After each character creation, I've been unable to complete the main questline. The current play-through, I managed to reach the point where only one "Eliminate" quest remained, but due to other issues, the play-through still could not be completed. I set all difficulties on "Very Easy" and despite that every battle is now boring, and the campaign itself is stale - its still not something that can be completed before the conspiracy timer expires (I have to assume at this point that its the last quests provided during that timeline). I've got over 175 hours played in Bannerlord currently, and these are my findings:
Ultimately, this is what I was left with at Summer 2, 1094.
Now despite the Khuzait having only one fief remaining, they still have a strength of 43,000. No armies available, and all of their parties consisting of less than 30 units per party. The progress bar, I had to claw back from -100 several times because of the stubborn Southern Empire, along with probably a lot of time wasted in chasing down lords of the southern empire to declare peace at least 8 times to try and allow some of my clans to trickle through into Khuzait territory - all for nothing it would seem.
In short, the major balancing problem here is that the campaign itself is unbeatable for the player, even on very easy difficulty. I'm not sure what the "10 years" bit is for, or whether its just a stop-gap, but that's probably where the problem resides.
- (Bug) The pre-battle power bar is sometimes incorrect with the colour shown. The player's colour is always on the left, whether attacking or defending.
- (Balancing) AI Kingdom Leaders do not need to approch AI Clan Leaders to persuade them to join their Kingdom. Allegiances just randomly change. The same applies to mercenaries. This puts the player at a significant disadvantage for increasing their Kingdom size.
- (Balancing) There is no recognition for past battles (beyond taking the odd castle or town). Enemy AI still just assume they can beat you with numbers alone.
- (Balancing) Enemy AI attack prematurely, nearly always. They use recruits like cannon-fodder and never develop their armies.
- (Bug) Peace-time doesn't exist seemingly. A Kingdom can declare war on you within a day or two in-game after peace has been agreed.
- (Balancing) There are no methods to improve your standing with Lords because everything is stacked negatively towards the player, even winning massive battles, and vastly expanding the kingdom has absolutely no positive consequences with your clans.
- (Bug) After a town or Castle has "Sallied out" to attack your forces, before a Siege Camp is constructed, they regenerate troops inside the castle/town before the Siege Camp can be completed.
- (Balancing) All prices are fixed in towns/settlements for "barter". There's no fluctuation for the player to try and persuade the merchant to buy your goods at a higher price, or sell them at a lower price.
- (Bug) If your spouse is a party leader, you spontaneously have children, without ever needing to visit them.
- (Balancing) Without any way to direct your Clans as to what are priority targets, they spend far too much time needlessly running around the map not helping your Kingdom actually make any meaningful strides.
- (Bug) In my save, Battania were forced to make peace, but weren't eliminated as a faction. They then subsequently immediately resumed war (item 5) which caused my AI Lords to obsess with fighting Battania instead of helping me eliminate the other remaining factions. I basically had to do this solo as a tier 5 clan.
- (Balancing) Player's AI Lords are horrific tactically, and spend most of their time losing battles, fiefs and armies (when they actually do engage - item 10).
- (Balancing + bug) Player's companion parties start with just themselves, and they don't recruit to a reasonable degree before engaging in fighting, which usually leads to them being almost instantly captured. Upon release, they end up at any random town which leads to them sitting idle instead of attempting to rebuild. The spouse party does not do this - at least my spouse didn't in this save, she immediately began rebuilding.
- (Balancing) Mercenary armies instantly regenerate with 40-50 units after release, and then begin attacking again. The only way to stop the relentless onslaught of slaughtering recruits over and over is to execute all mercenary factions. Pairing this with their ability to be recruited without being approached by other Kingdoms (Item 2) leads them to being a massive pain in the backside for players.
- (Bug) On the "Eliminate" quests, if another Kingdom is at war with the Kingdom you're assigned to eliminate, and they take fiefs from them, it acts as if you are losing the war and massively reduces your ability to progress (since taking another fief from them only counteracts their negative value). This results in the requirement to almost always execute lords as well as take every single fief from them.
- (Balancing / Bug) AI Troops spend more time chasing down fleeing soldiers, instead of fighting the ones that are currently killing the rest of your army. This leads to a constant need to regroup troops, which leads to unnecessary casualties. There is no option to re-group troops, or ignore fleeing soldiers.
- (Balancing) Cavalry assigned to charge leads to their formation being broken up, which loses their effectiveness.
