Greetings warriors of Calradia!

The continent of Calradia is a hive of activity. From small bandit parties preying on merchant caravans to huge armies embarking on campaigns, Bannerlord’s dynamic sandbox campaign presents players with an ever-changing, albeit hostile, medieval world. And no matter if players directly involve themselves in unfolding events or if they simply watch on, the kingdoms, clans, and lords vying for power press on with their own ambitions and goals in mind.

In this week’s blog, we take a look at one aspect of Bannerlord’s campaign AI that helps to support this idea of a living, breathing world, ensuring that lords make sensible choices and prioritise their actions on the campaign map in a logical way that accounts for their abilities, limitations, and needs.

Just like the player, NPC lords spend much of their time traversing the campaign map as they go about their business. And unlike our previous game, Mount & Blade: Warband, in Bannerlord, NPC lords are bound by many of the same restrictions and rules as the player. This change in approach to NPC parties meant that we needed to ensure that NPC lords not only create and react to events in the world but can also perform many of the actions that players are required to do to maintain their party and ultimately progress through the game.

To find an appropriate solution, we first had to consider the different factors that would be important when making these kinds of decisions. The first (and only consistent factor across all possible actions) is the distance that the party would need to travel to perform the action. Naturally, the NPC lord will generally favour closer targets, providing its requirements can be met, of course. In addition to this, the NPC lord will also look at several other factors when deciding which action to select and how to carry that action out.

Go To Settlement
NPC lords will need to visit settlements to restock their supplies, recruit fresh troops and ransom prisoners. Lords may also decide to visit a settlement, especially if it is one of their own, if they have been out in the field for some time. After all, even NPCs deserve a little rest and recuperation! If a friendly settlement looks to be being threatened, an NPC lord may decide to lend their support to the settlement to try and dissuade the enemy from attacking, or if need be, defend it.

Patrol Around a Settlement
If a party’s needs have been met, and there aren’t any other pressing matters to attend to, NPC lords will lead their troops on a patrol around their clan’s settlements, prioritising ones where hostile troops have been spotted in the vicinity of recently.

Defend a Settlement
NPC lords will ride to the defense of settlements when the need arises, either with just their party in tow or at the head of an army. If the besieged settlement is particularly prosperous or is owned by the NPC lord, then they will be much more likely to make an effort to defend the settlement.

Raid a Settlement
Wars aren’t won on the defensive and under the right circumstances they can be quite fruitful. NPC lords, given the opportunity, will try to get in on the action! When looking at enemy settlements, the lord will check to see how valuable the production of the settlement is, as well as, the strength of the settlement. In addition to this, the lord will consider the relations between their clan and that of the owner of the settlement, favouring to attack ones that they are feuding with. Finally, a lord may decide to raid a settlement that is providing supplies to a connected castle, with the castle being the true target of the action.

Besiege a Settlement
NPC lords will try to lay siege to enemy castles when they are confident that they can succeed with the attack. While looking for a suitable target, Warband veterans will be pleased to hear that one factor that is checked is the proximity of the targeted castle to their own faction’s territory, which should help reduce the chances of those crazy expeditions deep into enemy territory to capture a castle they have little chance of holding on to. In addition to this, the strength of the castle is looked at in relation to the lord’s party strength, the prosperity of the castle, as well as, any enemy parties that are known to be in that region at the time.

Chase an Enemy Party
The final aggressive action that an NPC lord can pursue is to chase down enemy parties. If the enemy party is already being chased down then the lord may decide to safely ignore a particular party, however, if a hostile force is considered to be encroaching within the lord’s faction’s territory, especially if they advance near to a settlement, then the lord may decide to give chase. However, with that being said, a lord won’t foolishly chase after a party that it knows to be faster than their own party, at least not for an extended period. Finally, if an enemy party’s clan has low relations with the lord’s clan, then they might be seen as more of a desirable target that is worth giving chase to.


Sturgian Lords gather to break the siege at Ustokol Castle

And that's it for 2019! We will be back in the new year with more blogs and details about Bannerlord's early access in March so make sure to follow us on our social media channels to stay up to date with all of the latest news. We hope you all have a wonderful time over the holiday period!



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Medieval kingdoms were fraught with internal power struggles, and in many instances, the most powerful people in a realm didn’t sit directly on the throne. Instead, they wielded their influence to shape the kingdom in their image or changed the course of history completely by throwing their weight behind sweeping changes that eroded the power of those above them. Bannerlord’s kingdom decision system is a solution that allows us to represent these kinds of internal politics, leading to a more dynamic sandbox that evolves and changes throughout a playthrough as clans rise and fall. In previous blogs, we briefly touched on the subject of decision making, however, the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper, and so, in this week’s blog, we will be expanding on this topic by discussing how decisions are brought forward, and the outcomes and consequences of voting.

Kingdom decisions come in various types. Kingdoms may have to make decisions on which policies to enact as well as things like who will get a newly captured fief. In these cases, while the ruler makes the ultimate decision, all clans in the kingdom get to have their say by supporting one or the other choice by putting their influence behind one of the options.



