Is the dynasty mechanic wasted feature and is it also the reason fast paced combat agenda pushed by TW?

How many generation did you play in Bannerlord in your longest campaign?

  • 1

    Votes: 71 79.8%
  • 2

    Votes: 12 13.5%
  • 3

    Votes: 3 3.4%
  • 4

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 5

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 6

    Votes: 3 3.4%

  • Total voters
    89
  • Poll closed .

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Why is an endless game a good thing?
Because I enjoy playing the same narrative, the same character (or family), the same setting. I'm sure many others do too. It's partially why Fallout 3 Broken Steel was the best DLC for that title. It allowed you to play on with the same character past the 'ending'.

Regardless it's a completely optional feature. This discussion should be regarding adding a 'fast exp' mode if anything; not removing something people genuinely play and enjoy that is already in the game.
 
Regardless it's a completely optional feature. This discussion should be regarding adding a 'fast exp' mode if anything; not removing something people genuinely play and enjoy that is already in the game.
The Bannerlord story is built around a single player rags to riches narrative. The story is centered around your initial character about how you find the dragon banner and unite the kingdom or form your own. It has 8 kingdoms to take over. It's very reasonable to rule everything in 15-30 years. But let's contrast that with the CK series which has gigantic maps and 100's of kingdoms, principalities, duchies etc to take over or ally with. It could take 100's if not 1000's of years before you could ever be expected to rule even a majority of everything in a CK game. It has court intrigue, spying, assassinations, allying and betrayal of other kingdoms but Bannerlord has none of that. Those are some a big differences.
The CK series is designed around generational game play from the start. But this feature feels tacked on in Bannerlord without any real thought to how it makes the game better, almost like someone decided to tick of a check mark on some feature list instead of actually giving real thought of how it adds value to the game and why it should be added, just my 2 cents.
 
The Bannerlord story is built around a single player rags to riches narrative. The story is centered around your initial character about how you find the dragon banner and unite the kingdom or form your own. It has 8 kingdoms to take over. It's very reasonable to rule everything in 15-30 years. But let's contrast that with the CK series which has gigantic maps and 100's of kingdoms, principalities, duchies etc to take over or ally with. It could take 100's if not 1000's of years before you could ever be expected to rule even a majority of everything in a CK game. It has court intrigue, spying, assassinations, allying and betrayal of other kingdoms but Bannerlord has none of that. Those are some a big differences.
The CK series is designed around generational game play from the start. But this feature feels tacked on in Bannerlord without any real thought to how it makes the game better, almost like someone decided to tick of a check mark on some feature list instead of actually giving real thought of how it adds value to the game and why it should be added, just my 2 cents.
Oh I understand; but I think it adds value to many players regardless. It's a nice thing to have - tacked on or not.
 
Definitely yes, I would also add the simulated economy to that list. There just isn't enough game to actually make these features worthwhile, and God only knows how much time they wasted implemented them. In order to make the dynasty feature worthwhile, war would need to go from 90% of the game like it is now, to maybe 30-40%. With a bunch of peacetime activities like feasts, hunts, raising your children, governing your lands etc filling in he rest. That basically means TW would need to make another game. As it is, it's this feature that clearly only belongs in a deep 4x grand strategy game like Crusader Kings, tacked onto a shallow skirmish simulator. Others have said that another solution could possibly be to make time go faster, but I think that creates too many other problems.
 
IMO the question we should ask isn't how much to shorten the year, but why we have to shorten the year so much to make the pace of the game believable.

One way to slow down the player is to make battles take campaign time. Now the player can delete armies the instant he reaches them, assuming he wins the battle scene. Not only does this save a lot of in-game time (see how long it takes AI parties to fight!) but the very presence of the player accelerates the pace of a (usually victorious) push by his chosen faction, so the enemy has less time to regroup and is more likely to be defeated in detail and leave the castles & towns nearly defenseless. The sieges may also be too fast, but I know little about the actual pace of dark age sieges and whether bombardment was as effective as it is in-game.

There's also the fact that parties do not need rest in this game, except for recovering the wounded in settlements, but due to Warband and the AI implications I think we're meant to assume that Calradians are a fantasy race that don't require sleep.
 
