Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[Zanzoken]

I recently completed a pretty long campaign in Bannerlord, guessing around 100 hours. It was the first major attempt I've made at playing since the EA launch.

Truthfully, I would say the game has improved somewhat, if you only look at it in terms of polish. It is very stable and well-optimized from a technical standpoint, and the systems all "work" to the extent that you can play an entire campaign from start to finish without the game world becoming completely broken and gone to shit. Running around on your horse ganking people is still fun, and if you are patient, it is possible to command and maneuver your troops in battle in such a way that creates a better outcome than simply F1 + F3.

However, besides that, there is literally nothing about the game that doesn't suffer from a major lack of fun and interesting design. The character system is shit. Kingdom management is shit. Fief management is shit. Diplomacy and negotiation are nonexistent. The economy is lol. The characters are all cardboard cutouts that are not unique in any way, and have nothing interesting to say regardless of whatever happens. The end result is there is absolutely nothing about the game that supports roleplaying, storytelling, or C&C that would for one second allow you to lose yourself in the illusion that you are a feudal lord, in a medieval kingdom called Calradia, fighting against other lords for wealth and power.

If you just want to fight battles (literally hundreds and hundreds of battle) and grind your way across the map to conquer the kingdom, then you'll probably enjoy vanilla Bannerlord. Otherwise I would just continue to wait until some of the upcoming total conversion mods are released, as hopefully they will be able to inject some life into what is otherwise an extremely hollow and uninspired experience.

 

[Konjad]

For SP Warband and Viking Conquest are vastly superior.

For MP Bannerlord is superior.

So it depends what you want. Doesn't mean you won't have fun in SP in Bannerlord, just that eventually you will go back.

 

[Butter]

Just keep playing Warband.

Warband was an excellent game and it has far more mods available. But it looks terrible. It looked terrible even at the time it was released and time has not improved it. No amount of modding is going to change that. The only thing that might improve the graphics now is if you replace the entire rendering engine with Nvidia RTX Remix.

This is the Codex. I assume most people don't care about graphics. I think Warband looks kind of charming though. It's not something obnoxious like Oblivion where they thought "OMG bloom is the future!" and it ended up ageing terribly.

 

[thesecret1]

I recently completed a pretty long campaign in Bannerlord, guessing around 100 hours. It was the first major attempt I've made at playing since the EA launch.

Truthfully, I would say the game has improved somewhat, if you only look at it in terms of polish. It is very stable and well-optimized from a technical standpoint, and the systems all "work" to the extent that you can play an entire campaign from start to finish without the game world becoming completely broken and gone to shit. Running around on your horse ganking people is still fun, and if you are patient, it is possible to command and maneuver your troops in battle in such a way that creates a better outcome than simply F1 + F3.

However, besides that, there is literally nothing about the game that doesn't suffer from a major lack of fun and interesting design. The character system is shit. Kingdom management is shit. Fief management is shit. Diplomacy and negotiation are nonexistent. The economy is lol. The characters are all cardboard cutouts that are not unique in any way, and have nothing interesting to say regardless of whatever happens. The end result is there is absolutely nothing about the game that supports roleplaying, storytelling, or C&C that would for one second allow you to lose yourself in the illusion that you are a feudal lord, in a medieval kingdom called Calradia, fighting against other lords for wealth and power.

If you just want to fight battles (literally hundreds and hundreds of battle) and grind your way across the map to conquer the kingdom, then you'll probably enjoy vanilla Bannerlord. Otherwise I would just continue to wait until some of the upcoming total conversion mods are released, as hopefully they will be able to inject some life into what is otherwise an extremely hollow and uninspired experience.

Agreed. I'm hoping that all those things are a lot easier to mod than the battles. Vanilla Bannerlord is pretty worthless unless you just want to play a couple battles, but it does look like a potentially great mod platform

 

[Nathaniel3W]

If you just want to fight battles (literally hundreds and hundreds of battle) and grind your way across the map to conquer the kingdom, then you'll probably enjoy vanilla Bannerlord.