When clan AI evaluates whether to put their weight behind a proposal, it will consider a number of factors:

• Interest in the outcome of a proposal: A clan will, of course, consider if the proposal is to its benefit.
  
• Available influence: Generally, a clan will be less likely to use influence to affect a decision if doing so will deplete its influence.
  
• The chance/cost to succeed: Clans will be unlikely to waste influence to support a lost cause.
  
• Time since the last vote.
  
• Relationship with sponsors: A clan may be more likely to support a proposal if it is on good terms with the sponsor. Conversely, they may reject if they hate the sponsor and want to spite them.

Before a clan leader can make a proposal, there is a check to see how much time has passed since the previous vote. This is done to help ensure that the system doesn’t become too overwhelming or disruptive for the player, nor create too much instability within a faction. If a sufficient amount of time has passed since the last vote, a decision type is selected randomly, albeit with weighted probabilities.

These types are:

• Kingdom Laws / Policies
  
• War / Peace decisions
  
• Annexation
  
• Clan expulsion

The system then checks if a clan has enough influence to propose and vote on the decision type, with varying costs per type. Once a decision has been selected, it is evaluated by the clan in question. This evaluation stage is partially unique, as the clan leaders determine their interest independently for each decision type, and with varying factors. If there is no interest in a decision, the evaluation ends without any further steps. However, if there is an interest in a decision, this represents value to the clan leader. This value is reviewed together with the chance that the proposal will succeed and the available influence.

If a proposal is made, the respective clan leader becomes the sponsor of the kingdom decision. Depending on the decision type, an opposition sponsor is then decided. In the case of annexation or expulsion, naturally, the opposition will be the clan leader that the action is targeted against. However, with kingdom policies and diplomatic actions, similar checks to those used to select the sponsor take place to determine the opposition.

Every decision has at least one sponsor and opposition sponsor. Some decisions, such as the distribution of fiefs, may have more. Supporters (other clan leaders) then vote in favour of their chosen sponsor. Once a vote is cast, a supporter gains relationship with the sponsor they vote in favour of, while losing relationship with the other(s).



Of course, Bannerlord’s decision system represents politics in a feudal kingdom rather than democracy, and therefore the ruler has the ultimate word. However, in order to overrule a decision, the ruler needs to spend influence that is equivalent to the difference between the majority and minority vote. Also, this does risk drawing the ire of their vassals. Consequently, the more support a decision enjoys, the more expensive it becomes to change it. Similarly, if there is a tie, the ruler can freely decide on whether they want to pass or reject the decision.



In the end, we feel that Bannerlord’s kingdom decision system goes a long way in helping to represent the dynamics and power struggles that were at the forefront of feudal kingdoms among the ranks of the nobility. It creates an additional strategic layer to the game that wise players can bend and subvert to achieve their own goals. Finally, it presents players with fresh challenges to assess and overcome throughout their playthrough as they rise through the ranks and attempt to cement their position among the ruling elite.



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In this week’s blog, we want to take a step back from Bannerlord (just for a brief moment!) to show you something we have been working on recently: our new look website! There are still a few small tweaks and touch-ups to do, but we wanted to take this opportunity to share it with you now so that we could hear your thoughts and feedback before decommissioning our current site.

http://betasite.taleworlds.com/

The new website is a little more with the times and brings with it some much-needed improvements over the current site, such as mobile and tablet support. The change has also provided us with a nice opportunity to show off some of our new artwork, which is never a bad thing! Overall, we think you will find the new site to be a little more visually appealing and user-friendly.

We look forward to hearing what your thoughts are on the site, so make sure to leave a reply in the comment section to let us know what you think!

Next week, we will follow up on this post by introducing you to our new forums, explaining what the changes will mean for our current forumites and detailing all of the new features that will be made available to you (spoiler alert: there’s a lot!).



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Lighting is an extremely important aspect of any modern game. Bad lighting can make the most detailed models and textures seem drab and lifeless, while good lighting helps to bring together the different visual elements on-screen to provide a more realistic and aesthetically pleasing polish. This is something that we are acutely aware of, and is what led to the introduction of Global Illumination (GI) to our game engine some time back, (which we briefly mentioned at the time in our Engine 1.4 Update blog).



Recently, we have been working on enhancing and heavily optimising this engine feature, so we wanted to take the time to expand on this and discuss GI in a little more detail, covering our requirements, how the system works, and touching on some of the difficulties we faced while implementing it.

So, what is GI? To put it simply, GI is a system that models how light is bounced off of surfaces onto other surfaces, or in other words, indirect lighting. This allows light that has been emitted from a source, for example, a torch, to interact with surrounding objects in a more natural manner with some of the light being absorbed by the object and the rest being reflected onto other objects. The end result is a much more realistic representation of how light acts in the real world.

