Playing as a small warband (clan tier1-ish) feels really bad

[imgran]

I have to agree. The worst stage imo is when youve got like 30 troops and youre too weak to help in wars but too powerful to farm looters or quest. There is a distinct lack of parties to fight around that size.

I haven't had that particular problem. I get to about that level i'm raiding Hideouts, especially Mountain Bandit Hideouts. it's a great way to farm reputation as it's usually tough enough to be interesting without being impossible, and the money's pretty good too.

 

[stevehoos]

The early game was my favorite part of Warband mods. I am worried a bit.

 

[Turtlefingers]

Go Khuzait, do some solo trading and questing for 30 minutes, and then build a 100% horse archer army. Looters will never get away from you again.

 

[Wehrwolfzug]

I'm not really looking for a noob guide though -- I'm saying building up an army sucks. I don't savescum, I play on realistic across the board and I do sometimes lose tough or overambitious battles, so that often sets me back to square one. And square one sucks. The best thing to do is just farm looters until you're up to strength again and this feels like crap because it is zero challenge and has zero impact on the world. Losing a battle, losing your army, and having to run around from town to town buying horses, gathering recruits, and chasing down looters while a war goes on all around you just feels really bad.

Yeah, I feel you. As a new player I have started to notice that bannerlord is a fairly simple game at the moment. I think this is actually a good thing, as balancing and building a new game requires time. This game reminds me a lot of Arma 3. It's a software engine that is like a chunk of play doh, every person has a different idea what to make with it. It is a raw product that is waiting for some creative minds to express their vision.

 

[Midnitewolf]

While more content is needed, as another person mentioned, the early game is over quite quickly so it isn't that big of an issue. Also they really need to work on more of the biggest picture items like getting Kingdom making and Management working or making castle/town management, management rather than just upgrade everything to level 3 ASAP and forget about it.

Lastly, why do you look to mods? There are tons and tons of mods already that add things like new bandit spawns, bandit caravans, etc. I am sure one of those would spice up the early game quite well.

 

[Orbit-]

This game is Bannerlord not Warband you are supposed to be playing as a Bannerlord... Jokes aside yes we do need more content for early game, like a lot.

The early game was my favorite part of Warband mods. I am worried a bit.

Same.

 

[Demoulius]

Are you playing on realistic? I mean, I've taken down large groups of forest bandits before with smallish groups but even bumrushing them point blank with 30 T2-T3 infantry will likely end up in a lot of carnage that isn't worth it. Money can't buy good troops.

I play on 1 mode underneath that. But havent taken any damage at all in that battle, so even if it was doubled it would have been irrelevant. But like I said, I was lucky that I could use the terrain to close with them without suffering any significant damage

 

[Swadianborn]

Yeah, this is the problem. It feels like that's your only real option. Even then, when you finally do decide to start actually playing the game you still need to go around powerfarming recruits on looters.



I'm not sure you read my post.

It was like this in Warband too and It's really not that hard to get strong enough to attack a faction and hunt lords with small armies.

 

[Dabos37]

Well, this is about the first 15-30 minutes in the game. Then you can reach clan tier 2 after doing some tournaments and trading.

 

[RhodokScrub47]

As a smallish clan you have no real gameplay options and playing as one feels bad. Your gameplay largely consists of getting recruits and farming looters for XP because you can't do much else. (To make matters worse, the larger your party is the slower it tends to get so you end up having to chase looters at a slower and slower and slower pace as you grow.) Everyone else has 80-man parties so the only thing you can do is join a larger army and have the lord randomly suicide the small army you painstakingly built up into the enemy, only for you to have to start all over.

There needs to be more to do for smaller clans and warbands. Bandits would be a thing if hideouts a) weren't so poorly designed as piecemeal slaughterhouses and b) killing bandits actually did something for the world state like freeing up trade routes or at least not make it simply a riskier version of farming looters. Quests? No thanks. Better off doing most of them solo since they rarely involve a party, and when they do (like the deserter or caravan quest) you'll probably get slaughtered and, again, have to rebuild your army.

