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

[Ouroboros]

I just join a faction currently at war with the biggest faction to tip the scales. Works fine for me. However, though it makes sense, it is a bit crappy being forced to do this instead of joining the faction I want to join instead.

I don't mind snowballing late game. But if I'm only at day 150 or something and still establishing myself, it really sucks if one faction is already super-dominant.

Basically - my only gripe is if a faction starts snowballing very early in the campaign, like day 100 or so.

 

[Grendlewalt]

But does this mean a never ending campaign because I’d like a dominant faction after a long term

Currently for me it seems so, but that's what I want.
I like to do some trade runs and tournaments at the beginning so I dont want any faction to be too strong before I finish that and move onto kingdom building.

If it feels like not enough is happening in the game just adjust the settings in the config file to be a bit lower.
I'm not saying this is a long term fix for the game just helps you play at your own pace a bit more for now.

 

[Brynjahr]

Currently for me it seems so, but that's what I want.
I like to do some trade runs and tournaments at the beginning so I dont want any faction to be too strong before I finish that and move onto kingdom building.

If it feels like not enough is happening in the game just adjust the settings in the config file to be a bit lower.
I'm not saying this is a long term fix for the game just helps you play at your own pace a bit more for now.

Okay understandable, for me I have limited snowball effects in my game but somewhat like dominant factions so long as it’s not due to a balancing issue so for now will stay in the native game and try and get as many bugs from there before using mods. Thank you for the info

 

[Pejot]

Still Sturgis is really weak and always dies fast (they should balance it some more).

Also there is one big reason empire grows fast. First upgrade of empire soldier gets shield while most of factions have it on second or third or never. This gives a huge defence bonus even for weak empire troops in autocalc.

I made some simulations of autocalc battles and on case where my infantry was 100% with shields I got less wounded/dead.
The number varied but was always smaller than with infantry without shield (despite tier)

 

[whentheragequithappens]

Great to hear. Thanks for sharing.

This was a very interesting simulation to run.
The simulation ran for 30 years total, because that is how long it took for a faction to wipe (Sturgia). Much longer than my simulations with unmodded or CWA only.

It is definitely the most balanced and stable map deveploment i have seen so far.
This also leads me to believe that garrison size and strength plays an important role in the balance issues, which a lot of people on this forum have already suggested. Larger and better garrisons does indeed make it harder for factions to snowball.

The simulation used:
CWA mod version 0.2.1 with default settings

AND

Bannerlord Tweaks mod with only the following enabled:
- Militia bonus
- Elite militia spawn rate bonus
- Settlement food bonus
-Siege tweaks
All Bannerlord Tweaks with default settings

Here is the development in power using towns as a measure:

Area-Chart:

Map after 5 years

Map after 10 years

16 years

20 years

25 years

30 years

Thx for your work dude; started a campaign with my own values with both mods then after some time i found it so stable.
i do wonder if you continue this one; when will a faction take over all. maybe 100 years?

 

[klink.von.stalag13]

The problem with a campaign that is supposed to be about a total conquer of the map is that maybe that exactly not what we enjoyed in M&B: the fact that the main wars was just giving some change of the context but most of the entities werent wiped.

With M&B WFAS, you had the historical mess of various entities going up an down. So you could be a lord in all this mess and do something for yourself.

 

[Figulus]

Tried this and can say it also works for me re sn

First you need to download the 'Bannerlord Tweaks' mod.

Through this mod you can adjust the garrison militia levels for towns & castles, the rate of elite militia in these, and the food production levels to keep up with larger garrisons.

I personally have set the levels much higher than the defaults in the mod.
I have set Castle Militia Bonus and Town Militia bonus to 9, elite troop rate for towns to 0.7 and castles to 0.4, and both food bonuses to 7.

After 8 years, the lowest any faction has got was down to 3 towns, but that faction is now sitting on 6.
The largest any faction got was to 10 towns and now they sit at 5.
At different times 3 factions have been above 6000 strength and then come back down, and 2 factions have been below 2000 strength and come back up to above 3000.

