Information about developments at snowballing problem

[Anushtegin]

might as well remove khuzaites entirely then...

how about we look to increase everyone's cavalry forces instead? also what's with the suggestion to count mounted infantry towards speed?

 

[mexxico]

might as well remove khuzaites entirely then...

how about we look to increase everyone's cavalry forces instead? also what's with the suggestion to count mounted infantry towards speed?

It was previously like that. Footmen was also counted as horsemen if there are horses in inventory. But it seems it is removed at some point. I do not know reason of this maybe because it is too complicated hard to tell player. Also even this is added again we should make npc lords to carry 30-50 horses each. They will need to buy horses from marketplace. Lots of additional AI codes will be needed lords will need to spend money oh horses (rich kingdoms will be able to buy more horses and in data you see Khuzait is richest, then again snowballing will be effected badly). Also NPC clan economy will be effected, new expenses will be created and more importantly I do not think it can be added back because it seems it is removed from a decision from top.

Actually I checked code and it is still there but its effect on speed is 30% (half of normal cav effect):

So if all your party is mounted footmen (100 footmen + 100 horses at inventory) you gain 30% speed bonus, if your all party is cav units you gain 60% instead.

 

[Medivhtratos]

And here is data for cavalry ratios for each kingdom :

I will make some work to make these averages closer. In gray data first number is all cav troops in that kingdom and second data is all foot troops in that kingdom.

In pink data first number is cav ratio and second number is total man count.

Currently Khuzait average cav ratio is 31% while others are all between 9-16%. If we can make Khuzaits 25% and average of others 15% game will be probably more balanced. As secondary solution we can reduce cav ratio's effect on speed to 40% or 50% from 60% (current).

@Andrei[beast] did you confused kingdoms, Aserai was at average in that run.

Maybe you wanna play with this method for SimulatedBattles:

private static float DefaultTroopPower(CharacterObject troop)
{
int num = troop.IsHero ? (troop.HeroObject.Level / 4 + 1) : troop.Tier;
return (float)((2 + num) * (10 + num)) * 0.02f * (troop.IsHero ? 1.5f : (troop.IsMounted ? 1.2f : 1f));
}



Because it seems the Simulation only differs in two troop types. Mounted or not.
Maybe we can include Archers and Skirmishers also

Btw Merry Christmas @mexxico too, although i think you don´t celebrate it. Thanks for all your great work this year

 

[Anushtegin]

It was previously like that. Footmen was also counted as horsemen if there are horses in inventory. But it seems it is removed at some point. I do not know reason of this maybe because it is too complicated hard to tell player. Also even this is added again we should make npc lords to carry 30-50 horses each. They will need to buy horses from marketplace. Lots of additional AI codes will be needed lords will need to spend money oh horses (rich kingdoms will be able to buy more horses and in data you see Khuzait is richest, then again snowballing will be effected badly). Also NPC clan economy will be effected, new expenses will be created and more importantly I do not think it can be added back because it seems it is removed from a decision from top.

Actually I checked code and it is still there but its effect on speed is 30% (half of normal cav effect):

So if all your party is mounted footmen (100 footmen + 100 horses at inventory) you gain 30% speed bonus.

mounted infantry bonus should be increased to 50% at least, IMO.

anyways, the game is called mount & blade, right? i don't udnerstand the logic of reducing the number of cavalry forces for khuzaites. i don't mind if everyone else gets more horsemen, in fact i've been advocating this for a long time now. but further crippling the khuzaite mounted forces will also have a negative effect on battles, less horse archers, more footmen. they will be just another generic faction. khergits in warband had no footmen at all and they were not OP.

 

[mexxico]

Maybe you wanna play with this method for SimulatedBattles:

private static float DefaultTroopPower(CharacterObject troop)
{
int num = troop.IsHero ? (troop.HeroObject.Level / 4 + 1) : troop.Tier;
return (float)((2 + num) * (10 + num)) * 0.02f * (troop.IsHero ? 1.5f : (troop.IsMounted ? 1.2f : 1f));
}



Because it seems the Simulation only differs in two troop types. Mounted or not.
Maybe we can include Archers and Skirmishers also

Btw Merry Christmas @mexxico too, although i think you don´t celebrate it. Thanks for all your great work this year

Design team is working on that part to create different bonuses on different terrain types. At some terrain types archers will get bonus and at some terrain types cavalry will get bonus. I am not sure if it is accepted or not but there is a work on that issue.

