We need better Wanderer game start spawn system.

[five bucks]

Yes. And perhaps not just that they level up faster but that they actually feel like hero units.

Thats what I actually enjoyed about Warband. Outside of the inital powerlevelling I would mostly just settle into watching my companions do the job

"go Alyen, you get em".

Yes!! I want Bannerlord combat companions to actually be a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield!

Otherwise there's no point in having combat companions at all, since you could use them as governors instead.

A big part of making combat companions useful will be fixing arrow damage to armour so that my companion doesn't die to four arrows to the chest they were too busy fighting to block!!!!

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Yes!! I want Bannerlord combat companions to actually be a force to be reckoned with on the battlefield!

Otherwise there's no point in having combat companions at all, since you could use them as governors instead.

A big part of making combat companions useful will be fixing arrow damage to armour so that my companion doesn't die to four arrows to the chest they were too busy fighting to block!!!!

A crossbow bolt to the face was just as nasty in Warband. Keep your shield up. The key difference were

-that your mounted cav companions could actually hit stuff.
- And archers-crossbowmen were kind off headless chickens once you reached them.


I mean.. here in 1.8 I did decide at one point that it was time for my companions to work on their melee. After 30 minutes (probably not quite) of fruitless passes the 8 looters actually won...


Edit. I should probably have let them (the looters) live given their achievment but I guess I am not that big a person.

 

[Brano]

For me, the best available way to level combat companions is via doing as much bandit hideouts raids as possible. In a standard battle they are usually lost in the overall chaos, overperformed by other AI actors and seldomly get even one kill.
I would appreciate if I could choose in a similar way my companions for the quest "Rival gang..."
Thats why I think we need much more quests to do only with companions so there can be full XP gain focus for them.

 

[black_bulldog]

Back when Skyrim released in 2011 it was the top selling game . It had lots to do from the start to the end . You check it against games of its time and it stood out as AAA it was massive and ground breaking in many way. The stealth ranger is the cheese and still is but its an option you can stealth ranger time slowing with ghost bow now. The civil war story was never fully added lots of files in skyrim were never used but its didn't effect the main story ,which wasn't the civil war.

Yeah and Cyberpunk was a top selling game too so don't take too much from that. I don't want to derail this thread anymore so I'll leave it at that.

For me, the best available way to level combat companions is via doing as much bandit hideouts raids as possible. In a standard battle they are usually lost in the overall chaos, overperformed by other AI actors and seldomly get even one kill.
I would appreciate if I could choose in a similar way my companions for the quest "Rival gang..."
Thats why I think we need much more quests to do only with companions so there can be full XP gain focus for them.

I never use companions in combat roles unless you consider a party leader to be a combat role. Once I can afford a caravan off one goes. Once I can have additional parties off goes the next. Once I own a town the next one goes there. Imho companions are far better off being used in other roles besides combat and I don't want to lose one that I'm grooming to be governor, party leader etc just doing a hideout. I wish I had the option to keep them out of battles all together.

I think one of my big beefs with companions is even though they can be used to complete other quests it takes far far too long for them to complete it. A quest I can do in a few hours-half a day game time takes a companion a week or more and the requirements for them to do the quest will spiral out of control. It becomes virtually impossible to have a companion who can even meet the requirements. There's really no logic to that restriction because there's no restriction put on us so why Taleworlds decided to do that is beyond me.

 

[Brano]

My gameplay style actually is independent wanderer. Im fed up with world conquering. No incentive in being vassal or mercenary. I don't run workshops and only 2 caravans. No governors either. That's why I have most of companions as captains for infantry/archers/horses and 4 main party roles.

 

[Taveren]

Wow, didn't see that loosely thrown out comment about Skyrim gathering this much momentum...

I must admit I never finished it. Over 2500 hours played, both LE and SSE, brought flintlock pistols and muskets into the world, tried many different and interesting companions (Vilja, that cat fellow), but just.could.not.finish.it.
Once I get to the meeting with the civil war factions and the Blades go stupid on me, I'm like, yup, time to try something else. Most of the time I just played in the CK and SSEdit to overhaul the entire world into a version of the Powder Mage universe (https://powdermage.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters), which I found to be quite interesting (a blend of AC3-5, W2-3, and various other stuff)

 

[xdj1nn]

Yes. And perhaps not just that they level up faster but that they actually feel like hero units.

