Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord News

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


Facebook Twitter

Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Twitch

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.


Facebook Twitter

Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Twitch

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

Facebook Twitter

Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Twitch

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


Facebook Twitter

Website Facebook Twitter YouTube Twitch