Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[Metro]

Only setting I adjust is the incoming damage. Yes it's realistic for you to get one shot/killed by a random arrow during a siege but it's horribly unfunny from a gameplay perspective.

 

[Zanzoken]

The improved visuals and physics are nice, but #1 on my wish list was a beefed up strategy layer and I'm not really seeing it. Even the battles still appear to have the same old basic approach.

It's going to be a D1P for me no matter what, because M&B is my favorite game of all time. But I'm hoping for something more than a glorified remake.

 

[Orma]

Only setting I adjust is the incoming damage. Yes it's realistic for you to get one shot/killed by a random arrow during a siege but it's horribly unfunny from a gameplay perspective.

I start out with 1/2 damage, then i switch to full damage when i eventually get my MASTERWORK lamellar armour for 80k shekels

 

[Zanzoken]

Seeing the gameplay videos got me interested in starting up a new Warband campaign. It's amazing how it still hooks me even after logging over 300 hours. I sat down to just do a couple battles and ended up playing all afternoon. But the more I play, the more the strategy piece seems lacking... here are some thoughts off the top of my head:

1) The AI needs to start using more experienced troops. Once you build a party of 100+ top tier fighters -- which really isn't very difficult -- most fights are a faceroll. The AI lords simply don't bring enough quality manpower to pose a threat. Only when you are severely outnumbered does the AI have a chance.

1a) It's even worse if you play with elite cavalry, because armored horses are overpowered as fuck. Chargers and Warhorses have like 160hp and the equivalent of full plate armor... this makes Knights and Mamlukes incredibly durable and gives them a ridiculous advantage over infantry. The lighter horses like Coursers and Hunters are much more balanced... they are fast and grant big attack bonuses, but defensively weak.

2) The AI needs better battle tactics. Currently its available strategies consist of "charge" and "find high ground and shoot volleys". This problem is somewhat minimized by the first one -- the enemy usually isn't strong enough to win regardless -- but even when they have good troops, the AI lords fail to utilize them effectively. The devs mentioned in the demo that this has been worked on, so we'll see.

3) Kingdoms need to work together better. Friendly lords are hard to direct, even when you're the marshall and have a good reputation with them. Enemy kingdoms also have a hard time with teamwork and coming up with reasonable war strategies. Sometimes they get it right, but they do a lot of dumb stuff too... for example I've seen a group of 700 troops run right by their besieged town just to go raid a village.

4) Wars need to be more decisive. First, they shouldn't just start randomly and for no reason. And when I take a lord down, he should automatically be captured and out of action until the war is over (or until he is rescued). Not respawned within a week with a new army of trash mobs. Give each lord what amounts to one "life" and all of a sudden the stakes get much higher.

Put all of these pieces together and I think the game will feel more logical and cohesive, and more like everyone is acting with a sense of purpose -- instead of just a bunch of dudes fighting a bunch of other dudes, rinse, repeat.

 

[Old One]

...armored horses are overpowered as fuck.

It's definitely a problem. I've always thought the first step should be to stop horses - warhorses especially - from galloping merrily along on steep slopes. Unless you have a mountain horse, you shouldn't even be able to ride up or move laterally across a steep slope. If you do ride up a slope, it should be very slow going. That would force chargers to stick to flat areas, and make heavy cavalry vulnerable to archers in mountainous or rocky terrain. I think it's an engine problem though.

In vanilla Warband the ultimate, unbeatable force is a band of companions trained up as heavy horse archers. Put them all on Heavy Chargers and give them bows. Enemy troops can't catch them, and Khergit horse archers' arrows can't penetrate their armor, so they're largely invulerable.

 

[Harpsichord]

4) Wars need to be more decisive. First, they shouldn't just start randomly and for no reason. And when I take a lord down, he should automatically be captured and out of action until the war is over (or until he is rescued). Not respawned within a week with a new army of trash mobs. Give each lord what amounts to one "life" and all of a sudden the stakes get much higher.

I couldn't take SP Warband seriously after discovering that it was essentially impossible to fully succeed in the metagame for this reason. It doesn't really matter how quick you defeat the enemy bands, if you start the war at a manpower disadvantage you will stay at a manpower disadvantage forever and ever amen.