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One issue I have with late game is that it forces you to go really hard on the AI and bulldoze them all off the map, Even if you wanted to make a faction of moderate size and take it slow, it's really not going to workout in any enjoyable way. It will just be you doing 90% of the defending against endless AI armies that take no meaningful malice from being defeated over and over. The player will get burnt out and annoyed at this very fast. The only recourse is to take down ALL the enemy parties, capture ALL the lord and begin taking ALL their fief. Nothing short of this matters at all, the AI always has too much access to troops and influence and will always just come right back.

And of course once your faction is a certain size, everyone on both sides wants war forever and your vassals can just paint the map with or without you. There's just no way to actually have long game because you have this miserable endless army fights that will make you not want to play or you bulldoze and the map is quickly finished off.

I hope when they add player death they add some fast forward so when you die you can SKIP to when your child is 18 and take over. I don't want to play as another NPC and have to hope they die at a convenient time. Having to do this creates a problem of needing a new spouse incase you die before babies are 18+, and thus a cycle of un-wanted main characters while you wait.

Also I think children should be interactable and useful as clan members long before they are 18+ Clan members. I know it's just some "oh if we change that then we have to chance a b c d ..." I don't care you have done it differently to begin with! Of course you can't make it take 18 years if there's not 18 years of content in the game!
 
The sieges may also be too fast, but I know little about the actual pace of dark age sieges and whether bombardment was as effective as it is in-game.
I would argue the sieges are both too short and long. Making them simply a grueling endevour that can't be sped up in any manner is hardly a enjoyable solution to the problem.
Too long because there is no way to have garrisons quickly surrender to a superior force or take a fortification by deceit by storming the gates with soldiers disguised as peasants for a real life example, Spys from total war are a good example of a similar concept in a game. But it is also too short at least for the play because fortifications often don't pose a significant threat especially with a small amount of cheese. Fortifications even breached could still be rather effective historically to my knowledge.
 
I do prefer play main character (immortal) rather than take over a.i design of character that mess up or not felt belonging, more fun that way for me than take over stranger children to play that I do not design or not representation of my idea. Those question is kind of little fishty, it's mean many reason why people might playing main character, one might gave age and children slow grow, other don't want take over, they want play with main character, if main character die, game over, even there is child that could take over and play, other want similar game style older classic mount and blade, pure main character roleplaying, no other character.

here is thing next children, world is changing, tech, all that, are we going to had game that sword, riding horse to gun, tanks, aircraft, to spacecraft? Next children often do not go throught same experience, one are rich and powerful, but next children is poor, weak, even die alone without making family, or one become disability leading no where life improve but trapped, so go on.

I don't see any point playing main character that we design and invest only got deleted and a.i random gave you npc (children) to play that you might not enjoy that character.
 
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The issue is that, as far as dynasties go, the map is too small. Dynasties require a diplomatic system that this game just cannot give. The issue is this: the game is too fast, even with a very short year (or because of how short the year is*), for it to be a multi-generational build to an entire dynasty. The map is tiny. I've talked before about how quickly you can circumnavigate it. If you just started the game at Sargoth, went south to the desert, hit every city going around the Mediterranean-esque sea, up the eastern edge of the map, across the frozen wastes of the north, and back around to Sargoth in less than a month. In the Middle Ages, without ship travel it would have taken years to trek across the northern edge of Africa, up the Levant, all the way to the north sea, back across the northern edge of continental Europe back to Spain. Maybe a decade depending on setbacks and such.

This is a tiny world. Conquering it doesn't take centuries. Conquering Brittany in Crusader Kings takes decades if you don't start as a kingdom. That's 6 fiefs. There are 120 fiefs in Bannerlord that can be besieged but the game can be conquered in less than 30 in game years.

*If it were a longer year they could slow movement speed to make the world feel larger but if it took half a month to get from Ocs Hall to Charas as it would if the the travel were mapped to France (Ocs Hall sitting to the northeast but not all the way on the coast maps well to Paris and Charas on the southern coast maps well to Marseille). 16 days for a single traveler to cover 481 miles on a horse is fairly good travel time before cars or trains or carriages even. But with the shortened year that is an 8th of the entire year.
 
