Companion Wages are Way Too High

[conleyc86]

Paying your kids and spouse and a few randoms well above the soldier wage makes zero sense and makes it foolish to even recruit companions if they can't serve a purpose.

Instead, there should be a wage (and relation) bonus for sending companions on quests and/or assigning them roles in the party or even leading their own party. Otherwise it's financially unwise to hire companions until you need caravan or party leaders or party roles filled.

 

[Underuse2307]

i'm sure there is a skill (i think in steward) that reduces their cost.

 

[Askorti]

Those costs become completely and utterly negligible by midgame. I dont really see this as an actual issue tbh. Especially since companions arent just soldiers, they are officers and leaders in their own right, it makes perfect sense that they would be better paid than some soldiers.
If anything, it's regular troops that don't get paid enough.

 

[geala]

Companions can fill the gaps in your skills and increase the performance of your party on the campaign map and in battle, therefore I hire some early. Scouting and Medicine are the main fields for them. I like to have one captain for infantry, ranged and cavalry as soon as affordable. I also like to dress them up. They can also make some money with caravans or because they win the tournaments where your main gets gutted. I agree with Askorti that their wages are appropriate.

If you like you can use a mod like Character Manager to make companions better. I usually do it with one of them, a close friend of my main, to make him a good fighter. Also a mod which gives trade xp to you from caravans makes companions more interesting. You can spare you some costs and raise skills of a companion if you park him/her in a town for some time.

 

[luoyezhiqiu]

I want to know, why do my brother and wife also need very high salaries? Aren't they relatives?

 

[Penn]

They are not expensive at all

 

[conleyc86]

Those costs become completely and utterly negligible by midgame. I dont really see this as an actual issue tbh. Especially since companions arent just soldiers, they are officers and leaders in their own right, it makes perfect sense that they would be better paid than some soldiers.
If anything, it's regular troops that don't get paid enough.

The tutorial encourages you to get one immediately, and they cost the same as two fian champs and you have to equip them and vanilla gear gets crazy expensive. Sure, eventually money is no object, and once you get the hang of the systems you can min max quickly, but they are making harder. Trading and workshops are less lucrative

They are not expensive at all

They are more than double fian champs or khans guards or cataphract, and require a quarter to half a million denars to get their equipment on par. By late game money is no object, sure, but early game, they make no financial sense. A fian champ is FAR more bang for the buck.

 

[conleyc86]

Those costs become completely and utterly negligible by midgame. I dont really see this as an actual issue tbh. Especially since companions arent just soldiers, they are officers and leaders in their own right, it makes perfect sense that they would be better paid than some soldiers.
If anything, it's regular troops that don't get paid enough.

Except in your party they dont really lead, and even mid game it is not negligible. Late game sure, money is no object. But companions are 2x to 3x a banner knight champ, and then you have to spend 400k roughly to gear them appropriately (the banner knight armor is rare too and not always available). Why am I paying a steep wage on top of a colossal sum of money to equip them? Equipment matters more than than skill. Sure, companions are second only to the player once you dump half a million in them (it was a million before cost of goods came down in an earlier update)

Their value is not equal their cost is my point - and I originally said you could tack on an extra fee when they are assigned roles, or put them in charge of caravans (with their wage related to trade, charm and tactics skills) or make them governors... but not all the companions have skills for roles, so their whole point is to cost more to do less than ordinary troops. When they are just another troop., often on the vastly inferior side, why do they make 2 to 3x?

 

[TechnoSarge]

If you turned off dying in battle - they're persistent, unlike your fian champs. So they're permanent troops.

 

[Apocal]

They are more than double fian champs or khans guards or cataphract, and require a quarter to half a million denars to get their equipment on par. By late game money is no object, sure, but early game, they make no financial sense. A fian champ is FAR more bang for the buck.

Then leave them in town or a village. You don't have to pay their wages in that case.

 

[xdj1nn]

Those costs become completely and utterly negligible by midgame. I dont really see this as an actual issue tbh. Especially since companions arent just soldiers, they are officers and leaders in their own right, it makes perfect sense that they would be better paid than some soldiers.
If anything, it's regular troops that don't get paid enough.

that if you aren't playing sturgian - if you are playing in sturgia with sturgian fiefs, it isn't negligible until super-saiyan late game

 

[Bluko88]

Paying your kids and spouse and a few randoms well above the soldier wage makes zero sense and makes it foolish to even recruit companions if they can't serve a purpose.

Instead, there should be a wage (and relation) bonus for sending companions on quests and/or assigning them roles in the party or even leading their own party. Otherwise it's financially unwise to hire companions until you need caravan or party leaders or party roles filled.

I admit they are pricey, but pretty sure that's on purpose.

