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Dejan said:

Art

• Added 6 new battle terrains - West of Revyl, southwest of Quyaz, three terrains northeast of Razih and one around the town of Odohk.

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This is great! is there a graphic or spreadsheet showing all the done/remaining battle maps, as of this beta patch?

• Added 4 new battle scenes.
• Added 6 new town scenes: Phycaon, Diathma, Saneopa, Syronea, Epicrotea, and Danustica.

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I remember a map showing battle scenes allocated in to each region/province, I guess, of Calradia a few patches back.
Is there a list or statistic of how many battle scenes are now completed? (i.e. finished maps : total maps) and the same for towns?

These are great! Really makes me wish we could get some toggleable map views in the game to show stuff like borders, resource nodes, typical trade highways (pulled from the AI patching network) and so on.

five bucks said:

1.6.7 - Lord Duels. The dialogue option to insult a noble and start a duel, or Lords who dislike you occasionally challenging you to a duel. This would return the Denounce Lord/Defend Honor quests from Warband.

1.6.8 - Pre-battle army placement in field battles.

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I like all of these. Though, one thing I'd personally like to see is a hybrid of these two: the option to nominate/challenge the enemy army's champion to a pre-battle duel (perhaps only a viable option if both sides are actual "armies" and both over a given size, say, 250, or lead by a realm's top lord (e.g. Derthert), so it doesn't always happen), with the winning side gaining a morale buff, and some clan Renown (if it was a clan member that won), and the losing side's troops gaining a morale debuff.

• You'd pre-place your army and then, if both sides accept to duel, pick an elite unit - or companion / clan-member - as a champion, as would the other side.
• They square off between the two sides and after the fight, the loser is dragged back in a cutscene with the battle starting soonafter.
  • Most of the code and animations should already exist for this - based on MP duels and the current hideout boss mechanics.
  • Perhaps lord personalities could play in to this, too,
    • with you (and "dishonourable" lords) able to not honour the "champion-tradition" of letting the victor be dragged back. Not honouring this could trigger an early start to battle and possibly confer an advantage.
    • or honourable/vein lords or lords without holdings / low renown (but with heirs) nominating themselves as champion (giving you a good way to kill them "for free", whilst giving them favour with their liege if they win).
    • This is probably excessive, though it would be cool, as I don't think too much really ties in to character personalities right now?

Bluko88 said:

Unit collision is something that needs to be addressed as well. The "angry bee-hive" of soldiers when too many units are in close proximity is just an eye sore - and from what I have observed the most common cause of Troops falling off walls, getting stuck, etc.

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I think its a lack of animations, too you see this in 2 places in the video. One is at the first gate, several times the spearmen try to thrust their spears at the gate (lol, they really ought to pull out little hatchets or something) and immediately abort their attack as they seem to lack a minimum range.

You also see this after they breach gate #2 with some body-blocked swordsmen. For those packed-in ranks, they really need an over-the-shoulder animation - imagine holding the hilt up to your jaw-height then thrusting forwards over your friend's shoulder (even if it clips a bit). Without something like that to give them "reach" when packed in, it'll never improve IMO.

What if post-battle loot wasnt immediately usable items, or even "damaged [item]" but stacks of junk/broken components that cant be used at all?

Say there is a 95% chance of an item getting turned in to (Useless/Average/Uncommon/Valuable [T0-3 or T1-4]) "Broken Armor/Weapons" with a 5% chance of getting immediately usable gear. (example stats).

• A scouting or roguery stat ("loot the dead") could increase this base chance from 5->10% or increase the general chance of getting higher quality items when that 5% does trigger.

With Broken Armor/Weapons you effectively make loot what it is - low-priced vendor junk

• (and this means your inventory isn't constantly clogged with trash items - rather you have just 1-8 types of broken items, separated by tier and "armor"/"weapon", automatically stacked up in the junk tab, which means fewer things for the game to track, probably improving UI performance and save bloat, and less clicking/time wasted).

BUT you also have the option to take that to a forge and deconstruct it down in to base wood/metal/cloth/whatever - and a high level smithing perk could be used to reforge or "roll" stacks of junk e.g. uncommon broken armor might have a chance of turning into Tier 3 lamellar mail or whatever else is in that gear-tier class.

• It could even be a new business input - selling broken components to cities with a smithy reforges or deconstructs the components automatically over time (but you'll then need to pay the full item price for any items they reforge or any materials they deconstruct - so smithing-focussed characters still get the most out of this, but other playstyles can still engage with it to a degree, too).

At least this way, you can still make a living from loot scavenging (more so if you engage with reforging it) and you have a chance to occasionally find some good gear on the field - without making it the free bank account top-up it currently is.

Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James said:

What does this have to do with boats?

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The point I'm getting at is, if something as complex as networking can be done well, without native support, it means there's a lot more flexibility in what you can do, generally, to create other things that don't have native support/mechanics -- boats being just one example.

