Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah siege crew is better.

 

[IDtenT]

Been playing warband the past month or so.

 

[vota DC]

Horses are one area that actually needs significant revision since the charger was so OP in Warband. Riding one was like having an extra 160 HP with heavy armor -- which is why an army of 100 Swadian Knights could chew through thousands of enemy troops and barely suffer any losses.

To me cavalry should play like shock troops -- devastating when they can get out in the open and charge but vulnerable when bogged down in the midst of the melee. Horses play a key role in this -- if you reduce their armor and HP to where they can't take a lot of damage then suddenly you have to start using your horsemen tactically, as opposed to cavalry being an insta-win.

Idk if they will make the necessary changes but for me armored horses trivialized 98% of the battles in Warband, to the point where I have to avoid using them in order to have a challenge.

The changes right now are
1)The charges can be more devastating. In old game they bump soldiers when they barely touch them with zero damage, now they seems to always apply damage.
2)Speed doesn't only apply a bonus to your damage but to the enemy as well. Spear bracing will work, also there is a video that a two handed axeman cut two horses that are running in his direction.
3)Shield doesn't provide anymore a huge invisible wall so it is more difficult to protect the horse
4)They have dedicated anticavalry units. Shock infantry is supposed to be good against heavy infantry and cavalry but weak against ranged units. Camel is slow but can hit the knight on the head while it is too tall to be an infantry machine killer.
5)Horses eat a lot. That could limit their number since food can't be stockpiled like the gold.
6)Not all units can become heavy cavalry.

 

[vota DC]

New blog

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/64

There will be many obstacles in map, there light cavalry and horse archer will perform better than heavy cavalry

Also random generated map are gone. Doing all battlemaps could be one of the reasons of delay. I guess there won't be 100% flat terrain perfect for knight but also impossible mountains.

 

[thesheeep]

Also random generated map are gone. Doing all battlemaps could be one of the reasons of delay. I guess there won't be 100% flat terrain perfect for knight but also impossible mountains.

Well, that's a giant decline.
Now, after playing for a while, you will enter a map and think "aha, it's THIS map, so I need to go here and there for optimal...".
Random maps were one of the best points of the original game, you always felt like you were somewhere new. The randomness was also an additional challenge as sometimes you were placed in a fucked up position.

Guess that means "more maps!" mods are mandatory now, to make up for that at least somewhat.

 

[Syme]

Well, that's a giant decline.
Now, after playing for a while, you will enter a map and think "aha, it's THIS map, so I need to go here and there for optimal...".
Random maps were one of the best points of the original game, you always felt like you were somewhere new. The randomness was also an additional challenge as sometimes you were placed in a fucked up position.

Guess that means "more maps!" mods are mandatory now, to make up for that at least somewhat.

Yeah they fucked up on that one. Most maps were pretty generic and I'd usually just look for the nearest hill to place my archers on, but sometimes the random generator could really turn the tides in a battle. I remember when I was playing the Prophesy of Pendor mod I was once caught in a really bad spot against a Jatu army (500+ cavalry) and decided to savescum the fuck out of the terrain generation. I ended up forcing the enemy army to crawl up a ridiculous mountainside like a horse from Skyrim while being showered by crossbow bolts until they reached my line of dismounted knights who didn't give a fuck about being poked in close combat by lances.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Meh, its not like the random generated maps were that diverse in Warband. If they make enough of those custom maps (say like 40 or 50) the difference will be barely noticable.

 

[Merlkir]

It should be possible to mod in a random generator. (TLD has one, even if unfininshed and unused)

It's interesting, custom made battle maps is something we did in TLD, yet another similar thing Bannerlord either adopted, or invented independently.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Well, that's a giant decline.
Now, after playing for a while, you will enter a map and think "aha, it's THIS map, so I need to go here and there for optimal...".
Random maps were one of the best points of the original game, you always felt like you were somewhere new. The randomness was also an additional challenge as sometimes you were placed in a fucked up position.

Guess that means "more maps!" mods are mandatory now, to make up for that at least somewhat.

Yeah they fucked up on that one. Most maps were pretty generic and I'd usually just look for the nearest hill to place my archers on, but sometimes the random generator could really turn the tides in a battle. I remember when I was playing the Prophesy of Pendor mod I was once caught in a really bad spot against a Jatu army (500+ cavalry) and decided to savescum the fuck out of the terrain generation. I ended up forcing the enemy army to crawl up a ridiculous mountainside like a horse from Skyrim while being showered by crossbow bolts until they reached my line of dismounted knights who didn't give a fuck about being poked in close combat by lances.