Thank you for kind words We here celebrate new year but no problem I don't believe in religion stuff much but I respect all of them. Happy new year all and merry cristmas to you and all other players.

A picture from home :

Spoiler: Upside buggy star

mounted infantry bonus should be increased to 50% at least, IMO.

anyways, the game is called mount & blade, right? i don't udnerstand the logic of reducing the number of cavalry forces for khuzaites. i don't mind if everyone else gets more horsemen, in fact i've been advocating this for a long time now. but further crippling the khuzaite mounted forces will also have a negative effect on battles, less horse archers, more footmen. they will be just another generic faction. khergits in warband had no footmen at all and they were not OP.

Thats why I only wanted to reduce cav ratio of Khuzaits 25% from 31%. This is not huge difference. Others are already 10-15% currently. Still Khuzaits will be different and have 2x cav ratio. Otherwise with 3x cav ratio and current speed rule set it is very hard to cope with OP of Khuzaits. You can prefer this but we should find a solution for all player's average. Mounted infantry bonus can be increased as you suggested (but still no solution to Khuzait OP, we need other kingdoms to carry more horses but Khuzaits can buy horses cheaper and they are rich also (reason : they are faster and they join battles where they can win & they can run away from powerful parties)) or cavalry bonus can be decreased by 10% (40%-50% instead of 60%). Or we can keep Khuzait's cav ratio at 31% but increase average of others to 17-18% instead of 13% (maybe you prefer this).

Khuzaits's OP effects its neighbors badly also. Sturgia, Southern Empire and Northern Empire are weakened nearly in most playthroughs.

 

[sniparsexe]

Khuzaits in my current playthrough are getting obliterated by 2 of the empire kingdoms, and the overall balance looks great.

I said obliterated but in reality they just lost 2 cities lol, I meant they can't take cities as fast as before, it is a fairly new save (3-4 years has passed)

 

[Dabos37]

New data is looking pretty promising! Concerning the remaining Khuzaits snowballing:

- Increasing cavalry units for all factions is a pretty good idea and 20% looks like a good value.
- I am ok with reducing Khuzaits cavalry to 25% but less than that could look weird for them (thinking about Khuzaits/Mongols “lord”).
- Reducing the bonus for mounted units would be also a good idea, if combined with the above changes. Even if the the bonus gets reduced from 1.6 to 1.5. Every small step is pretty much welcome.
- What about the Riding perk (75 skill) which increases the bonus for mounted infantry? Is this bonus getting applied currently to all lords?
- NE and SE are usually more involved in wars than Khuzaits. Lucon has two kings as enemies (Garios and Monchug). Is this maybe making things worse? Plus Valor trait.
- Would be possible to force the NE to attack closest Khuzait fiefs instead of trying to attack deeper ones? Makeb having high prosperity and strong garrison always means that NE armies try to siege deeper fiefs.

 

[mexxico]

New data is looking pretty promising! Concerning the remaining Khuzaits snowballing:

1- Increasing cavalry units for all factions is a pretty good idea and 20% looks like a good value.
2- I am ok with reducing Khuzaits cavalry to 25% but less than that could look weird for them (thinking about Khuzaits/Mongols “lord”).
3- Reducing the bonus for mounted units would be also a good idea, if combined with the above changes. Even if the the bonus gets reduced from 1.6 to 1.5. Every small step is pretty much welcome.
4- What about the Riding perk (75 skill) which increases the bonus for mounted infantry? Is this bonus getting applied currently to all lords?
5- NE and SE are usually more involved in wars than Khuzaits. Lucon has two kings as enemies (Garios and Monchug). Is this maybe making things worse? Plus Valor trait.
6- Would be possible to force the NE to attack closest Khuzait fiefs instead of trying to attack deeper ones? Makeb having high prosperity and strong garrison always means that NE armies try to siege deeper fiefs.

(about 6) I also have plans to make importance a bit more important in selecting siege targets as you said this is a problem currently also kingdoms sometimes capture a settlement inside enemy territory and this is not good for game. Next week I will check its codes again.

(about 1-2) Khuzait cav ratio can stay at 30% as I said previously but others should be increased a bit (not much to save difference of kingdoms). As you said with small change at (3) two small change can effect balance in a good way.

(about 4) I have no idea about it need to check codes.

