SP - General Early Game Too Short and Uneventful

[Heafodban]

The early game is too short and uneventful for my liking. Part of the inspiration for this post is this side character I made. I'm playing with the settings on realistic, I only rely on auto-save, and I've downloaded a mod that gives me a fairly high chance to die in battle, yet without much effort I'm already a lord and have a fief. I don't feel like I had to earn it. Here's what I suggest.

1. Make men more expensive to recruit and upkeep. It would be cool if early on many players end up forming their first warband out of looters they took prisoner. Putting together a warband one man at a time like that could be fun and rewarding, and it could make the player feel more like they earned their later success by starting from nowhere.
2. Make more sub-factions/minor factions. It would be cool if there were: poachers; deserters; highwaymen; cultists?; smugglers; and so on.
3. Make tournaments harder and rarer. It's very easy to earn a lot of money and renown early on by doing tournaments. This is mostly because the AI units don't turn quick enough, so the player can walk in circles around individual enemies and they can't really fight back. I also recommend making tournaments more varied by having things like ranged-only matches.
4. Fix the exploit where the player can retreat over and over and regain their horse's health, and their projectiles. Also, retreating in the middle of a battle (as opposed to retreating by physically running away) should be an automatic loss for the player, and prevent them from attempting another fight.
5. This suggestion is more outlandish than the others (since it would take a lot more work), but maybe have some minor factions you could join. So before the player is renowned enough to join a main faction, they could skill up and gain renown by fighting in small conflicts between minor factions. One faction could be the smugglers I mentioned in suggestion 2. Your main enemy as a smuggler might be patrolmen. The game already has hideouts, so there's some precedence for sub-faction territories where these kinds of fights could happen. One thing I have in mind is the ruins of an old castle in the woods. Maybe locations like this could be permanent, but since they're so worn down no main faction would be interested in capturing them. So that would leave minor factions free to have turf wars on a level below the main wars between the main factions.

 

[MightyMidgit]

Make men more expensive to recruit and upkeep. It would be cool if early on many players end up forming their first warband out of looters they took prisoner. Putting together a warband one man at a time like that could be fun and rewarding, and it could make the player feel more like they earned their later success by starting from nowhere. As things stand now, I feel like very little work goes into becoming a lord and being granted a fief.

I like this idea. You are essentially an unknown but can create an army immediately and effortlessly, and that just seems off. Although, it was always like that in any Mount&Blade game, even if you started out as a peasant.

Make more sub-factions/minor factions. It would be cool if there were: poachers; deserters; highwaymen; cultists?; smugglers; and so on.

Cultists? Reminds me of the Prophesy of Pendor overhaul. I would not mind more variety so long as it's balanced enough that the world is not overly cluttered. Again, Prophesy of Pendor had a great balance in this with a ton of minor factions like knight orders and such.

Make tournaments harder and rarer. It's very easy to earn a lot of money and renown early on by doing tournaments. This is mostly because the AI units don't turn quick enough, so the player can walk in circles around individual enemies and they can't really fight back. I also recommend making tournaments more varied by having things like ranged-only matches.

I think most of the issue in tournaments is that you deal just as much damage as everyone else regardless of your combat skills. You could have 10 in 2-handed weapons and still kill someone in a single hit and attack just as fast as a lord. Warband's tournaments were so much harder because you were dealing a fraction of the damage against anyone at first, and attacked much slower.

Fix the exploit where the player can retreat over and over and regain their horse's health, and their projectiles. Also, retreating in the middle of a battle (as opposed to retreating by physically running away) should be an automatic loss for the player, and prevent them from attempting another fight.

I do not agree that retreating should be an automatic loss. There are tactical retreats. But that being said, retreating should break combat and COST something, like troops being killed as they try to retreat, calculated similarly to auto-battles.

This suggestion is more outlandish than the others (since it would take a lot more work), but maybe have some minor factions you could join. So before the player is renowned enough to join a main faction, they could skill up and gain renown by fighting in small conflicts between minor factions. One faction could be the smugglers I mentioned in suggestion 2. Your main enemy as a smuggler might be patrolmen. The game already has hideouts, so there's some precedence for sub-faction territories where these kinds of fights could happen. One thing I have in mind is the ruins of an old castle in the woods. Maybe locations like this could be permanent, but since they're so worn down no main faction would be interested in capturing them. So that would leave minor factions free to have turf wars on a level below the main wars between the main factions.

I like this idea.

 

[TONSofAG]

1. I don't like this idea personally. I read this as make the grind even grindier. Also, I don't recruit looters ever and would rather not be forced to do so. In fact, I wish there was a feature to execute them because I don't really sell them either. Wouldn't mind seeing this suggestion as kind of a difficulty slider though.

2. Awesome. This would be awesome in my opinion... long as they were actually different factions than what we have now and actually played different and or had different effects on the game's environment like in areas where there are poachers, there's more meat for sale or something like that.

3. You're probably right about this one. I mean you are, but I'm one of the few talentless players that don't have it so easy in combat.

4. Well yeah, that needs fixin.

5. Would be great, but like you said, that would be challenging to add in my opinion... but still worth it.

 

[Heafodban]

I read this as make the grind even grindier.

