My thoughts on the Faction Snowball effect. Campaigns should go on forever!

[MrJoca]

+1

I'll probably place this game on stand by due to this issue coupled with the grind that is necessary to level up skills. I know that this it's EA and I'm not knocking on the game at all, I think it will be a great game once a few months of patching come by. But as of now, any long term single player campaign is just not attainable, and constantly having to start new campaigns due to one faction conquering everything in under 200 days, will surely drain the fun right out of the game for me.

 

[Tuco]

I examined situation. There are several reasons for this :
...
5-Currently there is no war decleration mechanic to a very powerfull kingdom or making peace mechanic to get unite aganist most powerfull kingdom. (will be added in next months, not quick one)

Thanks for the hard work!

I gotta imagine #5 is the real fix for this, but if you can make lords more defensively oriented until then, it won't be that big of a deal to wait for a few months for it.

 

[GhostTechGaming]

For me, Battania wiped the western empire to just 3 settlements. I actually feel like I am pretty lucky that they haven't destroyed the world but factions are way to weak in the sense of settlements and parties lords never have over 100 troops and a whole bunch have between 1 - 30 troops at most and constantly get captured by looters and bandits. Vlandia has a super tough time with this at least. There needs a lot of work for this to be balanced out and I am guessing the first Major Update will be reworking kingdoms

 

[Prifter]

Also another question related to the problem, why is there so many bandits and looters in Calradia. I know this is a fantasy world but I doubt there was actual hundreds of bandit armies roaming Europe back then. (I know there's probably exceptions but you know what I mean)

The problem is that when Lords lose a battle and manage to escape, whenever the are left with less than 10 soldiers, bandits destroy and capture them thus slowing even more the replenishing of this lord's army and accelerating the snowball effect for the winning faction.

 

[Callum]

Balancing is something that will constantly be worked on and improved through the Early Access period. It might be that the AI is currently pressing its advantage when their opponents are on the back foot and not giving them any respite. In theory, I guess that's what it should do, but it does have a negative effect on gameplay.

The devs are definitely aware of this issue and it will be looked in to.

 

[Admiralsexy]

I think when a faction gets too big it should break into civil war with all its factions trying to reform or maybe make new ones with different leaders the clans seem to be missing a lot of functionality they just seem to go mostly with what one leader/ruler wants not try and do their own thing. And pull at their attention the cohesion thing in the army functions feels like it doesnt work becausr its more likely they die by being defeated because attrition hurt them so much because they brought two days of food which inteslf should be dealt with if they dont have food they need to stop or raid a village for food or break up all together also i feel like their should be events that not just pisses off the different kingdoms but pisses off different clans i saw an potential element of that in a village quest where there was a blood feud and someone had to pay somebody off
Btw has anyone done quest for the lords because i only found one which was to recruit people

 

[lcmiracle]

We all made jokes about those feasts in Warband over the years but that sort of thing helped to sort of soft reset campaigns and get everyone back to doing normal things.

Thing is, it's almost all about Harlaus holding feasts after feasts while simultaneously at war with Rhodok, the Nords, the Vaegirs and the Khergit, maybe even the Saranids, while their only holdings consist of one castle and two razed villages. That holding feasts in the most inopportune moment is detrimental to preventing other factions from snowballing one faction too.

 

[Offline]

They lowered defection rates with last patch. Try starting a new game and see if you still get snowballing.

 

[SvarteOrm]

I examined situation. There are several reasons for this :

1-There were so many defections. Today with new patch defection probability is decreased and defections are rare now. Do not forget during defection lords also take their settlements with them to new faction. Weak factions were losing their lords and settlements to strong ones this was not so frequent but even 1-2 in a year this was effecting huge.
2-There are lords going in financial crisis stay with no money and they cannot recruit men. (will be examined tomorrow)
3-There were big starving penalty for starving castles and towns. For each 4 missing food 1 garrison were dying. This effect is now for 8 missing food with today's patch. Because they were dying they were making sally out and losing their defensive bonus.
4-There were so many sally outs and during sally out garrisons were losing their defensive bonus. This probability is decreased with today's patch now sally outs are rare compared to previous versions.
5-Currently there is no war decleration mechanic to a very powerfull kingdom or making peace mechanic to get unite aganist most powerfull kingdom. (will be added in next months, not quick one)

I continue searching for other reasons. However do not forget in Bannerlord there is no stable world even we fix these problems one faction can rule all the world without player interaction but this should take more time like 20 years maybe. We are working on that. If you want to show you effect on world is much conquer all world earlier than 1090.

