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

Users who are viewing this thread

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.
office analogy is bad example, because back than, during medieval times, king could do all things you mentioned, without any consequences :xf-grin:
joke aside, for minimum next 8 months, we won't see any new features except voting system, and maybe new quests, and it's a big maybe.
 
Actually King with only title and no influence could never make lords follow him unless they had something to gain out of it. Many Kings had weaker position than nobles around them and were forced to please them. They had to issue certain policies, give land and grant additional rights to get noble support. Title was nothing without strong support. Influence is what takes it into right direction however the mechanic right now is too simple and with lack of mechanics around it.
 
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.
There have been plenty of rebellions againt kings, from lords and peasants about kings keeping their armies in the field too long. It was expensive and it was rarely the king who paid.
 
back than, during medieval times, king could do all things you mentioned, without any consequences :xf-grin:
yeah, sure :dead:

222.png
 
article starts with "supposedly"... and this is more like anomaly in English monarchs tree than rule.google king Henry VIII...
article says 19 medieval England monarchs were assassinated or executed. I wouldn't call it an anomaly..

15 were killed in battle, and about 60 died through natural causes.
 
Actually King with only title and no influence could never make lords follow him unless they had something to gain out of it. Many Kings had weaker position than nobles around them and were forced to please them. They had to issue certain policies, give land and grant additional rights to get noble support. Title was nothing without strong support. Influence is what takes it into right direction however the mechanic right now is too simple and with lack of mechanics around it.
Indeed, influence (or political capital) were and are a real thing. Kings and lords aren't managers and their staff, they are the CEO and upper management, and I can guarantee you plenty of politics goes on there without a lot of people simply doing what the boss says.

There are historical examples of kings and pretenders raising their armies and going to war, with key lords on either side holding back and weighing their options about who they would declare their allegiance to even after the fighting had already started. They were the king-makers, and their choice wasn't necessarily based on which monarch they liked better - it also incorporated who they thought was most likely to win, and what they stood to gain by backing a particular party. ie. what favours they were owed or could demand. That behaviour wasn't limited to the ultimate act of war, it was part of the fabric of the relationship between feudal lords, and between those lords and their monarchs.

That is what influence is supposed to be about. I do like the idea that HAVING influence giving a passive benefit, while spending it has an alternative (usually shorter term) benefit. People owe you favours, you are more powerful. If you call all your favours in that might bring a short term benefit, but people aren't so in awe of you anymore, and you become more dependant on how much they like you for you to stay in power.
 
The political importance of kingship changed during the entirety of the Medieval era, with what essentially started as merely a "representative of the lords," going through the consolidation of power and arriving at absolute monarchy after the end of the Medieval ages. Despite a lot of misconceptions, the Medieval society was ruled by common law, and any one side in breach of law gave rise to the justification for the other to resist, or even rebel. A king constantly overriding the decisions of the nobles gave rise to just cause for the nobles to rebel and overthrow the king as a tyrant.

In that sense, "influence" is not the same thing as "authority," nor "power." All three of those are different concepts.
 
Indeed, influence (or political capital) were and are a real thing. Kings and lords aren't managers and their staff, they are the CEO and upper management, and I can guarantee you plenty of politics goes on there without a lot of people simply doing what the boss says.

There are historical examples of kings and pretenders raising their armies and going to war, with key lords on either side holding back and weighing their options about who they would declare their allegiance to even after the fighting had already started. They were the king-makers, and their choice wasn't necessarily based on which monarch they liked better - it also incorporated who they thought was most likely to win, and what they stood to gain by backing a particular party. ie. what favours they were owed or could demand. That behaviour wasn't limited to the ultimate act of war, it was part of the fabric of the relationship between feudal lords, and between those lords and their monarchs.

That is what influence is supposed to be about. I do like the idea that HAVING influence giving a passive benefit, while spending it has an alternative (usually shorter term) benefit. People owe you favours, you are more powerful. If you call all your favours in that might bring a short term benefit, but people aren't so in awe of you anymore, and you become more dependant on how much they like you for you to stay in power.

Yep I would like that too. In some cases You would need to spend the influence while in other cases the sole information that You're an influential lord/king would be enough to gain something.
For example you could be able to convince lords before voting to support You just because You have a lot of influence or You won't be able to call lord to join your army if he has more influence than You unless You spend some to do it but You could freely call any lord with lower influence then You.
 
You didnt give any suggestions as to how influence decisions and creating armies should work instead then, unless you want them to be unlimited ?
 
It's an abstraction to represent the functional outcomes of the combination of those things.

Actually You have those in game already as separate things.
Authority is given to You by your status (mercenary, lord, fief owner, king). As Lord You can vote and call armies. As fief owner You can solve quest (like family Freud) by ordering both sides to do what You decide. As King You can overwrite vote decisions.
Power is mostly Your military power but also your wealth.
Influence is kind of currency allowing You to support something and call armies.
 
I like some of these ideas. Influence needs a complete rethink rather than a balance pass.

King John (of England) lost so much of his influence and renown through loosing wars and land to the French King, high taxes and general mismanagement of the kingdom that the Barons rebelled and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. Obviously there was much more to it than that but he couldn't just spend influence points to get them back onside. His reputation and influence was eroded by his actions to the point where his vassals were forced to step in.

If that situ was in Bannerlord John would have just spent influence points on the barons to repair the relationship.
 
I like some of these ideas. Influence needs a complete rethink rather than a balance pass.

King John (of England) lost so much of his influence and renown through loosing wars and land to the French King, high taxes and general mismanagement of the kingdom that the Barons rebelled and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. Obviously there was much more to it than that but he couldn't just spend influence points to get them back onside. His reputation and influence was eroded by his actions to the point where his vassals were forced to step in.

If that situ was in Bannerlord John would have just spent influence points on the barons to repair the relationship.
you have it the wrong way around here. He would not just have used influence to get them to do things, because as you said, he lost all his influence. If he had won those battles and gained land, he would have had the influence to raise those taxes.
 
That is what influence is supposed to be about. I do like the idea that HAVING influence giving a passive benefit, while spending it has an alternative (usually shorter term) benefit. People owe you favours, you are more powerful. If you call all your favours in that might bring a short term benefit, but people aren't so in awe of you anymore, and you become more dependant on how much they like you for you to stay in power.
That's basically what influence is supposed to be, well said.
 
That is what influence is supposed to be about. I do like the idea that HAVING influence giving a passive benefit, while spending it has an alternative (usually shorter term) benefit. People owe you favours, you are more powerful. If you call all your favours in that might bring a short term benefit, but people aren't so in awe of you anymore, and you become more dependant on how much they like you for you to stay in power.
That's basically what influence is supposed to be, well said.

But if you can call in favours from different people to the ones who gave you the influence, how does that make sense?
 
But if you can call in favours from different people to the ones who gave you the influence, how does that make sense?
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.

In terms of a practical or "realistic" justification for such a simplification, in any given organisation there is a pecking order of influence that is not necessarily tied to official rank. Whether it is spoken about openly or not, people know it is there and there is a degree of consensus about who sits where. You will pay attention when someone high on that pecking order talks to you, whether they owe you a favour personally or not.
 
Back
Top Bottom