This game is broken at a fundamental level

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I mean you are welcome to disagree if that's what you want to do. When I give you multiple reasons why I said that and you answer by basically saying "nah ya wrong" without building any argument of your own, I am not really sure what you expect me to say to that :smile:

That's not an answer to what I asked. You didn't give me anything. You only discussed other issues with the game and when I asked you point out what he said, you failed to do that. Not once did you explain why OP was off base, only what you think constitutes other issues. I then asked, why isn't what OP pointed out something worthy of making it fundamentally broken. But sure?

If you don't have any idea how to explain your opinion, then fine, just say that. Don't point to someone else to explain your opinion for you and then lash out because I dared to say something.
 
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If you don't have any idea how to explain your opinion, then fine, just say that. Don't point to someone else to explain your opinion for you and then lash out because I dared to say something.
Everyone suddenly becomes tough and hard for no discernible reason when they're behind a computer screen, lol.
 
I disagree with your assertion about loses not really mattering to AI or player. Player loses can be catastrophic depending on the difficulty your playing. The player may not have a developed clan with lots of fiefs and garrisons to pull from.
This can & does happen to the AI. The key to defeating them is consistent pressure. Winning a huge set piece battle between two 1000+ armies is cool and all, but if the victor loses half of their forces and falls back to recruit new troops then no momentum was gained because the escaping lords will do the same. It is better for the player (strategically, but not from a design perspective) to let large armies pass by so friendly AI can deal with them. This frees the player to chase down individual lord parties and prevent new armies forming from large parties. If your friendly AI beats a large opposing army while you are stomping down solo parties, then your friendly army has time to replenish troops and besiege something before a new large army is formed. When your faction takes a settlement you decrease the recruitment opportunities for the enemy and increase your own.

I have noticed that taking 2 cities (or 1 city and a handful of castles) effectively determines the outcome of future wars. Unless a third party attacks from a different direction, the faction with a foothold in enemy territory will win future wars primarily because of recruitment availability. The player doesn't need to be involved after the initial conquests because those conquests upset the equilibrium so much.

On the other side of things, the player can easily stock T5/6 troops in their garrisons and maintain them through active money generation (trading, smithing) so a lost battle is not necessarily crippling. I would argue that after a certain point it becomes beneficial to the player to lose a battle, because their wages go down until/unless they recruit more troops. If you don't recruit more troops, then you can spend less time making money and more time rolling over enemy lords with your doomstack.
 
That's not an answer to what I asked. You didn't give me anything. You only discussed other issues with the game and when I asked you point out what he said, you failed to do that. Not once did you explain why OP was off base, only what you think constitutes other issues. I then asked, why isn't what OP pointed out something worthy of making it fundamentally broken. But sure?

If you don't have any idea how to explain your opinion, then fine, just say that. Don't point to someone else to explain your opinion for you and then lash out because I dared to say something.
I think you and I have a very different idea of what lashing out means, but cool.

I did explain in my post why I don't think that what OP says makes sense, I could elaborate further on what I said but you come across as just wanting to pick random fight, so I will leave you to doing that with someone else :wink:
 
I'd classify immediately getting a childish tone to your posts over a simple post as lashing out, but if you don't see how reacting the way that you did comes off like that, it explains everything.

I did explain in my post why I don't think that what OP says makes sense, I could elaborate further on what I said but you come across as just wanting to pick random fight, so I will leave you to doing that with someone else :wink:

Yep. Disagreeing with you = wanting a fight. ?‍♂️

Everyone suddenly becomes tough and hard for no discernible reason when they're behind a computer screen, lol.

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From what I see, nothing he says explains away what I asked/why OP is "off base". The way lords recruit troops is surely not the major factor why the game is a giant, ugly mess, but calling it "off base" is absurd when these sorts of important workings of the game AI changes the way people play and or enjoy it.
StewVader's OP claimed it was not just a major factor but THE major factor. It also happens that he was totally wrong about the way it worked, to the point where his suggestion for the way it should work is the way it already does (and people still hate).

If you misdiagnose the illness, the medicine won't cure you.
I disagree with your assertion about loses not really mattering to AI or player. Player loses can be catastrophic depending on the difficulty your playing. The player may not have a developed clan with lots of fiefs and garrisons to pull from.
You can always pull from neutral villages and towns. No recruiting bonus, you'll get two slots per notable (assuming no trait mismatches), roughly three notables per village and five per town, which means passing from Odokh to Baltakhand (four towns and 8-13 villages) can put you over 100 party size in under four days' travel, for one example off the top of my head.