In Bannerlord, we decided to go for a GI solution that can handle different lighting environments, can run on a wide spectrum of hardware, has low memory and hard drive usage and requires less manual work to be done per scene. With these requirements, we decided to use a static solution that bakes the lighting transfer on pre-defined probe points.



For our implementation, we drew inspiration from multiple techniques. The core lighting algorithm uses the technique from Precomputed Radiance Transfer for Real-Time Rendering in Dynamic, Low-Frequency Lighting Environments (Sloan, et al, 2002). In addition to this, we implemented an in-game offline ray tracer to ensure that the lighting is correct with the ground truth. After that, we modified some equations so that gameplay would not be negatively affected (e.g. increasing the ambient light of torches).

With probe-based methods, such as the one that our engine uses, a major issue is light leaking, which can drastically reduce the visual quality. To solve these leaking issues, we use the shadow map algorithm described in the Irradiance & Light field Probes with Visibility slide (Morgan McGuire, 2017). However, the most challenging and time-consuming part was to implement a process that can automate the probe placement, light leak shadow map placement, and baking process.

Firstly, we didn’t want to place probes everywhere as this would save huge amounts of memory and hard drive usage, which was one of our initial design requirements. So, to achieve the desired visual result while remaining conscious of hardware usage, our automated baking process uses the navigation mesh to find the positions that agents can go. Then, from these positions, rays are cast to find the visible points on the scene. For all of these points, the automatic process then places probes in a grid fashion. Following this, the automatic process assigns shadow-map functionality to the ones that might introduce leaks. For example, an outside probe which affects both the inside of a house and the outside will render a shadow-map to prevent leaking. Finally, the lighting transfer function is calculated for every probe placed. This process is done for every level combination for towns and once for multiplayer and interior maps.

This automatic baking process can be run via the editor or our internal integration system, saving a huge amount of time for our scene designers! And the good news is that this will also be available to modders and is as simple as the click of a button in the scene editor. Also, additional editing time is optimised with many advanced editing operations like lasso and geometric selection operations and shortcuts in the editor.



We are quite pleased with the final results. Our implementation of GI certainly enhances the visuals of the game by adding some visual depth to scenes and making the environments more realistic, and all with a minimal impact on performance!



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Music is a vital part of our lives, and it’s one of the most powerful tools for conveying emotions and feelings – especially in visual media, like films and video games. A good score connects you to the setting as a whole and grounds you to the scene; it evokes certain feelings and images, moves you to feel in a certain way. But that’s not all: music is one of the very few things that you never really forget – and it’s always connected in your brain with the feelings you had when you listened to it. And so, in many years from now, if you happen to hear a certain melody you will be brought back to that moment, to that memory. That is why we take really seriously the music of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – and why we have tried to be as authentic as possible, asking a true medieval music band to compose and play music for the game. And it’s not a trivial task – it takes artistic talent, but also lots of research and hard work… But let’s leave that for them to explain in their own words in a special Q&A!


Individually, our interest in medieval music goes way back, but the idea of forming a band to perform this type of music first developed in 2003. Kaan Bahadır and Selçuk Dalar joined together to dig through an archive of old songs. They picked a few songs from the archive which they could play with some plucked and wind instruments that they own and started tryouts as a duo. Thus formed Ensemble Galatia! In 2004, Serkan Özçifçi joined on stringed instruments and in 2005, Senem Gökçe Okullu on vocals. Gökhan Bulut joined in 2006 and Nevin Şahin joined in 2011, which formed the current line-up of the band. Additionally, there were many musician friends who worked with us and helped our progress but parted ways in time.



It’s extremely complicated to categorise all the music composed throughout European over millennia. Still, we think summarising our field of study in two layers won't be too far off the mark.

We can define the first layer as "Chronological". We are focusing on two eras historians define as "High Middle Ages" (11. - 13. Centuries) and "Late Middle Ages" (13. - 15. Centuries).

The second layer is more "Thematic". Across all of the Middle Ages, there were roughly two branches of music, one is "Liturgical" (e.g. Church music), and other is "Secular" (e.g. Folk music). We prefer to work mostly on Secular music of this era.

As a band, we are interested more in the music that impacted on the common medieval citizen's everyday life, instead of institutional ceremonial music. Sometimes it's dance songs from palaces, love songs from Andalusia, songs of knights, wandering bards or songs compiled by a king and dedicated to his holies, or songs of exiles spread all over medieval Europe. These medieval songs embodied with us as tales where anything is possible. I think that's how we pick what we play!

The charm of medieval music is hidden in this period's extraordinary cultural diversity. At the end of the Antique period, the Roman Empire was able to build up a vast cultural realm that spread from the British Isles to North Africa, from Spain to Caspian Sea. Following the break-up of the empire, the fall of Western Rome, the dispersal of central authority to local kingdoms and fiefdoms enabled rich and pluralist structures where indigenous themes stepped up and local languages were written down. And this variety went further when Muslim Arabs conquered Syria, Egypt and Northern Africa from the Romans, Spain from Visigoths, Sicily and parts of Southern Italy from Ostrogoths, and even further still when Magyars and Vikings came down from the north. At this time, the bards of northern pagans, ancient Roman and Greek heritage, vibrant Arab poetry and Berber music from North Africa were all living together across Europe. This interaction provided a basis for a very unique musical liveliness so uncommon up until this point in history. After the Crusades, Turkish, Persian and other Middle-East involvement put a good measure on this diversity. So, in short, the magical and fabulous atmosphere of the Middle Ages is very attractive for sure, but we are most impressed by this cultural diversity.

