Modifying TMP Training Reductions

[LilWolf]

The drawback is that the whole point of it is to make things so bad in the realm that you have to go to war. The purpose of it is to let the majority of the players in the game who don't get to play the "Council Channel" aspect have something to do, and to force the Councils to find a war for them somehow.

To be honest TMP is one of the worst additions to the game and one of those things that make it less fun. Beating people with a stick isn't going to make them get into interesting wars. What you get is stuff like Melhed jumping in to beat on an realm that's already beaten. You get stuff like Itaulond, a 2 region realm with a single RC and enough troubles as is, getting additionally hammered by the code. It's horribly demotivating to just about every player in a realm because it fails to create any fun and more often causes problems and hardship when they're not needed. Heck, it'll hit you even if you're at war, but are forced in to an stalemate situation for a bit of time(not that uncommon in an even war).

Want to fix TMP? Remove it all together because it's nothing but trouble and makes the game less playable.

[Jens Namtrah]

To be honest TMP is one of the worst additions to the game and one of those things that make it less fun. Beating people with a stick isn't going to make them get into interesting wars. What you get is stuff like Melhed jumping in to beat on an realm that's already beaten. You get stuff like Itaulond, a 2 region realm with a single RC and enough troubles as is, getting additionally hammered by the code. It's horribly demotivating to just about every player in a realm because it fails to create any fun and more often causes problems and hardship when they're not needed. Heck, it'll hit you even if you're at war, but are forced in to an stalemate situation for a bit of time(not that uncommon in an even war).

Want to fix TMP? Remove it all together because it's nothing but trouble and makes the game less playable.

Disagree.  We're just in the next "learning phase".

First, we had things like the "Atamara Gridlock" and the "Zonasan Peacemongers"

Now, we have a period of "bitch and moan and whine" about being forced to change

Eventually, we'll settle into a period where realms and their Councils realize that steady, reliable warring is as essential  to a realm as Region Maintenance, and they will act accordingly.

This is BM - change takes time  :P

[Shizzle]

So what's it going to be? "Hey guys, want to have a small scale war? We promise not to steal any of your regions"
Fissoa has no RP basis for a war right now, but we really need one.

How about raiding surrounding rogue lands?:)

[Kain]

To be honest TMP is one of the worst additions to the game and one of those things that make it less fun. Beating people with a stick isn't going to make them get into interesting wars. What you get is stuff like Melhed jumping in to beat on an realm that's already beaten. You get stuff like Itaulond, a 2 region realm with a single RC and enough troubles as is, getting additionally hammered by the code. It's horribly demotivating to just about every player in a realm because it fails to create any fun and more often causes problems and hardship when they're not needed. Heck, it'll hit you even if you're at war, but are forced in to an stalemate situation for a bit of time(not that uncommon in an even war).

Want to fix TMP? Remove it all together because it's nothing but trouble and makes the game less playable.

I agree with LilWolf on this one. It has too many bad unintented consequences (like some of the ones LilWolf pointed out). Just remove it and perhaps find some other way to motivate councils to find wars to fight.

[Indirik]

Personally, I'm not all that sure we need to give people too many artificial reasons to fight. True, there need to be some, to prevent things like the "Great Peace" on EC that followed the end of the "Great War". But I think that rather than penalize peace, maybe we need to find some way to provide incentives for war. The TMP penalties don't really seem to be doing it. The estate revamp will help, hopefully, by allowing realms to claim more land.

[Phellan]

Yeah, but the side effect is that TMP ALWAYS screws over the Realms ability to actually *wage* war.   

Which of course is absurd, because it spirals - you aren't fighting, so they want you to fight, but it damages your ability to fight, so then you can't fight, but they still want you to fight. . .

As always the problem with TMP is like the issues with Estates - it's negative consequences for not doing desired behaviour.  Instead of providing bonuses and incentives for the players and Realms to DO it.


If you want people to do something, reward them for it.  Don't punish them - especially when the punishments make it damned near impossible to do the desired behaviour ANYWAYS.

[Indirik]

As always the problem with TMP is like the issues with Estates - it's negative consequences for not doing desired behaviour.  Instead of providing bonuses and incentives for the players and Realms to DO it.

That's kinds what I just said...

So, what do you suggest?

[JPierreD]

Give a productivity/tax tolerance/miscellaneous bonus according to realm glory? If you fight you get bonus, if you do not, your whole realm does not fall apart.

[LilWolf]

Give a productivity/tax tolerance/miscellaneous bonus according to realm glory? If you fight you get bonus, if you do not, your whole realm does not fall apart.

This. Seeing a "The people feel safe under the protection of you and your knights. Morale rises x%. Loyalty rises y%." in the daily region report if you have nice battles would probably do more to encourage fights than the current system.

[Phellan]

That's kinds what I just said...

So, what do you suggest?

Well, I think it would be interesting to tie it into estates a bit personally, but since the new changes haven't been released all I can say is that being at war should lessen any negatives a region experiences - maybe even provide improvements such as reduced production loss, region loyalty loss, morale loss etc.    Each battle should improve stats (or lessen the effects that push stats downwards) - war makes the people more loyal, they are afraid of the "other" and are more willing to suffer high taxes, work harder, and have fewer freedoms if it protects them from the scary other.

