Taking new regions becoming historically harder

[Chenier]

Over the years, many new features have been implemented and that had probably unintended effects of making expansion much more difficult. It is now almost impossible to do a friendly takeover and then maintain the high sympathy in realms where lords are elected.

For example, ox carts used to produce no or little waste from my memory, and brigands have been made to steal a bunch of these transfers to favor caravans use instead. However, new regions without lords cannot set purchase orders, and as such caravans are completely useless in them. Bankers have also lost their options to move food around, and have much less power over warehouse settings in regions. As such, since most regions TOed tend to lack food, starvation always hits as soon as the TO completes, there is then no effective way to feed the new region, and sympathy drops to 1% within a day or two. And since control is often at occupied when the region is taken, ox carts aren't an alternative. Out of 100 bushels sent to a new region captured, 96 or so were stolen by brigands. Who can afford such a ratio to feed new regions? Even if people had caravans they couldn't sell directly to the region until a lord is elected.

Furthermore, the maintenance modifiers by duchy just aggravate the situation. It was desired to disfavor imperial regions in order to give incentives to lords to align themselves to a duchy... But all new regions are necessarily imperial. Maintenance efforts and therefore much less effective than they used to be. And to make matters worse: even when a lord is finally elected, it takes a full seven days before he can actually switch allegiance to a duchy. So that can easily mean about 12 days where all efforts show no gains.

And how is subsistence-level farming supposed to work? The other day, our new region was starving. Then it returned to subsistence level farming. Then this morning it starved again and all stats reset to 1%.

Also, without any knights, the region suffers a control penalty on top of the lack of estate penalties. But how could it recruit a knight when it has 0% production? And because of this, production suffers and a vicious circle tends to be created, one that takes disproportionate amounts of work to break out of.

On top of that are control issues due to the size of your realm that have a nasty centralizing effect. How can we honestly prone ducal independence and large-realm penalties at the same time? These harsh penalties force ducal cooperation, as expanding your duchy without the aid of everyone else in the realm is starting to get pretty damn hard.

All of these new features aimed at modifying how people act with a bunch of penalties are stacking up with what I believe was an unintended effect: expanding is now a hell of a lot harder than it was when I joined the game. This, imo, is a problem. Even if most these features affect those who elect their lords a lot more, they all affect everyone. And everyone switching to appointment is not a valid solution, as it only reduces the negative impact of new behavior-control mechanics and would reduce the gameplay possibilities significantly.

It is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will no get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay. Wars are significantly delayed because of maintenance issues, when they are not avoided completely. Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting. By focusing on the duchies and regions so much, we increased overall maintenance needs and made in sort that instead of having a few bureaucrats maintaining a whole realm, you now need a few per duchy if you want to avoid maintenance problems and seek to maintain reasonable tax levels.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Well, I think the original thought of this was "realism". Whole lot of good that did.

[Shenron]

I think the original thought was to have food become much more valuable therefore turning food into a much more important tool in diplomacy and warmongering (which I think has succeeded.)

However the annoying maintenance control is indeed annoying and I think is a big turn off not only to new players but to old players who are too busy coordinating maintenance to care about any RP like religion, guilds, political battles, wars etc

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Well, for one thing, as lords of various regions at varying times in my playing experience, food had eventually become almost a full-time job. Send food somewhere, receive food, move places. It's all part of the territory really. At least some places don't require so much work, but when you have a region that doesn't have enough knights, and ALL other knights in the realm are taken, then it gets to be not cool.

Basically, the report goes "Lack of knights reduces control. All your stats drop. lol" And I check and I'm like "No! Dude! I have over 100% authority! Dang it!"

[Fleugs]

Use diplomats/ambassadors/priests to improve loyalty at an astonishing rate. Your realm decided it could allow several faiths and has no hegemony? Tough luck.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

That's not an issue in my experience. It's more like, some regions require you to have so many knights at a minimum, and sometimes, even that minimum can't be reached. For bigger realms, downsizing is not so much an issue. For smaller realms, it means they never get past the stage where they are a little puppy in a forest filled with wolves.

[De-Legro]

Over the years, many new features have been implemented and that had probably unintended effects of making expansion much more difficult. It is now almost impossible to do a friendly takeover and then maintain the high sympathy in realms where lords are elected.

For example, ox carts used to produce no or little waste from my memory, and brigands have been made to steal a bunch of these transfers to favor caravans use instead. However, new regions without lords cannot set purchase orders, and as such caravans are completely useless in them. Bankers have also lost their options to move food around, and have much less power over warehouse settings in regions. As such, since most regions TOed tend to lack food, starvation always hits as soon as the TO completes, there is then no effective way to feed the new region, and sympathy drops to 1% within a day or two. And since control is often at occupied when the region is taken, ox carts aren't an alternative. Out of 100 bushels sent to a new region captured, 96 or so were stolen by brigands. Who can afford such a ratio to feed new regions? Even if people had caravans they couldn't sell directly to the region until a lord is elected.

