Skill Advancement

[Eirikr]

Thanks De-Legro for continuing to argue my historical point - I don't think anyone ever said communication was perfect. Battles were definitely messy. BM doesn't actually detail the specifics in battle much, but it often hints at imperfect and inexact scenarios. Panicked flight, winds, and abandoning fortifications are some indicators. Leadership skill also plays into this, often determining if those men will stay and fight or not...

If Herman trusted his leader enough, you bet he'd leave the battlefield on the retreat signal as soon as he could. No, he's not going to just drop everything and go home that instant, effectively committing suicide; he'd get out of danger (or die) and then withdraw. BM doesn't really go into these specifics (except when Unit K is cut down as they flee).

Also, nobody said anything about completely safe from combat. 30 feet is not far. You could definitely hear a horn or some such, and you'd definitely be in bow range. A quick Google search shows an English longbow had a range between 180-249 yards (165-228m). (Remembering, of course, that "reliable hit range" was largely irrelevant since archers were used more like artillery, firing for effect into a cluster of enemies.) Horsemen could easily close such a gap as well. Infantry's really the only part where the argument breaks down, but I don't think it'd be a stretch to say that there are certain events where a noble would get caught up involuntarily in an infantry line as well. (Besides, it's not exceedingly often nobles get wounded even when their unit loses. If your unit gets decimated like the chaff they were, how do you explain your ability to be completely overlooked by your enemy?)

Now, in truth, this is all somewhat beside the point that we've finally gone back to. I'm on the same page as Chenier that in terms of gameplay, the academy should be a peacetime, mostly inefficient way to gain combat skills. It's true that a melee is a different scenario than a one-on-one duel, but I'm sure some aspects are applicable.

I wonder if a wiser option is to increase the likelihood of a skill gain from an actual duel (not sure if that likelihood is actually 0% right now) and do something to promote cross-realm duels after battles, etc. Something like a battle for honor after a loss or as a response to an insult made via letters afterward. (Since duel rings are already illegal, I don't think organized stat-increase groups will become an issue.)

I also want to state a little of my bias regarding this whole argument in a straightforward way: I don't want Heroes to become marginalized and lose some of their uniqueness. It's a special ability that they add to their unit because they've chosen to be a paragon to both noble and peasant, standing among their soldiers to fight for what they believe. It gives meaning to the word "Hero". (The counterpoint being that the word "Warrior" should imply active fighting, too, but I also don't think we should be called warriors unless we can say without a doubt that we do fight directly... After all, Courtiers have units, too.)

[De-Legro]

Feels kind of wrong, though, that the elite swordsmen will be those that will have spent their lives at the academy, doing little of anything else, and (more recently) ex-advies (though even then, my own ex-advies who had done nothing else than hunting for years did not end up with the high skills ex-advies are often reputed to have).

Maybe it makes sense realism-wise (debatable)... but gameplay-wise, it doesn't. The academy should be for peacetime when there's nothing better to do, it shouldn't be the most efficient way of achieving anything.

Characters who end up being badasses with swords should be made so only by playing as badasses with swords. And that means by taking risks. Either by allowing "prudence" settings for battles that allow nobles to lead their units' charges for high chances of increased swordfighting skill and wounding, dramatically increasing swordfighting gains by heroes, or attributing swordfighting gains and risks with other activities, such as looting (a warlord who plunders a village is likely to get his own hands dirty as well).

Academies should be the slowest and least efficient paths to high skill levels. As they work now, too many are content to have long periods of peace, or indeed work towards quelling all attempts to liven things up, because they want to sit on large revenues just to train their infiltrators or the like. This egoistical behavior does not create fun for others.

Think it through. If mere battles was all that it took to make master sword men, then the common foot solider would fast become a master. I'm not against some sort of tweak to to the battle/academy system, but I'm not in favour of the proposed system of making academies much slower, since they will soon become irrelevant and might as well be removed from the game.

I'm not convinced there is some sort of epidemic of people doing nothing but training, and I am certainly not convinced that the few that do this are actively attempting to maintain peace. Even if they were GREAT, that gives you someone within your realm to rail against. If you can't motivate a realm to override the desire of peace by one or two characters, then game mechanics to "fix" it is not the solution.

Game mechanic restrictions have their place, but we seriously need to get away from trying to dream up mechanics to fix every perceived "undesirable" activity.

[Chenier]

Think it through. If mere battles was all that it took to make master sword men, then the common foot solider would fast become a master. I'm not against some sort of tweak to to the battle/academy system, but I'm not in favour of the proposed system of making academies much slower, since they will soon become irrelevant and might as well be removed from the game.

