How to catch / get rid of Steppe Bandits?

[DrTuSo]

First of all, i'm playing on realistic difficulty. No speed bonus for traveling on the map.
My army is made out of 150 Khuzait Cavalary, no extra mules, no extra goods beside food.
Scouting on Level 200.

My map speed is:
Base 3.95
Cavalary +2.97
Cargo within Capacity -0.05
Overall: 6.3

The problem, every freaking Steppe Bandit has a speed of 7.9. No matter how big their army is or how many prisoners they have.

My home territory of the Khuzait is flooded with them, ripping everyone apart that is not strong enough to fight them and running away with ease from me.

In another savegame a week ago, i managed to get big parts of the Vlandian territory Bandits free by hunting them down and destroying the hideouts.

Doesn't work in Khuzait territory, the hideouts pop up faster than i can destroy them and right now there are more than 60 groups and steppe bandits roaming around. It is completely insane.

Any idea how i can catch them?

[Multifaced]

basically you can't catch them all, but you can trap some and even many of them in parts of the map where they can't escape, you will need a tonne of food and spend a lot of time chasing them around

also a little tactic that sometimes works, don't know if it's been patched out, but you can start a second party with one of your companions nearby, and with a group that will attract bandits to attack them, then wait for the bandits to attack them, then jump in and help eradicate them

It is tedious process however, you basically have to sit there and clear out all the bandit camps first to stop all the spawns. Honestly, I don't even bother anymore, they are just a part of the land, too annoying and tedious to deal with.

The entire bandit mechanic is poorly implemented in its current form, hopefully in time it will be corrected

[DrTuSo]

Thank you! The idea with the second party sounds nice.
Trapping them was one of the things i did, but it took so much time and i had always the feeling during that time i managed to trap one group, the hideouts produced like 5 new troops.

The problem for me, i have the feeling the Steppe Bandits have a massive negative influnce on the Khuzait territory.

[eighthsin]

Originally posted by DrTuSo:

Thank you! The idea with the second party sounds nice.
Trapping them was one of the things i did, but it took so much time and i had always the feeling during that time i managed to trap one group, the hideouts produced like 5 new troops.

The problem for me, i have the feeling the Steppe Bandits have a massive negative influnce on the Khuzait territory.

It doesn't seem much of a reward to catch them. it takes days chasing them around the map. this is the same reason that I cant understand why people want looter deaths - i already spend days chasing them, just give me the XP without killing my tier 6 troops!

Hopefully the bandit mechanic is developed further than just being an annoyance on the map or XP grind. This game is all about potential... everyone is just hoping they deliver!

[madracc00n]

U dont,they are not properly balanced.There is a quest when u need to hunt them down,then they wont run away from u until u do the quest.

[JoelTarnabene]

If you have less troops in your army the base move value goes up. I haven't tried myself but I'm sure you can catch them with a 10-20 man cavalry party with 200 scouting. And if you can't it's just an oversight which will be fixed eventually.

[Apples]

My guy has maxed out at like 7.6 but that's with 3 companions and no scouting perks, on Realistic.

[Pain]

Just solo them, no chasing involved, they come to you.

[DrTuSo]

Originally posted by JoelTarnabene:

If you have less troops in your army the base move value goes up. I haven't tried myself but I'm sure you can catch them with a 10-20 man cavalry party with 200 scouting. And if you can't it's just an oversight which will be fixed eventually.

You are right.I removed troops from my party. At 100 cavalary troops i got 6.5 movement, at 80 6.9, still they are at 7.9

At the moment it doesn't matter anymore. All my mods got updated to 1.4.1 so i decided to go Beta again and start a new game

[Swirler]

You can catch them?

I'm pretty sure they're just ghosts of enemies you've slain running around the map.

[JoelTarnabene]

Originally posted by Swirler:

You can catch them?

I'm pretty sure they're just ghosts of enemies you've slain running around the map.

:)

[Dan]

You can't catch them, poorly thought out and implemented by TW. Have nothing but Cav and small party to stand a chance at catching them, or just let them do their thing.

[Matiati]

Easiest way is to have a seemingly inferior party compared to them. If there are 20 steppe bandits bring a 15 men horse archer party for instance.

If they think they can kill you they'll come to you.

[JoelTarnabene]

Originally posted by Matiati:

Easiest way is to have a seemingly inferior party compared to them. If there are 20 steppe bandits bring a 15 men horse archer party for instance.

If they think they can kill you they'll come to you.

But isn't this the way it should work? A small force is more mobile than a large one. I can agree that they seem way to fast but if realism is your goal, like it seems for many people here, I think it actually works as intended.

[DrTuSo]

Originally posted by JoelTarnabene:

But isn't this the way it should work? A small force is more mobile than a large one. I can agree that they seem way to fast but if realism is your goal, like it seems for many people here, I think it actually works as intended.

