First, I'd like to say that I generally enjoy Bannerlord but one of the biggest things holding back the game, in my opinion, is the recruitment system.
So, I'd like to list the criticisms I have of it:
1) Recruitment requires grinding relations with notables
2) Most recruits are useless and require further grinding to level them up
3) Other lords can just take your recruits before you can
4) The pool of recruits is way too small
5) Recruiting, training and maintaining troops is way too cheap
6) The tier system allows players the ability to eventually maintain solely high tier units, which creates an advantage over the AI.
In essence, the recruiting system is just way too time consuming. You have to do quests for notables of multiple settlements, hope no other lords are taking all the recruits, and then grind levels. This whole process makes raising an army overly difficult and yet simultaneously excessively cheap. I never stop to consider if I can afford new recruits, I just get them in the hopes that one day they'll be useful.
In addition I don't understand why a lord should have to beg merchants and gang leaders for troops when he/she has the right to just draft troops from the populace.
So with that in mind here are my suggestions:
1) Each town and castle has a large recruitment pool that varies based on its prosperity and the prosperity of its villages. Each pool could be split into 3 categories: Levies, Sergeants and Nobles. When a lord wants to muster their forces they can choose how many of each group they want. Levies are cheap and plentiful, but have poor equipment and poor training. Sergeants form the backbone of all armies, they are your professional troops that are well armed and trained. Nobles are the elite shock forces, usually reserved for critical moments due to their small numbers. In addition, there should be a pool of warhorses available at the settlement that mounted units use. As an example, the levy pool could have 300 men, the sergeant pool could have 100, the noble pool could have 15 and the horse pool could have 30.
When a lord musters their forces they can assign roles for each category. I will use Vlandia as an example:
- Levies: Can be mustered as Vlandian Levy Crossbowmen or Vlandian Levy Spearmen. They would be equipped with basic gambeson and helmets in addition to their weapons.
- Sergeants: Can be Mustered as Vlandian Sergeant Spearmen, Vlandian Pavise Crossbowmen, Vlandian Pikemen, Vlandian Voulgier, Vlandian Billmen, Vlandian Cavalrymen. All equipped with mail armor in addition to good quality weapons.
- Nobles: Can be mustered as Vlandian Knights.
When a lord musters their army, they simply select a number of troops they want from each category (via a slider or number input) and the troops will join the lord's party after a period of time (e.g. one week, to represent the time it takes to get everything in order). The pool will slowly regenerate over time based on policies and prosperity. Additionally, policies can affect the quality of the troops (i.e. a small stat boost for the whole stack). Assigning a competent companion could improve mustering times and such.
The horse pool is there to avoid having to buy horses at the shop, but to also limit your cavalry options.
So, gameplay would be as such: go to town or castle -> muster the troops you want -> wait till they're ready -> go to war
Now, you may have noticed that I removed the tier system. A soldier stays in his role for as long as he is enlisted. This allows players to keep a coherent core of troops. A spearman shouldn't be upgraded into a billman because those have 2 different roles.
So what about veterans? Well, I would personally just have the whole army gain experience from campaigns and battles. Each unit stack could have a cumulative exp bar, where once a certain threshold is reached certain bonuses are applied to the whole stack. Things like:
- Stat boosts
- Better army morale
- Faster map speed
Killing units shouldn't give exp since that could be overly complicated, but finishing battles, marching, participating in sieges should all net exp for the stack.
At the end of a campaign/war the lord has the option to disband their army back into the recruitment pool. This is important also because troop wages and army maintenance should be high enough to prohibit fielding an army for long periods of time. (which should discourage wars) I shouldn't be a millionaire after fighting a war. Also the recruitment pool should remember how experienced the troops are for when you need them again.
The other thing this does is it gets rid of leveling troops. I personally find clicking each upgrade after every battle tedious so this fixes that.
To wrap it up, my proposed system would do the following:
- Reduce grind.
- Simplify army construction (no more upgrading each unit 5 times)
- Skips the middleman (no more begging for troops from notables unless you really have to)
- Prevents accumulation of elite nobles (since their pool will be tiny)
- No more armies of recruits that just die
- The Ai doesn't need cheats to get their armies, and losing an army hurts because they will run out of their troop pool.
2) So, what happens to notables? Well, something similar. Instead of a handful of faction troops, notables will have their own recruitment pools that give different types of troops:
- Merchants give you caravan guard troops
- Gang leaders give you bandit types troops
Plus some new types of notables:
- Mercenary Guild Leaders give you mercenaries (I would suggest having several guilds each with their own culture)
- I can't think of another right now, but you get the idea.
