Infinite Armies

[Death2Tyrants]

That's not an answer! You can still do everything with 20% of HP so why shouldn't the AI also do it?

You will not solve this problem by restricting the AI. You need peace content (meaning less wars), perhaps lengthier sieges/heavier casualties to make the wars last longer (giving time to all other factions to replenish), etc. This is a design flaw, trying to solve it by patching it will only create more problems.

You could wander around with your army at 0% too and I think no one should be doing that.

I'm all for peace content but one reason why warband didn't feel like it had endless wars was because lords took time to heal and replenish. Now they're like roaches. There's literally no down time for them at all.

The minute they're released, they respawn at their base with some elite troops and bang..they're off recruiting. Before I know it, the army I destroyed is back to get destroyed again. Sometimes, I don't even have time to ransom the prisoners I have.

Don't tell me that's great game play. It's not.

And lengthier sieges/heavier casualties? I'm all for that. Heck. I wrote it a few posts above.

 

[ShakenSpeare]

That's not an answer! You can still do everything with 20% of HP so why shouldn't the AI also do it?

You will not solve this problem by restricting the AI. You need peace content (meaning less wars), perhaps lengthier sieges/heavier casualties to make the wars last longer (giving time to all other factions to replenish), etc. This is a design flaw, trying to solve it by patching it will only create more problems.

Nay, more war! Give me more, more, more, more war! There's not enough war. It's just an action game, remember? All that other stuff is boring and too complex. Repetitive, grindy action is the pinnacle of the vision. One vision to rule them all. One vision to find them. One vision to bring them all, and in the powers of soon, bind them.

 

[madnessario]

And lengthier sieges/heavier casualties? I'm all for that. Heck. I wrote it a few posts above.

It seems we are in agreement, my only objection is to let them heal to 100%. I would prefer if the problem was solved in some other way.

One vision to rule them all. One vision to find them. One vision to bring them all, and in the powers of soon, bind them.

In the land of TW where the visions lie

 

[Death2Tyrants]

It seems we are in agreement, my only objection is to let them heal to 100%. I would prefer if the problem was solved in some other way.


In the land of TW where the visions lie

It doesn't have to be 100%.

My only objection is that there's no time lag between being released on 1 end of the map to reappearing on the other end instantaneously with no downtime whatsoever and being immediately battleworthy from the get go.

 

[bonerstorm]

Sure there is. Make sieges alot harder. Make the walls higher. Give the walls more HP. Make it so it's really difficult to capture and that taking one is going to sap all your strength.

So after you defeat their field army, you'll be stuck in sieges. No steamroll.

That is the correct answer imo and not clone armies.

Yep. I pretty much eliminated snowballing in my playtesting last year using Bannerlord Tweaks and a now-defunct garrison mod to massively increase passive unit XP gain through training fields etc ("massively" = to a point where it actually matters at all, like being able train a stack of recruits to T2 in 2 weeks) + increase town food production + increase militia production.

With harder sieges, the timeline for an AI blob to dominate the map - if it happened at all - was drawn out a LOOOONG time. Since most of the bonuses only take effect after you give the town time to recover, it meant that even the moron AI could have a much better time retaking a lost fief than grabbing a fresh one.

I've been trying to stick closer to vanilla this time, though. It's boring as piss, so I can't really say whether sieges still need to be made harder.

 

[Death2Tyrants]

Yep. I pretty much eliminated snowballing in my playtesting last year using Bannerlord Tweaks and a now-defunct garrison mod to massively increase passive unit XP gain through training fields etc ("massively" = to a point where it actually matters at all, like being able train a stack of recruits to T2 in 2 weeks) + increase town food production + increase militia production.

With harder sieges, the timeline for an AI blob to dominate the map - if it happened at all - was drawn out a LOOOONG time. Since most of the bonuses only take effect after you give the town time to recover, it meant that even the moron AI could have a much better time retaking a lost fief than grabbing a fresh one.

I've been trying to stick closer to vanilla this time, though. It's boring as piss, so I can't really say whether sieges still need to be made harder.

Vanilla is still boring as piss. It gets progressively worst after the 3rd ingame year when it just becomes same old same old but with more and more lag.

 

[Apocal]

Sure there is. Make sieges alot harder. Make the walls higher. Give the walls more HP. Make it so it's really difficult to capture and that taking one is going to sap all your strength.

So after you defeat their field army, you'll be stuck in sieges. No steamroll.

That is the correct answer imo and not clone armies.

