Initially these were written with the idea of being mods but some might be cool to implement in native, even if not fully as written here.
I will paste the text from a document I wrote. Keep in mind that I don't know C#, but I have a slight idea of how the in-game code is set up so I tried to account for this when designing the ideas. I recognize that not all of these would be everyone's cup of tea.
Feature number 1: Status
Social and martial status was extremely important in most historical societies, and more often than not they went hand in hand. So here’s a way I believe such a feature could be implemented into bannerlord, with the use of ‘Status points’.
They would be split into two. ‘Personal status’ and ‘army status’. The ‘status points’ would be a value which determines people’s reactions to you. High points would yield favourable reactions, and low points would yield disdainful reactions from the higher classes in society.
For example a player with a low personal status would not be allowed inside of castles, would not be allowed to wear high status clothes (due to sumptuary laws), and wouldn’t be given the opportunity to serve the lord as a vassal.
Personal status points could be impacted by a few things. Fashionable clothes and armour would raise the status points when worn, but outdated and low-class armour, weapons and clothes would decrease it. This would be achieved by giving each individual item a hidden ‘status value’. The renown of the individual (a value already in game) would also raise the status points. Criminal rating would severely lower them.
‘Army status’ would work similarly. Having an army with up to date and modern soldiers would raise the army status, while having soldiers with old and outdated equipment would lower it (the value would depend on the aforementioned values assigned to individual items, and in this case the median would be taken from the combined values of the soldiers).
Winning battles and accumulating renown would also raise the army status, while losing battles would lower it.
A low army status would mean that lords are less likely to hire you as a mercenary and offer less in payment. A high army status would mean that interest in hiring your party would be high and the money offered would also be much greater.
Feature number 2: Personal Mercenary recruitment
In history, mercenaries were often hired in groups or companies. However, what if you wanted to create your own company? This feature is intended to come close to the way historical companies recruited their members.
The main idea is that recruitment would be quite different from the normal troops. One would go into a town and put out an ‘advertisement’ for recruitment (this would be done through a menu). In the menu one can select what type of troops one wishes to recruit. As you might know the armour in the game is divided by tiers, so you’d have the option of requesting the recruits to show up with a minimum tier of armour for the body, head, legs and hands.
(for example you set the bar at a t4 helmet and a tier 2 torso).
Then you’d have a specific chance to recruit troops per day based on factors discussed below. If you’re lucky you could pull several recruits per day, but if you’re unlucky you could go several days without recruiting any.
Putting out strict requirements would guarantee well equipped troops, but it would also lower the chances of getting any recruits (an arbitrary number would be that you have a 100% chance to score at least one recruit per day with no equipment, but a 5% to score one with the highest level equipment). Recruits with more equipment would also request more pay. The higher renown you have, the higher the chance of scoring recruits.
The recruits would then pull random armour from the culture the town has if they show up. Potentially there could be a feature to request specific pieces of armour instead of just a tier, but this would then lower the recruitment chances.
There could also be a feature where one can send out officers to do the recruiting for you instead of having to personally be in the town. This was also a thing done historically.
Feature number 3: Less specific troop upgrades
This is the one I am least confident about since I don’t know if one can change the upgrade system. But the idea is that instead of upgrading to a specific equipment, the troop would instead only be given general directives towards the equipment it would pick.
Instead of having the upgrade specify a nasal helmet and a mail hauberk, it would instead only say a ‘Tier 3 helmet’ and ‘Tier 4 body armour’, letting the computer randomly pick from all of the available items which fit that.
But here’s the main part. This would depend on the culture you’re currently in. So if you were from the Empire but campaigning in Aserai lands, every troop you upgrade in Aserai lands would pull from the available armour assigned to the Aserai culture (since you’d only be able to find the armour which is locally sold). Or if you were campaigning in vlandia, they’d pull from the vlandian pool.
And if you wish to avoid this, you have to wait until you reach back home to upgrade the soldiers. An additional feature would be an option to tell all of your troops to re-equip themselves with the local gear, but this would cost you money.
Feature number 4: Troop readiness and exhaustion
Marching is annoying. Marching in armour is even more so. This is the reason for why soldiers on the march rarely armoured up fully, and would wear lighter configurations (if anything at all) for better comfort.
The idea is that this would be represented in bannerlord. By default, when travelling, your soldiers would be armoured lightly (could be solved by giving them alternate loadouts). If you want them to armour up you’d have to press a button to do so, which would take some time on the overland map.
But if you marched in full gear your soldiers would become exhausted after a little while, lowering their effectiveness in battle. On the other hand if you got ambushed without having the time to armour up, you and your troops would be in battle with the light armour instead of the full protection.
This would create a very interesting dynamic to armies and would create an advantage to catching them unawares.
Feature number 5: Supply carts
Armies would often bring supply carts with weapons and ammunition. This could be a feature when creating an army in bannerlord.
The downside of bringing carts would be that the army would move slower. The more carts are brought with the army, the more the speed is impacted. They would also of course cost an unspecified amount to buy (can be tweaked at will).
However bringing them would have the benefit of being able to equip your troops better. For example the carts could contain polearms, which could be grabbed by the archers once they’re out of arrows (this was done in some historical battles).
In real life, knights would also sometimes bring several polearms into battle. Since they obviously cannot carry more than one on the person the secondary ones would be carried by servants or put into carts. In the late medieval period usually a knight brought a lance and a pollaxe, and would switch to his pollaxe once the situation called for it. With this feature, that could potentially be implemented.
Both of the things above would pair very well with unsheathable polearms and large weapons.
The carts would also be able to contain extra ammo for the ranged troops. So in the end while the carts would be expensive and would slow the army down, they’d provide large benefits in the actual battles.
