Re-thinking peasant mobs

[pcw27]

Peasant mobs were first introduced to discourage the tendency for realms to just depopulate every enemy region they take. This was a reasonable change but they've gone way too far. I recently tried to do a simple advanced scouting, and possibly a small raid and was instantly attacked and seriously wounded by a horde of peasants. It would be one thing if I had looted, triggered a militia and was foolish enough to stick around until they attacked me, but being seriously wounded just for entering the region is just aggravating and undermines the PvP nature of the game with a very frustrating and unpredictable PvE element.

Some have suggested getting rid of peasant militias all together. I'm not sure about that because we don't want to go back to the "every war is total war" "two realms enter one realm leave" dynamic we had before.

I think another, better option would be to make this an infiltrator ability. That way it becomes a character action. An infiltrator must enter a region either of their realm or of an ally and "organize peasant militia". Once they've done this the militia will be triggered by any enemy approach so long as the infiltrator remains in the region.

At minimum, some way to find out if a region is poised to kill you would be nice. How closely does the region's stance towards your realm correspond to the risk of a militia attack? If it's a pretty direct relationship updating the flavor texts would be nice. Or maybe this could be something adventurers can figure out by mixing with locals e.g. "This region has a well organized peasant militia prepared to defend their homes if [realm] attacks".

[Medron Pryde]

These are neat ideas.

Any of them could work I think, depending on how easy it is to implement them.

They are very good ideas though.  :)

[Chenier]

I don't think removing peasant mobs would instantly cause all wars to be total wars. Looting kills peasants, but not by the thousands per unit that loots. It would take a big army a while to kill a lot of peasants. Coding in a degressive mortality rate would also be easy to code in. "The peasants are hiding and running, the army has already killed all the elderly and has a hard time finding more victims this turn".

For example, first guy loots brutally, kills 100 peasants. Next guy does the same, kills 90. Next does the same, kills 81. Next doe the same, kills 72. Etc. There are other ways to slow down the speed at which an army kills a region than "HA! BITCHES! EAT THIS 20K OF PEASANTS! HAHAHAHAHA!" I mean, this literally just happened on BT. Worked in my character's favor, but OOC, I find the whole thing pretty ridiculous.

Also, regions already recover way, way, way faster than they used to, in the old days. This should equally be taken into consideration.

I don't mind peasant militias existing in some form or another, but I do much rather they be the result of player actions, and not some form of passive defense. In other words, it's the automatic spawning of peasant hordes that I hate. If the horde required some noble being in the region and spending gold and hours to arm those people, it'd be another story.

[Medron Pryde]

I would expand that to say some character.

I kinda like the idea of having adventurers able to help arm the common folk as well.

Though as in all things, it must be balanced.  I don't want a single adventurer able to recruit units that could stop an entire army of nobles for instance.

[pcw27]

I would expand that to say some character.

I kinda like the idea of having adventurers able to help arm the common folk as well.

Though as in all things, it must be balanced.  I don't want a single adventurer able to recruit units that could stop an entire army of nobles for instance.

I like the idea but that might encourage too much random killing of adventurers which the dev team wants to avoid.

[JeVondair]

Y'all wanna know how embarrassing it is to lose a character to a random peasant mob? DM me. I'll rant both your ears off.


Please fix the peasant legions before they invent guillotines...

[Vita`]

Please fix the peasant legions before they invent guillotines...

Feature request approved! ;)

[Medron Pryde]

Um...which feature request was that which just got approved?

Fixing the peasants?

Or giving them guillotines?

;)

[Vita`]

Definitely guillotines ;)

[Medron Pryde]

Well then...obviously we'll have to distribute more cake to them then...

[pcw27]

I've thought of another way this might work. The conditions to create a peasant mob could be modified so only sustained player action can keep the region angry enough to attack. The two triggering conditions could be sustained looting of civilians or propaganda against a realm spread by priests or diplomats.

An insurrection spreading infiltrator ability would still be cool. Maybe it would be primarily for hostile actions. The infiltrator could have a "sow dissent" ability to lower sympathy and realm control, through prolonged subversion of course. Then with enough ill intent the infiltrator could trigger a rebellion.