I Have No Control Over My Vassals - I accidently started an Oligarchy

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I keep hearing this and it's a lame excuse. Kings and others sent messengers with orders, they didn't go everywhere to tell everyone personally what to do.
It doesn't matter if it's RTS or you just call it RTS. Is it more realistic? Does it give the player agency? YES and YES. So it needs to be done.
If you complain that instant messaging is not realistic enough, send messenger parties with the orders, so there will be a (realistic) delay between issueing and receiving orders. But this doesn't really bring much to the player experience.
I don't think its a lame excuse. 3 things were rejected. 2 of them was telling your calm members what to do and where to go and the 3rd one was about absolute control as the king.

1-prioritized target: Im not against the idea, would have made it so that you can communicate with a clan member roughly what to do, and the the AI brain will decide if it want to do that. And base on you tactics + social + INT and their stats, will determine how well they work and listen to you. I don't think making it RTS style (where units are just like dead pieces on a board) fits the game which is supposed to be more of living world.

2-prioritized upgrade: same as before. I don't mind them adding a small dialogue where you tell your dude, focus on shock or cav with my culture. But it should be up to the AI brain if they want to or not. Then if they mess up we can fire them, have a sort of boss employee relationship.

3-more power as king: The game is meant to be played as if the AI are real and have their own agendas. Figuring out ways to navigate around them is part of the intended gameplay (I think).

I play CK2 and CK3, and they are great games. In this game, I think the player is supposed to work with the AI and hope they do their job (kind of how we hope that the people we work with do their job).
During the crusades, the crusaders were famously bad at working together. So were the Turks btw.
However it would be an interesting Idea to introduce more RTS elements if the player has more social skills. To simulate you being a better communicator and leader.
 
I understand that TW vision and mine aren't the same and I'm ok with that, but giving some kind of agency to the player when they are king isn't asking too much. This isn't a disagreement about how much rts gameplay should be in the game but about how the player interacts with the game. If the player feels he/she has little control over how his/her kingdom unfolds then that's a big turn off. This has nothing to do with decision makers being out of touch with what fans want. It has to do with decision makers don't understand why people play video games. Playing video games is about putting obstacles in the players path and letting them figure out how to solve them, not letting the ai run the show with some input from the player. :facepalm:
 
This isn't a bug, it's a feature, so there's no need to fix anything. Don't go into a kingdom then, stay neutral. Better garrisons means harder to take fiefs and stronger kingdom.
i didnt say was a bug..i say to fix it..i know is a feature but a very annoying one, and i honestly dont see the point..i spent alot of time getting those tier 6 troops just to lose them like that..even the other day i spent alot time getting and upgrading troops to dump on vassal garrisson..result--they lost the town in minutes..so again i really dont get the point of our companions dump half of the tier5-6 troops to go recruit milita...
 
@mexxico As a KINGDOM leader I would like to be able to:

-Raise common notables into powerful positions and lordships within my kingdom (Promote Gang leaders, Village head-mans, Rich Traders, Companions into lords)

-Negotiate Treatises (We will come to your aid in battle for the next 10 years if your kingdom agrees to help us fight Vlandia today)

-Establish Embassy's (Gives vision of the settlement, allows you to speak directly to any Notables within the settlement at any time)

-Establish Trade Deals (We will give your kingdom 200 sheep a year in exchange for 100 units of Spices)

-Set up border patrols (They will enforce trade embargos and keep hostile or unwanted forces out of my land)

-Choose my Heir

-Establish Laws (Not vote on them, establish them, I am king!)

-Hold Court and War counsels ( We all meet in one place and discuss options. Example: Lord A Suggests we should take Caeleus Castle, Lord B Suggests we should wait for the enemy to attack us, Lord C Suggests we start a campaign of pillaging villages to draw out enemy forces, Lady D Suggests we besiege the enemy capital, Lady E Suggests we burn everything in our path, Lord F Suggests we cut off enemy supply lines along the eastern road. Lady G Suggests we seek out and capture important hostages to use as bargaining pieces.)

