Information about developments at snowballing problem

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Since it differs so much, I think the goal is achieved? You don't have the usuall snowballers or?

Edit:OK except khuzaits as always XD.
To be honest, I don't understand (like) this design at all. Why Khuzaits has to be hardcoded to dominate the world all the time??? Who decided Khuzaits are the "chosen ones".

I would prefer to have random outcomes of world domination. Not that someone decided the endgame is always "some faction" vs Khuzait.
 
To be honest, I don't understand (like) this design at all. Why Khuzaits has to be hardcoded to dominate the world all the time??? Who decided Khuzaits are the "chosen ones".

I would prefer to have random outcomes of world domination. Not that someone decided the endgame is always "some faction" vs Khuzait.

Khuzaits are not been harcoded to always dominate as far I know. So I think that it is just the result of some mechanics which still are not polished because the game is still not finished.
 
Khuzaits are not been harcoded to always dominate as far I know. So I think that it is just the result of some mechanics which still are not polished because the game is still not finished.
Yes, I forgot to add that it's only my perception and I was referring to faction cultural bonus of Khuzaits. In my opinion this is the root cause of the snowballing. Anyway this is only my view...

Here are the results of 20 years test:

Khuzait - 58
Vlandia - 49
Sturgia - 19
Aserai - 18
WE - 13
NE - 6
SE - 5
Battania - 5
 
Test1​
10 years​
20 years​
Aserai
33​
25​
Battania
18​
7​
Khuzait
39​
45​
N.Empire
15​
19​
S.Empire
8​
6​
Sturgia
29​
15​
Vlandia
18​
37​
W.Empire
13​
19​
Snowball score
37
46
Test2​
10 years​
20 years​
Aserai
26​
27​
Battania
16​
5​
Khuzait
45​
45​
N.Empire
4​
8​
S.Empire
9​
4​
Sturgia
14​
23​
Vlandia
41​
49​
W.Empire
18​
12​
Snowball score
55
77
 
4th campaign test in 1.5.6:


(I am just sharing screenshots instead of specifying fiefs per kingdom for the moment until we get the hotfix, sorry for my laziness)


Seriusly, I am loving the game in 1.5.6 and while snowballing still exists, it is great how factions are able to resist and not being completely defeated for 20 years or more. This gives plenty of time to the player to help and turn the campaign balancing. Plus it is really great to see how factions are able to come back and become pretty strong even after losing 3 towns previously. For example, Sturgia lost Revyl, Vargcheg and Omor in the first 150 days against Battania, but then they were able to push Battania back and retake lost towns (Two of them thanks to rebellions, but lost Omor again some years later) and same happened with Battania, got reduced to 3 towns and has been able to take back lost territory and even take a Vlandia town later. For me this is actually almost good enough to enjoy long campaigns without getting dissapointed by snowballing. On the other hand, if snowballing could get further improved, this will be pretty welcome. Some suggestions:


  1. Longer wars <--- Probably fixed in the next hotfix.
  2. Less war/peace declarations (especially les war declarations) <--- Probably fixed in the next hotfix.
  3. Something to avoid some factions (especially Empire kingdoms) getting ganked by 3 or 4 enemy kingdoms at the same time. This is probably something related to factions losing settlemets being too aggressive as @mexxico mentioned before. Would be great if instead this faction turning too aggressive against everytone, would focus on being aggressive only against the factions who conquered their settlements before.
  4. It is probably already happening, but would be great if you could increase kingdoms aggressiveness against these ones having more settlements (if this is already implemented, increasing the relevance of this when evaluating new wars could be a good idea).
  5. Khuzaits having a bit less cavalry units while other kingdoms having more cavalry units. <--- Not my suggestion but I like this idea.
  6. Slightly reducing cavalry units speed bonus in campaign. <--- Not my suggestion but I like this idea.
  7. Forcing the AI to attack closer fiefs instead of going deep in enemy territory.

Many thanks for this amazing work.
 
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By the way, what do you think about this:

Add a penalty for factions having too much fiefs. For example:
  • Lords having harder time to scape after being defeated.
  • Having harder time when trying to make peace if they are the ones losing a war or fighting a 1vs2 war (this could be hard to do properly though and bring other issues).
  • Lords having an influence debuff simulating some "internal politic problems".
  • Increasing corruption (decreasing income for lords having too much fiefs).
  • Increasing loyalty and security issues for making rebellions more common for big kingdoms.
  • Whatever debuff you want... Games like Total War usually use this kind of debuffs/penalties for big kingdoms
 
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.

