SP - General 273 hours logged in - my issues with the game.

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Capillati

Banned
Hello everyone and sorry for the long read, but here it goes...

1. Bandits

a) Steppe ones are too fast. No matter how long you chase them for, they don`t seem to run out of food. Same goes for all bandits on the food matter.
b) If they surrender, you don`t get the prisoners they had
c) 5 looters absolutely murder 30+ parties of villagers... mind boggling. Even more of a mind boggle, same 2 steppe bandits seem to pretty much bring armaggedon to absolutely any party of villagers, no matter how big, 50, 40, don`t matter, get 2 steppe bandits to attack them and they`ll be gone faster than warm bread in Yemen... And the fight takes like 2 seconds, you`ve literally got no time to intervene.
d) Bandits capture lord + prisoners. Game message log confirms that. I`m standing by next to the fight, as soon as it`s over I jump on the bandits and crush them. No lord, no relation boost, nothing. Just the lord`s former soldiers as prisoners. God forbid the bandits surrender or you won`t even get those.
e) an option to permanently disable them in the end game should be available for those who wanna concentrate on the big fights rather than chase the average 20ish party of looters, like permanently destroy caves or something. Or make them band up and form big raiding armies which run out of food and are forced to raid a city and that way you can attack them and clear the entire region for like at least 6 in game months or something... Also the amount of bandit parties late game is huge and causes economic wrecks of global proportions if you own more than half the map.
f) cave system is idiotic and old news. Bandit bases should be more like small strongholds, maybe with some wooden ramparts or palisades. The option to bring all your troops should be available and only those who want to take the whole encampment with the starting 8 troops should be able to do that instead of forcing us all to do it. Also, not being able to pick out the troops I`m about to start a bandit raid with is equally moronic. I`m the boss, the chief, I pay the bloody wages, my will be done, so on so forth etc.

2. Cities, castles and villages.

a) Garrisons should be fed by the leading liege. Option to stockpile food if you own the settlement your garrisoning needs to be there. Make villages able to have garrisons as well. A 10 garrisoned troops per village, 25 per castle and 50 per town that isn`t affected by food shortages should be doable. The amount of said food shortages is mind boggling, there`s too much of it.
b) Villages should be manageable and given as fiefs as well. Option of a palisade reinforcement wall being built, along with food fields upgrades and such. Militia range should be increased and an active party on the map should be seen engaging bandits that pray on said village`s people (same goes for castle and city militia).
c) Sturgians having metric tones of grain next to icy and snowy climate, that pretty much seem to run all year round, should not be the case. Fish yeah, but not grain. A lot of mountain side villages produce grain. Try that in real life, see how long it takes you to go bankrupt and starve. Also, grain in steppe lands as well and in some desert lands. Desert villages (one or two) have olives (need hills to grow) and grapes - aserai villages next to Quayaz (in case I`m mistaken about the name, the closest city of aserai natives to the Vlandian Kingdom). Maybe add some fruit producing villages? No one seems to like fruits for some reason...
d) there should be more villages supporting the cities (in real life medieval ages you had maybe 10 villages for every town, if not more, not just 2 or 3).
e) Some if not most of the castles should start with wooden walls and we should upgrade them from there. which was also the case in medieval times, as opposed to the greek ancient period that seems to be going on in the game (loads of castles and citadels with stone walls before 200 A.D., not so much later). Same should be for cities. Outer walls of cities should be palisades, inner walls should be protecting a keep somewhere in the middle of the city (battanians for instance and kuzhaits should definitely have much less walled settlements - not fewer, but less walled, more palisade, or earth motts). Also, there seems to be an abundance of castles inside the kingdoms, which doesn`t really make any sense strategically wise, as castles generally protected borders and mountain or river passes again, on the border of a kingdom, not in the middle of it.
f) Geography is a bit wrong. If Pravend was the empire`s capital, it should still be in imperial hands? I think? Maybe? Vlandiands should not be starting with the entire western side of the map conquered. A lot of the settlements should be made neutral in certain areas and sturgians should be pushing the vlandians more to the west and south west, consequently making the vlandiands capture more neutral settlements there or like an imperial faction settlements that also control Pravend, to make it historically accurate as far as game lore goes. Some neutral city states should also be present in other parts of the map. Like between Northern empire and Khuzaits or southern empire and the Aserai on the east side and Vlandiands and aserai on the west side. Also pretty sure the Battanians and the vlandians should swap places in some areas on the south west and batanians shouldn`t really be bordering nords/sturgya as far as warband world map is concerned...
g) I am guilty of exploiting this but can I please be stopped from being able to recruit troops from enemy villages? Also, if I`m the village`s lord, you`d think I`d be able to recruit all the troops available in that village? Me being the supreme leader and all that? Normally I`d say the same should apply to the AI but as far as I`ve seen, the AI isn`t cheesing enemy settlements for troops...
h) Cities should be bigger on the map, not roughly the same size as castles or as each other, also, coastal cities should be bigger and more prosperous than mountain and inland cities. There also seems to be an abundance of rivers and mountains... if the continent is somewhat similar to medieval Europe + Asia Minor and North Africa, there are way too many mountains...
i) Certain castles and cities on the map that are surrounded by mountains, like Myzea for instance, or Quyaz, should prevent enemy parties larger than 100 men from passing next to them without forcing said parties to engage with militia troops or besiege the city... It would make strategical sense...

