High tier equipment as a goal for end game

[Highest of all Landers]

What he suggests basically removes the item progression. As he suggests in his thread:

It might be realistic but wouldn't be fun nor satisfactory to buy the best items in the game at 10 minutes mark. Paying 100.000 denars for the most expensive item in the game is reasonable in my eyes and would make a good progression. I also tested suggested change from this thread (it's similar to what SadShogun mentioned) and it felt reasonable.

Agreed. One thing that has been pointed out a couple of times is that you can get troops wearing really expensive armors while barely using mid tier armors, and I would like to remind those people that this happened because of complaints that it was too hard to get higher tier troops.

I would rather have them reduce the quality and price of some of the current armors, like the Legionary Mail and include more high end armors that sets the player and lords apart from the troops. Less so in protection but more in visual terms.

 

[Shun]

Agreed. One thing that has been pointed out a couple of times is that you can get troops wearing really expensive armors while barely using mid tier armors, and I would like to remind those people that this happened because of complaints that it was too hard to get higher tier troops.

I would rather have them reduce the quality and price of some of the current armors, like the Legionary Mail and include more high end armors that sets the player and lords apart from the troops. Less so in protection but more in visual terms.

I agree that adding lord level armors to differntiate rulers from common soldiers would be a great addition. However, this does not change the fact that the economic side of player itemization is totally out of whack and should definitely be adressed.

 

[Highest of all Landers]

I agree that adding lord level armors to differntiate rulers from common soldiers would be a great addition. However, this does not change the fact that the economic side of player itemization is totally out of whack and should definitely be adressed.

And it is being addressed, as pointed out by SadShogun.

I agree that there are still issues, like some items not being available in the stores, or crafted items being too expensive to be bought by cities or not being considered for removal in shops (which has been fixed for future versions), but those aren't all going to be fixed in a day and as we've seen they are not being ignored.

 

[menuisier100]

I agree that the highest tier of armor should be very expensive to obtain for a sense of progression plus it's not like they're required to do well in game. I just want the gear to be possible to obtain.

 

[Because]

We have an apperance modifier in the items which affects their item values linearly. Though not sure if they're actively used. I will bring up your suggestion about the modifiers in an internal meeting.

I'd 2nd the request to add it I liked the existence of slightly better, but absurdly more expensive Lordly items as an end game goal, but am very pleased to hear that normal quality armour AND weapons will be affordable and available.

 

[Lord Irontoe]

I guess you have to blame procedural item pricing, which is necessary to make smithing work. If the prices were set by hand, we wouldn't have these problems.

Too much of the wrong stuff is being done procedurally, which makes it really hard to get the right balance. Meanwhile, battlefields, which totally should be procedural, are still being made by hand

 

[SadShogun]

First and foremost, thanks a lot @SadShogun for jumping in the thread and giving us informations. Wether we like said information or not, it's absolutely great to have explanations for why things are in the game, which are intentional and which are not, and what the plans are. It helps a lot !

The problem, as we already discussed here, is that the formula is based on exponential growth, which is completely insuitable for real-life values as it goes far too high far too quickly.
Samely, I suspect the whole concept of "tier" for gear is a gamey system that doesn't fit well in the verisimilitude of the world and adds some artificial value to gear rather than having said value be a logical consequence of the usefulness of the item.

I don't think even a factor of 3 to 6 is enough to bring down prices to a believable level. 100 000 denars is still a price that could be compared to a whole castle, not an armor or a weapon.

I understand the point, but I disagree that hugely priced gear is a suitable goal for a game in this genre. We are in a game about kingdoms, cities and whole armies. Pieces of gear should not play on the same levels as the fate of countries.
What should be a late-game goal is being a king or a general, not having a breastplate. Armies should be expensive, not gear.

I'm rather wary about such kind of solution. When a system gives bogus results, I'd say the good solution is to fix the system so the results are adequate. Here you suggest to add another system to correct the bogus results instead. It feels like overengineering (adding complexity instead of simplifying to solve the problem) and it risks causing weird results in unexpected places when you reach edge cases for both system, or when the first system is used without the second to correct it. It also makes modding harder, as you have to alter several parts or risks having everything crash down.

I'd say the better way would be to 1) fix the formula so that no ridiculous prices are reached, and 2) not aim for gear to be an end-goal.

