Fix the completely unrealistic, frustrating terrain generation

The terrain generation in this game makes no sense. When you're on flat ground, it's good, it's flat and has some soft rolling hills. But when you do battle on a mountainside, instead of it actually taking place on a mountainside, it's just a bunch of ridiculously steep hills on a map with no overall grade. I'm pretty sure mountainsides aren't made up of a bunch of tall, pointy hills. It looks like someone exaggerated the height of realistic terrain by about 10 times. This terrain is also really frustrating because horses move so f*cking slowly through it and the AI can't navigate it (in addition to it never occurring in real life)

So is there some way to make it so instead of just making the map have taller hills when in mountainous areas, just put the whole thing on an actual slope?

Agree. Instead of random spiky rocks there should be an overall gradient or two present.

I mean, who would'nt want to fight on a massive 40 degree slope?

I second this.

I agree. If you want to make it harder for cavalry which I guess is the point then adding some fences, ditches or even develop boggy ground to slow them down would be great, the vertical slopes are just stupid. The fact you were traveling on the map at the same speed as when your on the flat makes no sense either.

I must say, great post.  Totally agree.  It does not take much of a slope to really mess up cavalry, so a gentler slope that is constant in one or two directions would be more realistic and practical.  Those crazy slopes mess up infantry just as much since they cant navigate it without spreading out all over the place.

Completely agree here. Having the game "pick" a bit out of the map and scaling it up a few times (TW style) is much better, effecient and realistic.

Good post. I have thought about this a number of times as well, but never bothered to make a thread about it. The spiky terrains near mountains are definitely flawed. They're unrealistic, don't look good and most importantly, are not fun to fight in.

Nahkuri said:

are not fun to fight in.

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Too right, I normally avoid fighting in the mountains (going so far as to teleport away) purely because the terrains are so ridiculous. Maybe they could just apply a (very strong) smoothing algorithm to the current "mountainous" terrain generator to get something reasonable.

Agreed, and moved to kings court.

You have my support on this. That and the fact that forest bandits love this kind of terrain to pick out your troops from afar.

SantasHelper said:

So because a few peoples can't control their horsemen and use dismount we'll loose the mountain ? And it will go back to a pointless challenge-less game where Knights rule the world ?

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It's not just horseman - some of the terrains are quite ridiculous, but even more ridiculous is the kind of slope footmen think they can climb. It completely destroys any kind of immersion when you have folk wandering up an 80 degree incline. (Admittedly, it is fun to watch them tumble down after you perforate them.)

As far game balance, even mild slopes cause horseman problems. Without their speed they fall to infantry very quickly (especially AI horseman), so you don't need to be at the top of a cliff in order to use the terrain against cavalry.

In an ideal world there could be all sorts of rough terrain in M&B, but only if you have good pathfinding so it becomes a tactical challenge rather than a "my troops are complete idiots" nightmare. It'd be fine if your mounted troops would go around steep mountains and so on, but they don't - they try to climb them because they're dumb, dumb, dumb. We could have bogs and marshes too, but again your mounted troops would ride straight through them like morons.

One way to mitigate the problem might be to create a mask of impassable regions within the map, which the AI will always go around. However, good pathfinding is very difficult to code and Mount&Blade's seems very simplistic at best (witness the problems the AI has using ladders during sieges). I simply don't believe there's any chance that M&B will gain pathfinding of the level needed to make the AI navigate difficult terrain in even a semi-intelligent fashion. Even if it does, there's a 99% probability that it will interfere with their combat routines, resulting in a very frustrating game where your men are constantly being killed because they're idiots that need the player to hold their hand in order to get from A to B.

Therefore, the proposal of a more achievable outcome: tone down the terrains enough that the deficiencies in the AI don't greatly affect gameplay.

(I just want to stress I'm not having a go at the dev team's prowess - I know how difficult a problem it is, which is why I'm suggesting they don't try to solve it. It would take a lot of time that could be spent improving countless other areas of the game that would provide more benefit to players.)

SantasHelper said:

Penis Colada said:

The terrain generation in this game makes no sense. When you're on flat ground, it's good, it's flat and has some soft rolling hills. But when you do battle on a mountainside, instead of it actually taking place on a mountainside, it's just a bunch of ridiculously steep hills on a map with no overall grade. I'm pretty sure mountainsides aren't made up of a bunch of tall, pointy hills. It looks like someone exaggerated the height of realistic terrain by about 10 times. This terrain is also really frustrating because horses move so f*cking slowly through it and the AI can't navigate it (in addition to it never occurring in real life)

So is there some way to make it so instead of just making the map have taller hills when in mountainous areas, just put the whole thing on an actual slope?

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Where do you get your concepts ? Ever visited the grand canyon ? The real world is a lot more like that than like the old roling hills of .808. The new generator is perfect and full of surprises

<<This terrain is also really frustrating because horses move so f*cking slowly through it and the AI can't navigate it >>

Here come your real problem. you're frustrated because you're using a force full of high end knights abd can't use the dismount command when stuck in mountains ?

True, the AI should be improved, the horsemen are very poor at finding paths when they exist. But sometime THERE IS NO PATH, PERIOD. And this exist in real life too. You expect archers to wait for you in open terrain. Are you mad ? They didn't sign a contract to commit suicide. If anything, I want MORE of those challenges.

In my game, I got pathfinding, and that give me a speed edge. I try to force the AI to force me where I want. In mountain if I got archers, in plain if I got lancers/knights. Just learn to do it. make them follow you. Or make them run away. In both cases you can control where they go.

Anyhow, overall your complaint seems to be your problem rather than the game problem

I really got no clue why this was moved to King Court

So because a few peoples can't control their horsemen and use dismount we'll loose the mountain ? And it will go back to a pointless challenge-less game where Knights rule the world ?

