Information about developments at snowballing problem

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Can someone explain to me how kingdoms decide who to declare war on? In all of my recent campaigns there are rarely any wars that aren't against the kingdom I'm part of. My kingdom is usually the most powerful, I know that has something to do with it but other powerful kingdoms avoid war with much more vulnerable neighbouring factions rather than taking advantage, so they don't grow to rival my factions power. If I use console commands to instigate wars they make peace straight way. Is it that they actually prefer to declare war on the kingdom the player is a member of? This is with the main quests disabled.
This is just a guess but i believe this is what is happening.

The AI kingdoms are always looking to improve their tribute status. What is hard to notice is that AI kingdoms actually make these very quick wars (1 day long) that are much more like tribute negotiations. It often happens when a kingdom is at war, others see that they would be weak if they also declared war on that kingdom (since it would be a 2v1) so they declare war to get a better tribute payment and make peace again (they like to stay in 1 war, unless very strong).

The problem right now is that I think AI kingdoms are doing the same thing to the player kingdom, but because they have no way to offer peace you end up in a bunch of wars that depend on you paying a losing war tribute (tribute are different for each kingdom, as offering peace is admitting defeat so is the worst situation for each kingdom, i.e. its a better deal for you to get them to offer peace except they can't right now). Your kingdom will eventually vote to get out of multiple wars but it will take much longer if you are the strongest faction as your AI lords wont want peace since they think they can beat the other factions.
 
This is just a guess but i believe this is what is happening.

The AI kingdoms are always looking to improve their tribute status. What is hard to notice is that AI kingdoms actually make these very quick wars (1 day long) that are much more like tribute negotiations. It often happens when a kingdom is at war, others see that they would be weak if they also declared war on that kingdom (since it would be a 2v1) so they declare war to get a better tribute payment and make peace again (they like to stay in 1 war, unless very strong).

The problem right now is that I think AI kingdoms are doing the same thing to the player kingdom, but because they have no way to offer peace you end up in a bunch of wars that depend on you paying a losing war tribute (tribute are different for each kingdom, as offering peace is admitting defeat so is the worst situation for each kingdom, i.e. its a better deal for you to get them to offer peace except they can't right now). Your kingdom will eventually vote to get out of multiple wars but it will take much longer if you are the strongest faction as your AI lords wont want peace since they think they can beat the other factions.
This seems like a perfect description of what I'm seeing. I wonder why the AI can't offer peace to, or sue for it from, the player kingdom.
An example of how diplomatic options or 'bartering' could improve things.
 
Part of the issue from what I recall @mexxico mentioning is kingdom's finances go way down during peacetime as they are reliant on pillaging/raiding. This means they can't rebuild or maintain their forces so as a stopgap solution they basically keep everyone in war to keep them financially afloat. He recently changed it so there are less wars per kingdom, but until they solve peacetime economics I don't see long periods of peace being a thing.

As far as diplomacy they haven't mentioned any changes in their roadmaps, so I wouldn't expect any meaningful interaction between kingdoms in terms of negotiations (trade agreements, war/peace, defensive pacts, truces). You'll have to wait for mods to get that stuff.

I feel like trade agreements (likely won't be implemented) and an economy boost to feasts (whenever that is implemented), might be the best bets for solving the peacetime economics problem.
 
Part of the issue from what I recall @mexxico mentioning is kingdom's finances go way down during peacetime as they are reliant on pillaging/raiding. This means they can't rebuild or maintain their forces so as a stopgap solution they basically keep everyone in war to keep them financially afloat. He recently changed it so there are less wars per kingdom, but until they solve peacetime economics I don't see long periods of peace being a thing.

As far as diplomacy they haven't mentioned any changes in their roadmaps, so I wouldn't expect any meaningful interaction between kingdoms in terms of negotiations (trade agreements, war/peace, defensive pacts, truces). You'll have to wait for mods to get that stuff.

I feel like trade agreements (likely won't be implemented) and an economy boost to feasts (whenever that is implemented), might be the best bets for solving the peacetime economics problem.
amazing
 
Part of the issue from what I recall @mexxico mentioning is kingdom's finances go way down during peacetime as they are reliant on pillaging/raiding. This means they can't rebuild or maintain their forces so as a stopgap solution they basically keep everyone in war to keep them financially afloat. He recently changed it so there are less wars per kingdom, but until they solve peacetime economics I don't see long periods of peace being a thing.

As far as diplomacy they haven't mentioned any changes in their roadmaps, so I wouldn't expect any meaningful interaction between kingdoms in terms of negotiations (trade agreements, war/peace, defensive pacts, truces). You'll have to wait for mods to get that stuff.

I feel like trade agreements (likely won't be implemented) and an economy boost to feasts (whenever that is implemented), might be the best bets for solving the peacetime economics problem.
Just from casual glances at the barter menu, clan leaders (including rulers!) will only have at most 20k denars in their coffers currently. Previously, it was totally normal to see a one-town clan with 100K+ while the ruling clan sat above 250K.

It makes it sorta lame to be a complete raiding dirtbag, because you can only grab 20,000 for a peace deal through the barter menu, when they would be willing to fork over 100,000 if they had the cash on hand.
 
Just from casual glances at the barter menu, clan leaders (including rulers!) will only have at most 20k denars in their coffers currently. Previously, it was totally normal to see a one-town clan with 100K+ while the ruling clan sat above 250K.
I've noticed this too.
 
Then the other point I wanted to make is that for the other factions there is a significant amount of "lag" time between when a T1 recruit gets sorted into the half of the troop tree with cavalry, and when it actually becomes a cavalry troop. Specifically for the Empire, they only have one cav troop at T5 in their main line of troops, so a high proportion of recuits get sorted into the archer branch, but relatively few of them survive long enough to become horse archers. This isn't much of an issue on its own, but it makes the tactics perk Tight Formations (Infantry deal 10% more damage to cavalry in auto-calc) less useful against Khuzait since fewer troops get sorted into the infantry branch. Here's another screenshot of an Empire army in 1.5.7 with many more archers than infantry, but relatively few cavalry (only a ratio of 0.04):
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So two possible solutions:
  1. Only count T2+ troops in the cav ratio. There are no T1 cav troops in the game, but most non-bandit T1 troops have the potential to upgrade into cavalry eventually. This will hopefully prevent the game from sorting so many Nomads into the cavalry branch of Khuzait parties.
  2. Allow npcs to recruit more tavern mercenaries (specifically Watchmen and Scouts). This gives factions more abundant access to cavalry troops quicker, but currently npcs don't recruit many mercenaries because there is a high gold requirement in place that only clan leaders can meet (though make sure there are still plenty of mercs left for the player :smile:). As a side note, it seems the mercenary selection code might be bugged, because it isn't spawning any troops from the Scout branch of the merc tree that I can tell (unless that's intended).
Hey, I know this has taken awhile to respond to and maybe you (or mexxico) have put some more thought into it but I think it is a bigger issue than just making a perk somewhat less valuable. The issue with upgrades into cavalry lagging behind the cav ratio demand is that more and more troops get shoved down the cav-leading lines and stay there when there are no others options.

Sturgia only gets cav at tier 4 and 5 but whether or not a troop will eventually reach that point is decided when they upgrade to tier 3. Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks to me like they understand where the branches lead (upgradeTarget2?) and so shove more and more recruits that direction, even if they already have a sufficient number in the pipeline, so to speak. Now, during the course of normal wars, that's not a bad thing because most of them won't survive, like you said. But what about a faction that gets beaten up in a bunch of field battles but then is left alone? I'm pretty sure they just keep plowing guys into the hopper, so they have a kinda lopsided cav ratio.
MNJvL8k.png
 
Hello, I am new to the party and I have a proposal.

You could call it: "King" is another word for "grandson of a successful bandit".

