I tested how bad the AI is in Bannerlord, here's what I found

[@Strat-Guides]

The previous episode can be found here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6e5amuigL9pftk I tried to cut as much of this as I could, needless to say I'm burned out from making Bannerlord Map porn lol I hope it's still enjoyable! Next week I'll be covering a full review of Bannerlord including my thoughts on what needs to change in the full release.

[@MarioPawner]

Awesome job on this series, especially the intro adding some humor to the analysis.

[@agungsuryapangestu2446]

there is one more brother,the Ai never making money at peace

[@videocritic2463]

It seems the AI is hell bent on balancing itself, if one kingdom starts to conquer too much, the vassals will start voting for peace, and other kingdoms will declare war. If one kingdom takes several towns and castles, it will be practically forced into a peace deal by its own vassals, also the AI completely ignoring taking Sanala as to not destroy another kingdom supports this.

[@aegontargaryen3856]

You have many kinds of bannerlord content and I support you bro much love from greece. Plus I learned alout for my campaigns bcs if you

[@Jasta85]

Having AI throw army after army at my kingdom, each being destroyed and losing tens of thousands of men and then demand I pay them tribute to end the war makes my head hurt.

[@Strat-Guides]

It gets old really fast. I wish there was a better way to control clans (I guess keeping them in an army 24/7 could work lol).

[@МихаилРадулов-й4т]

Get diplomacy mod. It calculates war and the casualties do matter depending on what % you set them up. Losing 2 big armies fills up the bar real nice and soon they ask for peace mostly without anyone paying if you`ve been purely on defence. They`ll be like - Ok we tried lets have peace now.

[@jonathanoriley8260]

@@МихаилРадулов-й4т Diplomacy has an issue with the 1.8.0 version atm and crashes on startup.

[@nunyanunya4147]

Opposing nobels: "We did something stupid. now... pay us so we can have a vacation."

[@FarmerJeff]

@@МихаилРадулов-й4т is that on steam workshop I can't find it

[@no-one5310]

This story is not about a great emperor and his vassals... It's a story about a frustrated parent constantly telling his spoiled children 'no' everytime they open their mouths.

[@Strat-Guides]

Hahaha as a parent with 2 kids under 3 I can 100% support this comment :D Thanks for watching and the laugh!

[@duetopersonalreasonsaaaaaa]

@@Strat-Guides recording must be a nightmare with tiny screaming kids - good on you for getting such clean takes! Haha

[@Strat-Guides]

@@duetopersonalreasonsaaaaaa lol yeah it pretty much doesn't work! So I try to do most of my voice over at night or when they are napping. The weekends when they are visiting family are when I get to stream and record my 2nd channel let's plays.

[@RedWolfenstein]

@@Strat-Guides Honestly I was thinking you were a 20 year old living at home making youtube videos avoiding working at McDonalds

[@Strat-Guides]

@@RedWolfenstein it doesn't help that I sounds and act like a 20 year old still haha like the toys r us theme - I don't wanna grow up (damn I'm getting old)

[@Awesomewithaz]

I've seen the AI throw away men for a lost fight just because I was passing by. I wish I could I flag I'm not going to help so the AI doesn't suicide with the hopes I'll help.

[@vitolapinta]

This. Exactly this. It forces me into radical fights, just to save a party from prison or death.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah I've had that happen at the worst possible moment before! I was trying to conserve troops to siege down something, quick conquest and then sue for peace only to be dragged into a massive field battle that was pointless.

[@Awesomewithaz]

@@Strat-Guides there should be a "reinforcement" flag to let AI know that you'll reinforce fights or not. Perhaps if a battle is big enough the engagement area should increase to so that way I don't have to travel for a few combat ticks and have my enemies stomp my allies before I can get there in time.

[@Strat-Guides]

@@Awesomewithaz that's a great idea, something we could easily toggle on and off. I also would love to see persistent battles so the AI can reinforce player battles as well. It would make picking fights much more selective.

[@MusMasi]

well on the good side it is a way to get your faction leader captured so you can lead a failed rescue mission in which he dies and you become leader.

[@Masterchezze]

The factions endlesly respawning almost drove me mad, Dirtbag was basically just a terrorist buring down his own territory. Even after excecuting his entire bloodline, the Ai seemed to have an irresistible urge to desert and join a "kingdom" that had no fiefs, had the previous 6 kings executed and were litterally being hunted down like rats to extinction.

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol that sounds about right :)

[@DderwenWyllt]

I feel like every time a faction in Bannerlord that starts getting steam rolled because their faction has a bug that made them stupid, instead of Taleworlds fixing that bug or making them smarter to compensate Taleworlds just makes all the other faction more stupid to balance the game, eventually Bannerlords AI's will begin starving to death because they're too stupid to buy butter but Taleworlds won't see it as an issue since all factions will be starving to death equally meaning the game is technically balanced.

[@Strat-Guides]

That's a great way to describe it - mutually assured idiotic destruction :)

[@midweekcentaur1050]

@@Strat-Guides Hey we have MAID here in Canada already, I don't need it in my games too lol.

[@daviddavidson505]

I think a big issue with the AI is that there's no way to simulate how deeply personal all these decisions are. Abandoning a kingdom is a big deal, but the clan leaders of the game make that decision very lightly and expect you to take it the same way. Wars and truces are declared willy nilly, there's no sense that anyone wants to retake a fief that historically belonged to their culture, and in general there's just not a whole lot of personality involved in all this geopolitical intrigue. A smart but robotic AI can be just as dull and immersion-breaking as a stupid AI, but it can help to have an AI that has a bias towards making decisions, good or bad, based on character, no matter how rudimentary.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah that's a great way to put it - It feels like most of the decisions have no "weight" to them in the AI's mind.

[@sandman4663]

Also the lack of organic cultural drift in the game makes my brain hurt. You have natural drift over time with trade exposure etc. but also, in conflict whenever you completely Devastate a town, I’d say that’s polite wording for population replacement. Thank the modders!!!

