Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul

[Chenier]

Yeah; something different needs to be done, and perhaps some of my other ideas about changes in region ownership should play into themâ€"with the basic idea be that you essentially half-take-over the city and some surrounding regions, then declare them en masse to be a new colony.

Yeah, something along those linesâ€"optional, like Vita says, and working with the new system, not trying to replace it.

I'd still rather not just make the excess gold decay away.

Frankly, it sounds to me like what you really want isn't so much the removal of family gold, but the removal of the "buy region" option, and that's something I am open to, though I'd like something to replace it withâ€"not necessarily another way to take a region, but something that's sneaky and highly disruptive.

No, I definitely don't want to start undermining referenda. But yes, I tend to agree with your general feeling.

However, I would also say this: If the one-player gimmick required a lot of time and effort to set up, its payoff should be proportional to that. So if there were an infiltrator option that required several days or even a week or two of RL time for setup, but that allowed you to, say, wound all or most of the troops in a region (simulating poisoning a water supply or something similar), that is something that I would consider as probably viable.

There are a few different things going on here, and yes, I think all of them need some kind of overhaul.

One thing that would help a lot is to increase the game's memory furtherâ€"not as in RAM, but its ability to remember what happened when. Then we wouldn't be working with simple numbers like loyalty and morale all on their own quite so much.

So I have the first outline of a way to strongly encourage, without mandating, dense realms. The basic gist is this: A fully-controlled (non-city; cities should be handled at least slightly differently) region is one that has at least a Lord and one knight. If the capital has even one non-fully-controlled region (of those belonging to the realm) adjacent to it, all non-capital regions suffer a certain amount of penalty. If the capital is fully surrounded, then check if all those regions have fully-controlled regions around them. If not, then all regions beyond that first ring suffer similar penalties, and so on.

Essentially, it puts strong pressure on a realm to concentrate its Lords and knights in the regions around the capital.

However, as I said, in addition to adding this higher control state, I would also like to add a lower control state, like demesne or crown lands, or possibly call it hinterlands, that more or less consists of regions that your realm claims, and can extract a small amount of benefit from, but doesn't really own in any very meaningful sense. As soon as someone else comes in and stakes a claim with a military presence, the region becomes part of their demesne.

So if you can only really hold regions with a Lord and a knight, and those have to be concentrated around the capital or you risk unrest and red tape, but you can extend your realm's influence with very little limit, that makes warfare a much more dynamic experience, not measured in weeks spent taking over each border region as you tediously push through your enemy's outer regions, but in days marching across them, planting your flag and briefly intimidating the peasants, and moving on toward the lands they are actually willing and able to hold onto in the face of an army...

I think that makes it much more about the knights and the fun.

Edit:

Had another idea about family gold (or remembered an idea I had some time ago): Right now, once gold goes to the family, it is essentially removed from the game until it is spent.

What if it existed just the way gold getting ready for taxes did?

It shouldn't be anywhere near as easy to steal, but families need to have a home (and if they don't have one, we can force them to pick one, or just pick one for them, if they're dragging their feet about it), so shouldn't their gold be there?

Perhaps we should even let families have estates, that exist as regular estates within a region, help with efficiency, and generate gold (at a vastly reduced rate, due to expenses) for the family, but don't confer the same benefits that having a knight there does (like my fully-controlled regions above). Then the family gold is divided between all the various family estates, and if you happen across one when you're looting, you have the opportunity to try to rob its vault.

4) I really dislike both the "buy region" option and the amassing of family wealth. I never liked the amassing of family wealth, because it encourages people to have secondary characters who have no other purpose than to farm gold. These characters are parasites that decreases the realm's ability (and will) to take risks and go to war. As for "other things to do with family gold", I know there was calling family aid, that I just remembered. I think that was nerfed since Thulsoma abused the hell out of it, but I think it still allows for one character to fund another on another continent. Continents should work independantly, I don't like the idea of some people on some continents helping other people on other continents. All continents need war, and all realms need their tax gold for it.

6) I think that would be way overpowered. Balancing great gains with great risks only goes a certain way, it still comes down to "risking/wasting 1 noble to potentially destroy a realm". Because if you can wound a whole foreign army without even fighting them, and you prepared for it, in many cases you can outright kill them, or just about. And I don't think a few weeks of RL time to setup is all that much either, compared to typical refit times.

One player gimmicks, in my opinion, should target one other player. Like assassination attempts. A key strike can have a huge impact, but it's still only just affecting one player, and largely works around how much power people are concentrating. I'm fine with the existence of specialists who can do things that maybe the masses can't do, but I also think that their impacts should be, overall, small compared to the masses of troop leaders.

12/13) I think the details for any system addressing this will probably be tricky to sort out.  There's also the issue of balancing them around changing demographics. Some features that didn't make sense back in the days could work now, and vice versa, just because of how many (active) players we have now vs then.

I'm not sure how I think about very quick TOs. Seems like to could be rather demoralizing to players if everything they have can be taken in a week.

