And now for mods I'm interested in / tweaks to the game I'd like to see, but haven't found something just right for, yet:
Companions: The role of companions in Bannerlord is far broader than it was in Warband, and sort of approaches the level of where it was in mods like Prophesy of Pendor. Succinctly, in BL, you need companions to act as soldiers in your party, leaders of other parties, governors of your fiefs, and leaders of your caravans. However, you are limited to far fewer companions than you could hire in base Warband; you simply do not have enough available companions to act in all of those roles. This leaves aside the fact that, since they're randomly generated, you just might never find a doctor companion. Additionally, the companions in Warband, and even in extensions of that like PoP, were pretty barebones as far as characterization was concerned. They had a couple of lines they'd say when they were near a particular location, and some companions they liked or hated (which caused their morale to improve slowly or drop precipitously) and that was it. Bannerlord manages to trip over even that low bar with characterless, soulless statblocks with OMG repetitive names: Hi, Laura the Wronged! have you met Liesl, Stacy, Anastasia, Letitia, and Gladys? They've all been Wronged, too.
Smithing: I love the idea of smithing. I like the idea of customizing a weapon to fit my particular character. I hate that you can unlock 40 mutually indistinguishable (stats-wise) sword pommels, and that you'll go for possibly years before you figure out the mysteries of "The Slightly Longer Stick" or "An Axe Handle, But What If You Could Throw It?" I know how to make 5 varieties of hammer head, but I can't quite figure out how to put on on the end of the spear pole I've already figured out how to make. Also, there are, at last count, 350 varieties of sword blade, and 2 two-handed mace heads. There's something interesting here, and I like fulfilling orders by subtly tweaking the sizes on the design I've got, but the payout is absolutely not worth the investment of resources they've put into this. Also, you get frequent nonsensical results, like smelting down 20 weapons for a single skill-up and no recipe to be seen, but the next one gives you 4 points and 5 unlocks. Just WTH is going on here?
Settlement Loyalty: I have no idea what this does, but it's really insanely hard to make it go up. I hope you managed to luck out and get a companion suitable as a governor who happens to be the right ethnicity, because otherwise you're eating a more-or-less permanent -3 penalty to this (per day? per week? who knows!), whatever that means.
Family: I love Crusader Kings; it's one of my favorite game series of all time. But the marriage / family game just doesn't really work here, in Bannerlord. The time frames don't line up. I suspect that you are supposed to supplement your limited companion count with family members, but your initial child siblings take, uh, I dunno how long to grow up to be old enough to play as; I've played something like a couple dozen hours in my current 1.7.1 save, and my kid sister (the oldest non-starting adult sib) is still a child, according to the game. At this rate, it'll be a couple hundred hours before my character is too old for riding around Calradia (or dies) and I need to play as someone else. In CK, this works because managing your family tree is basically the entire game, and the game time passes at a rate of days-per-second (until you get to the end game, anyway), rather than the comparatively staid rate in Bannerlord. I like that having a family is an option, but it's just not tied into the rest of the game well.
Other stuff I'm forgetting because it's late.
Oh, I remembered one! Governorships: None of the "Governor" traits do anything for a PC, because you can't be a governor. That sucks.
I thought I recalled reading that the devs planned to put in non-random companions at some point. That said, you'd still end up with randos for descendants. Same thing happens in Crusader Kings: You'll play as someone legendary like Ragnarr Lodbrok, Aelfred the Great, etc. and then the next in line after that ends up being a mediocre person with no signs of their forebear's awesomeness. Well, assuming the descendants ever come into play in Bannerlord.
Loyalty is fairly straightforward. It ticks up or down once per day by your modifier. Low loyalty imposes a penalty to construction, and stops all building when below 25. Below 25 your city has a chance to rebel, but it can't do that while you're inside. When your loyalty is high you get a bonus to construction (I think starting at 75).
There are some policies you can enact with fairly minor downsides that will give a total of 3.5 loyalty. Just having a dude of the right culture in town is also a bonus +1.
I should say I was being a little hyperbolic there, although I wasn’t aware of the revolt risk, so thanks for the heads up!
