how I deal with Warband Native Lord Vassal Personalities

[swillfly]

There is much confusion about Which lords to recruit in Native Warband when you have established your own kingdom. (alas.. I need a mod that makes more despicable lords have a sickly green pallor or zits)

The Mount & Blade Warband Wikia on Vassals[mountandblade.wikia.com] provides a list of the different types of vassals/lords (which seem random in each game) and the most important part: How They Speak because how they talk to you determines if they are plotting worthless wastrels or helpful buddies.

After you establish your own kingdom and have set up your headquarters (probably a town) with a minister (probably your wife) then various people will start showing up over time regardless of whether you send out emissaries or have the bestest dukeydom. Most are backstabbing layabouts.

Here's what I've been doing: Typically I release lords I've captured unless they are one of the selfish rotten sods listed by their captured dialogs on the wikia. Then I capture them and later I sell them for gold. The good lords I defeated I always release and gain honor.

When I capture a castle or town I don't distribute the property immediately to whichever nice-guy vassal. It's dicey leaving a new place un-garrisoned but I can always re-capture if some sneaky enemies take it from me (no garrison = magnet for every enemy). So... I go back to my headquarters (this game I have Uxkhal as my HQ). When I go into my castle hall there's my wife, a claimant, a bunch of lords wives, daughters, sisters, and of course a variety of lords: -some resting/collecting more troops eternally (i.e. lazy bums I need to kick out) -and then others I have yet to chat with.

So I save my game before chatting with them. I chat to all the potential new lords and each has a starting relationship. If it's negative then I normally don't accept them. I speak to each accepted lord again (a 2nd time) and see what they say about my releasing Count Fraichin (for example).

If the lord says something like "well, I won't tell you what you should do" then they're probably calculating/bad. If they say something like "you released Lord Fraichin? that's chivalrous, but chivalry doesn't win wars" then I figure they are either martial personality types or something else undesirable. If they say "you released Lord Fraichin! Your chivalry credits our cause" then they are probably upstanding/good lords to keep.

Then I quit out, re-load and only accept the good ones. Kinda munchkin tactic but AFAIK there's no way to tell within Native Warband which vassals are good or bad on-the-fly. And I only keep 3-5 good lords so I don't have mutinous scum to worry about. Companions make better in the front of my party serving as damage sponges than as independent castle/town vassals.

I tried looking online for all personality vassal speech dialogs but didn't find any regarding what they say about your capture/release policy . It seems the Diplomacy mod fixes this and it provides a quick view of vassal personalities but I'm only playing Native currently.

[Brick Slayer]

Firstly, you seem to be a bit wrong about the lordly personalities being random each time. Yes, most of them are random, but there are some lords who seem to always have the same relation, regardless of your playthrough (They are mostly elderly lords). An example for this is Lord Grainward from the Swadians, and he has been a good guy in 100% of my playthroughs. This makes him a priority for increasing relations, since it means he's very reliable + I get the hidden benefit of him potentially making Swadian Knights.

You can know about whose personality is which by asking them to talk to you in private or to do a special task for you. If they say something disrespectful to you about being a plotter or something similar, you know that they are not worth having.

I always release everyone I capture. It will naturely give you a solid relation with the lords you definitely will want to have (good-natured, upstanding, martial) and give you a very negative relation with the undesireable guys in the long run, because they will see it as an insult that you let them go freely (+5 for letting them go, but if you meet them again their relation will immediately drop by 15).

This way I know who to keep when they arrive at my court to join my Reich, because if someone has a relation of 40+ I know that he appreciates me not cutting his head off. On the flip side, if someone comes at me with a solid -100 relation I know that there's probably something fishy about that guy -> I just tell them to go away.

