Game progression in Bannerlords - from adventurer to King

Users who are viewing this thread

As I see it, the game has 3 levels of play: Adventurer/Merc/Trader, Lord (owns fiefs) and finally Ruler (has recruited other clans). However, the gameplay is not significantly different. Practically, the difference between lord or even ruler from an Adventurer boils down to 2 things, access to a stash and access to the fief menu (which is about as exciting as a self serve menu at any decent fast food).

Why should we aspire to being a ruler? What new exciting gameplay does it open?
 
I hate to disagree but there is a noticeable difference in gameplay from merc/vassal to landed vassal in my opinion. Sometime it can be quite the challenge to manage a new castle/town if your finances are not robust enough. And while it never broke my playthough outright, the difficulty gap can be infuriating. You go from leader of a optimized one-culture warband to a recently conquered, economically devasted, on the verge of rebellion town with negative relations. It is a whole different gameplay (of course your mileage may vary but it happened to me in my last playthrough and i had the stupid Conspiracy quests popping up in the middle it was very tedious and not so fun).

Same thing with becoming king. Although it's ussually not painful, but you have to change your whole stategy. I find myself having to reverse all the policies I had voted for as vassal.
Then in military terms, the first aspect is that the AI never goes on the defensive on the true sense of the term. And given that you are one of the biggest parties in your faction usually, the fact of getting wiped-out almost means instant peace treaty. So it leads to the fact that best overall strategy is to take a back seat, focus on settlement defense, and seldom join/form an army and let the vassals do the conquering.
In addition, since a lot of diplomacy, wedding proposals and defections have to be made in person, that is basically the king playthrough for me.
I have to admit that vassal is more fun, but being ruler feels cooler.

One way where I think they could improve that is give cultural bonuses. And not some underwhelming bonus like caravans make 20% more, but kingdom policies that affect gameplay and dare I say internal politics. There is a difference between a "centralized" and "decentralized" kigdom but it is not a gameplay mechanic, it only matters on metrics like money and influence.
 
What is the point of stash, by the way?

I remember, in Warband I used it only when organizing feasts, so I could place of bunch of everything there.

What's the point of having a stash in BL?
 
I hate to disagree but there is a noticeable difference in gameplay from merc/vassal to landed vassal in my opinion. Sometime it can be quite the challenge to manage a new castle/town if your finances are not robust enough. And while it never broke my playthough outright, the difficulty gap can be infuriating. You go from leader of a optimized one-culture warband to a recently conquered, economically devasted, on the verge of rebellion town with negative relations. It is a whole different gameplay (of course your mileage may vary but it happened to me in my last playthrough and i had the stupid Conspiracy quests popping up in the middle it was very tedious and not so fun).

How are your finances not robust enough? The loot you get from battles is more than enough to fund generations. Before getting a town, make sure you have the appropriate wife or companion. Pump lots of gold into it to build up fairground and do quests. That's about it. The only thing different? Pumping lots of gold into a menu. Not terribly exciting.

Same thing with becoming king. Although it's ussually not painful, but you have to change your whole stategy. I find myself having to reverse all the policies I had voted for as vassal.
Then in military terms, the first aspect is that the AI never goes on the defensive on the true sense of the term. And given that you are one of the biggest parties in your faction usually, the fact of getting wiped-out almost means instant peace treaty. So it leads to the fact that best overall strategy is to take a back seat, focus on settlement defense, and seldom join/form an army and let the vassals do the conquering.

I don't see how your strategy changes. You start a fresh kingdom, you pick the right policies from the start then you recruit clans. Once you recruit clans, you barely get a say in how the kingdom operates.

I seldom get wiped and I only fight when I'm guaranteed victory or I retreat and attack again. Archers of any kind, mounted or otherwise, are your best soldiers. Ignore foot. Shoot, shoot and shoot.


In addition, since a lot of diplomacy, wedding proposals and defections have to be made in person, that is basically the king playthrough for me.
I have to admit that vassal is more fun, but being ruler feels cooler.

What diplomacy. Wedding proposals are even easier than for your own spouse. How is it different?