3) Battles, renown, diplomacy and military campaigns.

a) troops should turn in the spot they`re on (at least archers anyway). Maybe make AI stop attacking one target if more than 2:1 proportion of attackers is met, 4:1 for archers, 1:1 spearmen vs cav, etc. Play a bit with that as well!
b) players should be able to issue formation vs formation orders and so should the AI. Maybe try introducing, for infantry only, a group of ten lead by a sergeant or corporal (like a designated agent leader) both for player armies and AI, and try having them engage each other like that along the infantry line, test it out.
c) battle scenario speed for infantry should be reduced slightly, more for armored infantry, but all infantry in general, even when the charge order is given.
d) cavalry charges should be a lot more like hit and run and much less like solo fighting or charging once and then stick around to try and finish the enemy. Like the horse archers do (spot on with them lot, maybe a slight reduction in accuracy might go a long way in making people stop using them as an exploit of decimating armies 10 times their size)
e) if you lose a battle, lose renown, - 1 tier of your clan? Test it out. And a bit of influence as well. That should work for all AI lords as well (maybe that way, in order to get their renown back and be able to recruit more troops, they`ll sort out the bandit problem more often). It should limit the steam rolling effect as well. Lose a battle as a big army leader, lose 2 tiers of your clan. If you win the battle but get knocked out during it, you should not gain renown or influence. Also, if you recruit 10 troops from a village/city and kill them all in 2-3 in game months, you should not be albe to recruit from that village/city again for another 2-3 in game months.
f) AI lords should take longer to recover from injuries from the battle field. They should also not be able to escape prisons so quickly (even after the update), especially if the dungeon is maxed out (which by the way, you should make that available).
g) If I release lords after battle, I should get some valour/honor as well, not just charm. If I win battles with no casualties tactics and leadership skills should get bigger buffs (leadership is a pain to raise).
h) military campaigns on national level should revolve on conquering enemy territory that`s closest to your kingdom`s border, that should go especially for the AI. Loads of AI lords siege castles right smack in the middle of the enemy kingdom, only to have their aOs handed to them or just lose the conquered castle/city within days in game. After a couple of castle/city losses there should be a sue for peace and a financial settlement and a very long truce. Not like right now where AI declares war on one another, makes peace, one week later, back at war, same factions. Also, Sturgya should not have any business declaring war on the Aserai when they`re miles apart. Same goes for Vlandians and Khuzaits and so on.
i) Some factions should have cultural affinity (make it less likely to go to war with one another, I`m thinking battania - sturgya, khuzaits - aserai, maybe northern empire and the western one).
j) clans should not be switching sides so often. Especially to factions that took their lands. Should a clan lose it`s lands in wars and it should also lose tiers from its strength and should their kingdom eventually be defetead they should join any other kingdom than the one they were at war with. By losing tiers from their clan power and thus, the ability to recruit larger armies, they won`t overbuff the faction they join.
k) Marrying the daughter of a faction leader should only be possible if you already own a settlement and have big renown (minimum tier 5 maybe? at least?). Also, maybe nerf down their equipment? Have them wear tier 6 civilian clothes, not top armor that I`m gonna be stealing. Also, number of women leading armies is quite high. It looks like a 50% 50% proportion or close to that. Especially feels weird in a Vlandian, Aserai or Khuzait kingdom, maybe not so much in Sturgya. Number of real life women that lead armies in medieval ages are probably down to 20 in total, across the planet, throughout the entire period, accounting for indian (Asian) an Chinese cultures as well.
l) Trample damage for cavalry units, especially heavy ones, infantry that gets trampled over now will magically step right up as if nothing happened and immediately start fighting again... and if the bruce lees of the mounted archer community could get some stagger damage when knocked off their horses instead of immediately being able to shoot an arrow right in my face, that`d be nice too...
m) Also, in sieges, if defending troops run out of food and sally forth to attack, I should have a defensive bonus if my siege camp is done; their morale should be very weak as well ? Them being hungry and desperate and under immediate danger of losing their lives and all that...
n) Upgrading troops from cloth armor to chainmail or even padded armor should cost way more than 25 or 50 gold per troop.
Upgrading buildings in your settlements should also cost gold, not just bricks. It should as well take longer, far longer. Most castles and cities I conquer past the first year are either maxed out or have barely 2 or 3 buildings left to build up with just one level. Buffs of the buildings developed should be bigger and more integrated with the battle scenario
(have for instance in a village a ditch upgrade as step 1 that provide a -20% attacks from bandits, 20% longer range of radius for militia to intervene on the world map and helps out in all battles close to the village, step 2 earth mott and again +20% range for militia, - 20% bandit party chance to appear, step 3 palisade, - 20% less bandits + 20% radius for militia etc).
o) At the beginning of the game, rock throwing looters do between 6 and 12 damage if they hit you in your head. Makes a bit of sense since you`re not exactly wearing any head armor at that time. But if you do wear like a 35 head armor helmet and you still get hit with 6-12 damage from the same rock throwing looter, you might have a problem with head armors? There`s a small problem in that regard with expensive tier 5 or 6 armors, again, (on realistic difficulty) you seem to take quite a lot of damage from a pathetic falchion while wearing heavy imperial lammellar armor. Also, hitting looters with swords doesn`t seem to do much damage even though they don`t have any armor at all? I get that they`re ****ty swords, beginning of the game and suchs, but you reckon metal would still cut meat pretty brutally if used from horseback while galloping...
p) during melee`s a lot of fighters should be knocked on their backs every now an then, especially if a big guy like me meets a little looter guy twice as small... it makes no sense him being able to just take all my attacks and not fall at all, under any circumstance, never. Same for heavy armored vs unarmoured units...
q) Food for horses would be a nice addition and more of an encumberrance and financial problem for cavalry only army.
r) getting an arrow in the proverbial knee, or anywhere on your leg for that matter should definitely make you limp and slow you down considerably. Having 50 arrows on your shield should definitely make it heavier... not by a lot, but still... heavier, make blocking take more time with an encumberred shield.

