low morale, low supplies, low renown - part of the game, or actually managemable?

[matt]

I keep finding myself (in Rook's group) with far too little renown to go around - my supplies are barely enough to get me to the next market, my morale stays permanently at the lowest level because I can't afford to spend supplies resting, and now promotions are starting to queue up because I can't afford to spend renown on leveling up either. I'm kinda worried at this point - battles just keep getting harder, and without promotion my heroes aren't going to be able to keep up.

Is this just a temporary situation to emphasize the dire straights Rook's group is in, or is this actually just a normal part of the game? I probably could've made riskier moves to get more renown, I suppose - and I don't really know what effect morale and army size has, unless that just varies from encounter to encounter?

Just kind of curious what other people's thoughts on this are.

[Knight]

I found in my second playthrough you're better off letting them starve :(

They're basically your conscience, they dont help you much.

[Myll_Erik]

It's doable, but not easy. It does improve as you start to win more battles though.

[Aleonymous]

Originally posted by Myll_Erik:

It's doable, but not easy. It does improve as you start to win more battles though.

Aye. Winning battles is the only way to balance this, but, even so, it's still barely manageable. This is not one of the game that you can steam-roll over, promoting all your heroes to the max, while suffering no penalties...

Originally posted by sersafir:

I found in my second playthrough you're better off letting them starve :(

They're basically your conscience, they dont help you much.

That's somewhat true, especially concerning the Clansmen (but not Fighter & Varl) portion of the caravan population; they just eat! Maybe having a large population (and little to no starvation) will prove important in the following parts of the game, but as far as this game is concerned, you can let them die (to save on Renown by not buying supplies) if you can handle the morale-drop that comes with starvation and affects battle (where your units will have less willpower)...

[craig234]

Is this incentive to starve your troops a 'well designed moral dilemma of war' issue, or a 'poorly designed you are incented to do something terrible for no good reason' thing?

[matt]

> Is this incentive to starve your troops a 'well designed moral dilemma of war' issue, or a 'poorly designed you are incented to do something terrible for no good reason' thing?

honestly that's kind of the root of what I'm wondering about - and the only reason I wonder is that I can't see a very obvious connection between morale and anything else. Like, I haven't seen an event that's gone bad because I have bad morale - or something good that's happened because I have good morale. And it seems like you can save a losing skirmish by having your characters charge and fight a tough battle - in which case it seems like it makes more sense to spend renown primarily on leveling and item acquisition, while ignoring supplies and morale, because you can always do it yourself.

... though that's only from a pretty strict min/max perspective, I guess. what ends up happening, since I'm so caught up in the story, is that I try to be a good guy and feed people, even if it means I don't get to buy that cool eyepatch. :}

[Aleonymous]

That was, honestly, one of the biggest flaws of the first game: Saving population (especially clansmen) didn't have any impact on the gameplay itself. I think Stoic understood this, and they're gonna tackle it in the second part. Saving Fighter & Varl portion of the caravan population has a small impact, as it makes the War-battles easier, and also triggers some random events.

Now, Morale has one and only influence on gameplay: It affects the Willpower (one of the five stats) of your Heroes in battle. That can make a big difference, but as the previous poster said, you can still manage with mediocre or poor morale. It's still much better to invest on promotions, especially if you're running a big caravan that needs tons of supplies to upkeep.

In the end of the day, it feels like the game could still be OK with current mechanics; it just required more balancing for the management of "Renown" (the only currency of the game), how much is earned through battles & events and how much is spent between { Supplies ; Promotions ; Items }.

[craig234]

On the one hand, I'm the type of player who doesn't like to do 'bad things' in games to the point that I passed up quest lines in World of Warcraft, I didn't play a shadowknight because the starter quest had you kill everyone in a church, etc.

I'm ok with 'thoughtful' dilemmas that have a reason for making you make hard choices (preferable with a 'less evil' option), but when it's just gratuitous, or even worse careless, it's a big negative on playing. I'm disappointed this sounds like a 'didn't care about the issue' situation.

I'd go so far as to suggest you consider patching this in the original game, so that it's better handled, from the description, not merely improve it in the next game. Can I play the game trying to save the people? Maybe it's still worth playing then, but not nice the game doesn't deal with it well, whether that means 'rewarding' saving them - the simple solution - or making tough choice tradeoffs where you get both the reward of saving them and pay a price in a way that is reasonable just as real wars have hard choices. If you were to commit to patch that it'd be an easy choice to buy.

This is a tricky issue for games. It can be gratuitous - you can save your sister or your mother, the other is killed - just for cheap drama. Or it can be more realistic - the enemy is too strong to proect all your lands, and some are going to get overrun, you pick.

