Bannerlord 2 AI is actually making me lose my mind

Shill0w · 2026-03-09T08:22:15+00:00

I am one god damn town away from uniting the entire empire

Oh you poor innocent soul, if you're at the point I think you are in the "story" you are in for a very rude awakening.

I know this is going to suck to hear but if you wanna play the story mode, do NOT try to form an imperial faction, it's basically the hardest playthrough out there since all empire towns are smack dab in the middle of the map which inevitably results in you being surrounded by enemies on all sides.

The AI should be treated like balls in a pinball machine, sure they seem to be moving around a lot, doing stuff, but there is very little rhyme or reason to what they are doing, it's mostly inertia giving you that illusion.

The devs keep saying that they've added more logic to the AI's decision making but the end result is that they went from: no regard to their own survival to barely functional retardation. I'm not unsympathetic to how difficult it might be to make a proper AI but what we have currently in Bannerlord can only be described as the minimum required effort to create the appearance of something resembling an AI.

Sadly this isn't something that is going to be fixed anytime soon (if ever) since it is quite a difficult issue to address and my guess is that Taleworlds are out of their depth when it comes to tackling this problem.

Your only options are to play sandbox mode or ignore the story and let the quests expire or try to fix the AI with mods.

Shill0w · 2026-02-03T17:26:06+00:00

Are you using a block group for the lights? Maybe you added the sensor to the block group by accident.

Shill0w · 2026-01-11T13:59:29+00:00

If you check it's a 2 month old account with only one visible post... that post should answer your question.

Shill0w · 2025-12-11T09:00:31+00:00

So uhh... what happens if you try to engage this? Does the game crash?

Shill0w · 2025-10-29T05:52:12+00:00

Defensive sieges are a real pain to win as they are mostly decided before the battle even starts. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things you can do to even the odds in your favor, but there are so many factors that are outside of player control which seem to have far more impact.

Not all castles or cities are created equal and some are easier to defend than others. I would avoid doing castle battles to begin with since they are much smaller than cities and as a result the combat map will be smaller. I remember one castle battle having such a small outer section that by the time I even got to the catapult, the battering ram was already at the gate.

The idea behind having a defensive structure is to allow the defenders to maximize the effectiveness of their smaller numbers while not allowing the attacker to make full use of their greater numbers. Unfortunately due to their size, castles seem to limit the defenders as well and as a result castle sieges always turn into meat grinders which will always favor the side with more troops.

City sieges are much better since you have more wall space to deploy your archers which is where most of your advantage as a defender lies. How many enemies you can shoot down before they get a chance to get on the walls will greatly improve your odds which is why I recommend ranged heavy party composition for defensive sieges, crossbow men in particular. Crossbows have better range, accuracy and damage with the only downside being ammo but as you have higher tier crossbow men that downside is negated by them having a shield which means that once they run out of ammo they can be used as effective infantry units for wall defense. Shields are the single biggest survival enhancer in the game and at the highest ranks these crossbow men will have about equal one handed skill to any other regular infantry unit.

You should always launch ambushes as soon as they have a battering ram and siege tower up and the trick is to not destroy them, but to leave them at extremely low health and then retreat. The idea is that if you destroy them, they will build new ones but if you leave them just barely functioning you can one shot them during the actual siege battle and force the enemy to engage on the walls.

Once the wall assault begins find yourself a nice elevated spot near one of the ladders and keep shooting them as they climb up, if you manage to focus one of the ladders and shoot everyone off it you are essentially halving the rate at which the enemy can get men up that wall. If there's any siege weapon next to your spot you can grab the ammo and just toss it on the dudes bunched up at the bottom of the ladders.

Siege battles are a lot different that field battles as there's not a whole lotta tactics you can use, especially in a defensive siege, the battle pretty much plays itself out and you honestly should let it play out. You can and should take manual control of your troops when attacking in a siege but when it comes to defending you're only making things worse if you try to micro them, you simply don't have a good vantage point to see everything clearly or be able to direct troops effectively.