I read some guy's totally underhanded political strategy for conquering Calradia. Join a kingdom. Spend your influence to pass all the worst policies. Then spend your influence to kick all the other clans out of the kingdom so that you end up with most of the fiefs. Then defect to another kingdom and do the same there. Dude said he conquered the whole map that way within 5 game years and never sieged a single castle.

 

[Nm6k]

How's the modding scene for this?

All the big stuff are still in the middle of being made. The only one with a playable campaign is the Old Realms Warhammer mod and it's very early in development

 

[whydoibother]

How's the modding scene for this?

All the big stuff are still in the middle of being made

Crusaders Kings: Bannerlord mod when?!?! Historical setting and more personalized characters is what I need to get into this.

 

[Nm6k]

There are a bunch of mods that try to add more stuff to the base campaign like these three though sadly I do not think they work together https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3826 https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/832 https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/2969

 

[The Wall]

If you just want to fight battles (literally hundreds and hundreds of battle) and grind your way across the map to conquer the kingdom, then you'll probably enjoy vanilla Bannerlord.

I read some guy's totally underhanded political strategy for conquering Calradia. Join a kingdom. Spend your influence to pass all the worst policies. Then spend your influence to kick all the other clans out of the kingdom so that you end up with most of the fiefs. Then defect to another kingdom and do the same there. Dude said he conquered the whole map that way within 5 game years and never sieged a single castle.

Ey! Hey! Hey! Tone it down with anti-semitic remarks, buddy

 

[razvedchiki]

how are sieges as a defender? can you still solo them by cutting down anything coming up a ladder?

 

[Nathaniel3W]

how are sieges as a defender? can you still solo them by cutting down anything coming up a ladder?

I really like defensive sieges. You can't solo them because the enemy has too many ways in now. Even if they can only climb ladders, there are always two walls where the enemy can put up ladders, and there are three ladders at both walls. I hear you can still exploit the game by sniping 100 attackers as they approach the walls, then retreating, and doing it again.

What's really fun as a defender is dropping rocks. Run up to a tower that has a catapult and grab rocks from the pile there and you can toss them directly onto the battering ram as it approaches. Or if the attackers break the outer gate, you can drop rocks inside the gatehouse on the crowd of attackers at the inner gate. One well-placed rock can give you an instant 25 points in throwing.

 

[The_Iconoclast]

Any recommendations for mods that improve the late game?

I enjoy the first ~10 to 20 hrs or so, but once I'm maxed out in equipment and get the first towns it just gets annoying and tedious, especially since economy and town management are fucking atrocious...

 

[vota DC]

I tried a full conversion mod but interesting stuff require C rather than just changing xml also there are some unexplained things like game ignoring you and giving random stuff to troops you Just edited, expecially if you try oooga booga naked cavemen.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Any recommendations for mods that improve the late game?

I enjoy the first ~10 to 20 hrs or so, but once I'm maxed out in equipment and get the first towns it just gets annoying and tedious, especially since economy and town management are fucking atrocious...

I think you just have to find your own fun and then accept that it's a sandbox game.

Maybe do a playthrough where you're a prodigal minor noble, just out partying with his entourage. Go to all the tournaments. Go to the keeps and flirt with the ladies and get quests to win more tournaments. Avoid responsibility and getting involved in wars.
Do a playthrough where you're a bandit king. Get your roguery up, break your allies out of prison, hire only bandit troops.
Do the Littlefinger playthrough where you sabotage kingdoms from within, gather fiefs for yourself, and then defect.
Do a companions-only playthrough where you only ever have companions and family in your party.

Everything is likely to get boring eventually, but that's the nature of an open-world sandbox.

 

[The_Iconoclast]

Any recommendations for mods that improve the late game?

I enjoy the first ~10 to 20 hrs or so, but once I'm maxed out in equipment and get the first towns it just gets annoying and tedious, especially since economy and town management are fucking atrocious...

I think you just have to find your own fun and then accept that it's a sandbox game.