I'm not convinced there is some sort of epidemic of people doing nothing but training, and I am certainly not convinced that the few that do this are actively attempting to maintain peace. Even if they were GREAT, that gives you someone within your realm to rail against. If you can't motivate a realm to override the desire of peace by one or two characters, then game mechanics to "fix" it is not the solution.

Game mechanic restrictions have their place, but we seriously need to get away from trying to dream up mechanics to fix every perceived "undesirable" activity.

Disagreed. If risk-taking is modulable, the default would be "safe", where the skill gain is slow, "engaged" means slightly higher skill gain with say 33% chance of getting lightly wounded in battle, and "reckless" with high skill gain, 30% chance of getting seriously wounded, 20% chance of getting a normal wound, and 20% chance of getting a light wound. Numbers would obviously vary according to the details of the battle, but that's just to give a general idea.

Who would take the "reckless" option if they end up wounded all of the time? When serious wounds are pretty much the only threat old characters have to lose their titles?

Only characters who actively participate in as many battles as they can, and continue to take great risks even when old, would become truly elite in swordfighting.

Academy whores are de facto peace mongers. They pour huge resources into their training, and thus very little into units or military infrastructure. What do rulers look at before starting a war? "How strong is our army and what are our capacities?". It doesn't matter if there isn't a huge number of people doing it, the resources training suck up has great impact regardless.

Training should be both cheaper and less effective. That way, even those who decide to drain all of their hours at it don't represent a significant financial drain on their realms. And put the cap much lower, like 40%.

[De-Legro]

Academy whores are de facto peace mongers. They pour huge resources into their training, and thus very little into units or military infrastructure. What do rulers look at before starting a war? "How strong is our army and what are our capacities?". It doesn't matter if there isn't a huge number of people doing it, the resources training suck up has great impact regardless.

That is their choice, instead of seeking game mechanics to punish them, use the existing tools to rally the realm against them and prevent them from doing so. If you can't convince the realm to act, then its simply not a problem the realm cares about enough.

[Chenier]

That is their choice, instead of seeking game mechanics to punish them, use the existing tools to rally the realm against them and prevent them from doing so. If you can't convince the realm to act, then its simply not a problem the realm cares about enough.

Why is it seen as a punishment? You want people to punish them for doing that, not me.

Honestly, the more this goes, the more I have a simple solution: abolish academies altogether. Training is not fun. Having others spend huge resources on training is not fun. Infiltrators aren't even as meaningful as they used to be. Gameplay-wise, there's no reason to have academies around. People who want to train should pressure their leaders to hold more tournaments.

[De-Legro]

Why is it seen as a punishment? You want people to punish them for doing that, not me.

Honestly, the more this goes, the more I have a simple solution: abolish academies altogether. Training is not fun. Having others spend huge resources on training is not fun. Infiltrators aren't even as meaningful as they used to be. Gameplay-wise, there's no reason to have academies around. People who want to train should pressure their leaders to hold more tournaments.

If you are changing mechanics to make their style of play either pointless or greatly reduced in efficiency, then yes you are punishing them through mechanics, simply because they aren't playing in the way you have deemed acceptable. There are player driven methods to resolve this, which not only allow for different play styles between realms and individual choice, but also the possibility of political and other conflict and interaction within the realm. I don't particularly want them punished at all, I was simply pointing out that for realms where this is a problem and the consensus exists that it is not acceptable within the realm, mechanics exist to correct it, which in my view is much better then a game wide system to stamp it out.

[Eldargard]

Regarding doing vs training, I can not say. On one hand, I agree that participating in a few wars is not all it takes to create a master swordsman. I agree fully. Should you take a few untrained peasants, give them spears and lead them to war it is unlikely that any who manage to survive a handful of battles would become expert warriors of legendary proportions. I was never suggesting that.

I am suggesting that without practical application, all the training in the world will only take you so far. Just as sending untrained people into battle is unlikely to them very far. What I am talking about is a class of people (knights) who trained from childhood on to become proficient warriors and how battle would influence these people. Should these highly trained warriors survive dozens of battles, I can not believe that they would not show real development in the fighting arts.

All that is really quite minor to me though. What is important to me is the ability for characters to increase their skills by doing their job. Some classes/skills allow this easily. Swordfighting/Jousting/Leadership, however, can only really see significant gain via academies. Whether this is historically accurate and realistic or not is not all that important to me.

What is important is that it would, in my opinion, be so much cooler if my character could become more skilled at swordfighting/jousting/leadership by doing his job and fighting in battles. We want people to wage war and all that as this game is BATTLEmaster. Every incentive given to encourage this behavior is a good thing in my opinion. Right now war is fun but it does have it's downsides.