The musical instruments we use are mostly unfamiliar to anyone born into the musical world of the 21st Century. As with cultural elements, music evolves over time. This evolution is also reflected in musical instruments as form, timbre or material. Just like in biological evolution, the evolution of instruments relies on adaptation to new times, otherwise, it gets marginalised and squeezed into obscure music that lives on in small communities or ceases usage and vanishes altogether.

We use more than 20 instruments alternately, based on the region and period of the music we're performing. Some of the instruments we use look familiar to modern ones as they are predecessors of the latter, while others look very unfamiliar. For example, one of our most used instruments, a "Vielle", is similar to a modern viola, and a "Lute" looks quite like a guitar. However, listening to a kind of lap zither named "Psaltery", a northern string "Tagelharpa" or a “Hurdy-Gurdy” with its interesting mechanics could be as curious as witnessing a sabretooth or a woolly mammoth alive! :)



Actually, we met dear İpek and Armağan very long time ago. After a concert in April 2007, we had a lengthy talk about the game they were developing (Mount and Blade: Warband). But unfortunately, we didn't have access to instruments nor the recording environment to handle such work at that time. After some years had passed, we were able to meet again in 2018 and took our chance to compose parts of the music in this project, (which is very exciting for us!).

As a general approach, we are composing music that's going to be used in physical locations, such as taverns and palaces. In these areas, you will see the musicians perform their act. For that purpose, we are preparing many demos for each kingdom. Once a demo is prepared we hand it over to TaleWorld’s audio department (salutes to Uğurcan) where they pick which music is appropriate for which area, and sometimes to places that we didn't plan! We think the multiplayer lobby is one of these places.

https://youtu.be/fgp6gR50Fhk

Ensemble Galatia is a band that is focused on performing medieval music. In the past 16 years, we mostly performed songs that have survived to this day in written form or through oral sources. In other words, we play and sing songs discovered from old handwritings or that have been passed down through the generations by being performed. Our recordings have been used in TV series, documentaries and short films. But as we said, these were songs from hundreds of years ago. Therefore, this experience of composing original music with TaleWorlds is a first for us.

On other projects, as the melody was already there, we were focusing on performing issues like deciphering existing notation, correct execution by the period, sound and harmony. Stylised composition in this manner is a new and exciting pursuit for us. Additionally, we're excited and happy to use the new instruments we crafted and acquired within this period to be heard for the first time.

As we stated, stylised composition became a new pursuit. For a group that's focused on performing period music that's been transcribed from day one, creating new compositions out of nowhere could be described as a new design area, and so a new challenge for us! :)

However, with Bannerlord's historical background being based on reality and each of the kingdoms inspired by medieval cultures really made things a lot easier for us. We are not experts on each and every style of music encompassed by these cultures for sure, but researching, reading, listening and experimenting on each culture was an enjoyable learning process instead of a drawback.

The idea of the Medieval Ages has very strong imagery on its own. As Ensemble Galatia, we built up our repertoire on displaying this powerful imagery and musical variety from the very beginning, thus we were very familiar to the musical approach of the cultures represented in Bannerlord. It's possible to say that our biggest inspiration was the cultures themselves, as we already had experience with them. Nevertheless, there's a big difference between performing authentic music and composing fresh, stylised music. With stylised music, you have to represent the period's characteristics. So you have to distil all of your research, performing and listening practices to craft original music that evokes the cultural and periodic feelings with sound and strong melodic structure. Our biggest aid was the works of art that have passed down as transcriptions or oral traditions.

A composition, with no doubt, can be brought to life in many different ways. Sometimes, the whole work just arrives as a sudden revelation. But, to be honest, that's a very rare situation. Most of the time, it's you who have to reach the muses. To achieve that, we firstly focus on the distinctive instruments of the target culture. We draw a frame by combining an instrument's capabilities and performance styles with the structure of music, common modality and scales of that culture. Then, we improvise within this frame. And lastly, we decorate and variate the themes that emerged from this process. Matching melodies with correct instruments is another part of the work, where we materialise the true sound of that culture.



We can admit that when we first read this question, there was a silence of doubt. In the game, every culture was so detailed and visually substantial, it's really hard to put forward one over the others. But later, there were some whispers saying "Sturgia"... There's a good chance we are biased because of our latest works. Well, except Gökhan! He's a Vlandian guy! The Vlandian culture is very similar to our current repertoire, so it's not hard to say we feel that Vlandia is a part of us. But in our production phase, we try to think, dream and act like a musician living in that society at that time. Every culture we work on become our favourite during that time. I think we will ultimately decide about our favourite culture only after we finish all the work and sit down and play the game itself.

