Why field battles turn into a 1:1 K/D slugfest

[Demoulius]

Hey peoples,

I have a theory why most of the field battles revert into a dumpsterfire slugfest where both sides have about a 1:1 KDR regardless of their tier, gear and/or position prior to the player getting KO'ed.

Now again this is a theory.... But here goes: Ever watched the fights in Arena? I tend to watch the battles that have my companions because they can get skill improvements there, and they often fight with weapons that I dont arm them with. However, ive noticed that hardly anyone; even toons with 130 or 160 skill in weapons actually.... Block. Even ones with shields tend to not use them. And because some of my fiefs are ones in Batannian culture alot of the fights there are with 2 handed weapons or 2 handed polearms.

And what I noticed..... Most fights are over in or 2 (at most) hits. Both combatants will swing, and then just spam attack. The one who was hit first will be staggered and (provided he dident die from the first hit) get hit multiple times after that and just lose the fight if he gets hit first. Blocking, feinting, using mobility to move around; everything is thrown out of the window.

Now transplant that behaviour to the battlefield. Your guys are either lucky and get the first hit in, or theyre not. So that essentially translates to a 1:1 KDR.

Thoughts?

 

[julijs]

that.. or that that they dumbed down the combat AI so that it better translates to consoles..

 

[Adrivan]

This is just from my personal observations (quite limited) but I never saw a low tier unit win an arena (or maybe extremely rare?), its usually either a lord/noble or a high tier. So I do think skills/gear matter.

 

[Demoulius]

Im not quite sure if you are serious or are taking the piss

 

[Grank]

You're right but not quite. The AI does block, really well in fact, but only against their designated target. They don't take anyone else into account. This is very noticeable in a 2v2 tournament match, especially when one of the two is a ranged unit. The melee one will walk towards the ranged enemy... and ignore you until you hit it a few times. They don't constantly readjust their designated target to the nearest, and thus most dangerous, opponent. Against their designated target, they fight perfectly on Challenging difficulty, except for the occasional mistakes to let the player win.

This is also why the defender AI is really bad in siege. Their designated target are often the defense spots. You will often find them walk right through you to get to a point without even attacking. That is, again, until they get hit a few times. I wonder if I should make a report on this. I'm sure the devs already know about this, but it's still not getting fixed, at least not yet.

 

[Koshkasa]

From my personal observations it isn't block alone, but block paired with the braindead tactical AI that doesn't know how to utilize numbers advantage AT ALL

Say, there is a 2k vs 1k field battle. The larger numbers group starts attacking, the lower numbers group goes defensive.

As soon as the first wave of attackers makes contact with defenders and blows are exchanged, troops die and reinforcements are popped into battle
Now both have to regroup, but the attacking force has their "regroup point" set further away from the frontlines, so all troops remaining on the frontline from the first attack start the super-slow casual stroll down the park with their backs turned to the defenders. That's when a huge portion of them is powderized by missile, eliminating the tiny advantage having larger numbers during the attack itself created.

Rinse, repeat, get an aneurysm from seeing exceedingly overwhelming forced lose 5 times the men they should. Each and every bloody time

Couple that with the fact that units don't value their lives and blob together into a mess never blocking blows, and... that's why I prefer working as a lone sergeant recently ;/

 

[Spinozart1]

You're right but not quite. The AI does block, really well in fact, but only against their designated target. They don't take anyone else into account. This is very noticeable in a 2v2 tournament match, especially when one of the two is a ranged unit. The melee one will walk towards the ranged enemy... and ignore you until you hit it a few times. They don't constantly readjust their designated target to the nearest, and thus most dangerous, opponent. Against their designated target, they fight perfectly on Challenging difficulty, except for the occasional mistakes to let the player win.

This is also why the defender AI is really bad in siege. Their designated target are often the defense spots. You will often find them walk right through you to get to a point without even attacking. That is, again, until they get hit a few times. I wonder if I should make a report on this. I'm sure the devs already know about this, but it's still not getting fixed, at least not yet.

Indeed, this behaviour is obvious in siege.
If you manage to get in the castle early on during the battle, infantry troops will pass beside and ignore you to simply reach their target.
In the battlefield, it is less noticeable and, as you said, on challenging difficulty they behave quite efficiently.

