What changes would you like to see to the influence system?

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Totalgarbage

Sergeant Knight
The current implementation of the influence system as a faction-specific currency that's supposed to represent a clan's political capital feels unsatisfactory to many people including me. Barring it's complete removal (something I wouldn't necessarily oppose, it's just for discussion's sake), what changes would you like to see to the influence system?

For me, I would like see that the total influence of a faction become finite, with the total sum of influence increasing or decreasing as the number of fiefs and prosperity increases/decreases. We should then become able to "buy" influence from clan leaders through bartering and get influence from completing quests (where village notables give small amounts, and lords give large amounts). We should also be able to use influence for more things in general; we should be able to also invest influence in towns, castles and villages for boost to their construction (villages should therefore also have some building options) and we should be able to use a very large amount of influence to force the king to abdicate or for us to secede from the kingdom and keep our holdings without being declared war, etc.

What would you like to see happen to the influence system (barring it's removal, cause that would be a whole other subject)?
 
Treating it as a flow rather than stock and coming through notables in your fiefs rather than racking up the same way as money, renown, XP and loot. That would make it practically finite without being arbitrary.
 
Treating it as a flow rather than stock and coming through notables in your fiefs rather than racking up the same way as money, renown, XP and loot. That would make it practically finite without being arbitrary.
Yes exactly! That's what I tried to describe, but you've said it much more concisely.
 
Back when they introduced the devblog talking about it as if it were a currency... many of us raised our eyebrows... Well, we'll see what they have in mind, we said 😌.

In the long run and looking at the bigger picture, the influence system is a mana that has been implemented in the worst possible way... and I'm not talking about a technical issue (I guess programming it takes its complication) but rather a practical issue that affects the player's playable experience; yes THE PLAYER... fun... you know :iamamoron: .

I think we should never have lost the way the Warband system with its honour and renown together with the marshal system. A revamp 2.0of that + a system analogous to what we can find in games like Medieval 2 and its authority system for late game (king/leader phase)... we'd have achieved that in my eyes.
 
Back when they introduced the devblog talking about it as if it were a currency... many of us raised our eyebrows... Well, we'll see what they have in mind, we said 😌.

In the long run and looking at the bigger picture, the influence system is a mana that has been implemented in the worst possible way... and I'm not talking about a technical issue (I guess programming it takes its complication) but rather a practical issue that affects the player's playable experience; yes THE PLAYER... fun... you know :iamamoron: .

I think we should never have lost the way the Warband system with its honour and renown together with the marshal system. A revamp 2.0of that + a system analogous to what we can find in games like Medieval 2 and its authority system for late game (king/leader phase)... we'd have achieved that in my eyes.
Yeah I agree, influence in its current implementation is the blandest way of adding political capital as a currency. Influence can become salvageable in my eyes if the total amount of influence within a kingdom was made finite but increasable/decreasable depending on a multitude of factors (and could be gained by bartering with clan leaders and doing quests, especially if intrigue quests were added).

I think if the trait system were to be tweaked (a lot, along with lord behaviour variance based on traits), it could possibly work even better than honour in Warband (though I'm not that hopeful). A version of marshalship with this game's army system would be really good as a progression point within the faction, which this game sorely lacks. How does authority work in TW:M2 btw, could you give an example?
 
Would be better to have it on a scale instead and you gain & lose influence through actions, maybe make like the Destiny 2 Light Cap in a way where you can raise it with certain criteria and then you only have temporary maluses.

So let's say it is on a scale up to 100, you always start at 0, for every notable you have you get a certain amount added to your cap per their own power level. So maybe keep it the same 0.05/0.15/0.25 so you'd perpetually be at let's say 10 if you had 2 towns and 6 bound villages worth. Then you get some added per renown, per clan rank, per nobles in your clan, and then have some from your Traits (or minus for your traits & traits of clan members).

That would make it a modifier to Kingdom decisions, where it takes into account Traits and Relationship and the tie breaker is the Influence -- so you'd have more weight applied in a direction but it'd be more meaningful since everyone is on a scale of up to 100.

