SP - General Remote Commanding

[Monkey]

I'd like to be able to command my fief garrisons and clan parties (and why not vassals) during siege defenses and field battles while away.

I'd take control of the army unit's leading companion (or vassal) or the highest tiered mounted (or ranged or melee) troop's body and command the troops during the battle just like if I was there. Once the battle is over I'd go back to my character's body and normal play would resume.

In such fights I would obviously not benefit from any of my character's leadership or tactical perks since they're not who's really commanding the battle. I would however benefit from the perks had by whoever's the commanding unit I'd be controlling.

That would be awesome from a gameplay perspective and also make perfect sense since there are always leaders appointed for every unit in a kingdom's army.

There have been many discussions concerning caravans and their defense(lessness). The ability to command their defense "in person" (as the caravan leader) would relegate their defense to my skill.

 

[Kakuna Rattata]

I second this and doubly so on the caravans. The cost of delegating one of your companions with the absolute knowledge that it is inevitable the 15k caravan will get sunk turned me completely off. It would also be great if you could do the same with your clan parties, as I see them getting wiped pretty often (usually because they decide to raid deep in enemy territory).

 

[TheShermanator]

YES! As it is, I've never been defending a siege at all in a couple hundred hours of game play. Which makes sense w/out remote commanding for a lot of reasons: AI is never going to assault a castle/city unless they are confident in their superior force, and a half-smart player should not get themselves in that situation unless they purposefully put themselves in a bad situation just for fun.

And yes, having the attributes of the commander vs. the main player character makes sense and would be a good balancing mechanism anyway.

 

[Monkey]

I also view with much positivity the diversity such a (huge) feature would provide in allowing for the commanding of different armies, with different, troop compositions, in different terrains and situations, commanded by heroes with different abilities and equipment, all without the need to start a new game in order to experience something different. I truly believe it would add SO much to the gameplay.

Obviously, I don't think such "remote commanding" should be forced upon the player in any situation at all, after all even our own battles can be chosen to be automatically solved. There should instead be an option for the player to be prompted whenever a battle is about to start. There should also be options whether to be prompted to command siege defenses, clan member (family and companions) battles, vassal battles, caravan battles or none at all.

Except for the additional developer hours required to implement such a feature, which I have no idea how hard would be or how long would take (we always assume it's all simple and developers always hate that assumption), I see absolutely no downside to having this as an option in the game.

 

[CzeReptile]

I am +1 on the sieges of stuff that I own. With the armies in the field I do not agree, after all you nominated a companion of choice for leadership position and he / she should do their best.
What I would like is to have a type of interface where I can command my parties or even vassals to do certain things. Patrol around here, protect this, recruit and train army etc.

 

[Monkey]

I am +1 on the sieges of stuff that I own. With the armies in the field I do not agree, after all you nominated a companion of choice for leadership position and he / she should do their best.
What I would like is to have a type of interface where I can command my parties or even vassals to do certain things. Patrol around here, protect this, recruit and train army etc.

Though there is a mod that does just that (in case you want to be able to do it already), it's definitely something that should be in the game too. As with every suggestion, some will disagree and say they'd rather have everything running on AI, even clan parties' strategical decisions of what to do. It's not a valid argument, however, against providing it as an option. It does add to the gameplay for those who want the additional level of managing without taking from those who don't as long as it's optional.

 

[CzeReptile]

Though there is a mod that does just that (in case you want to be able to do it already), it's definitely something that should be in the game too. As with every suggestion, some will disagree and say they'd rather have everything running on AI, even clan parties' strategical decisions of what to do. It's not a valid argument, however, against providing it as an option. It does add to the gameplay for those who want the additional level of managing without taking from those who don't as long as it's optional.

yes definitely keep it optional. The base game perhaps should have quite a few options to check in at start of game

 

[jasonpct]

How about making it so that you can command remote battles of those fiefs WITH A GOVERNOR? But this fundamentally goes the other way of the game's style of controlling only the player's character, making it a lot less realistic.

 

[Monkey]

How about making it so that you can command remote battles of those fiefs WITH A GOVERNOR? But this fundamentally goes the other way of the game's style of controlling only the player's character, making it a lot less realistic.

That would be a very valid solution. I never bother assigning governors to anything at the moment. That would make me assign governors to all my fiefs, especially those near kingdom borders.

 

[TheShermanator]

As long as they loosen companion # restrictions, yeah, that’s be good. Otherwise, I find it to be a hassle to use governors at all.

 

[Monkey]

As long as they loosen companion # restrictions, yeah, that’s be good. Otherwise, I find it to be a hassle to use governors at all.

I'm not sure if that's working as intended, but I've recently been picking Reeve (the trait from the Steward perk "tree") for my companions, since Stand United, its alternative, is useless IMO. I'm also not sure whether Reeve or something else is responsible for this, but my companion allowance has risen by quite much. If Reeve is indeed responsible and its picking for each companion's Steward tree really does give you (which kind of makes sense since companions can't have companions) an extra companion allowance, then you're pretty much capable of having unlimited companions, since you just need to level their Steward enough for an additional +1. Once again, it's hard to be certain if that's working as intended, but I suspect it is, because to me it makes sense not setting a rock hard limit on number of companions. Governors alone, assuming they actually become useful and desirable at some point, are enough to eat up a good number of companions when you own a couple of fiefs. When you account for parties, caravans and quest solvers you realize the standard limit might be too low.

