Conversion to dynamic demographics

[Chenier]

More of a brainstorming than a feature request, to see how, if at all possible, such a transition could be possible.

I've said it many times and I still stand by the belief that the maps are largely suboptimal from a gameplay perspective. It didn't matter as much when every continent was overflowing with nobles, but that's just no longer the case, as we have less players who, on average, I suspect play less characters. This results in some completely uninhabited zones between realms (eastern Dwilight) at the extremes, and realms with difficulty to project power to neighbors in the rest.

Some of these problems are caused by the bodies of water. Short of redrawing the maps (an idea which in some cases might be worth considering), there's not much to do about that. But a lot of problems are due to city placement, given how only cities and strongholds can be capitals and cities concentrate the wealth needed to run realms. Dwilight is the worse for this, but it's not the only one. Clusters of cities make it hard for them to be ruled by multiple realms, and in the cases where it happens, it makes war between those realms unthinkable. Look at Madina and Fissoa, it'd be ridiculous for either one to turn on the other, any sign of betrayal would result in both realms being unable to ever leave their capitals ever again, out of fear the other would lunch a sneak attack and destroy their realm. Same in Luria, the two economic powerhouses are tied with a ferry route, they can't afford to not be on the same boat, and while the rest of the cities in the region could theoretically have made other independant realms, they'd just stand no chance before the might of Giask+Askileon.

And then you've got the deserts, figurative when not litteral. Palm Sea and Desert of Silhouettes means there has rarely been any meaninful interaction across them. Add in the mountain ranges in Swordfell, in Westgard, and you've rarely seen any interaction across those either. That was kind of the point, at first, to have a supercontinent that consisted of potentially largely independant subcontinents, and that'd all be fine if all of these subcontinents were filled with realms and lots of players, but that's no longer the case, ain't gonna happen either.

Pre-blight BT had a fairly good geography, but that's no longer the case. EC and FEI are very linear. Colonies barely has any cities at all, it's basically always been one-city realms which have pretty much always had the same borders, more or less.

That's not to mention the problem that have been had, and that are likely to be re-had, with colonizing regions where the population is at 1/1000000, and where production will be at 0% for ages.

So what kind of overhaul would be possible?

We could keep the regions as are. Same region ID, same locations, same connections. Only exception would be to reshape doughnuts out of the game, to have them become townslands next to cities instead of around cities, but that should be done anyways, without regards for any of the rest of this.

But we modify the attributes. Each region gets a "Habitability", "Resources", and "Fertility" score. These can be derived from the current stats, by dividing region max population, gold production, and food production by total area. Preferably, some region borders would be modified so that cities are no longer tiny regions and that the huge regions are somewhat less so (without changing what regions border which). We then also add a "region type" attribute: "Mountain, badlands, forest, plains". With dynamic maps, it'd be fairly easy to make it possible to switch between forests and plains through player actions, but we don't even need to go there, this still works with static maps like we have now. Then, you add a settlement attribute: "rural, townslands, city, stronghold". This requires a simple map change, presuming we finish the redrawing of the maps in the AoW editor: simply delete all of the mills, cities, and strongholds from the map, and render them as icons on top of the map IG (like flags are rendered on the original "dynamic" maps). And finally, add a final "development" attribute, which can either use numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4) or descriptors.

With the proper conversion factors, every existing region could be converted to the new system with barely any stat changes, if any. What it would change is the possibility to modify these in the future.

Lords would gain the ability to invest in their regions to make it grow. Or to invest to shrink them, turning a part of the population into something mobile to move elsewhere. Or to loot other realms for different results (ex: slavery, to bring back population to their own realm).