Having war bolster regions would help reduce the need to look after regions while fighting wars - we had that problem in Zonasa in the last war, where regions were becoming unmanageable because our nobles were off fighting, never mind the enemy never set foot in our realm.

These effects should be tied to battles - the more battles you fight, the stronger and longer lasting the effect.   Even if it's just rogues you should get some of these effects as the people "know" the army is out there fighting something that's going to hurt them if they aren't careful.

I'd like to see more "gain" for players from war, maybe higher honour and prestige gains from fighting PC armies when compared to NPC armies.   I'd love to see something like "loot" being distributed to an army (or army chest) or nobles when a region is successfully TO'd, but I would worry about game balance - though gold being put into an army chest may not be so unbalancing.    Even from fighting battles - gold looted from enemy corpses, from the armour / weapons of the fallen, from the peasantry - what have you -  that gold gets put into the army chest for repairs/training later on.

I mean, it's awesome to get lots of honour and prestige - but rarely can anyone use it.   I can field a 210 man unit. . . but i'd never get that much money on my own to get that many men, much less pay them on a weekly basis unless I was a Duke.

Maybe unique paraphenalia can be acquired via fighting a war (or against PC armies) or with higher levels of honour/prestige - trophy banners, Realm Standards, Priests of your Faith (or banners of your faith), etc.  Things that could show up in battle or give your unit a more unique flavour.   Rewards for fighting in battles against PC enemies - even battle honours for Armies, something that makes the players want to fight each other for the rewards.    Maybe a certain number of PC vs PC army battles grants an army lower training costs or improved training due to the veteran survivors passing on their knowledge.   Maybe an army that scavenges a lot can have not only their own equip dmg reduced, but places some extra "weapon/armour" (metal) in the army chest, reducing the repair costs for members in that army (simulated by your unit scavanges the battle field . . . . in addition 5 gp worth of metal is sent to the army supplies - which grants 5gp to the war chest).

I almost want to see in a battle report "Unit X has captured a battle standard of Saguist Astroism in battle!"   Gold reward?  Maybe, bonus to morale?  Probably.   Put a giant nasty target on the characters head because they now have the honoured standard of someone else?  Oh, definately :D

Battles could even lower the cost of the "pay your men" option - looting was very common in those days, whose to say your men didn't stuff their purses with the gold from the dead (or loot some people on their way back to camp?).

[Indirik]

Give a productivity/tax tolerance/miscellaneous bonus according to realm glory? If you fight you get bonus, if you do not, your whole realm does not fall apart.

So the people winning the war (since they have a high glory they are most most likely winning) get bonuses that help them win even easier? And realms that are losing, and thus probably have a lower glory, don't get these same bonuses, and therefore lose all the faster?

[Phellan]

So the people winning the war (since they have a high glory they are most most likely winning) get bonuses that help them win even easier? And realms that are losing, and thus probably have a lower glory, don't get these same bonuses, and therefore lose all the faster?

Balance to this is to base it off the number of battles fought - rather than victory giving bonuses (since, this inherently makes the winner stronger).     Though you could also modify it with smaller realms receiving a bonus with fewer battles when compared to a larger realm - as a bigger realm needs to fight more battles to impress it's people.   Or have glory effect small realms more strongly (or make it easier for small realms to gain glory when compared to a large realm).

Limit the effect to number of battles compared to the size of the Realm (or their total CS).    A big 10K fight for a single or two duchy Realm can be their entire army - that should be a big bonus with a long decay period (A big rise followed by a medium decay that slows to a small decay).   Whereas a 10K fight for someone who has 40K CS, well, they should need 4 fights to get the same bonus (however, over those 4 fights they still get a bonus that's smaller, but probably more sustained as they have them spread over time).   Winning and losing shouldn't matter at the end of the day when we want to encourage war, but the fighting is what we want so seeing the fighting grant the bonuses is important bit.

[Bedwyr]

I'm not wanting to fight the system, though. So any hints for a new-born ruler char?

You already have a friend in Koli...Perhaps Koli should invite Fissoa to join in the Crusade to cleanse the Divide Mountains and Desert?  We could use the troops.

[Bedwyr]

What about a stat bonus divided by population?  So, you fight in a battle, and you've got 10K CS worth of troops in it, so you get 10K points.  You've got 50 people in the realm, so you get 200 points worth of stat bonus that helps your regions.  If you have 20 people, you get 500 instead, nicer bonus to reflect the fact that lower noble counts make it harder to fight.

[Vaylon Kenadell]

What about a stat bonus divided by population?  So, you fight in a battle, and you've got 10K CS worth of troops in it, so you get 10K points.  You've got 50 people in the realm, so you get 200 points worth of stat bonus that helps your regions.  If you have 20 people, you get 500 instead, nicer bonus to reflect the fact that lower noble counts make it harder to fight.

This actually might encourage smaller realms and more friction. I like it. ... Although anything is better than how TMP currently works.

I've been wondering if it would be against the rules to conduct a mock war solely for the purpose of avoiding TMP.  Probably is. ::)