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What little I know about medieval times, this was actually a bit common, right? To give peasants some basic arms and then summon them to an army.
Of course, this probably also changed during certain times in history. For example, the Romans had a standing army of soldiers.
Of course, this probably also changed during certain times in history. For example, the Romans had a standing army of soldiers.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
Recruits are meant to be the guys who literally just got pulled fresh off the farm and brought whatever they had available. You aren't exactly carrying around stacks of spare equipment to give them (the implication is that they buy equipment when you pay to level them up), and even if you did they haven't been trained to use it yet.
You walk into town, ask the notable "do you know any lads who want to fight?" And any lads who do want to fight pick up whatever they have and come join you.
Edit: It is also worth mentioning that in laws we know of from the 1200s, even levied troops were legally allowed to bring farm tools to war, and were not required to bring a spear or shield.
You walk into town, ask the notable "do you know any lads who want to fight?" And any lads who do want to fight pick up whatever they have and come join you.
Edit: It is also worth mentioning that in laws we know of from the 1200s, even levied troops were legally allowed to bring farm tools to war, and were not required to bring a spear or shield.
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Recruits are considered higher tier then peasants(villagers) though, who are the actual farmers. However because peasant often have stones..... well you know they're more powerful in love combat because rocks.
But the silly thing is that they have an expensive sword but not even the cheapest shield. It makes them almost completely useless for no logical reason. It also means you have to spend far, far longer farming experience for them and buying new ones because so many of them die at that stage.
"Peasant" doesn't just mean poor. As opposed to "serf", it means something like "free man" and their individual levels of wealth varied dramatically. In the early to high middle ages, Knights were actually rich peasants, not nobles. It's not like a lord would just pull random people off the farm with nothing but farming implements. Maybe that happened rarely but it wasn't the intended norm. Militias would be organised and trained even before they were levied, and they would be sent home if they didn't have a helmet and armour or whatever the king specified.
I really hate the recruits in bannerlord for these two reasons. They suck and they make no sense.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
Yeah this is weird and can be fixed by replacing the sword with something crappier like a knife.
Tier 1 troops are meant to be bad; that's the point of tiers. Shieldless troops would be a bit less bad if armour didn't give such terrible protection - even gambeson should be doing better against bows than it does now.
Tier 1 troops should upgrade faster. Otherwise, them dying if used as cannon fodder is not a problem.
Yes, but the people you randomly pick up in their droves in a village are probably not going to be rich for the most part.
The ones who are richer which you describe already exist in the form of elite/noble troops; who start at T2. Everyone else is your standard, stereotypical, dirt poor peasant.
And they are willing to drop their current life and go fight for a random band of wanderers which means they are very unlikely to be rich.
But who are we? In most cases we aren't the liegelord. We literally turn up in a town and say "hey, any impoverished villagers' sons without regular work want to join my warband for glory and pillage?" And the notable will point us in the direction of someone who's interested.
It's a totally voluntary, impromptu thing with no official structure whatsoever, where volunteers learn on the job. And that makes perfect sense to me for a roving warband. And that's why it makes sense for these guys who were peasant farmhands just minutes ago to be using farming implements repurposed as weapons.
They don't prepare for the possibility that someone might come by the village and hire them for combat.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
I think their vanilla loadout makes sense (sans swords) considering these are poor dudes who joined you on a whim, and I like it.
Exactly, RBM and other mods favour this kind of solutions; more interesting than the ones proposed by Native.
For me there are two things that bug me and that in a collateral effect are the bad result of a lack of consistent restructuring of the troop trees and the flawed application of a damage/protection balance calculation for both weapons and armour.
The T1 recruit is cannon fodder and anyone who has played previous M&B (or similar games) knows it. However I would personally frame that recruit/peasant into different archetypes/role by function. When recruiting from the troop trees it would be interesting if that first tier had weapons adapted to the faction itself (for example a couple of javelins for Battania, maces and small ****ty shields for empire, ****ty kite shields and short spears for Vlandia.... blah blah blah ... just a thought) and not civilian tools like a sickle, a blacksmith's hammer, scyte and a pitchfork. Is here where weapons type like slings/ staff slings are really missing.
All those civilian weapons are more logically taken by peasants defending themselves in village against a sudden raid by a hostile force. So adding a couple of lines of code with these kinds of properties would be interesting in my eyes (peasant branch no recruitable with civil weapons and peasant-recruit recruitable for faction troop tree with adapted weapons)... giving more practical sense to differentiate between a peasant defending oneself and a peasant being called to arms/levy.
if you read about medieval times, you will see the levies were simply farmers called for war by their lieges lords, after the Roman Empire was conquered in the west by the barbarian the idea of standing armies went along with it, in the west only by 16th century the idea of professional army would come back. In the east, the remains of the Roman empire (Byzantine) maintained their legions, but they were fewer (from 25 legions to 5, and from 6k men to 1k men per legion). But even before the standing armies, the Roman also used the levys system, only landowners were in the military. When Gaius Marius made the military reform is that professional armies, aka the Legions, fueled by the proletarii (poor people or commoners if you will) could sign for the military service.
