Quote from: Tom on October 12, 2012, 07:05:46 PM
Rejected for multiple reasons.
One, we already consider peace in calculating the population growth rates. Two, your extrapolation is wrong because growth is exponential, depending on the current population, so a larger city will also grow faster (in absolute numbers).
Three, the real problem that might need fixing is stuff only coming "online" at certain amounts of production, which is a useful shortcut but not terribly realistic for everything.
The first reason, that's great! Perhaps it could be increased to have more tangible effects?
Second, I know that it is. However, for both larger and smaller cities, that growth is still not enough. It still takes far too long for the peace cycle to end and a new war cycle to begin.
Not sure about three, because even when certain things become 'online' if their infrastructure still takes damage from the decreased production caused by population reduction, it doesn't really help too much.
EDIT: Perhaps I didn't make this clear enough in my request. This rebuilding problem is both a perception problem and a game problem. Perception-wise, people are getting bored and frustrated and if we just say 'well, it's already growing' that isn't going to help. And then I have already listed the benefits for the game if this were to be added.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 12, 2012, 06:52:00 PM
We aren't prepared, and we have been a realm for a year and had Oroya for eight months. Over six months since we increased to 10 regions, I believe. Therefore, in a roundabout way of doing things, by helping the peace cycle move faster, we can get to the war cycle once again(as both the real world and the game world go in cycles of mass war and mass peace, with a few shades of grey in between).
Ashforth is basically at full population.
Are you saying that if Oroya didn't exist, then you would consider Nivemus ready to fight?
Then how exactly is a depopulated Oroya reducing your ability ot fight?
Quote from: vonGenf on October 12, 2012, 07:51:04 PM
Ashforth is basically at full population.
Are you saying that if Oroya didn't exist, then you would consider Nivemus ready to fight?
Then how exactly is a depopulated Oroya reducing your ability ot fight?
Ashforth was never attacked.
While that hypothetical question is meaningless since it is asking me to ponder 'yeah but if...', I will give it a go. If Nivemus didn't have Oroya, we would be much weaker. Therefore, yes, as a weaker realm, I would have to be much more careful and much more painstaking in setting up a war and deciding which wars I would join.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 12, 2012, 07:59:46 PM
While that hypothetical question is meaningless since it is asking me to ponder 'yeah but if...', I will give it a go. If Nivemus didn't have Oroya, we would be much weaker. Therefore, yes, as a weaker realm, I would have to be much more careful and much more painstaking in setting up a war and deciding which wars I would join.
Oh, of course. I'm not saying you should run headless into the first war that presents itself. Every realm must be careful in deciding which war they will join, or they'll find themselves weaker after it than before. But not all realms are equal, and that is the normal state of the game.
A realm always finds itself in the situation it is currently in. The reason you are wary of war at the moment is because you know that if you remain at peace, you will be stronger three months down the road, therefore your baseline for going to war is higher than a realm which will find itself unchanged if it does nothing. However your ability to go to war is not impaired, it is at a certain level and that's it. Find an objective worthy enough and you will be able to go to war.
Said another way, you currently have a city and a half. It seems you would feel better if you had two cities. Do you know what is a fast way to get a second city, faster than waiting for Oroya to repopulate?
Invade one.
Quote from: vonGenf on October 12, 2012, 08:07:24 PM
Oh, of course. I'm not saying you should run headless into the first war that presents itself. Every realm must be careful in deciding which war they will join, or they'll find themselves weaker after it than before. But not all realms are equal, and that is the normal state of the game.
A realm always finds itself in the situation it is currently in. The reason you are wary of war at the moment is because you know that if you remain at peace, you will be stronger three months down the road, therefore your baseline for going to war is higher than a realm which will find itself unchanged if it does nothing. However your ability to go to war is not impaired, it is at a certain level and that's it. Find an objective worthy enough and you will be able to go to war.
Said another way, you currently have a city and a half. It seems you would feel better if you had two cities. Do you know what is a fast way to get a second city, faster than waiting for Oroya to repopulate?
Invade one.
While that is true, in a sense, it is also impractical considering all the other realms around us, with the exception of one, are stronger than us. I am not complaining, that is to be expected. When a realm starts, it doesn't start out as a Perdan or Sirion that can war with whoever whenever for whatever reason.
