The other missing piece of M&B: army management

Lots of people criticize how limited M&B is when it comes to kingdom management, diplomacy and strategy, and while that's true it is still ground that other games have covered.

For me the unique and cool thing about M&B is the "first-person command" where you get to lead a military party through the eyes of the commander, while practically every other game seems to be either a godmode RTS or some variant of the first/third person shooter. Unfortunately the implementation in M&B falls far short of the potential. Disclaimer, I've only played Fire and Sword, but when I see people playing Bannerlord it doesn't look much better.

Here are things I would suggest that would add a lot of life and variety to the game, and would convince me to buy Bannerlord:

Detailed tracking of stats for each member of the player's party, even though this information won't be readily available to the player. Each soldier should have a name, consistent appearance, morale, hunger, health and money. If this is computationally expensive then let the game do it for just a subset of the soldiers in a large army while letting the rest be generic like before. Party attributes will be calculated based on the status of these simulated individuals. And the individuals will show up in battle and in camp scenes.

Party logistics overhaul where you have to deal with all kinds of supply. You can make choices like using wagons (carry more load but only over roads/flat ground) versus carts (less load but capable of worse paths) versus horseback/walking only. You can choose what kinds of pack animals to bring and how many. Feeding the army should be more complicated and difficult. Etc. But it has to be implemented in a way that doesn't require micromanagement.

Choice of scouting strategy. Depending on how many troops you allocate to scouting and how good their horses are, you can detect farther on the map, but it will increase the party's logistical requirements or have other tradeoffs.

Choice of how many guards to post at night, with a corresponding risk of nighttime sneak attacks.

Dynamically generated field fortifications for when you have to defend yourself in the wilderness. Depending on how many hours you choose to spend constructing them, you can get things like deeper ditches and taller fences, affecting the real battle map.

WE NEED CAMP FOLLOWERS. Depending on the party size and characteristics, and the player can choose whether to allow them. Families, traders etc. Affect party speed, income, morale, etc. And when you defeat an enemy army you could get way more slaves.

Dynamically generated camp scene. Based on the soldiers and the camp followers. You can go around and ask people how they're doing, look at their armor, buy things, etc. Won't be useful gameplay but still nice to have.

Rules for army life. Are sutlers allowed to price gouge? Are gambling and prostitution allowed? Etc. With impacts on the economy, morale, health etc.

More choices regarding pay. Choose how much to pay the more experienced men and officers, choose how much loot can be shared among the men. You can distribute to them other things besides coin, like cloth or food, and it will help keep up their morale.

Ability to appoint more individual roles like cook, sergeant, banner carrier, etc. Maybe from party heroes and maybe from ordinary recruited soldiers.

Region-specific factors. Like a companion who is good at pathfinding may only be familiar with one part of Calradia, so they can improve your party speed there but not elsewhere. Or soldiers may have higher morale and treat peasants slightly less badly when they are in their native lands. Soldiers from the south become more likely to get frost injuries when they go north. Etc.

THank you for coming to my TED talk

Submitted June 24, 2023 at 09:56PM by DroneDamageAmplifier https://ift.tt/Di4VRUv