The issue is that, as far as dynasties go, the map is too small. Dynasties require a diplomatic system that this game just cannot give. The issue is this: the game is too fast, even with a very short year (or because of how short the year is*), for it to be a multi-generational build to an entire dynasty. The map is tiny. I've talked before about how quickly you can circumnavigate it. If you just started the game at Sargoth, went south to the desert, hit every city going around the Mediterranean-esque sea, up the eastern edge of the map, across the frozen wastes of the north, and back around to Sargoth in less than a month. In the Middle Ages, without ship travel it would have taken years to trek across the northern edge of Africa, up the Levant, all the way to the north sea, back across the northern edge of continental Europe back to Spain. Maybe a decade depending on setbacks and such.

This is a tiny world. Conquering it doesn't take centuries. Conquering Brittany in Crusader Kings takes decades if you don't start as a kingdom. That's 6 fiefs. There are 120 fiefs in Bannerlord that can be besieged but the game can be conquered in less than 30 in game years.

*If it were a longer year they could slow movement speed to make the world feel larger but if it took half a month to get from Ocs Hall to Charas as it would if the the travel were mapped to France (Ocs Hall sitting to the northeast but not all the way on the coast maps well to Paris and Charas on the southern coast maps well to Marseille). 16 days for a single traveler to cover 481 miles on a horse is fairly good travel time before cars or trains or carriages even. But with the shortened year that is an 8th of the entire year.
That a kind of possible dynasty system is implemented (and it is) is something fine. Finally Bannerlord will be a game clear 'playable' but also clear made for possible modding... with tools. As far i read there are still not all tools present or not accomplished, but for many fans mods will be the interesting stuff, also for creating world-necessary maps. It is nearly the same like for Warband. As par example crpg or 1257 were playable i never had thoughts again about the vanilla versions, only if there were updates and hopefully preferred mods still functioning.
Also i try the new Bannerlord updates (first Vanilla) i tend now also for Bannerlord more and more to test new versions of some existing mods like ''Calradia Factions Enhanced'' or ''Eagle Rising''. But some (for me even more interesting) total overhaul mods still put on hold because Bannerlord is apparently more far away from finished in any aspect than ''all'' players want.

But sure, finally Calradia is like you mentioned to small as 'world' for the mood of empires. But it is enough for the common players not to lose the overview. Some folks were in Warband to overwhelmed with p.e. 1257 mod, there the gamemap was/is as big as such a 'world' must be. But also clear it is a game... in vanilla even a (quite small) fantasy world (fine without magical looking rocketlaunchers)
 
Yeah, most probably, mods will turn this feature something more relevant for the players than it is now. The map is being big enough and maybe decreasing the days in a year.
Sure size of maps are often a matter of taste. If someone wants a game he can 'win' the whole 'world' in one gamesession the existing Vanilla map is toooo big :grin:
But i have the optimism that modders will make it. There is par example also a mod in development for an european map... but now i read for some mods even that (half-europe) map would and will be to small... clear. Ohhhh, it is probably all a matter of time (more more than less) :grin:
 
It is definitely big for my taste. But the points EverKira making do make sense for this particular feature.
I think also the vanilla map is not really small, clear also not huge. Finally all need to wait, but modding will make the possibility of huger or even smaller maps. Sure, i like more the big gamingworlds (for M&B style) :wink: so if i start in a historical setting as par example ''english'' or ''pereslawl rus'' i must not explore, visit or beat then folks from Sicily or Portugal. If i want to play those different regions i start another game or if i want to be a worldconqueror then i try that... should be anyway a bit difficult and not the main goal.
 
I wonder how player death in combat may fit into this... with careless gameplay you might end up going through characters quite quickly (though respecc is a lfieline for that). I'm certainly interested to try it out.
 
I wonder how player death in combat may fit into this... with careless gameplay you might end up going through characters quite quickly (though respecc is a lfieline for that). I'm certainly interested to try it out.

I wholeheartedly agree. It's gonna be an option ofcourse but one that I'll check. Right now offspring is an afterthought. Being at risk of dying will encourage a more careful gameplay style and also add some pressure on producing mini-me's. I like it!
 
I wholeheartedly agree. It's gonna be an option ofcourse but one that I'll check. Right now offspring is an afterthought. Being at risk of dying will encourage a more careful gameplay style and also add some pressure on producing mini-me's. I like it!
Also makes that Brother, Wife and list of companions a little more important; as they might end up being your main character!

Still I want a retire option. TW have mentioned it before.
 
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