What do you think about population?

[flavior flavius]

Prosperity IS a measure of population. Its why high food consumption increases as prosperity increases.

Prosperity for villages is even called "hearths" FFS.

 

[Benisfug]

With everything else that is broken. **** no, implementing it will only lead to to curbstomping on the players recruitment. Especially now that AI lords are getting their recruitment buffed due to being wiped out too much.

 

[Waybook]

That would just be another game mechanic, which needs balancing. There's already a ton of stuff to balance.

 

[BlackRainZ]

I really think that the player should only be able to recruit mercenaries until they have their own fief, I also wish lords could only recruit from their own fiefs. Of course, this would take a re imagining of the recruitment process. So for example, fiefs would have certain limits on how many soldiers could be recruited for each lord, etc. Lords with few fiefs would naturally have less soldiers. Infinite soldier supply is just silly. There should be ways to hurt a faction by killing a lot of their soldiers which makes them not want to go to war for a long time. Of course, someone else might take advantage of this.

 

[Apocal]

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.

The AI can barely manage food for an army marching from Jaculan to Omor, right now. Giving it a higher-level, longer-term layer of concerns just means it will continue to cripple itself with increasingly bad decisions, played out over in-game years rather than months.

 

[Sheepify]

The AI can barely manage food for an army marching from Jaculan to Omor. Giving it a higher, longer-term layer of concerns just means it will continue to cripple itself with bad decisions.

It already cheats in far more areas than it did in Warband. Ironically, implementing population counter affecting recruitable troop numbers (and quality) would presumably tone down the difference between player and "AI lord" treatment a little bit.

Warband had a very nice system where prosperity and population were influencing each other. When you recruited from a village, it removed the number of recruits from that village's population counter, which, in extreme and prolonged wars, could visibly impact their prosperity, therefore leading to fewer recruits.

In Bannerlord, all the systems in place feel very disjointed, and this very much applies to the recruitment system and settlement status. At best, you only see drop in initial troop quality (or perhaps availability of noble recruits in those rare settlements where they appear). A town can bounce between kingdoms like a ping-pong ball in a CPC-sponsored championship, and the only determinant of recruit availability is whether you got there before everyone else.

I'd like to see population back in play. In fact, population and prosperity should have direct effect on notables' presence. High population should result in more notables, but unless prosperity increase matched the increased population, they should all be poor quality. If population is low, but prosperity (somehow) remains high, you should get fewer recruits available, but noticeably higher quality. If both are appropriately high, you probably shouldn't see much of T0 recruits at all - the men willing to join and army are not just numerous, but also reasonably wealthy enough to afford good equipment from the get-go - and, consequently, requiring greater expense in hiring (the hiring costs and upkeep, right now, really feels like placeholder).

We shouldn't keep excusing unecessary abstraction and simplification of the game just because it takes a bit more effort to properly implement much better performing alternatives.

Lords should pay more attention to prosperity of villages (both theirs and potential conquests in nearby future) far more than they currently do, anyway.

 

[ZydrateTheSmoothCriminal]

Mongols - Tribal,

Go **** yaself

 

[Wulfsdottir]

The AI can barely manage food for an army marching from Jaculan to Omor, right now. Giving it a higher-level, longer-term layer of concerns just means it will continue to cripple itself with increasingly bad decisions, played out over in-game years rather than months.

Well, we don't demand anything and it's just a suggestion. But what we're talking is applied in ideal situation where devs know what they're doing and are capable of game-building. They get paid good money judging by the game price, so, why can't we assume they're professional enough?

Anyways. It might be just wishful thinking right now, but who knows. Maybe they can pull it off.

In fact, population and prosperity should have direct effect on notables' presence. High population should result in more notables, but unless prosperity increase matched the increased population, they should all be poor quality. If population is low, but prosperity (somehow) remains high, you should get fewer recruits available, but noticeably higher quality. If both are appropriately high, you probably shouldn't see much of T0 recruits at all - the men willing to join and army are not just numerous, but also reasonably wealthy enough to afford good equipment from the get-go - and, consequently, requiring greater expense in hiring (the hiring costs and upkeep, right now, really feels like placeholder).

