Information about developments at snowballing problem

[Blood Gryphon]

I want to share an image with all of you, especially with @mexxico

Day 1409:

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Image 6 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

First time I have seen this sionce the release. While snowballing is still present and Vlandia is almost gone, I think this is pretty encouraging. The hotfix change about fixed value + prosperity * 0.35 has been simply amazing. We are pretty close!!

Is this a unmodded version?

Looking good as far as different winners I haven't seen before, wanna give us snowball scores? Clan counts too ?

Sturgia surviving with 4 cities despite seeminly losing half their clans is very interesting. I wonder if their downfall is imminent.

 

[Nalgasucia507]

Dope.

 

[Dabos37]

Is this a unmodded version?

Looking good as far as different winners I haven't seen before, wanna give us snowball scores? Clan counts too ?

Sturgia surviving with 4 cities despite seeminly losing half their clans is very interesting. I wonder if their downfall is imminent.

Well, I just had a small mod to slighly increase upgrade XP cost, but I have been used this before the hotfix and never saw anything like this. Now Khuzaits are getting a lot of war declarations compared to pre-hotfix. Khuzaits were able to carefully pick favorable wars before, but now it is not the case.

Here you have the first test I did today:

Year 20:

7 hosted at ImgBB

Image 7 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Khuzaits: 11 Towns 15 castles

They were strong in this campaign but not extremely OP.

Oh, now I am thinking that I also have another small change in my game, I have replaced the Sacred Majesty policy from Khuzaits because I saw Monchung making a 2300 men army at day 150-200 or so xD...

 

[Blood Gryphon]

Well, I just had a small mod to slighly increase upgrade XP cost, but I have been used this before the hotfix and never saw anything like this. Now Khuzaits are getting a lot of war declarations compared to pre-hotfix. Khuzaits were able to carefully pick favorable wars before, but now it is not the case.

Here you have the first test I did today:

Year 20:

7 hosted at ImgBB

Image 7 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Khuzaits: 11 Towns 15 castles

They were strong in this campaign but not extremely OP.

Oh, now I am thinking that I also have another small change in my game, I have replaced the Sacred Majesty policy from Khuzaits because I saw Monchung making a 2300 men army at day 150-200 or so xD...

Got it, I'll run a vanilla one to see if we see anything similar. Looks promising tho!

Lmao Monchung is the real main character in BL (serious note, maybe Sacred Majesty needs to be reviewed/refined). Mex has already expressed a desire to improve the kingdom policies decision making and hopefully that involves a full review and adjustment of current policies. Not sure where this fits in the line of priority for him but I know he has plenty other things he needs to work on (so Soon™).

Thanks a bunch for testing and sharing, I'm sure others agree when I say its much appreciated

 

[mexxico]

Thanks for feedbacks @Dabos37. Sometimes even changing one line improves gameplay of thousands of player. As I said I am not real owner of these war peace codes. Since 1.5.1 I am working on these to improve and sometimes I see that kind of stuff. There were lots of weird things at codes. Current state is not perfect but ok. Maybe you remember before 1.5s several factions were being eliminated in first 4-5 years. Weakened factions were at war with several kingdoms. Still time to time I see weird decisions but they are less now. Its good experience to improve game with players here.

 

[Old-Bull]

We do not give lots of free soldiers to AI, only about 10 free soldiers when they first spawn. It has nothing related to our problems. This is nothing big.

I am not fan of AI cheats and try to remove as much as possible but we have to give passive XP to NPC parties because player party and NPC parties so different in lots of terms. Player make more battles compared to an average lord party (average lord party life (time between spawned - prisoned) is less shorter than player party) and if we do not give passive XP as AI cheat 80% of troops at Npc parties be tier-1 or tier-2. This damages gameplay so badly, we have tons of troop variety but we cannot show them to player. With passive XP cheat this ratio (tier-1, tier-2 troop ratio) reduces to 50%. I want to reduce passive Xp more but I fear to damage gameplay especially at combat side.