This specific suggestion was made before but rejected by mexxico:

Making stable world is not hard. We just close defections, decrease sieges, make garrisons huge and give ai extra money to feed his garrison then its easy to make game stable. However it is not entertaining and it is not player-like ai playing. In every game you should see map is dynamic and take you in different direction. Of course one faction controlling all map is not something we also want to see. However we do not want to see stable world also.

 

[Death2Tyrants]

This specific suggestion was made before but rejected by mexxico:

Well then he's wrong. He doesn't have to close defections or decrease sieges. Increasing militia is not a bad thing. Who says it's not entertaining?

I believe a hard siege is what everyone actually wants. Winning a town should be a massive accomplishment. The cost to manpower should be astronomical but to make it palatable to players, we ought to be able to select which troops will storm the walls so our t6 noble troops don't become fodder.

 

[Apocal]

I believe a hard siege is what everyone actually wants.

I don't. It is easily one of my most disliked things in BL and that's without having to deal with buggy towers and inner doors.

The entire scope of meaningful decision-making gets boiled down to "do you want your archers to send arrows until they run out then charge in or do you wanna just charge in?" Picking which troops go would be a nice but minor QoL improvement because people already just leave their high-tiers in garrison or a safe party before launching an siege assault. But it would still be like watching a movie -- and frankly, if I wanted to watch a movie, I could just do that instead. And there are very few movies so good I'd watch them 58 times (number of towns in BL), so there is that as well.

Obviously, this is the minority report on sieges in M&B since most people seem to enjoy them when they are working.

 

[Death2Tyrants]

I don't. It is easily one of my most disliked things in BL and that's without having to deal with buggy towers and inner doors.

So you want sieges to be easier? And if sieges are not your thing, what then do you play the game for?

The entire scope of meaningful decision-making gets boiled down to "do you want your archers to send arrows until they run out then charge in or do you wanna just charge in?"

That sounds more like a "sieges need to be improved" rather than a "make sieges easier" statement.

Obviously, this is the minority report on sieges in M&B since most people seem to enjoy them when they are working.

Very much so I'm afraid. I'll stand by my initial comment - that most people want sieges to be harder and more challenging so that it feels more rewarding when we get one.

Right now sieges are so boring that it can literally be soloed by the player.

 

[stevehoos]

I don't. It is easily one of my most disliked things in BL and that's without having to deal with buggy towers and inner doors.

The entire scope of meaningful decision-making gets boiled down to "do you want your archers to send arrows until they run out then charge in or do you wanna just charge in?" Picking which troops go would be a nice but minor QoL improvement because people already just leave their high-tiers in garrison or a safe party before launching an siege assault. But it would still be like watching a movie -- and frankly, if I wanted to watch a movie, I could just do that instead. And there are very few movies so good I'd watch them 58 times (number of towns in BL), so there is that as well.

Obviously, this is the minority report on sieges in M&B since most people seem to enjoy them when they are working.

You want 5-8 minute siege battles with no multi tier fallbacks, paper walls, or any real defensive advantage? To all his own.

 

[Apocal]

That sounds more like a "sieges need to be improved" rather than a "make sieges easier" statement.

People have been pretty consistent they consider Warband sieges good when they suffered from the exact same problem. All you did there was spend a half-hour picking dudes off the walls with a bow or being pressed into man-sausage on the ramp before face-smashing the defenders on the walls. Or you were the defender posted behind a merlon, dropping overhands until your mouse broke.

I mean, ****, even Viking Conquest drank deep from that stupid: they'd give you the "choice" of building mantling to reduce casualties at the cost of some of your troops but the number of troops lost in the process + trickle casualties on approach was higher than just going without. They just blatantly wanted certain things to go a certain way.

You want 5-8 minute siege battles with no multi tier fallbacks, paper walls, or any real defensive advantage? To all his own.

I only want it if it comes with meaningful choices, as opposed to the prevailing "cinematic" style sieges. Dragging them out longer (although i'm wondering how you get 5-8 minutes for anything other than a cakewalk; mine take like 15-20 minutes usually) isn't any more challenging if I'm still just cramming massive numbers of dudes through a set of chokepoints.

That is just adding grind for grind's sake. Completely brainless grind, at that.

And if sieges are not your thing, what then do you play the game for?

The battles that aren't sieges.

 

[bonerstorm]

I don't. It is easily one of my most disliked things in BL and that's without having to deal with buggy towers and inner doors.

I only want it if it comes with meaningful choices, as opposed to the prevailing "cinematic" style sieges. Dragging them out longer (although i'm wondering how you get 5-8 minutes for anything other than a cakewalk; mine take like 15-20 minutes usually) isn't any more challenging if I'm still just cramming massive numbers of dudes through a set of chokepoints.

