SP - General Please rework Leadership, Trade, and Steward

[StaceMcGate]

The gist of my argument here is that Steward currently has too many responsibilities assigned to it and Trade/Leadership are lacking in the perks they can assign to the player. Steward should delegate some its responsibilities to Leadership and Trade while having a specific purpose in what it is responsible for in game.

There is also an egregious cost vs reward in three perks. Steward is the easiest stat to level in game by just ensuring to have food variety, while Leadership and Trade will take dozens of hours to level up. By the time the player levels up Leadership and Trade, the majority of their perks are redundant and offer no real benefit.



Steward needs to be a governor focused skill tree, while Trade needs to account for more than just trade penalty and Leadership should be the determining stat for party size/base morale.

Here are my suggestions for a possible rework.

Steward
1) Party size should be determined by Leadership, not Steward.
2) Steward is focused on governorship entirely.
3) Leveling is based on raising the stats of a settlement (prosperity, loyalty, population, security), constructing add-ons, ensuring high food surplus, and running projects.
4) Perks reduce the maintenance cost of settlements, raise power of notables, increase stats of settlements, augment militia, and boost effectiveness of projects.

Trade: Re-purposed as Quartermaster or Logistics
1) Leveled by having plentiful amount of food, variety of food, maintaining party inventory to acceptable levels, managing caravans, having profitable workshops and selling goods for a profit
2) It's perks reduce party food consumption, reduced trade penalty, generates trade rumors, reduced party wages, increased workshop production and reduced barter penalty.

Leadership
1) Determines party size and base party morale
2) Base morale it provides should be reduced so 100 is not possible unless this perk is heavily invested into.
3) Leveled by maintaining high morale, leading armies, killing a large portion of enemies during a battle, defeating enemy lords in battle, and winning decisive victories over large armies or siege battles.
4) Perks would provide morale bonuses in unique situations, amount of troop/companion exp generated, level of recruits from notables, renown bonuses from situations, and morale penalties inflicted on enemy troops.


While these are all just suggestions, the ONE thing I would like people to get out of this thread is that Trade needs to be reworked. It is the most costly trait to invest into, takes the most amount of work to level up, and has the least beneficial long-term rewards of any stat in the game. Trade should not be the pre-requisite for trading fiefs, and getting 250 to do so is such a costly venture that I would not recommend anyone to do so.

It is nearly impossible in current game to get companions/clan members to level up their trade skill, and the rewards offered by loot/crafting far outshine any reward you could get from trade. I desperately plea for some sort of rework to this skill to make it a worthwhile investment for players.

 

[Maown]

dud whole perk system is a mess. totally crap.

 

[Tryvenyal]

Steward
1) Party size should be determined by Leadership, not Steward.
2) Steward is focused on governorship entirely.
3) Leveling is based on raising the stats of a settlement (prosperity, loyalty, population, security), constructing add-ons, ensuring high food surplus, and running projects.
4) Perks reduce the maintenance cost of settlements, raise power of notables, increase stats of settlements, augment militia, and boost effectiveness of projects.

By the time the player levels up Leadership and Trade, the majority of their perks are redundant and offer no real benefit.

first - players won't be able to raise Stewardship
second - Now stewardship becomes redundunt to players

Your suggestion is not solving any issues - it´s moving them all from Trade and Leadership to Stewardship - to what gain?

1) Party size should be determined by Leadership, not Steward.

Partysize can definatly be boosted by a good steward. For me it´s a good thing that party management is more than leadership. A good steward is a practical leader, creating a good infrastucture in the party. A good Quartermaster fits more equipment in the cargo, more detailed camps, more practices and rules, detailed stock-keeping etc. With all this, ofc the party could fit in a few more recruits.

 

[StaceMcGate]

first - players won't be able to raise Stewardship
second - Now stewardship becomes redundunt to players

Your suggestion is not solving any issues - it´s moving them all from Trade and Leadership to Stewardship - to what gain?



Partysize can definatly be boosted by a good steward. For me it´s a good thing that party management is more than leadership. A good steward is a practical leader, creating a good infrastucture in the party. A good Quartermaster fits more equipment in the cargo, more detailed camps, more practices and rules, detailed stock-keeping etc. With all this, ofc the party could fit in a few more recruits.

Players could choose to level Stewardship by waiting in towns in theory.

My suggestion is to move some Steward traits to Trade/Leadership to make those more important perks for parties. My issue with Stewardship is that it encompasses too much responsibility for governing and party management, leaving Leadership and Trade with the scraps of party management, and makes them that much harder to raise skills for.

