I don't normally comment on anything, but I just want to say that I don't think I can describe accurately just how important this type of analysis is for a game of this complexity and I really appreciate it. I also appreciate how important it is to continue a rational and analytical discussion on this game as I feel not enough people do. Please don't stop, it's desperately needed especially when it comes to updates/patches. Please continue looking at various facets of the game and continue your analysis. It really informs us on the "health" and state of the game.
Will do, I'm glad so many people are enjoying these types of videos as well! Often times the videos that get views are not the ones that will end up helping the most, so we get pushed into making "fluff" pieces that will get views. I do my best to avoid that!
@@Strat-Guides if you're having issues with some videos you'd like to do more of, but don't want to risk the ire of the algorithm, you could make a second channel dedicated to those and link to it and mention this channel when applicable. Most come for your great and detailed analysis in a digestible format, many must have rejoiced by finally having a channel untangling Tale World's theory of how math works, but fewer come for the other stuff which brings down your main draw. From a cursory look it seems your videos like this, since you can't trust what Tale Worlds says from experience, and the clickbatey ones are most popular. Hmmm, might work to have the first episode of a series on this channel, for publicity, and then have all the episodes uploaded on the other channel since there's a smaller market for those videos.
This looks like one game over 100 years not 100 games of one year. That would have had some analytical weight to it. Besides, it's a game designed with human interaction in mind, not an autobattler.
I think the other AIs especially declare war on the one already at war. At least that's what happened in my campaign. I was the biggest empire and when at peace they were all good little lambs. As soon as I declared war on somebody, another kingdom started to declare war on me and it snowballed from there. What I think is the weird part, even with this into consideration is that kingdoms with 2k power while I had close to 20k were still declaring war on me. Which would make no sense in the real world. But they were the ghost kingdoms of past, with no land but lots of lords running around (until I decided to let the world hate me and execute everyone). I am so glad they fixed the ghost kingdoms, can't wait for 1.2 to get out of beta.
@@alex86fire Idk your experience in the game, but as a vassal I had an eye opening experience. My Western Empire liege Garios went to war with the Southern Empire and the Northern Empire, in quick succession, because "They are getting too big and will surely swallow us up." When you get to a certain size in the game, the AI make it a point to gang up on you as much as possible, like crabs in a bucket. I helped make the Northern Empire really powerful before switching to the West, and they even had double the troop count. Once that happened and my faction experienced some victories, they are now fighting three other factions at once on all sides. It becomes extremely important to convince nobles from other factions to join you after a certain point, otherwise it becomes difficult to keep blobbing.
@@leohawk776 I've not played as a vasal in bannerlord. You just get so fast to the point where you can have your own faction I don't really see the value of being a vasal. They do sometimes declare stupid wars. I just about wiped sturgia (no more fiefs) and they still kept declaring war on me with a power over 10 times smaller than mine. It's crazy. I also can't stand that factions survive after they have no fiefs left. Can't wait for 1.2 to come out of beta so I can enjoy a game without having to execute all the lords.
@@alex86fire I usually do it to take over an established kingdom. It's pretty fun to work from the inside occasionally, although I get the appeal of doing it from the ground up. It's a way to do business and save money while I am able to learn the ins and outs of kingdom stuff, too. Being on the vassal side has given me some pretty valuable insights in how I run my kingdoms in other playthroughs, too.
0:32 Previews said Vlandia is *supposed* to have a high amount of power but not be able to wield it effectively due to internal conflict. Unfortunately, I don't think this *ever* actually applied: If there's less internal loyalty, it's not significant.
@thatonedude6247 literally… I got so tired of this I took all of their towns. This slowed down their manpower increasing significantly, but of course, they still have 1k-2k man armies with only 3 castles and take towns back 🤣
@@braincell4536 I think that's not possible, wasn't bannerlord set just after the death of the grand emperor of the empire or something like that? It would make sense they're almost completely similar given they had been one empire just some time ago
@@JoelDiez And the Calradic Empire existed for years. And since the Calradic Empire is based on the Roman Empire ehich assimilated tactics and troops from cultutes they have assimilated. Its good to assume each split empire would have a distinct culture they have assimilated that would be based on theie troop tree. For example the Western Empire could have vetter Cataphracts with asthetics similar to Vlandia or Fian Archers of their own since their proximity to Battania. The Northern Empire could have Super heavy infantry from.the Sturgians they have in contact either Mercenaries or as the elite Vaiger guard in the lore. As for the Southern Empire, they could have special Khuzait Axuilliary Lancers. Like the Dacian Cataphracts thats have the special masks like in Rome. The possibilities are endless to make each split empire distinct and unique. Offering the player the Empire's balanced troop tree with a hint of speciality.
The enemy targeting seems like a pain. Crushing a seigebreaking army and taking a strong fief with the last handful of your men was always a nailbiting experience, but now that fief gets immediately sniped from across the map by the full-force Aserai who we've been at war with for half a year for no reason.
Yeah when I saw Sturgia in Ortysia (whatever that town is called across the water from the Aserai on the west side of the middle body of water) I was kinda like WTF.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD Nah, they'd have about 200-400 men sitting in said capital. So unless you got a big enough force on your own, or get a couple other lords to join you, there's not much you can do.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD Exactly. Chasing enemy armies and defending far away besieged fiefs is a waste of time - time which the enemy will be using to build even more armies. Unless you have a specific reason to not want to lose a fief, you should instead go on a conquest spree on their undefended territories. It's best to think of most fiefs as just roadblocks to stall the enemy and free you to go further away from home.
The AI is what breaks my interest in more playtime, I have always called it blob, it is dumb, it does dumb things, I will never forget starvin mavin armies that would form into a thousand plus and disband on the way to an objective because it starved to death chasing a small patrol... one day the combat AI will approach something like sub-brick levels of competency so I can finally see shield walls and spearmen working instead of everyone insisting on turning into a ball.
Which is sad, considering everything they touted on the game having in the beginning. (smart AI, some preferring defense or offense over the other, etc.).
@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken I think that’s the thing, AI which has been coded as “aggressive” might do that while AI coded as defensive might not. there’s also the calculating trait which plays a role in whether they will chase looters or actually pursue objectives
@@BlapwardKrunkle They were referencing on the battle field in the beginning. Stating that some would prefer defensive and go to hills for the upper advantage, or preferring wooded areas. Or on the flip side, some would just charge straight into, or would do hit and run tactics while infantry set up. Unfortunately this game instead goes with If AI attacking, YEET at you. If Defending, run to highest/nearest highest point and sit there.
@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken I noticed that as well - I wish Taleworlds would port RBM into the vanilla version, unfortunately I only have console so fixing these issues via mods is out of reach for me
Yeah it's a shame because the game is really fun for a little while but once you really get into it you quickly realize how dumb the AI is both on the campaign map and in combat. Not only is it immersion breaking but it can also make the game just boring to play. AI is hard to get right but with how long they've been working on the game you'd expect better.
I think the change to auto-resolve with penalties to archers and cavalry in a lot of terrain types, but infantry getting the better deal most of the time helps Sturgia out.
With weather and auto-resolve changes in 1.2 beta giving pretty substantial nerfs to archers and cav, it makes sense the inf-heavy faction are doing well and the horse archer faction getting eliminated.
Well, infantry have a big trade off - not much posivive factors in battles, but also much less negative. Archers are dominating mostly only on open terains and siege defenses with standart weather - deadly in sousthern and eastern plains, but useless in north and middle-west. Similar with cavalry except more opposite extremes in sieges and plains. Only horse archers are compensating it, but they are very weakened by weather.
@@KroganWarlord I thought sturgia is infntry heavy too until in my recent campaign when I joined ai armies against khuzait, sturgians was the heavy horse horde, poor khuzait horse archers. ai choise of troops seems random
I'd love to see two more things: 1. Rebel clans change their names from e.g. Varcheg Rebels to a clan name that suits the kingdom that rebels joined 2. Culture of settlement changes after being conquered 4 or 5 times, or after a year if no rebellion happens. That would be awesome.
The changing of cultures within towns could be a double-edged sword, because if, say, an entire faction is conquered by another, you won’t be able to recruit the troops of the conquered faction’s culture anymore for the rest of the game.
@@internetguy2760 That kinda perfectly fits with the setting though, one of the themes of the game is how cultures get permanently destroyed with the expansion of empires
Troops should fully depend on the notable providing them, after a time conqured notables should have a chance to be replaced with one of the conqured faction.
@@betin731 well in the first game which happens after this one Battania merged with i think Vlandia to make the Vaegirs. so completely being wiped out isn't exactly correct.
Sometimes it's hard to do that, especially when fighting a bigger enemy, if they come with a big army at you, you can't really contest that and take back your fief. But if you take their undefended fiefs, you can weaken them. I don't know if that's how the ai is thinking but that's what I would do if I was on the loosing side. Take the most vulnerable towns, sack them as hard as possible, and let them go, just destroy their income from them. Weaken your enemy where you can.
@@ricwalker6600I mean not really no. All these game tactics can easily be transferred to the real world if anything, they're actually mirroring the real world. What he said is 100% viable and HAS been done in the real world. If a big army comes and takes one of your forts and you have no way of reclaiming it, why would you waste time, energy, man power , and resources trying to take it back when you know you can't? You wouldn't. You would in stead go sack all their easy to sack cities. You reduce the enemies supplies and man power while increasing your own. This can also have the added benefit of making the attacking army remove troops from its garrison to go chase the sacking armies. TLDR; You actually know nothing of strategy and tactics.
The thing about "going far to snatch land" this is imo one of the things they should improve upon, have "zones of control" so they cant just blitz those weak. Example to attack a town, they need to have the castles that is "attached to it". Also overall with the constnat predatory way of the ai in declaring war it never get the fiefs that gets decimated over and over to bounce up again. Like in my play you have some of the Towns that start with 4-5 thousand prosperity, and within a mere years its down to 1000 or below(hello Lagata W/B/V/A/S all battleing over it). I just wish they had removed the current system of declaring war and going back to the the old "causis belli" that was in Warband. Or atleast add it in like Crusader kings, where a kingdome have to have a causis belli, and they get it naturally randomly, or they could make claims. Overall its "too much war still" which is wrong to say in some ways yes, but it just tanks the fun, when there is "no breathers" and you know as soon as that "peace aka truce" is over its war again. Dont get me wrong overall this patch is that much better, and I've even had some time with peace, but barley. Worse of though is how the AI dont seem to account for "strength" at all when combineing numbers of enemies. Sure our 7000 is stronger than the power of the enemy with 3000.. but its not a good time to declare war upon the other guy with 5000, and next day also go for the one with 4000.. By the end of those wars you end up with 5000 power unless you go in and are on the frontlines constant(and paying tribute, instead of the previous where we had tribute to us). Wars feel like "they dont matter" its just war for wars sake, with the causis belli it just immersed you more and it felt "like it mattered" even if it was to avenge the other kingdomes haveing changed the pathing of a river :P
A simple mod such as diplomacy and or AI war tweaks, you can set the parameters for peacetime, alliance forming, non aggression pacts, war exhaustion etc.