That would mean changing the Policy system to which is in a dire need of a pass. Have a maximum amount of Policies - either scaled off of total fiefs or total clans or average clan rank or something doesn't matter - and then it costs extra money or a permanent influence / relationship malus per Policy over. Purchase extra slots for a lot of money so we have something to do with it.

Of course none of this will happen - it means the entire system would have to be torn out as is
 
Would be better to have it on a scale instead and you gain & lose influence through actions, maybe make like the Destiny 2 Light Cap in a way where you can raise it with certain criteria and then you only have temporary maluses.

So let's say it is on a scale up to 100, you always start at 0, for every notable you have you get a certain amount added to your cap per their own power level. So maybe keep it the same 0.05/0.15/0.25 so you'd perpetually be at let's say 10 if you had 2 towns and 6 bound villages worth. Then you get some added per renown, per clan rank, per nobles in your clan, and then have some from your Traits (or minus for your traits & traits of clan members).

That would make it a modifier to Kingdom decisions, where it takes into account Traits and Relationship and the tie breaker is the Influence -- so you'd have more weight applied in a direction but it'd be more meaningful since everyone is on a scale of up to 100.

That would mean changing the Policy system to which is in a dire need of a pass. Have a maximum amount of Policies - either scaled off of total fiefs or total clans or average clan rank or something doesn't matter - and then it costs extra money or a permanent influence / relationship malus per Policy over. Purchase extra slots for a lot of money so we have something to do with it.

Of course none of this will happen - it means the entire system would have to be torn out as is
I like these suggestions. I think policies can also be balanced by only being able to enact/remove a policy once per a certain amount (like once a year) with a cap on the maximum number of active policies (7 seems fair enough to me but can be different as well).
 
The problem with influence is that it's copied from games that are far more abstract. EU4, Rome 2 and a bunch of these other modern strategy games use these mana systems because they want a simple number to represent all the characters that aren't actually interactable.

The problem is that Bannerlord actually has those NPCs, you can interact with them first hand, but there is still this overarching abstract system that overrides some of them. It affects the game like some kind of bizzare mystical force, it would be like having whole-faction supply or region-applied attrition in a squad-based game like ArmA where everything is simulated anyway. Every time I see the influence thing I am always thinking "what is this actually supposed to represent", and since I can actually talk to the people who make up the "influence" it breaks the illusion even more.

The system really doesn't need to be in the game. I feel like the only reason they added it was because that was the trend for strategy games at the time. But paradox games are awful to play, I really don't know why their horrible design philosophy has become so pervasive.
 
Agree entirely with you all. About paradox... i think its because their game systems give a better feeling of depth than most strategy games, and have become mainstream, given it's a fairly complex strat game, it is easy to see why people would copy it the apparent system without the overarching depth.

It feels awful having to open a menu to pay influence to fill a bar to keep army cohesion, its... completely antithetical to everything else in the game. Also it feels like a lackluster currency for voting, which doesnt make much difference: you can only spend a small amount each vote, and the AI decision making is dumb and arbitrary, so spending influence there is mostly useless.

I dont even know what else influence is used for, and i play it since day one, just to give an idea of how... not cool of a system it is. If it even unlocked orders to AI, or flavorful dialogues... but no. Its just a mana score for armies and voting. I seriously dont have other suggestions. Maybe getting rid of it might be good.
 
Hmmmm, I would rather it not be a currency and more like an bar/stat that goes up when you do useful actions and down when you do bad ones or you action lead to bad results, kid of like the marshal option in warband. Your influence lets you influence lords and notables but the payoff/loss comes later, not spent like money. you just need a certain amount to be able to do certain things/make other people do them, but it's not spent and maybe you have to contest other lords with similar influence but a different desire, not spending it on a vote, but you must win them over some how, maybe a variety of ways depending of skills, perks or traits and relations.
You make an army, if you successfully win battle and sieges you gain Influence.. but if other fiefs get sieged and villages raided you laos lose some as people aren't so happy about this.
You make new clan...... if this clan's villages get raided or they lose thier fief, it dings your influence, but when they win battles or do good it gives you a bit. SO as a ruler you get this ebb and flow, though it's probably easy to keep it high, it may dip down sometimes and open up for vassals undermining you.
Of this required doing stuff so it won't get done.

