I Have No Control Over My Vassals - I accidently started an Oligarchy

[Mikal Manfriedson]

I cannot see how this will skip something important - you still will improve relationship one way or the other - this is part of the game. Go questing - alter relationships. Fight battles someone is involved - relationship shift. Fight for your side - relationship shift.
I just want to tell my companion "go forth and recruit X, then train to archers" - and the AI-controlled party will run around, recruit recruits or units fitting description if relationship is high enough to clan and then whack looters for XP - optimally: then deliver the troops to a certain location. Something you ought to do in the early game when you could not afford to have a big army and lots of companions. Once you reach this level, hover, this becomes a chore while more important stuff arises like "upgrade that castle, defend area versus noble raiders, buy shops and caravans" - and next to it you are to recruit and train your troops while other kinds of companions than traders, medics and engineers have no real reason to be here.
An archery NCS with the trainer perks of his skill tree, however, would do a nice job recruiting and training desired troops for your clan. This is a QoL decision that would give more reason to companions. Naturally, I could max out on companions, keep one medic and put the rest to caravan duty to pay my bills - but then I could ask myself "why even bother having them?"

And the AI does not gather the troops I mentioned? You know...I guess that an AI actually CAN be scripted to do certain things...just because it doesn't do now does not mean it is incapable of doing so.

 

[Althix]

"go forth and recruit X, then train to archers"

campaign.give_troops battanian_fian_champion 372. (as example)
-
and battanian fian is just a basic example. do you know what you need for the majority of cavalry or noble-liners (which are also cavalry). that's right. War Horses. Should i continue?
and there is a reason why we do not suffer from the morale penalty of having troops of different cultures in the same party you know.

 

[Mikal Manfriedson]

Only with the flaw, that no fianns are trained from regular troops, but the AI should hire recruits and then train them into the appropriate troop type. And if you do not happen to find gazillions of noble troops, our companion will not train then because he won't get them. Training also has the danger of losing troops in battle and yes, fianns CAN die, even if there are other troops in party if autoresolving. Even versus looters. The horse thing? Working as intended, isn't it? No horse, no upgrade. Or can the AI 'cheat' horses? If yes, it should stop being able to do that and go shopping for horses like us players (might help the snowballing Khuzait problem as well as then training is limited to market availability) . Or you could deposit horses in asset stashes where the AI will return to get the horses needed for upgrade and then upgrade - where is the problem there?
The last thing what you said about morale..enlighten me: how is it connected to troop recruiting? Why can we also do it without bothering? Why is your last sentence relevant?

 

[Althix]

Why is your last sentence relevant?

because current design assumes your progression from one culture to another with the following actions of building relations with notables in order to acquire more troops. Which should not be a problem because of Charm discipline. This also means you will be getting recruits regular or nobles in the process. Meaning, we would never run out of troops in our AO and we will not suffer any penalties, in this aspect Bannerlord is simpler than a Warband. This also means the idea of tasking companions to gather a certain number of specific troops pointless, you get them as you go.

 

[Mikal Manfriedson]

I might differ here. I would like the thought that my NPC would run around my castle and recruit and train new troops while I am helping my side with siege enemy assets and smashing their lords. I could come back and replenish losses and it would feel like I have a proper logistic behind this.
But it seems we might rather agree to disagree on the one. For me it is QoL.

 

[vonbalt]

I might differ here. I would like the thought that my NPC would run around my castle and recruit and train new troops while I am helping my side with siege enemy assets and smashing their lords. I could come back and replenish losses and it would feel like I have a proper logistic behind this.
But it seems we might rather agree to disagree on the one. For me it is QoL.

Agreed this would be great and it's the main reason i use the Improved Garrisons mod so i can set a number i want to always be present if possible in my garrison and the ai will go recruiting while i'm out doing lordly things like waging war against the enemies of the realm and when i get back i have a garrison filled with fresh troops to replenish my party, it's both realistic and a QoL feature since they don't appear from tin air but are recruited locally and paid from my pockets as if i was doing it myself.

 

[Mikal Manfriedson]

It would just be a nice touch, if you could think about your companions as being able to fulfil the role of castellan thus organizing troops and training them with their traits picked up. An archery companion with appropriate perks could train archers more efficiently - just as an example.

