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SP - World Map My thoughts on the Faction Snowball effect. Campaigns should go on forever!
- Thread starter Koartz
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phillies6f
Recruit
He’s referring to the fact that after a short time in game people are seeing one faction take over the entire world. Or at least many factions being wiped out almost instantly.
Every map looks like this, or some variation, after the player barely gets off their feet.
Its pretty random who it is, its not any single overpowered kingdom, its the fact that when the AI gets going, they really get going
I have seen scrennshots of pretty much every faction archieving world-Domination
DId you bother to ensure this bug or imbalance was reported in the correct forum?
This isn't a bug post its an opinion.
Theres plenty of posts in there about it already.
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Frappee
Recruit
Its really ridiculous bug, I wasn't paying attention on my main quest for the first year and spent most of time on Smithing. The northern kingdom that I joined snowballed rampant and took over entire world in the second year. When I finally finished my story hearing, Bannerlord quest already became impossible to complete. Because I have no a single settelment available on the map to rebuild kingdom nor give it to norther kingdom lord (because its imperial).
ANYONE ?
ANYONE ?
Not really on anyone's side here but who actually uses time spent on a forum as an achievement.
The Luminary
Sergeant
The fief "sally out" formula also contributes to the problem. Just took over a town with 20 troops guarding it because the AI decided to sally out. The formula should be 2x+200 before any fief should sally out with x being the number of enemy troops sieging so there will always be at least 200 troops left to guard the fief after a sally out.
I'm tired of taking over fiefs with only militia guarding it. Lords should really have a larger initial and constant base income so they can leave some troops in their garrisons. Bigger garrisons would really help to curb the snowballing rate.
I'm tired of taking over fiefs with only militia guarding it. Lords should really have a larger initial and constant base income so they can leave some troops in their garrisons. Bigger garrisons would really help to curb the snowballing rate.
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Agreed
It's a known issue, many have reported it, me too Let us hope it will be fixed soon
The execution is definitely not facilitating that.
As far as the mechanics of the game itself, it seems geared for long campaigns -- things like clans, being able to have children and presumably play as them later, the grindiness of the skill system, the relatively slow burn of gaining influence against the high cost of spending it. Everything in the bones, the skeleton of the game itself, seem set up for campaigns that last a very long time.
But there's just so much missing to make the campaigns last this long, and so many things that are also counter-intuitive to a long campaign. A few examples:
The game seems to want me to play for a long time but it also seems to undercut that from happening. Even if the player kingdom system was full and finished, there would be nothing to do but fight against a gigantic monolithic faction that had taken over the entirety of the map once it had steamrolled everything else. And that would ultimately come down to encountering these massive armies and either winning or losing against them. Once someone had won or lost that encounter, the outcome would be academic as things stand due to the game's other issues.
There are a lot of small tweaks that can greatly improve these things but I fear that for the time being, every campaign is going to feel fairly cookie cutter, just with some random elements about which faction attains supremacy and starts to snowball first.
As far as the mechanics of the game itself, it seems geared for long campaigns -- things like clans, being able to have children and presumably play as them later, the grindiness of the skill system, the relatively slow burn of gaining influence against the high cost of spending it. Everything in the bones, the skeleton of the game itself, seem set up for campaigns that last a very long time.
But there's just so much missing to make the campaigns last this long, and so many things that are also counter-intuitive to a long campaign. A few examples:
Faction snowballing: We've all seen this to some degree. If you haven't yet, you surely will as you continue playing. Once a faction wins a few large set-piece battles, the faction on the losing end often has a very, very difficult time recovering. I've heard a lot of theories about this and I've got a few of my own. I personally think it has a lot to do with the speed/availability for recruits which significantly hampers an AI lord's ability to get back on their feet once they've been wiped out. Obviously, their AI has a lot to do with it. They shouldn't be sallying out without any troops in their army because they just end up getting captured by bandits which starts a vicious cycle of it happening over and over again.
INTENSE WARMONGERING: The AI doesn't ever seem content with its gains. Whenever I join my faction's army and we start rolling, we take one city and immediately set the objective for the next. 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. In Bannerlord, you just roll from castle to castle, city to city, and if your faction's army is big enough, you roll right through them without difficulty.
