Dev Blog 26/09/19

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[parsehtml]<p><img class="frame" src="https://www.taleworlds.com/Images/News/blog_post_107_taleworldswebsite.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="290" /></p> <p>In this week’s blog, we will be concluding our miniseries of blog posts on sieges by discussing the assault phase, with a particular focus on how the game’s AI evaluates and reacts to unfolding events. </p></br> [/parsehtml]Read more at: http://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/127
 
JustinTime49 said:
Well people have said enough about your comment. But as for horses, they're making a game. People can't use history only when it conveniences them. In this case, the horses act TOO MUCH like actual war horses

Do not listen to him.
Historical sources clearly say that full head on charge did not work against a shieldwall. Funny eneough, there were some formation that head charged later on against pike squares (with huge succes). But generally speaking, no. Full frontal assault is not a purpose of cavalary.

Also, early medieval horses were much smaller than today's horses. Which is not to say that Calradian horses were. They can be wahtever world creators wish.

It was repeated here many times over, but apparently some people do not acknowledge that, because "hav u evr seen a horsie, dude?"
 
Yeah i'm not an expert on this but i think too a good shield wall is quite dangerous for cavalry and will be very hard to break, i think they would do this most of time if they have no choice. Maybe rare times they will break shieldwalls. Also there is different type of charge through time, not every cavalry was charging like Knigth Templars.
 
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Overall this is looking pretty good, but there are some things that concern me a bit. There are a couple of issues in sieges, in my opinion, namely:

1) Some of the wooden protections built by the attackers are way too close to the castle walls. How could they build them so close under arrow fire from the castle's defenders? I think you should remove this wooden protections and leave the ones near the siege engines, which make more sense, since they are pretty far from the castle. Not only it's unrealistic to have those protections so close, but also they give the attackers a huge advantage they shouldn't have.
2) Archers shooting from the castle don't protect themselves behind the merlons between shots, they just stand there exposed in the gaps that protect only half of their bodies, which kills the whole point of crenelations in a castle and undermines the advantage of defense they should have. It would be amazing if you could program the AI to try to hide behind merlons or whatever protection they have nearby between each arrow fired, making them harder to hit.

This two things would make taking a castle much harder, which it should be. Castles were very expensive and took a lot of work and effort to build, but they were worth it! The advantage they gave made a pretty outnumbered garrison able to defend effectively from much larger forces, and an attack against the walls a pretty risky move. That's why many of the historical sieges revolved around starving the defenders to death by depriving them of resources rather than striking head on, or trying different tactics like sneaking in during the night and then opening the main gates from the inside. That is not to say taking a castle by force should be impossible, but it needs to be harder in my opinion. You should outnumber the defenders heavily, or wait for their morale to lower as days pass without recieveing new supplies, or exploit some weakness in the castle design, etc. I believe all this would make the strategy side of sieges more important and fun.

Also, I've got this gripe with the crosshair: it looks too modern. It even has those diagonal lines that appear when you hit someone, which makes it seem like a modern fps. I'd love you to go back to the classic aiming reticle in Warband. It worked fine and had a better design considering the medieval setting of the game.

Finally, in the raid against that village I found it absolutely ridiculous that they tried to defend themselves. They were around 50 villagers or recruits with pitchforks against almost 500 trained soldiers with cavalry and archers. Those villagers would have actually run like hell when they saw such a strong force attacking their village. Even if some brave ones wanted to fight to death, those would've been a minority and most of them would've tried to flee.

I hope these suggestions are taken into consideration and help improve the game we all love and are looking forward to spend countless hours in.

Cheers!

PS: Also the banners! Every banner of a faction sharing the same colors is absolutely horrible and ridiculous! Make the faction have the colors of the king's banner, but each lord should have his own colors and more varied design. I'd rather have the original Warband banners (which I liked mostly) than this minimalistic approach.
 
I agree with you Azhael and i've created a thread on this problems, that might interest you: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,386327.msg9148129.html#msg9148129

The wooden protections can be build far and then if not too big some men can carry them during massive assault and left them there or bring them at night ? Same problem for fill an emptry gap near walls, they were probably doing it at night or even during massive assault when defenders are too occupied at defend the walls.