Actually, trade penalty would not complicate the system so much. Currently, the system already has a trade penalty it would be like tweaking numbers. Of course, the exponential increase in prices is not something sacred which we should preserve at all costs. It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

Also, I was also in the armies should be more expensive camp as a developer. Analyzing the campaign behavior throughout the months made me understand why some decisions are made and why relatively low recruitment costs have a reason to exist.
One of the outcomes of increasing party costs is its effects on NPC lords. Increasing recruitment costs buffs the NPC lords greatly as they get free troops with every respawn. (and before someone asks it requires a very very complicated AI behavior which would be harder to balance and more prone to fail if we want them to obey the same rules as the player. Nevertheless, AI is also something we're improving upon thanks to @mexxico.)

Moreover, army costs touch so many more systems (recruitment, wars, upgrades, passive exp gains, armies, party counts) than just adjusting trade penalties and improving the current calculation.

I understand that armies cost a lot higher in medieval history but the key difference is that in our game our armies are always raised instead of the call-the-bannermen type of medieval armies. Thus in my opinion giving "realistic" pricing for these armies could make party management a chore, or even a survival situation where lords run around to collect money so that they can have decent armies.

I hope I can at least communicate my perspective. Again thank you for your feedback. It always makes me happy to see invested players who devote their time to analyze, critique, and improve the game.

 

[xdj1nn]

Actually, trade penalty would not complicate the system so much. Currently, the system already has a trade penalty it would be like tweaking numbers. Of course, the exponential increase in prices is not something sacred which we should preserve at all costs. It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

Also, I was also in the armies should be more expensive camp as a developer. Analyzing the campaign behavior throughout the months made me understand why some decisions are made and why relatively low recruitment costs have a reason to exist.
One of the outcomes of increasing party costs is its effects on NPC lords. Increasing recruitment costs buffs the NPC lords greatly as they get free troops with every respawn. (and before someone asks it requires a very very complicated AI behavior which would be harder to balance and more prone to fail if we want them to obey the same rules as the player. Nevertheless, AI is also something we're improving upon thanks to @mexxico.)

Moreover, army costs touch so many more systems (recruitment, wars, upgrades, passive exp gains, armies, party counts) than just adjusting trade penalties and improving the current calculation.

I understand that armies cost a lot higher in medieval history but the key difference is that in our game our armies are always raised instead of the call-the-bannermen type of medieval armies. Thus in my opinion giving "realistic" pricing for these armies could make party management a chore, or even a survival situation where lords run around to collect money so that they can have decent armies.

I hope I can at least communicate my perspective. Again thank you for your feedback. It always makes me happy to see invested players who devote their time to analyze, critique, and improve the game.

You should've adopted 1257 ad's Lance System from the get go and applied it to lords, make the game more "realistic" would improve a lot. End game goals being essential items that virtually change little isn't a smart move neither, unless we had the same armor soaking seen in 1257 ad (yeah, it has my favorite balancing for M&B), than I'd agree, but as it is, almost all armors are useless, except for Tier 6, which's ridiculous, moreover, how come I can run around with 100 guys wearing T6 armor and me, their lord, can't even find it, god forbid have enough gold to buy it (doesn't make any effing sense).

Anyway, the general Game Design for BL is quite underwhelming for me, and although I'd like things to be different, I'm quite conformed already, so I don't expect changes, simply wanted to give my honest opinion on the matter. BTW, instead of inserting virtual difficulties and challenges, you could've come up with something more creative in the lines of end-game objectives like WB mod Prophecy of Pendor has, oh, they also have quite extraordinary background stories that completely change in-game experiences, that could also be useful in BL. Oh well, guess it's about waiting for mods to come out then

 

[Shun]

Actually, trade penalty would not complicate the system so much. Currently, the system already has a trade penalty it would be like tweaking numbers. Of course, the exponential increase in prices is not something sacred which we should preserve at all costs. It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

Also, I was also in the armies should be more expensive camp as a developer. Analyzing the campaign behavior throughout the months made me understand why some decisions are made and why relatively low recruitment costs have a reason to exist.
One of the outcomes of increasing party costs is its effects on NPC lords. Increasing recruitment costs buffs the NPC lords greatly as they get free troops with every respawn. (and before someone asks it requires a very very complicated AI behavior which would be harder to balance and more prone to fail if we want them to obey the same rules as the player. Nevertheless, AI is also something we're improving upon thanks to @mexxico.)

Moreover, army costs touch so many more systems (recruitment, wars, upgrades, passive exp gains, armies, party counts) than just adjusting trade penalties and improving the current calculation.

I understand that armies cost a lot higher in medieval history but the key difference is that in our game our armies are always raised instead of the call-the-bannermen type of medieval armies. Thus in my opinion giving "realistic" pricing for these armies could make party management a chore, or even a survival situation where lords run around to collect money so that they can have decent armies.

I hope I can at least communicate my perspective. Again thank you for your feedback. It always makes me happy to see invested players who devote their time to analyze, critique, and improve the game.

Thanks for elaborating on the reasoning behind your position @SadShogun .

I am assuming that item tier is calculated by the game procedurally based on item characteristics.

If having high tier items being an end goal is a given, there are some disconnects between some game systems and representations which IMO should be taken care of.

The player easily is able to rise and afford in the first few days a number of high tier soldiers, which use high tier items.
- Said armors are unaffordably to the player themselves
- and - a point I find exceptionally frustrating - the items are nearly impossible to loot from battles.
- The player may easily become a noble, fight in multiple campaigns, and still be dressed in battle loot like the captain of a ragtag mercenary band


If the player rises the social and military ladder, they should be able to get equipment fitting that position at a similar rate.

To achieve this goal, a combination of item quality modifiers(make exceptional high tier items marginally better but very expensive, while the same tier items w/o modifers are affordable).

Another way is to add more ways to get higher tier items :
- arena fights
- duel a lord for an item
- steal items e.g. when sneaking into a town
- items as quest rewards
- items as presents for marriages
- items as presents when joining a faction as a lord
- bartering for items with NPC lords
-items as payment being part of diplomacy, e.g. as part of a peace deal between factions
- paying a craftsman to make an item
- adapt looting scheme to include (lower quality but high tier) items from the player side as well as the opponent's side
- make certain unique items of artifact level quality that are available under specific conditions: e.g. the equipment of the ruler of a faction becomes available when the player is in control of that factions capital. Take a look at how the sword of Khaine is implemented in Warhammer total war 2 - it is an exrtemely powerful item that changes hands when the wielder is defeated in battle. May even make for a casus belli

Edited for formatting and added a few suggestions.

 

[Apocal]

You should've adopted 1257 ad's Lance System from the get go and applied it to lords, make the game more "realistic" would improve a lot.

You still pay for your lances' upkeep in 1257 though, so the issues with armies being too costly for the AI to manage would remain.

 

[Dabos37]

I really cannot understand the reason behind the decision of making high tier amor a goal for end game. On the other hand, what is considered “end game” for devs? Because currently we can get the best possible armor in the first couple of days if we steal our spouses’ equipment. Plus, getting 500K is actually not a huge problem for the player but it actually means that we have to grind lords to get this money. We can easily get 500k at day 300 or so which is far to be considered late/end game.

You could say: “so, why are you complaining about this if you can easily get 500k in the first 300 days?”... Well, I am complaining about this because it makes high tier equipment unaffordable for family and companions. Who the hell would spend 600-800K per character to get high tier armor? I prefer to spend that money on recruiting lords, improving fiefs and getting more and more T5-T7 units which totally outshine fighter companions. Plus, funnily enough, the main reason because we are still able to get tons of money easily in this game, is because equipment is overpriced, and we can get a lot of money from battles when selling loot.

I really think that regular units armor should be asequible since the first couple of days like in Warband, especially the non noble units armor. I am ok with having some pretty expensive armors but please, just add better qualities for the same armors and set the regular armors to a reasonable price (100k is still a bit too expensive for an amor of T5 a unit like legionaries, but it at least much better than we have now).

 

[Shun]

-snip-

Plus, funnily enough, the main reason because we are still able to get tons of money easily in this game, is because equipment is overpriced, and we can get a lot of money from battles when selling loot.
-snip-

Yea this is quite strange. An interesting way to solve this conundrum may be to implement a player choice for the whole loot pool after a battle, similar to like the Battletech game from Harebrained Studions did it. E.G After the Battle , the player can choose any items from the loot pool up to 1/10th of the vaulue of the loot pool. So we can get either few expensive items or many cheaper ones. Cheaper ones havin the advantage of offering more materials for smithing? I dunno.