We shouldn't keep excusing unecessary abstraction and simplification of the game just because it takes a bit more effort to properly implement much better performing alternatives.

Lords should pay more attention to prosperity of villages (both theirs and potential conquests in nearby future) far more than they currently do, anyway.

That's a very good point and nice idea regarding prosperity/population.

 

[Wulfsdottir]

I really think that the player should only be able to recruit mercenaries until they have their own fief, I also wish lords could only recruit from their own fiefs. Of course, this would take a re imagining of the recruitment process. So for example, fiefs would have certain limits on how many soldiers could be recruited for each lord, etc. Lords with few fiefs would naturally have less soldiers. Infinite soldier supply is just silly. There should be ways to hurt a faction by killing a lot of their soldiers which makes them not want to go to war for a long time. Of course, someone else might take advantage of this.

Very good point as well

 

[Sheepify]

"I made dis"

Shamelessly stolen from Wulfsdottir (Women owning anything? Sounds like some filthy imperial practice) and expanded on in case anybody wants to chime in with criticism/elaboration:

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/add-population-variable-to-towns-and-make-notables-and-recruitment-rely-on-both-it-and-prosperity.426024/

 

[scarface52]

It already cheats in far more areas than it did in Warband

Directly quoting from a developer:

I did not understand. What do you mean by AI is cheating? What AI is doing that you cannot do? When they escape from prison they start with 10% of party size filled with troops only and as @scarface52 mentioned they can get troops from 2 slots ahead for now (means that if normally they can get 1st slot only they can get from slots 1-2-3, its like they are playing at easiest recruiting mode. It will be removed when initial lord-notable relations are set). These are the only cheats AI have in your scenario.

 

[Sheepify]

Directly quoting from a developer:

Recruiting from raided villages. For that matter, having no apparent restrictions on recruitment in settlements, period, whereas you need to work on reputation - though I may simply be unaware of this working under the hood. Doesn't seem to, though, especially since the quote above pretty much details they get a free pass on two recruitment slots regardless of any actions taken against the settlement, or base relationship between factions. WIP, I get it, but as things are still stands.

Respawning with higher tier troops. For that matter, again - not sure how things work, but I don't think their troops' leveling up is handled the same way the player's is. Understandable given game's limitations, but still different treatment.

Income in general. Faster prison escapes, though maybe that was a bug that got patched. Then again, I'm not sure their escape chance is calculated in the same way, considering the stats of some of the lords I've seen escape. They certainly don't seem to be investing in either caravans or workshops, though (ok, this one's in favor of the player, but still different rules).

I suspect there's more, but I can't say I've been playing the game with a focus on how AI behavior differs from the mechanics assigned to the player, so maybe I'm just flat out wrong.

I really think that the player should only be able to recruit mercenaries until they have their own fief, I also wish lords could only recruit from their own fiefs. Of course, this would take a re imagining of the recruitment process. So for example, fiefs would have certain limits on how many soldiers could be recruited for each lord, etc. Lords with few fiefs would naturally have less soldiers. Infinite soldier supply is just silly. There should be ways to hurt a faction by killing a lot of their soldiers which makes them not want to go to war for a long time. Of course, someone else might take advantage of this.

While I disagree about the "only mercenaries" part (hell, the village recruits are, when all is said and done, "mercenaries" even when your're part of their faction), want to pimp out a suggestion I made a while back related to the "notable-owner-recruitment" interaction that never got any traction.

Basically, have one notable in a settlement with a recruitment queue restricted only to the settlement owner OR their overlord(s) (lord->clan leader->faction leader). Require permission from the owner to recruit from any other notable, or, with high enough relationship with the notable, suffer small penalty in relationship with the owning lord (you went behind his back and, without permission, removed valuable hands from his property).

