Recruits need to far less common in armies

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I agree. The solutions have already been mentioned in this thread (they may be temporary solutions if TW has other plans):

a) AI Lords should get a passive experience bonus like 'Raise the Meek' but stronger.
or
b) Villages should have more tier 2 units for hire.

I just ran into a 1300 man Vlandian army comprised of about 700-800 recruits. I've never seen the killfeed speed by so quickly as they got decimated.
 
I think this "too many Recruits in lord's armies" issue isn't really a fundamental problem in itself, but rather the symptom of other problems. The recruitment & troop-development mechanics might actually be all right, except they're overstressed and distorted by the never-ending warfare. Another factor: all Calradic lords are escape artists who rarely spend more than 1-2 days behind bars when captured. Which means all the lords are constantly sucking up all available recruits from settlements, to the point where it can even be hard to even find a lot of Recruits in some areas, let alone higher-tier troops.

OP suggests that perhaps a future patch might add higher-tier troops available for recruitment in settlements. Lol...it's already like that now, and has been since EA release. It takes a little bit of time, however, for the settlements to develop those and populate the slots in the recruiting screen...but AI party leaders are stripping many of the settlements bare too quickly for that to occur.
 
I disagree, in Mount & Blade the lords are running around with their personal retinues. why would it be full of peasents? Lower tier units such as a soldier with perhaps just a helmet a spear and a shield I 100% want to make up the majority so I hope that is what you meant. I also subcribe to the idea that even peasents could manage to scrap together a shield and a spear if they were levied into a proper army. Peasents defending their homeland from raids are something else.
He said top tier troops. He didn’t say tier 2-3 troops
 
The biggest thing this game needs is an out of battle training system. Time spent at garrison, an arena type event where troops train with you (this was in Warband), ways to build up towns where they give more experience to in waiting troops: there is just a bunch of things that could, and should, be done to fill battles with more mid tier troops.

Id hate to see battles shift to nothing but top tier, but considering most factions don’t get basic roles like archery or light Cav until Tier 3-4, this really needs to be addressed
 
I´m almost certain this has been brought up before on numerous occasions, but in case it hasn´t I´ll do it now. In the mid/mid-late game when you have amassed a warband of higher tier units every fight turns to a slaughter of whoever you´re fighting. Killing waves of unshielded recruits feel more like a gamey chore rather than a challenging battle. I think one of the upcoming patches should either make villages/towns have higher tier units to recruit, both for the AI and player or that the lords are better at training their troops to a higher tier before going to battle.

Simply put the solution to this is to allow weaker armies to withdraw from fights at partial strength, allowing them to keep a cadre of experienced units. Frankly battles rarely resulted in all the commanders being captured, which is the single biggest issue with the combat in this game IMHO.
 
there is that first perks in leaderships talent, that gives passive xp to troops, maybe it need adjustment, But changing that AI to fights with looters and bandits more, could also help
 
its the meta right now when skipping battles thats how AI FIGHTS AI
tier 6 unit and tier 1 can do equal damage infantry or range no difference with the new farming looters nerf formula
you will notice a big chance in the AI no longer has decent amount of rangers or none at all
due to the fact they are useless now
 
They could change the behavior of the Lord after a defeat to stick to his own fief, cleaning out looters and bandits in order to level his army AND save his economy and us from a head ache when later we take over his fief?
^ 100% this.

When defeated enemy lords shouldn't return with a recruit stack but instead stick around their fief, clearing out bandits/hideouts and train their troops.
 
Main problem is how fast can AI create new armys. You can defeat 5 lords and if you dont kill them they will make full stack of new recruits in like 2 days. If you kill them they will be immediately replaced by mercenarys. It is dull. Actions you make have no consequences ,,
I think this "too many Recruits in lord's armies" issue isn't really a fundamental problem in itself, but rather the symptom of other problems. The recruitment & troop-development mechanics might actually be all right, except they're overstressed and distorted by the never-ending warfare. Another factor: all Calradic lords are escape artists who rarely spend more than 1-2 days behind bars when captured. Which means all the lords are constantly sucking up all available recruits from settlements, to the point where it can even be hard to even find a lot of Recruits in some areas, let alone higher-tier troops.
This is the main problem that I can see. When a lord is defeated, whether by the player or AI, they should be imprisoned for a long time before being ransomed. Escape chance should be tiny, and basically not happen unless another lord attacks the army/castle that they're in and frees them. That way, every defeat would hurt the faction.

War is just boring at the moment because it's playing whack-a-mole with trash armies that have little hope of even causing casualties, let alone beating the player.
 
While armies full of recruits is something that I do not like, I would hate even more to see Lords armies full of elite units. I think that two things should happen:

1- Help Lords to recruit better armies without making them full elite.
2- Make harder for the player to have full elite armies. This option maybe do not like for people who love to play un easymode and complain every day for caravans, but TW could add campaign difficulties to make economy much harder for player who really want a challenging campaign. Currently it is too easy to become rich in 150-200 days.
 
The world needs to be much more stagnant, as in, countries should have long periods of peace or perhaps if in war, not siege so damn much. Like wars should be a lot of battles but not a lot of changing of settlements. I feel like even after several years, there shouldn't be much of a change in the map. The reason is, it feels like a constant pressure on the player and removes options for the player. I don't want to see one nation dominating the map by the time I am ready to commit to someone or try to start my own kingdom, etc. I want to see a lot of back and forth in fighting, but not in changes to settlements on the map. More field battles, less sieges

This is especially so if the intention was to have the players clan develop, grow and you to move on as your heir, etc. What is the point of that if everything around you gets messed up too frequently or before you are ready to do things.
 