 

[daishi5]

I've had this happen to be as Battania also and maybe even Vlandia but I can't remember for certain. I've also seen Penton replace Lucon when he dies but but I wasn't part of the Northern Empire at the time so didn't see a vote.

Can anyone confirm how this mechanic works and how it is for all factions?

I have had the western empire elect me as emperor when Garios died in battle. The main storyline quests don't seem to realize its an option. I was told I didn't meet the requirements to found a kingdom, and I also couldn't give the banner to myself.

 

[caledoni]

I have had the western empire elect me as emperor when Garios died in battle. The main storyline quests don't seem to realize its an option. I was told I didn't meet the requirements to found a kingdom, and I also couldn't give the banner to myself.

Thanks for the info

My educated guess is that it is like this for all factions now.

Hopefully they iron out the problem with the main quest at some point.

 

[Deathmacabre]

Loosing control over your vassals in most of the time led to collapse of the kingdoms/empires. But in this game it does not mean anything except that you just have less influence over kingdom decisions. Your kingdom will still grow and conquer everything but without you

 

[kapko]

I just want to tell my companion "go forth and recruit X, then train to archers" - and the AI-controlled party will run around, recruit recruits or units fitting description if relationship is high enough to clan and then whack looters for XP - optimally: then deliver the troops to a certain location. Something you ought to do in the early game when you could not afford to have a big army and lots of companions. Once you reach this level, hover, this becomes a chore while more important stuff arises like "upgrade that castle, defend area versus noble raiders, buy shops and caravans" - and next to it you are to recruit and train your troops while other kinds of companions than traders, medics and engineers have no real reason to be here.

You could add this feature with certain clan level. Say, you need to be clan tier 4 to unlock this recruitment command. Many of the suggestions for clan leader commands, listed here in this thread, could be tied to clan tier to make it more interesting.


Also I have a feature I would like to see added.
I would like a period before every voting (for example 1 day) to get a chance to influence:
- Who is going to be in the poll
- Who supports who
That means, I will see that there are currently 3 clans - I do not like it and want to give a chance to another clan, so I replace one of them (for influence and a relation hit). Then I will see who supports the 3 clans and who wants to abstain and I get a chance to sway other clans to support my decision or make them abstain. These things could be done either via influence, persuasion check or traditional barter a.k.a. bribe (I am really missing the option to bribe my way to the top)

This feature alone would be huge. The time limit is only there if the player does not participate and once you pass through the two stages yourself, other clans may get a shot and change things yet again - this time, the player will not be able to intervene. After that you can either move to voting or leave voting for later.

 

[NamingIsHard]

We will start working on this issue next week. Probably you will see this feature after mid February. I will post this thread to office communication channel so design team will see what you posted. Please add which options you want to have over your clan parties & kingdom parties (when king). We will examine all ideas and try to come up with a solution by selecting some of them.

For example :
As Clan Leader :

• I want to be able to limit party's recruitment at X. (Stop recruiting when reached X men)
• I want to priotize which troop types my party will recruit (infantry / archer / cavalry)
• I want to change agressiveness of my party so it will always defend or always attack
• I want my parties to not join armies led by other lords

As King :

• I want to prioritize a target settlement for hostile actions.
• I want to prioritize a settlement to defend

If you add what you want to see as list shown in example it can be better but all formats are ok of course.

People in this thread have already given lots of great suggestion regarding military issues, I want to add something more closely related to other aspects, like trade and production, of the game.
As a clan leader:

• I want to be able to order family troops/caravans to trade in a way I preferred
  • I want to be able to set a price threshold for certain goods so the other clan members can only buy/sell the given goods below/above the threshold, respectively
  • I want to be able to order clan members to store certain goods into stash when they returned to clan-owned fief
  • I want to be able to set shresholds for goods in stash so the clan members will try maintain amount of goods above that threshold, like strategical reserves
  • I want to be able to set preferred goods to buy/reserve
  • I want to be able to set settlement(both city and village) I preferred clan members to trade at
    • or even manually set a route of cities/regions I want caravans to go

Basically I'm trying to describe business management features I have seen in 'The Patrician' game series. Currently these functions may only look useful for horse(upgrading cavalry) ,food supplies(feeding soldiers) and smith supplies(leveling up this skill requires tons of raw materials), but for future features like workshop management/trader playstyle, this will greatly help the player to manage their business

 

[mexxico]

We carried some of your ideas to meeting and also we added some ideas. However sadly most are rejected. As a decision there will be only 2 implementations at this subject.