4) Prisoners, Caravans and loot.

a) You should be forced to leave out some troops to guard the prisoners during battles. Double that if locked in a dark whole and key is thrown away for a couple of months.
b) Prisoners should be more eager to join forces with you if you keep them for longer than an in game month.
c) You should be allowed to have prisoners do forced labour, especially in villages that make iron ore for instance.
d) some slave trading would be nice, some slaves fighting in the arena as well, as a way to make you money and whatnot...
e) Caravans should have a more set in routine, not wander all over the map, into every faction`s territory. The needs of one kingdom should be supplied by maybe 70-75% of its own caravans and another 25% should be foreign caravans, but from the bordering kingdoms.
f) loot should be according to the person I`m targeting. Right now I`m annihilating steppe bandits (just barely but I am managing it), I haven`t received a bow as loot in like 15 fights against them. Say I fight a lord and defeat him in battle, makes no sense why I shouldn`t get his armor. If it`s a ''you shouldn`t be walking around in tier 6 stuff in the first 150 days'' or something like that, just keep the tier 6 armors to royalty, not nobles. Simple as.
g) I get that when I upgrade my troops from infantry to horsemen I have to buy them horses. But when I upgrade them and require war horses, I should get my normal horse back, because at the moment, loot went from loads of horses, which kind of made sense when engaging large armies (don`t get why that was nerfed down, it was realistic) to like no horses or barely a sumpter horse every now and then (and yeah, I`m still talking about steppe bandit parties mostly).
h)
An army of 500 or more besieges a settlement. Another one comes to defend the settlement. They fight and one of them wins but remains with under 100 troops. I swoop in and crush the remaining force, as a non member of any of the 2 factions. I get a moderate amount of loot, no lords released (again, game message log says loads were taken prisoners), very little loot for the amount of fighting that was going on. What I should have gotten was loads of loot, especially since one of the big armies got wiped out, the ability to keep the captured lords as prisoners or release them (in this case I absolutely wanted them just as dead as the lords of the army that took them prisoners), stuff like that.

