Do you think bannerlord would benefit from a smaller map and less clans?

[Count_Morfetico]

Ok, so, I normally like to think things in their contextualized complexity... but I've been watching some videos of people playing warband's campaign, and was thinking if one of the problems of Bannerlord is that the map is huge in comparison with warband's and there are SO MANY of them clans everywhere.
That simple.
Do you think that Bannerlord would benefit from a smaller map and less clans?
I guess that it would reduce the meat grinder of army after army after army and maybe make the battles more meaningful cause' there wouldn't be so much lords hanging around forming armies non-stop. There would be less battles and there would be less vassals, and maybe if there are some personality traits that do function, maybe allow them to shine for a change...
I kinda remember someone talking about this in the forums, but i did a little search and couldn't find it.
So, what do you think? Aye or nay?

Ps.: I know that they wouldn't do anything like that at this point, this is just some musings...

 

[Tryvenyal]

I fully agree with the issue. Battles are meaningless, a few battles and all of Calradia should realistically be uninhabited.

But I don't agree with the solution.

My solution is lots more expensive warbands - they should cost much more gold but also goods to keep in shape(Not only food horses and gold but equipment for sieges, tools, camps, smithing tools for creating and maintaining weapons and armor. Have created this suggestion for how I would like troop upgrades to work - and it´s really a simplification!)

A party that is not prepered to participate in an army, it probably not worth calling them to an army and definiatly not worth sending them!

Add a "Manpower" functionality where available recruits respawn rate slows down when they have been taken too frequently. My suggestion is to use "Militia" as the meassurment. Each time recruits are hired, take their number from militia. If Militia is "low" - recruits are not/very slowly respawning.

With "prepered" armies and "aware" factions, we can avoid too many of these slaughters.

 

[vonbalt]

what? the map should have more factions instead of less to make politics more interesting in my opinion, the problems with the meat grinder is that battles are meaningless and diplomacy is nonexistent, the game is just a pretty empty shell even compared to vanilla warband.

All the game has is shinny graphics and arcadey battles that gets boring pretty fast with no solid rpg elements, interesting diplomacy and intrigue mechanics etc, thankfully we have modders that still havent jumped ship like the author of bannerkings to fix that.

 

[Goyyyio]

Yes, a big map is nonsensical and repetitive. All a good game needs is a small map full with content instead of a huge 0103038282 factions that have barely any difference between each other. At this stage, it doesn't matter, the map could work as it is but none of the systems are deep enough to make me care about anything.

 

[Totalgarbage]

I think the map should either be smaller, or even larger with more factions and faster time (and obviously several improvements to the late game in the form of reducing grind such as improved war/peace declaration and kingdom destruction).

Why would I want an even larger map? So that similar to EU4 or other map painting games, people will have different objectives other than a full conquest but rather taking over and controlling some specific geography. Is it the most well thought out plan? No, not really, but I'm a fan of having a very large map (and faster time) so that it will become very very unfeasible to conquer all of it in one generation (except if we can choose our start as a king or a lord in sandbox) and players will set other goals for themselves.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Given the current game mechanics the map should be about a quarter of its current scale. But there is no way players are going to take kindly to having 75% of their caahntent taken away even if they were never enjoying it.

Instead they should make the gameplay match the size of the map:
1. Drastically reduce recovery rates. Battles should be decisive and factions who lose 10,000+ men in a single war should be basically defenseless for the remainder of the game.
2. Make diplomacy make sense, have a system for partially integrating a defeated kingdom into your own, so a king can become your vassal and all his sub-clans are at least temporarily pacified after a large defeat. That way you don't have to take every single settlement from the enemy and kill all their soldiers down to the last man.
3. Start the game with more numerous, much smaller and more asymmetric factions so that there is a difference between the early game and the endgame, and the final confrontation is more like 2-3 mutually opposed coalitions and their vassals than just a single kingdom doing cleanup duty. When one faction/coalition owns more than say 70% of the map the rest of the factions just capitulate.
4. Accept that the generational mechanic is just a gimmick.

I think going down this route would accelerate the lategame and prevent the dreaded grind that makes the whole experience feel the same.

 

[Lucius Confucius]

I fear for the battle soul of the approval people in this thread. No, this is a terrible suggestion, absolutely terrible with no inkling to good. It would make the game over so quickly that you might as well scrap the dynasty aspect of the game.

Instead the game should be made bigger with more continents and factions, more wars to be had, more places to be discovered along with naval warfare and nords.

 

[Count_Morfetico]

the map should have more factions instead of less to make politics more interesting in my opinion

But the quantity of factions doesnt matter if there's no meaningful mechanics to support them...

more wars to be had, more places to be discovered along with naval warfare and nords.

again, without meaningful mechanics, more things just equal the same blandness we have

Just to be clear, i don't expect any changes to the game at this point, and this reflection is about the game as it is without anything else added.

