Guards in castles or keeps

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I could just as easily claim that guards in bannerlord should be armoured in gold because coins are a renewable resource in calradia.

I do not agree with you on this.

Even though Calradia isn't a logically consistent place, the game should at least try to maintain the semblance of being a grounded, semi-realistic place even though it's not.
(Almost) No game, book, movie, etc. will ever manage to create a perfectly 100% logically consistent world. That doesn't mean that, because of this, all rules should be thrown out the window in favor of total, non-sensical chaos.
Even though I know Calradia isn't a logically consistent place, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief that it might be. If that makes sense.

That's my point. I was responding to rocco's idea that guards in warband should be more professional than real life counterparts, basing this entirely on ingame logic. I also used ingame logic to reach a similar conclusion. The result is something less believable than if they just copied history to the overall detriment of the game's internal logic.
If warband's world was more believable on its own then drawing from this logic would be a good thing, but if you try to extrapolate new facts about the world from warband's logic, you end up with nonsense.

 

[Honved]

I'm about to presume a few things here so take what I'm about to say with a big ol' pinch of salt.

Weren't medieval city guards "low-tier" soldiers historically? I thought that being a guard was considered to be a tedious, boring job. It would make sense for these characters to not be high level troops.
A highly trained soldier's purpose is to fight in battles. Using them to stand in a doorway or watch out for thieves in the city market would be a waste of money and resources. Any idiot with a spear can do this job.

Being a soldier is also a tedious, time-consuming job. For the entire history of warfare the average soldier has just stood around waiting for stuff to happen. Some commanders relied on waiting for the enemy to get bored and go home.

There are clearly two very different roles in question:
- the "city guard" who knows everyone in the area and can spot problems, yet more than likely isn't a skilled fighter.  This a a Tier 1-2 job.
- the Royal Guard who may or may not be from the area, but is considered reliable and extremely capable of protecting the important person who employs him.  This is a high-tier job.

Being a soldier is certainly a boring, tedious job, and one of the hardest things for a commander to do is keep his troops occupied enough to prevent them from getting into trouble.  Training is one obvious way, construction of public infrastructure is another.  As for waiting for the enemy to get bored and go home, that was usually a matter of supply: the army which brought more food and insured a supply of fresh water could often outwait the other army.  Rome was noted for setting up a fortified camp next to a supply of fresh water and sitting until the large but hastily assembled hordes of barbarians ran out of food and/or water.  When half the army had deserted, Rome could attack the remaining half with a numerical advantage.  Julius Caesar, for example, was NOT a superb tactician, but clearly understood logistics, leading to him all-but winning most of his battles before they started.

If you think that's not boring enough as a career, consider how many opponents a typical soldier kills over the course of a military career, ON AVERAGE.  If each soldier in each army killed even a single enemy, that would annihilate the smaller army entirely and devastate the larger one.  Most soldiers survive their military stint.  The typical kill rate has to be a fractional amount, well below 1/2.  Of course, that wouldn't be all that exciting in a video game, where your character got involved in 2-3 encounters, poking spears at the other side to little effect, and MAYBE managed to wound or kill one enemy soldier over the course of the character's entire existence.  The game has to exaggerate.....just a wee bit.

 

[vicwiz007]

Can somebody finally tell this person to stop using colours?

Leave the purple man alone

 

[NPC99]

I'm about to presume a few things here so take what I'm about to say with a big ol' pinch of salt.

Weren't medieval city guards "low-tier" soldiers historically? I thought that being a guard was considered to be a tedious, boring job. It would make sense for these characters to not be high level troops.
A highly trained soldier's purpose is to fight in battles. Using them to stand in a doorway or watch out for thieves in the city market would be a waste of money and resources. Any idiot with a spear can do this job.

Being a soldier is also a tedious, time-consuming job. For the entire history of warfare the average soldier has just stood around waiting for stuff to happen...

... town watches in most premodern societies were locally recruited, and their purpose was to deter and investigate crime, not to go on campaign...

Was the role of medieval guards merely tedious? Surely, their position offered them opportunities to earn bribes and other kickbacks if they remained alert to the dark side. 

 

[Noudelle]

Can somebody finally tell this person to stop using colours?