Then again, if regions were less binary in control, maybe it wouldn't be a big deal. For example, taking over a region takes only 3 days instead of about 7, but when the TO is "finished", you only have 30% control, which means you only get 30% of the taxes you otherwise would. If you really want to, you can continue "takeover options" to bring it to 100%, or you can move on to the next region. Regions could directly work from control: takeovers first deplete the current control pool, and then begin to fill your own, but having low control doesn't mean it will revolt and that all your work will be wasted, just means that the region won't give much until control is increased.

[Zakky]

I'd just reduce the capability of family gold in general.

Investment should only be limited to your estate. Too often family gold is used to funnel gold from one continent to another. May the way it is used should change completely. Maybe instead of family investment increasing the gold output, it should maybe used to increase loyalty and control so there is no financial gain from using family gold but to help your realm overall by aiding them in stabilizing unstable regions.

Or be used to get your new character off the low honor and prestige status quickly. When you spend a large sum of gold, you can quickly gain honor and prestige to get to the point where you can change to any class like cavalier.

Or like Vita's idea, after getting rid of the inability to read letters in prison, maybe increase the time you are held in prison by a lot. Like 2 weeks if you are a member of a wealthy family. If you are a new family you are probably broke so get them released sooner (maybe after 2-3 days. Same goes for poor families as well I guess.). After all medieval people held other nobles to get ransoms and some people had to be stuck in a place for a very long time because they refused to pay. Maybe this will make people less likely to send thousands of gold to their families.

As for control, maybe lower your control over a region, the faster TO should be conducted. Core regions requiring 100% while regions that don't even have a lord and lack any control should only require 20%.

As for war, it should definitely be overhauled. I'd try to make people fight more often but shorter wars. Make recruits lose training and morale as the war progresses. Make training and morale don't recover until the war ends. While there is a war going on, then every time RCs produce new recruits, make training and morale drop slightly. The longer the war, the more drop they suffer since the penalty accumulate over time. Maybe if a war lasts for a very long time, RCs should produce less recruits as well.

[Chenier]

Oh yea, investments. That's a third way where family wealth can directly help in a war effort, along with calling in family aid and buying regions.

The possibility to tax/raid/interact with family homes more would be interesting, but would need proper thought.

I'm not sure we really want to force people to end ongoing wars through fatigue mechanics. Ideally, yea, more shorter wars sound fun, but inertia is so huge in this game, and it's so hard to get a war going... that you really don't want to end it sooner than it has to, because making the war shorter won't necessarily make the inter-war peace any shorter.

[Zakky]

Oh yea, investments. That's a third way where family wealth can directly help in a war effort, along with calling in family aid and buying regions.

The possibility to tax/raid/interact with family homes more would be interesting, but would need proper thought.

I'm not sure we really want to force people to end ongoing wars through fatigue mechanics. Ideally, yea, more shorter wars sound fun, but inertia is so huge in this game, and it's so hard to get a war going... that you really don't want to end it sooner than it has to, because making the war shorter won't necessarily make the inter-war peace any shorter.

You are talking about the same inertia that drives people to fight until they demolish a realm.

[Bronnen]

I had an idea of some things to do with family gold.

Allow the family itself to have control of recruitment centers. Have these centers be able to send troops out to family members for a massive premium, but the center is tied to the family itself and cannot be used by anyone else, does not have an upkeep, and cannot be disbanded as militia.  Think of it as a private bodyguard that your family pays for.

Allow people with family gold to use that gold to purchase more votes in elections. Would give more opportunities for people to suspect elections of being rigged and cause more strife within realms.

Last thing, embargoes. People with incredibly wealthy families would in theory have massive trade routes everywhere in the world. Allow families to embargo realms at a penalty to their family gold, would impact tax gold of the realm itself by a percentage. I know this one would require a lot more coding and a lot more effort to make workable but i think it's pretty cool.

[Eduardo Almighty]

BM evolved... we moved from bearded Vikings behind a shield wall to rich, well-dressed nobles leading a sea of archers. Of all the natural changes that have happened, this is the one I hate the most since I came back to play.

[Chenier]

You are talking about the same inertia that drives people to fight until they demolish a realm.

I don't think that's fair at all. First of all, that inertia at least gives people something to do. Second of all, the inertia that leads to realm destruction is usually based on the losers refusing to accept defeat, preferring death to surrender. You can't ban people from being suicidal...

As for Bronnen's suggestions, I'm firmly opposed to allowing characters in one continent from sponsoring characters on another, which is what all these family gold mechanics are.

[Bronnen]

I think those ideas would give people a way bigger incentive to actually use their family gold and actually lose it for maybe no gain. Right now we've got so many people with almost maxed out or actually maxed out gold, which yes would give those people an advantage, but only until they've spent enough that they're equal with everybody else. It would force another bit of strategy to the game.