I even tested with cheats, it just isn't doable.

 

[Metro]

4) Wars need to be more decisive. First, they shouldn't just start randomly and for no reason. And when I take a lord down, he should automatically be captured and out of action until the war is over (or until he is rescued). Not respawned within a week with a new army of trash mobs. Give each lord what amounts to one "life" and all of a sudden the stakes get much higher.

I couldn't take SP Warband seriously after discovering that it was essentially impossible to fully succeed in the metagame for this reason. It doesn't really matter how quick you defeat the enemy bands, if you start the war at a manpower disadvantage you will stay at a manpower disadvantage forever and ever amen.

I even tested with cheats, it just isn't doable.

Ahem...

 

[Harpsichord]

I don't know what to say, they would respawn from their home fort within hours of me wiping them.

Also, nice flag.

 

[Metro]

There is a bug (even in the final/updated version) where lords of a defeated kingdom (no castles/towns/fiefs) would keep respawning. Of course, if they still have holdings then after awhile, yeah, they'll respawn if you don't actually capture them in battle. However, their new armies won't be that big unless it's a king/leader. It's not that unreasonable considering you as the player can lose most/all of your army in a battle, escape, and recruit a decent amount of men in short order.

That said, it's a pain in the ass to actually conquer the entire map.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

If I got a good haul of Lords I dropped them at an upgraded prison and refused to ransom them. Eventually I'd have some amazingly low scores with certain folks but the enemy kingdom found itself with a shortage of meaningful troops to resist me. Got about 65% of the way done conquering the entire map once. The political slog burned me out.



But if you want nearly impossible, try conquering Prophecy of Pendor as an independent. Unless you get lucky and manage to befriend the Noldor (and can thus recruit them) it's.just.not.happening.

 

[Gregz]

But if you want nearly impossible, try conquering Prophecy of Pendor as an independent. Unless you get lucky and manage to befriend the Noldor (and can thus recruit them) it's.just.not.happening.

It can be done, as long as you cheat by 'teleporting' your army around the map. On foot I can't imagine.

 

[Zanzoken]

4) Wars need to be more decisive. First, they shouldn't just start randomly and for no reason. And when I take a lord down, he should automatically be captured and out of action until the war is over (or until he is rescued). Not respawned within a week with a new army of trash mobs. Give each lord what amounts to one "life" and all of a sudden the stakes get much higher.

I couldn't take SP Warband seriously after discovering that it was essentially impossible to fully succeed in the metagame for this reason. It doesn't really matter how quick you defeat the enemy bands, if you start the war at a manpower disadvantage you will stay at a manpower disadvantage forever and ever amen.

I even tested with cheats, it just isn't doable.

Have you ever used TweakMB? It's a convenient GUI that allows you to see under the hood and tinker with a lot of the game's settings. I use it on all my M&B campaigns now just to tone down a lot of the grinding and bullshit.

For instance, the default escape chance for enemy lords you defeat in battle is 70%, but I have it turned down to like 20% in my game. So now I only have to defeat each lord a time or two in order to put him out of action.

I'm also thinking about handicapping myself by not using any top-tier troops. I always play Swadia so what if I restrict myself to only using Footmen, Skirmishers, and Men-at-Arms? That would certainly make the battles harder and force me to be a bit more tactical in how I play.

 

[LESS T_T]

New blog post: https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/15

Greetings ye faithful and thank you for coming to read the, somewhat belated, thirteenth of our here Bannerlord blogs. As promised, we're giving a rundown of what we showed at the PC Gamer Weekender (video below) in March, with some added detail, guided by the questions we received on the forums. Thanks to everyone who got involved whether directly asking questions or just discussing in general!

The first thing we show in the demo was our character customisation. This is a feature that has been refined and improved upon, since we revealed it at Gamescom last year, by tweaking and increasing the number of sliders to provide more control for the player. We also give a glimpse of facial animations, which help greatly in bringing characters to life and makes combat and dialogues much more immersive.Some of you have been asking whether or not you will still be able to create weird and wonderful (to put it euphemistically) faces, as in Warband and the answer is, of course, yes! Though our goal is to make the faces in the game, that are generated, look interesting but still believable.

