Please adjust respawn mechanics

[Badcritter]

In my opinion, i think respawn instantly with free troops is the key to stop snowballing.

Let me try an example to demonstrate why this doesn't help, at least not on its own.

Routinely people only think as far as what happens when the losing team suffers a battle loss and requires replenishment. But to stop a snowball what needs to happen? The team that is struggling, let's call them the defenders, has to win battles against the team that is having success, let's call them the attackers.

When the defenders beat an attacking lord what happens? The attacking lord comes back with fresh troops as fast as a defeated defending lord would. Net effect of universal fast replenishment on snowballing? Negligible. The team on the offensive is as much harder to stop as the defensive team is more enabled to defend by rapidly replenishing troops.

If a soccer game is experiencing a score blowout and you want to do something to players universally to reduce it, you don't add more players to both teams or give both teams more subs. You improve the ratio of defensive players on both teams. You could also change the rules of the game (analogy of the introduction of the offside rule, which would correspond to sieges being made easier for the defender to win).

Providing a bonus that only applies to the party that is "losing the war" is a different exercise. The challenge there is less about determining what the bonus should be, and more about how to identify who is winning and losing wars in a multilateral environment with 8 factions with a dynamic web of wars starting and finishing.

 

[Nokturnel]

Just like basic diplomacy features could fix the snowballing issue.

- AI not being so dumb as to declare war on multiple Factions at once.

"If at War with Factions > 1 then; declare peace with 1 faction"

A simple if-then statement to fix that issue.

- Ability to form alliances with other Kingdoms in order to fight stronger Kingdoms.

"If Army Strength of this Kingdom < Half of the Kingdom they're at war with then; Ally with someone else for the love of god."

There's so many ways you can balance and fix the snowballing issue that the focus should really just be implementing the core features of the game IMO though. Balance it after the core features are in game, if you keep trying to balance the snowballing + economy while those core features don't exist yet, you're gonna have to just keep balancing it after each new feature is added which is just a waste of time. Get it all in game, get it all working AND THEN balance it.

 

[Toplayer]

Let me try an example to demonstrate why this doesn't help, at least not on its own.

Routinely people only think as far as what happens when the losing team suffers a battle loss and requires replenishment. But to stop a snowball what needs to happen? The team that is struggling, let's call them the defenders, has to win battles against the team that is having success, let's call them the attackers.

When the defenders beat an attacking lord what happens? The attacking lord comes back with fresh troops as fast as a defeated defending lord would. Net effect of universal fast replenishment on snowballing? Negligible. The team on the offensive is as much harder to stop as the defensive team is more enabled to defend by rapidly replenishing troops.

If a soccer game is experiencing a score blowout and you want to do something to players universally to reduce it, you don't add more players to both teams or give both teams more subs. You improve the ratio of defensive players on both teams. You could also change the rules of the game (analogy of the introduction of the offside rule, which would correspond to sieges being made easier for the defender to win).

Providing a bonus that only applies to the party that is "losing the war" is a different exercise. The challenge there is less about determining what the bonus should be, and more about how to identify who is winning and losing wars in a multilateral environment with 8 factions with a dynamic web of wars starting and finishing.

Actually the loser need to come back before the winners can take the city, or the loser should be able to take the empty city back very soon if the city is taken. The winner of the last battle should not be able to win again against the loser who come back with fresh troops

In your example, I see that the attacker can come back immediately with fresh troops and beat the defender in the next battle, but you know the defender will be back real quick and stop the attacker from taking the city. No matter who wins first, the following battles will be around this city only

Probably the current respawn mechanic is not the best solution of snowballing, but i dont think it should be changed before the snowballing can be solved completely in a better way.

 

[Toplayer]

Just like basic diplomacy features could fix the snowballing issue.

- AI not being so dumb as to declare war on multiple Factions at once.

"If at War with Factions > 1 then; declare peace with 1 faction"

A simple if-then statement to fix that issue.

- Ability to form alliances with other Kingdoms in order to fight stronger Kingdoms.

"If Army Strength of this Kingdom < Half of the Kingdom they're at war with then; Ally with someone else for the love of god."

There's so many ways you can balance and fix the snowballing issue that the focus should really just be implementing the core features of the game IMO though.

In my experience, the faction which is at war with a major faction will not declare war on another major faction. Player declared war is excluded.

Edit: the loser ally with somebody might be helpful, but the current wars between major factions are all 1v1. This means there can be 4 winners and 4 losers and i dont think they can create balanced alliance.

