Snow-balling version 1.4.2. I'm starting to think its not an accident.

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In fact, I think the intent of the developers is to let players conquer the known world in three years or less. In my 1.4.2 play through I'm barely a year in and Sturgia and Western Empire no longer exist.

With Callums recent comment that this game is an action RPG with strategy sprinkled in, it appears this is the intent of the developers. They want the game fast.

In 1.4.2, as soon as a faction loses 20 percent of their territory every other faction declares war on them and within a month they're gone.

I would think that you would want factions to declare war realistically, lords vote for wars with countries that have nearby fiefs they personally want to own. Border disputes create wars with bordering countries. Wars are declared to regain lost fiefs. Some lords should never want to go to war at all. Wars should rarely, if ever, be declared on countries that are on the opposite side of the map, thousands of miles away.

Right now all lords are blood thirsty and war support is based entirely on which faction is the weakest, resulting in the quick elimination of several factions and the consolidation of power among factions in advantageous starting positions: Khuzait, Vlandia, and Aserai.

I guess I would like to know the intent of the dev's. If they want a fast paced game which results in one faction conquering the world in three years, why did they add heirs and family lineage?

If this game is Electronic Arts Medieval Simulator, I'll come back when a mod produces something similar to Viking Conquest: an in depth, realistic, and challenging game.

Right now this game is designed for pre teens: super easy, really fast, and non stop action. I'm beginning to think that's not an accident. In fact, I think it's the game the developers are trying to create.

Maybe I'm the minority. Maybe people really want a game designed to meet the attention span of 12 year olds.

A word from the developers would be helpfull here. What is the intent of developers when it comes to the pace of the game?
 
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What day are you on, and what interactions have you had?

I've played 650 days, and all factions still exist. A couple are struggling a little now, but they've still got multiple towns, and there's still 5 very strong factions.

EDIT - The pace is very long term for me at least. Especially with the introductions of dynasties it seems clear the developers want that too.
 
I agree, I like certain aspects about this game but I have no idea what they were thinking here with the pace. Have generations of family.... why? This is not what I expected which is why I don't play it anymore.
 
So a comment of one of the Devs would be really enlighting. I too have problems invisioning the lineage concept with the current pace of the game.
 
What day are you on, and what interactions have you had?

I've played 650 days, and all factions still exist. A couple are struggling a little now, but they've still got multiple towns, and there's still 5 very strong factions.

EDIT - The pace is very long term for me at least. Especially with the introductions of dynasties it seems clear the developers want that too.

I'm on day 484 right now. Western Empire and Sturgia were completely eliminated by day 400.

I noticed that both of them were only at war with the factions they started at war with until they lost a few territories. As soon as that happened then anyone and everyone declared war on them until they were gone.

I don't think the way I play the game affected the outcome. I clear bandit hideouts in Khuzait territories until I'm clan tier 2, building an army of horse archers. At clan tier 2 I joined Western Empire as a mercenary because they were at war with Battania. I do that on purpose because I knew I would eventually join Battania before creating my own kingdom. It allows me to catch and release the clans I want to recruit. It also allows me to keep Battania from growing too powerful.

Anyway I was a mercenary for Western Empire until clan tier 3. Then I joined Battania. When I joined Battania Western Empire had all of their original territory and 4 of Battanias castles. When I joined Battania I quickly went on campaign to reclaim Battanias lost castles, voting for the lords I like to have them and keeping Llanoc Hen for myself. The start of Westerns downfall was my siege of Llanoc Hen. They sent 4 armies of 500 each at me during the siege while I scrambled to keep my army large enough to finish the siege. I did finish the siege and then afterwards Caladog took Legata from them as well. I quickly took Veron and Thracatore. That's when the flood gates opened. Aserai declared war on Western, followed by Southern, Vlandia, Khuzait, Northern, and finally Sturgia. Western was gone within a month.

During this time, Khuzait took Sturgias most eastern city and Vlandia took Varcheg. As soon as Western was eliminated Vlandia, Northern Empire, and Battania declared war on Sturgia, followed by Southern and Aserai a few weeks later. Sturgia was gone by day 400.

Its day 484 and Aserai and Southern own all of their original territory plus half of Westerns. Khuzait, Vlandia, and Battanis now own all of their original territories plus a mish mash of Sturgian territory.

I just reached clan tier 4 and the map is covered by 5 big factions. Im still going to create my own kingdom today, but I'm afraid I will get gang raped to death by the other five factions as soon as I do because that's what happened to Western and Sturgia.

I'll update this later today to tell you what happens when I create a kingdom, but I expect everyone to declare war on me immediately.
 
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On 1.4.2 here , all clans are still alive after 2 years but only because i stopped it by siding with the weakest factions all the time and weakening Khuzait, and Southern Empire. Problem is Vlandia is OP now so i joined Sturgia to help them.

But yeah it is EA so they are finetuning the game because once there will be a functional diplomacy ( probably when it goes beta ), i can imagine that it will be more balanced and not just the big fishes preying on the small ones, and smaller factions will be able to ally against larger ones ( hopefully but otherwise a mod will do that )
 
It's already improved drastically, and noticeably (for me) improved this latest patch too. It's definitely not perfect yet, but they're obviously aiming to try and balance it as much as possible, without putting simple blunt tools in place.