Next we offered a look at the map, revealing the locations of our major factions. The colours may still change but it has been exciting to see your reactions to Bannerlord's expanded Calradia. One thing noted by the keen-eyed among our viewers is that, contrary to Warband, cities now have hard edges and parties are now required to go around them and enter at specific points. Our three Empire factions: Western (orange), Northern (magenta) and Southern (purple), are culturally the same but vary in behaviour, dependent on the personalities of their leaders and lords, the partners with which they can trade and their natural resources. In this sense, each develop their own nature, through the game mechanics, shaped partly by the actions of the player and the AI characters.

Unlike Warband, there are no standalone castles, but rather castles attached to villages. These can be constructed by players and lords but take a lot of time and money. Villages with castles can be captured and held, but those without onewill only change ownership dependent on who holds the local town.

In the small skirmish fight, we wanted to give you a taste of combat. To allay your fears, we also switched to first person; we are absolutely supporting both first and third person perspectives, as we have always done in the series. Combat continues to be something which we are constantly iterating on and working towards an ideal where we maintain the direct control of the previous games, but build upon that and add in new features. Kicking and Chamber-blocking (riposte) are still part of combat's roster of techniques and there are a few new things that we are looking forward to covering in detail.

Next we enter a town. As mentioned in the demo, the idea behind the town menu is to save the player time, keeping exploration optional and rewarding it in different ways. One feature we have added is wall strength, supported for both castles and towns, which affects behaviour and gameplay during a siege. From the town menu, you can immediately see who is located in the town and where they are currently located.



You can also see the various garrisons stationed in the town, which will defend the settlement in the event of a siege. In the demo, the player collects one of his own garrisons, that he had previously left in the town. Leaving troops in settlements allows you to go out with a smaller and faster travelling party to complete personal quests or pursue fast enemies. Any groups of soldiers garrisoned require that the player leave a companion with them, to act as leader.

As we step into the tavern, we once again provide you with a reminder of the efforts we have made, to create a distinct feeling with each culture in the game. Now, while we have made the taverns separate scenes, in order to prioritise improving the content and variety of gameplay that towns can offer, that decision may change in the future and there is a lot of work we can and will do to optimise and reduce the loading times as much as possible, before the game's release. The stream demo, from the Weekender, shows a Battanian tavern. This culture is one of the most distinct from any of the factions in the previous games and comes with interesting styles of architecture, attire, art and arms.

When we wander into the backstreets, we are confronted by a group of thugs and the dialogue is automatically initiated by the gang leader. The main advantage of engaging in crime is to make money quickly. It is cheaper and provides a faster return than a legitimate business. However, engaging in criminal activity while rising up the ranks of a faction increasingly puts the player in a difficult position. Regardless, the player can still choose to take part in criminal activity, at any time, even as a King; there are always costs and benefits.



In the blacksmith, we choose to craft our own weapon and show the full process the player goes through. Nearly all of the melee weapons in the game use this modular system, adding a tremendous amount of variety. We have some statistics in the user interface shown here; most values are fairly self explanatory, such as Weight and Weapon Length. What's new is that, whereas in Warband the damage values and types were listed separately for swings and thrusts, we now have separate values for thrust and swing speed, as well as special cut and pierce damages, that are distinct from the base damage.

A new concept in Bannerlord is influence, which acts a bit like a currency, alongside gold and relation, but more directly affects our interactions with other characters in our faction. Influence is held for each lady and lord as a value to represent their contribution to their faction's war effort. Vassals can maintain their influence by joining military campaigns and the more troops they provide, the more influence they gain. What this does is form a system, where being part of a faction actually comes with a measurable level of responsibility. Keep your influence positive and the leader of your faction will be pleased, raising your chance of being awarded more fiefs; let your influence slip into the negative too far and you'll risk expulsion from the faction and your fiefs being seized.