Thats what I actually enjoyed about Warband. Outside of the inital powerlevelling I would mostly just settle into watching my companions do the job

"go Alyen, you get em".


It was most certainly not the huge battles that made me like warband.Total war does that way better (and I havnt played that a fraction of the time I have played warband).

that's only achievable rn if we spend couple hundred thousand denars on them and use mods that give more skill XP rates.
Without both they can't really get much better than their initial stats unless you use tricks and "mini-exploits" like fielding a mini-shield wall and allowing your comp to shoot everyone, or spamming bandit camps quiting when the boss fight's about to happen repeatedly. Even than that takes ages, and subtracts from their best uses which are the passive management skills for governors while you're busy doing that.

To actually take a low lvl comp (lvl 11 or 12) into a decent governor (lvl 24) with the appropriate skill distribution (trade, steward + extra combat skills that add gov perks) it takes hours irl and years in-game for each. That means it's only feasible to have a single governor if you want other roles filled (like captains, for instance). It's not viable to have a elite companion squad as it was in WB, the time sink's too harsh and slow, we also have no control of companion availability due to arbitrary RNG, meaning we also are unable to plan-ahead without "start scumming" until the correct squad spawns at the beginning of the game. Talk about annoying mechanics...

Solution I use to actually have fun in the game:

1. Leveling Customizer
2. Better Attributes
3. Distinguished Service

why?

The first allows for reasonable time investment on each comp so that they can over-perform at any planned task by late game.
The second allows for more companions plus more bulky companions which in return makes leveling them less of a tedium grind because you got half-built "reserves" in case one of them dies.
The third allows you to complement the missing companion specs that the RNG has arbitrarily taken from you as an option.

Sometimes you may have planned for a Vlandian PC who owns Khuzait lands, yet the game spawns only 1 wanderer with Khuzait culture - Distinguished Service will save your playthrough. Sometimes the game does you the favor of denying any of the trading companions yet you wanna play a trader prosperity game - Distinguished Service will save your butt. Sometimes you simply want to start your own kingdom and have all vasslas with the same culture as you, again, Distinguished Service.

Better Attributes' hard to balance, though, because it's natural defaults are too OP when combining with some mods. It'll automatically give 2% extra HP, 5% hp regen, 2% move speed, etc. I tend to disable the non-utility ones like these and keep the "extra companion" for the oomph at having reserves, as I've said.

Leveling customizer's also tricky because my first balance test for BL (back in 2020) made me conclude that we needed around 25% more skill xp, level xp was fine, and extra attribute points, so if I'm not careful, Attributes mod with this can make you too op too fast. So far I've been testing options to see how can I make leveling less stupid for both PC and Comps while maintaining the game challenging. Haven't come up with any formula yet.

All of that because TW made their "high-standards" balancing while impeding as much control as they could over the companion AI

Wow, didn't see that loosely thrown out comment about Skyrim gathering this much momentum...

I must admit I never finished it. Over 2500 hours played, both LE and SSE, brought flintlock pistols and muskets into the world, tried many different and interesting companions (Vilja, that cat fellow), but just.could.not.finish.it.
Once I get to the meeting with the civil war factions and the Blades go stupid on me, I'm like, yup, time to try something else. Most of the time I just played in the CK and SSEdit to overhaul the entire world into a version of the Powder Mage universe (https://powdermage.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters), which I found to be quite interesting (a blend of AC3-5, W2-3, and various other stuff)

I have over 5k hours in Skyrim, made personal mods, helped with some of the popular mods in the shadows. In fact I'm friends with multiple popular Skyrim modders, but I don't divulge much on it because I hate exposure. As I said time and time again, if a game provides a decent platform for modding, it can flush the best gaming experiences, yet that doesn't excuse the developer's short commings.

