Influence should be overhauled. Here is how I think it should work

[pyerr]

The old discussion about infamous "mana system" in strategy games. "Mana" = abstract game currency accumulated from abstract sources players use for achieving certain actions in game (defined in other game forum).I think reworking influence system before they change characters personality traits (honor, loyalty) wouldn't work.

 

[kweassa]

The old discussion about infamous "mana system" in strategy games. "Mana" = abstract game currency accumulated from abstract sources players use for achieving certain actions in game (defined in other game forum).I think reworking influence system before they change characters personality traits (honor, loyalty) wouldn't work.

Well the debate did fire up a bit since the failure of Paradox's Imperator: Rome -- but the problem would be the infinitely shallow depth of that game where everything is handled by "mana" -- prior to that game, others like CK2 and STL both handled the system reasonably.

The problem with vague, abstract concepts like "influence" is that there's no really coherent way to portray its effects in terms of actual political/social result -- which is why it's been handled as "mana" in the fisrt place. If not this system, how do you portray Lord A's influence over Lord B with lower influence? By RNG? If higher influence in a "not mana" system guarantees a stable success rate of certain actions then it's no different the "mana" system with even more faults, and if the success rate remains lower then the players start complaining "higher influence is meaningless" and is just "RNG." For example, a player with lower influence in certain actions can simply save-scum until the RNG overrides a NPC player's higher influence -- this, also makes the concept of "influence" totally meaningless, and you can bet your money that if something like this is possible, then the players will abuse the HECK out of it.

If this be the case, then it's better to clarify things with a very clear set of rules to handle these abstract concepts as a resource <-- this is usually the reasoning behind the system. And IMO it makes sense.

Better to have influence become a currency where it's availability directly determines what's possible and not possible ,than to have things rely on RNG.

 

[Gambles]

Well the debate did fire up a bit since the failure of Paradox's Imperator: Rome -- but the problem would be the infinitely shallow depth of that game where everything is handled by "mana" -- prior to that game, others like CK2 and STL both handled the system reasonably.

The problem with vague, abstract concepts like "influence" is that there's no really coherent way to portray its effects in terms of actual political/social result -- which is why it's been handled as "mana" in the fisrt place. If not this system, how do you portray Lord A's influence over Lord B with lower influence? By RNG? If higher influence in a "not mana" system guarantees a stable success rate of certain actions then it's no different the "mana" system with even more faults, and if the success rate remains lower then the players start complaining "higher influence is meaningless" and is just "RNG." For example, a player with lower influence in certain actions can simply save-scum until the RNG overrides a NPC player's higher influence -- this, also makes the concept of "influence" totally meaningless, and you can bet your money that if something like this is possible, then the players will abuse the HECK out of it.

If this be the case, then it's better to clarify things with a very clear set of rules to handle these abstract concepts as a resource <-- this is usually the reasoning behind the system. And IMO it makes sense.

Better to have influence become a currency where it's availability directly determines what's possible and not possible ,than to have things rely on RNG.

I think framing it as it's either a currency system or RNG and that's the only possible solutions that could possibly exist isn't exactly accurate. For instance with just a quick thought I could say something like a sliding scale that lords have that isn't infinite and raises and lowers based on battles won or lost, decisions, etc. and when used consumes it as it does now. But this would always give influence a cap, say the scale is -100 to +100. You could sort of utilize it to effect decisions of the king and what not but it would have a hard cap so would never become irrelevant or saved up to absurdity. This would also function closer to how influence function in real life, you can leverage all your influence to sway people but that influence isn't completely endless and can decline fast if used wrong or with poor decision.

You could even scale how much you get based on how far up that scale you are, so the closer you get to 100 the harder it is to accrue more. Of course that's just off the top of my head but it instantly seems like a less abusable and broken system, you'd probably even want a slightly different scale for the king based on "legitimacy" with also a scale that could rise and lower based on decisions made. I've played enough 4x games with all kinds of systems to know that this system isn't some greater of two evils...

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

If you want it to make sense to that level of granularity, you would track an influence metric or favours between every pair of individuals. But that would be cumbersome, so a single number which generalises the concept works better for a game like this.

It wasn't too cumbersome for warband, which already had this system between the player and NPCs, and between other lords as well.

 

[Pejot]

It wasn't too cumbersome for warband, which already had this system between the player and NPCs, and between other lords as well.

Wasn't Warband system more simple? I don't recall any option to affect decisions of Lords that didn't like the player. There wasn't any option to keep them following You longer then they wanted.
It was mostly about grinding relations with lords. I know that current system isn't perfect an can become a grind but at least You don't need to grind it separately for each NPC.

 

[pyerr]

Well the debate did fire up a bit since the failure of Paradox's Imperator: Rome -- but the problem would be the infinitely shallow depth of that game where everything is handled by "mana" -- prior to that game, others like CK2 and STL both handled the system reasonably.

