In my 300+ hours of playthrough and a year of early access, I find that this dialogue has no use whatsoever. Some utility can be added to this dialogue in order to make the game a bit more immersive. To keep it short, here are my list of suggestions for this dialogue option:
- Inquire lords and ladies about the whereabouts of their clan members: This can be implemented as a way similar to warband, for example, lord 'a' is going to 'x' and must be in between 'y' and 'z'. You can go a step further by keeping this information vague for neutral factions and detailed for friendly or player faction.
- Inquire clan leaders about the whereabouts of other clan leaders and ruler of their own faction: Self explanatory, clan leaders should know the whereabouts of their ruler and other clan leaders of their own faction.
- Inquire about war status and objective: Inquire lords about which factions they are at war with and how the war is going (winning or losing or stalemate) similar to the dialogue options in warband. Inquire lords of the faction player joined about the current objective of war which could be: capturing certain fiefs, raiding and destroying economy or defend fiefs.
- Inquire lords about known lords and ladies personality traits and noteworthy skills: Lords can give opinions about the lords they know through which we can infer the personality traits of said lord and some of the skills they are good at.(example:"If i were you, I wouldn't trust lord X, he broke his vow of helping me and left me and my men to die when we were attacked" , this could give us some insight that lord X is deceitful. Another example about skills insight:"Although lord Y is not a great fighter, he's a crafty tactician and great at managing resources, he was once tasked with managing resources of the army led by the king and he did a marvellous job at it", this could give insight that lord Y doesn't have any notable combat skills but has high tactics and stewardship)
- Inquire all parties about hideout locations: during their travel, parties might have come across some hideous, inquiring if they know any hideout locations makes sense to me. after all mid to late game, player doesn't have the time to go around looking for hideouts to deal with the bandit menace.
These are all the suggestions I could come up with, please do critique or add anymore suggestions to this list.I know some of these information is already available in encyclopedia and kingdom menu but having to open the menus every 2-3 minutes breaks the immersion for me and sometimes encyclopedia is quite unreliable about a lord's location.