Also, gold isn't the only thing realm's need from a city. Cities hold infrastructure as well, and a solid infrastructure is needed to win a war. We could theoretically fight a war right now, but if we don't have the infrastructure down, it's going to be a short war. And if we fight a losing war, or even a war in general, with a weakened city, there is a chance, a very good chance, that our enemies could take advantage of that fact and reduce it again, or take it. But to make a city stronger, you need to wait for better population and more gold, and those things are tied together considering this is a region that is a gold producer.
Going to war isn't just about gathering new assets. It's about defending the assets you already have too.
Why make peace time more appealing?
The only serious damage we can have right now, in most cases, is massive starvation. I see no reason to reduce the importance of war damages by improving population growth like this.
Quote from: Chénier on October 12, 2012, 11:24:02 PM
Why make peace time more appealing?
The only serious damage we can have right now, in most cases, is massive starvation. I see no reason to reduce the importance of war damages by improving population growth like this.
This isn't reducing the importance of war, it is decreasing the time we spend not being in war. Do you really think, just because you gain a few more peasants a day, that people are going to say 'hey, let's stay bored and sit around!'. This request is trying to reduce the time that people are sitting around.
Quote from: Chénier on October 12, 2012, 11:24:02 PM
Why make peace time more appealing?
The only serious damage we can have right now, in most cases, is massive starvation. I see no reason to reduce the importance of war damages by improving population growth like this.
The current system punishes losing wars too hard. If we want to see more wars, we need to cripple realms less so they can get back up and fight again at least within 6 months.
This request won't make peace more appealing. Actually, the current system is what is making peace more appealing than anything else.
Why try to make peace longer by crippling realms for longer periods of time? If realms can recover quickly, they can fight again more quickly. I don't understand why Tom is being so insistent on not speeding up the totally devastated regions from recovering bit faster. Why try to apply realism to this side of the game when it doesn't help the game at all?
Why fight if it doesn't hurt the enemy? Why even bother going to war in the first place?
Quote from: egamma on October 13, 2012, 03:17:59 AM
Why fight if it doesn't hurt the enemy? Why even bother going to war in the first place?
Isn't 6 months enough? How long do you want to cripple your enemy for?
And most of the time, people completely destroy their enemy realms anyway.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 03:32:57 AM
Isn't 6 months enough? How long do you want to cripple your enemy for?
And most of the time, people completely destroy their enemy realms anyway.
So what you really want, is to not make
winning so painful.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 03:32:57 AM
Isn't 6 months enough? How long do you want to cripple your enemy for?
If crippling is my goal, then odds are, it will take more than six months to achieve it. In which case, yes, I'd like them to remain crippled for as long. 4 months could be fine, but less than 3 certainly isn't worth the trouble. I'd like to point out that crippling a realm for 6 months, simply by looting, is basically impossible. Only massive starvation can cause this kind of damage.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 03:32:57 AM
And most of the time, people completely destroy their enemy realms anyway.
Well, if damage doesn't last long, that's one more reason to do TOs to completely wipe off the enemy, since looting wouldn't matter. There won't be any recovery time whatsoever, because your realm will be killed.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 04:50:56 AM
If crippling is my goal, then odds are, it will take more than six months to achieve it. In which case, yes, I'd like them to remain crippled for as long. 4 months could be fine, but less than 3 certainly isn't worth the trouble. I'd like to point out that crippling a realm for 6 months, simply by looting, is basically impossible. Only massive starvation can cause this kind of damage.
Well, if damage doesn't last long, that's one more reason to do TOs to completely wipe off the enemy, since looting wouldn't matter. There won't be any recovery time whatsoever, because your realm will be killed.
Six months of war=six months of cripple? Wait, so you want equal parts war and peace cycles? Good God, why? And if you do, then why does this game have so few things you can do during peace? Roleplaying and region repairing can only occupy a person so much. I can understand not incentivizing peace if we want Battlemaster to be a primarily war game, where we primarily fight battles. But, if we want to make the cycle times equal, I don't want a half boring game.
I said more than 6 justify up to 6 months of cripple, and that 4 months could be fine as well.
Plus, there are various levels of "cripple".
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 05:52:21 AM
I said more than 6 justify up to 6 months of cripple, and that 4 months could be fine as well.
Plus, there are various levels of "cripple".
Here we are talking about the usual crippling people like doing. Starving regions until there is nothing left.
If the population growth is exponential, maybe there should be an option to forcefully send a fraction of a region with full population to a region with no population to speed things up.