[@aliasofanalias7448]

I think ck3 does this well with personality traits, your character will get stressed if you go against their traits which can give you negative traits such as alcoholic, they can even die from stress. NPCS also act according to their personality traits. The personality traits in bannerlord don't do an awful lot other than the odd companion complaining about how you do things and you can just say "sorry mate" for a relationship boost

[@jonathanpilcher337]

​@@sandman4663 population replacement simply wasn't normal in medieval west eurasia and north africa though. You could obviously see admixture and cultural influence, but not full blown replacement. For full blown replacement to occur there would need to be an overtaking of native populations via migration, which requires a very specific set of circumstances that we simply don't see in bannerlord. Those circumstances being that the replaced peoples were far less advanced and far less populous

[@sandman4663]

​@@jonathanpilcher337 I wouldn't get hung up about historical accuracy of populations when there isn't even language diversity in the game. Besides, in a *sandbox* rpg the world should be dynamic to reflect extreme change. Many, many, many people agree with me, hence the DynaCulture Mod on Steam. And really if you wanna get into it deeper, you *should* be able to replace the culture of an area over time because the game is designed for dynasty progression. It's a really poorly thought out long term sandbox rts really.

[@takuoku2546]

I hate how character traits basically do nothing other than presuasion. I feel like every character should move based of their trait just as you said on the video. also culture should effect their ai, such as sturgians and battanians raiding more, empire prefering to not be agressive and so on. I don't think TW is ready to release the game yet

[@Strat-Guides]

That's a good point about cultural stuff - I had a similar feeling but couldn't quite put it into words. It just seems like characters are generic NPCs with different stats, but otherwise 100% interchangeable.

[@gallowglass3764]

abso-freakin-lutely. The cultural differences are miniscule. With the exception of the Kooozaits, military tactics feel roughly the same. Even on a large scale. Battania shouldn't be fielding large armies (at least, not many of them). They should be fielding many small armies to perform hit and run ambushes (if TW bothered to incorporate ambush battles like in viking conquest). And why does every single faction get pissy from executing other lords? I don't think Sturgia would bat an eye at stuff like that. Every faction in the game is essentially just a different color than one another.

[@aliasofanalias7448]

Play ck3, no combat as it's pure map besides menus and pop ups but diplomacy is very fun

[@lukegallagher4665]

something also interesting with the ai in my game is that they seam to LOVE to grab as much grain as they can. im in the late game and trying to use armies is so annoying because of the -100 overburdened because of the ai just stacking grain so im at a permanent 1 speed and when we go into towns they dont even sell it

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah that's a recent bug that I really hope they release a hotfix for! I'm surprised it's gone on this long

[@karlhastings8342]

Same thing, beat smaller armies, loot and get 2,000 grain in my loot. Overburden.

[@lukegallagher4665]

@@karlhastings8342 like ive had times where i fight a single person and they would have over 8k grain

[@IRRob.]

@@karlhastings8342 Ive had multiple empire armies with over 20k grain while their towns are rebelling from lack of food

[@Leonion6]

Idk, I LOVE this bug/feature. It means I have more time to react and don't have to instantly adjust my schedule the moment my faction declares war on someone. Like, it gives me time to finish my trade route and only then I head towards the frontier. It makes gameplay more satisfying for me since I kinda hate the sense of urgency.

[@JackieFishHD]

Dude your editing has been out of control recently 10/10 quality

[@Strat-Guides]

Thanks Jackie! I've been working hard to improve the last 6 months :) You ready for the full release next month?! It's going to be wild (I hope)

[@ashutoshtripathi.]

I feel like bannerlord needs a more detailed diplomacy system as well.

[@historyrepeat402]

Yup, it’s pretty embarrassing they plan on releasing it in the current state it is in.

[@SolZaer]

It needs a more detailed everything

[@Strat-Guides]

I already started on next week's video - covering my thoughts on the game as a whole and things to improve on. I will probably have to reduce the list I have LOL It's several pages long at this point. However, most things are small - I think overall it's good with a handful of big issues.

[@kopazwashere]

Honestly with all the exploits coming from the diplomacy system not being patched, I feel like that is last on TW's list or whomever that was doing diplomacy part of the game ragequitted and this is what tw is stuck with Also especially with a normal playthrough it will be quite a grind to test exploits with the inflience and diplomacy systen (let alone making kingdoms and gettinf scammed by the fief voting system). So I would imagind this wasnt brought up as much by CBTs

[@historyrepeat402]

@@Strat-Guides As the old saying goes “it’s as wide as the ocean but only as deep as a puddle”.

[@coollman8619]

There needs to be a debuff added for nations that spend too much time at war. Once a nation has been at war for a long time then towns should become more disloyal, cohesion is lost faster, less troops available to recruit,etc. Then the ai would want to avoid the terrible penalties for this war exhaustion and thus declare less wars and focus more on hunting looters and building their fiefs. This could help prevent the old issue of nations snowballing too fast and the new issue of nations being so aggressive they fight everyone in the world at once to their demise. They also need to make traits influence the willingness to declare wars, so some of the vassals naturally will rarely fight so that it is easy for just a few aggressive ones to turn the vote for war to a no. Another way to prevent snowballing is to give nations in defensive wars a buff so they can more easily repel the attackers, but also make them less likely to siege down enemy territory or just make them only occupy and not annex enemy territory. This would keep the borders more static so players have time to do things before they face against a world owning empire. (Although nowadays you would only see a ton of tiny empires more aggressive than chihuahuas declaring war on each other for eternity.)

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah I really like the war exhaustion mechanic from EU4, something like that would be good.

[@JdougGlass]

I have felt this exhaustion. And I simply ignore the clan I join when they go to war and build my fiefs instead. I end up saving my influence that way.

[@jsucker2280]

Dude attrition makes so much sense i wonder if that crossed their minds but they ignored it cause like how can you forget that

[@IamElChapo]

Have a decent army. Keep your footmen as far back as they can get. Move forward with your cavalry but dom't attack the enemy. The ai will move to engage them. Just keep moving your horsemen out of reach and the entire enemy army will follow after your cav and only your cav, they won't bother engaging you, allowing you to massacre them, especially if you are on horse back with Rhoomphalia. If you feel dangerous you can move your archers to the front of the infantry and move the cav just inside range and the ai will still focus on the cav while your archers pepper them. Works real well, especially when you're significantly outnumbered!

[@Strat-Guides]

That's a sneaky move! What about when their cav charge your cav line? Do you engage or pull back with your own cav?

