There are no options other than declaring war and signing peace. Implement basic non aggression pacts and offensive alliances.
- All policies are incredibly boring number modifiers
My stance is that something should be added if it was in the last game, or was mentioned by TW in devblogs/posts/videos/demos that they would add it.
Bannerlord is an extremely broad game. It's a melee slasher, it's an RPG, it's a tactics-lite game, it's a grand strategy-lite game, it's even a trade simulation and multiplayer game. Not all of those various aspects can have depth. Some of them will just be simple number modifiers and that's fine. Bannerlord is a grand strat lite, not Crusader Kings.
I think the reasonable expectation is for TW to give us everything they created an expectation for, functional and working as intended in a well balanced way.
Unless I've missed a devblog, alliances and NAPs were never mentioned, not were they in Warband. So while they would be nice to have, I think we can't claim to be owed them, and also think they would be pretty complex for TW to implement.
If you don't even trust TW to fix the tribute system, as you said, how do you think they're competent enough to add alliances that will even further complicate the existing AI?
- Tribute calculations are completely broken
- Bring back truces from Warband so kingdoms cannot attack 3 days after peace declaration
Totally agree, and it stands in the way of the game being fun. My proposed solution was given above - reduce importance of raids in the calculation, increase importance of kills and prisoners and fiefs taken. Just some simple numbers changes. Also, yes, bringing back WB truces would solve unfun war/peace pacing.
- 80% of policies are still broken, some even do not work at all
- All policies are horrifically balanced. Every playthrough sees the player passing the same good policies and avoiding the same bad ones.
Yes, these should be fixed. Mainly by simple numbers changes. I should probably update the OP to mention this.
- Vassal AI is god-awful and constantly tries to declare 4th simultaneous war. Relations and traits barely influence voting.
I think fixing the second one would make the first one good. If some AIs are stupid warmongers and some are sensible or conservative, the player can be the one to balance the vote and steer things in the right direction.
- Castles are completely worthless
- Towns are almost worthless. The only useful building is Forum that gives you passive influence
I wouldn't say completely worthless. They just need to give a little more source of income. Really, owning towns and castles is the game's main unspoken win condition, so that's worth in itself.
- Permanent wrong culture penalty to loyalty is beyond idiotic
The penalty could probably just be reduced a little and it would be fine. Being a permanent thing is unrealistic, but most games shouldn't be lasting more than 2 lifetimes, which is a realistic duration for cultural prejudice to linger.
- Proposed changes
- Move castles to natural chokepoints and places of strategic importance. Make them exert areas of influence that force enemy parties to siege a castle if they want to go past it
Are you proposing castles physically block passage and the player has to have positive relation with the castle owner to go through a gap? I can see that being extremely annoying.
I like the area of influence idea in theory. It's certainly realistic and could be implemented as draining a nearby hostile army's supply, or morale, or making them take passive casualties, or generating a harassing raid from cavalry that attacks and retreats, or something.
However I think simply increasing income is the quickest and easiest way to make castles/towns more useful for the player to own. Also, completing quests for castle fief village notables should provide loyalty, like it currently does for town fief village notables.
