Troops are Too cheap, Player Gears are Too Expensive

[randomuser]

Shouldn't players also need to buy gears for the troops that are being upgraded ? Warhorse is required to upgrade mounted units, why other gears are not required and the fee is so low ?
Player gears are dramatic expensive that worth hundreds of knight, is this reasonable ?

In my opinion, the economy is bad because it is not based on war expense so that there isn't an effective money sink. The solders and their gears are all expendables so they should cost more in order to consume the over generated currency. Buying lord and player gears are all one time expense so they are nothing in the long run.

Edit: I clearly know that players can always make extra money. However, one of the major income is robbing AI lords, beat them in battle and sell loots. Players use OP troops to win 100 vs 300 that can loot a lot of money with little cost. Basically the players are entering the phase of late game and get bored quickly when they got a group of OP troops. We need to put some restrictions on these OP troops so that players can't gather a lot of them easily. Mounted troops require warhorse for upgrading is a good idea and Fian should require something to upgrade too. Player won't always use the OP troops when they can't fulfill the upgrading requirement easily.
We don't really have to increase the price of troops or their upgrades. We can also lower the market price of battle loot and tournament rewards in order to make denar more valuable.

 

[Apocal]

It is because drastically increasing the price of troops hits the AI much harder than the player. They pay garrison wages but aren't nearly as good at making money. It results in a continent full of small parties and positively tiny garrisons that can be rolled over by any party the player cares to field.

 

[randomuser]

They pay garrison wages but aren't nearly as good at making money

How about giving AI a handicap bonus on the tax ? You are talking about the upkeep which I think is okay. I mean the upgrades should be more expensive or require something

Actually I like idea of requiring warhorse to upgrade mounted units so it can limit player from getting a lot of T6 knights. Other T6 troops should also have some restrictions to stop player from spamming easy Fian. The AI lords can already get free troops and upgrades so I don't mind giving them more money.

 

[Apocal]

The AI lords can already get free troops and upgrades so I don't mind giving them more money.

The majority of AI troops aren't free and I don't think their upgrades are either.

And while you might not mind giving the AI more money, lots of players hate it with a burning passion, because it makes it impossible to hurt AI factions.

 

[froggyluv]

The majority of AI troops aren't free and I don't think their upgrades are either.

And while you might not mind giving the AI more money, lots of players hate it with a burning passion, because it makes it impossible to hurt AI factions.

Thats why we (and by We I mean the collective ME) was hoping and praying they had spent years calibrating how to even this thing out.

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[randomuser]

The majority of AI troops aren't free and I don't think their upgrades are either.

I think neither of us can confirm this case right now. In my experience, AI lords get free troops when they respawn, they can still get troops without fief. I indeed saw some of them recruiting from one village to another, but many lords can gather 100+ upgraded troops in a few days that is unbelievable.

The AI lords can only get bonus on tax of fiefs. Players can find several ways to take away their fiefs, and yeah I don't want AI factions to hurt themselves

 

[Zerosaiko]

I think neither of us can confirm this case right now. In my experience, AI lords get free troops when they respawn, they can still get troops without fief. I indeed saw some of them recruiting from one village to another, but many lords can gather 100+ upgraded troops in a few days that is unbelievable.

The AI lords can only get bonus on tax of fiefs. Players can find several ways to take away their fiefs, and yeah I don't want AI factions to hurt themselves

Poor clans (including in your kingdom) get paid from the kingdom wallet, but don't remember how much money the wallet generates if it's low on money. Maybe that's what keeps them going?

 

[Apocal]

I think neither of us can confirm this case right now.

Dev confirmed it a few years back and they haven't changed much since then:

All npc parties collect recruit from towns/ villages as player does and level their troops up when they are ready to upgrade.

There is only a small xp cheat we are giving to troops of npc parties. Maybe it can be better to give a bit higher xp cheat to clan leader's parties so their troops can contain more higher tier troops compared clan member parties. Otherwise which troops they will have in their parties are only determined by how many battles and how long days they survived on map.

In my experience, AI lords get free troops when they respawn, they can still get troops without fief. I indeed saw some of them recruiting from one village to another, but many lords can gather 100+ upgraded troops in a few days that is unbelievable.

The AI gets like ten free troops when they respawn, just so they don't get continuously captured by bandits. The ones that get hundreds grab them from their garrisons.

As for the gear idea, I guess it would be fine but it is sorta the same as the two perks to boosh troop XP that most people use.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

I've said this a lot of times and I still stand with it. Troops should be the end game, gear earlier. Not the other way around.

That's said, it would be easier said than done. What can be done, I am not 100% sure.

