I Beat Them 10 Times... And They Love Me For It!

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On advice from another thread, I'm running a campaign (so far) as a merc, doing "catch-and-release" on enemies I beat. Each iteration improves relations by 6 or 7 points, and each warband in a clan adds to the clan relations - so you can cream a guy, move on down the road, cream his brother, then his sister, and all three of them are at the same level of loving you.

So I have clans with +60 relations I've never run an errand for. Never saved their lives by showing up to share in a foregone victory. Heck, I'll meet a lord for the first time, and he/she is grinning his/her face off because he/she knows I am their clan's best friend, even before they know who I am!

I regularly end my merc contract and move on to another kingdom, so I can spread my happiness to their enemies too. Now I'm the most popular guy in Calradia because all I do is beat the pants off anyone I meet, and then let 'em go. (I keep my horses limber enough to escape parties I couldn't beat.)

Personally - I would feel absolute hatred for some upstart merc who has beaten me several times, stripped me of all my men and gear & wounded me in the left side (always!) each time. But M&B is a strange community. The lords LIKE to be beat up and have to start over.

... Does anyone else find this a strange way to run a continent?

Still, it's nice to have a straightforward way to build good will. I'm sure it will pay dividends later.
 
Personally - I would feel absolute hatred for some upstart merc who has beaten me several times, stripped me of all my men and gear & wounded me in the left side (always!) each time
you have a dishonorable personality lmao.
 
Are you sure you are not beating them off?
So what you're saying is that the whole battle experience is just a dream, an illusion. The story is about a man that's attracted to other men but since he lives in the medieval era he is afraid others will not accept him for his feelings. Off-screen he gains the power to transform into every man's most beautiful imagined woman, then he proceeds to satisfy them, and then he lets them go, because he knows they would never truly love him if they saw the true him. They're happy, they smile, and look forward to their next encounter. Then the illusion sets in again for the main character, like he's just fought the wildest battle, with a full party of archers on his side, completely and utterly decimating the enemy with no casualties on his side. His real memory gets repressed because the fear of being rejected by the world and those he loves is a truly frightening, traumatic experience, which gives him more PTSD than war itself, which is why he chooses to see himself fighting instead. At the end of his journey, he reflects, how did he conquer the world?. The protagonist finds himself with all the lands conquered, no enemies in sight... Sometimes he sees himself conquering through wealth, sometimes through sheer military power. He even sees himself as a javelin merchant in some of his journeys. But deep at night... when his consciousness can't keep the illusion alive... he sees the truth... a nightmare... he's been left long ago. By every man he's loved. Because the illusion faded in their eyes, even though he himself has not realized it. They stopped fighting him. He has "won". Then reality becomes blurry. Blurrier and blurrier. He finally wakes up from his nightmare. This goes on every night, for years. Until one day. He finally splashes some cold water on his face, and looks at his own reflection. He is ready to face the truth... But what is this?... He can barely distinguish any real, sensical human characteristics. His neck looks awkwardly glued to his body... "Who is this abomination?" - he asks. How can a human look like this? All messed up, like a joke... No... no... this couldn't be....... This was Warband all along. Bannerlord never came out. And he was never born at all. He fades and then you open your eyes. You just had a nightmare. You also just wasted your time reading some bull. You see the clock ticking, getting closer and closer to the inevitable end of this journey, the time when you have conquered the world. You close your eyes, you breathe, and you forget you ever read it. And you click another post.
 
well well if you smack/slap/choke a girl in certain way at certain time, under certain situations, the girls LOVE you

but in the wrong way, you are committing crime
 
Personally - I would feel absolute hatred for some upstart merc who has beaten me several times, stripped me of all my men and gear
They don't loose their gear though ;/ wish they did.

The lords LIKE to be beat up and have to start over.
It's the only break they get :sad:

Just like in warband catch and release is the easiest way to get relations with lords(clans)
 
On advice from another thread, I'm running a campaign (so far) as a merc, doing "catch-and-release" on enemies I beat. Each iteration improves relations by 6 or 7 points, and each warband in a clan adds to the clan relations - so you can cream a guy, move on down the road, cream his brother, then his sister, and all three of them are at the same level of loving you.

So I have clans with +60 relations I've never run an errand for. Never saved their lives by showing up to share in a foregone victory. Heck, I'll meet a lord for the first time, and he/she is grinning his/her face off because he/she knows I am their clan's best friend, even before they know who I am!

I regularly end my merc contract and move on to another kingdom, so I can spread my happiness to their enemies too. Now I'm the most popular guy in Calradia because all I do is beat the pants off anyone I meet, and then let 'em go. (I keep my horses limber enough to escape parties I couldn't beat.)

Personally - I would feel absolute hatred for some upstart merc who has beaten me several times, stripped me of all my men and gear & wounded me in the left side (always!) each time. But M&B is a strange community. The lords LIKE to be beat up and have to start over.

... Does anyone else find this a strange way to run a continent?

Still, it's nice to have a straightforward way to build good will. I'm sure it will pay dividends later.
Yeah, they chose pretty much the worst thing to bring over from Warband. It's so unintuitive that severely injuring someone and slaughtering hundreds of their subordinates and then taking their castle makes them love you just because you didn't kill or imprison them. Fear maybe, but not grinning at the sight of you.

