Suggestions from a diehard fan of the series. I couldn't find a proper MB2 suggestion thread, so I'll just place this here.
General
- Need to know which day of the week it is.
- New music will be great, but please include the classic music as well, it's outstanding and nostalgic.
- Please take careful note from the existing mods (like Diplomacy) because these are gaps filled in by the community.
Character
- Ability to reset characteristics/points; should be balanced by some cost incurred to do so. "But that's not realistic!" Well technically, neither is leveling up, so.....
- Current leveling system is too steep. 1,000 days in and my character is only level 40, companions 30.
- Learnable fighting skills/combos; doesn't have to be fancy or Mortal Kombat-esque, but breaks the monotony of the standard moves; add a secondary slash, quick counterattack after a block, etc.
Party Mechanics
- Food Rations. Your party needs to give you a heads up that your food is low. Currently, they eat up all your food, but wait until it's all out to throw a hissy, and then act like YOU screwed up. I feel like I'm opening the fridge in the a.m. to find only a sliver of milk left in the jug.
- Professions. Professions/specialties that can be leveled for characters would be interesting. Blacksmithing, cooking, foraging, hunting, etc. Not just bonuses to the party, like the skills provide, but new abilities you would not have otherwise; hunting provides food on the go if you stop, cooking reduces wasted food and therefore increases the amount of usable food, etc. These would be leveled with use, instead of character level.
- Inventory. Inventory should not be based on skill but upgraded in other ways. It is odd for a lord to command 200 men in battle, but have only a 30 slot inventory. A horse drawn carriage for supplies, for example, can keep up with the party and carry a lot of food/equipment. Extra horses should not take up inventory space, but instead provide extra space as beasts of burden.
- Inspire. Enable an "Inspire" function or battle speech. You don't have to do it, but if you do, it raises your troops' morale and steels their resolve, increases their ability to stay and fight if the character gets knocked out or sits the fight out. Does a chieftain or warlord lead men into battle without EVER talking to them? And do troops blindly obey their commander to their utmost without knowing what they're even doing here? The type of speech could be determined by the type of character you've become and actions you've committed.
- Garrisoning. Make the "Give All / Take All" functions more intuitive. I found out about it after 100 hours in and could've saved my fingers.
- Dispatch Troops. Be able to send troops to another location, without leading them yourself or one of your companions. If you don't use a companion (100% trustworthy), appoint a captain (who becomes a named NPC); if this captain turns rogue, hunt him down. That's the risk, if this captain has not fought long with you and has not built up loyalty.
- Disagreements. This was a novel idea in MB1, but it needs to go away. In the real world, people get along and overcome their differences. These whiny companions need to get over it already. The fact that they are battle brethren should create an unbreakable bond between them. Talk to any veteran; they were willing to lay down their lives for each other.
Villages
- Assistance. Villages never need any help! They are poor and desolate, but when offered help, they "don't really need anything right now." Of course you do, just look at it! (and I need more standing with them). 1,000 days in, and there are still villages I have 0 standing with, and not for lack of trying. We need more ways we can help them; currently too few and far between. Even simply visiting them and talking to the peasants should count for something, as it shows you care. Incentives for interactions. Balance the increased ways to help by a reduction in the amount of standing you get from each help.
- After being raided, villages should need a TON of help. Crops were plundered and livestock were stolen. The same way we spend time to train them, we could also spend time helping them rebuild random structures that were damaged, replant crops, etc.
- A village whom we helped train against raids, should have a higher resistance value to raids and bandits. Maybe this can diminish over time for various reasons, the trained peasants migrate, they're on a town run, or their practice simply atrophies over time; enables the recurring need to retrain them.
- When successfully defending a village from a raid by a lord, you should get a bump to your standing. This will incentivize helping them.
- If a player has sufficient charisma/persuasion (and if not enough troops or not wishing to be at war), he can try to persuade a lord from raiding the village. Good men are easier to persuade, evil men are harder. This should be seen by the villagers as saving them and result in a bump in standing.