The great Roman dictator Cincinnatus was a farmer before he was summoned and been appointed as a dictator. 15 days after he solved the problem, he return to his farm to continue being a farmer. Never underestimate a farmer.
The ancient Rome Republic at its classic old day had its legions made up with farmers that defeated Hannibal the Carthaginian.
What's actually not making sense is that MB2 still haven't introduced the concept of "Martial Law" and "Armory".
When a liege calling his farmers to form an army, were these farmers suppose to prepare the weapons themselves or were they suppose to receive the equipment from that liege? In ancient Rome republic before Marius's military reform, the Roman legionaries were farmers who own land and they prepare weapon and armor themselves, then after Marius's military reform, the Roman's legionaries included the landless poor fellows who wouldn't be able to afford needed gears, but thanks to the reform, they can then join because Marius's new martial law makes sure that the needed warring gears would be provided by the state to all recruits. MB2 doesn't have these concept of "Martial Law" and "Armory", so things could look very ridiculous once you noticed it.
The ancient Rome Republic at its classic old day had its legions made up with farmers that defeated Hannibal the Carthaginian.
What's actually not making sense is that MB2 still haven't introduced the concept of "Martial Law" and "Armory".
When a liege calling his farmers to form an army, were these farmers suppose to prepare the weapons themselves or were they suppose to receive the equipment from that liege? In ancient Rome republic before Marius's military reform, the Roman legionaries were farmers who own land and they prepare weapon and armor themselves, then after Marius's military reform, the Roman's legionaries included the landless poor fellows who wouldn't be able to afford needed gears, but thanks to the reform, they can then join because Marius's new martial law makes sure that the needed warring gears would be provided by the state to all recruits. MB2 doesn't have these concept of "Martial Law" and "Armory", so things could look very ridiculous once you noticed it.
But I just don't find the idea of tiers interesting. At the start your guys suck so much that they're useless, and by the end they're machinegunners. I wouldn't mind this power imbalance if there were ways to use skill to redress it, but you can't. Even in total war you could use flanking with peasants to beat the best units in the game, but in bannerlord they're completely useless, and a liability on the battlefield. It just adds an extra level of babysitting and makes progression more annoying.
I wouldn't mind this if they had a different system for when you actually *are* a liege lord.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
The idea of tiers is a sense of progression of your capabilities and the threat the enemy presents. Going from crap to great appeals to many people. Nobody would get excited/worried for getting/fighting a shielded unit at T5 who has the same equipment as a T1 recruit and the only real difference is 10 points of armour and damage.
Tier 1s are slightly undertuned but only because ranged units can ignore the armour of anything without a shield as if it was totally naked. They should be tanking a little more ranged damage, and be slightly quicker to upgrade (less babysitting required). Then they would be in a good spot.
And there would be more ways to use skill to win battles with bad units if this game's morale systems actually worked; as it stands I don't think flanking attacks seem to have any morale effect at all. One thing that definitely needs to be changed is the Loyalty and Honour perk giving T2+ troops immunity to morale mechanics.
That would be nice, perhaps to even forcibly take militia off their lands, but raises the question of whether the AI would be allowed to do the same.
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To be honest i would go even further. If I had my way I would completely separate the recruitment into bandit, mercenary, companion and lord recruitment. I don't think the player should be able to just yank guys from a village without getting in trouble, and I don't think lords should have to go on a world tour just to scrounge together a few hoboes. I would like some actual unique incentives to being a bandit or lord.
For instance T1 trash could actually be cool if only bandits could use them, and they actually did come with farming implements (that might do well in some situations if they don't rout), and could be recruited in large numbers in some circumstances. Imagine some town you have high relations with as a bandit, and you could yank like 200 really crappy troops from them and throw them at the enemy.
Or imagine that you're a merchant, you can hire a handful of companions but have to supplement your caravan with mercenaries. You could run the risk of not hiring them, but you wouldn't easily be able to build back up if you lost them.
Or imagine lords being able to recruit for free, but only from the towns they own, and at the expense of the population and prosperity of the town.
The problem with the recruitment in this gamr is that it has one universal system for everything. It has to make sense for a bandit or merchant or the king or just a random idiot, meaning jt makes sense for none of them. It also provides no variety whatsoever between playstyles. Its crazy that 10 years of development didn't compel them to change this boring system from warband.
If we were really goint to play as a liege lord then imo each village should have a certain number of recruits you can tap into before you start causing a village's production to plummet Other lords in your faction shouldn't be able to recruit in your villages without permission and should never be able to go over the limit. Neutral or hostile factions should be able to press gang your people but they take a hit to party morale and the more they force recruit the worse the morale drops and if neutral factions do force recruit that can be a reason for a faction to declare war.
