Is this game out of Alpha yet?

[GirlyPants]

I didn't buy the game at release because I didn't trust the Turkish developers. Did they deliver their promises with the bugfixing etc? Is it a complete game now?

[Clovis Sangrail]

Works for me.

[Action Man]

The things they said they were going to do in their dev blogs and whatnot are in the game. Playing Vanilla seems to result in little/no crashes.

Not sure what you mean by 'promises' though. Everyone has either a different or just wrong view of that.

[zeeb]

Considering units climb ladders in a siege and then stand around doing nothing at the top of those ladders except taking arrows to the face instead of chasing down enemies alongside the walls and try and disrupt siege engines from obliterating assaulting archers tells me it's still in alpha.

This is why defending a siege the moment you unlock Fire Catapults is child's play. Considering they stand around at the bottom of the ladders or outside the main gate like absolute morons while having fire pots thrown at them. Even if the main gate is open they're adamant on climbing the ladders.

The issues I stated are just a few among many.

Hard to not exploit the AI when every action they take is exploitable.
Personally I would say this game is still in Alpha, but they've made it clear that it is in a good enough state to be labeled as Released.

At least now we know for certainty what quality means for TW and how important/unimportant it is to achieve it prior to releasing their projects to the masses.

This is what a "Released" game looks like to TW, just something to think about going into the future in regard to their upcoming titles, whatever they might be.

[Iconocrush]

I was going to create a new post to vent, but I may do it right here; It's sad that we still don't have a diplomacy system within the game (if you are going to point out the mod, spare me the obvious), it's sad that the AI is so frustrating that limits the already very limited end game options. It's infuriating, not even sad, that after all this time we have the worst iteration of a working economy yet, being the workshops as useless as they are now, and blacksmith is still the number one option by such a large margin that I really feel struggling when I don't level blacksmith, but I have such a Stockholm syndrome that I came to enjoy the struggle just not to level blacksmith again. And, personally, is heartbreaking that having such a vocal community, Taleworlds decided to basically ignore our concerns and give us things that nobody asked for like back alleys and a cornucopia of new shiny pieces of armor.
Bannerlord is the game that could've been, and like many others disappointing titles is kept alive by a mod community.
If you want to test the modded persistent multiplayer or you are a GoT rabid fan I'd say give it a go, otherwise I wouldn't recommend this game.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Iconocrush:

I was going to create a new post to vent, but I may do it right here; It's sad that we still don't have a diplomacy system within the game (if you are going to point out the mod, spare me the obvious), it's sad that the AI is so frustrating that limits the already very limited end game options. It's infuriating, not even sad, that after all this time we have the worst iteration of a working economy yet, being the workshops as useless as they are now, and blacksmith is still the number one option by such a large margin that I really feel struggling when I don't level blacksmith, but I have such a Stockholm syndrome that I came to enjoy the struggle just not to level blacksmith again. And, personally, is heartbreaking that having such a vocal community, Taleworlds decided to basically ignore our concerns and give us things that nobody asked for like back alleys and a cornucopia of new shiny pieces of armor.
Bannerlord is the game that could've been, and like many others disappointing titles is kept alive by a mod community.
If you want to test the multiplayer or you are a GoT rabid fan I'd say give it a go, otherwise I wouldn't recommend this game.

If you need blacksmith to keep afloat economical, that is just you bad at manage your economy. Just because you can stuff your garrisons full of high tier troops, doesn't mean you should. Just because you can level up troops in your party doesn't mean you should either.

Workshops does better the more you manage them, and the prosperity of the fief they in. A workshop that does 250+ a month do good. It's not supposed to be a magic bullet to keep cover your cost passive.

The diplomacy system in the game function for the loop of the game. The game is not designed for alliances, non aggression pacts and such. Regardless how much you want it.

[Urmel]

the good , the bad, and the ugly

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Rakshasa:

I don't think Iconocrush is referring to alliances when they say that there should be a diplomacy system. I think most people here can get on board with the fact that this is suppose to be a war game. But what about making plans to tag-team an enemy? I do think non aggression pacts should be valid for the same reason you can negotiate peace. Imagine being able to through diplomatic favors influence the rank and power of an enemy nation? Place your friends in key positions to later recruit them into your faction, or maybe lay a lord low that always raids your fiefs. My job isn't to be a creative genius and I'm not paying a dev team to make the fantasy myself but it's pretty easy to see that the, "diplomacy," or whatever you want to call it is lacking in this game.

Imagine, we had clown school, and a circus and.... it doesn't matter what each of us imagine is in the game, because the devs made the game they said they would. They stated the game fully released in a post here on the steam forum. I wouldn't expect any giant overhaul of the diplo system, because that would require them to redesign a lot of the game mechanics to fit with the game loop. They working on 1.3.x whatever that might be, and they did pledge to support the game with fixing bugs and issues.

The system you want you can find in games such as CK3 that is built around it. You just wont get the battles and such you find in Bannerlord.

