Why I Still Love Bannerlord Despite Its Flaws Hello everyone I've been thinking about this for a while, and I wanted to share it with anyone who enjoys Bannerlord, or wants to enjoy it more. If you're already having fun throughout the entire game, that's great. This post probably isn't aimed at you. But if you've ever felt that Bannerlord has incredible potential yet somehow loses its magic after the early game, maybe this perspective will help. I completely understand the criticism the game receives. Bannerlord could have been so much more. The quests become repetitive, diplomacy lacks depth, and many of its mechanics never evolve as much as they could. The early game is exciting, the mid game starts to slow down and the late game often turns into a grind. I agree with all of that. And yet... I still enjoy every stage of the game. The reason is simple; I don't rely on the game to tell my story. I create one myself. To me, Bannerlord feels less like a tra...
So, after watching War Sails videos all day, I can confidently say that I can see what the naval battle meta is going to be. Mass archers with a few shield units to clog up the chokepoint rope bridge. Too many melee soldiers on a boat just get in each others way, and most of them just end up standing around waiting for their turn to fight at the rope bridge.
Id say, 75% archers, 25% shield units at most. Archers completely dominate every battle I've seen, it doesnt matter if they are mariner units or not.
This is going to completely overshadow the Nord Faction, because they will not have any advantage in naval battles. In fact, I think they will probably be one of the worst if not the worst naval battle faction because they can't put ballistas on their ships.
I thought this was really strange, so I had a bit of a chat with ChatGPT to find out what pre-gunpowder naval battles were really like in history.
Turns out there's a massive difference between reality and Bow & Arrow II: Archerlord.
According to ChatGPT naval battles in this time period were dictated by two main things.
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How well ships were able to manouver a flank to ram their enemies to sink them immediately... cool, bannerlord has that down pretty good. The ship physics look like it does that really well. So thats the first main aspect to naval warfare checked off.
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If they couldn't ram their enemy, then they had to attempt to board them for a brutal melee fight. Great, thats what we all expected, and the game handles it reasonably well.
But thats pretty much it. I thought that was strange because War Sails battles are going to be decided by who has more/better archers. So, I simply asked it why people didn't just mass archers on deck to unload on enemy ships. It answered with a surprising, yet obvious answer, that I'm not sure we can solve with the way the game is built.
Essentially, its too damn hard to hit anything with a projectile reliably while on a boat thats constantly rocking in the sea. Just think about that for a second. You're on a boat with your bow, the ship is rocking up and down like crazy. The enemy ship is rocking like crazy. You have no chance of hitting anyone without a lot of luck. You're better off just supporting by shooting fire arrows at the enemy sails.
And that's the problem. The game doesnt simulate this well enough, and the AI troops are popping helmets just as well as they do on land. Fian Champions are decimating enemies at a very large distance. Just as well as they do in a field battle. This is not how things were in real life at all.
There needs to be a massive ranged penalty for projectile accuracy at sea, especially for AI troops. Without it, the ship combat is going to be one dimensional and get stale very fast.
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