Limited Wars

[Dante Silverfire]

If I can't take them, I will drive them rogue. It doesn't matter if I can have them, the important thing is that I deny them to you.

The idea of limited wars in a good one. But t is very hard to come up with some way to enforce or incentivize this. Tim's "grand cycle of war and peace" idea is a possible one that could have some good effects.

That is a good point.

Well, one way to do it would still be to make regions more loyal (than they are now) the closer to the capital they are. This would prevent people from driving them rogue as well as slowing takeovers.

[Foxglove]

I don't think limited wars are very feasible without first addressing the imbalance in realm sizes. If we introduced a mechanic to allow realms to fight (e.g.) over one region, what would happen is that a larger realm would fight a smaller one over a 'claim' to one region. Then a little while later they'd declare another limited war over one region... rinse and repeat until the smaller realm is eaten up. The end result of realm death being a disincentive to fight wars would be just the same.

Forgive me for turning the problem on its head, but my take on this is that if you want more limited wars you have to stop realms being able to expand to huge sizes so that it gives more incentives to create new colonies. More realms = more different players in government positions = more political intrigue = more wars. The fact that no one realm could just expand right over the others actually creates incentives to fight wars because you know they physically won't be able to control all of your regions if they win the war unless they create a new colony, which in turn would create more political intrigue which would create more wars.

My way of doing this would be to introduce a hard cap on the number of regions one realm can control, with the actual number varying depending on the total number of regions on a particular map.

[Geronus]

So here's an out of the box idea that might accomplish the above in a slightly more flexible fashion:

Implement "cultures." Similar to weather areas, regions would be grouped into "cultures," reflecting the nature and origin of the peasants of that area. A realm would automatically be identified with the "culture" of either its capital or perhaps whatever the majority of its peasants happen to be. You could even use existing realms as the basis of the first cultures.

Culture would affect control and take over mechanics; regions with an alien culture would be harder to take and control, as Evilstanis wouldn't like their Keplerstani overlords and resent being ruled by them. Similarly, taking regions that match your culture would be easier. If the mechanics were properly adjusted, you could effectively implement a soft cap on the number of regions a realm could safely hold.

There are some problems with this idea, but depending on how creative you're willing to get with it, you might be able to do interesting things. Perhaps there would be a way to (over time) artificially alter a region's culture and assimilate it into your own. Perhaps cultures would slowly change over time on their own reflecting migration and cultural assimilation, and also forcing realms to adapt to changing circumstances. Keeping a soft cap on the total number of peasants that could belong to each culture could prevent realms from forging some sort of cultural takeover of an island; maybe you can assimilate as many regions as you want, but by doing so you make your other regions progressively more susceptible to being assimilated by other cultures in turn to the point that there's an effective cap on how many you can assimilate, where every region you assimilate almost automatically causes another region to be assimilated by some other culture.

Just a thought. Might be too complex, but it seems like an interesting approach to limiting realm sizes and possibly even to forcing realms to take time to stabilize new acquisitions (if they have to culturally assimilate the new regions to hold them).

[Indirik]

You would have to be able to chamge the culture of a region. Otherwise we are just predefining realms, and calling ti "culture".

[Fleugs]

You would have to be able to chamge the culture of a region. Otherwise we are just predefining realms, and calling ti "culture".

Alternatively you could make cultures integrate into a realm. So the first 5 months the culture is totally rejected, both ways. Then the next 5 months it is mildly tolerated. Finally it is accepted as an "integrated" culture that is recognized as part of the realm.

An idea that of course comes from Europe Universalis. In fact, I suggest Tom tries it out to find more ways about limited wars. Infamy is a very interesting thing there... and it works. Basically, you accumulate too much without a decent claim, you gain infamy - once you get too much, the entire world just decides you are an evil villain and you need to be chopped up.  8)

[Anaris]

You would have to be able to chamge the culture of a region. Otherwise we are just predefining realms, and calling ti "culture".

This is why my suggestion for this (which Tom ended up rejecting, though IIRC not in an "over-my-dead-body" kind of way) didn't call it the native culture of the people living there, but rather spheres of cultural influence that spread out from cities you control.

This was, in turn, fed by Glory, so the more glorious battles and such you could sing about, the stronger your cultural dominance became, and the more regions you could control. So the longer you were at peace, without glorious deeds to sing about, the more your realm would (slowly) contract—though never beyond a reasonable distance from your cities, unless you were at peace for a truly absurd length of time.

[Valast]

Trying to do something like this in the Colonies (still)... Not sure how it will all work out in the end but it is a fun way to try.  Then again the Colonies are a completely different animal than any other location.

