Remove mercenary distance limits

[Indirik]

Then find a war closer to home. If a realm on the far north corner of the map can't fight a realm on the opposite end of the map, then the restriction is working. It's *supposed* to stop it from being possible. Consider one more thing that makes Dwilight unique.

[pcw27]

BattleMaster is not a hisorical simulator. The restrictions on long distance warfare is part of the game design.

Well several players are telling you it's a bad design, it makes the game less fun. Even Tom seems to agree that the penalty is too extreme.

Hand waving it as "one of the unique things about dwilight" wont suddenly make it fun. You know what could be a different unique thing about Dwilight, occasional massive crusades waged at great expense and sacrifice by large federations.

One of these possible unique features would be a product of the player community, the other would be the product of an arbitrary game mechanic. Which of these two unique features do you think will be better received in the game?

Then find a war closer to home. If a realm on the far north corner of the map can't fight a realm on the opposite end of the map, then the restriction is working. It's *supposed* to stop it from being possible. Consider one more thing that makes Dwilight unique.

There are no wars closer to home and given the political climate in the north west there wont be for some time. I'd like to add that it's not as if the battle field we're headed to is as far from Iashalur as possible. It's three quarters of the way down our landmass. I don't see why that should be an insurmountable distance, and certainly the excuse of "my battle hardened veterans are worse at handling home sickness then a ten year old going to sleep away camp" is not good enough.

[Zakilevo]

Wouldn't hurt to test it out. After all we have two test islands ;)

[Lefanis]

Consider one more thing that makes Dwilight unique.

Peace?

If a realm on the far north corner of the map can't fight a realm on the opposite end of the map...

Yeah, it's going to hit Astrum too, in just one more region from Chesland. If only it was just the realm in the corner that got excluded.

In five years of playing BM, I have never once seen this restriction coming in to play. On EC, distance from Semall to Sirion is itself 1250 miles. I don't know about Atamara, as I don't have a character there. I didn't even know that mercs had distance limitations. A crushing limitation like this just hurts the game, doesn't improve it.

[Eldargard]

Just a thought here. A variation of the original feature request. Have Mercenaries be unaffected by morale loss due to distance from home but have the weekly cost to pay them increase the farther they are from the homeland. A unit that costs 40gold per week in realm might cost 200gold per week on the other side of Dwilight. This would severely limit the size of far reaching armies and other factors will limit how long they can be out and about. The exact numbers are just guesswork on my part...

[dustole]

There are no wars closer to home and given the political climate in the north west there wont be for some time.

Iashalur had a chance for a war that was about 50% closer than Aurvandil, but they thought they /had/ to jump on the band wagon.

[MediumTedium]

Maybe have special "mercenary" units that you can recruit and are resistant to morale drop while OUTSIDE of home territory but cost a big amount of money and if they are inside home territory their morale continues to drop (like they are made for fighting long range battles instead of waiting in home territory or something) so you use them to fight long range battles and then dismiss them when they are not needed anymore?

[Eldargard]

I like the idea of having to recruit a new unit of mercenary specific units. A lot. It always seemed odd to me that you can walk up to your current troops and say, "You are all mercenaries now. You do not care about your home. You are only concerned for coin and this is an advantage to me." Vanguard, Police force, Sentry and Regular army are all variations in equipment and mission and it makes sense that you can change those but mercenaries seem to be something else entirely.

[pcw27]

I think I may have found a simple way to fix this.

Can any coders tell me if the "pay for lots of entertainment" has an effect in proportion to the number of men in your unit? It seems that as my unit went through desertions entertainment became more and more effective. I can't be sure because I also kept changing the type of entertainment, and hey maybe my troops prefer pub crawling to prostitutes.

If it is effected by unit size (which would make sense since 4 gold will only buy so much entertainment for so many soldiers) then we just need a system where you can buy as much entertainment as your troops need. Either the cost of entertainment should go up with unit size, or you should get a drop down of how much gold you want to spend (probably between 1 and 10).

Iashalur had a chance for a war that was about 50% closer than Aurvandil, but they thought they /had/ to jump on the band wagon.

What chance was this exactly? Are we talking about the war with D'Hara? 50% is a stretch. Or did you mean that minor tiff we had with Asylon. I thought there was a chance for war there to but Glaumring backed down.