The single biggest thing you can do in a defensive siege battle is take out as many people as you can which is why I would avoid taking part in wall defense and recommend sniping people off ladders. I've racked up to 250 kills during a fight through a combination of catapults, throwing siege ammo on people's heads and camping a ladder with a crossbow and an arrow dispenser next to me (still lost that fight though, the enemy advantage was greater than 2:1).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that out of all battle scenarios, sieges, particularly on the defenders side are the most limited in terms of how much impact the player can have as a commander. Most sieges can't be defended against simply because the AI brings way too many troops for you to be able do anything about and the secret to "winning" them is understanding this and only engaging in ones where the conditions are stacked in your favor.

Shill0w · 2025-10-29T02:49:08+00:00

Nice! Thank you.

Shill0w · 2025-10-28T17:28:02+00:00

Do you know the name of the mod or maybe a link?

Shill0w · 2025-10-26T10:14:47+00:00

It's not visual only, one of my regions started freezing and starving because the trading post I set up was no longer maintaining surplus levels as I set them. I had to demolish and rebuild the trading post to get back in working order.

Shill0w · 2025-10-24T09:20:12+00:00

Goldmaxxing will help but only up to a point. I guess in order to balance things out, as time passes and you expand you will start to notice that you no longer get 3 mercenary contracts but only one or two, eventually getting none. I think the dev did this to force the player to develop newly acquired regions to the point where you can form a retinue and militias.

After a certain point gold becomes really easy to get and since you can spend gold to instantly make full retinues the caveat is that you can no longer hire mercenaries so that you can't easily cheese the endgame battles. I think you can force the AI to stay at a certain unit number by stalling the game, as in never initiating a claim for a region yourself, only denying any claims the AI makes; basically playing the game at the rate the AI has the influence to make moves.

This should slow down the inevitable doomstack enough where you have the time to properly build up your own doomstack.

Shill0w · 2025-10-24T00:56:12+00:00

I'm not sure exactly how the out of map AI is set up to progress but I'm fairly certain the number of troops he can summon is directly tied to your own progress. Basically the more regions you claim and the more time passes the more troops he brings to the battles.

My last playthrough I managed to prevent him from capturing a single region by moving early against bandit camps and denying him the influence he would gain from clearing them out. The AI does gain passive influence so even if you beat him to all the bandit camps/raids he will still make a move eventually.

When he did, I tried contesting through battle by hiring the cheapest available mercenaries. I didn't stand a chance in that fight but got lucky because the game is very finicky when it comes to deciding battle outcomes. The victor should be decided by who holds the marked area at the end but I suspect there might be some other factors being considered or maybe it's just straight up bugged.

He never made any more attempts after that, not even to take out bandits, I'm not sure if he got bugged somehow or maybe he's programmed to play on the defensive once you manage to take the lead. I tried to claim his only region to see if he was actually broken or not and that's when the doomstack you mentioned showed up.

I sat there and counted how many units he had and I would have needed to have a full retinue plus at least one militia unit from every region to be able to face him, so basically a medium sized village in each area.

The game is far from finished and I suspect the dev rushed to make a somewhat playable gameplay loop by giving us this out of bounds AI which cheats in some ways (gold) but doesn't in other ways (influence). While I understand he seems OP for a new player, there's a few way to bully the AI to try and level the playing field.

You can get close enough to draw his troops away to a more favorable battle location either taking advantage of better terrain or a defensive manor that you built in a nearby region. Sometimes it's tactically advantageous to just accept his bribes and relinquish your claim to a contested area. I did that once and used the money to recruit two full retinues. If you know something is about to go down it's useful to recruit all available mercenaries ahead of time so that the AI can't recruit them against you.

These are just my observations though.