We designed our album series Codex Minor (Small Manuscripts) as Mini-albums / EPs, where we include examples of various medieval European music. Just as the relics unearthed completes the imagery and bigger puzzle of past cultures, we want our Codex Minor series to appear as freshly discovered parchments that serve the same purpose.

We released our latest Codex Minor on October 11, and we hope to release more in the future. All of our albums are available on all digital music platforms like Spotify, Deezer, Amazon Music, Fizy, Apple Music, Google Music and many more. Also, our first album can be found in CD format if anyone is interested!

On top of that, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, where you can listen to our albums and live performances. There will be some surprises soon! Also, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to keep track of our future concerts and workshops!

https://www.ensemblegalatiaofficial.com
https://www.instagram.com/ensemblegalatia/
https://www.facebook.com/ensemblegalatiaofficial/
https://twitter.com/EnsembleGalatia
https://www.youtube.com/ensemblegalatia
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5SW13PyqkGUyriEIj9t5ap
https://itunes.apple.com/artist/ensemble-galatia/651322866



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Morale is a key factor in warfare. An army can be greater in number, better trained and exceptionally equipped, but without the will to fight, none of that matters. Conversely, high morale can see people through extreme hardships, giving them the determination to press on and continue the fight long after all hope is lost, only to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat. In this week's blog, we take a look at how morale is implemented in Bannerlord, discussing its effects on both the campaign map and the battlefield.

On the campaign map, each party has a party morale rating. Your party’s morale is shown in the lower-right panel. If you mouse over this, you can see a tooltip that shows how it will change day to day and what factors currently affect it. Party morale changes mainly due to the result of your actions. Successful battles and raids will increase morale whereas excessive casualties and actions like sacrificing some troops during retreats will reduce it. Also, failing to pay wages or letting your troops go hungry are also rather detrimental!

If you manage to keep your party’s morale high on the map, you will enjoy a number of benefits. Your party will gain a slight speed boost and will also gain a small advantage in battle simulations. On the other hand, if you allow morale to fall below a threshold, some of your troops may desert your party to look for better employment.

While party morale is quite important on the campaign map, it is arguably more critical during battles. Medieval battles were fought in close quarters, which was no doubt incredibly stressful for the participants. Typically, battles were as likely to be decided on superior morale as fighting prowess.



At the beginning of the battle, each soldier is given a starting morale based on their party’s overall morale rating. After this, whenever a troop is killed or wounded (up to a maximum of ten), friendly troops that are nearby receive a morale penalty. This morale penalty is modified according to the commander’s skills and perks, and also other factors. For example, troops standing in a shield wall receive less penalty. Conversely, troops get a morale boost when one of their number scores a kill nearby. In practice, when two bodies of soldiers meet in the field and a fight ensues, morale will tend to drop over time. If one side is decisively winning, the other side will lose morale rather quickly. On the other hand, if the fight is more or less balanced, then both sides will lose morale, albeit more slowly over time. Whichever way the combat goes, usually some soldier's morale will eventually drop to a point where they will panic and start to run away. This is quite dangerous, because every time a soldier panics, this will also create a morale penalty on nearby troops and a few troops running away can easily create a chain reaction where an entire formation breaks and starts to run away. 



We think that our interpretation of morale in Bannerlord can be summed up by a single historical battle: The Battle of Towton. During the battle, Edward IV led his troops from the front while his Lancastrian opponent, Henry VI, remained in nearby York. Edward inspired his numerically inferior force to a crushing victory over the Lancastrians after battling on for hours until reinforcements arrived, breaking the morale of the Lancastrians in the process. This started with a trickle of men deserting the battlefield, followed by battalions, before eventually, the entire army began to rout, where it is said that more troops were lost during the ensuing panic than died during the actual fighting.



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In this week’s blog, we will be concluding our miniseries of blog posts on sieges by discussing the assault phase, with a particular focus on how the game’s AI evaluates and reacts to unfolding events.

Sieges are very much a key event in the game. Whether defending your homeland, aggressively expanding your borders, or simply trying to establish yourself among the ranks of the nobility, sieges are at the very heart of the Mount & Blade experience. With Bannerlord, our goal is to enhance sieges in their entirety, ranging from the tricks you can employ to indirectly weaken a settlement before laying siege, all the way through to driving the last defenders from the keep. In our previous siege blogs, we looked at the bombardment phase on the campaign map and discussed the options that players have at their disposal when either attacking or defending a castle. We also looked at keep battles and talked about their importance and the instances in which they can occur. The one thing we haven’t looked at is perhaps the most important and the bloodiest phase of a siege: the assault.

Assaulting a castle is something that players should carefully consider. Castles will call on a local militia to defend the settlement in times of crisis, but more often than not, they will also house a garrison of professional soldiers that can put up much more of a resistance. And if the castle has a governor overseeing the defense, things will get even trickier still since governors can boost defensive siege engines and garrison quality. But let’s put all that to one side and imagine that you have weighed up the pros and cons of launching an assault and decided to press ahead with your attack.

