Here's why you're not getting that castle.

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OK, but mechanically that is unsatisfying. The three candidates for who should receive the fief are the king, the guy who took it, and and influential noble with the ability for the player to challenge the outcome at the cost of relations and influence.

That would be a much more transparent and fair system for the player to be involved in.
 
OK, but mechanically that is unsatisfying. The three candidates for who should receive the fief are the king, the guy who took it, and and influential noble with the ability for the player to challenge the outcome at the cost of relations and influence.

That would be a much more transparent and fair system for the player to be involved in.

It'd feel less rewarding, though, IMO. When you go from a "never mentioned" to a lynchpin of the kingdom that's involved in most of the votes for fief bestowal, you can proudly think, "They used to tell me I was nothin'. NOTHIN'. Now they tell me that I'm SOMETHIN'."
 
So feudal kings are basically running protection rackets then?

I haven't really noticed particular trend. It almost seams random. But then again I haven't been paying it much attention.
 
What is new is the different kind of transparency of the vassal opinions. In Warband, you had to talk to the other vassals to see who they supported and usually there was at least a couple who believed it should go to the person who took it - so even though the king could over-rule, or someone else had more support for other reasons, you always had a sense that you were at least a consideration for it. Also, those who supported someone else always gave a reason why.

This. It felt better and more organic in Warband.
 
It'd feel less rewarding, though, IMO. When you go from a "never mentioned" to a lynchpin of the kingdom that's involved in most of the votes for fief bestowal, you can proudly think, "They used to tell me I was nothin'. NOTHIN'. Now they tell me that I'm SOMETHIN'."
Not really. The system needs to be easily understandable to the player (why are these people being nominated?) and also consistently reward the player for engaging with the core mechanics of the game (leading an army). Remember, even then you are only getting a CHANCE to get the fief while competing with the King and another influential noble probably from a tier 5 clan.

If you have to wait until you're tier 5 to have a chance to be considered for fiefs player aren't going to want to even join a faction or get very involved in it beyond getting their preliminary fiefs until they grind to that renown level. And it is a loooooong grind. Whats worse is that by the time you achieve that level there probably won't be any more fiefs left to win...

Reward the player consistently and reward the player fairly. Its very Pavlovian but that's what all good games are at the end of the day.
 
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It's all well and good until you get given a fief on the other side of the map that you don't want and have no way of saying "Actually, I don't want this, give it to someone else" like taking your name out of contention for example
 
Relationships are very important also.

4 important factors :
-how many (commander parties & strength) you have / how many fiefs you have (this effect is biggest)
-relationship between voters and candidates
-capturer / king / player effect (all 3 have a bit bonus)
-positions of your settlements compared with new one (if they are close it is better)

plus a bit randomization
 
Doesnt it boil down to influence?

I read somewhere (maybe reddit, maybe a devblog) that:

The ruler can overrule a council decision by spending an amount of influence equal to the highest supported candidate minus the lowest supported candidate.
So if Lord A has 500 support and lord B has 20, the King needs to expend [500-20] 480 influence to give the fief to someone other than Lord A
That someone could be lord B, or the king himself (and if you're spending that much influence, you're gonna give it to yourself lol).

Diplomacy is so shallow right now, and rebellions arent in, so I would assume eventually a king in the above position would be programmed to use a weighed dice roll, something like:
  • It would consider the opinions & current "power" (be it money, #fiefs, #influence, #troops - or a uniform metric considering all of these) of the candidate vassals before deciding to give it to Lord A / B or himself.
    • The AI might compute that giving it to himself would risk a rebellion, whilst giving it to lord A would make that lord too powerful, so it'd give it to lord B.
Or atleast that's what I hope they'll eventually do with it, as It's mathematically modellable:
  • Create a "powerscore" value for each vassal (and the king) - derived from their gold/influence/troops/fiefs, with weights attached.
    • E.g. PS = [5*#castle fief]+[20*#city fief]+[0.5*gold]+[2.0*troops]+[1.15*influence] to output a singular value
      • Weights could even be variables, fluctuating with the king's personality - a warlike king might value troops even more than a weight of 2 (in my above example), but might weight cities less.
  • Make the King always try and be X%[e.g. 20%] more powerful than the next vassal.
  • Make the king always try and ensure that the weakest vassal is at most X% [e.g.40%] weaker than the strongest vassal.
  • Prioritise the most powerful, most unhappy vassals [if there are multiple weak candidates in a vote] to maintain realm stability.
    • I.e. a cross-reference between "powerscore" and vassal opinion of king.
Using these rules (or something akin to them) the king AI would then allot their influence to issue fiefs and decide on votes, with an aim of creating a healthy swarm of happy vassals.
 
