Levies and settlement specialisation - Gameplay Changes to settlement management and recruitment.

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eritchie

Recruit
Proposed changes to Bannerlord Gameplay:

Settlement management and buildings should function in a similar way to total war games:

Castles and Towns

Rather than every town having the same buildings the owner has to choose which buildings are in their settlements. There will be limited slots so settlements will have to play a specific role for the clan which owns them (and for a faction overall). Some settlements will produce good archers while others will produce good infantrymen. Others will be focused on the economy. As the settlement levels up more slots will become available. Faction specialisations will increase variety.

Buildings will include:

Resource Manufacture Buildings

Some individual towns have access to special resources in their villages like mines. In these cases the settlement may have a special building chain to go with it (e.g Foundry)



Infrastructure

Infrastructure buildings will generally come in 4 varieties.

Food buildings which increase growth and ability to withstand sieges (e.g granary and aqueducts).

Economic buildings which increase monetary income (e.g markets, guilds, tax collectors).

Buildings which increase public order (religious and civic buildings) .

Defence buildings which increase the garrison or provide increased security (watchtowers, walls, garrison barracks).



Ports

Coastal settlements have access to a port building chain which usually increases growth and income, while allowing trade routes to other factions with ports on the same sea. Several settlements also have special ports.



Military recruitment / Basic military

Once built in a province, these buildings allow recruitment of core men at arms units (number scales with building level, perks and population)



  • Archery Range
  • Infantry Barracks
  • Stables
  • Siege workshop
Military support / Advanced military

These buildings improve quality of troops including levies, men at arms and knights by improving equipment and training. Some may provide access to elite troops (in each cultures capital).



Unique Buildings



Special buildings (including landmarks) are unique to that specific settlement on the campaign map. Landmarks often provide unique bonuses and may not be available to build for other cultures.



Villages

Villages are mostly focused on resource extraction and defence so most of the available buildings relate to these functions.

Basic Walls and Towers

Small Garrisons

Farming and Forestry Buildings

Churches

Town Halls

Resource buildings (corresponding to village resource)


Recruitment
Recruitment should function in a similar way to crusader kings

The owner of the settlement will be able to raise levies, men at arms, and knights from their settlement and it’s hinterland. The number of each available to the ruler will be determined by settlement population, wealth and buildings as well as policies and personal buffs. Knight populations are largely related to families with land holdings that exist in your settlements. Mustering troops takes time and troops will take time to regenerate if killed. Losing significant proportions of your knights and levies can have knock on economic and social impacts. Allowing populations to grow too large may also cause problems.

Until you own a settlement the only troops you can recruit are companions, mercenaries (from taverns), bandits (from gang leaders) and deserters (after defeating them in battle or from taverns). You can also serve as a soldier and become captain of a battle formation.

To get your first settlement you either need to take it with a party made up of mercenaries, buy a plot of land with money made from trade, or join a noble as a soldier and work towards knighthood and the ownership of a plot of land. From here you will have to work your way up the social ladder to grow your titles and land holdings.

Alternative campaign starts will allow you to start the game as one of the faction leaders, a duke (own a town), an earl (a castle), a baron (a village) or a knight (land in a village)

Once you own a settlement (castle or town) you can recruit quotas of levies, men at arms and knights based on the population and other buffs outlined above. Barons and knights only have access to levies. Each level of title provides access to some troops so a knight, baron and earl would each be entitled to their own portion of levies (like crusader kings). Earls would be able to call their barons and knights to battle when needed through the mustering tool. Alternatively they can leave them in situ if they feek defence of a particular settlement is more important.
 
It would take alot of time and effort to change the current fixed Towns / castles layout. They are not going to do that.

The current settlement layouts are really nice, if somewhat under-utilized.

I would like to see a Library in some major town so people could read books and gain skills.
 
It would take alot of time and effort to change the current fixed Towns / castles layout. They are not going to do that.

The current settlement layouts are really nice, if somewhat under-utilized.

I would like to see a Library in some major town so people could read books and gain skills.
Thanks for responding.

I suppose you just have slots in the fixed town layouts that change depending on which building you build. So in one town that space is used as an archery range and in another it is an infantry barracks. I dont see it as a major stumbling block.

My basic contention is that settlement and town management is highly dull in the current game. Everywhere has the same buildings and they have pretty inconsequential impacts on gameplay or the player in general.

This system would be much more immersive and encourage the player to think about what buildings they are building and what role each settlement is going to play within a kingdom or a clan. Losing that settlement then becomes much more of a big deal and you become attached to it.

