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The biggest flaw of how I have built my character is probably that he won't get the final Leadership perk as that would require a minimum of 7 points in Soc. Even though I find it cumbersome to command armies larger than 350 guys, that is not a good argument against morer being betterer. I should also have let a companion do the job of Scout so that I could get the final perk for that to make my army move faster on the world map.
Going two-handed instead of polearm is suboptimal since I lead a squad of Khan's Guard who use polearms for melee, but I simply prefer the two-handed weapon class.
Big hype for getting the final Medicine perk very soon +1hp to troops for every 2 skill points in medicine above 200
I really need a beefier army. Can't go around losing good men like this.
I recommend (Custom Spawns API+)LootersPlus, Dismemberment Plus, Fourberie, Realistic Weather, Responsive Soldiers, Improved Executions and AIExecutioner even for a vanilla playthrough.
LT_Nemesis is one that I just added, it makes enemy heroes shout curses at you on the battlefield. It is very good but also makes the game a little bit easier in that it makes Lords stand out more against their troops. A side effect is that it also changes the relationship system so that you have relations to individual lords instead of clans.
Improved Garrisons, DonateToGranary and Governors Handle Issues makes holding and managing a lot of towns a great deal less tedious. Possibly too easy if you are a masochist.
Diplomacy opens up a lot of small exploits to doing things which makes the game easier, but again, a lot less tedious. An example would be handing in quests by sending a messenger instead of traveling to the quest giver, or sending messengers to factions to quickly change your allegiance.
Improved Camels and Larger Camels is just fun, it makes camels a bit overpowered for the early game but that is needed because more camels on the battlefield is a great joy.
Simple Slow Motion fits very well into the game since there already is slow motion built in when commanding troops, but the mod of course allows you to be a complete degenerate in combat if you so wish. I like it for sitting on hills and just watching the combat rage on without having to have the command-UI cluttering the screen which I would otherwise constantly have to stay in slow motion.
Detailed Character Creation is sadly not much of an improvement over vanilla. Very slightly increases your choices in creating a character, currently crashes my game when I try to start a new campaign but works fine in the one I have going. Will not bother trying to make it work though it might just be a case of changing the load order.
The biggest flaw of how I have built my character is probably that he won't get the final Leadership perk as that would require a minimum of 7 points in Soc. Even though I find it cumbersome to command armies larger than 350 guys, that is not a good argument against morer being betterer. I should also have let a companion do the job of Scout so that I could get the final perk for that to make my army move faster on the world map.
Going two-handed instead of polearm is suboptimal since I lead a squad of Khan's Guard who use polearms for melee, but I simply prefer the two-handed weapon class.
Big hype for getting the final Medicine perk very soon +1hp to troops for every 2 skill points in medicine above 200
I really need a beefier army. Can't go around losing good men like this.
Who is this arrogant prick bringing his pitiful warband against me?
He scarcely has more troops than I. Has he not heard of my deeds?
This is the fastest I've gone down in battle in a long while. It was surprisingly hard to find them on the map and when I eventually did cataphracts came at me from every angle.
My army of 100% fully upgraded noble cav and horse archers of course won on their own, but I lost a great deal more than in most battles.
I handed the guy over to ones of his enemies that cut him down to size.
Now it's been a hot minute since I have played vanilla Warband, though I do have thousands of hours in it between mods and VC. I just reinstalled BL, but I always run it with RBM and DEI.
There is a fair amount of "fluff" still missing. Feasts I think. The companions are kinda shit, randomly generated with no personality or clashes.
I think the bandits types are lacking, folks seem to have issues, or at least did with enterprises. Every NPC/lord is sort of samey, quests were a bit lacking still. I literally just reinstalled yesterday so some of that could be changed
I think the battle side is good, a big emphasis on cav which I find boring, but I much prefer the RBM and DRM mods, sieges are fun.
It really depends on the type of warband player you are. I much preferred Brytenwalda and VC over Warband and I find Bannerlord fun but lacking in many of that more granular type of experience.
It came out as a mile wide and a foot deep, it's probably 3 feet deep now.
I don't think it's a bad experience but I do find myself losing interest in playthroughs more than I did with warband, that could be just due to M&B fatigue, I spent a ton of time on the franchise in the past 5 years between modding and playing.
Now it's been a hot minute since I have played vanilla Warband, though I do have thousands of hours in it between mods and VC. I just reinstalled BL, but I always run it with RBM and DEI.
There is a fair amount of "fluff" still missing. Feasts I think. The companions are kinda shit, randomly generated with no personality or clashes.
