Reduced noble count and siege

[Zakilevo]

As with most things, have it scale by size of the realm.  Smaller realms could support a higher percentage of their total mobile force as militia than large realms.

Total mobile strength. I like that idea. Having courtiers/priests will actually have an impact on how big your militia is going to be.

[Indirik]

Sounds interesting.

[Zakilevo]

I agree with the idea of realm size = mobile strength. Priests and Courtiers don't really count toward it. It would indirectly force people to become warriors though.

Also, instead of right out putting a hard limit, how about adding desertion? So if you go past the limit, your units will desert rapidly maybe lasting only a turn or two before deserting to meet the limit.

[Lorgan]

What if you could bribe a region's militia to desert?

[Gabanus family]

I do think we have to be carefull not to make large realms too attractive again, but also not to make city sieges impossible. If sieges become easy, then small realms are dead in no time and we'll see even fewer seccessions than we've seen so far. I like the idea of realm size to have an impact, but it would have to be well thought out.

[Zakilevo]

We also don't want small one region realms to last forever. If they only have one region, they should die against a giant.

We want small realms to last but not by having so many militias that other realms can't even besiege their last region.

At the end,  I think we want to make sieges challenging but not impossible like it currently is. At the moment, most realms can't hit cities if those cities have maxed out on militias.

We've lost that many players. Now we need to find a way to adjust this to the current number of players. One thing is for sure. It needs to be cut in half at least. Gold has become more abundant over the years while players have not.

[Zakilevo]

I think if we do decide to go with total mobile CS based approach, we will need to think of max and min.

Up to 5 nobles = 100%?
and from there for every noble, you lose 2.5% up to max of 25%?

So realm with 10 nobles = 75%

15 nobles = 50%? 20 and over = 25%?

Let's say with 10 nobles yon can reach 7000 CS.

So by that calculation, you should be able to reach 14000 with 20, 21000 with 30 and 28000 with 40. Of course this calculation doesn't take courtiers and priests at all meaning for normal realms, it will be even smaller.

So at 10 nobles they have up to mobile 7000 + militia 7000(0.75) = 12250

at 20 14000 + 3500?

[Gabanus family]

I agree that single city realms shouldn't be able to last forever. Granted, Oligarch is one of the richest cities, but that it can hold out almost forever against Sirion is a bit odd as well. But with the proposed numbers you give, it'd be dead in one siege. On the other hand, smaller realms than Sirion currently can't siege a city at all, which is an even greater problem.

[Zakilevo]

I agree that single city realms shouldn't be able to last forever. Granted, Oligarch is one of the richest cities, but that it can hold out almost forever against Sirion is a bit odd as well. But with the proposed numbers you give, it'd be dead in one siege. On the other hand, smaller realms than Sirion currently can't siege a city at all, which is an even greater problem.

Yeah. Unless numbers become low enough, no one can siege anything. Sadly Sirion and Oligarch case is an outlier compare to all other cases. There are not that many realms with over 40 nobles or a city that can generate as much gold as Oligarch to allow them to hold out indefinitely.

You can't have a case where one region realm can survive forever against a giant. That just doesn't make any logical sense. If even a giant can't besiege a city then who can?

If we don't want to reduce militia numbers too much, we will have to make SEs more powerful and abundant so they can bring down walls even faster. We might as well lower all city walls to lv3 since lv5 is practically impenetrable.  And will have to reduce militia's strength by 50% so while they still maintain their number, they become a lot weaker.

[Gabanus family]

True, the Oligarch/Sirion case it a bit special. But in other cases I know medium sized realms have no way of sieging a city in a semi-fair war. A 15k army these days can be considered a pretty good one, good luck sieging a city with that. So in that sense, I agree something should be done. I'd be willing to lose Oligarch for that :p

I like the idea of Militia being weaker or something, because they're not led by actual noblemen and therefore their organisation and spirit to keep fighting will be lower. The SE's I'm not so sure off though. Quantity is fine, if you want you can get 80 SE's in a single city in stock. Quality, I'm not sure yet tbh.

[Zakilevo]

I don't mind two medium sized realms being unable to siege each other.

but if one side is winning by a big margin thanks to their military having a better general and they managed to corner the other realm all the way back to their capital, it should become different.

if your city doesn't have any adjacent region, it should not its food teleported into the city through its market place.

I think starvation should really be implemented again to address this. Instead of making starvation kill off population to reduce the city's population, how about change it a bit to affect militia, morale and production?

If your units are out of provision, make them lose morale instead of having a few men getting wounded. Your men are more likely to revolt and flee/desert before they actually starve under your command anyway.

I think starvation should become a very viable strategy if you don't want to reduce militia strength too much - it should be reduced either directly or indirectly however.

[Sacha]

The problem is that aside from the donut cities on Dwilight, it's almost impossible to besiege a city in a realistic fashion. You can't surround them unless you spread your army out over 4-5 regions, you can't really blockade them or starve them out. What we're calling a siege here isn't really a siege at all, but a straight-up direct assault on a fortified positioin.

But honestly, I don't think super complex arithmetics are the answer. 90% of players won't understand how they work, and the other 10% will waste no time in figuring out how to bend them to their advantage. BM is already enough of a numbers game these days IMO.

[Zakilevo]

City of Oligarch, impenetrable  40k CS of troops guarding the wall with only 10k being mobile. Give up on sieging folks.

[Gabanus family]

City of Oligarch, impenetrable  40k CS of troops guarding the wall with only 10k being mobile. Give up on sieging folks.

Actually about 14k was mobile :p

But yeah, if you have sufficient gold reserves like Garas does and happen to command one of the richest cities, it is (nearly) impossible to siege it. Granted, due to its wealth and the fact that it has 5 (4 inf, 1 arch) good quality RC's makes the city somewhat a special case. But it would make you wonder why all the CE Dukes never secceeded, they too would be inpenetrable with their 100k+ gold reserves.

[Indirik]

Because Atamara.