But Pendor does not have randomly generated maps.

 

[Syme]

Well, that's a giant decline.
Now, after playing for a while, you will enter a map and think "aha, it's THIS map, so I need to go here and there for optimal...".
Random maps were one of the best points of the original game, you always felt like you were somewhere new. The randomness was also an additional challenge as sometimes you were placed in a fucked up position.

Guess that means "more maps!" mods are mandatory now, to make up for that at least somewhat.

Yeah they fucked up on that one. Most maps were pretty generic and I'd usually just look for the nearest hill to place my archers on, but sometimes the random generator could really turn the tides in a battle. I remember when I was playing the Prophesy of Pendor mod I was once caught in a really bad spot against a Jatu army (500+ cavalry) and decided to savescum the fuck out of the terrain generation. I ended up forcing the enemy army to crawl up a ridiculous mountainside like a horse from Skyrim while being showered by crossbow bolts until they reached my line of dismounted knights who didn't give a fuck about being poked in close combat by lances.

But Pendor does not have randomly generated maps.

Are you saying those clusterfuck woodland hills in the Noldor forest weren't random, but the result of a depraved mind?

 

[Zanzoken]

Hand-crafted maps may be a slight improvement but adding a PBOD feature would have probably served the purpose just as well for field battles.

Another instance of these guys having too much time and money on their hands. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

 

[LESS T_T]

Talking about gameplay for a change: https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1681414081363392053

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, whether you are trading goods or taking part in a military campaign, a large portion of your time will be spent traversing the campaign map. The campaign map acts as your portal to virtually every other aspect of the game: the diverse array of settlements, the huge and epic sieges, battles, trade, diplomacy, etc. In this week’s blog, we would like to show you some of the work we have been doing to improve this core feature of the game.

For Bannerlord, we are using a fantastic scene editor that our engine team created for our artists. We were, however, using a different method for the campaign map that was a relic of Warband’s system. This was practical in some aspects and had its advantages, but as time went on we realised that the limitations were too many and we decided to redo the campaign map system built on the new scene editor.

There are a lot of advantages to the new design. Apart from being able to create a map that is of a much higher quality, it is actually a huge change that opens up a ton of possibilities. By creating the map directly in our editor we are able to quickly and efficiently edit the map, with one of the key benefits being that we can now place settlements directly in the editor (rather than with coordinates in a text file!).

This leads us on to possibly the coolest change we have made with the campaign map: the city icons on the world map now visually represent the actual city scenes. This means that, given some time, seasoned players will be able to recognise a city just from its map icon alone. Likewise, players will be able to see what kind of resources a village produces and the level of a castle’s walls visually represented on the campaign map.

The new system requires a bit more work in certain areas. Making city icons that match the scenes is an additional task, and we also need a separate navigation mesh so that path-finding is fast and efficient for the many parties roaming the map. However, we think that the benefits justify the extra effort.

Finally, we would like to expand a little on what Gökçen told us in last week’s blog regarding terrain types. Designating areas of the campaign map with different terrain types allows us to do more than just match battle scenes to parts of the map, it also allows us to control AI behaviour (for example, limiting the areas where certain bandit parties can roam) and affect party modifiers (such as movement speed). We think that modders will find these terrain types to be quite useful as they can be used in a number of inventive ways.

In next week’s blog, we will be talking to 3D artist, Ömer Zeren. If you have any questions you would like to ask him, please leave a reply in the comment section and we will pick one out for him to answer.

 

[Spectacle]

Release the fucking game already!

 

[whydoibother]

Release the fucking game already!

Its not called Bannerlord 2077 for nothing, you know.

 

[vota DC]

Erdogan has been elected, bannerlord will be released soon.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1681414719795837833

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

One of the main activities you carry out in Mount & Blade games is visiting towns. Towns serve as trade hubs and strongholds where you can socialise with the nobility, recruit companions or get quests. For Bannerlord, we spent a lot of effort on the town menus to make the experience as fun and immersive as possible.

As a starting point, the town menu is no longer full screen. It now comes as an overlay on top of the campaign map. This, (hopefully!) makes visiting settlements a more fluid experience. Also, the basic campaign map user interface is still available, so if you would like to tinker with your party or inventory while visiting a town, you can easily do that.

The menu background art was something that was really dear to us and we didn’t want to let it go completely, so we decided to use illustrations as the background for the smaller menu for town options. This required some retrofitting of the illustrations but our illustrator, Serdar, did a fantastic job there.

