After keep battles and terrain-based battle maps, if they were to release a
major feature per 1.6.X (which will never happen,) my wishlist would be:
1.6.1 - Spear bracing, with troop trees reorganized to make it fit in well as a mechanic.
1.6.2 - Kingdom Court: When you start a kingdom, your first fief houses a Court (which can be moved). Fiefless nobles visit your Court to offer to join your faction, for a price. You have a Minister there who tells you about Issues forming in the kingdom (which with Bannerlord's parties system would allow you to dispatch companions to deal with them). This would be a major improvement on how frustrating it is for the player to run around the whole world and do everything themselves as a ruler. Was in Warband.
1.6.3 - Minor Faction bases. These were shown in the 2016 demo, and looked kind of like bandit hideouts for minor factions. It would be good if minor factions had a permanent location to hire their own troops and for the player to make contact with them.
1.6.4 - Feasts. The ability for nobles and the player to hold feasts during peacetime, which raise Influence, increase relations, and give you the opportunity to talk to lots of nobles at the same time, along with the immersion benefits. Was in Warband.
1.6.5 - Deserter enemies (military-grade bandits) spawned from low morale parties, Manhunters that spawn in areas of high bandit activity and have a recruitable troop tree focused on blunt weapons, training peasant women into Sword Sisters, Book Merchants who sell skillbooks, Hitmen/Belligerent Drunks who attack you in settlements, all of which were in Warband.
1.6.7 - Lord Duels. The dialogue option to insult a noble and start a duel, or Lords who dislike you occasionally challenging you to a duel. This would return the Denounce Lord/Defend Honor quests from Warband.
1.6.8 - Pre-battle army placement in field battles.
1.6.9 - Criminal Enterprise:
TW has mentioned this in the past and still advertises "make a Criminal Empire!" on the Steam store page, but we have still not seen them. In theory, you can take over alleys from gangs to start a "criminal enterprise" of your own there (black market?) which works just like a workshop, but with much higher profit, at the cost of raising your criminal rating, and having to fight off other gangs every now and then (implemented).
With this feature, alleys would finally have a purpose.
1.7 - Secessions/Civil Wars: The larger a kingdom gets and the more vassals it has, the more likely one of its AI vassals is (if they have low relations with the ruler, are different culture, or are devious) to try and convince other AI vassals to secede with their fiefs, starting a civil war.
Warband had civil wars, though the player had to kick them off. If TW had time to add AI-driven secession, it would give the player an endless source of enemies in the end-game (making the dynastic mechanics relevant), and solve the problem of faction imbalance and boring diplomacy in the late-game, by reintroducing defeated cultures as breakaway factions.
That would be all the
major features I'd want. Obviously the game's existing features would still need improving, but the content base would have succeeded in delivering on TW's feature promises and making a great sequel to Warband.