Region outputs would be relative to the interaction of their outputs. For example, max pop would be habitability multiplied by area multiplied by development (which would probably use an exponential growth). Food output would be use production levels multiplied by fertility multiplied by area multiplied by development (using a logarithmic growth), while gold output would use production levels multiplied by resources multiplied by area multiplied by development (using exponential growth). The more population a region has, the more food and gold it would produce, but the more gold/peasant and the less food/peasant it would yield. This would apply to all regions, be it mountains, deserts, or cities. So people could decide to build up rurals to become agricultural power houses, for example, or mountains to develop the mining riches. Then, you have the ability to build mills, which is required to then build a stronghold or a city, if either is desired. Building the mill gives all of the benefits of a townslands currently has, such as building fortifications. But it also costs a lot to build, adds a multiplier to max population in the region, and also a multiplier on the food and gold output. However, to avoid realms spamming them in every single region, it also inflicts a penalty when a townslands is too close to another townsland (including cities), perhaps if there are 2 or more other townslands within 2 region's travel (or using specific bird flight distance), due to competition between them for raw ressources. The same mechanics then also apply for turning townslands into either strongholds or cities, except strongholds would a lower multiplier (or none) while cities would add a much higher multiplier on max pop, gold output, and food penalty. These can be done in any region type, so a city in the mountains will yield very high gold/peasant, but due to low habitability score the total gold output may still remain modest as a whole, depending on the base stats.

On the whole, this means that safe and established realms can choose to invest to increase their economy past their current limits, smaller colonist realms can decide to just use small settlements to progressively carve their way into rogue lands, and all realms have much more say in their food and gold situation, so realms like D'Hara could choose, seeing as how Dwilight no longer has all the breadbasket realms it used to have, to settle with smaller cities that require less food to feed and to heavily invest in their few rurals to maximize the food they can pull out of them.

Change would not be limited to growth, however. By being raided for slaves, by purchasing colonist caravans (very expensive), or by closing down settlements (less expensive, large penalties for region pop being superior to max pop), regions could be intentionally depopulated and forcefully migrated. So say realms like Madina and Fissoa realize their inevitable destruction by the rogues, and decide on their own to pack up before being actually reduced to nothing (one can dream; I know nobody abandons ship on time, the glaciers proved it), or just about any group of colonists sponsored by a realm get their eyes on a new location, well they can shell out the big bucks, carry tens of thousands of peasants with them in colonist caravans, and then when they finally arrive at their target location and do their (colony?) takeover, bang, they deploy their colonists, and their new regions have the necessary backbone to start growing and offering a viable realm. This also applies to human conflicts. Westfold gets defeated? Pick up their colonists, head out elsewhere safer, and bang resettle. The winning realm gets the effect of having killed off the enemy realm (practically), and the losing realm needs not be completely removed from existence (realm destruction often results in player loss).

Above just giving realms more say in their economies, there's the huge gameplay gain from the geostrategic change. Capitals can only be in cities, and their current placement makes for natural realm capitals and natural realm borders. Look at Arnor, it has two choices for a capital, either a very remote city or a somewhat central stronghold. If that stronghold was ever taken by another, they'd be forced to Springdale, and thus insignificance. Fissoa? Stuck into a corner by Madina, if they could settle a city further East, then they could finally have had meaningful interactions with Luria. The North-West? There's only the excentric Darfix that's too far from everyone to be meaningful, and Gaston, which has a RURAL DOUGHNUT, which is the worst thing in the game, the city itself being poorer than many townslands. Especially with the newer lower distance from capital restrictions, it means many realms have a hard time holding onto more than one city at a time; Gaston ain't that far from Gelene, and yet it causes anarchists to prosper. In the maroccidens, the cities are all in a straight line, forming a circle, with only rurals and a river in the middle, it's fairly ridiculous.

If realms could settle literally anywhere, then at least realms that are currently in dead-end locations could choose to try to migrate to somewhere more fun, and realms that want war but find themselves surrounded by friends could choose to go develop elsewhere.

[Antonine]

I like the sound of this, but I worry about how much effort and complexity might be involved to make it a reality.

In the case of Dwilight, an easier fix might just be to bung a few more cities on there in the right places so that gameplay improves. It might also be worth reducing distance from capital penalties given how large Dwilight is.

But I'd also like to hear from people more knowledgeable than me about how much effort it would take to make regions truly dynamic.

