[Suggestion] Morale and Party system improvement

Users who are viewing this thread

RoelandBE

Recruit
I've been playing Warband for a while now and I've noticed that it's a great game with a great concept, though it still has a few loose ends in its gameplay. In this topic I'd like to adress a few of those flaws and offer some suggestions for improving them.

As the title says, I will be especially looking into the Morale system and the effects they have on your party, but I will also zoom in on the cohesion of the Kingdoms (the relationships between Villages and Lords, etc.). For now, this might sound quite vague so I'd advise you to keep reading (:p) and things will get clear along the way :smile:

Morale system and my opinions

1) The first thing I saw is that your army's morale gets affected by the nation you're at war with. This is very good and realistic, since every man in the dark ages had some sort of patriotism for his own country and fighting against his kinsmen would definitily tear him apart and cause him to desert eventually if the fighting continues for too long. This is especially cool when you're playing as a Rebel faction and certainly adds to the realism and fun!

The only remark I have on that is that there should be some sort of limit to the amount of morale you lose, because you start getting -50 morale deduction after a while which causes your entire army to deflect.... and that can be a ***** :p

2) The party limit deduction is way too high in my opinion. As the Morale Page in the Notes sections says, 'tight-knit groups of knights' are way closer with each other than large groups. This is true in a sense, but this gives a HUGE disadvantage to the player because only he really gets affected by this and NPC Lords etc. just automatically recruit new warriors when they lose some.

my suggestion is that you decrease this, since large groups have a certain advantage in making more friends (i know this sounds really cliché) and less chance at being picked on by others, since there is a larger variety of personalities and there is nobody that really stands out and is 'special'. So there will be more of a feeling of equality, which might not be there when you travel in small groups since in small groups, people can more often see who gets most priviliges by their lord.

3) This probably is the most important suggestion of this topic (wondering why I put it last..)

There is not enough connection between your army and you, their Lord!
For instance: your party morale can be very low (around 10~20) without you getting any sort of notice, until it is too late and one of your elite Swadian Knights has deserted. This is just not well thought of. There should be at least some sort of communication between you and your army, even though the political system is Feudalism. In Medieval times, the Landlords were timely notified when there was unrest in the village or in the Party Camp and they had the option to do something about it. (or make their lives better or just flog the **** out of them)

My suggestion is that you should be able to communicate a lot with your army, other then the almost totally useless 'Tell me about yourself' which just shows their skills.

Every group of troops (for instance your group of Swadian Knights or Rhodok Militia or Nord Warriors, etc.) should be able to talk to you at a point where the morale is very low. They should be able to inform you what their problem in the party really is and you should be able to get a chance to do something about the dire situations your troops are in, instead of just buying various amounts of food to keep them happy or to fight a lot.

Example of a problem they can show you:
'We are tired of fighting, please let us retire'
Option 1: No, you get flogged for your bad discipline (relation with certain Pro Feudal lords of your realm +5, relation with Lezalit if in party +5, Morale -10, +1000 party experience)
Option 2: I am sorry, you can't leave yet but I will give you a larger part of the spoils of war (Morale +5, wages of the troops in question get increased)
Option 3: Yes, you have fought well and you can return to your fields. (Relation with the Kingdom they came from +5, honour +5, renown +5)

'Rhodok warriors have a problem with the Swadian warriors, because their nations are at war with eachother'
Option 1: I don't want betrayal in my army, Rhodok warriors get flogged
Option 2: Learn to live with eachother (chance of desertion)
Option 3: [Persuasion] We have no quarrel with them in this army, we are one unit and they will have your backs as well as you will have theirs

Etc etc.... I believe this will add another dimension to the gameplay.

Other loose ends in the gameplay

1) Your Faction Relationship with a Kingdom is completely useless, it only shows who you are at war with and who you are oathbound to.

Example:

Your relation with the factions are:
Kingdom of Swadia: 0 (Indifferent)
Etc. etc.

What I mean by this is that it is a totally abstract and unused feature in the game. You can have 12 relationship with the Kingdom of Swadia and every single village, town and Lord in that realm can hate your guts with a -20 relationship and nobody would care.

My suggestion is to connect the Faction Relationships with Villages, Towns and Lords, so that if you do something good for the Kingdom, it affects every village in it because the news eventually spreads like wildfire and a lot of people will have heard of your great deeds and that should increase their opinions of you and thus as well your village, town or lord relationship.

You could also make it that if you do a good quest for your Fief Village 1, that Fief Village 2 and Fief Village 3 also get slightly improved relationships with you, since it means that you're a good lord and you bring prosperity to your lands.