As we approach the enemy lord in the demo, we can see their troop count drop. We have mentioned that one of the main improvements in Bannerlord is a much more detailed simulation. Ladies and Lords are subject to almost the same pressures as the player and of course, their troops also disband if they aren't provided with food or pay. Our enemy, Ecarand, a Vlandian vassal, has a cautious personality. The personalities of characters in the game are defined by their traits, which are earned in a variety of ways and determine how characters react, are reacted to and can affect their behaviour.

The battle we engage in demonstrates how some of that behaviour translates to the battlefield. Ecarand, as the defender, takes position on the high ground and waits for us to act. Since the onus is on us to attack, as the aggressors, he is happy to hold the hill. However, some lords may choose to play aggressive, even as the defender. In the demo, Ecarand roundly trounces a group of our archers but only charges in when recognises that vulnerability.

Eventually triumphing over Ecarand, we then talk a little bit about what the knock-on effects might be of the battle. While Ecarand escapes, he has lost all of his troops and is now forced to rebuild his forces, if he is to maintain his influence within his faction. If he doesn't have sufficient income to do so, he may decide to take action, which could be anything from raising taxes on his peasants to setting up a criminal enterprise. Whatever he chooses, the effects of this will then play out in the sandbox, and could leave him suffering in the long term. The nature of the game, with so many factors like this coming into play, is one of the things we believe makes Mount & Blade so interesting. Look forward to even more detail about the campaign mechanics in the future and thank you for reading.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/04/28/mount-and-blade-2-bannerlord-interview/

A Living World: Mount & Blade II – Bannerlord Interview
Adam Smith on April 28th, 2016 at 7:00 pm.

Mount & Blade: Warband is one of my favourite games but I haven’t played it for a long time. In part, that’s because I’ve been waiting for the sequel, Bannerlord [official site], since it was announced four years ago. After over half a decade of development, details about the game have started to emerge and I spoke to Armagan Yavuz, CEO and Founder of developers TaleWorlds, to find out how the team are aiming to improve on the dynamic world of the original. We talked combat, historical influence, settlement management, co-operative possibilities, modding and AI.


RPS: One of the key elements of Warband, which very few games attempt, is the creation of a dynamic world, that supports both strategic play and a more RPG style experience. What are the main ways you’re building on that?

Yavuz: With Warband, we felt we had a very original game with some unique elements. A lot of players and critics said that they felt it was like a rough uncut gem. There was a lot of potential but it didn’t quite meet that potential, and I agree with that. So we’ve tried to improve on all of the various elements, as well as trying to make them click with one another more effectively. We want all of the mechanics to work togeether.

At the heart of that, there’s a new scripting system, which is C#-based. It allows for many more sophisticated mechanics, from the way seasons work in the game to the functions of the AI. In Bannerlord, the AI can use any gameplay mechanic in the same way that the player can, whereas in Warband there were things that worked differently for the AI and the player. We’re getting rid of almost all of that, so that the player and the AI are working on an equal footing.

For example, you can talk to your enemies’ vassals and snatch them, poach them for your faction. Now, they can do the same thing to your vassals. That means you always have to be on your toes because whatever plans you might come up with, the AI can be coming up with similar plans to use against you.

RPS: Building an AI capable of working with such complex systems must be a huge challenge. How do you begin to build something like that?

Yavuz: One of the most important things is to make sure the AI can evaluate all of its options. If it doesn’t know what the options are, it won’t use them, just as a player won’t. We use a very modular system, which works such that when we add new features to the game, the AI is automatically able to see them and use them.

We approach the design the same way when we think about the players’ experience, introducing new elements that overlap with things that you’ve already learned. We try to make the game more transparent to players – if you don’t know how to do something, or even know that it’s possible, you might as well not be able to do it.

There are a lot of mechanics that make the economy and politics more fluid, and we want to make sure that managing villages and diplomacy doesn’t become an intellectual load. It’s very easy for a game to become intimidating when there is so much to do and so many options, so we need to make sure there is no information overload.

To do that, we try to give the player very simple interfaces to interact with. They’re very rich in information but not overwhelming. The information that you need when trying to perform any action should always be visible, and positioned under your mouse pointer as soon as you need it. For managing villages, you basically have three sliders – militia resources, taxes and building resources – and you decide how much importance to place on each area.