Background: Lukon and Oritolon were nearly taken out by a few realms years ago and over the last decade have taken revenge on all nations who were against them or did not help them (aka all other realms).

Problem: The Colonies have become very slow and very boring.  For a while Lukon was creating wars for the sake of it, or allowing factions I knew were against our realm to thrive so that they would make something for us to fight against.  Worked for a while but really hard to remain true to RP character and in the end was continuing the  stagnate environment.

Idea: Create something that would return the realms to one city each (Not very ideal on other islands...as mentioned 5 times before)... make a system of Guilds to unite the Colonies with an elected senate (United Nations) to develop a few laws: Allow Infiltrators to buy back bans...to prevent deportation or death; Freedom of religion...let the priests/religions have a chance to develop their own way of combating each other; Force a proclamation of war...so that everyone knows what the initial goal of the war is and what needs to be done to satisfy the end of it; lastly no nation will be destroyed by another intentionally.

Beyond those few initial laws I have no idea how the senate will progress.  But it is an idea we are trying to see happen if Oritolon would just stop fighting it so hard!  ;D

What I envision coming about are a series of federation voting blocs which may be united by other guilds (so that wars can still take place between the nations in the federations) trying to gain an upper hand in the senate.

It is not as complex as it sounds but I know it would be more complicated on any other island.  After all the Colonies have been reduced to only 4.

Credit goes to James (and another from Outer Tilog who I unfortunately can not recall) for the initial idea.

The key to it all is not the prevention of killing off a realm, although it is needed for starting, but the starting of small scale wars over boarders, gold, honor, evil, stupidity and eventually religion and skilled infiltrators once everything starts to fall apart.

Will it work?  Stay tuned...I have no idea.

[Tom]

Implement "cultures."

Sure. Pay us a professional full-time coder for a month.

[Vellos]

Limited wars can be incentivized by massive short-term bonuses with steep precipices when they go away.

For example: there could be some kind of, I dunno, "Establish a Professional Military" option for a general. This would be like building a fortification in terms of financial commitment involved. When it's complete, it gives you, say, a 15,000 CS army you don't have to pay (and of course there's some kind of cap) which is placed as militia in the capital as, say, 1,000 CS units that the general can hand out to people, or whatever. I dunno exactly how it would work, but bear with me.

These units would appear very suddenly, and cannot be replaced. They can be added to current units without violating unit-size caps. They don't violate realism because attempts by medieval powers to create standing professional armies did occur, but never lasted for very long.

Now imagine you're the realm that saved all the cash and made this army. Now you have a free army that appeared all at once. Move fast and you can conquer several regions easily. Sure your army will be torn apart over time and is prohibitively expensive to replace: but the different time-schedule and unit characteristics make it a dynamic feature that can make systems highly unbalanced.

Now then, maybe we say that hiring a professional army has some side effects. Professional armies need quartering, you know, and they have a hearty appetite. They're not paid from the land incomes of nobles; they're salaried conscripts.... but they take some on the side too. So beginning, say, 7 days after recruitment, they automatically begin looting every region they're in: or maybe not looting, just taking some gold and food.

Let's think about the dynamics here, both domestic and foreign.

Domestically, this is an army that a general (or maybe ruler, whichever, doesn't matter) can call up without noble support, provided he can get gold. It's a way for the council to exert force over the lords. It's a damn expensive way, and it won't last forever, but it's a way. And it's a way that a ruler could pursue a personal foreign policy: so your lords don't want to support a war? Fine; get a couple willing knights and assign them some professional soldiers, fight your war as you like. At the same time, a ruler doing this is making a gamble: every moment these soldiers are in-realm, they're stealing gold from the lords and eating their food. Lords have a reason to be concerned about council members raising professional armies: especially since ultimately the gold used to pay for them was theirs originally. So it's a source of internal dynamism.

Also a few things: I would suggest that, in the event of starvation in a region or a huge defeat in battle, professional soldiers should have a chance of going rogue and/or flipping to a realm you're at war with. So the Janissaries can stage a palace coup, so to speak. In the event of a rebellion, professional soldiers should side with either their "sponsor" or whoever they're assigned to, based on, I dunno, who has the highest prestige or something.

In foreign policy, these armies would allow small realms to have powerful first-strike capabilities and conceal major military resources. Also, small realms with shorter marching distances could have professional soldiers spend less time in their realm eating food and taking gold. Finally, I would note my suggestion that a huge defeat in battle can affect these soldiers' loyalty: this suggests that realms have an incentive not to risk their professional corps. So after they take their regions, they will have an incentive to sue for peace.

