Why is the battle AI so poor in comparison to Warband?

[fang44123]

I feel like you have some rose colored glasses regarding warband, there was zero battle ai in that game all they did was charge.

I had quite a few times where they would set up on a hill and rather annoyingly pepper my retinue with arrows and try to pull back when I got close to them. Other times they would just flat out charged as would your infantry if you were using a mod that used a battle cam system. The thing is though, the AI was still functional. Was it bare bones? Yes, but it worked well enough and didn't break the immersion or frustrate you due to HORRIBLE friendly AI.
If you want to see something frustrating hop in Bannerlord, get a retinue of 200 elite troops, die and watch how fast they fall even if they manage to pull ahead of the enemies in kills before you do so. I have used mods like "Warbandlord" to make elite unites worth a damn by overhauling the rather **** armor system and rebalancing health values closer to vanilla Warband. You will lose dozens of troops within a minute of going down, even if they don't route. No idea why, they just...die. It is kind of absurd.

 

[Sreaction]

If you want to see something frustrating hop in Bannerlord, get a retinue of 200 elite troops, die and watch how fast they fall even if they manage to pull ahead of the enemies in kills before you do so. I have used mods like "Warbandlord" to make elite unites worth a damn by overhauling the rather **** armor system and rebalancing health values closer to vanilla Warband. You will lose dozens of troops within a minute of going down, even if they don't route. No idea why, they just...die. It is kind of absurd.

It really depends on what enemy you fight, how many and their quality. Also, are you fighting with just your party or in an army? If you expect 200 elite troops to roll over every enemy you meet your gonna be disappointed. In my current play through I have gotten taken out of the battle quite early and still manage to win with minimal losses. I am fighting with an army of about 500 or more so the losses are spread out. However, I would not trust the simulator to win in a close match: every thing being equal, even troop numbers and quality.

Also, I ve been playing a lot lately and started wondering exactly how much influence my presence in the battle really makes a difference or would I get the same result if I used the "send troops" option and let the battle simulator run the numbers. The losses seem pretty similar to what I experience when my character is at the helm.

 

[kyle_usmc]

I had quite a few times where they would set up on a hill and rather annoyingly pepper my retinue with arrows and try to pull back when I got close to them. Other times they would just flat out charged as would your infantry if you were using a mod that used a battle cam system. The thing is though, the AI was still functional. Was it bare bones? Yes, but it worked well enough and didn't break the immersion or frustrate you due to HORRIBLE friendly AI.
If you want to see something frustrating hop in Bannerlord, get a retinue of 200 elite troops, die and watch how fast they fall even if they manage to pull ahead of the enemies in kills before you do so. I have used mods like "Warbandlord" to make elite unites worth a damn by overhauling the rather **** armor system and rebalancing health values closer to vanilla Warband. You will lose dozens of troops within a minute of going down, even if they don't route. No idea why, they just...die. It is kind of absurd.

Oh I don't deny that bannerlord ai is terrible, I have seen the same thing. Winning by 2 to 1 margin, I go down and then all the dying units are mine.

 

[fang44123]

It really depends on what enemy you fight, how many and their quality. Also, are you fighting with just your party or in an army? If you expect 200 elite troops to roll over every enemy you meet your gonna be disappointed. In my current play through I have gotten taken out of the battle quite early and still manage to win with minimal losses. I am fighting with an army of about 500 or more so the losses are spread out. However, I would not trust the simulator to win in a close match: every thing being equal, even troop numbers and quality.

If you fight an army in parity to yours in terms of quality and numbers you are likely to get rolled if you die, not even inflicting a 10% casualty rate if you go down early on in the battle. Even fighting higher numbers of low grade troops poses an issue and a likely loss if you go down.
If you pull ahead in kills in both scenarios before dying and then fall, you are likely to lose unless you are using a mod like RTS Camera or some such to fix the awful commands post death or body hop to stop them from making dumb decisions.

Also, I ve been playing a lot lately and started wondering exactly how much influence my presence in the battle really makes a difference

As the PC you can have a massive influence in battles. You can pretty much single handedly take down 10-20% of the enemies forces by yourself and be the single most effective unit on the field if you are good enough. Even if you aren't and like playing cavalry, you can decimate or distract a single portion of the enemies army while your troops deal with their infantry line and push them back to spawn, which is invaluable in larger battles.

Oh I don't deny that bannerlord ai is terrible, I have seen the same thing. Winning by 2 to 1 margin, I go down and then all the dying units are mine.

It is not a fun time. Playing aggressively or as a foot soldier is difficult as death means an instant loss no matter how hard you carry or how good you do.

 

[mujadaddy]

Guys, the AI has a preferred way of doing things. If you're leading a non-AI strategy, and you go down, the AI will revert to its preferred way.

Instead of fighting against what the AI wants to do, maybe try to learn what it wants to do, so you can die in peace.

 

[Earth Dragon]

If we want to complain about Bannerlord AI…..cool.

Don’t act like Warband was an AI accomplishment. You are just used to playing min/maxed builds with units that work “the best” and ignoring things like horse archers and spearmen that are all jacked up.

 

[Sreaction]

As the PC you can have a massive influence in battles. You can pretty much single handedly take down 10-20% of the enemies forces by yourself and be the single most effective unit on the field if you are good enough. Even if you aren't and like playing cavalry, you can decimate or distract a single portion of the enemies army while your troops deal with their infantry line and push them back to spawn, which is invaluable in larger battles.

I don't think the influence is massive if you just kill units and forgo controlling the army movements I think its considerable. I think a good player can possibly take out 10% of the enemy if that is what he solely does focuses on, and forgoes controlling units for the most part. 20% is pushing it. Think about it you personally taking out 200 of an army of 1000. Thats a lot of work not to mention very risky.

However if you do both control your army and individually kill the enemy then your influence is significant. I ran a small test just to confirm. Of course its not comprehensive but just a good example of what I am claiming.

My force is 579 strong the enemy is 416 strong (close to 3/2 odds?) I freelanced and controlled the main force, I racked up 34 kills, close to ten percent of the total casualties. The total results were my force: 89 dead 61 wounded total casualties 150 (only 3 dead and 4 wounded from my party the rest of casualties where absorbed by other forces in the army). Enemy casualties were: 253 dead 162 wounded and 1 surrender total 416

I ran the battle simulator where you just press "send troops" and the results from same battle, my force suffered: 132 dead 170 wounded total casualties 302. The enemy force suffered: 198 dead and 218 wounded total 416 casualties.

Of course the battle was slanted in my favor in numbers and maybe troop quality, but its a pretty good example. Id like to try it on something that is more equal. Personal control vs letting the AI have control, my casualty totals jumped from 150 to 302 essentially double the casualties. So ya if you go down bad things are going to happen.