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

[Watercrown123]

Honestly I just want to see things get to the point where no empire gets wiped out without player intervention in MOST playthroughs in the first decade and no single empire controls the entire continent before your kids are in their 20's in any playthrough and often not until your grandkids are of age.

It should also be BRUTALLY difficulty to conquer the map with your kingdom of choice in the lifetime of your character. It needs to be a HELL of a lot more than "side with the big dog and wait in town for a few years." It should be near impossible to do so in your characters lifetime if you form your own kingdom.

That's about what I'd expect from a balance perspective. I want a campaign I can sink my teeth into for a few hundred hours at least.

For people that want shorter games my suggestion would be to include "end condition" options upon starting a new campaign.

Examples of this would be:

• Game ends after so many years.
• Game ends after one faction controls X amount of territory.
• Game ends after founding your own kingdom and control X amount of territory.
• Game ends after you fall in battle (Permadeath/Ironman style.)
• Game ends after you acquire X amount of weath.
• Game ends after you reach X amount of renown.
• Ect.

I also feel that this needs the absolute top priority. After all there isn't much point waxing the court(bug fixing) if you don't have a ball to play with.(snowballing.) A crash here and there isn't going to make the game unplayable. It auto ending itself effectively does. To use basketball as a reference again what we currently have is a game where they do the tip-off and whoever gets possession wins the game.

If the AI needs to cheat when behind so be it. I mean we are playing a game where you can hire a unit wearing a quarter million gold in equipment for 12g a day.(Which with time-scaling is more like 2g per day) The economy already makes zero sense, so I'd much prefer better gameplay at the cost of a little number fudging.

I totally agree with all of this. If we're going to have this dynasty thing then we really do need to have a far longer campaign. If you do want a shorter game where you conquer the entire world with your very first character you'll need to accept that you're taking on a challenge similar to beating Dark Souls in under X amount of time or with only X equipment, etc., it would essentially require you to truly "git gud" at Bannerlord.

 

[sherdil]

Honestly I just want to see things get to the point where no empire gets wiped out without player intervention in MOST playthroughs in the first decade and no single empire controls the entire continent before your kids are in their 20's in any playthrough and often not until your grandkids are of age.

It should also be BRUTALLY difficulty to conquer the map with your kingdom of choice in the lifetime of your character. It needs to be a HELL of a lot more than "side with the big dog and wait in town for a few years." It should be near impossible to do so in your characters lifetime if you form your own kingdom.

That's about what I'd expect from a balance perspective. I want a campaign I can sink my teeth into for a few hundred hours at least.

For people that want shorter games my suggestion would be to include "end condition" options upon starting a new campaign.

Examples of this would be:

• Game ends after so many years.
• Game ends after one faction controls X amount of territory.
• Game ends after founding your own kingdom and control X amount of territory.
• Game ends after you fall in battle (Permadeath/Ironman style.)
• Game ends after you acquire X amount of weath.
• Game ends after you reach X amount of renown.
• Ect.

I also feel that this needs the absolute top priority. After all there isn't much point waxing the court(bug fixing) if you don't have a ball to play with.(snowballing.) A crash here and there isn't going to make the game unplayable. It auto ending itself effectively does. To use basketball as a reference again what we currently have is a game where they do the tip-off and whoever gets possession wins the game.

If the AI needs to cheat when behind so be it. I mean we are playing a game where you can hire a unit wearing a quarter million gold in equipment for 12g a day.(Which with time-scaling is more like 2g per day) The economy already makes zero sense, so I'd much prefer better gameplay at the cost of a little number fudging.

Good pointers that can be considered.

I like the idea of have to build an empire through generations.

 

[Niomedes]

https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/49? try this mod , i'm currently using it and no steamrolling for the moment day 150 only lageta fall to the vlandia

While your effort is commendable, this can't be the solution. The solution must be in the base game for all our sakes and thr games' sake. Te devs can't rely on people like you to fix their game. Though I would recommend that you approach them with what you did, since adding exp to tournaments etc. Are really valuable changes.

 

[D.O.A.]

Snowballing is the biggest issue right now what's the point of having 50 kids and a dynasty and desperately trying to grind to a level at least higher than a dude I just hired in a million gold worth of equipment for like 2g a day, so how's he gonna meet his bank loan repayments on his crossbow if I'm paying him peanuts.

tl;dr: re: snowballing, the game is over before it even begins.

We're just bug testing what's built I know but that's a pretty big bug.

 

[Niomedes]

Made a thread containing most of the issues. Maybe you guys feel like adding to it ?

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/analysis-of-the-kingdom-snowball-conquest-problem.404951/

 

[Redshadus]

Snowballing is the biggest issue right now what's the point of having 50 kids and a dynasty and desperately trying to grind to a level at least higher than a dude I just hired in a million gold worth of equipment for like 2g a day, so how's he gonna meet his bank loan repayments on his crossbow if I'm paying him peanuts.

tl;dr: re: snowballing, the game is over before it even begins.

