Expanding Territory and the Number of Lords

[Looter]

In Warband, I’ve always found how during the mid to late game whenever your Kingdom expanded, the number of lords to patrol your territories rarely if ever increased. This resulted in a small handful of lords coming into possession of 7-8 territories to their name that they could not possibly defend, often leaving border of burned villages in their possession against smaller kingdoms that had fewer territories but better lord distribution. Hopefully, in Bannerlord this is resolved in some manner, be it clans having relatives spawn in as companions/minor lord parties to patrol territory, lords hiring more companions as their holdings increase to patrol fiefs, or nobles trading territory with each other to make sure their fiefs are close together.

 

[Brandsan1]

i hope they fix this issue.

 

[JuanNieve]

I think it would be better if in the kingdom management window we have a map of calradia and drag the icon of the lords to the territory that we want to assign to it. I think it would be a better way to manage it

 

[vicwiz007]

Mid-Late game in general was so tedious to me that i never even attempted to take over Calradia. There's a lot they have to do (and i believe they are) to fix this.

However, now that lords can die and produce children, I have no idea how theyre gonna perform such a fantastic balancing act. I think we don't know nearly enough about how the family and death systems work to even speculate.

 

[Tabitja]

Not saying that the system worked perfectly, but I believe it was your fault to expand before you did convince enough lords to join your cause.

 

[Looter]

It’s not about expanding before convincing more lords to join my cause, it’s about how as a vassal in a rapidly expanding kingdom [never cared to become king], despite the huge territorial growths, there were simply no lords coming into the kingdom despite the plentiful lands. When your kingdom continued to conquer more and more of Calradia, the other lords of the defeated kingdoms would rarely if ever join your cause, and if they did, would never be awarded more than a 1-2 fiefs while the original lords were holding onto 5 or 6. Meaning that land was so badly distributed amongst the lords and they couldn’t defend half of the kingdom without running from end to end to do so. I’m just hoping that there’s a system for ai lords trading fiefs with each other so that this is mitigated somewhat.

 

[Tabitja]

I see what you mean now. I guess.

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/Bannerlord/Blog/80

Here they have touched kingdom management. Player will surely be able to use this interface nicely. For NPC Kings or parliament, they must definitely have been working on that.

edit: on second read, I do not agree with you.

It is hard to manage Warband that's for sure, but it is logical what happens. If you go hard push on other kingdoms their lord hate you. Your king also hate you. If they defect on your side, as you say rarely happens if he hates you and you hate her, this relation does not neutralize. The king does give the lands to most trusted lords. If he gives the land to a lord whom has bad relations with the rest of the kingdom, Other lords will start to mumble (lose relations with them). Again this does not work perfect we all know how King Harlaus can be unfair. All I am saying is what happening is happening in a meaningful way.

If the system would work like you suggested, give lands to every lord almost equally, when a kingdom got a better hand than the others that would be absolute. That kingdom would conquer the whole Calradia, assuming player stays neutral. When a kingdom get too loose their borders should be harder to defend eventually lose lands again. This is a sandbox game kingdoms should be balanced so the game could be played ideally forever.

It was possible to expand massively in Warband but it needed a lot time invested before taking actions. Politics. If you want to create a super kingdom, it is hard.

 

[Lord Brutus]

Warband has the option to trade fiefs, never tried it though.  I don't see why that wouldn't be in Bannerlord.

 

[Firunien]

The main problem in warband having your own kingdomn was fief distribution, the whole problem was about assigning fiefes to your lords, once you got to like 5-6 lords you got like minus 5 relation on each single one of them while the one getting the thief got like plus 10, no way to sustain that. If you wanted to expand whilst still giving everyone 1-2 fiefs got you pretty unpopular with those lords.

 

[Puking Panda]

The main problem in warband having your own kingdomn was fief distribution, the whole problem was about assigning fiefes to your lords, once you got to like 5-6 lords you got like minus 5 relation on each single one of them while the one getting the thief got like plus 10, no way to sustain that. If you wanted to expand whilst still giving everyone 1-2 fiefs got you pretty unpopular with those lords.

