The following is my opinion after my first playthrough. Hopefully it agrees with most everyone else. I spent at least a thousand hours in warband singleplayer and have a good grasp of early/mid game in Mount and Blade. There are plenty of good aspects to bannerlord, but I'll focus on what i thought could use improvement, and expect ought to be fixed by full release. Ill try to order it from when i encountered each. If I am mistaken about something please let me know.
Robot walk in bandit hideout: I like the new bandit hideout (exept for the fact that they take you prisoner now instead of escaping) and the way to fight bandits at the end, but when they walk up there is no variation, they look like clines marching up to you with the way they walk. This is very minor, though.
Main quest progession: I dont know if I missed a bit of dialougue or something, but my brother disappears to go find slavers while i raise money for ransom, and then nothing. Never hear from him again and nothing happens after completing the clan quest. It feels broken. (I know about the banner quest and i got up to finishing assembling the banner before i quit, but it didnt provide any closure to the part about my family)
AI dont know how to use shields: I thought bannerlord would improve on this but turned out worse than warband. In warband troops with shields would pretty much constantly hold up their shield towards the enemy in battle until in melee attack range. I hoped in bannerlord they would wait to hold up shields until in missile range of the enemy, but instead they do not hold their shields up unless i give the shield wall order, which seems to decrease their overall melee effectiveness. Ive seen them try to hold up their shields sometimes against archers, only to drop it back down randomly, right in time to get shot.
Holding formation: I dont want my troops to charge until I tell them to, but if i tell them to hold position they obey, until the enemy gets about 15 ft away at which they all charge. Viking Conquest and a few mods fixed this in warband, but I dont know if Talewords will fix it, as it was a big complaint in captain mode during beta.
AI Battle pathfinding: I know looters are supposed to be dumb fodder troops (aside from the fact that they are a little to good at killing horsemen with 1 handed weapons), but they (and any troop given the charge order) still run endlessly at the nearest enemy when charging. All you need to kill huge looter parties is a few archers and a horse. Circle around the looters within archer range and they will all get killed chasing you around in a clump, instead of going ahead and attacking your main force like they should. Something should be done that prioritizes high concentrations of enemies when charging. This was a warband problem I assumed would be fixed.
Slooowwwww: Everything seems soooo slow now, exept meanwhile the kingdoms are changing really fast with wars. Character progression, running in battle (i think its connected to athletics but it still feels too slow), and traversing the worldmap. It creates a lot of problems, by the time the player progresses high enough to even become a mercenary, one of the factions will have already steamrolled their neighbors. For me it was Battania who conquered almost the whole Western Empire, parts of Vlandia and Sturgia too, before I even got 50 renown. I constantly play in double speed because normal speed feels like swimming through honey, even with a ton of horses. All parties even armies should probably be faster.
Troops upgrade too slow: I spent all day yesterday playing and in the end my party was about 40 troops, mostly tier 1 or 2 with a few bandits as my best troops. I would like to see them upgrade faster and really want an effective training skill/perk.
Getting Info: The encyclopedia is nice and all, but what happened to the wars screen they showed us in a dev blog awhile back? It would be fine, but we cant talk to lords anymore (from warband) to ask them how the wars are going. Also finding the lords for that quest was INCREDIBLY frustrating because of the randomness of trying to find out where lords are. You cant ask a lord where another is anymore, but the encyclopedia will randomly know where they are across the map so you go there and by the time it finally randomly tells where they are again they're back where you were earlier. I dont know how the encyclopedia updates locations but it feels random, and i would rather just ask a lord.
Suggestion for Highlighting: If you could highlight more than just notables in the tavern and city it would be nice. Why can I instantly tell where some companion I don't want is but I have to search for the Mercenaries I want to hire?
Mercenary contracts: 15 silver per party killed? "Oh but it scales with you to 20 or 30" Thats still ridiculous, i can kill a band of looters and get 800 silver from their loot, but the reward is 15 silver? The biggest advantage i can see is a good excuse to hunt caravans, attack lords, and raid villages, but the payment is a joke.
-BUG- Sergent mode broke my game: I became a mercenary and joined an army, but the first battle we came upon, the done button was missing from the troop selection screen. I troubleshooted it and found that for some people it was invisible and could still be pressed, but i clicked everywhere. It was just gone. I tried several battles but it never worked. Therefore it means i currently cannot fight a battle with a friendly army involved, because it will open a troop selection screen that i can't escape from, or start the battle. It also doesn't assignt me any troops as a sergent in custom battle, but mabey thats just not implemented.