110% agree on the "constant" was thing. Sometimes as a Merc or vassal your kingdom will NOT let itself be at war with less than 2 people at a time (looking at you valandia). You can fight and fight and use massive amounts of influence to end wars then literally 1 week later the king just declares a new war on a faction literally across the fucking map. The amount of times we were just sitting in a war for the sake of it, with a faction so far away that we do not even have a single battle the entire war, was just absolutely ridiculous. I don't get why the AI is so obsessed with constantly being at war. Very unrealistic even in a fantasy setting.
Wars are declared too often. When a kingdom you fight for signs a peace deal with another the enemy just attacks you again after a few weeks. I just had a long war with them. I want a break. So I resort to save scumming to prevent having to fight too many wars. An issue is that the wars usually end only when one party is fighting too many wars at once. So if you're in a war with only one kingdom it might become a long war, where both sides either win or loses big.
It's always confused me why Sturgia and Battania would get demolished in almost every run. Sturgia has some great infantry. And Battannia is so compact and close together it should be easy for them to bring reinforcements to bear and regroup quickly. I wonder if battannia just has bad units
@nickthompson1812 I tried making a Celt-iberian style clan with My Little Warband and Eagle Rising. Light armored units with many javelins and scutarii. But when I took all the Battannian fiefs before declaring, I got demolished by all my neighbors lol. I wonder if it's a geographical thing too
Was Vlandian tonight, we were conquering Sturgia and getting pulled a bit thin. My best friend, Ingalther, flipped to Sturgia, I joined him, and now Sturgia is kicking arse with two more clans, and Vlandia is down clans and losing land quickly.
Wish they would fix the rebellions in the game. If you want to join a faction, then you need to constantly deal with rebellions. Zeonica (in one year) rebelled 5 times. They really need to fix the constant rebellion problem or (at least) explain how cities entire populations rebel every 2 months without becoming a ghost town!
Simply depending something is easy. But why does a town rebel? It has low security. Why does it have low security? Because it’s not able to produce militia fast enough, and not enough units were donated to garrison after the capture. Raided villages means no food and low prosperity. But having high security ultimately prevents a rebellion.
High security and high loyalty. If you’re below 20 loyalty in the town, it has a chance of rebelling, with the chances increasing the lower it goes. Putting the town on festivals as a passive town thing until the loyalty increases above 50-60 is where you want to be. After that start making the fairgrounds all the way. I never have rebellions in my towns if I follow that formula
I like the rebellions. More realistic I think than there hardly being any. Tons of peasant rebellions occurs in history. Or lords that had claims to lands trying to take what’s theirs. It makes sense we should see more. Maybe it’s more balanced yet but I’ve been enjoying it
@@kylerodd2342 If it was some mechanic that could affect core/inner towns and wasnt strickly based on the Owners culture i would agree. But the rebelions in BL are just plain stupid cuz they are based on a single stat that no AI will ever take into account so its boring and annoying knowing exactly which town is gonna rebel before its even taken. Lets say it was due to low prosperity , war fattigue or having random events done by the lords that affect the loyalty of their core settlements then sure it will be more fun. Like Onira rebelling againts Rhagea would make for fun roleplay and may convince the player he shouldnt help her out cuz she isnt cut for the job etc. But seeing a Vlandian lord taking battanian town i just know its gonna rebel off the bat and its stupid.
In all of my playthroughs since beta, Battania and N. Empire goes down first, followed by W. Empire. I have never seen these kingdoms dominated the map. S. Empire, Vlandia, and Kuzaits are always strong. Azerai never left the desert and Sturgia never left the snowy mountain. It's interesting to see in this video that Sturgia and Azerai are leaving their comfort zones.
The only issue I could see with an increase in the occurrence of large armies is that it was already a pain in the butt to fight off two to three 1000 man armies in order to finish a siege. It already felt like the AI were raising armies faster than I could kill them. The last thing I want is for every battle to be 800+.
Bro. I was defending a siege, outnumbered like 4 to 1. But we kept holding them off and they kept retreating. Their food ran out before ours. But just before they disbanded another 1000+ army rolled up and joined the siege. We got got. It was fun though.
Seeing the southern empire yield so much land with sturgia fighting them fills me with so much hope, a majority of my long campaigns always stay with static semi chaotic borders with factions clawing for more soldiers with constant warfare but this makes it seem like the extra coherent armies have had an effect of the longevity of a campaign. Don't get me wrong the chaos was interesting but i find it better when it's located to one area so the two factions are locked into a struggle for the specific region rather then going from A to B to Z. Great video none the less 👍
This type of stuff is why this is the goat of channels for this type of content. Hope you continue to expand into other games, you're a great voice for the community and do a lot of thankless and tireless work. Just know it's greatly appreciated.
A very useful, and highly appreciated breakdown. Plus, like you said this is probably one of the best timelapses I've seen from the Bannerlord AI. In my opinion, faction total destruction is a huge step in the right direction. Minor, fief-less factions declaring war over and over pretty much made solo-clan faction playthroughs impossible with all the raiding they would do. The AI decision-making regarding peace deals, and how the friendly lords decide to declare war are some of the most frustrating continuing aspects of the game. Thank you, and keep up the great work Strat
this makes me wish it was possible for rebellions to actually become their own kingdoms, like marunath was independent for more than 2 decades there i feel like they should have become their own thing at that point.
Even better if the rebellions got their own colors when they did become independent. And the new random colors go for any fief-holding noble that gets kicked out of or leaves a kingdom as well. I have planned to take over the map and then kick my nobles out one by one to create new kingdoms, but I know they will likely just be the opposite color as mine, so it might be really weird to have several enemy kingdoms with the same colors...
@justsomeeggsinapot1784 The world might actually feel more alive... And to have it where you'd have to more actively keep your citizens happy too...(moreso that you'd only be able to focus on smaller areas easily..., but maybe this would be annoying) So keeping the world map taken over would be harder, but not because of leftover lords being too annoying... or at least, not by themselves... Where the enemy could band together easier... pre faction And of course, it would be nice to have that option as the player too... Where you could join the jaded lords of factions to create new ones with enough power to survive...
You could also have where if you conquered the world, you could hit a "fast forward button", where it turns your faction into what the empire was, split in three if your were empire, and down to one if you weren't(the reason should be obvious), and then you'd take control of another character either with approx. A 1/4 of your late character's skills, focus/skill points but unused, and wealth at time of fast forward, and the leader of your now decayed faction, with new lords with random personalities/face keys under your command, with a smallish family. This could also usher in tech changes, if mods are present
Oh, I haven't played for a long time, so I found interesting when I saw that a city had become independent and got their own colors and banner, but usually they are quickly taken back...
I've recently began a playthrough as a solo Batannian character sticking to gathering money and renown until I reach Tier 6 + 2 million Denars while staying solo. Build based on your recent world conquest with my own preferences added. Campaign thus far has been going very much like yours. There have been big battles and power exchanges but no boring stalemate like previously. It's really good thus far. Really good to see these developments. They can make it better and better over time. I think we've finally reached a good state from which can be expanded
I think that a good feature would be: A faction that is losing in power and is becoming weak, make promisses of lands (of the next conquest) to mercenaries bands. Because the losing factiond wouldnt have more money than the winning, and the winning probably have more nobles to give the lands that they conquer, so (at least in my head) it would make sense to be that way. And then if that factions manage to win some land, the mercenaries bands form a clan and establish in that kingdom.
One thing that I think still could be improved (only got the game like a month ago) is AI threat assessment. Was playing a game as a Valandian noble where we were stomping the Battanians, but then the Sturgians attacked. Even after substantial gains and all sieges finished, the other nobles refused to make peace with Battania. Individually, we were stronger than both Battania and Sturgia, but together not even close. AI recognizing a bad situation and making peace with a faction they just took some ground from would be nice. I have a feeling that the old AI probably overdid that, and now it is swinging the other way. Would be nice if, when ganged up on, a faction finishes up whatever sieges they are on and tries to make peace. Not that the peace should always be accepted, is that even a mechanic? Seems like once the nobles agree to make peace it just instantly happens and consent by the other side is presumed. That might make things more interesting if it didn't work that way
I find it quite hillarious. According to lore then the Revylians (the people of Revyl) and the Balgardians (the people of Balgard) were traditionally bitter rivals. They hated eachother much, and a ancient balgardian king of the Gundaroving clan, even saw his own death at the hands of the Revylians. However as the ages passed on, then alliances would come to exist between these two people, and their nobility would intermarry. Balgard in the beginning of the game is always ruled by the grand prince of Sturgia, Raganvad who is of the Gundaroving clan, a decendent of the once killed king of Balgard. Now here is what i find funny. In this exact timelap you did of a 100 years, then the Gundaroving clan remained the rulers of the sturgians from 1084 up until 1134. But during summer 1134 the last powerful king of the Gundaroving clan would die. And the new elected king of the north (Sturgia) after that would become none other than the ruler of Revyl, whose family had ruled that town since the beginning of the game, as it was never conquered once, and their clan never defected or died off. Now, Balgard was conquered many times in this timelap, but it always got back into sturgian hands, and in the end after 100 years, the city remained the home of the Gundaroving clan, who at this point were now no longer the rulers of Sturgia, but now had to bow their heads to the lords of the Revylians. The Gundaroving clan in this timelap, ruled Sturgia for exactly 50 years. and for the remaining 50 years the lords of Revyl ruled Sturgia. That is pretty epic tale to say the least.
Your videos are genuinely such high quality and entertaining that it's one of the main reason for me to even play and try out new things in Bannerlord, even given it's issues.
You should run more such simulations. From what I've noticed in Warband, every new playthrough the RNG is different. Sometimes the same faction gets eliminated in a matter of weeks, and other times it become the dominant power on the continent. I'm guessing the same can happen in Bannerlord, especially if we take into account that the Khuzaits were, for the longest time, one of the strongest factions.
He did plenty of simulations and compared to the overall info given by the player base the RNG isnt that great so the outcome for some kingdoms is 80-90% certain in any playtrough unless the player is involved.
@@МихаилРадулов-й4т a single 100 year run has no statistical value and cannot serve as a basis for an analysis on what changes the devs have made in the patch. Whatever cocnlusions he makes, they are sadly void. It#s like going out on a sunny day and then saying "It will never rain anymore here."
The problem (at least on xbox) is that no matter how devastated a kingdom is ,the nobles disperse to another kingdom and without fiefs they can still muster up armies and you're eventually fighting kingdoms with hordes or armies taking back fiefs and raiding villages
Once they'll fix cav vs inf in vanilla, we could name it The Day and finally sort of release version it meant to be after all. Anyway, nice to see these changes.
The “snake to a weak fief” thing reminds of when the southern empire and Battania took refuge in aserai land because of an indefinite war between the western empire and Vlandia. (Giving a kingdom the dragon banner then leaving to watch the infini-war that ensues because derthert is too stubborn to die)
One thing I think that should be added is the option to vote a lord out of owning a fief if it is constantly lost or rebelled. I find it annoying the same lord keeps getting their feif back yet they cannot hold/manage it.
i always wondered if its the positioning or the AI but for some reason the southern empire has been the complete dominant empire every campain for my last 5. They always without exeption win against the other 2 empires
NE and WE have 5 enemies to fight on their borders while SE has 4 plus NE teritory is bad since it resembles a line like Sturgia so no wonder they get clapped hard by others.
The worst part of Bannerlord is how boring the endgame is and the lack of diplomacy. I hope they add something to make it at least a challenge and not just a big grind.