I think the late game grind is really bad (lords come back from defeat and muster new armies so quickly), but since early game is only temporary, the grind overall would be less if I had my way. In theory you'd only create one or two of these super crumby warbands in total, before having the wealth and renown to start recruiting units.

 

[TONSofAG]

I think the late game grind is really bad (lords come back from defeat and muster new armies so quickly), but since early game is only temporary, the grind overall would be less if I had my way. In theory you'd only create one or two of these super crumby warbands in total, before having the wealth and renown to start recruiting units.

I see your points there. I think it couldn't hurt to try it to see how it plays.

 

[FredFirefly]

I am fairly new to the franchise (never played warband, bought bannerlord a week ago after seeing a few videos and a friend recommending it, and joined the forum today). To me the early game was not too short or easy, but mostly because I didn't know what I was doing, I was learning all the mechanics of the game on the go. But I am pretty sure once you know the logic of the game, you make your way to lvl 3 clan in the blink of an eye. Then, you also need to find the balance so a new player doesn't get scared of the difficulty.

1. On my first game, during the tutorial I was thinking "omg, I need to spend 100 coins for my first five men, but then I have only 900 left, and I don't know what I can do with that" also, my first army ended up dead very soon because I didn't know how to give orders for the first battles I did. But yeah, it's too easy to make a decent first army of 20 men by visiting every village around. And I think in villages, you should only be able to find peasants or equivalents, and if you want the lvl 1 unit of whatever country you are to get something decent, you need to head to the towns, where it's more expensive.

3. (nothing to say about your second point) I wouldn't make tournaments as they are now rarer or harder.I would rather, as you also suggest make more variances, and the tournaments we have for now would be the basic ones that you find very often but that are not very rewarding, and then you would have bigger and harder tournaments that would occur less often and be way more rewarding. I could imagine a system of yearly city related tournament specialised in a specific weapon style, and the NPCs with the best stats for that specific weapon if possible (not dead or imprisonned) would join those tournaments. Also AI might need a slight boost to compete in the pit.

4. I actually didn't know there was such an exploit until today. I found out I could retreat from bandits hideouts without any penalty other than I cannot retry on that same night, so I cleaned a lvl 4 bandit hideout by going in, killing a few guys, retreating and coming back the next night, again and again for 4 or 5 in-game days. I agree running away should be a loss (actually thought it was).

5. Love the idea of starting off with a bunch of thieves, and getting your first settlement out of an old castle ruins. Might take a lot of work indeed, especially if we think about adding some of those here and there on the map.

 

[Wehveechen]

I'm kind of on the fence on this. There's hardly enough content for players who want to stay in early game because they don't want to pursue lands (merchants, bandits, similar type of characters) and if you intend to conquer the world, early game is just in the way.
I feel like giving us more things to do is a better option than making the existing things grindier

 

[Heafodban]

I am fairly new to the franchise

That's no excuse. I've only been playing since 2007.

 

[MightyMidgit]

I am fairly new to the franchise (never played warband, bought bannerlord a week ago after seeing a few videos and a friend recommending it, and joined the forum today). To me the early game was not too short or easy, but mostly because I didn't know what I was doing, I was learning all the mechanics of the game on the go. But I am pretty sure once you know the logic of the game, you make your way to lvl 3 clan in the blink of an eye. Then, you also need to find the balance so a new player doesn't get scared of the difficulty.

Very valid opinion.

What we could have is another difficulty option in campaign options that scales the difficulty of recruitment more than just the number of recruits available (what the current difficulty slider does). Maybe have it increase the cost and upkeep of recruits to slow down early game. The sliders could work something like this:

Recruitment Number: Same as the current slider, changing the number of recruits available for the amount the people offering the recruits like you.
Recruitment Cost: Scale from 1x to 5x, increasing both the cost of recruiting (so a recruit that costs 50g would cost 250g to recruit on the highest difficulty), and increasing the daily maintenance cost (so a recruit costing 5g a day would cost 25g).

Anyone who has played to late game know that these prices are nothing with the money you have in mid and late game, so it would only slow down early game to make it take some time to make a name for yourself. Drastically slowing early game might be boring with how little content there is right now, but once more content gets added as development continues, I think this might make the game better, and certainly keep the player from conquering the world in 5 years in a game that is supposed to have an inheritance system with posterity being a major gameplay factor.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

Have no issues with early game, feels pretty balanced money wise to except companions being dirt cheap... however the late game is to short since there´s so many wars constantly going on so theres like only like 2-3 factions left by day 940 now in this new patch, which is better then last patches but is also pretty much early mid game. Could thin em earlier if youre pumping it aggressively to ofc.

Well if you know how to cheese the AI and the game they should def work on the AI and mechanics to counter that (which they fixed a little on the ladders and towers now in sieges except when they climb down xD ). But why cheese (exploit) in the first place, its for weaklings!
Also yes on that one that Tournaments are to frequent in my opinion

Also liked that idea that you cant fight again if you retreated and you should be presented what you have as an secondary choice on the map (surrender / flee if you have troops left for it / retreat if you engaged as a secondary party) or have no ammo left and horse in same condition if you choose to go in again.

And as you said would be cool with new smaller factions incl bandits but think that have to come much later after they fixed all the stuff that should come in to the game which is on their table most prob