[VC RE BETA] Feedback on Economy

[kalarhan]

-Started new game, sandbox, normal,
-created cheat character, looting, engineer, leadership, tactics 10
-used cheat menu to create berserker army.
-turned off cheat menu
-seiged this 'rich' castle normally

Spoiler

-chose to 'devastate'

Spoiler

-0 peningas
-did the same with another rich castle

Spoiler

chose to 'sack'

Spoiler

-0 peningas

save file before attacking

this is already fixed internally, it will be pushed with next patch 

 

[kraggrim]

Oh well, was fun seeing berserker army in action.

 

[zapbib]

After playing for 280 days in a quest game, I gotta say the economy system is absurdly anoying.

The price of maintaining an army is several order of magnitude out of touch with how much money you can get from looting and pillaging and entreprise.

With 6 enterprises bringing about 500 each, edynburg as a poor/average city (1000-1500 per week if paid) and a poor village. I can barely pay for 400 low lvl troops and a mix of 100 mid-level and high-level. I loose about 1k per turn.

Since a average lord with a city will have 250 troop on him and 700+ troop in is city im wondering how he pay for them all, He can even replenish his entire army in about a week if defeated.

Result: the game is an endless grind of looting and defeating bandit parties. Fighting ennemy lord is the best way to throw tons of money by the window. A norse compagnion cost 500 and took time to train. Defeating a lord gives a 1000 trophy and at most around 2000 worth of stuff. As long as you got some lost troops your money is wasted (1 norse high end troop cost like 2000).

Even looting a village is barely worth it. A flourishing village will give maybe at most 200 + 3000 worth of stuff + 15-25 cow which can give about 7000 at most. Considering that on normal difficulty the horde of peasant can genrally knock 1-2 of your guys down you end up with a huge hassle for so very little money.

Mind you, it doesnt make the game hard, it makes it long and incredibly boring. Ennemy lord are avoided unless you got some friendly lord to absorb the losses.  Every fight must be very one-sided for you, if not it takes far too long to make up for the losses.

Trading gives some nice money at the beginning of the game, but: you cant trade with a huge army following you and everything you need to buy cost so flipping much compared to the profits.

money sink:
a boat for your army? 40k
a refuge built and the first state of improvement: 6-7k
any improvement for city: 6-7k
a good armor: 20k
20 nord companions: 10k
weekly pay for 100 boanti: 2k
weekly pay for 100 huskarl:10k
any entreprise: ~15k

money sources:
entreprise: ~0.5k
city: 1-3k
looting a rich village: 6-7k (they dont stay rich long)
trading: 2-6k per week (I think its usually less)
bandits: ~2-4k assuming you havent got to many losses and managed to find a slave trader and found a sufficiciently big group.
viking: you usually loose money because of the price of troops unless you got a lot of high lvl troops
lords: you loose money unless its a really small lord, then ~2-4k

 

[JuJu70]

viking: you usually loose money because of the price of troops unless you got a lot of high lvl troops

Viking lifestyle implies small army of high-level troops. If you raid alot, and your reputation  is low, bandit troops (like elite vikings) will be cheaper. Plunder castles and towns, that's basically what vikings did.

 

[zapbib]

Yes, i guess I didnt point out that doing that is fun once but get old fast. Its basicly the only way to play.

And it get stupid fairly fast when you notice that you are the only flipping lord in all of england that need to live like that.

 

[kalarhan]

Yes, i guess I didnt point out that doing that is fun once but get old fast. Its basicly the only way to play.

And it get stupid fairly fast when you notice that you are the only flipping lord in all of england that need to live like that.

lords also pay wages 

you now have new game options to tweak the economy to your playstyle, check them out 

 

[JuJu70]

Yes, i guess I didnt point out that doing that is fun once but get old fast. Its basicly the only way to play.

LOL, I guess you are not a real viking, since all they did were raid and trade 

And it get stupid fairly fast when you notice that you are the only flipping lord in all of england that need to live like that.

Ai obviously doesn't have to enjoy the game, it's there to give player a run for his buck so to say

 

[zapbib]

I'm sick of this community, everytime someone point out some glaring obvious problem on the thread to do so it get shot down by a bunch of fanboy that are either obviously not playing the beta, or have some absurdly skewed view of what fun is.

ope you enjoy your unfun game, makes me regret not getting a refund while i still could.

 

[kalarhan]

I'm sick of this community, everytime someone point out some glaring obvious problem on the thread to do so it get shot down by a bunch of fanboy that are either obviously not playing the beta, or have some absurdly skewed view of what fun is.

ope you enjoy your unfun game, makes me regret not getting a refund while i still could.

thank you for your feedback.

