Feedback on the New Culture Bonuses.

Users who are viewing this thread

I think the 160 is a step in the wrong direction and the other day I was talking to myself on twitch and saved the highlight :smile:

The pros look good but are mostly useless, they get cons that they will feel entire game but the pros are very tiny and will work for part of the game or under some special circumstances.

The bonuses should affect a culture either a good deal for the entire game or a great deal for early or mid or late game. And zero cons, please.

I play to have fun not to be stressed about some cons pulling my faction down. How much stuff do work as intended? Why introduce new unknowns.

I mostly played Battania and Empire and Khuzait for their bonuses, from 160 there is only one pick Battania.
 
I like the pro/con approach myself, it's just that they are heavily imbalanced in terms of what the player gets from them and what the AI does, as well as how general or niche they are. Some barely impact your game or are highly conditional(having to be a Merc for example to get part of Vlandia's), while others are a massive bonus from beginning to end - Battania being the most egregious outlier here with the move speed in forests.

Some of this is pretty fixable though, I think.Take Vlandia as the current total dud example:
  • [Pro] 5% more renown from battles. 15% more income while serving as a mercenary.
  • [Pro] 10% production bonus to villages that are bound to castles.
  • [Con] Recruiting lords to armies costs 20% more influence.
These are incredibly boring and highly conditional.

What about something like this:
  • [Pro] 10% more renown from battles you're outnumbered in. +10 to all skills and 20% lower wages for Mercenary units in your parties.
  • [Pro] Allied villages gain hearth when your nearby parties are victorious in battle.
  • [Con] Recruiting lords to armies costs 20% more influence.
Bam, now you have perks fitting the same theme but less conditional and that affect your gameplay in some tangible ways. I have incentives to play a Vlandian differently - field more Merc troops, more aggressively go after enemies raiding villages, and take on bigger enemy parties when I can. The more elite Mercenaries at lower wages of course helping with that. And the con makes a little more sense now, as this would be a playstyle favoring spending more time as a smaller party or army.

That's the kind of synergetic and impactful kind of culture bonuses I'd prefer to have, anyway.
 
@Apocal

So this is solved by now?
Post in thread 'Information about developments at snowballing problem' https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...ts-at-snowballing-problem.434547/post-9661480


Since battania mounted troops are also only at the bottom of the line.
Can't tell for sure, not enough brain wrinkles to understand the code but I don't see anything unusual in either my real campaign or test runs.
@Bannerman Man ?
The Khuzait 10% bonus could've been kept with the new con they get.
However to say it offered a wide variety among "multiple" playstylrme is incorrect.
It offered only bonus to cavalry,not a lot of variety imo.
By playstyles I mean you can take advantage of it as a raider going for tribute payouts, as a trader, as a pure mercenary, as a vassal->king, etc. Obviously you'd be restricted in troop composition to mounted units but that wasn't such a big deal, all things considered.
 
By playstyles I mean you can take advantage of it as a raider going for tribute payouts, as a trader, as a pure mercenary, as a vassal->king, etc. Obviously you'd be restricted in troop composition to mounted units but that wasn't such a big deal, all things considered.
That's fair.
Though the troop restriction seems sort of choking.

I have to notify the changes for something I think we're overlooking,the new bonuses do balance the Khuzait A.I and Player.
The Khuzait A.I get free horse upgrades which are even cheaper than infantry ones,first upgrade(Tribal Warrior) is around 5 denars if I remember correctly,so the new town bonus will balance this out,don't know how they'll perform if they run to another faction,though.
The player does benefit from the horse production,this could also help the atrocious inflation in prices for horses.
A Khuzait Warhorse costed me around 1K denar in November,hopefully the inflation changed.
 
Though the troop restriction seems sort of choking.
I still stack Cheap Horse archers as a Battanian. If you wanna go fast mounted troops is your go-to, if want mounted you go Horse archers.

The player does benefit from the horse production,this could also help the atrocious inflation in prices for horses.
A Khuzait Warhorse costed me around 1K denar in November,hopefully the inflation changed.
This only kinda related, but to me it seems to a much greater and lasting supply of imperial charger in 1.6. I haven't' gone into super long games, but across 4 games in the 300 day range it's pretty steady availability of 300-450 chargers. Could it be related tiny bit to more steppe warhorses on market? Idduno, I think they changed how many chargers gets made because people complained about it.
 
The additional warhorse production comes out to maybe 1-2 per week per village unless something else changed that I'm not aware of. It has had a slight effect on prices but I can't say for sure that is due to the bonus because I've seen changes in world state (more raids, more poor towns) change the prices just as much or more.
 