Cities should recover faster as they are one of the main sources of income in this game. Look at Ibladesh. That city will take more than a year to recover. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if that city takes two years or more.
Everyone wants to go into wars fully prepared especially when you know things are going to be very tight. But with the current population growth rate, that preparation period is really long. Some realms will need as long as a year to recover. How are those realms supposed to gain nobles when rebuilding time in this game is boring as hell? RPs can only go so far and keeping people busy is hard unless you fight wars in BM.
Starving a realm, in most cases, is next to impossible unless they managed themselves really bad.
Also, you need to remember that the less damaging wars become, the less people will be motivated to initiate wars, and those initiated will more likely result in total destruction in order to prevent quick repair.
It's not that I want regions to take forever to recover, but rather that I want wars to matter.
And you don't need all of your cities to be at 100% production to be able to engage in warfare. Finally, if cities recovered too quickly, it'd be too easy to implode due to food demand growing faster than food production, as was seen in Darfix twice I believe.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 06:13:30 AM
And you don't need all of your cities to be at 100% production to be able to engage in warfare.
This really can't be said often enough. 100% is a reward for hard work, it should not be considered a natural state for the city. You carefully feed it and tax it at just the right rate, you do courtier work and over the course of a year or two it grows into this giant money tree. But in the mean time, your enemies will want to chop it down.
Just look at how cities in the middle ages were
completely razed. Baghdad comes to mind. Population of 2 million in the 13th century, razed to the ground and turned into a barren wasteland for hundreds of years. The population didn't even reach six digits again until the 20th century.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 06:13:30 AM
Stuff
People don't usually try to starve rural regions. They try to starve cities. With the new market system, it is even more difficult to starve cities now but once cities do starve, they lose their population super quickly.
Look at Krimml. The city has less than 300 people now and it was like that for a month. How long do you think that city will take to recover back to 80%? Unless it is surrounded by regions with full populations, the city will take at least 8 months or more.
Quote from: egamma on October 13, 2012, 03:17:59 AM
Why fight if it doesn't hurt the enemy? Why even bother going to war in the first place?
We had plenty of wars back when population had zero effect on production and gold/food income. Why do you think that was? Oh, right, because fighting a war was fun. You were free to always grow one more region and that was the main way of damaging your enemy. The only reasons peasants started to affect things was to give looting some power and to bring realism to the game, but it has always been imbalanced in my opinion and made looting/starvation tactics too crippling for a game.
It's all this realism BS that's bringing the game down in general and making it less fun over all because it becomes less a game and more like real life, which to be honest, is not fun at all.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 07:20:42 AM
People don't usually try to starve rural regions. They try to starve cities. With the new market system, it is even more difficult to starve cities now but once cities do starve, they lose their population super quickly.
Look at Krimml. The city has less than 300 people now and it was like that for a month. How long do you think that city will take to recover back to 80%? Unless it is surrounded by regions with full populations, the city will take at least 8 months or more.
Unless the realm has a natural deficit or the defenders really suck at food management, starving cities is extremely difficult and tenuous. It takes a long time to do this, and all they need to do is send one steward to foreign lands and he can continuously buy food with the bonds given to him, food that just teleports over the siege lines.
If you let your attackers starve you, you
deserve to be crippled. The scheme I described above is so easy and effective it makes me feel filthy for mentioning it.
Do you think I don't know the impacts of starvation? I play in D'Hara, for god's sake, I can't even count then number of times our cities starved. Yet you don't see me whining about how long it takes to recuperate. Even if the last time was the result to a continental collapse of the markets due to number-playing from Tom.
Quote from: LilWolf on October 13, 2012, 01:16:46 PM
We had plenty of wars back when population had zero effect on production and gold/food income. Why do you think that was? Oh, right, because fighting a war was fun. You were free to always grow one more region and that was the main way of damaging your enemy. The only reasons peasants started to affect things was to give looting some power and to bring realism to the game, but it has always been imbalanced in my opinion and made looting/starvation tactics too crippling for a game.
It's all this realism BS that's bringing the game down in general and making it less fun over all because it becomes less a game and more like real life, which to be honest, is not fun at all.
1) There are still plenty of wars in most realms.
2) You can't compare now with then. Back then, taxes were collected realm-wide, making region loss not that dramatic for anyone. The new allegiance system with its free-for-all mentality hadn't been pushed onto anyone. There was no such thing as estate efficiency or lack of control due to estates, realms could expand as far as their military allowed it and the returns were far from as diminishing as they are now. Realms were like ant colonies, where the general controlled the whole forces and not following his orders would usually put you in serious trouble.