 

[Totalgarbage]

Just to be clear, i don't expect any changes to the game at this point, and this reflection is about the game as it is without anything else added.

Well tbh there is a real chance of the devs adding new faction(s) to the game as DLC in the near-ish future. Of course, if they intend to do so, they really should fix the late game before announcing any dlcs.

 

[JunKeteer]

Given the current game mechanics the map should be about a quarter of its current scale. But there is no way players are going to take kindly to having 75% of their caahntent taken away even if they were never enjoying it.

Instead they should make the gameplay match the size of the map:
1. Drastically reduce recovery rates. Battles should be decisive and factions who lose 10,000+ men in a single war should be basically defenseless for the remainder of the game.

Only if they also make the accumulation of an army take time as well (with clear objectives tied to army build up); to have those large battles 'make or break' your campaign's attack/defense. With added attrition factors/systems so it doesn't just become a complete snowball otherwise for the defeated.

2. Make diplomacy make sense, have a system for partially integrating a defeated kingdom into your own, so a king can become your vassal and all his sub-clans are at least temporarily pacified after a large defeat. That way you don't have to take every single settlement from the enemy and kill all their soldiers down to the last man.

They should've added a mechanic for starter kingdoms/clans to be able to 'fall' into mercenary category based on whatever conditions; and rise to vassals likewise. Decaying relations, decaying influence (to actual see people vote kicked), decaying clan tier, etc...
So that this could happen even with a kingdom that's still intact if a clan is doing poorly or a clan really hates the king, but it exponentially fractures if the kingdom has no holdings or suffer repeated defeats (not even recapturing a single castle).

3. Start the game with more numerous, much smaller and more asymmetric factions so that there is a difference between the early game and the endgame, and the final confrontation is more like 2-3 mutually opposed coalitions and their vassals than just a single kingdom doing cleanup duty. When one faction/coalition owns more than say 70% of the map the rest of the factions just capitulate.

What I would've liked too, they don't even need their own separate cultures. We have NE/SE/WE, why not do the same with the other 5 cultures? With a natural tendency to declare more wars amongst themselves before doing against the other cultures. So we get to see, throughout the in-game years (or a single generation) - which faction might become the defacto 'kingdom' of that culture; with/out the player's involvement.

4. Accept that the generational mechanic is just a gimmick.

Yep, proof of the pudding is the toggle option they added quite simply.

 

[XDaron]

Warband as a jack of all trades, master of none, It had a mixture of Roleplay, Kingdom Strategy and battles
bannerlord heavily improved on battles, but left the other two aspects unnatended.
It might feel like if you scaled things down you could get more involved, but the true fault is at the lack of development time being put into making a world that seemed lived in, and not just a battle simulator.

The traits system appear to be remnants of an ambition to make each lord have it's own personality and desires.
the famous ''I Have a quick question'' dialog followed by ''nevermind'' perfectly encapsulates how TW ambition just fizzled out mid-development

 

[vito397]

Warband as a jack of all trades, master of none, It had a mixture of Roleplay, Kingdom Strategy and battles
bannerlord heavily improved on battles, but left the other two aspects unnatended.
It might feel like if you scaled things down you could get more involved, but the true fault is at the lack of development time being put into making a world that seemed lived in, and not just a battle simulator.

The traits system appear to be remnants of an ambition to make each lord have it's own personality and desires.
the famous ''I Have a quick question'' dialog followed by ''nevermind'' perfectly encapsulates how TW ambition just fizzled out mid-development

Everytime i watch old gamescom and development footage a part of my soul dies of disappointment

 

[JunKeteer]

I thing the dynasty/generation thing really messed up a lot of what would've 'worked-but-better' as it was in WB.
As now they would have to deal with complexities of making it 'persistent' which takes a lot of work and side features (which is absent) as well as reduction on other features. Which is why the dynasty/generation system feels so barebones/meaningless to game impact overall.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

No, less of that would not work and its too far gone at this point. What we need is more factions.

I would not say more 'factions', as in cultures per say though. Rather, just split up existing ones into small kingdoms. That way there are more things going on in the map, and its more interesting to contend with.

 

[Apocal]

Yeah, it would be better probably. A primary group is only like 15-40 people, someone's monkeysphere is a bit under 200. Past that point, it is difficult to see them as individuals rather than groups. A faction with four clans is going to be easier to develop feelings about than one with like 15-20.

Yep, proof of the pudding is the toggle option they added quite simply.

It was always going to be an option.

 

[Totalgarbage]

Warband as a jack of all trades, master of none, It had a mixture of Roleplay, Kingdom Strategy and battles
bannerlord heavily improved on battles, but left the other two aspects unnatended.
It might feel like if you scaled things down you could get more involved, but the true fault is at the lack of development time being put into making a world that seemed lived in, and not just a battle simulator.

