SP - General The Issues I've Found

[Marbles20]

I felt the need to make a list of some of the issue I think the game has currently. I’m sure some of these issues have been brought up in one form or another on other threads. I figure if I never bring them up though then they can never be addressed one way or another. It is by no means a complete list but it does bring up points throughout the game that have been frustrating as a player. Some are overarching problems and others are smaller quality of life issues that detract from the experience. This will be expanded as I go back through them or notice things on playthrough, though some may get crossed off if fixed.

Diplomacy:

Kingdoms can declare peace when they are being besieged without losing the city/castle. Example: Southern Empire is at war with Khuzait and one of their cities is under siege by a Khuzait army. Western Empire declares war on Southern Empire. Southern Empire can declare peace with Khuzait without losing the city since Western Empire declared war on them. There should be a conditional that if a castle or town is under siege they must wait until after the siege to declare peace with the sieging kingdom.

War declarations are always 100% unless at war already. There is no chance to keep a kingdom out of a war for an extended period (even just a few days) or redirect the target to one more suitable using influence in either case. Example: Khuzait push deep into Imperial territories. If not at war they choose a target based off tribute which can be a kingdom as far as battania. All lords are in 100% agreement so there is no chance to sway the vote even though it makes no sense to attack an enemy that far from the kingdoms base when there are closer, easier enemies to attack.

War peace declarations follow along similar lines of illogical behavior with votes being almost always 100% for or against peace not allowing the player to sway the decisions.

Kingdom decisions follow order of first in first out. Each kingdom decision should be able to be decided independently of other kingdom decisions. Example: Player is leading a successful campaign. They just took a castle and are sieging a town when the kingdom has started a decision for peace. The vote for ownership of the castle comes up afterward. Due to the order they appeared it forces the player to vote for peace before castle ownership, which the player is loath to do during a town siege that will succeed.

There is no interaction with lords/kings to gauge their feelings and inclinations towards war and peace and to potentially manipulate their feelings on the matter through charm/diplomacy/roguery. This further makes all kingdom decisions from war/peace to fief ownership feel completely useless. The logical progression in intra-kingdom diplomacy from Warband would have been to get other lords trying to influence the player as well.

Family members cannot be directed to improve relations with particular clans. See Clans section for more.

Inability to contact friendly allied clans easily. This was a nuisance in Warband and its just as bad if not worse in Bannerlord due to the increased map size, physical obstacles, and the fact that only the leader of the clan is worth talking to. The ability to ask a lord where another lord is at is gone and we have to navigate a laggy encyclopedia to keep track of a person’s last known whereabouts, which are always screwy. Ideally you could send a message to meet somewhere or ask a direct question and it would take a half day or up two days to get a reply via text on parchment.

Relations should have been modified to individual + clan instead of just clan. It just makes most lords/ladies creepy smiling/frowning robots.

 

[Marbles20]

Clans:

The fact that any family member that is not a governor/party leader/party member, will randomly go to various settlements to improve relations is ineffective/undesired. This ties back into the Family members cannot directly improve relations with a particular clan point. They cannot be kept in an owned settlement to help their chances of conceiving children with spouses or improve relations within the owned settlement along with the governor. Forcing them back to a settlement by temporarily making them governor only keeps them there for a day or two.

Courtship needs a slight workover to make it feel meaningful and take a little more time (1-1.5 months). Clan status/level should play a role in which people you can court/marry (example: cannot marry someone in a rank 5 clan if your clan is below 3) Your kids will likely have more available choices if you have moved up through society.

Some spouses should view their equipment as their own and not part with it. (more of an exploit fix to keep people from just ganking the best gear within a week of starting gameplay, longer courtship would also minimize that problem.)

Flavor text and diplomatic options/rewards needs added for in-laws. Some example diplomatic rewards/options for being in-laws: lower influence needed to pull into army, will vote with you on kingdom decisions unless relations are poor, and option to get them to stay out of a fight if on opposing sides, unless it is their fiefs they are fighting for. Rewards and options are nullified if their daughter/son with whom you were married to dies (to prevent exploit).

General flavor text and options added for spouse. Spouse should have court intrigue or interesting things happening in the kingdom to talk about with the player.

Relations being individual + clan instead of just clan would have allowed some relationship building within the clan. Now spouse, kids, other family, and companions are stuck indefinitely at neutral and destroyed any real story building.

UI:

There should have been 2 UI options: robust and cinematic. The current UI is more cinematic keeping information minimal while allowing the player to enjoy the scenes (which seems to be the primary theme of this game’s development). It however really could use a robust UI that offered more of the information right in front of the player for those that like/need to keep track of things without having to constantly consult the encyclopedia. Having to open a book in the middle of an interaction with a lord is more emersion-breaking than giving me a toggle or directly showing me things while I’m interacting with them.

