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It is infuriating when you try to solo the game. But instead try to get some influence, get a huge army. Huge like 1000 or 1500 what the hell, And there is no protection agains this, you will conquer everything.
And now, after a year in EA, we have no new content - you literally do the same ♥♥♥♥ you did on day 1 of the EA. Its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ travesty and the game blows. Total missed opportunity to make a masterpiece.
This is the only statement I can generally agree with, more or less, and have stated so myself on several occasions.
The rest of your OP is kind of... a non-issue.
The AI does get a few things you don't. That's necessary. Why? Because that's "gaming" that's why.
AI Lords get a relatively small number of pre-leveled units on respaswn. Otherwise, they have to recruit like the player does. (Some possible small exceptions, there, but that "balancing" has been visited many times.)
Impoverished AI Lords, without income/fiefs, draw a minimum amount of cash from the faction AI "wallet." This is a necessity.
I have never seen one Lord with a 1000 unit party, but have seen Armies over 1000. Are you complaining that you can't have 1000 units in your "Party" at Clan Tier 3? Tier 3? Really? You basically have to trip over your own sword and die to avoid making it to Clan Tier 3...
Honestly, it sounds like you just had a bad day/play. That's fine - Everyone is allowed their own rage-posts after a particularly brutal beat-down. But, that's largely all that you post is as most of the issues you cite are just... not.
A well balanced game is one in which the AI doesn't have to cheat. If the AI can't form parties like the player then that's kinda a hint that it's too hard to build armies the normal way.
Also you say "you'd have to trip over your own sword" to avoid making it to clan level 3. Do you play on reduced damage or something? Or are you just talking about the inevitability of gaining renown? I mean, even tripping on your own sword wouldn't prevent increasing renown because I'm pretty sure there's no way to lose it.
To make matters worse, the main story mission basically encourages you to start your own nation, but to do so you have to take an area from someone so you can even declare yourself a kingdom. While you're not a kingdom you can't form an army. So you get your party size, which is about 100-200, and you have to fight armies of 1000 or so.
So it's entirely unbalanced.
I mean, is the game designed for you to have 1/2 damage on your army or whatever the lowest setting is? I'd have thought it'd be balanced for "realistic" since that should put you on equal footing with the AI. I guess if they balanced it for 1/4 damage taken or something then it would make sense why enemies have 1000 troops while you only have 250 or so.
Still bad design though because the options read "Very Easy", "Easy" then "Normal" rather than"Normal", "Hard", "Very Hard".
I seriously doubt you can actually win 20 vs 1000. Even with all the easiest settings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCGsqeiCDmM
I've formed armies larger than the AI's and have kept them in the field indefinitely... Other players have as well. So, when you say one "can't" do something, maybe there are some other conditions or context that needs to be discussed?
There have been changes from patch to patch that could have wide-ranging effects. But, by and large, I don't think any are directly related to the problems you're describing. For instance, it was much easier to accrue massive amounts of Influence early in EA. It's still possible to accrue massive amounts of it, but it's just a bit harder to do given the management/town/etc features and continuing flip-flop AI balancing...
Please provide a list of these games in which the AI doesn't "cheat" in some way. Be sure to try to keep as close to Bannerlord's genre as possible when considering candidates...
Despite developer's loving to say "we invented an AI that doesn't cheat" since the heady days of players complaining about Civilzation II mechanics... there isn't a game that doesn't have "AI" that doesn't, in some way, have access to mechanics or can ignore mechanics that the player is forced to deal with. If there is one, I want to know what it is. (Given a certain level of complexity as in "similar genre," that is.)
"Well Balanced" should mean that there isn't any unduly overpowered or "unfair" AI-cheating going on that acts against the player or compartmentalized, competitive, AI "factions/cultures/nations/characters/etc."
In Bannerlord? It's not AI cheats that are the issue at all. It's a case of the Faction AI just being coded to practically play the game by itself. In your estimation of that quality of Bannerlord, I'm in full agreement. The player is not as important to the overall progression of the gameplay in Bannerlord as they are in Warband.