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The grand canyon is a big deep carving into a flat plane, not a series of incredibly tall, pointy hills and super deep mini-valleys.

Also, grand canyon =/= mountainside

Of course you can't post a suggestion here without someone telling you that it's your problem and the game is fine

SantasHelper, don't compare canyon to mountains. I am a bit of mountain wanderer and no mountainside looks like those in game (I mean those we're talking about in this topic - pointy, extremely high watnots). For me, the only problem with them is that they are so pointy that only few men can stand on a top for example - it's unrealistic. They have to be bigger, wider, so they will look more like real

Penis Colada said:

The terrain generation in this game makes no sense. When you're on flat ground, it's good, it's flat and has some soft rolling hills. But when you do battle on a mountainside, instead of it actually taking place on a mountainside, it's just a bunch of ridiculously steep hills on a map with no overall grade.

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True. Actually these features look man-made, and their horizontal scale is few magnitudes too small. They look fake because they could not withstand even several years of erosion.

In addition to that, I noticed that when close to a river in the worldmap, lots of melioration ditches appear on the battle map. I didn't know they were so common these days.

Something like this, perhaps?

Yeah, I was thinking of posting some TW screenshot as well.

Agreed. I'm sick of seeing ridiculous terrain that makes no sense in terms of gameplay. For some people it might make it more fun to play on ground that can't be scaled, even by archers, ground that makes your men fall unconscious as soon as the battle starts. However, most people like their gaming to be fun and challenging, not frustrating and challenging. Santashelper, go play Rome: Total War or Medieval Total War; you'll see that terrain is used to tremendous effect there, even while it maintains an aspect of believability. I'm not sure if it would be very easy to code, but the total war games take a big strategic map, and, when you go to the battlefield, it basically takes the tiny plot of land you were traveling on and zooms in on it, taking into account terrain features and man-made constructs like roads, bridges, buildings, and putting them all on the battlefield. The result is pretty damn impressive.

Well, sorry to take the less popular view here but I have to say I like the mountains as they are.. Certainly path finding could and should be improved but that is just that. The path finding needs to be tweaked. Not, the maps need to be altered to accommodate poor path finding.

I have spent most of my life avidly exploring nature and I have traveled all over the world. Now of course those mountainous terrains are not perfect replicas of existing land forms but they are very close to lots of places I have been.

He didn't say "the grand canyon", he said "around the grand canyon".

They are not all the same in game, if you go a ways up into the mountains the terrain gets really rough, on the bases of mountains the terrain is more moderate, a bit further from the base of mountains there is just slightly more hilly terrain.

This is a great system if you ask me. No, it is not a perfect replication of reality but it succeeds wonderfully at putting mounted units at a progressively greater disadvantage the further they go up into the mountains.

This makes it so that the game is not always the same thing over and over which is very important for this game because it doesn't have a brilliant, deep single player story or a very highly developed overall plot. This game succeeds wonderfully at what it does - but it doesn't actually do that much, so this diversity in tactics due to terrain is actually important here to keep the game-play from feeling stagnant.

Some constant slope type terrains, bogs and marshes, these are great ideas and I would love to see them implemented but not at the cost of replacing existing terrain types. More types of terrains would be great, not less.

I really like your ideas of adding the bogs/marshes though. Could make mounted units virtually useless so we could have some great infantry battles trudging though some nasty bog. It would be cool to have some really dense rain forests too. The Olympic rain forests in Washington state are a great example (not like a tropical rain forest/jungle at all). If you go off the beaten paths there you have about 2-4 foot deep rotting vegetation covering the ground everywhere. It's fallen trees and branches and moss that are all rotten and wet so they are so soft you will sink into your waist wherever you go. The land forms are just as rugged and wild as those craggy mountains in the game throughout large areas too.

So I think adding a more diverse range of terrains would be a great idea, but just removing the existing mountainous terrain would not be a very good solution.

Also if you really don't like to fight in those terrains you don't have too, I will generally lead Nords out into the open and lead khergits up into the mountains.

You also might just try to command your troops a little more closely. I have found that by taking careful control of my troops, sticking close and giving them constant orders to adjust for various situations and to keep them organized and together, working as a unified force with a single strategy, keeping archers, infantry, and cavalry each applying their strengths where they are most effective.. Well I often will just trot along with them and never even strike a blow. It is very satisfying seeing them defeat the enemy all by themselves with me just giving orders, and to win against greater numbers with only one or two injuries. Of course this is partly due to the enemy's poor strategies but it is still satisfying and fun for a change from slaughtering 98% of the enemy all by my lonesome. It also serves as a great example of how by using the command options and watching your force closely and not letting them get spread thin over the map - well, even in the mountainous terrains your force is not helpless if you command them well.

So no need to remove existing terrains just add even more terrain types for the final version.

Can't say if it needs "fixing" but I would say that it needs tweaking. The mountain generation is kind of a luck draw since I sometimes get really horrible looking scenes and sometimes really awesome little mountain tops. I once spawned in to a scene right on the side of a one huge mountain which had spawned in the middle. It almost felt like I was climbing the damn thing, nearly took me a minute. Once I was at the top I waited for a minute maybe for 30 mountain bandits to arrive and then began a fight on top of the gargantuan mountain. It was really awesome and the view was fantastic. Felt like it was life or death. Either kill everyone at the top or fall to your death. King of the hill.

It doesn't need fixing, since it does quite often
get it right - often I rejoice at finding myself with my Nord Horde
of longobws and javelins at the head of a nice little deep valley,
which forces the poor Swadians to ride up it, into a hail of fire.
However, it should be remembered this is a game in BETA,
so don't be too harsh. It is a work in progress, after all.