Furthermore, the maintenance modifiers by duchy just aggravate the situation. It was desired to disfavor imperial regions in order to give incentives to lords to align themselves to a duchy... But all new regions are necessarily imperial. Maintenance efforts and therefore much less effective than they used to be. And to make matters worse: even when a lord is finally elected, it takes a full seven days before he can actually switch allegiance to a duchy. So that can easily mean about 12 days where all efforts show no gains.

And how is subsistence-level farming supposed to work? The other day, our new region was starving. Then it returned to subsistence level farming. Then this morning it starved again and all stats reset to 1%.

Also, without any knights, the region suffers a control penalty on top of the lack of estate penalties. But how could it recruit a knight when it has 0% production? And because of this, production suffers and a vicious circle tends to be created, one that takes disproportionate amounts of work to break out of.

On top of that are control issues due to the size of your realm that have a nasty centralizing effect. How can we honestly prone ducal independence and large-realm penalties at the same time? These harsh penalties force ducal cooperation, as expanding your duchy without the aid of everyone else in the realm is starting to get pretty damn hard.

All of these new features aimed at modifying how people act with a bunch of penalties are stacking up with what I believe was an unintended effect: expanding is now a hell of a lot harder than it was when I joined the game. This, imo, is a problem. Even if most these features affect those who elect their lords a lot more, they all affect everyone. And everyone switching to appointment is not a valid solution, as it only reduces the negative impact of new behavior-control mechanics and would reduce the gameplay possibilities significantly.

It is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will no get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay. Wars are significantly delayed because of maintenance issues, when they are not avoided completely. Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting. By focusing on the duchies and regions so much, we increased overall maintenance needs and made in sort that instead of having a few bureaucrats maintaining a whole realm, you now need a few per duchy if you want to avoid maintenance problems and seek to maintain reasonable tax levels.

I have in the past used traders and the black market to feed a region if it has no lord. I've never seen 96% of food stolen, generally I consider 20% loss on a ox cart to be bad. We have also never had a problem finding a knight willing to take up an estate in a ruined region, unless we already have a shortage of knights, in which case it is kind of mad to be trying to take a new region. Can always just offer to subsidise his/her share for a while, or promise to fast track their own advancement up the ranks for their service. Our biggest problem these days is the actual TO seems to take forever to complete. Could be something about the size of the realm.

Subsistence levels seem to be something not to rely on. Every full turn the region improves a little, which ends subsistence levels, only then they starve back to to them, or so it appears.

If you like to elect Lords, one way to solve it is to have an election before the region is TO'd and then appoint the winner, though I really don't love that option. Perhaps we need some code to reduce the negative effects in a region until a lord is elected? I would imagine the code would need to hold the region in an almost stable position to stop people using this to try and get a few days were they can really invest time to bring a regions stats up though.

[Indirik]

Over the years, many new features have been implemented and that had probably unintended effects of making expansion much more difficult. It is now almost impossible to do a friendly takeover and then maintain the high sympathy in realms where lords are elected.

I've been noticing the same thing lately, too. When I first joined, it was common on EC for there to be region switching hands constantly. You'd get at least one region being TO'd a day, and quite often regions changing hands every turn.

For example, ox carts used to produce no or little waste from my memory, and brigands have been made to steal a bunch of these transfers to favor caravans use instead.

As far as I am aware, Ox Carts have not changed at all. There has been no change to the effects brigands have on ox carts. I think we're just seeing it happen more often because we're trying to send food to more starving regions that have very low control, especially on Dwilight.

However, new regions without lords cannot set purchase orders, and as such caravans are completely useless in them. Bankers have also lost their options to move food around, and have much less power over warehouse settings in regions. As such, since most regions TOed tend to lack food, starvation always hits as soon as the TO completes, there is then no effective way to feed the new region, and sympathy drops to 1% within a day or two. And since control is often at occupied when the region is taken, ox carts aren't an alternative.

Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.

Furthermore, the maintenance modifiers by duchy just aggravate the situation. It was desired to disfavor imperial regions in order to give incentives to lords to align themselves to a duchy... But all new regions are necessarily imperial. Maintenance efforts and therefore much less effective than they used to be. And to make matters worse: even when a lord is finally elected, it takes a full seven days before he can actually switch allegiance to a duchy. So that can easily mean about 12 days where all efforts show no gains.

So, appoint a lord as soon as you take the region, and cut five days off the schedule. Rewrite your realm laws to allow this for newly captured regions.

Although I would like to see some option of capturing a region directly into a duchy.

And how is subsistence-level farming supposed to work? The other day, our new region was starving. Then it returned to subsistence level farming. Then this morning it starved again and all stats reset to 1%.

