How would you change the passage of time in the sandbox/campaign?

[Totalgarbage]

As it is right now, it is not only possible, but actually rather likely for the players to conquer the whole map before their first child comes of age. Even though the addition of the retreat gave the players the ability to play as their child (also as spouse or siblings if playing campaign) before their character dies, there is still the problem of needing the necessary amount of time pass in order to have a child come of age (18 years in-game time, if we somehow magically got married and gotten ourselves or our wife pregnant within the 1st day). So, how would you change how time passes in the game?

For me, I've suggested a while ago that we should have a slider that adjusts the speed of the day/night cycle & the daily ticks at character creation; if we for example set the slider to 3x faster day/night cycle, the daily ticks such as wages, influence, settlement loyalty, etc. would happen once every 3 days (so as to not become bankrupted or have towns rebel immediately).

I've also seen suggestions for halving or 1/3ing the amount of days in a year (84 days normally), which I'm also partially alright with (but I think it would make seasons pass by too quickly).

What do you think should be done with the passage of time in singleplayer? Do you prefer any of the above suggestions or have one of your own?

 

[TurkishEconomy]

• Random events or role playing elements that are fun / meaningful (which would create better immersion)
• There's actually a random event mod that was released recently in workshop and quite fun ^
• More independent clans, factions or smaller kingdoms that can actually rise to power and pose a threat - create more unpredictably

 

[SomeWeirdSins]

As it is right now, it is not only possible, but actually rather likely for the players to conquer the whole map before their first child comes of age. Even though the addition of the retreat gave the players the ability to play as their child (also as spouse or siblings if playing campaign) before their character dies, there is still the problem of needing the necessary amount of time pass in order to have a child come of age (18 years in-game time, if we somehow magically got married and gotten ourselves or our wife pregnant within the 1st day). So, how would you change how time passes in the game?

For me, I've suggested a while ago that we should have a slider that adjusts the speed of the day/night cycle & the daily ticks at character creation; if we for example set the slider to 3x faster day/night cycle, the daily ticks such as wages, influence, settlement loyalty, etc. would happen once every 3 days (so as to not become bankrupted or have towns rebel immediately).

I've also seen suggestions for halving or 1/3ing the amount of days in a year (84 days normally), which I'm also partially alright with (but I think it would make seasons pass by too quickly).

What do you think should be done with the passage of time in singleplayer? Do you prefer any of the above suggestions or have one of your own?

There are just development choices that are in conflict. There are a lot of systems that suggest the game will be a multi-generational playthrough with a shifting balance of power and politics.
The systems just aren't implemented well enough to challenge a competent player yet, so the game ends very quickly. usually by 1090 the world is mostly conquered, and it's just cleanup. The AI isn't able to defend itself against a player that wants to steamroll the map.

 

[Totalgarbage]

• Random events or role playing elements that are fun / meaningful (which would create better immersion)
• There's actually a random event mod that was released recently in workshop and quite fun ^
• More independent clans, factions or smaller kingdoms that can actually rise to power and pose a threat - create more unpredictably

Well I was actually talking about how fast the time should pass or maybe children growing up faster or something, not what to add to make the time pass better. Don't get me wrong, I would also like random events, I think it would up spice the game and give it more "soul".

 

[sh1ny4]

make recovery harder for everybody would be logical I think, and it would solve other issues along the way
If recruits respawn much slower then neither the player nor the NPCs could take ground so fast. Loose one battle ? Unless you have good garrisons you can afford to take you're in for a long wait before resplenishing your troops, same for the enemy lord. It would also make the battles more impactful as winning a Massive battle means the enemy faction loses much more than before
Also making healing slower maybe ? same reasons.
The issue being that the AI respawns with free troops, and most likely can't handle slower recruit spawn

 

[Rossa]

Since the developers are clearly struggling to deal with balance issues i have been using a few mods to try to correct that. I like using kaoses tweaks to increase militia in towns and castles to more than 1000, double siege building times, decrease garrison wages by 60%, increase regular wages by 30%. I also use war and ai tweaks to force the factions to have a few weeks of peace before they randomly declare war on other factions. I feel like it makes the game a lot harder to snowball, but i aways get bored and start a new one arround 1090.... there just isn't much to do after you get rich and powerfull. You can also use the mod character reload to make your children grow up faster, it's very good for making companions less useless too.

