This is the very beginning of what I'm sure could become a very large list of ideas and/or projects upon the gameplay development front for Diplomacy.
... a very, very ambitious mechanic if implemented.
Too long has this game treated vassals as if they were completely docile and never pose a challenge for the player to manage or even suffer severe setbacks at the hands of angry or perpetually plotting vassals. At the very worst, a singular vassal could defect, which is hardly interesting or realistic. With great power as a sovereign, one should also face great risks, as was the case throughout history.
These wars are waged by one or more rebel vassals, united as the same rebel faction during the civil war, with a common interest against loyalist vassals and the sovereign ruler. An obvious goal of such a civil war might be to depose the ruler (rendering him a regular vassal in most cases, so if he's a player, it's just a setback) and replace him with another of their choosing.
Another shared rebel interest & outcome might be an independence league. Many more possible outcomes (and shared interests aligning rebels) exist, and there could be many ways in which such civil wars are triggered (e.g., special succession crises in addition to just growing rebelliousness).
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Development of coherent vassal reasoning so that civil wars and their outcomes / reasons for the war actually make sense.
- Later, find ways to effectively communicate in the UI the current contributing factors for rebellious vassals so that the coherency is transparent and we can usher in a much better vassal management game.
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Potentially need to rethink the game's model of how war should be waged and how it concludes in whose favor.
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Definitely, civil wars should not be a way to immediately gain fiefs from rebels or loyalists simply because a siege was won during the course of it. They are internal to the realm, so in most cases, captured fiefs should be reclaimed by original owners at the end of the war.
- Exceptional cases might be what happens to the domain of the ruler, if he lost, or what happens to the traitors, if they lost. In general, however, it should not be a "Total War" type of situation.
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Could require a "warscore" system to help guide the AI (or player) into suing for peace either in their favor, as a white peace (nobody wins-- inconclusive), or as failure. Diplomacy already has the beginnings of such a system, but we might require it to be more definite -- and certainly not end in things like the rebel faction paying tribute.
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Need to block most diplomatic actions by and toward the rebel faction. They aren't a proper kingdom. They must be destroyed when the war ends.
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Rebel factions themselves, implemented as dynamic kingdoms, will require maintenance and tweaking in various places to not make them appear, e.g., in the UI as a kingdom.
Bannerlord is supposed to be [somewhat] set in the Early Medieval Era. Nation-states were not even a concept at that time. All diplomatic agreements were between rulers ("rulers" in the general sense which also includes vassals)-- not "factions." Ergo, Diplomacy should completely rework this part of diplomatic agreements to hinge upon relationships between rulers and not relationships between factions.
If a ruler dies or is usurped, so do their alliances and truces and basically everything else also come to an end, with the exception of any currently exercised agreement at the time of death such as a state of war.
This is mainly a realism feature to simply make Diplomacy's model make more sense, but it does also add a great deal more focus upon characters in politics.
It would be neat if factions could essentially be hired to assist other factions in war. It's not an alliance so much as a contract that costs money, but it'd use an AI reasoning model that includes the factors that go into alliances. Difference being that the "mercenary" faction must consider the likelihood of actually having to fight and whether it's worth the gold (which probably would be paid daily like tribute rather than all at once) as well as the duration of the agreement, which could be broken.
Another variant of the historical concept that this is idea is trying to represent in the game is simply to offer gold to another kingdom in exchange for them going to war against another kingdom.
An interesting diplomatic arrangement would be for one faction to become the nominal overlord of another kingdom. They're both still independent in the end, but the client state is much more likely to join their overlord's wars, esp. defensively & the overlord is required to defend them. Rather than conquer the entire map, make them all puppets!
Naturally, such tributaries wouldn't desire to be subjugated in this way forever, so they would seek independence if it made sense to do so. They might even find supporters of their independence among other tributaries, foreign powers, or vassals within your own kingdom.
If marriage could be made to be a significant factor in politics, then that would be a huge step for strategy, realism, and intrigue. More on this later, as it's a surprisingly complicated and hare-brained topic for Bannerlord.
... short of or aside from actually being at war with them against their enemy (e.g., this includes supporting allies in the same wars with you). One should be able to donate gold or even precious war supplies such as food or horses to other kingdoms in general and have them intelligently distributed rather than only being received by the kingdom's ruler.
This can sort of currently be done by tracking down their armies and starting a barter in which you don't demand anything (or maybe you do), but this is highly inconvenient, will not be effectively distributed to the parties that need it, and cannot be factored into the diplomatic relationship between the supporter and the receiving kingdom.
Arguably, this would be valid even toward kingdoms not at war (but perhaps destitute) that you wish to support.