So I'd just gotten back into playing Bannerlord after a bit of a break from the game and was excited to see what the new 1.1.0 patch was bringing to the table. Everything was fine for the first couple of hours of playing but after some time I started to notice that the faction balance was back to its old "one faction steamrolling over the others" self, the Western Empire had almost practically disappeared in the first hours of gameplay and the Aserai had been halved by Vlandia. It's only later that I realized that the cause of this lack of power balance was probably due to how the new sieges work.
For the sake of clarity I'll give a personal example of a siege defense and what I think is wrong with the new system:
So I'm defending the city of Amprela with a good garrison of Battanian Fian Champions and Imperial Legionaries from my own personal party. Our forces number around 230~ and the besieging army of Khuzaits around 400~. It all goes as it usually does and we wait for them to finish building their siege towers and battering ram before going in for the assault. The siege starts and I take control of one of the catapults on the walls to destroy one of their towers and the battering ram to give ourselves a better chance of defending without being swarmed by their superior numbers. They take about 40 soldiers worth of casualties and decide to retreat. Now here's the kicker, in the previous patches they'd just pull back to go for another coordinated attack, but now what they do is go back and continue building their siege engines again.
So the AI now basically goes in with an army, loses 10% worth of its forces and decides to build everything again from scratch. So what you end up doing is waiting for about 10 minutes for them to launch another assault only to do the same thing after losing about 30 soldiers again.
Now I don't know about you guys but I just don't have the patience to spend 2 real life hours to get through a siege...
The old system worked fine wherein they could pull back if they wanted to but were stuck in assaulting the walls instead of going back to the campaign map to continue their siege which now takes forever. An easy fix for this would be to give them the option to abandon the siege if they wanted to after retreating.
What I think causes this loop to happen is the sudden loss in morale after they take some casualties and lose 2 siege engines and no longer think assaulting the walls is doable. But if the option to keep them to fight is to simply nerf ourselves and not get involved in destroying their engines and risk suffering heavy losses or potentially even losing the siege then the new design is poorly executed.
Are we basically being punished for playing well?
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On another note the new female animations are absolutely horrendous, they look exaggerated and unnatural.
For the sake of clarity I'll give a personal example of a siege defense and what I think is wrong with the new system:
So I'm defending the city of Amprela with a good garrison of Battanian Fian Champions and Imperial Legionaries from my own personal party. Our forces number around 230~ and the besieging army of Khuzaits around 400~. It all goes as it usually does and we wait for them to finish building their siege towers and battering ram before going in for the assault. The siege starts and I take control of one of the catapults on the walls to destroy one of their towers and the battering ram to give ourselves a better chance of defending without being swarmed by their superior numbers. They take about 40 soldiers worth of casualties and decide to retreat. Now here's the kicker, in the previous patches they'd just pull back to go for another coordinated attack, but now what they do is go back and continue building their siege engines again.
So the AI now basically goes in with an army, loses 10% worth of its forces and decides to build everything again from scratch. So what you end up doing is waiting for about 10 minutes for them to launch another assault only to do the same thing after losing about 30 soldiers again.
Now I don't know about you guys but I just don't have the patience to spend 2 real life hours to get through a siege...
The old system worked fine wherein they could pull back if they wanted to but were stuck in assaulting the walls instead of going back to the campaign map to continue their siege which now takes forever. An easy fix for this would be to give them the option to abandon the siege if they wanted to after retreating.
What I think causes this loop to happen is the sudden loss in morale after they take some casualties and lose 2 siege engines and no longer think assaulting the walls is doable. But if the option to keep them to fight is to simply nerf ourselves and not get involved in destroying their engines and risk suffering heavy losses or potentially even losing the siege then the new design is poorly executed.
Are we basically being punished for playing well?
----------
On another note the new female animations are absolutely horrendous, they look exaggerated and unnatural.