Leave the purple man alone

Or ELSE

 

[Lord Engineer (Castor)]

So far in this topic there has been a lot of mention of personal guards of lords and general town guards. I would like to put forth the idea that maybe there should be well trained guards guarding the gates of towns and castles. It makes sense to me to have competent guards at the entrance to settlements as they have arguably a pretty important job, at least in my mind. In my mind they are the first line of defense, and even though they will be standing around all day they still need to be on the lookout. They're also part of the first impression travelers will get when they come to the city.

Now I'm not sure of the situation for towns, but I can recall that castles in Bannerlord don't have anyone guarding the gates, which I believe needs to be remedied. Seems kind of silly to not have anyone guarding the entrance. Previously in Warband there were people guarding the entrance to towns (as far I know most castles had the entrance walled up) but they were on the insides of town and weren't really all that high level. I think it make sense for there to be guards on the outside of the walls guarding the entrance, maybe on the inside as well for towns and for them to be at least tier 2 or higher troops. Maybe I'm over estimating the need for guards but this idea seems to make sense to me.

Can somebody finally tell this person to stop using colours?

You are the first person (that I can recall) who has expressed a grievance over my use of coloured text. While I feel that it is unfortunate that I given cause for disturbance for you, and presumably others even if they have not voiced their complaints, I don't believe it is that big of an issue and I see no reason to forgo its usage. To put it bluntly the two main reasons I use it is to make it easier for me to track my posts on a thread, and that I like the thought of adding some colours to my posts (even though I primarily use the colour purple). Another thing I would like to note is that as far as I'm aware my usage does not impair people's ability to read my posts. One thing I ask, Carpe Diem: Quis patitur?. It's not that big of a problem.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Highlighting your own posts like that is bad forum etiquette and comes across as narcissistic. Profile pictures are enough. Big purple "look at me!!!" text also makes it a pain to read and if I'm honest I've skipped the majority of your posts for that reason.

 

[Ruler of Calradia]

There are lot of differences between monitors and human eyes. So font and color that is almost identical to default color and font is preferable, as they tend to be more well tested/designed.

I personally see that purple fine and dont have any problems with it.

 

[Roccoflipside]

So far in this topic there has been a lot of mention of personal guards of lords and general town guards. I would like to put forth the idea that maybe there should be well trained guards guarding the gates of towns and castles. It makes sense to me to have competent guards at the entrance to settlements as they have arguably a pretty important job, at least in my mind. In my mind they are the first line of defense, and even though they will be standing around all day they still need to be on the lookout. They're also part of the first impression travelers will get when they come to the city.

Now I'm not sure of the situation for towns, but I can recall that castles in Bannerlord don't have anyone guarding the gates, which I believe needs to be remedied. Seems kind of silly to not have anyone guarding the entrance. Previously in Warband there were people guarding the entrance to towns (as far I know most castles had the entrance walled up) but they were on the insides of town and weren't really all that high level. I think it make sense for there to be guards on the outside of the walls guarding the entrance, maybe on the inside as well for towns and for them to be at least tier 2 or higher troops. Maybe I'm over estimating the need for guards but this idea seems to make sense to me.

Honestly, having guards on the ground at the gate doesn't make sense, unless you're looking for someone specifically or collecting a toll. Anyone placed on the wall has a larger/better view, and access to the mechanism to close the gate/drop the portcullis. I suppose if the gate is manually closed, it would make sense to be on the ground, but you would want them inside the walls rather than outside. So if the main need for guards is up on the wall, they actually don't need to be that well trained, as they wouldn't be in immediate danger. However, this again all changes if you're expecting an immediate attack, and in Calradia if you don't expect to be attacked, you lose.

I could just as easily claim that guards in bannerlord should be armoured in gold because coins are a renewable resource in calradia.

I do not agree with you on this.

Even though Calradia isn't a logically consistent place, the game should at least try to maintain the semblance of being a grounded, semi-realistic place even though it's not.
(Almost) No game, book, movie, etc. will ever manage to create a perfectly 100% logically consistent world. That doesn't mean that, because of this, all rules should be thrown out the window in favor of total, non-sensical chaos.
Even though I know Calradia isn't a logically consistent place, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief that it might be. If that makes sense.