Taleworlds isn't exactly setting the world on fire for new and innovative gaming. I'm having a hard time coming up with a mechanic that was in Warband that has been improved in Bannerlord.
you've answered it yourself "to give peasants some basic arms" isn't a pitchfork with rags
all power to you, but you must acknowledge that you like a meme, an unfeasible thing that would never happen. The vanilla recruit's geared as witch-hunting peasants who would raise tools to kill a single woman without their lord's consent nor leadership.
Levies would be provided basic gear like cheap spears + cheap shields and clubs, no swords EVER for recruits (those were expensive and required training to use), cheap axes when the lord was rich. Than later down the pipe-line during Medieval era, basic levies were geared with linen armor like gambesons + spear + shields (decent ones) and sometimes a helmet, again, axes and clubs because those weren't expensive nor required much training (clubs didn't require training at all). M&B in general carries a lot of hollywoodian misconsceptions and absurdities to a point that some stuff's just a meme, really. Even a poor dude joining an army on a whim would make sure to at least bring a weapon if their lord wasn't paying, and in M&B we pay for recruits, that payment's supposed to cover their basic gearing, which apparently there's none
been delaying getting that mod for too long, I need it I think. Really getting tired of being forced to baby-sit formations because the AI behaves like suicidal imbeciles.
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Brano
Sergeant at Arms
I have this troop overhaul mod installed for a few weeks.
www.nexusmods.com
It was originally an individual troop overhaul for each faction. Now it is combined into one. Approach of the author to the level of realism and historical background/inspiration is very similar to mine. My only pet-peeve are great helmets with horns for few high tier vlandian knights. But they are easy to edit out.
Warlords Battlefield - Bannerlord Branches Overhaul
Overhaul of all Calradia factions. Includes 480 new units, more than 100 new weapons, and extended branch trees for major, minor, and outlaw factions.
www.nexusmods.com
It was originally an individual troop overhaul for each faction. Now it is combined into one. Approach of the author to the level of realism and historical background/inspiration is very similar to mine. My only pet-peeve are great helmets with horns for few high tier vlandian knights. But they are easy to edit out.
LuciusDomitiusAurelianus
Sergeant
It does actually make sense, outside of standing armies of the (late) Roman Republic and Roman Empires, and much later professionally-trained knights and man-at-arms of the medieval period - serfs/peasants were shucked out of their land when bannermen were called to war. So having a bunch of guys running around with farming instruments was not uncommon. Hell, this is how a lot of the Swiss and Bohemian warbands started out - going out with actual farming equipment and reimaging them into weapons of war.
As far as swords and what not, that also made sense, even armor. That stuff was typically handed down from generations and the archeological record is filled with examples of things like Republican-era Spathas and Gladiuses in Norse graves, Roman chainmail or scalemail in tombs in Britain and worn by German soldiers in the 1100s.
All that aside, it's just a game, grind bandits like the rest of us and STFU babe
As far as swords and what not, that also made sense, even armor. That stuff was typically handed down from generations and the archeological record is filled with examples of things like Republican-era Spathas and Gladiuses in Norse graves, Roman chainmail or scalemail in tombs in Britain and worn by German soldiers in the 1100s.
All that aside, it's just a game, grind bandits like the rest of us and STFU babe
Brano
Sergeant at Arms
Raising a banner ment for the knight/lord to have all units it consisted of available. It means that certain amount of hearths/families were obliged to provide lets say one spearman with prescribed minimum gear. Forcing ordinary peasants to go to war was last-ditch solution.
Problem in this game is, that even as a lord, you are not raising a real banner. As a wanderer/mercenary/trader you should be able to hire only in town inns/caravanserais professional mercenaries/caravan guards. Or as a shady "robber baron" all the scum of calradia in form of looters, bandits, sea riders etc...
I would prefer if I could at the start of the game build a small group if dedicated companions, lets say a dozen, with whom I could do all that small stuff like hunting looters, doing hideout raids, fight thugs in alleys, search for run away daughters. As my pouch with denars would fill up, I could afford to add few mercenaries. Having a good relationship with merchants, I could gain access to caravan guards.
Problem in this game is, that even as a lord, you are not raising a real banner. As a wanderer/mercenary/trader you should be able to hire only in town inns/caravanserais professional mercenaries/caravan guards. Or as a shady "robber baron" all the scum of calradia in form of looters, bandits, sea riders etc...
I would prefer if I could at the start of the game build a small group if dedicated companions, lets say a dozen, with whom I could do all that small stuff like hunting looters, doing hideout raids, fight thugs in alleys, search for run away daughters. As my pouch with denars would fill up, I could afford to add few mercenaries. Having a good relationship with merchants, I could gain access to caravan guards.
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