Fog of war is extremely annoying and time consuming.

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It's annoying to to me that they even call if FOW because IT DOESN'T FOG ANY OF THE WAR! It still tells you were everyone is and you can still inspect everything about enemy parties on the map. They should hide enemy locations and put generic models for all parties so you have to actual get close to see what's what, that would be cool.
thats what i expected from the feature too, but as you already mentioned it would just add another advantage for the ai over the player. i can imagine that "simulating" such a fow feature in the ai enviroment is a hard thing to do and even harder to make it look good gameplay wise. imagine: having a kingdom and none of your vassals would know where to go, nobody is helping out, placing troops into garisson and/or get stuck in villages (pun intended)
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I am building a clan with good governor effects. Because it makes towns easier to manage. And who wants a cruel leader? Traits are nice there. Traits even goes to the children. Skill is not important at all. Because i think one should level them up to the desired skills.

iam always amazed to see how others approach the game. interesting. to me none of that seems necessary, but this approach seems like an more organic one and i like it. nevertheless given that i think the fow feature just adds something to it.
i dont know how you care that much about time consumption. as - with all respect - you already do with all of that rather needless management. no offense tho.
i never really cared about town management. i just get the right policies so they dont rebel, build some stuff and move on.
 
Make it less annoying sure, but it would still be a feature that just mindlessly slows down the player rather than meaningfully changing the way you interact with the game.

Its a feature i think people like the idea of more than anything else. Bannerlord is at such a large scale but it forces you to go to every corner of the map dozens of times per playthrough. The idea of "getting to know" characters is just not applicable here, and there's no feasible way to design features around it without fundamentally changing the pacing. However they implemented the fog of war, it's always going to butt heads with this element of the game.
I personally disagree with the idea that you MUST play several playthroughs or that players will play several of them at all in this game, well, of course Taleworlds destroying every save file in each update is a problem but, I don't think anyone here is even playing 2 playthroughs simultaneously, I don't think anyone ever had, I mean, don't you just stick to one playthrough until you're done with the game itself? By the point you pick it up again it really didn't mattered how much you did to evolve your character into a killing machine with 500 high level troop army, because it's enjoyable being in ground 0. In fact I enjoy myself the ground 0 that being a king at all, and I don't know, I don't mind fog of war (had it been well implemented) and I don't mind taking my time.

In fact I wished there were more features that encouraged you to enjoy each step of the game (mercenary/lord/king) properly instead of being able to rush so fast into it.
 
personally disagree with the idea that you MUST play several playthroughs or that players will play several of them at all in this game


You misread, I said that you have to traverse the map so many times in every playthrough (even if you only do one) and speak to so many NPCs so often that any attempt to de-streamline the process is going to be a massive annoyance regardless of how they implement it.
 
Ideally, in the model of its current implementation, making it so the player doesn't know where anyone is (in fact, the game encyclopedia should only add people after you meet them) would make the fog of war more a true to its name but there should be a tick in game settings in case the player doesn't want to play with fog of war active. Giving the players multiple options of gameplay always seem like a win for me
 
Make it less annoying sure, but it would still be a feature that just mindlessly slows down the player rather than meaningfully changing the way you interact with the game.
The game needs more things to slow the player down (in good/meaningful gameplay ways); you power through to the poor late-game way too quickly by barely needing to engage in any other aspect of the game.
Its a feature i think people like the idea of more than anything else. Bannerlord is at such a large scale but it forces you to go to every corner of the map dozens of times per playthrough. The idea of "getting to know" characters is just not applicable here, and there's no feasible way to design features around it without fundamentally changing the pacing. However they implemented the fog of war, it's always going to butt heads with this element of the game.
The idea on FoW was adding some 'realism' in the game where it seems feasible to.
  • Should I know specifically how many troops (and to the individual types) are in an enemy castle just be being near it?
  • Should I know where X mercenary clan is that just took out my caravan at all times to revenge?
  • Should I know where all captured allies were divi'd up and which castles they got deposited into in order to rescue them?
  • What is the point of scout tracking perks if I can just hunt them via encyclopedia?
  • Why bother with any lord dialogue options (barebones already) if it does absolutely nothing anyways?
  • Should I know the very instant Z castle is besieged across the map?
Pressing 'N' to hunt X/Y/Z lord location down is a QoL thing against 'fetching', I get it. Based on that then, let's scrap the unlocking smithing parts, scrap the poor RNG marriage scripts, auto-complete quests, scrap the arbitrary party/companion/workshop renown cap, scrap relationships/traits, etc...a lot of those things are very shallow anyways and also mindlessly slows the player down too without any meaningful gameplay aspect to them either.

But what are we left with? Might as well just play custom battles and allow us more 'customizability' within that.

Better to improve and add details and life to this medieval sim game with each feature that's added; FoW being among them.
Yes, TW's track record is horrible with all the features we've probably seen added/changed to date; many still incomplete or barebones. But that's an entirely different set of problems that removing/adding FoW or any other feature won't solve unfortunately.
 
The game needs more things to slow the player down (in good/meaningful gameplay ways); you power through to the poor late-game way too quickly by barely needing to engage in any other aspect of the game.