The problem with vague, abstract concepts like "influence" is that there's no really coherent way to portray its effects in terms of actual political/social result -- which is why it's been handled as "mana" in the fisrt place. If not this system, how do you portray Lord A's influence over Lord B with lower influence? By RNG? If higher influence in a "not mana" system guarantees a stable success rate of certain actions then it's no different the "mana" system with even more faults, and if the success rate remains lower then the players start complaining "higher influence is meaningless" and is just "RNG." For example, a player with lower influence in certain actions can simply save-scum until the RNG overrides a NPC player's higher influence -- this, also makes the concept of "influence" totally meaningless, and you can bet your money that if something like this is possible, then the players will abuse the HECK out of it.

If this be the case, then it's better to clarify things with a very clear set of rules to handle these abstract concepts as a resource <-- this is usually the reasoning behind the system. And IMO it makes sense.

Better to have influence become a currency where it's availability directly determines what's possible and not possible ,than to have things rely on RNG.

Man, I don't like mana more than you, so we are no the same page here , no need to be aggressive . If you are suggesting new "influence power" modifier in game to replace current "mana influence" where my character have different "influence power" towards every single NPC in game (so my "I power" to some characters would be +10, to some +40, or +60) then I think it's makes sense for me,
but if you suggesting my "I power" to be the same towards every NPC, that doesn't work for me as new concept.

 

[Toplayer]

In my opinion, the influence system need adjustment but dont have to be reworked.

I think we just need a good way to farm influence as a vassal after the prisoner nerf.
More cities means more influence currently. The king usually have the most cities in the kingdom. My influence will be done for once AI king or lords get enough influence to pass a certain policy. I gotta mess around and get rid of king's cities if I want to limit his/her influence income. It is weird to play in this way

 

[Pejot]

In my opinion, the influence system need adjustment but dont have to be reworked.

I think we just need a good way to farm influence as a vassal after the prisoner nerf.
More cities means more influence currently. The king usually have the most cities in the kingdom. My influence will be done for once AI king or lords get enough influence to pass a certain policy. I gotta mess around and get rid of king's cities if I want to limit his/her influence income. It is weird to play in this way

I agree that there should be some way to reduce someone elses influence. It should be available for both player and NPC of the same faction as player if they have negative relation.

 

[Badcritter]

It wasn't too cumbersome for warband, which already had this system between the player and NPCs, and between other lords as well.

Warband was mostly about relationship between each lord and Bannerlord still has those metrics, even though they don't count for much yet.

There was also renown, which was like a combination of renown in Bannerlord (which is now just the XP bar for you clan) and part of what influence currently represents in Bannerlord.

We now have traits instead of 7 distinct lord personality types. Traits is just a stub currently, but there's room for improvement over Warband here. It basically devolved into 4 of the lord types being simply unmanageable at scale.

Influence AND relationship metrics between every single lord would be cumbersome and unnecessary. Just relationship being managed that way is fine, people are used to that level of detail and it is really all that's needed unless the entire game focus is political manipulation.


People have started mentioning capping influence and I agree that's sensible. Consumable resources that you can accumulate do tend to suffer from players hording them. As well as helping maintain sanity at the relative levels of the resource, the cap also helps break the psychological barrier by spending it, as you figure "oh well, what I earn right now is just going to waste, it's OK if I spend some of what I've got".

 

[kweassa]

Man, I don't like mana more than you, so we are no the same page here , no need to be aggressive . If you are suggesting new "influence power" modifier in game to replace current "mana influence" where my character have different "influence power" towards every single NPC in game (so my "I power" to some characters would be +10, to some +40, or +60) then I think it's makes sense for me,
but if you suggesting my "I power" to be the same towards every NPC, that doesn't work for me as new concept.

It's actually the opposite. Handling an abstract concept like "influence" as a sort of a modifier will impact the game in a more negative way.

Have the influence as a resource as we do right now, but refine it better, IMO is clearly the better option.

 

[1115141208114]

It's actually the opposite. Handling an abstract concept like "influence" as a sort of a modifier will impact the game in a more negative way.

Have the influence as a resource as we do right now, but refine it better, IMO is clearly the better option.

I think if they kept it the way it is now while adding more modifiers that increase it (such as titles and actions), it would make it more bearable and less grindy. As of right now, thats all it is.

 

[Badcritter]

It dawned on me playing last night how weird the current implementation is, in that you can accumulate as much influence as you like - but when you get opportunities to spend it on voting, you are limited in how much you can spend. The opposite would make more sense.

Twice in as many hours of play last night a lord of a minor clan non-sensically proposed a law which only benefited the ruling clan, and coincidentally the support for the law was at a level where the player (also a vassal) spending the maximum allowed influence would be just enough to get the against vote over 50%. Can't help but be suspicious that the events were engineered by the game to help curb my influence accumulation.