I think people sometimes forget that this is early access. The mechanics are mostly in place, but the tweaking and tuning is what we're basically doing. Putting in the hours required to see what happens, so they can have the data required to make proper adjustments.

That and getting to enjoy more of the game earlier than if we just waited for release. If you're bored of your current game due to empire creep, start a new one come the next patch.
 
It still seems like many parts of the game are being balanced for 20+ year campaigns.
Smithing unlock rate, skill progression, economy, relation gain with notables, village/town growth rate, etc all seem to be done with a very long timeframe in mind.

I noticed that both of them were only at war with the factions they started at war with until they lost a few territories. As soon as that happened then anyone and everyone declared war on them until they were gone.
This is a big factor in killing off factions early. It's less noticeable now after war frequency was dropped down (and after the truce period was readded) but I still think they should tone down the strength bias in the algorithms.
 
To be perfecly honest, I've given up on the devs adding more content. They've basically spent the last 2.5 months bug fixing. I'll enjoy the game for several hours with no expectations every month or so.

I have great expectations for mods however, hopefully something on the level of Brytenwalda/ VC. I'd be perfectly happy if TW released the mod tools sooner ratger than later, so good content cam finally start being implemented into the game
 
Currently it is important to side wih the weaker factions ( usually northern empire and sturgia , western emp more rarely, sometimes battania ).

If you dont execute nobles like i do in this campaign you can make it a long term campaign by making sure you fight the largest factions likely to steamroll.

You can destroy their stacks one after the other to make sure they will come back only with basic recruits even if they outnumber you. Then when you mauled almost all their armies dozens of times( smaller groups 60-300 menat first then their larger armies ) , you are ready to attack their castles and settlements so that they will come at you mostly with weak troops that you will defeat easily when sieging.

Then as you capture cities from them they have less and less men on the power bar in diplomacy menu. You can also use the glitch that lets you have an additional party when you make a party with your wife as soon as one of your other party gets captured. So you can have at tier 4 at least 500 guys and beat armies twice your size if you weakened them well.

One mod is crucial though at this stage of the game, it is called Fighing Together Improves relations... it means that when you beat armies, you gain relations with the allies you fought with but it also means the enemy leader lose relations with his vassals that were inside his armies you defeated, which leads to very interesting outcomes as you can create "political divisions" in your enemy kingdom ( while you keep releasing some of them to boost relations for after ) and at some point some vassals leave their masters. It is funny to monitor the progress in the encyclopedia and check how the rulers you beat many times starts to have enemies in their own kingdom because they think he is a loser :smile:
 
Developers have cornered themselves with the game design. There's NOTHING to do in times of peace. No way to manage your holdings, be it Kingdom or just a fief. No real promised criminal empire creation or whatever... Does running errands for few gang-leaders count for that? Nothing. You can't even interact with your spouse and children. So the only thing there's left to do is wars. And that's what everyone is doing.
 
Yeah the interaction between the factions should focus more on the imperial civil war since that is the premise. Maybe that’s what the devs are starting to work towards because if one of the imperial factions loses territory it makes sense that the other two would immediately move in.

What doesn’t make sense to me is why the imperial factions wouldn’t be allied with another before doing so. Namely the western empire. since the game starts with the battanian war and the western faction is led by a general, there should be more focus on the factions forming alliances around that conflict.
 
In fact, I think the intent of the developers is to let players conquer the known world in three years or less. In my 1.4.2 play through I'm barely a year in and Sturgia and Western Empire no longer exist.

With Callums recent comment that this game is an action RPG with strategy sprinkled in, it appears this is the intent of the developers. They want the game fast.

In 1.4.2, as soon as a faction loses 20 percent of their territory every other faction declares war on them and within a month they're gone.

I would think that you would want factions to declare war realistically, lords vote for wars with countries that have nearby fiefs they personally want to own. Border disputes create wars with bordering countries. Wars are declared to regain lost fiefs. Some lords should never want to go to war at all. Wars should rarely, if ever, be declared on countries that are on the opposite side of the map, thousands of miles away.

Right now all lords are blood thirsty and war support is based entirely on which faction is the weakest, resulting in the quick elimination of several factions and the consolidation of power among factions in advantageous starting positions: Khuzait, Vlandia, and Aserai.

I guess I would like to know the intent of the dev's. If they want a fast paced game which results in one faction conquering the world in three years, why did they add heirs and family lineage?

If this game is Electronic Arts Medieval Simulator, I'll come back when a mod produces something similar to Viking Conquest: an in depth, realistic, and challenging game.

Right now this game is designed for pre teens: super easy, really fast, and non stop action. I'm beginning to think that's not an accident. In fact, I think it's the game the developers are trying to create.

Maybe I'm the minority. Maybe people really want a game designed to meet the attention span of 12 year olds.

