SP - Player, NPCs & Troops Recruits should have shields

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If you hire a recruit, they should have a shield. However if you hire a peasant, then no they shouldn't have a shield. I've seen archers mow down armies because the majority of the troops are recruits.

Agreed. And make spears more common for lower tier units than swords.
+1
 
Peple seem to be discussing several different problems simultaneously, which leads to confusion. The issues that lead the the current bad situation with battles are separate:

  1. All ranged combat is overwhemingly OP. The talk about looter stones, Imperial crossbowmen last week, forest bandits etc. are all symptoms of a much larger problem. I played Warband&mods in the couple of weeks before the release, and the difference is staggering.
    • Create a character in Warband with no ranged skills and try to hit something beyond 20m away, let alone land a headshot. Yeah, that's what I thought. In Bannerlord, a character with 0 skill, whether player or companion can pick up a ranged weapon and start chaining headshots like nothing. Starting with near perfect accuracy is OP.
    • Warband you needed a heavy skill investement into power throw/draw and horse archery to actually do damage. A novice with a hunter's bow could land headshots on a heavily armored knight and do virtually no damage. Bannerlord, ranged gamage starts massive from the get go, skills only slightly increase it. And also for some bizzare reason, blunt weapons like stones do tonnes of damage to heavy armor.
    • Crossbows had a low-ish skill requirement in Warband, but you still needed Strength and reloading was slow. Also, if you wanted horse archery, you were locked out of the most powerfuld bows crossbows. Bannerlord has an early perk that lets you shoot anything from horseback.
    • Overall ranged combat needs an major look at. Low skilled bow/thrown weapons need to do far less damage against armored opponents. Low skilled ranged weapons need to be far less accurate
  2. The second issue is fantasy recruits with swords and shirts. And nothing else. It's odd, it has no historical parallels anywhere. I don't understand why people say "meat on legs", that wasn't a thing either. If a lord went to the trouble of recruiting manpower, they usually expected them to at least not dieinstantly. Shields were one of the most basic ways of protection so there's no reason why most troops shouldn't start with one.
    • So yeah, recruits need a more varied weapon selection (far fewer swords, more spears/clubs/axes/throwables) and they absolutely should have some kind of basic shield.
  3. The third issue is campaign behaviour. There's 2 parts to it:
    • First is overzealoous lords who raise and army and promptly rush into battle again with 2/3 of their army being raw recruits. This is clearly unitntended behaviour and needs a fix.
    • The second is game mechanics. "Let's make my recruits into trained troops by chasing some bandits" said no lord in history ever. Troops even have names like "Trained Footman". Chasing looters is not training. Aand even for the player, after a while it feels like busywork, keeping you from the "fun" activities. Castles and towns need some kind of "training grounds", where troops could be trained (spending time and money), rather than rely on notables in settlements to roll what you need.
    • Another part of the issue is bandit behaviour. The bands <10 men are usually too fast and not worth chasing for most lord armies (or the player for that matter, outside very early game). Bandits needs some kind of consolidatiom mechanic, where if a band hasn't had a successful attack on villagers/caravans in a while, they try to merge with another bandit party in the vicinity, or failing that, go to the hideout and merge there.
  4. Then there's battle AI issues but these are minor in comparison.
You wrote this way better than I ever could have. +1
 
So I'm 2 years into a game on 1.1.0, so far its been running great and I appreciate all the changes that Taleworlds has done, but something I noticed is how easy battles have become.

Many of my battles ends up with the enemy closing the gap but then breaking and running away even before they reach my shield wall. My archers get way more kills proportionally than anyone else, even though I have only around 20 out of an army of 100. Most of the soldiers I fight tend to be recruits, and their lack of shields makes them so vulnerable to ranged units. Even if they do manage to close the gap (or I tell my infantry to charge) they get completely mowed down within seconds too, being attacked by multiple people in different directions and only being able to block in one direction with their swords or spears.

