Angry Peasants - Remove, Keep, or Change?

[Vita`]

Anaris and I were considering an edgecase regarding angry peasants being misused, when we came to a more fundamental question: what do angry peasants popping up from just entering the region add to BattleMaster? My initial thought is that it does add roleplay value, but I can't think of any game reason for their existence. However, I wanted further feedback and thought on this before any changes are made.

They aren't (nor should be) a genuine threat, it depopulates the region, and is potentially exploitable. If their main value is roleplay, Anaris proposed changing the mechanic without changing the fluff - instead of angry peasants as a combat unit fighting them have angry peasants slow unit travel, reduce unit morale, maybe even steal supplies.

Thoughts?

[D'Espana]

I like it. Would it be possible to make a combination of both concepts? As in, peasants still rise against low numbers of military strength (as in, fewer than 2k-3k CS or their rough equivalent in number of soldiers), which would help prevent a single knight or two staying in the same region and looting for a long time (I can see a bunch of peasants having funny ideas without many troops in the region, after all). However, if military strength is greater than that (a smallish group of coordinated nobles, and obviously an entire army), peasants do not dare to face them in open combat and thus resort to guerrilla tactis (such as the ones proposed by Anaris), thus preventing the entire slaughter of the region in open combat by raising wave after wave of peasants by looting a little. If you want to clear out a large region, it should take time and you should need to use the kill looting options.

I'd say militia should be counted for the threshold as well, intimidating peasants into indirect warfare as if they were mobile units.

[Zakky]

I dislike auto popping angry peasants from entering a region. You can literally just walk across your enemy region without looting and devastate those regions automatically. Don't even need to loot.

instead of angry peasants as a combat unit fighting them have angry peasants slow unit travel - This will make defenders who are already advantageous even better at defending. Remember, BM is a game where defenders already have an easy time defending. Not sure making it even more difficult want people to fight more often.

reduce unit morale - It is already annoying enough to fight outside of your own realm. I am against this idea. If this gets implemented, looting should increase your morale in return.

maybe even steal supplies - This implies that peasants are even allowed to be near any army. Have you ever approached an army base before?

[Anaris]

instead of angry peasants as a combat unit fighting them have angry peasants slow unit travel - This will make defenders who are already advantageous even better at defending. Remember, BM is a game where defenders already have an easy time defending. Not sure making it even more difficult want people to fight more often.

Hinterlands, by itself, should hugely shift things toward attackers. When you can "take over" a region in a turn or two, with a fraction of your army, that makes you much more able to strike at will. I have some other thoughts about things that can improve life for attackers, too (for instance, I'm strongly considering reducing equipment damage, especially that suffered outside combat, by a lot).

reduce unit morale - It is already annoying enough to fight outside of your own realm. I am against this idea. If this gets implemented, looting should increase your morale in return.

Looting probably should raise morale more than it does now, in general.

maybe even steal supplies - This implies that peasants are even allowed to be near any army. Have you ever approached an army base before?

No one's talking about army bases. This is a unit on the move, through hostile territory. Depending on the terrain, you might not even know the peasants were there.

But you would know your dinner was missing when you went to camp for the night.

[Zakky]

I think you are underestimating how heavily guarded army supplies are.

But if it is only affecting provisions, I doubt people will care much about this. Just a minor annoyance which you can deal with by looting for food.

As for looting, I think there should be some big difference between lenient, normal and strict.

Lenient granting a huge morale boost + doing unwanted damage.

Maybe there should be an option for TLs to decide how they want to punish their own men as well. Execute arsonists or something XD.

[Medron Pryde]

I like the idea of not having peasants rise up and wipe out trained military units the moment they march into a region.

:)

[pcw27]

I remember this mechanic reaching its current form because people were frustrated with the regular use of total-war tactics. At the time peasant mobs were so puny and weak they just served to help you kill everyone that much faster. It was relatively easy to depopulate an entire region and it could literally take years (real world) to get it back. Now it seems more geared towards shutting down small raiding parties, which were never a problem.

I agree the peasant mobs are out of hand, but we want to avoid a change that would bring back the days of every war being a scorched-earth campaign. The simplest solution would be to just scale them back.

We had an older thread about this with a lot of suggestions that might be worth revisiting.

I've also just come up with a new idea. What if when peasant mobs form they're automatically set as "retreated" and they can't rally on their own. These retreated mobs still prevent looting from taking place, but they don't trigger battles. The idea is the peasants are smart enough not to attack a trained army head on, but they're prepared to fend off looters. Then instead of fighting the peasant partisans in battle the occupying army will have to hunt for them. If they kill them all they can loot again. We could also leave the potential for the defending army to come in and rally the peasants for a battle, after which point they should disperse as normal.

[Tourmaline]

Worse is that small raiding parties is the main option that realms that have weaker overall forces have to exercise, limiting that option severely biases the bigger guys.

I like the idea of angry peasants having debuffs for units but do not actually fight.

[Zakky]

Yeah pretty much this removed any viable option of having a raiding party. The game has turned into one big blob vs another big blob for few years now.

[pcw27]

I think above all else peasant mobs should not form unless civilians are being attacked and it should take a few turns for that to happen.

[Zakky]

This feature definitely need to not directly spawn fight ready units.

Sieging is already a nightmare in this game and will continue to be that way for at least few more years. Can't even hit an under defended city when it has enough pops to summon more peasant CS than an well organized army.

This feature might have been useful when we had enough nobles to command troops but we simply do not have the luxury of that anymore.

[Constantine]

I see no reason to change this feature at this point.

[Medron Pryde]

I like the idea of peasant armies simply stopping the invading armies from looting.

That is a very innovative idea.

You can loot until they spawn.  Then you have to hunt them down in their woods and their buildings and...well...they may get some of your soldiers while you do it.  Or you can just go to another region.

It would help to keep small raiding parties from being overwhelmed, and it would give people a reason to move around more.

[pcw27]

It's also very close to how the system originally worked. They region would spawn a puny 100cs unit which the army would wipe out the next turn, but for that one turn the unit would prevent looting for the entire army. The problem was the scale and the willingness of this peasant band to go on a suicide charge made it all seem ridiculous.