[Zakky]

Dwilight has the same distance penalty as other continents. It was brought up multiple times. Instead of increasing the distance, devs introduced a way to work around it. It isn't perfect but it still gives you an option. You can have an ally across the map and that will increase your range of operation. Wish they increased the distance as well though since like many said, Dwilight is really big and with the game at its lowest point, increasing distance should give people another way to interact. Devs are still haunted by the days when Darka invaded Abington but I don't know why they thought it was a bad thing in the first place.

[Chenier]

Distance from capital is for region control issues. Honestly, I preferred the older limit, given how eccentric many of the cities are placed, but I don't think it's a huge issue overall, at least compared to other factors.

At least that's what I thought he was talking about.

For unit penalties for being far from home, I'm not sure how they work anymore. If you take a region really far away, does that become close to home? In any case, I used to be opposed to changes for distance penalties due to it being primarily championed by stale coalitions that wanted to impose their hegemonies continent-wide. Things have changed, though, we no longer have enough population to populate 100% of Dwilight. Nor BT, and probably some issues in other continents as well. This shrinkage in terms of nobles has shrunk realms' ability to project power below what used to be the norm, when it has not literally shrunk the realms and created vast rogue spaces around them (see: Luria, Fissoa). Given this, I'm now in favor of reducing distance penalties, reducing mercenary setting cost inflation, reducing travel times, and reducing militia effectiveness.

But back to geography. Some ad hoc changes could do some great relief. It's not a permanent solution, nor ideal, but it could ease some of the worst cases. Removing doughnuts would be a start.

A good city distribution seems to be a (hex) grid with two spaces between every city. Most dynamic areas of the game seem to respect this rule. Most undynamic areas seem to blatently break it (or technically respect it only by considering vast deserts/mountains where travel times are atrocious).

The problem with simply plopping cities everywhere is food... Dwi was barely balanced for self-sufficiency back in the pan-colonized days. In this new sparsely colonized context? Hard to say what the situation is. On one hand, we can intentionally give cities half rations now. On the other, there's a ton of rurals that are now rogue, while most large cities remain colonized. Adding cities here and there could further disbalance the food situation.

It could be a quick fix yielding large gains for little dev commitment, and certainly could be worth doing, but I feel like BM's static maps are a structural problem that greatly contribute to it's decay.

Similarly, on the topic of migrations I brought up recently elsewhere, manually displacing (willing) realms could help some of the current distribution issues.

But it seems like too many realms are just content to entrench themselves as they continuously dig their graves, both their owns by themselves and the game's collectively. They just find themselves with little to aspire to. Heck, I partly fear having too much success myself, in Westgard. So what if we push off the hordes, and expand to 1 region per 2 nobles. Then what? Keep on expanding until the rogues hit us back, I guess? But what about the others who haven't dedicated their realm to this purpose?

If we could build cities and strongholds anywhere, then people would start being tempted to put some at the borders... and then others could get nervous or jealous by this, and then suddenly border disputes become alluring. Realms like Fissoa could decide to go build a city (ANYWHERE ELSE) and get a more central capital, thus allowing them larger growth while also bringing them closer to neighbors for potential border disputes.  Etc.

[Zakky]

If my memories serve me right, I believe if your unit is over 650 miles away from the capital, they start to lose morale.

[Antonine]

As Chenier surmised, I'm talking about the distance penalty for region control, not for travelling outside your realm.

[Zakky]

As Chenier surmised, I'm talking about the distance penalty for region control, not for travelling outside your realm.

Around 4 regions away from the capital. Once your region is farther than that, it is pretty hard to maintain.

[Antonine]

Around 4 regions away from the capital. Once your region is farther than that, it is pretty hard to maintain.

Yes, and this is my point. On Dwilight, with its geography in particular, that really limits the ability of realms to form in a way that provides conflict. Let's look at a couple of examples:

D'Hara - The furthest it can expand west is to Paisly and Paisland, and only then if its capital is in Port Raviel. The furthest it can expand east is the Desert of Sillhouettes, which means that, even if Swordfell's capital was in Balance's Retreat or if Luria Nova's capital was in Askileon, there's absolutely no way in which D'Hara can takeover and hold any regions which another realm would want.