I think giving all recruits shields would mitigate these issues. Shields would both make recruits less vulnerable to ranged units and also last a bit longer in melee fights. It also would make a lot more sense, I would imagine most lords would issue their levies cheap shields because the advantages shields give far outweigh the cost of a few planks of wood.
First of all it's good that this problem has attention, but.
The idea itself is both debatable and not bad.
Why it may be a very bad idea - archers may become useless and every soldier without a shield is vulnerable to arrows. More detailed below. ? ? ?
Also from the start I can add that partly maybe the main idea of the thread makes sense. But it needs to be fit in the whole system.
Also why only shields? Recruits have bad everything, armor, weapon, skills. They are the worst starting troop. And they are also vulnerable not only for archers, but for everyone. Personally I disagree on solving it by just giving every recruit a shield and maybe giving them anything at all. Yes, there is a problem, but it's more complex and needs a chain of fixes.
And these are main reasons why, which should be fixed first to avoid such problems. ?
Recruitment system, AI lords, archer's skills.
1.
Recruit in Bannerlord is literally a medieval villager, who may have never ever even seen army ammunition and heard of battles only from their father's tales. Yes, it's unrealistic, but that's the idea of the game's recruits.
So the recruitment system itself may also be changed. At least in the most simple way. You can recruit villagers, but they need to train mostly in castles. If you want, you may risk losing potential nice soldiers by taking them in the fight without armor and skills, but it's better to wait until their training is over. And still it won't be realistic enough as most recruits shouldn't be villagers at all.
But, while I prefer it to be closer to realism, well, it's not our history, it's an alternative reality in a game, so maybe no need to be so sceptic about what we have now overall, including "naked" recruits and that they upgrade too fast. If it would be changed for more realism, than I'm happy, if not, this system is not too bad and it should be simple for AI. 2. But AI lords are dumb, that's the main problem and need to use it better. If nothing will be changed in this aspect, than there was no sense in all this simplification from the very start. Again, right now dumb AI is the main problem, not archers or shields.
3. But also archer's skills in general may need to be nerfed as it was done with AI's close combat skills. It's too easy to hit being an archer in the game even for the worst ones and actually for human player, even without starting skills. So it's better to rework/nerf them at least a little. A bow was always a very dangerous weapon, but only in the hands of a trained man. And in the game we have almost professional dead eye archers after a few fights with looters. It's ridiculous. Practically the same with the sword. Of course you gain experience in fights, but only after training basics inside the castle walls.

I understand that these are just the mechanics of the game. They can't be done too realistic and there's no complaining about it. But it needs balancing.

?Again about shields and why it may be a bad idea, minding everything written above.
Every type of troop have it's use and value.
There are other types and tiers of troops without shields. Every soldier without a shield can be very vulnerable to arrows, not only recruits.
So than any troop of any faction needs a shield to be able to defend against archers? Every horseman, archer himself, skirmisher, etc? Especially during sieges.
Then every troop needs to become a hybrid between infantry, archers and horsemen, not to be vulnerable to anyone or anything. Everyone would become ultimate soldiers. But then pure archers will become useless too. ?

Also don't get me wrong, all written above is just an example and my opinion, I can be wrong about something.
 
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Archers don't become useless when low-tier troops are given shields. I gave the recruits in my game shields and spears and it feels better balanced. Archers and cavalry are still good, but not as dominant as before.
 
There are a tier of units in the game called "peasants". They don't have shields or proper military weapons.

Maybe players should be recruiting peasants as the basic unit in villages. Players could then spend gold to upgrade them to recruits with weapon and shield.

The game doesn't do much to recognize the different phases of player progression. For example, Lords are still running around to villages in mid to late game to pickup troops instead of the villages sending peasants to garrisons automatically to be trained as recruits.

I believe training fields in castles and cities aren't working as advertised either.
 
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There are a tier of units in the game called "peasants". They don't have shields or proper military weapons.

Maybe players should be recruiting peasants as the basic unit in villages. Players could then spend gold to upgrade them to recruits with weapon and shield.

What would this solve? It would just make peasants the new recruits.
 