And that's the last key item: make it so that any time you sign peace treaties ending all wars (so go to total peace), you have an option to peacefully disband your professional soldiers; or maybe quarter them or something. So instead of becoming casualties, they go home, and the sponsor gets a refund equivalent to what % of soldiers were left over at the end of the war(s).

You wanted a suggestion, there's a suggestion. A big incentive to start wars: asymmetrical army sizes, hidden strength. A big incentive to sign peace: major downside risk on defeats, refunded money. A way to solve the longstanding "council members are powerless" complaint: soldiers not dependent on lords. A way to provoke conflict between council members and lords: professional military corps supplanting nobles.

I have in mind as historical precedent, as I mentioned, groups like the Jannisaries, Varangians, Mamelukes, and to a lesser extent even Housecarls of Anglo-Saxon groups and even Roman Legions.

Don't like the idea? Fine, it'd be a massive coding project. I can come up with another idea.

I disagree with Tim that we can't make code that will incentivize more and limited wars. I think it's completely possible. All we need is to create conditions that make decisive, early victories likely, and rapidly-concluded peace treaties beneficial.

[Vellos]

I should note:

I don't expect the above idea to be taken even remotely seriously. I'm just pointing out that there do exist ways to creatively put these incentives in the game, and even sometimes in ways that create beneficial effects on many levels and fit the historical period.

[Anaris]

I disagree with Tim that we can't make code that will incentivize more and limited wars. I think it's completely possible.

I didn't say we couldn't do it. I said there was nothing simple.

What you have proposed here is not simple.

[Wolfsong]

Limited Wars: A (Not Very) Modest Proposal

Limited wars sound good in theory, but players are worried they will become, like all other war mechanics, just another way to completely (albeit more slowly) destroy a realm. To counter this, I am proposing we add in a system of "coded casus belli" that can be used to start wars, a la Crusader Kings 2. This won't entirely prevent realm destruction, but it will make it much harder to achieve (and will add a host of interesting new mechanics for people to explore.)

What constitutes a 'casus belli'?

Claims.

A realm must have a claim they can press on a region before going to war over it. Claims can vary by type and strength, and here are some hypothetical examples:

+ A nobleman of your realm was previously lord of a region. He has a strong claim to the region, which the realm can use to go to war with the other realm currently holding that region. If they successfully take over the region, the nobleman is installed as its lord.

+ A region was once a part of your realm, but has since been taken over, has rebelled, or has been for whatever reason claimed by another realm. Your realm has the option to go to war to reclaim this region, and the strength of the claim would vary by the amount of time it had been a part of your realm, versus a part of this other realm.

+ A member of your realm is an elder member of the Church of Signs and Snakes. There is a region bordering your realm, or on the coast, that has a majority of Signs and Snakes worshippers. Their region lord, however, does not follow the religion. As a result, your realm receives a weak claim to the region they can press on behalf of the elder member of Signs and Snakes.

+ A member of your ruling council is an elder member of the Church of Signs and Snakes. Alternatively, your realm is a Theocracy and has pledged (in some coded fashion) to following the Church of Signs and Snakes. The Church has labeled another religion, the religion of Chutes and Ladders as "evil." As such, your realm receives a strong claim to any region owned by a realm that has a majority of Chutes and Ladders worshippers. (Potentially: make this dependent on if the Ruler is a member of Chutes and Ladders, or the number of "evil" churches in the area, etc.)

How does this fix anything?

+ Claims have a strength to them - strong claims, weak claims, etc. For example, you might have a strong claim to a region that you could press on behalf of another noble or knight (thus installing them as a lord if you win the war) and a weak claim you could press for yourself. If it's a wealthy city, or the noble is a rival of yours, you might want to press the weak claim and take it for yourself, rather than support their claim to it. However,

+ Claim strength prevents war fatigue. - By which I mean, add in some kind of "war fatigue" that peasants of the realm suffer the longer they are at war. Weak claims give you less wiggle room, and peasants begin to complain more quickly, or violently, or etc., the longer the war drags on - culminating in uprisings. (I'll go into rogue forces in a bit.) A strong claim would keep the peasants happy for longer, enabling you to war for longer.

+ Weak claims disappear if the war is lost. Strong claims become weak claims if the war is lost.

New "Rogue Forces"

+ Peasants

Peasants suffer from war fatigue, and will eventually form peasant revolts and uprisings: large in number, but low strength per individual. Similar to how peasants work now. These uprisings will attempt takeovers of the region they are in, and will continue to grow if left unchecked for long.

