SP - General War related quests, overall battle strategy and Marshalls

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RoboSenshi

Grandmaster Knight
Wars suck now and they're ****ing tedious and boring. Not to mention when two factions are fighting, there's no sense that there's any kind of overall war strategy or organization. That's cause there isn't; and it make wars chaotic and frustrating. By bringing back the Marshall position and adding a few quests, you could make wars feel dynamic and give the player an actual crucial roll in the out come of a war.

Marshall System
So first of all, I think this position should be brought back into the game. As the noble in charge of running the current campaign against the enemy. This position is needed because there has to be a character giving quests to move the war effort forward as well as plan what to do next based upon what is happening in the game. As normal, it could be a vote that the faction leader has the final decision on and you can use influence to put yourself or your friends in that position. Of course the position should come with a huge influence boost and a large increase to your influence rate for as long as you are Marshall.

Army Creation
The next part is that the Marshall can order other vassals to create armies for specific purposes or to counter enemy moves. At the moment, nobles just create armies seemingly at random to do one or two things before getting destroyed or being disbanded. This system will still allow you to create armies on a whim if you want but an army created on the orders of a Marshall should cost no influence. I'll explain why it's important in the next section.

Quests
There is an opportunity here to have war related quests that help and improve your immersion into the game. The Marshall can give the player various quests that are not just arbitrary and gamey but can actually move the game forward. For example:

1) Your faction has a large army besieging an enemy settlement and all of a sudden the enemy produces a small army that is raiding fiefs. You could get a quest from the Marshall, ordering you to form an army with 3 lords, locate the enemy army and destroy it.

2) The enemy has formed 2 armies and are attacking but you get a quest from the Marshall to take your party and patrol a certain area where an enemy party was sighted. Or he gives you an order to create a party with x amount of lords and protect the faction lands from enemy incursions while the main army is fighting in enemy territory. You can add balance to quests like this by allowing the player to spend influence to get other tasks instead. Fighting the enemy would give you more loot and money but protecting the homeland could give you an influence and relationship boost. You can allow the player spend influence to try and persuade the Marshall to give them a task that would favor the player's needs at that time.

3) Perhaps you are not participating in the war. You could get a quest from the Marshall ordering you to take your men to settlement 'x' and join the garrison in preparation for an impending siege defense or to army 'x' to help them in a siege attack.

4) You can get a quest to simply go and reinforce an army as they suffered heavy losses in a recent battle.

5) When your clan tier is higher, you can get quests to form an army to go take a settlement.

6) Or if your relationship with the Marshall is high you could persuade him to give you orders that favor you or your faction. Maybe there's a town you really want to take but the Marshall is focusing on another front. You can have a system where you can persuade him to allow you create and army (without influence remember) with orders to take the city.

There are a lot more quests that could be formed here and they are all modular so they can crop up based on how the war is moving. No two wars will be the same as different situations in the sandbox will arise, needing different quests. This would add a sense of organization to wars, while keeping the old system in place and adding much need quests to the game which currently suffers from a lack of interesting quests.

Marshall Personalities
Of course the quality of leadership will depend on the quality of the man that is appointed Marshall. Their different personalities and traits should have an effect on the kinds of orders and quests they give. An aggressive lord may focus on finding enemy armies and defeating them in the field, while a greedy lord may focus on besieging settlements and raiding villages. Or a cautious lord could focus on being defensive and create armies mainly to patrol the faction and defend against attacking enemies. All these approaches will lead to different successes or failures and that's exciting for the sandbox. It could be in your best interest to have a certain type of leader for an upcoming war so you as the player could spend influence to make sure the "right man" was chosen for that position.

Player
As the player you should also have the access to give these orders if you are appointed as the Marshall. It would really give you more control on how you plan your overall strategy during a campaign.

 
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Not to be disparaging but I'm looking into the future and seeing my Marshal giving me a quest to single handedly siege down the enemy capital on the other end of the world, which I promptly ignore and go about my own thing.
 
Unless this figure is part of the "not yet developed" part of the branch of diplomacy, I do not understand how the marshal and his roles could not be included.
 
Some similar things have been suggested over many threads, but its nicely all put together in detail here, this goes to Curated.
Cheers bud!

Not to be disparaging but I'm looking into the future and seeing my Marshal giving me a quest to single handedly siege down the enemy capital on the other end of the world, which I promptly ignore and go about my own thing.
That actually isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as it's part of the sandbox's emergent story telling which is sorely lacking in BL.If a lord who despises you becomes Marshall, he could give you a suicidal or particularity hard quest so you will fail and lose influence and standing in the faction. So the next time it's time to pick a Marshall you can perform some skulduggery to make sure he isn't appointed. There's a whole host of possibiltes if it's done right.

Unless this figure is part of the "not yet developed" part of the branch of diplomacy, I do not understand how the marshal and his roles could not be included.
I thought the exact same thing.
 
