A Discussion About What CAN Actually be Done with Villages

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To complement this, I would like to mention that thread SP suggestions has suggestions for keeping you entertained for hours.
Also, I would like to share a list of mods that in my opinion bring solutions that are easy to implement and that would enhance village life and related.
 
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A small wooden wall would be pretty cool... or dirt wall, or anything tbh. Don't have to make it a full-on castle, but it would serve as some kind of progress of the world at least, to see some development... Without a gate or nothing, just so defenders have a bit of an advantage. I'm sure peasants would get tired of getting raided all the time, and they would at least raise some basic improvised defenses (even if incomplete, with multiple holes in them, they could be very charming and unique to villages). So maybe hire a steward for villages (or set a companion as steward) and train him and give him projects based on his skill (engineering/combat). The steward can of course die if the village is raided (2% chance like all others - lords, companions etc), and he can train better militia if he has good combat skills, or build small defenses and other buildings if he has high engineering skill, or even create bands of thugs if he is high in roguery (would be cool to see different types of village leadership based on traits and skills). The roguery focused steward would organize and send bands of thugs to attack the villages of the nations you are war, so some kind of offensive village. A leadership/combat focused steward would send militia outside of it to defend against bandits and thugs (it consumes militia). Some kind of interesting, yet simple addition that gives some more life to the world. I don't know, maybe it's a dumb idea, but I'd like seeing something cool other than projects that only increase village stats. Give us some flavor of some kind

Other than that I don't really know. I still think you should be able to tell a companion with a party to defend villages etc. I'd like to see more interactivity but I don't really have any grand ideas. Buying a house for yourself or for a companion would probably be too much, but still, I'd love having such options for villages/towns/castles... I think a cool idea would be buying some land to build a farm or other things to produce just like you can buy a workshop in a town, and also allow us in a castle to buy a training ground so we can leave troops to train and level-up with certain patterns set (from recruit to infantry, to tier 3, tier 4... let us choose our upgrade paths), or you could do that with a cost if you don't own such a training ground in a castle. If you buy a training ground/farming land, again, you need to leave a companion, which would also act as an emissary and gain relations with lords there and notables, just the same. It would be an expansion to the emissary feature maybe. I think it would be great for every single entity (village/castle/town) to be able to provide something unique of their own (Again: castles - training grounds, villages - farmable lands that produce resources - hardwood or food for you and your armies needs, which you can also sell to make trading skill), and for towns we already have workshops that are profit-focused only - and if you leave an emissary with high trading skill, it could increase workshop profit by small amounts, that would be cool. An emissary left in village that has high endurance let's say, could increase resource output. And in castles, emissary with high leadership/combat skills would increase the rate/exp of training units.

I don't have any other ideas atm, this is just some brainstorming. Don't take them too serious, but that's all I can think about atm and maybe I give somone an idea of some kind
 
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Let me underline the most important thing. I will go with a proper suggestion but this suggestion should be easy to implement (like adding new projects to castles which effects villages) and it should not damage existing mechanics. I see some ideas in forum which suggesting changing basics of game. What I know these kind of ideas have no chance. I will read all your ideas and join discussion when I find time. Somedays I cannot find time to write in forum. In a day I try to watch streams 2-3 hours (Italian Spartacus, lionheartx10 and even a Russian guy's (DreadzTv) stream at twitch to see where players suffer) and 7-8 hours development so not much time remains.

Seperate village design had also its problems too it was not a perfect design but we did not tried to correct it or discuss it, suddenly it changed 4 years ago. Now we all know what we have in our hands. We can make it better with small additions.
Forgive me if these are more invested than I would expect (I have 0 coding experience) but I have few small ideas.
1. A way to invest money into a village to recover faster after raiding or just for small prosperity/growth bonuses for a limited time. Something like: 5k for 10% hearth growth and tax revenue for 15 days. 10k for 30 days etc.
2. Simple special quests that are only available to the owner of said fief. Something like: Bandit Extortion from nearby bandit base, raid it for small temporary prosperity buff.
3. Ability to install companions as village warden or something with a small contingent of troops, maybe up to 20 or 30 max. While there they provide small boost to village security and fortify villager parties with stronger militia but damage food production. Letting them also slow down the raiding speed/ deter enemy lords so we can get back from the war on the other end of the map in time to help.
and pay reduced wages. Yes. Although we have so few companions already....
 
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.
 
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How about an option to import a notable from another culture. With your support $$$ and maybe at the cost of relation to other notables, you help a new notable set up in the village, raising troops of a different culture. This would help with the annoyance (IMO) of the fiefs the player receives almost always being of a culture apart from the troops they favor. Maybe a even a notable that represents a minor faction and recruit their troops. They could have less slots, or have higher prices or slower replenishment. Maybe bandit notable? I've always liked this idea of changing the troops of your villages.
 
