A new Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord mod is in development and it does something pretty interesting -- it turns Bannerlord into a real-time strategy game in the style of Age of Empires.
A big part of Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord's appeal is a robust modding ability. Although there were some problems with the SDK functionality last year, modders soldiered on and created some interesting projects including a Wheel of Time mod, a Warhammer mod, and updated versions of older mods such as the one that let you play as a regular nobody. Now, a new mod is in development that's a little different from the rest -- it represents a full-on genre shift and changes this sandbox RPG into a real-time strategy game.
Meet the Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord Mod: Age of Bannerlords
Age of Bannerlords is a Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord mod that converts the sandbox RPG into a real-time strategy game. Naturally, it has all of the RTS hallmarks you'd expect like unit formations and resources. What's particularly surprising, though, is that this mod has been in development for barely two weeks.
"I started this project this Friday after work," read a Reddit comment from the modder Bloc. "So I spent around 2.5 days on it at tops - not much of a time to turn a TPS/FPS game into RTS. It definitely has some bugs in it and AI needs a lot of extra polishing to be competitive like real AoE games."
Despite being in a fairly early state, the gameplay looks surprisingly robust -- there's also a full gameplay video from late last month that shows it in action sans any commentary or cuts:
As with most RTS games, there are winning conditions. Players will have to either destroy the enemy town center or kill all of the enemy villagers in order to win the game.
Unfortunately, it's unclear if this mod will see a public release. A recent Reddit comment from Bloc suggests that he might make it available for other modders to use as a dependency module similar to the Freelancer mod, but he has not yet indicated whether or not this mod will be publicly released for players to enjoy.
For now, we've reached out to Bloc for more details about his plans for this mod. In the meantime, there's plenty of good content (and a ton of great mods) in the base game -- you can buy Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord for PC in Steam Early Access at the price of $49.99 or your regional equivalent.
Update (May 6, 2022 - 4:05 PM) - We've heard back from Bloc. He explained that he tends not to release most of his mods to the public. However, he hasn't ruled it out just yet for Age of Bannerlords. For now, he's continuing to focus on the development of this mod.
