Just let the AI skip the recruitment

[VanHoven]

snip

+1. Also you have to take into consideration that taleworlds has limited time and ressources. I'd much, much rather see them dedicate their ressources to flesh out late game and problems in combat/sieges than fixing ai recruitment /constellation of armies which could be fixed with a very simple bandaid. Ofc in a perfect world i would prefer no ai cheating, but thats not my highest priority. good and fun gameplay is my first pick.

 

[TomaSkTemplar]

if you allow ai cheating, like it does, it respawns armies close to you every 2 days, no need to wait. Time compression mechanic seems to add to this neverending endless warring with 5-6 k in casualties on both sides. If they had to recruit these hordes, it would have slowed down. Time compression that each day acts as 4,5, means there is no pause lol. They keep coming and you keep sending them back.

slow the game down, slow down recruitment, bring back normal times because otherwise there is war always and everywhere. If you take damage you can wait like 45 days in the city, or 10 compressed unrealistic 'days'.

 

[Pejot]

Yes. That has always been the point of gaming, ANY game, not just this. It's a simulation that on the surface give the player an illusion of proper challenge (mimicing our behaviour) while at the same time stimulate the AI to help it acheving similar result to an actual human. It's a balance act to maintain proper game-play as well as not breaking the 4th wall (spawning stuffs out of thin air for example).

BUT, what is your standard of "not so obvious". Because if you want to make the point of looking for cheating behavior, you will find it, period.

For start i wouldn't force the player to fight same NPC again and againg with NPC getting army in really short period after being annihilated. Maybe adjusting the time it takes to respawn would change it a bit. For example calculate shortest time it takes to manually train similiar army and let NPC respawn after this time. I know that this will probably make snowballing a thing again but there are other mechanics that can be adjusted to stop snowballing.

 

[Thelior]

I would prefer if the AI doesn‘t have to cheat, because i remember the chore of trying to capture all enemy lords, to prevent endless battles in Warband. Especially after starting your own Kingdom and going for world domination.But the current situation with huge amount of recruits and/or empty villages is no fun either. The AI should be capable to raise a sufficient army in a reasonable time to prevent snowballing.

Perhaps the training xp rate could be directly coupled to the leadership skill. As most lords have rather high skill ratings this would leave enough space for fine tuning and the player has some work to do to catch up with the AI training capacity, without the need of AI cheats.

The lack of available recruits could be solved by enabling the recruitment of militia by the lord owning the fief. The miltia could then be upgraded into regular troops. That weakens the fiefs a bit, but militia would regenerate over time and there would be enough trained lord party‘s arround for defense.

 

[TomaSkTemplar]

other mechanics that can be adjusted to stop snowballing.

like fixing the economy so garrisons dont starve in peacetime, same for militias. In city you can have 500 garrison without upgrades, with currently impossible to manage the food economy (or by temporarily removing food from affecting miliatia and garrisons) snowballing is easy to do as long as you manage to have a big enough elite army always on the attack, as defending is usually not good.

 

[stevehoos]

All strategy games that I have ever played need AI cheats. Once you find out how to beat the AI it needs help.

 

[imgran]

I agree there needs to be mass trainning. A garrison boot camp of sorts. But it should only get you past the 1st tier with a small chance to get to the second. After that battle experience is a must.

I disagree, training should mean that units are Trained. And until they change the names, Trained is T3.

 

[Eneas21]

The AI needs to cheat, no estrategy game can make an AI comparable to the player once he knows the mechanics. The only way to balance is to cheat the AI moderately like in Total War.

Also, you wouldnt like a bannerlord where the AI behaves like a player with knowledge of mechanics does, to put an example think of Age of Empires. I always play that game solo versus the AI or with friends with certain rules like no attacking until X time, because if you play agaisnt other players who only play in the most optimal way you find yourself rushing to everything and not developing anything, etc, and that is no fun, its just stressing and takes you out of historical realism, it becomes like a MOBA game where everyone is playing the most OP stuff because they want to get higher rank

 

[Thelior]

The AI needs to cheat, no estrategy game can make an AI comparable to the player once he knows the mechanics. The only way to balance is to cheat the AI moderately like in Total War.

True that it is difficult to make an AI comparable to a player. But you could do this by giving the AI bonuses depending on fiefs or skills. That would make make the AI stronger than the player early game, but he could eventually catch up.

Total War is a terrible example. The AI doesnt cheat moderatly but excessive. Depending on difficulty level. In the case of Total War cheating and more agressiv behaviour towards the player + player maluses are the replacement for a decent AI. If you disable AI cheats, you can basically steamroll them on any level, because AI is dumb AF.

 

[Androme1]

Agreed that something needs to be done about AI recruitment. Not sure this is it, but it's one possible solution atleast. It would be much easier to balance this way atleast.

 

[durbal]

I'm gonna offer my 0.02$ for people who keep insisting of for the AI to "play the same rule as the player". There is no such thing, and it has nothing to do with the dev being lazy or taking the easy way out. Because we - as the player - never have a set rule to begin with. For example ask yourself these very simple questions:

- How often you wipe an AI's lord party?
- How often your own party got wiped?
- How long does it take you to train up that elite army you're so proud off?