You have to be smart about it. Only recruit lords that are Upstanding, Good-Natured or Martial and resolve conflicts within your faction. Admittedly though it is pretty hard to get those lords as they tend to be pretty loyal to their own faction. I spent nearly half my campaign sucking off to all the lords trying to get them to like me. Feasts and joint battles agianst other kingdoms(get 1 or 2 relation every time you talk post-battle) are a pretty good massed way to go though.

 

[Roccoflipside]

Not sure about Native as I never created my own kingdom, and the scope is much smaller, but in VC (to quote one of my fav movies), "If you build it, [they] will come", it being a kingdom with enough fiefs, and they being lords to own them. I routinely have lords with which I have -25 or more relation asking to join my faction because it's just so big, and I can hardly keep up with the amt. of fiefs I and my loyal lords take. As long as you have un-claimed fiefs, lords will attempt to join your faction, although the longer you leave fiefs unclaimed, as well as the amt. of fiefs unclaimed, will increase the controversy in your realm.

Considering BL includes more factions, lords, and fiefs than WB, more along the lines of VC in scope, it seems likely to me that having lords join your faction would become easier, with perhaps the ability to recruit entire clans to your faction, depending on relation/etc.

 

[Honved]

I can certainly understand where having enough loyal vassals would realistically be a problem for a rapidly expanding kingdom.  In Bannerlord, it should be possible for a lord to divide extra fiefs between different sons, so the primary heir gets the best fief(s) and any subsequent heirs each get a single poorer one, if there are more than one.  Eventually, over a couple of generations, there would be enough lords to reduce fief ownership down to 1-3 per lord.  Meanwhile, the newly conquered lands would be poorly defended by the overstretched conquerors.

From a programming perspective, the primary heir gets the best fief automatically.
If there are additional fiefs, each subsequent heir gets the next best fief, starting with the eldest, until their are either no more fiefs to assign or no more heirs to assign fiefs to.
The primary heir then gets whatever remains, if anything.

Example 1: 2 heirs, 4 fiefs.  The primary heir gets the best fief, the secondary heir then gets the second best fief, and the primary heir then gets both remaining fiefs.

Example 2: 4 heirs, 2 fiefs.  The primary heir gets the best fief, the secondary heir then gets the second best fief, and there are no more fiefs to assign to the younger heirs.

 

[Roccoflipside]

I know we're all excited about Ruwa's birth and the confirmation of multiple generations in BL, but I think speaking of several generations is overreaching a bit. So far there's been no discussion of BL having CKII levels of generations, in fact it still hasn't been confirmed that we can play as our offspring, only that they will be actual characters rather than just flavor text, like in VC. Don't get me wrong, I'm hoping for a multi-generational (even if it's only 2 generations) playthrough, where my first character has to spend almost the entire game-time just becoming a lord or something, and then my offspring can take his father/mother's lands and go on to conquer, but I think it's better to temper our expectations until we get the 2nd devblog about children/generations. Speaking of which, how many 'part 2' devblogs are we waiting on now? I can think of two right off the bat, this one and the map.

 

[Tabitja]

It's already been confirmed that if your character dies, you will be able to continue playing with another character in your clan.

And that was my suggestion how it should be,

Take your son as a companion since he reaches age. Build him up the way you want strong or intelligent, fighter or a tactician, teach him everything you know. Appoint him as the ruler of one of your fiefs. Campaign with him (with all your dynasty members). Retire when you feel like he is good enough to play with, take control of your son.

 

[Roccoflipside]

Another character in your clan, yes, but that could be a companion or sibling or something, meaning that the game would still be within a single generation. I agree it would be awesome to play as your child, but as it has not yet been confirmed I would err on the side of caution. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for "offspring part 2" blog, where everything will be explained... Hopefully

Also, I'm assuming your quote is of you explaining your ideas. If I'm wrong and that is from a dev or something, then I stand corrected.

 

[AlexHBK]

I hope the game will be a kind of spawn generals. As in the same Medieval 2: Total War, when the player creates an army then it is headed by an unknown commander.

But as soon as he begins to gain experience on the battlefield, his popularity and skills immediately increase and he gets the opportunity to join the society of the king. Given that the game has permanent death to add such a function would be logical.