Party chasing mechanics

Would you like to see a different chasing mechanics implemented?


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Lately I have been having some grudge with the never ending party chasing mechanics and it got me thinking. The current system is really annoying, because you (say an army of 50 units, 10 cav, 20 inf, 20 archers) can chase a party of looters (say 8 inf) with the same speed for an eternity all around Calradia (insert Benny Hill music theme). While paying wages and feeding army. It could quite litteraly drain all your cash at the start of the game and the only way to catch them would be to force them into a pocket with a lot of parallel manual movement, which is hard to do. Same thing goes for enemy armies, if they are running away and are faster than me - I can run after them for an eternity (or until my food stocks are gone). The only way to solve this is to have a herd of horses on you, and even then you're screwed trying to chase Khuzait parties.

My proposition is this:
IF we have some cavalry and the enemy troops have only infantry, could we have a mechanic implemented that would allow us to "tackle" enemy party and engage them with our cavalry only, and make the footmen come in later (say few minutes combat time depending on the distance) as reinforcement? This would give the enemy party an advantage of not facing all of my army in the first minutes.
IF the enemy has both cavalry and footmen, and would be interested in running away, he could "sacrifice" the footmen and run away with just cav OR engage with all of his units versus our cavalry only, and maybe win before our footmen arrive.
IF the enemy has just cavalry, only then we'd have no chance to catch up with them if we're slower.

This would obviously work both ways, if I am the party who is running away, the same logic applied. What do you think?
 
From another thread with the same request:
Make sure you are targeting the party (it should say, "Chasing X's Party" on your status) then go to the Clan screen, Party tab, "Create Party." Select a companion or family member in your party presently and give them some mounted troops (tier doesn't matter, only being mounted). They'll appear on the map and immediately go after the party you have targeted.

I am not sure if this is intended functionality, but it is how I've been using my clan parties to snag faster parties/armies.

But yeah, something more formal would be nice. It can be annoying to track down companions once you take the troops back and disband the vanguard party.
 
This would obviously work both ways, if I am the party who is running away, the same logic applied. What do you think?
No it wouldn't.Reminder that enemy reinforcments need to be close to them if a player is enganging them, but if the player is the reinforcements he can just join the fight after it started by walking up to it on the campaign map. This would just give the player a pointless unfair advantage and make scouting/horse bonus/inventory managment obsolete. If you're chasing small groups of bandits you shouldn't be walking around with a triple digit army anyways, just drop off your troops at your fief. And while I agree that it is annoying having to go to your fief to drop off troops everytime you go bandit hunting it's still better than what you're suggesting here imo. "But what if I dont have a fief"? Tough luck, one of the perks being a lord I guess, but for real I think a camp feature(engineering perk tree isn't completed yet so maybe it'll be a perk with the camp having to be built for like 2 hours) would be better for that, where you can drop off your troops in an encampment with your food and inventory, while taking a smaller, quicker force to do whatever you want, with the risk being your encampent can get attacked when you're away, losing your troops and items in the proccess.But it's a longshot.
 
... but for real I think a camp feature(engineering perk tree isn't completed yet so maybe it'll be a perk with the camp having to be built for like 2 hours) would be better for that, where you can drop off your troops in an encampment with your food and inventory, while taking a smaller, quicker force to do whatever you want, with the risk being your encampent can get attacked when you're away, losing your troops and items in the proccess.But it's a longshot.
Temporary camps like that would be great. Its always an annoying part of the late-early game/early-midgame stage when your army becomes too big for fighting bandits and you don't want to join a faction yet, but you're kind of forced to unless you want to disband most of your troops. It would be nice to be able to temporarily stash your excess guys and go out with a small party.

Adding something like that as an engineering perk is a great idea too, especially if it gave engineering xp. We'd finally have a way to train engineers in the early game.
 
The current system is really annoying, because you (say an army of 50 units, 10 cav, 20 inf, 20 archers) can chase a party of looters (say 8 inf) with the same speed for an eternity all around Calradia (insert Benny Hill music theme). While paying wages and feeding army. It could quite litteraly drain all your cash at the start of the game and the only way to catch them would be to force them into a pocket with a lot of parallel manual movement, which is hard to do.