But apart from this natural selection and de-selection of lords by letting them go, there are also 2 other reasons you want to let everyone go:
1. The ransom money you get from capturing a lord is very negligible in comparison to what you can get from selling loot or having enterprises
2. Regardless of their personality, you will always get +1 honor from letting them go. Honor is good because your enemies will be less likely to declare war on you if you have a bunch of it (same as Right to rule), and it will make lords more likely to join your faction if you give them the right argument to betray their king



That being said, even bad-natured lords can be good vassals, as long as you don't have too many of them. Along with martial lords (or even better than those), they make excellent marshalls who will go on conquests often & successfully, often capturing at least one castle/town because they are just so bloodthirsty and have no problem with butchering enemy lords or fief populations.

The downside of them is just that they are so jealous and difficult to keep happy, so don't expect to keep them for a long amount of time. The way you do keep them in your army without defecting so quickly is to award villages to them. Villages are great because they don't only increase the army size of the lord who gets it, but your lords also can't take them with them when they defect to another faction

[swillfly]

Yeah, I'm not going to release scummy lords that say "get your dogs back" "ach the shame of it" after being captured. Sure you'll get honor BUT those bastages are back out and will continue to follow the scumball script sooner than if you capture and ransom them... additionally, there's gold to be had.

If a player begins a game and follows, say Sultan Hakim, until powerful enough, then dumps allegiance to form their own kingdom they will undoubtedly have met/talked to/fought many lords from all the factions. Now, unless people game with a notepad detailing every lord of every faction they meet and their relationship (very cumbersome/unrealistic) then that player will need to rely upon their memory as to which lords were what personality type OR if they're old like me then they can do as I do when the gamut of lords arrive at their HQ. When you first meet vassals in your HQ castle hall (be it a castle or town) each lord has 2 initial dialog options: 1) accept lord and get positive relationship bonus 2) turn down lord and get big negative relationship hit. After accepting a lord the dialog tree isn't much varied and I'm not aware of any polling questions to determine a lords personalities at that point (Lord is already hired). After I've captured and released a non-vassal ALL the lords have something to say about releasing whomever.

I understand the pros/cons of martial lords. I just don't need the relationship hit every single time an upstanding/goodnatured vassal gets a meager village or castle because Haringoth/etc. are jealous. That's why I 'm not a big martial lord fan either. Also, I can wreak havoc with the tank sponge frontline better than Haringoth or whatever warmonger martial lord.

I noticed that certain lords across games tend to have certain qualities (Ryis has never been a bad guy in any of my games) yet many are still random. So unless someone has a definitive list they pulled after mulling through game binaries of which lords are static, which dynamic, then I'll just say seem to be random.

Still, I would love to see that list/spreadsheet of all lord personalities with complete dialog trees. That's likely not going to happen as the game came out almost a decade ago (community base dwindled/forums less active than onset) and the devs are busy with Bannerlord.

[Brick Slayer]

Originally posted by swillfly:

Still, I would love to see that list/spreadsheet of all lord personalities with complete dialog trees. That's likely not going to happen as the game came out almost a decade ago (community base dwindled/forums less active than onset) and the devs are busy with Bannerlord.

http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Vassals
here you go. if you scroll down a bit you can see most dialogue options with their corresponding personality

[swillfly]

I was looking for the dialog that has a lords response when another lord has been captured (which is not listed unfortunately). It's in a script or mebbe binary as text canned responses for particular personalities but I'm not sure if it's ever been posted. I couldn't find it on Taleworlds or the wikia.

[Bearded Dream]

Do the tournement circuit get to know the ladies. Ask them about their family members. They will tell you what kind of personality their family members have. Either put that information in a spreadsheet or write it down. Spreadsheets are easier if you have a second monitor because you can sort the lords alphabetically and set up conditional formatting rules so you have a color coded list.

[swillfly]

Sure is a lot of extra work just to determine which lords are what. 18th century painters frequently depicted their royal subjects with beauty marks and moles. The inside joke was it would alert people to which lords/ladies were suspected of having syphilis.