Bottom line, all lords have near-guaranteed locations to replenish their party, interaction with lords ends up more encouraged and useful, and more "powerful" lords can rebuild their parties much faster.

 

[Apocal]

Warband had a very nice system where prosperity and population were influencing each other. When you recruited from a village, it removed the number of recruits from that village's population counter, which, in extreme and prolonged wars, could visibly impact their prosperity, therefore leading to fewer recruits.

This is not how it worked in Warband. There was no such population counter in native Warband. If there was (and there wasn't), it was both invisible and set to some ungodly value because I could regularly strip 20-40 troops from a village once every few days without its prosperity ever falling. The number of recruits you could pull from a village was 1-3 if your relations were neutral and once the people started to like you it was simply relation divided by half plus six. Every ten relations opened up the possibly for the next higher tier of troops to be recruited.

It was a very simple, straightforward system at its core, made to seem like it was deeper than it was because it was not transparent.

Well, we don't demand anything and it's just a suggestion. But what we're talking is applied in ideal situation where devs know what they're doing and are capable of game-building. They get paid good money judging by the game price, so, why can't we assume they're professional enough?

Why don't I assume TW can pull it off? Easy: their demonstrated prior and current performance paired with just how difficult a problem it actually is to have an AI handle anything but very simplified logistics.

I wasn't being glib when I said the AI can barely handle food considerations when deciding where to go with its army. That's not a mark against TW's competence overall because a few patches ago, it couldn't handle the issue of keeping an army fed at all. It is not easy to create workable AI and I commend them for what they've done so far, even if it does somewhat nerf my usual technique for acquiring massive amounts of influence -- simply feeding the army when no one else can.

But adding in population as a consideration isn't nearly so straightforward. The AI would need to be able to remember its previous loss rates in similar circumstances, know the depths of its own manpower pool, compare to its fielded forces and those of its enemies (and potential enemies!), judge the likely outcome of its campaigns and whether or not their population could support them without weakening the faction.

Otherwise, we just wind up with a lot of developer time spent making up a system that probably results in a turtling player faction (or lucky AI faction) stepping in after a series of mutually destructive wars then inheriting the remaining ashes by near-default. It might as well save the time/effort and just make it an optional "Mad Max" setting that continually debuffs recruitment as the game goes on longer.

I've played wargames for a long time and it is very seldom that an AI is built to handle longer-term considerations like that. Arguably the end result of successful implementation won't even result in fun because the optimal strategy will be to horde your population while everyone else wastes their men by actually fighting.

 

[elcapo29]

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).

I made Lords of Calradia and it has a fully implemented population system for men and horses. I'm an American btw. Its on Steam, and Ill be making a mod for Bannerlord as well.

 

[Gambles]

Of course it needs some kind of pop metric among probably many other things. They've half-assed 'realistic' elements that don't work because you don't have things like population for towns / provinces. If you take all the men from a village and put them in your garrison that doesn't magically make more people, that province has the same amount of people they're just in the garrison, or at least that's how it should work. Why can nations lead 10's of thousands of men to their death and suffer no consequence what so ever?? Yet you have trivial dumb **** like trade networks that provide food for an unlimited population.

The only thing worse than missing features is half assed poorly thought through features.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

I made Lords of Calradia and it has a fully implemented population system for men and horses. I'm an American btw. Its on Steam, and Ill be making a mod for Bannerlord as well.

Do a DNA test, your family probably originates from China. That's the only explanation for you implementing complex systems into your mod.

 

[elcapo29]

Do a DNA test, your family probably originates from China. That's the only explanation for you implementing complex systems into your mod.

Lol, its not a perfect system by any means but I hope to refine it with Bannerlord.

 

[Bannerman Man]

What parts of Bannerlord's recruitment system do people specifically dislike?

 

[Sheepify]

This is not how it worked in Warband. There was no such population counter in native Warband. If there was (and there wasn't), it was both invisible and set to some ungodly value because I could regularly strip 20-40 troops from a village once every few days without its prosperity ever falling.