The dovetails with one of my other gripes, which is that if you have a governor NPC and they are the right culture (not guaranteed because they're random), you can obviate a lot of the penalties. But if you're Battanian holding onto an Imperial fief (-3) and the only governor-appropriate companion you've got is a Khergit (-1), then those decisions are just (mostly) offsetting your penalties. You can also pump it up a little bit more with high security (+1). But apart from its effect on construction points, and apparently the revolt risk!, town Loyalty doesn't do much, and there's a range (~25 - 75) where it doesn't do anything meaningful.
And now for mods I'm interested in / tweaks to the game I'd like to see, but haven't found something just right for, yet:
Companions: [Variety]
Family: [Time]
Governorships
Alone these are merely annoying, but they synergize into a mini Voltron of genuine frustration with governorships in the mix.
An apparent solution has been there the whole time: make the city default to the Notable of greatest influence, or let you pick one, and they just take a cut. Given that the notables still don't seem to justify the effort put into them having influence and territory and interpersonal beefs, I wonder if something like that has always been on the to do list.
Or something that already happens and I never noticed? I haven't held a town in a long time
Yeah, that's still my main beef with the current state of Bannerlord. They have a lot of systems. You can buy production facilities (number allowed based on your clan rank) which (probably) make you a bit of money each day. Those facilities track how much capital they have on-hand and their level, but there really isn't a way to level them up, that I've seen, and the capital does ... ???. You can interact with the notables in town and do quests for them, which gets you reputation, which unlocks more or better recruits (yay! a coherent and functional system), but it also affects their power level (which seems be on a 0 - 300 scale), which does ... ??? Towns have clearings, where you can find thugs, I guess, but otherwise they're just kinda there.
But, in many cases, those systems don't quite gel into a coherent whole.
And now for mods I'm interested in / tweaks to the game I'd like to see, but haven't found something just right for, yet:
Companions: The role of companions in Bannerlord is far broader than it was in Warband, and sort of approaches the level of where it was in mods like Prophesy of Pendor. Succinctly, in BL, you need companions to act as soldiers in your party, leaders of other parties, governors of your fiefs, and leaders of your caravans. However, you are limited to far fewer companions than you could hire in base Warband; you simply do not have enough available companions to act in all of those roles. This leaves aside the fact that, since they're randomly generated, you just might never find a doctor companion. Additionally, the companions in Warband, and even in extensions of that like PoP, were pretty barebones as far as characterization was concerned. They had a couple of lines they'd say when they were near a particular location, and some companions they liked or hated (which caused their morale to improve slowly or drop precipitously) and that was it. Bannerlord manages to trip over even that low bar with characterless, soulless statblocks with OMG repetitive names: Hi, Laura the Wronged! have you met Liesl, Stacy, Anastasia, Letitia, and Gladys? They've all been Wronged, too.
Smithing: I love the idea of smithing. I like the idea of customizing a weapon to fit my particular character. I hate that you can unlock 40 mutually indistinguishable (stats-wise) sword pommels, and that you'll go for possibly years before you figure out the mysteries of "The Slightly Longer Stick" or "An Axe Handle, But What If You Could Throw It?" I know how to make 5 varieties of hammer head, but I can't quite figure out how to put on on the end of the spear pole I've already figured out how to make. Also, there are, at last count, 350 varieties of sword blade, and 2 two-handed mace heads. There's something interesting here, and I like fulfilling orders by subtly tweaking the sizes on the design I've got, but the payout is absolutely not worth the investment of resources they've put into this. Also, you get frequent nonsensical results, like smelting down 20 weapons for a single skill-up and no recipe to be seen, but the next one gives you 4 points and 5 unlocks. Just WTH is going on here?
Settlement Loyalty: I have no idea what this does, but it's really insanely hard to make it go up. I hope you managed to luck out and get a companion suitable as a governor who happens to be the right ethnicity, because otherwise you're eating a more-or-less permanent -3 penalty to this (per day? per week? who knows!), whatever that means.
