SP - Economy Why equipment pricing should dramatically drop

[Earth Dragon]

You’d need 50 of everything, at each tier, of varying types and styles and load outs.......it’s not as cut and dry as 50 horses

 

[Yangbang]

You’d need 50 of everything, at each tier, of varying types and styles and load outs.......it’s not as cut and dry as 50 horses

I didn't say each tier my man. I was saying troops would be limited to the tier if gear you'd give them. So recruits can use the highest tier weapons, but high tier troops must use high tier equipment. You know like it comes with the job description.

A recruit that use a high tier sword will do good dange but his skills would suck. A high tier level troop using his high tier level equipment, will do even better damage and perform even better.

It influences players to actual save money and gather funds beyond their own personal plans. They'd need to outfit their army appropriately as well. You can't just horde low tier weapons and expect everything to work out.

 

[Greak]

What's hard with having 50 swords for 50 men. We already would need 50 horses for 50 horsemen. My idea would only work of course if weapons and armor are normally priced. Just as horses are priced reasonably.

It would be a lot of work but it would be somewhat awesome. I would argue you should have the option to upgrade your troops for denars or reduced/free if you have parts/all of the necessary equipments. I love the way horse upgrades work as they are insanely op and it is kind of the limiting factor so you can not instantly train up your 200 horse army.

But on the other side if I had not been able to upgrade normal troops by just gold it would be a painstaking process to carry around a ****ton of equipment just to upgrade some basic recruits. But somewhat realistic in a war scenario when all vassals are training troops and there are a weapon shortage which skyrocketed the prices. But I am not sure that would be a feature for the better or worse.

Would be awesome to have some more specials units which required something similar to war horses tho. Just on the melee side of the tree.

 

[Sithrain]

I get the idea behind using up equipment to promote troops but i think implementing it can cause a lot of problems with availability once we factor in the AI. Either they don't need the equipment and we cant keep up with them as players or they do need it and probably wont manage it well enough to field quality troops. I also see people talking a lot about needing money sinks but to me what we need more urgently are time sinks, especially for the warmongering AI, so what if we had a system that incorporated time instead of inventory equipment?

Specifically I'm thinking make upgrades dependent on a place and an industry, for example needing to be in a settlement with a smithy to upgrade troops with higher tier armour and weapons. Then for every upgrade there's a time cost based on the productivity of the relevant industry, kind of like how we're limited in how many things we can craft in a day at the smithy. Say an average workshop can equip 10 tier 2 troops in a day, but if you boosted that production by 50% you could upgrade 15. As long as the ai is actually told to go and do the upgrades when they are available this might slow down the frantic total war somewhat, and it would increase passage of in-game time for the player without eating up more hours of our actual playtime that I think most people would rather spend on doing things that are fun than running around trying to buy up swords. Then there would also be a more tangible benefit to some of the industry perks beyond just gold. Do you operate the most productive war industries in Calradia? Well now you have an advantage in raising well equipped armies faster than your enemies, even if they have a larger population and can field more troops. I think this would also provide an incentive to specialize and differentiate settlements. "Oh yes, Jalmarys is certainly the richest city we have, but it wouldn't mean much if we lost the royal armouries at Ortysia." It would probably work best if castles were opened up to host a single workshop (so troop upgrades are still possible without owning a town), but they make such small profits right now that I doubt that would break the game, especially if they had to buy their raw materials from a nearby city.

 

[Yangbang]

@Sithrain you guys (in general) always say one thing is too much to potentially complicated. But then present something even more complicated haha. But I do love that one idea you have.

Upgrading troops should only be permitted in town. A time sink and money sink, where you the player must take your army to town (or castle if you belong to a faction) and then pay an incentive upgrade price for the troop unit to go equip themselves for the next rank. All instantaneous but in the town/castle menu.

This would make campaigning actual worth the time investment too. Because you could go out and fight enemies, but you'd still need to return to a base to upgrade your troops.

 

[Schoulayer]

What's hard with having 50 swords for 50 men. We already would need 50 horses for 50 horsemen. My idea would only work of course if weapons and armor are normally priced. Just as horses are priced reasonably.