I noticed that Haringoth and quite a few of the more self-serving/bad lords have grimaces/shadowy faces if you look closely. That may help a little to indicate which are upstanding/good and which are despicable. It's not perfect though.

I'd like green pallors and zits on the debauched, calculating, pitiless, and quarrelsome lords. Does anybody keep these backstabbers on their roster for long? I wait until they're negative relationship status (due to my giving parcels to more deserving lords) then dump them.

Note: you can expedite decreasing your relationship with a bum lord by helping his villagers with tasks and then having a chat with him afterward.

[highfivingbears]

Can't you just look in your character notes too see the personality type of the lords?

[swillfly]

what character notes? ingame? there are no personality types listed in Native Warband

[White Knight]

Once upon a time, a player certainly could learn that information by digging through the various menus in Warband. I'm not currently playing this game but if I cared enough to go and look, I would start by calling up the list of known lords, then clicking on someone and carefully reading that information.

Unless I'm mistaken, that profile information for the people you meet, gets expanded over time. The ones you know or have had dealings with, should have that information available?

In Viking Conquest, it's a bit different...it may require more menu surfing, it might not have that information there? Warband must have it, otherwise I wouldn't even know about it. I'm pretty sure that VC does too but I'm guessing it isn't as easy to access?

Generally speaking, I like your approach and do something similar myself. It's just roleplaying: talk to people and listen to what they have to say. The game was clearly designed with this sort of approach in mind.

As for the "zits" etc., I certainly hope people aren't that stupid. It's bad enough that people actually walk around believing that they can know a person's character with little more than a glance, but to actually turn that kind of bigotry into a game mechanic? That would be a serious problem, in my mind. I'd rather they did something completely foolish like put black hats or white hats on people...at least that would indicate details about choices they made. Surely, I don't need to explain that people with unfortunate, disfiguring medical conditions beyond their control, can be wonderful human beings? If I had to, I would probably point out how some of the folks I've met over the years, with such burdens to bear, have a tendency to be more understanding, more compassionate and less judgemental, etc.

What I'd really like is name, relation score, personality type and original fiefs, to be easily seen. Then you can get more details about family members etc. from their personal profile page (maybe even a list of previous interactions?).

Facial expressions might be a good way to go? I think anger, hostility, and friendliness should be pretty obvious to just about anyone, in any culture. How you'd show something like "martial" as a facial expression is another story (a clenched jaw, thousand yard stare?). My guess is that the difficulty of figuring this out is probably why it never happened...or maybe it did, thus proving the point?

So I agree, something could be done to make it easier to know people and make sense of the game world, it's just that I am totally opposed to scapegoating people as a game mechanic.

Edit - Scars! Martial could be shown as big, nasty facial scar. Debauched is a tricky one...I can't think of anything that wouldn't upset someone, or mimic other conditions that have nothing to do with debauchery...maybe the whole facial features to indicate personality stuff is misguided from the outset? An icon in the corner of the portrait would work just fine for me.

[swillfly]

Understood: zits can be taken as non-pc... Just some kind of physical hint in their character portrait so debauched could be told from upstanding or martial etc. would be a huge help.

In Native Warband you can clicky Reports at the bottom then Known Lords by Relation to see how positive or negative a relation you have with them. But not personality type. Same goes for clicking Notes -> Characters and then selecting their name... it shows their relationship by a descriptive name (15-25 = "friendly" etc.) and what fiefs they control.

I'm surprised over the years no one made a mod to address personalities. I have yet to try the Diplomacy mod or Floris so I'm not sure about those yet. When Bannerlord drops I'll be sure to note whether or not they address this and post. Mods for helpful basic gameplay should be included in the base (Native) module but it's not a huge deal as the game overall is my favorite of all time it seems.

[Tuidjy]

Originally posted by swillfly:

I'm surprised over the years no one made a mod to address personalities. I have yet to try the Diplomacy mod or Floris so I'm not sure about those yet.