Great to see you guys are on this problem already!

 

[blackwolf87]

+1
Couldn't describe it better

 

[Jack Avenger]

The Simpire reigns supreme.

I laughed really hard on this one

 

[Dagalexxus]

What I noticed as well is that once a faction is gaining an advantage the army size just goes far over anything their opponent can muster. I have seen in my play through (13hrs in) an army of 950+ just snowballing the remainder of an entire faction in one run with loads of smaller lords of the other faction following them but not able to group up and counter attack.
There is nothing anyone could have done to stop that which seems a bit broken as well and just feels like once one faction falls behind it is immediately the nail in the coffin for this one.

 

[Orbit-]

I agree with most of the things BUT marshall system in Warband was the worst thing in the game. This system we have in Bannerlord has lots of potential, I hated how it was in warband, lords wouldnt listen at all, they always broke off and run away when I was about to face a big army, or siege a settlement. This system is - as an idea- is good, just needs some improvements on recruitment, cohesion, and supplies. The problem with these huge armies is that there are bugs in the game preventing lords/ladies to recruit more soldiers and they soon run out of money. So after 1 defeat, they start to wander around with max. 30 soldiers, and sometimes even less. After they fix the money issue we will be able to see npcs spawn more armies and that will prevent the issue.

 

[brognar]

Simple: in Warband, it takes a long time for a faction's field army to be reduced to the point that a siege is possible. Whenever an enemy attempts a siege the Marshal scrambles an army to respond. usually the attacking side retreats unless they have a clear advantage, preserving their forces to fight on another day. Numbers win out in the end but thanks to an army's ability to retreat, massive stackwipes were rare.

In this game, auto resolve is way too aggressive at creating casualties, resulting in massive stackwipes very early in a campaign that leave the defeated faction impossibly behind. On the very first DAY of my current campaign there were 2 stackwipes and the Khuzaits started blobbing almost immediately.

Three steps I'd take to fix the problem

1: The spotting range of armies is absolutely tiny and N E E D S to be larger, giving the disadvantaged side more space and time to retreat and preserve their forces

2: Auto resolve needs to be slower and more expensive, like it was in Warband. The winning side should lost a lot of troops in a battle so they can't just snowball. In Warband, balance was preserved because offensive battles could wind up as Pyrrhic victories, with the victor's army severely reduced and vulnerable to counterattacks.

3: It should be way, way, W A Y harder to successfully siege down a castle or city. Making auto resolve more expensive would help a lot. Adding modifiers to make it even more expensive to auto resolve a siege would go a long way toward stabilizing the map.

Lords are too independent and oblivious in Bannerlord. They make almost no effort to cooperate defensively so basically as soon as one faction can somehow muster an army above a critical point (usually 200+) they can run into enemy territory with only small parties of 40 or so to meet them. No army is mustered in response and every lord they beat is dumped back into the world alone to be captured several times by looters and mountain bandits before they can slowly recover their modest sized party, if they ever do before they defect.

I like the idea of smaller lord parties and lords having to cooperate on campaigns, but there needs to be better defensive cooperation. Each faction should have certain "heavyweight" lords who take leadership and muster armies in response to enemy sightings/attacks. As it stands it seems armies are only mustered for offensive campaigns.

As well, the army system is an improvement (in theory) to the marshall system in Warband but lords don't seem to be able to cooperate outside of it. I've watched 3 40-man parties of Vlandians take turns running away from a party of 60 Battanians raiding a village. The only time individual parties reinforce one another is when they're coincidentally near each other when the battle is started. There needs to be some way for nearby lords to recognize a threat and automatically form an army if they can muster enough men to deal with it.

 

[Admiralsexy]

Now in regards this is early access as such that does guarantee from a consumer perspective theat there not done with the game when they announced i feintly remember that they said it was playable but a lot of features were still to be implemented which to means they knew and are fixing. Thats what differs ea from beta as well beta is done but bug fixing ea as i know it is anywhere from 50 to 80 % done. Abd thats what i feel were at now 70% done just need to add things to it that if i were to guess either is done and is destructivly breaking everything or is almost done and arent being added because the arent done yet or

 

[V-M-P11]

One of the problems i noticed with the balancing, which tremendously favoured Snowballing, is that faction growth is exponential via the defection system. On my first campaign, i joined the Vlandians early on and we were relatively balanced out. That is until the battanians came knocking with a 1.2k army and we lost Sargot to them.

