Rather than looking at more ways to punish player for Executing, change AI behavior.

[Hugo_Stiglitz]

I've recently read in one of TW's latest posts they're looking at more ways of punishing the player for executing nobles in game. I don't feel this is the correct approach. While executing should have certain repercussions, I feel the current penalties are extreme and are in fact quite ridiculous.

Perhaps we could explore fixing the issue of Nobles not having an heir and consider giving players more incentives not to execute. Incentives that don't involve massive and all encompassing penalties for the player.

- Check out the Fear Mod that makes Nobles shy away from player or other AI that have beat the crap out of them in battle. Implement this type feature in game.

- Put a stop to the mechanic that allows a defeated noble to magically reappear with a small army a day or three after resoundingly defeating them.

- Imprisonment could perhaps last a minimum set amount of time.

- Ransoming and expanded bartering options for release could be easier and thus more frequent. Give players a reason to release or barter and an easier method of interacting with the family/clan involved. AI could send messengers to the player to barter for a family member's release offering troops, horses, grain and coin in exchange for a noble.

- Mods that never allow escape break the game for AI. One faction will capture 3/4 of game world's nobles I've seen it first hand. This leads to steamrolling the map by one faction. Permanent imprisonment breaks the game also when the player captures all the nobles. There's a need for an expedient method for AI to replace captured generals and field commanders with weaker commanders and captains.

- A "Severe Wounds" mechanic for player and for AI. The player and and nobles that are downed in a battle have a chance of receiving severe wounds and must rest in a castle for X number of days prior to being able to move around the map. 25% chance for player, 75% chance for AI nobles downed in battle. Seeking the care of a shaman or special NPC healer only available in castles would speed up the healing process somewhat but not instant. No lingering effects as far as permanent disability or permanent negative traits as seen in Viking Conquest with the severe wounds mechanic. This would put a stop to those pesky nobles reappearing with a 100 man stack or an army a day after you beat the crap out of them and it's an immersive answer to the problem.

- Consider offering more +rep and payment in gold or equipment for releasing a noble after battle. "I'll give you 3000 gold and 10 horses if you release me". +Rep with the clan of the released prisoner as well. This type of mechanic could go by player level, player's rep and the captured noble's status and wealth.

- A "Blood for Blood" mechanic with slider. If a player executes members of a certain clan, those clan members are more likely to execute a player's captured companion or family member if they're captured by that specific clan. Not the entire faction, just the specific clan! Perhaps even the player being executed if captured with the ability to appoint his/her heirs. This could be turned on or off in Campaign Settings via off, easy(companions only executed), moderate(companions and family members), and hardcore(main character can be executed but with heirs).

Just food for thought guys and gals. Don't hate ?

 

[Ghost_awss]

I agree, they also need to add a chance of death on the battlefield. It just too many of them at the endgame, traveling in a little packs, and being annoying as flys

 

[gq87]

Personally, I never execute. I do agree that although they have changed how quickly defeated nobles get back into the field, they still can come back at you with a full army within 6-8 days. This makes holding onto your newly won territories difficult. Rather than having quick respawns, sieges need to be more difficult for the attacker or take longer. I know this is fantasy, but historically, to reduce a castle as done in the game in ever instance here, the attacker would need 10 times the number of defenders and could fully expect to lose over half their men. Now, this would not work for this game, but requiring the attacker to force some sort of weakness in the fortification before attacking would be good or giving stat bonuses to units defending fiefs would be better. This would make sieges more costly, and slow down the steam-rolling effect. AI need to also prioritize reducing enemy fortifications in the middle of their territory.

 

[110951667]

Agree, and I want to add a few things.
- The lords need to be able to die in the battlefield.
- The lords need not to charge into the enemy if he/she has a bow.
- The factions need to have a way to promote(generate) new lords to replace the deseased one. All factions have a noble/highborn troop tree, not allowing any of them means 0 social movility for them as well, what a tragedy!
- The factions need to have a way to generate new ladies when a new lord was generated as his relatives or direct family members.
- The factions need to have a way to generate new clans when a new lord was generated and having an existed clan to replace the ruling clan if the king/empress was killed.

