Posted by WilltheGamer on the official Taleworlds forum.
I think one of the greatest things about Mount and Blade is the potential it has to truly immerse a player in a medieval world and make them feel truly a part of it. These suggestions are meant to open up different ways to play the game so that a player can enjoy the game in whatever way they want. When I think of a medieval world, I don't just think of knights and lords and glory through conquest. I think of merchant lords, powerful nobles swaying policies that effect the people, power struggles, Bandit Warlords, Love quarrels, Rogue Knights who do as they please, an era where you couldn't just fly across the world it took time and effort to get places and do things so more planning was necessary.
In the idea of the merchant, I would like to see more use of the Persuasion and Trade skills, allowing players to experience the game differently.
List of Ideas that come to mind when I think of the Merchant style of gameplay:
Caravan Trading
Bartering
Merchant Cities - Crossroads
Merchant Empires - Mercenary Armies
Starting Businesses
Faction Neutrality
Economic Conquest
Merchant Wars
Gang/Corruption Mentality - City Control through Corruption
Honorable Merchants vs. Corrupt Merchant Lords
Business's being destroyed in wars
Wars opening up opportunities in different cities
Policies not allowing Trade
Policies allowing trade to flourish
Bribing Politicians to break trade disputes
Convincing Politicians or town leaders to take your side
Becoming a powerful influential man, rather than a militarily powerful one
New screens showing tax rates and profit margins for advanced traders
Underground networks
Man of the people
Feared and untouchable merchant
Let me expand on these ideas a little more one by one so I can suggest a way to implement them.
Caravan Trading
When I think of caravan trader I have ideas much like the ones you would find in with Fire and Sword with a few exceptions. In WFS players cannot create a caravan unless the town has enough supplies of that type to send(If any) and there is no way to supplement this of my knowledge without increasing the towns prosperity from trading over and over or being a lord and building in that town. I also have found no way to send more than one caravan at a time in with fire and sword, further limiting the trader lifestyle.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Allow players to create enterprises within a city, like in warband. Say a player builds a fur lodge, the city will then have more furs for trade so larger caravans can be sent.
2. Allow players to send as many caravans from a city as the city has resources available to send. IE: If you can make 4 caravans because you have 4 resources that can be sold, then allow it.
3. Reduce the cost for caravan guards, to do one job costs me more than to hire an entire band of mercenaries permanently, doesn't seem right and hurts profits.
4. Allow players to start permanent trade caravans between cities. If say there are 15 resources that can be traded in a game, and the player can build a maximum of 1-2 factories(or whatever) that produce these goods, then some towns will always have less of Items 3-15 and more of 1 and 2. Allow players to make factories in many different towns, catalog what he built where, and then send those goods to the towns that don't have them or are farthest from them. This will allow players to keep a constant cash flow into their pockets, obviously this needs to be regulated or the player will become to powerful to easily so maybe only small caravans can be permanently sent and only once every 1-3 days or something. Or maybe just make it so that if one city is producing a good for the player, it will automatically send a caravan once a week (Large caravan) to a city that has a high demand for it.
This will make it so players can invest capital in a city, and start trade routes between cities and liven up the map a little with some movement.
Bartering
A talent that was incredibly important to trade back in the medieval times, and has turned into an automatic feature with the Trade skill. Now this is an idea that I think is iconic to the medieval world, but I don't have any easy way of implementing it that would simply be a stat change on a hidden menu. This would require an almost complete overhaul of the trade system unless you entered parameters where it was only used in specific situations but even then it seems like it might over complicate the game. So for now I will leave this idea at that, just an idea.
Merchant Cities
Also known as Neutral Cities, such that the rise and fall of empires is overseen by a rich man in a palace made of gold. Part of the new building system I am trying to design is building up cities and villages from what otherwise would be a plot of dirt. The same idea goes for a Merchant City. A player would find a crossroads where caravans often pass, and he would build a city. These locations would be automatically placed before the game even starts, but players can choose to build their or not.
Ideas for Merchant Cities:
1. Neutral city that can be looted like a village but is neutral to all nations the player is neutral with, and does not count as trying to become a monarch.
2. Merchant cities are built on crossroads, so the roads that connect towns together, this will mean caravans have to pass through them on their way.
3. These cities can charge taxes on whoever passes through them.
4. These cities, unlike faction based cities, are focused completely on trade, so nobody is trying to gain anyone's loyalty.
5. These places cannot be used to produce goods, but can procure goods that pass through them at a discounted price, and then sold at a higher price somewhere else.
6. Bandit Lords, Rogue Lords, or enemy faction Lords can raid these cities, so mercenary guards must be paid to protect them.
7. These places can be havens for bandits and crime rings, putting drugs on caravans or hiding wanted men within them.
8. Just as they were built, if the player doesn't want it anymore, he can destroy it.
These are some ideas that come into mind when I think of a merchant city, a city that is built and raised by the player.
Merchant Empires or better thought of as Mercenary Armies
This style of gameplay came to me from something I read awhile back. What if the biggest and baddest army, was one for hire? What if the rise and fall of nations was decided not by the sword but by the coin?
Ideas that come to mind:
1. Player builds a mercenary army out any units (See Mercenary/National idea).
2. Player finds 2 lords in a fight, player talks to those lords.
3. Depending on how much gold each lord has to spare, they can barter for your help against the other. If you win, you get paid, handsomely.
