SP - General Stop the council voting for starting or ending wars

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As it is now, all the lords always vote to start a new war against any faction the player has not fought for a while, and regardless if the player faction is already involved in one or several undecided wars. Preventing the council from starting new wars costs so much influence that it is not sustainable to keep it up.

This needs to change. To be unable to direct the strategy of the faction you're playing seems very odd and is frustrating. A much better option would be to let the clans petition the king to start or end wars, and to take a hit or buff to relations with the clans depending on your decision, but you, the king, decide. Alone. And for this to make sense, so that refusing to start wars does not mean a death spiral of unreedemable relation losses, all the lords cannot be on the same page all the time. Those closest to the potential enemy should be far more reluctant to start a fight, they will bear the brunt of raiding and may lose their fiefs. And for peace decisions, those with many captive family members might be more positive to peace, to have their loved ones back home again. Land hungry barons (with no fiefs, or fewer than average) would be more pro-war, those established with many fiefs less so.

All in all, skewing the game to force me to fight useless wars just to preserve some influence is a poor design choice.
 
Agree. Lots of people have brought up this issue before.

If player freely deciding war purely on their own whim is too unbalanced, some Warband mods included a system of random border incidents that increased risk of war if villagers from your side offended their neighbor and your lords and lands getting discontent if you left these slights against you unresolved. With Bannerlord's barter system these could be negotiated away depending on their severity.
 
but you, the king, decide. Alone.
But thats not how unstable mediveal kingdoms worked. Many cultures had a king who were nothing but a puppet when the vassals had another, and united will. I'm not saying the game represent the best design but to give player kingsdoms Absolute Monarchy/Dictatorship is very far from realistic for the era this game represents.

My suggestion is to tweak the configuration abit, Lords who loves their king and doesn't hold a strong opinion should add their voting power to his decision rather than just check a few flags and say "Yep.. War is nice".

The option "I vote with the King, whatever his decision is" should be an option to all votes.
However, each time they do this, they lose some relation with the king, which can be repaired by entering a dialogue. Sometimes just a "Thank you" is enough, sometimes alittle bit more is required to regain all lost relation(Like an honourary mention that returns all Influence the vassal spent to support your vote on your note).
AI only use this option towards a player king and its not there for player vassals
 
But thats not how unstable mediveal kingdoms worked. Many cultures had a king who were nothing but a puppet when the vassals had another, and united will. I'm not saying the game represent the best design but to give player kingsdoms Absolute Monarchy/Dictatorship is very far from realistic for the era this game represents.

My suggestion is to tweak the configuration abit, Lords who loves their king and doesn't hold a strong opinion should add their voting power to his decision rather than just check a few flags and say "Yep.. War is nice".

The option "I vote with the King, whatever his decision is" should be an option to all votes.
However, each time they do this, they lose some relation with the king, which can be repaired by entering a dialogue. Sometimes just a "Thank you" is enough, sometimes alittle bit more is required to regain all lost relation(Like an honourary mention that returns all Influence the vassal spent to support your vote on your note).
AI only use this option towards a player king and its not there for player vassals

Absolute monarchy is highly realistic if you ask me. Every monarch was an absolute monarch and dictatorship was also long before coined by the romans.

Fun fact, the Romans brought the Dictatorship to fruition to, in times of war, have just 1 man calling the shots. That way they could be assured of a quick decisionmaking process. Julius Ceasar however took Dictatorship and named himself dictator perpetuum (for eternity). He bastardized a democratically chosen position into the term we now know and use it for.


A little more ontopic: I've always found it odd that the player is the last one to cast a decision in the council. If anything you should be the first to vote, and as Tryvenyal mentioned, others should either be with you or against you. High relationship votes more in favor of you, while lower relationships often take the opposition.
 
But thats not how unstable mediveal kingdoms worked.
That may be so. But it is very much how late antiquity Empires worked, even splinters of them. How centralised or decentralised decision-making is within a Kingdom should rather be decided by the laws enacted. If you have a senate, then yes, the nobles will have a say. If you have Sacred Majesty, then perhaps less so.

However, the really big problem, come to think of it, is not the actual voting, it's more how the real aim of the lords is to provide the player with "challenge". It is utterly unbelievable that the lords would work to ruin the kingdom by starting war after war after war, even before concluding the ongoing ones. The noble houses of a kingdom should have goals to guide their decisions and their votes. With an AI so guided, the lords would not all agree all the time. They would have conflicting goals, with the Sovereign being able to support one group or another at different times. And that was very much how an unstable medieval Kingdom worked. Rarely if ever were the nobles all united against the will of the King.

The same goes for AI Kingdoms - in my current game Battania has lost half its country to the Vlandians, but they keep attacking my unified Empire, even though I do not occupy a single Battanian culture settlement. When I fight Vlandia, they do not take advantage of the opportunity to get their own back. Exactly the same with Sturgia, half of which is lost to the Khuzaits.

The AI should have a list of priorities (First, our people should be free or foreign ocupation, then we will conquer new lands or for an Imperial faction First we will reunite the Empire, the barbarians outside our borders can only be a nuisance or an ally). And they should be able to realise when an opportunity arises to acheive those goals.

EDIT: In fact, this is killing the late game, it's that bad. I'm already at war with Vlandia (very powerful), Battania and the Aserai (also very powerful). The Aserai just took Onira while I was busy fighting Vlandia - and my retarded nobles now want to attack the Khuzait, (a third powerful faction) - and there is zero support for ending any of the ongoing wars, even receiving a hefty tribute. And I'm not going to have the influence to block them this time. If the wars were all started by my enemies, I would not mind that much, it makes sense to gang up on the top dog. But this is idiocy.
 
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Absolute monarchy is highly realistic if you ask me. Every monarch was an absolute monarch and dictatorship was also long before coined by the romans.

Fun fact, the Romans brought the Dictatorship to fruition to, in times of war, have just 1 man calling the shots. That way they could be assured of a quick decisionmaking process. Julius Ceasar however took Dictatorship and named himself dictator perpetuum (for eternity). He bastardized a democratically chosen position into the term we now know and use it for.
Yes, absolut monachy/dictatorship should be a thing but not the default! Julius Ceasar surely was a damn successfull emperer and could do what he wanted after he had cemented his power but the journey there? The Player is close to a lowborn rising from a nobody to kingship. It should be possible to rule with Ironfist but it should be challenging to get there!

However, the really big problem, come to think of it, is not the actual voting, it's more how the real aim of the lords is to provide the player with "challenge". It is utterly unbelievable that the lords would work to ruin the kingdom by starting war after war after war, even before concluding the ongoing ones. The noble houses of a kingdom should have goals to guide their decisions and their votes. With an AI so guided, the lords would not all agree all the time. They would have conflicting goals, with the Sovereign being able to support one group or another at different times. And that was very much how an unstable medieval Kingdom worked. Rarely if ever were the nobles all united against the will of the King.
THis is probably the main issue. Devs does not manage to give reasons for why your vassals goes against your will, which I assume is "we" and "a greater good". Bannerlord is not the first to fail to give AI characters a reason for their bidding, nor the last for that matter.

The player often don´t play internal politics. THey are the realm rather than a single person in many aspects. They allways see the best of their realm, which makes it more or less impossible, with both realism and balance, to 1. realistically roleplay with(This the player easely ignores) 2. realistically roleplay against(This the player very much see! "Game is set up against me!! AI is made to ruin my game!!") .
This is not against the players, it's just the reason why this is the main challenge for developers of such games.
 
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