Toning Down Looting - War Rebalancing

[Charles]

I would think the peasants would complain about the absence of a lord.  Which should decrease all stats.

[Ketchum]

I would think the peasants would complain about the absence of a lord.  Which should decrease all stats.

Will looting has a better adverse effect than the absence of a lord in the region?

[Charles]

Just thinking about the looting options and their effects on the population.  Raping and killing obviously makes the peasants hate you, but does not gain you any gold.  Stealing food will be similar, but probably with a bit less hatred and you get food.  Stealing tax gold, does not make peasants hate you (This is what I remember, I may be wrong about this) but you get gold.
 
Could a looting option be created that would not only not cause hatred, but actually increase loyalty to the looters?  A "robin hood" style looting, steal the gold from the lords, and instead of keeping it, throwing it into the street?  This would be a great option if you think you may want to TO the region later but want to damage the region's stats for the time being. 

Should this be in a separate feature request thread?

[vonGenf]

Could a looting option be created that would not only not cause hatred, but actually increase loyalty to the looters?  A "robin hood" style looting, steal the gold from the lords, and instead of keeping it, throwing it into the street?  This would be a great option if you think you may want to TO the region later but want to damage the region's stats for the time being. 

This is possible, only it's not called looting! Priests and diplomats have such options already.

[Morningstar]

I had to track this thread back down because of some observations made in the last few weeks with takeover actions. I had hoped that the new TO system would have eliminated what Loren was complaining about. But at least in the takeovers I've seen since then, it's actually made the problem more apparent.

-2 takeovers of rogue regions happened in about 3 days or less (FEI and Dwilight)
-Looting regions rogue takes, we'll estimate 4-10 days, depending on size, how many are looting, and if there's any real resistance
-A takeover of Mech Alb by Asylon (loyalty was friendly) lasted for ~2 weeks, never reached 50% completion, and was ultimately thwarted by Allison alone. By the time the TO failed officially, the region despised Asylon, despite doing only friendly TO options. Looting the same region rogue and then taking it potentially could have taken only that same 2 week mark.
-OT is currently going on about 3 weeks of a fear-based takeover of Giblot, facing no resistance, and is still only looking at about 67% completion. Which means we've likely got another week and a half, at least. Looting the region rogue and then taking it, again by even high estimation, should probably have only taken about 3 weeks.

I know there's a lot of factors involved with the new takeovers. You can't just sit in the region, you have to actively participate, and all that. But it still seems like the scorched earth method is the more useable option of the two available. Has anyone else made similar observations or even the opposite being the case?

[Foundation]

Hmm, did you have enough nobles perform those actions often throughout those 2 weeks?

[Morningstar]

It wasn't full participation. I think some people are still stuck in the old way, even though Dwilight's been on the new system for months now. But if I had to guess, I'd say if we had 20 nobles in the region, at least half performed some sort of takeover activity each turn. The one thing I misspoke about was that it was only about 9 days, not closer to 2 weeks.

[Tom]

Yeah, my impression is that the main issue is that people don't get the new TO system and don't use the support options. In Giblot, for example, before my character had to get to OT for a refit, I saw about 1-2 TO messages per turn. That's ridiculous if you want to take a city, you need more than two units to do it.

On Dwilight, the TOs done by Auravendil seems to go pretty quickly, so if your force is coordinated and actively working on the TO, things seem to be just fine.

It would be important to know how much active TO actions are done before making the system responsible. Maybe what we need is to improve communication of the new way?

[Sypher]

The takeovers by Solaria in Dwilight have been fairly quick & easy. Of course we've been taking over rogue regions with very minimal populations.

[Bedwyr]

It would be important to know how much active TO actions are done before making the system responsible. Maybe what we need is to improve communication of the new way?

Would it be possible to have the TO actions generate messages to everyone in the region with links to the looting screen?  Something like "Sir Bob has ordered his men to rape all the goats and sacrifice all the women, would you like to do so as well? (link)"

[fodder]

why looting screen? surely they would want to spend the time doing TO rather than "waste" it looting?

[Bedwyr]

why looting screen? surely they would want to spend the time doing TO rather than "waste" it looting?

Haven't seen the new system in action, I thought the TO actions were found from the looting screen.  Is that not the case?

[Gustav Kuriga]

It is most definitely not.

[Bedwyr]

It is most definitely not.

Well, alrighty.  Link to the TO actions page then.

[Morningstar]

The takeovers by Solaria in Dwilight have been fairly quick & easy. Of course we've been taking over rogue regions with very minimal populations.

Right, that's kind of partly my point. Comparatively, the takeovers of rogue regions are happening in about 25-40% of the time it's taking for a controlled region (resisted or not).

Tom, how many of those recent TOs by Auravendil were controlled by other realms vs rogue?