Bah, NerdLord: Of falx and flax

Always we return to Calradia.

The sun sets over Lageta's faded glories.

More than any other game, the two Mount&Blades have supplied me with an alternate universe. Sure, I've gone long stretches, even years, without diving back in, but from the very first single-town beta version a couple of decades ago I never doubted that I would be playing again, every time. And every time I have. Though any individual feature has been done better by others, nothing else has quite matched this particular mix of visual, aural and thematic immersion, long-term plans and tiny surprises, hack'n'slash and economics, in short: a world. Still, let's not get stuck in a moment you can't get out of.

As the War Sails expansion forced starting new campaigns, I decided to play a Battanian hill-man this time around. But aside from trading my crossbow in for some throwing axes and yurts for roundhouses -

- I find myself too easily falling into old patterns. Spawn outside Marunath, pick up a few soldiers, win my first looter fight, then thanks to a price tip in town, sell some iron and tools at a 400-1000% mark-up in Lageta. While M&B1 started from a D&D wandering adventurer band precept (albeit without magic) and only later skewed in favor of running your own fiefdom, my biggest complaint about the sequel has been that it refocused so heavily on kingdom management and massive sieges as to elide small-party adventuring or remaining independent. Objectively, it was a marketing-savvy way to avoid getting lumped in with all the 2010s' Skyrim clones, but it does make it too easy to get caught up in the trade good and army XP numbers game while ignoring the actual locations you visit.

 

So I had intended to spend more time in a small band, doing odd jobs and getting to know the neighbours. But the money to be made from trading was just too tempting. And to carry goods you need a mule train. And to run the mules you need a larger party. And if you're slowing yourself down to almost minimum speed anyway, you may as well stay at minimum speed (since you can infinitely overload yourself after that) and swell your party as fast as you can so you don't have to worry about bandits, and then you realize you've spent your first couple of in-game years doing nothing but running around in circles amassing cash. It were the flax wut done me in!

phear muh phork

As an added twist of your arm, when starting a new campaign and seeing those pristine low-low prices before towns start trading hands and losing productivity, the urge to take advantage of !!flax at 2 denars, OMG!! becomes irresistible. So I actually took very little notice of the new content (Nords and sailing) at first. Most map changes that came with the expansion seem to have made trade circuits less obviously direct, with more options, but Battania being arranged around a mountain lake invites a local circuit every time before setting off. Easy money. That low-brow town/village questing was nice for a bit:

Gangs of Old York.

- but the efficiency of delegating quests to companions is, again, too financially inviting to refuse, especially for an experienced player. The new text events are quaint: 

- but again, since they don't require you to actually interact with the villages/villagers in question, they maintain M&B's old split between playing and sightseeing. I hit up the arena in various towns to swash some buckles, but it's not quite the same. Granted, when battles do come, they turn out to be real nailbiters, with my Celtic archers skinning their teeth on two-soldier margins. But I rarely need to fight. When I do finally get out to sea, I cheat my way out of one impossible battle by crashing the game. Otherwise there's nothing to do with or on a boat. It's your party by another figurine. The availability of ports makes for some interesting logistic shifts, but I can't help thinking War Sails isn't quite the content mix Bannerlord needed to flesh out its gameplay.

 

When the desert (and desert faction) was added to Warband, its content actually connected into the existing map with new terrain (heavily favouring cavalry) new trade goods (fleshing out the somewhat limited existing gamut) and a welcome increase in map size raising supply/quest timer challenges. But Bannerlord's map was already satisfyingly sized, its trade good variety quite ample, mariner infantry come across as pointless bloat, and the Sturgians already included Nordic themes. Installment #2 had different needs from #1, which are not being met by the same additions. Bannerlord would benefit more from more ways to connect to the little people, to take breaks from kingdom-building, to enjoy the towns and villages as more than sight-seeing.

 

Not bad, but not particularly inspired either. Perhaps I can be faulted on my own cupidity limiting my adventures to trade screen ventures.

So next time I'll be making more of an effort at personally running quests. But come on, timber at 5 denars?!? Who can resist, I ask ya!