What is the point of stash, by the way?

I remember, in Warband I used it only when organizing feasts, so I could place of bunch of everything there.

What's the point of having a stash in BL?

I keep my change of clothes in there.
 
As I see it, the game has 3 levels of play: Adventurer/Merc/Trader, Lord (owns fiefs) and finally Ruler (has recruited other clans). However, the gameplay is not significantly different. Practically, the difference between lord or even ruler from an Adventurer boils down to 2 things, access to a stash and access to the fief menu (which is about as exciting as a self serve menu at any decent fast food).

Why should we aspire to being a ruler? What new exciting gameplay does it open?
dont forget you get access to uncontrolled unlimited wars as a ruler, and as a trader you have more control over that
 
I have explained the lack of immersion in actually being a lord and a king from my post about courts. The basis is here, TW just has to build upon it. Wether they do it or not is not under my jurisdiction but I hope that they have plans to make physical projection of power - through diplomacy, negotiations, ministers etc, something that needs to be done
 
What is the point of stash, by the way?

I remember, in Warband I used it only when organizing feasts, so I could place of bunch of everything there.

What's the point of having a stash in BL?
You put your special horses in thier so you units don't eat them when upgrading. Also sometimes you get so many that you would have herd penalty if you brought them all with you.

You also hoard lots of food, as if there would be a feats, but there never is, but sometimes that town may suddenly have food issues so it's good to have food you can just pull out and sell to the market.

It's not great but it better the not having it.
 
You also hoard lots of food, as if there would be a feats, but there never is, but sometimes that town may suddenly have food issues so it's good to have food you can just pull out and sell to the market.
I usually just buy all the food from the nearby town and sell it to mine :grin:
 
What is the point of stash, by the way?

I remember, in Warband I used it only when organizing feasts, so I could place of bunch of everything there.

What's the point of having a stash in BL?
hahaah.
wow nice - thats a gud point.
The only point then is to shed weight and 'keep' stuff 'safe'
 
What is the point of stash, by the way?

I remember, in Warband I used it only when organizing feasts, so I could place of bunch of everything there.

What's the point of having a stash in BL?
I used it to stash literally hundreds of horses I'd looted and thousands of units of food, but only brought them into my inventory when I was forming an army. Other parties in your army make use of your horses for purposes of getting the Mounted footmen bonus, which keeps them relatively fast, and the food's use should be obvious. At one point, I had several sets of decent starter armor and weapons around as well but that tapered off because the education system provided really good gear.

edit:
As I see it, the game has 3 levels of play: Adventurer/Merc/Trader, Lord (owns fiefs) and finally Ruler (has recruited other clans). However, the gameplay is not significantly different. Practically, the difference between lord or even ruler from an Adventurer boils down to 2 things, access to a stash and access to the fief menu (which is about as exciting as a self serve menu at any decent fast food).

Why should we aspire to being a ruler? What new exciting gameplay does it open?

Speaking only for myself, I found a lot of difference between the early, mid and late game experience. For my late game, I mostly don't even faff around with battles unless it is deliver a particularly decisive siege or save one of my settlements. Instead I spend most of my time just running around recruiting clans, occasionally launching distraction raids/sieges to draw enemy armies to my party (and away from my faction's other armies), dealing with serious settlement issues and generally making sure my faction is "topped up" in terms of garrison strength. The clans I recruit can handle the actual grind of besieging every settlement on the map just fine without me.

The one exception, where I'm more inclined to get involved in direct battle as ruler is the start of a war against a faction that has been at peace for awhile. They'll generally have high-tier armies, with huge cavalry numbers (in 1.5.10, at least) and lots of depth to support them (oversized garrisons to draw from, full notable slots). So I'll have to do a bit of baiting, chasing, prodding, stalking, etc. until I can get a good fight in and whittle those numbers down.

Once their armies are showing up with 50% of their infantry being recruits, that's when I go back to being the ruler instead of the commander.

(Full disclosure: I think Warband's late/endgame is terrible, so being able to finish with hands-off isn't a bad thing in my eyes.)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom