Limited Wars

[Tom]

Despite all the discussions going on in various current topics, I do believe most players agree that the game would do well with a few more wars.

Over the years, we have had this discussion many times. The best result we've arrived at is that wars are not fought because (doh) they are dangerous. What that means is that almost every war is an all-or-nothing affair, and could mean the total destruction of a realm.


So what we could use are better ways to wage limited wars. You know, that end when the dispute about that border region has been concluded. Sure, they might leave behind a diplomatic situation as tense and cold as the Middle East, and they might spark a total war, but let's just look at the small dispute. Can we make this happen? What game mechanics do we need to make people use that option, if it were to exist? What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult? Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?

[jaune]

Well, i suggested somewhere already, 1 city realms. Realm cant have anything else than 1 city. Every city would be indipendent "realm" with council, with its own RC's etc.

I bet it will lead to some big alliances and federations... but still, there would be so much variables to keep huge alliances/federations stick together... its not exactly what you asked for, but i think it could lead to much more dynamic warfare and gaming. To dominate continent, you would need helluwa lot trusted buddies and pray hard that they stay that way. Realm destruction is possible, but there would be new realm at some point anyway...

Mayby test it on one of the islands... mayby test it on the island you plan to "sink" before sinking it.

-Jaune

[vonGenf]

So what we could use are better ways to wage limited wars. You know, that end when the dispute about that border region has been concluded. Sure, they might leave behind a diplomatic situation as tense and cold as the Middle East, and they might spark a total war, but let's just look at the small dispute. Can we make this happen? What game mechanics do we need to make people use that option, if it were to exist? What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult? Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?

I always liked very much the idea behind the new diplomacy system that you tried to introduce a few years ago with the fine-scale declarations of war, such as raids or wars with specific territorial goals. I still think it would make the game better.

[Revan]

Revive the claim system in a limited fashion? Make it so that if a Duke in Keplerstan has a frontier province on the border with Keplerville, he can stake a claim to an adjoining region in Keplerville under certain circumstances. I suppose potentially you could use sympathy/diplomats towards this purpose. If sympathy in a bordering region reaches a certain level, a Duke with adjoining territory could stake a claim to it. You could then make it so that rulers can then press the specific, but limited claims of their vassals in a war.

[Chenier]

Despite all the discussions going on in various current topics, I do believe most players agree that the game would do well with a few more wars.

Over the years, we have had this discussion many times. The best result we've arrived at is that wars are not fought because (doh) they are dangerous. What that means is that almost every war is an all-or-nothing affair, and could mean the total destruction of a realm.


So what we could use are better ways to wage limited wars. You know, that end when the dispute about that border region has been concluded. Sure, they might leave behind a diplomatic situation as tense and cold as the Middle East, and they might spark a total war, but let's just look at the small dispute. Can we make this happen? What game mechanics do we need to make people use that option, if it were to exist? What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult? Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?

With the changes of sea travel, we are likely to see less war, not more. Wars are a lot more dangerous now. Suddenly, not only your border is exposed, but all of your coastal regions. which, for many realms, means most of their cities (most cities are concentrated along sea zones), probably their capital, and perhaps even most of their regions in general. Suddenly, Luria Nova can land an army deep in Morek territory and start a takeover before Morek even realizes what happened, can skip TOing the Desert of Silouhettes and jump staight for Sallowwild and Sallowtown. Riombara can just walk to Ete City, despite not having a border, and start a takeover. Astrum can go all the way down to the Madinian isle and try to annex some land.

Feels like sea zones were added too hastily, and little work has been put to finish them off since implemented. It's now functional, but not balanced.  Shipyards don't even work yet. And the possibility to takeover just about any coastal region by almost everyone (few don't have a region bordering a sea zone) is completely and utterly broken. If a belligerent wants to takeover a region, why would it bother itself with a border region when it can just as easily take a bigger wealthier region a bit further inland?

[Anaris]

With the changes of sea travel, we are likely to see less war, not more. Wars are a lot more dangerous now. Suddenly, not only your border is exposed, but all of your coastal regions. which, for many realms, means most of their cities (most cities are concentrated along sea zones), probably their capital, and perhaps even most of their regions in general. Suddenly, Luria Nova can land an army deep in Morek territory and start a takeover before Morek even realizes what happened, can skip TOing the Desert of Silouhettes and jump staight for Sallowwild and Sallowtown. Riombara can just walk to Ete City, despite not having a border, and start a takeover. Astrum can go all the way down to the Madinian isle and try to annex some land.

But all the fear you cite—which I agree is real—is because of the mindset of players toward war.

Honestly, I'm not convinced there is any simple change we can make to game mechanics that will make players significantly more likely to be willing to make peace after limited gains.

I think that there are several reasons why we have this current situation, and if you will forgive me for a bit of a ramble, I'd like to enumerate them.