(about 5) Relations are set automatically according to traits / characteristic and a bit random as I know. It can effect war declerations a bit (not much)

 

[Anushtegin]

look no further than the troop trees of the empire and sturgia if you want to know why they have so few horsemen. only their noble troops are mounted, and both sturgia and the empire are the only factions not to get mounted noble troops right away with tier 2*. also both sturgia and the empire only get one mounted tier 5 unit in their regular troop tree. this easily explains why they have so few cavalry.

khuzaites meanwhile have almost 50% of their regular troop tree plus their noble troop tree mounted, includign being the only faction who can get mounted units by tier 2 already in the regular troop tree. this needs to be looked at.

*except battania, who doesn't have mounted noble troops. but they have a lot mounted troops in their regular troop tree, which more than makes up for this.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

@mexxico 10 years into a snowball test, have 20 years is a bit. So far looks like your changes have improved the situation! Food changes for armies seems to have massively helped Sturgia actually compete or maybe it was something else you did, only 1 test tho so we will see.

Also after 10 years 3 rebel clans have become legit and joined kingdoms

Spoiler: Snowball test data

Northern	Test 1 10 years	Test 1 20 years
Aserai	20​	25​
Battania	28​	53​
Khuzait	46​	50​
Northern	6​	0​
Southern	8​	10​
Western	18​	8​
Sturgia	27​	20​
Vlandia	20​	3​
Snowball score	39​	92​

Spoiler: 10 years

Spoiler: 20 years

@mexxico updated test with 20 year results, will let it go to 30 and maybe 40 years.

 

[Andrei[beast]]

@Andrei[beast] did you confused kingdoms, Aserai was at average in that run.

Sry, rushed trough the image and didn't made the difference. My bad

 

[Anushtegin]

to follow up on my previous post, i highlighted the mounted troops in each of the troop trees for sturgia and the empire:

Spoiler: sturgia

Spoiler: empire

sturgia gets only four mounted units total: one tier 4 and 5 regular horsemen in the regular and tier 5 and 6 in the noble line. this is way too rare. and the higher the tier, the rarer the troops. this of course also plays into the issue of defeated lords havign mostly recruit armies.

empire also gets only five mounted units: one tier 5 regular horseman and tier 3 to 6 noble units. due to rarity of regular tier 5 and noble units, this is virtually nothing.

in contrast, the khuzaites:

Spoiler: khuzaites

seven regular and five noble mounted units! if it wasn't for the large number of recruits, khuzaites should easily have aroudn 40-50% mounted units.

for contrast, the other faction's trees:

Spoiler: aserai

Spoiler: battania

Spoiler: vlandia

imgur.com

Imgur: The magic of the Internet

imgur.com

aserai get three regular and five noble mounted units. due to the tier 3 regular unit and all-mounted noble units, cavalry is fairly common among the aserai.
battania gets only three regular and no noble mounted units. but from experience, battanian parties usually don't really lack horsemen.
vlandia has two regular and all five noble units on horseback. they also generally do not lack in horsemen.

 

[Worlok]

It still seems the biggest advantage of Khuzaits in building armies is party speed. They are faster in collecting recruits. Faster in gathering armies. They are always able to get +500-1000 more troops as any other factions army.
It is not properly visible in early game phases. But with 2 major kingdoms with the similar level of power it is evident.

Have you considered to compensate the Khuzait speed (caused by horse units) by carrying capacity penalty? I mean food capacity.
My initial tests showed the rebellion is not really sllowing down the Khuzait expansion...

 

[Blood Gryphon]

@mexxico 10 years into a snowball test, have 20 years is a bit. So far looks like your changes have improved the situation! Food changes for armies seems to have massively helped Sturgia actually compete or maybe it was something else you did, only 1 test tho so we will see.

Also after 10 years 3 rebel clans have become legit and joined kingdoms

Spoiler: Snowball test data

Northern	Test 1 10 years	Test 1 20 years	Test 1 30 years
Aserai	20​	25​	31​
Battania	28​	53​	56​
Khuzait	46​	50​	51​
Northern	6​	0​	0​
Southern	8​	10​	7​
Western	18​	8​	7​
Sturgia	27​	20​	13​
Vlandia	20​	3​	8​
Snowball score	39​	92​	102​

Spoiler: 10 years

Spoiler: 20 years

Spoiler: 30 years

Updated with 30 years, also i noticed there are now 10 rebel clans that are legit. Unfortunately im assuming due to available land to give away they have almost all joined the strongest factions either Battania or Khuzait, which is certainly adding to the snowballing issue.

Spoiler: Batt

Spoiler: Khu

 

[Anushtegin]

wait, the skolderbrodas are a khuzaite clan? i thought they were just a minor faction?