Maybe do a playthrough where you're a prodigal minor noble, just out partying with his entourage. Go to all the tournaments. Go to the keeps and flirt with the ladies and get quests to win more tournaments. Avoid responsibility and getting involved in wars.
Do a playthrough where you're a bandit king. Get your roguery up, break your allies out of prison, hire only bandit troops.
Do the Littlefinger playthrough where you sabotage kingdoms from within, gather fiefs for yourself, and then defect.
Do a companions-only playthrough where you only ever have companions and family in your party.

Everything is likely to get boring eventually, but that's the nature of an open-world sandbox.

Yhea, that's mostly my approach. Longest run I had was larping as a Validian Knight and his entourage, beating up and killing desperate poor people before joining the king in bringing the will of Christ to the funny brown desert people and promptly getting stomped and captured.

Good times...

I just think if the late game and town management could be a tad more refined, as in at all, the game could be bloody amazing, so I'm hoping for some autistic modder to really spazz out and create something wonderful.

 

[Zanzoken]

Everything is likely to get boring eventually, but that's the nature of an open-world sandbox.

The sandbox gets boring pretty quick when the developers put zero effort into making it fun, interesting, or meaningful.

Then on the other end of the spectrum you have Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, where you can play for thousands of hours and the game will still come up with ways to surprise and challenge you.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Then on the other end of the spectrum you have Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, where you can play for thousands of hours and the game will still come up with ways to surprise and challenge you.

I haven't played either of those. Is the improved variety because the NPC's AI is more freeform? Like, in Bannerlord there are a finite number of possible interactions. You can talk, and you can fight, and talking can get you quests (often to go fight). There's variety in the scale of the battles, from three dudes in a back alley to thousands storming a fortified city. And there's a little variety in the type of fighting: on foot, on horseback, as an archer, as a castle-defending stone thrower. But that's it for the gameplay. There's some management-type gameplay with cities, politics, your own inventory, trading, and smithing. And that's not nothing, but it's not as central to the gameplay as the fighting.

For Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld, from what I know about those games, the emergent gameplay opportunities arise from deep AI interactions, right? Like instead of the NPCs having a specific and finite list of actions they'll do, they have a bunch of personality traits that influence how they interact with each other? But ultimately, what will they do as a result of their quirky and unique personalities?

 

[Zanzoken]

I haven't played enough DF or Rimworld to intelligently comment on how their AI is designed. I just know they are both sandbox games that have been highly successful, and have been universally praised for their ability to create high-quality storytelling and worldbuilding, doing so largely through the use of systems instead of narrative.

Mount & Blade, on the other hand, I am quite familiar with. And while I don't think an M&B game needs AI that is as complex and layered as the aforementioned examples, it needs more than "NPCs running around and fighting each other at random" which is what Warband and Bannerlord essentially have.

It would probably take a whole thesis to properly unpack and explore this topic, but I will say this. One thing that DF and Rimworld have in spades, and that Bannerlord utterly lacks, is reactivity. When the game world feels like it is living and breathing on its own, and reacts to the player's actions in believable and satisfying ways, it creates suspension of disbelief and immersion in the story that's being told. But when that reactivity goes missing, the player is quickly pulled out of the illusion, and the magic is lost along with whatever emotional investment the player had in it.

 

[oblivionenjoyer]

Have they added feasts and stuff back to Bannerlord yet? It was little things like that which really made it lifeless.

Another one is, do they have inter-vassal wars yet or is the only way to get the fiefs you actually conquered still just to rebel?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It would probably take a whole thesis to properly unpack and explore this topic, but I will say this. One thing that DF and Rimworld have in spades, and that Bannerlord utterly lacks, is reactivity

The thing is, DF and Rimworld's NPC AI is subject to the same rules as the player. Whatever proc gen madness the player has to go through, so do the NPCs. Mount and Blade lacks that utterly, which is why you have lords with auto reinforced armies and shit.

 

[Hag]

I haven't played enough DF or Rimworld to intelligently comment on how their AI is designed. I just know they are both sandbox games that have been highly successful, and have been universally praised for their ability to create high-quality storytelling and worldbuilding, doing so largely through the use of systems instead of narrative.

