Rant about game design

[LDominating]

I recently tried to do rival gang moving in.
And boy...it's impossible to betray the quest giver.

I'm begging you,TW to fix these older quests rewards and completion necessary by the next patch!
It's embarassing to have this game design from 2020 in 2024.
You had 4 years to test these things.
You keep on doing things without thinking things through,why?!
Here's my rant about Rebellions,Kingdom destruction and spawning of NPCs!

Rebellions: A mess from the beginning,you didn't implement A.I to combat this,by late game we have 10K prosperity towns against 1K ones because of these rebellions spam.
Solution to this is to work on A.I and create policies(and fix them already,lol)that increases loyalty that A.I might vote to combat these;A.I should vote based on relation with the proposer aswell as their personality.
And make rebellions much more significant,like they get every fief that's below a certain threshold of loyalty,and every town rebelled at once and every 2 castle they spawn another allied rebellious clan.
Aswell as applying a debuff to nearby settlements,including neutral ones to lose loyalty.
Stationary parties/nearby parties or armies quell the loyalty debuffs,again...ALLOW A.I to think this through so that A.I won't declare war if they have loyalty issues at home or whatever.
This way we can also combat snowballing quite nicely!
Everytime a fief is retaken(btw allow rebellious clans to create defensive armies)the associated clan with that fief will have a timer of 1 year of retaking the fief or dissapear.
Rebellions only end after every fief is retaken or every member of the rebellious clan is dead.

If a rebellion is more succesful,either defeating lords and armies or getting wealth,they get a bunch of renown and form a new kingdom/each clan joins a separate kingdom or a kingdom depending on distance and relation and the need for a comeback for that Kingdom.
In order to not overload a Kingdom with clans,the remaining members of remaining clans will instead join other clans and stop maintaining independency or simply dissapear and return the fief to that kingdom.
Maximum clans for Kingdoms should be 11...
This way we can combat your oh so precious "BaNNeRLoRd WaS DeSIGnEd fOr LoNg PlaYthRougH" that you said about the kids or whatever a long time ago.

Because WHAT WERE YOU THINKING WITH THE WHOLE Kingdom destruction at no fiefs lefts?!
Do you know how many Kingdoms will be left by late game?!
Like 3 or 4 if we're lucky!
R.I.P Sturgia,Battania,N and S Empire in like 20 years!
We'll simply lose a bunch of interesting NPCs for RNG ones with nothing noteworthy!

Speaking of NPCs that feel unique...allow newly born/created Lords and Ladies to develop relations with other clans and notables.
Better yet...make A.I be able to complete quests for the same rewards players do,based on personality and necessity a Lord might lose relationship to keep a damn herd or abandon an escort of a caravan to defend it's fiefs!
Honestly just make NPCs interaction much more dynamic and belivable!
NPCs simply recruits,battle,conquer and get captured or die in an endless loop!

 

[Zorion_no]

The kingdome destruction was really poorly implemented.
Sometimes you may see clans join after its destroyed, but its relative rare.
Note that even if you arent king, you can "save" some of them and before they are destroyed get them to join the kingdome.
That being said, even when they have just 1 town left and they are very poor and landless, those lords is still happy with their liege..*shrugs head*


As for the policies, I can agree that they dont vote for the right policies.
That being said the AI should flip the solution with "festival" etc to boost loyalty instead of focuseing on prosperity that they seem to do.

Just so many things in this design overall that is what did they think, its alot of things that looked great on paper, but was poorly executed and or they dont seem to listen to the endless feedback we've been provideing for years now(before the game went to retail..).

I'm not sure what platform you use, but if you use PC there is alot of great mods that will fix some of the issues to a point.

I feel they just made it to complicated for themselves for it to be "working" for the AI.
We the players have no issues keeping our settlements loyal etc(or shoudlnt have an issue).

The core issue they failed at was the decisionmakeing behind war/peace - should have kept the old one.
Same for tribute it being constant and not timed to say just 15 of hte 30 days peace.
30 days peace is too low, and dont give some of the factions time to bounce back if they get ganked by other factions either.
I find that for better quality of the games with Diplomacy mod I set it to be 75-125 days of peace.
This typically can make kingdomes have a chance to bounce back + as you also mention abit about the settlement issues where a town ends up with 1000 in it.. or less.(I've seen under 1000)(Lageta was sieged endlessly in a 3 way war between Battania, Vlandia + Western Empire).

Some of the mechanics you suggest though in terms of the rebelling clans is kind of in a mod called VanillaPlus(again only on pc).
What happend is that the rebels will join a faction, often the original owner, and this way I've seen Battania fare much better for one without player agency.

 

[LDominating]

The kingdome destruction was really poorly implemented.
Sometimes you may see clans join after its destroyed, but its relative rare.
Note that even if you arent king, you can "save" some of them and before they are destroyed get them to join the kingdome.
That being said, even when they have just 1 town left and they are very poor and landless, those lords is still happy with their liege..*shrugs head*


As for the policies, I can agree that they dont vote for the right policies.
That being said the AI should flip the solution with "festival" etc to boost loyalty instead of focuseing on prosperity that they seem to do.

Just so many things in this design overall that is what did they think, its alot of things that looked great on paper, but was poorly executed and or they dont seem to listen to the endless feedback we've been provideing for years now(before the game went to retail..).

I'm not sure what platform you use, but if you use PC there is alot of great mods that will fix some of the issues to a point.

I feel they just made it to complicated for themselves for it to be "working" for the AI.
We the players have no issues keeping our settlements loyal etc(or shoudlnt have an issue).

The core issue they failed at was the decisionmakeing behind war/peace - should have kept the old one.
Same for tribute it being constant and not timed to say just 15 of hte 30 days peace.
30 days peace is too low, and dont give some of the factions time to bounce back if they get ganked by other factions either.
I find that for better quality of the games with Diplomacy mod I set it to be 75-125 days of peace.
This typically can make kingdomes have a chance to bounce back + as you also mention abit about the settlement issues where a town ends up with 1000 in it.. or less.(I've seen under 1000)(Lageta was sieged endlessly in a 3 way war between Battania, Vlandia + Western Empire).

Some of the mechanics you suggest though in terms of the rebelling clans is kind of in a mod called VanillaPlus(again only on pc).
What happend is that the rebels will join a faction, often the original owner, and this way I've seen Battania fare much better for one without player agency.

I like all the mods,the issue with mods is that if they crash,you're at the mercy of developers of BOTH mod and game to fix.
You can wait several months to just play your game again.
I want the developers to add these,since it can't be that hard to change a few numbers here and there...if moderators can do such complex things,I think TW should be able to do the basic thing aswell.