TW loves them some "Teh Ecomony." I have no clue why they're trying so very hard to structure the AI's behavior in onesies-twosies fashion. The results of those efforst are pretty apparent in a lack of agency for the player and RNG gameplay results regarding the quality of the gameplay experience. How many restarts before I can have a game where Sturgia doesn't suck? Doesn't turtle? Doesn't get beat up for their lunch money? Doesn't suicide? How many fiefs must I personally steamroll before one of them can actually be reliably held by an AI Lord? The last campaign I did I took something like seven in a row and we ended up holding one? Almost two? Friggin' brilliant...
But, never fear! The little points that are accrued to tell the AI whether or not a Town rebels, a Lord raids a village, your children chew on lead paint, or a faction finally decides to go to war are recorded, analyzed, tallied up and re-analyzed repeatedly every game tick to ensure that the results of those calculations are accurate!
^-- This is the kind of crap I complain about. So, if you consider these "imbalances" then we're in agreement. :)
It's not hard to get to Clan Tier 3. What I am saying is that you'd basically have to be "not playing the game" to not easily reach Clan Tier 3. This is a "battle fighting" game, first and foremost.
I agree that the main story mission sucks and the concept behind it and the progression through it is dumb... And, yes, it puts you in the position of being forced to declare yourself far too early. It's not that it's imbalanced, it's just plain "badly done."
TW hasn't paid any attention to gameplay progression in Bannerlord nor what they would or should consider to be the hallmarks of player-progression through the game. As a result, you can progress through that story quest very quickly and a new player will insta-gimp themselves by declaring their own kingdom. And, they're encouraged to think that's the right "progression" choice for them to make, too... That's just all sorts of bad.
I do agree TW's standard choice for wording difficulty settings needs some work. There are threads and threads about armor, piercing damage, arrows, combat mechanics enough to show that structuring any true "difficulty level" around these notions is full of hazards right now. :)
But, I always choose realistic since I do assume that is what everything is "balanced" for. I don't hork around with difficulty very much, though - In EA, especially this one, I am unsure that the difficulty setting isn't actually set by TW's most recent patch contents... :)
If you were ensnared by the story quest and did what was apparently the intuitive thing to do, start your own kingdom when you reached that stage, then you do deserve all my sympathy - That's a borked up progression issue that TW should take care of, but hasn't touched since they did their last polish pass on it. It is a "misleading" thing, implying you'll be acknowledged as Emperor of the Universe if you choose that option... only to end up being whacked in the face by all those who don't look kindly on banner-wavers in them parts o' the world...
You used to be able to tell your parties to leave and re-join the army to regain some cohesion but they seem to have patched that out. Now you get some minus cohesion when they leave and plus some when they come back but not more than the original amount.
I think we agree on most things.
Though, I would point out that getting stomped by 1000 stack armies isn't just for independent players. If you take a castle or town and the AI lord gives it to you then it's both great and awful. Mostly awful for the first while.
You get the potential for loads of income but towns seem to start with 20-30 loyalty. So nothing can get built until their mood improves. The only way to improve it is by filling the garrison, which provides security, which provides a small amount of loyalty gain. You also get minus loyalty for your culture if it doesn't match and/or the culture of the governor doesn't match.
Then you usually have the 2-3 armies come at you to try to immediately take it back. If you somehow hold out against them, your loyalty takes more of a hit because they ran out of food, because you were under siege. So you might have a rebellion anyway.
Oh and the armies of your own faction rarely come to help because they're too busy picking flowers somewhere in the middle of their territory.
Bonus points if one of those armies has recruited your parties. It's kinda stupid you can't tell them to leave the army and come join yours.
And! Castles build their own defences. So if you're unlucky the AI will decide that it wants ballistas on the walls and then you're screwed. (Every time I've ever tired to use a ballista I've been instantly headshotted. They've just got no protection.)