 

[Totalgarbage]

make recovery harder for everybody would be logical I think, and it would solve other issues along the way
If recruits respawn much slower then neither the player nor the NPCs could take ground so fast. Loose one battle ? Unless you have good garrisons you can afford to take you're in for a long wait before resplenishing your troops, same for the enemy lord. It would also make the battles more impactful as winning a Massive battle means the enemy faction loses much more than before
Also making healing slower maybe ? same reasons.
The issue being that the AI respawns with free troops, and most likely can't handle slower recruit spawn

Yes, I like this idea a lot, I would even expand on it by changing it so that parties need to camp/stay in a settlement for a bit after marching non-stop similar to how In The Name of Jerusalem 2 does it (but I would maybe change the increasing map movement speed penalty to an increasing daily morale penalty like starvation).

 

[Kazzan]

make recovery harder for everybody would be logical I think, and it would solve other issues along the way
If recruits respawn much slower then neither the player nor the NPCs could take ground so fast. Loose one battle ? Unless you have good garrisons you can afford to take you're in for a long wait before resplenishing your troops, same for the enemy lord. It would also make the battles more impactful as winning a Massive battle means the enemy faction loses much more than before
Also making healing slower maybe ? same reasons.
The issue being that the AI respawns with free troops, and most likely can't handle slower recruit spawn

Would that not just amplify the problem of the players' high tier armies with archers dominating the field? Those armies take very few losses so they could go on for several battles and never lose.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Would that not just amplify the problem of the players' high tier armies with archers dominating the field? Those armies take very few losses so they could go on for several battles and never lose.

It would. It might slow down early farming abit, if you have less prey to hunt, but you can fairly easily compensate by moving to new hunting grounds/attack more factions.

 

[sh1ny4]

Would that not just amplify the problem of the players' high tier armies with archers dominating the field? Those armies take very few losses so they could go on for several battles and never lose.

It unfortunatly would but if the player is using this kind of army he most likely isn't playing for the longer term, if anything wouldn't it be better for them as they clearly want to take the shortcut ?

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

It unfortunatly would but if the player is using this kind of army he most likely isn't playing for the longer term, if anything wouldn't it be better for them as they clearly want to take the shortcut ?

This is not a bad point. I dont necessarily see why a campaign should be "insanely" long. At the end of the day the length of a campaign, in terms of time, primarily boils down to how many times you repeat the same action.

Though, the biggest issue would end up being that the number of sieges you need to carry out is fixed by the map size (lategame is still going to be a slog).

 

[Rossa]

Increasing the wages and upgrade costs for high tier and mounted troops, while also increasing AI lords income, would help to make low tier troops more relevant. Maybe make you carry food for war horses in your party. The way it's now high tier troops are worth a lot more than the wages reflect.

 

[sh1ny4]

Though, the biggest issue would end up being that the number of sieges you need to carry out is fixed by the map size (lategame is still going to be a slog).

Totally agree with you, that's in my opinion part of the things warband did better : Since there were fewer town capturing one was more of an achievement, and you could see the end of the game.
If you capture as many towns as there is in warband in bannerlord, you wouldn't even get one third of the map, barely more than the three empires...

 

[Totalgarbage]

Players' retention of units is insane anyways, and while it's true that it may reinforce an "archer meta" even more, I think that the overall benefit of making battles more decisive would be better for the game (and archers can always be nerfed by making armor more effective).

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Just make the children age up faster. KISS. You already have 80 day years, who's going to care if kid age 1 year in 30 days (or whatever) until 18.
Oh will there be to many lords on the map? doesn't matter because party number caps be clan.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

Players' retention of units is insane anyways, and while it's true that it may reinforce an "archer meta" even more, I think that the overall benefit of making battles more decisive would be better for the game (and archers can always be nerfed by making armor more effective).

Nahh, the optimal strategy for a non-archer based party is the same as for an archer based party. You want to keep losses to a minimum eitherway. It is just not efficient to throw away a larger portion of your force and then, potentially, having to waste time rebuilding.

The only real practical difference is that an archer based party is able to take on forces that you would(should) otherwise avoid. It does make an archer based campaign slightly faster but nowhere near enough that it is gamechanging in anyway. If you could give the AI the ability to split its infantry into multiple formations you could blunt most of the players ability to exploit the AI.

Eitherway, in my personal opinion, there is no point in trying to stretch out the campaign length without first encouraging more diversity in what we do. There are still some fairly simply things that could help achieve that.

Quests might be an example. They provide wholly uncompetitive rewards and I doubt you will find many who feel that they are particularly exciting. So, increase the reward from them considerably and compensate by making them rare instead (you obviously do not want the game to be based around farmings quests).

 

[Totalgarbage]

Eitherway, in my personal opinion, there is no point in trying to stretch out the campaign length without first encouraging more diversity in what we do. There are still some fairly simply things that could help achieve that.