Maybe more minor characters or clans belonging to factions would help so you'd be able to encounter smaller warbands to fight. I'm not sure how this would help though if they all just join armies when they're formed.

That brings us to simply raiding villages and slaughtering villagers which puts you pretty decidedly on the 'bandit'-ish path. Attack a village? -6 relation. Flee from an enemy army while it passes and attack it again? -6 again. Maybe if you want to go full 'screw it, scorched earth' like a bandito then this wouldn't matter, but part of the big issue is castles changing hands back and forth again and again. You'll likely be raiding a village that was once part of your faction, so when it gets retaken good luck recruiting from there or doing other quests.

So on we go, slaughtering looters until eventually we can play the game. There has to be another way.

the combat is so easy even on realistic that even with a decent 15-30 man party you can easily take out the smaller lords and the minor factions. I'd just do that during clan tier 1. I basically only played with khuzaits so this might not be true for the other factions.

 

[durbal]

the combat is so easy even on realistic that even with a decent 15-30 man party you can easily take out the smaller lords and the minor factions. I'd just do that during clan tier 1. I basically only played with khuzaits so this might not be true for the other factions.

With massed horse archers, yes, it's possible especially if you're on the winning side of the war (which if you're in the Khuzait faction is pretty much a sure thing) since the enemy has 80% of their armies as recruits.

 

[RhodokScrub47]

With massed horse archers, yes, it's possible especially if you're on the winning side of the war (which if you're in the Khuzait faction is pretty much a sure thing) since the enemy has 80% of their armies as recruits.

true, I mainly capture and recruit higher level steppe bandits and they seem to easily overpower the empire/aserai lords even when they have twice as many troops when compared to me.

 

[MBeagleguy]

For the time being, I agree with the OP, however the game is early access and literally launched less than 3 weeks ago.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

It's only 50 renown to be clan tier 1 and be able to be a mercenary. If you choose a background choice that give more renown it's even faster.
You don't need a bigger army to beat the lords that got beat once and now have 90% tier 1-2 units. I did it super fast on all realistic settings and once you take down a couple you get a power surge because you quickly have money for caravans and gear drops better then you can buy and you get rank 2 super fast. That awkward period in warband of "can barely feed my 50 dudes and gots no castle" doesn't happen as long as you can win because you get plenty from drops and ransoms.

 

[Sketchyad]

Dude, it's not hard to solo looters with horse and bow. With those, they're fun... to slaughter them mercilessly.

 

[Scrip]

As a smallish clan you have no real gameplay options and playing as one feels bad. Your gameplay largely consists of getting recruits and farming looters for XP because you can't do much else. (To make matters worse, the larger your party is the slower it tends to get so you end up having to chase looters at a slower and slower and slower pace as you grow.) ......

For my play, as a rule, I never hire recruits if speed of my army is below 5.5 (sometimes even not below 6.0). And buy horses for every footmen if you can.
Then I have no problem in early game, just pure fun!

 

[ZydrateTheSmoothCriminal]

Early game needs a lot more content. More interactive ambient life in cities & towns, more quests that tie in with the latter, options to play as a bandit, more meaningful mercenary play (and troop enlist - freelancer style?), fun caravan defense battle scenes and proper options to enlist as a caravan guard, I could go on. The more there is to do early game the more meaningful it feels when (or if) you graduate into being a vassal and perhaps even rising to rule.

Basically, more ways to "complete" the game and more ways to feel satisfied. Right now the only way you'll achieve anything meaningful is just conquest, which means you'll either rule a kingdom or join one. That gets old pretty quick and doesn't utilise the game's enormous potential. The option to build a trade empire, an independent mercenary company, a brigand band etc. are exactly the additions most players anticipated. Also, a lot of cool ideas were discussed and compiled into a huge list of community suggestions (more specifically this one) but I've heard the devs don't read or pay attention to those lists? Why? It could be excused in Warband as it was really old, the main idea was nice but everyone acknowledged it hadn't lived up to its full potential, it cannot be the same excuse with Bannerlord which is why I've yet hope.