How about if a castle or town has a governor it can send a militia patrol to attached villages in case a small raiding party or bandits are sighted nearby? it could be realistic in that it draws from the garrison and the governor itself go with it gaining a bit of combat experience even if stationed there or simplified that it creates a random patrol party maybe with the size dependent of a construction like barracks or something so higher levels of it would create a stronger patrol.

Maybe this is too much and better left for modders who knows, also really liked Apocal's suggestions
 
Let me underline the most important thing. I will go with a proper suggestion but this suggestion should be easy to implement (like adding new projects to castles which effects villages) and it should not damage existing mechanics. I see some ideas in forum which suggesting changing basics of game. What I know these kind of ideas have no chance. I will read all your ideas and join discussion when I find time. Somedays I cannot find time to write in forum. In a day I try to watch streams 2-3 hours (Italian Spartacus, lionheartx10 and even a Russian guy's (DreadzTv) stream at twitch to see where players suffer) and 7-8 hours development so not much time remains.

Seperate village design had also its problems too it was not a perfect design but we did not tried to correct it or discuss it, suddenly it changed 4 years ago. Now we all know what we have in our hands. We can make it better with small additions.


I would like to see a building constructable in only castles that increases the quality of troops in the surrounding villages as well as the replenishment rate. So instead of spawning mostly recruits like at towns they should have t2 and some t3 troops and nobles depending on tier of upgrade.

Also I want a bonus applied to both castles and towns that is build able to decrease garrison wage percent with more wage decrease per level of upgrade in a castle. For example town watch decreases town garrison cost by 10/20/30 percent. Castle guard watch decreased castle garrison cost by 20/40/60. We have garrison slots let us use them without going bankrupt.

Also would like to see a building called garrison patrols which increase milita respawn rate and quality of milita in castle villages. Blacksmith armory building buildable only at castles increases castle and surrounding prosperity.. This would be a start to helping with castle villages having such bad prosperity and income. Just some ideas.
 
I thought about toggling the villagers between "grow and sell produce" to "socage" thus helping with upgrades of a city or castle. Villager will go to settlement, but not sell goods there but boost build time - maybe as if 250 daily gold were paid. Problem is that the produce lingers in the village instead and if socage is done to a city, it will miss essential goods if done longer periods of time thus raising prices and whatnot unless you ship the goods yourself.

When I think about villages, I think about stuff like a windmill, an estate for the village's lord or bailiff, a granary, crops and cattle - even stuff like vineries or similar. I mean grapes will decay pretty fast, so wine is produced at a village, not a city. Something I find strange.

Let us also not forget that some villages are the home of minor factions like the Eleftheroi, the Embers of the Flame so why not have a dignitary there to talk, do jobs for them, barter for mercenary contracts or even recruit their special troops into your team? Or just mend your relation to them or negotiate non-aggression between them and your assets.

Give them a fair ground and sometimes, when you visit the village you might buy stuff there as wandering traders are there.
If your roguery skill is high enough you might get contacts to the local brigands. You might get shown bandit hideouts and get the action of recruiting their troops instead of killing and looting them. Maybe they can be put under your protection or at least under your patronage so they will deliver a part of their plundered goods to you or you can get it there. Maybe recruit poachers. Do smuggling missions.

Give them ox-pulled carts to haul more resources to the city, let them claim new land for crops, do an irrigation system and not a castle/city switched project. Let them produce small amounts of other stuff like woven linen or some hides or wood - you know the stuff they did in winter or what the women in history did while the males were on the field plowing or similar. The jobs, villagers did to earn some extra cash.

There is so much that could be done to make villages interesting and immersive and not passive tax-payers and raiding party target.
Even small walls or hedges could or strong houses to defend could make a village more defensible and resist raiders a bit more.
 
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.

Wow, that are very good ideas. I hope at least some of them could be put into the game.
 
Let me underline the most important thing. I will go with a proper suggestion but this suggestion should be easy to implement (like adding new projects to castles which effects villages) and it should not damage existing mechanics. I see some ideas in forum which suggesting changing basics of game. What I know these kind of ideas have no chance. I will read all your ideas and join discussion when I find time. Somedays I cannot find time to write in forum. In a day I try to watch streams 2-3 hours (Italian Spartacus, lionheartx10 and even a Russian guy's (DreadzTv) stream at twitch to see where players suffer) and 7-8 hours development so not much time remains.

Seperate village design had also its problems too it was not a perfect design but we did not tried to correct it or discuss it, suddenly it changed 4 years ago. Now we all know what we have in our hands. We can make it better with small additions.

