It might be a good time to talk about Sturgian Druzhinnik

[STcloz]

Since you have introduced winter and snow to strengthen Sturgia, why do you still let Varyags keep their horses. It does not make much sense. Now Sturgia has no feature at all. It did not have any feature in the past by the way. Historically, Varyads did not mount horses neither, right?

 

[anoddhermit]

Bannerlord's factions are only l o o s e l y inspired by historical cultures. Many of the troops in the game have historical names but don't use the same equipment as historical troops by the same name. Druzhinnik isn't an exception.

"Features" of the factions aren't a matter of "it doesn't have this troop type" or "it does have this troop type", either. Sturgia doesn't need to be infantry only to be distinct, they have different strengths and weaknesses. They're clearly centered around shield walls and breaking... lines, and they have the weakest archers by substantial margin.

Varyags IE Varangians, and Druzhina, did use horses according to historical accounts - typically more for mobility than for combat.

Winter and snow doesn't strengthen Sturgia that much either. If they had their old snow movement speed they'd be better. Currently the culture bonuses are kind of lame in general, with Battania being way better than everything else and Empire being second place for late game kingdom management mainly.

 

[STcloz]

Bannerlord's factions are only l o o s e l y inspired by historical cultures. Many of the troops in the game have historical names but don't use the same equipment as historical troops by the same name. Druzhinnik isn't an exception.

My point is that there aren't noble footmen in Bannerlord, unlike Warband. And the empire has both the best footmen and the best chavalry.

Winter and snow doesn't strengthen Sturgia that much either. If they had their old snow movement speed they'd be better. Currently the culture bonuses are kind of lame in general, with Battania being way better than everything else and Empire being second place for late game kingdom management mainly.

Yeah, Sturgia is still the weakest faction. If TW want to strengthen it, they need to do further, say, give all the soldiers of other factions punishment in winter or improve verterans' proportion in Sturgia.

 

[Totalgarbage]

Druzhinniks shouldn't have their horses removed, but they should have their spears replaced with a long 2-handed weapon like an axe in my opinion. This way, they would be able to perform a unique function of "mounted shock troop", where they can use their mounts to move and reposition quickly and then dismount if the player wishes (and also be more effective in sieges).

I understand why people want the Sturgian noble troop to be a foot troop, as there are already 3 other noble mounted melee cav troops, but having a noble foot infantry unit would render 1 or more of their commoner foot troop trees useless. One change that would give diversity to noble troops would be to split Empire noble troops to 3 - one for each imperial faction:

- The Northern Empire noble troop would be the Vaegir Guard who would be a Varangian Guard inspired noble shock infantry with a 2H axe and a 1h or polearm with a shield (already exists in lore, which is a plus).
- Southern Empire would keep the Cataphracts, since they would be the geographically closest to the Calradian analogue of the Parthians, who inspired the Roman Cataphracts.
- Western Empire would be crossbows + sword & board infantry, inspired by the... umm... Ballistarii? Genoese? Precursors to the Rhodok military doctrine in lore maybe?

 

[JunKeteer]

My point is that there aren't noble footmen in Bannerlord, unlike Warband. And the empire has both the best footmen and the best chavalry.

Yeah, Sturgia is still the weakest faction. If TW want to strengthen it, they need to do further, say, give all the soldiers of other factions punishment in winter or improve verterans' proportion in Sturgia.

They should've given Sturgia better map movement in winter, or make it a part of their bonus, weighted by infantry ratio. Then have their template be weighted more in favor of infantry; especially with infantry AI being a bit better than before. How nice/challenging it would it be to field an army, to only encounter ~500+ units of infantry all grouped up lumbering towards you, near impenetrable to archers and suicidal for cavalry charges. Sure, they won't be taking over Aserai land anytime soon, but with the snow, damn near impenetrable/disadvantage for cavalry invaders.
Yet, all my playthroughs, they always lose that western section Varcheg/Omor (except that Revyl portion - invisible to AI practically), and Tyal is perpetually changing hands. And we all know why. Same reason Battania dies out almost every time.

Honestly, with both that 'mediterranean' sea by Aserai and the 'baltic/north' sea by Sturgia, they should add a crossing in the middle somewhere. Have it cost extra food or troops or very slow as a modifier (I don't even care if there's naval fights at this point).

Instead, we have yet another culture with practically the same ratio of archers/infantry/cavalry as practically all the other cultures (except Khuzait). 'North-North Empire' with a different skin, in a ****ty map situation their AI can't figure out to deal with.

 

[STcloz]

This way, they would be able to perform a unique function of "mounted shock troop"

AI wouldn't use them as intended. It makes me think of French mounted archers in Medieval II Total War, which are even more horrible than Mongolian mounted archers.

One change that would give diversity to noble troops would be to split Empire noble troops to 3 - one for each imperial faction:

Sounds interesting. This could be designed as a Mod feature. But in vanilla game, three empires will finally merge together, so maybe it won't work.

They should've given Sturgia better map movement in winter, or make it a part of their bonus, weighted by infantry ratio. Then have their template be weighted more in favor of infantry; especially with infantry AI being a bit better than before. How nice/challenging it would it be to field an army, to only encounter ~500+ units of infantry all grouped up lumbering towards you, near impenetrable to archers and suicidal for cavalry charges. Sure, they won't be taking over Aserai land anytime soon, but with the snow, damn near impenetrable/disadvantage for cavalry invaders.

This is what I would like to see, a defensive army. It might not be powerful but has its feature.

Yet, all my playthroughs, they always lose that western section Varcheg/Omor

Another reason which could explain this result is that Sturgia can't maintain its shape without ships. Obviously, Sturgia is a mix of Russ and Scandinavian. They're both heirs of Viking. Viking has boats but Sturgia doesn't.

 

[hoboistice]

Druzhinniks shouldn't have their horses removed, but they should have their spears replaced with a long 2-handed weapon like an axe in my opinion. This way, they would be able to perform a unique function of "mounted shock troop", where they can use their mounts to move and reposition quickly and then dismount if the player wishes (and also be more effective in sieges).

I played around with CTT on the base factions and making Druzhinnik use 2h axes on horseback was decently effective, the reach still allows them to hit infantry and cavalry with great cleave. Also fills a niche that no other faction does.

 

[SomeWeirdSins]

Dismount them for one of the best infantry troops in the game that move at cav speed and have t6 medic procs?

Just fix the buggy captains perks so that they actually work on dismounted cav

 

[Gricken]

Dismount them for one of the best infantry troops in the game that move at cav speed and have t6 medic procs?

Just fix the buggy captains perks so that they actually work on dismounted cav

Oh is that how those perks work? They aren't flagged for units labeled as 'cavalry' but for units that happen to be on horseback at the moment or something?

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

All factions need a certain amount of mounted units or they will be too slow and get wiped off the map too easily. So if they make the t6 an infantry they need to make sturgia make more raiders too, or adds some other buff to give them map speed.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Turning the Druzhinniki into Noble Infantry would spice up the Noble troops considering most countries have an elite cavalry and thus making that less of a feature and more of an expected component.

Druzhinniki are currently the "safest" cavalry because they have the second-best armor but keep a shield while using their spear, unlike the Cataphracts who have to put their shields away to use their spears, so they aren't as vulnerable to being mobbed by footmen when entangled nor as likely to be one-shot by other cavalry making a frontal or flanking assault on them. However, should they switch to one-hander and shield, the Cataphract wins out due to superior armor and otherwise being effectively identical in equipment.

However, turning them into Super Melee Guys would obviate the Heavy Spearmen and Axemen like how Banner Knights and Squires obviate the Light Cavalry and Vanguards (or the Noble Sons and Khan's Guards obviate their commoner counterparts).

Ideally, becoming Noble Infantry should match as well as Battanian Noble Archers do with their own common troops but the Battanians were probably designed from the start to feature only noble archers and thus don't have this problem. The Heavy Spearmen/Axemen would need to be rebalanced to be competitive, in some way, with Super Melee Guys since their entire troop line would be pointless if it's both easier and smarter to mass recruit superior counterparts and just have normal Sturgians become... their okay-ish archers.

I guess they could replace the Heavy Spearmen/Axemen with mediocre cavalry (switch places, basically). They'd be in the same unenviable position as the Battanian Horseman and Vlandian Vanguard, and the Sturgian commoner troop lines would lack anything worth investing into in the first place, but it would prevent obviating their present-best melee infantry with hypothetical super infantry.

 

[SomeWeirdSins]

Oh is that how those perks work? They aren't flagged for units labeled as 'cavalry' but for units that happen to be on horseback at the moment or something?

It's full spaghetti code. None of the captains perks are described or coded in a consistent way. Some of the melee damage perks even apply to ranged damage by archers

 

[JunKeteer]

It's full spaghetti code. None of the captains perks are described or coded in a consistent way. Some of the melee damage perks even apply to ranged damage by archers

I hate the perks with how they've intended it to be, worst implementation I've seen among a lot of different games; even if they manage to get them to actually work consistently and as described/coded. What with the one-sentence 'encyclopedia' info about it too.
A majority don't 'work' since they don't apply among a plethora of situations, some only affect the player (yet part of the 'global' system), some only affect the governor, which, can the player be? Some only apply to party roles that don't apply for companions you send off anyways. The trade skills your caravans gain allow for perk options that don't even affect them anyways; and so on.

