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

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The main problem with the influence mechanic is that it is used like a currency, which leads to the frequent criticisms of not being able to acquire enough of it to do anything, or it being worth any value. Influence should not be a currency to be spent, it should be something that is accrued due to your actions. It should not be spent. It should be similar to your fame/how well known you are/how popular you are, etc. One of the staples of the Mount and Blade games is that you are at first nothing but a lowly clan, and make your way up the political ladder of Calradia. Your influence should reflect this. Instead of it being a currency, your influence should be fixed and increase due to your actions. For example, joining a faction and introducing yourself to nobles should earn a base increase of influence, though only just a little bit. As you gain fame, fight in battles, become more well know, your influence, and therefore how well know you are, increase. In one instance in my playthrough I commanded an army of one thousand men and captured huge swathes of Aserai territory with little payoff. In this instance, I also think it would be cool to add things like titles, which give you a big boost in influence. Like the title "The Conqueror." The higher your influence is, the likelier the chance more nobles will follow you when you, for example, create an army. This will simulate you climbing up the political ladder of Calradia, instead of influence being nothing more than a currency that you have to grind over and over. It could also be connected to the relations with other lords. However, I also think your characters attributes should also play a role in your relations with other lords.

What do you guys think?
 
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One of the staples of the Mount and Blade games is that you are at first nothing but a lowly clan, and make your way up the political ladder of Calradia. Your influence should reflect this. Instead of it being a currency, your influence should be fixed and increase due to your actions

Isn't this just Renown then?
 
Renown in Warband (I think it was called renown there) couldn't be spent, but it atrophied over time. There is currently no atrophy of renown or influence in Bannerlord, and there is a place for it imo.

Influence is meant to represent political capital. This is an idea which has risen in popularity in games over the last decade. In principle I like the concept, but most games don't have effective implementations. In fact, in the games I've played extensively the "value" of the political currency always ends up going out of whack and essentially fails to achieve the point it sets out to make.

Obviously Bannerlord is in too rough of a state to have any chance of succeeding at something which most games fail at. I'm interested to see whether the base game or a mod does get the implementation right.
 
Renown in Warband (I think it was called renown there) couldn't be spent, but it atrophied over time. There is currently no atrophy of renown or influence in Bannerlord, and there is a place for it imo.

Influence is meant to represent political capital. This is an idea which has risen in popularity in games over the last decade. In principle I like the concept, but most games don't have effective implementations. In fact, in the games I've played extensively the "value" of the political currency always ends up going out of whack and essentially fails to achieve the point it sets out to make.

Obviously Bannerlord is in too rough of a state to have any chance of succeeding at something which most games fail at. I'm interested to see whether the base game or a mod does get the implementation right.

Big +1
 
+1
And you could loose renown/honor (I agree they should simply merge it) for example when:
- you loose battles
- or if you get knock down too much/too early in a battle
- Sending to many times your troops in combat without you (Automatic battle)
- You don't participate in Kingdom war
- You failed to pay your troops
- You loose a Castle/City
- etc...
 
I don't mind it being a currency. It's ok. Think of it as Somone indebted to You is doing a favour for You and after that he don't have to listen to You anymore.
I think that influence cost of thing should be reworked and instead of fixed amount used for actions it should be based on who you're dealing with.
For example If You want to implement certain policy than You and those 2ho support it should be able to spend all Your influence on it if it's needed.
Or if You want to call some lords into Your army the cost should be enormous to call for influential lords.

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I think the problem is actually the lack of system allowing to convince people to vote for something. If I could propose a policy, check who's against it and go to that person to convince him/her to support me it would gain a lot of depth.
 
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The issue of going back to the old warband system is that at some point everyone will just do what you say then. It works as a ressource you can spend and run out of, its a political good will.
 
Agreed, influence shouldn't be spent like dinars. It is an indicator of your dominance. It should rise when you display your power and decrease if you fail or staying passive. Currently it makes no sense, because a lord with 500 influence and a lord with 100 influence have the same effect on the voting result. Whereas the voice of the first should outweigh about 5 times.
 
Influence points as a resource is not inherently a bad idea. Mind you, spending stuff like "piety" or "trust" or etc etc.. are already a part of a lot of strategic simulation games, most notably those from Paradox. These resources affecting internal politics, is also pretty much the norm in those games.

It's simply a matter of better refining the system, for example, a passive effect in direct relation with stuff like influence, would be nice to implement, in which case it would present a player dilemma in whether to retain high influence amassed for cumulative passive effect (..of some kind), or to spend it to see immediate political results.

As it is, the influence system is sort of bare-bones without much depth into it. A direct comparison would be the influence in Stellaris. It's basically the same thing as in this game, but influence is used in many more things, a lot more variables attached to it with plenty of more options as to how to spend that influence. It'd be a good benchmark point for the devs, if they need any more ideas on how to properly treat influence as a resource.
 