We lost a city via war.

Then most clans started defecting Vlandia to join Battania/Northern Empire. We lost a city via war, but we lost 2 cities and countless castles via defections. And so, battania now fielded TWO 1.2k armies, one of which was mostly compromised of Vlandian defectors.

My point is, not only do factions have a horrible time trying to get back on their feet (recruiting, looters, priorities, etc.) but the winning faction just keeps getting bigger and bigger and able to fight many more wars at the same time. The second they start capturing cities and recruiting defectors, there's literally no way of stopping them.

In my opinion this is the biggest problem. I think you could fix this by just not allowing AI faction members to join other AI factions unless their faction has no land. Probably not a great long term solution though. So maybe better to just make it so that AI doesnt leave a faction as easily and maybe adding rebellion mechanics and such.

 

[Tomweya]

As well, the army system is an improvement (in theory) to the marshall system in Warband but lords don't seem to be able to cooperate outside of it. I've watched 3 40-man parties of Vlandians take turns running away from a party of 60 Battanians raiding a village. The only time individual parties reinforce one another is when they're coincidentally near each other when the battle is started. There needs to be some way for nearby lords to recognize a threat and automatically form an army if they can muster enough men to deal with it.

Exactly this, three seperate groups of NPCs came running at my siege camp and proceeded to run back and forth "Protecting the castle" and then "Fleeing me". The three were much larger than me in aggregate but as they weren't an army they seemed unaware that they could do so.

 

[Fantomen]

Alright so based on the comments so far it's clearly seems to be a problem with snowballing itself in the military and/or economy balance, it can happen with all factions and on any difficulty setting and regardless of if the player joins a faction or not.

Good news is that this kind of issue is common in new games with simulated economies, TWW2 had it with the dwarves snowballing in the large campaign, and X4 had the economy literally breaking down. So even if it currently snowballs it may at least be a sign that the simulation itself is complex and ambitious.

So solutions. I think the suggestions with boosting defense is a good idea, I've seen a lot of sieges that seemed too easy. Maybe bigger garrisons with lower upkeep and sieges taking longer to prepare. I also think sieges should require a certain amount of siege equipment before the attack can be launched, I've seen a lot of sieges with no siege equipment at all and it seems like a waste when they implemented all those cool rams and catapults and whatnot to not see them used in the game. Maybe have a requirement scaling up based on whether it's a castle or town + the size of the garrison.

Diplomatic solutions could also be used. It should be in the interest of all factions that one of the others doesn't take over, so it would make sense if there was a tendency to gang up on the biggest faction. You can also have defensive alliances where a faction calls it allies for help.

Worst case solution you could let the losing factions cheat a little bit in terms of recruitment and economy to lose slower, I hope there are better solutions though.

 

[Legebrind]

A kind of 'claim' system would be great, like to be able to annex a town or castle you have to previously spend influence to get a claim and then go to war for it. It should work as way as well of keeping lords busy with internal warfare as right now every realm is united and there is no internal strife. Having a way of claiming holds inside an empire (no civil war, just lord vs lord) would keep empires busy.

 

[imgran]

Also another question related to the problem, why is there so many bandits and looters in Calradia. I know this is a fantasy world but I doubt there was actual hundreds of bandit armies roaming Europe back then. (I know there's probably exceptions but you know what I mean)

The problem is that when Lords lose a battle and manage to escape, whenever the are left with less than 10 soldiers, bandits destroy and capture them thus slowing even more the replenishing of this lord's army and accelerating the snowball effect for the winning faction.

To flesh out this point a little better, looters and bandits should not be a peacetime thing because in peacetime, lords would hunt them down and drive them out for interfering with their economy. They should be in hiding, waiting for opportunities in the more remote areas of the kingdoms.

The problem is the map is so busy that there is no remote area. Everything is between something and something else and the distance between things is way, WAY smaller than it is in Warband.

IMHO the map is a huge problem, It's way too ambitious in terms of the number of cities and settlements, leaving everything packed together like sardines and no space in between for bandits to actually operate the way they did in the gaps between Kingdoms in Warband. Because there's so many cities and towns packed so close together, there's nowhere for bandits to be that is not right up in somebody's face.

To TLR, the map is cool, but has too much geography and topography and not enough tactical space to do anything meaningful.

Ultimately though, retooling the map is not happening, so I have no idea how to deal with this problem.