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I was about to post the same suggestion: a tactical pause button, pretty please.

I'm a F6 player, basically. I've tried doing tactics with the menu, but I find this difficult, awkward and slow, and just absolutely not enjoyable. It is possible that I would get the hang of it eventually. But the (single player campaign) game offers little opportunity for that, unless you are willing to save-scum over and over again. By the time I'm working on my second command, the enemy is upon us and it's either pressing F6 or losing. If there was a pause button, I could spend my time setting things up. And maybe after a while I would be more familiar with the menu and get faster and better at the mechanics, until one day I will pause no more. But if it stays as it is, I will simply ignore the tactical side of things entirely, which is a shame.

I have a hard time understanding how anyone can be against a pause button (in single player). If you don't like it and don't want to use it, then ... well, don't? This would be feature, not somehow imposed. It takes away nothing from the realism unless you choose to use it. Heck, if you are concerned that you may be tempted to press a button because it exists, make it a game option to diisable the pause button and set that option to disabled by default. Then I will happily enable the pause button and play the way I like, and you go on playing the way you like without a pause button.

I have the exact same issues, I noticed in particular that the lock buttons on items have become lines, as seen in the screenshot to the right. As it happens, same GPU.

AnandaShanti said:

Anyways what I'm saying is because the vassal system is (or was, could be better in 1.4.1?) broken, you could just finish the game by executing everyone when you're done trying to manage vassals.

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I applaud your murderous perseverence, but I don't think this is for me...

Curiously, I probably couldn't have completed my chop run with a world conquest anyhow. I had one lady stuck in a lord's hall (not dungeon) as prisoner. I think this happened because I dismissed her as prisoner from the party screen while in one of my castles. Surely it's a bug. Anyway, she showed with manacles on her icon, and she refused to talk when approached in the lord's hall in person ("I'm not allowed to talk to you.." or something like that). I never figured out how to move her again, she was basically there but not accessible. So I assume if I had kept on killing she would have ended up with several fiefs - as my prisoner but de facto untouchable..

Bob Gnarly said:

I try to recruit tier 5 clans into my kingdom as they usually have a few lords in their clan. You get their fiefs when they defect too.

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That's definitely not true as a general rule. I have had plenty of defectors leaving with their fiefs, indeed with the fiefs I conquered for them. But I agree that recruiting higher tier clans tends to be advantageous as they have more lords that can help out.

Do AI clans actually ever grow, e.g., if they level up? Magically find a cousin behind the couch, or something?

AnandaShanti said:

My advice is, until they add more stuff and fixes, just do your best and enjoy building up, being a vassal or trying to be a kingdom.... then when you can't hack it anymore go mad king and start murdering everyone in the world who stands up to you.

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I have tried the "kill them all" approach, recently. But I think everybody gets mad at you this way, which is a bit weird? At least the game kept pinging away after each mass beheading with relationship drops including names that did not seem to belong to the immediate clan / kingdom I was giving the chop. I admit that I didn't really check though, as my plan was to kill everybody anyway. (Simple improvement suggestion: I do not need to be alerted with banners and sounds if I am dropping relations with someone already at -100...).

Anyway, the murdering did seem to slow down attacks somewhat, but not quick enough to make it viable for me in the short to medium term. Also, after some initial glee this gets old quick. There are a lot of heads to chop off, and the AI just happily sends one member of a clan after the other. There is no sense of self-preservation there. The slow down is purely from having less nobles / armies to send, not from them getting "scared" by a murderer who has slain dozens and dozens of nobles already.

I tried the opposite tactic next: release everybody you capture, getting relationship boosts. That also wasn't good enough, i.e., the AI kept attacking too much for me even if everybody kept telling me how sad they were to fight a friend. However, purely by game feel (no hard numbers, single runs so no stats) I would say that reduced attacks more than the head chopping. Maybe the AI does avoid attacking "high relations" targets somewhat? Anyway, it seemed to me like the "Mr Nice Guy" strat may have more legs (and certainly more heads...).

Apocal said:

Forming your own kingdom is usually considered late- or end-game in M&B. ... I don't know why they decided to do the banner quest in the manner that they did. It shoves you into what is a late-game activity way too early if you follow the questline.

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Thanks, I had no idea... I wouldn't say that I'm rushing to do the main quest line, but those quests are there and so whenever I have nothing else to do I try to progress them. After getting my nose bloodied several times with seeking independence, I did start to prep more. But the vanilla game sort of runs out of new / interesting things to do at that point (at least if playing fighting-oriented), so it seemed logical to take the leap to unlock new content sooner rather than later.

Punished Mert said:

You need mods. Mount and Blade titles without mods are mac and cheese without the mac or the cheese.

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Well, as someone new to the M&B franchise, I appreciate that this may be the grown culture. But it is not something I'm used to from other games, and I honestly think that this has to change if you want to keep new incoming players. Not that mods should disappear, of course not! Mods are great to extend a game in scope and replayability. However, I don't see why the base game that I paid good money for should not be perfectly playable and enjoyable in vanilla?!

<responding to blackbellamy two posts above>

I'm not sure that one can chracterise fairly the election system simply as "my lord gave me". But setting that aside: I like realism in games, but not to the point where it affects game enjoyment negatively. I'm playing a computer game after all, I'm not trying to do historical reenactment...

Furthermore, if you think the current system represents the lord trying to keep his vassals in line "realistically", fair enough. Then I would also like "realistic" options to deal with this, like being able to conspire against the lord with other clans in the kingdom or external powers, bribe, marry or murder my way onto the throne, etc. Realism in games always falls short, where it ends is a game design choice.