Speaking of suggestions:

Please consider a simple system suggestively called a 'Legacy Quest' system. You all have done some great work already filling in roles and purposes for NPC characters in villages where they sell workshops, offer your army food for a morale bonus & spread trading rumors (etc) but they could also offer insight into easter-egged opportunities where certain villages & village locations therein could drop clues for subtle perks or unique objects.

  • Honorable Artifact/s: The endearing artifact of (Person/story/lore) which has inspired knights/archers/calvary/etc for thousands of years, once thought lost to time.
  • Unique items: (Sword/shield/helm/barding/etc; sure to stand out on the field while generating a small global bonus in morale/skill/perk/etc)
  • Ancient landmarks: (A variety of map-specific areas that can be discovered/excavated & calls attention thematically for pilgrims to deliver food to honor ancient heroes, more likely to attract a type of recruit, a long begotten tower with a commanding view with + range on incoming armies/parties in the surroundings, special sites/places that tell the Calradian story while offering larger-than-not villages due to popularity, & really there's an entire Mary Poppin's bag of options for these landmarks and their benefits for finding them but it could also add depth for skills like roguery and merciless traits when undiscovered/unused dungeons for prisoner perks and other nefarious options could be had)
  • Long-lost ruins: A chance to find special ruins to any culture-specific area in which a player could attract people to live with specific insights into cultural origins on the walk-through as well as it could potentially have specific bonuses/defensive features/small caravans for long begotten resources in mountainous keeps(ores/metals) & so forth & so on (Huge list of options for this as well).
  • Befriending the well-connected: Finding a largely unknown figure who happens to be well connected in any one of Bannder Lord's systems. This beneficiary could send you warnings of incoming armies, 1-time opportunities for trade, a historian for finding more legacy quest pickups, a unique smithy whom specializes in ancient armors culturally throughout the map/etc/etc/etc
Currently the conspiracy knights related to the conspiratorial story lines are not able to be taken as prisoners but with 2 birds, 1 nest, if a player were to take the time early on to chase down those clues for a perk like 'Honorable Artifact' then they'd take these ready-made knights as troops with subtly-higher rates of swing/armor rating/etc. You should disallow these troops to be picked up otherwise as prisoners subject to recruitment & be ransom-bound otherwise.

These are just loose examples and are not in any way particular needs/wants & subject to your discretionary POV given your roles/time available. Mainly thanks for taking the time to peek into Pandora's Suggestion Box
 
I have some simple ideeas some of them a return from warband and viking conquest:
-from a point of view will not be practical to encircle all of the village with a wooden pelisade,it will be better to build a wooden motte and bailey
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-it dosent need to be with a river just a wooden tower with a wooden pelisade on a high point of the village,it will work similar to the refuge from viking conquest
-this will be a good think for the milita to defend from the tower and pelsade that encircle the tower.yes it will be more hard for a riding party of max 90 than a full 500+ army to ride the village.
-one of the boyos in a post said to be able to put a companian in a village with a small group of 30 soldiers to aid the local militia,again it will be more hard for a small riding party to ride the village and give you a chance to come in help for your fief.
-lookout tower in order to inform you of enemy activity more early
-in warband you had the option to hire patrols but only from towns.it will be good to have this option for castels and max 4 patrols of 30 max units of militia.
-projects like build a school and a smithy etc that we had in warband and viking conquest to boost the prosperity and the lifes of your subject making them more loyal and not rebel.

This are simple ideeas that will not change the game mechanics and they where a fav in previous games plsu it will be more in theme with the time period of the game.

P.S.sorry for bad english not my native plus I am on my way to work.
 
To play devils advocate I always hated the border gore you got in warband when fief villages were handed out seperate to castles; I am glad they are held together.
Well they weren't kept separate, they were tied to towns in Warband, they could be handed out separately, but they are conquered along with the town, so there couldn't be that border gore because of villages (if a village owner defects to another faction he can NOT take the vilage with him), more because your marshal targeted a town in the middle of the enemy territory and not always the closest one to the border, but that happens in Bannerlord too sometimes.
 
After reading through the thread, the simplest and most impactful thing regarding villages I'd be able to think of would be add an ongoing project a bit like what the towns and castles have. If I'm not mistaken they're the projects that are picked up in towns and castles when a building project isn't ongoing (4 options at the bottom of the manage settlement page)

Rather than adding a ton of buildings or changing scenes; only adding ongoing projects could be effective & simple enough. Could do simple things when activated one at a time like increase rate of prosperity grow, decrease impact of a raid & increase recovery rate/time, increase bound settlement militia growth or increase relation with random notable from the village.

They seem to me like the simplest things to implement as they're already mechanics that exist within the game while increasing the adaptability of villages to someone's playstyle; although I could be wrong as I'm not a programmer or modder.
 
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