You suggested increasing fief income but lets examine a test from 1.5.8 results :

As you see total kingdom budget is 8000K at 1084 (game start) but it rises 30000K at 1104 (20 years later) so this shows we already have a money inflation at world and as you see kingdoms with high number of fortification (Khuzait, Vlandia, Aserai, S.Empire in sample test) have high money inflation. Increasing fief incomes will make rich kingdoms even richer and create new problems and make money inflation worse. Reducing loot income can be one solution but these lords mostly do not earn money from looter loots already. Loot is income for everybody while fief income is income for mostly powerfull kingdoms. Already 66% of total income is fief income currently remaining is loot income. Increasing fief income do not solve our problem, Battanians have already 2 town 2 castles in total for last 10 years of test they already have limited number of fiefs. Making fief income 1.5x will give them daily 2000 more maybe while we will be giving 10000 more to each other kingdom. This will help stronger factions with bigger territory more and total kingdom budget of 30000K will be 50000K at 20th year.

I dont think the game does a good job of reflecting the cost of raising, supplying, and keeping a large army in the field. An army shouldn't just cost influence. It should cost denars.

In real life you have to keep an open supply line for an army. The army can't just re-supply itself.

This game doesn't account for the time and money it takes to supply the army with equipment, food, horse feed, lodging, and the economic impact of a country losing the majority of its work force.....

If you put a monetary cost on raising and keeping an army in the field, it would allow small defensive kingdoms to bank money while they aren't at war.

If you made that cost smaller for countries defending than countries deep in enemy territory, since its easier for them to re-supply and find lodging, it would naturally reflect the expense and difficulty of rapid expansion.

To me, armies are making too much money from war. Historically, armies at war bankrupted countries. In Bannerlord, its the easiest way to get rich aside from exploiting the broken smithing mechanic.

Raising armies should cost denars and influence. The larger the army, the more it should cost. The deeper you are in enemy territory, the more it should cost.

Right now the game tries to make up for the expense of raising armies by artificially inflating fief income and nerfing loot income. It isn't the loot or the fiefs that's the problem. The problem is armies aren't an expense, they're a limitless supply of money.

 

[Ragemaster9999]

@mexxico
One thing I am noticing in 1.5.7 beta is that the side effects of having death in battle enabled is causing a lord drain on some of the enemy clans im fighting. Day 600 or around there and some clans in southern empire have lost most of their adult lords. Right now there 1 lord leading the clan and a bunch of kids. Not sure what happens when the last adult noble dies but its about to be a clan ran by orphans

This is not helping snowball situation when sturgia has twice as many alive lords as southern empire because im mostly fighting southern empire and only taking part in winning battles which ends up killing enemy lords. The game needs a failsafe where a clan won't go extinct while it has children still alive. Maybe you can implement some kind of regeant system until the children can come of age and assume leadership

 

[Pejot]

I dont think the game does a good job of reflecting the cost of raising, supplying, and keeping a large army in the field. An army shouldn't just cost influence. It should cost denars.

In real life you have to keep an open supply line for an army. The army can't just re-supply itself.

This game doesn't account for the time and money it takes to supply the army with equipment, food, horse feed, lodging, and the economic impact of a country losing the majority of its work force.....

If you put a monetary cost on raising and keeping an army in the field, it would allow small defensive kingdoms to bank money while they aren't at war.

If you made that cost smaller for countries defending than countries deep in enemy territory, since its easier for them to re-supply and find lodging, it would naturally reflect the expense and difficulty of rapid expansion.

To me, armies are making too much money from war. Historically, armies at war bankrupted countries. In Bannerlord, its the easiest way to get rich aside from exploiting the broken smithing mechanic.

Raising armies should cost denars and influence. The larger the army, the more it should cost. The deeper you are in enemy territory, the more it should cost.

Right now the game tries to make up for the expense of raising armies by artificially inflating fief income and nerfing loot income. It isn't the loot or the fiefs that's the problem. The problem is armies aren't an expense, they're a limitless supply of money.

I totally agree with that. And one more thing is that it's to easy both for player and NPC lords to raise an army. There is nothing that stops You from it except influence. Army should cost influence, money (for example the one raising it should cover the upkeep of all troops or some mechanic to split the cost between all the lords in the kingdom) and require something more like clan lvl/relation with king or the lords/tactics lvl and battle history or something.