The traits system appear to be remnants of an ambition to make each lord have it's own personality and desires.
the famous ''I Have a quick question'' dialog followed by ''nevermind'' perfectly encapsulates how TW ambition just fizzled out mid-development

One thing that's also noteworthy is that along with increases to the map size, battle size, and number of lords/clans, the scope of Bannerlord is also more macro focused than Warband's, which may have inadvertently (or by design) caused the game to feel lacking in individual personality. I'm not sure if I can explain this eloquently; in Bannerlord, while it is certainly still very lacking, there's a much greater emphasis on building up your clan through achieving higher clan tiers, getting more companions and using them in many different ways, some where we don't even keep the companion in our party, getting married and having babies, getting your son(s) to marry to get extra clan members, etc.

There's more to city management with buildings and their levels, loyalty, security, prosperity militia, village number and hearths, having trade bound villages from castles to grow your towns even further, garrison wages, governors, daily defaults, etc.

There is influence (a mechanic that I don't like how it is right now) where we spend our influence for passing/blocking policies, stripping other lords of their fiefs or making their votes fail (mostly due to the AI being retarded and wanting to declare 3 wars at the same time), gather armies by calling lords'/mercenaries' parties rather than talking to individual npcs and convincing them, there are kingdom stances we choose as a ruler, etc.

We have to manage our inventory weight, the amount of mounts, number of mounted and non-mounted troops, and the number of food & other commodities in our inventory, which can go up to hundreds or thousands in numbers, compared to the handful of items had in our limited inventory slots in Warband.

What I'm trying to explain is that even if the map of Bannerlord were to be made smaller, the game by design is trying to make the player character be more than a single person, but rather something akin to an organization which takes away from the more down-to-earth, personal feeling Warband had compared to this game. We no longer feel like a leader of a Warband with our trusty companions, but more like a medieval company CEO, with the company being our clan or kingdom. As I said above, many functions of companions and family members require them to be outside of the player's party (caravan leader, party leader, alley guard, emissary, governor, etc.), there simply isn't as much point to our companions having as much personality as in Warband (no matter how bland their personalities already were), especially when they are randomly generated due to birth & death existing. Could they be made better, of course, there's so much more potential in terms of character, but they will always have less of a unique personality by design.

 

[XDaron]

What I'm trying to explain is that even if the map of Bannerlord were to be made smaller, the game by design is trying to make the player character be more than a single person, but rather something akin to an organization which takes away from the more down-to-earth, personal feeling Warband had compared to this game. We no longer feel like a leader of a Warband with our trusty companions, but more like a medieval company CEO, with the company being our clan or kingdom. As I said above, many functions of companions and family members require them to be outside of the player's party (caravan leader, party leader, alley guard, emissary, governor, etc.), there simply isn't as much point to our companions having as much personality as in Warband (no matter how bland their personalities already were), especially when they are randomly generated due to birth & death existing. Could they be made better, of course, there's so much more potential in terms of character, but they will always have less of a unique personality by design.

Couldn't agree more, I like the CEO analogy, hopefully story-focused mods like Kingdom of Arda will shake Bannerlords foundations and deliver a more personal adventure. Knights of Sika showed it can be done.

also hopefully one day, some hero will stumble upon my mod request and create a whole mod just for me

 

[1blackpearl]

I think the map being large is a good thing, but you could probably get someone to make a mod for a smaller map

 

[Cullam]

It needs a bigger map, the realm of thrones mod has a huge map and wars have more impact on this map because you can´t just take 3 towns in a row....I mean you still can, it´s still Bannerlord but it´s not that easy/common...

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

With added attrition factors/systems so it doesn't just become a complete snowball otherwise for the defeated.

I actually think it should be a snowball if you lose a big battle and get annihilated. I'm sick to death of games with anti snowballing that solely exists to maintain equilibrium to offset the idiot kamikaze AI after it gets completely wiped, and to forcibly slow the player down if they're too good at the game. Strategy games have been doing this for years now and it's only getting worse. Enough!!!

Instead of adding annoying stuff like attrition or constant rebellions or civil war, factions should never commit 100% of their forces to a war unless there are only two factions left in the game. The Vlandians should look at all the factions around them with 10,000 men in the field vs their 4,000, and try to seek alliances and make peace at all costs rather than suiciding everything they have into every border conflict. That also means that instead of some hamfisted rebellion system, overextension is literal overextension, where you send 2000 of your 5000 men to die in a war and suddenly you're way weaker than your neighbours.

That way if the player manages to force a 2000 vs 2000 battle and kill all the enemies somehow (a good AI would actually try to retreat in these circumstances), that faction would basically be screwed. But the AI would at the very least not hand its entire field army to you on a platter and never retreat even if they're getting massacred.