-Hold and Judge Criminal Trials (Notable refuses to pay taxes over land dispute, allows me to judge and sentence this criminal)

-Dispense Justice and command my underlings to enforce laws against disobedient lords and outlaws (Imprisonment, Execution, Exile)

-Resolve political squabbles between my Vassals (Lord A: Wants access to Lord B's grazing land due to some old claim he has on that land via royal grant. Lord B: Argues that the Royal grant was made 50 years ago and should not be honored today because his sheep need the land more than Lord A does. As King I would decide on how to resolve this by : 1. Giving Lord A access to the lands. 2. Denying Lord A's request. 3. Taking the land for myself as a lesson to both Lords. 4. Ignoring their request to intervene and allow them to fight it out between themselves.)

-Throw feasts and celebrations like tourneys or religious holidays

-Design a Custom Crown to wear and show off my power.
 
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Mods guys, whoever is in charge of these decisions likes bland arcade gameplay. Thank you Mexxico for trying to help.

This game has better graphics than Warband, but the direction is not what I expected, and I can say officially that I do not like it. It has zero personality/depth; just battles with menu pages and scenes that are pointless for the player to visit.

Does the "decision group" play this game? The suggestion page is pointless, they reject 99% ideas.

It's boring as hell, there's nothing to do and the player has zero connectivity to the NPCs in the entire campaign. Viking Conquest is 10x better than this. Without mods I would have un installed this months ago. Please finish the game TW so the modders can make it fun, thanks.
+1000! Future mods are the only reason i have this game at this point. waiting on AD1257, Japan, GOT, and Lord of the Rings mods. This was suppose to be a improvement from warband and get ideas from mods and DLC. Almost at a year and still empty. I don't want to be a bandit, a lord, king, anything because nothing feels different. Nothing feels impactful or mine. I just grind around a map fighting battles.
 
We need to know if the "decision group" are also avid fans of this title and how it is that they are enjoying this game while simultaneously shutting down 95% of our requests for decent game fare
 
I can`t believe that the suggestion of limiting our clan party size was rejected (although implemented at least in a rudimentary way). This is not about us wanting complex nerd features, it`s because of a practical problem - companions recruiting so many troops that they are too slow to catch bandits.

Do you never play this game (you = the guys finally deciding about the features)??
 
We need to know if the "decision group" are also avid fans of this title and how it is that they are enjoying this game while simultaneously shutting down 95% of our requests for decent game fare
Do you never play this game (you = the guys finally deciding about the features)??
It's Armagan.

When he started off with OG M&B, he (apparently, I wasn't around back then) talked about how he was making the game he always wanted to play. Which is a nice bit of indie dev rhetoric but it actually sucks for us because the game he wants isn't the game we want. ?‍♂️
 
We need to know if the "decision group" are also avid fans of this title and how it is that they are enjoying this game while simultaneously shutting down 95% of our requests for decent game fare
Your proposal was carefully written on a piece of toilet paper so it would be put to good use in the near future, :grin:
Seriously I would like to know this too - apart from Armagan, who else decides what's in and what's out, and what are their team roles and qualifications.

But, let's face it, bosses who think they are the smartest in the room (and many times may be) don't like other people's ideas by default. They only like their own ideas. It's unfortunate, but human.

I can`t believe that the suggestion of limiting our clan party size was rejected (although implemented at least in a rudimentary way). This is not about us wanting complex nerd features, it`s because of a practical problem - companions recruiting so many troops that they are too slow to catch bandits.

Do you never play this game (you = the guys finally deciding about the features)??
As a former modder, I can tell you that once your game becomes a chore and you begin to hate it, you don't play it and don't want to playtest it because it's tedious work, not fun. It doesn't have to be this way, but Bannerlord's problems and negative forum feedback make it that way.
I don't think any of the decision-makers play the game, but rely on trusted people's feedback or their own preconceived notions, however wrong or outdated they may be. They certainly won't listen to people shouting at them over the internet tubes, even if it's the truth. This is why Armagan apparently prefers the friendlier Reddit over his own forum.
 