We are in the process of balancing the game, you can try the new game options to adjust the rulesets to your playstyle 

(there is no way to have one setting that will make everyone happy -> that is why we have game options  )

 

[CeltiberoCaesar]

Request of logs​

Hi everyone,
I'm here to request all of your rgl_log from long games (>year long). We want to check the economy of your games in order to make sure everything works as intended.
Thank you all 

 

[Carrion]

Sorry I unfortunately deleted my save games from the last 2 builds  ( both >year ) and would have submitted them. Although I was surviving week to week with 150 man troupe, plenty of high levels ( 6k wages )

- wages of troops:
Wages are to low on low level troops: Huge armies of low level troops are move viable ( price vs damage ) then a well trained force.

- recruiting and upgrading costs:
It's cheaper to recruit brand new tier 2 then upgrade from tier 1
hiring men from the mead hall is insanely overpriced

- rents and tarrifs from fiefs
Rents are to low for AI income ( presumption they are equal to player income )

- prices of goods
Aren't very realistic across the board, most buy and sell prices make no sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_penning .

- trading and profit
Not a trader but from what I have traded the cost / benefit analysis mandates grindy metagaming.

- general feedback on expenses and way of making cash (slaves, prisoners, loot, ...)
Slaves sell price vs sell price of goods makes no sense: I can sell a pair of shoes for 20 pennings ... same with low level slaves * facepalm *
Randsom for lords is pitiful.

More realistic price structuring may make balancing the economy easier.

 

[Petro Buleka]

Do not you think that the prisoners are now useless? Sale price of 120 coins per unit of high-level, and to hire to his squad the price is 7 times higher . Now, in most cases I just dismiss them. In my opinion you are too clever by half.

 

[Carrion]

Nerfing income for "balance" reasons makes no sense in my opinion. To be quite honest I think a more realistic approach would result in a better darkage feel:

Solutions:

Increase low Level troup Income ( peasants, farmers etc ) should make no less then 3 pennings a day ( 21 a week minimum )
High level troop income is fine, not sure if they need to be tweeked

Increase cost of recruiting bondis by 50%, 108 pennings each

Cut prices of mead hall / campaign recruitment by 50%, old captain for 500 is fine.

double rent income

Decrease ratio of buy / sell for all items with merchants, why would an item I buy cost 1000 but if i sell that same item only net me 200 or less?

Normalize prices across the entire map, add more farmsteads, salt mines, etc all over the place.

Slaves would sell for quite a bit in the 9th century, realistically it was about 500 for a slave not 20 - 100

Randsom should be at least doubled

double the cost of all business, increase income by 50%



While not perfect, it makes more sense to approach this realistically then "warband inspired"

schilling ( 1 cow ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling

denari (1 days work) https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius

penning, imitation denari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_penning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_denier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfennig

 

[kalarhan]

Spoiler

Nerfing income for "balance" reasons makes no sense in my opinion. To be quite honest I think a more realistic approach would result in a better darkage feel:

Solutions:

Increase low Level troup Income ( peasants, farmers etc ) should make no less then 3 pennings a day ( 21 a week minimum )
High level troop income is fine, not sure if they need to be tweeked

Increase cost of recruiting bondis by 50%, 108 pennings each

Cut prices of mead hall / campaign recruitment by 50%, old captain for 500 is fine.

double rent income

Decrease ratio of buy / sell for all items with merchants, why would an item I buy cost 1000 but if i sell that same item only net me 200 or less?

Normalize prices across the entire map, add more farmsteads, salt mines, etc all over the place.

Slaves would sell for quite a bit in the 9th century, realistically it was about 500 for a slave not 20 - 100

Randsom should be at least doubled

double the cost of all business, increase income by 50%



While not perfect, it makes more sense to approach this realistically then "warband inspired"

schilling ( 1 cow ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilling

denari (1 days work) https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius

penning, imitation denari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_penning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_denier

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfennig

Thank you for the feedback.

Btw a lord ransom can be low or very high (+10k peningas), you just need to capture a rich one  (it is based on the npc wealth, they have cash just like you do)

 

[CeltiberoCaesar]

In my opinion you are too clever by half.

what do you mean?

 

[Petro Buleka]

In my opinion you are too clever by half.

what do you mean?

All further complicate the gameplay you have already reached absurd things.

 

[JuJu70]

While not perfect, it makes more sense to approach this realistically then "warband inspired"

Rewriting warband economy would be a DLC of its own 

 

[CeltiberoCaesar]

In my opinion you are too clever by half.

what do you mean?

All further complicate the gameplay you have already reached absurd things.

Ok.

 

[Idibil]

Thank everybody for your feedback.