Instead of tooling the relationship between kings and vassels, a liquidisable power shifting system could do the job much better. Since there are already mods that creates new wanderer companions or letting the hero die, and the game itself already has a way to generate babys and villager's daughters, lords generation and replacement mustn't be a development chanllege at all for TW.

 

[Hugo_Stiglitz]

I agree, they also need to add a chance of death on the battlefield. It just too many of them at the endgame, traveling in a little packs, and being annoying as flys

WOW! ???

Time to get out the calculator and see if it's a doable battle.

 

[black_bulldog]

I agree, they also need to add a chance of death on the battlefield. It just too many of them at the endgame, traveling in a little packs, and being annoying as flys

This was one of the things in Warband that use to annoy the **** out of me. I could never tell how many opponents I was facing and inevitably I had to rely on my terrible mental arthritic.

 

[durbal]

Armies should be based on available resources to supply them (gold and food), not necessarily lords to lead them. Too bad the economy is broken because of dumb loot prices and an MMORPG-style progression system that it seems to be derived from. Until the economy is fixed and makes sense this issue will never be adequately resolved.

 

[NordicWill]

Agreed. I made a thread last month on solutions or diplomacy that would make it less annoying and more fun.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I executed everyone by myself and claimed the map in one game and the current penalties basically are meaningless.

Clans lose relations: They can't help you anyways. They show up with 50% recruits and even if they have a better warband they suicide into the enemy and die, with no way of you using them for a good strat. They never ever come defend your towns when you need them too, IOW when your town is far away from faction.....
You have to do everything yourself anyways so they don't matter.

Notables hate you: Oh no what ever will I do? I guess I'll force recruitment and take all of your troops instead of just 3 of your ****y ones, boy did I learn my lesson.

Is there supposed to be something else?

To contrast playing the standard way, in beta 1.4.1, as soon as you have a town you have endless 600-1k blobs showing up to try to take it and you can never do anything else ever because there is always a 3 or 4 way war and this is now your life, you stay within 1 day of your town and kill thousands of recruits every other day, put guys in the prison and maybe it helps? I don't know they seems pop right out and come back for more.

I agree with the idea of this thread that the devs first goal should be to make AI lords not a useless pile of garbage, preferably by making them make intelligent campaign and combat choices and forming meaningful lasting relations, IOW they will prioritize your wishes if they like you, they can be devoted.
Not by giving them more cheats. They needs no advantages. I want to see defeated lords have to walk around recruiting and fighting looters. If they get beat for the rest of the game GOOD. It was wrong to make easy fixes to the AI problems by just giving them money and troops. They need to make the AI 'just not' go to war too much and not join armies with recruits, meaning they spend time alone fighting bandits until they don't have them anymore.

I do also agree that there should be more effects to executing, but they need to be game enriching, not just 'don't do that'. Take it out if you don't want us to do it.

But I mean really, if they've got something to stop me from murdering them all, bring it on. What lemme guess, will my children who have no stats or function not love me?

 

[Wehveechen]

Those are some awesome ideas. I really hope one of the Devs will see this thread because they actually give more meaning to the system they already started implementing

 

[The Sign of 33]

It's all because they tried an "easy fix" for the snowballing effect, let them come up with 20 soldiers right away because they are being targeted by bandits and I think some passive recruits after that.
There was a reddit post that got so much attention (863 upvotes with %99 upvoted) which suggested;
"I hope Taleworlds address this issue quickly, as this is ruining the fun and making the game too tedious. There are a few suggestions to fix this issue:

• Allow lords to spawn with a small group of "retinue" troops after they are defeated. The size should start at ~20 men at the start of the playthrough and should scale with the player level.
• Allow NPC lords to recruit troops constantly and passively without the recruitment mechanism.
• Modify the strategic AI to care more about manpower losses so that they avoid combats where they cannot win decisively. They should generally try not to engage enemies with similar power even if they are actually slightly stronger. (Avoiding pyrrhic victories, just as what players do)
• Modify the battle outcome mechanics to make each battle cause fewer casualties. Think of it like this: when a side is defeated, most of the troops just run away from the battlefield and can be regrouped at safe positions. At the current stage, every single one of the Bannerlord battles leads to a bloodbath. Both combatants lose a significant number of men each battle, and the defeated side loses all of its troops."

