What we have in Bannerlord pre-release dev diaries but not in game by now

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But in Bannerlord you were supposed to be the slaver in your role as a noble warlord. You are the one crucifying Spartacus' rebels. That's not inspirational unless you are a sadistic conservative.
I quite like the idea of playing a young woman
Who doesn't? This is not weird at all.
Yes, struggling against medieval sexism and bashing men is great, if you like the challenge, I give you that.
But slavery unless it's heavily abstracted is unpleasant for a normal person. Just like infected wounds, poor hygiene and other realistic, but unpleasant features of medieval life.
 
But in Bannerlord you were supposed to be the slaver in your role as a noble warlord. You are the one crucifying Spartacus' rebels. That's not inspirational unless you are a sadistic conservative.
Ehh... I guess? It might have been interesting to see slavery become the new raiding - a mechanic lucrative enough to justify its existence but morally repugnant and attaching you to Cruel/Dishonorable NPC's who you probably don't want to associate with.

There are reasons why slavery existed and also reasons why slavery was increasingly resisted as the Middle Ages progressed - right up until the New World created overwhelming financial incentives to perpetuate it en masse. Despite being a moral abomination (which, among metropolitan civilizations, medieval Europeans were largely unique in believing), it existed in practically every major civilization (including those who considered it inhuman) right up until the 19th & 20th Centuries. Part of realism is understanding the real-world human motivations behind inhuman behavior - because history was not populated exclusively by moustache-twirling villains.

Also no slavery means no freeing slaves and less reason to care which flavor of ice cream rules Calradia. There's no way for me to do my slavers-must-die playthrough attacking slave caravans for recruits or to support Garios over Rhagea for that sweet sweet ahistoric abolitionism. Fun fact: religiously-motivated manumission was a major force in the Islamic slave trade for over 1,000 years - actual prolifically-slaving empires culturally considered freeing a slave to be one of the most righteous acts anyone can do.

And, at the high risk of further derailing this conversation with politics... I don't know what conservatives you're talking about. I guess British ones?

Here in America, conservatives + libertarians literally value freedom over life itself (as evidenced by certain behaviors/policies during COVID) and even dudes with Confederate flags on their trucks somewhat ironically consider slavery to be the most unthinkable evil in existence whose every perpetuator should be purged with fire + sword. Virtually all conservative messaging accuses opponents of perpetuating de-facto slavery and Republican intra-party fighting almost always features casual accusations of promoting the enslavement of humanity through free healthcare or something.
 
That's another reason why I'm annoyed at Bannerlord rn. One of my favorite playthroughs (and one I repeated a few times) was to start out as a woman and use woman soldiers (sword sisters, etc) and companions (Ymira, Klethi, etc) as much as possible and to see if i could make it to establishing a kingdom. Girl Power(TM) and all that ya know? The novelty of it was great fun. You can't do that in Bannerlord. No sword sisters. Woman companions are few and far between. Can't grant land to companions (last I checked). It just irks me.
 
What's astonishing is how Hollywood and generally the game industry both fail so much to portray interesting stories occured in history, and it takes as little to 15min in wikipedia, on a random library or just listening a random podcast to know that our rich history is filled of that.

@bonerstorm said a word about Joan of Arc, for the quick trivia my avatar is a drawing of Jeanne de Clisson, talking about badass ... :grin:

Ubisoft being impopular for a lot of reasons these days, they are at least trying to have such diverse experiences on their Assassin's Creed games, even if it's not perfectly fitting what historians has to say, there are always nice crafted attempt to respect that.
 
What's astonishing is how Hollywood and generally the game industry both fail so much to portray interesting stories occured in history, and it takes as little to 15min in wikipedia, on a random library or just listening a random podcast to know that our rich history is filled of that.

@bonerstorm said a word about Joan of Arc, for the quick trivia my avatar is a drawing of Jeanne de Clisson, talking about badass ... :grin:

Ubisoft being impopular for a lot of reasons these days, they are at least trying to have such diverse experiences on their Assassin's Creed games, even if it's not perfectly fitting what historians has to say, there are always nice crafted attempt to respect that.
YES!!!

There's a lot of meme scholarship with goofy ideas like "OMG the vikingr had total gender equality", but there is real well-attested history of extremely badass women who engaged in warfare and especially engaged in piracy. That badassery is kind of wiped from history if sexism magically no longer exists.
 