 

[Demoulius]

Prior to 1.5.8 I dident play for a while and lastly played like a month after the game released in EA.

Back then I saw plenty og attacks beeing blocled, feinted and such. Now though? Not even in duels. VERY rarely I will see them block an attack but its an anomaly. Now during battles im abit to busy to watch my front lines closely to see if they do still block or not but if the fighting in Arena is any indication then id say not....

And most of companions have 130 or there abouts in their combat skill. Theyre not rookies by any stretch but they just dont seem to block or do anything other then spam attacks.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

From my personal observations it isn't block alone, but block paired with the braindead tactical AI that doesn't know how to utilize numbers advantage AT ALL

Say, there is a 2k vs 1k field battle. The larger numbers group starts attacking, the lower numbers group goes defensive.

As soon as the first wave of attackers makes contact with defenders and blows are exchanged, troops die and reinforcements are popped into battle
Now both have to regroup, but the attacking force has their "regroup point" set further away from the frontlines, so all troops remaining on the frontline from the first attack start the super-slow casual stroll down the park with their backs turned to the defenders. That's when a huge portion of them is powderized by missile, eliminating the tiny advantage having larger numbers during the attack itself created.

Rinse, repeat, get an aneurysm from seeing exceedingly overwhelming forced lose 5 times the men they should. Each and every bloody time

Couple that with the fact that units don't value their lives and blob together into a mess never blocking blows, and... that's why I prefer working as a lone sergeant recently ;/

This is why I wish reinforcements were handled differently. I kinda which large engagements would be split into multiple battles.

 

[Ser Jon]

It would be nice if the AI wasn't so simplistic. They block and attack very well, but it is as if they are looking through a cone. Nothing else matters except the person right in front of them. I've seen my army get slaughtered from time to time because they get attacked from the sides or behind and will not adjust themselves to confront the newer enemies or to tactically think out what to do. They just stand there and whack, or they mob together into a blob and attack mindlessly. An army without any tactical know how is a miserable one.

I've also noticed that issuing commands doesn't really do much either. I try to make my archers stand on a hill and then drive my infantry in. The infantry will just smash into the enemy and blob up. So then it's either minutes of shield bashing and no movement, or that but with archers raining hell fire over them.

I don't know if the fix to something like this is drastic or just a few values changed or something, but I think making them smarter could make the game go a thousand miles in the right direction.

 

[AndrewArt]

You're right but not quite. The AI does block, really well in fact, but only against their designated target. They don't take anyone else into account. This is very noticeable in a 2v2 tournament match, especially when one of the two is a ranged unit. The melee one will walk towards the ranged enemy... and ignore you until you hit it a few times. They don't constantly readjust their designated target to the nearest, and thus most dangerous, opponent. Against their designated target, they fight perfectly on Challenging difficulty, except for the occasional mistakes to let the player win.

This is also why the defender AI is really bad in siege. Their designated target are often the defense spots. You will often find them walk right through you to get to a point without even attacking. That is, again, until they get hit a few times. I wonder if I should make a report on this. I'm sure the devs already know about this, but it's still not getting fixed, at least not yet.

The AI was better in the past (lots of patches ago). I remember units turning around and attacking you, but then they changed it and now they tunnel vision on their target. They were also better at blocking and attacking - even a peasant had the skill in combat that a max combat lord does now... It was so ridiculous that combat would only end once you broke the AI's shield and then you had the chance to kill him, as his blocking was perfect before that. But even if it was maybe too difficult then, now it's very poor in comparison. I really hope they will improve the AI to at least resemble some kind of challenge again, it was a really bad choice to dumb down the AI so badly even for the highest difficulty.

It's also really annoying when in the tournament you spawn as the ranged unit and your guy just runs ahead and suicides because he completely ignores the other team's melee unit who whoops his ass while he's trying to get to the ranged one. So yes, you can say that blocking and attacking isn't the biggest problem, but this tunnel visioning is, which was a deliberate design choice as far as I can tell... So even if you report it, I'm not sure if they'll improve upon it, but they really should because it truly breaks immersion... I'm not sure of the reason they did the change - either for consoles or because even on the PC so many AI choices with so many units were causing performance issues, but yeah, they know best what the reason was. If they improved it at least a little bit I'd be happy with it though.

