Messages

481

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 19, 2012, 11:32:04 PM »

A lot of the "confusing situations" would go away if we make alliances transitive. Allying with a realm means allying with all of its allies. Declaring war on a realm means declaring war on all of its allies. Of course a realm can choose to not actually participate in the war, but if it wished to officially leave the war early, or was forced to surrender first, it would also have to leave its alliance bloc.

It seems to me that this would encourage smaller realms and larger wars, both of which are generally considered to be "good things".

482

Development / Re: Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

« on: January 19, 2012, 10:58:52 PM »

I somewhat get what you mean, but I feel that you can't call it balanced when most realms don't even have access to mountain regions. I would be fine with mountain and badland regions staying food-neutral, which seems to be how they work now. I would object, however, to turning mountain and badland regions into food exporters. That's just getting silly if ask me.

483

Development / Re: Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

« on: January 19, 2012, 10:51:13 PM »

I believe we should distinguish mountain, woodland, and badland regions more, instead of lumping them together as "other".

Mountain regions should have much higher gold income but much lower food production than an rural region. They should be net food importers like cities. Currently it seems that most mountain regions can feed themselves. If realm A wrecks realm B's food supply chain, realm B shouldn't be able to keep its gold mines, iron mines, and stone quarries operational.

Woodland regions should be somewhere in between an rural region and a mountain region in terms of income and food production.

Badland regions should have much lower food production and population than an rural region, especially if the region looks like a desert or a tundra on the map. You could argue that they still generate some income from trading and crafting. Dwilight is pretty good at making this distinction, but on the other maps, a badland region is not that different from an rural region.

484

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 18, 2012, 03:21:05 AM »

The code could be set up to  so that troops have three possible state depending on the treaties: side with the attackers, side with the defenders, or be confused. If the are confused, they have a 1/3 chance of siding with either side or sitting it out. Make sure that the confused status of the troops is clearly indicated by the flavour text of the batte.

Realms who don't like this need only to stop writing contradictory treaties.

Speaking as someone who plays Generals and Marshals, that would just make me less likely to order attacks, because I can no longer predict whether my side would win the battle or not. Fewer attack orders = fewer battles = less fun for everyone.

It's always best to make the system consistent and predictable. I believe the current behavior for "confused" troops is to not participate in the battle. Why change it if it's not broken?

And before you say "just stop writing contradictory treaties then", keep in mind that you need two realms in order to have an alliance. Sometimes you don't have much choice in which realms to ally with. Sometimes those realms are ruled by nobles whose competence, intelligence, and judgement that you deplore in private. On top of that, you have zero choice on whether another realm declares war on you, or attacks you while neutral. If an ally of an ally of an ally attacks my realm (crazy but I've seen it happen), figuring out what would happen when and where is hard enough already. Please don't introduce randomness on top of that.

485

Dwilight / Re: Banks Charging/Stealing Gold?

« on: January 18, 2012, 03:07:41 AM »

Are you sure you didn't use up the gold when you sent out caravans?

Caravans cost 1 gold to send right now, as far as I can tell.

486

General Talk / Re: Ron Paul

« on: January 15, 2012, 04:47:48 AM »

words

Vellos, how can you say all this and support Paul? You know that he wants to whittle down the US military to just enough to protect US territories, right? That probably means the US will no longer have more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined.

487

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 10, 2012, 09:25:11 PM »

No realm could stay on either footing indefinitely without certain consequences.

Why should a realm be punished for staying in a war footing for a long time? The solution to too much peace is certainly not punishing realms for fighting all the time. And if a realm is being ganged up on, it may not have any choice but to keep fighting indefinitely.

And how come the Devs almost always reach for the stick first rather than the carrot? I often hear from Devs about how we ought to punish this, and ought to punish that, and almost never about rewarding the players for something.

488

BM General Discussion / Re: funniest moments in battlemaster

« on: January 10, 2012, 02:16:00 AM »

Sounds like nothing ever changes Goats and wenches?

The Makarians marry their food, eat their horses, and ride their womenfolk into battle.

Which is why Makarian cavalry is feared throughout Atamara. After you kill the rider, you still have an angry wench to deal with.

489

Other Games / Re: Echo Bazaar

« on: January 10, 2012, 02:10:24 AM »

...

Or you can log in with Twitter.

Now you're going to tell me you don't have a Twitter account because it's a tool of the devil. 

490

Other Games / Echo Bazaar

« on: January 09, 2012, 10:13:30 AM »

"Three decades ago, London was stolen by bats. Dragged deep into the earth by the Echo Bazaar. The sun is gone. All we have is the gas-light of Mr Fires. But Londoners can get used to anything. And it's quiet down here with the devils and the darkness and the mushroom wine. Peaceful.

"But then YOU arrived."

Echo Bazaar is an online game set in late Victorian era post-mini-apocalypse London.

http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com

491

Feature Requests / Re: Let's go viral

« on: January 09, 2012, 10:01:32 AM »

People are lazy. A giant button will lead to higher participation than telling people to "do it yourself".

Also, this would allow Tom more control over how his game is marketed.

492

BM General Discussion / Re: funniest moments in battlemaster

« on: January 09, 2012, 09:51:47 AM »

Ah, Far East Island, where "things make sense", and nobles "do things for a reason".

Too bad that reason is usually "because he's bat-!@#$ crazy".

493

Feature Requests / Let's go viral

« on: January 09, 2012, 09:49:15 AM »

We need links on the front page that lets users share the glorious goodness that is BattleMaster via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.

Even better would be to let us directly invite our friends on Facebook and Google+.

Because, let's face it, BM appeals to a rather small subset of human beings. Word of mouth is not enough. We need to spam all of our contacts in order to maybe grab a few new players.

494

Development / Re: Takeover Feedback, please!

« on: December 25, 2011, 10:02:47 AM »

New features and refactoring are fine, Tom, but please keep in mind that breaking the game is worse for player retention than any shenanigans us players can do. Quite a few islands were broken for a period of days.

What we really need is a robust testing system, where features can be tested without risking breaking every other island. Maybe the devs can get their own private island to play around in?

Because just "turning on a feature and hoping it works" does not seem to be working.

Edit: TOs on depopulated regions worked fine, and were indeed very speedy once the bugs were resolved. We should still see how long it takes to TO a big regions. Taking a large rural region should not take more than 6 days, imho. Maybe 8 to 10 days for major cities. (And of course this is just going to encourage players to completely raze regions, which is fine by me.)

495

Helpline / Question on how FTOs work

« on: December 25, 2011, 09:51:53 AM »

Currently, on Atamara, Eston is running a friendly takover of Meneriel. However, the situation does not conform with my understanding of how FTOs work.

Here is the context: The Cagilan Empire recently took Meneriel from Eston via a BTO. There were still some retreated Estonite peasant militia around after Cagilan and allied Talerium forces retreated. A single Estonite knight entered Meneriel afterward, and was defeated by a straggler Talerium knight still in the region.

So the troops in Meneriel are:

25 Eston peasant militia, retreated
15 Eston infantry, led by a knight, retreated
45 Talerium infantry, led by a knight, stationary

The region is currently owned by Cagilan Empire.

However, scout reports now show an Estonite FTO running on Meneriel. This seems strange to me because:

1. 15 troops should not be enough to start a TO. I know that FTOs require fewer troops to start, but 15 men seems way too low.

2. I thought scattered/retreated units cannot start TOs.

Assuming that this is not a new bug, what's the trick to doing this? How do you start a FTO in a region with just 15 retreated troops?