History of the East Continent

[Vellos]

I'm starting to wonder if Sirion is the only realm (that has existed forever) which has not gone through really tough times?

Yes.

Sirion has never suffered.

[Peri]

Yes.

Sirion has never suffered.

Well that's inaccurate. It's right that Sirion never lost too much land, but nevertheless when Fontan created SoA and took out OR, Sirion was in a very dire moment. Thankfully a very well timed krimml incident, the secession of Fontan city and a whole lot other things distracted fontan enough to allow sirion to reform and - in time - get where we are now.

And I also would like to point out how different the map looks like from now and then: back then even with very tough wars on all fronts very few regions were rogue. Now, every war spawns a whole bunch of rogue and destroyed regions. That is cool, even if perhaps doesn't really make things interesting in the end. what do you think?

[Indirik]

Oh, shush you. Sirion must be made to suffer.

[Peri]

sadly, sirion suffers way more from success and lack of enemies than they did when gangbanged from half the continent..

Another question: back then were regions so much hurt by looting? Because as the game is now, after a very heavy war is fought on a certain area it's pretty hard for the remaining realms to be strong enough to fight again shortly. See Fontan (ok they probably win the award as the most damaged realm ever, but that's a bit their fault).

Doomy commented on those moments as pretty exciting especially because of the number of nobles that led to huge cs deployed. Could the number of realms have influenced that? (yea always about retention but I think that's really the pivotal thing to discuss in bm's forums )

[Anaris]

Another question: back then were regions so much hurt by looting? Because as the game is now, after a very heavy war is fought on a certain area it's pretty hard for the remaining realms to be strong enough to fight again shortly.

Regional population used to be static.  Variable population didn't come into play until...I think it was late 2005?  I could look it up, but I'm feeling lazy

That makes an enormous difference in the effects of looting.

[Kain]

Regions did not become damaged by looting for this long a time when I started playing in 2005. Therefore, even in the midst of war, it was still worth it to TO regions, rather than just loot them rogue. You did not need to maintain them much, other than if you had a higher taxrate than the peasants liked.

Now we loot them rogue and they have so little population left that there is no use taking them over. See Mines of Isadril for example. A very rich region on EC, but it has such a low population, and such hatred towards everyone that it would probably take half a year and plenty of work before you'd see any substantial gold coming from there. The population does not seem to be growing any either. Maybe the pop growth is put on stop when it is rogue?

And yes, Fontan is an excellent example. Although the population code has changed now (in the last 2 weeks). All Fontan regions used to increase by a mere 30-50 people per day, and now the most damaged ones increase by almost 10 times that (200-400 per day).
So that should change things a bit.

Another thing I was thinking of that is very different is starvation. Do you remember Avamar? We had at most 3 regions (Avamar city, Montijo and Oporto I believe). Long periods, we only had the city. Yet we never had problems with starvation. We didn't even talk about food in the council. It was a non-issue for some reason. Does anyone know exactly why?

[Telrunya]

Nope just one small piece was.  The rest was based on facts.  Yes every little thing can be argued but information I put down was general consensus.

Im more then willing to changes pieces and parts but I prefer if people dont touch the basis of the work too much except maybe for spelling mistakes or help with the layout.

I have no problem editing things in and out.

I was asking due the account of my character's betrayal. I'll take a look at it later and propose some things what I know from my side of the story.

[Indirik]

sadly, sirion suffers way more from success and lack of enemies than they did when gangbanged from half the continent..

Well, maybe. But it just doesn't give your enemies a warm fuzzy when your realm falls apart due to apathy brought on by the vast number of successful wars that you've fought which have resulted in no one on the island being able to actually cause you any harm.

Another question: back then were regions so much hurt by looting? Because as the game is now, after a very heavy war is fought on a certain area it's pretty hard for the remaining realms to be strong enough to fight again shortly. See Fontan (ok they probably win the award as the most damaged realm ever, but that's a bit their fault).

As far as I can tell, that's a function of knights and estates. Having to have the estates and knights and lords in order to make regions recover is a serious slow-down to the pace of wars. Heck, back when I joined, you didn't even have to have a region lord, let alone knights for regions. And there was no out-of-duchy penalty, either. Buros rocked. You'd move your army in, TO the region, and your two super-buros would whip that region back into shape in a couple days by tag-teaming the survey-admin. So, the army didn't even really need to stop for very long at all.

Back in '06, regions were changing hands at an incredible pace. At times it seemed odd for a day to go by without someone taking a region from someone else.

Doomy commented on those moments as pretty exciting especially because of the number of nobles that led to huge cs deployed. Could the number of realms have influenced that? (yea always about retention but I think that's really the pivotal thing to discuss in bm's forums )

There are, I think, three things that have changed that have had a rather large effect in slowing down the pace of the game. This list is not necessarily in any particular order.

• New tax system. If you lose a region now, the lord and knights are suddenly without income. They have to find new lords in order to have incomes again. And the amount of income each noble gets varies widely. You have low-pop, low production regions that still have to have lords and knights, except that they get horribly !@#$ty incomes, and need constant subsidies from the dukes, that all have to be handled manually. Maybe this is realistic, and helps internal politics, but it sucks for team-building, and sucks for army-building.
• Estates, and the requirement that all regions must have lords and knights. This greatly increases the requirements for regional maintenance work. Especially when combined with the next point.
• Lowered player count. When you have only played in realms that have, at most, 50-60 characters, or hell even 100 characters, you can't comprehend the way things work when your realm has 180 nobles. Your army moved and left 20 nobles behind? Hot damn! That's an 80% movement rate!

