Battle in Manor Lords is expensive, and the battlefield remains untouched after victory. The spears, shields and armor of the killed simply disappear along with the bodies, although each piece of equipment before this cost the lord iron, the blacksmith’s time and labor.
The proposal sounds cautious – to allow 30-40 percent of the trophies to be taken, and the rest to be attributed to breakdowns. The logic is simple, because for a person to die, it is not necessary to break his spear. But even in the event of a breakdown, useful materials should remain.
The historical part of the dispute was closed almost immediately – one of the experts says:
The medieval battlefield was full of naked bodies. Absolutely everything was robbed, and the soldiers counted on the loot as a reward.
The objection that the trophies went to the mercenaries and represented their only payment was broken by the specifics of the game. Militia in Manor Lords recruited from its own population, and not hired, and the feudal left fought without pay precisely in anticipation of booty and foraging.
But it all comes down to balance. The main fear is that the war will turn into a loot box, and the decision to start it will no longer be a decision.
There are already reasons for concern. Bandit camps act like piggy banks, giving out more money than the mercenaries hired to clear them are worth, and from that moment on the settlement begins to accelerate on its own.
It is significant that they regularly ask for trophies, but no one asks for wear and tear on equipment. The weapons and armor of surviving fighters in the game do not deteriorate and do not require repair, so a one-way influx of loot will fall on top of the already generous economy.
The argument about the high cost of battles will also not go away. In the early game, the loss of a couple of militia out of thirty residents is felt painfully, and the house of the deceased goes into mourning and stops production.
The opposite position is based on prices – a detachment of mercenaries costs about 50 coins, 50 servings of oats cost the same, and war in this situation remains too cheap a tool against the backdrop of burned villages in defeat.
Luckily, the community has plenty of advice:
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chance to pick up equipment depending on the squad’s experience, from 5 percent for recruits to 20 percent for veterans
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limited window for collecting loot, after which the abandoned one becomes unusable
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trophies only to the winner or only from their fallen
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scrap metal instead of finished items, with melting into ingots and reforging at a rate of three to one
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increase in regional wealth instead of items
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reduction in maintenance costs, without direct replenishment of warehouses
The last option grew out of everyday observation about village ingenuity. In the villages after the war, metal was not thrown away, and soldiers’ helmets were turned into basins, lids and colanders, and nine centuries ago the situation was hardly different.
A separate line of dispute concerns the setting. Robbery of bodies was condemned by the church and the knightly class, and the player acts as a lord, not a robber, so it is proposed to introduce the mechanics along with a fine. There is an elegant solution here – the right to the trophies is given to the one who buries the dead, and the tedious fuss with the bodies of bandits finally makes sense.
Perfect circles in Manor Lords – the player assembled a village of concentric roads and explained the method
It is worth noting that loot mod already exists, but has not been updated for a long time.
Greg himself from Slavic Magic noted several months ago that he considers such mechanics as a possible innovation.