I've been ranting about the influence system for years. The moment they announced that it would be spendable like a currency I instantly hated it. It just turns yet another aspect of the game into a gamey grindy maths game. Hardly anyone agreed with me at the time but unfortunately everything I was worried about with regards to this system has turned out to be true.

The issue of going back to the old warband system is that at some point everyone will just do what you say then. It works as a ressource you can spend and run out of, its a political good will.

Not necessarily. The great thing about the warband system was that no matter how much honour and renown you had, some lords just wouldn't like you and wouldn't listen to your orders. Different lords liked different things about the player and you couldn't please all of them. Ironically this more static system was more dynamic, and believable because it prevented you from just farming stats to become the influence king.

Also there is no such thing as goodwill in a hierarchical power structure. No matter how much your Boss asks you to do, you have to listen to him otherwise you get fired. If someone in management demands something from you, they don't become less influential over time, and you don't have to give them anything in return. Having to spend influence to get stuff done in a feudal hierarchy is ridiculous.

This all boils down to immersion. The problem with paradox games is that you are constantly jerked out of the game experience by these complicated interactions between points and currencies which are so abstract and vapid you can't make any real sense of what's going on, and it just becomes a video game again. When you see a message that says "tax rates are falling. Lose 1 stability or gain 15 autonomy in all regions", what does this even mean?
I feel the same way about influence. What real life example am I supposed to associate with influence gain and loss? I can understand renown, I can understand honour, neither of which are currencies. But influence?
 
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Also there is no such thing as goodwill in a hierarchical power structure. No matter how much your Boss asks you to do, you have to listen to him otherwise you get fired. If someone in management demands something from you, they don't become less influential over time, and you don't have to give them anything in return. Having to spend influence to get stuff done in a feudal hierarchy is ridiculous.
Exactly this. I was also thinking about the boss example. You may hate him (low relation) but you still follow his orders. And spending influence make no sense, because you don't become less powerful by forcing others to follow you. Quite the contrary, you become more influential.
 
Yes and Honor/Renown should also have an influence of how you can raise your troops, and their morale.
I think there is many cool stuff they could do, while still keeping some "realism", but all this "spend points" system is just bad like you demonstrated.
 
Also there is no such thing as goodwill in a hierarchical power structure. No matter how much your Boss asks you to do, you have to listen to him otherwise you get fired. If someone in management demands something from you, they don't become less influential over time, and you don't have to give them anything in return. Having to spend influence to get stuff done in a feudal hierarchy is ridiculous.
You cant compare compare a feudal lord system to "someone in management". Ever heard of the Barons Rebellion? If the king asked to much of his lords, there were bound to be lords dragging their feat or openly rebelling. If a king or duke or count, did not listen to his vassals or made new laws or asked for too high taxes all the time, said "boss" were bound to be toppled unless he had major support from stronger factions aka "goodwill"
 
You cant compare compare a feudal lord system to "someone in management". Ever heard of the Barons Rebellion? If the king asked to much of his lords, there were bound to be lords dragging their feat or openly rebelling. If a king or duke or count, did not listen to his vassals or made new laws or asked for too high taxes all the time, said "boss" were bound to be toppled unless he had major support from stronger factions aka "goodwill"

Raising taxes too high, getting into expensive wars and infringing on the "rights" of the nobility was what caused lords to rebel. Telling someone to follow your army is not infringing on lord's rights.

An office analogy would be your boss sexually or physically assaulting you, embezzling money, or doing something that oversteps your rights as a worker. But beyond that, bosses can do a hell of a lot without their workers rebelling and calling for them to step down. Your boss can do unethical stuff like demand absurd amounts of overtime, but most people just sit back and take it because that kind of thing is actually expected of bosses. In a game setting he would lose relations, but not influence.

Medieval 2 total war, for all its faults, had a very good system for king characters called "authority" which was a measure of how loyal your lords were. You gained authority by defeating rebel armies and getting into battles with your king, and you lost it by losing battles. You barely had to think about this system beyond "use your king in battle", but it made a lot of sense and you could understand why a lord might feel like rebelling if his king was sitting around in the capital while he was out fighting.
 
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You cant compare compare a feudal lord system to "someone in management". Ever heard of the Barons Rebellion? If the king asked to much of his lords, there were bound to be lords dragging their feat or openly rebelling. If a king or duke or count, did not listen to his vassals or made new laws or asked for too high taxes all the time, said "boss" were bound to be toppled unless he had major support from stronger factions aka "goodwill"
This is what relation system is for. If you abuse your influence too much, you quickly lose relation with everyone to the point when they leave your kingdom or even turn against you.
 
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