It sounds like we agree - the question is just whether the effort to fix it in the original game is the solution, not just 'that was too bad'.

[Aleonymous]

All of those things can be "patched in", but the question is whether they are willing to do it. You see, they are building another two single-player games (parts 2 & 3 of the story), and have a multiplayer game (Factions) in hiatus. Patching those things is no easy task, as a lot of the game needs to be revised and maybe some parts of the code extended... And, all that, just to get the people who didn't buy at -50% sale and are waiting for a -75% or -90%? It doesn't seem like its worth their time-and-effort, from a business perspective, right? That's why I said "that's too bad", because I don;t see them patching those changes in TBS1; however, I am sure they'll have them in mind for the following games.

There are examples of devs (e.g. FTL) who came back after a couple of years and expanded their game, adding more content, which was given *FREE* to all those who already owned the game. It's surely the best for us "buyers", but it's not something you can *demand* from devs, especially small indie studios...

[matt]

> Saving population (especially clansmen) didn't have any impact on the gameplay itself.

ah that's kind of what I was afraid of.

[Aleonymous]

Originally posted by mattlohkamp:

> Saving population (especially clansmen) didn't have any impact on the gameplay itself.

ah that's kind of what I was afraid of.

It was somewhat of a sad realization for myself, too, when I was near the end of my second playthrough. Well, they need to "fix" this for the second part, right?

[craig234]

From a money view, that wouldn't drive the choice to address this. But from the view of having the game in a better form, as the entry to the series, with what I suspect are not highly expensive changes and for a fundamental issue like this, I'd think maybe they'd like to improve that.

It's not quite the same, but remember when the ending to Mass Effect 3 got concerns in feedback, even though there are no more games in the series to sell, they went back and improved that. It's not just for people waiting for a bigger discount, but for all new players. It is unusual to do, though.

By the way, again - they don't have to just address this by making some sort of score you get for protecting the caravan. I think it's interesting to note that it might reflect a leader's or military's view to see the civilians as nothing but cost and overhead and a drain on their military needs. It could be interesting to note that as part of the experience, and realize just how it might be up to the leader's morality more than reward how much the civilians are protected. I think of Iran for example throwing human waves at terrible weapons with massive losses.

I think too many games are too often turning things into 'scores' that might be better done in other ways.

There are a lot of interesting design questions, such as how combat games generally like more 'fair and equal' combat for good gaming, while actual war tries for the opposite.

Choices about protecting the caravan can be more interesting than just 'x points'.

But such a design should be done with the intent to do that for a reason, and not be a 'missing part of the design' making it seem like just an oversight.

[Aleonymous]

Originally posted by craig2345:

I think too many games are too often turning things into 'scores' that might be better done in other ways.

There are a lot of interesting design questions, such as how combat games generally like more 'fair and equal' combat for good gaming, while actual war tries for the opposite.

Choices about protecting the caravan can be more interesting than just 'x points'.

But such a design should be done with the intent to do that for a reason, and not be a 'missing part of the design' making it seem like just an oversight.

Indeed. The "leader's morality" (saving population or leaving them to die) should be incorporated into the gameplay in a meaningful way. For example, if you're a bad/good leader, then more bad/good events should trigger for the caravan. Also, Stoic have said a million times that the choices made in the first part will carry on to the next games; so, maybe, in TBS2, an unpleasant surprise awaits those who let their caravan starve to death! Honestly, the first time I fell into that Onef mutiny event, I thought it was a result of my bad management of the caravan. I realized later that it was a scripted event...

[matt]

> Honestly, the first time I fell into that ... event, I thought it was a result of my bad management of the caravan. I realized later that it was a scripted event...

exactly. those are the kind of things I could see coming about as a result of bad morale - or at least turning out better if you've got better morale, or giving you more decisions that are viable, or something. Otherwise it's a little less like a game, because there's no strategic aspect to it, and a little more like... I don't know, it's like the difference between choose your own adventure and mad libs, or something.

... all that said, banner saga was still a pretty great game. I just wish this one aspect was a little better thought out.

[Vurt]

You need to only promote a core of units, there is a spoiler help for a part of rooks journey before the waste that gives you a big lump of supplies and you can earn about 30 renoun from various mini dialogues along the way, I managed to make it to the last town without going below 8 supply and then you really don't need supply any more, + I managed to keep moral at normal for the whole trip.

For example only level up one of the Axe brothers (if you save them), never ever buy any boost items from the market etc.

[Cursed Life]

Originally posted by mattlohkamp:

> Saving population (especially clansmen) didn't have any impact on the gameplay itself.

ah that's kind of what I was afraid of.

I dont get it, you if you lose warriors you dont lose battles ?