Towns don't provide enough income

[User 5318008]

Has anybody else noticed that it is now ridiculously easy to raise funds by selling crafted weapons but that towns no longer produce sufficient income to pay for their garrisons?
I feel like this needs to be fixed as the more you expand the sillier it gets!

[TaleWorlds Community Team]

Thank you for sharing your feedback, it has been noted and forwarded to the development team.

[SuperCrumpets]

if only bannerlord had population so food was tied to that instead of capping prosperity.
id rather play tall with my own kingdom and have a small number of filthy rich cities instead of blobbing and taking over the entire map but prosperity being capped by food stops that.

[Ruffio]

Imho, towns and castles need more tiers of income yielding buildings. Also would been nice if your reputation with traders in the towns, and the hamlets (whatever) connected to your towns and castles would increase tax yield/income as well.

That being said, if you fill your towns and castles to the brim with high tier troops it will cost you.

[SuperCrumpets]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2246688650

settlement finances is such a meme mod, you can invest money directly into cities for a +prosperity bonus which the banks interest rate is tied to so if you have enough money to start you can make an infinite loop.

the city has -12k food and it doesnt even matter apart from not being able to have a garrison or militia.

this means Sanala has 200k per day bc of the prosperity.

[Leigh]

I think it is being done purposefully to slow down game progression.

For whatever reason TW tend to be treating Bannerlord like a MMORPG where they feel they need to add mechanics that hinder progress; grind, low caps, high outgoings etc.

As sucky as that is in MMORPGs you can see why it is done, but why a Singleplayer Sandbox? I really don't see the point.

So many aspects of this game are driven towards slowing the rate of play. A games longevity should come from enjoyment, not because of statistics.

[SuperCrumpets]

all these artificial caps in whats supposed to be a sandbox are almost everything i hate about bannerlord.

imagine if policies were actual policies instead of just small buffs you grind influence for then stack on top of eachother until you have all the good ones then ignore the mechanic for the entire rest of the game.

would be better if i could just do things like set tax rates and caravan tariffs with a slider.

[JoelTarnabene]

Originally posted by SuperCrumpets:

all these artificial caps in whats supposed to be a sandbox are almost everything i hate about bannerlord.

imagine if policies were actual policies instead of just small buffs you grind influence for then stack on top of eachother until you have all the good ones then ignore the mechanic for the entire rest of the game.

would be better if i could just do things like set tax rates and caravan tariffs with a slider.

That's because it feels like they haven't decided on which game they want to make. The generational system is a relic from the time when they were gonna have the ability to build your own castles (since that takes decades in real time) so now we are stuck with a snail pace of a game.

[SuperCrumpets]

lol that basically sums up bannerlord, like the levelling.
the attributes do nothing but act as a hard cap,
they couldve just gotten rid of them and balanced it so that you could absolutely level all skills to the max but by the time you did that your character would just die of old age so making an actual character build would still be relevant and more useful than trying to grind everything to max

[Leigh]

I know its a big ask, but really we should be seeing Floris levels of features in this title. Bannerlord is meant to be an extension of the old Warband modules, yet misses some very basic features that even Native had.

People say that Warband was a grind, I disagree. Or at least, a more realistic take on grind suitable for a lowly noble or peasant making a name in a medieval playground. Bannerlord just seems to be using grind at a meta level to stunt gameplay.

Towns need more that we can do with them. The original Rome Total War had a fantastic and varied city upgrade system which required you to actually specialise towns. Some would make money, others would train units, or build equipment etc. Would love to see that sort of thing, even if at a limited level.

[Gray Matter Guerrilla]

I agree towns don't provide enough income, but is it possible the reason behind that is to force the player into more combat (since loot is best way to grab cash)?

I'm not really defending or attacking anything here, just probing for insight.

[SuperCrumpets]

being forced into combat to get more power is one of the biggest problems with mount and blade since the start, it hurts other playstyles.

[Drakun - Ironhammer]

I'd agree. I have a major city (Lageta and its villlages), three caravans (which barely makes above 100 gold each most of the time) and five workshops and I still can't pay for decent garrisons to stop my fiefs getting attacked and a small, varied tier army. How is the AI even able to afford hundreds of men?

[NoMegaCorps]

Originally posted by SuperCrumpets:

being forced into combat to get more power is one of the biggest problems with mount and blade since the start, it hurts other playstyles.

Originally posted by Drakun - Ironhammer:

I'd agree. I have a major city (Lageta and its villlages), three caravans (which barely makes above 100 gold each most of the time) and five workshops and I still can't pay for decent garrisons to stop my fiefs getting attacked and a small, varied tier army. How is the AI even able to afford hundreds of men?

I agree with both of these posts. Bannerlord was seen as having a more intricate ability to generate and maintain funds independent of constant combat looting.

Now maybe it's possible the features just isn't complete yet to allow a player to do the above, but I do hope by April of next year we will achieve such things.

[Leigh]

Originally posted by Drakun - Ironhammer:

How is the AI even able to afford hundreds of men?

While they are meant to follow the same rules as the player, they clearly do not. If you follow a Faction Head around, clean them out of money selling them stuff, then try again a day or two later, they have recovered their balance.

Sure, they get taxes and what have you, but fully recover in just a few days? They are simply pulling money out of their rear end.

Irony is, they don't keep a well-trained army in garrisons and such. If they have a few losses and thus lose most if not all of their men, they just hire a bunch of chod when it comes to wartime, who die before they can be trained to be useful. This is why factions steamroll, as those that have taken a few loses don't recover their forces, even if they are beyond rich and could afford thousands of mercs.

[Supply Side Jesus]

The current situation with fief ownership is deeply frustrating - starvation mechanic is deeply annoying as there is no feasible way to defend your villages, income from cities is deeply inadequate as it doesn't pay for a garrison (and for some reason this doesn't seem to impact AI lords), all combat loot being expensive vendor trash...

Here is how I would re-balance the economy:

1. Promoting troops should not cost less than loot these troops produce when defeated. Costs to promote should go up by a lot, loot value should go down by a lot. I suggest adding item requirements (similar to horses) - "basic weapons", "standard weapons", "superior weapons" as consumable goods is a good way to increase costs of promotion. Have these items replace 'tools' and be produced by smithy and traded by caravans.
2. Passive income from fiefs should go up by a lot, ideally giving an owner a sliding bar that would allow increase and decrease taxes (i.e. higher tax level = more income, but less growth).
3. Governors should ride out with a war party to rescue villages.
4. Garrisons should never starve, it is just too annoying to deal with. Instead militia should be more impacted by starvation.