I will paste the text from a document I wrote. Keep in mind that I don't know C#, but I have a slight idea of how the in-game code is set up so I tried to account for this when designing the ideas. I recognize that not all of these would be everyone's cup of tea.
Feature number 1: Status
Social and martial status was extremely important in most historical societies, and more often than not they went hand in hand. So here’s a way I believe such a feature could be implemented into bannerlord, with the use of ‘Status points’.
They would be split into two. ‘Personal status’ and ‘army status’. The ‘status points’ would be a value which determines people’s reactions to you. High points would yield favourable reactions, and low points would yield disdainful reactions from the higher classes in society.
For example a player with a low personal status would not be allowed inside of castles, would not be allowed to wear high status clothes (due to sumptuary laws), and wouldn’t be given the opportunity to serve the lord as a vassal.
Personal status points could be impacted by a few things. Fashionable clothes and armour would raise the status points when worn, but outdated and low-class armour, weapons and clothes would decrease it. This would be achieved by giving each individual item a hidden ‘status value’. The renown of the individual (a value already in game) would also raise the status points. Criminal rating would severely lower them.
‘Army status’ would work similarly. Having an army with up to date and modern soldiers would raise the army status, while having soldiers with old and outdated equipment would lower it (the value would depend on the aforementioned values assigned to individual items, and in this case the median would be taken from the combined values of the soldiers).
Winning battles and accumulating renown would also raise the army status, while losing battles would lower it.
A low army status would mean that lords are less likely to hire you as a mercenary and offer less in payment. A high army status would mean that interest in hiring your party would be high and the money offered would also be much greater.
Feature number 2: Personal Mercenary recruitment
In history, mercenaries were often hired in groups or companies. However, what if you wanted to create your own company? This feature is intended to come close to the way historical companies recruited their members.
The main idea is that recruitment would be quite different from the normal troops. One would go into a town and put out an ‘advertisement’ for recruitment (this would be done through a menu). In the menu one can select what type of troops one wishes to recruit. As you might know the armour in the game is divided by tiers, so you’d have the option of requesting the recruits to show up with a minimum tier of armour for the body, head, legs and hands.
(for example you set the bar at a t4 helmet and a tier 2 torso).
Then you’d have a specific chance to recruit troops per day based on factors discussed below. If you’re lucky you could pull several recruits per day, but if you’re unlucky you could go several days without recruiting any.
Putting out strict requirements would guarantee well equipped troops, but it would also lower the chances of getting any recruits (an arbitrary number would be that you have a 100% chance to score at least one recruit per day with no equipment, but a 5% to score one with the highest level equipment). Recruits with more equipment would also request more pay. The higher renown you have, the higher the chance of scoring recruits.
The recruits would then pull random armour from the culture the town has if they show up. Potentially there could be a feature to request specific pieces of armour instead of just a tier, but this would then lower the recruitment chances.
There could also be a feature where one can send out officers to do the recruiting for you instead of having to personally be in the town. This was also a thing done historically.
Feature number 3: Less specific troop upgrades
This is the one I am least confident about since I don’t know if one can change the upgrade system. But the idea is that instead of upgrading to a specific equipment, the troop would instead only be given general directives towards the equipment it would pick.
Instead of having the upgrade specify a nasal helmet and a mail hauberk, it would instead only say a ‘Tier 3 helmet’ and ‘Tier 4 body armour’, letting the computer randomly pick from all of the available items which fit that.
But here’s the main part. This would depend on the culture you’re currently in. So if you were from the Empire but campaigning in Aserai lands, every troop you upgrade in Aserai lands would pull from the available armour assigned to the Aserai culture (since you’d only be able to find the armour which is locally sold). Or if you were campaigning in vlandia, they’d pull from the vlandian pool.
And if you wish to avoid this, you have to wait until you reach back home to upgrade the soldiers. An additional feature would be an option to tell all of your troops to re-equip themselves with the local gear, but this would cost you money.
Feature number 4: Troop readiness and exhaustion
Marching is annoying. Marching in armour is even more so. This is the reason for why soldiers on the march rarely armoured up fully, and would wear lighter configurations (if anything at all) for better comfort.
The idea is that this would be represented in bannerlord. By default, when travelling, your soldiers would be armoured lightly (could be solved by giving them alternate loadouts). If you want them to armour up you’d have to press a button to do so, which would take some time on the overland map.
But if you marched in full gear your soldiers would become exhausted after a little while, lowering their effectiveness in battle. On the other hand if you got ambushed without having the time to armour up, you and your troops would be in battle with the light armour instead of the full protection.
This would create a very interesting dynamic to armies and would create an advantage to catching them unawares.
Feature number 5: Supply carts
Armies would often bring supply carts with weapons and ammunition. This could be a feature when creating an army in bannerlord.
The downside of bringing carts would be that the army would move slower. The more carts are brought with the army, the more the speed is impacted. They would also of course cost an unspecified amount to buy (can be tweaked at will).
However bringing them would have the benefit of being able to equip your troops better. For example the carts could contain polearms, which could be grabbed by the archers once they’re out of arrows (this was done in some historical battles).
In real life, knights would also sometimes bring several polearms into battle. Since they obviously cannot carry more than one on the person the secondary ones would be carried by servants or put into carts. In the late medieval period usually a knight brought a lance and a pollaxe, and would switch to his pollaxe once the situation called for it. With this feature, that could potentially be implemented.
Both of the things above would pair very well with unsheathable polearms and large weapons.
The carts would also be able to contain extra ammo for the ranged troops. So in the end while the carts would be expensive and would slow the army down, they’d provide large benefits in the actual battles.