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.

i hope your suggestion will get accepted. type of terrain should not only affect combat advantages/disadvantages but also party speed. sure, horses are generally faster than infantry but in mountain terrain it should be about same and in forests probably slower than infantry. is there a way to reduce cavalry speed bonus specifcally for certain types of terrain?

also yes, cavalry bonus should only apply in battles that take place in open steppe or desert. it should not apply in sieges and terrain that doesn't benefit the use of horses. danger right now i think if we even thigns out too much, the game and factions will become bland. if we make it so that khuzaites dominate in the open steppe but suck in the mountainous forests of sturgia and the empire, the game will be more interesting than just making all things equal.
 
i hope your suggestion will get accepted. type of terrain should not only affect combat advantages/disadvantages but also party speed. sure, horses are generally faster than infantry but in mountain terrain it should be about same and in forests probably slower than infantry. is there a way to reduce cavalry speed bonus specifcally for certain types of terrain?

also yes, cavalry bonus should only apply in battles that take place in open steppe or desert. it should not apply in sieges and terrain that doesn't benefit the use of horses. danger right now i think if we even thigns out too much, the game and factions will become bland. if we make it so that khuzaites dominate in the open steppe but suck in the mountainous forests of sturgia and the empire, the game will be more interesting than just making all things equal.
Exactly, I like this suggestion. Don,t make every faction more or less the same. A new war is interesting because of different army composition.
 
I still think how easy it is for Khuzuit to get cav makes it bad for others and if you help notables to get powerful they can get them that much easier. Getting a ton of cav at T2 is huge. I know making any change to a tree would be tough to do. When i face a 1,000 man army I will assume they have 300 cav or more
 
i hope your suggestion will get accepted. type of terrain should not only affect combat advantages/disadvantages but also party speed. sure, horses are generally faster than infantry but in mountain terrain it should be about same and in forests probably slower than infantry. is there a way to reduce cavalry speed bonus specifcally for certain types of terrain?

also yes, cavalry bonus should only apply in battles that take place in open steppe or desert. it should not apply in sieges and terrain that doesn't benefit the use of horses. danger right now i think if we even thigns out too much, the game and factions will become bland. if we make it so that khuzaites dominate in the open steppe but suck in the mountainous forests of sturgia and the empire, the game will be more interesting than just making all things equal.

It would be nice to add these faction specific cultural advantages to rulers rather than the faction itself. Each faction could have some specific advantage which would intensify their army conquest capabilities. For example lets give the Khuzait cultural bonus to Monchug and when he dies the bonus will fall to a level which will cause the faction weakening (loosing territory). As a matter of fact the cultural advantages were always benefited only by great rulers (Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Attila ... etc). When the great ruler died their empire started to fall apart.

For me it's obvious that the snowballing is caused by some cultural faction advantage (Khuzait cav ratio) and that is fine. The wars were always about great leaders which could use the advantage of their units. Lets define similar advantages to all Factions - Vlandia crossbows, Battania Horse Skirmishers, Empire strong Infantries, Aserai Camel raiders etc... just some ideas.
I am perfectly fine to keep the cultural advantage of Khuzaits at the beginning of campaign. But when the ruler dies (Monchug) they advantage would disappear. This would solve the Khuzait snowballing very elegantly in late game. Ruler is usually alive at least for 20-30 years and this period is already nicely balanced by the fixes implemented by mexxico and others. But after 30-40 years the game is still overpowered by Khuzaits. This would solve the issue and it would be random which faction would get a great ruler. The cultural advantage provided by the great ruler could be randomly generated to the new rulers of each faction (when they come to age 18 maybe). So we would have completely random mix of stronger and weaker factions in some point in game history.
 
I have been thinking more about this and I have came to the conclusion that there is no any mechanic to penalize huge kingdoms in this game and you (and the AI) can get huge without any consequence.

I have done some other runs and it is not only Khuzait the one who are still able to snowball (this kingdom is the worse offender though), and sometimes Vlandia also gets huge, or Battania or even Sturgia.

If you think about Bannerlord and compare it with Warband or any other game, becoming huge in Bannerlord has no drawbacks. It is fairly easy to keep all vassals happy and avoid defections, we can get huge armies and steamroll everyone, get tons of influence, money, looking more appealing for getting more clans, etc. The player as a king loses some control over own kingdom but for the AI there is no any single negative thing for getting huge. Civil wars would be a dream but this probably won’t be a thing for the moment, so adding relationship penalties and other drawbacks for big kingdoms would be pretty helpful to completely fix snowballing.