It’s a sandbox roleplay at the point your character is level 35+. I choose to rebuild the conquered factions, leave, and rebuild another. Sometimes relocating a faction to the opposite side of the map. The game gets easy when you know how to mid-max everything.
war is "hit them where they aint". Expect it, draw them in, counter their foolish advance. Use their foolishness against them. Neretzes should have known this.
@@markj2305 Yeah but this is a game… war isn’t marching through enemy lands just to take a fief surrounded by said enemies cities and castles just because you somehow magically know through the power of being a computer they have 65 guards
@@markj2305 in an actual war you HAVE to take the other castles because they are literally built to control access to areas of territory. You don't leave enemy held fortresses across your lines of supply, communication, and reinforcement
@@TheAchilles26 yes strong points should be taken when appropriate. Computer keeps sending armies in the field to rescue their weak Castle them in the field rather than behind their next strong point it might not be appropriate to take that castle now, use it as bait.
Right now I'm just trying to get Battania to take over everything, but either because my charm is over 300, because I kept saving battanians from armies til every clan liked me, or because I got those first few fiefs outside battania and am closer to the new ones, I am now given every fief they take over. Would it be possible to get everything, leave, and then conquer all of Calradia without any other clan joining my kingdom? I currently have 16 out of 34 Battanian fiefs
This is why Empire is so good as a player clan. Most of the map is Empire Culture. When you branch into a different culture, it's on its own side of the map so you aren't on multi-front pressure.
i dont think mount and blade is meant to be balanced. bannerlord is a chronicle of the time before warband. battania dont exist in any form in warband. battania sucking is a feature, not a bug.
In most of my playthroughs, battania loses a little bit, but one of my playthroughs saw battania clapping parts of Vlandia AND Sturgia, but Sturgia and Vlandia went into the W. Empire and Aserai pushed both sides up. This was during my Khuzait run. Stopped focusing on claiming land and focused solely on finishing off the N. Empire that we ended up backtracking a little, but West and South empires moved up north as far as Tyal region as the North died.
I'm wondering whether the 'weather effects' has also contributed to the success of Sturgia (of course I don't know their army compositions, but would expect a higher number of infantry which would do better in the harsh / snowy weather against the usually cavalry heavy Vlandian, Empire and Kuzait armies). Or maybe I'm talking out of my cheeks.
I just got back into the game after several years of waiting for more development. I tried the vanilla and it was just ok. Now I am trying the beta and I really miss some discussions and info about what is new, improved and what is bad about v1.2+ beta
Hey strat , great video =) I was wondering . You have all this data, would it be possible to plot a graph instead of the list with all the values? Maybe this is worth looking into - just for the readability. just a suggestion -and maybe you tried it already. Also, great time laps. The night cycle wasn't even noticeable ( dark flickering) Great job .thanks for these entertaining videos
Yeah I know what you mean, I can try to put something together next time that would be easier to understand visually. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that :P I appreciate the suggestion!
I thought it was supposed to be lore that the kingdoms were in a complete stalemate until player intervention. Always thought it was a joke that id base an entire playthrough around being say, khuzait, and then they would declare war on 3 factions and get wiped in an in-game month
I guess they have a good reason to not have clan creation or allegiance be super dynamic. What also bothers me is how little army the dominating kingdoms seem to have. I suppose permanent warfare and exchanging fiefs nukes prosperity permanently ( I wonder what data on that would be) so they wont really benefit much from their growth
That's a good point - those fiefs need years of stability to get back to being useful and might actually be a hindrance if the garrison costs more than it's making
In My game Battania and Sturgia always Kick ass and the empire factions collapse. Vlandia just kinda chills Also I think that horse archery has been seriously nerfed
These games really need these analytical videos to keep them in check, because there's just sooo many factors that affect gameplay especially when the campaigns can range for what seem an eternity. Unrelated note, I really wish they had a gamemode where every fief started independent, (I know there's a mod, but I think it would be a nice addition to the base game)
This makes quite some sense because i had a old battonian campaign id been neglecting byt decided to play last night. When id left i had been successfully forging a sort of alliance between the battanians and sturgians through gifts and building relationships, all the sturgian nobles loved me.and i married into on of their lucrative families. When i opened the game last night within 3 days they had declared war on us and my relationships with almost every sturgian family was in the negatives. It was super infuriating
What this data does s confirming my old observation, waaaay back when: What matters is the strategic placement on the map itself and everything is secondary to that. Aserai and Sturgia have very narrow venue of entry. They can keep their borders secured much easier, and their armies are kind of forced to move outside of their territory, always concentrated in the outside. Aserai is extra-proofed against enemy raids, because whoever can attack them is already fighting someone else, leaving them with time to compound. The only real surprise was the Mommy Dommy Empire growing so strong, but then it crumbled down, probably for the same reasons as always - open border from all sides + incompetent AI management. The autoresolve screwed Khuzait, so it's barely any surprise they are losing now so hard. Their only hope is boxing out Rhagea from Aserai by sudden strike, and then do a mop-up, which AI now does in about 1 in 5 gameplays, rather than each and every time. Unless TeleWorld changes how Vlandia can be accessed (new passable terrain or similar), the game is going to ALWAYS gravitate toward Vlandia, Aserai, Mommy Dommy Empire and Sturgia. Northern Empire is screwed from the get go, so is Battania and the only real gamble in this game is who is going to dismantle Western Empire: Rhagea, Aseriar or Vlandia. And it's usually two of those. All of this is SOLELY on map shape and nothing else. Bottle up northern passages for Khuzait (so no Sturgia easy access) and they are going to rape Northern Empire, having nothing closer or easier to focus on . Put a funnel in the middle of Aserai and they got raped by Western/Southern Empire. Remove Vlandian "corner advantage" and they fall down faster than Battania. Coincidently, the reason why Battania folds so easily is because they are surrounded by enemies from every side, and each of those enemies have only a single venue of access. And when 3 different factions take just a single fief from you, that's already plenty of damage. The AI also struggles with focusing on the real threat (Vlandia) and instead puts pressure on both Sturgia (which they can't really hit hard or defend their fiefs once conquering any) or Western Empire (same problem, and potentially opening themselves for 4th party in form of Aserai).
In my Battanian campaign, they trecked all the way down to the desert and kept growing down there while having no presence there outside of the fiefs they grave me.
What I hate the most is how AI just isn't able to hold onto fiefs with foreign cultures for too long. I don't like constant rebellions and -3 loyalty penalty in fiefs is too much to handle for AI. And they will never ever sign any policies that could help with loyalty either or assign clans to control towns with matching culture
Yup thats why ever since the Changing Culture mod came out i use it. Its for the AI not me cuz i build loyalty buildings etc but the AI doesnt so lets help the poor AI a bit.
I always thought it'd be neat to see Vlandia's weakness be rebellions in the southern regions. Have two culture groups within vlandia of Rhodoks and Swadians. Vlandia would be the unified version of both, but in the event of a civil war you could see either the Swadians or Rhodoks rise up in rebellion. I think that'd help keep things interesting on that side of the map, while also giving Battania a break.
Intersting. I started a new campaign on beta branch and so far Battania is very strong. They took two cities and a few castles from Vlandia and few castles from Sturgia. Aserai and one of the Empires went to war with them but couldn't succeed. I did join them as a mercenary but couldn't do much with my band of 20
Those poor Battanians. They keep getting a rough deal. I love playing in their area, I don't understand how the AI can't defend those 4 core towns, they have such an advantage with that terrain. And all the towns are clustered together for easy defense. I'd love to see a boost to the Kingdom, just to see the underdog have a better chance. Like, an extra clan or two. Just a minor adjustment to give them more staying power. I know that might snowball, but, right now, they're the ones getting snowballed on. It's fun to think about the time lapse though. Cause, in my playthrough, it's only been 28 years so far. I wonder if my own Kingdom would fair well if put to this kind of test.
I just bought a new pc and returned to bannerlord immediately after a long break. I love your videos man. Just tried your world conquest build and now I'm trying to catch up on all the changes so this video comes in handy. Keep up the good stuff :)
Would it be useful to redo this test now that a year has gone by? Thanks for all the effort you put in! I am curious of the patches this year changed things.
They haven't updated the game in close to a year now I think? It's been a long time, but I did noticed they have been testing beta patches on Steam (You can see what internal patches they've uploaded to the steam database). So I think they have a big patch coming soon, so we'll see what's changed then.
@@Strat-Guides Ohh valid, I should've assumed you'd be on top of it. I haven't played since the game finally first dropped. Really hoping this 1.3.0 or whatever brings us some great changes.
Hey, love your videos, data based info is the best. Few points to focus on: 1. You ran this how many times? A hundred? Fair enough. Once? meaningless 2. Disregarding players input does not create "equilibrium" for the empires. If one was to do that, ones goes against game theory, meaning most of the game doesn't push back harder against the player, lowering difficulty and unbalancing all thing towards the player's will. You sure this is happening? I think that ought to be a data point, and equalize it over a 100 - 1000 runs. Please do better, meaning at least to a level of degree you did with unit of unit battles, meaning more than one simulation. Apologies if I may have had misheard the number of times you were running the simulation
I mentioned in the final thoughts that this was a sample size of 1 and that it doesn't prove anything, but shows that this is at least possible in a campaign. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of how much time goes into these? Just the recording and taking data alone was 2 days of work (roughly 15 hours) so running this 100 to 1000 times wouldn't be feasible unless we organized a community timelapse testing and had 1000 people run it at the same time and contributed their data. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree that this is meaningless. Statistically irrelevant, perhaps. But it's still relevant to show the AI has improved from previous timelapse tests.