I think the bandits types are lacking, folks seem to have issues, or at least did with enterprises. Every NPC/lord is sort of samey, quests were a bit lacking still. I literally just reinstalled yesterday so some of that could be changed
I think the battle side is good, a big emphasis on cav which I find boring, but I much prefer the RBM and DRM mods, sieges are fun.
It really depends on the type of warband player you are. I much preferred Brytenwalda and VC over Warband and I find Bannerlord fun but lacking in many of that more granular type of experience.
It came out as a mile wide and a foot deep, it's probably 3 feet deep now.
I don't think it's a bad experience but I do find myself losing interest in playthroughs more than I did with warband, that could be just due to M&B fatigue, I spent a ton of time on the franchise in the past 5 years between modding and playing.
I still play Warband off and on between games. It is one of my go to relaxation games. I have played VC and Brytenwalda a few times, and also play a little Fire and Sword on the original game when the mood takes me. The sequel doesn't seem like it has enough going for it to bother picking it up yet. I'll keep my eye on it.
I think there's also a bit of a meta problem, like MMORPGs suffer:
If you actually try to RP, and go with the flow, and not plan or optimize, the SP still delivers.
The MP has the problem that StarCraft II or Quake 3 Arena had for me, where its difficulty to break into the existing community of killers, and its not very educational to just get pwnd repeatedly.
I'll do fine trying to hold back, ambush people, use thrown weapons, pick someone to move along with, etc, but I can clearly see that's not how others play, and if I just run into someone to 1v1 duel I get wrecked. And I for sure am not going to sit down and study how to be better at Bannerlord, if it doesn't happen naturally through play I won't work for it.
But the game itself is fine. Meta issues, I think.
The battles are a straight upgrade over Warband, amd substantial one at that. The balance is pretty garbage in places, but the core is great. My advice is wait for some of the big mods (In the name of Jerusalem 2, Shokudo, etc) to come out, as they're bound to fix balancing and provide a lot more interesting overworld - vanilla has a lot of issues there, but luckily, none of them seem like something that couldn't be fixed by mods.
If you actually try to RP, and go with the flow, and not plan or optimize, the SP still delivers.
The MP has the problem that StarCraft II or Quake 3 Arena had for me, where its difficulty to break into the existing community of killers, and its not very educational to just get pwnd repeatedly.
I'll do fine trying to hold back, ambush people, use thrown weapons, pick someone to move along with, etc, but I can clearly see that's not how others play, and if I just run into someone to 1v1 duel I get wrecked. And I for sure am not going to sit down and study how to be better at Bannerlord, if it doesn't happen naturally through play I won't work for it.
But the game itself is fine. Meta issues, I think.
Nah, the overworld is pretty bad. Plenty of features that Warband had are not present here, companions are generated and thus generic, economy was still broken last time I checked, lord AI is still retarded, etc. Now to be fair, Warband vanilla had many of these issues too, but that's why one didn't bother with vanilla, and instead played with mods.
The only thing that truly sucks about the game is how reinforcements work. If it was just that it sometimes spawned in enemy units on top of yours I could live with that, but the chaotic way it dumps your new reinforcements into your squads is just not workable.
If it's a serious battle you simply have to retreat once they arrive so that you can regroup, but the random reinforcements can make even a retreat hazardous.
Another aspect that makes the system suck is how you can't select which troops to bring into battle when there are too many units to spawn them all in. It can be very frustrating how I as the commander has no say in if I want to bring a sucky garrison into a battle over my elite cavalry just because I happen to be fighting near a castle.
The only thing that truly sucks about the game is how reinforcements work. If it was just that it sometimes spawned in enemy units on top of yours I could live with that, but the chaotic way it dumps your new reinforcements into your squads is just not workable.
If it's a serious battle you simply have to retreat once they arrive so that you can regroup, but the random reinforcements can make even a retreat hazardous.
Another aspect that makes the system suck is how you can't select which troops to bring into battle when there are too many units to spawn them all in. It can be very frustrating how I as the commander has no say in if I want to bring a sucky garrison into a battle over my elite cavalry just because I happen to be fighting near a castle.
If you're only talking about the battle system, then yeah.
I would add that the way they tried to implement army battles doesn't really work. The friendly AI has no idea what it's doing, and since you only have a fraction of your troops available you can't do much to swing the tide of the battle. Joining up with a large army is great if you're looking to reduce payroll, otherwise it sucks ass.