- (Balancing) Using a Lance/Spear on horseback only allows you to damage one entity when charge through. A Couched Lance should allow you to pierce through several enemies before momentum and damage is lost, at a reduction of damage dealt. There's absolutely no need to deal 400+ damage to one entity, but dealing 100 damage to 4 entitites is actually useful.
- (Balancing) Swinging a sword (left or right) into a crowd of entities deals damage to only one target, but the swing itself can be stopped by hitting a target accidently before the aimed target leading to no damage dealt. This can especially occur when fighting alongside allied entities.
- (Balancing) Enemy Lords do not have to regenerate health. After defeating them in battle (1% HP), they return within a day with a new army when released, with 100% HP again.
- (Bug) AI cannot respond well with terrain anomalies (like rocks). As a player, you can sit upon a rock, and any melee units will sit at the base of the rock not dealing any damage, and is susceptible to any ranged weaponry, without consequence to the player.
- (Bug) Sometimes when sieging a unit may clip into the walls and become invulnerable to attack, but can deal damage from beyond the wall (essentially shooting through it). This leads to massive army losses, from a single unit.
- (Bug) There is no way to recruit large armies and have your parties actually join you before engaging, instead they charge off in random directions often chasing a small party into a larger one - completely defeating the object of forming an army in the first place.
- (Balancing) Night fighting, or low-visibility fighting, offers a huge monumental bonus to AI, due to no need for visuals or sight. This also applies to firing arrows through trees.
- (Balancing) Somehow in my save, the Khuzait amassed a power of 49,000. They often only declared war on factions already at war with myself, and swooped in to steal towns/castles I'd lost due to my AI Lords losing territory from not defending, or doing stupid actions. This lead to all of their towns and castles being filled with garrisons of 750+ men, in every single settlement. These garrisons were completely immune to the effects of starvation.
- (Bug) As stated above, Food is a monumental issue in this game. There is no way to sustain any garrisons because the food counter seemingly doesn't work properly.
- (Bug) Starvation doesn't do anything. Sometimes when a Garrison or Militia is shown on a town/castle info as declining, it doesn't decline and occasionally grows in size - despite there being no food to sustain. This means its almost pointless in maintaining a siege beyond building the basic siege weapons.
- (Balancing) Siege weapons (Treb, Bal, Mang) shooting each other before the siege begins leads to a sheer lack of use. The siege mechanisms don't apply. If you want to break in a wall, you should be attacking the wall in the siege itself. This should require a method of keeping your units out of archer range before hand, and allowing to make use of the siege weaponry at the start of the battle.
- (Bug) when you do use siege weaponry in a siege battle, the two multi-operator weapons require an AI to reload them, and they often don't reload the weapon, or get stuck with pathfinding to do so. This leaves only the Ballista as a reasonable weapon to use.
- (Balancing) the Ballista's maximum kills in one shot seems to only be three, despite being able to line up more targets sometimes. The pierce effect of the Ballista should be increased. This is also a massive issue with shields, the Ballista should be able to pierce straight through a shield and kill the unit holding it. It shouldn't stop something with that much stopping power from being able to at least hit/kill the holder.
- (Balancing) In prolongued periods of war (Which is ultimately all the time), AI opposition never struggles to recruit new troops. Yet as the player, every town/village I visit to recruit troops is seemingly empty. This leads to the player being required to run around for several days to a whole season, just looking for troops to recruit. Without the ability to recruit from a garrison (because of starvation) this ultimately stacks in favour massively to the AI. The AI can pull 2-6 recruits from empty villages, just by visiting them.
- (Balancing) Khuzait units have a massive speed boost in the desert region, yet during winter when its covered in snow, there's no penalty for movement in snow. The player (as Imperial on this save) resulted in around a 10% penalty during Winter.
- (Balancing + Bug) On the Eliminate quests, the territory that an enemy Kingdom gains from another enemy Kingdom results in a loss of progress for the player. In this case, Khuzait took settlements from Southern Empire, and my progress was reduced by 30. Pairing that with item 15 (the reverse where Southern Empire took from Khuzait), this results in a continuous loss of progress from the player when those factions are at war with one another.
- (Balancing) Archer morale hardly ever breaks... even when flanked hard by cavalry. They spend 90% of a battle re-adjusting position, to have their entire army wiped out, and then they still keep fighting until there's only around 25% of them left.
- (Balancing) Troops never fight in coordination with one another - partly because they constantly mixed in with one another. I know the banner icon in the party dialog can change their unit assignments, but it doesn't negate taht they don't organise themselves or work together. Once you're in a battle, its a complete free-for-all. The only exception to this, is when AI have spearmen working alongside their archers defensively to protect them - occasionally.