5) Some historical facts that should`ve been taken into account for the game.

a) medieval villagers didn`t roam the lands being capitalists and selling their stuff to the cities markets. They were tied down to the land, most of them never left their settlements their entire lives. Lords owned villages and castles, not so much cities which tended to be owned by royalty. The way things worked was opposite with what happens in game. Lords sent armed militia and clerks to collect taxes and produce owed by the villagers tied to the lord`s land.
b) Bandits didn`t attack villagers, most of the time they WERE the villagers... they attacked the armed militia and clerks of local nobles for the taxes and produce they collected and gave a lot back to the villagers, that`s why there`s loads of legends and songs praising banditry virtually all over the world. They also attacked caravans, to quite little success though. Most of the time, the villagers were helping the bandits. Bandits rarely hid in caves, they were mostly hiding in the closest village to their place of birth or in forest settlements of small proportions, also very near of their birth place.
c) most medieval wars were fought by mercenary companies, not by national militias or the likes. Most knights, when not nobles, were actually mercenaries. Loads of pike using mercenaries, crossbowmen as well. Usually the wars started with a fight between the noble`s supporters, those usually died out quite quick and mercs were brought in to fill in the ranks. Usually the richest guy won.
d) murders in medieval world were common and, especially during wars, not frowned upon.
e) looting villages only happened when armies ran out of food, the real targets were the cities. Some 50% wars also ended up being I raise army, raid a region, get a financial settlement, f.. off home once I got paid, regardless of the stated reasons for which those wars started.
f) Caravans/merchants weren`t roaming the land, they usually had a set pattern of point A to point B, with some minor stops on their way, not f.. off way to the south of their route for some weird trade deal.


His majesty, the simulator!

Simulator should go on 3 basic principles of medieval combat: tactics of commanders, numbers of troops (general, and also per type) and type of equipment for the troops (armored heavily, medium armored and unarmoured, spears, infantry, archers, cavalry, horse archers, mixed).
Fight calculation should develop in stages and should oppose troops of the same type.
First stage should always be calculating the number of troops engaging according to the opposing commanders level of tactics and their type (ranged, infantry, cavalry). This should translate into a bonus per troops engaging each other like, an increase of 10% in damage (incremental with the more one force is disatvantaged from a number`s perspective) for infantry for the guy with more troops, or same for archers, depending on the proportion of troops used and which commander has more of them. Lack of archers on one side for instance should provide a significant disadvantage if the enemy has them and even more so if the enemy has a lot of them and they can`t be counterd by a lack of cavalry or very few cavalry units compared to the number of archers. Same for lots of cavalry vs spears.
Second stage should take into account equipment (armored percentages, types of armor and lack of, shields or lack of). Again, bonuses, like 10% or whatever, up to the developers, should apply at this stage as well. As an example, lack of armor, -20%, lack of armor and shield -35%, lack of armor, shield and you`re a tier 1 recruit or peasant, -50%.
Third stage should take into account tiers of the troops engaging (bonus for experienice 5% or -5%, developers should play with that, maybe a 20% or more bonus for tier 6 vs tier 1 or peasant).
Fourth stage should be the first part of a battle, like the starting skirmish, where only archers, javelin troops and horse archers do damage, like a 5% or 10% and maybe light cavalry as well.
Fifth stage should be the main combat operations where all troops should do damage according to the aforementioned calculations in the first 3 stages.
Sixth stage should be the chasing down of the losing force where only cavalry and archers do damage and take very little if on the winning side.

Some historical considerations of medieval battles that should be taken into account:

Medieval lords were rarely caught when a field battle was fought. If they felt like they were losing, most of the time they just fled the field with their bodyguards. An example is the English king at Banockburn 1314, against the scots. Still had numerical superiority but managed to waste most of his cavalry. His generals decided to send him back south to safety. All the troops panicked at the sight and went on to lose the battle to an underequipped but numerically rather equal force of scots.
As a counterpart to that, when their fiefs were attacked lords were almost always forced to come and fight to defend them and they almost always got caught in such situations. Kings even more so.
So what you can do in game is... maybe have most of the lords escape even when defeated but force them to come defend their castles or cities when under siege.
Throughout all ages, ancient, medieval, all the way up to modern times, when the leader of an army fled the field of battle, his army lost regardless if it had numerical superiority (Darius and Xerxes from persians, huge numerical superiority over the greeks, lost their battles for fleeing the field even thought they still outnumbered their enemies by 3 or even 5 to 1, the english lords vs vikings, vs scots, the French lords vs the English, vs the germans - 1870, not ww2, etc).