[@IamElChapo]

@@Strat-Guides Depends on how many there are, the ai seems to like splitting it's cav in two sections. If one engages, you can comfortably let your cav engage but as soon as the infantry get close you need to move them before they are bogged down. I usually aim to kill as much of their cav first when they are chasing, if you kill the leaders quick it makes the whole battle easier.

[@МихаилРадулов-й4т]

@@IamElChapo Is this on vanilla or with RBM cuz im on RBM and AI cav will try to flank and get to my archers , they only scrap with my cav if i send them to bog them down otherwise they`ll circle around and atack the archers from a clear path. And the enemy foot and archer lines move slow in the middle and seems to target my foot and archer lines as a center so they wont chase my cav even if i park them 10m next to them. They`ll slowly bypass them while trowing and shooting at them but not divert their aproach.

[@IamElChapo]

@@МихаилРадулов-й4т This is for the vanilla version, I should have clarified!

[@AmericanGadfly]

What i do is rush their cav myself, they almost always send their cav to chase me back to my waiting fians. Fians kill tgem. Rinse repeat till their cav is almost wiped, at that point the ai rushes the rest of the troops which are screwed.

[@PARTYzanRnD]

i think keeping kingdoms unable to "snowball" and capture most of the map was whe purpouse of multiple balance patches before, thats why they are what they are

[@Strat-Guides]

True, they've been trying to balance snowballing for over a year now. I just wish they went about it differently. For now, they declare war too often, suicide their armies, don't defend much of what they take, etc. I guess it's better than the alternative (one faction taking everything every game).

[@Tate_THG]

@@Strat-Guides how would having attrition debuffs sound? The longer a war continues and the amount of battles and sieges a faction does, they start to take a a cohesion and attrition debuff

[@jamoecw]

i prefer a slow paced game, in which i defend and build up my fiefs pretty hard. this slows me down a lot, and i end up with pretty strong fiefs (unless they are castles, they suck). if the AI baby sat its fiefs more and was more reluctant to engage in unwinnable wars it would be harder to for them to snowball. less of their parties would run off to war leaving their fiefs unprotected, and most of the war would be fought with lords without fiefs. this makes landless lords more likely to get fiefs in war if it is going well, and as they take land it would be harder for them to keep pushing (since the fiefs would be handed out and you would have less landless lords). the other lords that would go to war would be lords with maxed out fiefs and no major issues at their fiefs. this would also make a starting player pretty valuable to a kingdom, as either someone to raid the enemy and get them abandon the war or to bolster the numbers in war. this would also make the wars play out in a more historical fashion. another thing to note is that if a faction is losing more of their nobles would become landless, resulting in more lords joining the war to retake lost land. also since the player tends to have more parties for their clan than the AI that would give them an edge they could exploit to allow for the player to feel more impactful.

[@Aarlaeoss]

@@Strat-Guides While its really stupid from a realism and common sense perspective . . . its also true to Calradia which has always had absurd and unjustified losses and endless wars to such a degree that the villages and cities must produce their goods only as a side hobby and all their real real jobs is repopulation.

[@Austin555661]

snowballing definitely still happens, I have a game where I would just trade to yknow, do the whole trader playthrough 20 years in and the western empire has taken over the northern, as well as the entirety of battania with vlandians having a few, sturgia got demolished by khuzaits, aserai was getting wrecked by vlandia as well and that was my most recent 1.8 playthrough

[@RadimovGames]

Awesome very detailed video Strat. This video actually should be made known to TaleWorlds... them releasing the full game like this is a travesty. The A.I is one of the core elements of the game and its broken to hell... this must be made known for sure.

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you! The last couple months I noticed a lot of what I was covering got patched within a week or so which makes me thing they will probably see this one as well :)

[@The_Yeti616]

Fantastic Work! I hope taleworlds sees this vid and gets an idea for how much work needs to be done as far as kingdom management/war management to make the late game actually fun. Most of my games fizzle out for me as I start owning my first few fiefs because it gets so boring dealing with stupid ai constantly

[@CatBxtchNami]

To be honest, it's kinda realistic for most of a king's problems come from the stupid nobles.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah I agree - my favorite part of the game is getting the first 3 - 5 fiefs in a brand new kingdom. Then after that it's pretty much the same thing every time. I'm hoping they have something in store for us with the full release!

[@aj5820]

I know it's a big ask but I wish TW would follow that map mod's(forgot the name) example. The one that let's you build roadblocks at bridges and passes. I've found that's one of the biggest issues with the way war is waged. Everyone just wanders around in each others lands it's total chaos. Being able to control where and when fights happen would mean they wouldn't have to fix the shit AI or worry about steamrolling.

[@Strat-Guides]

100% agree with that - being able to bring some form of order to army movements and party movements would be really nice!

[@Messy6610]

Forcing Armies and parties, over a certain size to only follow certain safe/wide enough paths and/or roads, would work. It would at least make for an interesting mod.

[@222cristobal]

The only time i've seen the AI do something useful while i am king, is when i dedicate myself to hunt down enemy armies while they (allied AI) siege, they seem to do that pretty well, as they don't get distracted or ganged up by enemy parties. This is fairly easy since the diplomacy screen tells you when and by who an army has been created. You do have to give them fiefs and policies so they have influence and cash to run those armies of course. The war declaration spam by them is bs though, in my first playthrough i had to spend almost all my influence just to keep the mad dogs of my vassals from declaring 3 wars at once. Now that i know better, i run 4 companion parties, +3 merc clans, +2 vassal clans.

[@Strat-Guides]

That's true, especially in the recent patch when they allowed more than one party to siege at the same time - they are actually pretty good at sieging stuff down now. My biggest issue with that is they waste so many troops due to autoresolve. Fighting that same battle in person would waste 80 - 90% less losses usually.

[@jacobterry2900]

That is honestly one of the coolest thumbnails I ever saw, wish I knew how to make videos as good as yours!

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you Jacob! A ton of work went into this one lol I think about 3 - 4 hours on the thumbnail alone. Part of it is because I'm not that good with photo editing yet and I'm a little slow lol but everything I know I learned from watching KZbin tutorials so I have no doubt you could do it if you worked hard at it! I appreciate the support :)

[@irrelevantirrelevant7332]

Strat, you outdid yourself. Amazing data.