Family: I love Crusader Kings; it's one of my favorite game series of all time. But the marriage / family game just doesn't really work here, in Bannerlord. The time frames don't line up. I suspect that you are supposed to supplement your limited companion count with family members, but your initial child siblings take, uh, I dunno how long to grow up to be old enough to play as; I've played something like a couple dozen hours in my current 1.7.1 save, and my kid sister (the oldest non-starting adult sib) is still a child, according to the game. At this rate, it'll be a couple hundred hours before my character is too old for riding around Calradia (or dies) and I need to play as someone else. In CK, this works because managing your family tree is basically the entire game, and the game time passes at a rate of days-per-second (until you get to the end game, anyway), rather than the comparatively staid rate in Bannerlord. I like that having a family is an option, but it's just not tied into the rest of the game well.
Other stuff I'm forgetting because it's late.
Oh, I remembered one! Governorships: None of the "Governor" traits do anything for a PC, because you can't be a governor. That sucks.
I thought I recalled reading that the devs planned to put in non-random companions at some point. That said, you'd still end up with randos for descendants. Same thing happens in Crusader Kings: You'll play as someone legendary like Ragnarr Lodbrok, Aelfred the Great, etc. and then the next in line after that ends up being a mediocre person with no signs of their forebear's awesomeness. Well, assuming the descendants ever come into play in Bannerlord.
Right, but CK has built an entire game around those random descendants, and goes through a great deal of work to make them stand out - they've got education traits, lifestyle traits, sins / virtues, etc. And CK3 did a lot of work to tie the mechanics of play into those traits, so that although your eldest and your younger sons are both related to you, one is a drunk who needs a night out every now and then to blow of steam and your other is a zealot who can't work with people of a different religion.
That's all missing from Bannerlord's companions, where the biggest difference between Sasha the Wronged and Stephen the Wanderer is the one has points in crossbow and the other has points in Two-Handed. You end up spending a whole bunch of time with them, but they don't really mean anything.
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
It's kind of baffling that you can't share items between your battle and civilian outfits. I know a lot of items aren't flagged as civilian, but for those that are, a toggle or something on the slot to let you share would be nice.
This morning I've been chasing looters around and beating them up and taking their lunch money, as one does, and I've basically had this in my head the entire time:
I think they kinda work out like “combat outfits - but worse.” Basically, the only stats that matter are their defensive or offensive properties, and thus you’re incentivized to treat them the same way you treat your combat gear, just with universally lower stats. You kind of need to do this because there are fights that happen in town and for them you will be wearing your civilian gear.
I think that misses an opportunity.
The part I like best about civilian outfits is that they’re an excellent venue for pretty-boyar-dress-up. I loved in, for instance, PoP where I could have my character wear my crown and some swanky robes when at a feast without needing to manually switch back and forth to my combat gear. That works at cross purposes with them having meaningful combat stats. I think it would be nice if dressing up civilian-side in a Tailored Merchant Coat was incentivized over dressing up in a Tattered Leather Tunic.
I think this runs into problems where combat-side enemies - looters, militia, bandits, etc, - largely have combat equipment consisting of civilian gear.
Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
You'd think the entire point of civilian outfits is to allow you to play dress-up and have something fancy that you wear in town when you don't have to worry about combat. I don't see the point otherwise, unless it's to make towns more dangerous for some reason. Clothing items already have an appearance value, but I'm not sure if the game currently uses it. It would be perfect for some sort of charm bonus while wearing it in town. Combat in towns should be pretty rare, IMO.
Warband: Prophesy of Pendor lately, because I have unfinished business before I try out Bannerlord some day. I bought it at launch, it seems like a great game, but I knew there was still stuff left for me to do in Pendor.
I beat Prophesy of Pendor once, but it was a really long time ago in vanilla Mount & Blade. They've obviously added a ton of stuff since those days, and Warband changed everything up quite a bit, so I need to do it again. I've played the Warband version for hundreds of hours, but I never get terribly far past the beginnings of being a King before I get distracted and then restart 6 months later.