I like the pro/con approach myself, it's just that they are heavily imbalanced in terms of what the player gets from them and what the AI does, as well as how general or niche they are. Some barely impact your game or are highly conditional(having to be a Merc for example to get part of Vlandia's), while others are a massive bonus from beginning to end - Battania being the most egregious outlier here with the move speed in forests.

Some of this is pretty fixable though, I think.Take Vlandia as the current total dud example:
  • [Pro] 5% more renown from battles. 15% more income while serving as a mercenary.
  • [Pro] 10% production bonus to villages that are bound to castles.
  • [Con] Recruiting lords to armies costs 20% more influence.
These are incredibly boring and highly conditional.

What about something like this:
  • [Pro] 10% more renown from battles you're outnumbered in. +10 to all skills and 20% lower wages for Mercenary units in your parties.
  • [Pro] Allied villages gain hearth when your nearby parties are victorious in battle.
  • [Con] Recruiting lords to armies costs 20% more influence.
Bam, now you have perks fitting the same theme but less conditional and that affect your gameplay in some tangible ways. I have incentives to play a Vlandian differently - field more Merc troops, more aggressively go after enemies raiding villages, and take on bigger enemy parties when I can. The more elite Mercenaries at lower wages of course helping with that. And the con makes a little more sense now, as this would be a playstyle favoring spending more time as a smaller party or army.

That's the kind of synergetic and impactful kind of culture bonuses I'd prefer to have, anyway.
The above is far more interesting way to do culture bonuses. Having them be a consideration for gameplay, though this may be harder to code.

Using faction bonuses as a means to balance factions on the campaign map would be an awful design choice. Players would feel penalised for picking a faction because the game is unbalanced elsewhere, in a way that isnt even visible to the player at the point of them making a faction choice, why would they choose the penalised cultures?

Why do these factions bonuses seem like a first draft I could have thought of after 15 minutes brainstorming. If every player can at a glance see how unbalanced these are then why release them? As another example policies are unbalanced with no AI implementations, when are we going to see a campaign side feature that is more than a first draft. Hard to balance anything around 20 different placeholders.

"Recruiting and upgrading mounted troops is 10% cheaper.", "10% production bonus to villages that are bound to castles."
These just from a numbers perspective appear meaningless, and the second one is laughable because it is even condtional.

Faction bonuses are if anything an opportunity to expand on or emphasize a faction's identity. Players should be excited to explore the differences.
 
I mostly played Battania and Empire and Khuzait for their bonuses, from 160 there is only one pick Battania.
False, Empire is the best culture, because of 20% discount on garrisons troops wages and it stacks with perks and the castellan office of castles.
Empire culture + Castellan office = 50% reduced wages for castle garrisons.
 
False, Empire is the best culture, because of 20% discount on garrisons troops wages and it stacks with perks and the castellan office of castles.
Empire culture + Castellan office = 50% reduced wages for castle garrisons.
Well it would certainly add up in some of my games that's for sure. But what can I do with more money? The speed bonus let me trash the AI faster and stop them from assembling armies, so I can take all those fiefs in first place to have all the garrisons to save money on. I feel like +movement heps every part of the game.

I don't know if I like the malace to village hearths though, that seems like it would make start to have food issues from prosperity sooner!
If only I could use that extra garrison money to build more farms.... come on TW let me make farms and stuff!
 
I think the Khuzait nerf for taxes is intentional. I'm not sure if they wanted to just nerf Khuzait outright. I'd like to see a much higher discount on mounted troops. 50% discount or there abouts would be better.
 
I think the Khuzait nerf for taxes is intentional. I'm not sure if they wanted to just nerf Khuzait outright. I'd like to see a much higher discount on mounted troops. 50% discount or there abouts would be better.
Well, reduced wages (10%) for mounted troops and sturgia for infantry would be better, cause recruiting and upgrading costs becomes irrelevant in late game
 
Ive noticed that, but why though? kinda makes them lose their identity
depending on who you base the culture off of, that can be true or false. i think battania having the strong cavalry could fit in well with the right lore even if historical accuracy is aimed. the problem imo is the power associated with cavalry units in simulations. i wish they were just more situationally dependent, e.g. on plains cav is the king, in a forest they are less useful than infantry, etc. in battle that is how it plays out most often, but simulated battles are just too simplistic.

as for the threads topic, i'm happy with kuzait being nerfed. they just spoiled every game. at least in my case i'd always join play aroudn the west and as soon as whatever faction i am in grows to border khuzaits its some sort of souls game, which is not my cup of tea. i hated playing khuzait as well because reagardless of difficulty setting its some sort of god mode, little challenge.

i would really love to be able to have a foreign mercenary kind of gameplay where i am not associated with calradian cultures, but just a random arrival that builds a warband as a sword for hire. downside would be you are not a noble, but upside is you can marry a wanderer and start a family easier. you get to collect recruits but have a troop tree for your own clan, just like other minor factions. eventually if you manage to get one of your children to marry into the nobility, you can then play as a lord after death. that would make lontg term multigenerational mercenary playthroughs more excititng maybe
 
Well, reduced wages (10%) for mounted troops and sturgia for infantry would be better, cause recruiting and upgrading costs becomes irrelevant in late game
Agree with this. I think 10% is too low though. And then the other issue is that money perks alone are pretty dull, and if we have multiple + and - to money the faction just feels like it's a pointless wash 'nothing' faction. A 20% wage reduction seems significant enough.