3) Looting isn't overpowered. All of the damage achieved by it can be more effectively achieved by TOs, if you have the nobles for it. If you see more looting being done than 5 years ago, it's because tying tax efficiency (and previously control) over the number of nobles a realm has makes expansion for a lot of realms nonviable, not because looting somehow became overpowered.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 03:34:40 PM
Unless the realm has a natural deficit or the defenders really suck at food management, starving cities is extremely difficult and tenuous. It takes a long time to do this, and all they need to do is send one steward to foreign lands and he can continuously buy food with the bonds given to him, food that just teleports over the siege lines.
If you let your attackers starve you, you deserve to be crippled. The scheme I described above is so easy and effective it makes me feel filthy for mentioning it.
Do you think I don't know the impacts of starvation? I play in D'Hara, for god's sake, I can't even count then number of times our cities starved. Yet you don't see me whining about how long it takes to recuperate. Even if the last time was the result to a continental collapse of the markets due to number-playing from Tom.
1) There are still plenty of wars in most realms.
2) You can't compare now with then. Back then, taxes were collected realm-wide, making region loss not that dramatic for anyone. The new allegiance system with its free-for-all mentality hadn't been pushed onto anyone. There was no such thing as estate efficiency or lack of control due to estates, realms could expand as far as their military allowed it and the returns were far from as diminishing as they are now. Realms were like ant colonies, where the general controlled the whole forces and not following his orders would usually put you in serious trouble.
3) Looting isn't overpowered. All of the damage achieved by it can be more effectively achieved by TOs, if you have the nobles for it. If you see more looting being done than 5 years ago, it's because tying tax efficiency (and previously control) over the number of nobles a realm has makes expansion for a lot of realms nonviable, not because looting somehow became overpowered.
Starving cities is difficult? Just send it rogue for a week. See how quickly that bitch can spiral out of control.
Congratulations, however, it is also fundamentally different for D'Hara because
everybody was starving in Dwilight, just at different degrees. On places like the East Continent, we have completely decimated cities by war in realms who just started, have few diplomatic ties to speak of, and are just generally not very well off. Then, we have the monsters: Sirion, Perdan, Caligus. They have a crap ton of cities, so if one was bad it would effect them less(I'm looking at you, Perdan). But, for the most past, they are either relatively unscathed cities or have several other producers to turn to. Nivemus doesn't have that luxury. Eponllyn doesn't have that luxury. OI doesn't have that luxury. Armonia doesn't have that luxury. Dunnera wouldn't have that luxury(if they had been allowed to take Krimml).
The wars BM has now: Dunnera-Caligus, a terribly one sided affair that is more of a beat down than a war. The Atamaran chronicles continued, which most everyone hates with a passion. Aurvandil vs. Terran, once again, beat down, although it is at least somewhat more fun. D'Hara vs. Solaria and Nova. And then the Far East Island war. A good number of those are one-sided and boring, and only two of them are large scale wars. Of those large scale wars, I know at least one of them is an abomination that needs to be stopped.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 05:14:10 PMOn places like the East Continent, we have completely decimated cities by war in realms who just started, have few diplomatic ties to speak of, and are just generally not very well off.
Then that is a failure of the people who started those realms.
If you are creating a new realm, and don't line up allies, you're pretty dumb.
If you are creating a new realm with a lot of depopulated regions, and don't line up allies, you're a good candidate for the Darwin Awards (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/).
Quote from: Anaris on October 13, 2012, 05:21:34 PM
Then that is a failure of the people who started those realms.
If you are creating a new realm, and don't line up allies, you're pretty dumb.
If you are creating a new realm with a lot of depopulated regions, and don't line up allies, you're a good candidate for the Darwin Awards (http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/).
As a ruler, I have attempted to increase diplomatic relations across the continent as a whole regarding my realm. While I agree with you that those who don't line up allies are foolish to do so, there are some realms that they do not have options, created by the diplomatic climate(e. g. Armonia, Eponllyn, Dunnera).
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 05:24:47 PM
As a ruler, I have attempted to increase diplomatic relations across the continent as a whole regarding my realm. While I agree with you that those who don't line up allies are foolish to do so, there are some realms that they do not have options, created by the diplomatic climate(e. g. Armonia, Eponllyn, Dunnera).
