Spend last week doing nothing but playing Bannerlord. War Sails changing map layout has been an improvement, but wish they were bolder with changes. For example Nord lands are Scandinavia-like peninsula north of Sturgia, which is a Scandinavia-like peninsula itself. Strangely vacant too, barring southern shore its all wast empty space, lacking even villages. They should be on separate island, or archipelago, to really make use of their naval focus. Also there needs to be more rivers across Caldaria, ships have either shallow or deep draft, would be nice if some smaller river would be added that allow only shallow draft vessels to pass (again strengthening Nord navy, as all their ships are shallow).
Naval combat somehow feels more clunky than in Viking Conquest. Ship physics occasionally spaz out, ships can get completely swallowed by waves but its but graphic effect that does nothing but obscure player vision, troops cant drown or get washed away from the deck. Performance is abysmal in them, I get crashes in large land battles, but in naval combat even couple hundred troops on handful of ships can bring the game down.
Stealth implementation is predictably a mess an undercooked. You have separate set of equipment for it, in addition to along standard combat and civilian clothes, and its only used when sneaking into bandit hideouts, and given how easy is it to be spotted, instantly giving you mission over, it is far easier to simply assault the place as before (a thing that appereantly was removed from War Sails, and only added after the launch due to player outcry about forced stealth sucking). Also if you want to sneak into town now you have to run around trying to reach your "contact" first, while avoiding guards who have suspicion meter, if it fills out you get instantly arrested, not even an option to escape. Sometimes the game spawns you right in front of multiple guards, basically instantly getting arrested.
Nords as a faction are Sturgia, but even more so. No cavalry whatsoever, ok archers, excellent infantry. All units get bonuses when fighting on ships. Aesthetically they dont really stand out from Sturgia either, you can even tell most of their troops apart. Both are infantry focused chainmail wearing vikings. Both in gameplay and look they should be more barbaric. They are bunch of nordic tribes who according to lore until recently didnt even have any towns, but somehow have industrial capacity to outfit their entire a
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