It seems to be finally working out this time. I started out with Ravenstern, who were generally doing terribly. They didn't have Ravenstern, and were down to 2 cities overall by the time I had enough party size and veteran troops to actually start helping out. I helped them retake some cities, but they kept being dumb and getting rolled by the Fierdsvain. So I eventually rebelled and took Sarleon as my capital in a war, and the current status of the Kingdom is very healthy:
I'm now basically nearing the End Times. The Empire, Fierdsvain, and D'Shar have finally figured out it's time to all war dec me at once, so at the very least the first chapter in the Final Wars has begun. I mostly wanted to hang out turtling and skilling up my Custom Knighthood Order, but this war on all fronts pushed me into action.
I made Lethaldiran train my troops for about 800 days, because his skills and weapon proficiencies are awesome. It was a long tough road, as I didn't really want to go getting my expensive CKO troops killed when they weren't sufficiently decked out and trained up. But since it's the End Times, I finally decided to unleash them on the world. Here are my boys:
And they're performing fantastically, as I had hoped. They rain death with their fancy bows, have cool horses, and can go hand to hand with the best of them with their cool Kraken shields and fancy weapon skills. I think I may finally beat Prophesy of Pendor, which I honestly thought would never happen.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I just came across this mod that I'm about to try out: Distinguished Service. It lets high-tier troops be eligible for promotion to a companion if they perform well enough in battle. That seems like it would go pretty well with My Little Warband and would help somewhat alleviate the problem with bland companions since these will have at least been people that have been with you for a while and earned their place beside you. They kind of write their own story.
The Serve As Soldier and Realistic Battles mods combined are pretty interesting. Infantry actually knows how to block or use shields properly so lines of them don't just insta-gib on one another; being a tier 1 soldier in the shieldwall with their equipment is a pretty interesting change of pace from the usual nigh-immortal cavalry doombringer.
It's especially neat watching the lines seem to understand that if they get scrambled enough they should pull back, reform, and reengage.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I just came across this mod that I'm about to try out: Distinguished Service. It lets high-tier troops be eligible for promotion to a companion if they perform well enough in battle. That seems like it would go pretty well with My Little Warband and would help somewhat alleviate the problem with bland companions since these will have at least been people that have been with you for a while and earned their place beside you. They kind of write their own story.
So I've had this mod trigger a couple of times now and it works pretty well. If you have any troops meet the threshold you'll get a window showing the eligible units. You can hover over each of them and it'll tell you how many kills they got in the battle. Each time I was able to select up to 2, and I'm not sure if that's a hard cap or is based on something. Once I picked them, it created a random name for them and I was able to select a few skills that they focused on, which basically will give them points in those skills and is useful for non-combat skills since troops don't have any points in those. They also get bonus skill points you can assign based on your leadership skill, I believe. Depending on the unit that gets promoted, they can be pretty powerful companions.
Joined a 600+ army that attacked a 500+ army, and I ended up being in command of nobody except myself, which was kinda cool. I met up with our infantry block and ran with them to meet the entire enemy army, which seemed to be running sideways and then stopped and showered us with arrows. Right as we closed the distance, their cavalry rushed in from the sides and everything went to shit. Pure chaos, I was just running and swinging my mace whenever an enemy presented itself, but there were so many pockets of people fighting that sometimes it was hard to find someone. At one point I realized I was the only friendly left within a large area so I turned around and ran with the entire enemy army on my ass, until I made it to the safety of friendlies and turned around and helped push back the enemy charge. I eventually got mobbed and knocked out, but my side's army won the day and I earned a bunch of cash, vendor trash, and prisoners. It was pretty fuckin rad.
Here's the enemy army as we approached them. They were moving to the right for some reason, it looked very cool in motion
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AkimboEGMr. FancypantsWears very fine pants indeedRegistered Userregular
These last few posts aren't helping my decision to wait for the full release.
Give me a kiss to build a dream on; And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss; Sweetheart, I ask no more than this; A kiss to build a dream on
These last few posts aren't helping my decision to wait for the full release.
It's pretty fuckin great, just saying. 🤪
Also, I know I was complaining about smithing earlier but I went ahead and fell down the smithing rabbit hole on this save too. It seems like they've improved the rate of unlocking parts a bit overall since I last played, and there's two perks that increase it even more when smelting weapons and smithing them. So that's the perk path I'm going down, while one of my companions is going down the other path of perks to make higher grades of steel for me. I only have enough patience and money to level smithing for us two lol
edit: here's a neat pic of my troops about to murder some looters at night using that fire arrows mod, it's a pretty great mod:
These last few posts aren't helping my decision to wait for the full release.
