I’d like to suggest a new feature; the possibility to recruit from a caravan you’ve just successfully escorted.
Intended impact of feature; introduce a new recruitment event, deepen game experience and create more choices (particularly in the early game)
Here’s how it could work; At the end of a caravan escort mission, you get the option to recruit the guards from the caravan train. They would be priced along similar lines as recruits from town recruitment pools with a couple of extra contextual variables. These variables will affect availability, and cost of hire, and play a power force in determining whether or not you get to hire the guy with his scramasax or with that sweet shield + sword combo, or just the man without his equipment.
Variable factors; Before deciding if recruitment is an option and what shape it takes game devs would have to decide : –
(a) are caravans one way journeys or not? As in, are the man defending the ‘vans hired for one trip or are they about to make the return journey or are they permanent staff. This raises the question that as a business are the caravan masters nomadic or are they based in the town you depart from and they’re looking to land a shipping job to pay their way back to their home town? Therefore does the caravan master need to hold onto their guards? So you may not always get the option to recruit if the caravan is making a return journey. Equally if they’re all one shot trips you’ve got a bunch of men who may be looking for their next job, moreover you probably just fought side by side with these men.
(b) are the caravan guards free labour or indentured labour? The descriptions of caravan hands’ backgrounds suggests they’re all for-hire free men rather than slaves, but this point needs to be considered before determining whether they’re for hire or not. When balancing this against the caravan masters considerations of future jobs, selling indentured labour may cost more as the owner is looking to return a cost.
(c) finally, is the equipment of caravan guards company property or does it belong to the individual men? This is an important factor in deciding cost of hire and what you get for your money
Why I think this would be a great addition to the game: Every time I get involved in a caravan defence battle, there are always one or two guards who catch my eye for their savvy placement and decent combat performance. Normally this is lining up in parallel with one of my shield-bearing men to give the option of forming shield wall. It’s as much a tribute to the AI as anything but I’ve got one eye on them thinking “If they survive this journey I’d love to recruit them”. Most of them are total crud. But this makes the gems all the more enticing.
Further considerations for the game devs: –
How does this affect the balancing of the game?
As a player I do not envisage this imbalancing the game but it potentially introduces a margin of more quality recruits (as well as dud ones). The devs would have to decide if this weights the chances too generously towards the player.
Apologies if this was mentioned in a dev diary as a feature in development. If so, that’s grand.
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