impatience is indeed a hindrance to your enjoyment. And if you cannot cope with how this game works, it might just not be for you. From how you feel about battles, I'd actually recommend you check out CK2, if you haven't done so already.

 

[Dionaea]

Long battles would be great if they where actually decisive and you wouldn't face an army of equal enemy size led by the same lord within the same week over and over and over again. I like to preserve the lives of my men during sieges and go for the trebuchet bombardment aproach of sieging, the amount of attacks you have to face by the same lords over and over again is enough to make you quit playing for a while

I'd actually recommend you check out CK2, if you haven't done so already.

haven't, did play EU4 but it's too slow, nothing ever happens, you end up using cheats to give yourself cash and diplomacy, administrative and military points just to be able to do something, anything, and you get dragged in hopeless wars by allies but if you don't have allies you get overrun by neighbors etc.... it's not for me.

I don't mind battles but I do mind fighting endless stacks of AI armies that almost seem to teleport towards me when it is least convenient for me