Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-26172435-20170403171442

Basic notion & motive
Anyone can hire any unit at any time provided they have sufficient alignment. This leads to an undesirable situation in various ways: 1) players do not immerse in their role as playing for one or just a limited number of factions, simply hiring any best unit they have access to; 2) the uniqueness of unique units and gear of factions is much less significant; 3) there is simply less diversity on the practical gameplay than intended by the makers (Mevans & mod team) as in most cases players will simply combine the best forces available to them.

My basic notion is this: Elite military forces that are loyal to a faction will only swear allegiance to a leader that proves his or her loyalty with / allegiance to their faction is higher than (s)he has with / to any other faction.

Proposal
Make the most elite units of any faction only hirable to players for which the alignment they have with that faction is the highest of any alignment the player has. Additionally, make the hiring of banner bearers and a number of other NPCs that cannot be considered 'elite', but are definitely not 'levy troops / cannon fudder' also dependent on the relative alignment a player has with the faction: require at least 'second highest alignment with any faction'.

The purpose of this proposal is to encourage: 1) improved usage of the faction diversity as offered in the mod; 2) strategic choices by players when hiring units / composing their fighting forces; 3) roleplay immersion by limiting the options players have in hiring units, dependent on the alignment profile they have acquired in-game.

Feature mechanics
The addition is relatively simple. In the GUI, the player should already be able to see whether or not the units (s)he wishes to hire are hireable to him/her or not. So, next to the check on whether or not a player meets the minimum alignment requirement (and has enough in cash in his/her inventory), an additional check must be added for all higher tier units. For each player, two additional parameters must be stored: the faction with which the player has highest alignment and the faction with which the player has second highest alignment. For the highest tier units (excl. banner bearers), a check will be done on whether the 'players highest alignment faction' is equal to the faction of the unit. If 'true', the player can hire the unit. For the second highest tier units and banner bearers, a check will be made whether the players two highest alignment factions are equal to the units faction, etcetera.

Related proposals
As indicated in this post, the basic notion relates to more than explained above. One related proposal I wish to mention here is this:

[Endorsed] Food for troops!

The mechanic as discussed extensively in that thread provides the opportunity to create a mechanistic cap on the number of hired units a player can maintain, or 'how large a standing army a player can support'. I believe it deserves more thorough and open/public thinking to find acceptable ways to implement it ... in that thread.

Additionally, I feel that adding more and significantly higher minimum requirements for crafting faction specific gear will certainly contribute to the purpose indicated above. I may post a separate suggestion on that notion, but I feel this is so obvious, and as I have brought this forward earlier in a number of other threads, I suspect the mod team should simply alreday be aware of that option. So I suspect that either they will never implement it, or it's already planned in some way. 