It would be nice if they nerfed the relation gain for releasing lords, and replaced it with, i dunno, more mercy trait gain instead. Give more serious (gradually ramping up) consequences to executing every lord you meet (like some notables refusing to give you troops if you are a total murderer perhaps), and give relation penalties for holding lords in your dungeon too long. That will balance the three options in an intuitive way.

Then buff the relation gain for travelling in an army, fighting in battles as part of an army, joining in battle, etc.
 
I'm not sure why they even bothered with any other "feature" beyond combat. It's clearly all they want you to do. I honestly would have rathered that they focused on refining and perfecting combat then adding half (scary no no word) content.
well well if you smack/slap/choke a girl in certain way at certain time, under certain situations, the girls LOVE you

but in the wrong way, you are committing crime
Hahaha splendid.
 
I don't necessarily think the mechanic of gaining relation by stomping someone and then showing mercy is bad. It's just that the implementation was vacuous (like most things in this game). If I spare lord "A" and lord "B" really hates lord "A" there should be some amount of relation loss with lord "B". Really there is a whole multitude of basic changes that would improve things and make the mechanic seem less silly.
 
I don't necessarily think the mechanic of gaining relation by stomping someone and then showing mercy is bad. It's just that the implementation was vacuous (like most things in this game). If I spare lord "A" and lord "B" really hates lord "A" there should be some amount of relation loss with lord "B". Really there is a whole multitude of basic changes that would improve things and make the mechanic seem less silly.
It will be a big bonus the first time, then start decreasing until its 0 after few releases.

But... the problem is that there are just few ways to improve relationships right now so ...
 
That's what I'm getting at though, just the whole system in general was implemented with out much thought and leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
Seems like there is many minor changes in regards to relation that could be made. You may not nessesarly get more ways to gain or lose relation but making the options that are there more dynamic would go a long way.

TW has made it quite apparent they don't want to make big changes or additions so keeping ideas with in the confines of what's already there is our best option for suggestions.

This was all worded poorly but hopefully you get my train of thought
 
Yet they haven't brought the relation loss mechanic when you take lords prisoner for some reason so no one minds being a guest in my dungeon until I don't know who accepts their ransom and releases them.
 
It would be nice if they nerfed the relation gain for releasing lords, and replaced it with, i dunno, more mercy trait gain instead.
It's okay since relation doesn't really do anything anyways (It should though... but oh well), however I think a ultimatum option like "If I let you go your clan can't raid my villages or attack my parties for 30 days" would be much more useful. Or some other stuff like maybe he puts in a good word with some notables or something or gives you a lesson in a skill.

Would you prefer grinding quests?
But why though? If you recruit a clan you get a relation boost, if you gift them a fief you get a relation boost... why would you need more in 1st place? Do you have a technical break down of how much money (lol) you save on recruitment per relation? It seems to me undiscernible. Also this is getting into the "TW in the bucket" mindset again : Just because the other in game option sucks doesn't mean they can't replace that too with something that doesn't suck.
 
It's okay since relation doesn't really do anything anyways (It should though... but oh well),

I know for sure it decreases the price of summoning members from that calm into your army, and makes them spend influence to support you at voting. Maybe it affects the persuasion minigame, but not sure on that one.
 
Are you sure you are not beating them off?



To the topic at hand: the problem isn't that you get brownie points for releasing them, it's that you don't lose Relation for attacking them. Any time you attack a Lord/Lady who doesn't want to fight you should lose Relationship with them. Seems pretty simple to me.

It sort of makes sense if they attack you and you release them, that they'd come to respect you, especially if you don't do anything dastardly to anger them otherwise (attack civilians, caravans, etc.) That could be seen as "honorable combat" I suppose.

I dunno maybe Calradia is just kinky like this by design though. Do I want to know what the Dragon Banner even looks like?
 
I know for sure it decreases the price of summoning members from that calm into your army
You summon enemy vassals to you army? No
Enemy vassals vote for you in elections? No
I get what you're saying but it's a bit of stretch from "Is gaining relation from defeating lords and releasing them okay?"
I guess if you wanna play a long con of building relations and then joining the faction for cheap armies and easier fiefs , that's fine too, it's much slower then kicking down the doors and just taking town for yourself alone.
I don't know though, haven't tried.
Have you done this?
DO you think it made the game too easy or did it make the game better?
 
To the topic at hand: the problem isn't that you get brownie points for releasing them, it's that you don't lose Relation for attacking them. Any time you attack a Lord/Lady who doesn't want to fight you should lose Relationship with them. Seems pretty simple to me.
I guess I can agree with this, though I do think that the relation gain/loss should be either a net increase or net loss based on the lord's personality- as it was in Warband.

The best way of doing it, assuming TW was willing to put effort in this area, would actually be to have three steps.

Attack: Attacking lords makes you lose relations.

Defeat: The more cautious a lord is, the more relation you gain for defeating them in battle.

Release: The more honorable or merciful a lord is, the more relation you gain for releasing them.

A lord with an honorable, merciful, or cowardly personality will appreciate being released and factor it into their future relations, and in the case of cowardly lords, will fear and respect you as a superior warrior. So defeating and releasing them should be a reasonable net gain.

A lord with a dishonorable, cruel, brave personality will despise being defeated, and doesn't play by the rules anyway so sees no reason to be nice just because you were nice to them. So defeating and releasing them should be a slight net relations loss (but not as much as if you had imprisoned them).
 
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