Stupid things that happen with the current simulator:

Difficulty realistic, tactics skill between 60 and 90 for most fights

- party of about 70 (20-25 horse archers, 20-25 crossbowmen and archers, 20-25 infantry) attacks 5-6 looters. They manage to kill either a tier 5 saergent crossbowman or a tier 5 horse archer
- same party vs 30-35 loters, they kill anywhere between 5 and even 10 of my troops
- 60 horse archers, 15 imperial elite cataphracts vs 5 looters, 1 tier 6 cataphract dies!!! He f..cking dies!!! HOW? On what planet?
- I meet an enemy khuzait army. 150 me, 450 (give or take 10 troops) the enemy. My troops, mostly horse archers top tier, some imperial elite cataphracts (about 14-15), enemy has 50 horse archers, 20-25 cavalry, not all top tier, some spears and archers (about 160-170 of them, tiers 2-5) and some 200+ recruits of all kinds. I win with more than 50 horse archers and some 10 heavy cavalry still standing. I`m not even gonna bother bringing that on easy difficulty, it`s probably the end of times for any faction.
- my party of 150-170 recruits (of which maybe 25-30 are tier 2) fight with enemy parties ranging from 250-320. I win. Every time. Sometimes I even get very little dead and loads of just injured upgradeble recruits.

Desired effects
- No looter revenge for all the thousand simulated battles I exploited to level my troops up before patch 1.1.0. No, no, triple f..ck no! Looters should never be able to kill any kind of high armored unit or archers for that matter, even less so if they`re mounted.
- have a result as accurate as it can get based on the number and type of troops doing battle.
- no Leonidas and the 300 results for anyone, not even on easy mode all around, more than 4 to 1 proportion should result in defeat every time (unless it`s 1 mounted elite cataphract against 5 looters, then the horsie must win please).

Clan, Kingdom and party size. Killing enemy lords.
I find the clan system oversimplified. I think it`s an easily improvable portion of the game and it wouldn`t take a lot of effort at all. I suggest using this model.

Tier 1-5 (band/fighting party)
tier 6-10 (warband/ war party)
tier 11-15 (clan)
tier 16-20 (tribe)
tier 21-25 (house)
tier 26- (royal house, or make it royal for vlandia, noble for khuzait, sheiks, vizirs or emirs for aserai, patrician for empire and karlhouse for sturgya)
Increase the number of companions per tier (I would like very much to roam the lands with 20 companions for a big portion of my early game instead of just go for an army directly)

Party size should increase by 5 as opposed to 10, per tier upgrade. Consequently, tier upgrades for clans and war bands and so on should require less renown to make it balanced (warband tier 4 should have the same party as currently a tier 2 clan and it should take the same amount of renown to get there, maybe slightly less).
We should get a party size bonus after the first 50 won battles, another at 100 won battles, another at 250, another at 500 and another at 1000 (maybe go for 5 extra party slots for the first bonus, 10 for the next, 25, 50 and then 100).
Give an extra bonus for battles won with more than 4-1 odds against us (10 permanent increase in party size? 5? maybe 15? they don`t happen very often so maybe it should count for something when it does). Make fighting looters and bandits not count for this bonus though or they`ll be plenty of exploits. Make Leadership skill gain loads of experience in such cases.