I agree that the current cost of equipment makes no sense at all, but I am also against having to manually purchase gear for your soldiers. The need to purchase war horses for my cavalry is already annoying to the point where I end up cheating and giving myself horses rather than running from town to town looking for war horses for sale. Having to have swords, armor, and other stuff in my inventory would just make things that much worse.

As the leader that's the kind of tedious crap that I should be able to tell others to do for me. I want automation for everything tedious. I want a errand-boy companion who will automatically take denars from me, go to nearby villages, and return with food so that I don't have to bother with food. I want to click a single button to upgrade my troops, without worrying about inventory management. Clicking that button takes money from me and it's assumed that errand-boy went to town to purchase the equipment my soldiers needed.

 

[Sithrain]

@Sithrain you guys (in general) always say one thing is too much to potentially complicated. But then present something even more complicated haha. But I do love that one idea you have.

LOL that's fair criticism I suppose, and maybe too tedious would be a better explanation. I have been playing with a mameluke army recently and after doing constant horse-buying tours I shudder at the idea of doing the same for every troop.

 

[Yangbang]

@Schoulayer @Sithrain to make my idea not so cumbersome to the player, which I agree I can become. I totally agree that there should be an errand boy of sorts or a tasking mission for companions to get either equipment or supplies for your party. Like I know we got those clan rules in game. Those would be perfect inserts for those roles.

And also I think items in towns need to be dramatically inflated. I hate games that have a store, decorated with items along the walls and floors, and then when you go to buy, they only got like a handful of swords and armor haha.

So I know you guys dread the situation of stores only having 5 warhorses and 6 different swords (for my proposal). But the game needs to inflate store quantity by 10 fold. For towns that aren't impoverished of course.

Currently all towns' markets look impoverished haha

 

[Bramborough]

I don't necessarily disagree that equipment prices still need a lot of work, and the more basic low/mid tier stuff generally should come down. But I don't think that's an isolated issue either, it's just one piece of the larger economy. Finding the right pricing for loot and shop-bought gear needs to be balanced alongside caravans, workshops, fief incomes (the prosperity-vs-food thing being quite a can of worms in itself), etc. Which is an obvious statement, but ALL that stuff is kinda up in the air right now. I don't really perceive that they've yet solidified any one economic aspect such that it serves as a constant reference against which they can compare and adjust the other factors. (maybe they have, but it doesn't seem apparent to me as a player yet).

I DO disagree with the idea of having to provide armor & weapons for unit upgrades out of inventory. Right now, I'm fine with having to provide a horse (or war horse) for a cavalry-line upgrade. It's a little bit of immersion, and makes it a little bit fun to loot a war horse (woo hoo, that's another Banner Knight sometime soon!). But I would not like to see the concept expanded to other gear and troop types. I don't want to have to bean-count and provide spears for spearmen, crossbows/bolts for crossbowmen (and then later a better crossbow, presumably, for Sharpshooters), and so on. And that's just weapons; are we going to do the same with armor?

Even if gear availability & price were appropriately adjusted for an acceptable balance, it still sounds like a lot of clicky tedium. There is such a thing as "too much realism". Is it logical? Yes. Would real-life warband leaders have to concern themselves with such things? At least some of the time, sure. Is it good for gameplay? THAT, I think, is a solid "No", imo (at least not without some other mechanics introduced to streamline the troop-equipping process).

 

[Schoulayer]

@Schoulayer @Sithrain to make my idea not so cumbersome to the player, which I agree I can become. I totally agree that there should be an errand boy of sorts or a tasking mission for companions to get either equipment or supplies for your party. Like I know we got those clan rules in game. Those would be perfect inserts for those roles.

And also I think items in towns need to be dramatically inflated. I hate games that have a store, decorated with items along the walls and floors, and then when you go to buy, they only got like a handful of swords and armor haha.

So I know you guys dread the situation of stores only having 5 warhorses and 6 different swords (for my proposal). But the game needs to inflate store quantity by 10 fold. For towns that aren't impoverished of course.