- Recruiting. All recruits should be lowest level, and the number you get, based on standing. It doesn't make sense that a village you have 99 standing with, provides you 20 Swadian Knights. They have elite troops just hanging around? How? Then why are they so helpless against bandits and raiders? I always thought villages hiding elites that they don't use was weird. If anything, mid-level recruits should be found in towns because they might have more wealth for better equipment than the typical peasant.
- Improvements. Towns/villages/castles need MANY more options for upgrading, and the benefit/results of those options should be more visible/recognizable for the player. In other words, not some behind-the-scenes perk that is rarely triggered or noticed (does anyone really notice the 5% from the mill? I mean, really?) These should also provide the added benefit of a standings increase, since you are investing in the village. Improvements should also appear in the village itself when you walk around. If you have the coin, the sky really should be the limit.
- Practice field. Gets you the same low level recruits, but they have the experience to immediately level up once you hire them (they already have the experience, but it takes money which they don't have which is why they are still recruits).
- Granary or Silo. Provides a reserve, so prosperity never falls below "Average"; can still be raided; must attain "Rich" or higher to fill (the idea is, if they encounter non-raider induced economic woes, the granary is a safety net, AND you need to try to help increase prosperity to take advantage of this).
- Hidden Reserves. Like a hidden/underground granary storage; bounce back from "Looted" status in half the time, OR same time to repair, but start out as "Average" instead of "Very Poor"; must attain "Rich" or higher to fill (the idea is, raiders don't know the location and can't get to it)
- Expanded Farmland/Grazeland. Increase village output; can double specialty crop/livestock output, or provide a secondary crop/livestock output for diversification. Certain lands/climates might be better suited to farming, others for grazing; up to the player to learn this; the expansion can be switched to a different output for a nominal cost of gold and time.
- Village blacksmith. Provides new commercial exports for the village (tools and weapons) and low-to-mid level blacksmithing services. Availability of weapons in the village should also provide a slight increase to resistance to raids.
- Barracks. Station up to 20 men, who will delay the raiding process and can actually kill off ill-prepared raiders with the help of the villagers. Can live off the land if village is "Rich" or higher; require wages if below "Rich".
- Palisade Wall. Wooden palisade around innermost structures delays the raiding process; after initial raid of outlying structures, raiders must decide to continue assaulting further into the village to get inside the wall; if they do not, village does not enter "Looted" status and simply takes a massive prosperity hit; if they do, raid takes twice as long and they further risk getting attacked by outside help; if no forest nearby, timber must be imported at cost.
- Village Inn. Provide extra income due to hospitality; lots of wanderers/adventurers out there. Not all of them can go 1,000 days without sleep like our character.
- Mill. Eliminate the static 5% perk; its benefit should be tied to what it actually provides the village; mills turn wheat into flour, which means instead of selling raw wheat at low raw material cost, they can sell wheat flour for higher cost since they already did the work; anybody can make use of wheat flour because they do not need to mill it and should therefore be in higher demand. The perk will be seen with the new product, the extra income the village makes from it, and the extra tax the fief generates.
- Mine. If near hills/mountains or if on rocky soil (which means farming takes a hit), a mine is a different way a village can produce goods from the land (metals, gems, coal, etc).
- Fishery. Useful for villages near bodies of water, provides the fish export.
- Wells. A freshwater source could provide different benefits: reduction in mortality rates, increased farm/livestock output, or be a prerequisite for some of the other options listed here, like a secondary crop or for livestock.
- Non-owner investment. It should not matter who owns the village, but only that the funds are provided for the upgrade; may anger or please the lord, depending on their temperament. As king, I can no longer upgrade villages I've given to a lord and they sure as hell don't upgrade them. There is no reason I cannot throw my money at a village so they can build something they need; I may not receive the benefit now…
Fiefs, Land
- Ability to build bridges, roads, watchtowers if you own the land, because why the heck not.