Army/Siege: I made a new character using cheats to see if the sergent problem would continue, and joined an army that decided to besiege a castle. Ill list off the problems with that below.
Besiegers dont build enough seige equipment: Most of the sieges ive observed, including this one i was involved in, the attackers just made one trebuchet or catapult, then attacked. No siege tower or ram. That would be ok because ladders work, right? Nope. Thats because of the next problem.
Siege Battle Pathing and placement: The attacking archers were cool the way they'd use cover, but defending archers would just stand around without a target instead of finding a good shooting area. The defending Infantry all clumped up over two ladders, while there were only about 10 guys defending the other side. At first the attacking army was pathing ok, going half to the heavily defended side and half to the lesser, i went to help the attackers on the lesser defended side but once again they used the least distance path instead of the more spread one, like the looters in a field battle; with two ladders side by side where we were attacking, all but about three of them swarmed trying to get up the ladder closer to where they aproached from, despite barely anyone climbing up the one a few feet to the left of it.
Stuck on ladders: Once they got to the top of the ladders, they'd stand as if on invisible ladder rungs, unable to get off the ladder onto the walls. My character had the same problem too, not just the AI, and once i got to the top of my unused ladder I had to press jump to get off it, and almost fell off the wall. All the troops were stuck because nobody could get off the top rung. Meanwhile on the heavily defended side it was just like a warband battle with all of the defenders blocking all of the attackers from getting up two ladders, and nobody was attacking the gates. When we finally defeated all of them (we had over 1000 troops), i had died and 2 archers had fallen down the gatehouse murder hole. The attackers still wouldnt attack or open the gates to get them where they were stuck between the gates, until eventually (after a few minutes of double speed) they just walked through the front gates like ghosts and suicided into their rear.
Army AI: The armies never bring enough food, and end up losing so much cohesion from starvation after one siege that they disperse. Other people have had this problem, and it happened immediately after the siege, despite us still having over 900 troops.
Well thats what I've got to say so far. I'm a little dissapointed to be honest, and i know its EA, but i figured after all this time it would be a little more playable than other early access releases. Regardless I am glad its finally released and will try to continue helping with feedback. I have faith most of these will be fixed and polished up by full release, but i feel like I'd better wait until after it's progressed a little more before starting another real playthrough. Feel free to comment if you agree or dissagree with my points!
Robot walk in bandit hideout: I like the new bandit hideout (exept for the fact that they take you prisoner now instead of escaping) and the way to fight bandits at the end, but when they walk up there is no variation, they look like clines marching up to you with the way they walk. This is very minor, though.
Main quest progession: I dont know if I missed a bit of dialougue or something, but my brother disappears to go find slavers while i raise money for ransom, and then nothing. Never hear from him again and nothing happens after completing the clan quest. It feels broken. (I know about the banner quest and i got up to finishing assembling the banner before i quit, but it didnt provide any closure to the part about my family)
AI dont know how to use shields: I thought bannerlord would improve on this but turned out worse than warband. In warband troops with shields would pretty much constantly hold up their shield towards the enemy in battle until in melee attack range. I hoped in bannerlord they would wait to hold up shields until in missile range of the enemy, but instead they do not hold their shields up unless i give the shield wall order, which seems to decrease their overall melee effectiveness. Ive seen them try to hold up their shields sometimes against archers, only to drop it back down randomly, right in time to get shot.
Holding formation: I dont want my troops to charge until I tell them to, but if i tell them to hold position they obey, until the enemy gets about 15 ft away at which they all charge. Viking Conquest and a few mods fixed this in warband, but I dont know if Talewords will fix it, as it was a big complaint in captain mode during beta.
AI Battle pathfinding: I know looters are supposed to be dumb fodder troops (aside from the fact that they are a little to good at killing horsemen with 1 handed weapons), but they (and any troop given the charge order) still run endlessly at the nearest enemy when charging. All you need to kill huge looter parties is a few archers and a horse. Circle around the looters within archer range and they will all get killed chasing you around in a clump, instead of going ahead and attacking your main force like they should. Something should be done that prioritizes high concentrations of enemies when charging. This was a warband problem I assumed would be fixed.