Obviously this is only evidence from one playthough so not really statistical proof but there are some reasons why I think this works:
-These settings leave castles and towns with 500-700 defenders at any time, around 500 militia and 1-200 garrisoned troops.
-An AI army of around 1000 tends to lose around 70% of its troops vs the 500 defender castle, meaning lords need to build their armies again after.
-An AI army of 1000+ will sometimes actually lose against 700 defenders, meaning this faction may be worse off for warmongering.
-In both scenarios the attackers will need to regroup meaning they remove garrisoned troops from their own castles, which weakens their own holds, and makes them more likely to be taken by others.
-Militia forces however are completely separate from clan armies and cant be removed from the garrison. This means towns & castles can still be reasonably well guarded when a faction has many of its clan leaders imprisoned or stuck with small armies.

I may have gone a bit too far with the settings though as 2 of the factions haven't changed at all in the 8 years with the towns they own, some castle changes though. But this is definitely the best playthrough I've had so far with faction balance. Its the first time I've had more than 1 faction be significantly the strongest at different points in the campaign.

One other benefit of more militia troops is it makes the sieges more fun to play as you are not always 1000 vs 200 stomping.

So if you're not having fun with the snowballing and want a longer game, give this a try, I hope it works for you and wasn't just a one off!

Tried this and it also works for me re snowballing.

 

[heltonjmattei]

Well, I got the same problem. Someone already discovered what to do? I think it would have some to do with the unfinished main quest as long we can't solve the conspiracy problem maybe somehow the Empire got advantage ...

 

[GrasSclammPferd]

The lack of casus beli and truce period also makes the war a non-stop battle fest.

 

[Jumara]

In my oppinion the new army feature is a major culprid in letting the lords steamroll. All the losing side is doing is riding into enemy territory with an inferior army and getting crushed then flee and reform only to do it over and over again.

 

[Lazor]

To share my thoughts a bit, this is the primary issue that has been plaguing the game for me so far. In terms of some suggestions...

1. There needs to be a truce period after peace is declared, for somewhere around 14 to 30 days. Even using a mod that forces factions to declare peace more frequently, it's common for them to almost immediately declare war again.
2. There needs to be alliances. Smaller factions should be able to band together in order to push back against snowballing factions.
3. Extremely aggressive expansion should be met with extremely aggressive consequences for doing so. If a faction sweeps two cities and a few castles within a short period, it should leave them open for easy counter-attacks.
4. Some of the AI decisions leave a lot to be desired. I've seen multiple instances where factions will dive straight for a city and take it over within 2 hours of game time, even if it is completely surrounded by enemy castles. There should be some sort of system in place where you need to have at least one castle in proximity to a city in order to attempt to siege it. What's worse is that the AI doesn't even seem concerned about taking back their lost territory. They're entirely content to just go raid another faction and just ignore the fact that their city was just demolished.

I think that these additions would probably go a long way to curbing the effects of snowballing. Without something along these lines, the game is essentially unplayable, because by the time the character is powerful enough to actually change the outcome of the game, it's already over.

 

[Chris Matters]

I agree with point 1
2 & 3 I would combine in mechanic similar to aggressive expansion from Europa Universalis IV
4 Played just around 20 hours so I can't tell

I would also add Civilization game mechanic when city fresh after capturing will try to rebel and you need to garnizon lots of troops to suppress it for time. This would slow down wars and snowball.

 

[Pejot]

New game on 1.0.7 Sturgia and Northern Empire destroyed before 1885.

 

[Sarissofoi]

There is few issues at last for me.
>clans defecting
>defeated lords spawning back almost instantly with free troops(they also evry easily run from prison)
>losing side armies mostly compromise of low level troops - it make sense but with no passive training its hard for them to level up troops and most lords lack training perks(and they do nothing anyway)
Biggest issue is that winning side have immediate access to new manpower when losing have their manpower cut off. (It also lead to mixed culturally armies or whole armies having not kingdom troops - like I was part of battle where Vladians fight Imperials and one side was using Sturgians troops only and the other one Aserai troops).
>bonus points for food on market affecting garnison food stockpile and when player/lords/merchants buy it all its suddenly starvation season

So things that could be done:
>cultural recruitment - lords could only recruit their own culture kingdom troops plus mercenaries from inns, with different culture troops would only come in auxiliary version and harder to recruit
>with slow cultural conversion that make more and more slots producing local recruit able recruits
>fix Prosperity negatively affecting food supplies, city starving should not affecting stronghold garrison - sure it should affect rent and add probability for riots and weaken militia but troops in garnison should be feed from separate granaries
>make towns/castles able to stockpile food in separate granaries

 

[Varrak]

Maybe giving individual factions certain goals aside from genocidal world domination would help. Some could be defensive, some could fight for trade routes or even have a desire to conquer a certain region of the map. That way it gives enough spark to create interesting conflict, but each conflict has an endpoint AND an interesting story rather than just being war for war's sake.