The only saving grace is that the AI will sometimes just build a battering ram and rush you before you can finish a second catapult. If you manually aim then you can, if you hit every single shot... destroy their ram and force them to scale the walls, because they're too stupid to retreat. So they basically feed their units into the meatgrinder that is ladders. Got about 80 kills out of 500 troops just headshotting climbing units with the crossbow. Prioritising any actually dangerous ones of course.
I haven't patched in awhile and I can't recall if I use the same strat in the last playthrough or not. I "used to" in the play before last just invite new Lords and basically pay for cohesion. If all that's patched out, you've got a legit gripe. But, if it's all patched out, it's once again due to TW's "Teh Ecomony." They are in love with the accrual and spending of currency of all types in this darn thing. I understand the mechanical need, but they didn't figure out a workable system... It's just "in there." This is why so many games use one currency for everything...
It depends, really. There's too many variables to make the curbstomping inevitable. I think the biggest effect is when you get a Town, do what's right in terms of management, then can't keep a garrison in it that is strong enough to dissuade the AI from attacking you. (Propserity/wealth, power, range from currently held fiefs, etc, is basically how the campaign map AI determines a target.)
The rebellion mechanic is dumb. It was a dumb decision. The only thing it could possibly be useful for is in terms of a "long play" game. But, what does it do? Does it introduce new long-play mechanics? That'd be a "nope."
"Let's put in a new mechanic that spawns more battles and sieges and stuff!"
"I knew we hired you away from that street taco-vendor for a reason! Outstanding suggestion. Make it so!"
Runaway mechanics... They're for early/mid gameplay management games. Turning fief ownership too deeply into management/building isn't a good idea. It needs to be simple, have an impact, have a sufficient difficulty/cost to feel important, and then leave the player the F alone... When something is que'd to be built, the player should get a "You did a good job there! Attaboy!" message and then... done. That's it. You did the thing, took care of the problem, and now that fief is "clean."
The game feels like it's being developed by Marvel Studios. Or, worse... D.C.
I haven't looked at the Army AI related to "not besieging fiefs/patrolling" stuff or how their stances are managed. But, they're pretty independent and don't react to "incursions." They react to sieges and, by most appearances, little else. Somewhere, someone once suggested that Castles could have some Faction importance in that sightings from them of enemy Armies could help to initiate a defensive response... Dunno where that genius went, probably playing Minecraft or solving the Global Warming crisis or something.
I've never once been in a defensive siege and I've tried. Well, everything but "dump all my units and get naked." I stopped trying when they made some faction AI changes and my last playthroughs were snooze-fests of permanent peace or "how many ways do you want your faction to fail, today" stealth patches. confess, I only moved in to try to participate in a defensive siege a handful of times, but then the attacking armies left because it was a school night or sumthin'... I wasted good hours on those plays that I abandoned. Hours that TW never paid me back for.
I was really excited about one, too. i was going to save my worthless brother-in-law and his spawn from the invading army! DRAMA! But, nope... The Vlandians and Battanians both decided to go wash their hair.
Tribute monies was the bestests monies, I guess. No clue where Sturgia got half a billion shekels to pay literally everyone on the map with, though.
I'm sure it's fun... /sniffle
I loved defensive sieges in Warband! And, in some of the mods, they could be truly epic. Defending against a demon horde of special spawn armies in PoP or forty-five minute tooth-and-nail battles in Osgiliath in TLD....
We likely agree on a lot of things. I think the game has decent potential if someone cared about making it a quality gameplay experience at this point. I'm sure some line workers want to do that. But, IMO, it's on the "clean it up and ship it" track. Well get a couple of content additions, some big cleanup thing, then they'll declare victory and leave it up to mods to "fix" six months later.
(I booted it up today to check some things. Guess I'll have to patch and endure another broken playthrough just to be sure my info's current. I am not looking forward to that experience. Not a bit.)