@@Strat-Guides you cannot prove any meaningful changes to the AI with only one anecdotal run. This is simply not feasible. I appreciate all the work you put into it, but it was, sadly in vain. Even just one more timelapse like this, might co completely differently and you would come to a completely different opinion about the AI changes. I am sorry.
this is my biggest porblem in bannerlord, in my first playthrough i didnt know what to expect cus everyhting was so new to me, but then after that first playthrough was over and i started my second playthrough, the novelty of it all was gone bcus i knew pretty much how everything was gonne go or atleast a little bit of it, where as if they would just have randomly generated these kingdoms meaning giving them different names and locations for ur next playthrough it would have been so much better bcus then it would feel like ur playing for the first time again just cus the world is so different then the one u played before bcus all the kingdoms were different
It would be nice if they added a research tech after every 50-100 years to give a kingdom a neat toy in battles of city development unique to its faction, say the Aserai Gets elephants, and advanced understanding to farming and irrigation, improving village growth and production, Battania discovers how to make Bows with 5 arrow clips that attaches to the side making for quick reload and release, and improved shoes, to travel the map with more haste on foot and in battle, Sturgia learns how to craft Better armor and lighter with Mithril, and gains better Political and governmental understanding to maintain an empire without suffering reputation loss, the Empire learns how to Industrialize and make Superior equipment in vast amounts so their lower tier troops get outfitted better, that could be added once an empire faction is unified after 20 years, they could gain Diplomacy bonus to all factions through trade, and the ability to make all non empire settlements slowly change into Imperial towns and the recruits become empire but with a slight color change and armor/class differences. Khuzait, could learn how to make gunpowder weapons like rockets or flame throwers and gain access to smaller Asian elephant/archer/rockets/cannons, and also gain significantly better poetical governmental boosts to manage towns, loyalty, currency and trade. Vlandia would start to unlock full plate armor for its champions/foot sergeants and half plate for its archers/lighter infantry like a chest curass, gloves, boots, and gain better bonus to Castle production, maybe castles could turn into towns but retain the castle look but maybe expanded into layers of walls and unlock better grain silos for out lasting sieges for longer. side note for western, northern or southern empirss pending on which one is leading factor they could gain an added bonus to there already starting buffs by 5-10% or a Special like southern empire gets a higher income on the tax from trade without penalty by 20% northern empire could gain a higher loyalty from castles towns by 20 for staying a Republic, and in turn boosting village production and growth by 15% and western empire could unlock Unique elite troops Perhaps the praetorian guard that only the Emperor can recruit or leaders of each party in the kingdom, and perhaps gain a bonus to loyalty with a larger garrison to suppress the people into submission. and maybe boost village production by 10% so they don't starve. just some ideas to toss into the wind, for taleworlds or a mod
I think all that we need is the total population available for military to be shown per settlement and kingdom. So we have the option to know that we are actually wearing a kingdom down to strong tactics . Not just always have their army come back in huge numbers
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🎮 The video discusses the impact of patch 1.2 on the game Bannerlord, specifically how it affects the AI-controlled kingdoms in a 100-year simulation. 00:14 🏰 Initial data points include the number of fiefs, clans, nobles, deaths, and kingdom strength for various in-game kingdoms. 01:09 🔄 Battania and Sturgia are experiencing unexpected changes, with Battania's decline happening rapidly and Sturgia performing better than usual. 01:50 🌍 Kingdoms like Battania, Kuzait, and Northern Empire are undergoing significant territorial changes. 02:32 🏞️ By year 5, the world of Calradia starts to stabilize with minor changes in fefs, clans, and nobles for most kingdoms. 03:57 ⚔️ Deaths among nobles increase significantly, but overall noble count rises, indicating more births and new clans being created. 05:10 🌐 The Southern Empire becomes a dominant force, while other kingdoms see fluctuations in their fortunes. 07:19 🗺️ Over 75 years, several kingdoms rise and fall, with Sturgia unexpectedly coming out on top. 08:53 📊 Clan numbers increase, nobles' deaths stabilize, and the world remains dynamic with constant territorial changes. 11:02 🚀 The AI shows improved coordination, making the campaign map more dynamic and interesting to watch.
Hello. Not sure if you read comments on older videos, but could you take a look at Jagged Alliance 3 and do some testing? Not sure if it's your kind of game, but I have been playing it and thought you might enjoy it.
Always a good day when I see a new Strat Gaming video, every few days ya get me going back to Bannerlord. I can’t get enough of the AI analysis videos.
After a whole year of trying on and off to like this game, I've given up on it due to the blatant disinterest from the devs to make it a full experience. Every single aspect of the game feels rushed and not even 30% completed. And no, I don't want to have to install 36 mods to have a good time, I did that in Skyrim back in the day and most of us just don't have the time. Props to this awesome channel for putting this insane amount of effort this whole time, so many informative yet easy to watch videos about pretty much everything this game has to offer! I wish we had content like this for every game out there.
i guess the WORST part of bannerlord is subjectiv. nonetheless, this is something i very much like to see. thanks for all the effort to you and Flesson19. as for the AI failing on policies, i think this is intended to cause more rebellions
my worst encountered bannerlord bug is.. the bug when i join an army, then that army stop to a village, THEN, IT'S JUST STUCK THERE FOREVER. stuck in the village interface menu. You know that.. when we're in army, u cant just exit, right? need to click the menu that says "exit the army" or something like that. so yeah i stuck in that village interface menu. forever. cant skip time. even tho i keep clicking on the option of "exit the village" or something MAN.. I LOST ALL MY PROGRESS THERE. I PLAY IT ON IRONMODE. NO OTHER SAVE FILE. I still keep that save file. hoping that it will get fixed soon.
I've never joined someone else's army so that never happened to me. Did you post on the taleworlds forum about it? I saw they are pretty good at responding there.
I wasnt going to comment, but then you said it was nice to see vlandia suffer for once. I started a new campaign and joined the vlandians right before 1.2 dropped. My kids hit the play button and i didnt notice before putting my computer in the other room. Came back a few hours later and vlandia was gone, i was king, and i had no army or money. I was kind of astonished.
Oh wow lol sabotage by your heirs! I think there is some sort of AI bias against the player, so if you were to join another faction it would probably turn out the same. It also hurts not having the king on the battlefield since they can field a bigger party than any other clan from bonuses, so maybe that hurt some?
@Strat_Gaming the sabotage showed proper prior planning on their part, so I'm a proud dad. Lol. You are probably correct about the bias against the player. It was kind of cool, though, being clan tier 3, king of nothing, and essentially restarting the campaign. My original goal was to join the first faction that asked and sabotage them from the inside, leave, and start my own kingdom. Vlandia became my kingdom. Lol. BTW I love your videos and greatly appreciate the information you put out.
Great analysis on an epistemological level. I think I like the fact there are more rebellions. It makes sense too. There were always tons of rebellions back in the day. It also gives us more opportunity to take a fief before we join a faction so you can try to be independent right from the start. That’s pretty cool.
Coming a bit late but: I think the biggest problem for Nation balance regarding Aseria includes that there is no sea travel. There are only 2 ways to get to the lands of the Aseria, which makes them very hard to attack and for them to expand aswell. Very long ways to travel from Husn Fulq to Quyaz. Sturgia has a similiar problem, but their western cities have an easier access. and are not so spread apart. At the other hand, Battania has the complete opposite as a problem. They are very small and dense but have a border with 4 other nations (Sturgia, Vlandia, Northern/Western Empire), so they can easily be targeted. (One of my games: In one round, Battania was attacked by 4 nations at the same time. Tell me how they should survive this.) I think Vlandia has a great starting situation, because they only really border Battania and the western empire. So their threats, especially early on, are non-existent.
Strat, I just started playing this game for about two weeks now and I've watched soooo many of your videos. Thank you for everything I genuinely appreciate the time and effort you've put into this
Worst problem is that I can no longer play the game. Took a break and no crashes at loading screen. Hell, sending a bug report fails too. Tried literally everything short of reinsalling windows.
Oh that's pretty cool, I agree seeing Vlandia get hurt like that is super nice as usually they were the reason I would stop playing. I will say that even before this Patch I would see the AI grabbing territory quite a distance away, usually though it was usually just Vlandia or Aserai bypassing Empire Cities to grab the weakest one.
in my game aserai leader died in battle in first month of the game. a large sturgian clan kuloving, joined vlandia and they took half of the map. i got tired of killing vlandian nobles and left
They should make it so that the empire civil war finishes faster and have a mechanic that empire factions unite to if one defeats the other confederates them
It pains me to see how much Battania seems to struggle. It's the first faction I've started working with, and it seems like they get the short end of the stick in many ways.
I stoped playing this game after persuing a bunch of thugs around the map for in-game3 days by horse, then all of a sudden I thought what the hell am I doing with my life
You should check out starsector at some point if bannerlord content ever dries up in the future. Basically mount and blade in space, and definitely lacking in larger creators with good editing and content like you!
I've had that one on my radar for a while! It looks really fun. I already pre-ordered Starfield so I'll be playing that for a bit, but after that it's Paradox games and probably others like starsector
Have you ever considered doing the same experiment with the mod banner kings. I wonder if their lord tweaks would change the outcome for the worse cultures and give then a chance.
I'm honestly just happy with the fixes in the auto-resolve system and the faction elimination thing. Two of the most frustrating things in the game. I wish I could give more likes, mate. These technical analysis of sorts are invaluable.
Yeah I agree, they made some good changes in this regard. I also got a message from one of the devs saying they are working on fixing the combat (regarding the issues I was complaining about in the patch testing video) so maybe they'll have the game in good shape soon!
Looks like the weather changes, auto resolve changes make it so sturgia is a monster now since there infantry is some of the best. The weather is changing the Meta hugely it looks like. It's interesting to see such a small change fix auto resolve.
Watching this unfold really makes me wish new factions could take hold more frequently in the forms of kingdoms splitting, rebellions becoming legitimate, or new populations appearing. I know that's not how the base game plays at all, but it would be more interesting to me.
My biggest problem with the game is the broken sieges where if anyone comes to help they take over and never attack. Haven't played since that shit ruined 2 of my campaigns. Every update I check to see if it's fixed, play until I can start a siege and its never fixed. (I'm on ps5)
I don't normally comment on anything, but I just want to say that I don't think I can describe accurately just how important this type of analysis is for a game of this complexity and I really appreciate it. I also appreciate how important it is to continue a rational and analytical discussion on this game as I feel not enough people do. Please don't stop, it's desperately needed especially when it comes to updates/patches. Please continue looking at various facets of the game and continue your analysis. It really informs us on the "health" and state of the game.
Couldn’t agree more , great comment
Will do, I'm glad so many people are enjoying these types of videos as well! Often times the videos that get views are not the ones that will end up helping the most, so we get pushed into making "fluff" pieces that will get views. I do my best to avoid that!
Thank you for the video, basically what mr @askforgreg1216 said, and also thank you mr greg for your comment, we needed this.
@@Strat-Guides if you're having issues with some videos you'd like to do more of, but don't want to risk the ire of the algorithm, you could make a second channel dedicated to those and link to it and mention this channel when applicable. Most come for your great and detailed analysis in a digestible format, many must have rejoiced by finally having a channel untangling Tale World's theory of how math works, but fewer come for the other stuff which brings down your main draw.
From a cursory look it seems your videos like this, since you can't trust what Tale Worlds says from experience, and the clickbatey ones are most popular. Hmmm, might work to have the first episode of a series on this channel, for publicity, and then have all the episodes uploaded on the other channel since there's a smaller market for those videos.
This looks like one game over 100 years not 100 games of one year. That would have had some analytical weight to it. Besides, it's a game designed with human interaction in mind, not an autobattler.
Ah good the ai finally learned that declaring war with 3 factions at once was a bad idea
I think the other AIs especially declare war on the one already at war. At least that's what happened in my campaign. I was the biggest empire and when at peace they were all good little lambs. As soon as I declared war on somebody, another kingdom started to declare war on me and it snowballed from there.
What I think is the weird part, even with this into consideration is that kingdoms with 2k power while I had close to 20k were still declaring war on me. Which would make no sense in the real world. But they were the ghost kingdoms of past, with no land but lots of lords running around (until I decided to let the world hate me and execute everyone).
I am so glad they fixed the ghost kingdoms, can't wait for 1.2 to get out of beta.
@@alex86fire Idk your experience in the game, but as a vassal I had an eye opening experience. My Western Empire liege Garios went to war with the Southern Empire and the Northern Empire, in quick succession, because "They are getting too big and will surely swallow us up." When you get to a certain size in the game, the AI make it a point to gang up on you as much as possible, like crabs in a bucket. I helped make the Northern Empire really powerful before switching to the West, and they even had double the troop count. Once that happened and my faction experienced some victories, they are now fighting three other factions at once on all sides. It becomes extremely important to convince nobles from other factions to join you after a certain point, otherwise it becomes difficult to keep blobbing.