 

[Nokturnel]

In my experience, the faction which is at war with a major faction will not declare war on another major faction. Player declared war is excluded

I've had multiple playthroughs where factions will be at war on 2 fronts getting decimated or as soon as they declare peace with one faction they immediately declare War with another after already getting their asses kicked to proceed to get their asses kicked by a new faction lol. Peace just doesn't seem to be an option and Lords don't seem to ever surrender or try to barter their way to peace. Especially when the player is involved.

You can chop every Lord's head off in a faction and the last surviving member will still be like "IDGAF I'll never surrender even though I'm outnumbered 400 to 1!" Or they'll hide out in a city YOU own while you can't even capture them, they get to hang out in your Lord Hall while at war with you with no way to be like "WTF are you doing in here? Go to jail so I can execute you."

 

[Maximuuus]

Oh ok, I understand now why npc armies are going to beseige castle in the middle of nowhere... That's because they know every garrisons...

There's still lots of work for them to become good.

Now that it's known, I know what to do... Keep an empty castle in the middle of mye territory so ennemy is going to rush... Easy kill.

 

[MinhTien]

Hey Mexxico, and thank you for your hard work and communication. So far my opinion on most changes you've proposed and implemented have been positive, they have all been good for the game. But I want to provide some criticism regarding npc lords knowing garrison sizes at distance, not because it's "unrealistic", but because I don't believe this "cheat" helps the AI at all. Here's my reasoning:

One of the reasons (out of many reasons), according to my experience, with why factions on the defensive against a stronger faction keeps on losing without the ability to recover (snowballing), is that the AI thinks that besieging a weakened town/castle deep inside enemy territory will shift the balance back in its favour. There are two problems with this assumption:

1) By leaving homeland and venturing far into enemy territory, the faction on the defensive leaves its own lands open for attack by the enemies armies, without being able to be close-by to rush to the defense of its remaining cities and castles.
2) Even if the faction on the defensive successfully manages to locate, besiege and conquer a weakened city or castle, odds are since this new territory might be within the enemies heartlands, it will just soon be retaken by the stronger faction with more resources available to it anyways.

If, instead of knowing the garrison size of towns and castles far away, the NPC's had to work with the information it's able to scout (and remember after scouting for a certain period of time, say a week or two of in-game time? Perhaps more?), it would more usually than not make the decision to attack castles and cities bordering its own territory. This would result in three things:

1) The faction on the defensive would much more quickly be able to respond to the attacking factions attacks against its own territory
2) Army cohesion would on average be higher at the time of besieging an enemy town/castle, leading to sieges not failing due to cohesion running out
3) If the faction on the defensive successfully managed to conquer a bordering city/castle, it would be able to respond much more quickly to rush to its defense once the attacking faction attempts to retake said city or castle.

I think you should take these things into consideration, try them out a little bit and see how they play out when two factions (with one being weaker than the other) are at war with one another over numerous games over some periods of time, and see if perhaps this approach would be more logical and result in more intelligent behaviour by the defending faction.

Edit:
Perhaps a bit unrelated but I think this is important to point out: The autocalculation bonus given to Cavalry of 1.3x over other unit types is one of the major contributing factors to snowballing by Vlandia, Khuzaits and to a certain degree also Battania (which for some reason has alot of cavalry in its party templates).
As far as I know, this bonus to autocalculation is still given to cavalry even during sieges. Which besides not making much sense, makese these cavalry-heavy factions even more "overpowered" during sieges scenarioes, when "realistically" the power of their cavalry should really only shine during field battles, and not during sieges.
In my opinion, the Cavalry bonus should just be removed alltogether, but if this is not on your radar at all, then at the very least consider removing the Cavalry bonus during Sieges, as that would slow down these two powerful factions (Khuzaits and Vlandian) a little bit when it comes to snowballing during Sieges.

Thank you for your hard work and I hope you will take this feedback into consideration.

Agreed. The AIs currently will cross vast distance to try and besiege weak fiefs, suffering starvation and deteriorating cohesion on the way. So very often, all they accomplish is getting massive casualty and scattered deep inside enemy territory and then get mop up. For the winning faction, this can be rectify, but the losing factions suffer terribly for this because they will have less and less fiefs to recruit from. This omniscience ends up biting the losers in the ass due to poor decision making

Please reconsidering having the AI knowing all fiefs' strength!

Or maybe the AIs should put more weight on distance in their decision-making.

Or maybe instead of needing to actively scout, the AIs could have a passive radius of knowledge from each of their fiefs (castles and towns), to represent those fiefs sending out scouts. So they know information about garrisons' strength of fiefs near their border, but no further.