It's pretty fuckin great, just saying. 🤪
Also, I know I was complaining about smithing earlier but I went ahead and fell down the smithing rabbit hole on this save too. It seems like they've improved the rate of unlocking parts a bit overall since I last played, and there's two perks that increase it even more when smelting weapons and smithing them. So that's the perk path I'm going down, while one of my companions is going down the other path of perks to make higher grades of steel for me. I only have enough patience and money to level smithing for us two lol
edit: here's a neat pic of my troops about to murder some looters at night using that fire arrows mod, it's a pretty great mod:
Do the arrows do anything or just look awesome at night?
These last few posts aren't helping my decision to wait for the full release.
It's pretty fuckin great, just saying. 🤪
Also, I know I was complaining about smithing earlier but I went ahead and fell down the smithing rabbit hole on this save too. It seems like they've improved the rate of unlocking parts a bit overall since I last played, and there's two perks that increase it even more when smelting weapons and smithing them. So that's the perk path I'm going down, while one of my companions is going down the other path of perks to make higher grades of steel for me. I only have enough patience and money to level smithing for us two lol
edit: here's a neat pic of my troops about to murder some looters at night using that fire arrows mod, it's a pretty great mod:
Do the arrows do anything or just look awesome at night?
Just looks cool. I guess it helps see where archers are and where they're shooting at too. Looks cool as fuck when you're charging an enemy line and you see a column of flaming arrows fly overhead
These last few posts aren't helping my decision to wait for the full release.
More battle maps should be worth waiting for. They seem to only have half of their planned coverage, so it's hit or miss on whether you can leverage your terrain advantage. Once the whole continent has these context aware battle maps, it's going to be allow for a major improvement in how it plays.
What's here is cool, but that seems like it will be a different game.
There's also still a lot of jank. Nothing game breaking or anything just a bunch of annoyances they never resolved from the first game. Lots of systems not explained well, smithing is...a thing... you can't unbind controls and you can't bind a control to a key in use so changing keybinds is an exercise in annoyance. Stuff like that.
If you've played and put up with Warband you'll be fine, mind.
I should really just restart. I'm still playing my campaign that only has 1 or 2 patches from with early access first started. I'm probably missing out on all the neat additions
Have they fixed sieges yet? I got to the sieging stage in my, admittedly very old, last game and discovered that troops would still conga-line up a single ladder. This was despite there being another ladder literally right next to it and multiple other entrances available to them.
Have they fixed sieges yet? I got to the sieging stage in my, admittedly very old, last game and discovered that troops would still conga-line up a single ladder. This was despite there being another ladder literally right next to it and multiple other entrances available to them.
That's one of the big fixes in 1.7, yes - troops will use multiple ladders and siege towers at the same time.
Yeah, I just did my first siege in 1.7 and the troops used two ladders at the same time.. Maybe more elsewhere, I just know the two at my location got used.
Also, I find it hilarious that my mediocre javelins and throwing skill is still enough to ragdoll enemies I kill, and often they kill in one hit unless the enemy is super armored. Just sending dudes into fuckin orbit all CHOOOOOM (not really, just ragdolling them backwards, sometimes with cartwheels)
My only gripe about Bannerlord sieges right now is that the attackers don't use siege engines, though I'm not sure if that's because the AI's too impatient - armies have to disband after only a few days of siege now - or if it's because defensive siege engines on the map screen keep destroying them.
My secondary gripe about Bannerlord sieges is that I keep forgetting to switch out my equipment before joining an assault, meaning I'm going up a ladder with something like a 175-reach glaive, those being well known for their versatility in tightly packed spaces...
Yeah, I’ve had bad luck in using offensive siege engines except siege towers because building a ballista just results in it getting off two or three shots before the 4 defensive ballistae destroy it.
With a siege tower you can build it and immediately assault, so it doesn’t have a chance to get destroyed and defensive ballistae prioritize troops in-combat.