4. Mercenary group finds a lord, he tell you how much he hates other lord X. You find other Lord X, and kick his ass, you win, you get money, lots of it.
5. Lords castle is under siege, you can talk to the people besieging the castle/town and ask them if they want your help for a price. Success = Money.
6. Lords castle is under siege, if the people besieging the castle don't want your help, or you just don't like them, you can talk to the defenders and see if they want any. And again, success = money.
7. Beating an army as a paid mercenary does not warrant negative faction reputation, so you can fight whoever and not have to worry about backlash.
These sort of ideas come to mind when I think of m>
Starting businesses
A continuation of what you did with Warband. Find a place that has an easily accessible source of material A, Make factory for material A, Ship material A to the world for a price. Expanding on what I talked about earlier, basically just building places of production in different areas. Maybe the Nord lands are rich in Furs so you build a tannery there and it makes tons by trading all the furs to the Sarrinid who have no furs in the desert for crazy profits. Or maybe make a silk production facility(IDK what they are called) in the Sarrinid lands and ship it to Swadia where everyone wants to wear fancy robes and make a huge profit.
Finding demand, exploiting resources to meet said demand, profit. Simple, and a good way to get really really rich.
Faction Neutrality
Talked about this a little earlier, being able as a merchant to stay neutral with factions or even friendly. I would hope to have a built in way for traders to become friendlier with factions they trade with and thus stay on their good side. The death of a salesman comes when the people he trades with turn against him. This leads me to ideas that may involve popularity... but that would be over-complicating things. For now I would just say that neutrality needs to be part of the game for a merchant, but still be able to sell a sword(lolpuns) to the right buyer without the backlash.
Economic Conquest
When a player runs all the trade going in and out of every city in every nation, then that player has won the game in a sense. The idea of Economic Conquest is just that, conquering the coin, win by buying your enemies, or paying their enemies to fight for you, or simply being so rich and powerful, nobody dares to touch you, and kings come asking for your permission to conquer. The idea that you can become so wealthy and powerful that a faction is not required to become victorious.
Merchant Wars
This idea adds a whole new level to the merchant gameplay style. Merchant Wars refers to NPC traders competing for your coin and having to fight either with sword or corruption to gain economic footing in an area.
Ideas that come to mind:
1. Already existing powerful merchant lords who control production and shipment of resource A.
2. Sabotaging enemy traders businesses.
3. Defending your businesses.
4. Bribing town officials to raise taxes on their export so they have to close.
5. Framing enemy traders for crimes they didn't commit.
6. Mercenary Trader armies that seek out enemy trader caravans to destroy competition literally.
7. Paying guards to stop and hassle enemy caravans, reducing profits.
Lots of different ways can be added to prevent enemy trade, and procure new resources. However, don't make enemies of traders you can't defeat, or they will do the same to you.
Gang/Corruption Mentality - City Control through Corruption
Obviously Merchants and Bandits play a dance of death, sometimes against each other, sometimes one in the same. This idea focuses more on the mafia or gang style life that a merchant with power can have. This may cause the player to lose honor with his actions but grow in strength within the city.
One thing I didn't find very important in the long run of the game was popularity with a city. It didn't seem to have any real effect on how the player interacted with the city unless he wanted to start a business there. I think we could go a bit further than this.
Here are some ideas:
1. Even if town popularity is low player can bribe or persuade check the guild master into allowing the player to start businesses.
2. Bribing or Persuading town officials to cut taxes on just your caravans.
3. Adding a "Take Illegal Action" menu to the town screen.
4. Allowing players to start drug rings in cities.
5. Allowing players to start "Protection" rings in cities.
6. Allowing players to set up bandit groups in cities to keep the population in fear.
7. Becoming a member of the city council and gaining more influence in policies of that city.
8. Avoiding tax calls on property in a city.
9. If you have bandits in the city, forcing local merchants to give you a percent of their income.
10. Having a "Hideout" in a city where if you are being chased you can use it as a rabbit hole to wait until their army leaves.
Many many different ways to add these types of gameplay come into mind.
Wars opening up opportunities in different citiesOne thing I was thinking about was different ways to bar a player from economic conquest. My reasons being that if you had the system from Warband but added all these different ways to be a merchant lord without giving them any restrictions the game would be way too easy for anyone to just mass economic wealth and be super rich. So with that in mind the game has to find logical ways to hinder the players progression to wealth.
One of those ways is economic policies banning foreign traders from starting businesses in their cities. This will force the player to bribe or persuade people in those cities to allow them trade access. If the player decides to max trade and not put any points in persuasion, it will be difficult for him to make new opportunities in certain lands.
This is where war can be of an advantage to players like this. Say for example:
The Nords wont allow foreign traders, but the Swadians will. Now lets also say these 2 factions are at war. The player can either go hostile with the nords and attack their armies/caravans/cities/villages to hinder them while they are at war with Swadia allowing Swadia to conquer their lands and thus open up trade for you in those cities.
or
Find bandit camps and hire they to attack Nord villages and caravans for you. While not as effective it furthers your goals and allows you to stay neutral.
or
Pay Nord Jarls not to attack Swadia, or to stay in their castles.
These are just different thoughts that come to mind when I think of war and mercantilism being a major playstyle in the game.
Edited by: keinPlan86m