That's the gist of it. If you read this far then thanks for your patience! I hope you at least find the idea interesting!
So, I'd like to list the criticisms I have of it:
1) Recruitment requires grinding relations with notables
2) Most recruits are useless and require further grinding to level them up
3) Other lords can just take your recruits before you can
4) The pool of recruits is way too small
5) Recruiting, training and maintaining troops is way too cheap
6) The tier system allows players the ability to eventually maintain solely high tier units, which creates an advantage over the AI.
In essence, the recruiting system is just way too time consuming. You have to do quests for notables of multiple settlements, hope no other lords are taking all the recruits, and then grind levels. This whole process makes raising an army overly difficult and yet simultaneously excessively cheap. I never stop to consider if I can afford new recruits, I just get them in the hopes that one day they'll be useful.
In addition I don't understand why a lord should have to beg merchants and gang leaders for troops when he/she has the right to just draft troops from the populace.
So with that in mind here are my suggestions:
1) Each town and castle has a large recruitment pool that varies based on its prosperity and the prosperity of its villages. Each pool could be split into 3 categories: Levies, Sergeants and Nobles. When a lord wants to muster their forces they can choose how many of each group they want. Levies are cheap and plentiful, but have poor equipment and poor training. Sergeants form the backbone of all armies, they are your professional troops that are well armed and trained. Nobles are the elite shock forces, usually reserved for critical moments due to their small numbers. In addition, there should be a pool of warhorses available at the settlement that mounted units use. As an example, the levy pool could have 300 men, the sergeant pool could have 100, the noble pool could have 15 and the horse pool could have 30.
When a lord musters their forces they can assign roles for each category. I will use Vlandia as an example:
- Levies: Can be mustered as Vlandian Levy Crossbowmen or Vlandian Levy Spearmen. They would be equipped with basic gambeson and helmets in addition to their weapons.
- Sergeants: Can be Mustered as Vlandian Sergeant Spearmen, Vlandian Pavise Crossbowmen, Vlandian Pikemen, Vlandian Voulgier, Vlandian Billmen, Vlandian Cavalrymen. All equipped with mail armor in addition to good quality weapons.
- Nobles: Can be mustered as Vlandian Knights.
When a lord musters their army, they simply select a number of troops they want from each category (via a slider or number input) and the troops will join the lord's party after a period of time (e.g. one week, to represent the time it takes to get everything in order). The pool will slowly regenerate over time based on policies and prosperity. Additionally, policies can affect the quality of the troops (i.e. a small stat boost for the whole stack). Assigning a competent companion could improve mustering times and such.
The horse pool is there to avoid having to buy horses at the shop, but to also limit your cavalry options.
So, gameplay would be as such: go to town or castle -> muster the troops you want -> wait till they're ready -> go to war
Now, you may have noticed that I removed the tier system. A soldier stays in his role for as long as he is enlisted. This allows players to keep a coherent core of troops. A spearman shouldn't be upgraded into a billman because those have 2 different roles.
So what about veterans? Well, I would personally just have the whole army gain experience from campaigns and battles. Each unit stack could have a cumulative exp bar, where once a certain threshold is reached certain bonuses are applied to the whole stack. Things like:
- Stat boosts
- Better army morale
- Faster map speed
Killing units shouldn't give exp since that could be overly complicated, but finishing battles, marching, participating in sieges should all net exp for the stack.
At the end of a campaign/war the lord has the option to disband their army back into the recruitment pool. This is important also because troop wages and army maintenance should be high enough to prohibit fielding an army for long periods of time. (which should discourage wars) I shouldn't be a millionaire after fighting a war. Also the recruitment pool should remember how experienced the troops are for when you need them again.
The other thing this does is it gets rid of leveling troops. I personally find clicking each upgrade after every battle tedious so this fixes that.
To wrap it up, my proposed system would do the following:
- Reduce grind.
- Simplify army construction (no more upgrading each unit 5 times)
- Skips the middleman (no more begging for troops from notables unless you really have to)
- Prevents accumulation of elite nobles (since their pool will be tiny)
- No more armies of recruits that just die
- The Ai doesn't need cheats to get their armies, and losing an army hurts because they will run out of their troop pool.
2) So, what happens to notables? Well, something similar. Instead of a handful of faction troops, notables will have their own recruitment pools that give different types of troops:
- Merchants give you caravan guard troops
- Gang leaders give you bandit types troops
Plus some new types of notables:
- Mercenary Guild Leaders give you mercenaries (I would suggest having several guilds each with their own culture)
- I can't think of another right now, but you get the idea.
That's the gist of it. If you read this far then thanks for your patience! I hope you at least find the idea interesting!