And as a beginner player you can leave them all in the middle and not worry too much. The game doesn’t force you to optimise constantly, or to care about all of this stuff just to survive. If you are part of a kingdom and you have a single village to manage, you can do that suboptimally without altering the course of the war too much. That way, you can learn the more complex mechanics and how they all tie together while working as part of a bigger system, without too many responsibilities. That’s a natural learning curve and there’s plenty of time to master strategies as you play.

The entire UI is much more streamlined than in Warband as well. You can see characters in the gameworld and interact with them directly, and you’ll be able to access various properties and statistics directly rather than looking through menus.

RPS: Why did you decide to set the game two hundred years earlier than Warband?

Yavuz: We decided early on that we would either be basing the game either a little earlier or later, because we didn’t want to revisit exactly the same time. We opted to go earlier for several reasons, one being that if we go too much later then, realistically, the combat changes a lot and becomes based on heavy armours, full plate, and firearms.

There are lots of interesting things to look at in that setting and there’s a charm to it, so it’s something to explore at another point maybe. But it’s not what we wanted to do just yet because we wanted to retain the medievalish feel of the combat.

One thing that opens up in this setting is the use of female characters. In Warband we had female nobles but they didn’t have armies and they weren’t commanders, because that didn’t fit with the time period. But if you go back in time a little bit, you see that a lot of societies did have female leaders. It was much more prevalent and it’s something that we’ve implemented. It’s an fascinating period to explore culturally and gives us a lot more freedom to create some new social dynamics.

RPS: How do you balance historical realism and entertainment? Medieval life wasn’t all fun and games…

Yavuz: First of all, we arevery much interested in history and we’ve learned a lot while making the game. Steve Negus, our writer, is a super history nerd and a great source of knowledge. There are a lot of really interesting, knowledgeable people in our community as well.

We aim to keep the game balanced between fun and realism. What’s important is that whatever mechanics we use are believable within the world we’ve created. We try to use history as a source of inspiration rather than a script to follow. But we’re always surprised by the number of inspiring ideas that come from historical research. As we dig into it, we find so much that we can use.

RPS: What changes have you made to combat?

Yavuz: The idea was to keep the basic mechanics that worked really well but to evolve them and to add mechanics so that everything feels more natural and polished. We’ve redone almost every animation with mo-cap and thrown in some physics-based calculations as well, which actually work to balance the speed of animations.

As you play, you realise that doing certain actions feels faster or slower according to the situation of your body. You don’t need to learn lots of combinations and controls, but you’ll come to understand the tempo and the rhythm of it in a naturalistic way, and you’ll catch certain methods and be able to use then more intuitively.

RPS: Can you talk about how minor factions will work?

Yavuz: We can’t share too much information on minor factions yet. They’re a way to make the game world richer, as well as the lore. The exact mechanics aren’t quite as rich as with the core factions but they open up new possibilities.

RPS: You’ve mentioned elsewhere that modding support is important to you. What are your plans for Bannerlord modding?

Yavuz: The modding scene is something that we are really fortunate to have. We’re blessed with a great community, and the modding tools are one of the things that we want to develop as much as possible and to the highest possible standards. We were able to draw a lot of lessons from the things that we did and didn’t do well with the previous games, so we’re fixing some of the mistakes and coming up with a much better system.

There is a very rich scene editor that people can use and we’ll also have very powerful scripting tool, written in C#. The goal is to make sure that even after the game is released, we’ll be able to patch and change things, with as little effect on the mods as possible. And further to that, we’re trying to come up with a system that makes it possible for different mods to work together.

The community also creates lots of fanfiction – the world is important to them and we’re making it richer this time around. The lore isn’t at the forefront though and part of the reason that it’s not so pronounced is that the game also works a bit different each time you play. Part of the lore becomes your own personal history. In Bannerlord, there’s more dialogue, more small stories and more interesting characters, but each player’s experience of the game will be unique. We build algorithms that enable narrative rather than scripts.