Currently all towns' markets look impoverished haha

+1

As long as I don't need to bother with purchasing a billion different items myself, I agree with you 100%. Upgrading troop equipment would be a great way to burn excess denars, while passive income could cover the basic cost of things.

 

[Sithrain]

@Yangbang maybe there's a sort of simpler middle ground between our notions here, where troops need the gear pieces to available upgrade but would just automatically draw that gear from shops in a settlement as long as they were present in that town. As you say shops would need to have a lot more inventory, perhaps producing in stacks of ten. Then you could cut the prices to 10% without affecting the profits of the workshops, and you could upgrade in settlements without a smithy as long as trade was bringing the goods in.

 

[Yangbang]

@Sithrain I brained stormed the idea properly and gave it it's own thread haha. Hopefully it doesn't ruffle everyone's feathers too much haha. Addressed providing horses and also a spin on upgrading troops.

https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?threads/suggestion-have-upgrading-troops-only-in-towns-or-castles-and-also-allow-multiple-leveling.416242/

 

[Kristjan108]

I completely agree to this and just want to remind everyone that the best armor in Warband (coat of plates) cost less than 4k to buy and was still more effective than any armor in Bannerlord is.
The fact that a single helmet can cost 1 million denars means you can buy 3-4 towns for the same price, seriously.
Equipment needs to be kept under 10k, maybe 100k denars for the best items with lordly modifiers.

 

[KidKiedis]

Looks like OP removed the poll, which means that majority of users voted against cheaper prices.

Warband

There're no helmets for 1million denars in Bannerlord and Warband had a bunch of armour and horses for >20k. Not to mention difference in economy and daily income in Bannerlord. And you can't buy towns in Bannerlord. And wtf are you talking about? =)

 

[Kristjan108]

There're no helmets for 1million denars in Bannerlord and Warband had a bunch of armour and horses for >20k. Not to mention difference in economy and daily income in Bannerlord. And you can't buy towns in Bannerlord. And wtf are you talking about? =)

Yeah, you could get dyeworks for 15000 denars that made 500 a week in Warband, so outside of the early game grind you could get a lot more permanent income than in Bannerlord.
The armor and horses you are talking about are modifier items - the ones that give you a +1 to +5 stat bonus for up to 1050% of the original price.
Also you can buy towns and castles through barter with the 225 trade skill perk in Bannerlord.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

Hahah, well, yes. Except that I had 300k+ and needed to equip my men to clear the bandit camps ^^ Didn't even do special things, didn't even have any caravans, only a slow running business and my tax money from 2 castles and the town of Lageta. And selling the occasional loot of course. So now I am the ruler of a kingdom, with still these same fiefs in my possession, have 3 caravans, still that slow running business and was pretty surprised to just learn I net 4k per day It's somewhat going up and down so I will see what the average is, but in that sense, I don't see a very big problem with somewhat expensive pieces of equipment. Oh and don't forget that I am paying a pretty large sum in wages everyday for garrissons, parties, oh and 3 mercenary clans.

Youre damn right! Those armors and weapons arent for peasants, squires nor some common Mercenaries to use

 

[Kristjan108]

Youre damn right! Those armors and weapons arent for peasants, squires nor some common Mercenaries to use

Then why does it cost under 1000 denars to upgrade any peasant to use them?

 

[Yangbang]

Then why does it cost under 1000 denars to upgrade any peasant to use them?

Thank you!

Lordly gear cost thousands for the player but just chump change for the AI troops.

 

[Dr-Shinobi]

Then why does it cost under 1000 denars to upgrade any peasant to use them?

Because your armor is covered by a lifetime insurance and theirs are not! also their daily salary are taken account to the down payment. But sure if you gonna start having a chance loosing gear by getting captured (which should be in the game) then we can talk tweaks in prices. But cheesing wimps would prob complain about save files then because they cant stand loosing stuff and defeats over stupid decisions they made

 

[Wasdefg123]

Previous game had already solved that issue lol.
You want a cool armor for cheap? It had a worn version costing cheap and masterwork version costing really expensive, so you are able to both gear up in early game and spend your millions late game