[Ruffio]

Originally posted by Urmel:

the good , the bad, and the ugly

Is that you Tuco? -)

[Iconocrush]

The "git gud" squad didn't waste time I see. Never said that I need blacksmith to stay alive, I said that comparatively it feels like struggling, because blacksmith is printing money without basically no effort which is day and night compared to the rest of options that we have, and I never said that workshops should be something that you set up and forget about money, but this is the worst iteration of the system. and I know I'm not alone in that opinion. I may be completely wrong, but it's the devs opinion that there shouldn't be a diplomacy system in place or just yours? Because it's pretty weird that we don't have the option to have any kind of comunication with other kingdoms when they usually gang up on the player nation, being on yourself or as a vassal, even worse when you can't even coordinate with your own fellow nobles or vassals, unless you put them all in your army, and they keep behaving like lemmings.

[PossibleTango]

It's in early beta.

[Action Man]

Originally posted by Iconocrush:

The "git gud" squad didn't waste time I see. Never said that I need blacksmith to stay alive, I said that comparatively it feels like struggling, because blacksmith is printing money without basically no effort which is day and night compared to the rest of options that we have, and I never said that workshops should be something that you set up and forget about money, but this is the worst iteration of the system. and I know I'm not alone in that opinion. I may be completely wrong, but it's the devs opinion that there shouldn't be a diplomacy system in place or just yours? Because it's pretty weird that we don't have the option to have any kind of comunication with other kingdoms when they usually gang up on the player nation, being on yourself or as a vassal, even worse when you can't even coordinate with your own fellow nobles or vassals, unless you put them all in your army, and they keep behaving like lemmings.

Making money in this game is difficult for players that don't know how to do it. So they can abuse Smithing to make all the money they need. Once you learn how to make money in this game, you don't need to use Smithing at all.

Diplomacy is in the game, you just don't like it. I would say that the Diplomacy we have in the game is indeed the dev's opinion because that's what they made. You can read their dev blogs. What they say in there pretty closely matches what's in the game. I as well find it very lack luster, but that's why I use mods. Non-Aggression Pacts are in the game. You pay for them via tribute. Alliances are in the game. All the clans in a faction are allied together. Betrayal/defection is in the game. AI clans will switch sides. The player can do it whenever they want.

What this game does best is battle. I actually think the economy is fairly well done - the problem is it takes in game years (literal hours of play time) to see things really play out and bear fruit. With battle, I can achieve results much, much faster. There's no real incentive to foster economy unless I feel like slow playing the game.

Since battle is the main point of this game, introducing mechanics that reduce this seems counter intuitive. The game wants to give you battles to fight. Preventing factions from going to war goes against that. The 'endgame' (for what it is) only has much challenge because multiple factions are fighting you. Picking apart a faction one by one while not allowing any other faction to go to war with you is boring.

This also is not an RTS style game. The player is not the overlord that commands all units from on high. You only get to control your unit, and you have to deal with how the AI makes decisions for their units. I definitely would like better AI, but being able to control multiple units goes against the theme of this game of you being one person.

Could the player be something akin to a General in command of all a faction's forces? Sure - but that would be just another OP mechanic the player gets that the AI doesn't. The player is already plenty overpowered compared to the AI. Do we really need another thing to make the game even easier?

[Iconocrush]

Again, I never said that blacksmithing is the only option to make money, but it's the easiest by a huge difference, both in amount of money generated and effort put into it.
Saying that diplomacy is in the game because we have factions is risible, and a very sad and lazy excuse, same for pointing out the mod whan I already said that was the obvious fix. I don't want to control my whole faction, at least when I'm a vassal, but any form or shape of coordination would be a great addition to the game. At least have the chance to stop allies to suicide whole armies or declaring several wars at once, and I know that you can play with the influence and drain the AI houses, but that's not always a possible solution and sometimes you don't have the time to do it, that's one of the things I meant that the AI behaviour limits the already limited end game possibilities, the fact that you have to play kindergarten teacher with your own "allies".

@Lokaror Thanks for the heads up, I didn't know but I figure something of the sort. I knew that the git gud squad would probably make an appearance, but this is something else.

[The Mau Corporation]

Diplomacy does exist just not in the ways players want; which would actually be detrimental to the games design loop. Ganging up on a kingdom just makes the game nonsensically easy. We can do it, just without the safety net of a feature (which would be dumb imho for reasons given).

We have kingdom and clan strength to leverage. And I think you'll find more welcoming lord reactions if you focus on upping these to large amounts (10k+ clan str). A warring clan will change sides and bring over every fief, for example.
Kingdoms wont even declare on your when you start out a kingdom at these lvls. The player can then pick fights and control diplomatic outcomes better. The ganging up on a kingdom thing happens this way, unofficially and risky.

Anemic clan strength is the number one failure of most playthroughs, I bet you.

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

No they did not.

[The Mau Corporation]

If you are feeling like you have to kindergarten your ai allies then youve chosen the wrong allies. Traits matter, and longterm campaign outcomes for clans matter.

Paying more attention to ai clans and their specific members (like making sure they spend little to no time in prison, for example) makes a difference longterm. ie, They will have more children, better stats potential, stronger clan (especially if player nourishes their environment).