 

[Akka]

Actually, trade penalty would not complicate the system so much. Currently, the system already has a trade penalty it would be like tweaking numbers.

Yes but the "true" price of the item would still be huge, which could potentially affect other things (if some modder adds some AI decision based on the worth of items for example, he needs to take this trade penalty into account or it would be grossly unbalanced toward high-end items).

Of course, the exponential increase in prices is not something sacred which we should preserve at all costs. It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

With all due respect, I think you got your priorities wrong with the formula : it should give adequate prices FIRST, and THEN get some tweaks to make some items a late-game goal for players, rather than getting huge price increase all over the board just so high-end items are very expensive, and then getting a tweak to fix everything else which is broken.

Anyway, I'm not too fond of the idea of having singular items rivaling country-shaping in term of costs, but I can understand somehow the game design goal. And I think it's possible to have a good compromise :
Regular items, even good quality ones, shouldn't be hugely expensive. It breaks the economy (as pointed, one of the main reason why the player even HAVE that much money is because of selling such overpriced gear), it's very anti-immersive (a single sword can rival a whole fortress in price) and it's grating to see we raise, upgrade and command hundred of people who can wear gear we can't afford. We should be able to wear at the very least the roughly the same gear we clad our soldiers in.

But what could be done is to add "masterwork"/"lordly"/"prestige" items, which would cost A LOT more (as, supposedly, one-of-a-kind, personally-tailored craft), but which would be just a small increase in effectiveness. That could justify why we need to invest a ton of money in, while still being able to pay for the dozens of plate armor in our army. It also would tone down the money we get from post-battle looting, as only lords would use such gear, so most of the loot would be regular-priced items.
Finally, it could even be the occasion to put some "special bonus" on items - like a bonus to social relation due to the prestige of wearing such gear, or a nominal stat increase due to the quality of the work.

Also, I was also in the armies should be more expensive camp as a developer. Analyzing the campaign behavior throughout the months made me understand why some decisions are made and why relatively low recruitment costs have a reason to exist.
One of the outcomes of increasing party costs is its effects on NPC lords. Increasing recruitment costs buffs the NPC lords greatly as they get free troops with every respawn. (and before someone asks it requires a very very complicated AI behavior which would be harder to balance and more prone to fail if we want them to obey the same rules as the player. Nevertheless, AI is also something we're improving upon thanks to @mexxico

I understand that armies cost a lot higher in medieval history but the key difference is that in our game our armies are always raised instead of the call-the-bannermen type of medieval armies. Thus in my opinion giving "realistic" pricing for these armies could make party management a chore, or even a survival situation where lords run around to collect money so that they can have decent armies..)

Moreover, army costs touch so many more systems (recruitment, wars, upgrades, passive exp gains, armies, party counts) than just adjusting trade penalties and improving the current calculation.

Thank you for the information, it's always interesting to know why decisions are taken, and it allows for better-informed feedbacks and suggestions ^^
In this case, I wonder two things :

1) Would it still cause strange behaviour if only the higher levels of soldiers were expensive ? Like, it's rather cheap to line up peasants and militia, but the price ramp up when getting men-at-arms and knights ?

2) I suggested in my other thread to give a number of "free slots" to lords and settlements, to reflect the ressources that could be drawn from holdings and society. Like 5 soldiers free for being a noble, 15 for a castle, 25 for a city (made-up numbers, just to illustrate). Couldn't this fit in a design with more expensive armies ?

I hope I can at least communicate my perspective. Again thank you for your feedback. It always makes me happy to see invested players who devote their time to analyze, critique, and improve the game.

Trust me, it makes US happy when a dev comes and explain things. We might agree or disagree, but understanding why design decisions are made and what plans are, is a TREMENDOUS boon for us. We can better appreciate what is happening, we can better guess what is deliberate design and what is just "will be fixed", and as I said above, we can give better, more informed feedback and suggestions.
Please continue to post !