Firstly, you are met with a deployment phase in which you can choose where to position your troops and siege machines before the battle begins. You can select each formation and move it around a deployable zone, positioning your troops for the best possible advantage. Each castle will have three sections open to attack and you have to choose a method of attack for each of these. For each section, there may be a magnitude of options available depending on the level of your preparation: You can simply ignore a section to focus on other targets, attempt to ascend ladders, use an assault tower, break down a gate with a battering ram, or if you have been able to take down a wall section by bombardment, try to push your way through the breach.

Once you have deployed your troops and siege machines, the assault begins. Your troops will begin to carry out your attack plan according to the way you deployed everything. The game AI will take control of the various assault groups by default, however, you can easily take over control of one or all groups yourself and micromanage everything if you wish to do so.

We believe the availability of AI to carry out the siege plan together with the ability for the player to take over, gives the best of two worlds. Players can carry out a multi-pronged attack on several sections simultaneously without much difficulty while focusing their attention on the most critical location. In this way, you can, for example, let the AI carry out a diversionary attack which forces the enemy to split its troops, while you lead your elite soldiers and attack the most vulnerable point.

The same principles also apply to siege defense. If the player is the commander of the battle or captain of one of the formations, they can give orders to override what the defensive AI would do. However, controlling all the formations and all the sides at the same time from the player's perspective isn't always easy. As such, the player may want to take over the defense of the weakest section as the AI tries to maintain the rest of the defense as effectively as possible while entrusting that side to the player.

Attacking AI
When AI is responsible for the attacking force, it will make a few checks to determine how and where it will launch its assault. It does this by assessing its own strength and that of its opponent and will either choose to press with a coordinated attack on many fronts or attempt a concentrated assault through the weakest point. At the same time, the AI will decide how to split its force to achieve this. It does this according to the number of troops that each front can support. If there is a breach in the wall, the AI will try to send many soldiers through that side, however, if there are ladders, since fewer men can simultaneously attack at the same time from that side, fewer troops will be sent, or in the case of a breach on another wall, the AI may choose not to use the side with ladders at all.

If the attacker side has a battering ram or siege towers while also having ladders or a breach on another side of the castle, and it decides that making a coordinated attack will strain the defenders more because they will be forced to defend all fronts simultaneously, then the attacker side will hold assaulting the breach and ladders until the slower machines can be pushed to the gatehouse or walls. Formations on the waiting fronts will try to stay in a relatively safe spot while threatening to attack if the defenders pull forces from that side.

In terms of prioritising actions, operating primary weapons like battering rams, siege towers and ladders are the most important task for the attacking force as they will be used to open paths into the castle. Apart from that, there is not a strict priority list, but depending on circumstances the strategy level of the AI will try to prioritise what is most important or beneficial.

Defending AI
The defending AI considers both the threat level of the means of attack possessed by the attackers and the actual enemy positioning. Let's say the enemy is bringing a siege tower from the left side and has ladders on the right side. If the attackers are threatening both sides, since ladders are easier to defend against, the defender side will concentrate more troops on the siege tower side. If the attackers are trying to be tricky and attack purely from the ladder side with all of its troops, the defending AI will realise this and bring the bulk of their infantry to defend that side. If in another scenario the defenders were able to destroy a battering ram or a siege tower, thus rendering that side unattackable, they will not waste any men waiting on that wall.

The defending AI will also relocate its archers with similar reasoning, i.e. if the enemy cannot or does not attack from one side, defending archers will leave positions that can only cover that side. In addition to this, when a wall or gate chokepoint is about to fall, archers on a nearby wall may be sent to bolster the numbers in hand to hand combat, whereas when the enemy is approaching the castle from afar, the defending archers will utilise the best positions for shooting at the approaching enemy.

Retreating
Soldiers may decide to run away based on morale, but in many instances, retreating is a strategic decision that is decided with many factors taken into consideration. Ultimately, the AI tries to estimate whether the attack or defense can succeed or not and if retreating will only yield more immediate casualties. For instance, let's imagine a siege assault where 500 men are trying to take a city defended by 100 men. As the assault continues, men die from both sides, but due to the valiant defense by the city's garrison, the attackers now have 250 soldiers against 80 of the defenders without setting foot inside the castle. At this point, the attacker AI commander may decide to call off the assault instead of losing more troops in vain.




If you would like to see what was just discussed in action, we would encourage you to check out the video from the previous blog where you can see the attacking AI split its forces and coordinate an assault on the castle from three different directions. https://youtu.be/cvkZ4RaYSE8?t=395


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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

In this week’s blog, we will be showing you some raw gameplay footage from Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s vast sandbox campaign. This particular video was captured from the demo we took to this year’s Gamescom, which put a heavy emphasis on large battles and sieges, dropping the player in the mid-game of Bannerlord’s campaign with a sizable warband of troops. Because of the scale of the sandbox, unfortunately, we are unable to show you all of the game’s current features in their entirety in this one video, but rest assured, as we move closer to early access we will be sharing more videos with you that focus on different aspects of the game and highlight the many different features and mechanics that will be available for you to experience in March 2020.