@@leohawk776 I've not played as a vasal in bannerlord. You just get so fast to the point where you can have your own faction I don't really see the value of being a vasal.
They do sometimes declare stupid wars. I just about wiped sturgia (no more fiefs) and they still kept declaring war on me with a power over 10 times smaller than mine. It's crazy. I also can't stand that factions survive after they have no fiefs left. Can't wait for 1.2 to come out of beta so I can enjoy a game without having to execute all the lords.
Just yesterday I had Vlandia and Khuzait declare war on us after we declared war on Battania.
It still happens =\
@@alex86fire I usually do it to take over an established kingdom. It's pretty fun to work from the inside occasionally, although I get the appeal of doing it from the ground up. It's a way to do business and save money while I am able to learn the ins and outs of kingdom stuff, too. Being on the vassal side has given me some pretty valuable insights in how I run my kingdoms in other playthroughs, too.
0:32
Previews said Vlandia is *supposed* to have a high amount of power but not be able to wield it effectively due to internal conflict. Unfortunately, I don't think this *ever* actually applied: If there's less internal loyalty, it's not significant.
@thatonedude6247Because they don’t have other clans roaming through there lands taking their recruits
@@LCInfantry yeah the Split Empires need to have its own cultures or atleast a dominant culture distinct from the others
@thatonedude6247 literally… I got so tired of this I took all of their towns. This slowed down their manpower increasing significantly, but of course, they still have 1k-2k man armies with only 3 castles and take towns back 🤣
@@braincell4536 I think that's not possible, wasn't bannerlord set just after the death of the grand emperor of the empire or something like that? It would make sense they're almost completely similar given they had been one empire just some time ago
@@JoelDiez And the Calradic Empire existed for years. And since the Calradic Empire is based on the Roman Empire ehich assimilated tactics and troops from cultutes they have assimilated. Its good to assume each split empire would have a distinct culture they have assimilated that would be based on theie troop tree. For example the Western Empire could have vetter Cataphracts with asthetics similar to Vlandia or Fian Archers of their own since their proximity to Battania. The Northern Empire could have Super heavy infantry from.the Sturgians they have in contact either Mercenaries or as the elite Vaiger guard in the lore. As for the Southern Empire, they could have special Khuzait Axuilliary Lancers. Like the Dacian Cataphracts thats have the special masks like in Rome. The possibilities are endless to make each split empire distinct and unique. Offering the player the Empire's balanced troop tree with a hint of speciality.
The enemy targeting seems like a pain. Crushing a seigebreaking army and taking a strong fief with the last handful of your men was always a nailbiting experience, but now that fief gets immediately sniped from across the map by the full-force Aserai who we've been at war with for half a year for no reason.
Sounds like your enemy just left their capital unguarded
Yeah when I saw Sturgia in Ortysia (whatever that town is called across the water from the Aserai on the west side of the middle body of water) I was kinda like WTF.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD Nah, they'd have about 200-400 men sitting in said capital. So unless you got a big enough force on your own, or get a couple other lords to join you, there's not much you can do.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD Exactly. Chasing enemy armies and defending far away besieged fiefs is a waste of time - time which the enemy will be using to build even more armies. Unless you have a specific reason to not want to lose a fief, you should instead go on a conquest spree on their undefended territories. It's best to think of most fiefs as just roadblocks to stall the enemy and free you to go further away from home.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD 600 Millitia to level your bow on :D
The AI is what breaks my interest in more playtime, I have always called it blob, it is dumb, it does dumb things, I will never forget starvin mavin armies that would form into a thousand plus and disband on the way to an objective because it starved to death chasing a small patrol... one day the combat AI will approach something like sub-brick levels of competency so I can finally see shield walls and spearmen working instead of everyone insisting on turning into a ball.
Which is sad, considering everything they touted on the game having in the beginning. (smart AI, some preferring defense or offense over the other, etc.).
@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken I think that’s the thing, AI which has been coded as “aggressive” might do that while AI coded as defensive might not. there’s also the calculating trait which plays a role in whether they will chase looters or actually pursue objectives
@@BlapwardKrunkle They were referencing on the battle field in the beginning. Stating that some would prefer defensive and go to hills for the upper advantage, or preferring wooded areas. Or on the flip side, some would just charge straight into, or would do hit and run tactics while infantry set up.
Unfortunately this game instead goes with If AI attacking, YEET at you. If Defending, run to highest/nearest highest point and sit there.
@@Th1sUsernameIsNotTaken I noticed that as well - I wish Taleworlds would port RBM into the vanilla version, unfortunately I only have console so fixing these issues via mods is out of reach for me
Yeah it's a shame because the game is really fun for a little while but once you really get into it you quickly realize how dumb the AI is both on the campaign map and in combat. Not only is it immersion breaking but it can also make the game just boring to play. AI is hard to get right but with how long they've been working on the game you'd expect better.
I am surprised at the success of Sturgia as they always seem to get rolled in my games
I think the change to auto-resolve with penalties to archers and cavalry in a lot of terrain types, but infantry getting the better deal most of the time helps Sturgia out.
Sturgia is stronger now, and infantry are getting ample bonuses.
With weather and auto-resolve changes in 1.2 beta giving pretty substantial nerfs to archers and cav, it makes sense the inf-heavy faction are doing well and the horse archer faction getting eliminated.
Well, infantry have a big trade off - not much posivive factors in battles, but also much less negative. Archers are dominating mostly only on open terains and siege defenses with standart weather - deadly in sousthern and eastern plains, but useless in north and middle-west. Similar with cavalry except more opposite extremes in sieges and plains. Only horse archers are compensating it, but they are very weakened by weather.
@@KroganWarlord I thought sturgia is infntry heavy too until in my recent campaign when I joined ai armies against khuzait, sturgians was the heavy horse horde, poor khuzait horse archers. ai choise of troops seems random
I'd love to see two more things:
1. Rebel clans change their names from e.g. Varcheg Rebels to a clan name that suits the kingdom that rebels joined
2. Culture of settlement changes after being conquered 4 or 5 times, or after a year if no rebellion happens.
That would be awesome.
The changing of cultures within towns could be a double-edged sword, because if, say, an entire faction is conquered by another, you won’t be able to recruit the troops of the conquered faction’s culture anymore for the rest of the game.
Don't Rebel Clans change name to "[Clan Leader name] Clan"?
@@internetguy2760 That kinda perfectly fits with the setting though, one of the themes of the game is how cultures get permanently destroyed with the expansion of empires
Troops should fully depend on the notable providing them, after a time conqured notables should have a chance to be replaced with one of the conqured faction.
@@betin731 well in the first game which happens after this one Battania merged with i think Vlandia to make the Vaegirs. so completely being wiped out isn't exactly correct.
in my opinion they need a "focus reclaim own fiefs" coded into their decision making. No expansion if one of your castles or cities is in enemy hands.
Sometimes it's hard to do that, especially when fighting a bigger enemy, if they come with a big army at you, you can't really contest that and take back your fief. But if you take their undefended fiefs, you can weaken them. I don't know if that's how the ai is thinking but that's what I would do if I was on the loosing side. Take the most vulnerable towns, sack them as hard as possible, and let them go, just destroy their income from them. Weaken your enemy where you can.
@@alex86fire are we talking strategy in game or reality? What you should do in your Szenario is vastly different between those two.
@@ricwalker6600I mean not really no. All these game tactics can easily be transferred to the real world if anything, they're actually mirroring the real world.
What he said is 100% viable and HAS been done in the real world. If a big army comes and takes one of your forts and you have no way of reclaiming it, why would you waste time, energy, man power , and resources trying to take it back when you know you can't? You wouldn't.
You would in stead go sack all their easy to sack cities. You reduce the enemies supplies and man power while increasing your own. This can also have the added benefit of making the attacking army remove troops from its garrison to go chase the sacking armies.
TLDR; You actually know nothing of strategy and tactics.
@@chrish4439yeah. I like the mechanic. And the AI will sack towns depending on the characteristics of their nobles. It’s a viable strategy.
Wouldn't be a problem if settlements changed culture over time, thus allowing for natural migrations.
Now people can't make fun of Sturgia.
It's about damn time. 🤣
They *can* but they'll regret it.
I still laugh at Battania though
Always play as a Sturgian. Would like to remove all cavalry from the game...
Spoilers
The thing about "going far to snatch land" this is imo one of the things they should improve upon, have "zones of control" so they cant just blitz those weak.
Example to attack a town, they need to have the castles that is "attached to it".
Also overall with the constnat predatory way of the ai in declaring war it never get the fiefs that gets decimated over and over to bounce up again.
Like in my play you have some of the Towns that start with 4-5 thousand prosperity, and within a mere years its down to 1000 or below(hello Lagata W/B/V/A/S all battleing over it).
I just wish they had removed the current system of declaring war and going back to the the old "causis belli" that was in Warband.
Or atleast add it in like Crusader kings, where a kingdome have to have a causis belli, and they get it naturally randomly, or they could make claims.
Overall its "too much war still" which is wrong to say in some ways yes, but it just tanks the fun, when there is "no breathers" and you know as soon as that "peace aka truce" is over its war again.
Dont get me wrong overall this patch is that much better, and I've even had some time with peace, but barley.
Worse of though is how the AI dont seem to account for "strength" at all when combineing numbers of enemies.
Sure our 7000 is stronger than the power of the enemy with 3000.. but its not a good time to declare war upon the other guy with 5000, and next day also go for the one with 4000..
By the end of those wars you end up with 5000 power unless you go in and are on the frontlines constant(and paying tribute, instead of the previous where we had tribute to us).
Wars feel like "they dont matter" its just war for wars sake, with the causis belli it just immersed you more and it felt "like it mattered" even if it was to avenge the other kingdomes haveing changed the pathing of a river :P
Gotta agree there. I’d much prefer a slower more focused conquest then a time to focus on rebuilding then just constant “attack attack attack!!”
A simple mod such as diplomacy and or AI war tweaks, you can set the parameters for peacetime, alliance forming, non aggression pacts, war exhaustion etc.
110% agree on the "constant" was thing. Sometimes as a Merc or vassal your kingdom will NOT let itself be at war with less than 2 people at a time (looking at you valandia). You can fight and fight and use massive amounts of influence to end wars then literally 1 week later the king just declares a new war on a faction literally across the fucking map.
The amount of times we were just sitting in a war for the sake of it, with a faction so far away that we do not even have a single battle the entire war, was just absolutely ridiculous.
I don't get why the AI is so obsessed with constantly being at war. Very unrealistic even in a fantasy setting.
Its due the "daring " trait of party leader?happen twice in my campaign.
Wars are declared too often. When a kingdom you fight for signs a peace deal with another the enemy just attacks you again after a few weeks. I just had a long war with them. I want a break. So I resort to save scumming to prevent having to fight too many wars. An issue is that the wars usually end only when one party is fighting too many wars at once. So if you're in a war with only one kingdom it might become a long war, where both sides either win or loses big.
It's always confused me why Sturgia and Battania would get demolished in almost every run. Sturgia has some great infantry. And Battannia is so compact and close together it should be easy for them to bring reinforcements to bear and regroup quickly. I wonder if battannia just has bad units
The Fians are OP but battanian lords don’t prioritize them at all. They end up with mostly infantry armies.