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you!! I'm done with maps for a few weeks I think hahaha these videos took forever man. I appreciate you watching :)

[@irrelevantirrelevant7332]

@@Strat-Guides At this point, you know more about the game progression than the devs.

[@ObeseMcDese]

Oh good to see nothing has changed from warband :) Great video

[@Strat-Guides]

Haha yeah that seems to be the consensus :) Thanks for watching!

[@pology4618]

I think the devs purposefully made the nobels in your kingdom declare war on everybody so that your kingdom is force into several wars at once and you don't steam roll so the late game is more balanced.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah that might be the case. I'm curious to hear from the devs what their reasoning was behind that!

[@kopazwashere]

12:22 I heavily suspect this is due to one of the earlier patches when people complained about the snowball effect of AI kingdoms - where by the time people become vassal of kingdom, or make their own kingdom, the map is heavily lopsided by one or two factions so game becomes borderline unplayable. So, whatever TW did, worked. Hooray for stupid AI!

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol I think you're right. How to balance bad AI? Make them all equally bad I guess :)

[@hero_on_youtube]

Nice opening, bro! Good stuff!

[@Strat-Guides]

Thanks Hero! I could have used your voice for some of these roles though... :)

[@sadienut]

I was having a pretty bad day till you posted this, great work!

[@Strat-Guides]

I'm sorry to hear that Bishopnut, I hope your weekend goes better!

[@Lorendrawn]

Ah yes a channel that combines my job with my favorite game. Mount and blade plus data analysis

[@Strat-Guides]

Very cool! I'm still an amateur with data collection so hopefully I don't muck it up too badly haha

[@cloudsora]

I'd love to see a version of this where you grab a corner kingdom and use only your clan, execute everyone, and promote companions to clans only or w/e just so you have more fine control over a kingdom as well as... less insane ai all over.

[@Strat-Guides]

Interesting you bring that up - I actually have a video just like that already recorded :) I need to edit it, so maybe next month I'll have time to get it out. Soon!

[@giantdad1661]

The AI is your biggest enemy. Considering executing some Vlandians though, they send their whelps to war without giving them armor and their lords too numerous.

[@Strat-Guides]

I'm always happy to off some Vlandians :)

[@emmanuelwalton4557]

@@Strat-Guides same fking hate Vlandiai executed so many😂😂

[@Thanoric]

You have to gold up your clan leaders. Check on the ones that go into the poor clan zone, then find the leader and give them 100k. They'll never leave if they have at least a castle and average wealth. I've even seen some of my larger clans owning towns and castles dip in wealth, but I am always quick to remedy it.

[@Strat-Guides]

The interesting thing is they didn't defect until after several years. I have the save files at the end of each year and they were all rich :( Flesson seems to have narrowed it down to clans that own a fief that was owned by the previous king (the kingdom has to still be alive and well - the empire kingdoms were all executed so none of those defected). He said someone looked into the code for him and found the AI thinks they are the ruler clan so they defect? Something like that, but I'm sure it's going to be fixed with the next patch. Sorry I got sidetracked - you're 100% right if the clan becomes poor they have a daily chance to defect. I also think they take into consideration the king's wealth so having a ton of cash personally helps to fill up the "invisible piggy bank".

[@Thanoric]

@@Strat-Guides I haven't had a defector yet in 3 playthroughs, but I steamroll the map in 2 years usually, and only give big cities to honorable clans. Towards the end it gets annoying when fighting 2 big wars and the almost dead remnants are just sacking villages.

[@Thanoric]

@@Strat-Guides Funny thing I was just talking about I haven't had a defector yet, but playing last night I had my first lord defect and give Balgard back to Sturgia, then the lord I put in charge when I reclaimed it defected again. I just took the castles back and sued for peace, don't need to lose anymore lords to it. And then I recruited the Karakhergit minor faction while they were in prison like a normal faction, and they even were given a fief the next day. This game can be weird sometimes.

[@MS-lb9yd]

Always delivering with the intros 🙌

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you! I was going for something a bit less serious this time :)

[@harrybenson6731]

It's a bit laughable that you can end a war immediately after an enemy declares it for a little bit of cash.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah I thought about that last night after I had already posted and edited this - that's one of the changes I would recommend. I like how the Paradox games handle peace deals - sometimes there's nothing you can do until enough damage is done (or if you give up enough land to enforce peace).

[@HighAdmiral]

​@@Strat-Guides Are you talking about EU4? In CK3 and Stellaris, you can always surrender at the start of a war if you want to.

[@jamoecw]

@@HighAdmiral true, but you give up the war goals which is quite a bit different than Bannerlord.

[@HighAdmiral]

​@@jamoecw EU4 has war goals too. HoI4 has them but they're practically meaningless, like in Bannerlord.

[@jamoecw]

@@HighAdmiral yeah when i played EU4 i pretty much just drove the warscore up to 100% then grabbed what i could then waited until i could declare war again. CK2's casus celli system would be much better for Bannerlord, so long as it is simplified.

[@aatroxnoxus8299]

nice data again ! For the war stance i thought the "defensive" one was only there for protecting villages in case of a raid and not going deeply in the ennemy kingdom for a siege. But well, that's the theory though.

[@Strat-Guides]

Thanks!! I need to do a bit more testing to say conclusively what it does. I think you might be right on that one though. Generally in my campaigns, I set everything to defensive and handle all offensive sieges personally.

[@youtubeaccount1233]

ABSOLUTE LEGEND KIND OF CONTENT RIGHT HERE!

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you for watching!! :D

[@DragonSlayer-706]

0:45 truly is the secret, apparently the Sturgians at the start of my vassal campaign decided they should declare war on the Aserai... (This was near the start of the game as well so it's not like we even bordered the country)

[@Strat-Guides]

Sometimes things just make no sense at all!

[@osetrinushka]

Great job, you need to become TaleWorlds’ QA Team lead, or to do a live master class!

[@Strat-Guides]

Hehe I'm not sure if I burned that bridge already or not :P Thanks!!