- (Bug) Once the timer has expired for the conspiracy, it continuously generates new "Stop the conspiracy" bugs, but then instantly fails them with the same error message of failing to complete the quest within 10 years. However, the 10 years is from the start date of the campaign, not the start of the conspiracy.
- (Balancing) During the late-game Eliminate quests, by the point of Spring 1094, the enemy factions seemingly have no influence left to create armies, their parties are no more than 40 (what they start with), and they don't ever engage in battle. Because their party sizes are so small, they end up able to evade capture continuously (even with the player speed increase in the settings), this makes for further issues completing the Eliminate quests.
- (Balancing/Bug) The whole fief nomination thing is broken. You get three options, two of which will always result in a negative social relation. You aren't considered for contention the vast majority of settlements you single-handedly conquer yourself. As King, you should have a right to decide who gets what based on their contributions to the Kingdom, and there's absolutely none of that.
- (Balancing/Bug) To further prove the uselessness of AI Clans operating under the players' Kingdom. Battania "Eliminate" quest was ended in peace when they still had four fiefs to their Kingdom. Peace ensued for a grand total of 1 day (item 5) and 90% of my clans parties decided to remain to engage Battania. They lost nearly every fight, constantly being taken prisoner, and even lost more fiefs to Battania, allowing them to further grow. Because of this, I had to deal with the Khuzait solo - a 49000 strong faction, with a minimum of 750 garrison inside every fief. This led to recruiting issues for all sides... and to top it all off, every few days, Southern Empire would declare war on me to prevent any of my clan parties from ever reaching my army creation.
- (Balancing) Armour in battles is unbalanced. A peasant with no armour on, can be shot 2-3 times with a bow and arrow to the chest that has piercing attributes to go through plated armour...? And shooting said plated armour can take anywhere upto 6 arrows to kill the wearer. The plated armour is fine, but the looters and peasants shouldn't need shooting several times. They're supposed to be very easy to kill.
- (Balancing) Aiming a weapon (any weapon), and being hit by a projectile results in the aim being lost. In the case of a bow and arrow, you have to completely re-draw the bow... it doesn't make sense. If realism is required for a "stun", then the arrow should be loosed, not just magically vanish and be re-strung and drawn. As for lances/swords, the knight shouldn't really be impacted so much so that they have to completely re-ready their weapon to attack.
- (Balancing) Horse charge damage should be significantly more than it does, especially considering the amount hitting multiple bodies slows the horse down. There is also no trample damage from a horse running over someone that's knocked down.
- (Balancing) "Kiting" in battles is possible by getting yourself a few early kills, then retreating all troops. You then re-engage the same battle and can whittle down your opposition. This allows you to regroup the whole of both armies to give you a significant advantage over the AI since once they've engaged, they can't disengage.
- (Balancing) Ballistas have no crosshair which is odd considering bows and crossbows do.
- (Balancing) Riding into a tree has absolutely no impact to the horse rider... really this should cause the horse to come to a complete stop if it can, or send the rider flying off taking damage in the process... the same thing should really happen when encountering spears infantry, instead of causing the horse to come to a complete stop, the rider should be dismounted, but the spear would have to be a lot more accurate and assault the horse directly, not from an angle to accomplish that.
- (Balancing) Mercenaries can be bought and instantly swap allegiance in favour of the AI Kingdoms, but you cannot offer a mercenary more money to join your Kingdom (unless while being sieged, which breaks the game). Instead you must work through the persuasion aspect of the game as if they were a normal lord. If successful, they temporarily become a vassal until the AI Kingdom needs a new mercenary again, and they turn back into a mercenary clan for that Kingdom, and take your fiefs with them.
Ultimately, this is what I was left with at Summer 2, 1094.
Now despite the Khuzait having only one fief remaining, they still have a strength of 43,000. No armies available, and all of their parties consisting of less than 30 units per party. The progress bar, I had to claw back from -100 several times because of the stubborn Southern Empire, along with probably a lot of time wasted in chasing down lords of the southern empire to declare peace at least 8 times to try and allow some of my clans to trickle through into Khuzait territory - all for nothing it would seem.
In short, the major balancing problem here is that the campaign itself is unbeatable for the player, even on very easy difficulty. I'm not sure what the "10 years" bit is for, or whether its just a stop-gap, but that's probably where the problem resides.