This is spicy.
If something like this is doable, one has to wonder what the limits to modding really are for BL. Stuff like naval travel/boats seems more feasible now, for example.

babelfisch said:

Yeah, problem is just that village battles suck.

I think the general design needs to change. If someone raids a village with his 200 men army he would probably position 175 of them on an open field before the village and just take a small party to plunder.
So when we attack them the battle should take place on an open field with the village in the background. If we defeat them they could try to escape to the village centre where we can fight with a smaller force similar to keep battles.

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Whenever I raid somewhere I'm left wondering why I cant use the "wait till nightfall" thing we can do for hideouts, rather than letting their whole militia nicely line up and equip themselves.

Why cant I just sneak in to the village when everyone's asleep and kill and raid that way? Maybe skill checks could have a chance of revealing you and forcing you into battle early with your troops scattered around the village map in camps if you have low skills in roguery or tactics etc. At least it would make village battles more interesting than the usual:

1. F1
2. F3
3. chuckle as literal starving peasants are cut down by bloodthirsty warriors.

Or hell (more for earlygame / sub 100 troop parties), if i'm being chased by an enemy party and pass by a neutral village, why cant I bribe the local headsmen to let my troops in and effectively have a tiny siege battle in/around the village, letting me place my archers on village rooves or behind walls, men at chokepoints between homes etc. Cost/Chance to accept (or even be double crossed by the headsmen) would scale off your charisma stat

I name my house based on whatever drink i've had recently.

Currently playing as the independent lord Vod, of clan Ka.

PeasantOP said:

and lol we don't need procedurally-generated maps, handcrafted maps are way better. If it is procedurally-generated and randomized maps, it can be exploited if you dont like your position, you can just retreat and start the battle again reloading a different scene

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That isnt strictly an exploit, it would make sense to retreat if you are in a bad position, e.g. to plains from woods, to make full use of army composition (e.g. cavalry).

You can have locked seeds for procedural systems, too. Each point on the map can have a fixed seed attached to it (so think of the world map like a giant grid) so that yes the maps are procedural - but they always generate the same way each time in that same spot, so reloading a battle doesn't give you radically different landscape.

Either way it doesnt look like it's ever going to happen, so I imagine the next likely thing is, one day we will see a modpack released with like 200+ rural/countryside/mountainous/forest maps all geo-locked to various points on the world map after someone comes up with a macro for converting heightmaps into terrain + randomly placing vegetation via the mod tools.

Youve got to first ask yourself - what does a village actually do, what can you do when you interact with one?

1. You can hire troops.
2. You can buy primary resources (grain, fish, silver etc).
3. You can raid them for troops or resources.
4. You get income as the holder.
5. You can 'hide' in "third party" villages when hostile parties pass you buy so they don't attack you.
6. Fuel the dynamic economy via villager parties dumping goods at the nearest town.

I think just having a half dozen projects or settings - 1-2 dedicated to improving each of the above main functions would help. And personally I'd run them all out of the castle menu. Give the castle say, 3 slots, these 3 upgrades will apply to all 3 (on average) bound villages - or even the general area around them (e.g. within X distance units of the castle & its villages). So the player also has to consider opportunity cost (these could be tiered but that probably isn't necessary as having 3 slots and opportunity cost necessitates them being somewhat good).

Here's some ideas:

1. "Travelling marshal" - a castle upgrade that will give bonus XP to all troops from bound villages & increase their militia size when attacked.
2. "Fortify local villages" - add a few lookout towers, palisades and ditches or spiky wooden traps, to form a rough perimeter around local villages when it's assaulted + biases auto resolve chances in favour of the village, somewhat. (IDK if villages have scouting range but this could increase the distance they see armies at).
3. "Concealed storage network" - instruct peasants to bury food stores for winter. This will "reward" villages/the caslte with passive grain income in the winter (they're digging the food up) so they don't starve (stability) and make raiding take longer/yield less.
4. "Sheriff patrols" - Sheriffs, backed up by village militia, will patrol the area between the castle and it's bound villages, killing looter-related parties (I have, rarely, seen large looter bands prey on villagers going to town to sell stuff, this would help - and also curtail looter spam). They could even pay for themselves via auto-ransoming any looters caught, or dump them in the dungeon for the player to deal with.
5. "Misleading signs" enemy parties (as defined by diplomacy state) will move slower (25%?) in proximity to this castle/its villages.
6. "Wayshrines" - your/allied parties troops will gain a moderate (but slowly decaying) morale buff when passing in proximity to this castle/its villages.
7. "Corvee system" - you force the local peasantry to work in construction - speeds up castle construction speeds and recovery speed after a village raid.
8. "Trade posts" - all caravans that pass in proximity to this castle/its villages will deposit some small amount of gold which the local lord will claim in income.
9. "Smithy network" - weapons made out of random parts (i.e. the smithing system) may spawn at shops in these villages. they'll also start to demand iron etc, for this [this might actually be better as a special type of workshop or a city perk].
10. "Forced labour" - bound village output is increased by 1% for each prisoner in the local castle dungeon.
11. "Entitle headsmen" - increases base headsman opinion of owner (can hire more troops) + each village grants you some influence, passively, but this reduces the villages overall output.