This should not be forgotten in previous pages.

 

[Sidhwen_Khorest]

I used the CWA mod that forces people to make peace earlier than usual, and I cranked those numbers up so that even one successful siege or a few raids or one big battle would cause peace. The snowball stopped happening (or happened very slowly) but the problem now is that lords don't have enough to do, each faction is rolling around with armies of a thousand troops.

This is why I am hesitant to such measures as "just add in feasts" or "just slow it down" because it seems like the economy isn't designed for war to stop like that. I think taleworlds knows that and thats why we haven't gotten a cap or something like they did with the wood workshops initially.

 

[Pejot]

I used the CWA mod that forces people to make peace earlier than usual, and I cranked those numbers up so that even one successful siege or a few raids or one big battle would cause peace. The snowball stopped happening (or happened very slowly) but the problem now is that lords don't have enough to do, each faction is rolling around with armies of a thousand troops.

This is why I am hesitant to such measures as "just add in feasts" or "just slow it down" because it seems like the economy isn't designed for war to stop like that. I think taleworlds knows that and thats why we haven't gotten a cap or something like they did with the wood workshops initially.

Yep CWA is a workarounf but not a fix and it bring it's own complications like further economy unbalancing.

 

[mexxico]

I used the CWA mod that forces people to make peace earlier than usual, and I cranked those numbers up so that even one successful siege or a few raids or one big battle would cause peace. The snowball stopped happening (or happened very slowly) but the problem now is that lords don't have enough to do, each faction is rolling around with armies of a thousand troops.

This is why I am hesitant to such measures as "just add in feasts" or "just slow it down" because it seems like the economy isn't designed for war to stop like that. I think taleworlds knows that and thats why we haven't gotten a cap or something like they did with the wood workshops initially.

Yes we are not acting in hurry in this snowball thing like we acted in wood workshop / smithy OP problem. As you see 10 year settlement count graphs we are slowly fixing this problem in every patch. I do not want to add some easy hotfixes like adding more peace times. Because these additions can make game boring. Of course we can make peace times a bit more but problem is in peace times all lords start to wander around they need more mechanics features then like feasts and these are not hot fix these changes need time and bigger patches.

Currently game has not got enough quests to fill these gaps at peace times. By addition of new quests and new features we can increase peace times. Some people here put graphs after each patch and you can see how snowballing issue is slowly fixing. However please be patient in this problem because we should not damage gameplay while fixing this. We have lots of different solutions to fix this problem and we are slowly testing them and will add them by time.

 

[Mppqlmd]

Thank you for the answer !

 

[sherdil]

Yes we are not acting in hurry in this snowball thing like we acted in wood workshop / smithy OP problem. As you see 10 year settlement count graphs we are slowly fixing this problem in every patch. I do not want to add some easy hotfixes like adding more peace times. Because these additions can make game boring. Of course we can make peace times a bit more but problem is in peace times all lords start to wander around they need more mechanics features then like feasts and these are not hot fix these changes need time and bigger patches.

Currently game has not got enough quests to fill these gaps at peace times. By addition of new quests and new features we can increase peace times. Some people here put graphs after each patch and you can see how snowballing issue is slowly fixing. However please be patient in this problem because we should not damage gameplay while fixing this. We have lots of different solutions to fix this problem and we are slowly testing them and will add them by time.

Thank you. I completely agree with everything you just stated.

The snowball balancing goes to the very core of the gameplay of Bannerlord and the changes must be made gradually and correctly. Any abrupt change will cause more problems in other areas of the game. I have full confidence in the devs to make this game great.