There are many things that you typically do in towns, so we tried to make as many actions as possible directly accessible from the menu, thus removing the need to load into a scene to perform actions. For example, prisoners can be sold to the ransom broker directly through the menu and players can access the crafting screen without needing to navigate their way to the local blacksmith.

One result of this was that the number of menu actions increased considerably and it was no longer practical to access everything from a single menu layer. Fortunately, the solution came quite naturally. Town scenes have various areas and sub-locations such as the tavern, castle, marketplace, etc. We decided to simply mirror that in the town menu structure. So the main menu now has options to go to various districts, which are themselves sub-menus. Each sub-menu has actions that are applicable there. For example, the arena sub-menu has an option to join a tournament.

Locating and speaking to NPCs is also one of the most important things you do in towns. This can be done through the portraits on the top right panel, eliminating the need for the players to enter the town scene and search for any NPCs they wish to talk to. This may seem like a minor improvement, but in reality, it has a huge positive impact throughout the game as it helps to streamline certain actions to make them faster and less tedious, improving the overall user experience.

Players who wish to immerse themselves in the world will still be able to explore the scenes to locate notables, however, those who prefer to maximise what they can achieve during their play session will be able to use the town menu to perform any action and save some valuable time.

In next week’s blog, we will be speaking with AI and Campaign Programmer, Ozan Gümüş. If you have any questions you would like to ask him, please leave a reply in the comments and we will pick one out for him to answer!

Discuss this blog post HERE

 

[unfairlight]

0.00005 micro issues remaining

 

[Latelistener]

I don't like the UI and portraits are just horrible.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

I'm not in love with the Ui either, but I think it's a big improvement over Warband. It's clear and readable at least, and should be easy enough to re-skin.

 

[Shinji]

On the left, is that some sort of "Circus Maximus"?

Spoiler

Or is it just a normal oval-shaped arena?

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

As a starting point, the town menu is no longer full screen. It now comes as an overlay on top of the campaign map.

 

[thesheeep]

As a starting point, the town menu is no longer full screen. It now comes as an overlay on top of the campaign map.

So what? The screen looks much better than what was in the old game(s).
You actually get some information for once

I am sure mods will allow you to replace all of that with a blank screen and the same drawing for every city and village

 

[whydoibother]

I don't like the UI and portraits are just horrible.

The easiest thing to mod. They just need a robust engine and a release date.

 

[LESS T_T]

https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/3113560763351475723

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Before we dive into this week’s blog post, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new Steam Creator page. The Steam Creator page acts as a hub for all things TaleWorlds on Steam. Make sure to follow the page to ensure that you don’t miss out on any news or announcements regarding our company and our games!

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/taleworlds


Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a bit different from other sandbox games. There are some in which the story isn’t linear, so you can more or less play it in any order while you explore the world. In others, there is no such thing as a broad story that encompasses the whole game, or if there is, it is less important than the world itself and its inhabitants: you are free to roam to discover them. What we intended to do with the original Mount & Blade, and what we are working hard to do even bigger and better in Bannerlord, is to create a game where you get to create your own story from scratch, where you make your own decisions and live through the consequences. In this week’s entry of our dev blog, we talk with one of the people responsible for creating this magic: Campaign AI Programmer, Ozan Gümüş. If we think of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord as a “box of tools” you can use to create and live your own story, he’s one of the people who help to create and shape those tools.


NAME
Ozan Gümüş

FROM
İzmir

JOINED TALEWORLDS
2009

EDUCATION
Computer Engineering, Bilkent Üniversitesi

OFFICIAL JOB DESCRIPTION
Campaign AI Programmer


WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
“I can answer this question in two ways: what I do now, and what I did in the past. In the past, I was generally trying to build our living sandbox world, which is almost a simulation of the real world. There are wars, enemy and ally kingdoms, lords with different characteristics and other aspects which mirror the real-world Middle Ages... From time to time, new armies will gather and try to attack the weak points of their rivals, capture rival fiefs or raid enemy villages. At the same time, caravans are carrying goods from where they are cheap to where they are expensive, making profits for the owner of the caravan (who can be a well-known merchant in a town, or even the player themselves). Each village produces new raw materials each day and villagers carry these resources to connected towns. Each day, the residents of towns are consuming these resources and paying taxes. The collected taxes are then given to the clan which owns the fief. While villagers are carrying their goods to town, they are vulnerable to attack from bandit groups and they can be killed and their items stolen. Each night, new bandit groups are spawned around hideouts. This means that even bandits can damage the economy of a clan if they populate a hideout which is close to a village.