They should have never made it so AI lord have to use the same system as players because lets face it, the AI is not ever going to act like a player. For example, a Player is going to spend hours leveling his troops usually in situations where there is very low risk of losing his troops like fighting exclusively against looters. He isn't going to tackle AI lords until he thinks he has a solid and well trained army. The AI on the other hand, is in the middle of a war and he is going out of his way to engage in that war. He just gathers what is available and fights with that, there is no conscious effort to train up his troops, nor does he train up troops in peace and stockpile them in his garrisons for later use.

That being said, you have to give the AI and artifical advantage like maybe a AI lord only recruitment table in villages and towns, one chock full of mid to high tier troops at bargain basement recruitment prices so that they always have a good solid core of mid to high tier troops.
 
I agree with Lords being escape artist and running back to war to soon being a big part of the problem but how is it on the settings like realistic and challenging. I started a game a few days back on the beta 1.2.0 and after the first battle, my army consisted of mostly recruits and what ever I could pick up after a fight. I suffered heavy losses in every battle and I avoided Lords that didn't yet have 50% recruits. I didn't play much more so just wondering how it is with realistic settings through out the game?
 
While armies full of recruits is something that I do not like, I would hate even more to see Lords armies full of elite units. I think that two things should happen:

1- Help Lords to recruit better armies without making them full elite.
2- Make harder for the player to have full elite armies. This option maybe do not like for people who love to play un easymode and complain every day for caravans, but TW could add campaign difficulties to make economy much harder for player who really want a challenging campaign. Currently it is too easy to become rich in 150-200 days.
Infantry should b 4x more expensive and cavalry should be 10-15x more expensive. You should then be able to go to the budget tab, when there is one, and create a budget for training and equipping soldiers, designating a fief as the place of your training camp. Training camps should produce up to 20 T3 troops of their own culture that are sent to the Garrison and a new set f Recruits gathered.
 
I disagree, in Mount & Blade the lords are running around with their personal retinues. why would it be full of peasents? Lower tier units such as a soldier with perhaps just a helmet a spear and a shield I 100% want to make up the majority so I hope that is what you meant. I also subcribe to the idea that even peasents could manage to scrap together a shield and a spear if they were levied into a proper army. Peasents defending their homeland from raids are something else.

Yeah, I feel like every unit that can carry one should have a shield.
 
Recruits army would not be a problem if those recruits where decently equiped with a gambeson, skullcap, a shields and a spear/polearm. Add some sort of long knife or axe for close combat and you are set.

Gambeson and shield should be basic armor, not your everyday worn linen shirt.
 
They are affected by morale too hard IMO. A few volleys of arrows and peasants start routing. What's the point of playing a game about combat when the only enemy you'll ever see is dead or fleeing?

Well it make sense for the morale part. They are pretty much conscripted peasants so it make sense that they will run as soon as things turn south. We just need less of them in the battles.
 
One of the few things I absolutely love about Bannerlord is the fact that the AI doesn't cheat (much). Please for the love of god don't give the devs any ideas by making them into cheatbots.

I think the problem here is the way battle and AI works in the first place, particularly the autobattles.

1) Autobattles kill way too many high-tier troops and that should be hit with a serious nerf bat.
2) AI commanders get into way too many fights they can't win or that are way too close for comfort (even "cautious" ones)
3) AI commanders are all Houdini and escape from dungeons with ridiculous regularity
4) AI commanders refuse to ever retreat or surrender
5) There's no scenario where killing enough enemy troops will allow you to make a full retreat without sacrificing troops (a standard in games like this - wasn't this feature in Warband? might have been Floris mod IDK)
6) If the player gets surrounded by a superior force after getting caught raiding with their pants down, we get the option to negotiate for our own release with the caveat that we won't attack again for 10 days. But the AI NEVER does this. Why not? Why can't we get paid to not go through the motions of battling a 40-man mercenary band - who we can't autobattle without sacrificing our T6 troops? Hell, I would happily pay THEM for saving me the trouble.

I'm not sure how much the AI is bound up into personality traits, but maybe there should be a little more lean into valorous commanders seeking open battles, calculating commanders focusing on sieges and cruel commanders raiding villages + caravans. Cautious commanders should (like cautious players) focus on cavalry troops and BTFO as soon as they see a superior force. At present, I don't see much implementation of these at all (though I did notice a "cautious" and "merciful" khan only seems to campaign in 800+ doomstacks ever).

I like the idea of dedicated training structures that actually work. The castles need some love right now and they'd be a great place to start - at present they're a giant hole in the ground you pour money into if you have any kind of garrison at all. That's especially true in wartime when an enemy raiding party so much as sneezes near your villages.

One of the things I loved in Warband (may have been mod stuff) was the ability to send out parties to recruit for you and bring the fresh troops back to the garrison or patrol around towns. Right now the only thing you can do is create additional parties which you can give zero direction to - who are just as stupid as the regular AI commanders. You can't assign them a mission or preferred party size or general area of operation - just create or disband or call to army.

WTF's with Caravans too - they just roam all over the map and, while I like the money, the reason I created one was so they'd find a market for my damn silver + velvet and keep Myzea from starving for lack of grain.
 
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