That's my point. I was responding to rocco's idea that guards in warband should be more professional than real life counterparts, basing this entirely on ingame logic. I also used ingame logic to reach a similar conclusion. The result is something less believable than if they just copied history to the overall detriment of the game's internal logic.
If warband's world was more believable on its own then drawing from this logic would be a good thing, but if you try to extrapolate new facts about the world from warband's logic, you end up with nonsense.

To be fair, I wasn't really suggesting that as much as qualifying my earlier post, which was entirely historical in nature. Basically, I'm saying that, if the devs wanted to go the route of having higher tier troops as guards, I could imagine a situation that would explain it rather than having my immersion ruined.

 

[Wilhelmus Van Laecken]

It's not that big of a problem.

No, it isn't, but as Kentucky said, it really give off the impression of "Hey! Look at me! I'm the only one that uses coloured text! I'm special!", even if that wasn't your intention. It's akin to someone using ??? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ?????????? when typing posts. Just gives an annoying "I'm more unique pay attention to me" vibe. Just bad etiquette imo.

Anyway, maybe the type of guards you see in a town take from what kind of troops you have garrisoned there?

 

[Noudelle]

Highlighting your own posts like that is bad forum etiquette and comes across as narcissistic. Profile pictures are enough. Big purple "look at me!!!" text also makes it a pain to read and if I'm honest I've skipped the majority of your posts for that reason.

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't think this is warranted. Especially considering that Lord Engineer's posts are always very respectful, well-reasoned and of value to the topic.
Of all the users on this forum I think he's one of the users that most deserved to be heard because of that. The purple might be annoying but it's entirely inofensive and I don't think Lord Engineer means it in a bad or narcissistic way.

 

[Wilhelmus Van Laecken]

Highlighting your own posts like that is bad forum etiquette and comes across as narcissistic. Profile pictures are enough. Big purple "look at me!!!" text also makes it a pain to read and if I'm honest I've skipped the majority of your posts for that reason.

While I understand where you're coming from, I don't think this is warranted. Especially considering that Lord Engineer's posts are always very respectful, well-reasoned and of value to the topic.
Of all the users on this forum I think he's one of the users that most deserved to be heard because of that. The purple might be annoying but it's entirely inofensive and I don't think Lord Engineer means it in a bad or narcissistic way.

Engineer's posts are indeed usually very insightful. He doesn't need a purple font when his words stand out enough.

Anyway, as you said, Engineer isn't remotely narcissistic, but regardless of his intentions, different colour/font posts just come off that way naturally.

 

[Lord Engineer (Castor)]

...
Anyway, maybe the type of guards you see in a town take from what kind of troops you have garrisoned there?

I kind of like this idea, sounds reasonable enough and makes some sense. It would also show the garrison doing something useful while they're stationed at a settlement. Not really sure that this would be entirely necessary though, I just don't see this as being something crucial to the game and that its exclusion would cause relatively little change to the final product. So while it would be kind of nice and kind of cool I don't think it's a necessity or a high priority feature.



Originally I was just going to carry on with colour but I really didn't want to cause, or continue to cause, a fuss or any particular disturbance as I seem to have inadvertently done.
Now can we please focus on the topic at hand?

 

[Triune Impurity Rites 999]

VIVA LA COLOR REVOLUTIONÉ!

Also, I don't mind the purple at all. In fact, it makes reading all of these blocks of texts more interesting. And besides, if color'd text makes you comes off as narcissistic, then what's that say about the reader? Always look for perspective.

 

[Wilhelmus Van Laecken]

VIVA LA COLOR REVOLUTIONÉ!

Also, I don't mind the purple at all. In fact, it makes reading all of these blocks of texts more interesting. And besides, if color'd text makes you comes off as narcissistic, then what's that say about the reader? Always look for perspective.

Now can we please focus on the topic at hand?

We're kinda over that off-topic discussion, sorry man. 

Got any guard ideas/suggestions?

 

[Triune Impurity Rites 999]

Uh, yeah, guards... Town militia. Slightly better gear?
Three tier: village militia, town guard, garrison soldiers.

Village, town, castle respectively.