It's all so stupid, jamming every little stat modifier option into one overarching perk system. When they should've made them all separate, gained separately, and rewarded separately. Instead, when you deposit someone as a governor or a captain, it's this laundry list of stupid stats garnered from all the random categories of their skills/perks gained; to the point you don't even care about their effects anyways or how you want to build them.
You assign a governor, they gain governor skill/tier over time, reward with an A or B perk specifically applicable for governing. That simple, do that with captains, caravans, etc...Nope, in order to get castle garrison wages down, I have to have some companion level 100 in one-handed or something stupid.

Better off if it never existed in the first place, does more harm existing in the sorry state it's been designed.

 

[Totalgarbage]

It's all so stupid, jamming every little stat modifier option into one overarching perk system. When they should've made them all separate, gained separately, and rewarded separately. Instead, when you deposit someone as a governor or a captain, it's this laundry list of stupid stats garnered from all the random categories of their skills/perks gained; to the point you don't even care about their effects anyways or how you want to build them.
You assign a governor, they gain governor skill/tier over time, reward with an A or B perk specifically applicable for governing. That simple, do that with captains, caravans, etc...Nope, in order to get castle garrison wages down, I have to have some companion level 100 in one-handed or something stupid.

I like this idea, and thinking about it, it can actually be somewhat accomplished without a complete overhaul of the perk system. A specialized career system that you implied would work and play better, but I think that my following suggestions would be more likely (but still be unlikely) to be taken, as TaleWorlds developers are more likely to take the path of least resistance/effort just as most living organisms do.

Honestly, the Vigor, Control and Endurance are mostly (not completely) fine in this regard, as the majority of their perks have 1 personal and 1 captain effect. Those that have a governor effect should be changed to give a captain or personal effect. Party leader effects should be made into personal or captain effects or should be moved into the relevant skill tree (such as nomadic traditions in Riding getting moved scouting, potentially being swapped with the "finding horses in plains and steppes" perk).

All the governor perks should be moved to the INT skills (especially steward), whether as a second effect in all perks or as a separate skill option (so the skills on top would give personal/party leader skills, the skills on the top would give party leader/governor skills). The steward perks that affect inventory size should be moved to scouting, and the ones that are related to food and morale should be moved to leadership. The perks that give your troops exp for donating armor and weapons should be moved to smithing (or maybe to leadership). The engineering perk that improves workshops should be moved to trade, and the perk that improves the quality of looted items should be moved to Roguery (or smithing maybe), etc.

Party leader perk effects should only be in Cunning and Social skills, and maybe Intelligence skills as well depending on what solution people think would work better on governors.

All "Army Leader" perk effects should be made "Party Leader" perk effects, "party leader" effects of an army leader should work and override all the other parties' party leader effects (except for the player if they're part of an army, their party wouldn't be affected by it at all to increase player agency). "Clan Leader" effects would all be made into party leader or "profession" (like medic, quartermaster, etc) effects depending on what they give.

Some of these changes probably aren't as good as I think they might be, but if you get the gist of what I'm trying to say, please do provide criticism.

 

[STcloz]

All factions need a certain amount of mounted units or they will be too slow and get wiped off the map too easily. So if they make the t6 an infantry they need to make sturgia make more raiders too, or adds some other buff to give them map speed.

They should have a speed buff on the snow. Suppose that they have sleds.

I guess they could replace the Heavy Spearmen/Axemen with mediocre cavalry (switch places, basically). They'd be in the same unenviable position as the Battanian Horseman and Vlandian Vanguard, and the Sturgian commoner troop lines would lack anything worth investing into in the first place, but it would prevent obviating their present-best melee infantry with hypothetical super infantry.

I think the hard question is that what makes noble infantry outstanding and unique. I never thought about it really. Bannerlord has more units than Warband, but that reduces the uniqueness of each faction. All factions have two similar infantry units, spearman and melee infantry.

I hate the perks with how they've intended it to be, worst implementation I've seen among a lot of different games

I hate it too. It makes nonsense and look very silly. But it has been done and there's nothing we can do about it. At least it's better than Warband.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

I think the hard question is that what makes noble infantry outstanding and unique. I never thought about it really. Bannerlord has more units than Warband, but that reduces the uniqueness of each faction. All factions have two similar infantry units, spearman and melee infantry.

Being memetically OP giga-chads that chew bolts and arrows and wrangle dudes off of horses? Ideally, they should be as OP among melee infantry as Battanian Fians are among ranged infantry as a means of both competing with the rest of the noble units as well as... completing an arbitrary set where there's an OP mounted ranged (Khan's Guard), mounted melee (debatable), and ranged infantry (Fians). However, this introduces some obvious issues with obviating the common infantry and making, what my self-recognized newbishness considers the "best" unit type (shields up until ranged enemies run out of arrows; keep tight to slaughter oncoming horsemen; mob emptied enemy archers; only really checked by other infantry or mixed-arms assaults from multiple directions), so OP that nothing short of more Nord Huscarls can stop it.