My response was;
"They implemented an organic recruit system and we're seeing realistic results. In medieval warfare a decisive victory quickly followed a massive territory gain. Even vast empires collapsed after suffering a few decisive defeats. It's very normal to have such outcomes especially in a relatively symmetrical setup like Calradian factions where they tried to make them balanced.
If they make the A.I. suddenly revert back to the unorganic passive recruit system, player will have the same repetitive experience where the lord he defeated comes back with an army just happened to be trained and ready out of nowhere in a few days. Active recruit system is one of the major promises of Bannerlord, it's very foolish to ask for a removal of such vital feature.
If we're to offer a solution to this outcome, we need to make sure our solution will feel just as organic to the player. In my mind there can be many solutions to this;
Grand strategy: A.I. should "keep an eye" on rapidly expanding factions and aim to interfere with their campaign. If they are at war with another faction they should be willing to make peace and focus on the expanding faction.
Management: Factions shouldn't gather ALL of their forces for a campaign. They should be aware of the threats that might come from other factions while they're engaged elsewhere, so they should keep some armies at the bordering cities and castles at all times unless they started to suffer territory losses, at that time it's going to be all hands on deck. Defending side should enjoy slightly better chances to repel the attackers.
Adding "Trainers" in cities: In Wfas, you could order units to be trained and after a certain amount of time when their training is completed you'ld pick them up. That would help as the defending side would have access to more recruits, meaning longer periods of expansion campaign could suffer a turning point where the defenders start their counteroffensive, trying to take back their recently occupied lands.
Rebellions and conflicts: After conquests there should be internal problems, some discontent lords who couldn't gain any territory should leave the campaign or ambitious lords should start becoming more enthusiastic about getting more political power. Peasants should be more eager to rebel than normal. Rebellions are the most important setbacks for the expanding factions. That's why we need to see Rebellions ASAP to balance the rapid expansions.
ALL organic solutions demand better A.I. to work properly. I'm not sure TW has got what it takes to tackle this matter. Above all else, the state of A.I. at every level is disappointing."

The problem is a large portion of the community only focuses on the problem itself and not the effects of a solution can create afterwards. TW is already eager to go with the "easy fixes" so they just "fix" that problem, even if it creates a whole another problem in the end. That doesn't save them from putting more effort in the long run but the opposite, it leads to an unnecessary waste of efforts from the dev team.

 

[Ardept]

execution is the only way to be sure, if they accepted peace and it lasted that would be one thing, but they don't. Killing everyone means that you can take all the towns and not worry about them again.

 

[Bannerman Man]

Guys, come on... This stuff is in the works already, just give it time. Once all the relevant features are in the game they can work on more robust solutions to the snowballing problem, but for the time being it's quicker and easier to tackle the issue the way they have so the game has some stability during longer campaigns.

Executions fall under the same catagory of, "it's risky to remove penalties while there is no replacement system."

This time will be longer in future. There will be more heroes in clans and when you capture one, another clan hero will form its party from start.

Currently they have to run away fast like 4-8 days in average until this replace mechanism is ready otherwise after a big battle (or after 3-4 small battles) you can capture nearly half of a faction's lords then you can capture 2-3-4 of their fortifications in this time period. This also causes snowball effect in NPC faction's side. When you capture a lord 4-8 days pass while he/she is prisoned after that 2 days passes until they respawn again and 2-5 days until they collect 70-80 men again. In total this make 8-16 days to collect their old power again after a lost battle in average.

I know escape of hero you caught is so disturbing but it is needed currently. If we make their average prisoned time 30-40 days there will be more problems in current situation.

Also decreased lords escaping probability by 25% / 50% (from mobile party / from settlement). This will be later decreased more when replacement heroes are added to game. Currently it is risky to reduce very much because replacements are not added and some clans only have 1-2 lords. This addition (slightly decreased escaping probability) will be at beta too 2-3 days later.

We know this escaping thing is disturbing. When new heroes are added to game these probabilities will be decresed very much. Currently there is no replacements so it is risky to reduce daily escape chance to 2.5%s this can cause kingdoms to lose lots of settlements after losing one big army battle.