Maybe have special "mercenary" units that you can recruit and are resistant to morale drop while OUTSIDE of home territory but cost a big amount of money and if they are inside home territory their morale continues to drop (like they are made for fighting long range battles instead of waiting in home territory or something) so you use them to fight long range battles and then dismiss them when they are not needed anymore?

I think the idea is more along the lines of "I'm going to pay you more so you don't mind traveling as far". I have however thought that mercenaries as a troop type would be a possible solution. Losing moral in home territory is unnecessary, the cost alone would deter people from using them without a purpose.

[Norrel]

If the front lines are too far from your home, then start a new front line closer to home.

The dev team's been saying this for ages, and to be perfectly honest, it doesn't work. The entire game has shown that the political benefits of having amicable neighbors outweigh having convenient war. Are you going to create an existential threat to your nation or are you going to deal with having nonfun wars? Almost always, people choose the latter.

The game doesn't have enough wars. Solution: make it so that pool of potential enemies is increased. More avenues of potential conflict = more conflict.

[Tom]

I've just about had it with everyone constantly complaining that there are no wars to the dev team.

People, we do not make war or peace, you do.

If you want to have a war, or have a war closer to home, or more war - get your ruler to declare war. You think it ruins long-standing roleplays? Seriously? What is non-roleplay about nobles wanting more loot, preferably from nearby and pressuring their ruler into making it possible?

There is no game-mechanics solution to this problem. The solution is in your heads. If you want war, go and make war.

The real problem is also in your heads. You want war, but you don't want to lose a war. So nobody declares a war unless they are absolutely certain they can win it. Which, of course, leads to very short and predictable and boring wars. Your characters can't even die, so WTF are you afraid of?

Go out there and make a war happen. And if you don't win, so what? Losing is fun.

[Indirik]

Yeah, it's going to hit Astrum too, in just one more region from Chesland. If only it was just the realm in the corner that got excluded.

Then bummer for Astrum. Again, we'll have to find a war closer to home. And Astrum is pretty much in the same corner as Iashalur. Not much difference there.

In five years of playing BM, I have never once seen this restriction coming in to play. On EC, distance from Semall to Sirion is itself 1250 miles.

And how often have you tried to march an army from Semall to Sirion?

Edit: Fixed broken quoting.

[Chenier]

I tend to agree, and I've objected to previous requests that would allow the northern realms to go pick a fight far away because they just locked themselves in peace for miles around.

However, I think that travel times, refit times (getting to banks to pay one's unit and then returning), equipment wear and other travel expenses already make realms rather ineffective over long distances. I don't think any of this should change. They don't make fighting far away impossible, they just mean you should bring smaller units and expect them to be weaker when they arrive.

On the other hand, morale is dangerous. If it gets too low, your men will abandon you outright. Considering the above issues and what's at stake, it doesn't feel to me like paying 50% more for your unit is providing enough of a reduction to morale loss for distance. And I mean this for all continents. I've never found it to be worth it even for smaller-range wars on other continents.

Long-distance war should be difficult in the sense that it takes forever to send troops, that it costs a lot to do so, and that very little strength arrives in the end. Not in the sense that your troops start deserting you as soon as you arrive to your destination, purely because of the distance.

Then bummer for Astrum. Again, we'll have to find a war closer to home. And Astrum is pretty much in the same corner as Iashalur. Not much difference there.

In five years of playing BM, I have never once seen this restriction coming in to play. On EC, distance from Semall to Sirion is itself 1250 miles.
And how often have you tried to march an army from Semall to Sirion?

When Enweil sent troops against Sint once (minor skirmish), we were getting these penalties. But really, we were only crossing one realm. I always felt like the distance penalties to morale were too great, despite being quite fine with the rest of the restrictions.

[vonGenf]

And how often have you tried to march an army from Semall to Sirion?

I once marched a mercenary unit from Sasrhas to Osaliel and back. Equipment damage was a big problem, but morale was manageable.

[D'Espana]

I once marched a mercenary unit from Sasrhas to Osaliel and back. Equipment damage was a big problem, but morale was manageable.

I have twice marched an army unit from Sasrhas to Taop and remained there for weeks without even the slightest morale drop. The message was pretty similar to "your men complain about being far from home, but their morale rises anyways X points".

So, army folks can stand long distance campaigns without penalties, but mercenaries can not? Even if there is only a reduction of the penalties, and not having them disabled, the bonus should be MUCH bigger than it seems to be right now.

They are mercenaries, not crying babies, for god's sake.