So right now Mount and Blade feels a little bit like a Charlie Sheen house party... it starts really well but always ends up with the escorts in tears and half of your friends arrested for possession of cocaine.
More seriously....
We all know that TW will never implement major changes to make late-game good. Like all of us know that they will never make a diplomacy system for Bannerlord with any depth....
So ok, what are the changes COULD Taleworlds make in order to improve end-game? (Maybe smaller changes that wouldn't require months of coding and fresh design?)
- What would be the 'easy wins'?
Biggest layups that would make the most improvement to the soulless, repetitive lategame grind for the least effort:
* Fix armor so that it provides more sensible protection. The current state of armor seriously damages the enjoyment of the game's tactics and combat, and makes engaging in blobfests where you sit at the back feel like a chore. There are mods out there which make armor much more satisfying with just a relatively small amount of code changes. If TW wants to do it more complicated and model lots of variables that's great, but a simple solution that works is also fine as well.
* Make the AI take a bit longer to come back with armies after they have been defeated and released/escaped captivity.
* Reduce the amount of chasing people around (finding clan leaders and mercenary clans so you can convince them to join you or marry your clan members to; going to your many tens of fiefs to do issue quests) the player has to do in the late game. One immersive way of doing this would be to add a minister in the Lord's Hall who can send messages for you to people. Warband had lords actually come visit your court but if that's too hard for TW a message system would be easy, as modders have shown.
* In addition to the above point, change the encyclopaedia so it tells you where the AI was last seen *heading towards* instead of the last place they were seen! Again, Warband did this and it made tracking people down much easier.
* Add a cooldown on AI proposing a war/peace vote repeatedly while the player is ruler. It is incredibly unfun for the AI to constantly drain the player's Influence as we try to stop them making dumb strategic decisions while already at war.
* Forcibly dissolve an AI kingdom after it has held no fiefs for 20 days. All its clans join other factions, or go "into exile outside Calradia" (disappear permanently). Defeated enemies nipping at your heels for eternity raiding your fiefs with small armies they
don't actually have the income to afford is very annoying.
* Make Engineering skill easier to acquire and have more effect on the rate of siege camp setup/tower construction. Although many skills need looking at, Engineering is one of the biggest offenders, as with the many sieges the player must do to conquer Calradia in the lategame, there is an enormous amount of time wasted waiting for siege camps to build. If I put focus points into Engineering, then by the lategame it should be very quick and easy to build a siege camp even if I'm not in an army and just have 300 guys.
* Five out of eight factions in the game field very similar army compositions. Make the troop trees more distinct from each other with more clearly defined strengths and weaknesses, so the player has to change their tactics when invading different countries!
There are plenty of other problems which affect the early/mid game but the above are some of the biggest offenders in making the lategame an unfun, boring, dragged out experience. And some of them could be fixed by just changing a single number, e.g. Engineering.
Finally, onto the daydreaming. If TW wanted to make the lategame really fun and satisfying, they could:
* Change the campaign route to be less grindy and drawn out, and more climactic. Instead of painting the whole map in the campaign you should be able to fight one really big, difficult battle in the last stage of the campaign, and have the remainder of the factions surrender to you if you win.
This will make the lategame fun for people who want a shorter and not repetitive RPG-like experience.
* Add some form of internal large-scale civil wars or external foreign invasions to the game for sandbox, for players who want to experience a long game and make use of dynastic mechanics and stuff. Give them a credible threat which is there permanently.
This will make the lategame fun for people who want a long lasting Crusader Kings-style experience.
! They should be having rebellions everywhere, no tax payment from any thing, having absolute no money or man power if they're all in prison for too long. I want to see them completely ruined and unable to function being caught by looter as soon they spawn in thier ruined territory.