It is not fixed yet only escaping probabilities are a bit decreased (at 1.3.0). It will be fixed when replacement heroes are added to clans. I reported this to responsible people and waiting their addition. Thanks for patience.

 

[durbal]

Guys, come on... This stuff is in the works already, just give it time. Once all the relevant features are in the game they can work on more robust solutions to the snowballing problem, but for the time being it's quicker and easier to tackle the issue the way they have so the game has some stability during longer campaigns.

Executions fall under the same catagory of, "it's risky to remove penalties while there is no replacement system."

Replacement heroes sounds like zombie lords with new names each time their zombie horde rushes you. Not a real solution.

 

[Patwick]

Replacement heroes sounds like zombie lords with new names each time their zombie horde rushes you. Not a real solution.

I disagree, you forgot the whole point to this : Keeping your prisoners, barter them for peace. Replacement heroes would just serve that purpose, allowing an enemy to keep defending itself while still letting you keep a bargaining chip.

It decrease the need to execute a lord simply because it's worth it to keep them alive and less usefull to kill them. Aaand there is no increased penalty for you should you chose to do so.

And the son of a noble family taking his father place to for exemple siege the castle in which he's imprisoned is an interesting mechanics that for example in the future could conditioned a bit more the actually erratic AI war behavior. That would maybe emphasize a bit more the need to defend instead of just sieging another location like AI does right now, if you add some kind of "hostage" value to settlement maybe AI will be more prone to do it aswell.

More like punishing for killing i'm more interested in reward for keeping alive

 

[adrakken]

Some interesting ideas here. I am torn on them however. Perhaps if they can also include far heavier "Negative" affects also.

The Butcher: affect that gives negative influence per tick. Makes diplomacy harder. Lords more likely to rebel/defect.

There would also need to be a higher chance kingdoms would go to war with you to stop your reign of terror if you kill over a certain amount.

 

[durbal]

I disagree, you forgot the whole point to this : Keeping your prisoners, barter them for peace. Replacement heroes would just serve that purpose, allowing an ennemy to keep defending itself while still letting you keep a bargaining chip.

It decrease the need to execute a lord simply because it's worth it to keep them alive and less usefull to kill them. Aaand there is no increased penalty for you should you chose to do so

What 'bargaining chip' would you have if the enemy doesn't actually need that lord? If they have a ready and willing replacement, why would they need him? The game mechanics do not support the silly replacement lord mechanic. It's another bandaid on top of a bandaid which is on top of a bandaid and the wound is still gushing and painful.

The game needs a functional economy and logistical/economic limits to army sizes, not the silly number of lords * average troop limit = strength formula that it inherently uses now. That's the core of the issue and TaleWorlds is so far from tackling it that they haven't even acknowledged it.

 

[Patwick]

What 'bargaining chip' would you have if the enemy doesn't actually need that lord? If they have a ready and willing replacement, why would they need him? The game mechanics do not support the silly replacement lord mechanic. It's another bandaid on top of a bandaid which is on top of a bandaid and the wound is still gushing and painful.

I've edited my post while you were responding. And i'm sure that the dev would put some kind of restrain on those replacement heroes or some kind of drawback for their kingdom/ruler (Like heavy likelyhood of rebellion in the future when it will be implemented)

And if they don't, yeah i would agree with you it's far from optimal. The Enemy should need their lord back by some kind of new mechanism that the game doesn't have right now

 

[adrakken]

What 'bargaining chip' would you have if the enemy doesn't actually need that lord?

I thought I read from a dev that they only have a placeholder in the game right now and that the prisoner system will be better than Warbands in the end. imprisonment in a built dungeon/prison will make it harder for them to escape and all lords will have value to their kingdom and they will try to pay ransom based on chance...I think it was every 24 days or something like that.

Anyway, I highly HIGHLY doubt that what is currently in game is going to be the end result at release.

 

[9yearsago]

Problem is not enemy lords escaping your party too early, without having a chance to bargain. When this so called hero replacement system is implemented probably AI lords are going to continue sending endless armies at you with only different commander names, despite you are keeping their clan leader as a prisoner. Hero replacement would not solve anything if heroes are to be replaced in a day or two. You see no result in butchering their forces, they simply keep coming as if nothing happened. From what I understand hero replacement will change only the commander names practically, not the actual situation.