Grand Melees

[pcw27]

Here's an idea for something new in BM that should not require any code changes. In the middle ages grand melees were an early form of tournament in which dozens of nobles would charge at each other in a mock battle. It seems to me that Battlemaster could have its own form of that. Start with a guild, "The Grand Melee League" for organizing and coordinating. All participants show up in a pre-selected region. The rules could stipulate that no one realm can be overrepresented at the melee (e.g. if Realms A and B send just one unit realm C cannot send two). At an appointed time all participants set their units to murderous. The TLs are also free to challenge each other to duels to surrender. Battles ensue for a certain number of days, perhaps 3-5. After each round all TLs of the defeated side must withdraw from the region until only one unit remains victorious. TLs who lose a duel must also withdraw. Additional prizes may be given for winning duels, wounding opposing nobles in battle or capturing them (last unit to deal damage to their unit is assumed responsible). This could be a lot of fun, especially when there are few wars going on.

[Anaris]

That won't reasonably approximate a Grand Melee, because in BattleMaster battles there's always exactly two sides.

If you get 6 individual nobles from different realms into a region and have them all set to murderous, you'll have one of three outcomes:

1) The game doesn't find a defender. No battle takes place.
2) The game recognizes one of the nobles as either owning the region or controlling the battlefield, and designates them the defender. They fight alone against all the attackers.
3) The game selects a defender as in #2, but they have one or more allies present, who join in defending; all others attack them.

[pcw27]

That won't reasonably approximate a Grand Melee, because in BattleMaster battles there's always exactly two sides.

If you get 6 individual nobles from different realms into a region and have them all set to murderous, you'll have one of three outcomes:

1) The game doesn't find a defender. No battle takes place.
2) The game recognizes one of the nobles as either owning the region or controlling the battlefield, and designates them the defender. They fight alone against all the attackers.
3) The game selects a defender as in #2, but they have one or more allies present, who join in defending; all others attack them.

So then it would probably need to be alliance bloc vs alliance bloc or realm vs realm, rather than a total free-for-all with the guild organizing things and determining attacking and defending sides with equal numbers. That could still be pretty cool. There could also be qualifying bouts with individual TLs challenging each other in 1 on 1 melees in order to be accepted into the grand melee.

[Zakky]

How about making the code copy people's unit to be used in the grand melee tournament?

Then each round, you get assigned to one of the two teams randomly. Repeat melee battles until x number of nobles remain and declare the members of the last winning team as winners?

[Andrew]

You could probably just copy the M&F battle code to accomplish this, if I'm being honest. It's already written to support N-sides, character info is hard-coded, and it has obvious hooks for how to output information.

That said, it's also like 2000 lines long, has a bunch of extra stuff, and would require me to sit down and strip out the extra bits as I'm the only person who has comprehensive knowledge of it's workings after the last rewrite.