 

[geala]

Actually, trade penalty would not complicate the system so much. Currently, the system already has a trade penalty it would be like tweaking numbers. Of course, the exponential increase in prices is not something sacred which we should preserve at all costs. It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

Also, I was also in the armies should be more expensive camp as a developer. Analyzing the campaign behavior throughout the months made me understand why some decisions are made and why relatively low recruitment costs have a reason to exist.
One of the outcomes of increasing party costs is its effects on NPC lords. Increasing recruitment costs buffs the NPC lords greatly as they get free troops with every respawn. (and before someone asks it requires a very very complicated AI behavior which would be harder to balance and more prone to fail if we want them to obey the same rules as the player. Nevertheless, AI is also something we're improving upon thanks to @mexxico.)

Moreover, army costs touch so many more systems (recruitment, wars, upgrades, passive exp gains, armies, party counts) than just adjusting trade penalties and improving the current calculation.

I understand that armies cost a lot higher in medieval history but the key difference is that in our game our armies are always raised instead of the call-the-bannermen type of medieval armies. Thus in my opinion giving "realistic" pricing for these armies could make party management a chore, or even a survival situation where lords run around to collect money so that they can have decent armies.

I hope I can at least communicate my perspective. Again thank you for your feedback. It always makes me happy to see invested players who devote their time to analyze, critique, and improve the game.

I recognized it myself that expensive high tier units are not a good idea when I used a mod for this, although actually I'm not satisfied by the cheapness of units compared to the high prized items. I think it has to stay as it is more or less, the player cannot compete with lords at all with expensive units.

First I have to say that I would make a lot of things differently if I could. I would remove Smithing completely from the game to balance economy and make modding easier, I would restrict percentage of soldier tiers in a party, I would remove many shiny armors from a lot of soldiers, I would get rid of the main story and start differently, and of course I would remove a lot of the ugly beards. All more or less impossible, skip it.

To the design problem of expensive items and a ragged player: the problem for me is quite natural and unavoidable and the reason for it is the general game and story design. We have a Mr. Noname fresh player roaming through the villages to lure young men into service from the start. It is obvious that such a Mr. Nobody has bad equipment. In the real world such a person would not be able to recruit soldiers at all. So either we remove the clan revival background and let the player start as humble soldier/mercenary without the ability to recruit from the start (as some Warband mods had it) or we keep the current situation of item disparity. I think the answer is easy what will happen.

So to me it seems we have to accept the current system and only work on the finer stuff. Medium armor should be less expensive, the lowest metal armor should be available at clan 2 level. Metal armor in addition has to be much more protective btw, which with the current system would make it even more extremely expensive, that has to be addressed. I feel it in my game as I increased such armor stats considerably (thanks to all the gods that armor is not craftable). I have to cheat with mods to get to some decent armor of medium level at all.

I would not mind extremely expensive lord level armor which should in my opinion however offer also a lot more protection or boni than normal armor. There should be a real benefit for wearing it (which I would never do as I don't like the high tier armor stuff). To the rest I think we have to live with the fact that items are very overprized compared to fief income or unit costs. That's a tribute to be paid because the game is also an item related RPG (kind of) where every looting is like opening a gift box. I would increase the chances of having some good items (even if cracked) in the loot earlier.

 

[vonbalt]

I really cannot understand the reason behind the decision of making high tier amor a goal for end game. On the other hand, what is considered “end game” for devs? Because currently we can get the best possible armor in the first couple of days if we steal our spouses’ equipment. Plus, getting 500K is actually not a huge problem for the player but it actually means that we have to grind lords to get this money. We can easily get 500k at day 300 or so which is far to be considered late/end game.

You could say: “so, why are you complaining about this if you can easily get 500k in the first 300 days?”... Well, I am complaining about this because it makes high tier equipment unaffordable for family and companions. Who the hell would spend 600-800K per character to get high tier armor? I prefer to spend that money on recruiting lords, improving fiefs and getting more and more T5-T7 units which totally outshine fighter companions. Plus, funnily enough, the main reason because we are still able to get tons of money easily in this game, is because equipment is overpriced, and we can get a lot of money from battles when selling loot.

I really think that regular units armor should be asequible since the first couple of days like in Warband, especially the non noble units armor. I am ok with having some pretty expensive armors but please, just add better qualities for the same armors and set the regular armors to a reasonable price (100k is still a bit too expensive for an amor of T5 a unit like legionaries, but it at least much better than we have now).