Arnor - Pretty much the furthest it can expand away from Springdale is to Taishan/Croton. Those are also the only regions close enough to another city for another realm to be able to hold so those are the only regions that any wars can be fought over. And how likely is anyone to fight a full blown war over a couple of rurals? It's certainly not going to be something that happens on a regular basis.

There are loads more examples like those two. The geography of Dwilight means that, even with the best will in the world, lots of realms can't possible expand far enough to be able to have anything worth fighting with a neighbour over. So the distance limit and the geography put together end up starving the continent of conflict.

At the very least, reducing the distance penalty for region control would make it slightly easier for realms to expand into places that would bring them into conflict with other realms - and, since we already have the rogues to prevent realms from spreading themselves too thinly, the distance penalty mechanic really isn't as necessary as it is on other continents.

[Zakky]

All BM maps are horribly designed. Everyone knows that. EC was never meant to be used for a game like this. It was for Spellmaster RP not to be a standalone. It just turned into one.

Dwilight is even worse. This game is very heavily focused on cities yet distribution is horrendous. The biggest issue is, it takes too much work to rework the map. Maybe less now since Anaris has all the maps now. But if he adds new regions or swap out existing maps, he will have to redraw the border and roads as well.

Dwilight is big but that isn't its biggest issue. Dwilight is pretty much nothing more than 2 EC put in one map and EC is not the best map. All these mountains that divide realms look cool but they pretty much cripple any realm that form in Flowertown. Cities should be replaced closer to each other and they need to be closer to the inner sea zones.

Reducing the distance limit won't do much since the actual distance is what cripples Dwilight. No small fixes will fix Dwilight. It needs some major changes otherwise it will just suffer continuously. It is simply not designed for the current player count and nothing will fix that without pissing everyone on Dwilight off. I don't think this game can take anymore of realm wipes like the dev did with monsters and ice age.

To be honest, maybe forced relocation is better at this point. Manually pull realms down in the south up. Add more cities in the northern half closer to the sea zones and in the middle of large planes. Cities needs to be distributed better to allow people to conduct wars more efficiently which should help people fight each other more enjoyably. I don't know why distance limit is still a thing. All the examples are from like 2006-7. We are not playing the same game from 10 years ago unfortunately.

[Chenier]

All BM maps are horribly designed. Everyone knows that. EC was never meant to be used for a game like this. It was for Spellmaster RP not to be a standalone. It just turned into one.

Dwilight is even worse. This game is very heavily focused on cities yet distribution is horrendous. The biggest issue is, it takes too much work to rework the map. Maybe less now since Anaris has all the maps now. But if he adds new regions or swap out existing maps, he will have to redraw the border and roads as well.

Dwilight is big but that isn't its biggest issue. Dwilight is pretty much nothing more than 2 EC put in one map and EC is not the best map. All these mountains that divide realms look cool but they pretty much cripple any realm that form in Flowertown. Cities should be replaced closer to each other and they need to be closer to the inner sea zones.

Reducing the distance limit won't do much since the actual distance is what cripples Dwilight. No small fixes will fix Dwilight. It needs some major changes otherwise it will just suffer continuously. It is simply not designed for the current player count and nothing will fix that without pissing everyone on Dwilight off. I don't think this game can take anymore of realm wipes like the dev did with monsters and ice age.

To be honest, maybe forced relocation is better at this point. Manually pull realms down in the south up. Add more cities in the northern half closer to the sea zones and in the middle of large planes. Cities needs to be distributed better to allow people to conduct wars more efficiently which should help people fight each other more enjoyably. I don't know why distance limit is still a thing. All the examples are from like 2006-7. We are not playing the same game from 10 years ago unfortunately.

AT/BT, pre-blight/glacier, was fine imo. It had some geographic barriers (central mountains, north-eastern lake, south-eastern bay) but they did not seem sufficient to stiffle conflict. There were SOME natural capitals, and on both maps major realms mostly sat in the same power regions, but the borders were much more fluid and there were a lot of opportunities for conflict.

