Saievo
Recruit
Firstly to the Bannerlord team: Good job on fixing (fingers crossed) bankruptcy of NPC lords.
Secondly, here are a few suggestions to further improve the game's economy and overall feel of the game:
1. Banditry is prevalent with low prosperity. This makes sense upon taking a new village/castle/town. It would force you to take care of your new area (NPC lords included) and earn this back. As prosperity rises, however, banditry reduces to the point of 0 at a high level. Yes, 0. Chasing down bandits is tedious as is knocking out bandit camps. This should 100% tie back in to recruitment ability but inversely. At low prosperity villagers are desperate for work and you can find a plethora of tier 1 recruits. As the prosperity increases, you find very few troops but the ones you do find are tier 4+. This is on a slider so it can run the entire gamut. This would also tie in to esteem with village notables. I think there should be fewer quests available but they give a great deal more reputation if completed. This way, early on in the game, a player might actively choose to seek out villages in their preferred faction to get those better units. Of course with less money, they'll likely be frugal.
2. Caravans need to be more of a "guarantee." Think about the silk road. Cities and nations went to great lengths to protect this route and all nations should actively help caravans in distress vs banditry (if they're able). An NPC's trade skill should directly correlate with incoming wealth earned from caravans. Historically, banditry tended to be against the common folk over guarded caravans, which is what you originally had. Protecting villagers should really tie in with prosperity of a region.
3. PUT MORE FOLLOWERS WITH HIGH TRADE SKILL IN THE GAME. In fact, you should really diversify followers. As the game goes on, I tend to see more followers with zero skills over followers with improved skills.
4. More workshops!!! It's strange that I can have 6 caravans at tier 4 but only 4 workshops. If a player is focused on trade, give them more options, not less. Also, historically, monopolies were common throughout nations and large wealthy land owners.
5. Diversify goods and raw resources more throughout each faction. Getting to 200+ is a grind and it would be nice if I could focus on 1-2 regions instead of massive map trawls.
6. List animal prices. Seriously, you do it for horses & mules, why not cows, sheep, etc?!
7. Blocking/sacking a nation's caravans should have major impact on quality of field strength from specific cities. Knocking out a supply line before/during a siege or war was often vital to victory.
8. I get that buying a city from a noble was too cheap previously but now, it's too high. Yes, you want a certain level of realism but working hard to get to 225 should be rewarded. Cities are now outside the reach of relevant scope at about 2 mil denar. Why even go trade at this point if you're going to pigeonhole us that badly?!
9. Quality of life tweak for everything: give more skill & stat increases. Stat increases every 3 levels instead of 4. Honestly, you're really stingy with this stuff and for no reason that I can tell. As it stands, I can only focus on 1 stat block (social for trading atm), which means 3 skills max. It should really be 2 stat blocks for diversity and an increase to overall fun. That way I could go high vigor for a maxed melee block or perhaps I want to be a smarty pants and be a boss at sieges, medicine, and steward.
10. Speaking of Steward, it seems mandatory to increase party size. I think it needs reworked entirely to focus on JUST villages/towns (giving town/city focused playthroughs their own flavor). Split the party increase mechanism into leadership and tactics. Castles should be their own thing under Engineering.
Besides the tweaks to AI in patch 1.3, I really feel like your recent "fixes" to game play have been large steps in the wrong direction. Making auto-calc battles vs low level bandits kill tier 5 units now is ridiculous. Especially when my 2 vigor, 20 point polearm trader can take out 30 low level bandits with just her Menavlion. What's the point of Tactics if not to speed up game play and make winning battles easier?! If anything, you need to adjust melee. Bandits spawn too much and get out of hand quickly, since the NPC AI doesn't combat them nearly enough. Noble respawns are too fast with too high of quality units. I won't get into it here, since this forum is for feedback related to the economy. Unfortunately, it's all interrelated.
Secondly, here are a few suggestions to further improve the game's economy and overall feel of the game:
1. Banditry is prevalent with low prosperity. This makes sense upon taking a new village/castle/town. It would force you to take care of your new area (NPC lords included) and earn this back. As prosperity rises, however, banditry reduces to the point of 0 at a high level. Yes, 0. Chasing down bandits is tedious as is knocking out bandit camps. This should 100% tie back in to recruitment ability but inversely. At low prosperity villagers are desperate for work and you can find a plethora of tier 1 recruits. As the prosperity increases, you find very few troops but the ones you do find are tier 4+. This is on a slider so it can run the entire gamut. This would also tie in to esteem with village notables. I think there should be fewer quests available but they give a great deal more reputation if completed. This way, early on in the game, a player might actively choose to seek out villages in their preferred faction to get those better units. Of course with less money, they'll likely be frugal.
2. Caravans need to be more of a "guarantee." Think about the silk road. Cities and nations went to great lengths to protect this route and all nations should actively help caravans in distress vs banditry (if they're able). An NPC's trade skill should directly correlate with incoming wealth earned from caravans. Historically, banditry tended to be against the common folk over guarded caravans, which is what you originally had. Protecting villagers should really tie in with prosperity of a region.
3. PUT MORE FOLLOWERS WITH HIGH TRADE SKILL IN THE GAME. In fact, you should really diversify followers. As the game goes on, I tend to see more followers with zero skills over followers with improved skills.
4. More workshops!!! It's strange that I can have 6 caravans at tier 4 but only 4 workshops. If a player is focused on trade, give them more options, not less. Also, historically, monopolies were common throughout nations and large wealthy land owners.
5. Diversify goods and raw resources more throughout each faction. Getting to 200+ is a grind and it would be nice if I could focus on 1-2 regions instead of massive map trawls.
6. List animal prices. Seriously, you do it for horses & mules, why not cows, sheep, etc?!
7. Blocking/sacking a nation's caravans should have major impact on quality of field strength from specific cities. Knocking out a supply line before/during a siege or war was often vital to victory.
8. I get that buying a city from a noble was too cheap previously but now, it's too high. Yes, you want a certain level of realism but working hard to get to 225 should be rewarded. Cities are now outside the reach of relevant scope at about 2 mil denar. Why even go trade at this point if you're going to pigeonhole us that badly?!
9. Quality of life tweak for everything: give more skill & stat increases. Stat increases every 3 levels instead of 4. Honestly, you're really stingy with this stuff and for no reason that I can tell. As it stands, I can only focus on 1 stat block (social for trading atm), which means 3 skills max. It should really be 2 stat blocks for diversity and an increase to overall fun. That way I could go high vigor for a maxed melee block or perhaps I want to be a smarty pants and be a boss at sieges, medicine, and steward.
10. Speaking of Steward, it seems mandatory to increase party size. I think it needs reworked entirely to focus on JUST villages/towns (giving town/city focused playthroughs their own flavor). Split the party increase mechanism into leadership and tactics. Castles should be their own thing under Engineering.
Besides the tweaks to AI in patch 1.3, I really feel like your recent "fixes" to game play have been large steps in the wrong direction. Making auto-calc battles vs low level bandits kill tier 5 units now is ridiculous. Especially when my 2 vigor, 20 point polearm trader can take out 30 low level bandits with just her Menavlion. What's the point of Tactics if not to speed up game play and make winning battles easier?! If anything, you need to adjust melee. Bandits spawn too much and get out of hand quickly, since the NPC AI doesn't combat them nearly enough. Noble respawns are too fast with too high of quality units. I won't get into it here, since this forum is for feedback related to the economy. Unfortunately, it's all interrelated.