My only gripe about Bannerlord sieges right now is that the attackers don't use siege engines, though I'm not sure if that's because the AI's too impatient - armies have to disband after only a few days of siege now - or if it's because defensive siege engines on the map screen keep destroying them.
My secondary gripe about Bannerlord sieges is that I keep forgetting to switch out my equipment before joining an assault, meaning I'm going up a ladder with something like a 175-reach glaive, those being well known for their versatility in tightly packed spaces...
I remember it being really hard to get siege engines up (and keep them up) against a half decent town without a good engineer. Is that aspect harder now or roughly the same?
Edit:
Secondary solution: Make a group consisting of a single more appropriately geared soldier and order it to stand in the open
Yeah, I think it's a race between the attacker's engineering skill and the defenders', and there's usually an advantage to the latter. Though I suppose that's basically how sieges traditionally went.
The couple of times I've seen the attacker have siege engines ready to go in 1.6 days, the attacks were very one-sided.
The first issue is that the attacker needs to set up a siege camp first. That takes a significant amount of time, during which the defender can already start building.
The second issue is that towns can build siegeworks (and many towns start the game with one) which increases their siege engine build rate.
So unless you have an amazing engineer, chances are really good that the defenders will have 4 ballistae up and running before the attackers get one.
And then, of course, the defending ballistae can destroy your attacking ballistae before it really does anything.
Which is for the best, because the defenders are fuuuuucked if you manage to tip the balance.
Though for it to mean anything (attacking with a small army that could sustain itself long enough) that Kingdom would already need to be in complete disarray to not have simply swept you away.
And in the end your prize is getting to spend years rebuilding a city that hates you.
I know I started as Battanian, but I really shouldn't have joined them because they keep getting their asses whipped. Slowly losing more and more territory, usually to the Empire. Maybe I should join Vlandia instead, they have rad crossbowmen. Are there any drawbacks to asking the king to release me from my oath? I did marry his daughter...
I know I started as Battanian, but I really shouldn't have joined them because they keep getting their asses whipped. Slowly losing more and more territory, usually to the Empire. Maybe I should join Vlandia instead, they have rad crossbowmen. Are there any drawbacks to asking the king to release me from my oath? I did marry his daughter...
I think you take a 20 rep hit from the other clans if you're a vassal, so it shouldn't apply to his daughter.
You get the same warning if you're a mercenary, but you don't actually get the penalty.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
I don't know if they added it to vanilla (or I just never noticed it) or if it's the Diplomacy mod I'm using, but there are now factions that can be created within a kingdom. There's a secession faction and an abdication faction. Both will cause a civil war to fire, and if won the former will have all clans in it found a new kingdom while the latter will have the current ruler step down and a new ruler be elected. That's pretty sweet as I wanted a way to start working within a kingdom to eventually kind of morph it into my own. Ideally I could get the clans I like behind me and take them with me instead of just having to start from scratch. I'm not sure how it plays out in practice yet, or how easy it is to get clans behind you. I know trying to recruit foreign heroes has been tough, even with really high relation.
The main idea of making friends then taking them with you works well enough in vanilla, but that -20 rep hit also means it's potentially easier to recruit the former enemies who you repeatedly trounced then declined to take hostage.
What's the blood of a few hundred serfs spilled needlessly between friends.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
Diplomacy also added that Send Messenger button that I love so much, so it's now my favorite mod.
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I thought I recalled reading that the devs planned to put in non-random companions at some point. That said, you'd still end up with randos for descendants. Same thing happens in Crusader Kings: You'll play as someone legendary like Ragnarr Lodbrok, Aelfred the Great, etc. and then the next in line after that ends up being a mediocre person with no signs of their forebear's awesomeness. Well, assuming the descendants ever come into play in Bannerlord.
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3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Dresses are surprisingly good low tier armor
I should say I was being a little hyperbolic there, although I wasn’t aware of the revolt risk, so thanks for the heads up!
The dovetails with one of my other gripes, which is that if you have a governor NPC and they are the right culture (not guaranteed because they're random), you can obviate a lot of the penalties. But if you're Battanian holding onto an Imperial fief (-3) and the only governor-appropriate companion you've got is a Khergit (-1), then those decisions are just (mostly) offsetting your penalties. You can also pump it up a little bit more with high security (+1). But apart from its effect on construction points, and apparently the revolt risk!, town Loyalty doesn't do much, and there's a range (~25 - 75) where it doesn't do anything meaningful.