Kingdoms
- should have a split social layering of clans, warbands, houses and so on. For instance only a house type of clan should be able to form armies.
- As a warband you should not be eligible to get fiefs or even be a vassal, just be allowed to join as mercenary.
- If you join a kingdom as a mercenary you should not be able to upgrade to vassal unless you spent 1 ingame year helping that kingdom.
- Mercenary companies should only help neighbouring kingdoms, not have some from Vlandia fight for Khuzait, or if they did, or if they did, they should be less effective at it. They should also actively fight their native faction for most of the time, as they are at war but rarely seem to care that much about that said war. They should be able to extort or raid villages for profit on that faction.
- fog of war is a bit much in your own kingdom as much as the enemy lords are concerned. No king or noble was ever caught unaware of a big enemy army entering its lands, that`s not the type of event you usually miss, especially in times of war...
- some borders would be nice, like a dotted line and stuff like that... and make the kingdoms do agreements for border crossings. I shouldn`t just march into some other country`s territory like I own the place.
- for the ''civil war'' that`s going on, the empires don`t really spend that much time fighting each other (compared to the amount of fighting they do against barbarian kingdoms).
- have different events during peace times (not just feasts but hunt events and the like, have the lords host tourneys for their birthdays, give them birthdays, make the tourneys special, like more renown and better quality equipment rewards)
- add people to do roles for the kingdom (like a vizir for aserai, royal steward, etc, have royal marshalls, get some sheriffs roaming the woods to kill bandits)
- daughters of faction rulers should only marry royal houses, unless eloping with you. Daughters of strong noble families shouldn`t marry anything less than a house, unless eloping with you. Minor nobles daughters for clans, unless eloping and so on. Make it possible to marry companions as well as commoners, make it possible to ascend to faction ruler if you marry the faction`s current ruler daughter and make it impossible to do that if you marry your companion or a commoner. Except for IRA (who lorewise likes to participate in tournaments, fighting attributes should not exist for the rest of the marriageable ladies in game, maybe with some khuzait exceptions as well, but as far as I can tell, Ira is 25% khuzait, correct me if I`m wrong, anyone...), good fighting attributes for your children should only come from marrying commoner women, accustomed to a hard life as opposed to how it is now. Lord daughters should generally be more intelligent, but less physically strong because of their nurtured lifestyle. Thus your children should inherit such attributes from their mothers accordingly (I don`t know how much of a role the father plays, but the idea should be clear, less fighting skills if that wasn`t the parents main background).

Killing lords - the penalties need to go away. I already have the option to play without me being able to kill them, you shouldn`t force your mentality of how other people should be playing the game on them. Simple as. It`s war, it`s a medieval simulator, let things simulate as they were back then.

Other stuff:

- Lords should not be joining a faction if I`m killing that faction`s lords in a consistent manner. There should be a fear aspect or something like that, a reputation of getting killed if you join that faction, that should prevent them from doing so.
- if a lord was besieging one of my settlements or raiding one of my villages and I kill him for it, other ai lords should realise what happened and why and they should avoid doing that action unless having a much larger army than mine (to overcome the fear aspect). Consequently, if I killed someone`s dad or brother, they should ignore the reputation and raid specifically my villages.
- make the fear aspect die down during peace times
- being married to Ira and killing her mum, I would`ve expected at least to get some cold meals, if not an outright divorce... Maybe fix that a little bit in the future?


Anyway, generally that`s what I have, I`ll probably remember more and add it, right now I`m bored with writing.
Cheers!
 
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Wow, this post took a while to compile and then write out! I agree with most of this. Some of these things are unlikely to be implemented in game, but I understand why it's included in this post.
 
I`m aware they probably won`t add more villages on the map, or change some of the mountains to flat lands or won`t kill the capitalist ideas inside villagers heads but maybe some modders will get some ideas...
 
reffering to 3), point h from original post :
h) military campaigns on national level should revolve on conquering enemy territory that`s closest to your kingdom`s border, that should go especially for the AI. Loads of AI lords siege castles right smack in the middle of the enemy kingdom, only to have their aOs handed to them or just lose the conquered castle/city within days in game.



Case in point - Aserai at war with Southern empire. They don`t even try to siege any bordering castles or cities, they go straight for Gaos castle which is next to the northern empire teritorry. Lost it exactly 5 days after conquering it.
 
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can please someone make a 300 athletics character, then same for max riding, together with noble bow, also, two such fast characters running vs each other, shoot each other for the maximum impact speed. And make it into a video.

Two fastest horses with 300 archery and noble bow, 300 riding. Bow shooting each other.(and compare with normal units speed)

And I would bet TW doesnt see much of a problem with it, especially with horses and missile speeds.

I think wed be in an area of 150 m/s, or nearly half the speed of sound..(and triple the normal RL arrow velocity)

Very well written overall.
 
Some good thoughts here!

1. Bandits:
a) Bandit parties running out of supplies would be a neat feature, would it lead to them getting desperate and attacking stronger parties than they normally would?
e) I don't like the idea of just flat out removing them in late game, but some way of controlling it would be ideal. Your suggestion on 2b would probably help with this problem.
f) The whole Bandit Hideout thing right now is horrendous. Major work needs to be done here, but it makes sense to have small bandit hideaways whether they be caves or secluded mini-forts in the forest. A palisade in the middle of an open plain just makes you a target.