[@restitutororbis675]

Problems with Bannerlord rn are parties in the army becoming overburdened with grain, ai declaring wars at the worst times, targeting small parties instead of commiting to the bigger target and clans defecting regardless of relation and wealth. I heard that having too many clans will result in some clans defecting but i'm not sure if that's the actual reason for these ungrateful clans to defect, (happened to me but I personally executed the clan leaders for their betrayal) but yeah, hopefully this gets fixed before the full launch comes out.

[@Strat-Guides]

The grain problem should be an easy fix for them so I'm not as concerned about that as I am the war behaviors - from war declarations to lack of self-preservation lol they just suicide all the time and it's frustrating (both when it's your people but also when the enemy does it because it's not fun when there isn't a challenge).

[@Anti_Septikum]

@@Strat-Guides there was a enemy town and allied town besieged appart, the allied army chased the enemy army into the enemy town, then went to the allied town, then the enemy army came back, ran away. This continued for 20 days.

[@AndyD25]

man that intro was pure fucking gold! :D

[@Strat-Guides]

Thanks! I was going for something a bit lighter than the last episode lol

[@Slangnegativ]

Manteos: We have the enemy surrounded!

[@Strat-Guides]

Hahaha at least he's a confident clan leader! Unfortunately he has a peanut brain to go along with it :)

[@Sherudons]

Remember, they are saying it's nearly ready for FULL release years later... The combat AI though is something worthy of screaming into the night about, do you like blobs, they like blobs.

[@Strat-Guides]

I really enjoyed my campaign using the RBM mod for that exact reason. I noticed in the bigger battles, the AI isn't as bad. I'm wondering if that's by design because the leader doesn't have high enough tactics? I'll have to look into that more.

[@kopazwashere]

"Battania is the weakest kingdom" Clearly this one didn't get their ass whooped by battanian snipers

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol! The sad part is the AI rarely uses their fians to good effect. I feel like the Vlandian sharpshooters are much more of a threat from the AI and the Fian champs.

[@mortache]

Their machinegunners have little impact on the autocalc, they get bodied by everyone

[@Strat-Guides]

@@mortache yeah that's true, archers have very poor performance in auto resolve compared to infantry and to a lesser degree cavalry.

[@scott5222]

It needs to be possible to tell AI clans or army leaders (having the ability to assign army commanders would be great) to focus on different enemies would be great. It'd be like saying okay we're being attacked from the east and west. Army 1 and 2 focus on attacking the western faction, army 3 defends against the west and army 4 defends against the east. It'd make fighting wars on multiple fronts so much easier.

[@reybladen3068]

I think the stupid AI is the devs cheap way of preventing a snowball effect

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah that seems like it might have been the case. I would have liked to see a stronger defense to slow things down instead :(

[@masteroutlaw100]

The AI seemed smarter in earlier builds of the game

[@michaelerhardt2549]

they should just gang up on big kingdoms instead

[@RobertJones-vb2qi]

I felt this on my last pt before the update. Was doing my best had my clan pretty much solo taking vlandia and the northern empire while the western empire just decided while you do that we're gonna declare on literally everyone. Atleast the other kingdoms declare and get declared on

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah that's true, the AI is consistent at least!

[@dbuyandelger]

That opening speech reminded me of the Roku and Sozin conversation in ATLA

[@Strat-Guides]

I'm going to have to look up that reference - it's outside of my wheelhouse. Although that's not saying much these days - I pretty much work and watch the kids, no time for anything else :) Thanks as always for watching and helping with the algorithm!

[@dbuyandelger]

@@Strat-Guides it’s a kid’s show, you can watch it with your kids 😁

[@mertgezent605]

-So how much warmongering do you want? Empire nobles: yes

[@Strat-Guides]

Hahaha I saw only the top part of this comment but already knew what you were going to say - that's hilarious! That's pretty much what the intro was supposed to portray :) Thanks for watching Mert!

[@mortache]

Without the rebellion mechanic, most patches would have some particular kingdom reduced to atoms very soon. Currently its Battania Also based use of KCD music

[@Strat-Guides]

That's true, rebellions slow down progress significantly. In the last 2 videos, I noticed Vlandia take a huge chunk of land only to lose 2 - 3 towns to rebellion and slow their roll. I love KCD music! I'm really looking forward to KCD2 :)

[@mortache]

@@Strat-Guides I wanted to do an independent "Palaic" kingdom this time, but then I saw Battania reduced to 3 fiefs and became their savior lol And I really hope KCD 2 takes place in the Hussite wars! The first game was one of the best RPGs I've ever played, tied up there with Witcher 3 and KOTOR

[@50_Stars_and_Stripes]

The AI has been terrible. I'm convinced that the drop down selector for Defensive, Neutral, and Offensive, doesn't even work on the approach to war. Last time I played, which was before Taleworlds claimed they've temporarily fixed the defect bug and the Baltakhand crash, I would try to amass 30K influence or greater before really making a run at unifying the lands, while keeping my nobles count low so I could thwart the constant STOOPID votes that pop up. They also need to fix how they calculate tribute payments. It's utter nonsense that I should pay a kingdom 20 - 30K denars a day after they declared war, and I've taken all their feifs. This is why in my last campaign, I killed every noble I captured, even companions who I promoted and kept defecting. I especially ended them swiflty.

[@Strat-Guides]

Especially those fief-less kingdoms! That's so annoying. I wish they would just turn into mercenary minor factions at that point!

[@fantassthicc7817]

@@Strat-Guides it takes time but I did once manage to force the Southern Empire into submission & it literally gave me a notification saying they basically integrated into the Northern Empire & sure enough looking at the Diplomacy tab, they were completely non existent as a clan lol

[@Gaming-Enthusiast]

Great video , you’re massive inspiration to us smaller creators

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you for watching! Hopefully there was something useful in the video for you :)

[@tylerpowers7034]

Great video Strat! Your guides have been a god send to a mount and blade rookie like me who just picked it up during the 1.8 beta when I got my first gaming PC.

[@Strat-Guides]

Hey Tyler! Thanks you so much for the kind words, I'm happy to hear the videos are helpful :) I'm going to keep putting out guides on the main channel (shooting for 1 per week), especially once they get to full release. I'm sure I'll have to redo some of these guides.

[@listenerobserver7160]

I already had guessed that their diplomacy was bad before seeing this video, but it still hurts ........ Is it so hard to use some heuristics like not declaring war on everyone and coordinate army movements?

