SP - World Map My thoughts on the Faction Snowball effect. Campaigns should go on forever!

[Malorn]

I think the problem is actually a bit simple. Right now lords are extremely motivated. They will fight and die for things that give them nothing, for people they do not like, and keep doing it until they have no more resources or troops to send to the fight.

This is not logical. Lords are supposed to care about themselves first, their clan second, and the kingdom a distant third. Sure, stopping attackers is necessary to protect their own lands, attacking is necessary if they think they will personally gain from the conquest. This is the cornerstone of a solution, getting lords to fight offensively should be difficult, and they should only be willing to do when they are in good shape. This would give major bias to the defender, and benefit the kingdom which has the most unity.

 

[Broxogar]

I think the problem is actually a bit simple. Right now lords are extremely motivated. They will fight and die for things that give them nothing, for people they do not like, and keep doing it until they have no more resources or troops to send to the fight.

This is not logical. Lords are supposed to care about themselves first, their clan second, and the kingdom a distant third. Sure, stopping attackers is necessary to protect their own lands, attacking is necessary if they think they will personally gain from the conquest. This is the cornerstone of a solution, getting lords to fight offensively should be difficult, and they should only be willing to do when they are in good shape. This would give major bias to the defender, and benefit the kingdom which has the most unity.

Definitely part of it - but one major issue I found with Warband was that the kingdoms basically didn't change much until you got involved. Then it was actually pretty simple to do what the AI is doing in Bannerlord.

Just smash them down one at a time. Similarly, it did seem to be harder to attack in Warband - which meant that when I was defending I almost NEVER had to worry about losing much of my empire.

Simply making it harder for the AI to 'attack' won't help anything in the longterm - it will just mean they are stuck in their current territories until you inevitably steamroll them, because you (as a player) can choose when and where and what to attack.

I like the aggressiveness, I dislike that the other factions don't really react to the aggressiveness.

 

[ssssnake]

Suddenly the crusader kings system starts making sense. Make reason to go to war (fabricate claim) go to war over claim, if wins enough and wargoal is taken, peace can be gotten and the wargoal only is kept. If the one being attacked turns out being the winner they can demand lump sum money, or tribute (money over time)

Some variation of this Crusader Kings warfare would be great. Right now, in Bannerlord, factions are taking castles and towns so quickly that the defenders can't even have time to put an army together to defend.

It should cost influence to declare war, and the broader your war goals are, the more influence it should cost.

 

[Malorn]

Definitely part of it - but one major issue I found with Warband was that the kingdoms basically didn't change much until you got involved. Then it was actually pretty simple to do what the AI is doing in Bannerlord.

Just smash them down one at a time. Similarly, it did seem to be harder to attack in Warband - which meant that when I was defending I almost NEVER had to worry about losing much of my empire.

Simply making it harder for the AI to 'attack' won't help anything in the longterm - it will just mean they are stuck in their current territories until you inevitably steamroll them, because you (as a player) can choose when and where and what to attack.

I like the aggressiveness, I dislike that the other factions don't really react to the aggressiveness.

I wasn't saying to make attacking actually harder, I was speaking of motivation. A faction in the corner, in massive danger, would have motivation. Their lord would fight to survive, to regain what they have lost. On the other end, a faction where lords all have fiefs...well, that's a bit different. In short, the very people who become strong, those with incomes, should not be as motivated to fight. They have wealth, power, etc. Whereas if they have no fiefs, they should be 'hungry' and willing to push with whatever they have, as lesser as that might be.

Oh, and fix sieges. Sieges should be costly as hell for the attacker, period. But right now I generally see roughly equal losses, which is just silly even for the 2 to 1 advantage the AI often has.

 

[Broxogar]

I wasn't saying to make attacking actually harder, I was speaking of motivation. A faction in the corner, in massive danger, would have motivation. Their lord would fight to survive, to regain what they have lost. On the other end, a faction where lords all have fiefs...well, that's a bit different. In short, the very people who become strong, those with incomes, should not be as motivated to fight. They have wealth, power, etc. Whereas if they have no fiefs, they should be 'hungry' and willing to push with whatever they have, as lesser as that might be.

Oh, and fix sieges. Sieges should be costly as hell for the attacker, period. But right now I generally see roughly equal losses, which is just silly even for the 2 to 1 advantage the AI often has.

My sieges have played out appropriately I think - the attacking side takes heavy losses until their breach the walls. Usually then it starts to even out and if the attackers STILL have advantage after that - they usually win (and might make up some of their kill/death ratio) as they overwhelm the remaining attackers.