There is a modder called gnivler, who among others, made the mod "Bandit Militias".
This mod generates Bandit Heroes and their armies from meeting Looter groups.
Now if you expanded the scope of that mod and made those bandit armies recruitable micro-clans (complete with spouses and children)
you would have solved the problem of the original clans dying out (as some would in war and more would in civil war).
You also would have introduced a balancing element, as it would be loosing kingdoms, who rearm with former bandits.
That is because the coin, that these guys crave is legitimacy, which only a true king has, and which only a desperate king would spend on lowlifes that could win him the war (or just bring him back into the game).
I asked gnivler, and he would be okay with his concept ending up in the vanilla game in whatever form it would take in the end.
He won't do the expansion himself (it is a pretty big undertaking after all), and I am unable to do so.

So how about it?
Could you see dynastic succession implemented in Bannerlord like this?
 
Hey, I know this has taken awhile to respond to and maybe you (or mexxico) have put some more thought into it but I think it is a bigger issue than just making a perk somewhat less valuable. The issue with upgrades into cavalry lagging behind the cav ratio demand is that more and more troops get shoved down the cav-leading lines and stay there when there are no others options.

Sturgia only gets cav at tier 4 and 5 but whether or not a troop will eventually reach that point is decided when they upgrade to tier 3. Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks to me like they understand where the branches lead (upgradeTarget2?) and so shove more and more recruits that direction, even if they already have a sufficient number in the pipeline, so to speak. Now, during the course of normal wars, that's not a bad thing because most of them won't survive, like you said. But what about a faction that gets beaten up in a bunch of field battles but then is left alone? I'm pretty sure they just keep plowing guys into the hopper, so they have a kinda lopsided cav ratio.
Yes, they know which branches will eventually lead to the cavalry, with the exception of the T1 => T2 upgrade, which mexxico excluded with the recent change he made. So T1 troops will get sorted roughly 50/50 into each branch, regardless of the cav ratio, and from there they will start favoring pathways to cav. The game also considers how far down the line the cav troop is, and the further away the cav troop is from the current tier, the less chance they have of getting sorted down that line. For instance, assuming an equal cav ratio, a T2 Mameluke Soldier will have a slightly higher chance of upgrading into a Mameluke Regular than a Sturgian Woodsman will have to upgrade into Brigand, even though they are both the only avenue to cav troops in their respective trees.

That fact was making Khuzait quickly funnel high amounts of Nomads into the cav branch until they hit the cav ratio cap, whereas the Empire would favor the archer/HA side of their tree for T1 upgrades to a lesser extent, but those troops wouldn't actually affect the cav ratio until much later, making them think they needed to keep sending more troops down that path.

I haven't noticed anything that drastic yet, but I think you're probably right, Woodsman are getting locked into the Brigand path without being counted toward cavalry, so Sturgia might end up actually making more cavalry than Aserai because of that.
 
Well Imperial Armies continue to have next to no Cavalry in the new patch (1.5.:cool: And if anything.. it seems to have gotten worse. In 1.5.7 they'd usually at least have some Buccelarii.. But in 1.5.8 they rarely ever even have those anymore. Which is resulting in the Imperial Armies getting ground out by the Aserai and Khuzait who easily replenish their cavalry losses and snowball from there. But the Imperial Armies just get run down. It also makes leading Imperial Armies a bastard because you'll typically be the only one bringing any amount of cavalry. So it gets drowned out in Recruits and Imperial Archers.

Not entirely sure what's going on there, maybe it's just some bad luck. But i do suspect the Buccelarii's Path makes it much more awkward to reach for the AI compared to all the other non-noble cavalry which at least have one cavalry tier beforehand. And i suspect cavalry tends to be in general more survivable. So i think the lack of a preceding Tier for the Buccelarii is a potential part of the issue here as well.

Edit : Here's an example : which i would find fairly representative of the issues with Imperial Armies as the game progresses vs in particular the Khuzait.

For whatever reasons they can keep on propping up armies with this kind of Composition meanwhile Imperial Armies struggle to get any cavalry going, and in that example over half of the cavalry and horse archers are mine..
 