From my experience of DF it has not that many common points with M&B. DF gives you a box of building tools and constraints to deal with which are sufficiently balanced to have a sweet spot where you overcome the odds and roam freely until the next event (invasion, player mistake, whatever). The AI itself is not that important, there is no deep strategy in fights and military success is always the result of proper training and fortress design, not AI, either friendly or enemy. There is a number of more or less random events to keep you on your toes and the game has a very good procedural generation system for land and history that make for various challenges (embark on water, glacier, desert, evil, no metal, etc.).

M&B on the contrary does not give the player worldbuilding tools but makes use of AI interaction. World map is set so there is little room for surprise once you know it (no way to build your own settlements to modify influence politics, trade or whatever), so everything depends on the quality of AI that is directly competing with the player and on similar terms. Complex task indeed that can create a dynamic world when done correctly, something that DF does not have.

Disclaimer : I have not played either game in a decade but the design behind must not have change that much.

 

[oldbonebrown]

After 400 hours of only Khan's Guard and heavy cavalry to support them I'm starting to feel done with the game for now
The core experience of mongol dominance is so strong that other troops have only found use as short lived vanity projects

 

[oldbonebrown]

I wish the BloodMod was more exaggerated and worked with archery, I feel that the simplest and most fundamental feature missing from the game is painting the ground red

Are sandstorms in vanilla? I've been using the extreme weather mod pretty much since start, and sandstorms and to a lesser extent fog are the only things that bothers my Khans Guard. Though sadly nothing prevents reentering the battle to roll for better weather.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Khan's Guard are without a doubt the best troops on the battlefield. But in the late game, I find it difficult to run around the world buying up all the warhorses I need to keep my armies filled with Khan's Guard. If I'm assaulting a castle, I don't want to lose expensive cavalry. I'll sacrifice legionaries, but not top-tier cavalry. And if I'm going to leave troops in a garrison, I want to leave fians.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Khan's Guard are without a doubt the best troops on the battlefield. But in the late game, I find it difficult to run around the world buying up all the warhorses I need to keep my armies filled with Khan's Guard. If I'm assaulting a castle, I don't want to lose expensive cavalry. I'll sacrifice legionaries, but not top-tier cavalry. And if I'm going to leave troops in a garrison, I want to leave fians.

The main role of my cavalry is as a wall of metal to smash into anything that threatens to touch my Khan's Guard. There is always plenty of horses and all other types of loot, but it is almost never a good time to have to return to the steppe to recruit more units. Cataphracts on the other hand are easy to come by so losing more than one or two Khan's Guard in a any battle is a great loss when bleeding for their masters is what empire dogs do best.


In regular battles I stick to commanding and let my horse archers handle the slaughter. However in siege battles I do the opposite, the game plan there is just to make sure that the enemy have no siege engines, then I personally leet a big chunk of their archers and lead the charge on a wall while my troops do whatever they want to. It usually ends fine enough when backed up by a high medicine skill.
Then I just drop off whatever scrap troops I have over in the garrison and move on, because I'm not about that sedentary life and I'd rather retake the castle later than care about it now. Never putting no Khan's Guard in the hands of the AI, it makes me cry how easily they lose them.

 

[oldbonebrown]

Alright, just because I was acting hard I almost got my just deserts and came the closest to wiping I've gotten in a while

The numbers might not seem like it, but it felt tense.

They came at me with endless archers and a lot of cavalry. They were also much more spread out than usual on a map with no great vantage points. I stupidly took a lot of personal damage early on in the battle. Being knocked out is the worst thing that can happen so I also had to be extra cautious of where I commanded from because of that.
Since I could never get a full grip on what was going on one of my four Khan's Guard squads got picked off early by archers, when I otherwise would've pulled them back or sent in cavalry as support.

This battle really showed me how useless the reinforcement system is. It dumped all horsed reinforcement into the same squad, making the cavalry somewhat useless because I didn't want to set the more important horse archers in the squad to Charge.
Usually I will retreat and reenter the battle to let my archers restock on arrows but since I had taken too much personal damage for that I ended up having to let the Khan's Guard do melee charges towards the end anyways when all but the squad that got reinforcements were out of arrows.