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Mechanically, it seems that clans without a fief are prioritized when deciding who gets what, and then after that, it goes by clan rank. That's how it seems to me.

But let's talk about why personally laying siege to and taking a castle doesn't automatically give you the castle, since so many people think this is ridiculous. I get why you'd think that, but the key to understanding this is quite simple: You have to step outside our modern, meritocratic mindset and step into the mindset of a feudal society.

When you join a faction, you swear an oath to your king. That king is your liege. Everything you do is now in his name, for his glory. It's quite a serious oath. Historically, violating that oath could easily be punished by death. It's true that in practice, many feudal lords served themselves first, but they had to at least maintain the appearance of acting in service to the crown. More importantly for this discussion... Laws and obligations were, regardless, tied to the king. In Bannerlord, when you take that oath, you are your king's subject for better or worse.

In other words, when you take a castle, you're taking it for your king. The castle belongs to your king until he sees fit to bestow it upon a subject. Why does he deserve it? Because he's the king. Your enemies are his enemies - and by extension, the enemies of all your peers. I know ingame it seems like fluff, but step into your character's shoes for a moment. Say you're walking down the street and a group of ten hooligans beats the daylights out of you and takes your money. Now imagine that there's a person who would respond to that by sending a literal army of thousands to hunt down and punish those hooligans and everyone who works with them, and would deploy portions of that army to protect you the next time it happens. That's literally what we're dealing with here.

As long as the king has the authority necessary to uphold that arrangement, he deserves what you take. Now, should he give you the castle you earned without any help? Maybe. That's for you to decide. If you think you earned the castle and he won't give it to you, you have two options: You can humbly accept it and let everyone know you acted for the glory of king and country, or you can become discontent. The latter happened in history! A lot, in fact. If it bugs you enough, you can always leave his service. If you feel you're not getting your due anywhere, you can always start your own kingdom and keep as much as you want. Just be careful you don't disgruntle your own vassals the way your former king upset you...

In short, when you swear fealty to a king, you act in his name, not your own. That's the essence of feudalism, and that's why the castle isn't yours, no matter how hard you fought for it. Your reward is glory and renown, which will eventually let your king know that you're indispensable and will earn you a seat at the table when lands are doled out.
This is mostly true, but it should be stressed that historally a monarch's power is not absolute and they are constantly attempting to balance control of resources to hold onto power. Warband and Bannerlord attempt to simulate this in a variety of ways. In bannerlord this means building a basis of strength among established clans, but the player acts as a disruptive agent by being a non-established clan that comes out of no where.

Ideally combat prowess on the battlefield would make a monarch desire to quickly reward an up and coming lord by giving them control of the fief they just unilaterally took. What's interesting is that from a monarch's perspective, it might be better to instead go after the dude who came out of no where and started Napeleoning everything, find him and execute him and his entire family for being a threat to the King's rule.

 
I agree with everything OP said and his reasoning for it but it would be nice if it was explained more in game.
 
Lol I joined the Southern empire, rode with their army to a city and we conquored it. I noticed I was on the list for the who it would go to at 33%, with another at 66% and was quite miffed to find out that I got the thief. The city was at the southern corner of the map, surrounded by enemy terretory and the rest of the army proceeded to bugger off and leave me to my own devices.