[@Strat-Guides]

I would love to see the actual code they use to determine when a war should/shouldn't be declared. It almost feels like they treat each kingdom on the map independently, not as a whole when they make their decisions. My favorite is when you're at war with all but one and they vote for war with the final one "We are stronger than them currently" LOL Good logic :P

[@kanrakucheese]

Warband's Gekokujo mod (may have been part of a module included in it) had an elegant solution to all the war votes: Every so often a random "border incident" (villagers from X accuse villagers from Y of trespassing, a samurai from one domain is accused of killing a commoner from another) occurs which makes the "victim" more likely to go to war, and if you were the victim you could declare war without an honor hit and you lost reputation if you didn't. While random, there were enough rationale behind it (you needed a bordering town), DID prevent snowballing (more borders=more likely to war with multiple factions) unless in the hands of a careful player (uses border of map to minimize neighboring factions, which would be much harder in Bannerlord's map than the relatively thin main island+smaller islands with limited numbers of factions that Sengoku Japan makes ), and could be seen a few days in advance so it mostly worked. With Bannerlord's systems, it could easily be expanded to perfection. Not doing anything about an offense costs you influence, you could use barter to reach a non-war solution to incidents, and declaring war on an offender takes much less (if any) influence.

[@Strat-Guides]

That sounds like a really cool mod! Do you know if the mod creator has any intention of porting it over to Bannerlord? I really hope so

[@kanrakucheese]

@@Strat-Guides Spiritual Successor Shokuho (which apparently shares some creators) released a trailer a few days ago.

[@Strat-Guides]

@@kanrakucheese Oooh I think I saw that one - it looked really good!

[@Duxmamalakis]

I loved the ugzug refrence in the start 🤣🤣

[@Strat-Guides]

Haha that fief's name always reminds me of him :) Long live Ugzug!!

[@lahayestudiofrqc8708]

Omg that intro is still exactly how captain mode chat is in a nutshell 😂

[@TheeActualKeyboardWarrior]

The beginning sounded like when the highlords of terra talk in "If the Emperor Had A Text to Speech Device"

[@Brandon_Brando]

I think being able to sign a peace from a defensive war right away is what made this so easy it would be nice if there was at least a minimum amount of days before you can declare peace

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah they need to add more depth to the diplomatic aspects of the game. The AI will always give peace no matter what, just depends on how much $$$.

[@ilikecatsandstuff1]

In their attempt to curb snowballing, they've lopped off a good 30IQ from AI decision making to ensure that things stay even. Unfortunately, they never considered if this would be fun to play.

[@Strat-Guides]

I think your last point is an important one - there are changes that makes sense in terms of balance but really nose-dive the fun factor.

[@sethleoric2598]

This really maked me miss feasts, they gave nobles something to do other than going to war. Plus it weirdly gave Swadia personality despite being just as broken. King Harlaus constantly throwed feasts because feasts raised Lord loyalty and relations, and because Swadia was surrounded and always in a constant state of war Harlaus' ai basically came to the conclusion that constantly throwing feasts and doing jack shit was the way to keep the kingdom stable. That's awesome, and it always gave me the feeling that (when i eventually became marshall) that i was this brilliant general and the only one keeping the kingdom in check while the other lords were out having fun i was the grizzled general constantly gaining relations with other lords and winning battlss to keep the Nord hordes at bay. Heck i beat a force of 300 guys with an army of 101 men, mostly knights and captured Ragnar. It was glorious. In all honesty the way it worked sort of reminded me of this AI but the feasts just gave them so much personality. Also i fucked out of Dhirim, let the Vaegirs have it, we're expanding into Rhodok lands for now.

[@savic101]

That thumbnail is beautiful 👌🏻

[@Strat-Guides]

Thank you! It's my first time trying that technique out - holy crap it takes forever lol

[@avivio0]

ukzuk jumpscare was something I wasn't ready for.

[@MarksmanGamingPk90]

I happily start new game set up every thing perfectly like main character, huge money,solid incom, powerful companions/captains etc and when i start conquering i got bored due to these snow ball effects and start over:(

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol I know exactly what you mean! I've done that a few times as well - it's almost like the setup was more fun than the execution of the plan :)

[@MarksmanGamingPk90]

Exactly, i hope they add random event which we could enable or disable in the start of new game to add more variety to the game so it won't become boring, events like storms which causes moral loss or disease or random powerful army appear on map to wreck mayhem or stuff like that

[@dennisbrglum4035]

Like having valandia charge tier 3 wall, with 300 low tier crossbowmen... that was something to watch.

[@MegAGAM3RMaN]

Npcs be like: 20 days have past and everything is prosperous and full of joy.... lets go to war now

[@kinkajuu1]

Idea for you, start from year 0 and spawn 100 clans for each faction. Imagine actually needing leadership to get any recruits. It be pandemonium

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol that's an interesting idea! I thought about killing off all clans on the map and recruiting tons of companions, giving each their own single fief and see what happens. Now that I think about it - they won't be able to recruit other nobles because leader clans aren't recruit able okay nevermind, bad idea lol

[@kingsuksasmal860]

0:39 welp!! I am currently exploiting that secret in future calradia with my faithful company of knights 😉

[@Strat-Guides]

Haha Sun Tzu will smile upon your kingdom :)

[@kingsuksasmal860]

XD

[@Predator20357]

I never realize how bad the A.I can be as when I took out the Forest Bandits ++, I was the one controlling the large forces. I guess it’s easy to forget how bad they can be when you are the one holding the leash on them.

[@NightKolm]

when's the next Rags to riches vid? Kinda got invested in that already lmfao.

[@Strat-Guides]

Hey KnightKolm! Thank you for watching :) I've got 2 options for rags to riches, would like to hear your thoughts - I can either do a single recap video (30 - 40 minutes long) and cover the whole campaign as a whole OR I could do the episodes still, but I have to cut out the intros. Those take 1 - 1.5 days to produce and I can't afford to spend that much time on them because campaign videos just don't do that well :(

[@NightKolm]

@@Strat-Guides as much as i enjoyed the intros, the logistical nightmare of trying to do the numerous different pieces is just insane to imagine. Personally i think it would be better to have them episodic still since in the long run you'd have multiple, let's say "workshops" garnering you views. and a higher chance for the algorithm to pick one up to viewers, wanting to see more they watch the whole series and you get say... 20-30 views from one person for the campaign alone, depending on it's length.