Realistically I think adding some rules for the AI's voting would be important related change such as "No repeated votes from vassals for X days" I would like a long time like 80 days. Also the amount of influence AI clans get seems like A LOT lately I know it's a least partially because they get a huge amount for putting normal troops into prisons. Also vassals don't know anything about what they're voting for and use very counter productive numbers for deciding to vote. Really making them able to make better decisions should have came before having them vote.
 
I agree with the suggestions of a finite amount of influence inside a kingdome and influence not being a currency but a flow that can take a bigger or smaller % of the total amount based on actions and events.

Since the first blogpost mentioning influence i was worried, and it turned out to be exactly what i was afraid off.
It feels awful having to open a menu to pay influence to fill a bar to keep army cohesion, its... completely antithetical to everything else in the game. Also it feels like a lackluster currency for voting, which doesnt make much difference: you can only spend a small amount each vote, and the AI decision making is dumb and arbitrary, so spending influence there is mostly useless.
^ the amry cohesion is indeed very artificial and bad.
I agree on the voting, the max amount you can spend is way to low (might be better in a finite system)
Individual lords should be approachable so you could barter with them to switch their vote, with the price in relation to their own goals and the personal relationship.
 
Hmmmm, I would rather it not be a currency and more like an bar/stat that goes up when you do useful actions and down when you do bad ones or you action lead to bad results, kid of like the marshal option in warband. Your influence lets you influence lords and notables but the payoff/loss comes later, not spent like money. you just need a certain amount to be able to do certain things/make other people do them, but it's not spent and maybe you have to contest other lords with similar influence but a different desire, not spending it on a vote, but you must win them over some how, maybe a variety of ways depending of skills, perks or traits and relations.
You make an army, if you successfully win battle and sieges you gain Influence.. but if other fiefs get sieged and villages raided you laos lose some as people aren't so happy about this.
You make new clan...... if this clan's villages get raided or they lose thier fief, it dings your influence, but when they win battles or do good it gives you a bit. SO as a ruler you get this ebb and flow, though it's probably easy to keep it high, it may dip down sometimes and open up for vassals undermining you.
Of this required doing stuff so it won't get done.
Ooh, I like this suggestion. If I understand correctly, are you suggesting something like the controversy mechanic in Warband, but one we have to keep in balance between positive and negative?
 
A lot less, its like noble lines now, its all over so it doesn't mean much. Leading an army should be an honor now it's just non stop armies running all over. Either a decay or less earned.
 
Ooh, I like this suggestion. If I understand correctly, are you suggesting something like the controversy mechanic in Warband, but one we have to keep in balance between positive and negative?
Yeah, like that, but it should be transparent and the information on why it's gained or lost should be mostly shared with the player and there should be ways to interact with it to get you way, with maybe a few hidden things like rival lords with bad traits having their own plot hidden from you.

Main problem with current influence (outside of the voting system) is that it's just currency and you gain it the same way as the other currencies, so it just ends to the endless meat grinder of beating people up/siege then a trip to the store for money (and influence from prisoners goin into the dungeon) and you never run out unless you're very lucky and can actually spend it all on making clans as fast as you get it.
 
The current implementation of the influence system as a faction-specific currency that's supposed to represent a clan's political capital feels unsatisfactory to many people including me. Barring it's complete removal (something I wouldn't necessarily oppose, it's just for discussion's sake), what changes would you like to see to the influence system?

For me, I would like see that the total influence of a faction become finite, with the total sum of influence increasing or decreasing as the number of fiefs and prosperity increases/decreases. We should then become able to "buy" influence from clan leaders through bartering and get influence from completing quests (where village notables give small amounts, and lords give large amounts). We should also be able to use influence for more things in general; we should be able to also invest influence in towns, castles and villages for boost to their construction (villages should therefore also have some building options) and we should be able to use a very large amount of influence to force the king to abdicate or for us to secede from the kingdom and keep our holdings without being declared war, etc.