 

[rainford]

I am on my 4th campaign, aprox 10-15 hours in each, and every single time i feel like the factions start to snowball too fast, in 2 of my campaigns i tried to always join the underdog factions to try to stop the snowballing faction to win and i have noticed that for some reason, factions seem to refuse to try to defend their territory, multiple times, i would try to defend a city, alone when their armies are not even that big, easily beatable with some reinforcements... and sometimes you just cant call for an army yourself.
I am guilty of liking to do trading and questing a lot, but i havent even reached clan tier 3 yet without a faction already being snowballing.
I understand that this is EA but hopefully it gets fixed so i can have long term goals in the game and not feel like i have to rush into war to have a more balanced experience.
also joining the snowballing faction is not fun imo either because its just a free W.

 

[The Luminary]

Some variation of this Crusader Kings warfare would be great. Right now, in Bannerlord, factions are taking castles and towns so quickly that the defenders can't even have time to put an army together to defend.

It should cost influence to declare war, and the broader your war goals are, the more influence it should cost.

I like that idea. 300 influence to wage a war unless there's a good reason. To make it work you would need a lot more minor factions to be at war with during longer peacetime with the major factions as the game currently requires constant war unless you enjoy farming looters or passively trading.

The minor factors would need to be more of a threat with large armies and able to own fiefs. As a kingdom gets bigger it should be increasingly hard to maintain, with lords breaking off forming their own new factions or joining/allying with minor factions.

50 years into the game maybe 3 major factions should still remain with the chance for a minor faction including player created ones to still rise up and have a chance even if small of winning.

 

[Diavolo]

Some variation of this Crusader Kings warfare would be great. Right now, in Bannerlord, factions are taking castles and towns so quickly that the defenders can't even have time to put an army together to defend.

It should cost influence to declare war, and the broader your war goals are, the more influence it should cost.

I actually started wanting a system like this in warband too, mostly because then you can have factions actually focusing on war when they are at war, instead of the endless wars one saw in warband.

 

[Niomedes]

Link to the original Steam Discussion: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2615...1390557/?tscn=1585991375#c2144217924385093276

Everyone who has played a game for more than 300 days has experienced this: One kingdom suddenly starts to take over the entire world within a few weeks, and there is literally nothing you can do about it. After 1000 days of game time, I've identified what I believe to be the main factors that lead to this situation. The following is a short list in order of descending severety with my personal suggestions on what might be done to fix these issues. Since I don't know on what kind of decision making system the AI operates in this game, my suggestions may or may not be applicable though.

1.AI Agressiveness:
Problem: The AI is indeed capable of stopping wars and making peace, but generally only does so after they have entirely wiped out their opponents, or reduced them to a single town. And sometimes they don't even make peace after that. This means that a war will almost always end with at least one faction being wiped out, since peace doesn't really seem to be an option in the mind of the AI.

Possible Solution: I don't know if the AI operates on a weight or war goal system, but if it operates on a weight system, the weight towards making peace could be increased by an extreme amount after a single Town is taken, which would then lead the AI to immediatly try and negotiate a peace after a single town or castle changes hands. It might also be possible to introduce a war goal system which makes the AI go to war over a single Town or castle, or at least a limited amount of those. The AI would then solely concentrate on its objectives, which would limit the war in both scope and scale.

2.AI Lord Loyalty:
problem: Lords don't really seem to give a damn about their oaths towards any ruler, and are more than willing to betray their liege as soon as the war isn't going 100% in their favor anymore. This means that the losing side of any war will instantly start bleeding lords, which means losing armies, which means more battles are being lost which means that even more lords change allegiance to the other side and so forth. This then leads to a snowball effect that combines with point 1 and makes everything so much worse.

Possible Solution: decrease likelyhood of lords changing sides by increasing their loyalty to their liege. If this is weight based, lords which have the same culture as their liege should have an extremely high weight of supporting him and not changing sides to a leader of another culture. The Imperial civil war would then still work, with lords changing sides oftenly since all Imperial contenders have imperial culture, but I wouldn't need to see Imperial Archons leaving their glorious heritage behind to instead join the forest people of Battania or some nonsense like this anymore.

3.Lacking diplomatic options:
Problem: It is currently appearently impossible to form alliances, non agression pacts or really anything. Kingdoms can only ever be at war or at peace, and I honestly have yet to find an indicator for whether relations between kingdoms are good or bad, if there is even such a thing as Kingdom relations. The main issue here in relation to the topic of this thread is naturally that Kingdoms cannot form an alliance or coalition in opposition to a nation that is becoming too strong, but I also regard this as an issue in general.


Possible Solution: Add more diplomatic options for Kingdoms, clans, etc. to engage in diplomacy with each other, and perhaps also add a full blown diplomatic AI like the one that exists in Paradox Interactive grand strategy games. Perhaps even introduce a threat rating or something like this which increases with the size a kingdom has in comparison with the rest of calradia which leads to other kingdoms forming coalitions against it if the rating becomes to high.

4.Towns and castles are too easy to take and not very well defended most of the time:
Problem: The AI doesn't seem to place substantial garissons anymore and leave the defense up to the militia, which will usually not succeed in holding on to anything.