This is the kind of commentary @armagan should be reading.
Well, I hope this implementation is put forward in front of decision makers again. Imo Warband's implementation is quite good, it gives more interaction with lords, the choice of control and immersion. This mechanic also adds a new layer to campaign map tactics, for example, you can split your army to raid multiple villages and the enemy army is put in a dilemma of whether to disband and protect each village or march the whole army to each village at a slow pace and risk losing villages( I had used this tactic against the dark knight invaders in bannerpage mod). Diplomacy mod improved it further by adding the feature to send messengers.
Technically, Bannerlord is tagged as 'strategy' on steam, so this feature or something similar should be implemented.?
 
This is why Armagan apparently prefers the friendlier Reddit over his own forum.
I don't think reddit is that heavily favored over the forum. People on r/mountandblade and the bannerlord sub-reddit aren't too happy about the state of Bannerlord either. Threads come up constantly about buying the game and it's usually a 50-50 of wait for it be developed further, or the game is fun because of the battles.
 
2-Player will be able to set stance of their parties as one of 3 stances (defensive / agressive / default)
Probably too late at this point, but another stance that focuses on recruiting troops while avoiding fighting at all costs would be great. I find I typically lose my clan parties after releasing them from an army so they can go recruit then they end up in a fight and lose their party.

Maybe a solution to get around making another stance is to let "defensive" focus on recruiting until they hit a certain threshold of party size? (its okay if they don't avoid all contact).

Maybe you can confirm this for me but it does seem the default behavior is to recruit up to a threshold but I have no idea what that is? (seems like maybe its 40-50% of party?)
 
We need to know if the "decision group" are also avid fans of this title and how it is that they are enjoying this game while simultaneously shutting down 95% of our requests for decent game fare
I would argue not.

If they played it, they would be here on the forums complaining too!

I don't understand why giving an extra tool to the player to use it if he wants would "complicate" the game considering these features were already available in warband.
I discovered warband a few months after release of EA bannerlord and I am glad I played it before purchasing Bannerlord. The campaign feels much more engaging in warband compared to bannerlord simply because I have a CHOICE to suggest actions to fellow lords or king or as a king issue a task to a certain lord through simple dialogue which simply can't be done in bannerlord. If the suggested action goes wrong it would effect of relationship with the lord. As a part of Marshal's army I can suggest an action to the marshal(which he may or may not take) if I think AI is doing something stupid, which is not possible when I am part of a lord's army in bannerlord. As a marshal I have a CHOICE to either force the lords following to either raid the same village or split them up to raid nearby villages while I scout ahead for the enemy which again is not possible in bannerlord and you're stuck with all lords in your army of a size of more than 1k raiding the same village. You can suggest lords/vassals to flee,patrol, go to, raid or siege in warband if you want to through simple dialogues and you had a CHOICE to completely ignore it if you want and the ai would carry on with whatever task it was doing. Lords could completely ignore your suggestion if they had some other priority.
Taking away this choice from the player makes the game less sandboxy imo cause I believe player freeness/choice is a core feature of sandbox games
+1
 
I don't think its a lame excuse. 3 things were rejected. 2 of them was telling your calm members what to do and where to go and the 3rd one was about absolute control as the king.
About the rejected suggestions, the one about telling your clan members/fellow lords what to do and where to go is present in warband based on your relationship with them, it could easily be tied to relationship + an influence cost that decreses the higher the relationship in bannerlord, i don't think it's about controlling but about planning, the realm should have a common goal and coordinate at the very minimum when waging war and that feature would simulate that + add more dialogue with lords which is severely lacking.

