Interesting point I've considered before too.
Yep, making shieldwalls and armor work better will make battles longer, possibly even doubling the length from, say, 3 minutes on average to 6 minutes on average. And obviously that will increase the amount of time the player spends doing battles.
However, that's only a bad thing in the current state of the game because:
* All battles are tactically samey, so they get very repetitive.
This can be fixed. And by doing that, battles will be more unpredictable, involve more player agency and be more fun to play.
* The autoresolve system can kill high-tier units in situations it would never happen otherwise, so players don't want to autoresolve easy boring battles. Fixing autoresolve will fix this problem. That way, if you think a battle is boring and easy you can just skip it.
* Make lords take longer to come back to battle after they are defeated, this will reduce the number of grind battles.
I agree with the both you and
@Spyware, I want to play longer battles with time for formations and tactics. But I don't want to spend a bigger percentage of the game on battles.
After a big battle it should take the enemy longer to come back with a strong army.
I still remember the first big battle as a subcommand back in march 2020, I was in awe! 10 battles later it lost its glamour.
I would prefer the standard party vs party battles, about 100 - 200 man per side for the majority of the time, with the big battles as icing on the cake.
This topic is very tricky to balance, everyone has a different preferences for game time for different aspects of the game:
- questing
- minor battles
- major battles
- sieging
- map traveling
- trading
- bandits
- tournaments
- equipment , skills /perk management
- clan management
- kingdom management
- fief management
- ...what ever I forgot.
What I would like to see is difference in play style in different stages of the game.
early game: more focus on bandits, trading, questing and tournaments for example
mid game: more focus on minor battles, clan management, fief management, occasional major battle/siege
late game: more focus on kingdom management and major battles, sieges, and setting up your children as future rulers.
It is there for the most part, but early game grinds should be delegated to subordinates in later stages and late game kingdoms management needs a lot of improvements.
One suggestion I read somewhere is to lower the amount of days per year so you children come of age faster and are needed to take over.
I never finished a campaign with the child of the MC, I was either already bored or too powerful.
A dip in character level and some new grudges and lowered relationships, would spice the late game up.
afterthought:
I t would be nice to be able to give quests to NPC's in the late game:
- collect x amount of warhorses
- clear this area of bandits
- deliver food to a city or army
- raid x villages
- incite a war against a kingdom
- train X amount of type Y troop for me
- find this person and breng them to me (or deliver a message)