@nickthompson1812 I tried making a Celt-iberian style clan with My Little Warband and Eagle Rising. Light armored units with many javelins and scutarii. But when I took all the Battannian fiefs before declaring, I got demolished by all my neighbors lol.
I wonder if it's a geographical thing too
Fians are OP but almost every other battanian troop is trash. Especially cavalry.
@@alexanderrahl7034 that is 100% a factor.
@@Wanky_Woop Battanian cav are so bad it genuinely scares me
Was Vlandian tonight, we were conquering Sturgia and getting pulled a bit thin. My best friend, Ingalther, flipped to Sturgia, I joined him, and now Sturgia is kicking arse with two more clans, and Vlandia is down clans and losing land quickly.
if ik my clan is gonna fall I usually fall with my clan, more honour
@@motionprimeaep Well, I think he took his clan with him, he just abandoned the faction. So he will still fall with his clan in the end.
It is great for flesson and yourself to be collaborating. Two great minds at work
Really refreshing seeing someone actually breakdown all aspects of a game instead of just scratching the gameplay! Love the videos, keep em coming.
Wish they would fix the rebellions in the game. If you want to join a faction, then you need to constantly deal with rebellions. Zeonica (in one year) rebelled 5 times.
They really need to fix the constant rebellion problem or (at least) explain how cities entire populations rebel every 2 months without becoming a ghost town!
Simply depending something is easy. But why does a town rebel? It has low security. Why does it have low security? Because it’s not able to produce militia fast enough, and not enough units were donated to garrison after the capture. Raided villages means no food and low prosperity. But having high security ultimately prevents a rebellion.
High security and high loyalty. If you’re below 20 loyalty in the town, it has a chance of rebelling, with the chances increasing the lower it goes. Putting the town on festivals as a passive town thing until the loyalty increases above 50-60 is where you want to be. After that start making the fairgrounds all the way. I never have rebellions in my towns if I follow that formula
I like the rebellions. More realistic I think than there hardly being any. Tons of peasant rebellions occurs in history. Or lords that had claims to lands trying to take what’s theirs. It makes sense we should see more. Maybe it’s more balanced yet but I’ve been enjoying it
The rebellion mechanic is good, it means its hard to expand into different culture lands and helps prevent factions from snowballing too hard
@@kylerodd2342 If it was some mechanic that could affect core/inner towns and wasnt strickly based on the Owners culture i would agree. But the rebelions in BL are just plain stupid cuz they are based on a single stat that no AI will ever take into account so its boring and annoying knowing exactly which town is gonna rebel before its even taken.
Lets say it was due to low prosperity , war fattigue or having random events done by the lords that affect the loyalty of their core settlements then sure it will be more fun.
Like Onira rebelling againts Rhagea would make for fun roleplay and may convince the player he shouldnt help her out cuz she isnt cut for the job etc.
But seeing a Vlandian lord taking battanian town i just know its gonna rebel off the bat and its stupid.
In all of my playthroughs since beta, Battania and N. Empire goes down first, followed by W. Empire. I have never seen these kingdoms dominated the map. S. Empire, Vlandia, and Kuzaits are always strong. Azerai never left the desert and Sturgia never left the snowy mountain. It's interesting to see in this video that Sturgia and Azerai are leaving their comfort zones.
The only issue I could see with an increase in the occurrence of large armies is that it was already a pain in the butt to fight off two to three 1000 man armies in order to finish a siege. It already felt like the AI were raising armies faster than I could kill them. The last thing I want is for every battle to be 800+.
Bro. I was defending a siege, outnumbered like 4 to 1. But we kept holding them off and they kept retreating. Their food ran out before ours. But just before they disbanded another 1000+ army rolled up and joined the siege. We got got. It was fun though.
@@kylerodd2342happens every time
You need mods to fix that my friend. I know ur pain.
I recommend WarAndAI Tweaks combined with Diplomacy. You can adjust the settings as you like.
Seeing the southern empire yield so much land with sturgia fighting them fills me with so much hope, a majority of my long campaigns always stay with static semi chaotic borders with factions clawing for more soldiers with constant warfare but this makes it seem like the extra coherent armies have had an effect of the longevity of a campaign.
Don't get me wrong the chaos was interesting but i find it better when it's located to one area so the two factions are locked into a struggle for the specific region rather then going from A to B to Z. Great video none the less 👍
This type of stuff is why this is the goat of channels for this type of content. Hope you continue to expand into other games, you're a great voice for the community and do a lot of thankless and tireless work. Just know it's greatly appreciated.
I appreciate that! :D
A very useful, and highly appreciated breakdown. Plus, like you said this is probably one of the best timelapses I've seen from the Bannerlord AI.
In my opinion, faction total destruction is a huge step in the right direction. Minor, fief-less factions declaring war over and over pretty much made solo-clan faction playthroughs impossible with all the raiding they would do.
The AI decision-making regarding peace deals, and how the friendly lords decide to declare war are some of the most frustrating continuing aspects of the game.
Thank you, and keep up the great work Strat
this makes me wish it was possible for rebellions to actually become their own kingdoms, like marunath was independent for more than 2 decades there i feel like they should have become their own thing at that point.
Even better if the rebellions got their own colors when they did become independent.
And the new random colors go for any fief-holding noble that gets kicked out of or leaves a kingdom as well.
I have planned to take over the map and then kick my nobles out one by one to create new kingdoms, but I know they will likely just be the opposite color as mine, so it might be really weird to have several enemy kingdoms with the same colors...
Would be cool to see decades later a rebbelion kingdom grew to serious conpetition size
@justsomeeggsinapot1784 The world might actually feel more alive...
And to have it where you'd have to more actively keep your citizens happy too...(moreso that you'd only be able to focus on smaller areas easily..., but maybe this would be annoying)
So keeping the world map taken over would be harder, but not because of leftover lords being too annoying... or at least, not by themselves...
Where the enemy could band together easier... pre faction
And of course, it would be nice to have that option as the player too...
Where you could join the jaded lords of factions to create new ones with enough power to survive...
You could also have where if you conquered the world, you could hit a "fast forward button", where it turns your faction into what the empire was, split in three if your were empire, and down to one if you weren't(the reason should be obvious), and then you'd take control of another character either with approx. A 1/4 of your late character's skills, focus/skill points but unused, and wealth at time of fast forward, and the leader of your now decayed faction, with new lords with random personalities/face keys under your command, with a smallish family.
This could also usher in tech changes, if mods are present
Oh, I haven't played for a long time, so I found interesting when I saw that a city had become independent and got their own colors and banner, but usually they are quickly taken back...
I've recently began a playthrough as a solo Batannian character sticking to gathering money and renown until I reach Tier 6 + 2 million Denars while staying solo. Build based on your recent world conquest with my own preferences added.
Campaign thus far has been going very much like yours. There have been big battles and power exchanges but no boring stalemate like previously. It's really good thus far. Really good to see these developments. They can make it better and better over time. I think we've finally reached a good state from which can be expanded
I think that a good feature would be: A faction that is losing in power and is becoming weak, make promisses of lands (of the next conquest) to mercenaries bands. Because the losing factiond wouldnt have more money than the winning, and the winning probably have more nobles to give the lands that they conquer, so (at least in my head) it would make sense to be that way. And then if that factions manage to win some land, the mercenaries bands form a clan and establish in that kingdom.
That sounds awesome
One thing that I think still could be improved (only got the game like a month ago) is AI threat assessment. Was playing a game as a Valandian noble where we were stomping the Battanians, but then the Sturgians attacked. Even after substantial gains and all sieges finished, the other nobles refused to make peace with Battania.
Individually, we were stronger than both Battania and Sturgia, but together not even close. AI recognizing a bad situation and making peace with a faction they just took some ground from would be nice.
I have a feeling that the old AI probably overdid that, and now it is swinging the other way. Would be nice if, when ganged up on, a faction finishes up whatever sieges they are on and tries to make peace. Not that the peace should always be accepted, is that even a mechanic? Seems like once the nobles agree to make peace it just instantly happens and consent by the other side is presumed. That might make things more interesting if it didn't work that way
WarAndAI Teaks + Diplomacy is the answer to your struggle. They mostly fix or change the mentioned problems.
I find it quite hillarious.
According to lore then the Revylians (the people of Revyl) and the Balgardians (the people of Balgard) were traditionally bitter rivals.
They hated eachother much, and a ancient balgardian king of the Gundaroving clan, even saw his own death at the hands of the Revylians.
However as the ages passed on, then alliances would come to exist between these two people, and their nobility would intermarry.
Balgard in the beginning of the game is always ruled by the grand prince of Sturgia, Raganvad who is of the Gundaroving clan, a decendent of the once killed king of Balgard.
Now here is what i find funny. In this exact timelap you did of a 100 years, then the Gundaroving clan remained the rulers of the sturgians from 1084 up until 1134.
But during summer 1134 the last powerful king of the Gundaroving clan would die.
And the new elected king of the north (Sturgia) after that would become none other than the ruler of Revyl, whose family had ruled that town since the beginning of the game, as it was never conquered once, and their clan never defected or died off.
Now, Balgard was conquered many times in this timelap, but it always got back into sturgian hands, and in the end after 100 years, the city remained the home of the Gundaroving clan, who at this point were now no longer the rulers of Sturgia, but now had to bow their heads to the lords of the Revylians.
The Gundaroving clan in this timelap, ruled Sturgia for exactly 50 years. and for the remaining 50 years the lords of Revyl ruled Sturgia.
That is pretty epic tale to say the least.
I am mostly content with this 1.2.1 patch largely due The horse lords factions got nerfed a bit and having fun during winter sieges..❤
Your videos are genuinely such high quality and entertaining that it's one of the main reason for me to even play and try out new things in Bannerlord, even given it's issues.
Nice data and video once again! Glad to see map stability, but sad to see Battania losing 😅
You should run more such simulations. From what I've noticed in Warband, every new playthrough the RNG is different. Sometimes the same faction gets eliminated in a matter of weeks, and other times it become the dominant power on the continent. I'm guessing the same can happen in Bannerlord, especially if we take into account that the Khuzaits were, for the longest time, one of the strongest factions.
He did plenty of simulations and compared to the overall info given by the player base the RNG isnt that great so the outcome for some kingdoms is 80-90% certain in any playtrough unless the player is involved.
@@МихаилРадулов-й4т a single 100 year run has no statistical value and cannot serve as a basis for an analysis on what changes the devs have made in the patch. Whatever cocnlusions he makes, they are sadly void. It#s like going out on a sunny day and then saying "It will never rain anymore here."
The problem (at least on xbox) is that no matter how devastated a kingdom is ,the nobles disperse to another kingdom and without fiefs they can still muster up armies and you're eventually fighting kingdoms with hordes or armies taking back fiefs and raiding villages
Gotta update this. Recruit the enemy clans that have the most members and the tide turns from your villages getting
The worst part of Bannerlord is that the game is over before your children grow up.
Once they'll fix cav vs inf in vanilla, we could name it The Day and finally sort of release version it meant to be after all.
Anyway, nice to see these changes.