Azhael said:
This two things would make taking a castle much harder, which it should be. Castles were very expensive and took a lot of work and effort to build, but they were worth it! The advantage they gave made a pretty outnumbered garrison able to defend effectively from much larger forces, and an attack against the walls a pretty risky move. That's why many of the historical sieges revolved around starving the defenders to death by depriving them of resources rather than striking head on, or trying different tactics like sneaking in during the night and then opening the main gates from the inside. That is not to say taking a castle by force should be impossible, but it needs to be harder in my opinion. You should outnumber the defenders heavily, or wait for their morale to lower as days pass without recieveing new supplies, or exploit some weakness in the castle design, etc. I believe all this would make the strategy side of sieges more important and fun.

Totally agree with this, one dev said you need 3/1 ratio to take a castle and was thinking it was a big number but as we can see in gamescom videos seiges look quite easy to storm a castle. But i would clearly think 5:1 ratio would be more near reality and maybe even that big. Taking a castle, it depends which one, but it was not an easy task. as you said it. Also normally you need quite some time to build siege engines, towers, ram protections etc... I hope they take this in account. If you want to storm a castle just ladders why not but that would cost you big losses in your army.
 
The problem is that because of the lack of meaningful manpower, high losses just slow the campaign down rather than making it more interesting or skill based. If you have to spend half an hour ingame just scrounging soldiers together for a grindy assault with guaranteed 5:1 casualties, the game just becomes a slower version of the already horrendous warband grind. Imagine having to amass an army of 600 men just to beat a 100 man garrison, only for the majority of them to die.

The player in warband is the most active person in the entire game, doing sieges on their own and carving out a kingdom etc. There is nothing wrong with this, but you then need to make sure the actions the player has to repeat more than the AI don't punish them for taking the initiative. Making sieges (which the game basically railroads you into partaking in) wipe your army out is anti-player.
 
By "losses" we have to think that they are not all killed but taken out off combat (it will just reduce your army size for some days or weeks), i think many soldiers were just badly hurt during sieges but could recover (with arrows and rocks but armors are done to handle this at some point). You need a quite massive army of well armored man at arms, to storm a castle, and good siege engines. If you have a good doctor probably much of this men can get back to combat soon ! Also there could be other ways to take a castle by negociatons after defenders start to starve or by offering other things with the Bannerlord barter system or ruse? Also you could just wait you have build max number of siege engines and plan well your assault, to have less possible losses, and take the castle without too much harm; the fact that Bannerlod allow a far batter battle size could improve the fact the we could assault the castle from every side. So it could be worth it to gather a really big army to be at 5/1 and take the castle faster with not too much harm, than getting a 3/1 attackers army and take the castle with big losses. Castles are hard to take it's a reality.

But if you have ingeniors (speeding up the sieges engins building) and doctors (less casualties) with you, you could handle far better the negatives impact of a siege and don't ruin your army number of troops. Reuniting a big army for a campaign should be easier than in Warband by the possibility of calling vassals.

So if you plan well your siege it should not cost you too much losses but if you attack it stupidly it could punish you. I never said every siege should be a slaughter but when you take very bad decisions the game should punish you. And i think a siege should me more complex than just saying yourself "oh i have a 3/1 ratio against this defenders castle i'm gonna storm it !" :iamamoron:
 
Glad to see that there are people who dare to say things, that Bannerlord has problems and is not perfect, and that taleworlds has to listen to his community about his felt; what I did no see during the last dev blogs
A company that listens to itself will only kill itself and his creations, and everyone will lose.

As for seats I ask myself a lot of questions:
- Is the AI smart enough to take different positions to defend the entire walls, or use seat weapons by itself ?
- will he still have the rocks or bombs to launch to the attackers that can be seen in the video of the E3 2016 ?
- normally by reading all the dev blog I had heard that one could only destroy the merlons with the help of the weapons of seats, is it that it counts later to make so that the whole walls can be destroyed in full battle ?
 
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