Yes, I agree, it's super annoying. I think one simple way to fix it is to just make foot troops much slower (of course, with horses in your inventory they can ride them and become faster). It really doesn't make sense as-is and is not a great way to start out the game.
 
It's a fairly common complaint, but I don't really agree. Some parties are faster than you. Get more cavalry, get horses, get scouting perks. Or don't, and they'll be quicker than you. Use your human advantages; guide them to run through forest while you skirt the edge and gain ground, or towards a garrison/party so that they will momentarily turn back towards you. Run them into a dead end, micro-manage your clicks when they have to turn so that you cut the corner rather than following their rear. There are ways of catching a party of equal or slightly faster speed. But ultimately, there's no reason why you should be able to catch every party unless you put some effort into making your party as quick as possible.
 
It's a fairly common complaint, but I don't really agree. Some parties are faster than you. Get more cavalry, get horses, get scouting perks. Or don't, and they'll be quicker than you. Use your human advantages; guide them to run through forest while you skirt the edge and gain ground, or towards a garrison/party so that they will momentarily turn back towards you. Run them into a dead end, micro-manage your clicks when they have to turn so that you cut the corner rather than following their rear. There are ways of catching a party of equal or slightly faster speed. But ultimately, there's no reason why you should be able to catch every party unless you put some effort into making your party as quick as possible.

In particular it's the looters and troops on foot that really bug me, and it's the early-game stuff when a player is still developing a first impression. That part of the game needs to not have you endlessly running across the map chasing looters when you barely know how the game even works. It just leaves a bad impression.

Later on, sure, you know how to adjust your party speed and you do so in order to get the result you want, and that's fine.

But, along with that, there needs to be better explanation of all the factors that influence speed and how to access them. I know it well now after 250 hours of play but it shouldn't take that long. That stuff should be easily referenced immediately when the game begins because it's so important. It should be a hover-over on the bottom right by default without having to click that weird little arrow, and each penalty should be able to be clicked on or individually hovered over to see exactly what is causing the penalty and why (herd penalty - should say, because you have 300 horses when you can only support 100 due to the number of men you have, etc.). It just needs to be more clear to the player how this **** works so people can actually make reasonable decisions about it. Otherwise it feels like a big "WTF, why am I so slow?" especially early game when you're still learning the interface.
 
This would just give the player a pointless unfair advantage and make scouting/horse bonus/inventory managment obsolete.
I am suggesting this mechanic to work on all sides, NPC vs NPC, Player vs NPC, NPC vs Player, essentially making small infantry armies very vulnerable to large enemy groups which is kind of logical IMO. But then again, different mechanics could be used here, including camping feature you've mentioned, and roguery if one would want their camp hidden.
All I am saying, currently it is quite annoying. Even NPCs are playing this slow cat and fast mouse game instead of fighting.
 
This is the exactly annoying bit - you chase them into a corner - and they go around you just because your speed is 4.7 and theirs is 4.8. Unless you micro manage it by tiny steps.
The game is about making choices, though. If you don't make choices which improve your map speed, then you have to accept that some parties will be quicker than you, and/or do the micro management. From your OP example - yes, a band of 8 looters is annoyingly quick. A band of 20 looters is slower, though, and 30+ slower still. Make choices. There's no gain from chasing 8 looters for very long, at all. If you can't catch them quickly, move on.
 
There's no gain from chasing 8 looters for very long, at all. If you can't catch them quickly, move on.

Yeah but in the beginning of the game, that's all you can fight against. 30 is likely too many and also parties of 30 looters don't even exist in early game. All of the looter parties are small and super fast.
 
This is the exactly annoying bit - you chase them into a corner - and they go around you just because your speed is 4.7 and theirs is 4.8. Unless you micro manage it by tiny steps.

This could be solved by increasing the range at which you "encounter" parties on the map. It should just be a little larger so that when you do corner a group, it can't "slip past" you as you say. It's so annoying to do the micromanagement of tiny steps - it's not an interesting aspect of gameplay. The strategy of cornering them, sure, that's OK I guess. But once we corner them, we should have them. It shouldn't require save-scumming 20 times to catch a party cornered into a tiny little spot.
 