All of these elements come together to create the sandbox world and present players with activities and objectives to pass the time. Each game element is connected to other somehow and we try to make the world as realistic as possible to make players feel like a real lord in Calradia.

More recently, with the majority of the coding for the simulation already complete, most of my time is spent fixing bugs that are reported by our QA team.”

WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
“In Bannerlord, the power of a kingdom doesn’t come from just its total manpower count, but also from the economic power of each clan within the faction. Through taking different actions, players and kingdoms can win wars just by restricting the income of their rivals. In Warband, this side of the game was quite weak when compared to Bannerlord because NPC lords never suffered from a shortage of funds. However, achieving this was quite difficult because we needed to create an economically balanced game world (the total amount of money in circulation shouldn’t increase too much over time).

In addition to this, fiefs can be developed through projects. We have lots of different projects which affect different things positively, and managing these issues helps to make the player feel like the lord of this fief.”

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
“The first rule for creating a realistic world for our game was to make NPC lord and kingdom armies make rational decisions. We had to ask ourselves questions such as: after one army has gathered and laid siege to a town, what should the besieged town’s faction do in response? The answer may seem quite easy, especially if their army is patrolling in the area, however, what happens if the army is involved in an offensive siege of its own? Should they abandon their siege to head home and defend their own lands?

When making these kinds of decisions a lot of factors come into play. Distance, army power, garrison size, nearby parties, other armies, the strategical importance of fiefs... Ideally, the most logical decision should be found by the AI and their army should do this. If parties give irrational decisions in critical moments like this then players will notice this and start to interrogate our game world. Also, if players find situations in which the AI cannot react to or solve cleverly then they could misuse it. For example, if raiding a village alerted all AI lords and most of them travelled to the village, then other parts of their kingdom would be exposed to attacks. Players would notice this and the end result would be that they would be forced into using this strategy every time, which would negatively affect their gameplay experience. Solving these kinds of issues and not leaving things open to abuse by the player is a difficult problem for us, but it is something we work hard to achieve.”

WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“Currently, I am working on income and expense issues. In Bannerlord, clan wealth is mostly controlled by the clan leader, and all taxes are sent directly to them. However, the clan leader is also responsible for nearly all of the expense issues too (except for some minor personal expenses like recruiting troops and purchasing food). Each clan member is expected to deal with these minor expenses themselves, however, clan leaders can choose to gift money to their clan members. There are actually a lot of additional mechanics surrounding clans but it would be too much to explain right now!

My main area of responsibility is the simulation of the game world. The game is quite huge in scale and the simulation is open to many different kinds of bugs, many of which will only occur is certain combinations happen, so half of my time is dedicated to fixing these bugs. I actually prefer bug-fixing periods over implementing new things!”

WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
“I think Battania is so characteristic when compared to the other factions. Their architecture and equipment draw me closer to them. Also, their culture is more closely connected to wildlife, which I also like.”

MORALE IN BATTLES: WILL THERE BE A CHANCE FOR A BATTLE THAT DOES NOT END IN A TOTAL BLOODBATH ON EITHER SIDE?
“Party morale is a critical variable. It decreases massively if the leader does not pay wages regularly or if the soldiers cannot find food to eat. Leaders have two main responsibilities: wages and food. Other than this, travelling long distances without entering a town makes soldiers tired and decreases their morale. Some strategies, like leaving soldiers behind to run away from strong parties also make men unhappy. When you enter a battle with troops who have low morale, after taking some casualties your men can lose their courage and start to flee. This means that a battle can be lost even if most of your troops are still alive. These deserting troops go on to form a new deserted party on the campaign map which the party leader can no longer control. Thankfully, there are lots of different ways to keep party morale high!”

 

[Zanzoken]

Currently, I am working on income and expense issues. In Bannerlord, clan wealth is mostly controlled by the clan leader, and all taxes are sent directly to them. However, the clan leader is also responsible for nearly all of the expense issues too (except for some minor personal expenses like recruiting troops and purchasing food). Each clan member is expected to deal with these minor expenses themselves, however, clan leaders can choose to gift money to their clan members.

Why in the world would you send all fief income to the faction leader? To gain nothing from your fiefs makes no sense from either a gameplay or roleplaying perspective. It also seems nonsensical to label recruiting troops and purchasing food as "minor expenses" since that is where almost all your money goes over the course of a game.

I was kind of interested in what this dude would have to say on campaign AI and the strategy layer but now I am just confused.