Under Debate: Statistics on nobles and density

[Chenier]

Title: Improving available statistics on nobles and density

Summary: The suggestion is two-fold. Firstly, to remove adventurers from the counts of "characters" and "active characters" on the realm statistics. Since their addition, these stats have become utterly worthless. Secondly, add a new "noble density" statistics to the page, since it is an increasingly used metric.

Details: It's not a very complicated proposal that needs further elaboration.

Benefits: First of all, it would make the data more reflective of what it used to be, and what one might expect it to be. Adventurers don't participate in normal realm activities. They aren't included in the messages, they don't lead units, they don't have estates, they don't vote, etc. The number of (active) adventurers has really no bearing on what life in that realm is like. Furthermore, many adventurers never even operate in their own realms, so it's not like it even has much of an impact on anything at all. Secondly, density has been made more and more relevant over time. We think about it for estate efficiencies, it gives an idea of military recruiting power, of internal social dynamics, and now of potential for being targeted by rogue hordes. Present densities can be calculated from the realm list page, but the evolution is not available, and we can't calculate them ourselves due to the above issue of adventurers being included in the character counts.

Possible Downsides/Exploits:

No exploits, most of that info is readily available for "today", having the data reach further back wouldn't break anything. The only downside is if people for some reason like having advies in those tallies, which I wouldn't understand, but could be addressed by simply adding one or two entries for "nobles" apart from those of "characters".

[Chenier]

Summary: Up-to-date local statistics
Details:

Currently, all info on the statistics page is a few weeks behind. I get the reasonning for not having easy instant intel on everything, but it would be nice if the local data (the line pertaining to your own realm) would go up to the present day.

Benefits:

The info can mostly be compiled by info we already have anyways, anyone can go look up all the region info of the regions in their realm which will show army strength. There's also the marshal and general info pages which add great details, and one usually has a lot of scout reports on himself. So it's mostly about making this aggregate info more easily accessible, instead of having to manually look up all the info and paste it in spreadsheets.

Having easy access to this info would help military planning, and well all kinds of planning for everyone who uses statistics (traders too, for example). You would still need to gather intel on foreign nations if you want the complete picture, but at least you wouldn't have the clerk tasks to get your up to date local info.

Possible Downsides or Exploits:

Makes the info more readily available... which is a downside if forcing players to manually compile a bunch of basically public data is intended, I guess.

[JeVondair]

I'd love to see this

[Chenier]

Yea, I look at statistics a lot.

[daviceroy]

This is where I'll be the voice of dissension.  I like to see what every realm's stats were at the same time.  This gives me an ideal of how the realm I am part of compares with them then, not now.  After all, maybe my realm has boosted up or theirs have fallen to disrepair.  I want to compare numbers from the same time.  I think this was the original reasoning why everything is synced.  Desyncing this data will not give any advantage.  I'm not against seeing a spot somewhere other than stats that sums up what we can already do, but it's not something that I would personally use either.  After all, the army pages are used for what I need in figuring out what CS I have going where. 

[Chenier]

This is where I'll be the voice of dissension.  I like to see what every realm's stats were at the same time.  This gives me an ideal of how the realm I am part of compares with them then, not now.  After all, maybe my realm has boosted up or theirs have fallen to disrepair.  I want to compare numbers from the same time.  I think this was the original reasoning why everything is synced.  Desyncing this data will not give any advantage.  I'm not against seeing a spot somewhere other than stats that sums up what we can already do, but it's not something that I would personally use either.  After all, the army pages are used for what I need in figuring out what CS I have going where.

What would the desync be? You'd still have all the data from all the realms up to the current cut-off. Then, you'd see only a single line continue up to the current date. To compare with other realms, you'd look at the areas where all lines are present, just as you would now. To simply evaluate your own realm's activity, you'd be able to add the most recent data on top of that.

It's not like it would remove your own realm's historical data to replace it with only recent data. All presently possible comparisons would be exactly the same.

I don't really understand your argument. "I dissent because I would rather have less data on my realm than more of it"? If you wouldn't want to use it, you wouldn't have to. But I'd like to be able to see recent spikes and drops to figure "ok, 4 days ago we had that battle and lost about X CS, but then recovered about Y CS, the partial repair of 7 days ago had brought us back to Z CS less than our previous max, so there's still a potential to increase, etc. etc.. The stats allows to deduce a lot of info without having to crunch a bunch of numbers for specifics.

Or "ok we just took a new rural, what's our food supply like now? Should I take the next door rural, or are we good and should I go for the next door mountain instead?" Etc.

[daviceroy]

I must admit I am a bit confused as to your initial question because you seem to answer it with the next statement.  I'll try to reword it though just in case it's not clear.  All the data would be synced up until the current cut-off, then the data would desyncronize requiring the graph or data to only have one realm instead of all.  I don't even know if the code behind the graphing system can do that.  Typically graphs aren't meant for this.  Data is supposed to be syncronized between all points to give the comparison even if it's just a projection of what it might be.

Honestly, you should have a good clue about how many CS you lost in a battle.  The battle reports are very descriptive.  It'll tell you how many attackers/defenders as well as the CS.  You can compare that with what you have now and figure out how much you lost and recovered directly from that if you are on top of things.  When I'm not in charge of an army, I can use two battle points to figure out the CS drop and recovery.  It's something I like to do for fun because well, I love figuring these sort of things out   It's pretty easy math too.

One additional note I'd like to point out is when you take a new region, it's supply that it may provide is also determined by the production level.  Often when there have been battles (or if it's been ownerless), the production will be quite low.  There is a wiki about all the calculations of how much good you may have, but I would never use any new region as a guarantee for food production as there are so many factors including the fact that it can be retaken or revolt before you really see much of that food.

While I understand some may want to see all the possible data that you could on a realm, I also understand that the point of the game isn't to see everything all at an instant glance.  I've always gotten the impression that was on purpose.  This is a game of trying to figure out the balance, developing a strategy, and putting things together.  Sometimes it blows up in your face, sometimes it doesn't.

In the end, I don't really see this suggestion as something that improves the game in the long run when there are other items that would warrant more of the limited time that the developer's have.  That is my 2 silver on the subject and I respect that we may not agree on it.

[Chenier]

PHP might have some arcane restrictions I'm not aware of, but charts *frequently* have unsynched data IRL when comparing whatever statistics from multiple countries, because they usually have different sources that don't start and end at the same date.

BM always touted itself as being "lightweight" and "playable in 5 minutes per day". I don't believe the intent has ever been to force players to crunch a ton of numbers on spreadsheets, and as the game has evolved, we have had to do less and less of it.

And that's kind of the point of it, the current sources of up to date info are *too* descriptive. Gotta scroll pages and pages and pages of battle reports... The point isn't to receive any new information, which would remove strategic elements from warfare, but to make already existing information more easily digestible in but a short analysis. Yes, I've got a spreadsheet for food. Yes, I could go look up the region info, plug it into the spreadsheet, account for various variables for weather and such, and get a pretty accurate portrait. I tend to end up doing it anyways, but down the road. BM isn't what it was 10 years ago, junkies that are available to crunch numbers for hours and hours are now extremely rare. And this numbers crunching isn't all that *fun*. A compilation chart that abstracts of the specifics lets one just eye-ball things, and then work with that. Most of us aren't in high school anymore, or wherever we started. We got married, kids, jobs, etc. Those who already had some might have more. As BM ages, so, I reckon, does its average player, and thus, those of us that do stick around, would rather be able to do so by spending less and less time.

Add to all that events like getting wounded for 5 days and then having to play catch-up... getting a broad picture from individual reports is tiring.