I also agree on the subject of Autocalculation. The formula definitely needs tweaking. I know it's hard to factor in sound tactic and equipment into this, but I hope it can get better.

Also cavalry is not what I imagine when thinking about Battania. Why do they have so many horsemen? Among the Battanian Tier 5, 2 out 5 are cavalries! Cut one of them out and give them a line of commoner archers instead would fit the faction's image better, I think.

 

[durbal]

Also cavalry is not what I imagine when thinking about Battania. Why do they have so many horsemen? Among the Battanian Tier 5, 2 out 5 are cavalries! Cut one of them out and give them a line of commoner archers instead would fit the faction's image better, I think.

They're based on cultures which used a lot of cavalry actually.

 

[MinhTien]

They're based on cultures which used a lot of cavalry actually.

Really? I thought the Celts are strong in infantry and archer, with light skirmishing cavalry. Not to mention the forest terrain of Battanian land does not seem suitable for large cavalry force. Anyways, I still think a common archer line would fit better than 2 cavalries.

 

[bonerstorm]

In my opinion, i think respawn instantly with free troops is the key to stop snowballing.

NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOOO SWEET MERCIFUL JESUS NO

You absolutely have to be trolling.

Instantly-respawning enemies with free troops is the cancer that is killing this game and it was the cancer that killed vanilla Warband.

Fighting the same respawning army every 5 minutes is not fun. Nobody in their right mind wants to do this.

It's like how nobody takes death in comic books seriously because everybody keeps getting free resurrections. There's no point to defeating an army in Bannerlord if it will be back just as strong the next day. Wars become pointless lawn maintenance if there is no significant consequences to defeat on the battlefield.

The problem with snowballing isn't defenders respawning fast enough (they respawn plenty f***ing fast) - the problem is that they immediately go on the offensive and get into more stupid fights they can't win instead of reinforcing their own damn fiefs or protecting their villages from raiders so their garrisons don't starve or healing their wounded. I can't count the number of times I've wiped the same damn 50-man mercenary army raiding one particular village, captured the guy leading it and stuffed him in my dungeon only to watch him come right the hell on back a few minutes later. And I can't cut off his damn head without being labeled "dishonorable" because he isn't "dishonorable" himself.

I hope to God the devs don't listen to nonsense like this or I'm going to set my game on fire and salt the earth and walk away from all of TW's cancer gaming forever.

EDIT: I'm sorry if I'm being harsh. I'm not trying to insult you. I'm just frustrated because this was my biggest peeve with Warband... the fact that I had to carefully curate my elite troops and carefully manage my vassal armies and interrupt sieges to remind them that they really should be sticking around for this and do all of this obnoxious crap to pull off a war effort... while the AI could just cheat whole armies into existence. That breaks suspension of disbelief and any sense of overcoming real challenge. Instead of me vs the ai it's me vs the devs and their retarded game mechanics.

 

[margenat]

There are only 3 cheats currently :
-npc lords are spawning with 25% of their part size is filled (this will decrease to 10% soon)
-npc lords get extra small amount of xp to troops daily (starting with 1.3.0) to allow them have more elite troops otherwise they have 50% tier-1 troops
-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

There are no other cheats.

Could i ask why? There was no need for these 3 cheats.
1º- If we used viking conquest recruitment system then lords shouldnt be able to replenish their troops outside their fiefs, thus stopping snowballing so the 25/10% free spawn shouldnt be needed.

2º- Reduce ai aggro and make them chase bandits in their lands instead boosting them like that. Clans can form many parties so in war time they sould left a minor noble of their clan chasing bandits.

3º- In warband there were scouting missions when you were called into a war, lets bring them back so the way to discover how much a castle or a town is garrisoned.

 

[Toplayer]

Could i ask why? There was no need for these 3 cheats.
1º- If we used viking conquest recruitment system then lords shouldnt be able to replenish their troops outside their fiefs, thus stopping snowballing so the 25/10% free spawn shouldnt be needed.

2º- Reduce ai aggro and make them chase bandits in their lands instead boosting them like that. Clans can form many parties so in war time they sould left a minor noble of their clan chasing bandits.

3º- In warband there were scouting missions when you were called into a war, lets bring them back so the way to discover how much a castle or a town is garrisoned.

Yeah there is no snowballing and respawn cheat in VC. Probably because VC got a much larger map and a complex morale system ? I mentioned about VC on steam forums but people told me that the mechanics of VC and Bannerlord are completely different. They don't think devs want to rework it.
Anyway, VC got more factions. A few of them will still get wiped early, but nobody cares.

