Hey guys, I'm not overly clued up on all the mechanics of BM since I haven't been here so long, but I've noticed a few things certainly.
- Militia inflate low population kingdoms with CS, allowing them to survive way past their usual life expectancy. Whilst lower player kingdoms shouldn't be discouraged, it does give the impression that they aren't actually achieving anything. Just, existing.
- Archers are overused, and if it's not archers, it's SF with ranged attacks + abilities. This might not be because they're BETTER at dealing with Monsters/Undead, but it might be because they don't get killed when dealing with them. (Although I think they are perhaps a tad too effective). Which leads me to.
- Recruitment is a bitch. As a new player, I can't understand why recruitment is cantered around the capital. And is fairly gold intensive. You basically have to get hand outs to recruit even passable infantry/archers without weeks of sitting around gathering gold. As a feudal lord, you should be levying troops from your local estate, practically for nothing unless they're trained retinues. Having said that, this is a game so, I can understand why people wouldn't necessarily want to use their 30/50/15 MI with Range 2
I would propose a new way of handing militia and recruitment all in one.
1) You can recruit units from any Ducal capital, or if that's not possible to code, from literally any region. Having to travel 2-3 days of real life to go to and from campaigns is not fun. Time is easily the most valuable currency in BM, and reducing red tape and paperwork on players time will help people get more stuff done. What's more, is it allows realms to expand more capably but not reducing the threat of 'too little nobles to regions', as presumably more rogues would attack.
2) The barracks that house the troops you recruit from become the militia forces of the region. In doing so, make the militia static, not depleting, and when people hire from that group, it reduces the militia amount. Have the regions pay half the usual upkeep it would cost to have those many troops deployed in mobile armies. This stops people from stacking hordes of militia in provinces that would not feasibly upkeep them, as well as putting emphasis on having trained units or SF/Cav in high gold provinces, and less trained Inf/Arc in the rural regions. More flavour friendly too.
3) Repairing equipment should be allowed in all provinces with a barracks. They can repair equipment to 100%, but reduce/improve the quality of your troops equipment based on the highest level equipment available in that province. Costs increase/decrease dependant on the skills of those local smiths. This keeps campaigns on the move, and whilst it means your regiment may come home with shoddier gear, it can allow armies to keep pushing forward against the tide of attrition.
In tandem with the above, a system that allows you to upgrade your companies gear should be a thing. I know the wiki makes out that it's because the troops aren't trained in that style of fighting, but historically speaking medieval armies used all sorts of different weapons/armour in the same regiment. Standardization was a huge problem for them that wasn't introduced until pike and shot regiments, and even then it wasn't universal. What's more, is that a character can role play their regiment as wielding 'pikes' or 'swords' even though they come from the same region. Why? Because there's nothing denoting what infantry/archers/cavalry use as weapons. Surely then upgrading their equipment is really just getting better quality versions of their current weaponry?
Hope my 2 pence doesn't sound like ranting or such, I really love the game so far, and I want to see it do better and get even more players. Thanks for reading.