BL's phenomenally uncanny in all regards, because it lacks depth, immersion and has borderline asian levels of grind involved. It also has no late-game what-so-ever, at late-game all you do is hence-repeat mid-game loops with inflated numbers. No challenges, no compelling narrative, no rewarding objectives. You build up all of this grind for late game only to find out that there's nothing else worth you time, which pushes most of us into "world conquest", a boring time consuming task that yields unsatisfying results, because by that point the game feels empty. And if we take the Meta, the only effective strategy is to murder all lords for world conquest, because dealing with arbitrary vote options to distribute fiefs and random war votes' not at all pleasant, it also removes the annoying respawn cycles that the AI manages to do because in auto-calc, an army of recruits and pesants still has no trouble taking garrisoned towns & castles what-so-ever.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

that's only achievable rn if we spend couple hundred thousand denars on them and use mods that give more skill XP rates.
Without both they can't really get much better than their initial stats unless you use tricks and "mini-exploits" like fielding a mini-shield wall and allowing your comp to shoot everyone, or spamming bandit camps quiting when the boss fight's about to happen repeatedly. Even than that takes ages, and subtracts from their best uses which are the passive management skills for governors while you're busy doing that.

I know,

But on the other hand I cannot "care" about some companion I am fundamentally just going to dump in a town never to see again so that they can serve as stat-sticks.

(So I want it to be true)

And yes, I really need to start considering mods to correct for some of the worst most glaring issues I have. I am just old school, in the restart the campaign 50 times to get a decent combo of companions, but disliking adding something to the game that could qualify as cheating way.

 

[xdj1nn]

I know,

But on the other hand I cannot "care" about some companion I am fundamentally just going to dump in a town never to see again so that they can serve as stat-sticks.

(So I want it to be true)

And yes, I really need to start considering mods to correct for some of the worst most glaring issues I have. I am just old school, in the restart the campaign 50 times to get a decent combo of companions, but disliking adding something to the game that could qualify as cheating way.

I use another mod that improves companion usefulness, so your governor actually resolves local settlement issues automatically if you don't intervine, makes them exceptionally useful for maintaining stability and raising the fief's prosperity.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

I use another mod that improves companion usefulness, so your governor actually resolves local settlement issues automatically if you don't intervine, makes them exceptionally useful for maintaining stability and raising the fief's prosperity.

Hmm, my take is that security will not be a major issue post 1.8 since you can, in addition to the brother, just respect wifes to stack perks that reduce garrison maintenance.

 

[xdj1nn]

Hmm, my take is that security will not be a major issue post 1.8 since you can, in addition to the brother, just respect wifes to stack perks that reduce garrison maintenance.

settlement issues affect security, prosperity and hearts. Having your governor auto-sorting these issues with a long CD (basically they wait until the quests' about to despawn and "resolve it" automatically from what I've gathered). This means you can focus on more pressing matters like helping in a war, breaking sieges, etc without having to travel the entire map all of the time to do some annoying minor quest maintenances for your stuff. It's much less efficinet than doing it manually (because it takes a long time for the Gov do intervene), but it also makes Governors logically useful for actually running things in your absense. What I can't remember is if they use the garrison troops for some of these quests, but I think they do. I'm still testing the mod though, so no big kudos as of yet.

Some quintessential ones are "Useful Companions", arguably (depends on preferences) Warbandlord, Distinguished Service (to mitigate stupid RNG and have less of a dumb grind when trying to shoot for specialized companions + having a wider array of possible lords for your realm that match your culture - currently the only culture that has this issue mitigated's Empire, than again we have this annoying bug where all children have the mother's culture ugh), Fourberie (quitessential for filling the massive feature gap TW left us with the whole criminal stuff), leveling adjustment mods, better attributes with 2 levels per attribute changes disabling of OP passives for combat but letting utility bonuses slip in (like persuasion chance, int giving extra 1 or 2% xp etc.)

Than while playing I see myself with 2 options, either go full bannerlord settings while reducing player received dmg for early game (ludicrous start with ludicrous combat move speed & attack speed means you're in for an annoying experience of savescumming otherwise), or I crank up xp gain during early game (up to a reasonable level 12) to virtually skip early game excrutiating stages. It's optional, but I figured it saves you a lot of grief and tedium because otherwise you have to make an early balanced build and spam specific activities in a very specific way until you aren't useless. Thank TW for destroying Arena XP gains for that.

