Heroic NPCs: Battlefield Promotions And Personality

Instead of special recruitable heroic NPCs perhaps you could turn an individual soldier, of your choice, into a nameable heroic NPC. The total number of special NPCs could be, say, half of your total stacks for troop types. Coupled with some way to track stats on your soldiers it would allow a kind of roleplaying aspect as you decided on battlefield promotions. Combine that with making special NPCs killable and you'd have some real drama on your hands protecting heroes you've become particularly attached to but you'd also be able to replace them with new heroes. Much along the lines of an X-Com where players could get very attached to particular named squaddies as they rise through the ranks.

To add a bit more of a sense of individuality to them maybe you could only "suggest" what skills an NPC should learn but a hidden personality trait might actually dictate which skills they buy if your suggestion doesn't take.

I think that would be awesome. Having heroic NPCs would be much cooler than Borcha/Marnid. You could just have a database of 20 generic conversation/personalities, and each heroic NPC just randomly selects one of those upon creation.

This idea is great, I love it.

I would really appreciate this change, and it wouldn't be hard to do.

Name generator, etc.

Make it so that any foot unit that performs heroically in battle has the 'chance' to promote to a leader if you have free leader slots.

A popup could come up that says "soandso has distinguished themselves on the battlefield" - and a popup comes up where you get to review the stats.

The stats would depend on the troop type. Random, but influenced by the type of troop it was. Random name, and random appearance weighted by the troop type.

At this point you can choose to either merely congratulate them, or promote them to Lieutenancy. If you promote them to Lieutenancy you get them as a hero.

I would also like it if heroes could be killed.

Make them fight better, whatever but them being invulnerable is weak.

Another way to get heroes could be enemy prisoner train rescue missions...

And/Or a hero could arise from any troop type based on several sorts of spectacular battlefield exploits: many enemy kills, unusual enemy kills, tremendous damage delivered, incredible missile shot, etc. A nameless veteran footman transformed in the crucible of battle into a valued member of team Strange.

Nox's idea to limit heroes to available leader slots would reduce chances of having too many chiefs and not enought indians.

Now that I like!

Seems to me, at this point in the development, we're mostly playing against the system to achieve goals we set ourselves rather than trying to "win" something be it a high score or a war. The less predictable, and more dramatic, those systems are the more friction we've got to play against. Having heroes arise dramatically during a battle like that would really play to this.

The only problem, possibly, I see with this would be if that happened so frequently it became a nuisance or so infrequently it made it impractical to really count on getting heros. If I had to err, I'd err towards infrequency. That way you'd be more likely to treasure and want to nurture whomever you ended up with. Might even shift your tactics around to suit your heroes rather than trying to bend them to suit you.

Yeah. I don't have too much to contribute to this, but I'll say that I like it, and hope it'll end up in there.

Sign me up to this! - I love this idea.

I'd like to see either this, or my/the proposed army leader idea.

Why not both? You could pull "Generals" from your NPC heros who have a certain level of Leadership (and perhaps Tactics).

i know it would be good in this form we could have real armys not just small battles.

I'm 100% for this idea also. The more control, the better. With Ray Liotta, golden.

Perhaps one day we shall see this idea mentioned again. One day.

I would like to be able to talk to my units and actually have a bit of a conversation with them, rather than just ask what their stats are. A randomly generated name could be in order.

Perhaps if you do something heroic like save a town from a siege, or act as a rearguard of the count's army and buy the army some time when people attack from behind through a narrow gorge and you only have a handful of men yet you fend them all off or something, Perhaps then, you could go to the count who rewards you, and everyone in your party by being knighted. (In this case, i consider the knight to be a hero class, because knights weren't as common as m&b makes out.)

ya this way you could send out war partys and such

Ingolifs said:

I would like to be able to talk to my units and actually have a bit of a conversation with them, rather than just ask what their stats are. A randomly generated name could be in order.

Perhaps if you do something heroic like save a town from a siege, or act as a rearguard of the count's army and buy the army some time when people attack from behind through a narrow gorge and you only have a handful of men yet you fend them all off or something, Perhaps then, you could go to the count who rewards you, and everyone in your party by being knighted. (In this case, i consider the knight to be a hero class, because knights weren't as common as m&b makes out.)

