Terrible “Tribute/Peace” mechanics

[MattTheMan500]

The tribute system is ridiculous. I am absolutely destroying my enemy in war; I have taken almost all of their castles and cities, but have not done any village raiding. On top of this, I have the faction leader (King) as a prisoner. By all accounts, I should be able to sue for peace and charge them a boatload of tribute as I am WINNING the war tremendously. However, the stupid game logic wants ME to pay tribute to them in order to end the war because they have raided more of my villages. This makes absolutely no sense. Even if this was the developer goal, that needs to be changed immediately. It doesn’t make any logical sense that I have almost all of their castles and cities, but because they have raided more of my villages they are somehow “winning” the war. What an embarrassing game mechanic, and quite frankly one that decrease the value of the game tremendously. This needs to be fixed. If I have 5 cities captured, and they have 0 cities captured and 5 villages raided, I should be winning the war full stop. Fix this massive game breaking mechanic immediately. I have seen so many Reddit and steam posts about people being extremely upset because of this terrible game mechanic. It needs to be changed to reflect the actual winner of the war.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

It's unintuitive, but Tribute calculations appear to be based on the desire for one side or another to be at war plus a penalty against the player (presumably to punish potential exploitation of declaring peace/war arbitrarily by the player). Basically, if one side's on the brink, they have a huge incentive to continue fighting to regain lost territories and the winning force could get invaded by third parties to create opportunities for reconquest. Unless you exterminate them all via execution or imprison them all permanently via a perk combo, they don't really stay down for good so, at the very least, they'll subsist as bandits if they can't regain their former status as land holders.

I do think the "kingdom lifecycle" needs looking at though since it is kind of annoying for the remnants of a destroyed faction to persist as bandits around the former capitals of their former factions. I think kingdoms ought to be destroyed once they lose all their land after, say, a season has past and then have the possibility of reconstituting whenever rebel factions pop-up. This way you don't have to deal with persistent bandits biting your ankles forever and the possibility remains for a destroyed faction to return even if in a minor city-state form.

 

[DavetheDavestDave]

The tribute system is ridiculous. I am absolutely destroying my enemy in war; I have taken almost all of their castles and cities, but have not done any village raiding. On top of this, I have the faction leader (King) as a prisoner. By all accounts, I should be able to sue for peace and charge them a boatload of tribute as I am WINNING the war tremendously. However, the stupid game logic wants ME to pay tribute to them in order to end the war because they have raided more of my villages. This makes absolutely no sense. Even if this was the developer goal, that needs to be changed immediately. It doesn’t make any logical sense that I have almost all of their castles and cities, but because they have raided more of my villages they are somehow “winning” the war. What an embarrassing game mechanic, and quite frankly one that decrease the value of the game tremendously. This needs to be fixed. If I have 5 cities captured, and they have 0 cities captured and 5 villages raided, I should be winning the war full stop. Fix this massive game breaking mechanic immediately. I have seen so many Reddit and steam posts about people being extremely upset because of this terrible game mechanic. It needs to be changed to reflect the actual winner of the war.

just attack tem over and over again untill they surender
Simple and easy solution

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

You don't want them surrendering beyond a certain point, though; you want them endlessly farmed casually by your peers/vassals! From what I've played, if a defeated kingdom (especially a homeless defeated kingdom) has enough time to gather new troops from the villages, they can come back as a significant threat but if they're constantly being beaten down then the worst they can do is set fires in remote villages without the capacity to besiege decently staffed castles or cities. It's ironic how the final hours of the late game was basically just me vetoing peace orders lol. My biggest Influence drain went from vetoing war declarations to vetoing peace declarations just because it only made sense to keep the wars going on forever due to the friendly snowball and what I described above.

 

[DavetheDavestDave]

You don't want them surrendering beyond a certain point, though; you want them endlessly farmed casually by your peers/vassals! From what I've played, if a defeated kingdom (especially a homeless defeated kingdom) has enough time to gather new troops from the villages, they can come back as a significant threat but if they're constantly being beaten down then the worst they can do is set fires in remote villages without the capacity to besiege decently staffed castles or cities. It's ironic how the final hours of the late game was basically just me vetoing peace orders lol. My biggest Influence drain went from vetoing war declarations to vetoing peace declarations just because it only made sense to keep the wars going on forever due to the friendly snowball and what I described above.

thats why i like to have a high charm skill
i you get a bunch ton of influince from it

 

[DrDragonlance]

Raids having a high value makes sense because you are basically paying them to stop burning down your Kingdom. Raids are devastating and will be even more after the next update.

The one thing they need to adjust is Casualty calculations. Wounded troops from the winning side of a battle are adding into the Casualty count on the losing side. If you are dominating a war, the Casualty count will probably be close, even though its realistically a slaughter. If they change that, I wonder if that alters Tribute payments.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

thats why i like to have a high charm skill
i you get a bunch ton of influince from it

I know, I leveled it up rapidly once my first generation protagonist became a sultan, and again for my daughter/heir, but when I gotta spend 4,000 Influence to veto my pacifist vassals, I really need all the Influence I can get lol. Generated tons passively by the end, but still ended up abusing the "clan members imprisoning nobles for Influence" exploit near the very end, I'm ashamed to say. So, if I hadn't, it would have taken be a bit longer lol. Granted, maybe I shouldn't have purchased the loyalty of so many noble clans... but having ~30 or so clans roaming about does make the work of policing the realm and expanding it a lot easier than trying to do it myself with only a handful of lackeys.

 

[Yoshioki Ouchi]

Raids having a high value makes sense because you are basically paying them to stop burning down your Kingdom. Raids are devastating and will be even more after the next update.

The one thing they need to adjust is Casualty calculations. Wounded troops from the winning side of a battle are adding into the Casualty count on the losing side. If you are dominating a war, the Casualty count will probably be close, even though its realistically a slaughter. If they change that, I wonder if that alters Tribute payments.

I'm already shuddering since my poor Senala had its 10,000 Prosperity reduced to 2,500 thanks to Aserai terrorists during my first playthrough since I was too busying uniting the entire world to do anything about them lol. Then again, it also said the "burnt out" phase would last longer so I suspect the actual damage to hearths (maybe not so much Prosperity) will be reduced. At any rate, at least being a bad guy appears to pay better since...

I'm not sure how it'd go with Tributes, but I have noticed there's some kind of flat Tribute amount imposed on top of whatever the war score calculates and I'm guessing that's the discourage the player from abusing war/peace declarations (like to free up a besieged city, for example) or force the player's side to deal some damage before agreeing to at least an unconditional peace, never mind a favorable one. Frankly, I don't think it's a big deal; I think a bigger deal is how fallen kingdoms rove about like bandits. Although they can eventually be ignored in forever-war with them, they can still be a real annoyance and I'd like it if they "revisited the clan/kingdom lifecycle" and changed it so that kingdoms disappear after a while of homelessness and only reconstitute through rebel/free cities. This'd allow them a comeback without requiring they function like terrorists forever for the off-chance it happens how it does currently.