I agree, I think that the campaign lengths should even be a little bit decreased. I just want time (or more specifically, years) to pass faster, so that having kids has a point and that conquering the equivalent of Europe + The Levant + North Africa be nearly impossible in one lifetime (especially for some rando that manages to become a lord or even a ruler from being a nobody).

Quests might be an example. They provide wholly uncompetitive rewards and I doubt you will find many who feel that they are particularly exciting. So, increase the reward from them considerably and compensate by making them rare instead (you obviously do not want the game to be based around farmings quests).

This is a separate discussion, but I agree with having rare quests that give large rewards (which could be non-monetary rewards as well, such as maybe a very very rare, long and hard quest for non-noble player characters that rewards the player with vassalage even as a tier 0 clan or something).

There already are some really rare (and genuinely good) quests in the game such as one where we have to stop a knight from riling up the villagers in order to stop a rebellion, or the quest where a lord requests we capture one of their enemies, or the quest where we need to take a lord's daughter/son under our wing and tutor them until they gain X skill points, etc., but as you've also said, the rewards are kind of lacklustre for the quests' rarity. Though these are the quests that I've personally very rarely come across, I might just have had some very unlikely quest generation RNG or something. They could also add some other quests such as making us do a prison break for a rival lord in the same faction, in order for us to assassinate that lord during the escape (where the death chance in prison breaks is increased to 100% when this quest is active) or something.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

There are just development choices that are in conflict. There are a lot of systems that suggest the game will be a multi-generational playthrough with a shifting balance of power and politics.
The systems just aren't implemented well enough to challenge a competent player yet, so the game ends very quickly. usually by 1090 the world is mostly conquered, and it's just cleanup. The AI isn't able to defend itself against a player that wants to steamroll the map.

Yeah I dont think they can fix the fundamental contradiction of grind-heavy rpg elements with multiple generations and warfare. One of them has to go. If you have to go through say 5 generations to conquer calradia, that's 4 separate occasions where you lose most of your levelling progress, which is hours and hours and hours of grinding, and have to start all over again.

They would have to make levelling and grinding less important if they want multiple generations that don't make players ragequit. With games this long, you can't justify ditching hours and hours of player grinding, regardless of the reason.

 

[NPC99]

4 separate occasions where you lose most of your levelling progress

Not really. With high medicine your primary character can last long enough to level up his/her kids while they lead warbands in his/her army, allowing smoother hand-overs.

 

[Sweynforkbeard]

I agree, I think that the campaign lengths should even be a little bit decreased. I just want time (or more specifically, years) to pass faster, so that having kids has a point and that conquering the equivalent of Europe + The Levant + North Africa be nearly impossible in one lifetime (especially for some rando that manages to become a lord or even a ruler from being a nobody).

I have no issue with that. I dont see why, at the very least, you could not have an option to set the speed at which people age. Maybe it could lead to some long term problems with e.g. overpopulation but, in all likelihood, only a small number of players would actually encounter those problems.

This is a separate discussion, but I agree with having rare quests that give large rewards (which could be non-monetary rewards as well, such as maybe a very very rare, long and hard quest for non-noble player characters that rewards the player with vassalage even as a tier 0 clan or something).

There already are some really rare (and genuinely good) quests in the game such as one where we have to stop a knight from riling up the villagers in order to stop a rebellion, or the quest where a lord requests we capture one of their enemies, or the quest where we need to take a lord's daughter/son under our wing and tutor them until they gain X skill points, etc., but as you've also said, the rewards are kind of lacklustre for the quests' rarity. Though these are the quests that I've personally very rarely come across, I might just have had some very unlikely quest generation RNG or something. They could also add some other quests such as making us do a prison break for a rival lord in the same faction, in order for us to assassinate that lord during the escape (where the death chance in prison breaks is increased to 100% when this quest is active) or something.

I am sure everyone would appreciate better quests or just more content in general.

Though, I am really more concerned with using the existing content more effectively. From my point of view, the main activity has to be battle. So, the rest of the content need to fulfill a supporting role, primarily by infusing a bit of variation into the mix.

If your ingame choice is between finding your next battle or doing something else, such as a quest. At the moment that decision is pretty straightforward, look for your next battle!

So, rewards needs to be increased to a point where it makes sense to choose to do something else. On the other hand, the quality of the other activities you can do are generally not strong enough to be a main pillar of the game, so they need to be rationed. Essentially, they need to be rewarding but not something you end up farming.

"Cool, I found a quest" is probably what you should be aiming for