• People are afraid to leave a defeated enemy around to come back and bite them. This can be quite a legitimate fear, as I've seen it come back and bite realms in the past, to the tune of complete destruction. (For a semi-recent, prominent example, see Ibladesh and Perdan.)
• People rarely really know when to stop fighting. A war over ideological differences isn't likely to be stopped because one side changed their mind, because no one in BattleMaster ever changes their mind about anything substantive.
• Relatedly, once a realm is badly losing a war, they have no real incentive to surrender rather than see their realm destroyed. This leads to them demanding utterly absurd peace terms, that sometimes amount to demanding that the winning realm surrender if they want to end the war. Part of the motivation for this is that (somewhat paradoxically, given this topic) realms that destroy other realms are, at least to some, viewed with significant disfavour.
• The difficulty of continuing a war does not scale with how much of a realm you've destroyed. By and large, taking a border region is not meaningfully harder than taking the region next to the capital.
• Destruction—in general, not just of realms—is just too darn easy. Looting regions rogue has become too much of a standard practice, and it leaves those lands a wasteland for, in some cases, RL years afterward.
• There is no reason not to remain at war—in a single war—essentially forever. Your soldiers and peasants suffer no "wartime fatigue" of any kind, nor do your resources deplete (for the most part).

These last three are things that we can actually address in code. In fact, Tom, if you'll recall, the devs had a discussion earlier this year in which you approved some suggestions that should at least significantly mitigate the last two. One of my suggestions that you did not approve would have made a big difference to #4, as well (the idea of cultural influence).

[pcw27]

Maybe level 1 and 2 fortifications should be based on how long a region has belonged to your realms. That way it will be harder to take regions in the heart of the realm

[Geronus]

stuff

My only concern with a few of your suggestions is that they seem to imply implementing mechanics that effectively punish wars that go on too long, by making TO's harder, or affecting region maintenance, troop morale, etc. Unless you simultaneously succeed at incentivizing people to start more wars more often, you're actually going to reduce the amount of war in the game in the aggregate.

Part of this problem is that you're dealing with human nature here... A lot of the behaviors exhibited in the game are a function of rational action given certain incentives and disincentives. You have to determine what those are and how to alter them if you want IG behavior to change. Anaris has his finger on some of them, but the biggest one is quite simply that people are inherently risk-averse. They tend to avoid wars that they're not highly confident they can win, and then once in them they usually do everything they can to mitigate any future risks that might result, which often implies completely destroying your opponent or otherwise ensuring that he'll never be a threat to you again, or at least not for a long time (See: Eston). I do not see any way around this that wouldn't involve implementing systems that significantly depart from reality.

[Anaris]

My only concern with a few of your suggestions is that they seem to imply implementing mechanics that effectively punish wars that go on too long, by making TO's harder, or affecting region maintenance, troop morale, etc.

I don't recall offhand what all the ideas were that Tom approved, but they did not include making region maintenance harder.

If you want to disincentivize wars-to-the-death in code, then I'm sorry, but from where I sit, you have to have some kind of mechanic that makes a war harder to sustain as it goes on longer.

Unless you simultaneously succeed at incentivizing people to start more wars more often, you're actually going to reduce the amount of war in the game in the aggregate.

That is at least as important a part of the war improvements package the devs discussed, and while, again, I don't recall the specifics off the top of my head, Tom definitely approved some changes to push in that direction, too.

Part of this problem is that you're dealing with human nature here... A lot of the behaviors exhibited in the game are a function of rational action given certain incentives and disincentives. You have to determine what those are and how to alter them if you want IG behavior to change. Anaris has his finger on some of them, but the biggest one is quite simply that people are inherently risk-averse. They tend to avoid wars that they're not highly confident they can win, and then once in them they usually do everything they can to mitigate any future risks that might result, which often implies completely destroying your opponent or otherwise ensuring that he'll never be a threat to you again, or at least not for a long time (See: Eston). I do not see any way around this that wouldn't involve implementing systems that significantly depart from reality.

Well, actually, the other way you can do it is to make the system move much closer to reality. After all, if the fear is of losing everything the character has gained, and the character is going to definitely die within another 10-30 game years, and his heir isn't someone you control...you might be more willing to take some risks to gain more while you're alive.

But, in general, you're probably right. And I don't have a problem with making changes that reduce realism, so long as they make BattleMaster a better game.

For instance (just to give a relatively extreme example), I don't think it would be totally beyond the pale to say that once Realm A has taken 1/4 of Realm B's regions, or 5 of Realm B's regions, whichever is more, Realm A cannot take any more regions from Realm B until Realm A has had a period of at least 3 RL months at peace to consolidate its hold on those regions. (I'm not entirely thrilled with mechanics like this because of the arbitrary magic numbers involved, but I think it gives the general idea.)

[jaune]

1 City per realm fixes the problem! :D

-jaune

[Tom]

1 City per realm fixes the problem! :D

We heard you the 5th time, you can stop pushing the same idea if you don't have something constructive to add.

[Dante Silverfire]

Honestly, a simple mechanic that stops wars from being able to mechanically takeover an entire realm (unless they started small) makes sense to me.

The cultural idea also makes sense. Make it that much more difficult to takeover regions next to a capital. And make it even harder to hold onto regions far away from capitals.

[Indirik]

Honestly, a simple mechanic that stops wars from being able to mechanically takeover an entire realm (unless they started small) makes sense to me.

The cultural idea also makes sense. Make it that much more difficult to takeover regions next to a capital. And make it even harder to hold onto regions far away from capitals.

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.

[egamma]

1 City per realm fixes the problem! :D

-jaune

Why bother going to war if you can't take the profits of the enemy capital?

Also, this makes the problem of the "forever duke" even worse.

[Indirik]

Also, this makes the problem of the "forever duke" even worse.

In a city-state, duke = ruler. Tie two together. Lose one, you lose them both.