I can say that the marshals are already in the game. After all, who are the marshals? In Warband, it was a lord who could call an army. In Bannerlord, instead of one lord who can summon an army, several lords have appeared. So, technically, there are marshals in the game.
I would also like to receive some quests from the leader of the army.
 
Yes while that is true, the haphazard and random nature of army formation and wars in general is what I'm trying to fix. There should be a supreme commander that directs all the the armies while on campaign. It would make wars more fun and the game more immersive imo.
 
Maybe a king? I am thinking of creating a menu for the king to control armies during the war. For example, our lord has called an army and we can give him the command to attack a certain settlement (for influence).
 
Of course it could be a king but sometimes you want to delegate the responsibility to one of your nobles. Kings did not always lead wars. And if the game was designed a bit better with more things to do, the player should also have various issues to deal with as a king that sometimes appointing a Marshall could be a necessity.
 
Yes while that is true, the haphazard and random nature of army formation and wars in general is what I'm trying to fix. There should be a supreme commander that directs all the the armies while on campaign. It would make wars more fun and the game more immersive imo.

Exactly, a figure that personifies the commander-in-chief of all royal armed forces acting in substitution of the king/faction leader (second to the king); something similar to the constable or mega domestikos.

A figure like this would slow down the pace of conquest, the king decides the next target, if he can't or doesn't want to be part of the campaign or if he does but later; that's when the Constable comes into play. I believe that the Lords can gather armies as marshals through influence but not to decide a military objective for themselves. The Constable would be above them all. If a lord wants to form an army of conquest for a particular objective, he should convince the king or the constable on the panel of persuasion.
 
I like the idea, there could also be factions that might have two marshals in a similar way to the two-consul system of the Romans. Also, it would be interesting if the clan leaders could call all their members to create small armies
 
I also dislike when every single army that we have figts on the same front. We're being attacked from the southe but nooo, they want to take castles located at the end of the map.
 
Yes while that is true, the haphazard and random nature of army formation and wars in general is what I'm trying to fix. There should be a supreme commander that directs all the the armies while on campaign. It would make wars more fun and the game more immersive imo.

I like the idea of anyone being able to form armies. But I do think that there should be limits to it. Add restrictions to low level clans so that they can't just start a thousand man army on a whim. To start an army your clans needs to be at least level 3. Then limit the number of lords they can call or make it so that they can only recruit clans of the same level or lower.

And then have the Ruler assign some nobles to be "Generals." To be a General you would have to be a leader of clan that is level 5 or higher, and you would need at least a good amount of relation with the ruler. They would have the ability to create larger armies that have a purpose, like capturing an enemy faction's town. And it's these types of armies that would generate quests.

This way you'd still have smaller armies doing their own thing, but it'd be limited to defending territory or capturing a castle near your faction border. Then you'd have the bigger armies led by Generals that would actually have war campaigns aimed at capturing an enemy town or two.

As a vassal you can only be made a General if you have high relations with the ruling clan. As a ruler yourself.. you can assign a level 5 clan to be a general even if you have low relations with them.. but do so at your own risk. If they aren't loyal to you or have high relations they just might think that they're better suited to lead your kingdom.

Adds extra spice to diplomacy and relationships. ?
 
Copying my post from another thread, as it was suggested it fit well with this...

I find it frustrating when I'm in a war and the first thing my companion parties do is go raid the enemy and get captured. Its totally stupid. From a personal standpoint I don't like raids anyway. I try to play a good guy and raiding helpless villagers disgusts me. But from a strategy standpoint it sucks anyways. Got into a war with the Kuzaits and the first thing that happens is my companions go there to raid their villages. Within 5 minutes 1/2 my parties are already gone. I want to issue a directive that basically says patrol and protect our territory until I'm ready to combine our parties and go on the offensive. Now I've got to defend against Khuzait forces over 1k with 1 companion and our 300-350 troops. If I make new parties to replace those I lost they will end up over there being captured again, so I can't even replace the parties I lost. The one party I managed to save I had to defend twice and once I couldn't even form an army with it to pull it out of there because he kept going back to raid the settlement and you can't form an army with parties that are raiding (which is also stupid).
 
In addition to my comments above about losing companions because they immediately go do raids in enemy territory, the other problem with their actions is they go and hurt your relations with other lords because of their raidings.

At someone else's suggestion, I am trying to join other factions as a mercenary in this game to try improve relations with a lot of clans prior to forming my own kingdom. The hope is that every kingdom out there won't attack me at once and maybe I can even get some lords to join me. But now I'm stuck with the choice of either letting companions destroy my relations with other clans or restricting them to being in my party only. Don't really have a problem with them only being in my party, but when they lead their own parties they do increase a number of skills in various categories that won't happen if they are just an unkillable peon in my party. If I could direct them to ONLY patrol this faction's territory or join armies it would be much better.
 
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