What do you think about population?

[Wulfsdottir]

Do you think that population must be a thing?
I think that if it will be well implemented, it will sort out and balance some problems with constant wars and lords having magical armies.

For example the settlements might have limited number of population and some % of this number could be eligible for army (no children, no most of the women and elders). The population should rise over time and maybe prosperity could do something about this. Maybe collection of factors like food availability too.

Recruitment must not be the magical thing neither for player character, nor for NPC lord. It can make town blockades much more meaningful and fun too and lord will "think twice" before gathering an army and rush to all-vs-all meaningless wars.

 

[WhiteEyedSh4rk]

I like that idea, could add way more depth to the game in general.

 

[Wulfsdottir]

I like that idea, could add way more depth to the game in general.

Yes. And there can even be differences in how big is the % of people out of whole population eligible for army for different cultures.
it can even be a subject of your state policy when you become king.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I feel like this must have been something they were considering and then it didn't happen. It's very strange to have so many partially implemented features about village's and town's prosperity and not have it effect troop availability. I know they originally wanted the AI lords to play by the same rules as the player, but they've been altered so that they don't get wiped out or go broke.....

 

[Wulfsdottir]

I feel like this must have been something they were considering and then it didn't happen. It's very strange to have so many partially implemented features about village's and town's prosperity and not have it effect troop availability. I know they originally wanted the AI lords to play by the same rules as the player, but they've been altered so that they don't get wiped out or go broke.....

You have valid point but I think it can be balanced with some thought put in it. It would be just as hard for player to recruit but there also must be the way for player to train the troops without risking by making them fight looters. Well polished barracks system could do the trick.

Also, an natural events can be a thing and help with balancing too.

"There's a juicy castle near your borders you set your eyes on? Well, sorry but the year was dry. There are no crops. Your people are starving. You'd better pack your mules and go find some food for your towns in a distant land before your people die out of starvation" - this would give so much more to do in times of peace and besides the constant war and mindless hacking and slashing around.

 

[Askorti]

"There's a juicy castle near your borders you set your eyes on? Well, sorry but the year was dry. There are no crops. Your people are starving. You'd better pack your mules and go find some food for your towns in a distant land before your people die out of starvation" - this would give so much more to do in times of peace and besides the constant war and mindless hacking and slashing around.

A lord doesn't go out personally getting food for his cities, he should have people doing it for him. I get your idea, but it's imo a bit to gamey if that's how you'd want to execute it. It would be fine if delegation was a possibility though.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

A lord doesn't go out personally getting food for his cities, he should have people doing it for him. I get your idea, but it's imo a bit to gamey if that's how you'd want to execute it. It would be fine if delegation was a possibility though.

......yeah..... I never have had to go buy 10 villages worth of grain and fish and slaughter 50 animals to sell to my towns so my garrison doesn't disband....
nope that never happens in Bannerlord.....
I know what you mean and I wish I could send a companion or caravan to gather food when needed. Also, they've eased up on the starving garrisons in recent patches. Once you have orchards it's usually fine now, but in earlier versions it was an endless struggle.

You have valid point but I think it can be balanced with some thought put in it. It would be just as hard for player to recruit but there also must be the way for player to train the troops without risking by making them fight looters. Well polished barracks system could do the trick.

Also, an natural events can be a thing and help with balancing too.

"There's a juicy castle near your borders you set your eyes on? Well, sorry but the year was dry. There are no crops. Your people are starving. You'd better pack your mules and go find some food for your towns in a distant land before your people die out of starvation" - this would give so much more to do in times of peace and besides the constant war and mindless hacking and slashing around.

I agree that would be interesting and of course could be done....... but realistically I doubt they're going to mess with the recruitment system much. Hopefully they could have more benefits/punishments to prosperity of fiefs and kingdoms. You have to remember though, there are people playing BL that actually think it's too hard to get troops on easy recruitment settings. I only play on realistic and I think it's no problem ever, only a chore to chase looters sometimes.
I would welcome some more events such as rebellions or food shortages to counter or challenge a kingdom getting too big. I think we're more likely be able to see mods with these kind of events though then in the base game.

I've actually really wanted/imagined a game like M&B but where you build your own settlement in a new continent and you become the village leader and you compete against other settlers all over and build up and advance and create your culture over time, eventually becoming more like M&B with all the factions at war or peace and invasions from foreigner governments.

 

[Wulfsdottir]

I agree that would be interesting and of course could be done....... but realistically I doubt they're going to mess with the recruitment system much. Hopefully they could have more benefits/punishments to prosperity of fiefs and kingdoms. You have to remember though, there are people playing BL that actually think it's too hard to get troops on easy recruitment settings. I only play on realistic and I think it's no problem ever, only a chore to chase looters sometimes.

I would welcome some more events such as rebellions or food shortages to counter or challenge a kingdom getting too big. I think we're more likely be able to see mods with these kind of events though then in the base game.

I've actually really wanted/imagined a game like M&B but where you build your own settlement in a new continent and you become the village leader and you compete against other settlers all over and build up and advance and create your culture over time, eventually becoming more like M&B with all the factions at war or peace and invasions from foreigner governments.

There definitely will be mods for that yes. It's a pity they had to say no to establishing the settlement idea in the base game though, as they were planning it at one point.

A lord doesn't go out personally getting food for his cities, he should have people doing it for him. I get your idea, but it's imo a bit to gamey if that's how you'd want to execute it. It would be fine if delegation was a possibility though.