Edit: and also something that would be required from player to be able to join an army (invitation or something)

 

[Dabos37]

New test, just after verifying files in Steam:

Day 422:

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Image 8 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

I have only modded the game this time to replace Khuzaits policies and give them the same than Vlandia ones (I just picked Vlandia aleatory, just to remove Sacred Majesty from Khuzaits). You can do it going to:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Mount & Blade II Bannerlord\Modules\SandBox\ModuleData

Open the folowing file using notepad (I use Visual Studio Code for more clarity): spkingdoms.xml

Copy Vlandia policies and paste in Khuzaits section:

9 hosted at ImgBB

Image 9 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

The thing which is working better is the mexxico's change about prosperity, but I have the feeling that Sacred Majesty is also making things worse in vanilla, because Monchung was creating huge armies before I changed this. Going to sleep now, tomorrow I will update this with campaign after 20 years.

 

[Ragemaster9999]

I totally agree with that. And one more thing is that it's to easy both for player and NPC lords to raise an army. There is nothing that stops You from it except influence. Army should cost influence, money (for example the one raising it should cover the upkeep of all troops or some mechanic to split the cost between all the lords in the kingdom) and require something more like clan lvl/relation with king or the lords/tactics lvl and battle history or something.

Edit: and also something that would be required from player to be able to join an army (invitation or something)

There is just too much army spam in general. One gets wiped out and a new one immediately forms. In my current playthrough im playing a vassal of sturgia they are starting to snowball and besieging FOUR southern empire fiefs with 4 different armies. Seriously what the heck?

 

[Blood Gryphon]

@mexxico
One thing I am noticing in 1.5.7 beta is that the side effects of having death in battle enabled is causing a lord drain on some of the enemy clans im fighting. Day 600 or around there and some clans in southern empire have lost most of their adult lords. Right now there 1 lord leading the clan and a bunch of kids. Not sure what happens when the last adult noble dies but its about to be a clan ran by orphans

This is not helping snowball situation when sturgia has twice as many alive lords as southern empire because im mostly fighting southern empire and only taking part in winning battles which ends up killing enemy lords. The game needs a failsafe where a clan won't go extinct while it has children still alive. Maybe you can implement some kind of regeant system until the children can come of age and assume leadership

Death is going to severely change soon, we will see the death rate lowered and death will be activated for AI vs AI simulations. The current 10% death chance is there for bug fixing purposes at this point, so don't worry it will definitely change (they talked about somewhere around 2%).


@Dabos37 got through my first 10 years on vanilla

An early observation with only our samples, but these changes seemed to be really good for Aserai. They are quite aggressive now.

Spoiler

Okay so **** got weird in the last 10 years. I started to notice in 1100 but basically all wars had stopped and essentially the 5 outside factions took turns declaring war on the empires but not really doing much. Khuzait sat in peace for multiple years. Sadly I only got a pic in 1102 but you'll see its the exact same in 1104. Every single faction is at peace at 20 years, wish I had proof of how long this has lasted.

Also something i noticed in the 1104 picture is that failed rebels are constantly getting captured and escaping, but also it seems that they are being ransomed as well. Is this just free gold source for a faction if they actually put down the rebellion?

Spoiler: 15 Years, 1099

Spoiler: 18 Years, 1102

Spoiler: 20 Years, 1104

Spoiler: Factions War Status at 20 years

Spoiler: Aserai

Spoiler: Battania

Spoiler: Khuzait

Spoiler: N. Emp

Spoiler: S. Emp

Spoiler: Sturgia

Spoiler: Vlandia

Spoiler: W. Emp

 

[Nawki]

 

[Old-Bull]

I totally agree with that. And one more thing is that it's to easy both for player and NPC lords to raise an army. There is nothing that stops You from it except influence. Army should cost influence, money (for example the one raising it should cover the upkeep of all troops or some mechanic to split the cost between all the lords in the kingdom) and require something more like clan lvl/relation with king or the lords/tactics lvl and battle history or something.

Edit: and also something that would be required from player to be able to join an army (invitation or something)

Agreed. There should be start up costs for raising an army in denars if its going on an offensive campaign and there should be significant costs to maintain those armies that increase the farther away you are from your own territory.

If you're raising an army to defend a fief it shouldn't cost influence or money since people will defend their loved ones for free.

Those mechanics may be complicated to add, but adding a denar cost for maintaining armies and a start up cost should be easy to implement.

Countries at war should lose money the longer they're at war and should lose more with more soldiers in the field. Since most of the members of a medieval army have jobs other than soldier, their fiefs should operate less efficiently with armies in the field since they are missing the workers they need to operate efficiently.