 

[Medivhtratos]

This is why I wish reinforcements were handled differently. I kinda which large engagements would be split into multiple battles.

+1

It would be nice if the AI wasn't so simplistic. They block and attack very well, but it is as if they are looking through a cone. Nothing else matters except the person right in front of them. I've seen my army get slaughtered from time to time because they get attacked from the sides or behind and will not adjust themselves to confront the newer enemies or to tactically think out what to do. They just stand there and whack, or they mob together into a blob and attack mindlessly. An army without any tactical know how is a miserable one.

I've also noticed that issuing commands doesn't really do much either. I try to make my archers stand on a hill and then drive my infantry in. The infantry will just smash into the enemy and blob up. So then it's either minutes of shield bashing and no movement, or that but with archers raining hell fire over them.

I don't know if the fix to something like this is drastic or just a few values changed or something, but I think making them smarter could make the game go a thousand miles in the right direction.

Regarding the blobbing, i don´t see an option to solve this. I mean should it look like 1vs1 all over the field? If I would be a Soldier and I would be commanded to charge, i would focus one target after an other and sure there will be always an enemy who try to backstab me(and he will actually have a success in that regard, because im focusing on the soldier in front of me). I mean there is no way that 1 soldier can handle 5 enemies e.g.

If you would programm it in a way that the soldiers has always an eye on his surroundings, a real charge would not occur because they would always reposition themselves to get into 1 on 1 position. That would look awkward too.

The best would be that try to keep the max weapon length as a distance.

 

[Grank]

It's also really annoying when in the tournament you spawn as the ranged unit and your guy just runs ahead and suicides because he completely ignores the other team's melee unit who whoops his ass while he's trying to get to the ranged one. So yes, you can say that blocking and attacking isn't the biggest problem, but this tunnel visioning is, which was a deliberate design choice as far as I can tell... So even if you report it, I'm not sure if they'll improve upon it, but they really should because it truly breaks immersion... I'm not sure of the reason they did the change - either for consoles or because even on the PC so many AI choices with so many units were causing performance issues, but yeah, they know best what the reason was. If they improved it at least a little bit I'd be happy with it though.

If my programming instinct is correct, the current AI problem is not that hard to fix. Decreasing the interval to decide the "designated target" might be enough to make it work, but software development is not that simple. Implementing a simple logic such as that can be a hassle if the codebase is complicated. Besides making it work, you also need to test it a bunch. How does it affect performance, for example. We're increasing the amount of function calls for each troop and a battle can have hundreds of troops. How many seconds or miliseconds is just right? Too fast and the AI will act silly. Too long and it won't fix the problem. That's why I said that maybe they already know this, but decided it's not time to fix it yet.

 

[Ser Jon]

+1

Regarding the blobbing, i don´t see an option to solve this. I mean should it look like 1vs1 all over the field? If I would be a Soldier and I would be commanded to charge, i would focus one target after an other and sure there will be always an enemy who try to backstab me(and he will actually have a success in that regard, because im focusing on the soldier in front of me). I mean there is no way that 1 soldier can handle 5 enemies e.g.

If you would programm it in a way that the soldiers has always an eye on his surroundings, a real charge would not occur because they would always reposition themselves to get into 1 on 1 position. That would look awkward too.

The best would be that try to keep the max weapon length as a distance.

I don't expect no blobbing or 1v1, just a more intelligent gathered fight. Right now it's a mess that doesn't work. It honestly reminds me of the pile of corpses in Game of Throne's episode Battle of the Bastards, or that scene in World War Z when the zombies fling themselves at the Israeli border and blob up to form a ladder.

Maybe program it so that infantry blobs separate into groups? That way there isn't one giant mass in the middle pathetically trying to do the same thing over and over again (breaking shields) to get an their enemy. Even a simple intelligence check that makes a blob try to disperse and reposition themselves against enemies would be good.

That weapon length might work, too.

 

[Philozoraptor]

We did a lot of research on this since we were trying to fix it. AI in vanilla block very little, armor does almost nothing (every battle ends in 1-4 hits no matter the weapon or armor), AI reacts to arrows when they are shot by the archer not when they are about to hit its target.