I had a character in Cathay a while ago that had assumed the position of a Duke's Champion. One of his jobs was to partake in duels on the Dukes behalf. I though this was a pretty damn cool idea and it gave me motivation during the time of peace my character found himself in. Then war came and as much as I loved it I couldn't help but feel that this war was holding my character back a bit. After all, despite fighting in battle after battle the character was just not developing his swordsmanship at a rate that could even be considered worthwhile. This change would mean that going to war had one less possible negative aspect associated with it.

As far as the literal mechanics, I can only propose what I think would be good. The devs, should they take a liking to the idea, would certainly be in a better position to judge what would best work for the game as I doubt many know the workings of BM better.

Regarding my suggestion, I doubt that it would make Academy training obsolete. I would even suggest that you could STILL progress at the academy faster, and certainly with more precession, than on the battle field. TO know this for sure would require data though.

* How often, on average, does a noble engage in battle per week/month/year or whatever.
* How often, on average, does a noble participate in a battle in which his unit does not engage any other units?
* What is the average life expectancy of characters (from creation date to date of death/retirement)?
* Using the averages above, how skilled could a character become via battle alone?
* How skilled could a character become using the academy using the only the academy over the course of an average life expectancy?

Answering these questions would allow us to tune the percentages. If 90% chance of skill growth is to rapid in comparison to academies, then drop the percentage. Or make battlefield skill growth progressively more difficult as skill increases like at the academy (as long as the number of battles over a given span of time would result in similar levels of skill growth as training at the academy over that same time period would).

[vonGenf]

Training is not fun.

So don't train. What is the worst that can happen? Duels will actually be risky? You won't win that tournament that was so important to you having fun?

Having others spend huge resources on training is not fun.

I'm not having less fun because my neighbor likes to watch baseball. I don't understand how that could happen to you.

Gameplay-wise, there's no reason to have academies around. People who want to train should pressure their leaders to hold more tournaments.

If you don't like academies in your realm, destroy the academies there. It'll save you maintenance money.

[Chenier]

If you are changing mechanics to make their style of play either pointless or greatly reduced in efficiency, then yes you are punishing them through mechanics, simply because they aren't playing in the way you have deemed acceptable. There are player driven methods to resolve this, which not only allow for different play styles between realms and individual choice, but also the possibility of political and other conflict and interaction within the realm. I don't particularly want them punished at all, I was simply pointing out that for realms where this is a problem and the consensus exists that it is not acceptable within the realm, mechanics exist to correct it, which in my view is much better then a game wide system to stamp it out.

What is the "play style" of academy whores? I've been there. I trained infils back in the old days. There is nothing fun about it. It is boring. I felt like hammering my head onto the desk every time I trained. Is there seriously someone who *enjoys* training? Not the end result of having high skills, but the training itself?

People train because it's currently the only way to improve their skills. It shouldn't be so. Training is boring for them, boring for others. A game shouldn't focus any objective on boring processes.

Our characters are high nobles. It should be simply assumed that they train on their free time.

So don't train. What is the worst that can happen? Duels will actually be risky? You won't win that tournament that was so important to you having fun?

Hardly anybody duels because no matter how badass your character is, and how many battles he's led infantry in, odds are the brand new character has as much or higher swordfighting skill than you have. Often, this has led to ridiculous cases of brand-new characters challenging rulers and the like to duels within weeks of joining the game. IRL, if this happened, the war-hardened king could easily just say "bring it on" and slay him.

If he's a peace-lover, though, or never takes risks, then fine, that character shouldn't be a god at swordfighting. But that's what modulated risk-taking is all about. Having it so that characters who don't take any more risk than they do right now only increase skill very slowly and cap at, say, 40%, while characters who jump in head-first and end up with serious wounds most battles, for years, are the only true sword gods.

More wounds also means more turnover.

I'm not having less fun because my neighbor likes to watch baseball. I don't understand how that could happen to you.

I fail to see how this compares. IR, you have a ton of neighbors, and no obligation to frequent any of them. In BM, you are in a team of a select few. It's more akin to being in a family where a certain member of the family is always at the bar, using up grocery money to get drunk. Yes, maybe he's the one that made that income. Doesn't give him the right to disregard everyone else that's relying on it.

If you don't like academies in your realm, destroy the academies there. It'll save you maintenance money.

Believe it or not, I've actually done this when in positions of power. That's irrelevant, however.

It only takes one party to start a war.

If you've got a continent with five realms, three allies on one side and two on the other, and for various reasons four of these realms are led by peace-loving rulers that maintain the status quo against restless nobles that would like for something to happen. Now say that one other realm, with a single ally, is the only one ruled by a ruler that wants to shake things up. So that ruler tries to prepare his realm for war, he orders recruitment of troops and investments in recruitment centres. But, despite how wealthy his realm should be, none of that seems to be happening. His army remains small and the infrastructure remains poor, because those with gold have other priorities. He can't ban them, they'll just switch to one of the enemies, and he'll just be less able to go to war. And so, because he can't mount a reasonable army, he puts off the war again, and again, and again. Just because one or two douchebags wanted to use that gold to train their skills, the whole continent is at peace. Had he been able to divert all of these resources to a war effort, he could have launched a surprise attack on one of his enemies, their two allies would probably have come in to defend him, and then his own ally would probably have come in to even the odds. That single ruler could have brought the whole continent at war.

Academies are detrimental to the game as a whole, not just to the realms that use them.

[vonGenf]

If you've got a continent with five realms, three allies on one side and two on the other, and for various reasons four of these realms are led by peace-loving rulers that maintain the status quo against restless nobles that would like for something to happen. Now say that one other realm, with a single ally, is the only one ruled by a ruler that wants to shake things up. So that ruler tries to prepare his realm for war, he orders recruitment of troops and investments in recruitment centres. But, despite how wealthy his realm should be, none of that seems to be happening. His army remains small and the infrastructure remains poor, because those with gold have other priorities. He can't ban them, they'll just switch to one of the enemies, and he'll just be less able to go to war. And so, because he can't mount a reasonable army, he puts off the war again, and again, and again. Just because one or two douchebags wanted to use that gold to train their skills, the whole continent is at peace. Had he been able to divert all of these resources to a war effort, he could have launched a surprise attack on one of his enemies, their two allies would probably have come in to defend him, and then his own ally would probably have come in to even the odds. That single ruler could have brought the whole continent at war.

Academies are detrimental to the game as a whole, not just to the realms that use them.

I'm sorry, but your argument boils down to "I know how that game should be played and I want everyone else to play the same way". If you think an academy can weaken a realm so much, then you can be the one to take the lead and attack those realms with academies. Your own academy-free realm won't have these problems, so it should be beat them easily.

Hey, I can even turn the argument around. If academies were not available in any realm, then there would be nowhere to spend your gold but in the military. This would result in all realms being armed to the teeth and would lead to a long-term peace due to the equality of forces and mutually-assured destruction.

[Eirikr]

The math may not work out (it's a complicated equation, too, so I don't see it being done for a while), but Leadership training in academies does have an impact on how well your troops perform and therefore how often you win. Leadership, of course, is also gained during battle, but when I started, I was told that getting it higher via the academy would be a smart move. So it would actually be pretty interesting to see an academy realm vs. a no academy realm, from an... academic standpoint. (Thank you, thank you.)

Inputs to such an equation would be:

• Time spent training
• Gold spent training
• Average Leadership level attained
• Impact Leadership has on combat
• Time committed to engage in battle

Essentially, you'd look for a common ground: How much does Leadership % translate into combat effectiveness vs. throwing in real gold and time. Input #5 would need to be finagled to determine how the time resources "lost" to training could be used in combat effectiveness... Assuming you need a minimum of 4 hours remaining to reach any destination on a single turn, you could maybe count that input as "hours beyond 8 used per turn".

Sorry I just like these math things sometimes.

[De-Legro]

Part of the problem here might be perception of the scale of skills. People look at 20% and think, rubbish at hitting things with swords. Like Scarborn said this is the skill of the warrior class, it is all relative. 20% is when compared to the non nobility actually quite a high livel of skill, its is just relatively low vs those of the nobility with exceptional skill.

The math may not work out (it's a complicated equation, too, so I don't see it being done for a while), but Leadership training in academies does have an impact on how well your troops perform and therefore how often you win. Leadership, of course, is also gained during battle, but when I started, I was told that getting it higher via the academy would be a smart move. So it would actually be pretty interesting to see an academy realm vs. a no academy realm, from an... academic standpoint. (Thank you, thank you.)

Inputs to such an equation would be:

• Time spent training
• Gold spent training
• Average Leadership level attained
• Impact Leadership has on combat
• Time committed to engage in battle

Essentially, you'd look for a common ground: How much does Leadership % translate into combat effectiveness vs. throwing in real gold and time. Input #5 would need to be finagled to determine how the time resources "lost" to training could be used in combat effectiveness... Assuming you need a minimum of 4 hours remaining to reach any destination on a single turn, you could maybe count that input as "hours beyond 8 used per turn".

Sorry I just like these math things sometimes.

That would get much closer to reality, but perhaps be difficult to convey to the player what stage of training they are up to and how they may best advance their skill. Considering what Scarborn has said about being of the warrior class I am reconsidering my previous statement about battle advancement of skills. If we assume that our characters have trained from birth, then they are already proficient. Perhaps a good starting position is to increase the chance of skill gain from battle and see what effect that has?