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Region Taken   (11 minutes ago)
message to all nobles of Aurvandil

We have successfully convinced the people of Tower Fatmilak to raise our banner and abandon their old allegiance to Madina.
The region joins the duchy of Candiels.

;D ;D ;D

.. and then there's this -

Out-of-Character from Mendicant Anhangar   (just in)
Message sent to everyone in your realm (43 recipients)

Will some one be able to go on the forum for me and report a bug? I cannot appoint a new lord in Tower Fatmilak, it only gives me an error message on the drop down list.

http://imageshack.us/f/52/dfe.png/

Ackerson Cole

Well as long as the takeover works by evening turn I won't complain  ;D if not ...

... Might just order we burn the whole place to the ground.

Well active accounts don't get deleted anyway .. how did that affect Madina? The only thing that contributed to us winning in TF was you didn't seem to have even half your force defending it, right when we made a mega army.

And as the running joke in Allomere's roleplays go, I can give you another explanation.

"How is your military so powerful?"
"We use children, lots of children"

I don't really want to do this but since these reports are from over a week to a month ago I can't see it mattering. However, clearly this needs clarifying. These are our tax incomes.

3062 gold.
3539 gold.
3186 gold.
3476 gold.

300 of which pays our 5KCS of militia in Candiels each week.

Trust me, it doesn't take 3000 gold to keep a standing army of 11 KCS paid. We've been building up for a month, that's why we can only ever attack Madina every three weeks or so, and with our RC's which seem rather cheap and are mostly all enlarged we can rally up a lot of infantry in just a few days and with a few drafts. That is partially why Candiel's morale is at stoic at the moment. Next tax is going to be nasty because the city is down to plodding since we've been in Madina, but all that mattered was that we broke Tower Fatmilak. We can afford to take a week to recover. Recruiting 10 of our best infantry only just costs more than 40 gold and the archers I hire are something like 28 gold per 10. Very easy on a Lord's wages to get 100 archers, which are about 800 CS.

Yeah, there are a lot of investments in Candiels, and the tax boom just before we attacked helped quite a bit. We weren't going to attack just then and then got landed with about 300 extra gold. I don't see why other realms can't rally as much CS when they need to, it really hasn't been that difficult for us, with minimal planning. Ruler taxes are high so there's always a good pool of gold to be handed out to the units that need it, and any extra gold I don't use I hand out. There's also a reason why the Motte and Bailey in Candiels Fields has been almost falling down for several months now, and at the moment is at 72 % damaged. We've been focussed on building an army to break Madina. Wasting gold on stuff behind the lines is worthless.

Oh yeah, even I'll admit Allomere has taken a few prestige knocks to get family gold in the past week. No one is denying that. That's the problem, you're all talking as if we've been maintaining this CS for ages, we haven't ; we've spent a month saving gold and spent it all in one go. There was no other way to challenge TF.

You can't do, the two different set of actions clearly massively counter-act each other, and how can a Sympathy takeover require fully the same amount of Fear/hostile actions as an actual Hostile takeover. A lot of our actions have raised fear as well but the fear stat hasn't even increased by 1%, yet the Sympathy is reportedly more than 100%.

Also, if that is the case and we need 100% in both then the region will take a full 28 turns to complete. Which means with anything less than 2000 men and more than 40 nobles is is nigh impossible to take a region like this. And since few other armies will comprise that many men and 24,000 CS I don't think that is a workable system at all.

Either the takeover still needs to conclude at the coming turn, having this turn only just gone over 100%, or there is actually an issue in the system as a whole. Either way, it shouldn't be saying there is 101% Sympathy if there actually isn't, nor should it require there to be more than 100%, because that is just madness.

That is a quote directly from the takeover page. We know what needs to be done to proceed the takeover, we've been doing it for almost a week. The point is we're already apparently over 100% sympathy in a sympathy takeover and it has not concluded.

"the actual page"

.......

Currently, your realm has about 0% of the fear and 101% of the sympathy you need to complete the takeover.
(actions done this turn are not yet included in this estimate)

Um..

[not yet in control]

That is where you make a faulty assumption. You see, you are not yet in control of the region. You have won on the battlefield, but you are not in control of the region. Ask any veteran from Iraq if you don't see what the difference is. The TO is the action by which you establish that control. So it's not like people would walk into the barracks right under your nose.

I'm aware what the difference is, but in this particular case we're talking about something, let's be honest, entirely different from Iraq. The two aren't even comparable. The army is in the Stronghold, which isn't a big city (or indeed a city at all) but which is the only place soldiers from all over the realm are apparently gathered awaiting hire. We've been there almost a week, our army is 24% of the entire regional population so it's not like we're thinly spread, considering a good number of them won't be in the castle anyway. So if the defender knights are in the rather small, militarily occupied, takeover-almost-complete castle, with every other person there being their enemy, it's highly unlikely to think they could wander along and hire men who would surely have been neutralised anyway.

As much as its a faulty assumption game-wise, it is by no means illogical when given some context, especially if you think of it in terms of a RL situation. Thats why it's not really a ridiculous question to ask when you have no idea of how that particular part of the game works.

I'm not trying to challenge that part of the game, I'm fine if thats how it's coded to be, I just wanted clarity on if that actually was how it worked.