Yeah, that's still my main beef with the current state of Bannerlord. They have a lot of systems. You can buy production facilities (number allowed based on your clan rank) which (probably) make you a bit of money each day. Those facilities track how much capital they have on-hand and their level, but there really isn't a way to level them up, that I've seen, and the capital does ... ???. You can interact with the notables in town and do quests for them, which gets you reputation, which unlocks more or better recruits (yay! a coherent and functional system), but it also affects their power level (which seems be on a 0 - 300 scale), which does ... ??? Towns have clearings, where you can find thugs, I guess, but otherwise they're just kinda there.
But, in many cases, those systems don't quite gel into a coherent whole.
The combat game's pretty awesome, though.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Right, but CK has built an entire game around those random descendants, and goes through a great deal of work to make them stand out - they've got education traits, lifestyle traits, sins / virtues, etc. And CK3 did a lot of work to tie the mechanics of play into those traits, so that although your eldest and your younger sons are both related to you, one is a drunk who needs a night out every now and then to blow of steam and your other is a zealot who can't work with people of a different religion.
That's all missing from Bannerlord's companions, where the biggest difference between Sasha the Wronged and Stephen the Wanderer is the one has points in crossbow and the other has points in Two-Handed. You end up spending a whole bunch of time with them, but they don't really mean anything.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I think they kinda work out like “combat outfits - but worse.” Basically, the only stats that matter are their defensive or offensive properties, and thus you’re incentivized to treat them the same way you treat your combat gear, just with universally lower stats. You kind of need to do this because there are fights that happen in town and for them you will be wearing your civilian gear.
I think that misses an opportunity.
The part I like best about civilian outfits is that they’re an excellent venue for pretty-boyar-dress-up. I loved in, for instance, PoP where I could have my character wear my crown and some swanky robes when at a feast without needing to manually switch back and forth to my combat gear. That works at cross purposes with them having meaningful combat stats. I think it would be nice if dressing up civilian-side in a Tailored Merchant Coat was incentivized over dressing up in a Tattered Leather Tunic.
I think this runs into problems where combat-side enemies - looters, militia, bandits, etc, - largely have combat equipment consisting of civilian gear.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Warband: Prophesy of Pendor lately, because I have unfinished business before I try out Bannerlord some day. I bought it at launch, it seems like a great game, but I knew there was still stuff left for me to do in Pendor.
I beat Prophesy of Pendor once, but it was a really long time ago in vanilla Mount & Blade. They've obviously added a ton of stuff since those days, and Warband changed everything up quite a bit, so I need to do it again. I've played the Warband version for hundreds of hours, but I never get terribly far past the beginnings of being a King before I get distracted and then restart 6 months later.
It seems to be finally working out this time. I started out with Ravenstern, who were generally doing terribly. They didn't have Ravenstern, and were down to 2 cities overall by the time I had enough party size and veteran troops to actually start helping out. I helped them retake some cities, but they kept being dumb and getting rolled by the Fierdsvain. So I eventually rebelled and took Sarleon as my capital in a war, and the current status of the Kingdom is very healthy:
I'm now basically nearing the End Times. The Empire, Fierdsvain, and D'Shar have finally figured out it's time to all war dec me at once, so at the very least the first chapter in the Final Wars has begun. I mostly wanted to hang out turtling and skilling up my Custom Knighthood Order, but this war on all fronts pushed me into action.
I made Lethaldiran train my troops for about 800 days, because his skills and weapon proficiencies are awesome. It was a long tough road, as I didn't really want to go getting my expensive CKO troops killed when they weren't sufficiently decked out and trained up. But since it's the End Times, I finally decided to unleash them on the world. Here are my boys:
And they're performing fantastically, as I had hoped. They rain death with their fancy bows, have cool horses, and can go hand to hand with the best of them with their cool Kraken shields and fancy weapon skills. I think I may finally beat Prophesy of Pendor, which I honestly thought would never happen.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
It's especially neat watching the lines seem to understand that if they get scrambled enough they should pull back, reform, and reengage.