+ Soldiers

There used to be a "peace time fatigue" where region stats would drop and soldiers would get unruly if the realm was not at war. I don't know if it still exists, or was removed, but it was annoying as hell. However, I'm going to suggest something similar to it. Restablish a peace time fatigue that only affects soldiers - in units or as militia. Instead of region stat drops, too much peace time fatigue will cause "soldier revolts" or "armed rebellions" - like the peasant uprisings above, but with stronger CS. They would also attempt takeovers of regions they were in, but may not grow over time. This "peace time fatigue" would need to be balanced so that it was difficult to achieve, and was based in part around how much standing army/militia a realm had. A large standing army, and no war, should equal malcontents.

Fabricating Claims

+ What happens when there are no claims on a region, though? We're trying to make war both more appealing, and more easily introduced. If wars could only be fought over claims, and claims eventually fade, won't that mean wars will eventually cease? Hence - in Crusader Kings 2, you can send your (I forgot the name of it? Castellan? Steward?) to fabricate claims on another region on your behalf. This takes time, and your steward is in danger of being caught while there.

Do something similar with Battlemaster. Allow Stewards (aka Bankers - and yes, holy !@#$, I'm implying bankers get to actually do something cool) to attempt to fabricate claims to regions of other realms that your realm shares a border with. These claims would be weak claims and function as if the region was a part of your realm once, and was lost.

However, also make it dicey. The banker should be able to send minions to fabricate the claims (he won't have to be physically present there, since that would encourage meta-gaming) but these minions should have a chance of being caught. (Ie, like how scouts can be captured and show who they've come from.) Should the fabricating claim critically fail, the region lord should be alerted to the fact that someone was attempting to fabricate a claim to his region. Make it variable: sometimes they'll only get the "someone" echo, and sometimes they'll be given full information "John Hawkes, Castellan of the Land of Lamb, has failed in an attempt to fabricate a claim to your region."

So... You can create claims, and you can fail to create claims - but, good news! A failure to fabricate a claim on a region of a realm, if a critical failure, can in turn create a claim for the other realm. Instead of getting a claim on land, they receive a weak "revenge" claim on your realm - and have the option to go to war for tribute/gold.


Wars For More/Less Than Just Land

+ Not all claims would be on regions, and when fabricating a claim, you would have an option for which claim to attempt - each with differing levels of difficulty.

+ You could start wars to demand tribute, and any land captured during the war would revert back to their original owner at its conclusion.

+ War to capture a noble. IE, a foreign realm is currently holding an enemy of the state. You fabricate a claim to war with them, and at its conclusion, if you win, the enemy noble in question is transferred to your dungeons with rogue status. If the enemy noble flees to another realm before the conclusion of the war, the war ends inconclusively and the noble is not transferred to your dungeons.

+ Wars to install new leaders. Not sure on the specifics of this, but could be cool.

Also related: wars within a realm to force a duke to step down from his position, should a claim be fabricated. And furthermore: if intra-realm war did/could exist (I saw the post saying it was a pipe dream, but so is this) allow dukes to fabricate claims on regions in other duchies.

Also also: Allow dukes to appoint a council of their own that only function within their duchies - a Ducal Banker, Ducal Judge. "Ducal General" is already possible through the founding of armies and the appointment of Marshals.


Disclaimer: I have not spell-checked any of this, it's early, and I have probably typoed a heap.

Disclaimer #2: I know it's all probably impossible given the current coding abilities of BM staff. But the game needs change. Otherwise, stagnant like it is, it'll just continue to die slowly. As it stands, Might&Fealty will probably be its death knell.

tl;dr: Crusader Kings 2. Basically.

[Chenier]

"Limited" wars aren't what they used to be. Back then, even if they were rare, at least it was for border (rural) regions. Nowadays, even if you only have enough nobles to take on only one more region, you can pick whichever region you want, even a coastal city deeper down.

Naval armies are also invisible, unscoutable. Aurvandil could sail a huge army past D'Hara and Barca, land right in the heart of Terran and occupy its capital before it even realized what was happening. This would never have been possible before. They would have been seen weeks in advance, and it would have been easy to devert a few forces to hold on the fortified regions.

Naval travel makes war a considerable amount more dangerous. If you go to war with someone, you don't just put your border regions at risk anymore, you put your whole realm at risk, because the enemy can land anywhere and depart before you can even start to rally to react.

I'm far from hating naval travel, but it went live unfinished and broken. Already one realm, Terran, was destroyed by a mild use of its power. And we haven't even seen the worse yet.

[Geronus]

Sure. Pay us a professional full-time coder for a month.

I did say it might be too complex  :)

[pcw27]

I'm just going to reiterate my suggestion because it seems to be missed.

Allow level one and two fortifications in rural regions, but only if they have core realm control and have belonged to the realm for a set amount of time.