Actually how much the people love Aurvandil has decreased since we started the takeover according to the stats. The region has gone from Loyal to Indifferent to us, and yet the takoever says it is succeeding and is nearly complete, so if its just a case of making the people like you more it's not entirely squared by what the game actually says to you in the stats. Even if a priest or a diplomat is working against us the stats should surely also be influenced by the takoever and show the people moving to liking us more rather than disliking us. That was more my point. If the opposite was true how can the takeover be succeeding .. there has to be a shift in relation somewhere.

No, I'm not advocating takeover being a super-weapon whatsoever ... look, I'm fairly new to all this anyway, which is why I'm asking not telling. We just seem to understand that a region under a takoever doesn't give you recruits, so since the new system has already failed us regarding the walls it's not too hard to also move to asking if its not got a fault somewhere else, and then the point was made about recruitment.

It does seem logically flawed that recruits which are clearly in the capital when you hire them are suddenly unavailable if a region 200 miles away they happen to come from has enemies trying to take it over, yet when those very same actions are being taken by an enemy army in that city where you are suddenly every man in the region is still up for hire, and the takeover force isn't doing something to neutralise possible recruitment despite the fact its happening in that very location. I know you can demolish RC's to stop that, but only the ones in the region at the time. So there are still soldiers for hire mulling around, and the conquerors being totally fine with knights walking along and taking them under their banner and readying them to fight in the next battle.

Hence, I don't think its much of an unreasonable question to ask. Thanks for clearing it up though.

We managed to win the battle, but they did have the walls again.

I am unsure of the recruitment issue, as I don't have much experience with my own capital being under takeover.

Ah, this addresses the last bit in my reply. Thanks.

If you're doing a fully friendly takeover, how much would the region really suffer though?

Control should surely suffer, you're killing or kicking out officials and the like. Its an entire change of government. Loyalty should suffer too, surely. I mean; especially under a friendly takoever which is suceeding. The people are choosing to be less loyal, that is the definition of a friendly takoever. All of which would mean they can't draft and the like.

Yeah, the messages are probably excessive. But then you have a special situation. 50 messages? Are you really running a TO with 50 people? Or do you run one with 20 people and everyone does 3 different TO actions per turn?

We've got 42 chevaliers doing roughly one takeover action per turn. Add that to a very few letters, scout reports or demolishion reports and it's just sheer monotony. It's worse than looting because looting has a limit afterall.

This may be true, Tom, but for years, when a takeover is running, no one has gotten the walls.

Yeah, this is quite a big problem then. I can understand fighting street to street, but then the streets don't have Walls and barbicans all along them. Its unfortunate we seem to be one of the first few to take on a city, and a Capital at that, when this is going through testing. I fear we might lose the takeover because of this, when Madina was pretty much totally beaten.

What about the recruitment issue? A few of the older players have said they're pretty sure you can't recruit in the capital when the capital is under a takeover. We're not entirely sure though.

I'm not entirely sure if this is wrong but from what I've been told there is something amiss.

Under the old takeover system regions were supposed to be in control of the ones who have the takeover. As I understand it the defender is usually the one the game considers "in control" of the region. Winning a battle doesn't mean you're auto in control except to be able to loot and dismantle things. However starting a takeover has always made the one running the takeover to be the defacto defender because they are in control of the region. Doesn't make any sense otherwise surely because how could they be "taking it over" without being the dominant power for that turn. Also, regions under a takeover are not meant to be able to provide recruits.

If this is all correct then there is an issue with the current Aurvandil takeover of Madina's capital.

Every battle we've had since the takeover has started Madina has continued to have the walls. From what more experienced players have said the walls are meant to be unusable for both sides if there is a takeover running. One turn there were rogues which joined the attackers (Aurvandil) against the Madina defenders. The defenders had the walls again. The next turn no Madinians rallied and we became the defenders and got attacked by the rogues. Neither of us had the walls. The next morning after that (today) Madina has the walls again. Surely this isn't supposed to happen, and if it is it's a rather serious flaw in the new takeover system which is going to be costly for us. We're in the city, chatting the locals, and occasionally dismantling the walls, but then we decide its much more fun to go outside and use our siege engines when it comes to doing battle?  ???

Second to this, if what I said earlier is true Madina shouldn't be able to recruit troops in the region because its under takeoever. I'm not sure if this changes because it's a capital but the Madinians have constantly been rallying up and recruiting up units which weren't there before. Again, if the region is under takeover how can it be used to recruit in? Surely that doesn't make any sense. Apparently under the old system you couldn't recruit in a city under a takeover but I don't have any personal experience to go off on this.

Some clarity from the Devs on this might be helpful.

Also as an end note I would say that both Aurvandil and Madina's players think the new takeoever system is pretty bad... we're getting 50+ messages every turn which are almost all the same. As much as I like knowing who is and who isn't following orders its very droll. Also the takeover doesn't seem to run the region into any negative stats so even though its 70% complete the region is still on full morale, full loyalty and so far has remained on Core control, which means there's nothing negative for the host realm who are suffering the takeoever. This doesn't seem to make much sense either. I don't know if this has simply been overlooked with the new system.