Still, in spite of the balance issues the return of the Huscarl (not literally, just in spirit) would present, I think it'd be worth having. However, I think the current mounted Druzhinniki could be made into commoner troops whose appeal is being cheaper to raise (perhaps only costing a normal mount rather than both a normal mount + a war horse like most horseman lines) than any other cavalry while the current commoner infantrymen could either be cheaper (and thus more spammable) or specialized more anti-cavalry for the Heavy Spearmen and skirmishers for the Heavy Axemen. I mean, this is probably a less than ideal solution, to the point where the hypothetical mounted commoners should probably just replace the Heavy Axemen so the Noble Infantry can be a super-evolved variant of them, but then the only solution I have to make Heavy Spearmen/Axemen relevant is by making them very cheap for their Tier.

Indeed, compared to Warband, factions are much more homogenous due to having many more unit types that do mostly the same thing but with slight differences. If you're a skilled player you can probably take advantage of these differences to produce interesting results but, at my skill level, it's hard to tell the difference between any unit type that isn't the best in class via differences in casualty ratios.

 

[hoboistice]

I think the hard question is that what makes noble infantry outstanding and unique. I never thought about it really. Bannerlord has more units than Warband, but that reduces the uniqueness of each faction. All factions have two similar infantry units, spearman and melee infantry.

I hate it too. It makes nonsense and look very silly. But it has been done and there's nothing we can do about it. At least it's better than Warband.

Not only do they have too many units for each faction but they don't even do anything interesting with the different factions. There's a lot more interesting unit types they could do that they don't, such as jinetes for Aserai or mounted crossbowmen for Vlandia.

Nah Warband's system is much superior, it's an RPG system as opposed to Bannerlord's perk system, like Morrowind/Oblivion to Skyrim/Fallout 4.
The attributes you pick affect your playstyle as well as adding benefits themselves, whereas in Bannerlord attributes are just an xp modifier that don't intrinsically do anything.

 

[JunKeteer]

I hate it too. It makes nonsense and look very silly. But it has been done and there's nothing we can do about it. At least it's better than Warband.

I wouldn't even say it's better than WB. WB didn't have this, and it wasn't really an issue. They made this an issue with BL by introducing it.

 

[STcloz]

Ideally, they should be as OP among melee infantry as Battanian Fians are among ranged infantry as a means of both competing with the rest of the noble units

It is an ideal situation indeed and hardly to achieve. If it can't be designed, just remove druzhinnik's horses, and then they're still better than other infantry of Sturgia because of their armors.
Huscarls are exactly what I want. Just bring them back. I think a well-armed axeman with a shield is good enough. The new huscarls should take a single-handed sword, a two-handed axe, a shield and a bag of throwing axes just like their successors in Warband. Their equipments should be top-ranked, then they will be better than both Sturgian heavy axemen and line breakers.
Druzhinnik(not druzhinnik champion) could be removed into commoner troops because the Sturgian horse raider is total rubbish.
By the way, actually the update of commoner chivalry costs war horses too.

Nah Warband's system is much superior, it's an RPG system as opposed to Bannerlord's perk system, like Morrowind/Oblivion to Skyrim/Fallout 4.
The attributes you pick affect your playstyle as well as adding benefits themselves, whereas in Bannerlord attributes are just an xp modifier that don't intrinsically do anything.

I wouldn't even say it's better than WB. WB didn't have this, and it wasn't really an issue. They made this an issue with BL by introducing it.

Warband is distant and I think you've forgotten its defects. It's not as good as in our memory. Firstly, do you remember how hard it is to train non-combat companions? They have to fight in battle or they can't get skill points. Secondly, Warband doesn't have perks.

 

[JunKeteer]

Warband is distant and I think you've forgotten its defects. It's not as good as in our memory. Firstly, do you remember how hard it is to train non-combat companions? They have to fight in battle or they can't get skill points. Secondly, Warband doesn't have perks.

I know full well the defects/flaws of WB too. WB is basic, but with how basic it was, the expectations were not high. They decided to open the pandora's box with adding all these features in with a sequel, but so many are still unfinished/half-assed into place; maybe it was better if BL also never had the perks options too. Wasn't an issue in WB because it wasn't a thing in the first place.

Anyways, besides that, I also rather the noble troops be more unique. If all factions' noble troops are mounted cav, then they should (at bare minimum) make them all equally performative. That's the issue they brought upon themselves making them mounted cavs vs being some strong infantry 'huscarl'. Then, we're also dealing with the issue of all the factions being identical; another Northern-northern empire.