[Indirik]

Regions did not become damaged by looting for this long a time when I started playing in 2005. Therefore, even in the midst of war, it was still worth it to TO regions, rather than just loot them rogue. You did not need to maintain them much, other than if you had a higher taxrate than the peasants liked.

That's a function of the new oaths and taxes. Back then, nobles got taxes from the realm-wide tax pool, not directly from the region. So the 20 gold the region produced got dumped into the realm-wide tax pool. And on tax day, 20 of your nobles got one extra coin. Lose a 400 gold region? Oh well, each of your 150 knights gets 48 gold this week instead of 50, and the council income will drop from 400 to 340.  Oh, we lost a 150 gold region? I wonder if anyone will notice...

The new tax system is great at handling steady-state stuff. If your realm neither gains nor loses regions, it works just fine. But it simply cannot adapt fast enough to handle acquiring and losing regions.

The population does not seem to be growing any either. Maybe the pop growth is put on stop when it is rogue?

It's food. Rogue regions have little to no production, so there is little to no food. Therefore pop doesn't grow.

[Kain]

Back in '06, regions were changing hands at an incredible pace. At times it seemed odd for a day to go by without someone taking a region from someone else.

Yeah, I miss that. The high pace was fun.

There are, I think, three things that have changed that have had a rather large effect in slowing down the pace of the game. This list is not necessarily in any particular order.

• New tax system. If you lose a region now, the lord and knights are suddenly without income. They have to find new lords in order to have incomes again. And the amount of income each noble gets varies widely. You have low-pop, low production regions that still have to have lords and knights, except that they get horribly !@#$ty incomes, and need constant subsidies from the dukes, that all have to be handled manually. Maybe this is realistic, and helps internal politics, but it sucks for team-building, and sucks for army-building.
• Estates, and the requirement that all regions must have lords and knights. This greatly increases the requirements for regional maintenance work. Especially when combined with the next point.
• Lowered player count. When you have only played in realms that have, at most, 50-60 characters, or hell even 100 characters, you can't comprehend the way things work when your realm has 180 nobles. Your army moved and left 20 nobles behind? Hot damn! That's an 80% movement rate!

Yes, I think you're right on the money with these things, but I'd like to advocate that the pop growth system changing also did it's part.
Estates will be changed, this we know. The new tax system is here to stay I'm guessing? I agree that it sucks in many ways, but it was fun to get your own knights as a lord. We have to recruit more players, but that might come naturally if we solve some of the biggest problems with the game (the things we are now talking about).

Speaking of the high amount of nobles, I remember Avamar having more than half of Ibladesh's current nobles (77) at the end of it's life (I count 42 avamarian TL's participating in the mother of all battles) with only 1 city and that's it.
Amazing how 1 city at full tax rate (25% at the time) could support so many, especially since the amount of militia in Avamar city was quite large too.

Then imagine how 80% of these joined Oligarch. That was one well packed realm at that point.

[Indirik]

Yes, I think you're right on the money with these things, but I'd like to advocate that the pop growth system changing also did it's part. Estates will be changed, this we know. The new tax system is here to stay I'm guessing?

Taxes will change slightly as part of the new estate changes. However, they will still be derived directly from the region and paid to the knight. There will be no return to the "realm collects it all, the parcels it back out to the nobles" style system.

[Kain]

Taxes will change slightly as part of the new estate changes. However, they will still be derived directly from the region and paid to the knight. There will be no return to the "realm collects it all, the parcels it back out to the nobles" style system.

But you said yourself that "The new tax system is great at handling steady-state stuff. If your realm neither gains nor loses regions, it works just fine. But it simply cannot adapt fast enough to handle acquiring and losing regions".

Will the new estates be able to adapt fast enough to handle acquiring and losing regions? If not, we're stuck with the slow pace aren't we?

[Vellos]

If not, we're stuck with the slow pace aren't we?

Yes, and thank God. Not all of us like seeing a TO blitz nab three or four regions in a single campaign, only to have the full productivity of those regions be brought to bear against you.

Realistically, though the taxation system has the negative effect because of estates. If regions are able to have better productivity with less intensive estate management, the drag of the tax code will be greatly reduced. I know of few realms avoiding expansion because "It's complicated to create equal income." Many, many realms halt expansion because of estates, and finding knights for new regions is a pain. With new estates, things will change greatly.

[Indirik]

Will the new estates be able to adapt fast enough to handle acquiring and losing regions?

It is not specifically designed to do so. But as I was writing my last response, I started to think about it. And yes, actually, it will be more able to respond to changes in the number of knights. This will require some work on the part of the lord, and the cooperation of the knight.  (Well, the lord could just do it without the knight's cooperation, but you may end up with a pissed-off knight.) Exact details will have to wait. Tom has started coding the new interface, but the exact details are still being worked out.

[Kain]

Yes, and thank God. Not all of us like seeing a TO blitz nab three or four regions in a single campaign, only to have the full productivity of those regions be brought to bear against you.

I don't see the harm considering you could do the same thing And usually, it was more like 1-2 regions, not 3-4 :p
Is it better that they're driven rogue, and take ages to recover until they are useful for anyone? Just look at all the rogue regions in EC now. There used to be none.