1- There will be a wage slider for your each party so you will be able to limit waghe of your parties. For example you can set this limit to 500 denars for a party lead by companion X. So this party will stop recruiting / upgrading men when their party limit reaches that limit. Even this was nearly rejected (would be left to future for finding better idea(?)) - we insisted to do it now and it worked.

2-Player will be able to set stance of their parties as one of 3 stances (defensive / agressive / default)

What are rejected :

1-Player will not be able to set a prioritized target for his clan parties. Example : you will be able to set stance as defence but you cannot select a prioritized target. So you will not be able to say your clan party prioritize defending target X (which would result in patrolling around X most of time). (I am not aganist this suggestion by the way and wanted to see at game)

2-Player will not be able to select prioritized upgrade targets or focused troop types like archer / cavalry / infanrty or limit recruiting to any culture. Imo this is not so important too so much micromanagement.

3-Most dissappointing (just as personal view) is as a king we will not be able to do anything over AI decisions as it is current situation of game. We come up with an idea of king to spend influence to boost some war targets. In this scenario king will be able to spend 50-100-200 influence to boost a target so probability of AI armies to select this target would increase. If that target is captured by one of our armies this influence spent by king would be shared by leaders at that army. If any other kingdom capture that target king would get spent influence back. So as king player would be able to boost selection of target. When player is vassal he would see a target chosen by AI time to time (not always). This would add much sense to game. However it is also rejected. If it was accepted you will be seeing something like this (and player would be able to change it if he is the king) :

So as summary as decided design you will get one slider for each clan party for limiting wage of that party and one dropbox for determining stance of your clan parties (so if you select defence stance they will not do any hostile actions but you will not be able to give them a prioritized target to defend - maybe at defence stance we can prevent clan parties to join hostile armies also - however even an army is created for defending it can change idea later). Probably these 2 additions will have so limited effect on gameplay. We are sorry for this. Nothing to do, we wanted to do more detailed systems which gives more control to player (as clan leader and king) which can make gameplay better but we cannot do these without permission. What annoying is decision takers are not coming here and discuss with you even I do not think they read here most of the times. As reason they give us to reject most of these ideas they say our game is not a real time strategy where players have to select targets. They say AI should do always nearly most logical things which does not bother player so player should not spend time and need to select these targets himself or deal with several different micromanagement. However in my opinion in current situation of game being king does not make sense because king has no effect over anything also similar case for clan leader control over clan parties, so spending time for that stuff is not big deal for player even he does not want spend time it can stay at default (which is current situation).

Everybody can have different ideas over game by the way. We cannot know which one best suits game or imporves gameplay we just make some guess. So I cannot be sure about what is best, I cannot say my view is best, everybody thinks that their ideas are best. However I personally support rejected 1-3 and wanted to see them at game maybe some of you think that these rejected ones do not suit M&B series well or some of you can think similar with me. So these are just personal thoughts and we cannot know which is best design before implementing all and trying. So these additional rejected ideas can be tried by mods over time and we will see results.

So adding these decided 2 things will take only 1-2 days after UI make needed additions because nothing much is approved. At saved time I will try to do improvements at these stuff (cannot guarentee removing all back and forths but will try to reduce) :

Ai trying mindlessly going this "one" route rather than finding new route after few tries

Spoiler: back and forth 1

Spoiler: back and forth 2

Spoiler: example

 

[Mikal Manfriedson]

Thanks mexxico. But you know that erodes my faith in the company that produces the game a fair bit. From all proposals only the most shallow approaches were taken. At least I do not share their argumentation and it kind of shows, that somebody in charge is neither caring nor interested in how we play the game. Nevertheless: a big 'thank you' to you

 

[a_ver_est]

What annoying is decision takers are not coming here and discuss with you even I do not think they read here. As reason they give us to reject most of these ideas they say our game is not a real time strategy where players select targets. They say AI should do always nearly most logical things so player should not need to select these targets himself. However in my opinion in current situation of game being king does not make sense because king has no effect over anything also similar case for clan leader control over clan parties.

Sad to see that the heads of the project has an absolutely different view of the game than many players whishes.