There's also the rework they did to grouping where you have to fiddle around with sliders instead of just assigning troops to the groups you want. It's retarded and unnecessary to the point where I'm genuinely confused why anyone could ever think it was a good idea.
However, these are minor issues compared to the awful quality of the campaign and overall roleplaying experience. I am withholding final judgment until some of the big overhaul mods are released, but the devs fucked that part up so bad that I'll be surprised if the modders can fix it.
However, these are minor issues compared to the awful quality of the campaign and overall roleplaying experience. I am withholding final judgment until some of the big overhaul mods are released, but the devs fucked that part up so bad that I'll be surprised if the modders can fix it.
Though there are a myriad of ways they could be improved I have no major problem with the campaign and I have never had a better time roleplaying with a sp game than with this one.
Congrats on being easily amused? I guess if you are content to autistically grind the same battles for 500 hours and create a LARP in your head for all of the stuff that would give any meaning to the fighting, then Bannerlord is all right.
The game is a very good canvas to project on, but it was was not easy at all to paint 800 hours of the same battles with as much meaning as I have. You seem to lack the roleplaying chops to do it.
All the big mods are still in their early stages. Playing them (the ones that released at all) is on par with being an alpha tester. There's quite a number of really good looking mods, but it'll be another two years or more before they'll release anything that can be considered a complete experience
Honestly, it's sad to say Bannerlord would become much more playable if modders removed from it rather than add to it.
Gut the skill system, it's an abomination, make it a simple point and XP system like Warband and maybe make some of the perks automatic bonuses for certain skill levels and other things, like how Prisoner Management skill level is hidden and tied to party size in Viking Conquest, where Shield skill is also tied to Weapon Master the same way. Remove the formation system if possible, at least from players, and replace it with the simpler Warband system that actually lets you control your army and make your own groups and control your formations. Remove influence completely. Remove the AI lord personality traits that don't do anything but fool you into thinking they might, along with everything else that's similar. Etc.
Bannerlord feels like a piece of anemic abandonware trapped inside of bloatware, waiting to have its fat surgically removed to reveal the skeleton trapped within that yearns to be saved and built upon.
All the big mods are still in their early stages. Playing them (the ones that released at all) is on par with being an alpha tester. There's quite a number of really good looking mods, but it'll be another two years or more before they'll release anything that can be considered a complete experience
In the name of Jerusalem 2 and Shokuho both look like they'll be awesome. From fanasy side, The Old Realms (a Warhammer mod) looks pretty good and its early access can be played now. There's also that GoT mod, and a LotR one, although with that one I'm a bit sceptical whether it'll release.
The problem with the mods out there already is that they're all spending an enormous amount of time and effort on making beatiful and detailed models of armors and weapons to fit their setting instead of changing the mechanics, so you're left with essentially a vanilla reskin. This is likely why it's talking so damn long for anything good to come out - everyone's stuck making a gorillion assets. Also scale. Modders went crazy over how BIG they can make the map, so having 5x or more the amount of cities than vanilla isn't anything out of the ordinary.
TCs are cool but honestly I'd be happy with a proper vanilla rebalance mod. Essentially "here is what the game would be if the devs were actually competent and good at game design".
The problem with 99% of projects like that is most modders aren't content to just fix the vanilla issues. They have to layer in a bunch of bullshit of their own, half of which is unnecessary or just adds clutter. That's how I always felt about the Floris mod for Warband, for example.
Even something that just reverted all Bannerlord systems back to Warband would be an improvement, as Akachi pointed out above.
It's an SP game with MMO grinding. It has a much, much, much, much slower start than Warband and takes an offensively long time to level up. The battle AI's better than Warband ever was, though Viking Conquest comes close, and crafting's cool in theory, but the RPG and strategy sides are boring and halfbaked.
I personally hate how they took the setting from mid-high medieval to more of a dark ages feel. I wanted a remastered Calradia as we had it, not something centuries in the past. Maybe that'll be DLC at some point.
Then there's the clan system that's barely explained and barely works, and unless modders can work around it it's gonna heavily restrict future mods, though more scripting means it mignt not be too big a deal.
TCs are cool but honestly I'd be happy with a proper vanilla rebalance mod. Essentially "here is what the game would be if the devs were actually competent and good at game design".
The problem with 99% of projects like that is most modders aren't content to just fix the vanilla issues. They have to layer in a bunch of bullshit of their own, half of which is unnecessary or just adds clutter. That's how I always felt about the Floris mod for Warband, for example.