It would be even better if buildings were destroyed and had levels reduced if they were conquered.
 
I would say that one relatively simple way of spicing up settlement management would be to have culture specific buildings in towns, such as Empire towns having the possibility of building Roman (Calradian?) baths for something like garrison morale & prosperity, Battanians towns building Ceilidh Halls for loyalty, Khuzaits towns having the ability to build yurts which decreases housing costs & food consumption (which increases the prosperity softcap) etc.

Also, some actually simple things to add/change that would massively help distinguish castles from towns would be:

- Removing loyalty & security from castles, they're defensive fortifications & they already can't rebel, so why do they have it? Removing them would help castles with their building construction speeds massively

- Adding something like a Sherriff's office that lets castles create a patrol party from garrisoned troops, that patrols the villages surrounding the castle and the trade bound town of the castle villages. Each level of the Sherriff's office (or whatever its called) could increase the patrol size to 30/45/60 troops in a patrol party. This way, castles would actually complement towns instead of being inferior to them in every way (except having a meager reduction to their garrison wages).

I also had a post a while ago about adding artefacts, statues, paintings, unique settlement banners, etc. that can be pillaged from and placed in towns to grant additional effects, inspired by Starsector's colony system.
 
I would say that one relatively simple way of spicing up settlement management would be to have culture specific buildings in towns, such as Empire towns having the possibility of building Roman (Calradian?) baths for something like garrison morale & prosperity, Battanians towns building Ceilidh Halls for loyalty, Khuzaits towns having the ability to build yurts which decreases housing costs & food consumption (which increases the prosperity softcap) etc.

Also, some actually simple things to add/change that would massively help distinguish castles from towns would be:

- Removing loyalty & security from castles, they're defensive fortifications & they already can't rebel, so why do they have it? Removing them would help castles with their building construction speeds massively

- Adding something like a Sherriff's office that lets castles create a patrol party from garrisoned troops, that patrols the villages surrounding the castle and the trade bound town of the castle villages. Each level of the Sherriff's office (or whatever its called) could increase the patrol size to 30/45/60 troops in a patrol party. This way, castles would actually complement towns instead of being inferior to them in every way (except having a meager reduction to their garrison wages).

I also had a post a while ago about adding artefacts, statues, paintings, unique settlement banners, etc. that can be pillaged from and placed in towns to grant additional effects, inspired by Starsector's colony system.
All good ideas. I think the key thing for me is having those limited slots so the settlements become more specialised. Rather than just get everything to level 3 then forget about it.

You could make settlement management really good in this game with just some small tweaks.

When you have played the game as many hours as me, fighting battle after battle becomes pretty dull. I just want more non combat gameplay to add weight to the battles and decisions you make. Banner Kings tries to do this but it tries to do too much in my view and just overloads the game.

The key changes I feel are needed are how recruitment and settlements work because both of these are really quite poor. It makes absolutely no sense that you can just rock up at a village recruit a bunch of random villagers and turn them into legionaries.
 
Nah I think the recruitment should largely stay as it is, since the game needs to provide a power fantasy experience of building up your army from the ground up as well. So while people being able to train peasants to legionaries in a week is unrealistic and immersion breaking, it is one of the core premises of the game, and should be changed via mods (or overhaul dlcs similar to Viking Conquest if they decide to do it, maybe via in-game options as well, but I doubt that TW would implement it).

This is not to say that recruitment can't use any work, I myself think that noble troops for example should be rarer/harder to recruit. One other thing about recruitment is maybe having army doctrines for every faction that you can select once you are king similar to voting for policies. These doctrines would be mutually exclusive, would give bonuses to specific unit types (e.g. infantry, archer, cavalry, horse archer) such as extra proficiency, more damage/hp/movement speed or whatever, make upgrading to that unit type cheaper, and recruitment slots would have that unit type more commonly while potentially nerfing the other unit types in your kingdom.
 
I think you get to do that with my changes. It just takes a bit more time and effort.

This would mean more room for small scale encounters and more weight added to elite troops. Of course, you could build big armies of bandits/ deserters/ mercenaries, but this would be more challenging due to costs and tiers.
 
- Removing loyalty & security from castles, they're defensive fortifications & they already can't rebel, so why do they have it? Removing them would help castles with their building construction speeds massively
man this so much, castles shouldn't be towns with all the drawbacks and none of the usefulness
I really wish we would get that and something that uses the navmesh blocking of the previous updates, like preventing bandit parties of caravan blocade
 
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