I advocated for a skill solely related to being a governor as that is what some nobles are raised from birth to be or have all their skills allocated to already, so why not make it a perk tree?

Ultimately I realize these are flawed suggestions that I came up with on the fly and are welcome to scrutiny, but I advocate fixing Trade above all else. Trade should be about the logistics of supplying your party while also searching for the most cost-effective means of securing goods.

At the very least, owning profitable caravans or workshops should raise the trade skill would you agree?

 

[Midnitewolf]

I don't know, if you realistically consider it, the biggest constraint to the size of an army, historically at least, was its ability to supply the army. If you suck at logistics (Stewardship) it absolutely should have an adverse effect on the size of the army you can put into the field.

Consequently there have been a ton of very large armies lead by commanders with poor leadership. Leadership to me should be more about recruiting, morale, retention and battle performance. A good leader should be able to draw troops to his banner easier, maintain them in a high morale state, keep them motivated to stay with the army and inspire them in battle.

 

[StaceMcGate]

I don't know, if you realistically consider it, the biggest constraint to the size of an army, historically at least, was its ability to supply the army. If you suck at logistics (Stewardship) it absolutely should have an adverse effect on the size of the army you can put into the field.

Consequently there have been a ton of very large armies lead by commanders with poor leadership. Leadership to me should be more about recruiting, morale, retention and battle performance. A good leader should be able to draw troops to his banner easier, maintain them in a high morale state, keep them motivated to stay with the army and inspire them in battle.

I think you make great points and I can see your side of things. You also bring up Logistics, which is what I suggested re-branding trading as, because for whatever reason the game displays Trade skill for when you are assigning someone to quartermaster. To that end, I suggested delegating some of the responsibilities of Stewardship to Trade to make it a more useful stat to raise.

Supplies consumed, party wages, and recruitment fees could go into my hypothetical logistic stat; while party size, garrison upkeep, and general things related to maintaining cohesion could be with Stewardship.

 

[Tryvenyal]

Players could choose to level Stewardship by waiting in towns in theory.

Sounds like a terrible idea, TBO. Skills boosted while doing nothing at all?

At the very least, owning profitable caravans or workshops should raise the trade skill would you agree?

Absolutely Caravans! Workshops though is more running a business, to me thats Stewardship?

Supplies consumed, party wages, and recruitment fees could go into my hypothetical logistic stat; while party size, garrison upkeep, and general things related to maintaining cohesion could be with Stewardship.

Leadership left with only party moral?

 

[StaceMcGate]

Sounds like a terrible idea, TBO. Skills boosted while doing nothing at all?



Absolutely Caravans! Workshops though is more running a business, to me thats Stewardship?


Leadership left with only party moral?

What are you currently doing to level Steward apart from having 3 different types of foods? Yes there is some foresight in actually buying the supplies, but its not an in-depth mechanic. The only other way to raise Steward is by in fact waiting in settlements and having prosperity raise. The same applies to Leadership in which it is only leveled by having high morale (which is easy to do once you hit leadership 25+) or leading an army. Both of these stats can be leveled by doing nothing and just waiting around.

Workshops is the effy middle ground, but the unreliability of caravans and the fact you can't run them yourself makes me think it should be included in raising trade skill but only minutely. If we could extend the troop capacity of Caravans to 50 or more, then workshops wouldn't be needed in Trade exp.

As more implementations are introduced to the morale system, I think its appropriate leadership's main role is applying morale buffs to your army and morale debuffs to enemy army. Things like increasing enemy morale drop from defeating lords or inclusion of more solo activities that can raise morale. It's secondary feature would be about managing companions and boosting their effectiveness.

 

[Tryvenyal]

What are you currently doing to level Steward apart from having 3 different types of foods? Yes there is some foresight in actually buying the supplies, but its not an in-depth mechanic. The only other way to raise Steward is by in fact waiting in settlements and having prosperity raise. The same applies to Leadership in which it is only leveled by having high morale (which is easy to do once you hit leadership 25+) or leading an army. Both of these stats can be leveled by doing nothing and just waiting around.

What more are you do to boost Athletics and Riding? Well, you are moving on the map

You at least have food and a party. Waiting in a fief you can do on your own and go fetch a coffey or whatever IRL stuff you wich to.

Workshops is the effy middle ground, but the unreliability of caravans and the fact you can't run them yourself makes me think it should be included in raising trade skill but only minutely.

Agree. They could give alittle XP to both.

If we could extend the troop capacity of Caravans to 50 or more, then workshops wouldn't be needed in Trade exp.

This sounds like exactly what the tradeskill should do! Manipulating caravan size, composition and troop-costs!