- Bridge. May be built over any river within the fief; wooden bridge not as resilient to time/weather/use as a stone one. Must be a certain distance away from existing bridges. Can be destroyed/disassembled (by owner)/sabotaged.
- Roads. Connect adjacent locations, speed up travel; can even be custom (from X village to Y village), in which the game suggests the route, but the player can alter it by clicking and dragging before confirming; can connect to an existing road or crossroad, or diverted around/through a geographic feature.
- Watch Tower. Provide advance notice about nearby rival activity, extend player's view, must be manned and incur wage cost; Can be destroyed/disassembled (by owner)/sabotaged.
Towns
- Recruits. Get recruits from towns! There are plenty of people there, more so than in villages. It makes more sense to find mid-level recruits in towns, as they might more reasonably be able to afford better equipment.
- Second Business. If a town is flourishing, you should be able to open a secondary business enterprise, since the excuse for only being able to do it is that there aren't any available specialists to run it. A flourishing city should be drawing these types of people. If the town's prosperity plummets, then maybe your 2nd business goes offline, which would be an incentive for you to help get it back up.
- Ransom Brokers. If they were smart, they would position themselves closer to battles/disputes/warring borders. They're never where you need them and I'm unwilling to make a special errand to take a group of prisoners on a scavenging hunt. Also, it should be simple for anyone to know that a certain stockade is holding prisoners, therefore, a Ransom Broker would intentionally visit those towns/castles that have prisoners. Auto-sell could be an option, because a lord or king could simply tell the prison guard to sell all/certain captives to any visiting Ransom Broker. Does a king really need to meet with this man?
- More Buildings. So villages have schools, but towns don't? Towns are different, yes, but they should have some of the same options as villages, if not more. There's a lot of land out there doing nothing. More options to build!
Battle
Town/Castle Defense. This has a LOT to be desired. If I were defending my home, everything including the kitchen sink would be thrown at them. I would not simply form a line and wait for my turn to be hacked up. The sky is the limit for defensive upgrades. These can be emplacements that need to be manned for use and/or makeshift defensive measures that the defenders can enact based on their manpower and available time. The invader would need to diversify his assault methods, which can take more time and the defenders can use that same amount of time to jimmyrig defenses and barricades.
- Defenses (some need setup/loading, some don't because they are fixtures and ammo is already in place)
- Boiling Oil. Fixed emplacement, needs setup (heating); above gates to attack battering rams
- Wooden Stakes. Needs setup, anti-cavalry, anti-personnel; let's assume the defenders should know exactly where they are and will avoid that area (I foresee AIs running haphazardly into their own traps.)
- Fire. Needs setup, like braziers, one of the simplest, most terrifying weapons readily available; burn men, ladders, siege towers; they can splash buckets of pitch onto a tower or a group of men and then fire it.
- Boulders. Needs setup; drop rocks on their heads! Barricade the invaders' paths to channel them where you want them to go. Or tie boulders to ladders and push them off to topple a ladder full of men.
- Barricades. Needs setup; restrict the invaders movements, close off tower defenders if the walls are lost (why are these always open to the world in games?). Just in general, pile up debris in places to funnel the invader or delay them.
- Tactics
- Attack Ladders/Siege Towers. Rather than wait in line for your doom, hack away at ladders with axes or set them on fire. Why just stand there?
- Leave the gate open. If they take the bait, or if it's the only way in (due to destroying their ladders), then spring a trap, engage from afar and flank the sides.
- Push them off the dang wall. Why would a soldier on a high wall care only about proper sword technique, when he can use gravity to his advantage. Shove them off or use an angled shield wall to advance and wedge them off.
- Ambushers. Fixed emplacement; camouflaged holes in the courtyard to spring out among a disorganized charge, confuse and delay attackers.