 

[bonerstorm]

Yeah there is no snowballing and respawn cheat in VC. Probably because VC got a much larger map and a complex morale system ? I mentioned about VC on steam forums but people told me that the mechanics of VC and Bannerlord are completely different. They don't think devs want to rework it.
Anyway, VC got more factions. A few of them will still get wiped early, but nobody cares.

Well the AI was definitely smarter in VC. But also to be fair it was nigh impossible to maintain good relations with vassals long-term with a large kingdom, even with a player doing insane micro. From what I remember, at a certain point the bonus relation from giving a fief to one lord got outweighed by penalty relation to lords who didn't get it so eventually all larger kingdoms broke apart.

 

[Toplayer]

NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOOO SWEET MERCIFUL JESUS NO

You absolutely have to be trolling.

Instantly-respawning enemies with free troops is the cancer that is killing this game and it was the cancer that killed vanilla Warband.

Fighting the same respawning army every 5 minutes is not fun. Nobody in their right mind wants to do this.

It's like how nobody takes death in comic books seriously because everybody keeps getting free resurrections. There's no point to defeating an army in Bannerlord if it will be back just as strong the next day. Wars become pointless lawn maintenance if there is no significant consequences to defeat on the battlefield.

The problem with snowballing isn't defenders respawning fast enough (they respawn plenty f***ing fast) - the problem is that they immediately go on the offensive and get into more stupid fights they can't win instead of reinforcing their own damn fiefs or protecting their villages from raiders so their garrisons don't starve or healing their wounded. I can't count the number of times I've wiped the same damn 50-man mercenary army raiding one particular village, captured the guy leading it and stuffed him in my dungeon only to watch him come right the hell on back a few minutes later. And I can't cut off his damn head without being labeled "dishonorable" because he isn't "dishonorable" himself.

I hope to God the devs don't listen to nonsense like this or I'm going to set my game on fire and salt the earth and walk away from all of TW's cancer gaming forever.

EDIT: I'm sorry if I'm being harsh. I'm not trying to insult you. I'm just frustrated because this was my biggest peeve with Warband... the fact that I had to carefully curate my elite troops and carefully manage my vassal armies and interrupt sieges to remind them that they really should be sticking around for this and do all of this obnoxious crap to pull off a war effort... while the AI could just cheat whole armies into existence. That breaks suspension of disbelief and any sense of overcoming real challenge. Instead of me vs the ai it's me vs the devs and their retarded game mechanics.

There was snowballing on day 1 and it got fixed in patch 1.0.5 and 1.0.6. I didn't notice if people were also complaining about the insane respawn cheat of AI around that time. so i assumed that the respwan cheat was added to balance snowballing. I could be wrong here. I just hope no change will possibly bring snowballing back.

I hope the devs can actually make sure the change wont mess up anything else. I don't agree with some changes such as more elite troop for AI, troop equipment nerf, loot nerf etc. Hopefully these changes were not made based on the biased feedback.

 

[bonerstorm]

There was snowballing on day 1 and it got fixed in patch 1.0.5 and 1.0.6. I didn't notice if people were also complaining about the insane respawn cheat of AI around that time. so i assumed that the respwan cheat was added to balance snowballing. I could be wrong here. I just hope no change will possibly bring snowballing back.

I hope the devs can actually make sure the change wont mess up anything else. I don't agree with some changes such as more elite troop for AI, troop equipment nerf, loot nerf etc. Hopefully these changes were not made based on the biased feedback.

On that we can absolutely agree.

Thanks for your understanding tone after I kinda flamed you a little.

I'm seeing a lot of really terrible feedback on these forums. Tons of people with longstanding accounts are complaining about how the game is too easy because it only takes you a few hundred hours to level a combat skill to 100 or something. Or it only takes a couple hours to build up a strong army. Or how it only takes half a dozen hours to make lots and lots of gold.

I think there's a kind of gamer who would love nothing better than to grind this game for months and years with nothing to show for it.

And these same gamers, of course, are complaining about things being too easy when they cheese the game by running nothing but horse archers and caravans and buy/sell random crap and grind looters in 12-hour shifts and maintain 24/7 companion "armies" to grind Leadership. The hubris of these people - complaining that the game is too easy while min/maxing everything and burning weeks of their miserable lives away.

Now I find myself doing some of the same things and I kind of hate myself for it.

