What do you do in a medium-long campaign when NOT at war?

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I'm at this point in my current Vlandia playthrough, and there's a clear lack of interesting/compelling things to be doing when your faction is NOT at war to pass the time. I end up just sitting in a castle with the time set to fast forward. To be clear there are things to do, but they're trivial/done in a few seconds, or just not particularly interesting when you've done more than one campaign. Lets have a look at the bulk of them:-

Tournaments
These are fun to do now and then - but as events they don't really help with the sandbox "passage of time" I'm talking about

Management
  • Manage your fiefs
  • Manage your workshops
  • Manage your companions/caravans (if captured during war)
  • Recruit troops (if needed)
These are all nice features in Bannerlord and I'm glad to have them - but because of the lack of depth to them you can do all of these things combined in a couple minutes.

missions/quests
As I'm the leader of a fairly influential clan in the medium-late game, by this point doing missions has lost most of the appeal. And lets be honest, there's a lot of MMO tier "fetch" quests that aren't particularly interesting, especially if you've done them before. There's also an immersion factor - I'm a well known Lord, why would I be doing errands for other people?

Bandits & bandit hideouts
In their current implementation, to me these are more of a tedious nuisance than something enjoyable to deal with beyond the early game when you grind on them. A more detailed thread with my opinion on this HERE

Smithing
A nice feature, but it's playthrough specific (not everyone will want to make a character that's a smith)

marriage
You'll probably only do this once or twice in your playthrough

I think that's about it? Add anything if I've forgotten. Reading the new post about future plans, I didn't see anything that would beef up this particularly thin section of the game which is a shame, but I hope this area does get some attention. I know its been said time and time again that people would like to see things like peace time feasts (and I agree!) to expand this part of the gameplay, but I think this area of the game can be mostly padded out by adding depth to existing features (particularly "management" and diplomacy features) so there's more for the player to sink their teeth into & think about.

Edit for clarification - To be very clear, I'm not in any way saying that the peace time should be reduced - the increased peace time has been a really good change for the campaign flow for multiple reasons. It's just that it's shown the actual peace time to be currently quite hollow in terms of features.

With good game design, both war & peace would offer the player the time to make use of enjoyable features that they look forward to and positively add to the gameplay loop. As it stands, "war" is getting there. I'm really looking forward to the pre-placement of troops, and your position on the campaign map deciding your starting position on the battle map. The "peace" time though, is currently a bit void of features with depth that you can look forward to diving into.

Do you use any mods that add more to this particular section of the game?
 
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I think you got it all.

I mostly spend this time improving my relations with village/town notables doing quests. This is important because once you become king you can't do quests anymore because of your status.
 
Agree but I really appreciate that now we have at least some few peace days in order to do some stuff between wars. Endless wars make feel battles too repetitive and less appealing for me, and before it was really hard to do some stuff when your kingdom was 100% of the time involved in wars.

So, while it is nice to improve the peace gameplay, and devs should focus on this and on making late game more fun, I am in favor of some peace times which allow us to enjoy other aspects of the game different to battles (even if there are not much features during peace). Some examples:

- Looking for better equipment.
- Looking for a new companion.
- Looking for a new wife for me or brothers.
- Resolve all issues in my settlements.
- Smithing (bigger issue with smithing is how broken/OP it is currently).
- Try to have a new kid.
- Recruit new clans.
- Complete a history mode quest.

Not saying that these things are enough for making me enjoy a lot peace times, but it is good to have some days to between wars to taking care of these things
 
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I strip my party down to 10-15 dudes (including companions) and hunt bandit parties.

Sometimes I'll strip my party and rebuild it, so I have hundreds of replacement troops and can keep my offense during wartime going with only a minimal delay.
 
I'm honestly never bored with combat and looting. I like to go after bandits, I like to handicap myself, I like to cheat in battles (one of my favorites is just grabbing a party full of javelin throwers and watch as they spam hundreds of javelins into the air), I like to have a party purely of companions, I like to join tournaments, I like smithing, etc.

A good chunk of it is just modding/cheating, honestly. If there isn't anything to do.. well.. that's where those two come in.
 
Let's wait until later, the addition of contenders for the throne of each nation will add a lot, I hope to see another function that was in warband or even viking conquest. Permanent wounds if not treated by a doctor, prostitutes in taverns that you can pay for the morale of your army, noble receptions etc ...
I think we go up too quickly hierarchically in bannerlord. In warband, apart from the village you are given, you have to contribute a lot to get more. Especially on a game that must be over several generations, becoming the lord of a city in less than 3 years really breaks the principle of going up generational.
 
Agree but I really appreciate that now we have at least some few peace days in order to do some stuff between wars. Endless wars make feel battles too repetitive and less appealing for me, and before it was really hard to do some stuff when your kingdom was 100% of the time involved in wars.

So, while it is nice to improve the peace gameplay, and devs should focus on this and on making late game more fun, I am in favor of some peace times which allow us to enjoy other aspects of the game different to battles (even if there are not much features during peace).
Oh I agree - To be very clear, I'm not in any way saying that the peace time should be reduced - the increased peace time has been a really good change for the campaign flow for multiple reasons. It's just that it's shown the actual peace time to be currently quite hollow in terms of features.

With good game design, both war & peace would offer the player the time to make use of enjoyable features that they look forward to and positively add to the gameplay loop. As it stands, "war" is getting there. I'm really looking forward to the pre-placement of troops, and your position on the campaign map deciding your starting position on the battle map. The "peace" time though, is currently a bit void of features with depth that you can look forward to diving into.
 
Permanent wounds if not treated by a doctor,
I hated this feature from some mods with those random encounters where you had to choose some option and if you choosed the wrong one BAM -1 strenght, was noch much fun for me :grin:

But the good ol´ save scum method could make the -1 strenght to a +1 strenght, still didn´t like it.
 
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I hated this feature from some mods with those random encounters where you had to choose some option and if you choosed the wrong one BAM -1 strenght, was noch much fun for me :grin:

But the good ol´ save scum method could make the -1 strenght to a +1 strenght, still didn´t like it.
I'm not talking about a random thing. When you fall in battle, the last blow hurts you. If the last blow is on the arm, a wound that reduces the one-hand skill by 20 points, if not healed within 4 or 5 days of the battle, of course you pay the doctor. Did you play viking conquest?
 
Smithing
A nice feature, but it's playthrough specific (not everyone will want to make a character that's a smith)
Yeah.. I've installed the game and started a campaign (sandbox), didn't spent any points in smithing and it seems to me that the weapon variety is severely lacking..
Am I wrong?
I'm playing khuzait-oriented, and there are only 2 or 3 sabres/scimitars available... in all khuzait cities :sad:

This reminds me of the same 'problem' skyrim smithing has: If you don't level smithing, you stay with poor/bland weapons/equips
I don't want to be forced to be a smith to get variety in weapons
 
Yeah.. I've installed the game and started a campaign (sandbox), didn't spent any points in smithing and it seems to me that the weapon variety is severely lacking..
Am I wrong?
I'm playing khuzait-oriented, and there are only 2 or 3 sabres/scimitars available... in all khuzait cities :sad:

This reminds me of the same 'problem' skyrim smithing has: If you don't level smithing, you stay with poor/bland weapons/equips
I don't want to be forced to be a smith to get variety in weapons
I've never smithed. Weapon and armor drops are sort of tied to what loot drops you have gotten your hands on, so try to kill Lord parties to "open up" tiers.

Not having that many varieties in the game, I can't help with...
 
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