Ok, I'm gonna do a more substantive post. Time of post, January 11th 2022:
IMPLEMENTED
  • Destructible Merlons and other defenses
  • Appointing companions as Lords
  • Starving a settlement, while mostly inefficient in time management, is a thing that can be done with atleast some effect, very effective if you take the time to destroy the settlement's villages. Also if you immediately enter a city after a siege you can sell grain for TONS of gold
  • Workshops can be visited in town scene and bought there
  • Horse armour is now an equippable item for singular horses, though no saddlebags yet
  • Morale can significantly effect the fate of a battle, more so than warband
  • Prosperity and the bandit population definitely affect what quests can be given by notables in the area.
  • You can support a clan's claim to rulership by boosting their influence. Not as direct as they seemed to imply, but the effect is the same
  • Town scenes are designed to make out distinct districts
  • Children and education are here
  • Settlement issues have effect on its stats, and some of them put notables of the same or different settlement at odds with each other
  • Keep battles after succesful siege assault are in
  • Trade goods consumption is affected by prosperity, both determining wich goods are needed and how many. If the town's needs are met prosperity grows
  • It seems like OP thought the whole "Army and Logistics" dev blog talked about army mechanics, but all of the stuff mentioned in the blog is implemented, just for parties except for the food sharing which is for armies. Only thing which doesn't appear in game is scorched earth tactics, you can't raze your own villages
  • Executions and the consequences detailed in the dev blog are implemented, though I have never seen AI lords being executed by others or indeed the player being executed
  • The garrison does join you if you attack the besieging army, scene used is a regular field battle
  • Siege AI works exactly like that, sometimes some odd glitch or bug happens but it's mostly consistent
NOT IMPLEMENTED
  • AI still doesn't seem like they barter with each other, but I'm uncertain how to verify that
  • You cannot assign tasks to leaders in your army
  • Deserters bandit faction does not exist. (Likely discarded)
  • Faction leaders cannot designate objectives to armies
  • No street fight after succesfully taking a town's walls, thus no scene where the various map elements are siegeable
  • The persuasion system doesn't use game history files to affect it
  • Persuasion system doesn't seem to lead to barter or have any effect on it
  • "Siege tactics" feature where player can choose select combinations of engines and their targets isn't in the game
PARTIALLY IMPLEMENTED
  • I guess you can order units around in a siege, but it is very limited, and they are best left alone
  • You can't help bandits directly (unless you count gang leaders), but they do have quite the effect on the region
  • AI "Lords" don't open their own workshops, but notables have them, and you can reduce their power by buying it all off (except Artisans)
  • Crime is a thing that exists, but it doesn't look like its consequences are what they promised
  • Horse resource villages do produce different kinds of horses based on their culture, but food items are universal. Probably it was part of the completely scrapped village management feature.
Village management is completely scrapped, as all associated features. Coop campaign is definitely scrapped for base game but is still on the table for DLC.
 
IMPLEMENTED
  • Morale can significantly effect the fate of a battle, more so than warband
It still doesn't work quite the way they described it to in the blog post though, where they said it would allow entire armies to break and run once they realised they were outnumbered. Morale has a formation effect and an individual effect (if you kill a guy next to a low tier troop he might break), but no global effect, so armies do not recognise that they're hugely outnumbered and give up en masse in situations where it would make sense for them to do so. Which is what the devblog said would happen. So I'd personally say it's partially implemented, though I agree it's an improvement on WB.
  • Executions and the consequences detailed in the dev blog are implemented, though I have never seen AI lords being executed by others or indeed the player being executed
Would that not then be a partial implementation? You're right by the way, AI lords only ever execute other AI lords in one situation - rebel clans.
NOT IMPLEMENTED
  • AI still doesn't seem like they barter with each other, but I'm uncertain how to verify that
  • You cannot assign tasks to leaders in your army
  • Deserters bandit faction does not exist. (Likely discarded)
  • Faction leaders cannot designate objectives to armies
  • No street fight after succesfully taking a town's walls, thus no scene where the various map elements are siegeable
  • The persuasion system doesn't use game history files to affect it
  • Persuasion system doesn't seem to lead to barter or have any effect on it
  • "Siege tactics" feature where player can choose select combinations of engines and their targets isn't in the game
A lot of big promises by TW.
  • Crime is a thing that exists, but it doesn't look like its consequences are what they promised
Especially regarding the ability for the player to set up criminal enterprises in alleys for a high profit margin, which was shown in a demo, elaborated on in a blog post and still shown on the store page. That's the biggest feature they promised that is prominently missing and has no statement from TW as to whether it is a part of their future plans. Might be worth adding to the list.
Coop campaign is definitely scrapped for base game but is still on the table for DLC.
Was coop campaign said by TW to be in the game though? I see people mention it all the time but never saw a blog post about it and it was never in Warband either.

Good effortpost.
 
Was coop campaign said by TW to be in the game though? I see people mention it all the time but never saw a blog post about it and it was never in Warband either.
Everything is "on the table" if wishful thinking is your favorite hobby. And people who want to love a game imagine all kinds of things about its "potential" that would never happen except if modders don't step in.
A realistic take on non-commital (neither confim or deny), neutral comments from devs is to translate them to "they won't do it". Only commitments count and sometimes for very little.

It doesn't get more clear than this:
Coop is something that we have investigated and decided to put to one side. We don't currently have any plans to add it to the game now or in the future.
 
Was coop campaign said by TW to be in the game though? I see people mention it all the time but never saw a blog post about it and it was never in Warband either.
Never, I guess the community just brought it up a lot so they investigated the matter. Can't say I disagree with the decision to cut it out, lots of pausing in there.

Also, I feel like it's difficult to truly gauge what morale does. Units who run away are cut down very fast, especially in the middle of the infantry fight. Not to mention that the units that do indeed run away first are low tier as well, which is sort of the reason why you never see units like the Imperial Equites running away, they're already dead by that point and only the cataphracts remain
 
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