The “snake to a weak fief” thing reminds of when the southern empire and Battania took refuge in aserai land because of an indefinite war between the western empire and Vlandia. (Giving a kingdom the dragon banner then leaving to watch the infini-war that ensues because derthert is too stubborn to die)
One thing I think that should be added is the option to vote a lord out of owning a fief if it is constantly lost or rebelled. I find it annoying the same lord keeps getting their feif back yet they cannot hold/manage it.
i always wondered if its the positioning or the AI but for some reason the southern empire has been the complete dominant empire every campain for my last 5. They always without exeption win against the other 2 empires
NE and WE have 5 enemies to fight on their borders while SE has 4 plus NE teritory is bad since it resembles a line like Sturgia so no wonder they get clapped hard by others.
The worst part of Bannerlord is how boring the endgame is and the lack of diplomacy.
I hope they add something to make it at least a challenge and not just a big grind.
It’s a sandbox roleplay at the point your character is level 35+.
I choose to rebuild the conquered factions, leave, and rebuild another. Sometimes relocating a faction to the opposite side of the map. The game gets easy when you know how to mid-max everything.
It's so annoying how the ai targets the far away castles and cities just because they have less defenders
war is "hit them where they aint". Expect it, draw them in, counter their foolish advance. Use their foolishness against them. Neretzes should have known this.
@@markj2305 Yeah but this is a game… war isn’t marching through enemy lands just to take a fief surrounded by said enemies cities and castles just because you somehow magically know through the power of being a computer they have 65 guards
@@markj2305 in an actual war you HAVE to take the other castles because they are literally built to control access to areas of territory. You don't leave enemy held fortresses across your lines of supply, communication, and reinforcement
@@TheAchilles26 yes strong points should be taken when appropriate. Computer keeps sending armies in the field to rescue their weak Castle them in the field rather than behind their next strong point it might not be appropriate to take that castle now, use it as bait.
@@reece42069 that is an aspect of military intelligence game is playing out.
Right now I'm just trying to get Battania to take over everything, but either because my charm is over 300, because I kept saving battanians from armies til every clan liked me, or because I got those first few fiefs outside battania and am closer to the new ones, I am now given every fief they take over. Would it be possible to get everything, leave, and then conquer all of Calradia without any other clan joining my kingdom? I currently have 16 out of 34 Battanian fiefs
This is why Empire is so good as a player clan. Most of the map is Empire Culture. When you branch into a different culture, it's on its own side of the map so you aren't on multi-front pressure.
Not sure if this is enough to bring me back to BL but improved campaign A.I is always a welcome sight. Appreciate the video.
i dont think mount and blade is meant to be balanced. bannerlord is a chronicle of the time before warband. battania dont exist in any form in warband. battania sucking is a feature, not a bug.
In most of my playthroughs, battania loses a little bit, but one of my playthroughs saw battania clapping parts of Vlandia AND Sturgia, but Sturgia and Vlandia went into the W. Empire and Aserai pushed both sides up.
This was during my Khuzait run. Stopped focusing on claiming land and focused solely on finishing off the N. Empire that we ended up backtracking a little, but West and South empires moved up north as far as Tyal region as the North died.
Great analysis. I think kingdom strength should be the factor that determines which kingdom is the strongest at the end rather than number of fiefs.
I'm wondering whether the 'weather effects' has also contributed to the success of Sturgia (of course I don't know their army compositions, but would expect a higher number of infantry which would do better in the harsh / snowy weather against the usually cavalry heavy Vlandian, Empire and Kuzait armies). Or maybe I'm talking out of my cheeks.
I just got back into the game after several years of waiting for more development. I tried the vanilla and it was just ok. Now I am trying the beta and I really miss some discussions and info about what is new, improved and what is bad about v1.2+ beta
Hey strat , great video =)
I was wondering . You have all this data, would it be possible to plot a graph instead of the list with all the values?
Maybe this is worth looking into - just for the readability. just a suggestion -and maybe you tried it already.
Also, great time laps. The night cycle wasn't even noticeable ( dark flickering)
Great job .thanks for these entertaining videos
Yeah I know what you mean, I can try to put something together next time that would be easier to understand visually. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that :P I appreciate the suggestion!
I thought it was supposed to be lore that the kingdoms were in a complete stalemate until player intervention. Always thought it was a joke that id base an entire playthrough around being say, khuzait, and then they would declare war on 3 factions and get wiped in an in-game month
As a Battania lover the fact that they are here just to be destroyed makes me kinda sad
I guess they have a good reason to not have clan creation or allegiance be super dynamic.
What also bothers me is how little army the dominating kingdoms seem to have. I suppose permanent warfare and exchanging fiefs nukes prosperity permanently ( I wonder what data on that would be) so they wont really benefit much from their growth
That's a good point - those fiefs need years of stability to get back to being useful and might actually be a hindrance if the garrison costs more than it's making
In My game Battania and Sturgia always Kick ass and the empire factions collapse. Vlandia just kinda chills
Also I think that horse archery has been seriously nerfed
These games really need these analytical videos to keep them in check, because there's just sooo many factors that affect gameplay especially when the campaigns can range for what seem an eternity.
Unrelated note, I really wish they had a gamemode where every fief started independent, (I know there's a mod, but I think it would be a nice addition to the base game)
At the very last moments of the timelapse, I realized I only watched the snow going back and forth almost hypnotized. If only I had a brain.
This makes quite some sense because i had a old battonian campaign id been neglecting byt decided to play last night. When id left i had been successfully forging a sort of alliance between the battanians and sturgians through gifts and building relationships, all the sturgian nobles loved me.and i married into on of their lucrative families. When i opened the game last night within 3 days they had declared war on us and my relationships with almost every sturgian family was in the negatives. It was super infuriating
Woah this video is popping off! I feel like the 100 year time lapse videos do well. Similar to how people like the irl tactics.
In my experience, bad battlefield ai was a much worse issue than bad campaign ai.
True, but I don't think there's much that can be done about that sadly :(
Would be great to see a colab between this channel and HistoryMarche...
What this data does s confirming my old observation, waaaay back when:
What matters is the strategic placement on the map itself and everything is secondary to that.
Aserai and Sturgia have very narrow venue of entry. They can keep their borders secured much easier, and their armies are kind of forced to move outside of their territory, always concentrated in the outside. Aserai is extra-proofed against enemy raids, because whoever can attack them is already fighting someone else, leaving them with time to compound.
The only real surprise was the Mommy Dommy Empire growing so strong, but then it crumbled down, probably for the same reasons as always - open border from all sides + incompetent AI management. The autoresolve screwed Khuzait, so it's barely any surprise they are losing now so hard. Their only hope is boxing out Rhagea from Aserai by sudden strike, and then do a mop-up, which AI now does in about 1 in 5 gameplays, rather than each and every time.
Unless TeleWorld changes how Vlandia can be accessed (new passable terrain or similar), the game is going to ALWAYS gravitate toward Vlandia, Aserai, Mommy Dommy Empire and Sturgia. Northern Empire is screwed from the get go, so is Battania and the only real gamble in this game is who is going to dismantle Western Empire: Rhagea, Aseriar or Vlandia. And it's usually two of those.
All of this is SOLELY on map shape and nothing else. Bottle up northern passages for Khuzait (so no Sturgia easy access) and they are going to rape Northern Empire, having nothing closer or easier to focus on . Put a funnel in the middle of Aserai and they got raped by Western/Southern Empire. Remove Vlandian "corner advantage" and they fall down faster than Battania. Coincidently, the reason why Battania folds so easily is because they are surrounded by enemies from every side, and each of those enemies have only a single venue of access. And when 3 different factions take just a single fief from you, that's already plenty of damage. The AI also struggles with focusing on the real threat (Vlandia) and instead puts pressure on both Sturgia (which they can't really hit hard or defend their fiefs once conquering any) or Western Empire (same problem, and potentially opening themselves for 4th party in form of Aserai).
In my Battanian campaign, they trecked all the way down to the desert and kept growing down there while having no presence there outside of the fiefs they grave me.
What I hate the most is how AI just isn't able to hold onto fiefs with foreign cultures for too long. I don't like constant rebellions and -3 loyalty penalty in fiefs is too much to handle for AI. And they will never ever sign any policies that could help with loyalty either or assign clans to control towns with matching culture
Yup thats why ever since the Changing Culture mod came out i use it. Its for the AI not me cuz i build loyalty buildings etc but the AI doesnt so lets help the poor AI a bit.
I always thought it'd be neat to see Vlandia's weakness be rebellions in the southern regions. Have two culture groups within vlandia of Rhodoks and Swadians. Vlandia would be the unified version of both, but in the event of a civil war you could see either the Swadians or Rhodoks rise up in rebellion. I think that'd help keep things interesting on that side of the map, while also giving Battania a break.
Intersting. I started a new campaign on beta branch and so far Battania is very strong. They took two cities and a few castles from Vlandia and few castles from Sturgia. Aserai and one of the Empires went to war with them but couldn't succeed. I did join them as a mercenary but couldn't do much with my band of 20
Those poor Battanians. They keep getting a rough deal. I love playing in their area, I don't understand how the AI can't defend those 4 core towns, they have such an advantage with that terrain. And all the towns are clustered together for easy defense. I'd love to see a boost to the Kingdom, just to see the underdog have a better chance. Like, an extra clan or two. Just a minor adjustment to give them more staying power. I know that might snowball, but, right now, they're the ones getting snowballed on.
It's fun to think about the time lapse though. Cause, in my playthrough, it's only been 28 years so far. I wonder if my own Kingdom would fair well if put to this kind of test.
I was thinking about doing another video like this, but use a mod to boost Battania and see if it helps. It might be an interesting video!
I just bought a new pc and returned to bannerlord immediately after a long break. I love your videos man. Just tried your world conquest build and now I'm trying to catch up on all the changes so this video comes in handy. Keep up the good stuff :)
Would it be useful to redo this test now that a year has gone by? Thanks for all the effort you put in! I am curious of the patches this year changed things.
They haven't updated the game in close to a year now I think? It's been a long time, but I did noticed they have been testing beta patches on Steam (You can see what internal patches they've uploaded to the steam database). So I think they have a big patch coming soon, so we'll see what's changed then.
@@Strat-Guides Ohh valid, I should've assumed you'd be on top of it. I haven't played since the game finally first dropped. Really hoping this 1.3.0 or whatever brings us some great changes.
Hey, love your videos, data based info is the best. Few points to focus on:
1. You ran this how many times? A hundred? Fair enough. Once? meaningless
2. Disregarding players input does not create "equilibrium" for the empires. If one was to do that, ones goes against game theory, meaning most of the game doesn't push back harder against the player, lowering difficulty and unbalancing all thing towards the player's will. You sure this is happening? I think that ought to be a data point, and equalize it over a 100 - 1000 runs.
Please do better, meaning at least to a level of degree you did with unit of unit battles, meaning more than one simulation.
Apologies if I may have had misheard the number of times you were running the simulation
I mentioned in the final thoughts that this was a sample size of 1 and that it doesn't prove anything, but shows that this is at least possible in a campaign. Also, I'm not sure if you're aware of how much time goes into these? Just the recording and taking data alone was 2 days of work (roughly 15 hours) so running this 100 to 1000 times wouldn't be feasible unless we organized a community timelapse testing and had 1000 people run it at the same time and contributed their data. I understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree that this is meaningless. Statistically irrelevant, perhaps. But it's still relevant to show the AI has improved from previous timelapse tests.
