TW seems to be more interested in making the simulation aspect of Bannerlord successful rather than making it a rewarding gaming experience for the players.
In Bannerlord, AI agents are considered on the same level as the player. Time and time again TW devs have declined feature suggestions because of the impact it would have on the AI agents. Everything the player can do, the agents must be able to do as well. Or from a different perspective, the player is
limited by what can be coded for the AI agents. If this does not raise all sorts of warnings that Bannerlord is a game in name only, I don't know what to tell you. A game is
ALL about the players. Everything exists to create a cool experience
for the players.
A good example is the new 1.5.10 "feature" of adding stances to your clan's parties. What had been asked for a very long time is to allow the player to have control over what our clan parties can do. TW response is to just allow the player to slightly influence the AI agents priorities. Allowing the player to tell its clan parties to siege castle A while we ourselves siege castle B, effectively splitting the ability of the defenders to protect themselves, would have been super easy to do code-wise (I know this for a fact, by the way) and it would have added a great vehicle of agency and tactical value for the player. Did TW do that? No, because this level of sophisticated coordination is not something that the AI agents would
also be able to do.
Another good example that really shows TW philosophy is the Skill Perks. The thing is riddled with completely useless perk effects for the
Player! In a freaking single-player game!!
Third example and then I'll shut up. The economy. For those that have been here since the beginning of EA, work into Bannerlord's economy consumed the first several months of development. But why waste all that effort on it though? It is a simulation that is almost completely opaque to the player. Worse, the player can barely influence it because, if options to do so existed, they would also have to be available to the AI agents, and balancing that would be a nightmare, never mind that it would make the game
a better game and its economy vastly more interesting for the player
.
Bannerlord is mostly a great demo of how Agent-oriented Programming can create really sophisticated (from a software perspective) simulations where you have mostly independent software agents interacting with each other to work towards a common goal. It is objectively a bad computer game. Does that mean you can't have fun with it? Absolutely not, I have had at least 20+ hours of true fun with it. The problem is I have "played" 100+ hours of it
trying to have fun and I would really like to have those hours back.
Edit: The strong and negative sentiment in my words is not directed at you
@SOku , apologies if it reads that way.