RPS: A cooperative campaign is a holy grail for a lot of Mount & Blade fans. Is it a possibility?

Yavuz: It’s very difficult to do, not just because of the technical difficulty, but also to make things practically playable when we have two people doing wildly different things in real-time. One player might be trying to have a very exciting battle that is the climax of a very important experience, and one player just beforehand decides to go to town and look at the marketplace. These people have to be in the same gameworld and it’s very difficult to make sure that they’re both enjoying themselves and all having a great campaign experience simultaneously. It’s almost impossible without cutting down on what the game offers.

There may be another way to manage all of those things, by limiting the co-op to one kind of campaign. Let people play together as a party and have them always be together. That might be possible and that may be the the only kind of co-op that we can deliver. It’s something we’re experimenting with and that we have worked on. We’ll only officially announce something if we can make it 100% efficient and fun to play though.

RPS: If you could point to one thing that has improved since Warband, what would it be?

Yavuz: It’s the way that you’re involved with the game world. In Warband, the player didn’t have enough ways to interact with it. There was, for example, no way to hold proper diplomacy and conversations due to very limited dialogue choices. I think that’s one of the most important things that we tried to address.

Whenever you feel that you’d like to do something in the game, you have a much better chance of being able to do that thing in Bannerlord. Say you’re cornered in a castle and you have your enemy’s son as a prisoner. You might want to give him his son back so that he’ll leave you alone – those things will be much more possible in Bannerlord. You’ll be able to interact much more with the game characters and the game world than was possible in Warband.

RPS: And finally, how close are you to release, will you consider Early Access, and have you been building foundations for the future as well as for this one game?

Yavuz: We’re still not too close to release unfortunately. We are considering Early Access, or perhaps an open beta of some sort. We definitely want to involve players at some point so they can dig in and help with final touches and game balance.

And, yes, the big challenge was to make a platform for the future with this game. That’s one reason that it took so long. At the beginning, some of the choices that we made – technological and design – were suboptimal. They became limiting factors when we wanted to add more things, which led to having to do things two or three times. We’ve improved in that regard. But the most important thing is to make this a great game, which can hopefully then be a great foundation not only for mods and expansions, but for future games and projects.

RPS: Thanks for your time.

 

[Hoodoo]

Yavuz: We’re still not too close to release unfortunately. We are considering Early Access

 

[Spectacle]

We’re still not too close to release unfortunately. We are considering Early Access, or perhaps an open beta of some sort. We definitely want to involve players at some point so they can dig in and help with final touches and game balance.

Argh, this game is taking forever! Why can't it come out soon?

 

[Hellraiser]

We’re still not too close to release unfortunately. We are considering Early Access, or perhaps an open beta of some sort. We definitely want to involve players at some point so they can dig in and help with final touches and game balance.

Argh, this game is taking forever! Why can't it come out soon?

Too many microissues remaining bro.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

Like the decapitations in Vikings?

What sort of state is Vikings in now? I played it shortly after release and had all kinds of issues, it kind of soured me on it and I haven't checked back since

 

[Alienman]

Like the decapitations in Vikings?

What sort of state is Vikings in now? I played it shortly after release and had all kinds of issues, it kind of soured me on it and I haven't checked back since

It's good now. Fun experience. The main quest is actually good. Felt more like a RPG than some RPGs if you get my drift!

 

[Merlkir]

And, yes, the big challenge was to make a platform for the future with this game. That’s one reason that it took so long. At the beginning, some of the choices that we made – technological and design – were suboptimal. They became limiting factors when we wanted to add more things, which led to having to do things two or three times.

Hah, sounds like my secret inside source was right.

Viking Conquest is pretty good imo, well enough to start playing.

 

[Alienman]

Early access...

EA is such a curse. Was just now looking through steam for a good local co-op game, and every single game that looked interesting was EA.

 

[Merlkir]

It worked fine for Warband in the past.

 

[Alienman]

You mean the first Mount & Blade?

 

[Merlkir]

Both, really. (there was a Warband beta too)

 

[Ninjerk]

Yavuz: We’re still not too close to release unfortunately. We are considering Early Access

Gotta get those hair graphics perfect.