Same thing on the kingly part, it wasn't about control but abour coordination, setting common goals for your armies and using influence to make them more favorable to be acomplished, i don't think a single king in history has loosed his expensive armies on an enemy land and said to his commanders "don't even bother with reporting to my kingly self or achieving any goal that justifies this war, just enjoy the ride and have fun!" lol

Warband could excuse not having this because it had a system with a single army where the king/marshal was the absolute commander and set the policy coordinating all lords he summoned to the campaign, even so if the king was displeased with the outcome of the campaign he could retract the marshalship and bestow on another lord that hopefully would do a better job, bannerlord has a system where anyone can use influence to form an army and.. that's it, no consequences for a bad campaign, no coordination between armies, no persuing some general goal set by your king, nothing..
 
About the rejected suggestions, the one about telling your clan members/fellow lords what to do and where to go is present in warband based on your relationship with them, it could easily be tied to relationship + an influence cost that decreses the higher the relationship in bannerlord, i don't think it's about controlling but about planning, the realm should have a common goal and coordinate at the very minimum when waging war and that feature would simulate that + add more dialogue with lords which is severely lacking.

Same thing on the kingly part, it wasn't about control but abour coordination, setting common goals for your armies and using influence to make them more favorable to be acomplished, i don't think a single king in history has loosed his expensive armies on an enemy land and said to his commanders "don't even bother with reporting to my kingly self or achieving any goal that justifies this war, just enjoy the ride and have fun!" lol

Warband could excuse not having this because it had a system with a single army where the king/marshal was the absolute commander and set the policy coordinating all lords he summoned to the campaign, even so if the king was displeased with the outcome of the campaign he could retract the marshalship and bestow on another lord that hopefully would do a better job, bannerlord has a system where anyone can use influence to form an army and.. that's it, no consequences for a bad campaign, no coordination between armies, no persuing some general goal set by your king, nothing.
Well put, the contrast with warband is stark.
 
About the rejected suggestions, the one about telling your clan members/fellow lords what to do and where to go is present in warband based on your relationship with them, it could easily be tied to relationship + an influence cost that decreses the higher the relationship in bannerlord, i don't think it's about controlling but about planning, the realm should have a common goal and coordinate at the very minimum when waging war and that feature would simulate that + add more dialogue with lords which is severely lacking.

Same thing on the kingly part, it wasn't about control but abour coordination, setting common goals for your armies and using influence to make them more favorable to be acomplished, i don't think a single king in history has loosed his expensive armies on an enemy land and said to his commanders "don't even bother with reporting to my kingly self or achieving any goal that justifies this war, just enjoy the ride and have fun!" lol

Warband could excuse not having this because it had a system with a single army where the king/marshal was the absolute commander and set the policy coordinating all lords he summoned to the campaign, even so if the king was displeased with the outcome of the campaign he could retract the marshalship and bestow on another lord that hopefully would do a better job, bannerlord has a system where anyone can use influence to form an army and.. that's it, no consequences for a bad campaign, no coordination between armies, no persuing some general goal set by your king, nothing..

I avoid creating other clan's parties because I am tired to lose them in stupid battles... that's what decision makers wants? players avoiding game features because they are so dumb?

As you said WB give us some kind of control interacting with NPC or being the marshal which you can ignore and play solo or you can use it for better strategy, we just hope to have a similar level of control in BW.
 
We carried some of your ideas to meeting and also we added some ideas. However sadly most are rejected. As a decision there will be only 2 implementations at this subject.

1- There will be a wage slider for your each party so you will be able to limit waghe of your parties. For example you can set this limit to 500 denars for a party lead by companion X. So this party will stop recruiting / upgrading men when their party limit reaches that limit. Even this was nearly rejected (would be left to future for finding better idea(?)) - we insisted to do it now and it worked.