So I've had this mod trigger a couple of times now and it works pretty well. If you have any troops meet the threshold you'll get a window showing the eligible units. You can hover over each of them and it'll tell you how many kills they got in the battle. Each time I was able to select up to 2, and I'm not sure if that's a hard cap or is based on something. Once I picked them, it created a random name for them and I was able to select a few skills that they focused on, which basically will give them points in those skills and is useful for non-combat skills since troops don't have any points in those. They also get bonus skill points you can assign based on your leadership skill, I believe. Depending on the unit that gets promoted, they can be pretty powerful companions.
Here's the enemy army as we approached them. They were moving to the right for some reason, it looked very cool in motion
It's pretty fuckin great, just saying. 🤪
Also, I know I was complaining about smithing earlier but I went ahead and fell down the smithing rabbit hole on this save too. It seems like they've improved the rate of unlocking parts a bit overall since I last played, and there's two perks that increase it even more when smelting weapons and smithing them. So that's the perk path I'm going down, while one of my companions is going down the other path of perks to make higher grades of steel for me. I only have enough patience and money to level smithing for us two lol
edit: here's a neat pic of my troops about to murder some looters at night using that fire arrows mod, it's a pretty great mod:
Do the arrows do anything or just look awesome at night?
Just looks cool. I guess it helps see where archers are and where they're shooting at too. Looks cool as fuck when you're charging an enemy line and you see a column of flaming arrows fly overhead
And when combined with the True series of mods they're frickin loot pinatas I keep clearing entire towns of ALL THEIR GOLD from selling loot.
edit: oh right MCM is a thing. Fixed!
I'ma give that a watch later at home, because while it's mostly intuitive I am confused by when I'm joining a bigger group.
More battle maps should be worth waiting for. They seem to only have half of their planned coverage, so it's hit or miss on whether you can leverage your terrain advantage. Once the whole continent has these context aware battle maps, it's going to be allow for a major improvement in how it plays.
What's here is cool, but that seems like it will be a different game.
If you've played and put up with Warband you'll be fine, mind.
Selling Board Games for Medical Bills
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
That's one of the big fixes in 1.7, yes - troops will use multiple ladders and siege towers at the same time.
Sieges are awesome now.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Also, I find it hilarious that my mediocre javelins and throwing skill is still enough to ragdoll enemies I kill, and often they kill in one hit unless the enemy is super armored. Just sending dudes into fuckin orbit all CHOOOOOM (not really, just ragdolling them backwards, sometimes with cartwheels)
My secondary gripe about Bannerlord sieges is that I keep forgetting to switch out my equipment before joining an assault, meaning I'm going up a ladder with something like a 175-reach glaive, those being well known for their versatility in tightly packed spaces...
With a siege tower you can build it and immediately assault, so it doesn’t have a chance to get destroyed and defensive ballistae prioritize troops in-combat.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I remember it being really hard to get siege engines up (and keep them up) against a half decent town without a good engineer. Is that aspect harder now or roughly the same?
Edit:
Secondary solution: Make a group consisting of a single more appropriately geared soldier and order it to stand in the open
The couple of times I've seen the attacker have siege engines ready to go in 1.6 days, the attacks were very one-sided.
The second issue is that towns can build siegeworks (and many towns start the game with one) which increases their siege engine build rate.
So unless you have an amazing engineer, chances are really good that the defenders will have 4 ballistae up and running before the attackers get one.
And then, of course, the defending ballistae can destroy your attacking ballistae before it really does anything.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Though for it to mean anything (attacking with a small army that could sustain itself long enough) that Kingdom would already need to be in complete disarray to not have simply swept you away.
And in the end your prize is getting to spend years rebuilding a city that hates you.
But it is fun at the time.
I think you take a 20 rep hit from the other clans if you're a vassal, so it shouldn't apply to his daughter.
You get the same warning if you're a mercenary, but you don't actually get the penalty.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
What's the blood of a few hundred serfs spilled needlessly between friends.
What's that button do? I haven't tried it yet