What did that map have that stands out? A fairly circular map with fairly evenly distributed cities. Colonies also has that, but Colonies also has an incredibly low number of cities. That said, despite being turtle pace, it does seem like it had a fairly dynamic history?

Dwilight's concept might have worked if, instead of being two parallel ECs, as you put it, it'd have been two parallel ATs. The fact that realms have a hard time waging wars across the sea was never a concern in my mind, the problem lies rather with their difficulty to wage wars on their own halves.

With dynamic demographics, at least realms could take it upon themselves to fix their !@#$ty geography at the local level, taking their capitals out of these isolated corners (ex: Flow, Fissoa) and into more meaningful places, while those wide open spaces between the subcontinents could see the rise of new cities for new realms (or old realms that migrate).

I give mostly Dwi examples because I'm most familiar with it, but short of actually redrawing maps I think other continents could benefit from this as well.

[Zakky]

Recreating maps will most likely not going to happen. Maybe changing a region type might be possible now that Anaris has all the maps. I think he mentioned something about hating doughnut regions and wanting to break them into multiple regions? I might be confused with someone else however.

If he can do that, maybe moving some mountains and moving some cities around should be possible as well. Wish Dwilight was more of a circular shape like South Island. AT had its issues as well mainly due to the bottom part protruding out. Plus it was also a long map as well although broader. I guess Tom was a big fan of long maps.

As for your dynamic demographics, MF does exactly that. Maybe you might like that game. I believe it is not possible with BM unfortunately due to how it was designed in the first place.

[Chenier]

Recreating maps will most likely not going to happen. Maybe changing a region type might be possible now that Anaris has all the maps. I think he mentioned something about hating doughnut regions and wanting to break them into multiple regions? I might be confused with someone else however.

If he can do that, maybe moving some mountains and moving some cities around should be possible as well. Wish Dwilight was more of a circular shape like South Island. AT had its issues as well mainly due to the bottom part protruding out. Plus it was also a long map as well although broader. I guess Tom was a big fan of long maps.

As for your dynamic demographics, MF does exactly that. Maybe you might like that game. I believe it is not possible with BM unfortunately due to how it was designed in the first place.

Well Delvin said we wouldn't change maps before the old ones were redrawn.  That's done. ;) I do think he also echoed anti-doughnut sentiments. That's can be done without editing the maps, though, by just tweaking the polygons and region connections.

Are you talking about the South-Eastern peninsula? On BT, that area was one of the most war-torn, with many powers fighting over it and third parties carving a space for themselves. Not sure how it was used on AT, but if something works with one group of people and not another, sometimes the problem is not with the thing they use but that one group of people.

M&F... never appealed to me. Maybe I'll give it another shot. I don't think the concept is incompatible with the structure of BM, though, just that it would likely be a lot of code to change and potentially balance tweaking afterwards. It does offer a more structural solution, though, but maybe there are other less labor intensive structural solutions.

[Zakky]

Was talking about where Abington used to be. I would have cut everything south of Falasan area though. The map is too big when we only have 180 players per continent. We don't need anything large. Should just have a continent the size of South Island with more cities probably with cities being majorly nerfed so they can't build walls higher than lv3.

[Antonine]

Conversion to dynamic demographics would be the ideal fix.

But I do think a good, workable, and relatively easy to implement fix would be to change some region types on the existing maps, and edit their appearance, to create new cities/strongholds.

That's the kind of thing which wouldn't require the complexity of changing region connections or creating new regions from scratch, but which would make a major difference to game play.

[Chenier]

Was talking about where Abington used to be. I would have cut everything south of Falasan area though. The map is too big when we only have 180 players per continent. We don't need anything large. Should just have a continent the size of South Island with more cities probably with cities being majorly nerfed so they can't build walls higher than lv3.

Large walls are expensive. Imo, militia needs to be nerfed more than walls do. Realms SHOULD be able to defend their cities if their mobile armies sit there. But focusing on defending the cities should result in the loss of the war. As it is with militia most realms can easily have both: cities never need to be actively defended allowing their cities to be safe while their armies are fighting elsewhere.