Mount and Blade: Bannerlord combines a wide-open sandbox RPG with a real-time strategy game. Players can recruit their band of warriors and lead them into massive battles. Now, Taleworlds is rolling out a new update to add greater strategic depth to Bannerlord’s real-time battles.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord just received its 1.7.0 update, bringing a range of new content to the sandbox action RPG. This includes the introduction of a new Order of Battle system that lets players arrange their warriors into different formations. The latest patch also improves Bannerlord’s siege AI, making the climactic engagements significantly less janky.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord’s new Order of Battle system makes it easier for players to control large armies in combat. It lets them divide their forces into multiple formations and assign a Captain to each one. In addition, players can add or remove different troop types using sliders, allowing them to set the exact ratio of units they want in each formation. Players can then check in on their formations mid-battle thanks to on-screen cards, which keep the player up-to-date on critical information for each formation. This new feature sounds like it could be a literal game-changer for players commanding large armies late in the game.
The patch also overhauls the AI for Bannerlord’s sieges. Previously, soldiers had trouble navigating ladders and siege towers and would often cluster around a single one. They would also stop raising ladders after taking damage and sometimes attempted to flee after scaling the enemy’s walls. The AI updates fix all of those issues while making defenders more intelligent. They should be more effective at spotting where an attack is coming from and responding accordingly.
Bannerlord players will also notice changes should they choose to lay siege rather than assault a castle directly. When the defenders run out of food, they’ll start taking damage instead of simply dying. The game also now calculates starvation based on percentages rather than absolute numbers. This means that a larger garrison will have a higher proportion of damaged troops than a smaller force would. Bannerlord already did this for mobile parties, and it should make the sieges feel a bit more realistic than before.
In addition to the changes mentioned above, update 1.7.0 also introduces a range of new battlefields to Mount and Blade: Bannerlord. The patch adds 23 new battle maps, bringing the total up to 72. Developer TaleWorlds also plans to continue adding new battlefields in future updates, giving players further reasons to jump back into the medieval sandbox strategy action RPG.
Mount and Blade: Bannerlord is available on PC.
Source: TaleWorlds