[Chenier]

I think those ideas would give people a way bigger incentive to actually use their family gold and actually lose it for maybe no gain. Right now we've got so many people with almost maxed out or actually maxed out gold, which yes would give those people an advantage, but only until they've spent enough that they're equal with everybody else. It would force another bit of strategy to the game.

I don't think you get my beef with family gold and its usage for war purposes.

If player A has a city duke in realm A and another in realm B, and realm A is at war so he constantly pulls out family gold to help it, and his noble in realm B keeps funneling gold out to him to help him, then
1) The enemies of realm A can do absolutely nothing about what's going on in realm B (on another continent)
2) Realm B is deprived of a huge % of its wealth, and thus is greatly disincentivized from taking any risks, both passively by maintaining low war preparation indicators (mobile CS, RCs, other infrastructure, etc.), and actively by making the one of the most powerful nobles of that realm not WANT war because that player NEEDS that gold for his other character in another realm.

Allowing players to use family gold in wars increases anti-war inertia in the sponsoring realms. And it's really unfair to the players of the sponsoring realms because most of them probably have no clue about their peers funneling gold away from the realm.

If players had no way to stash their gold, then they'd end up having to spend it locally, or amass it locally. If they amass it locally, eventually when a crisis sparks up they might go "well, I've got 50 000 gold on hand if we really want to teach them a lesson", and if they just end up autopausing, that wealth goes back to the realm.

Though we probably don't really want players amassing 50k or more either, though, because that can also be kinda cheesy.

[GustavKuriga]

I don't think that's fair at all. First of all, that inertia at least gives people something to do. Second of all, the inertia that leads to realm destruction is usually based on the losers refusing to accept defeat, preferring death to surrender. You can't ban people from being suicidal...

That's anecdotal at best. I highly doubt that the ratio is any more than 60/40 one way or the other. Usually it's ridiculous terms from both sides and an inability to settle for anything more than complete and total victory. See the Sirion war against Oligarch, where until Greater Xavax nobles joined there was literally no way that Sirion would have the forces to break Oligarch. Yet they refused to settle for anything but the destruction of Oligarch.

The players of this game on both sides of any war generally have little sense of what is a sensible negotiation.

[Chenier]

That's anecdotal at best. I highly doubt that the ratio is any more than 60/40 one way or the other. Usually it's ridiculous terms from both sides and an inability to settle for anything more than complete and total victory. See the Sirion war against Oligarch, where until Greater Xavax nobles joined there was literally no way that Sirion would have the forces to break Oligarch. Yet they refused to settle for anything but the destruction of Oligarch.

The players of this game on both sides of any war generally have little sense of what is a sensible negotiation.

Anecdotal? I'd place it between 80% and 95% of realm deaths due the losing realms digging their own graves, at least 75% due to the dying realms refusing reasonable offers being made to them, the rest dying because they did their best to make their enemies utterly despise them.

People are proud. They'd rather keep their OOC pride than keep some virtual holdings. A lot of things RL people would be delighted to accept as surrender conditions would just never be considered by BM players for this very reason.

[Bronnen]

My thinking though is that if a character does that, that would then give incentive to the realm to get rid of that one character.

[GustavKuriga]

Anecdotal? I'd place it between 80% and 95% of realm deaths due the losing realms digging their own graves, at least 75% due to the dying realms refusing reasonable offers being made to them, the rest dying because they did their best to make their enemies utterly despise them.

People are proud. They'd rather keep their OOC pride than keep some virtual holdings. A lot of things RL people would be delighted to accept as surrender conditions would just never be considered by BM players for this very reason.

You say this, but you've yet to provide anything other than your word, and I've brought nothing but my word. Thus I would be skeptical about taking anything said by either of us at face value. In all likelihood it's biased one way or the other.

[Zakky]

Are we even talking about the same game here? People rarely accept terms in this game. The winners usually want a city at least. Losers don't want to give up anything. Even when a sensible guy is on the throne and is willing to accept terms, players of that guy's realm sometimes overthrow the guy for accepting terms. Since you don't really lose much, people don't willingly give up. I think there should be a huge penalty for getting your realm destroyed like losing 90% of your honor and prestige you've earned in that realm upon your realm's destruction. Even after you run, this penalty should track you down. Maybe people will think twice about fighting to the end. Then again I doubt that will stop people since people quit once their realms get destroyed.

[GustavKuriga]

Are we even talking about the same game here? People rarely accept terms in this game. The winners usually want a city at least. Losers don't want to give up anything. Even when a sensible guy is on the throne and is willing to accept terms, players of that guy's realm sometimes overthrow the guy for accepting terms. Since you don't really lose much, people don't willingly give up. I think there should be a huge penalty for getting your realm destroyed like losing 90% of your honor and prestige you've earned in that realm upon your realm's destruction. Even after you run, this penalty should track you down. Maybe people will think twice about fighting to the end. Then again I doubt that will stop people since people quit once their realms get destroyed.

This is a perspective piece, not anything that tells us what actually happens. It's what you "feel" happens.