 

[Blood Gryphon]

wait, the skolderbrodas are a khuzaite clan? i thought they were just a minor faction?

hired mercenaries show as clans, so no worries

 

[mexxico]

Updated with 30 years, also i noticed there are now 10 rebel clans that are legit. Unfortunately im assuming due to available land to give away they have almost all joined the strongest factions either Battania or Khuzait, which is certainly adding to the snowballing issue.

Spoiler: Batt

Spoiler: Khu

Yes, I was getting better snowballing test results before rebellion feature (average snowballing score was about 40-50 (no factions was eliminated mostly in first 20 years) now it seems we will have something like 60-70 (it was 105 at 1.5.5 and 115 at 1.5.4). Lower score is better. Also for some reason kingdom budgets are reducing fastly in 2-3 kingdoms need to check its reason too. Tax incomes are now both effected by loyality (highly) and security (low) this is also new added might be the reason. I will check codes next week. These rebel clans should mostly join kingdom with their culture not strongest one. I have less control over this rebellion feature because I did not code it. Could not find time to watch what is going on. Will check it next week. It would be so helpful if you run 1-2 new 20 year tests whenever you want. So we can take average of all results and find most accurate current snowball score.

 

[niekdegrijze]

(about 6) I also have plans to make importance a bit more important in selecting siege targets as you said this is a problem currently also kingdoms sometimes capture a settlement inside enemy territory and this is not good for game. Next week I will check its codes again.

(about 1-2) Khuzait cav ratio can stay at 30% as I said previously but others should be increased a bit (not much to save difference of kingdoms). As you said with small change at (3) two small change can effect balance in a good way.

(about 4) I have no idea about it need to check codes.

(about 5) Relations are set automatically according to traits / characteristic and a bit random as I know. It can effect war declerations a bit (not much)

I personally really like the difference in army builds between the different factions. I think it would be a mistake to make all factions similar for the sake of balance. I hope a solution can be found by other means. Keep up the good work!

 

[Dabos37]

I am running my first test and I am maybe noticing something wrong with war declaration. Not sure if it is me or a bad lucky campaign but there are too much war declarations for some reason. SE went at war against Battania, Aserai, NE and Khuzaits pretty early and lost about 5 fiefs before day 60 or so.

NE is currently at war vs Khuzaits, Battania and WE. After some days made peace with WE but still remains at war with Battania and Khuzaits for +20 days while Battania and Khuzaits are just at war with NE. On the other hand, NE are doing pretty damn good for the moment and re-take Amprela and resisting war in two fronts for the moment.

I still find two much wars declarations between Empire kingdoms. I know they should be at war but this makes things really hard for SE and NE.

Update1: NE is still at war with Khuzaits and Battania and for some reason they think that declaring war against WE is a good idea. I am really thinking that something has changed related to war declarations and for some reason snowballing is being worse than they were expecting.

Update2: NE and Khuzait have made peace and some days before, NE is now at war with Sturgia. NE is still at war against 3 factions all the time. Same for WE. At this point I am pretty sure that there is something wrong with Empire kingdoms or I am just getting a pretty bad lucky campaign. Going to restart this campaign to confirm.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

I am running my first test and I am maybe noticing something wrong with war declaration. Not sure if it is me or a bad lucky campaign but there are too much war declarations for some reason. SE went at war against Battania, Aserai, NE and Khuzaits pretty early and lost about 5 fiefs before day 60 or so.

NE is currently at war vs Khuzaits, Battania and WE. After some days made peace with WE but still remains at war with Battania and Khuzaits for +20 days while Battania and Khuzaits are just at war with NE. On the other hand, NE are doing pretty damn good for the moment and re-take Amprela and resisting war in two fronts for the moment.

I still find two much wars declarations between Empire kingdoms. I know they should be at war but this makes things really hard for SE and NE.

Update1: NE is still at war with Khuzaits and Battania and for some reason they think that declaring war against WE is a good idea. I am really thinking that something has changed related to war declarations and for some reason snowballing is being worse than they were expecting.

Update2: NE and Khuzait have made peace and some days before, NE is now at war with Sturgia. NE is still at war against 3 factions all the time. Same for WE. At this point I am pretty sure that there is something wrong with Empire kingdoms or I am just getting a pretty bad lucky campaign. Going to restart this campaign to confirm.

I thought i was noticing something similar with NE as well during my last run through. We will see how run through 2 goes.