Possible Solution: Make the AI put down more and stronger garissons, or improve the militia.

5.Not enough Recruits:
Problem: This only really is an issue due to it multiplying the impact of the other factors I already mentioned. It would cease to be an issue alltogether, if points 1-3 are adressed accordingly, but as it stands now, it is a problem. The AI doesn't cheat troops into existance anymore, and that is a good thing in most regards since winning battles actually means something now. On the other hand however, losing a single battle or a series of battles will put the AI at such an extreme disadvantage as the returning and remaining lords now have to compete for limited stocks of recruits while the enemy is essentially free to conquer most of the kingdom in the mean time. This, compounded with the AI agressiveness and low loyalty of lords, means that even in a relatively equal confrontation, one kingdom will get destroyed very hard, very quickly as it cannot possibly make up for its losses in time.

Possible solutions:
1. Increase number of recruits per slot.
2. Solve problems 1-3. If the AI is less agressive, Lords don't immediatly change sides and more diplomatic options become a thing, this won't be a problem anymore since the AI will have an opportunity to regroup, doesn't immediatly lose most of its commanders and potential armies after just a few defeats, and might be able to ally with someone to improve its odds in the next confrontation.

Or:

3. Make the AI cheat again. And NOBODY wants that, do we ?

 

[Shrugging Khan]

IMHO the game should prevent snowballing entirely. Any faction that grows too big should splinter, or be pushed back. Destroyed factions should always reappear.

Else there's no point to long-term mechanics like raising children.

 

[Odione]

When I watch streaming of this game, most of the players there kill the generals/lords after the fight. Maybe that is the reason for the snowballing.

Or maybe the world of Calradic is full of snowflakes like ours?

 

[SerMittens]

Hard to say, so far the only constant is:
Battania dies.
Aserai dies.
Sturgia dies.
Two empire dies.

 

[fanch88]

you're right i was thinking the same on this
maybe add a casu beli( humilation , conquest ect ect) for war and longer peace time with internal war to get castlle to the other clan and keep us occupate could help too
(sorry for the bad english not my language)

 

[SerMittens]

Period of peace after every truce is also good, so they have time to reset.
Making sure the AI prioritize making peace when fighting multiple fronts could also help.

 

[BUFFbeard]

Day 246

This was my second campaign that I am playing since the launch date, I poured many hours into it. Battania destroyed the Western Empire and has made peace with the Northern and Southern Empires. They turned their attention towards waging war on Vlandia, the Khuziats strangely, and now the Aserai.

The Southern Empire was previously at peace with everyone but now on attack against the Khuziat, my character joined the Empress to initially curb the onslaught of Battania and because Sturgian nobles kept being taken prisoner by bandits and looters. Originally he was supposed to become a vassal for Sturgia because of his background.

Meanwhile the Northern Empire is at peace, and I foresee both Vlandia and Aserai to be taken over by the Battanians in the next 100 days.

 

[BrianDavion]

Absolutely needs to be a top priority - spend hours getting my smithing up and a little trade empire while getting involved in fights for my faction - then BAM Khuzaits own the map, turn their 30,000 power against our 2,000 power and now the game is over. Just sitting here on fast foward hoping some sort of Civil War would break out.

But nope.

A civil war mechanic to slow down factions that get too big would be an absolutely perfect way to address this

 

[RahroUth]

Top priority should be the performance. I dont even bother to start the game anymore since i know it is gonna be a slideshow.

 

[Landstrider]

Maybe we could make the AI feast again after every siege to celebrate like they seem to have done back in Warband, only stopping if any fief is under attack.

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, couple this with the AI asking for peace more when their casualties reach a certain threshold and I'm thinking it could work to give players a campaign that lasts with empires structurally surviving for a long time and still wage war.

 

[Skurkanas]

I hate the idea of the auto-peace after a single town/castle. Wargoals (bought with ruler influence) would be better, but still not really fitting to M&B. Warband worked fine without any of these.

I think what's mainly needed to fix this is diplomacy, mainly alliances. I got to a point where the main quest makes 3+ nations gang up on the one you gave the dragon banner to and it's instantly interesting again

Also they could lower army cohesion a bit, or make them harder to maintain for long periods of time (food scarcity etc.).
Lastly we are sorely lacking internal realm politics so far. No revolts, no disgruntled vassals ignoring your call to arms etc. With that, roving doomstacks will also become much rarer.

Just please no forced-peace. That's a terrible idea

 

[Orkmann]

A lot of good ideas. I believe the most important would be to increase the garrisons and make them regenerate quicker. Limiting the AI via some kind of wargoals system would be useful too.

Personally I would not mind evn a mild amount of AI cheating, if that makes the game more balanced. I like for instance the EU4 revanchism system, which provides bonuses to the faction which was defeated. That could help a faction stay alive after an initial loss.