I would then go as far as giving Sturgia +30 athletics to infantry. If you're fielding mainly infantry armies you really need them to hustle to not just get peppered and whittled down by ranged units as they waddle forward.

Similarly, I would give Khuzait +30 maneuver for mounted units. Managing armies with primarily mounted units, this makes them just a bit more coordinated and fluid.

Could add the caveat 'under your command' if necessary.

Both of those improve your ability to manipulate the main troop type of these factions in the field, but without making them overpowered in terms of raw durability or damage, nor making them too fast on the map itself.

depending on who you base the culture off of, that can be true or false. i think battania having the strong cavalry could fit in well with the right lore even if historical accuracy is aimed. the problem imo is the power associated with cavalry units in simulations. i wish they were just more situationally dependent, e.g. on plains cav is the king, in a forest they are less useful than infantry, etc. in battle that is how it plays out most often, but simulated battles are just too simplistic.

as for the threads topic, i'm happy with kuzait being nerfed. they just spoiled every game. at least in my case i'd always join play aroudn the west and as soon as whatever faction i am in grows to border khuzaits its some sort of souls game, which is not my cup of tea. i hated playing khuzait as well because reagardless of difficulty setting its some sort of god mode, little challenge.

i would really love to be able to have a foreign mercenary kind of gameplay where i am not associated with calradian cultures, but just a random arrival that builds a warband as a sword for hire. downside would be you are not a noble, but upside is you can marry a wanderer and start a family easier. you get to collect recruits but have a troop tree for your own clan, just like other minor factions. eventually if you manage to get one of your children to marry into the nobility, you can then play as a lord after death. that would make lontg term multigenerational mercenary playthroughs more excititng maybe

The tactics skill seems to add some elements like this to the game already, but it would be nice if there were also universal factors like this.

Terrain could just get categorized as flat / vertical and sparse / dense polarities.

Then you could have, for example: Flat and sparse benefits cav. Vertical and sparse benefit archers. Dense and vertical benefits infantry.

I also agree it would be awesome to have a minor clan with custom culture/troop options, though it would penalize you later in the game since you'd have -loyalty no matter what cities you get. But perhaps the way to go would be to have both major/minor culture for characters - if this is not too complicated. Clearly the minor factions have a sort of connection to specific main factions as well.
 
I also agree it would be awesome to have a minor clan with custom culture/troop options, though it would penalize you later in the game since you'd have -loyalty no matter what cities you get. But perhaps the way to go would be to have both major/minor culture for characters - if this is not too complicated. Clearly the minor factions have a sort of connection to specific main factions as well.
i guess marriage could help with that, e.g. if you marry a noble as a commoner, you adopt their culture, or maybe not you but your kids.
 
Imo it would be easier to do cultural bonus' as part of the character creation.

Khuziat +1 focus in riding and bow
Vlandian +1 focus in riding and xbow or polearms
Aeseria +1 trade and riding
Sturgis +1 athletics and 2hander
Battania +1 Athletics and bow

Or something along those lines (idk if you would have to do it to nobles as they seem to start out op but you could if you wanted as well...)

This would reflect that cultural affinity to certain skills? Make it less which is best to pick and more what style of player do I want to be?
 
Imo it would be easier to do cultural bonus' as part of the character creation.

Khuziat +1 focus in riding and bow
Vlandian +1 focus in riding and xbow or polearms
Aeseria +1 trade and riding
Sturgis +1 athletics and 2hander
Battania +1 Athletics and bow

Or something along those lines (idk if you would have to do it to nobles as they seem to start out op but you could if you wanted as well...)

This would reflect that cultural affinity to certain skills? Make it less which is best to pick and more what style of player do I want to be?
Eh, I think that's super boring, we already have these types of bonuses, and over time via levels their difference is negated. This would end up having less with what style of player you want to be and more about whatever you want to stack at the beginning. Which is not combat skills, for many players. Those bonuses would make no difference in my character build and the best faction would automatically be Empire just due to culture bonus to city loyalty.

Culture bonuses I think should have a fairly substantial and distinct impact on gameplay that aren't just basic stat boosts, otherwise there's not much point in having them be a separate aspect of character creation and faction dynamics.
 
Back
Top Bottom