I assume I got it because I just joined and dident have anything yet but it was a nasty suprise. Since then I also havent gotten any thiefs, however im also not THAT active in fighting the enemies of the crown (on the account that my home is bloody miles away from it....) so that might have something to do with it. :roll:

That said im slowly getting my military machine up and running and am looking to be more active. Will be interesting to see if it improves that rate that I gain thiefs :grin:
 
In my current playthrough I was only awarded castles twice, both of them were deep in enemy territory at that time so there was absolutely 0 chance to defend them. In addition, now that I became stronger and participate in sieges or even siege alone, my name is always on the list of candidates, but I never gain a fief recently. I read that most likely those vassals will get them who have a fief closer to the recently conquered settlement. The problem is that 2 former Empire vassals (both tier 5 clan) and my "beloved" khan Monchug owes everything in the newly conquered lands, and the settlements got assigned to one of the 3, but not me despite having literally 0 fiefs.
In addition, Monchug started to act like an Emperor, every time when there is a council which would strengthen his positions or the positions of the tier 5 clans, the outcome will be in his favour and in the favour of tier 5 clans. Since I always vote against his crazy ideas, I reached the point where I have -30 relationship with his clan...now the idea of defecting his khanate seems pretty attractive to me, heck I am even thinking about joining another faction just to be the enemy of Monchug... in case I get lucky, I could capture and execute this greedy despot :grin:
 
What is odd for me is that they keep giving me castle and I don't even want them. I abstain from the vote and still get the castle. My relation with the Ruler is -16 and they still give me the castle. Actually I think it is just a sick joke of the ruler, they give me the castle furthest from where I am interested in having a castle and it is usually always the first target of the enemy faction every time we go to war with them meaning I have to nursemaid my castle....that I don't want....constantly.

As far as keeping what you capture, yeah that was a nice feature of Warband. That way at least you could kind of pick were you wanted your holdings. This was especially important if you wanted to defect and create your own kingdom so you could pick a strategic starting position. With this system, even when I eventually get awarded 2-3 holdings, they are so spread out that I realistically have to let all but my main location wither on the vine. I guess realistically, a Rule would actually do that on purpose to prevent a lord from consolidating his power and rebelling hehe so there is that.

What I would like to see though is a compromise system of the two systems. I am OK with the voting but I think you should ALWAYS be able to use your influence to force your way into one of the candidate slots. Call it going to the King and saying, "Hey my man, you know I have a lot of influence in the kingdom so can you hook me up here?) Maybe make it cost 1000 influence to bump a candidate. Also that candidate would be royally pissed off so give him like a -10 relation because of it. Finally you might not have the support you need to get the holding AFTER you have spent 1000 influence, even if you spend ANOTHER 300 influence to try to sway the boat. This way you at least have a way of possibly getting the holding(s) you want rather than have everything left to chance and getting that castle in the arse end of no where that you don't even want.
 
Relationships are very important also.

4 important factors :
-how many (commander parties & strength) you have / how many fiefs you have (this effect is biggest)
-relationship between voters and candidates
-capturer / king / player effect (all 3 have a bit bonus)
-positions of your settlements compared with new one (if they are close it is better)

plus a bit randomization
No matter how many cities i capture, the voting is always between the 3 biggest clans in the faction. The ruling clan and 2 other level 5 clans.

There are 7-9 other clans that barely have a fief, between 1-3 at max. Meanwhile the faction leader has 15. And the other 2 have around 7-10?
 
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Know what a lord is without a fief? A lord in title only.

The only kings that historically allowed his lords to have no lands of their own were kings that were quickly assassinated or rebelled against and over-thrown. The games mechanics clearly needs work, kings should not be keeping any lands gained if he has a single clan with nothing of their own.
 
Quite true. It is not a real vote as such. The game just needs to add a bit of info below the Influence "vote" telling you that you will probably not win the castle even if you have the highest Influence due to A, B, C, etc.
 
This is mostly true, but it should be stressed that historally a monarch's power is not absolute and they are constantly attempting to balance control of resources to hold onto power.

Technically true, but this was far more true of the High Medieval period than it was the early middle ages. Charlemagne and his successors are a pretty good example of that fact. Of course I can't say this as an absolute either, because every culture was a little different... But for the most part, early kings were considered absolute rulers. If for no other reason than loyalty being the norm, and the full force of the realm being arrayed against any who deigned to disobey the king's will.
 
Yep fully agree, right now I think the influence system is great, it makes perfect sense. You're a vassal, you're not a king, not sure why people aren't understanding it. I assembled a big army and took a castle from the Aserai b as a Vassal to King Derthert of Vlandia on my first playthrough, easily the most enjoyable and best moment of the game for me so far. But the castle went straight to him and I knew that was going to happen, I already had a castle, and realistically it would make sense that the king gets the most say and has the largest piece of the pie.
 
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