What would you like to see happen to the influence system (barring it's removal, cause that would be a whole other subject)?
That you get more influence after battles
 
Back when they introduced the devblog talking about it as if it were a currency... many of us raised our eyebrows... Well, we'll see what they have in mind, we said 😌.

In the long run and looking at the bigger picture, the influence system is a mana that has been implemented in the worst possible way... and I'm not talking about a technical issue (I guess programming it takes its complication) but rather a practical issue that affects the player's playable experience; yes THE PLAYER... fun... you know :iamamoron: .

I think we should never have lost the way the Warband system with its honour and renown together with the marshal system. A revamp 2.0of that + a system analogous to what we can find in games like Medieval 2 and its authority system for late game (king/leader phase)... we'd have achieved that in my eyes.
When they first introduced it in dev blogs and shown it in 2016 I thought it was going to be a great, in depth feature. Then they did the complete opposite of in depth. TW mastered the art of trying to fix what is not broken (and kept everything broken as is), ie. Right to rule-Honor-Relationship trio, they were all interconnected and important in their own rights, wish we could have that back.
 
When they first introduced it in dev blogs and shown it in 2016 I thought it was going to be a great, in depth feature. Then they did the complete opposite of in depth. TW mastered the art of trying to fix what is not broken (and kept everything broken as is), ie. Right to rule-Honor-Relationship trio, they were all interconnected and important in their own rights, wish we could have that back.
+1 there was also decay in Warband. The marshal got to lead the siege, it was an honor and special to lead an army. Now as a leader I can easily lead a 6 or 7 party army forever.
 
The current implementation of the influence system as a faction-specific currency that's supposed to represent a clan's political capital feels unsatisfactory to many people including me. Barring it's complete removal (something I wouldn't necessarily oppose, it's just for discussion's sake), what changes would you like to see to the influence system?

For me, I would like see that the total influence of a faction become finite, with the total sum of influence increasing or decreasing as the number of fiefs and prosperity increases/decreases. We should then become able to "buy" influence from clan leaders through bartering and get influence from completing quests (where village notables give small amounts, and lords give large amounts). We should also be able to use influence for more things in general; we should be able to also invest influence in towns, castles and villages for boost to their construction (villages should therefore also have some building options) and we should be able to use a very large amount of influence to force the king to abdicate or for us to secede from the kingdom and keep our holdings without being declared war, etc.

What would you like to see happen to the influence system (barring it's removal, cause that would be a whole other subject)?
Well for the things that could be added, I think influence should be an option to help in barters within your kingdom, someone very influencial should after all have an easier time convincing a noble
Also instead of choosing the clan with the most money when the former king dies, the one with the most influence should be the go to choice, logically speaking.

Something I wouldn't dislike is using influence to aquire a group of high tier units, something like 20 influence for a tier 6 noble troop, giving us an expensive alternative to recruiting low level troops.
 
Well for the things that could be added, I think influence should be an option to help in barters within your kingdom, someone very influencial should after all have an easier time convincing a noble
Also instead of choosing the clan with the most money when the former king dies, the one with the most influence should be the go to choice, logically speaking.

Something I wouldn't dislike is using influence to aquire a group of high tier units, something like 20 influence for a tier 6 noble troop, giving us an expensive alternative to recruiting low level troops.
I love all of these suggestions. One thing I would add is the ability to buy votes for policies through bartering like in Civ 5 for World Congress votes.
 
ie. Right to rule-Honor-Relationship trio, they were all interconnected and important in their own rights, wish we could have that back.
RtR wasn't important and Relation-Honor weren't connected to each other except you could circumvent normal relationship-building by just stacking Honor with good personality lords. It wasn't a good system.
The system really doesn't need to be in the game. I feel like the only reason they added it was because that was the trend for strategy games at the time. But paradox games are awful to play, I really don't know why their horrible design philosophy has become so pervasive.
I assume it was part of their core goal being the AI playing under (mostly) the same rules as the player.
 
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