Seconded, contrast Floris with Diplomacy for example, which was the vanilla expansion mod par excellence. It was basically Vanilla+ to the point where every other mod based itself off of Diplomacy.
It's an SP game with MMO grinding. It has a much, much, much, much slower start than Warband and takes an offensively long time to level up. The battle AI's better than Warband ever was, though Viking Conquest comes close, and crafting's cool in theory, but the RPG and strategy sides are boring and halfbaked.
I personally hate how they took the setting from mid-high medieval to more of a dark ages feel. I wanted a remastered Calradia as we had it, not something centuries in the past. Maybe that'll be DLC at some point.
Then there's the clan system that's barely explained and barely works, and unless modders can work around it it's gonna heavily restrict future mods, though more scripting means it mignt not be too big a deal.
Agreed on the rest, but did they improve battle AI since I last played in early 2022? The bots are definitely better at fighting individually, but I played VC recently and Bannerlord last around spring or summer last year and I honestly thought VC's battle AI and formations seemed overall better and more intelligent than Bannerlord's to me. They are a bit janky in terms of controls and movement, which can give the illusion of them being less intelligent than Bannerlord's especially since they take some practice to actually make use of. There were a few improvements, like I know the horse archer AI was way better (VC benefits from not having them in Warband).
I just remember my skirmishers like Battanian wildlings couldn't even skirmish without micromanagement, whereas in VC skirmishers (and archers) know how to engage with the enemy before the main melee and actually skirmish keeping at a range and trying to get hits off with their often more limited amount of ammunition. They will often do this between waves of reinforcements and on retreat too. It can be brutal fighting Picts and Irish even with elite troops if you're playing Anglo-Saxons or Norse and especially if you aren't used to fighting them, their skirmishers will do hit and runs and kite you. I learned the value of getting my own and learning how to use them fast.
VC shieldwall battles are also very historically accurate. They basically all go exactly like this description of Anglo-Saxon warfare, even down to getting to make a speech pre-battle and the special traits you can learn like a war cry:
Preliminaries – The lines are drawn up and leaders make pre-battle inspirational speeches
Advance to close quarters – A battle cry would be raised and one or both shieldwalls would advance
Exchange missiles – Both sides shoot arrows and throw javelins, axes and rocks to break the enemy's resolve
Shield to shield – One or other side closes the short gap and attacks, using spears and swords, protecting themselves and pushing with shields to try to break the enemy line. If neither line broke, both sides would draw back to rest. More missiles would be exchanged, and then the two lines would close again. This would continue until one line broke through the other, perhaps aided by the death of a leader or capture of a banner.
Rout and pursuit – One side would begin to give way. A final stand might be made by some, as at Maldon, but most would flee. The victors would pursue, killing all they could catch.
They also know how to use weapons in shieldwalls properly, switching to shorter secondary weapons at the very front and every rank behind the front line each using increasingly longer spears with the longest 2.2m spears at the back, but in Bannerlord my shieldwall seemed to just use whatever and my troops could barely figure out how to use their shields, constantly putting them up, down, up, down, not knowing how to utilise the new shield direction. Spears are really just horrible in Bannerlord based on when I last played, too.
In Bannerlord, it all felt more like fantasy to me than plausible medieval warfare, where Battanians can't skirmish, Sturgians can't utilise shieldwall tactics or even spears very well, and the Romans are better off relying on heavy cavalry and pretending it's the High Middle Ages. Not to mention, archers everywhere despite them not being nearly as common in the era, although maybe they were in Anatolia where Calradia is inspired from (not sure). I was excited it was advertised as more "Dark Ages", but it sure didn't feel like it to me except in some very anachronistic ways, since it's about the same as Warband where heavy cavalry and archers are king and only a single faction relies on infantry. Subjective, but the armour designs were also very disappointingly ugly to me, since I expected some nice Dark Age byrnies, hauberks, gambesons, cloth and whatnot, but instead everyone looks like a homeless savage in leather, fur, and lamellar.
When I played I had the same issue, the only skill that leveled up easily was Stewardry. I focused on commanding my troops (maybe it doesn't expect you to actually play like a warlord) so my weapon skills never got anywhere, nor did my athletics skill fighting on foot since I wasn't moving enough either. That's not to say I wasn't fighting with my weapons or running around, in fact I probably risked doing so far more than I should have being a commander of an army and with the risk of them all charging rather than using tactics if I die. I also originally tried using a spear, but they are useless in Bannerlord for some reason. Really tedious grind, I don't know why they had to reinvent the wheel and didn't just go with the same skill system as Warband.