2-Player will be able to set stance of their parties as one of 3 stances (defensive / agressive / default)

What are rejected :

1-Player will not be able to set a prioritized target for his clan parties. Example : you will be able to set stance as defence but you cannot select a prioritized target. So you will not be able to say your clan party prioritize defending target X (which would result in patrolling around X most of time). (I am not aganist this suggestion by the way and wanted to see at game)

2-Player will not be able to select prioritized upgrade targets or focused troop types like archer / cavalry / infanrty or limit recruiting to any culture. Imo this is not so important too so much micromanagement.

3-Most dissappointing (just as personal view) is as a king we will not be able to do anything over AI decisions as it is current situation of game. We come up with an idea of king to spend influence to boost some war targets. In this scenario king will be able to spend 50-100-200 influence to boost a target so probability of AI armies to select this target would increase. If that target is captured by one of our armies this influence spent by king would be shared by leaders at that army. If any other kingdom capture that target king would get spent influence back. So as king player would be able to boost selection of target. When player is vassal he would see a target chosen by AI time to time (not always). This would add much sense to game. However it is also rejected. If it was accepted you will be seeing something like this (and player would be able to change it if he is the king) :

TYpaD.png


So as summary as decided design you will get one slider for each clan party for limiting wage of that party and one dropbox for determining stance of your clan parties (so if you select defence stance they will not do any hostile actions but you will not be able to give them a prioritized target to defend - maybe at defence stance we can prevent clan parties to join hostile armies also - however even an army is created for defending it can change idea later). Probably these 2 additions will have so limited effect on gameplay. We are sorry for this. Nothing to do, we wanted to do more detailed systems which gives more control to player (as clan leader and king) which can make gameplay better but we cannot do these without permission. What annoying is decision takers are not coming here and discuss with you even I do not think they read here most of the times. As reason they give us to reject most of these ideas they say our game is not a real time strategy where players have to select targets. They say AI should do always nearly most logical things which does not bother player so player should not spend time and need to select these targets himself or deal with several different micromanagement. However in my opinion in current situation of game being king does not make sense because king has no effect over anything also similar case for clan leader control over clan parties, so spending time for that stuff is not big deal for player even he does not want spend time it can stay at default (which is current situation).

Everybody can have different ideas over game by the way. We cannot know which one best suits game or imporves gameplay we just make some guess. So I cannot be sure about what is best, I cannot say my view is best, everybody thinks that their ideas are best. However I personally support rejected 1-3 and wanted to see them at game maybe some of you think that these rejected ones do not suit M&B series well or some of you can think similar with me. So these are just personal thoughts and we cannot know which is best design before implementing all and trying. So these additional rejected ideas can be tried by mods over time and we will see results.

So adding these decided 2 things will take only 1-2 days after UI make needed additions because nothing much is approved. At saved time I will try to do improvements at these stuff (cannot guarentee removing all back and forths but will try to reduce) :

Tpwdt.png
Abysmal. Why are simple things that clearly were supposed to be implemented in the dialog UI rejected? So if you are a marshal or leader of a clan/kingdom, you have absolutely no control over your subjects, and this will never change?
 
"So, in one of my campaigns I decided to overthrow Urkhunait and become Khan myself ... "
"...Nobles decide everything and I became their puppet."


... you, as a vassal, pulled a coup... and yet, you don't like it when your vassals, who were previously all your equals, don't want to listen to you?

Not intended as a real criticism, but I find this irony too funny to just overlook. lol

Again, with these types of problems the devs definitely need to benchmark Paradox games, particularly Crusader Kings series, and get some ideas and inspirations, if they really want to expand the game to more than just a battle simulator, and want the game to have a real strategic/simulation feel.

(ps) most likely for a different game far out in the future. I guess no such plans for the current game.
 
If the vassals refused to listen to their king for this and that reason it would be awesome and immersive, as it is now there is nothing for them to refuse cause there is no interaction or coordination between vassals and monarchs lol

In warband you could give suggestions on what to do to other lords, if they liked you enough they would follow it, as a king you could command them as in no refusing (go this, defend that, besiege such and such)
 
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