2. Cities, Castles, and Villages
b) In Warband I played a lot of Floris mod, being able to send out Patrol parties really helped curb bandit infestations in secluded regions. I like your idea here where a portion (maybe half) of the militia of a village would attempt to run down bandits passing by.

3. Battles, Renown, Diplomacy, and Military Campaigns
a) There is a formation command to make them face a certain direction (F2, F1 I believe?) which is NOT the default (Face Enemy is default), perhaps it should be. I find it infuriating when my whole long line of archers start wheeling to fire upon a single horse archer charging ahead of their recruits.
b) I don't quite understand this one, in addition to the regular groups (1 = Infantry, 2 = Archers, etc) you can set unit types to be in whatever group you wish. If you want AI to take over command of a certain formation, you can press F6 (Delegate Command) and they'll manage themselves. Being able to specify a global strategy would be cool though, such as "Keep archers on a hill" or something would cause infantry and cav to protect the archers, etc
e) Losing a battle should make me lose a clan tier? No. Losing renown? Maybe. Losing Influence? I could see that.
q) Sounds good in theory, but I think this is one of the cases where fun > realism. Especially if you have a bunch of pack animals to carry tons of loot, having to carry tons of food would render all that useless.

4. Prisoners, Caravans, and Loot
d) Inb4 social justice warriors make a big deal about slavery =P When you talk to the ransom brokers the dialogue they have make it sound like slaves aren't really a thing in this game. Having prisoners do hard labor while they are "waiting to be ransomed" would be a nice feature though.

5. Some historical facts that should've been taken into account for the game
a-f) I believe the devs did take these factors into account, there are many threads about "Historical" vs "Fantasy" and "Fun" vs "Realism" over the years. I suspect some of these things may appear eventually (Again this is Early Access and not even close to feature complete) however it may not change due to balancing issues. Something as simple as making lords only raid villages when they are low on supplies may have a snowball effect on the entire world (That little change they made awhile ago with caravans being targeted, ended up snowballing in some cases to global famine)

Everything else I pretty much agree with! Good read =D
 
Some good thoughts here!

1. Bandits:
a) Bandit parties running out of supplies would be a neat feature, would it lead to them getting desperate and attacking stronger parties than they normally would?
e) I don't like the idea of just flat out removing them in late game, but some way of controlling it would be ideal. Your suggestion on 2b would probably help with this problem.
Hello mate and thank you for bringing your ideas forward. Let me address some of them cause the rest are alright or a question of taste.
I`ll start with e). I didn`t say forcefully remove them, I suggested it would be nice to have the option of permanently destroy the cave that spawns them (if that is the case and they`re not outright spawned on the map willy nilly). That being said, if you wanted to enjoy some of the bandits, fine, if not and you wanted to concentrate just on the battles, which in late game if you don`t kill the lords, trust me, you`ll be doing loads of, also fine, make it available for me to destroy the cave, have an effective militia patrol. By the way, Viking conquest had those warrior patrols, what ever happened to those...
a) bandits rarely surrendered because they were tortured. So being desperate and actually fight you off would make sense... The reason they were tortured was because, historically, the bandits were the villagers. I explained that concept, peasants weren`t the capitalists this game thinks they were. Local noble sent troops and clerks to collect money and mostly, food (grain, barley, agricultural produce that the peasants were busy planting and gathering all year round). ''the Bandits'' were actually desperate peasants that were going to starve if the noble took their stuff so they might as well attack the local force sent there to collect it. The lord found out about the situation so in order to keep the rest of the peasants in line, tortured and murdered the bandit peasants in the cruellest of ways (having their hands and feet tied to horses and make the horses go in separate directions, Vlad the Impaler execution of invading muslims by impaling them on wooden pikes was actually far more present in the day to day lives of Romanians - not only them, common also in Bulgaria, former Yugoslavia and Ukrain - for instance). That`s why I`m saying bandits rarely hid in caves. They hid in neighbouring villages, in close by forests, they did build some encampments there (yes, with palisades, but not like your roman palisades which everyone seems to think of, a much more rougher form of enclosure, obviously). Keep in mind back in that age forests were a no no unless you were a big group of people. Pitch dark by night, loads of wolves by both night time and day. They had a lot more trees back then as well, a hideout in a forest wasn`t so easy to spot. I`m not a history nerd, I swear!

