My issue with the game

[Kreu2009]

Just my very personal subjectiv opinion.

Whats the goal?
- For me and many other players the goal is to conquer the world, Either with your own or an already existing faction.

What do you need for that?
- As many as possible elite Troops, Money and if possible good equipment.

How to get what you need?
- Battles. Preferably battles in which you don't loose more valuable units than you get. That means fairly easy battles. Battles where the chance of loosing is basically 0 right from the get go.

Problem?
- These battles aren't fun at all...
There is no tension and you fight hundreds of them!

Questions:
But why not fight difficult battles if they are more fun?
- You loose a lot of progress even if you win those. Sure you do also usually kill more enemies that way but enemy Lords respawn fairly quickly with the same trash army again so its not that helpfull.

You can also make progress by other means than just battles. Why not do that instead?
- Trading and quests also lets you make progress but:
Trading is not fun at all. Go to a marked, look at trade rumors to see what goods let you make profit, buy them, sell them somewhere else. Thats not engaging gameplay at all.
Its as fun as quests that force you to walk to a destination.
But what about quests?
- Most quests are also winning very easy battles or walk from point a to point b.


So in conclusion:
I think the gameplayloop of recruiting troops, fight battles, level up, repeat is extremly boring as it lacks any challenge.

 

[anoddhermit]

I think a big part of this is just the difficulty of forming a kingdom, most particularly the phase of recruiting lords. Companion promotion helped but it's definitely still something that requires a great deal of grinding to accomplish. When you have enough lords you can afford to take more risks, but for a great deal of time your main party basically is the driving force of everything and losing it is absolutely devastating during early kingdom formation - I just delete and start a new game if it happens, honestly.

Relationships currently matter very, very little compared to power and wealth levels, you can't really build up relations and political power to start a reasonably powerful kingdom.

What would be a nice additional to the potential kingdom-starting strategies is to be able to get support from lords to defect and start a civil war (support from X% of lords required). Being able to recruit rebels would also be nice. That'd allow you to skip some of the farming that's currently necessary but tedious.

Right now the obvious strategies all involve cheesy mechanics like taking tons of fiefs before starting a kingdom, and/or capturing or executing lords such that your main method of winning is more about just having good map speed and baiting the AI into stupid behavior. It's a brutal slog to attempt much else.

I also think the sandbox mode should have a variety of alternate starts at varied money/power levels IE starting at higher clan tier with higher denars. Disable achievements for them or whatever if that really matters - though it involves no real risk or difficulty, just time, to acquire denars and clan tiers - it's more about giving players more replay value. I like the early game aside from the early campaign quests which are definitely not exciting to repeat, but sometimes I want to try things without going through the early game process.

 

[NPC99]

But why not fight difficult battles if they are more fun?
- You loose a lot of progress even if you win those. Sure you do also usually kill more enemies that way but enemy Lords respawn fairly quickly with the same trash army again so its not that helpfull.

Win a difficult battle and you will lose valuable troops. However, all your wounded will recover, whereas your enemy lose their entire army as prisoners or casualties. Don’t ransom enemy Lords (in mid to late game) so they are out of the fight for the current war (all auto freed on peace). Yes, strong enemies have deep resources, but your wins do have impact. The initial army faced may have 2,000/+ troops with lots of high tier fighters, but later armies will become progressively smaller and will contain higher proportions of low tier troops as the enemy struggle to make up battle losses. Defeating four successive armies, generally clears the decks to allow fast sieging two or three towns before the next round of peace allows all parties to restock reserves.
Just be careful around two or three large mutually supporting enemy armies, or you’ll spend some time in prison

 

[kyle_usmc]

Just my very personal subjectiv opinion.

Whats the goal?
- For me and many other players the goal is to conquer the world, Either with your own or an already existing faction.

What do you need for that?
- As many as possible elite Troops, Money and if possible good equipment.

How to get what you need?
- Battles. Preferably battles in which you don't loose more valuable units than you get. That means fairly easy battles. Battles where the chance of loosing is basically 0 right from the get go.

Problem?
- These battles aren't fun at all...
There is no tension and you fight hundreds of them!

Questions:
But why not fight difficult battles if they are more fun?
- You loose a lot of progress even if you win those. Sure you do also usually kill more enemies that way but enemy Lords respawn fairly quickly with the same trash army again so its not that helpfull.

You can also make progress by other means than just battles. Why not do that instead?
- Trading and quests also lets you make progress but:
Trading is not fun at all. Go to a marked, look at trade rumors to see what goods let you make profit, buy them, sell them somewhere else. Thats not engaging gameplay at all.
Its as fun as quests that force you to walk to a destination.
But what about quests?
- Most quests are also winning very easy battles or walk from point a to point b.


So in conclusion:
I think the gameplayloop of recruiting troops, fight battles, level up, repeat is extremly boring as it lacks any challenge.

Winning difficult battles usually results in you getting troops as loot, I have had no trouble maintaining my numbers.