 

[Owen Wulfson]

My suggestion isn't very fun but it worked out well oddly enough for me. When I started my Khuzait character I ran to Chaikland and got there on my 2nd day. Every now and again I boot up the game and just do practice fights to level my athletics, one-handed, throwing and occassionally polearm.

Here's the thing though, unlike most practice arenas it's actually very easy to win the Khuzait version once you learn how to throw a javelin and remember to pick up a shield. By the time I was level 8 on my Sturgian in the Imperial Arena of Lycaron, I had 8 thousand denars from the odd champion victory. By the time I was level 8 with my Khuzait, I had about 15 thousand in the bank and it's only the 2nd day since my brother gave me the Main Quest. So I can now run out of town with some armor, a bow and some mounted archers and start doing trade routes with bulk goods.

This isn't really a suggestion as to how you would change things up, it's just what I'm doing until they fix the main questline.

 

[blackbellamy]

I usually roll a heavy Social char with a riding and bow skill secondary. So my strategy for the early game is to complete the quest and gather companions and get the money. I don't recruit any scrubs. The first thing I do is get a bow and double up on the arrows. Then I find where the best melee companions are and head to them while trading goods and fighting groups of looters - ideally a group of 10-12 looters is the best for early solo guy and you can finish the last guy or two with melee to keep all the skills up.

Once I have the two good fighters I upgrade their throwing weapons and get everyone good horses and whatever else I can for cheap. Meanwhile I'm knocking off the lords for the main quest. It's going to be a lot harder once you're in a kingdom and there's wars, so I try to get the 10 for 10 while still roaming. I follow the best prices for trade goods so I traverse the map and usually find all the little exclamation marks no prob. I raise my clan level and get a companion that I send off on a caravan which will start making good money in a while so I continue to knock off small bands of idiots and raise my skills and get more loots. Once I have two fighters, a scout and a medicine guy I should have the quest knocked out and I should have accumulated enough cash to upgrade all my gear so I head down to my new kingdom, pledge fealty and start recruiting scrubs.

Then I take my scrubs and I join the army and hope for a castle. If my idiot lord gets the army wiped, I lose a bunch of recruits and a couple of days and I go get my guys back no sweat. After a winning battle I leave the army and run off to the town and sell all my loots and buy tons of food and head right back. I feed the army and they give me tons of influence and eventually I get the castle because they love me so much.

Then I just gather as many recruits and fight everyone and the wounded survivors go back to the castle where my governor medicine man hopefully does something and I keep getting healed guys back from the garrison so this way I always have a fully healed army and then it's just a matter of holding on to what you got and taking everything else from everyone.

 

[wherearewee]

My early game is tournaments, practice fights, and high paying quests. I use that money to recruit the first of my companions from various cities. Once I have those slots filled, I recruit my soldiers based on what kind of mercenary company I want to run. I usually have a focus, like heavy cavalry, infantry, skirmishers, or even an archer company. I always put all my companions on horses. I send the recruits into the meat grinder against looters and bandits to level them, with my character and companions acting as a small light cavalry flanking force to ensure victory. Meanwhile I take more quests and win tournaments for coin to better outfit my captains and hire replacement recruits.

Once I feel I've properly outfitted my captains from the spoils of war, I start a merc contract with whatever faction I feel like supporting. Then I start turning in looters and bandits for influence which converts to decent coin over time.

I don't think I ever spend more than 20 minutes as a Tier 0 clan, and Tier 2 hits pretty quick once you've been merc'ing for a bit. Then it's off to find a spouse and make babies for a late game I'll never see because I'm in a state of perpetually starting over due to new inspiration for characters and companies.