A Lack of Intrigue: This one is, I think, very important. Outside of the occasional vote for a castle or some new lawful provision, there is very little intrigue within factions. The absence of intrigue between lords is a major blow to fracturing the power base of factions. It turns them into monolithic juggernauts that win hard, or lose hard. And it leaves very little to do other than steamrolling through castles. I think these last two go hand-in-hand and maybe the warmongering is part of TaleWorlds' plan to cover for these missing features -- I don't know. But I miss denouncing lords, getting into duels, trying to provoke wars on border skirmishes. Now, the wars just seem to start without provocation and without any real explanation. The game loses a lot with these things being absent.
A Lack of Patrols: There just aren't any faction patrols anywhere on the map aside from the few minor factions active. I guess you could also call this 'too many bandits' but bandits are also very important to facilitating early game which, again, might really point out the grindy skill system as the largest detriment here because you absolutely need to fight bandits constantly at the beginning of your campaign or else you'll just never get anywhere. But I think adding some faction patrols around castles and urban centers would do a lot to, hopefully, prevent the AI lords from sallying out without any armies and just instantly getting captured. It would help to just improve the AI of those lords but: why not both?
The ARMY Feature: And finally, and I think most importantly, is the system of joining these massive roving armies prowling around the map. This feature seems absolutely worse in every single way than the Marshal system from Warband because there's just no give to it, no elasticity or flexibility. When a Marshal called an army, it would lead to these gigantic roving bands of multiple lords and their men storming through the map, YES, but a few of those lords would always bleed off to chase bandits, or follow a caravan, or something. There was a chance that steamroll would lose its steam. In this Army feature, it seems to happen a lot less. People join a gigantic army and they just stick together until it dissolves which leads to 900+ troop armies just steamrolling around the map and given the grindiness of the skill system, and of the renown, when am I ever going to be able to stop that sort of thing on my own? It just seems impossible. You can either run away, conceding your castles, or try to form a bigger army and hope you win. And when these gigantic armies collide? The winner continues to steamroll, the loser finds his faction utterly decimated due to the other problems listed above. This is breaking so many campaigns right now because the balance is just abysmal. Everything centers around these gigantic battles and once they're done, the war is basically over. Is this more realistic and historically accurate? Yeah, I suppose it is. But it's not the best for gameplay at all. The stakes are too high in these confrontations and a faction's life or death is decided in them with very little chance for them to recover.
The game seems to want me to play for a long time but it also seems to undercut that from happening. Even if the player kingdom system was full and finished, there would be nothing to do but fight against a gigantic monolithic faction that had taken over the entirety of the map once it had steamrolled everything else. And that would ultimately come down to encountering these massive armies and either winning or losing against them. Once someone had won or lost that encounter, the outcome would be academic as things stand due to the game's other issues.
There are a lot of small tweaks that can greatly improve these things but I fear that for the time being, every campaign is going to feel fairly cookie cutter, just with some random elements about which faction attains supremacy and starts to snowball first.
Kaan The Recruiter
Recruit
As I said before top priority should be snowball bug right now. +++
maiel
Recruit
In my games Lords leave kingdoms way too much. In both my games my kingdom lost 2 or 3 cities to sieges and in less than 50 days the lords of the other 4 cities just LEFT the kingdom.
(insert confused meme here)
I haven't even reached one year or completed the first quest to talk to 10 guys and my kingdom is already dead.
(insert confused meme here)
I haven't even reached one year or completed the first quest to talk to 10 guys and my kingdom is already dead.
Kaan The Recruiter
Recruit
Generally, the lords end up captured by bandits because of the bug that makes them travel alone.
+1 on all of this. How am I supposed to play with my kids if when my character is 32 (and it starts at 30) everytjing is conquered already? I barely reach clan tier 2 before everything is done. It was nice of them to make so that Lords do not cheat and create an army like the player, but this also created this mess.
I cannot even reach clan tier 2 before the snowballing starts, it really sucks the fun out the game
I was already at clan tier 4 by the time I had my first child lol.