 

[ZavodilaSauklus]

+1

 

[William7667]

YES! As it is, I've never been defending a siege at all in a couple hundred hours of game play. Which makes sense w/out remote commanding for a lot of reasons: AI is never going to assault a castle/city unless they are confident in their superior force, and a half-smart player should not get themselves in that situation unless they purposefully put themselves in a bad situation just for fun.

And yes, having the attributes of the commander vs. the main player character makes sense and would be a good balancing mechanism anyway.

I've defended a few sieges in 1.40 got sieged just after taking the town had a lot of wounded and got hammered there are some glaring bugs if your with an army only your own party gets to defend not even your companions parties. So disband them quick and stick their men in the garrison so they can help you defend. I had the impression I'd have done better sallying out and fighting I would probably still have lost but not so resoundingly. The walls and stuff didnt seem to give me much advantage. If i had to do it again I might leave the walls and try and use the stairs down as choke points. \still it was an experience.

 

[Monkey]

I've defended a few sieges in 1.40 got sieged just after taking the town had a lot of wounded and got hammered there are some glaring bugs if your with an army only your own party gets to defend not even your companions parties. So disband them quick and stick their men in the garrison so they can help you defend. I had the impression I'd have done better sallying out and fighting I would probably still have lost but not so resoundingly. The walls and stuff didnt seem to give me much advantage. If i had to do it again I might leave the walls and try and use the stairs down as choke points. \still it was an experience.

So companion parties in the same fief you're siege defending do not participate in the battle? If that's the case it does look like a bug.

 

[Niomedes]

I'd like to be able to command my fief garrisons and clan parties (and why not vassals) during siege defenses and field battles while away.

I'd take control of the army unit's leading companion (or vassal) or the highest tiered mounted (or ranged or melee) troop's body and command the troops during the battle just like if I was there. Once the battle is over I'd go back to my character's body and normal play would resume.

In such fights I would obviously not benefit from any of my character's leadership or tactical perks since they're not who's really commanding the battle. I would however benefit from the perks had by whoever's the commanding unit I'd be controlling.

That would be awesome from a gameplay perspective and also make perfect sense since there are always leaders appointed for every unit in a kingdom's army.

There have been many discussions concerning caravans and their defense(lessness). The ability to command their defense "in person" (as the caravan leader) would relegate their defense to my skill.

How do you rationalize this being a good Idea ? In this game, you're supposed to play your character, not an entire clan or nation. You can't just magically exchange consciousness with other people. I don't get how anyone would second this.

 

[Monkey]

How do you rationalize this being a good Idea ? In this game, you're supposed to play your character, not an entire clan or nation. You can't just magically exchange consciousness with other people. I don't get how anyone would second this.

I'm of the opinion that nobody's supposed to play any game in any predefined way. Concerning "magical consciousness exchange", that is exactly what happens when your character dies: you continue playing, but as one of your heirs instead. My suggestion is for a temporary version of such exchange between the player character and one of their commanding officers, be them governors, highest ranking garrison troops, companions, vassals etc, that will last for the duration of the battle to be remotely commanded/played.

 

[Monkey]

A very valid argument that I haven't seen presented and is against the implementation, even if optional, of my suggestion would be the difficulty of balancing the game in the presence of such a feature. It is quite obvious how better armies perform when actually commanded/played instead of autoresolved. The more battles the player can actually play instead of have autoresolved, the higher the probability of the faction they own or belong to snowballing and ending up expanding and rising in strength too quickly, damaging the game's balance and pace. The optionality of the feature wouldn't help in this case, since by balancing the game towards the playing of every battle (which I assume would not be a desirable thing), a "normal" game (where only player party battles could be commanded/played and the rest autoresolved) would become too difficult, if not nearly impossible. While separate balancing mechanisms and autoresolve formulas for two types of game modes, chosen upon game creation, with and without the possibility of remote commanding, could address the problem, the complexity of such a solution might not be efficient or viable, given TaleWorlds' already slow developement pace and the essentiality and priority of other features.

 

[Niomedes]

I'm of the opinion that nobody's supposed to play any game in any predefined way. Concerning "magical consciousness exchange", that is exactly what happens when your character dies: you continue playing, but as one of your heirs instead. My suggestion is for a temporary version of such exchange between the player character and one of their commanding officers, be them governors, highest ranking garrison troops, companions, vassals etc, that will last for the duration of the battle to be remotely commanded/played.

The difference there is that you've fully become that character then. You're basically supposing that you should be able to play multiple characters at once.

 

[SuperCrumpets]

The difference there is that you've fully become that character then. You're basically supposing that you should be able to play multiple characters at once.

And that would be even better

 

[Death2Tyrants]

A very old game, Colonization, had a fairly simple but smart system of organising caravans. I'd propose a slightly simpler (but smarter) system and that is the player simply decides the route and let the AI work out the buy/sell element.