@@Strat-Guides you cannot prove any meaningful changes to the AI with only one anecdotal run. This is simply not feasible. I appreciate all the work you put into it, but it was, sadly in vain. Even just one more timelapse like this, might co completely differently and you would come to a completely different opinion about the AI changes.
I am sorry.
this is my biggest porblem in bannerlord, in my first playthrough i didnt know what to expect cus everyhting was so new to me, but then after that first playthrough was over and i started my second playthrough, the novelty of it all was gone bcus i knew pretty much how everything was gonne go or atleast a little bit of it, where as if they would just have randomly generated these kingdoms meaning giving them different names and locations for ur next playthrough it would have been so much better bcus then it would feel like ur playing for the first time again just cus the world is so different then the one u played before bcus all the kingdoms were different
It would be nice if they added a research tech after every 50-100 years to give a kingdom a neat toy in battles of city development unique to its faction, say the Aserai Gets elephants, and advanced understanding to farming and irrigation, improving village growth and production, Battania discovers how to make Bows with 5 arrow clips that attaches to the side making for quick reload and release, and improved shoes, to travel the map with more haste on foot and in battle, Sturgia learns how to craft Better armor and lighter with Mithril, and gains better Political and governmental understanding to maintain an empire without suffering reputation loss, the Empire learns how to Industrialize and make Superior equipment in vast amounts so their lower tier troops get outfitted better, that could be added once an empire faction is unified after 20 years, they could gain Diplomacy bonus to all factions through trade, and the ability to make all non empire settlements slowly change into Imperial towns and the recruits become empire but with a slight color change and armor/class differences. Khuzait, could learn how to make gunpowder weapons like rockets or flame throwers and gain access to smaller Asian elephant/archer/rockets/cannons, and also gain significantly better poetical governmental boosts to manage towns, loyalty, currency and trade. Vlandia would start to unlock full plate armor for its champions/foot sergeants and half plate for its archers/lighter infantry like a chest curass, gloves, boots, and gain better bonus to Castle production, maybe castles could turn into towns but retain the castle look but maybe expanded into layers of walls and unlock better grain silos for out lasting sieges for longer. side note for western, northern or southern empirss pending on which one is leading factor they could gain an added bonus to there already starting buffs by 5-10% or a Special like southern empire gets a higher income on the tax from trade without penalty by 20% northern empire could gain a higher loyalty from castles towns by 20 for staying a Republic, and in turn boosting village production and growth by 15% and western empire could unlock Unique elite troops Perhaps the praetorian guard that only the Emperor can recruit or leaders of each party in the kingdom, and perhaps gain a bonus to loyalty with a larger garrison to suppress the people into submission. and maybe boost village production by 10% so they don't starve. just some ideas to toss into the wind, for taleworlds or a mod
I think all that we need is the total population available for military to be shown per settlement and kingdom. So we have the option to know that we are actually wearing a kingdom down to strong tactics . Not just always have their army come back in huge numbers
Man I wish you would do another campaign like the Harald Campaign, maybe one to unify the Empire?
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🎮 The video discusses the impact of patch 1.2 on the game Bannerlord, specifically how it affects the AI-controlled kingdoms in a 100-year simulation.
00:14 🏰 Initial data points include the number of fiefs, clans, nobles, deaths, and kingdom strength for various in-game kingdoms.
01:09 🔄 Battania and Sturgia are experiencing unexpected changes, with Battania's decline happening rapidly and Sturgia performing better than usual.
01:50 🌍 Kingdoms like Battania, Kuzait, and Northern Empire are undergoing significant territorial changes.
02:32 🏞️ By year 5, the world of Calradia starts to stabilize with minor changes in fefs, clans, and nobles for most kingdoms.
03:57 ⚔️ Deaths among nobles increase significantly, but overall noble count rises, indicating more births and new clans being created.
05:10 🌐 The Southern Empire becomes a dominant force, while other kingdoms see fluctuations in their fortunes.
07:19 🗺️ Over 75 years, several kingdoms rise and fall, with Sturgia unexpectedly coming out on top.
08:53 📊 Clan numbers increase, nobles' deaths stabilize, and the world remains dynamic with constant territorial changes.
11:02 🚀 The AI shows improved coordination, making the campaign map more dynamic and interesting to watch.
Hello. Not sure if you read comments on older videos, but could you take a look at Jagged Alliance 3 and do some testing? Not sure if it's your kind of game, but I have been playing it and thought you might enjoy it.
I've got a few ck3 videos to handle this month and then Starfield next month, but I can add it to my list. Maybe later in the year if time permits
Always a good day when I see a new Strat Gaming video, every few days ya get me going back to Bannerlord. I can’t get enough of the AI analysis videos.
After a whole year of trying on and off to like this game, I've given up on it due to the blatant disinterest from the devs to make it a full experience. Every single aspect of the game feels rushed and not even 30% completed. And no, I don't want to have to install 36 mods to have a good time, I did that in Skyrim back in the day and most of us just don't have the time.
Props to this awesome channel for putting this insane amount of effort this whole time, so many informative yet easy to watch videos about pretty much everything this game has to offer! I wish we had content like this for every game out there.
i guess the WORST part of bannerlord is subjectiv. nonetheless, this is something i very much like to see. thanks for all the effort to you and Flesson19. as for the AI failing on policies, i think this is intended to cause more rebellions
You know, I i have seen Battania conquer half of the map. It was once and i was shocked!
my worst encountered bannerlord bug is..
the bug when i join an army, then that army stop to a village, THEN, IT'S JUST STUCK THERE FOREVER. stuck in the village interface menu. You know that.. when we're in army, u cant just exit, right? need to click the menu that says "exit the army" or something like that.
so yeah i stuck in that village interface menu. forever. cant skip time. even tho i keep clicking on the option of "exit the village" or something
MAN.. I LOST ALL MY PROGRESS THERE. I PLAY IT ON IRONMODE. NO OTHER SAVE FILE.
I still keep that save file. hoping that it will get fixed soon.
HOLY FUCK YES, I lost so many fucking holdings thanks to that shit.
I've never joined someone else's army so that never happened to me. Did you post on the taleworlds forum about it? I saw they are pretty good at responding there.
Interesting and informative! Still wondering what the heck is going on at TW, although it feels like they're finally starting to iron out some things
I wasnt going to comment, but then you said it was nice to see vlandia suffer for once. I started a new campaign and joined the vlandians right before 1.2 dropped. My kids hit the play button and i didnt notice before putting my computer in the other room. Came back a few hours later and vlandia was gone, i was king, and i had no army or money. I was kind of astonished.
Oh wow lol sabotage by your heirs! I think there is some sort of AI bias against the player, so if you were to join another faction it would probably turn out the same. It also hurts not having the king on the battlefield since they can field a bigger party than any other clan from bonuses, so maybe that hurt some?
@Strat_Gaming the sabotage showed proper prior planning on their part, so I'm a proud dad. Lol. You are probably correct about the bias against the player. It was kind of cool, though, being clan tier 3, king of nothing, and essentially restarting the campaign. My original goal was to join the first faction that asked and sabotage them from the inside, leave, and start my own kingdom. Vlandia became my kingdom. Lol. BTW I love your videos and greatly appreciate the information you put out.
I like how the outcome for Battania never changes in any patch they always get beat up
Great analysis on an epistemological level.
I think I like the fact there are more rebellions. It makes sense too. There were always tons of rebellions back in the day. It also gives us more opportunity to take a fief before we join a faction so you can try to be independent right from the start. That’s pretty cool.
Coming a bit late but:
I think the biggest problem for Nation balance regarding Aseria includes that there is no sea travel. There are only 2 ways to get to the lands of the Aseria, which makes them very hard to attack and for them to expand aswell. Very long ways to travel from Husn Fulq to Quyaz. Sturgia has a similiar problem, but their western cities have an easier access. and are not so spread apart.
At the other hand, Battania has the complete opposite as a problem. They are very small and dense but have a border with 4 other nations (Sturgia, Vlandia, Northern/Western Empire), so they can easily be targeted. (One of my games: In one round, Battania was attacked by 4 nations at the same time. Tell me how they should survive this.)
I think Vlandia has a great starting situation, because they only really border Battania and the western empire. So their threats, especially early on, are non-existent.
Strat, I just started playing this game for about two weeks now and I've watched soooo many of your videos. Thank you for everything I genuinely appreciate the time and effort you've put into this
Worst problem is that I can no longer play the game. Took a break and no crashes at loading screen. Hell, sending a bug report fails too. Tried literally everything short of reinsalling windows.
one of my favorite types of your videos (besides guides of course)
Oh that's pretty cool, I agree seeing Vlandia get hurt like that is super nice as usually they were the reason I would stop playing. I will say that even before this Patch I would see the AI grabbing territory quite a distance away, usually though it was usually just Vlandia or Aserai bypassing Empire Cities to grab the weakest one.
You’re channel is awesome bro.
in my game aserai leader died in battle in first month of the game. a large sturgian clan kuloving, joined vlandia and they took half of the map. i got tired of killing vlandian nobles and left
They should make it so that the empire civil war finishes faster and have a mechanic that empire factions unite to if one defeats the other confederates them
It pains me to see how much Battania seems to struggle. It's the first faction I've started working with, and it seems like they get the short end of the stick in many ways.
Cool video idea time lapses can be fun
I stoped playing this game after persuing a bunch of thugs around the map for in-game3 days by horse, then all of a sudden I thought what the hell am I doing with my life
I'm still waiting for a fix on ps5 when you fast forward the fights you get a loud sound and then all audio cuts out
You should check out starsector at some point if bannerlord content ever dries up in the future. Basically mount and blade in space, and definitely lacking in larger creators with good editing and content like you!
I've had that one on my radar for a while! It looks really fun. I already pre-ordered Starfield so I'll be playing that for a bit, but after that it's Paradox games and probably others like starsector
Have you ever considered doing the same experiment with the mod banner kings. I wonder if their lord tweaks would change the outcome for the worse cultures and give then a chance.
Yeah I've tried it a few times but the biggest issue is crashing - it's usually around the 10-15 year mark the game just becomes unplayable:(
Hey strat a while ago i asked you if you could do a video on how to become the ruler of an existing kingdom i was wondering if you did it
Very useful-info! Thanks Mate
I'm honestly just happy with the fixes in the auto-resolve system and the faction elimination thing. Two of the most frustrating things in the game.
I wish I could give more likes, mate. These technical analysis of sorts are invaluable.
Yeah I agree, they made some good changes in this regard. I also got a message from one of the devs saying they are working on fixing the combat (regarding the issues I was complaining about in the patch testing video) so maybe they'll have the game in good shape soon!
Looks like the weather changes, auto resolve changes make it so sturgia is a monster now since there infantry is some of the best. The weather is changing the Meta hugely it looks like. It's interesting to see such a small change fix auto resolve.
Watching this unfold really makes me wish new factions could take hold more frequently in the forms of kingdoms splitting, rebellions becoming legitimate, or new populations appearing. I know that's not how the base game plays at all, but it would be more interesting to me.
My biggest problem with the game is the broken sieges where if anyone comes to help they take over and never attack. Haven't played since that shit ruined 2 of my campaigns. Every update I check to see if it's fixed, play until I can start a siege and its never fixed. (I'm on ps5)