Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - Game Mod - Ludus - Gladiator Schools v.1.1.3 - Download

Ludus - Gladiator Schools is a mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, created by  Bloc.

Descrtiption (in author’s own words)

Ludus adds a completely new business opportunity for you. In all Imperial cities, you can find a "Ludus"-a gladiator school next to Arena. You can invest, train your slaves as gladiators, sell them and much more. All schools are inside the game's sandbox simulation - means that they are sustaining their own economy independent from player action.

FEATURES:

Ludus Simulation

This mod creates independent simulated gladiator schools in all Empire cities. Unlike workshops in-game, these gladiator schools have their own budget and population/slaves to maintain. If they are out of budget, they stop buying slaves to train or opt-out from underground fights to protect their asset. City that they are in also decides how many slaves they can get - i.e. more popular prosper town means it's getting more trader and slave trader traffic hence they have higher chance of buying slaves. These differences are deciding their prices along with how many already existing gladiators they have. Same as players' ludus, they also train their infantry each day and upgrade them based on the experience. Everything is dynamic, if one slave dies in fight, Lanista have to find a replacement in order to increase revenue.

New Troops

This mod adds 6 different troop types with a unique troop tree. This is essential for separating slaves/gladiators from the normal units. However, beware, this can cause issues in your saved files. Please make sure that you are okay with using this mod - otherwise, if you remove it halfway through, it's very likely that you will get a crash.

Buying and Selling Ludus

Buying gladiator school is as simple as a button click. You cannot own two Ludus at the same time, therefore you need to make a wise choice before buying a ludus. Selling ludus is also available after going inside the ludus.

Managing Ludus

When you enter your Ludus, you will see the estimated weekly revenue. This might be more or less than that value at the end of the week, however it's very likely to be around that. Happiness is also quite important and I will explain that in the Slave Uprising section.

In order to manage your ludus, you have multiple options. I will go one by one to explain each of them.

Watch Next Match: You can watch your gladiators fighting in weekly games. You need to be in that town while this is happening and these games only happen at the end of the week. You need a minimum amount of healthy fighters to do that.

Manage Fighters: This option allows you to manage your fighters and your prisoners. You can take your gladiators into your army and let them fight alongside of you and you can put them back into ludus once you are done with them. This action doesn't cost anything. You can also put your prisoners ( as long as they are not lords ). Once you put your prisoners and close the window, it will automatically convert them into slaves and start training them as true warriors.

Manage Stocks: This option allows you to monitor your food stocks for the Ludus. Based on the food conditions, each day, every Ludus buys their own food from their local town market. And they pay same price with you while buying this. If you only stash grain in there, it's very likely that happiness will go down and this is problematic. Especially if you are already "crowded".

Underground Fights: This option can be set to On or Off. Underground fights were essential, dirty side of gladiatorial games. Not every Ludus was getting picked by elite. Hence underground fights were necessary for some of them to earn more. This option increases your revenue, however, this also increases chances of your fighters to be killed or wounded as well - since underground fights are not regulated and quite brutal. You can opt-out if you don't want this.

Automatic Resupply: By default, all Luduses buys their own food from their local market to avoid any issues. Local towns are not always most profitable ones. Hence you can opt-out if you have a better source.

Automatic Slave Trading: By default, all Luduses gets their slaves from their local slave market. This can be costly or unnecessary if you think you have the correct amount of slaves. Automatic slave-trading never surpluses the cap while buying the slaves. But this doesn't mean that you can't. You can opt-out and add your prisoners as slave.

Celebrational Games

If a faction leader or any clan member higher than tier 3 experiences a fierce battle between two factions and wins they may choose to hire your ludus for celebration games. This means quick cash-in but beware, this also means that your fighters might get hurt badly or killed in arena since games are tend to be fierce than usual ceremonial games. And because of the nature of these games, your stocks will be drained much quicker in that hours. After you accept the offer, everything will goes to normal and the effects will be immediate.

Currently, you cannot hire others to do celebrational games - in the future, I will add this so that you can gain influence ( in a way, exchange popularity with denars )

Gladiatorial Games

With this system, if you get enslaved in any of the Imperial cities, your captor will sell you to Ludus. This means you will be a gladiator. This won't be optional in terms of the effects but it will be optional in terms of attendance ( ie you can say skip ). With each successful day, the game will track your progress and after you escape, based on how much "win" rate you have, you will also bring several other slaves and gladiators with you.

Each champion has some sort of a procedural personality - which reflected to you via their insult-lines when they enter the arena. This is nothing fancy, but I think adds a bit of immersion.

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Slave Uprising

If you know history, or at least if you watched Spartacus, you should know that being a slave isn't nice. And putting sweaty jagged fighter guys in a small location with weapons isn't very logical if they hate you to guts. Roman Empire experienced this three times with three Servile Wars. In this mod, things are not so different. If you don't make your ludus happy, you will trigger a slave uprising. Unlike the game's rebellions, slave uprising doesn't result in slaves taking over the city. Instead, they declare war against you ( or your faction if you are in ) and on the owner faction. And they spawn outside of the city with a single army ( yes, like Total War ). But you lose control of the ludus and all of your assets. Slaves are led by one person and it's considered as a clan in game ( similar to Rebellions ) All rebel leaders will have historically accurate names picked from old texts and they will have unique banners ( unique in terms of banners - handmade from BannerlodBanners subreddit and Piconi ) so you won't have hard time to see rebellion leaders and their armies.

Troop Tree and Some Remarks

Remarks: They are ( obviously ) not historically accurate. I tried my best to caption their real look but the game's assets are not that helpful for this type of job. I used this Gladiators mod to guide me?. I tried to make their skin color and face type as diverse as possible, however, if you somehow feel offended, it's not my problem.

Notes:

- Please make sure that you are okay with using this mod - otherwise, if you remove it halfway through, it's very likely that you will get a crash because it's adding new items and troops.

- It's very likely that some luduses get too much wealth because of this unchecked balance. This wouldn't be so unrealistic - since Lanista's often known to have quite noticeable wealth. However if player earns too much denars with this, it might unbalance the game. If you spot any issues, feel free to post and let me know.

- It could be that some gladitors are too strong. Although they have no agenda of besieging anywhere, they can still cause too much problem if they snowball with those good tier units. Let me know if this creates any issue as well.

- For all other bugs etc, create a bug ticket.

- This mod doesn't require any other mod. Yes, I'm aware of the fact that this would be great if I add models from CA Eagle Rising - but I wanted to keep it separate. If you can come up with a troop tree for CA Eagle Rising ( with their models ) - let me know, I can add it as optional patch for those who enjoy Eagle Rising. Check Gladiators.xml file for their items and such.

To install:

Extract to „… bannerlord\Modules\” and activate in launcher.

• Last update: Tuesday, July 1, 2025
• Genre: RPG
• File size: 56 KB