So we increased efficiency of armor, we increased AI block and parry chance and made it scale with skill (in vanilla skill reduces chance to block and increases chance to attack as result) - turns out if you increase block chance enough AI reacts better to attacks from all sides. We increased arrow block chance but this was not enough so we gave melee formations order to hold shields up if at least 1% of formation is under arrow attack. It helped and now battles are decided more by unit tier and tactic, go figure.

 

[vonbalt]

We did a lot of research on this since we were trying to fix it. AI in vanilla block very little, armor does almost nothing (every battle ends in 1-4 hits no matter the weapon or armor), AI reacts to arrows when they are shot by the archer not when they are about to hit its target.

So we increased efficiency of armor, we increased AI block and parry chance and made it scale with skill (in vanilla skill reduces chance to block and increases chance to attack as result) - turns out if you increase block chance enough AI reacts better to attacks from all sides. We increased arrow block chance but this was not enough so we gave melee formations order to hold shields up if at least 1% of formation is under arrow attack. It helped and now battles are decided more by unit tier and tactic, go figure.

realistic battle is like the only reason i can enjoy bannerlord's combat until (and if) the devs do another good pass on it.

They had a castle named after a guy whom faked cancer in the first M&B, they really should make another named after the war-hero whom teached Calradians how to block and dress in real armor instead of bodypainting it

 

[Adrivan]

Intelligence costs CPU power for each individual unit, my guess is that when they said they improved performance, what they meant is they made AI make less checks/calculations (more dumb).

 

[Philozoraptor]

Intelligence costs CPU power for each individual unit, my guess is that when they said they improved performance, what they meant is they made AI make less checks/calculations (more dumb).

I really believe that they dont want game to be too hard, I actually kinda understand it with vanilla damage. Imagine enemy soldier parrying 75% hits and then counter attacking with some instakill weapon. Also its easier to do "EPIC" video or feel "EPIC" when you can kill entire army of looters like some Conan the Barbarian. To each his own, still they put game difficulty including bot skill into the options, why not leave attack spammers to easy dificculty, that I am not sure.

 

[Ser Jon]

It might be because they want it to be easier, and that would probably be due to the eventual console port.

We did a lot of research on this since we were trying to fix it. AI in vanilla block very little, armor does almost nothing (every battle ends in 1-4 hits no matter the weapon or armor), AI reacts to arrows when they are shot by the archer not when they are about to hit its target.

So we increased efficiency of armor, we increased AI block and parry chance and made it scale with skill (in vanilla skill reduces chance to block and increases chance to attack as result) - turns out if you increase block chance enough AI reacts better to attacks from all sides. We increased arrow block chance but this was not enough so we gave melee formations order to hold shields up if at least 1% of formation is under arrow attack. It helped and now battles are decided more by unit tier and tactic, go figure.

It took me a minute to realize that you weren't a developer responding, because you were saying "we". I then looked at your signature and it all made sense. Thanks for your mod, it's honestly a must have for Bannerlord right now (though I wasn't aware it was updated so that's cool).

 

[Medivhtratos]

We did a lot of research on this since we were trying to fix it. AI in vanilla block very little, armor does almost nothing (every battle ends in 1-4 hits no matter the weapon or armor), AI reacts to arrows when they are shot by the archer not when they are about to hit its target.

So we increased efficiency of armor, we increased AI block and parry chance and made it scale with skill (in vanilla skill reduces chance to block and increases chance to attack as result) - turns out if you increase block chance enough AI reacts better to attacks from all sides. We increased arrow block chance but this was not enough so we gave melee formations order to hold shields up if at least 1% of formation is under arrow attack. It helped and now battles are decided more by unit tier and tactic, go figure.

Ah good, since the Modder side don't respond on my thread I have a question for ya ?. The getmeleeskill method in theSetAiRelatedproperties method seems to work wrong regarding two handed weapons, Am I right?

I mean the code is searching for a secondary weapon if the equipped one is two handed. If the soldier has a secondary weapon, the skill one handed will be used. I know that the check is for a shield, but what happens when this method found the throwing weapon(which every 2h soldier has). Does the method actually return the onehanded skill?