Giving shields to recruits is just a band-aid. Archers are overpowered. The time to aim a bow properly needs to be drastically increased (the bow fire rate is like a machine gun atm) and bows need a big accuracy nerf. If you just give shields to recruits and say 'problem solved' then that's only in this iteration of the game because you're trying to fix the symptom of the problem caused by lords having too many recruits in their armies (for a multitude of reasons). You still have the issue of 2h troops and such getting mowed down and the 360-no-scoping archers that hold their ground when a unit of barded warhorses charge at them and then turn around and shoot them in the back, unphased.
 
I believe training fields in castles and cities aren't working as advertised either.
That's one of the reasons I both suggested this ? in a different thread and said about it in my comment above.
Suggestion. Make training grounds the new main source of training, especially for recruits. Add recruiters and patrols in the game.

Giving shields to recruits is just a band-aid. Archers are overpowered. The time to aim a bow properly needs to be drastically increased (the bow fire rate is like a machine gun atm) and bows need a big accuracy nerf. If you just give shields to recruits and say 'problem solved' then that's only in this iteration of the game because you're trying to fix the symptom of the problem caused by lords having too many recruits in their armies (for a multitude of reasons). You still have the issue of 2h troops and such getting mowed down and the 360-no-scoping archers that hold their ground when a unit of barded warhorses charge at them and then turn around and shoot them in the back, unphased.
Agree.
It may not be a bad idea itself to give the worst shields to all the recruits. But, well, you already said, why it doesn't change a lot in a long run.

In my answer I stated exactly the same just in a little more detailed way.
First of all it's good that this problem has attention, but.
The idea itself is both debatable and not bad.
Why it may be a very bad idea - archers may become useless and every soldier without a shield is vulnerable to arrows. More detailed below. ? ? ?
Also from the start I can add that partly maybe the main idea of the thread makes sense. But it needs to be fit in the whole system.
Also why only shields? Recruits have bad everything, armor, weapon, skills. They are the worst starting troop. And they are also vulnerable not only for archers, but for everyone. Personally I disagree on solving it by just giving every recruit a shield and maybe giving them anything at all. Yes, there is a problem, but it's more complex and needs a chain of fixes.
And these are main reasons why, which should be fixed first to avoid such problems. ?
Recruitment system, AI lords, archer's skills.
1.
Recruit in Bannerlord is literally a medieval villager, who may have never ever even seen army ammunition and heard of battles only from their father's tales. Yes, it's unrealistic, but that's the idea of the game's recruits.
So the recruitment system itself may also be changed. At least in the most simple way. You can recruit villagers, but they need to train mostly in castles. If you want, you may risk losing potential nice soldiers by taking them in the fight without armor and skills, but it's better to wait until their training is over. And still it won't be realistic enough as most recruits shouldn't be villagers at all.
But, while I prefer it to be closer to realism, well, it's not our history, it's an alternative reality in a game, so maybe no need to be so sceptic about what we have now overall, including "naked" recruits and that they upgrade too fast. If it would be changed for more realism, than I'm happy, if not, this system is not too bad and it should be simple for AI. 2. But AI lords are dumb, that's the main problem and need to use it better. If nothing will be changed in this aspect, than there was no sense in all this simplification from the very start. Again, right now dumb AI is the main problem, not archers or shields.
3. But also archer's skills in general may need to be nerfed as it was done with AI's close combat skills. It's too easy to hit being an archer in the game even for the worst ones and actually for human player, even without starting skills. So it's better to rework/nerf them at least a little. A bow was always a very dangerous weapon, but only in the hands of a trained man. And in the game we have almost professional dead eye archers after a few fights with looters. It's ridiculous. Practically the same with the sword. Of course you gain experience in fights, but only after training basics inside the castle walls.

I understand that these are just the mechanics of the game. They can't be done too realistic and there's no complaining about it. But it needs balancing.