You really shouldn't need more than a few companions anyways, I mean if companions only had a 10 denars wage most players would recruit every Companion. The high wages discourage you from grabbing every single one and instead focus on what you need.

If you have Battle Death on, running around with 4 or more companions is really more of liability since one of them is going to get killed at some point. And if you have Death Off, well than yeah you should have to pay a pretty penny for your immortal sidekicks.


Admittedly the Tutorial/Campaign gives the bad impression you should grab as many Companions as possible, because that totally won't bankrupt newbies.

But again as other have stated if Companions are getting too pricey just drop em off in a Town somewhere. Can always pick up them up later.

 

[xdj1nn]

If you have Battle Death on, running around with 4 or more companions is really more of liability since one of them is going to get killed at some point. And if you have Death Off, well than yeah you should have to pay a pretty penny for your immortal sidekicks.

Well well well... It isn't a liability, it's just a hefty loss of time investment. Here's the issue: leveling for the PC is really bad as is, leveling a comp's a full time job that will probably require that you remove yourself from the game for pure meta-pursuit until they are meaningfully useful - running generic comps for generic purposes, like some half-arsed level 10 to 20 captain, isn't really a loss, they'll serve their half-arsed purpose and if they die you'll get another similar pretty easily from a tavern...
It becomes bad once you've leveled them past 20 with shaped respecs and really expensive gear, because for some retarded reason TW doesn't give your items back, the guy dies and apparently their entire gear melts into their corpse... Add to that the fact you've spent 10h to level them up, than we're talking about anti-player bias due to extremely insulting mechanics. And for some reason ppl seem to take the game's "hard" settings as the "default otherwise you're crap" because they think it's "challenging" when it really isn't. RNG switched on or off doesn't really matter - it's there just because... I like the idea of ppl dying in-game and as such I take the hit without whining, but there's an TAB IN CAMPAIGN OPTIONS THAT ALLOWS YOU TO DISABLE COMPANION DEATH. Just use it instead of calling "Liability" or grow a beard and bite the coal with a straight face. That if you're thick enough to actually play the game on vanilla, otherwise mod the game and be happy(ier) with an actually decent game instead of whatever this thing is.

PS: Don't come at me with "console" whining, games like this shouldn't even be on consoles, but greed is greed and as such consoles get a Half-Arsedception: "half-arsed version of an already half-arsed game" - BL is unenjoyable without mods, to me it's barely playable...

 

[Apocal]

that if you aren't playing sturgian - if you are playing in sturgia with sturgian fiefs, it isn't negligible until super-saiyan late game

If you're winning against lord parties regularly, it is negligible. The only way to stay broke enough to care about companions' costs is if you're either not fighting at all or you have something against collecting loot after the battles.

 

[xdj1nn]

If you're winning against lord parties regularly, it is negligible. The only way to stay broke enough to care about companions' costs is if you're either not fighting at all or you have something against collecting loot after the battles.

well, the most efficient steward build will allow you to upgrade troops at mach 3 speeds and requires us to discard equipment, besides the lack of reliable storage in the game makes it a nightmare to manage the inventory - ain't got no time for click simulator coin sounds. In fact the lack of meaningful strategical level on battles and depth + immersion on the overall game has been leaning me to basically do auto-calc with troop power-leveling builds... Specially vanilla only

 

[Brano]

Maybe an option to pay companions in portion of loot? Like real warlords did. Good times, plenty of coins, bad times, not that much. On the other hand, what do they need gold coins for? They are not even able to buy themselves an armor or weapon or horse

 

[anoddhermit]

I find they more than pay for themselves if you use them appropriately as captains. Early game they can also be handy dandy looter(/mountain/desert bandit) shooters for renown farming since you can give them a bow or xbow and 3 stacks of bolts or arrows to make that go quicker. But you can also create parties/caravans with them, assign them to be governers, etc. if you don't care to.

 

[Brano]

For me their wages are OK. In fact I never came close to question this point. Never bothered me to an extent it would start bothering me.....

 

[Apocal]

well, the most efficient steward build will allow you to upgrade troops at mach 3 speeds and requires us to discard equipment, besides the lack of reliable storage in the game makes it a nightmare to manage the inventory - ain't got no time for click simulator coin sounds.

Yeah, we all know about the steward perks. Point still stands: if you're going broke then wtf are you doing with all the loot? Are you just constantly losing dozens or hundreds of troops that you need to replace? In every single battle? Because that what it would take to make loot selling not enough to fund companions. Even in a tight spot financially, you can leave them in any town (or village) and not have to pay their wages for awhile.

I'm increasingly convinced you're just really bad at this game.

 

[Brano]

How much golden coins is a companion wage worth? Frankly, I never checked that.