I have no idea. Tim tried to explain it to me once, but I really don't get it. It has something to do with being at starvation levels for a certain time. I *think* that subsistence level is not a steady-state thing. I seem to recall that a region as subsistence level will bounce back and forth between subsistence and starvation.

Also, without any knights, the region suffers a control penalty on top of the lack of estate penalties. But how could it recruit a knight when it has 0% production? And because of this, production suffers and a vicious circle tends to be created, one that takes disproportionate amounts of work to break out of.

I believe that the estate revamp is at the top of the list of planned revisions. That should make a major impact on a realm's ability to take and hold land, as well as allow regions to operate with stability at less than 100% efficiency. Some decisions have been made to the approach to coding that should allow the dev team to actually get back to implementing some real changes like this. Unfortunately Tom is still not yet able to return to active coding, and Tim is on vacation. Various other dev members are likewise occupied with that diversion we call Real Life.

All of these new features aimed at modifying how people act with a bunch of penalties are stacking up with what I believe was an unintended effect: expanding is now a hell of a lot harder than it was when I joined the game. This, imo, is a problem. Even if most these features affect those who elect their lords a lot more, they all affect everyone.

I actually agree with this.

It is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will no get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay. Wars are significantly delayed because of maintenance issues, when they are not avoided completely. Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting. By focusing on the duchies and regions so much, we increased overall maintenance needs and made in sort that instead of having a few bureaucrats maintaining a whole realm, you now need a few per duchy if you want to avoid maintenance problems and seek to maintain reasonable tax levels.

I think these are all valid observations. The overall pace of the game has really slowed down quite a bit. We've unfortunately moved over toward a more "maintenance" focus rather than a "conflict" focus.

[Foundation]

So... I'm a bit new to this since I came after most of the "maintenance" was in place (about 2 years ago).  What specifics can be done about this?

[Indirik]

Well, we need to finish the estates overhaul. That should ease a lot of the pure maintenance concerns. We should probably add in certain exemptions for newly captured regions, and regions that currently have an ongoing lordship referendum, etc. But, really, overhauling the way estates work should really help this out a lot.

[Bedwyr]

Very much agreed.  I've grown increasingly frustrated with how difficult it is to keep newly conquered regions, and I'm nearly convinced at this point that you might as well just do a BTO as an FTO as every FTO I've seen succeed recently has still sent all the stats to rock bottom in a day or two.

[vonGenf]

Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.

I don't see this as a bad thing. What is bad, indeed, is to see realm who will not go to war because they are afraid they can gain nothing at all from it. That looting and rebuilding becomes a valid alternative to steady advance works well for me.

[Phellan]

I'm in full agreeance with this - back when I started playing (what?  6 years ago?) it was very rare for the Realms I was part of not to be at war, or at least constantly fighting and on the move.   It kept people active and interested in the game - something in other threads has been noticed is our retention and I would place our LACK of gaining people as an issue with this.

   Now I find myself in two Realms that would LOVE to be actively going to war, but the inability to maintain regions and hold regions due to estates and control issues - has all but stalled them in doing anything.    I don't think I've been in a real war since Madina attacked Paisly, and that was at least 2-3 years ago real time.   

The heavy maintenance aspect has slowed game play to a crawl when it comes to fighting and wars - we don't have the player base in many Realms to properly run regions, which forces Realms to reconsider going to war because of the threat of beasts, undead, or just general likelihood of stat issues.    Now toss in the "not enough fighting" issue . . .and well.  Region control and maintainence becomes a huge issue.

[egamma]

I'm in full agreeance with this - back when I started playing (what?  6 years ago?) it was very rare for the Realms I was part of not to be at war, or at least constantly fighting and on the move.   It kept people active and interested in the game - something in other threads has been noticed is our retention and I would place our LACK of gaining people as an issue with this.

   Now I find myself in two Realms that would LOVE to be actively going to war, but the inability to maintain regions and hold regions due to estates and control issues - has all but stalled them in doing anything.    I don't think I've been in a real war since Madina attacked Paisly, and that was at least 2-3 years ago real time.   

The heavy maintenance aspect has slowed game play to a crawl when it comes to fighting and wars - we don't have the player base in many Realms to properly run regions, which forces Realms to reconsider going to war because of the threat of beasts, undead, or just general likelihood of stat issues.    Now toss in the "not enough fighting" issue . . .and well.  Region control and maintainence becomes a huge issue.

They would probably that some of their region maintenance issues ease when they have battles--or have these realms forgotten the dreaded "too much peace"?

[Indirik]

I don't see this as a bad thing. What is bad, indeed, is to see realm who will not go to war because they are afraid they can gain nothing at all from it. That looting and rebuilding becomes a valid alternative to steady advance works well for me.

The problem is that it's not "a valid alternative". It's become the only viable way. Even if you manage to take a region peacefully via FTO, they almost always drop out the bottom very quickly, with no practical way to rebuild them. So realms do't do it anymore. The only reason to TO a region is to deny it to your enemy, or destroy it.