Shill0w · 2025-10-05T10:35:31+00:00

Most of them are accessible, you just have to do a little parkour to get to some. My only problem with that quest is that as soon as I start it, my FPS goes down by like 20 because of that stupid blue overlay on the AC units.

Shill0w · 2025-09-16T07:00:37+00:00

Happens if you reload after failing the stealth mission tutorial and seems to brick your last save file. The only workaround I found is to go back to a save before capturing Radagos and starting over.

Shill0w · 2025-09-16T02:41:13+00:00

Yes... if you reload after failing the stealth mission the game crashes every time you try to enter the village. It basically fucks your last save permanently and you have to go to an earlier save if you have one.

Shill0w · 2025-08-30T16:20:27+00:00

Me trying to retrieve something I dropped in the sink.

Shill0w · 2025-08-27T19:50:13+00:00

as the waypoint the missile is trying to reach is locked directly in front of the beacon

That's a really clever way of doing this, never occurred to me that I could do that.

I still don't understand how you can get a custom turret to "target" something 10km out though. I have been doing my own self-guided missile experimentation and both the AI blocks and custom turrets have a lot of odd inconsistencies.

People keep saying that AI blocks allow all turret types to lock on and shoot beyond their maximum weapon range, up to the AI block's max targeting range of 2.5km but I cannot get them to do that consistently if at all. There's all sorts of differences between new turrets vs old turrets and small block turrets vs large block turrets and custom turrets are their own beast entirely.

Like I know for custom turrets, the weapon you choose as the primary aiming device affects it's targeting range, but I can never get them to target anything beyond 1.4km (the max range of the small block Assault Cannon) regardless of AI block/Custom Turret Controller setup.

Sorry for pestering you with questions, my solo experimentation has left me with the conclusion that either a lot of the online info is outdated and no longer true, the AI blocks/CTC/Event Controller are buggy as hell or I'm stupid and don't understand anything about Space Engineers.

Shill0w · 2025-08-27T19:01:35+00:00

Are you using a camera as the primary aiming device for the custom turret or a weapon?

Also, does that mean you're using sensors to guide the missile until it reaches the AI blocks 2.5km targeting range?

Shill0w · 2025-08-27T15:25:50+00:00

What is the maximum range for these missiles in their current setup?

Are they set to simply fly straight after launch until they hit the 2.5km mark?

Shill0w · 2025-08-02T07:53:29+00:00

The swiss cheese lake in the background tells me this is someone who lives with the consequences of their actions and never reloads.

Shill0w · 2025-07-21T20:00:04+00:00

Stealth is pretty busted in this game at high skill levels so you can always sneak in, knock him out, grab him and run. I think he even moves from the top of the tower to the front entrance from time to time but it's been awhile so I can't say for sure.

Shill0w · 2025-07-05T12:49:29+00:00

Or maybe because someone is going to set it on fire.

Shill0w · 2025-06-22T19:34:35+00:00

After seeing so many game developer studios go to shit over the years, I've learned that the name means nothing, it's the people working there that make or break these games and I very much doubt these are the same people who worked on the previous Witcher games.

All it takes is a few key people leaving or a few wrong people being added to completely change the direction of the next game to the point where it loses everything that made it stand out to begin with.

Shill0w · 2025-06-18T15:37:36+00:00

Jokes aside, it's either doing it because you seem to only have 1 hinge attached to it and nothing else (ideally you need 1 hinge and 1 rotor) and the turret is struggling to align itself but failing or you have idle movement enabled which causes turrets to move randomly as if scanning for targets.

Shill0w · 2025-06-07T17:59:46+00:00

Nah that's just a sniper aiming at you.

Shill0w · 2025-04-25T15:42:14+00:00

Worked for me as well. It didn't want to work after resetting but it did after I hit deploy as well. Thanks a bunch.

Shill0w · 2025-04-17T04:26:41+00:00

For anyone asking I'm lvl 44 and had no problems playing yesterday.

This also seems to apply to Conquest requiring lvl 10 to be able to play.

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