A word from the developers would be helpfull here. What is the intent of developers when it comes to the pace of the game?
who ever said this is a fast game clearly never played it. have you noticed how much grind there is? you have to grind for almost everything. basicly like an mmo. why would they let players spent hours to rebuild their armies or let them grind for relation for hours if this is a fast game? the battles might be fast, but beside that? in the end, call it what ever you like, but i dont see a benefit to delete multiple factions without giving the player the chance to play a role in these wars.
 
I don't think there is anything that complex going on. Snowballing is the result of the emergent behavior of the games systems doing their thing. Since the behavior of the lords in this game is not at all realistic, we can't expect the results of the game to be anything other than an rpg-like total war game.

Without some kind of war weariness mechanic and extended (forced) truce periods, snowballing in many game will always be the eventual result.
 
I don't think there is anything that complex going on. Snowballing is the result of the emergent behavior of the games systems doing their thing. Since the behavior of the lords in this game is not at all realistic, we can't expect the results of the game to be anything other than an rpg-like total war game.

Without some kind of war weariness mechanic and extended (forced) truce periods, snowballing in many game will always be the eventual result.

I think that’s what’s being discussed. War weariness can be thought of as resistance to declaring war against a slightly weakened opponent. Taking land that isn’t the faction’s culture should decrease its neighbor’s resistance to declaring war. Not the other way around.
 
I noticed that both of them were only at war with the factions they started at war with until they lost a few territories. As soon as that happened then anyone and everyone declared war on them until they were gone.

Yeah I'm noticing this too.

As soon as a faction starts losing territory, it's like they get a big target put on them from the other factions.
 
I think that’s what’s being discussed. War weariness can be thought of as resistance to declaring war against a slightly weakened opponent. Taking land that isn’t the faction’s culture should decrease its neighbor’s resistance to declaring war. Not the other way around.

I think the game has peace weariness more than war weariness. In my current play through we cleared Battania off of the hill top and consolidated a nice, tightly grouped kingdom of fiefs. The only other fiefs that Battania owned were Sidur and Varnavapol, almost all the way over in Khuzait territory. I proposed peace with Battania and the other 2 lords I my kingdom both voted no.
 
I think that rebellions and clans prioritizing holdings of their own culture could really help the empires break apart over time but keep the cultures and kingdoms somewhat homogenous. The "Separatism" mod is a pretty good band aid for this at the moment. I hope something like that gets added to the base game. Thats the type of dynamic change the world needs.

I see some stuff like this already in, like if you have a holding then you get a -1 modifier to Loyalty, but that is not nearly enough as it can be easily fixed with a building.
 
With Callums recent comment that this game is an action RPG with strategy sprinkled in, it appears this is the intent of the developers.
I don't think as a studio Taleworlds understand its audience (and core customer base), or what made M&B a success in the first place.

It wasn't the lackluster and barebone mechanics of the base game, it was all the wonderfully complex mods that kept adding things till there finally was something to keep people's attention occupied long enough to grind to that level 20+. There is only so many battles you'll fight without a good reason to do it, and as wonderfully innovative as M&B combat is, it needs a lot more strings to tie it together with the rest of the game.

Despite multiple most popular Warband mods expanding on the base implementation, instead of making things like village improvements and management MORE complex, they "streamlined" them into settlement-dependent entities. That pretty much tells you all you need to know.
They want the game fast.
Nah. They want you to grind till your eyes bleed, because apparently they can't grasp the idea Warband was popular in spite of its grind, not because of it.

This is why we have the problem with laughably lackluster passive training and +3xp/day top "training building," much less the +1/2xp/day "perks." Which, for the records, in the latter's case means 135 in-game DAYS before that T0 recruit turns into barely better T1, and it only gets worse from there. Basically, it's "whack-a-looter-lord" by design.
 
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I don't think as a studio Taleworlds understand its audience (and core customer base), or what made M&B a success in the first place.

It wasn't the lackluster and barebone mechanics of the base game, it was all the wonderfully complex mods that kept adding things till there finally was something to keep people's attention occupied long enough to grind to that level 20+. There is only so many battles you'll fight without a good reason to do it, and as wonderfully innovative as M&B combat is, it needs a lot more strings to tie it together with the rest of the game.

Despite multiple most popular Warband mods expanding on the base implementation, instead of making things like village improvements and management MORE complex, they "streamlined" them into settlement-dependent entities. That pretty much tells you all you need to know.
Nah. They want you to grind till your eyes bleed, because apparently they can't grasp the idea Warband was popular in spite of its grind, not because of it.

This is why we have the problem with laughably lackluster passive training and +3xp/day top "training building," much less the +1/2xp/day "perks." Which, for the records, in the latter's case means 135 in-game DAYS before that T0 recruit turns into barely better T1, and it only gets worse from there. Basically, it's "whack-a-looter-lord" by design.

Yeah, I have a pretty big problem with the game design. I actually dislike the perks. It’s so much clicking for things. I think the devs need a vacation and they should play their game for a couple of weeks then come back to it. I have very high hopes for mp but I’m frustrated with its implementation too. I don’t get why they force me down a path, I just want simple things like ui/ux that feels good queueing up, enough time to get a plan together with teammates, and be able to binge 1 map and load out game after game. The themepark rng stuff is so tiring.
 
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