SP - General Wars & Peace lack meaningfulness

[Count Delinard]

That's my king every Friday basically.

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I believe the game's pace once you become a lord is extremely fast and you can never really catch a break, wars feel pretty meaningless. Why? because of how often you are at war.

You rarely spend a week at peace before your kingdom goes to war with one, two or even three factions. I'd understand if this was the case when an enemy faction declares war on you, but I've seen kings voluntarily opening wars on two fronts even if they were stuck on the first one (or even losing).

My first suggestion is to make peace a much more common occurrence by making Kings be much more reluctant to go to war, never seeking wars on two fronts (unless the conditions were extremely favorable). Peace doesn't need to be boring. Here's an excellent thread with ideas of what to do during peacetime.

Peace would feel much more meaningful if it was a well-deserved break after an exhausting war, especially if you used that time to recover, do activities like in the thread linked above, traded, focused on relations and money, etc.

My second suggestion is to make wars more decisive and less frequent. by limiting the number of armies a faction can field in accordance to some formula that looks into how many clans they have and the total influence of all those clans, that way a faction would field, say, 2 armies

They'd have more troops in them, but they'd only have two armies. This would reduce the number of sieges since lords don’t seem to besiege places on their own that much, they do so with armies. Thus, this would make engagements more decisive: losing an army would be a huge blow.

Imagine if you are at war with a faction and you both just field a couple of big armies, after a big field battle, the winner would go on to besiege and take a couple of castles or cities while the loser would go into a very defensive stance until they could recover. The attacker would lose enough troops during the sieges and thus both factions would be weary enough to sue for peace. Suddenly "the war vs the Aserai in 1083" actually becomes meaningful: it had one major battle where you won the field, then you managed to conquer one of their cities and a frontier castle, then you are back at peace. You'd remember these conflicts instead of being on a perpetual back and forth with every faction around you.
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What are your thoughts on the matter?

 

[Filena]

Agree 100%, so much wars at the moment, no time for anything else ! and no wars right away at Day one, start wait a few week at least !

 

[Androme1]

I believe the game's pace once you become a lord is extremely fast and you can never really catch a break, wars feel pretty meaningless. Why? because of how often you are at war.

Day 250. Of which 200 has been constant total-war against Northern Empire, Southern Empire, Western Empire, Khuzaits, Battania and Vlandia.
Or, in other words: Sturgia has been at war with virtually every faction on and off for 200 days except against the Aserai.
I just want to do something else for a while please

 

[MisterDanny8]

Agreed. Another thing it would add is make each lord more dangerous. Because if they have time to recruit and train units between wars then they wouldn't be running into every battle with 70% recruits. Making them much more of a challenge to fight at even numbers. Right now using archers makes it to easy because no one has shields.

 

[Antoine42]

I'll just focus on my general toughts on war, since peacetime has been discussed already:

Once you've played a game that use some sort of casus belli system, it's really hard to go back on games that don't without finding it a bit silly.
I've been a Total War player for a very long time, since childhood almost, but a few years ago I started playing Paradox games, wich I didn't really payed attention to before cause I was more interested in the tactical side than the strategic side of things.

And now I have really a lot of trouble with games in wich wars were declared in a snap of the fingers, without any reason.

I'd really love to see a similar system in M&B, with the political system there is so much that can be done, from dynasty marriages turning sour, succession wars, political and diplomatic intrigue, this opens to so much things that weren't in Warband. Territorial gains shouldn't be the only reason for going to war, there is a need for some kind of strategic behavior, may it be for the control of strategic areas, from removing a king from power and place a more favorable to you in place, you name it, there are enough examples and inspiration through our own history for all those

Peacetime and wartime should definitely mean something, also the casualties feature is great, but it doesn't has much to it, a bloody war against another faction should make the AI reluctant about going to war again, and on the other hand humiliating defeats should encourage them to build up their strength looking forward for revenge.

I'd say I wouldn't mind if some factions had a tendency to try to expand a lot, say the Kuzaits for example, the Golden Hord sweeping west looking for land to conquer could fit them quite well, on the other hand I'd see Battania more like a isolationist, defensive and traditionalist faction. That kind of stuff, having kings and factions in general share a broad mindset about wars, and defining their posture could be really awesome. I get this could be really hard to achieve and balance though

Also the ability to form alliances or coalitions against a mutual threat, or political features allowing for propaganda against one nation, that kind of stuff would be great. And of course non-agression pacts, defensive pacts, etc.. Adding some depth to the political and diplomatical system in general, I get that this feature is not done at all, and I don't know what's in TW minds, from what's already in the game I assume those kind of stuff will come at some point.

I quite enjoyed the way the AI waged wars in Warband, without the help of the player borders would stay almost unchanged, and if something was lost you could be sure the next war was going to be about taking back the lost ground, there's not much of that here, they should try to preserve their cores settlements as much as possible. And what happened to the post war truce? It's obviously needed, peace don't last more than 2 day now

Also, I think it would be really great to have some kind of economical exhaustion to that, like manpower, food or even horses shortages, at some point i'm genociding the whole youth of Vlandia in my game, I mean I'm killing at least a thousand of them a week, and they keep coming. They should have their manpower exhausted at some point, and sue for peace to recover.

I'm all in for limiting the number of armies one can field at a time, but it has to be done in correlation with the economical power of the kingdom,not say capped at 2 for everyone,more like how much boots on the ground they can feed, and for how long. I get that the food system is intended to do that, but it's not quite working properly, hence a supplies lines system could be a really great addition, and could render viable a whole lot of different gameplays, like guerrilla tactics against a stronger opponent

Oh, and also, records of wars maybe? Like an history of what happened, I know lots of people want the log thing back, in addition to that I'll love to have decisive battles sites appearing on the map, Total War style, with who fought who, what were the numbers involved, etc..

 

[dphilostrate]

I agree that something must be done to calm the constant wars and limiting the number of armies is a good start. I would recommend that if some one creates an army over a formula-determined limit then their created army should have an steep decrease in their army cohesion while all armies in the field would have their cohesion drained a little more quickly as well.

I must admit the idea of meaningfulness here has really gotten me perceive of war and peace in game differently. I’m not sure if I’ve seen war as anything other than a means to expand and enjoy more battle simulations. And peace has always been time to recruit for the next war.

There needs to be something special to give a war more meaning and decisive events would help. But meaningful also means memorable to me and this why I agree with Antoine42’s suggestion of using the encyclopedia to log wars and markers to show the site of past battles that would be judged decisive (probably determined by using the formula that determine’s renown rewards for a battle). The game should generate names for wars and log the decisive events of those wars in an encyclopedia entry. Then the battles considered to be decisive could become on option for a single player custom battle. Perhaps players could even share files of their decisive battles between one another.

 

[Count Delinard]

Great points everyone, they certainly add depth to the initial suggestion. I'll compile them into the OP this week.