?Again about shields and why it may be a bad idea, minding everything written above.
Every type of troop have it's use and value.
There are other types and tiers of troops without shields. Every soldier without a shield can be very vulnerable to arrows, not only recruits.
So than any troop of any faction needs a shield to be able to defend against archers? Every horseman, archer himself, skirmisher, etc? Especially during sieges.
Then every troop needs to become a hybrid between infantry, archers and horsemen, not to be vulnerable to anyone or anything. Everyone would become ultimate soldiers. But then pure archers will become useless too. ?

Also don't get me wrong, all written above is just an example and my opinion, I can be wrong about something.
 
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Giving shields to recruits is just a band-aid. Archers are overpowered. The time to aim a bow properly needs to be drastically increased (the bow fire rate is like a machine gun atm) and bows need a big accuracy nerf. If you just give shields to recruits and say 'problem solved' then that's only in this iteration of the game because you're trying to fix the symptom of the problem caused by lords having too many recruits in their armies (for a multitude of reasons). You still have the issue of 2h troops and such getting mowed down and the 360-no-scoping archers that hold their ground when a unit of barded warhorses charge at them and then turn around and shoot them in the back, unphased.

I’m in agreement with this. Hear, hear! Address the root problem and not the symptom.
 
What would this solve? It would just make peasants the new recruits.

which might be more in keeping with players' expectations of the lowest tier of troop.

I've only made two game change suggestions. The main map needs a compass rose-- also with the ability to simply analyze the map; and a setting for different ambient particle physics for better fps tuning.
 
The main problem her is not recruit dying to fast is having recruit making the brunt of a force. And especially when you see what the T2 are (basically recruit with stuff) recruit is there mostly so you HAVE to train to have an army and can't just recruit 40+ troops instantly.
They probably didn't want to go the same way of warband ( when you are high level enough and with enough trainer) you can train from T1 to elite a entire army in a few days just with daily training. But man this game play hard to get... even enjoy.

People where spaming auto resolution on looter because there is no other way to efficiently xp : make xp less in auto.
People are still auto but it's just longer : make them do kill now (my campaign with the last patch they became suddenly deadly if i do auto resolution)
Next thing people gonna do battle after battle against looter and they gonna make them be deadly now.
 
I’d go even further and say that equipment and troop skills should be separate, but it’s probably far too late for that.
Idk if the game could handle that level of detail per troop, it wasn’t set up that way, and both equipment and unit stats are married to a simplistic unit type.
 
So I'm 2 years into a game on 1.1.0, so far its been running great and I appreciate all the changes that Taleworlds has done, but something I noticed is how easy battles have become.

Many of my battles ends up with the enemy closing the gap but then breaking and running away even before they reach my shield wall. My archers get way more kills proportionally than anyone else, even though I have only around 20 out of an army of 100. Most of the soldiers I fight tend to be recruits, and their lack of shields makes them so vulnerable to ranged units. Even if they do manage to close the gap (or I tell my infantry to charge) they get completely mowed down within seconds too, being attacked by multiple people in different directions and only being able to block in one direction with their swords or spears.

I think giving all recruits shields would mitigate these issues. Shields would both make recruits less vulnerable to ranged units and also last a bit longer in melee fights. It also would make a lot more sense, I would imagine most lords would issue their levies cheap shields because the advantages shields give far outweigh the cost of a few planks of wood.

LeyJo.png

This should be hillariously easy to implement. Taleworlds, please.
 
Peple seem to be discussing several different problems simultaneously, which leads to confusion. The issues that lead the the current bad situation with battles are separate:

  1. All ranged combat is overwhemingly OP. The talk about looter stones, Imperial crossbowmen last week, forest bandits etc. are all symptoms of a much larger problem. I played Warband&mods in the couple of weeks before the release, and the difference is staggering.
    • Create a character in Warband with no ranged skills and try to hit something beyond 20m away, let alone land a headshot. Yeah, that's what I thought. In Bannerlord, a character with 0 skill, whether player or companion can pick up a ranged weapon and start chaining headshots like nothing. Starting with near perfect accuracy is OP.
    • Warband you needed a heavy skill investement into power throw/draw and horse archery to actually do damage. A novice with a hunter's bow could land headshots on a heavily armored knight and do virtually no damage. Bannerlord, ranged gamage starts massive from the get go, skills only slightly increase it. And also for some bizzare reason, blunt weapons like stones do tonnes of damage to heavy armor.
    • Crossbows had a low-ish skill requirement in Warband, but you still needed Strength and reloading was slow. Also, if you wanted horse archery, you were locked out of the most powerfuld bows crossbows. Bannerlord has an early perk that lets you shoot anything from horseback.
    • Overall ranged combat needs an major look at. Low skilled bow/thrown weapons need to do far less damage against armored opponents. Low skilled ranged weapons need to be far less accurate
  2. The second issue is fantasy recruits with swords and shirts. And nothing else. It's odd, it has no historical parallels anywhere. I don't understand why people say "meat on legs", that wasn't a thing either. If a lord went to the trouble of recruiting manpower, they usually expected them to at least not dieinstantly. Shields were one of the most basic ways of protection so there's no reason why most troops shouldn't start with one.
    • So yeah, recruits need a more varied weapon selection (far fewer swords, more spears/clubs/axes/throwables) and they absolutely should have some kind of basic shield.
  3. The third issue is campaign behaviour. There's 2 parts to it:
    • First is overzealoous lords who raise and army and promptly rush into battle again with 2/3 of their army being raw recruits. This is clearly unitntended behaviour and needs a fix.
    • The second is game mechanics. "Let's make my recruits into trained troops by chasing some bandits" said no lord in history ever. Troops even have names like "Trained Footman". Chasing looters is not training. Aand even for the player, after a while it feels like busywork, keeping you from the "fun" activities. Castles and towns need some kind of "training grounds", where troops could be trained (spending time and money), rather than rely on notables in settlements to roll what you need.
    • Another part of the issue is bandit behaviour. The bands <10 men are usually too fast and not worth chasing for most lord armies (or the player for that matter, outside very early game). Bandits needs some kind of consolidatiom mechanic, where if a band hasn't had a successful attack on villagers/caravans in a while, they try to merge with another bandit party in the vicinity, or failing that, go to the hideout and merge there.
  4. Then there's battle AI issues but these are minor in comparison.

This sums up everything I was going to say about this. Recruits without shields really are an atrocity against logic and historical accuracy.
 
The way I see it, a recruit is just that- a recruit. Unlike your average peasant, they are able bodied and full of potential however lack training and equipment, besides whatever they brought along from home. To me, a recruit is literally a peasant that you just picked up from your muster.

Sending those literal peasants into battle against a trained army is stupid. That's the whole point. A sensible lord would instead take them back to camp and spend at least day or so arming and training them. T1 is not supposed to be your adequate levy, that's what T2 is. In fact, that's exactly where you see shields and better armaments.

I like the idea of having the recruits to represent a makeshift force. If you see them in battle, its because of desperation, incompetence or cruelty. I don't think they should get shields.

Instead, what should be fixed are the training perks and lord behaviour. To an extent, the latter problem has been fixed, seeing as most lords tend to run around with stronger armies now.

Still, raise the Meek should allow you to turn t1s into t2s in a single day, so as to represent the transformation of recruit to levy.

Imo, there's no need to give recruits shields. Maybe change up the weaponry though, it does look a little odd to see Imperials with swords. Rich or not, I fail to see why your random Imperial citizen is in possession of one.
 
I completely agree recruits should have a basic shield. I dont see any reason why someone wouldnt bring his ownmade shield (very basic, weak) in case he wasnt provided with one
 
Risking beeing the devil's advocate, i disagree : recruits should not have shield, or not massively at least.
they should not have swords either, rather two handed pikes and a short axe and maybe throwing stones : usfull against horses and allowing to fight from further, and an axe for ultimate close combat. this should of course vary with culture.

this combo : spear, simple axe, throwing stone is cheap and efficient and needs no training, and yes a a simple makeshift shield is a decent addition.

but yes, the problem is not that recruits lack shields, the problem is that their captain throws them at the front line !
not even on purpose.. when you shout "infantry, charge !" recruits run faster because they dont have equipement and get naturally to the front line and get mowed by archers.