I think the Banner Kings mod made troops more expensive, not sure.

 

[Totalgarbage]

I agree that armour is too expensive, especially the higher tier ones, but I disagree that units are too cheap. It's actually the case of loot being too valuable (especially tournament rewards recently). I think that the unit wages are good, some are even unnecessarily expensive for the little value they provide (*cough* mercenary units *cough*). If we decreased equipment prices across the board, troops will become more expensive by default. But nerfing loot isn't necessarily good because the AI automatically liquidates all loot (maybe except horses?) on the spot after a battle, and as @Apocal noted, any loss in purchasing power hits the AI disproportionately harder than the player.

To make the progression smoother, I suggest that:

a) Weapon, Armour & Horse Armour prices be reduced across the board, with higher price reduction for higher tier items (like 50-66% for tier 6 gear)
b) Tournament rewards should be nerfed or the number of necessary nobles in town to get better rewards should be increased
c) The AI's loot conversion rate should be modified so that they get roughly the same income as they do now (a little bit higher would even be better). So, if the average price of all loot has been decreased by 25%, their loot to denar conversion rate should be 133.3%
d) I've requested this like 20 times by now in the last 2 months, but we should be able to upgrade the modifiers (e.g. from fine armour to lordly armour) of our (non-crafted) gear by talking to a smith npc or the equipments' respective vendor in town (so weapons should only be upgraded by weapon vendors) for a lot of money to keep armour as a form of character progression, but one that is much more accessible and less dependent on RNG.

 

[LDominating]

The majority of AI troops aren't free and I don't think their upgrades are either.

And while you might not mind giving the AI more money, lots of players hate it with a burning passion, because it makes it impossible to hurt AI factions.

They aren't free.
As you know they just don't pay for horses or carry in their parties.

It's also bad considering many mounted troops require less money to upgrade,so A.I might choose that over an unmounted troop.

 

[Totalgarbage]

They aren't free.
As you know they just don't pay for horses or carry in their parties.

It's also bad considering many mounted troops require less money to upgrade,so A.I might choose that over an unmounted troop.

The AI doesn't "choose" upgrade paths based on any factor other than their troop template (or whatever it's called) iirc. Afaik, their template includes percentages of unit types to have; for example, a lord with a "ranged unit" template upgrades 50% of their troops to be archers/crossbows 30% to infantry 15% to cavalry and 5% to horse archer (I pulled all these numbers out of my ass, I just remember reading how this worked from one of the devs a while ago)

 

[Ichon]

The majority of AI troops aren't free and I don't think their upgrades are either.

And while you might not mind giving the AI more money, lots of players hate it with a burning passion, because it makes it impossible to hurt AI factions.

Only if the AI gets completely free money or free troops. If rather each town/castle gave the AI kingdom a fixed amount to spread between its AI parties that is proportional to prosperity and adjusted per difficulty level, then it is still very possible to hurt the AI via raids or other attacks.

Each town or fief might give the AI 4x the income of a player but taking that away also takes away 4x the income... meaning the AI party quality will still decline over time as it loses fiefs.

Linking it to prosperity means as town prosperities wax and generaly wane as all the town buildings are constructed over time, the amount of bonus the AI gets from each fief will slowly rise over time in most campaigns except in regions of excessive warfare (villages constantly raided and towns changing hands a lot).

The main difference might be in campaign difficulty in high prosperity regions such as the Empire but that is probably a good thing as an Empire start tends to be the easiest start currently with ability to recruit all same culture and high armor troops and take over high prosperity towns earlier.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Yeah and EVERY npc should have to pay for EVERY troop's gear but a fief only pays about as much 1 pair of boots a day because there is no economy in this game. Players should ignore it just like the Devs do OR make a mod.

The hole is just too deep for TW to ever have any meaningful economy in bannerlord. "Oh but I think it's good it just needs" you didn't look in the hole.

 

[Ichon]

Yeah and EVERY npc should have to pay for EVERY troop's gear but a fief only pays about as much 1 pair of boots a day because there is no economy in this game. Players should ignore it just like the Devs do OR make a mod.

The hole is just too deep for TW to ever have any meaningful economy in bannerlord. "Oh but I think it's good it just needs" you didn't look in the hole.

It will always be broken but there are ways to make the AI seem less obviously broken while improving the player progression. The late game is always going to have problems because it is very difficult to balance for a single party to a couple towns to owning half the map and a couple dozen towns and having several armies.

I'd rather they squeeze the late game into a smaller bit of broken stuff to lessen the grind and expand the early and middle stages of player progression.