Saturn666
Recruit
I've been playing for quite a few hours now on the same save, perhaps 50 hours at this point, and today I made a pretty horrible discovery, though it requires a bit of context before I go into detail about the issue itself:
So, I've been playing as a terrible kind of warlord who executes any enemy of my kingdom of the Southern Empire, and throughout my playthrough I've been especially viscious in wiping out Aserai clans, one by one, hoping to cripple their kingdom to the point where taking over their territory would be easy-peasy.
Now here comes the big issue:
After wiping out clan after clan, even the rightful ruler (and his heirs) of the Aserai kingdom, I noticed something strange. The list of Aserai clans kept growing... and when I started fighting some of these new clans I realised that they aren't just new Aserai clans that have formed out of thin air, no, they're pre-existing clans from other kingdoms that are randomly dragged in to fill out the kingdom's roster. Even hostile kingdoms or lords that are on the other side of the world. I have continually destroyed clan after clan, but they keep dragging more and more clans from other kingdoms, which I'm guessing will persist until there are no more clans left. The worst part was that some of my loyal compatriots of the kingdom I've chosen to serve are then dragged into the crumbling ruins of the Aserai... along with every single fief they own... many of which are fiefs they've won in elections after I spent hours laying the groundwork and then subsequently sieged those castles and towns...
I get that betrayal and backstabbing and side-switching, and so on, is a legitimate feature, but this goes far beyond that, especially since my allies with whom I have nearly max reputation with will change side even though they earn nothng from it, and will treat me like an enemy and have dialogue as though they've been long-time allies of their new kingdom, even though they swapped sides less than a day prior.
I find it absolutely ridiculous that such a mechanic would be in place. Granted, my playstyle is pretty extreme, since I'm literally executing any hostile lord I capture, but the fact that the game is designed to drag in lords who have literally no reason to join a failing kingdom, simply to fill up the roster rather than letting the kingdom die out or have peasants / village leaders rise up as makeshift lords or something more imaginative. It's just a really horrible design I think, and I have to wonder if someone went the route of persuading every enemy lord to switch sides, in some kind of high charm setup, whether the game would also drag in other clans to fill up rapidly-depleting kingdoms.
There are a lot of things with this game that are really underdeveloped, broken, or plainly not implemented, but come on, the main feature of this game is surely the whole kingdom vs. kingdom dynamic, and this kind of idiotic system fundamentally undermines the effort players are putting in by abitrarily forcing lords to switch sides to kingdoms that would otherwise go extinct.
So, I've been playing as a terrible kind of warlord who executes any enemy of my kingdom of the Southern Empire, and throughout my playthrough I've been especially viscious in wiping out Aserai clans, one by one, hoping to cripple their kingdom to the point where taking over their territory would be easy-peasy.
Now here comes the big issue:
After wiping out clan after clan, even the rightful ruler (and his heirs) of the Aserai kingdom, I noticed something strange. The list of Aserai clans kept growing... and when I started fighting some of these new clans I realised that they aren't just new Aserai clans that have formed out of thin air, no, they're pre-existing clans from other kingdoms that are randomly dragged in to fill out the kingdom's roster. Even hostile kingdoms or lords that are on the other side of the world. I have continually destroyed clan after clan, but they keep dragging more and more clans from other kingdoms, which I'm guessing will persist until there are no more clans left. The worst part was that some of my loyal compatriots of the kingdom I've chosen to serve are then dragged into the crumbling ruins of the Aserai... along with every single fief they own... many of which are fiefs they've won in elections after I spent hours laying the groundwork and then subsequently sieged those castles and towns...
I get that betrayal and backstabbing and side-switching, and so on, is a legitimate feature, but this goes far beyond that, especially since my allies with whom I have nearly max reputation with will change side even though they earn nothng from it, and will treat me like an enemy and have dialogue as though they've been long-time allies of their new kingdom, even though they swapped sides less than a day prior.
I find it absolutely ridiculous that such a mechanic would be in place. Granted, my playstyle is pretty extreme, since I'm literally executing any hostile lord I capture, but the fact that the game is designed to drag in lords who have literally no reason to join a failing kingdom, simply to fill up the roster rather than letting the kingdom die out or have peasants / village leaders rise up as makeshift lords or something more imaginative. It's just a really horrible design I think, and I have to wonder if someone went the route of persuading every enemy lord to switch sides, in some kind of high charm setup, whether the game would also drag in other clans to fill up rapidly-depleting kingdoms.
There are a lot of things with this game that are really underdeveloped, broken, or plainly not implemented, but come on, the main feature of this game is surely the whole kingdom vs. kingdom dynamic, and this kind of idiotic system fundamentally undermines the effort players are putting in by abitrarily forcing lords to switch sides to kingdoms that would otherwise go extinct.