Click to expand...

As Ingolifs says Knights weren't common because they were considered the Special Forces of today. As a Knight you were on step below royalty and as such had alot of status symbols given to you by the lords, such as lands, slaves, money, weapons, armour and the most valuable status icon were in fact horses! A horse was almost an imortalised being worth so much money that the horses well being of a Knight was worth more than all his serfs and slaves put together.

As such the 'Knights' in M&B should become Mounted Swordsman like the seargents of invantry and only apon completion of valuable missions they become knighted[/b]

As mentioned the ability to make certain units Officers would be great but i think that these officers would need to be a new class in there own as their sole purpose is leadership.

As such a Fresh Lieutenant becomes much as you were when you started the game, cluless about leadership but with battle experience a great bonus.

These Officers should take a command slot of yours but then have as a Lieutenant 2 slots one filled for them and another that replaces the slot they took in your command positon.

As these officers advance they gain levels of experience a little different. Don't know if anyone else has noticed but your own personal exp is exponetial compared to others in you party. Take mandrid for example; he was a lvl 11 when i got him at lvl 5 i'm now a lvl 26 and he's only lvl 13! Because you gain massive amounts of experience for your kills and share a bit through the party it takes them ages to lvl.

So in order to remedy this i think that if they system of Officers is added which i hope is the units under the officer also contribute to the amount of experience he gets. So base CHARISMA for Lieutenant is 3 with with 1 Leadership skill, his own slot +1. From here you have direct control over progression of their lvls.

From this also you gain an Honour Gaurd of Officers with a very large army directly under your control GENERAL. Should make for some interesting battle scenarios

MUHAHAHA my own warparty here i come!

I still believe the original idea of battlefield promotions shouldn't be consigned to the dustbin of M&B history but rather implemented when/if modding tools are available or incorporated into M&B's final version.

This thread is old, I wonder what's the status with these suggestions

phantom_tranger mentioned it, but didn't emphasize it enough:

Promoting heroes is one thing, that is quite enjoyable, but imagine giving a lot of troops to one of your luitenants and sending him to hunt down bandits! Or raise money, or capture prisoners!

There should be two stages of NPC heroes: companion hero who can fight with you, and if he gains enough experience he could be promoted to let's say leader hero who may lead troops on his own. You can give him a starter bunch of minions and orders on his goal.

Example orders:
-hunt bandits
-take prisoners
-trade and make money
-wage war on opposing party (agressive)
-help allies (defensive)
-gather troops

Becuase promoting "leader heroes" needs a lot of experience (especially since they die quite often), this whole scenario would only be available when you're high level, giving the
end game a new atmosphere. In the beginning you were the one who had to count the coins and kill bandits. Now you're the one giving the orders!


Thus far as much as I've seen, the following four will keep the game interesting in it's various stages:

1. Keeping yourself alive and gaining enough money to buy good equipment and a good horse - the beginning of the game, usually my favorite part

2. Doing quests, taking prisoners and hunting down bandits and such. Also gathering troops and promoting them when possible. building your army.

3. Waging war against one fraction or killing high level bandits, accomplishing hight level quests. I'd put castle sieges here since that is the real new thing. - I'm a newcomer and I haven't joined any fraction yet and don't want to (like to be neutral), so I don't know what that gives in game atmosphere (I really hope it's not too easy to buy knights... one of my favorite things is training my minions via battles)

4. Promoting and sending your leaders to do your bidding and becoming a true Lord Of The Land (tm). Let's say at this point of the game, both fractions ally against you, so you still need to plan your strategy (not just sit back and wait for the dough). It would be also fun leading your troops to rescue one of your captive leaders.

John

realy good idea. mabye ranks u could promote them to. like as new person, like "fighter" or something and then to a new rank then like a genreal that is like a hero. u could promote/demote them at will, but if u get a new guy at a tavern then make him a genreal or hero, he slacks and gets killed real quick.but then u would have to name them all and see how they did in a battle, wich might take a while, but ever i like how u can equip marnid and borcha with wat u want and u can lv them, i would like to see more people like that comeing straight from a regulare guy u recruited