3. Battles, Renown, Diplomacy, and Military Campaigns
a) There is a formation command to make them face a certain direction (F2, F1 I believe?) which is NOT the default (Face Enemy is default), perhaps it should be. I find it infuriating when my whole long line of archers start wheeling to fire upon a single horse archer charging ahead of their recruits.
b) I don't quite understand this one, in addition to the regular groups (1 = Infantry, 2 = Archers, etc) you can set unit types to be in whatever group you wish. If you want AI to take over command of a certain formation, you can press F6 (Delegate Command) and they'll manage themselves. Being able to specify a global strategy would be cool though, such as "Keep archers on a hill" or something would cause infantry and cav to protect the archers, etc
So. a) yes, there is that command, but if the enemy, as it always does, sends his 3 units of cavalry, to your left hand side, as it always does, all your troop lines will start to move... like they`re retarded. They all face the closest enemy. They don`t face the BULK of the enemy. Just the closest one. The archers for instance, I absolutely do not understand why they have to turn in line and not on the spot they`re on. Are they not gonna be able to shoot their bloody bows without a quick stroll? Horse archers as well, have the horses turn in the spot. It can`t be that hard, surely...
b) i mean i should be able to issue an attack order on an enemy formation, my infantry for instance to attack their infantry, not their cavalry units or their archers, just their infantry, my cavalry to only engage their horse archers. That`s what I`m talking about.
q)but you do carry tons of food for troops, remember? Why not for horses as well ? Are you racist against horses bruv? Just kidding, but still, it would make cavalry only armies a bit more difficult to manage, maybe also more slower. At the moment pretty much everyone goes horse archer = game over. There`s no antidote from the AI to that. Also, something very weird for me... why no fruits?

4. Prisoners, Caravans, and Loot
d) Inb4 social justice warriors make a big deal about slavery =P When you talk to the ransom brokers the dialogue they have make it sound like slaves aren't really a thing in this game. Having prisoners do hard labor while they are "waiting to be ransomed" would be a nice feature though.

You could have like a slave academy, make`em fight for you in tournaments. I don`t get how they`re not relevant anymore because ''they can escape all the time''. No they can`t. It`s the medieval ages. No one escaped from prisons back then. Prison was pretty much = death. Job done. Maybe make a hardcore mode on the normal arena with no tournaments. Say fight for fun with wooden sticks but if you get bored, get in with the slaves but make it to the death. They kill you = game over. Well if you`ve got no heirs...

The losing a battle losing a tier would actually make sense if you think about it. You losing a battle means loads of dead soldiers. Loads of families should be very upset with you for that... At least for a while. Loads more should be making fun of you cause you lost the fight. Again, can be something more optional for realistical purposes for players, but the ai should definitely suffer from it. I`m pretty sure if the AI has smaller armies, they can`t steamroll (bit hard to do that if your 7 lords with 30 troops each decide to besiege a 500 defender strong garrison of a city, just saying). Not to mention the getting the recruits killed bit. That should definitely be there. You got a bunch of young boys from a village and they were never heard of again in quick time? You shouldn`t be able to recruit from that village for a time. It will stop you from just doing battles all the time and doing something else in game... Like smithing… Which is an absolute s..tshow at the moment. Or go do some tourneys. Some trading. Etc. Because as things stand now in game, you`re pretty much doing one thing and one thing only. If your trading, that`s all you`re doing. Maybe you do some tournaments on the side, but it`s mostly only trading. When you`re fighting though, that`s AAALL you`re doing. There`s no time for tourneys, trading, nothing. The AI will come at you like it`s no tomorrow, your allied lords will do the same, you gotta struggle to keep up with them cause if you lose your allied lords all your villages get raided, you gotta pay attention if they raise an army and what`s going on with that army cause if that army gets wiped out you my friend are in a world of pain. Anyway, that`s pretty much it, hope it helps with understanding and what not. Cheers!
 
Great stuff. Could you explain the color coding? I couldn't find information in your post regarding the logic behind what the colors meant.

Otherwise there was some great ideas in there. I actually carried extra grain for a very long time when I first started playing and started hording mules for my trading empire. Then I figured out the mules never need food. I was somewhat sad.
 
Great stuff. Could you explain the color coding? I couldn't find information in your post regarding the logic behind what the colors meant.
It`s just to help people read cause at this point it`s more like a novel or something... I personally haven`t read that much since I was a university student, not gonna lie :grin:
 
Very well written post and I agree with it all. I want those features badly and yes I would actually like the lose battle penalties. But moreover AI should pick their fights smarter. I even learned a lot from the historical accuracy parts assuming they are correct :grin:
 
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