A very simple suggestion to make the game harder while making relationship matter more

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Totalgarbage

Sergeant Knight
The suggestion is to have a relation threshold (something like at least +10 or +20) as a vassal for summoning lords to your army. That's it, that's the whole suggestion. It can be expanded further so that in order to be able to call more parties of the same clan (or maybe to call the clan leader's party), you need higher relationship. The ruler should be able to call anyone they want regardless of relationship, and family/clan members should not be subject to this relationship requirement. This would also make promoted companions better, since they get a massive relationship boost when they are made into nobility. This will make the game "harder" (well it will actually make the power spike of armies harder to achieve) by not letting the player call 1000 people they don't know into an army to besiege any settlement they want.

I don't even think that this would make the game that much grindier, since raising relation is very easy (especially with voting). There are many many things that so many people (including me) that already suggested in order to reduce the late game grind, so that concern can be alleviated already.

Also, I think that minor factions/mercenary clans should be able to form armies, but they should be limited to calling only family/clan members and other minor faction parties to an army (with maybe at more cost compared to calling an army as a vassal?).
 
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Higher tier clans and Lords with more fiefs should be able to partially negate the relationship requirements due to their rank/power but yes, I think the requirements should be +5 relations for minor clans, +10 for regular kingdom members of 4th tier or lower clans, +20 for 5th tier clans and +30 calling the ruling clan into an army then +3 per fief so a clan with 5 fiefs would require and additional +15 which probably would barely make a difference most of the time since typically after working as a mercenary and resucing Lords relations get to 50+ in a single war.
 
Higher tier clans and Lords with more fiefs should be able to partially negate the relationship requirements due to their rank/power but yes, I think the requirements should be +5 relations for minor clans, +10 for regular kingdom members of 4th tier or lower clans, +20 for 5th tier clans and +30 calling the ruling clan into an army then +3 per fief so a clan with 5 fiefs would require and additional +15 which probably would barely make a difference most of the time since typically after working as a mercenary and resucing Lords relations get to 50+ in a single war.
I like your suggestions, tho I think we should be able to call minor clans to an army regardless of relation, they are getting paid for this after all. Other than that, maybe we shouldn't be able to call the king to an army for very minor immersion reasons (but other parties from the ruling clan is fair game). I also like your suggestion of prerequisite relation changing based on the number of fiefs, though imo there should be a cap of maximum prerequisite relations at 40-50 or something idk.
 
Relations already figure into influence costs for calling parties to your army but the existing influence costs are so low that it's barely noticeable.
You can easily take it up 5x and still not have it be oppressive. I had a test that played with it.

People might notice relations have an impact then but there are other factors so it would probably just get lost in the mix between distance, strength and policies.
 
Relations already figure into influence costs for calling parties to your army but the existing influence costs are so low that it's barely noticeable.
You can easily take it up 5x and still not have it be oppressive. I had a test that played with it.

People might notice relations have an impact then but there are other factors so it would probably just get lost in the mix between distance, strength and policies.
Well yeah, relation does actually affect the influence cost, but as you said, it doesn't really matter if relations are low since the cost generally isn't that high anyways. It's kind of a "win more" system that reduces summoning costs from 15-30 to 1-2 influence. That's why I think having a relation threshold (that's not too high) would be better in making relations matter. It would also potentially make the power spike we get by becoming a lord lower, and bring some (potentially annoying) immersion into the game by making it so that lords that don't know or like you won't join your army. Also maybe lords being able to leave your army depending on your actions (such as devastating a town after a successful siege) can be a thing, though it may also just be tedious so this isn't something I necessarily condone.

I think that creating and maintaining armies should also have a significant gold cost in addition to influence, but since the AI is crap in money management I don't know if it would affect the game positively in general. At the very least, I assume that it would at least heavily reduce late game grind if it's made so that poor kingdoms can't form armies (nor hire minor clans, but that's a different subject).
 
I dont really thing it matters tbh. There are no benefits to not improving relationships so it wouldnt really change anything.
 
I dont really thing it matters tbh. There are no benefits to not improving relationships so it wouldnt really change anything.
It would bring a downside to having low (well, technically not high instead of low, I guess) relationships and a bigger upside to having high relationships. Granted, it still wouldn't make the whole relationship system salvageable nor would it be game changing, but the relationship system can be improved one step at a (2,5 years worth of) time I guess.
 
It would bring a downside to having low (well, technically not high instead of low, I guess) relationships and a bigger upside to having high relationships. Granted, it still wouldn't make the whole relationship system salvageable nor would it be game changing, but the relationship system can be improved one step at a (2,5 years worth of) time I guess.
This was what came to my mind when I read your suggestion.