I just really hope the devs realize that these people aren't normal and they're alienating the people who just made them tons of money by feeding into this nonsense.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I want the AI lords to suffer! I want to see them slogging around from village to village having to buy newbs and horses after I kick their butts!
I however don't want the AI to knock each other out too fast and IMO they should never completely finish each other unless the player does it.
I hope someday they can add something that just makes them not ruin the game prematurely but also doesn't give them easy street annoying advantages.
There was big talk about how Bannerlord would make NPC lord do the same crap the player does to re-supply and grow, so I hope that returns sometime, but I understand the changes are to reduce snowballing.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Yeah there is no snowballing and respawn cheat in VC. Probably because VC got a much larger map and a complex morale system ? I mentioned about VC on steam forums but people told me that the mechanics of VC and Bannerlord are completely different. They don't think devs want to rework it.
Anyway, VC got more factions. A few of them will still get wiped early, but nobody cares.

You do realize that Viking Conquest lords "cheat" too, right? They don't wander around hiring available peasants from random villages. They go back to their fief and sit there for a little while as their party replenishes itself according to a preset party template that determines the amount of each troop they get. If they own multiple fiefs, they go and visit each one to collect money and troops, but again its not like they're hiring the actual peasants who happen to be there. Their army just magically fills up while they visit.

The party template system was pretty clever and kind of complex. There was randomness built in so that lord parties weren't all cookie cutters, and it accounted for the lord's status, renown and number of holdings, so there was a big difference between the powerful lords and the junior village lords and a king was always a real powerhouse.

This is the sort of system I mean when I say "let them cheat". Its not perfect, but it does the job quite well. It takes defeated lords off the board for a few days, which was a lot in Warband time, but it also ensures they have a real army when they do come back at you.


*Edit* I should add that I think Bannerlord's band-aid approach to stop steamroller by instantly giving defeated lords a small free army is a bad solution because its not giving them a timeout, so they immediately come back to harass you. That's not fun. At least in Warband, when you beat a marshal's army, you had a few days breather where you knew there wouldn't be any major attacks. With Bannerlord's accelerated timescale, it should probably be like a week.

 

[Beau Vine]

-npc lords know your garrison sizes at your distant towns

Damn, thank you for this info
I assumed my Revyl was just unlucky - although with sallying-out fixed and small number of elites garrisoned, it turned the region into quite neat killbox.

 

[eddiemccandless]

You do realize that Viking Conquest lords "cheat" too, right? They don't wander around hiring available peasants from random villages. They go back to their fief and sit there for a little while as their party replenishes itself according to a preset party template that determines the amount of each troop they get. If they own multiple fiefs, they go and visit each one to collect money and troops, but again its not like they're hiring the actual peasants who happen to be there. Their army just magically fills up while they visit.

The party template system was pretty clever and kind of complex. There was randomness built in so that lord parties weren't all cookie cutters, and it accounted for the lord's status, renown and number of holdings, so there was a big difference between the powerful lords and the junior village lords and a king was always a real powerhouse.

This is the sort of system I mean when I say "let them cheat". Its not perfect, but it does the job quite well. It takes defeated lords off the board for a few days, which was a lot in Warband time, but it also ensures they have a real army when they do come back at you.


*Edit* I should add that I think Bannerlord's band-aid approach to stop steamroller by instantly giving defeated lords a small free army is a bad solution because its not giving them a timeout, so they immediately come back to harass you. That's not fun. At least in Warband, when you beat a marshal's army, you had a few days breather where you knew there wouldn't be any major attacks. With Bannerlord's accelerated timescale, it should probably be like a week.

100% agree with this. I find it ironic myself that the Warband mechanics were scrapped to not let the AI cheat, and now the AI is actually cheating worse than it did in Warband with insta spawn free armies. I honestly don't understand why we can't just have the same system that Warband had, if it's not broken don't fix it.

 

[icthulu]

I am grateful for the discussions here, it gave me an opportunity to hear other's prospective on the game's mechanics. I have to say that the Viking Conquest mod sounds far better than the current peasant spam, but I am curious about two things.

Why don't some of these steamrolled Fiefs revolt? I would think that would stop the inevitable Khuzait conquest, as the AI would need to stop their army and rebuild order in the newly conquered Fief? Which makes me wonder why being parked in my own Fief has no impact on loyalty.

The other is that the toll for attacking a Fief of any kind doesn't have a high enough death count for the attacker. If the game had a more clear cost to attack a Fief I think that would add value to the possession of the territory and stop large kingdoms from snowballing until late game when they really should be encouraged to do so.