But like I said, most people don't play in that manner that because:
1) party size and troop quality is another form of progression in M&B
2) too many players feel compelled to use the safest (and grindiest) method of raising troops -- killing looters -- and the game does nothing to discourage them.
3) it feels bad to lose troops that you've spent hours grinding up, especially to an AI which cares nothing about its men.

The crazy part is, I'm actually on your side and I've said that battles should become rarer and more decisive, recruiting troops less of a chore, etc.
 
Do you guys actually imprison the lord you capture after every battle? Because that works well for me. You need few decisive victories but after that enemy will become weakened.
 
Well in a better world, the game would introduce Crusader Kings like choices for prisoners. I'd love to throw a lord or two into a snake pit. :lol:
I've had a few people in my life I'd like to do that to too. :ROFLMAO: But seriously I'd like some kind of reliable way to put a lord out of commission for more than a couple of days without something so drastic as killing him. Barring that I'd be ok with lords escaping a couple of days if they'd start to play defensive after a big loss, instead of reloading and coming right back at me.
 
I've had a few people in my life I'd like to do that to too. :ROFLMAO: But seriously I'd like some kind of reliable way to put a lord out of commission for more than a couple of days without something so drastic as killing him. Barring that I'd be ok with lords escaping a couple of days if they'd start to play defensive after a big loss, instead of reloading and coming right back at me.

They've found an inexhaustible source of peasants to exploit, it seems. lol
 
They've found an inexhaustible source of peasants to exploit, it seems. lol
One major mod for Warband (The Last Days of Middle Earth) used a value for overall faction strength. As the faction took losses, replacement troops cost faction strength. That strength value would gradually replenish from the faction's towns and villages, so as long as losses were lower than needed replacements, it wasn't a problem. Push too hard, and lose too many troops, and faction strength would drop, limiting replacements and forcing lords to field smaller armies.

Unlike the vanilla game, that mod made each battle at least slightly "meaningful", as a way of weakening an enemy faction. Yes, they could run home, call up another army, and come right back at you, but each army would be slightly smaller as they depleted their faction's strength pool. Eventually, with sufficient pressure, the pool would dry up, the last bastion would fall, and the faction would collapse.

In Bannerlord, or vanilla Warband, victories were generally meaningless, because the defeated opponent could simply call up more troops from thin air with no repercussions. At least in Bannerlord, they still have to chase around the various villages to recruit enough men to fully replace losses, as only PART of their army respawns instantly. It's broken, but not quite as broken as it was.
 
The problem was a mix of them drawing from garrison and how their garrison rebuilds over time. Player can rebuild their army just as fast if they have auto garrison and don't mind using lower-tier recruits. Improved garrison mod can trivialize recruitment even for noble troop only army.

But it's not just how fast they rebuild their stack, but also what they do with it. AI often chooses to go back on the attack even with minimal party size. Raiding settlements and whatnot, forcing the player to react to their attacks over and over again.
 
Unless the AI becomes more intelligent, the AI is going to need cheats in order for this game to be interesting.

The AI is simply too "dumb" to not rely on some type of handicap. Otherwise they will get defeated and it will be hard to get them to bounce back.


I always believe REALITY is best solution to problems.

If an AI army is beaten / slaughtered but the general flees, that general should be able to recruit more troops in a friendly town ..BUT as a "Loser" general, he would not be able to hire as many troops. The grape-vine has informed many soldiers that this guy will get you KILLED ! If the lost Battle was a slaughter, the general might even be SACKED !

Another point, The renown of the general should allow them to "Call up" (free) militia troops for a short period. For example, a large army is coming to siege a city, a highly respected general of the city "calls up' the citizens to defend their home. Thus he can get 20 - 80 ??? Citizen militia troops to defend the walls. These troops vanish after about 1 day.

I wander off sometimes .. :grin:

The problem is that this will make the game too easy for the player.

Factions doing well will quickly snowball and factions doing poorly will have very little means of recovery. That "short period' could be the decisive stage in a major war.

There would have to be some way for defeated factions to recover or the game would become even easier for the player than it already is.


I would also like to make a real world counterargument - the Battle of Cannae. Hannibal inflicted a very decisive defeat towards the Romans. Yet they recovered and ultimately won the Second Punic Wars by throwing everything they had at him to raise new legions. Even slaves and criminals were enrolled.

