Sea Zones

[Chenier]

BT map now contains my current draft of the sea zones.

I'm looking for names for the zones now. Things like "Bay of XYZ" or "Northern Sea" or "Barbary Coast" etc. etc.

Zone 1: Lake Salaman (name already in use to designate it)
Zone 3: Gulf of Blood
Zone 4: Enweilian Sea (ethnocentricism, don't we love it?) Alternatively: Bay of Feuds
Zone 6: Voghorian Sea
Zone 7: Bay of Fengen
Zone 8: Avalonian Coast
Zone 14: Sea of Betrayal
Zone 15: Coast of Ruins
Zone 16: Dwili Ocean
Zone 17: Celtic Coast

[fodder]

armies. does that include nobles with no units? or are they treated differently? (eg.. embark anywhere)

- traders/diplo

[Chenier]

I said we need to solve that.

The rough concept would be that it is possible to embark from every coast region, but things take longer, cost more, etc. if the region has no harbor. And if you retreat from a hostile region, you may lose parts of your troops, provisions, etc.

Basically, it should be possible, but if you have a harbor anywhere near, it should always be better to travel there and embark there.

Troops already at sea could attempt to rescue their peers, at the cost of extra attrition the more enemies are in the region they try to rescue them from. It would incite them to look for a safer boarding point.

Or just allow anyoone to return to the sea at the cost of increased attrition (depending on how many enemies are present) and slower boat travel (so that if one wants to chase an enemy trying to escape by sea, he can catch up by taking a real boat from a region that has a port). Because otherwise, good luck to anyone attacking Port Raviel island or Libidized islandon getting back home.

[Anaris]

An island will have no land-route towards its enemies (because it's an island, doh). So it will always have the added difficulty of finding landing spots for its armies. Establishing a beach head will become immensely important. Without that, you could be sailing your army up and down the coast until it has starved to death.

Erm...OK, see, from where I sit, that's the problem everyone else will have attacking the island. The island nation can station some militia in every region without much trouble, and thus be nearly immune to attack. But when they want to attack someone else, they just have to sail around until they happen to find one nice undefended region (which ought to be much more plentiful along the long mainland coast), and pow! They're in!

[Tom]

I've added the names that I considered obvious.

There's half a dozen or so zones left in need of names. I am looking for proposals, post them below (with the zone number), please.

[Tom]

Erm...OK, see, from where I sit, that's the problem everyone else will have attacking the island. The island nation can station some militia in every region without much trouble, and thus be nearly immune to attack. But when they want to attack someone else, they just have to sail around until they happen to find one nice undefended region (which ought to be much more plentiful along the long mainland coast), and pow! They're in!

Sure, but they will have to sea-travel everywhere. Did I mention that sea-travel won't be free?

[Anaris]

I said we need to solve that.

The rough concept would be that it is possible to embark from every coast region, but things take longer, cost more, etc. if the region has no harbor. And if you retreat from a hostile region, you may lose parts of your troops, provisions, etc.

Basically, it should be possible, but if you have a harbor anywhere near, it should always be better to travel there and embark there.

My suggestion here would be to have a requirement that there be a "makeshift harbour" there, which a group of units can construct by spending some time and gold. How fast it can be built depends on how many soldiers work on it together (quite similar in structure to the new TO system). (Or possibly, the number of troops embarking within one turn that it can support varies based on how well-constructed it is. This would allow quite small forces to still be able to head out to sea without hanging around forever.)

[Anaris]

Sure, but they will have to sea-travel everywhere. Did I mention that sea-travel won't be free?

I think so. But it still doesn't answer the question of, "How will they not be totally invincible?"

[Tom]

If you want to help out but don't have a BT char:

http://battlemaster.org/dynamicmap3.php?ShowWorld=4


Yes, that also works to see all other islands, links will be added to the game soon. You need to be logged into a character for this to work, I think.

[Tom]

I think so. But it still doesn't answer the question of, "How will they not be totally invincible?"

Because if you bring a large enough force, you can land even if there are defenders?

[Chenier]

Erm...OK, see, from where I sit, that's the problem everyone else will have attacking the island. The island nation can station some militia in every region without much trouble, and thus be nearly immune to attack. But when they want to attack someone else, they just have to sail around until they happen to find one nice undefended region (which ought to be much more plentiful along the long mainland coast), and pow! They're in!

Indeed, we could now chose from dozens of rurals or badlands along the sea instead of being forced to strike at a fortified capital.

I think so. But it still doesn't answer the question of, "How will they not be totally invincible?"

If it's a ratio, we'd need an awful lot of militia in Qubel to stop a large realm from landing an invasion force there. Mind you, Libidizedd would be another story.

[Fleugs]

And here I was thinking Creasur would be the end of Riombara's expansion. Let's bring some fear to those Fronite shores, aye!

[Naidraug]

A few questions/suggestions:

1-) Would realms be able to TO the Sea Zones, that could boost food production in a townsland or city, or it would be free for all? If option two would the coastal lord (only a townsland/city lord) be able to finance fishing expeditions to increase the food production of his region?

To add some problems on that, there could be a chance (the more spent the lower the chance) of the fishing expedition to be lost at sea and it would be impossible to send expeditions when there is enemy troops moving to attack. (The Lord send the ships but they never come back. To avoid the "scouting" of the Sea, the same generic message could be used for when ships are lost at Sea)


2-) The gold spent to travel would come from the army chest or the noble would have to pay from his own pocket? Considering a big travel like this would require a big force I see no problem on taking from the noble's army instead of his own pocket.

3-) Now if a noble is with out unit lost in a enemy realm, he could try to flea by sea, he could try to travel even if there is not a port, but on an enemy realm a lord of a noble with a famous family would be easily spotted so there is always a change of him being captured. This could be a solution to nobles with no unit returning home issue.

[Geronus]

I saw a sea travel option on testing this morning. With my 60 man SF unit, it would apparently cost me 68 gold and take 8 hours to embark in Athol Margos.

I know that's only preliminary, but I'm curious about a couple things. When I embark is it instant (hours gone right then) or is it more like starting travel, with the hours spent and progress made at the turn change? And when I finish embarking, am I immediately in the sea zone, or do I then begin traveling there from Athol Margos? I could test it I guess, but I'm not sure if it would actually work yet or not.

[Bedwyr]

Basically, it should be possible, but if you have a harbor anywhere near, it should always be better to travel there and embark there.

Embarking in a harbour is like normal traveling, with some additional cost.  Can be done any time through a friendly harbour.  Ships that originate in harbours reset your provision status to max.

Embarking in a non-harbour region takes an additional turn (two turn move, essentially), costs more, and can only be done if your troops are not in retreated/etc status (and if you enter that status at any point, you have to restart the embarkation).  Ships that originate in non-harbour regions use current provision status.