We're just bug testing what's built I know but that's a pretty big bug.

Snowballing is not a bug. It's a accumulation of several different factors that need to be tweaked / added / removed

 

[Benisfug]

https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/49? try this mod , i'm currently using it and no steamrolling for the moment day 150 only lageta fall to the vlandia

The siege tweaks seems simple but effective. AI can't take over if they can't take castles obviously. How are we going to tell Talesworld? I figure they won't hear a single user over this tsunami of complaints. Can we bring their attention to this mod?

 

[fanch88]

While your effort is commendable, this can't be the solution. The solution must be in the base game for all our sakes and thr games' sake. Te devs can't rely on people like you to fix their game. Though I would recommend that you approach them with what you did, since adding exp to tournaments etc. Are really valuable changes.

yeah i agree with you on that , and i don't think the dev rely on the people to fix the game but people are incrediblie fast to do it^^ the dev can't match with thousands of passionnate an skilled people around the world .
i hope they keep an eyes to the modding communitie for inspiration and maybe aside with some good modder to give a hand ( against retribution of course)

 

[fanch88]

The siege tweaks seems simple but effective. AI can't take over if they can't take castles obviously. How are we going to tell Talesworld? I figure they won't hear a single user over this tsunami of complaints. Can we bring their attention to this mod?

yeah its simple and effective and you can tweak like you want , i dont have touch the renow and xp cause i think it can be game breaking but i double garison bonus and food bonus , i have follow an big ass army of 1600 men to see the result ans it was a massacre ^^ they loss nearly 1/3 just for a casstle and the rest to the town so they can't steamroll further , the time to reinforce the army was gone .
plus the patch of the dev woo discourage lord to switch side i thinks it pretty good for now.
waiting for the official patch

 

[Rafalongo]

Another solution could be what I've seen on a TW:Warhammer mod - every faction has a list or fiefs they consider rightfully theirs and will mostly only wage war if they are missing any of those those

THISSS, central cities, a few, highly priority and in which they put all their effort to recover, would help them not to disappear and would keep the original territories linked to their culture.

 

[Lucius Confucius]

Until the player, the, chosen one, decides to unite all of Calridia at least. There should not be any one faction taking over the map without player intervention until at least 100+ years in game have passed.

Mount and blade is a sandbox, not something campaign oriented like total war. AI should be rather stagnant and limited in sandboxes to allow players the freedom of a 200+ hour play through or just to walk around trading for 50 years.

Devs need to figure out what they want. More campaign, story driven with a time limit for max play-through and objectives for victory, or a sandbox like warband was.

Exactly.

Would love an eternal campaign, where after 200 hours you can look back at all your children and heirs, remember heroic deeds, remember the fallen, and think how far you've come!

 

[D.O.A.]

Those feasts we all memed in warband seemed to reset the war clock in that regard. for now it's a total war steamroller.

 

[Zamorak]

Yeah, i thinks its a bit mess, since the bigger nations wage war against very small nations, i tryed to do trader and bandit charecter, but first game western empire snowballed hard, second game Vlandia and Khuzait snowballed, and ate all the minor powers. I see the problem,so the smaller nation try to wage war many nations at same time. And bigger nations consume them.

But still, the game is damn goood, and its still EA.Totally worth waiting all this time!

 

[DaVinchi]

2 games so far and both times Khuzait has over run the whole kingdom.

 

[reset5]

Personally I think there are 4 major issues contributing to snowballing:
1. Vassals getting imprisoned after every battle. They should have like 70% chance to escape from lost battle.
2. Vassals getting swarmed by looters because they're unable to get their troops recruited. They should probably stay inside castles/cities until they have at least 20 recruits. Now they walk around without army and get attacked by looters. Pair that with 100% chance to imprison and they just stay in prison all the time.
3. Too small garrisons. Cities should field at least 500 men. Castles should field at least 200.
4. Lack of piece deal mechanics meaning one war can wipe out faction off the map. There should be warscore system to make it so faction can only take fraction of holdings in a war. Something similar to europa universalis 4 peace deal system would be awesome. Alliances would also improve situation a lot with smaller factions ganging up when one big faction emerges.

 

[Benisfug]

2 games so far and both times Khuzait has over run the whole kingdom.

I might just play something else. Even after all these patches the snowballing is still here. Call me when it's fixed

 

[peenerz]

+1

 

[Rigan]

Devs need to figure out what they want. More campaign, story driven with a time limit for max play-through and objectives for victory, or a sandbox like warband was.

They can do all three, just give me the options to amend my game as I want!

 

[Occyfel]

That would just make the game last forever... And the point is that they hate each other too much to do this

You can see many instances of nations allying with enemies to take on a greater enemy.

 

[High chief Kieran]

Mexxico (game dev) already responded to this, the campaign is not designed to go on forever, it should take the ai about 20 years or something like that to take over the world. his post can be found here

They can do all three, just give me the options to amend my game as I want!

they are supporting mods, so they are already giving you that option.

Edit: fixed link