I'm going to tentatively agree with you that the sieges in BL suck a lot more than people give them anti-credit for.

Sieges are all-or-nothing grindy crapfests even when they somehow aren't bugged. The AI is just complicated enough to not give the player any agency but just stupid enough to never engage in anything resembling strategy/tactics.

IRL sieges progressed in stages and breaking/taking the outer walls was a big deal. In BL, that's often a mess which flops back and forth like a dying fish as defending AI teleports reinforcements directly into battle or attacking AI troops wander around picking their noses. Warband wasn't much better, but there was at least a modicum of strategy in directing your troops to chokepoints etc. and an actual battle-stages mechanic.

But that said: I wouldn't use this as a justification for keeping sieges easy. I would use this as a justification for making sieges be objectively less terrible in general.

 

[Apocal]

I'm going to tentatively agree with you that the sieges in BL suck a lot more than people give them anti-credit for.

I've had this same opinion since Warband. It's always been style-over-substance mashing of troops together.

 

[Death2Tyrants]

I've had this same opinion since Warband. It's always been style-over-substance mashing of troops together.

I think sieges are an iconic part of Mount & Blade so they ought to make it even more impressive, more gritty and more punishing.

1. The murder hole needs to be properly manned
2. Inner gate needs more hp
3. walls have to be higher
4. AI pathfinding needs to improve
5. Siege specific commands, like reinforce <section of wall>

Bonus points if each town/castle has its own devious layout.

 

[bonerstorm]

I think sieges are an iconic part of Mount & Blade so they ought to make it even more impressive, more gritty and more punishing.

1. The murder hole needs to be properly manned
2. Inner gate needs more hp
3. walls have to be higher
4. AI pathfinding needs to improve
5. Siege specific commands, like reinforce <section of wall>

Bonus points if each town/castle has its own devious layout.

Definitely. It seems the TW response to make sieges make sense was - instead of give the player more choices - to abstract it all by giving all power to the AI so the player is a passive participant. Then the AI s*** the bed and TW never bothered fixing it.

 

[Death2Tyrants]

Definitely. It seems the TW response to make sieges make sense was - instead of give the player more choices - to abstract it all by giving all power to the AI so the player is a passive participant. Then the AI s*** the bed and TW never bothered fixing it.

It started of as being too complex for us but it ended up being too complex for them?

lol

 

[StaceMcGate]

Just throwing some ideas about increasing costs of Armies and lowering their duration.

Formation of an Army has a base cost of 100 Influence
Increasing Cohesion has a base cost of 25 influence
Cohesion has a natural decay of 2 per day
Cohesion drops by 10 following a battle
Cohesion drops by 25 following a siege battle.
Cohesion drops by 0.5 for each starving member
Cohesion drops by 0.2 for each member with low morale
Cohesion drops by 20 if an Army Member dies

 

[bonerstorm]

Just throwing some ideas about increasing costs of Armies and lowering their duration.

Formation of an Army has a base cost of 100 Influence
Increasing Cohesion has a base cost of 25 influence
Cohesion has a natural decay of 2 per day
Cohesion drops by 10 following a battle
Cohesion drops by 25 following a siege battle.
Cohesion drops by 0.5 for each starving member
Cohesion drops by 0.2 for each member with low morale
Cohesion drops by 20 if an Army Member dies

Honestly I don't see the Army mechanic being a problem. Assuming AI don't have a bonus to influence, I haven't noticed an imbalance in that mechanic.

The problem is that individual lords keep escaping, respawning and coming back at full-steam within a matter of minutes of game time. Makes defeating massive armies a rather trivial accomplishment. Feels grindy.

 

[Honved]

The problem is that individual lords keep escaping, respawning and coming back at full-steam within a matter of minutes of game time. Makes defeating massive armies a rather trivial accomplishment. Feels grindy.

THIS is the problem. Victories are meaningless if the AI can simply come back minutes later with another army that's got a fair number of high-level troops in it (without severely depleting the garrison of one of his fiefs or depopulating his own villages by forcible recruitment), while you spend the next couple of game hours trying to replace comparatively minor losses and train the new recruits up to some reasonable standard.

With the initial official claims for Bannerlord, it sounded like we'd finally get a real economy that was affected by trade, embargos, shortages, and other things that the player could influence, as well as limits to AI insta-recruitment that made victories meaningless, and diplomatic options to make improving our relations with other lords important. Instead, the "consequences" of player actions turned out to be even more meaningless than in Warband. To say I'm "underwhelmed" would be an understatement.