As well as chasing down the petty looters, but here we are.
Anyways, it was just the first thing that ran through mind. Rough idea. It can be done through sending someone, or having any other means.
What I mean is to add events that will make peace-times interesting and give the player something to do.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

The game needs more "persistent" mechanics in general. Killing 1000s of men in a war should make the enemy kingdom completely unable to wage war effectively for years, perhaps even the rest of the game. There currently isn't enough to do in bannerlord to justify having to kill 10000 men in 30 battles in order to take a few settlements.

Population systems in strategy games are good because every soldier you kill feels like taking something important and irreplaceable away from the enemy, and suddenly every battle is worth fighting. Currently a lord is just going to be back within a few days so fighting them is actually counterproductive.

 

[Bloc]

Anything is better than the current AI recruitment system that relies on mitosis-based reproduction

 

[Wulfsdottir]

The game needs more "persistent" mechanics in general. Killing 1000s of men in a war should make the enemy kingdom completely unable to wage war effectively for years, perhaps even the rest of the game. There currently isn't enough to do in bannerlord to justify having to kill 10000 men in 30 battles in order to take a few settlements.

Population systems in strategy games are good because every soldier you kill feels like taking something important and irreplaceable away from the enemy, and suddenly every battle is worth fighting. Currently a lord is just going to be back within a few days so fighting them is actually counterproductive.

Exactly

 

[badman]

Honestly guys, any idea you come up with that increases the complexity of the game at a core level isn't going to happen. Look how many issues there already are.

 

[Wulfsdottir]

Honestly guys, any idea you come up with that increases the complexity of the game at a core level isn't going to happen. Look how many issues there already are.

Yeah, that's why I'm kinda have one eye at the modders when suggesting things like that to the devs

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

People have been saying "modders will fix it" for every bad mechanic for literal years, with not a single modder saying they would be willing to make all these changes. The thing is that modders do what they do for fun, and fixing bugs and adding basic mechanics is not fun. I'm a modder and I don't want to touch bannerlord with a barge pole, to be honest.

 

[Wulfsdottir]

People have been saying "modders will fix it" for every bad mechanic for literal years, with not a single modder saying they would be willing to make all these changes. The thing is that modders do what they do for fun, and fixing bugs and adding basic mechanics is not fun. I'm a modder and I don't want to touch bannerlord with a barge pole, to be honest.

Well, we have experienced wonderful mods in the past with Warband, so people have hopes of course, but everyone understands that modders don't owe anyone anything. If you don't want to mod Bannerlord, it's absolutely understandable and no one's saying you should. But even already now there are pretty neat tweaks and overhauls out there. That' doesn't excuse the game developers of course.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Most warband mods made relatively small changes and left the base game mostly intact. Only a few of the weird russian or chinese mods do anything substantial. There were plenty of broken mechanics in warband that nobody bothered to fix because trying to understand and re-implement someone else's code is unimaginably boring.

The fact is that individual modders do tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of free work just to make a game look and play slightly different, and tend to ignore anything that feels too much like actual work (which they could easily get paid for).

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I think if it's possible, we'll see all kinds of mods for this kind of stuff. Just look at the 1257 AD mods for warband, that has a lot of interesting features for recruitment and building that are very different from native WB.

I also enjoyed a mod for warband called lords of calradia, which tried to incorporate a lot of the ideas that were in the dev blogs for bannerlord. It's interesting because it succeed in some places where so far BL is still struggling. For instance you and the AI could only recruit normal troops from fiefs you owned and otherwise had to make do with weaker peasant troops and rescued prisoners. The fief had a population system and a horse breeding (very basic) mechanic that would determine how many troops and mounts you could get and the troops would remain until you recruited them.

Of course through smart play I was able to completely cripple and over take even the strongest faction (Saradins do to location)because of the AI using these same mechanics, they could not keep up once they started loosing repeatedly. Interesting to see similar problems with the snowballing in BL, but then they quickly started giving AI freebies to help them out.

 

[Diavolo]

I have always thought that the solution to the ****ty recruitment system in Warband, and even worse in Bannerlord, is to add in a manpower pool for each village, town, and castle, that slowly replenishes over time depending on prosperity, buildings, and the level of how developed the settlement is.
Of course only the owner of that fief can recruit from that pool, and the level of the troops that you can recruit depend on buildings. Typically castles should let you build more buildings to get higher level troops, while towns should give more money.

 

[black_bulldog]

Sorry not interested, this may bring complexity but imo it's too much complexity. Think people get upset now at lords taking all the recruits before they can get there, wait and see the forums rage at having to wait a dozen hours to recruit a few peasants.

 

[archaicwarrior]

"populations" are the basis of most societies, from Roman Patricians & Plebs to Spartan Spartates & Helots, to Japanese Samurai & Farmers, to Med European Lords & Serfs. etc etc etc

The interactions between these groups , made and broke nations.

If your playing BL and there's peace between Kingdoms, there might be internal friction . If a kingdom is treating their poor as slaves, you might be able to send a Spy to stir up trouble. Maybe the poor might revolt if you support them with an invading army ? etc etc.

Add lots more flavor to kingdoms if they all have different political structures. Aserai - Theocracy, Mongols - Tribal, Empire - Monarchies, Vlandia - Republican, Progressive CHAZ - Tyrant socialist slave state...

I've got it all in my head, I know how it should work, just give me the modding tools.
.