Thanks for defending peoples suggestions internally even if them have been rejected.

 

[Mushbeast]

We carried some of your ideas to meeting and also we added some ideas. However sadly most are rejected. As a decision there will be only 2 implementations at this subject.

1- There will be a wage slider for your each party so you will be able to limit waghe of your parties. For example you can set this limit to 500 denars for a party lead by companion X. So this party will stop recruiting / upgrading men when their party limit reaches that limit. Even this was nearly rejected (would be left to future for finding better idea(?)) - we insisted to do it now and it worked.

2-Player will be able to set stance of their parties as one of 3 stances (defensive / agressive / default)

What are rejected :

1-Player will not be able to set a prioritized target for his clan parties. Example : you will be able to set stance as defence but you cannot select a prioritized target. So you will not be able to say your clan party prioritize defending target X (which would result in patrolling around X most of time).

2-Player will not be able to select prioritized upgrade targets or focused troop types like archer / cavalry / infanrty or limit recruiting to any culture. Imo this is not so important too so much micromanagement.

3-Most dissappointing is as a king we will not be able to do anything over AI decisions as it is current situation of game. We come up with an idea of king to spend influence to boost some war targets. In this scenario king will be able to spend 50-100-200 influence to boost a target so probability of AI armies to select this target would increase. If that target is captured by one of our armies this influence spent by king would be shared by leaders at that army. If any other kingdom capture that target king would get spent influence back. So as king player would be able to boost selection of target. When player is vassal he would see a target chosen by AI time to time (not always). This would add much sense to game. However it is also rejected. If it was accepted you will be seeing something like this (and player would be able to change it if you are king) :

So as summary as decided design you will get one slider for each clan party for limiting wage of that party and one dropbox for determining stance of your clan parties (so if you select defence stance they will not do any hostile actions but you will not be able to give them a prioritized target to defend - maybe at defence stance we can prevent clan parties to join hostile armies also - however even an army is created for defending it can change idea later). Probably these 2 additions will have so limited effect on gameplay. We are sorry for this. Nothing to do, we wanted to do more detailed systems which gives more control to player (as clan leader and king) which can make gameplay better but we cannot do these without permission. What annoying is decision takers are not coming here and discuss with you even I do not think they read here most of the times. As reason they give us to reject most of these ideas they say our game is not a real time strategy where players have to select targets. They say AI should do always nearly most logical things which does not bother player so player should not spend time and need to select these targets himself or deal with several different micromanagement. However in my opinion in current situation of game being king does not make sense because king has no effect over anything also similar case for clan leader control over clan parties, so spending time for that stuff is not big deal for player even he does not want spend time it can stay at default (which is current situation).

So adding these decided stuff will take only 1-2 days after UI make needed additions because nothing much is selected. At saved time I will try to do improvements at these stuff (cannot guarentee removing all back and forths but will try to reduce) :

Damn son, sad to hear but always good to get a bit of insight.

Do you think in that case there will be no 'suggest a course of action' like on Warband? I think it'd be great to have that back, though that may be a different topic altogether and I'd hope that would be more related to relations/persuasion rather than just pure influence points.

That may not be your area of work though, so fair enough if you have no response to that.

 

[Cornelis]

the king role does need more power so I support the idea that the king as they should be able to influence their armies around however it's a great power and should be kept to the king I still would like this added or something similar

I can see why they rejected the other two ideas those could be a bit of an exploit in my opinion clan leaders would cause mass chaos attacking key points of land rather than what an AI would so human advantage and have an overwhelming powerful force as you would be able to now ensure you could amass a full horse archer army or whatever you would like in the exact culture you want

Great suggestions to the game good to see the community contributing

 

[GeluHUN]

We carried some of your ideas to meeting and also we added some ideas. However sadly most are rejected. As a decision there will be only 2 implementations at this subject.

First of all, thank you very much for your support and efforts in this matter!

Yes, in Warband you are a single person with phisical limitations, not a god governing every small ant from above the clouds. Thus you can only talk others by phisicaly aproaching them, (and when you are a king) you can form armies and pass laws.

The 3rd. denied featuer is a bit puzzling though, because advancing a priority target in a war is very much like passing a law, not directly controlling someone, so I (too?) don't understand why this decisions was made.