Slooowwwww: Everything seems soooo slow now, exept meanwhile the kingdoms are changing really fast with wars. Character progression, running in battle (i think its connected to athletics but it still feels too slow), and traversing the worldmap. It creates a lot of problems, by the time the player progresses high enough to even become a mercenary, one of the factions will have already steamrolled their neighbors. For me it was Battania who conquered almost the whole Western Empire, parts of Vlandia and Sturgia too, before I even got 50 renown. I constantly play in double speed because normal speed feels like swimming through honey, even with a ton of horses. All parties even armies should probably be faster.
Troops upgrade too slow: I spent all day yesterday playing and in the end my party was about 40 troops, mostly tier 1 or 2 with a few bandits as my best troops. I would like to see them upgrade faster and really want an effective training skill/perk.
Getting Info: The encyclopedia is nice and all, but what happened to the wars screen they showed us in a dev blog awhile back? It would be fine, but we cant talk to lords anymore (from warband) to ask them how the wars are going. Also finding the lords for that quest was INCREDIBLY frustrating because of the randomness of trying to find out where lords are. You cant ask a lord where another is anymore, but the encyclopedia will randomly know where they are across the map so you go there and by the time it finally randomly tells where they are again they're back where you were earlier. I dont know how the encyclopedia updates locations but it feels random, and i would rather just ask a lord.
Suggestion for Highlighting: If you could highlight more than just notables in the tavern and city it would be nice. Why can I instantly tell where some companion I don't want is but I have to search for the Mercenaries I want to hire?
Mercenary contracts: 15 silver per party killed? "Oh but it scales with you to 20 or 30" Thats still ridiculous, i can kill a band of looters and get 800 silver from their loot, but the reward is 15 silver? The biggest advantage i can see is a good excuse to hunt caravans, attack lords, and raid villages, but the payment is a joke.
-BUG- Sergent mode broke my game: I became a mercenary and joined an army, but the first battle we came upon, the done button was missing from the troop selection screen. I troubleshooted it and found that for some people it was invisible and could still be pressed, but i clicked everywhere. It was just gone. I tried several battles but it never worked. Therefore it means i currently cannot fight a battle with a friendly army involved, because it will open a troop selection screen that i can't escape from, or start the battle. It also doesn't assignt me any troops as a sergent in custom battle, but mabey thats just not implemented.
Army/Siege: I made a new character using cheats to see if the sergent problem would continue, and joined an army that decided to besiege a castle. Ill list off the problems with that below.
Besiegers dont build enough seige equipment: Most of the sieges ive observed, including this one i was involved in, the attackers just made one trebuchet or catapult, then attacked. No siege tower or ram. That would be ok because ladders work, right? Nope. Thats because of the next problem.
Siege Battle Pathing and placement: The attacking archers were cool the way they'd use cover, but defending archers would just stand around without a target instead of finding a good shooting area. The defending Infantry all clumped up over two ladders, while there were only about 10 guys defending the other side. At first the attacking army was pathing ok, going half to the heavily defended side and half to the lesser, i went to help the attackers on the lesser defended side but once again they used the least distance path instead of the more spread one, like the looters in a field battle; with two ladders side by side where we were attacking, all but about three of them swarmed trying to get up the ladder closer to where they aproached from, despite barely anyone climbing up the one a few feet to the left of it.
Stuck on ladders: Once they got to the top of the ladders, they'd stand as if on invisible ladder rungs, unable to get off the ladder onto the walls. My character had the same problem too, not just the AI, and once i got to the top of my unused ladder I had to press jump to get off it, and almost fell off the wall. All the troops were stuck because nobody could get off the top rung. Meanwhile on the heavily defended side it was just like a warband battle with all of the defenders blocking all of the attackers from getting up two ladders, and nobody was attacking the gates. When we finally defeated all of them (we had over 1000 troops), i had died and 2 archers had fallen down the gatehouse murder hole. The attackers still wouldnt attack or open the gates to get them where they were stuck between the gates, until eventually (after a few minutes of double speed) they just walked through the front gates like ghosts and suicided into their rear.
Army AI: The armies never bring enough food, and end up losing so much cohesion from starvation after one siege that they disperse. Other people have had this problem, and it happened immediately after the siege, despite us still having over 900 troops.
Well thats what I've got to say so far. I'm a little dissapointed to be honest, and i know its EA, but i figured after all this time it would be a little more playable than other early access releases. Regardless I am glad its finally released and will try to continue helping with feedback. I have faith most of these will be fixed and polished up by full release, but i feel like I'd better wait until after it's progressed a little more before starting another real playthrough. Feel free to comment if you agree or dissagree with my points!
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