Than as bonus for functionality and more control, I use the garrisons mod which allows you to manage fiefs from a distance, employ recruiters and guard patrols (would be better if AI would use it too). I also added the respec mod to circumvent the "respec" bug from TW, but it's hard to let go of a mod that allows you to tailor your wife (which often carry really retarded focus point and attribute point distribution). ShowTraitXP to trace bugged quests that won't earn you anything but a tap in the back by the NPC (useful for feedback and even seeing how bugged all quests currently are), CulturedStart when I don't feel like messing with Campaign Options plus skips the annoying tutorials in Campaign mode (allows you to start with mid-tier gear), AutoTrader so I don't have to keep track of numbers and waste 50 hours in menus (besides rumor-mongering's 99% lies in-game, completely unreliable, at least AutoTrader highlights profits properly if you wanna do it manually - and also makes getting rid of useless loot much faster). Than I'm considering switching simple RTS cam for the real deal (exceptionally quitenssential imo, since if you aren't on horse back commanding your troops' a nightmare). Diplomacy, which fixes a ton of issues with Faction AI (but unfortunately also introduces other non-sense behaviors in the process, it's a compromise in my book). And finally Party AI overhaul - must have if you dream of even remotely having a say on what your companions / clan members do with your soldiers - very useful to stop them from joining suicidal AI armies.

Now, the problem with all of that is how it changes how you experience the game in general, the only mod that I also find really high in priority's Serve as Soldier (like Freelancer for Warband of sorts) but it's currently half-broken and causes too many issues and crashes. So I've retired it temporarily. The best part of it is that it makes early game much more rewarding and interesting.

 

[five bucks]

A crossbow bolt to the face was just as nasty in Warband.

No, Warband definitely soaked more chest shots. I have tested this extensively and can say with certainty that it takes on average about 4-5 chest arrows to kill someone in Bannerlord, where it took 7-10 in Warband.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

No, Warband definitely soaked more chest shots. I have tested this extensively and can say with certainty that it takes on average about 4-5 chest arrows to kill someone in Bannerlord, where it took 7-10 in Warband.

Chest shots were not really a major issue in warband true. But a shot to the face/head was. Even with the best helmets around a single shot could easily remove most of your healthbar. I imagine that many others, besides me, had a healthy fear of charging a formation of Rhodoks crossbowmen.

Their rate of fire was also a bit too slow to go all "dancing with wolves" on them.

I am sure the main reason behind my PC mouses dying was pressing too hard to keep my shield up

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

settlement issues affect security, prosperity and hearts. Having your governor auto-sorting these issues with a long CD (basically they wait until the quests' about to despawn and "resolve it" automatically from what I've gathered). This means you can focus on more pressing matters like helping in a war, breaking sieges, etc without having to travel the entire map all of the time to do some annoying minor quest maintenances for your stuff. It's much less efficinet than doing it manually (because it takes a long time for the Gov do intervene), but it also makes Governors logically useful for actually running things in your absense. What I can't remember is if they use the garrison troops for some of these quests, but I think they do. I'm still testing the mod though, so no big kudos as of yet.

Ahh, I dont really bother with settlements anymore. I did at one point try a campaign where I wanted to play "tall" so I spend alot of time solving quests, getting to 100 relationship with notables etc. around towns. But, at the end the effects were too small to really matter and I figured that, with the amount of time spend on it, I could have made millions from battles instead.

So, I dont keep many towns and the ones I do keep I just dump enough troops into them to make sure security is high enough to handle a few negative events.

Than while playing I see myself with 2 options, either go full bannerlord settings while reducing player received dmg for early game (ludicrous start with ludicrous combat move speed & attack speed means you're in for an annoying experience of savescumming otherwise), or I crank up xp gain during early game (up to a reasonable level 12) to virtually skip early game excrutiating stages. It's optional, but I figured it saves you a lot of grief and tedium because otherwise you have to make an early balanced build and spam specific activities in a very specific way until you aren't useless. Thank TW for destroying Arena XP gains for that.