Practically every single mod, I've played in the last three years, and I've played more than a dozen, has at least one place which lists a lord's personality, if known.

Floris most certainly does. I have to admit, I have never played Diplomacy by itself, but my guess is that it also includes the personality, if known, on its "View known lords by relation" report. I'll link a screenshot from Phantasy 2018 in a minute.

Here[i.imgur.com] is the screenshot, from Phantasy 2018.

[White Knight]

Originally posted by swillfly:

Understood: zits can be taken as non-pc...

Ok, let's be serious, acne is quite horrible, no one needs to have that explained to them. The thing is, equating that with negative personality types just compounds the horror. That's taking something unfortunate and making it tragic.

I know it's oh so popular to rag on "pc" but the truth, as I understand it, is that there is straight-up common sense "pc" which shouldn't have to be explained to anyone, and at the extreme end of the spectrum, a kind of "pc" that is used to win points on some sort of imaginary tally-sheet.

I'm coming from a place where "pc" means "stop being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥", not "I'm better than you because...". Does that make any sense? Unfortuantely, it is the worst ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who seem to have a problem discerning between the two.

Don't make me have to go and look it up for you. That information has to be in there someplace or I wouldn't know about it. It was Tuidgy, talking about it like it was "a thing" that inspired me to look for that information. It absolutely was in there at one point. I wouldn't have believed Tuidgy if I couldn't verify it for myself. I know he's right, because I've seen it...because it's in there...or it was at one point, at any rate.

[swillfly]

Really, point taken and understood. I honestly don't care graphically how personalities are represented. No offense was meant. So back on track...

The bottomline is that Native does Not have a quick and dirty way to see which lords/vassals are X or Y personality. Mods do it seems but I've yet to play Warband mods like Floris or Diplomacy or whatever. I've played plenty of mods for the original M&B though (I kinda miss the voting for who gets to be marshal bit).

I'm not sure a grimace or scar would even be that recognizable in little portraits. But it's moot as Native is old and unlikely to be adjusted so I'll have to do my munchkin technique for Native until I play some mods.

I would like Bannerlord to address this in the basegame though along with some other quibbles (such as 2 different command overlays, trudging all over towns just to see Guild Masters, massive braindead piles of blocking allies esp. during sieges on skinny ladders, etc.) I know TweakMB & other mods solve many issues but now that M&B has been around a decade or so, I figure the devs have had a chance to go over a few if not all these issues for Bannerlord.

[Squishyrocks]

Putting this here since when you play a while and there are those lords that always defect and are >:(( to others will flock to your court. Since most are from other factions, I will most likely have a neutral relationship with them. This is also the same for the good lords, so I find it hard to figure out their personalities by relationship on their own.
Since you can't find out the personality of a lord after they defected to you, (I couldn’t find their personalities when they defected to my court after trying for a while) unless they have a relative (daughter or son or wife) In your court, this is one way to do it. (Playing on Diplomacy.)

Basically,
save, talk to the lords awaiting vassalage,
release prisoners, and see their reaction.

Very tempting to quit without saving if you accepted a bad lord.

Most likely you will be wanting martial, good-natured, and upstanding lords.

Good lords


Upstanding lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. Well, that was an honorable course of action, if possibly also a dangerous one.

Good-natured lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. Such chivalry does credit to our cause.

Martial Lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. Such chivalry does credit to our cause.


Uh-oh lords
Only recently I figured out there were different titles of a lord’s personality.



Cunning (Calculating) Lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. That was most chivalrous of you, but chivalry does not win wars.

Pitiless Lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. That was most chivalrous of you, but chivalry does not win wars.

Sadistic (Debauched) Lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. Well, I will not tell you what to do with your own prisoners.

Bad-tempered (Quarrelsome) Lords: I heard that you captured "enemy lord" but then let him go. Well, I will not tell you what to do with your own prisoners.