Integration of Banner Kings, alongside a few other updates! news

As the title of this article says we're very happy to announce that we're working with the author of the BannerKings mod to create a custom integrated version of it for Dell'Arte! What this will entail is that we're going to have a more in-depth feudal and administrative system than Native bannerlord can offer, including features such as different titles for lords, the presence of books, perhaps even introducing a mechanic for claimants to the throne. We're excited to see the possibilities this will bring us to better represent the historical reality of the Wars of the Roses and we hope you all are as well.

With update 1.1.0 of Bannerlord, the ability to display banners on clothes was finally added to Bannerlord. Our talented artists have worked with bringing this feature over to Dell'Arte with good success and we're happy to say that not only is this feature working, but we're also going to bring an entirely working livery system as well. There will be a future post which goes more into the detail of livery in the Wars of the Roses, however in brief the livery displayed by troops under a lord will actually differ from the banner displayed by the lord themselves, to represent the livery colours and badges that the lords would've issued to their soldiers in this conflict. The livery will dynamically display based on who the lord is. The symbols seen below are placeholders and will be replaced with more accurate counterparts.

On the left is Edward IV and on the right we have one of his retainers, bearing a jacket with his livery colours and badge.

The Earl of Warwick on the left and his retainer on the right, displaying the Earls ragged staff on a red background.

Talking about troops, we plan to bring a slightly different recruitment system than native on board. This will also be further explored in a future blogpost in greater detail, however in short the player will be unable to recruit retainers and men-at-arms unless they're a vassal of the faction or own the area they're recruiting them from. We will however still allow the player to recruit levies which while not entirely historical is a compromise we've elected to make to keep gameplay slightly more interesting and not limit selection entirely to mercenaries for someone who isn't a vassal. Although, this might be subject to change.

Troop trees in general have been reworked. Unlike the native expansive trees, we will feature separate linear trees for different troop types (such as bowmen or infantry) where there is a lot of variety in equipment owned by the same troop type, instead of having them branch off into several directions. This is to bring the recruitment of armies closer to the historical reality of the time. Mercenaries from the continent will play an important role to bring variety in some troop types one might not see in the main trees, such as pikemen and gunners, making mercenaries take more of a central role for anyone who wishes to use differing tactics to the English. While we are looking into ways of making mercenary recruitment more interesting as well we can't promise anything on that end as of yet.

This has been a brief update on the things we've been up to lately. And since this will inevitably be asked, we unfortunately cannot yet provide any ETA on when we will have a playable version to be released as there's still tons of things to implement and polish before that. Regardless, we're always thankful for your continued support and we can't wait for you all to experience this mod.

So until next time, take care
- The DADG team