admitting you send recruits to the front, they should simply belong by default to another group, bacause you cant use them like you sue a normal infantry soldier, they're not infantry soldiers. they are recruit, they WILL become infantry, archers or cavalry and rule the battlefield one day.
For now they need protection and training.

on the battle field they still can be usefull. beeing an independent fast moving group, they can be used to flank ennemy infantry,or intercept and swarm enemy cavarly (possible if they have a lot of pikes), or even skirt around an obstacle that enemy archers used to prevent cavalry harssment.
And for the butcher captains out there you still can use them as human shield, with even more precision.

Though this is already doable for the player, the Ai needs an update ... but i think it would an elegant, effective and easy solution.
 
Risking beeing the devil's advocate, i disagree : recruits should not have shield, or not massively at least.
they should not have swords either, rather two handed pikes and a short axe and maybe throwing stones : usfull against horses and allowing to fight from further, and an axe for ultimate close combat. this should of course vary with culture.

this combo : spear, simple axe, throwing stone is cheap and efficient and needs no training, and yes a a simple makeshift shield is a decent addition.

but yes, the problem is not that recruits lack shields, the problem is that their captain throws them at the front line !
not even on purpose.. when you shout "infantry, charge !" recruits run faster because they dont have equipement and get naturally to the front line and get mowed by archers.

admitting you send recruits to the front, they should simply belong by default to another group, bacause you cant use them like you sue a normal infantry soldier, they're not infantry soldiers. they are recruit, they WILL become infantry, archers or cavalry and rule the battlefield one day.
For now they need protection and training.

on the battle field they still can be usefull. beeing an independent fast moving group, they can be used to flank ennemy infantry,or intercept and swarm enemy cavarly (possible if they have a lot of pikes), or even skirt around an obstacle that enemy archers used to prevent cavalry harssment.
And for the butcher captains out there you still can use them as human shield, with even more precision.

Though this is already doable for the player, the Ai needs an update ... but i think it would an elegant, effective and easy solution.

Second to this, recruit equipement should be strongly culture oriented, since they're no longer peasants, they'er suposed to have had a little formation.
- The organized and "industrialised" Empire, might indeed give them a spatha, a spear, and a shield.
- The Sturgian have this norse/viking inspiration, and this culture stongly emphasied the use of the round shield, so that every soldier/raider/man(/woman) used to have before any other weapon.
- The Batanian on the contrary rather value speed and skill, they even have some higher tier almost armorless units. their recruits should then be as i decribed in the prevous post,
- the Vlandian as well wont bother sustaining a shield industries for recruits, wich might have quite a few makeshift shields in the "do it yourself" mode.
- the Kuzaits : a shield ? no, i want a horse !
- the Aserai : where's the wood to massively produce shields for recruits ?

So exept the empire and the sturgian, for background reasons, all the other cultures should use the simple strategy decribed in the previous post.
And for the shielded recruits ? they will be slower, taking arrow rains for longer, and more easily flanked by faster units. So i think it's balanced.



PS about Empire recruits :what i wrote makes sense if they're actually recruited by the empire ... witch make me think that recruiting and traning troops of a different culture shouldn't be so straight forward, they should have :
1- an experience penalty as long as their captain is of a different culture.
2- an oportuniy to change culture, a bit like the prisonner recruitment mechanics but using a menu to select a 1-tier-lower unit of your own culture. so it doesn't mess with the troop trees.
 
I read the post and I was confused as to why the OP felt that recruits needed shields. But I guess he's worried about arrows. You know you can put recruits (or whoever) in another rank and set them behind the guys with the shields right? I've been doing that since back playing Warband. But if it's also because of the fragility of recruits well they're raw and suppose to have higher mortality rates. I guess if it really worries you work on getting your rep up in a city or two and only recruit higher tier warriors.
The AI cant seem to understand how to do this, the point of the post is that Lords mass recruit recruits and aren't smart enough to not charge into a hail of arrows with them.
 
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