It only feels that way because there's nothing to do. It already takes dozens of hours of the same mindless crap to do a world conquest (the only meaningful goal that doesnt just amount to prematurely ragequitting at some arbitrary point). Making the campaign any longer than this is just ridiculous, it ensures only no-lifers who spend all day grinding like an MMO will get to finish the game.

I think you actually should be able to power through a campaign if you play well enough. Too many strategy developers now are scared of people "completing" their game in less than 24 hours so they add tons of anti-snowballing roadblocks to nullify the effect of good strategy, effectively just making their own game worse so that everyone has more or less the same experience. Paradox games are all like this and they are not fun to play at all.

Instead I think the game should be difficult strategically. So the campaign is fairly quick to complete, but you are also in serious danger of losing in some scenarios, forcing you to start again with a better strategy. And currently the campaign is so long that most players just quit when they get bored and restart anyway. Plus the developers can't add anthing that would make you lose or restard (minus permadeath which is just glorified RNG) because it would be a waste of dozens of player hours. The problem though is that they seem married to the generations gimmick, which is forcing them to make the campaign long enough to justify it. But I think the campaign is simply too long.


The idea on FoW was adding some 'realism' in the game where it seems feasible to.
  • Should I know specifically how many troops (and to the individual types) are in an enemy castle just be being near it?
  • Should I know where X mercenary clan is that just took out my caravan at all times to revenge?
  • Should I know where all captured allies were divi'd up and which castles they got deposited into in order to rescue them?
  • What is the point of scout tracking perks if I can just hunt them via encyclopedia?
  • Why bother with any lord dialogue options (barebones already) if it does absolutely nothing anyways?
  • Should I know the very instant Z castle is besieged across the map?

These things clearly don't make any sense, but the problem is that the game just becomes a drag if you remove them. It's not interesting to be denied information in a game with so much grinding and so little variation. All the factions and NPCs behave in exactly the same way, there is no diplomacy, so you are effectively at war with everyone, and it doesn't matter who controls what in a game-narrative sense like it does in civilisation or total war.

What needs to happen first is that they make meaningful asymmetric differences between factions (NOT just a stupid perk) like the khuzaits being actual nomads or the empire having the only big rich cities or even trade caravans at the start of the game, and properly implement a diplomatic landscape so that when you see the khuzaits have taken out your allies you're like oh crap, now my heartlands are in danger, and not "wow that's an ugly colour"
 
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It only feels that way because there's nothing to do. It already takes dozens of hours of the same mindless crap to do a world conquest (the only meaningful goal that doesnt just amount to prematurely ragequitting at some arbitrary point). Making the campaign any longer than this is just ridiculous, it ensures only no-lifers who spend all day grinding like an MMO will get to finish the game.
As a sandbox game though, there isn't a 'finish' to the game, only when the player decides that - but yes, given there's nothing but conquering, it's only that option and why the late-game and kingdom elimination is the issue (and overall lack of challenge).
I think you actually should be able to power through a campaign if you play well enough. Too many strategy developers now are scared of people "completing" their game in less than 24 hours so they add tons of anti-snowballing roadblocks to nullify the effect of good strategy, effectively just making their own game worse so that everyone has more or less the same experience. Paradox games are all like this and they are not fun to play at all.
I'm all for powering through to late-game (ie conquer full map) but they have to design the game to work around that, like better 'conquer' mechanics, better battle scenarios, smarter AI, tactics control, further troop variations, longer battles, better reinforcement waves, better siege defense/attack elements, etc...All things to enhance the battles and fights, so even if you need to take 40 castles, they aren't all the 'same' grind as it is. Instead, they split their resources also to the 'features' like the generations/marriage/smithing/caravans/workshops/alleys, etc...which, are wonderful to have for RP/world building but as they are currently, only just barebones so again, 'not much to do' there either.
Instead I think the game should be difficult strategically. So the campaign is fairly quick to complete, but you are also in serious danger of losing in some scenarios, forcing you to start again with a better strategy. And currently the campaign is so long that most players just quit when they get bored and restart anyway. Plus the developers can't add anthing that would make you lose or restard (minus permadeath which is just glorified RNG) because it would be a waste of dozens of player hours. The problem though is that they seem married to the generations gimmick, which is forcing them to make the campaign long enough to justify it. But I think the campaign is simply too long.
I've only bothered with the campaign early on - it's really not any 'different' from sandbox; just an extended prologue tutorial and annoying 'quest' pop ups. The endgame is the same. As it's designed, it can't really work for restarts given the current grind. It could be done as a fast-forward type - you gain skills quicker, age mechanics quicker, perks tailored/more effective for quicker pace, money balanced accordingly, etc...so a 40-hour playthrough should be 'common' enough to own majority of the map by then (besides additional player-made handicaps); but reflectively, you're already controlling your grandchild at that point or whatever.

The issue is they are trying to appease both sides; but in the end, not satisfying either.

I agree that the generation gimmick was not necessary at all (and the birth/death/clan replenishing aspect needed for that), but it speaks to the intention that playthroughs could potentially last years/generations. Which, arguably, they can, but there's no added gameplay behind it even after just 20 yrs in. It's a shallow feature as it is; the education they added in 'helped' a bit but that was a few mouse clicks every few hours of gameplay. Marriage for your daughters just 'deletes' all of that since you lose them, with no political gameplay benefit; they are just your clone placeholders or unlimited companions for the exact same thing as just removing cap for companions.
 
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