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Well Imperial Armies continue to have next to no Cavalry in the new patch (1.5.:cool: And if anything.. it seems to have gotten worse. In 1.5.7 they'd usually at least have some Buccelarii.. But in 1.5.8 they rarely ever even have those anymore. Which is resulting in the Imperial Armies getting ground out by the Aserai and Khuzait who easily replenish their cavalry losses and snowball from there. But the Imperial Armies just get run down. It also makes leading Imperial Armies a bastard because you'll typically be the only one bringing any amount of cavalry. So it gets drowned out in Recruits and Imperial Archers.

Not entirely sure what's going on there, maybe it's just some bad luck. But i do suspect the Buccelarii's Path makes it much more awkward to reach for the AI compared to all the other non-noble cavalry which at least have one cavalry tier beforehand. And i suspect cavalry tends to be in general more survivable. So i think the lack of a preceding Tier for the Buccelarii is a potential part of the issue here as well.

Edit : Here's an example : which i would find fairly representative of the issues with Imperial Armies as the game progresses vs in particular the Khuzait.

For whatever reasons they can keep on propping up armies with this kind of Composition meanwhile Imperial Armies struggle to get any cavalry going, and in that example over half of the cavalry and horse archers are mine..

You have some good points.
For AI it's hard to get big percentage of tier 5 units.
For that it needs long streak of victories and it's especially hard if it's kingdom surrounded by potential enemies.
Khuzaits have tier 2 regular mounted units and Aserai tier 3. On top of that they have their back to edge of the map.

I think it's better to give Empire better access to their noble line by increasing percentage of empire notables that spawn noble units.
Tinkering with troop trees will somewhat change nature of this culture.
 
Well. The Khuzait tend to have a larger number of Tier 5 cavalry i find. Just in that example they had over half their cavalry be Lancers and Heavy Lancers for example. My overall theory there is that cavalry tends to have a better rate of survival than infantry. Especially non noble cavalry where you can just feed large numbers into it as well. Which i think also plays into why the Empire barely gets any horse archers even because they're at the end of a long foot line but also one which has quite a few break offs with both crossbowmen and the archers.

So while increasing noble line troops will help a bit. I think the bigger issue on the larger timescale is simply that Khuzait cavalry just has a better evolutionary scale if you will that just provides them with long term more T5 cavalry and horse archers. Meanwhile the empire, it's main opponent can barely muster anything on the same level. So while improving the number of Cataphracts will be a help. I do think other things need to be looked at as well. For example perhaps shifting things about so the Horse archers for the Imperials get a T4 unit and i dunno. Maybe make the Crossbowman a T5 offshot instead.
 
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Shifting cavalry units up and down the tiers is a bandage in my opinion (that may not even work). I understand that mexxico has solved more or less the snowball problem (for now) but without changing the auto-calc formula I don't see a way to give a different experience to the different factions.
 
Well i'm only basing it off from what i can tell looking at different army compositions from different armies. And most of them typically have at least some sort of non-noble cavalry that starts at T4 and they can typically get a decent amount of it. The Imperials are the only exception with the Buccelarii being a T5 only non-noble Cav unit. So going just by that i'd say it wouldn't quite be a band-aid solution but rather put it on the same level as the other factions and probably help Imperial army compositions be less flat and help the Imperials be a bit more interesting to play as well (and against)

Would't fix everything. But might help a bit here and there.
 
We agree! I was more hinting on the fact that we can always solve the problem by having the "same" tree for every faction (either way stats dont matter for auto-calc, only tier and cav/non-cav). But then what is the point of different factions?
 
Well there's always the more distinct elements of how they're put together and what units they have. But when having a T5 only cav unit doesn't work then clearly something must give. At least that is what i'd argue.
 
Hello, the lancers just need to be a real anti-cavalry unit. No more cavalry, but just a real utility for the lancer and pikeman. the Pike Wall to break charges, like the Shield Wall to break archers. This is enough to reduce the impact of cavalry in the game.
 
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