Some years ago I read a commisionreport on the financial crisis. The key question was if derivatives in salarypackages had been a contributing factor in the risktaking behavior of some banks leading, up to the crisis. So, what it actually found was that the risktaking behavior preceeded the increased use of derivatives. Basically, risktaking bankers convinced their boards that it was great idea to reward them for taking risks.

Reward me more for doing what I already do. It would make me feel too much like a banker to endorse your proposal:wink:
 
It would also potentially make the power spike we get by becoming a lord lower, and bring some (potentially annoying) immersion into the game by making it so that lords that don't know or like you won't join your army.
It would only be annoying (IMO) if the AI wasn't limited by it as well. Being able to call together ****ing huge armies constantly is a drag.
 
It would only be annoying (IMO) if the AI wasn't limited by it as well. Being able to call together ****ing huge armies constantly is a drag.
Yeah agreed, player and the AI should have the same mechanical limitations in general. The AI will obviously have an advantage since they start with relations at the start of the game (idk if they form new relationships or change existing ones as the game goes on), but should be subject to the same conditions.
 
It's also a bit too easy to gain relation points with how they scale the reward/consequence voting for a lord; exponentially so since the player gets more influence typically (battle efficiency). As well as being able to dump that excess influence to +relation any clan quite easily; since there's no other 'spenders' for influence; besides wanting to spam a policy vote 20+ times to crash the other clans' influences (why not add a slider to this - as TW loves these sliders everywhere else). So almost no clans in your kingdom have negative relations and trend to be nearly all maxed out.
There's no 'risk' either getting kicked out of a clan if you spend your influence to near zero even IF you manage to get a clan in the kingdom to really hate you.
 
It's also a bit too easy to gain relation points with how they scale the reward/consequence voting for a lord; exponentially so since the player gets more influence typically (battle efficiency). As well as being able to dump that excess influence to +relation any clan quite easily; since there's no other 'spenders' for influence; besides wanting to spam a policy vote 20+ times to crash the other clans' influences (why not add a slider to this - as TW loves these sliders everywhere else). So almost no clans in your kingdom have negative relations and trend to be nearly all maxed out.
There's no 'risk' either getting kicked out of a clan if you spend your influence to near zero even IF you manage to get a clan in the kingdom to really hate you.
Yeah, relation gain with votes is too high for my liking as well, and I also dislike being able to donate influence for relation as well. The former can be tweaked and fixed but the latter is a problem due to influence being a currency we can accrue (without doing political favours and whatnot) and I don't think can be fixed without a massive overhaul of how influence and relations work.
 
Yeah, relation gain with votes is too high for my liking as well, and I also dislike being able to donate influence for relation as well. The former can be tweaked and fixed but the latter is a problem due to influence being a currency we can accrue (without doing political favours and whatnot) and I don't think can be fixed without a massive overhaul of how influence and relations work.
Yep, this is the main issue along with how easy influence is to get. I think TW imagined players switching kingdoms a lot or working as mercenaries for longe as influence is lost when you leave a kingdom but relations only change if you rebel and getting new influence which can increase relations so easily is just a massive positive feedback loop trivializing influence AND relations.

In my current campaign I have 5,000 influence and 100 relations with almost everyone in my kingdom after just 3-4 wars. Granted I did abuse the siege defense AR by running in to grab towns quickly then defending vs the massive army that lays siege and was gaining a couple hundred influence every couple of battles between releasing and rescuing Lords plus the battle renown and +influence from town buildings but influence accumulates pretty raidly no matter what a player does if they are fighting battles or doing quests.

Maybe as a trader or only riding the tournament circuit it would be difficult to gather influence if players are doing that then influence does not matter for anythingt they are doing in game anyway.
 
Influence 'currency' is such a dumb system. There are ways to at least flesh it out or make it more impactful, meaningful, relatable, etc...but nothing has been added or changed since EA to this; clearly an abandoned feature.
Make influence be finite ('tug-of-war') within a kingdom's clans; so both the spending and accumulation of it is worth it; or add to the influence pool per clan in kingdom, or anything else. Treating it literally like they have with denars does nothing; might as well just do away with the feature and add it as another denar money sink (which there is also a lack of there). Every vote, expenditure, donation, or hoarding of influence instantly becomes more meaningful and impactful.
 
Make influence be finite ('tug-of-war') within a kingdom's clans; so both the spending and accumulation of it is worth it; or add to the influence pool per clan in kingdom, or anything else.
This exactly. A kingdom should have a finite amount of influence (which should or shouldn't be increased through getting more fiefs and maybe increasing hearth & prosperity stages).
 
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