Why village elders felt more immersive

[HalfMetalJacket]

The general idea of lance recruitment is more or less how armies would have been gathered in most of the world up until the pike and shot era. A noble is given jurisdiction over a few settlements, and part of the "deal" is that a portion of able bodied men have to be levied during wartime. In the game this means you get them for free, but are incentivised to "return" them when the campaign ends. The rest of the time you travel with a small retinue of companions, knights or mercenaries.

Even so, absolutely anything is better than the human trafficking system bannerlord currently has. If we're using history to inform the game mechanics, the very concept of buying peasants and training them up is completely flawed.

Definitely not saying that what Bannerlord already has is more historical, but I was just thinking. I mean, it might make sense for recruiting mamelukes?

But fair. Still doubt we'd get anything like that for Bannerlord though. For better or worse, human trafficking just seems to be how M&B rolls.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

It may have been, but if you've played 1257AD it's a very enjoyable system of recruitment.

Btw I have that mod installed.

Also don't get me wrong, I quite liked it too.

 

[Apocal]

For the record I dislike both recruitment systems. The best imo would be the Lance recruitment system in 1257AD.

I'm on record as preferring lance recruitment as well. I especially liked how you dumped the troops back into your fief and you could pull them out again later, which was a great incentive to get the big, ****off army for specific campaigns but until that moment, you kept them in your fief without cost. Very nice.

But I know we're not getting that. If they wanted to do lance recruitment, TW would've done it.

However, I prefer the village elder route because the current system stops working once there are no quests to do. In my save, I couldn't get any quests and my recruitment got ridiculously difficult. Also the current system doesn't take into account if you own the fief, your renown, the prosperity of the village or it's connected town etc. All things that should have been in the game as an improvement. Instead you just have to grind relations with a slaver. If I own a village, I don't care about the relations with the "notables" I should be able to recruit more troops. It's immersion breaking.

It does take into account your faction owning the fief and its connected town, for some different purposes. The first gives you a "free" slot (so two slots while neutral, one while slightly negative -- useful for negating the -2 penalty from dissimilar traits) and contributes a certain kingdom policy effect (Cantons) while the other seemingly is for a single perk (Inspiring Warrior). There is some other math pertaining to GetDailyVolunteerProductionProbability that I don't understand beyond it accounting for powerful village landowners for purposes of generating noble troops.

It could be tied to prosperity (directly or indirectly) but I'm not sure.

That being said, I ****ing hate, hate, hate, hate, opaque mechanics like that. I had to go digging with dnSpy to figure that stuff out (and I might be wrong, heh) which means the average player will have no clue it even exists, let alone matters. Warband was absolutely lousy for that and while Bannerlord is better about transparent mechanics, TW still left tons of stuff under the hood that make it hard to learn the complete ins and outs of the game by actually playing it. Leaving it buried means it might as well not exist and that's a shame because there was clearly some thought put into it.

Bannerlord is more interesting how?
The thing with village quests in Warband is that they were very, very easy to do, they handed out a good amount of relations and honor and since they made sense world wise -villages will always need grain or need cattle, in fact seeing them grow after you help them felt like you were doing something that truly mattered- it wasnt a real trouble doing them. Now lets see how "Family Feud" works, probably the quests that spawned every single time I entered a village:
Talk to man, go talk to his brother inside village (you have to go directly) then go to the other village, walk towards the village notable, you have to go by foot and wait for the notable's brother because he has to be present, note, he's slow as **** and it takes like 2, 3 minutes to get where the other man is at, then finally reach him and speak to him, try to do charisma check and fail (even if you have invested points at charm) and have the stupid chance of having the brother dying thus failing, or yeah you finally won! It only took you like 10 minutes of your playtime, and the next village will have the exact same quest! Exciting.

It took me a bit to have the quest pop (I get deliver herd far more often; quests somewhat depend on world events with a fair dose of RNG) but Family Feud is one of the quickest quests you can complete -- if you own the fief.

Spoiler: It takes less than a minute.

I guess that sort of thing is why I like the new system. It is closer to a feudal society, with webs of personal relationships being elevated over popular impressions. I support Sasal because he is my source of military power (noble hostages) and tell Egen to pound sand because he isn't. But not too much because Egen still does own land on my horse village. It doesn't really bother me to see it pop over and over though -- possibly because I've been places where adjudicating personal disputes was a constant thing for leaders so it seems natural in a game.

(Although some of these requirements have not been thought-out: there is no way to level Charm on a companion but Family Feud requires they have 30.)

I do wish it were deeper -- although there is some promising stuff in the code -- and more lively with the give-and-take between notables, bringing their issues to me in a form other than quests ("My lord, banditry is becoming a problem... maybe we should hang a few from the town gate?") and generally pushing players towards a web of mutual obligations that would be more feudal and less populist. Something more like Darklands with literally hundreds of events would be far better than the dozen-odd we get in Bannerlord.

 

[RoboSenshi]

I'm on record as preferring lance recruitment as well. I especially liked how you dumped the troops back into your fief and you could pull them out again later, which was a great incentive to get the big, ****off army for specific campaigns but until that moment, you kept them in your fief without cost. Very nice.

But I know we're not getting that. If they wanted to do lance recruitment, TW would've done it.

Ugh, I know right. Mods to the rescue I guess.

That being said, I ****ing hate, hate, hate, hate, opaque mechanics like that. I had to go digging with dnSpy to figure that stuff out (and I might be wrong, heh) which means the average player will have no clue it even exists, let alone matters. Warband was absolutely lousy for that and while Bannerlord is better about transparent mechanics, TW still left tons of stuff under the hood that make it hard to learn the complete ins and outs of the game by actually playing it. Leaving it buried means it might as well not exist and that's a shame because there was clearly some thought put into it.

Wow I didn't even know half that stuff was in the game. I certainly didn't feel it in my play through.