Been a while since I played unmodded. Might've been the result of a mod, then, or I'm straight up imagining things.

Either way, if that's the case, apologies, my bad. Though it sure is something I'd have expected of Warband itself, much less Butterlord

What parts of Bannerlord's recruitment system do people specifically dislike?

Not so much "dislike" as "would prefer to see improvement of."

Straight out feels too disjointed from everything else. Considering the recruitment costs, there isn't really all that much immediate difference between T0 recruit and a T3 trooper. Sure, you save on looter chasing, but the whole system just feels like it's mostly floating aside from the rest of the game.

Relationship with a notable obviously matters, but again - the quests are just something that happens aside from the rest of the game, when all is said and done. The "best" you can say about interactivity is that Family Feud will give another notable a malus. No matter the state of the settlement, as long as a notable's relationship is high enough and nobody beat you to queue refreshment, you'll always get those recruits.

I'm struggling to find the right words to describe it, but "disjointed" seems fitting.

I like that we can get higher tier troops now (and, even better, noble ones in specific locations - which, in itself, is kind of a double-edged sword, because I'd MUCH rather see noble troop availability tied to settlement's prosperity AND the power of its local notable, not be something hard-coded even with the RNG assignment it now uses), I like that you need to do some legwork for a notable to get more out of the process, but... it just doesn't have any meaningful effect on the game world, if that makes sense. It's just something you do as kind of aside to other elements (that, likewise, do suffer from lack of passive interactivity).

Whether or not it's better implementation than Warband's (and that is obviously a very subjective call), it just doesn't feel to have much... soul in it? Doesn't feel "alive" - and while Warband's "click to recruit" was fine because - let's be honest - most of the base game was very abstract and simplistic, having the same feel from something much more elaborate is kind of "meh."

 

[Bannerman Man]

Considering the recruitment costs

What makes you say that? I've always considered recruiting costs to be on the cheaper side.

One issue I think the game has is that it's too easy, for better or for worse, for the player to make it from commoner to vassal while completely ignoring quests, and therefore missing out on the important boost to notables' relations and influence levels. Once they make it to the vassal stage and they suddenly need more access to recruits, they feel like it's a step backwards in their momentum to drop everything and go complete some quests. That's completely understandable, because not everyone enjoys doing quests, and no matter how much effort the designers put into them, procedurally generated quests will always get stale at some point. The game does not offer many alternatives to increasing notables' influence and relations in this respect.

There's also the fact that npcs' notable relations are not yet set, so for the time being they get a cheat instead, leaving the player at a recruiting disadvantage.

With the way the code is currently written, prosperity/hearths could easily be factored in as a multiplier to the probablity of spawning or upgrading notables' troops each day. Whether or not the AI could be programmed to properly consider the effect prosperity is having on their recruiting rates and plan accordingly is a different subject though, as Apocal said. If the AI could be made to understand how to use it, maybe the devs could implement an "emergency conscription" mechanic that boosts recruit spawn and upgrade rates for a short period of, say, a couple weeks, followed by a much longer period of reduced spawn rates to simulate a depletion of manpower. They can always make more policies similar to Cantons as well.

Interestingly, the first thing the code checks for when generating new recruits each day is whether or not the settement is in active rebellion. I don't know exactly what the rebellion mechanic will entail, but I'm sure loyalty will tie in somehow. If a fief is starving and its villages are looted, it's usually losing loyalty every day, which may trigger a rebellion in the future and cut off the recruiting pool from the owning faction. So a faction that is suffering from a grueling war will probably have many of their fiefs in internal turmoil and their total manpower will be reduced, creating an effect similar to a "population" pool. Not to mention, you can already raid enemy villages to reduce their recruiting pool for about 2 weeks. As far as I can tell, npcs totally avoid travelling to raided villages, so the bug that allows them to recruit from raided villages only comes into play when the player enters a raided settlement with an army in tow.