By doing this, you connect an otherwise useless feature to every single village in the Kingdom and this would make the world of Calradia an even more vivid and ever changing place.
This would also be a huge help to improve lord relationships, because if we're honest... getting 20 different lords to have high relationships with you can be a pain in the ass sometimes... especially if you want to run for Marshall after 200 days.

2) Feasts and their in-depthness (lol, cool word)

Let's face it... feasts get annoying after a while (a very short while). The lords that are there are completely useless, other than the fact that they bring their daughters and sisters. For the rest, they just stand there being pretty... (haven't played a Female warrior yet, but I think in that game the daughters and sisters will just stand there)
A feast should be an opportunity to engage in a little small talk with them to improve your relationships. (You could call that Feast-networking) There should definitely be more interaction between the NPCs and you on a feast... Small talk is one thing, but it should also be a place for serious political discussions where Lords can ask you questions about 'what do you think of the commoners' and then you get the evident options to choose from. Depending on his views on that subject, your relationship improves or decreases. If you just answer what he likes to hear, you get a small decrease in relationship and your controversy increases as well.

Stuff like that really need to be implemented into the game to give it a more complete feel, because now it's like an open-ended game with only a few possibilities which is quite a paradox...

Funny thing is that the game is published by Paradox Entertainment (lol)

3) Recruiting volunteers

Is it just me, or is the entire 'recruit volunteers' as a Lord just ridiculous? I can understand that as an oathless mercenary, you need to look for volunteers, but come on... It's the Feudal Age for crying out loud. If you have a fief, you need to be able to enlist a certain amount of that Village or Town (provided they are your fiefs).

So if you hold Praven for instance, you should have an option to 'Enlist for your army'. Then you get to choose from:
Enlist 5 recruits (-1 relationship with town)
Enlist 10 recruits (-2 relationship with town)
Enlist 20 recruits (-3 relationship with town)
Enlist 50 recruits (-10 relationship with town)

Same for a village, only then lower amounts of recruits that you can Enlist.
The relationship deduction shouldn't be too big, since they still live in a Feudal society, meaning they don't know anything better than to listen to the Landlord and do his bidding... (provided those illiterates even know anything) I'm being a bit harsh, but well... that simply was the situation back then.
You still need to be able to recruit volunteers in every settlement though, only in your fiefs you get the added option to just Enlist them. Also, recruiting volunteers should be connected to your Renown (not sure if it already is)

Like who doesn't want to join King Harlaus' army? The man is a goddamn hero and has 1200 renown... Famous Bastard oO

That was it, yaaaay
I doubt anyone has read this entirely, so if you did and you want to reply: type 7 at the end of your post lol... a way to find out who doesn't know what he's talking about and hasn't even read the topic :p
 
I got fed up with always having low morale with a somewhat big army (Got over 70 units) just because I had more units. I thought an army would appreciate strength in numbers especially when they are well fed,trained and usually I am not doing anything.

Don't think in any period would someone who is being paid, gets free food and has to do nothing most of the time complain and leave.

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,36638.0.html

Go to that link above if you want to change some of the morale settings. I changed my leadership bonus so that I no longer have to worry about troops leaving simply because we haven't killed enough enemies lately or done anything exciting.

7 :???:

edit :
RoelandBE said:
You still need to be able to recruit volunteers in every settlement though, only in your fiefs you get the added option to just Enlist them. Also, recruiting volunteers should be connected to your Renown (not sure if it already is)

The higher your relationship with the town/vilalge is the more people you can actually recruit from it. I have I think 60 or so with my fief and I can recruit a lot of people in a short amount of time.

Renown is linked to how many troops you can have in your party.
 
You still need to be able to recruit volunteers in every settlement though, only in your fiefs you get the added option to just Enlist them. Also, recruiting volunteers should be connected to your Renown (not sure if it already is)


The higher your relationship with the town/vilalge is the more people you can actually recruit from it. I have I think 60 or so with my fief and I can recruit a lot of people in a short amount of time.

Renown is linked to how many troops you can have in your party.

I know that you can recruit more people if you have a higher relationship, but it just doesn't make sense to me that it have to be volunteers. I keep noticing that the devs want to have the game as realistic and logical as possible, but one of the base aspects of the game is entirely wrong :p

If every lord that lived about 700-300 years ago should have only taken the volunteers, I doubt there would've been any armies at all :p I mean, in the British Empire being conscripted into the army was actually used as a punishment for thieves and beggars (basically anyone from the gutter).

The only nation I can think of that mostly used volunteers was medieval France during the 100 Years War, and their army existed mostly of knights from the noble houses who sought 'glory'. Small detail is that they got their asses kicked badly, with almost half of France being occupied by the English.

And about the renown: I know it's linked to how many people your party can have, but it would make more sense if it affected the amount of people that would actually want to volunteer and want to be in your party.
 
Back
Top Bottom