And do not make me wrong, I am loving the new patch and snowballing score after the hotfix will be probably even better, but I think that if devs want to fix 100% snowballing, the best and easier way to do it would be penalizing huge kingdoms, which would also be more realistic.
 
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This would solve the Khuzait snowballing very elegantly in late game.

It wouldn't. Monchug is one of the younger rulers. By time he dies, the Khuzait parties and armies aren't actually any faster than other factions, because they have so many non-Khuzaits troops and parties. Instead, grind everyone else because they have more troops, more influence to continuously generate new armies, more parties, more settlements, etc.

Like, it isn't unusual to see Khuzait faction armies being like 2.1 move speed in 1110 because the army has like 2,700 dudes in it. It still works though, because it can siege or raid wherever without anyone interfering.
 
I mean, maybe the best way to balance the khuzaits is introduce extreme political instability and have existing clans just full on rebel. One of the noted weaknesses of steppe polities in their transition to ruling over settled lands tends to be political instability. Usually over succession sure, but the game notes that it isn't Mochung that united the khuzaits, but his father. His grip on power as a young ruler should be fairly weak and he should face more than a couple challanges from the other large clans (and, like, his brothers, but the game has no way to simulate that at all I believe)

I don't know is this kind of civil war system is possible in the game. But it would be a good way to solve things. The Empire factions would even be pretty immune considering they are already in civil war.
 
i totally agree and IMO it would be the best solution to introduce succession struggles. as @Apocal pointed out, monchug is fairly young. so either change his age and lore, or make his legitimacy very low to start the game. not sure if it is a good idea to throw the khuzaites into civil war early (before they start to make major gains) though.

however, i do remember one of the devs saying that they do not want additional (AI) factions for soem reason. but a succession/civil war were clans side with either the current ruler or the strongest pretender clan would be ideal. mostly, i also want to have the chance to start the khergit khanate or even help the banu sarran start their sultanate. :grin:
 
I mean, maybe the best way to balance the khuzaits is introduce extreme political instability and have existing clans just full on rebel. One of the noted weaknesses of steppe polities in their transition to ruling over settled lands tends to be political instability. Usually over succession sure, but the game notes that it isn't Mochung that united the khuzaits, but his father. His grip on power as a young ruler should be fairly weak and he should face more than a couple challanges from the other large clans (and, like, his brothers, but the game has no way to simulate that at all I believe)

I don't know is this kind of civil war system is possible in the game. But it would be a good way to solve things. The Empire factions would even be pretty immune considering they are already in civil war.

The system of Civil War would solve a lot of problems... like Apocal said, the lord in Khzaits are one of the youngest, pls there's their children and now with marriage enable more kids on the way.

This turn them to be the biggest and one of the the strongest power in Calradia, even without player help.
 
Test3​
10 years20 years
Aserai2229
Battania99
Khuzait2526
N.Empire1927
S.Empire146
Sturgia2323
Vlandia3942
W.Empire219
Snowball score2243
Test4​
10 years20 years
Aserai1925
Battania279
Khuzait4033
N.Empire910
S.Empire82
Sturgia1618
Vlandia3137
W.Empire2139
Snowball score3347
 
Have you ever considered that, like Warband, the top cavalry of Khuzait is only Tier 4. The top infantry is Tier 3.

Their Tier 2 is cavalry, can be powerful, and pays the price.

In my mod, the Battania cavalry is Tier 3. Sturgia archer is Tier 4. Empire rider archer is Tier 4.
I imitated Warband to make different arms of different cultures.
 
i totally agree and IMO it would be the best solution to introduce succession struggles. as @Apocal pointed out, monchug is fairly young. so either change his age and lore, or make his legitimacy very low to start the game. not sure if it is a good idea to throw the khuzaites into civil war early (before they start to make major gains) though.

however, i do remember one of the devs saying that they do not want additional (AI) factions for soem reason. but a succession/civil war were clans side with either the current ruler or the strongest pretender clan would be ideal. mostly, i also want to have the chance to start the khergit khanate or even help the banu sarran start their sultanate. :grin:

I think Mochung should be having a succession struggle at the start of the game. He's young and not the genesis for the khuzait confederation. He should be embroiled in fighting claimants and breakaways that popped up from the death of his father, who IS the figure who united the Khuzaits. The Khuzaits should be paralyzed at the start of the game with internal succession issues.
 
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