I believe Arena XP is back. You do get "decent" xp from it.

But, the two weak minor clans are both close to the starting point in the main campaign, so I just go "warband" and solo one or two parties for an early powerlevelling boost, then rescue my brother to serve as steward and then start raising an army. It can take as little as a few weeks, mainly depending on how much time I need to spend picking up the core companions, to transition to the merc-lord hunting phase of the game.


Though, this is not particularly satisfying. The weakness of companions as warriors, outside of ranged atleast, means you dont really get that satisfying feeling of seeing your warband gradually grow stronger.

 

[black_bulldog]

My gameplay style actually is independent wanderer. Im fed up with world conquering. No incentive in being vassal or mercenary. I don't run workshops and only 2 caravans. No governors either. That's why I have most of companions as captains for infantry/archers/horses and 4 main party roles.

That makes sense.

 

[Brano]

Its aligned with my latest battle order groups:
I. cavalry 50%
II. archers 50%
III. infantry 50%
IV. infantry 50%
V. archers 50%
VI. cavalry 50%
I have 6 companions now (tier 3 or 4? clan)
2 are leading caravans
4 are captains
my wife is captain of III. infantry and myself lead VI. cavalry

 

[geala]

My gameplay style actually is independent wanderer. Im fed up with world conquering. No incentive in being vassal or mercenary. I don't run workshops and only 2 caravans. No governors either. That's why I have most of companions as captains for infantry/archers/horses and 4 main party roles.

What are you doing in the game? I could imagine just roaming around if there were interesting places to detect and explore or mighty bandit or invasion hordes or criminal minor clans to fight, but there is none. Do you use mods to add something (like in earlier versions Calradia at War and Scum and Villainy)?

I usually cannot decide whom to join as vassal (I don't like the fief gameplay as offered by the game that much, so clunky, albeit I like being able to form armies and help the faction), but as mercenary you can at least take part in battles or hunt lords (if you can bear the bad AI) while remaining flexible to a certain degree. So I'm usually playing mostly as mercenary.

 

[five bucks]

Chest shots were not really a major issue in warband true. But a shot to the face/head was. Even with the best helmets around a single shot could easily remove most of your healthbar. I imagine that many others, besides me, had a healthy fear of charging a formation of Rhodoks crossbowmen.

Their rate of fire was also a bit too slow to go all "dancing with wolves" on them.

I am sure the main reason behind my PC mouses dying was pressing too hard to keep my shield up

Lemme put it this way, I just jumped ingame, challenged a Vaegir lord to a fight, and ran around in front of his archers, and I didn't get headshot once. Most damage I took was around the 10 mark, on full damage to player settings.

For sure you would fear charging a formation of crossbowmen, that makes perfect sense - but in Bannerlord, I fear charging even a small group of 4 archers or crossbowmen because I know just one shot from each of them will kill me. And they get speed damage bonus for their arrows from my movement speed too!

Arrow damage to armour needs to be reduced so that instead of 4-5 chest shots or 1 headshot (on a helmet!) to kill, instead it takes 7-8 chest shots or 2-3 helmet shots to kill.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Lemme put it this way, I just jumped ingame, challenged a Vaegir lord to a fight, and ran around in front of his archers, and I didn't get headshot once. Most damage I took was around the 10 mark, on full damage to player settings.

Ehm, thats what I just said. Their rate of fire is too slow to do a "dancing with wolves". I mean do you really want to do that for every single battle?


Besides this, I do not mind fearing them. If you not supposed to fear a ranged unit, at range, then when? The important thing is that once you close the distance then the table is turned and you become the wolf.

 

[geala]

Reminds me of Ranulf at Brissarthe 866 AD. While his buddy Robert was killed in melee because he did not wear helmet and mail shirt, Ranulf was downed by an arrow while on horse fully armored, and being the duke of Aquitaine he surely hadn't the worst armor. He would have strongly supported a rule that x arrows min were needed to kill.