Answer those questions and you'll see the issue with forcing the AI to "play the same rule as the player". As human we merticulously choose our battles, often we don't fight battle we can lose, while we chase down AI's parties and force them into battle they have no hope of winning. Most of us roll in a mountain of money from either constant sure win battle for loots, selling prisoner, or trade caravan. And that's even before you factor in attrition the AI has another AI. Forcing the AI to play the same rule as the player without some abtracted help is perpetually sentence them to mediocrity.

Your solution is to keep the AI braindead but just give it huge buffs? That's demented. I think most would prefer to play a game where the AI did interesting things and made at least a semblance of clever decisions. It will not always be perfect, but let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.

 

[eddiemccandless]

For start i wouldn't force the player to fight same NPC again and againg with NPC getting army in really short period after being annihilated. Maybe adjusting the time it takes to respawn would change it a bit. For example calculate shortest time it takes to manually train similiar army and let NPC respawn after this time. I know that this will probably make snowballing a thing again but there are other mechanics that can be adjusted to stop snowballing.

Right, I am also not a fan of that. I do think that making the leadership perks work more like the old Warband training skill lords would be able to get troops quicker than in earlier patches with no need for endless respawning.

It's a bit of a paradox, the snowballing started because they didn't want lords to cheat, then to fix it they made them cheat even harder than they did in the previous title. Seems unnecessary to me.

 

[Maximum997]

Your argument is that to achieve balance, we must then give the AI some cheats.

But AI already has cheats. They start with 30 guys right after defeat. So i offten see like 15 lords going everywhere with 30 men army

 

[Thelior]

But AI already has cheats. They start with 30 guys right after defeat. So i offten see like 15 lords going everywhere with 30 men army

But thats only the case because of a hotfix to prevent the non stop capture of lords because they ran arround with <5 men trying to recruit someone.

 

[Maximum997]

Your solution is to keep the AI braindead but just give it huge buffs?

Do you really think then they can make AI who can match a player without cheats? Even famous Deepmind (the best AI for Star Craft 2) was a complete cheater, and still it was beaten by some average no name guys with some very "stupid" strategies.

"Smart AI" = only few ways to outsmart him. Thats all. So instead of using several ways of outsmart you will use one or two. And it makes game more boring.

 

[SturgiaStrong]

Nope

 

[VanHoven]

Your solution is to keep the AI braindead but just give it huge buffs? That's demented.

Just saying, but making an ai not seem braindead is a huge task. its easy to say oh just make it better. i think we'd all prefer an ai that is able to keep up with humans without any cheats. but the disagreement is about if it's possible to do with reasonable ressources invested in it.

 

[Thelior]

Do you really think then they can make AI who can match a player without cheats? Even famous Deepmind (the best AI for Star Craft 2) was a complete cheater, and still it was beaten by some average no name guys with some very "stupid" strategies.

"Smart AI" = only few ways to outsmart him. Thats all. So instead of using several ways of outsmart you will use one or two. And it makes game more boring.

Deep blue in the end was capable of defeating Kasparow.

So given a fixed ruleset it is possible to create an AI to defeat a genius player.

I don‘t expect Taleworlds replicating this, as it wouldn’t be fun for most of the playerbase, but i find it lame and sad to say „just let AI cheat, it doesn‘t work any other way“.

 

[Eneas21]

True that it is difficult to make an AI comparable to a player. But you could do this by giving the AI bonuses depending on fiefs or skills. That would make make the AI stronger than the player early game, but he could eventually catch up.

Total War is a terrible example. The AI doesnt cheat moderatly but excessive. Depending on difficulty level. In the case of Total War cheating and more agressiv behaviour towards the player + player maluses are the replacement for a decent AI. If you disable AI cheats, you can basically steamroll them on any level, because AI is dumb AF.

Totally agree, I always play on very hard because of it. But my point is that if Creative Assembly hasnt managed to make a proper AI who needs no buffs in all these years, im sure as hell Taleworlds isnt going to pull it out. In the case of Total War games the issue is that its too simplystic and the player has absolute control on his faction and what he does, so its easy to steamroll when you reach a certain point, while in M&B you can only have absolute control and steamroll your party, not your entire faction.

Its kinda balanced because the player starts his faction from zero and has to put a lot of effort initially, and even when he gets going and gets similar size to other kingdoms, the only part where his kingdom is OP is the player itself and what he can do, so it is still an OP faction because the other are not smart enough and you will eventually steamroll, but its going to take a while and its not going to be easy either.

So another mechanic to balance even that would be that if the player gets too big the AI should come together to be more aggressive to him. And in total war games what i feel is that they miss having a proportional balance, like the bigger the player gets, the more buffs the AI receives, only way to make late game interesting even on harder difficulties, because even when I play on very hard I never end my campaigns because I know I won already.

 

[Maximum997]

But thats only the case because of a hotfix to prevent the non stop capture of lords because they ran arround with <5 men trying to recruit someone.

But it is still cheating from AI
And AI has another cheats. For example they doesnt train troops at all. Devs said that they decreased ammount of t1-t2 troops in AI armies from 70% to 40%. So their high tier troops just apear from the thin air