Regions of Dread and Hope

[Bael]

Not really a feature request as of yet, but I thought I would throw it out there for a bit of discussion. It is somewhat related to the below post, and I say not a feature request yet obviously because it would not be a priority as of yet.
http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,421.0.html

The RP premise of it is this: in some realms there are regions that lend themselves toward being evil: volcano regions, regions covered in heavy forest, and so on. So, in every realm let there be a region of dread and a region of hope that actually has game mechanic significance.

What sort of significance?

Well, training in the region of dread would provide extra cohesion as compared to normal training. However, morale would drop a lot more, and there would be a chance of getting less (read no) training for each session. The men of the Lord and Knights would be immune to this, as they would know the region enough not to fear it excessively. Any enemy troops in the region would lose morale simply from being in the region (as they would not know it well).

The region of hope would provide the troops with extra morale, and on average more training. However, due to the exuberance of their training their equipment would take more damage. And for all the luxury accommodation the lord would charge them to stay their (not sure quite how this would work...perhaps 2 gold for the first day, and 1 gold for every day after that).

These regions could not be next to each other, nor next to a townsland, fortress or city. They would also be either mountain, rural, badland or woodland. The objective is not only to provide good RP, but also to provide bonuses to regions that currently have very little. Of course the new estate system will change a lot of things, so perhaps this could be considered in light of those changes.

Next, how to select the regions. The easiest way would be perhaps simply by having those lords that interested writing about events (either positive or negative) that have influenced the region, then running in a poll to see which the nobles of the realm think is the most dreadful/glorious.

Finally, there is the question of what happens if the regions are lost, either by going rogue or being taken over. A somewhat more prickly issue - each realm should only have one of each. For the regions of hope, they would revert to a normal region. Whatever made the region special to the one realm would not apply to the other (the place of a glorious victory, home region of a glorious hero etc). The region of dread is more tricky. Perhaps have residual dread for a while, but no bonuses. Within say 2 months the realm from whom the region was stolen could find another "special" region. Barring this event, the regions could not be changed.

I suspect this would take a lot of programming, so at this time more of a discussion than practical. And certainly not a hard-and-fast set idea.

Discuss away :)

[songqu88@gmail.com]

It's nice to see that players have great imagination and appear willing to contribute to this game. On the other hand, how quickly would players actually get it? Or keep track of it?

[Bael]

It's nice to see that players have great imagination and appear willing to contribute to this game. On the other hand, how quickly would players actually get it? Or keep track of it?

Well, as soon as it is implemented, the realms would get it. And every realm with over a certain number of regions (say, 7 or more), could get it. As for keeping track of it - there would be a message to alert you when you are moving into the region, and they would also be marked on the realm and regions list (with an asterisk or plus).

[songqu88@gmail.com]

That would be more useful to have than the current system, which is really touch and feel, because you don't get any concrete info on your unit's preferences, or how far they can be from home. However, that doesn't have to do with the region, I think, so having universal changes to each region that still can have different effects due to the overlapping unit tendencies might create a large variation.

Yet, how would this affect combat? I can think of the possibility that movements will be changed from current paths. That means marshals may force the army to march much longer just to go around regions that have large morale penalties, which could change strategies vastly. Might be pretty good, as long as it's not too complicated. And if it is too complicated, I guess we'd be fine if we didn't have that information visible anyway so it would all be played from experience.