Countries at peace should generate more tax revenue from fiefs. Countries at war should generate less revenue.

Financially reward factions that defend themselves and aren't constantly at war. Punish countries that are always expanding by adding a real cost to raising an army and make that cost more punishing the longer the army is raised and the farther away from home territory it travels.

 

[froggyluv]

Agreed. There should be start up costs for raising an army in denars if its going on an offensive campaign and there should be significant costs to maintain those armies that increase the farther away you are from your own territory.

If you're raising an army to defend a fief it shouldn't cost influence or money since people will defend their loved ones for free.

Those mechanics may be complicated to add, but adding a denar cost for maintaining armies and a start up cost should be easy to implement.

Countries at war should lose money the longer they're at war and should lose more with more soldiers in the field. Since most of the members of a medieval army have jobs other than soldier, their fiefs should operate less efficiently with armies in the field since they are missing the workers they need to operate efficiently.

Countries at peace should generate more tax revenue from fiefs. Countries at war should generate less revenue.

Financially reward factions that defend themselves and aren't constantly at war. Punish countries that are always expanding by adding a real cost to raising an army and make that cost more punishing the longer the army is raised and the farther away from home territory it travels.

+1

Yeah its strange the things that should naturally curtail excessive war or Cav dominated snowballing were left out in favor of artificial means.

 

[Dabos37]

Death is going to severely change soon, we will see the death rate lowered and death will be activated for AI vs AI simulations. The current 10% death chance is there for bug fixing purposes at this point, so don't worry it will definitely change (they talked about somewhere around 2%).


@Dabos37 got through my first 10 years on vanilla

An early observation with only our samples, but these changes seemed to be really good for Aserai. They are quite aggressive now.

Spoiler

Okay so **** got weird in the last 10 years. I started to notice in 1100 but basically all wars had stopped and essentially the 5 outside factions took turns declaring war on the empires but not really doing much. Khuzait sat in peace for multiple years. Sadly I only got a pic in 1102 but you'll see its the exact same in 1104. Every single faction is at peace at 20 years, wish I had proof of how long this has lasted.

Also something i noticed in the 1104 picture is that failed rebels are constantly getting captured and escaping, but also it seems that they are being ransomed as well. Is this just free gold source for a faction if they actually put down the rebellion?

Spoiler: 15 Years, 1099

Spoiler: 18 Years, 1102

Spoiler: 20 Years, 1104

Spoiler: Factions War Status at 20 years

Spoiler: Aserai

Spoiler: Battania

Spoiler: Khuzait

Spoiler: N. Emp

Spoiler: S. Emp

Spoiler: Sturgia

Spoiler: Vlandia

Spoiler: W. Emp

Uhmmm, you have had a bad lucky campaign in term of wars. This is my last run at day 2202:

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Image 9 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

All kingdoms are currently at war.

Would be great if more people could test campaigns replacing Sacred Majestry policy from Khuzaits.

 

[lunelune2413]

I want to share an image with all of you, especially with @mexxico

Day 1409:

6 hosted at ImgBB

Image 6 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Khuzaits did overexpanded and got ganked.

First time I have seen this since the release. While snowballing is still present and Vlandia is almost gone, I think this is pretty encouraging. The hotfix change about settlements fixed value + prosperity * 0.35 has been simply amazing. We are pretty close!!

"Finally some good ****ing food"
That image put a massive smile on my face. Thank you

I did not understand first question. Yes mercenary changes is at 1.5.8

By the way something can be annoying for player and can be also related to snowballing (long term side effect) is sometimes parties around enemy cannot catch it even they should :

Here normally weak and fast parties should catch 733 men Khuzait army. Black numbers are speed of parties. However 82 men Empire party come close to Khuzait army and run away back because it thinks 1208 men army cannot join battle (can be out of radius at first moment but it will catch up). This behavior saves Khuzait army from that bad situation. You can see how Khuzait army is fast (3.4 vs 1.9 (forest and bigger army disadvantages are effective also)) compared to Empire one because of horses it carry and better cavalry ratio it has. But even this speed advantage here weak & fast parties should catch Khuzait party and it should not escape from this situation. I will examine it and think about improvements. Something valueable can be found from here to improve gameplay & kingdom balance.