For now, we hope you enjoy the video and if you have any questions, comments or concerns, make sure to leave a reply in the comments section and we will do our best to respond to them.

https://youtu.be/cvkZ4RaYSE8

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Last week, we asked for questions from you, our community, regarding Bannerlord's multiplayer closed beta and the early access phase that the game will transition through on its way to a full release. We decided to answer a few more than we originally anticipated, and so, we thought it would be best to save the campaign gameplay video until next week's blog instead (our apologies if that is what you are here for!). We hope that these direct and honest answers will give you an insight into what is happening with the beta and a greater understanding of what to expect from early access. So, without further ado, let's get to it, shall we?

The way of reporting feedback is the first question that comes to mind if I join open beta, would I be able to report feedback/issues with ease, and how?

We have a beta section on our official forums which has been segmented in a way to allow players to provide feedback about specific points while making that information easily accessible by our development team. (the forums are hidden right now, but they will be opened up and accessible next week alongside the first wave of beta invites!). In addition to this, we send out regular feedback forms via email to gather players thoughts on different aspects of the game. We also use automated tools as part of the process which allows us to gather data on a number of different things. One such example is our analytics tool on our servers. This allows us to track events in each multiplayer match to aid us in balancing the game. Another tool is our crash reporter, which automatically sends a crash report to us for review in the event of a game crash.

What criteria are you basing the waves of invites for the beta on? I’m assuming computer specs mostly.

We have identified several key groups and we’ll be allocating quotas for different groups according to the kind of feedback we need at each specific stage of beta testing. For example, at one stage we may invite old M&B MP players because we are particularly interested in how they will adjust to a certain mechanic. At another stage, we may invite players with low-end PCs because our engine team needs to see how the game runs on their hardware.

Will the beta expand to include other game modes? I would love to get a look at captain mode, and possibly some multiplayer sieges, etc.

Of course! To give you an idea of how this will progress, when we started the beta, we launched with Skirmish Mode, two factions and one map. Over time we introduced Captain Mode, Team Deathmatch, a selection of maps, and the remaining 4 factions. At times, such is the case right now with Captain Mode, we will disable some content so that it can be worked on and improved before being reintroduced. Moving forward we hope to introduce more content, including siege as a game mode. However, we should say that people shouldn’t expect new content with every patch. Sometimes the patches will be focused entirely on balancing and bug fixing.

Will you give a chance to SP players to try MP and hear their opinion or will your first choice be MP players for the Beta?

We are interested in hearing the thoughts of people from a wide range of gaming preferences and backgrounds. Bannerlord’s singleplayer and multiplayer share a lot of core systems, in particular, the combat system, which means that changes we make based on the feedback from our beta testers has a knock-on effect with single-player. It is for this reason that won’t strictly select people who prefer MP over SP.

Will beta be ongoing until (or very close to) the launch of EA? If not, when will it close?

For now we plan to run the beta up until the launch of EA, however, there may be times when we decide to close the servers down for certain periods while we make adjustments and improvements. It is also possible that our plans may change as we close in on the start of EA, but if they do, we will let you all know!

How long is it planned to be in early access?

We have some internal estimates of how long the game will stay in EA before making it to full-release, however, at this moment in time, we would prefer not to share those. We are more focused on creating a game that players will enjoy and can keep coming back to and playing well into the future. This means that our estimates could change depending on how happy we are with the state of the game and whether we feel it is ready for a full release or not.

Will the price change upon full release?

We will be sharing more information about the price of the game closer to the start of EA, and whether or not this will differ from the full release price.

Roughly what percentage of single-player features and gameplay mechanics will be in-game upon early access release? Many of the blog posts make it seem as though it will be nearly feature complete, while some suggest otherwise.

Most of the basic features will be there and we can say that it will be possible to play a campaign from start to end with 100+ hours of gameplay. However, some features may be missing or turned off if they are not in the state that we would like to present yet. We encourage players who want a complete and fully polished experience to hold off on buying the game until full release.

Will we be able to host dedicated servers in early access?

This probably won’t be possible at the very beginning of EA.

Which languages will be available in early access?

We will only support English at the beginning of the early access period. We do plan to offer the game in quite a few languages at the full release.

There was a noticeable absence of banners in the battles shown at Gamescom. Have these been removed? Or was it just a temporary measure?

Banners and banner bearers will definitely come back as even better and more polished than before.

On cloth physics: is this feature still in the game? Can we expect any kind of human hair physics?

Cloth physics is in the game, it works and is used in many places. Hair physics wasn’t a priority since it is difficult to get right and you are usually wearing a helmet anyway. However, it is something we can look into if we can find the time.

