That makes that even worse...
I thought that he might have meant that, but I really thought it was just miscommunication because the other alternative is WF&S, and everyone in the community believes that to be the "worst" out of the franchise. Unless, that is to say, he himself believes WF&S to be objectively superior to VC, there would be no point in comparing WF&S with BL since we have VC at a higher pedestal.
He said VC was the only one that was good. "Worth a damn" means it is good. But even that is probably Reforged edition talking.
It was a good experience though, with a year's worth of polish. But it is going to be much easier to get Bannerlord to that state, because its balancing is aiming for a bit more diversity in terms of troops and tactics. They aren't just going to have cripplemounts like ponies all over the place. And leveling up troops is clearly intended to be part of that experience, unlike VC where it was, uh, let's just say it was different than native.
I'm hoping that they can get spacing for the fights; in the video you posted there was ample room between each man for them to freely maneuver. My memory of sieges in VC has faded to the point of being useless but even just having space to retain some element of footwork would make fighting on foot feel much better than it does at present, having to push my way through my own men and then being pressed right up against the enemy.
Other than that, I doubt formations will help much just because there are already formation mods and unless you go full static, no attacking with overlapping shields, your troops still die insanely fast once the lines meet.
VC was nowhere near as bad as Bannerlord was at release. The things people were claiming about it when it came out was drastically different from my launch date experiences. I may have just been lucky, but I can't imagine it being anywhere near as bad as Bannerlord during launch. Launch day Bannerlord was so broken it was funny.
Either you were lucky or you were playing Reforged edition. Just the fact they had a re-release a year later should tell you how bad its launch was. Anyone can still see the posts from that time on this forum, just go all the way back in the VC forum and check if you don't believe that VC was a sailing dumpster fire for the first few months.
I really have come to resent having to manually aim my troops at the enemy for them to shoot.....'good enough'. I don't know what even changes in the AI but if you don't face direction they're like twice as slow to shoot or they just don't track as well, I don't know but I hate it. I also hate having to drag mounted troops into enemies to get them to fight and actually hit enemies.
I wish I could choose where they start on the map and their opening formations, before battle. I hate so much having to hurry and do the same formations and movements every single battle. And make no mistake, if I don't do everything as optimally as possible troops die because they can't defend themselves. It's kill first or nothing. I wish there was surgery from warband, as good as in warband.
If you don't force a facing, the archers will semi-continuously turn their formation in place and waste time they should spend shooting on dancing back and forth to get the perfect ninety degree angle to the enemy. By giving them a facing, the thing that changes is the AI mostly stops its micro-maneuvering and focuses on just putting arrows downrange.
As for surgery in Warband vs. medicine in Bannerlord, someone who actually dug through the code pointed out that the benefits of the skill are
vastly underrated:
(Taken from some dude on Discord)
T0: 2.91%
T1: 15.25%
T2: 24.81%
T3: 32.43%
T4: 38.65%
T5: 43.82%
T6: 48.18%
At medicine 100:
T0: 50.7%
T1: 54.1%
T2: 57.0%
T3: 59.6%
T4: 61.9%
T5: 64.0%
T6: 65.8%
Medicine 330 (the highest native)
T0: 76.9%
T1: 77.6%
T2: 78.4%
T3: 79.0%
T4: 79.7%
T5: 80.3%
T6: 80.8%