Its really annoying to see armies do stuff like this. I've seen armies outnumber the siege army, only to run away once the siege is over. Only seen an army fight a sieging army maybe 2 times. Please, if you can improve the AI on this, please do it.

 

[D0c1]

It isn't the loot or the fiefs that's the problem. The problem is armies aren't an expense, they're a limitless supply of money.

and they're limitless supply of money because battle loot gives too much gold.

This game doesn't account for the time and money it takes to supply the army with equipment, food, horse feed, lodging, and the economic impact of a country losing the majority of its work force....

m&b doesn't really take into account equipment. it's part of the troop upgrade cost and it's too little.
horse feed should be simulated by making mounted units more expensive as warband did, but they're not for some reason...
you do have to buy food for your troops.
as for the economic impact, i believe that the troops in m&b are the "household troops" of lords. not levied (coscripted) troops. so they're full time soldiers.
and armies in bannerlord are just a bunch of lords and their personal troops banding together to achieve greater things.
and they carry their stuff on horses or pack animals. i wouldn't mind massively reducing carrying capacity for soldiers to make pack animals a must.

If you put a monetary cost on raising and keeping an army in the field, it would allow small defensive kingdoms to bank money while they aren't at war.

how will they bank money if their income is only 66% from fiefs? they won't be able to support higher tier troops for war.
but like dabbos said, economics of weak vs strong kingdoms should be examined to make sure that weak kingdoms have the 66% figure as well.

i don't mind making battles expensive. because they should be. but battle loot is what making them profitable.
maybe loot from villages and town sieges should be buffed significantly to compensate lowering battle loot.
fief income should be buffed too. if not for anything, just to make sense of holding lands.

 

[lunelune2413]

The fact that rebel clans remain at war even when join another kingdom is really weird. I hope to see this fixed in the future together with the rebels still existing after defeat.

 

[Apocal]

Agreed. There should be start up costs for raising an army in denars if its going on an offensive campaign and there should be significant costs to maintain those armies that increase the farther away you are from your own territory.

If you're raising an army to defend a fief it shouldn't cost influence or money since people will defend their loved ones for free.

Limiting a powerful faction's ability to raise armies doesn't do that much to affect snowballing. In the testing I did, they took fewer settlements but raided the absolute living hell out of any smaller faction they were at war with. It was normal for a faction at war with the Khuzaits to have every single village raided. The Khuzaits weren't really immune but it benefited them because they are the best raiding faction. And there was a lot of world economy damage done in the process.

As for making wars really expensive in and of themselves, that probably favors powerful factions more than weaker ones.

Yeah its strange the things that should naturally curtail excessive war or Cav dominated snowballing were left out in favor of artificial means.

It makes perfect sense when the fixes combine being complicated and not even stopping snowballing.

 

[mexxico]

I did not understand first question. Yes mercenary changes is at 1.5.8

By the way something can be annoying for player and can be also related to snowballing (long term side effect) is sometimes parties around enemy cannot catch it even they should :

Here normally weak and fast parties should catch 733 men Khuzait army. Black numbers are speed of parties. However 82 men Empire party come close to Khuzait army and run away back because it thinks 1208 men army cannot join battle (can be out of radius at first moment but it will catch up). This behavior saves Khuzait army from that bad situation. You can see how Khuzait army is fast (3.4 vs 1.9 (forest and bigger army disadvantages are effective also)) compared to Empire one because of horses it carry and better cavalry ratio it has. But even this speed advantage here weak & fast parties should catch Khuzait party and it should not escape from this situation. I will examine it and think about improvements. Something valueable can be found from here to improve gameplay & kingdom balance.

Information about problem found yesterday :
Today I made several changes at code and today they are catching 733 men army with these changes. Yesterday this 733 men army was escaping from this bad situation because of fast and small parties were not engaging it, they were coming closer and running away back. However I need to test if there is any side effects. These codes are a bit dangerous to change because they effect many things. Also we have to understand what to do in miliseconds for each party in world because these calculations are done in all map (1000s of parties) so these calculations should be done so effectively means we cannot check all parties in a large area for each party, also it become like AI cheating. This development also will have positive effects on snowball imo, maybe minor, also walking in enemy lands will be more dangerous now (good for gameplay). However more important than snowball this was probably so annoying for player to experience these cases.