[@kaymish6178]

I wish the AI was way less aggressive and had a truce timer. It feels like I smash a kingdom then peace out and they're right back for more a week and a half later; often right when I'm battling another upstart on the other side of the map. I think the kingdom diplomacy really needs expansion, like not EUIV type thing but more than WAR! And I need a 5 minute break bro. Stuff like alliances and fife trading and nonagression pacts would be good.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah I agree with the truce timer! I think Bannerlord could borrow some ideas from the Paradox games - their political system is really complex but even if they take 10% of it, the game will be so much better!

[@МихаилРадулов-й4т]

Seems there may be a sneaky code making the AI do what ever it can to avoid finishing off another kingdom. 1.If any kingdom starts to grow for some reason they declare multi war so its obv they`ll start losing ground and there we have it - BALANCE 2. If the big kingdom takes a bit long to demish its size by suice multy war other kingdoms will start to declare on their own until the BALANCE is achieved. My guess TW idea is that if a kingdom starts to grow out of balance that means the players is probably helping them so in other to give the player a challenge we get the stupid total war declarations left and right.

[@Strat-Guides]

The allied army and clan parties are so easily distracted! It's sad to see them change target several times in a few seconds, often times aimlessly going back and forth for targets they have no chance of catching. Just siege the fief guys! lol

[@МихаилРадулов-й4т]

@@Strat-Guides Yeah if only we could tell them what to do.

[@Bananalover115_]

This video shows that if you want to start a kingdom start in Sanala since no AI will attack it.

[@Strat-Guides]

Sanala is such a good town too, tons of prosperity and 4 bound villages!

[@ninobecirevic7135]

Minor faction reviews would be a pretty cool video.

[@Strat-Guides]

I remember watching a video on that over a year ago and it was pretty good! I think it would be even better if it wasn't just reading the descriptions, but had actual cut-scenes. The only issue is these intros take about a full day of work to pull off so a whole video of just that would take me a while to do. I'll see if I can find an interesting way to do it though!

[@kAtsGaming]

Please let the devs see this video 😂😂 this video explains exactly why I don’t play anymore

[@niksterplays3761]

loved the ukzuk referrence

[@Strat-Guides]

Haha yeah every time I see that castle it reminds me of the jolly green bastard from Halcylion's video :)

[@coxnathan06]

I found a bug in the game but what i do is i wait with a small army and wait til a larger army attacks a recently seiged fief. When i see that their soldiers are dying i pause and look to see if they have seige weapons (most never do or have one) and then break in and the ai keeps the seige going with ladders and my legions and fians just slaughter the army

[@maulmemes]

I have never used any strategy other than telling my soldiers to charge while riding in with a short bow.

[@p0xus]

And this is what they call full release

[@Strat-Guides]

In all fairness it's still early access - although I'm not sure how much more they can add/fix by next month.

[@emrestotheemresto9770]

@@Strat-Guides It's going to be five years

[@ggez3933]

i think it's kind of wack that you can just give someone a pouch of gold a day who just declared war on you to make peace

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol and then declare war on them 2 days later, rinse and repeat! I do hope they implement something more similar to Paradox games diplomatic systems.

[@fabilavooy]

Wow! Amazing video!! Your data is Amazing and help a lot! THANK YOU!! And like i Said, i cant wait to see your campaing! :D

[@Strat-Guides]

Thanks as always Fabian! I'm going to try to get that started this weekend, fingers crossed!

[@nasserfirelordarts6574]

Ive had multiple 700 armies (so like 1500 total) take an entire week to beseige a single castle with 70 militia while all the friendly vassals are struggling

[@georgeoldsterd8994]

Looking at the timelapse I've noticed that after you defeated the reborn Battania, it was almost immediately replaced by a reborn Vlandia, in Battanian starting territory. How does that even work?

[@Strat-Guides]

This was a few patches so and when a kingdom lost their land, they would still have a thousand troops or so. They would declare war on a weak kingdom and easily take a fief or two. The current patch, once a kingdom loses it's land, the kingdom is destroyed.

[@georgeoldsterd8994]

@@Strat-GuidesI really gotta wonder why TW didn't just handle this like in Warband, where, when a faction loses all of its fiefs, it just lingers for a bit, and then dies if it can't capture any new ones.

[@robertclarke71]

I love the Sun Tzu bit 😀

[@MT-iw6sl]

I gave up on a 20+ year Khuzait campaign. I had Tier 6 renown, and become Khan after Monchug died since 1) his sons were unpopular and 2) I married his daughter. I had pushed with the Khan into Aserai, Empire, All of Sturgia and All of Battania, but OMG the Vlandian AI just refused peace. I crushed them in every single battle I fought. I took city after city, castle after castle, and still they wouldn’t even accept white peace without years of war. It just wears down on you. You win every battle, you seige and seige and seige, and when you decide to stop and recruit some troops or head back to manage your holdings, suddenly the AI reformed its army and is raiding the frontier. It’s an irritating stalemate because the AI doesn’t know how to manage armies without the player intervening.

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol leave it to Derthert and his Buttery children to ruin everyone's plans :P They are always the hardest opponent to fight against in my campaigns.

[@fantassthicc7817]

@@Strat-Guides literally have never faced a more stronger enemy in this game than the Vlandians. I once spent a solid hour defending Quyaz from them in like a 3 wave siege, 1200 v 2000 so it took quiet a while

[@YappinStoner]

You know i think it fits the lore that the empire when its united wants ro fught everyone else, lile thats probably what lead to them collapsing with the whole fighting everyone ar once thing

[@David_Bower]

Hi, I'm new to this game, and your content has been helping me no end. I've a quick question though. Has the bug where vassals defect because of owning a town that belonged to the previous kingdoms ruler been fixed?

[@Strat-Guides]

I'm happy to hear the videos are helpful! Yes that should have been fixed a couple patches so

[@markj2305]

Looking for your video on things you hope to see before final release of this game.