I didn't notice the pommel bashing in any Gamescom / beta video so far, is it still a thing?

Yes, you can still very much bash someone in the face with the pommel of your sword. The animation is different depending on your weapon type, which might explain why you didn't notice it, but regardless, it is still there!

In earlier instalments of M&B it was always bothering me that I had to choose a flag that has already been used by a lord. I don't know how this will go in Bannerlord, but since it has the word BANNER in it, will we be able to choose our very own unique banner? Or even better, create one without modding tools? I think this would be a small yet great addition to the game!

We were planning to offer a banner editor, however, we eventually decided to limit it such that each clan has a specific charge with the colour scheme of the banner being determined by the kingdom. This has the advantage that it gives clans within a kingdom a more uniform look while retaining their character. Having said that, we already have quite a variety of different charge designs and it is a great idea to let the player select from unique ones that are not used by any existing clan!

Discuss this blog post HERE



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Greetings warriors of Calradia!

As the dust from Gamescom begins to settle, we thought we would use this week’s blog to give you a summary of the events from last week’s show before inviting you to present some questions for us to answer in next week’s blog.

So, let’s get to it, shall we? As we explained a couple of weeks back, this year’s Gamescom was a rather special one for us. For the first time ever, we presented the game in the public area of the show with a hands-on demo of Captain mode, a 6 vs 6 team-based game mode that puts players in command of a detachment of their own AI troops. Meanwhile, over in the business area, we presented guests with a hands-on demo of the mid-game of Bannerlord’s vast sandbox campaign, putting a heavy focus on large-scale battles and sieges.

This was actually quite a challenging task for us. Before this year, we had only shown the game in the business section to a restricted audience. This time, we would not only have a public booth for the first time, but we would also offer the single-player demo separately in the business area. This really put a lot of stress on our team. Although programmers working on single-player and multiplayer could generally work independently, our QA team, level designers etc. had to put a lot of work to ensure that both demos were ready. We also had to design and plan for two separate booths, which was quite a task in itself!


The TaleWorlds team making the final preparations at our business area booth

Thankfully, in the end, our confidence paid off and we were able to show the game in somewhat its entirety, with thousands of guests visiting our booths, and in some instances, multiple times! We won’t lie though, for as well as we feel things went (amazingly if we do say so ourselves!), there were a few small issues here and there, but that is to be expected of a game that is still in development. Barring the odd obscure crash and some minor optimisation issues, overall the demos were stable, had a sufficient amount of content to keep people entertained, but more importantly, they were fun!


Community member, Killbotter, after a game or two of Captain mode

We were blown away by the response from the players at both booths. It was amazing to see people completely fresh to the series standing alongside Mount & Blade veterans, enjoying the game we have worked so hard on for so long. We can’t express how much it meant to us to see the look on people’s faces as they rode head-on into battle with a huge smile on their face.


Visitors at our public booth playing Captain mode

At the beginning of the week, we made the announcement that the game will be launched on Steam Early Access in March 2020. It wasn’t our intention for Bannerlord to launch exactly 10 years after our previous game, Mount & Blade: Warband, was released, however, we do find it to be a rather amusing coincidence nevertheless! Alongside this announcement, we opened up a web form for people to apply to take part in Bannerlord’s ongoing closed-beta, which, by the way, is still open: beta.taleworlds.com

https://youtu.be/yCk6Jk7DvrA
So, why the decision to launch in early access? Well, for a game as huge as Bannerlord, we knew that at some point we would need to get a large pool of players in to play the game and find all of the strange and hidden bugs that are simply impossible for a team of our size to locate. The game has completely expanded in scope compared to anything we have released before, and not just in terms of map size and settlement counts. We are talking about the many new game features and mechanics, most of which are interconnected, meaning that any slight change in one can have an unexpected knock-on effect in another. We are keen to hear feedback from our players on these new features, as well as, the changes we have made to existing features. We want to work alongside our community to deliver a game that achieves our goals and vision while providing them with a unique and enjoyable experience that they can keep coming back to well into the future.

We will be talking a lot more about what you can expect from early access over the coming weeks so that you can make an informed decision on if you would like to access the game in an unfinished state or not, but for now, we just want to make it clear that there will be a lot of content there to keep you entertained for many, many hours.

As for the multiplayer closed-beta, we will start to invite players in from next week onwards. We have made the decision to invite people in waves, so if you don’t get a key next week, please do not be disheartened. We will be targeting different groups at different stages so we can gather feedback from a wide range of players. We have decided to take this approach because we feel it would be the most effective way for us to make use of the limited amount of time we have to gather feedback and data to refine multiplayer in time for the early access launch. This allows us to target and tackle specific problems individually rather than allowing ourselves to be overwhelmed from the get-go.



We would like to invite you to ask any questions you may have about this year’s Gamescom, as well as, any questions you may have about the closed-beta and early access, by leaving them in the comment section below. We will select a few to answer in next week’s blog, which we will present to you alongside a gameplay video from the single-player demo.

Discuss this blog post HERE



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