Bigger bandit parties would be a good thing too. Way too many groups of under 10 running around to no purpose. It creates this weird limbo stage when you get around 40-50 troops where bandits are too small to be worth chasing but lords are too strong to tackle. There should be a lot more size variety in the bandits.
 
Yeah but in the beginning of the game, that's all you can fight against. 30 is likely too many and also parties of 30 looters don't even exist in early game. All of the looter parties are small and super fast.
I was referring to your the OP, where you they talked about having ~50 units, which is a bit further into the game. But even at clan 1, you can have 22 troops quickly which is enough for looters of the same size. Also even small groups of looters slow down considerably if they have wounded, or prisoners.
 
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I was referring to your OP, where you talked about having ~50 units, which is a bit further into the game. But even at clan 1, you can have 22 troops quickly which is enough for looters of the same size. Also even small groups of looters slow down considerably if they have wounded, or prisoners.

I just remember running around the map chasing looters in early game and just wondering "What the hell is this crap?" And I just don't think that's a good first impression for the game. However that problem is dealt with doesn't matter so much... just needs to be addressed in some way.
 
I just remember running around the map chasing looters in early game and just wondering "What the hell is this crap?" And I just don't think that's a good first impression for the game. However that problem is dealt with doesn't matter so much... just needs to be addressed in some way.
I don't mind the idea above of just expanding the 'catch zone' slightly (though that would work both ways, such as when the player is trying to dodge a stronger party), but I think that early game frustration is best overcome when you realise that you don't have to catch every looter party; there'll be another not far away, possibly with wounded, prisoners or about to walk into a cul de sac.
 
I just remember running around the map chasing looters in early game and just wondering "What the hell is this crap?" And I just don't think that's a good first impression for the game. However that problem is dealt with doesn't matter so much... just needs to be addressed in some way.
Yeah, I had the same poor impression at launch. The game does a piss-poor job of explaining these kinds of mechanics.

They really dropped the ball with the main quest, since instead of making you clear bandit hideouts and chase lords all over the map, what it should be doing is teaching you all of the mechanics you need to know to play the game. They should've done something like a short scripted campaign where you have to raise some troops, join an army, go on missions to secure food and horses, fight a battle or two, do a siege, etc. And while doing these things, the game's explaining how these mechanics work and why they're important. That would've be a useful main quest.

My own idea was that they could've also introduced the whole inheritance concept by having you play the intro quest as your own mother or father during the time of the Battle of Pendraic. So all the missions could be related to the run-up to the battle, and then they could dump all that lore on you by having you experience it firsthand. And at the end of it all, your parent dies in the battle and only then do you introduce the main character.
 
I just remember running around the map chasing looters in early game and just wondering "What the hell is this crap?

I had that same impression first time litting up Warband...then i finally came out of my house one week later regretting it saying holy crap this was golden xD
 
Yeah, I had the same poor impression at launch. The game does a piss-poor job of explaining these kinds of mechanics.

They really dropped the ball with the main quest, since instead of making you clear bandit hideouts and chase lords all over the map, what it should be doing is teaching you all of the mechanics you need to know to play the game. They should've done something like a short scripted campaign where you have to raise some troops, join an army, go on missions to secure food and horses, fight a battle or two, do a siege, etc. And while doing these things, the game's explaining how these mechanics work and why they're important. That would've be a useful main quest.

My own idea was that they could've also introduced the whole inheritance concept by having you play the intro quest as your own mother or father during the time of the Battle of Pendraic. So all the missions could be related to the run-up to the battle, and then they could dump all that lore on you by having you experience it firsthand. And at the end of it all, your parent dies in the battle and only then do you introduce the main character.

Yeah absolutely agree about the main quest - sending a new player all over the map looking for 10 Lords that they don't even know how to find is just not a good start.

Love your idea about playing your parents first... maybe even whatever skills you gain as your parents would transfer to your player so you start with a tiny boost to 1hand or something. And it would be a great way to introduce the RP aspects of the game which are pretty weak right now, but really don't have to be.
 
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