You could even have culture specific ones or landscape specific ones:

1. "Know thy forest" - available if battanian & the village is near some woods. In the event of a raid where the villagers will surely lose, they scatter to the woods, the battle instantly yields to the invader but they get far less resources/troops in plunder, and let the town recover faster.
2. "Warrior villagers" - available if sturgian - your villagers may take it upon themselves to raid adjacent villages of other empires [in the winter? to keep with their snow theme - and when villagers arent farming]. A % of plunder is paid back to you as supplementary tax, items taken may appear in the village shop for a time, too.
3. "Feudal Levvies" - available if vlandian - If you enter into a battle [or the main castle is sieged] near one of these own/allied (as dictated by diplomacy) villages, with this upgrade, some village militia will join in on your side mid-battle [they may attack the enemy from the rear in the case of a siege].
4. "Imperial roads" - available if imperial - villager parties (and your own parties/caravans) move faster (35%?) in proximity to this castle/its villages.
5. etc

Virtually none of these would require graphical work - they'd be predominantly status modifiers or scripts - maybe a few icons/ui changes in the castle screen (they're essentially perk cards for the castle that also affect the surrounding villages/land.) - most of them would be small stat changes, maybe accompanied by a small text prompt in the event log or as floating text over an army

• e.g. If you pass through an area with wayshrines, you might see a floating popup over your party "Your men feel emboldened in this place" with a +X morale modifier in the morale tooltip.
• Or if a village with "know thy forest" is raided, it might give you a popup with some background artwork, saying that the locals scatter before you.

Bloc said:

Well done. I think this thread should take more attention from players. Some of them are things that we can see in the upcoming months as an update.
I'm extremely sad about castle-building mechanic getting discarded as well. As far as I recall, they stated that the reason for this as something like this "..after several years, there weren't any village in the game because every village was getting upgraded to castles." which I think is a really weird excuse for discarding a huge mechanic.

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I never followed the game much pre-beta release so dont have much hype to speak of for any of these features... but building a stronghold sounds cool.

Though, whilst you could in theory, you wouldn't want to build a castle just anywhere, so their initial implementation (turning any village into a stronghold) doesn't make much sense.. I could imagine villages getting an option to add defensive ditches/spikes or destructible (in battle) palisade sections. But IMO any "new" castle should need to be built on a special plot/point of interest.

The devs could scatter "fort sites" around the map - derelict/mostly destroyed aserai or empire fortresses, or maybe "defensible peaks" in the east and northern parts of the map. These would be places the player - or AIs - could stake a claim on and build their own stronghold from the ground up, a new village/tradepost could later spring up nearby (or as part of the construction process - you'll need labourers) as a fief from peasants looking for a kind lord - or supplied by another lord you have fealty to. They'd also act as a later game money sink.

I'd like this. Reminds me of the warhammer army creator.

IMO random clans should also eventually spawn over the course of the game (a playthrough is meant to last generations, right? if the birth/death mechanic is any indication?) - and they could have their own randomly rolled unit equipment/trees, too, you might get mercenary clans/companies spawning in, randomly rolled with heavy armor and warbows or whatever.

kidoman said:

Checkpoints/fortifications. Since the roads would be important (and the most effective way to transport large armies), forts/castles/checkpoints could be built on them (or simply have the roads pass near preexisting castles). This would discourage armies from bypassing forts/castles

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That's a good thought. Castles feel more like scenery than something I really care about right now.

Your point about checkpoints made me think of the Roman Public Courier System (Cursus publicus), which had many checkpoints and stops scattered around the empire. You could hook quests/events into these kinds of mini-locations like "Help tax collector of <Kingdom> to do XYZ" or have new kinds of roaming parties - taxmen and administrators - as rare/difficult but valuable targets that travel between cities and checkpoints of a kingdom which you could rob (or protect for influence).

If you have the power to conquer a city - why wouldnt you take it over rather than sacking it and running away?

IRL sacking was a viable strategy for some factions in history, as there were constraints on what people could govern, due to distance or trustworthiness of governors etc, sacking allowed them to take resources and people back home and keep it in a centralised place.

But nothing like that exists in BL, unless they plan to implement something like Fief limits, conquering will always be superior to sacking. And if you exceed your (hypothetical) fief limit it'd just encourage giving the city to vassals, rather than sacking it, and taxing your vassal through the roof.

Callum said:

Increased effect of trade skill on trade penalty to 0.4% per skill point.

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0.4*250 =100% (or total removal of the trade penalty at the 250th trade skill point) - what happens if you have 251 trade points? No change, or do they start paying you extra? lol
Or is 250 now the official max level of skill lines?