You can encounter an army of 50 steppe bandits with several prisoners that still have 7.9 speed. So if you come with your army of 15 to match that speed, they rip you apart during the battle. If you come with an army of 50, they won't attack and you can't get them because you don't have the 7.9 speed anymore (always keep in mind, realistic difficulty).

[Swirler]

Originally posted by JoelTarnabene:

Originally posted by Matiati:

Easiest way is to have a seemingly inferior party compared to them. If there are 20 steppe bandits bring a 15 men horse archer party for instance.

If they think they can kill you they'll come to you.

But isn't this the way it should work? A small force is more mobile than a large one. I can agree that they seem way to fast but if realism is your goal, like it seems for many people here, I think it actually works as intended.

IRL if you're pursued by a larger group you're at a disadvantage.

There is one thing bannerlord and mount and blade in general doesn't simulate well.

Sleep.

A small group of men have less manpower available to do things like eat/sleep/stand guard.
A much larger force of say over 100 men will be able to take shifts and send out patrols to find them.
And that larger force can also move it's fastest elements faster.
Things like changing tired horses so you can send messages huge distances, changing scouts out periodically to constantly search, constantly harass and eventually force the smaller group to just give in and surrender.

And even if you take into account a much shorter chase sequence over just 1 day instead of weeks, that larger group still has the advantage in that they can cover very wide areas. The only way the smaller group can survive is by using horses to run into a nearby city/forest or finding a boat and just sailing far away.

As the chase drags on longer the advantage swings heavily in favour of the larger group. (the dynamic changes with more modern tech ofc), pure fatigue and need for rest will catch up with the smaller group.
Assuming the area is just pure wilderness.

These are things a group of about 5-10 men would not be able to do nearly as well as 100.
The only advantage that small group has is that it can hide more easily.

In theory the smaller group could split up to improve their odds at some point, or even provide a distraction or sacrifice 1 or 2 individuals but that's a pretty desperate gambit.

This weird Tom and Jerry style chase only works if you remove the need for sleep and rest and keep groups consolidated into blobs that can't separate much.

IRL your big group of 100 men would have patrols of groups of 5-10 scouting around it periodically for forage and such. It wouldn't just move in a big slow column marching to the sound of a drum.


And Now I go on a tangent. Sorry not sorry, i'm bored........
Although it is entirely possible with a bad enough commander that could happen, in history there have been many incompetent leaders who let small groups of men slip away because they were too stupid to make use of the tools at their disposal or they just didn't care enough.

That's another thing Bannerlord doesn't really simulate well, human incompetence and brilliance.
People will complain about armies with bugs climbing ladders and not destroying gates in sieges or armies sieging the wrong castles but the fact is;
All of those things have happened in the past, simple probability and statistics can prove that point.
(not trying to justify the bugs or anything, I don't like them either.)

The problem us players have is we don't see any human justifications for these apparently haphazard decisions.
We just see armies wander off into that good night and wonder wtf they're doing. Or kingdoms randomly declaring war on enemies who aren't even neighbours.

These things have happened IRL, the issue is there's no clear justification for them. There's no story linking these bugs and odd behaviours.
As the player we expect to be told why characters behave as they do, we expect a human explanation for their decisions. We don't like it when all we see are binary decisions executed with perfect robot like automated efficiency.
Humans don't do that. We think, we worry, we act rashly, sometimes people go crazy when put under pressure.
Humans don't just rush headlong into a fight if they're outnumbered 10 to 1. People only fight like that when they don't have a choice or are cornered. Sun Tzu explains as much.

Sometimes sieges are won without a fight being done at all. Bribes and corruption were as much reasons for a kingdom falling as much as military preparedness or lack of. Sometimes fights were won by making the enemy drunk or tricking them into thinking your army wasn't nearby.
In fact there was often the expectation that with a siege the defender would come out to parley at least once, they know when an army takes a fort by storm they will often ravage the town and civilians inside.
So they try to avoid this fate. They surrender. In Bannerlord we don't have that simulated yet.
We have to siege even against a single defender.

An example of this is Alexander the Great won a battle once by just having his army do drill exercises. They did them in such perfect order that they scared their opposition.

The stereotypical fight in a nice clear battlefield wasn't the only part of the fighting.
Often from two large armies their scouts/ foraging parties would clash a few times in small skirmishes. And armies would have imperfect information as to what the other was doing.
For instance if you set your army up on a nice big defensible hill, your enemy probably won't attack you. In Bannerlord they will.
Or in other cases the armies could miss each other entirely. Much to the frustration of one or the other.

The AI in this game isn't human, so there's no personal connection to their weird habits. But don't be fooled into thinking people make perfect decisions with 100% of the information available. Psychological mindgames was a big part of warfare.

Like playing chess with a stranger, for all you know you could be playing against a grandmaster or some rookie who doesn't even know what a pawn is.
Armies would often be commanded by leaders who didn't even know what they were doing. And sometimes they could still win by making the "wrong" move.

TLDR, people are weird man.