[@Strat-Guides]

Started working on that oneyesterday :) I also have 3 episodes edited for the 2nd channel play through! I'm hoping to get caught up before Monday

[@markj2305]

@@Strat-Guides sounds like a lot of work don't kill yourself. I don't know if I mind having to take former capitals under one's Direct Control and I could just be another aspect of the game where the political insurrectionist well so you need your agents there. I would rather they fix up some things like making a smithing and you smoother with more categories to select things, and diplomacy. Hopefully they will release and continue to do proper upgrades as it should be to continue their sales. I wish they would have the courtesy to move results another information on the screen so that there is no interference with other text. These are things that certainly make the game more difficult to play and give it a garage project look, more than a finished product. This is something, to your credit , that I don't remember seeing in your videos,.

[@JawaThePwn]

Sorry if this question would require a long response, lol, but how did you go about making this scenario possible? If it's console commands, which did you use? I couldn't find a console command that forced a clan to join a kingdom. I was trying to create a Vlandian rebellion scenario but it flopped because I discovered that you cannot recruit rebels, even after they're past the rebellion phase.

[@Strat-Guides]

No problem - I used console commands to make this happen, but there's no direct command for it. I first raised relations with everyone in the empire kingdoms, took all of their fiefs, teleported around to each of the clan leaders and attempted to recruit them. When they have no fiefs left and you have good relations with them, it's pretty easy to bring them in. Then I donated their fiefs back to them once in the kingdom. It took a bit of work to do, but I think the result was worth it :)

[@JawaThePwn]

@@Strat-Guides Ah okay. Thank you for the response. I appreciate it. I do wish the game had more console commands to play out scenarios such as this. I genuinely enjoy watching your world map timelapse videos, I've always enjoyed watching AIs battle it out and see how it plays out without player interference.

[@ChristianAuditore14]

The AI needs to hire more new lords like they hire us, instead of giving vassals 14 fiefa

[@boromirtheblasted883]

Every Kingdom I create or join and make the strongest without fail spams war votes on everyone. From what I heard, it was Taleworlds solution to checking Kingdom growth. Solid solution my dudes.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah they just go nuts! I don't mind constant wars, but not with 4 other kingdoms all the time lol Once thing I'm experimenting with is having a small, but strong set of clans to keep in the kingdom. With 3 or 4 clan tier 5-6 clans I think easy hit and run wars would be possible and an easy world conquest without having to burn 1k influence per vote.

[@boromirtheblasted883]

@@Strat-Guides The fix that I found was to use the diplomacy mod and make non-aggression pacts last minimum 60 days, lol.

[@nunyanunya4147]

MATT DAMON!!!! MATT DAMON!!!!!!!!!!!! GARRY? NO!!! MATT DAMON!!!

[@Strat-Guides]

Lol MATT DAMON!! My favorite part of the whole movie

[@nunyanunya4147]

@@Strat-Guides i dont know this had a chase song called 'put a jhiad on you', puppet sex, amazing fight scenes, and was so campy that the message was completly lost. truely. the most !MER!KAN! ov ways. ... fuck yah

[@Strat-Guides]

@@nunyanunya4147 Hahaha yeah I had to avoid putting things in that might offend others, but I do enjoy that song personally :P

[@coreyostrander1763]

Its worrying that they plan on doing a full release in October.

[@Strat-Guides]

I'm hoping they have been sandbagging a lot of changes and balances for the full release. My fear is they focused mostly on the console port instead, but I guess we will have to wait to see :P

[@Neutral_1zed]

I came here after my 600 man army lost to a defending party of 300, all because no more than 2 soldier could climb the ladder at a time.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah the sieges are rough still :( I wish the AI was a bit smarter about it.

[@gabriele3665]

Stupid AI I'm currently in a Garios campaign and at a certain point we had a 3 front war all declared by the vassals. We are so close to crush the Northern empire but can't due to AI idiocy. I've no idea how we survived that period without losing fiefs except garontor castle to the aserai.

[@Strat-Guides]

My favorite part is when you spend a whole year destroying a kindom's ability to defend itself only to declare peace with 0 - 1 fiefs from them, allowing them to build back up LOL

[@IamElChapo]

"MaTt DaMoN"- excellently encapsulates the AIs decision making. Getting our shit pushed in by another four kingdoms, should we make peace and get some decent tribute? Nah fam.

[@Strat-Guides]

Hahaha exactly!

[@itlog3722]

I'd love to play vs PhD AI.

[@Strat-Guides]

It would be nice if there was a mod/game setting that you could adjust for that.

[@GruesomePizza1992]

The AI tends to go deep in enemy territory and take fiefs and castles instead of ones closest to our borders. And get ping ponged between seige a town and a party of 24 that is obsessed with grabbing troops next to an army of 500

[@GeneralSantucci1st]

Seems like they need to add more lands to conquer

[@50_Stars_and_Stripes]

I've watched this video a second time now after watching part 1. I'm curious, how are you convincing the nobles to vote for you to hold the fief first so you can promote your companions to vassals? When I play, I rarely will come up for a vote and the AI will often choose one lord at times to hold many many fiefs.

[@Strat-Guides]

So I wasn't using any troops and had 0 expenses, therefor I didn't need to own any fiefs :) If you're the king and you own nothing, you will get 100% of the votes which makes it very easy to distribute them as you see fit.

[@tbarnes3441]

I arrived here in frustration over the AI. My first compaign, took over half the map but god, they couldn't hold anything. Just taking, losing, taking and I just alt f4 and found this video. Are there any mods to fix campaign AI?

[@Strat-Guides]

You should try Diplomacy mod - it adds things like alliances and non-aggression pacts that can help with some of that, but the AI will still do stupid things sadly :( It's more of a band-aid than a fix

[@hobokingbilly]

Vassals also leave if their clan is Poor/Average. They need a cash injection.

[@Strat-Guides]

Yeah that's true - I should have clarified that. Leaving due to being poor is a game mechanic, but the defection I was highlighting is a bug because they aren't supposed to leave when they are rich, have lots of fiefs, tons of cash and the kingdom is vastly stronger than anyone else.

[@crazyhercules9442]

“The key to winning battles is F1+F3…” The truth of that statement though 💀

[@thatguy_5240]

I'd like to see this with different mods installed, like diplomacy or bannerkings