(To be honest I feel angry that those who have chosen this path are not here and explaning the reasons behind it - they may have another solution in the pipeline, or could have a very valid reasining we have not though of, but without any word I kind of feel neglected.)

 

[Tacostrom]

.

1- There will be a wage slider for your each party so you will be able to limit waghe of your parties. For example you can set this limit to 500 denars for a party lead by companion X. So this party will stop recruiting / upgrading men when their party limit reaches that limit. Even this was nearly rejected (would be left to future for finding better idea(?)) - we insisted to do it now and it worked.

2-Player will be able to set stance of their parties as one of 3 stances (defensive / agressive / default)

What are rejected :

1-Player will not be able to set a prioritized target for his clan parties. Example : you will be able to set stance as defence but you cannot select a prioritized target. So you will not be able to say your clan party prioritize defending target X (which would result in patrolling around X most of time).

2-Player will not be able to select prioritized upgrade targets or focused troop types like archer / cavalry / infanrty or limit recruiting to any culture. Imo this is not so important too so much micromanagement.

3-Most dissappointing is as a king we will not be able to do anything over AI decisions as it is current situation of game. We come up with an idea of king to spend influence to boost some war targets. In this scenario king will be able to spend 50-100-200 influence to boost a target so probability of AI armies to select this target would increase. If that target is captured by one of our armies this influence spent by king would be shared by leaders at that army. If any other kingdom capture that target king would get spent influence back. So as king player would be able to boost selection of target. When player is vassal he would see a target chosen by AI time to time (not always). This would add much sense to game. However it is also rejected. If it was accepted you will be seeing something like this (and player would be able to change it if you are king) :

So as summary as decided design you will get one slider for each clan party for limiting wage of that party and one dropbox for determining stance of your clan parties (so if you select defence stance they will not do any hostile actions but you will not be able to give them a prioritized target to defend - maybe at defence stance we can prevent clan parties to join hostile armies also - however even an army is created for defending it can change idea later). Probably these 2 additions will have so limited effect on gameplay. We are sorry for this. Nothing to do, we wanted to do more detailed systems which gives more control to player (as clan leader and king) which can make gameplay better but we cannot do these without permission. What annoying is decision takers are not coming here and discuss with you even I do not think they read here most of the times. As reason they give us to reject most of these ideas they say our game is not a real time strategy where players have to select targets. They say AI should do always nearly most logical things which does not bother player so player should not spend time and need to select these targets himself or deal with several different micromanagement. However in my opinion in current situation of game being king does not make sense because king has no effect over anything also similar case for clan leader control over clan parties, so spending time for that stuff is not big deal for player even he does not want spend time it can stay at default (which is current situation).

So adding these decided stuff will take only 1-2 days after UI make needed additions because nothing much is selected. At saved time I will try to do improvements at these stuff (cannot guarentee removing all back and forths but will try to reduce) :

Thanks so much for sharing @mexxico. It is really a shame how much influence these decision makers have. I don’t think they fathom how popular and niche warband was and if they do, they do not have any understanding to why. Sadly these developments will lead to big sales for these corporate losers and make the game ever more shallow, even compared to that of warband. Maybe company could give them task to play through warband so they can understand themselves what mount and blade players expect. Even in warband player can direct lords to specific targets or tell them where an enemy is headed. Only explanation is that they’ve never played warband and only care about lining their pockets. We do not have feasts, dialogue options, proper relationship system. No directions to be given to vassals, what a joke. I suspect these managers aspire to work for truly “successful” companies like EA.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

@mexxico

Mexxico, always very grateful for your very open approach to internal debates. I had to do a couple of inhale-exhale cycles after reading your comment.

Let's see, I'm no longer talking about pointing out objectives like in total war, yet you're telling me that what Party AI Overhaul and Commands mod (an essential top mod ) offers at a possibility/concept level you guys don't want to implement in analogous way?

I understand that incorporating new systems, right now, can lead to new bugs. But you're telling me that once again these kind of decisions, excuse the expression "paternalistic" that the player is going to be overwhelmed or saturated with so much info? I'm not talking about complexity anymore... I don't know, this is beyond my understanding .

Once again, thanks for the informative mission; your last two comments are being very revealing as to "where" Bannerlord is going as a product. From the heart I say; a sincere hug Mr. Gümüş.