The encyclopedia gets too laggy loading in the unique portraits of all of the lords. A possible solution might be to have it just take a life-stage screenshot of each lord and load that in each time. We do not really care if they are smiling or frowning or what they are wearing. The point of the encyclopedia should be about getting us information fast if we are to be expected to rely on it as our primary source of information.

The encyclopedia really needs a button on the player’s main HUD. Its okay if its optional and can be removed later but new players are going to have a hard time finding necessary information without it. Yes, I know the hotkey is quicker, but the button is more user friendly to start with.

Settlement food stocks in the Manage Town, Manage Castle, Clan Fiefs, and Settlement screens should be under the following format: <Current Food> / <Maximum Possible Food> [food icon] (<+/- Daily Food>)

Garrison numbers on the Clan Fiefs and Settlement screens should be under the following format: <Current Troops> / <Maximum Possible Troops>

A Kingdom Diplomacy Sheet is sorely needed. Preferably one that shows what the diplomacy between each kingdom is similar to Warbands. If at war it should show that they are at war, who started it possibly using an icon to denote it, and how long the war has gone on. If at peace it should show for how long the peace has stood and if one kingdom is giving tribute to the other.

A Kingdom Diplomacy Graph would be useful as well similar to Age of Empire II’s power graph shown at the end of the game, though not as pressing I think as the spreadsheet.

If an item is locked in the trade screen do not let it be sellable until manually unlocked.

 

[Marbles20]

Sound:

Some basic bug smashing for horses that sound like they are dancing on the wooden docks when they are sprinting through fields at an enemy.

Some more guttural grunts and yells that sound like they are coming from desperate men in a battle for their lives. (Do not actually put anyone in danger to get them though. Lol)

I know there was talk of bland sword chamber sounds but I haven’t really listened that closely.

More music is welcome.

Basic Combat:

No unit to unit control makes the battles very Mount & Babysitter in nature. Example: If I have a shield wall of infantry that I want to have intercept/stay engaged with the enemy infantry I cannot just order them to advance on Infantry. I must babysit their movement toward the infantry and make sure they remain engaged with them up to the enemy spawn point. If I ordered them to charge and there is a lone horse archer riding by, they will turn their backs on the enemy infantry and chase the cavalry until the enemy infantry have gotten closer to the infantry than the retreating cavalry archer.

No pre-battle formation orders. I understand the placement of troops pre-battle was scrapped but it would have been nice to have pre-battle formation orders as a replacement. Letting the player choose in having infantry start in shieldwall, or archers in loose, or cavalry in wedge, before the battle starts would make for less hectic nonsense at the beginning of battle. Instead we have to memorize the formation keys and scramble to find the best ground to fight on and move to it making sure its not too far off from our spawn, or just cheese it with HA or archer meta which is boring.

Armor values and penetration seem off. Others have more insight into this admittedly, but its odd when a basic slashing weapon is still doing a fair amount of damage on a piece of armor, example chainmail, designed to negate slashing.

Static spawns severely limit the battlefield maneuvers of the player, or computer for that matter. The only way to battle is really forward and backward. Flanking the initial enemy force leaves the players flank exposed to enemy reinforcements, especially if it is on the opposing end of the battlefield near their spawn. This makes many scenes that could have decent choke points or barriers to protect a certain flank through maneuvering rather useless.

*Would have to further playtest this one* spears bracing or attacks against a mounted unit who has high velocity should dismount the rider. Giving infantry, notably spear infantry, a worthy counter.

Companion/Lord deaths needs scaled back and refactored, and simulated battles should allow lord deaths at a slightly lower rate than live battle. Would start at 2.5%/1.5% to test.

 

[Marbles20]

Simulated Combat:

*I’m not sure if this was already implemented, but I’ll check the snowballing thread at some point.* Cavalry should get no bonus during sieges. There really isn’t anywhere for them to maneuver and they don’t go into sieges on their mount anyway so they should just count as their respective tier infantry or archer.

Siege (Campaign Map):

Attacker should be able to build all siege engines without placing them immediately. Having to immediately pull a trebuchet off its mark after its been built, and letting the enemy get a full hit on it regardless of how fast it was done is just bad. Ranged siege engines are useless to build because of this. Even when you do build them all and place them at once it is just a race on who can rebuild their engines the fastest. Trebuchets should be completely out of the range of catapult and ballista anyway. Though they should fire slower to compensate.

Siege Combat:

Siege towers are still completely broken. Players are better off using ladders, even though the computer barely knows how to use those any better.

Needs better pathfinding or ‘objective points’ to keep everyone from derping to the same location. Example West wall infantry should make their first objectives 2-3 points at the top of the west wall right above the ladder positions (might help them utilize all of the ladders), once secure next objective are the west towers, once secure then move to point just behind main gate.

 

[Apocal]

*I’m not sure if this was already implemented, but I’ll check the snowballing thread at some point.*

It was.