Without some mechanism of recovery, it would be - the player joins a faction and easily steamrolls the map. Unfortunately, for that reason "cheats" are a necessary evil.

The ultimate solution of course is that someday, the AI becomes more intelligent than most players, but that is beyond the realm of what is possible today.
 
The ultimate solution of course is that someday, the AI becomes more intelligent than most players, but that is beyond the realm of what is possible today.
You can already make the enemy significantly more challenging just by adjusting their target prioritization and the numbers behind when/if/how they form armies. It isn't really fun though, because they'll hit with like four armies at once, instead of one or two at a time, like now.
 
Factions doing well will quickly snowball and factions doing poorly will have very little means of recovery. That "short period' could be the decisive stage in a major war.

There would have to be some way for defeated factions to recover or the game would become even easier for the player than it already is.

If the game made defending more rewarding then attacking, factions doing bad could take a more defensive stance and try to recover faster. Meanwhile factions doing well try to conquer but lose much more resources then defending factions and would have to get back after a few victories and replenish. This way battles would be meaningful but also snowballing would be slowed down. But at the current state of the game factions doing bad just form another army of recruits and besiege cities of factions doing well and get slaughtered again and again.
 
Proper fix would need to be more complex because doing one thing relatively realistically while keepeng other things gamey might end up in even more snowball experience.

Ill give some examples. You add realistic consequences to loosing troops in battles, lets say "production" of troops would be slower, no cheats for AI, or maybe even something more simulation-like for example loss of prosperity / hearts for every now troop in the recruitment pool of the town / village or maybe even full blown population system. Great we have simulation, we migh be even able to feed it archeological / historical / scientific data to have even more accurate results. However there is problem. Pitched battles are far more common in BL than in actual history and any kind of battle have far more losses than hitorical battles (generally 1 army broke when it sustained 10-20% losses and most of casualities were inflicted during rout and even then it probably was nowhere near 50-70% killed like in BL). So, we would end up with realistic pop growth and pop cost of recruitment but unrealistic frequency and cost of battle. So we have to put some arbitraty modifers to good simulation in order to balance growth cost of new troops with attrition - so we are back in square one, gamey values.

Ok so then you decide to solve the death rate and battle frequency problem. You can affect the death rate by chnanging how armor works (combat overhaul) to prevent battles from ending in 30 seconds with ton of dead and then you will have to tweak morale so armies break quickly when flank charged or peperred with arrows or when sustaining bit of loses - but you end up with unapealing gameplay because you dont get to figh that much and because even with overhaul gamplay 20 % loses of 1000 strong army still happen very fast. So you cant really go realistic morale rout with scale of BL battles, but perhaps small tweak to pop growth or increase in wounded over killed will solve this problem.

In order to fix frequency of battles problem, without reducing their actual frequency too much you could speed up the progress of time in the game, lets say one currecnt day would actual mean 1 week, that would also enable CK2-3 like gameplay where you play for clan, not one person. But this would again require rework of xp system and more dynastic features.

So you see, I tried to solve one problem via simulation / realism but I ended up needing to solve half the game. On its own thats not a problem, if you deisgn that wway from ground up. Problem is reworking it this way this late in development.

And I have not touched eceonomy at all which would obviously need to be done properly too in simulation. For example fixing prices of armor and weapons, troops needing these weapons and armors for upgrades, AI needing them too not just player etc.
 
If the game made defending more rewarding then attacking, factions doing bad could take a more defensive stance and try to recover faster. Meanwhile factions doing well try to conquer but lose much more resources then defending factions and would have to get back after a few victories and replenish. This way battles would be meaningful but also snowballing would be slowed down. But at the current state of the game factions doing bad just form another army of recruits and besiege cities of factions doing well and get slaughtered again and again.

The only solution would be to allow defeated enemies to recruit higher tier units so that a higher percentage of their troops have higher tier units.

The Lord Retinue module in Realistic Battle Mod is probably the closet we have to an ideal solution.


In order to fix frequency of battles problem, without reducing their actual frequency too much you could speed up the progress of time in the game, lets say one currecnt day would actual mean 1 week, that would also enable CK2-3 like gameplay where you play for clan, not one person. But this would again require rework of xp system and more dynastic features.

To be honest, I think that we may need some dynastic features - particularly around succession of players as they die.

I think the ultimate game would be one that merged many of the best features of Bannerlord battles and CK3 strategy together.
 
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