It was the same in warband and classic BUT they had the modifiers and price was more reasonable (already confirmed to be wip in bannerlord), you could easily afford a set o plate armor to your companions by mid-late game but the best prize was lordly tier gear, those were very hard to come by and could easily cost some 100k a piece ( better than the 500k right now).

Yeah yeah wages were paid weekly in warband but you earned alot more with a few enterprises and prosperous cities than in bannerlord (except the glitched workshops that are being fixed already) + battle loot that was independent of a schedule.

 

[Shun]

snip

Yeah yeah wages were paid weekly in warband but you earned alot more with a few enterprises and prosperous cities than in bannerlord (except the glitched workshops that are being fixed already) + battle loot that was independent of a schedule.

What do you mean with loot being independent of a schedule in WB? How is loot in BL dependent on a schedule?

 

[Cabell]

Actually, trade penalty would not complicate the system so much. Currently, the system already has a trade penalty it would be like tweaking numbers. Of course, the exponential increase in prices is not something sacred which we should preserve at all costs. It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

Also, I was also in the armies should be more expensive camp as a developer. Analyzing the campaign behavior throughout the months made me understand why some decisions are made and why relatively low recruitment costs have a reason to exist.
One of the outcomes of increasing party costs is its effects on NPC lords. Increasing recruitment costs buffs the NPC lords greatly as they get free troops with every respawn. (and before someone asks it requires a very very complicated AI behavior which would be harder to balance and more prone to fail if we want them to obey the same rules as the player. Nevertheless, AI is also something we're improving upon thanks to @mexxico.)

I may be in the minority here, but I honestly don't mind that military gear has crazy high prices or is hard to find in cities. They shouldn't cost more than the city that's selling them of course, but I really don't like the idea of a medieval Bim Market (I shamefully googled "are there Walmarts in Turkey?" because I'm sorry to say I don't know a lot about the country) brimming with weapons and armors that anyone could buy. I would figure that if I was suddenly dropped into a medieval setting along the lines of Bannerlord, getting military-grade weapons and armor of any quality would be more difficult than getting a small band of recruits provided I could pay and feed them.

To me, the problem is that stores currently seem to be the only way to get decent equipment outside of looting with a high roguery level which isn't particularly reliable and does not fit with all gameplay types. I'm hoping that different playstyles and perk will have different ways of getting better quality gear. Of course, quests could be utilized as a way of getting gear for any character, but people bandit characters with higher roguery levels could scavenge better gear from battles. People pursuing smithing would be able to loot broken quality gear and then fix it via smithing. More fighter-oriented characters could get things through tournament prizes. Currently, tournaments are an okay source of gear at the very beginning but they pretty quickly start offering sparring blades and other lower-quality gear as the host cities' economies begin to struggle. As an aside, I wish tournaments felt more connected to the governing clan than the city. I'd think it would be cool to do an imperial style tournament but be rewarded with Aserai gear by the Aserai governor. I'll head over to the Suggestions section for that.

All that said, I'm guessing stores are an easy way to make implemented gear available to players for the purposes of testing the battle dynamics in the campaign so maybe things will get fleshed out later.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I really cannot understand the reason behind the decision of making high tier amor a goal for end game. [...]

I don't understand it either...

 

[Lord Irontoe]

It just has the properties we currently want, i.e. high tier items being end game goals for the player. It is something we plan to improve definitely.

I'm curious as to what point in a playthrough does the dev team see as "the end game"? Is it when the player's ready to make his own kingdom? When your child or grandchild takes over? In a game with such a long timeframe, where is the end game supposed to be? I'm just wondering at what point in the game we should expect to get our hands on the best gear.

 

[Blood Gryphon]

I don't understand it either...

I think its because there is literally nothing else to spend money on. Late game money becomes completely irrelevant, what am I going to do with 5 million. They need to implement some kind of money sink when you become ruler of a faction.

We know that clan welfare is being implemented in 1.5.6 but we also know it wont impact the player. I think this could be an avenue for the player to help his faction and sink some money if they are included in this welfare program. I'd be more than happy to share my wealth with my vassals to ensure they can function as normal. Maybe this could be a policy, either to exclude the ruler from these payments or to include them at a higher rate or something.