Don't blame the game, then. You tried, you failed. The problem isn't starvation, it's diplomacy.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 05:14:10 PM
Starving cities is difficult? Just send it rogue for a week. See how quickly that bitch can spiral out of control.
(...)
On places like the East Continent, we have completely decimated cities by war in realms who just started, have few diplomatic ties to speak of, and are just generally not very well off.
"Send it rogue for a week". There's your half problem. Why did you let it go rogue? And why did you let it go rogue with empty warehouses...?
"Sending cities rogue" is no easy task. Cities usually have significant fortifications (lvl 5, or 4 was it sieged often) and lots of militia. And if it's a capital, then all of the recruitment centres are there, and odds are many of the inactive nobles are as well.
If you colonized a ravaged city and didn't line up allies, don't expect to have it all handed over to you. You reap what you sow.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 05:33:51 PM
Don't blame the game, then. You tried, you failed. The problem isn't starvation, it's diplomacy.
"Send it rogue for a week". There's your half problem. Why did you let it go rogue? And why did you let it go rogue with empty warehouses...?
"Sending cities rogue" is no easy task. Cities usually have significant fortifications (lvl 5, or 4 was it sieged often) and lots of militia. And if it's a capital, then all of the recruitment centres are there, and odds are many of the inactive nobles are as well.
If you colonized a ravaged city and didn't line up allies, don't expect to have it all handed over to you. You reap what you sow.
Sending cities rogue is much easier than you think. Now, it's no easy thing to do, but it's not nearly as hard as you are making it out to be. Inactive nobles are there
only if it's the capital. Otherwise, it may have militia and walls. 'Lots' is a hell of a subjective term.
That's actually just the problem. I didn't reap anything. I am the second King, I am building off of the job of the first. Also, I did not ravage the city, in fact, I explicitly asked them
not to completely destroy the city while I was in Sirion. Obviously, that was to no avail. My realm was put at the mercy of military strategists who would not have to deal with these consequences later down the line. That, indeed is part of the problem.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 06:09:02 PM
That's actually just the problem. I didn't reap anything. I am the second King, I am building off of the job of the first. Also, I did not ravage the city, in fact, I explicitly asked them not to completely destroy the city while I was in Sirion. Obviously, that was to no avail. My realm was put at the mercy of military strategists who would not have to deal with these consequences later down the line. That, indeed is part of the problem.
So, you think you're the only one in BM who's ever been screwed over due to the actions of others he cannot control?
It can be incredibly aggravating sometimes, but it is all part of the game.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 06:09:02 PM
Sending cities rogue is much easier than you think. Now, it's no easy thing to do, but it's not nearly as hard as you are making it out to be. Inactive nobles are there only if it's the capital. Otherwise, it may have militia and walls. 'Lots' is a hell of a subjective term.
That's actually just the problem. I didn't reap anything. I am the second King, I am building off of the job of the first. Also, I did not ravage the city, in fact, I explicitly asked them not to completely destroy the city while I was in Sirion. Obviously, that was to no avail. My realm was put at the mercy of military strategists who would not have to deal with these consequences later down the line. That, indeed is part of the problem.
1) Walls and militia... and your army? If you don't defend your cities, you deserve losing them.
2) Assuming that cities have walls, militia, and a mobile army defending them, you need a lot more troops and a lot of siege engines to penetrate their defenses. Unless your realm is many times the size of the other, this is usually quite difficult to achieve.
3) You reap what your predecessor sowed, then. You can't expect to have it all handed to you just because you weren't the one in charge back then. That's just not how politics work.
4) So your realm could have not destroyed it, but decided to anyways? Your collective fault. You failed to sway them into not doing this.
5) Bad strategists? Again, your collective fault for putting them there and listening to them.
Sure, a city is easy to cripple, if you leave it undefended, made no allies, have rulers that ruin relations with your neighbors, made sure to claim it in a bad state yourselves to begin with, and didn't plan on eventually wanting to hold it and profit from its economy.
But then again, if you do all of that wring, it SHOULD be easy to cripple. Otherwise, in normal circumstances, it would become impossible.
You guys did everything wrong. Population growth isn't the source of the problem here.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 03:34:40 PM
1) There are still plenty of wars in most realms.
2) You can't compare now with then. Back then, taxes were collected realm-wide, making region loss not that dramatic for anyone. The new allegiance system with its free-for-all mentality hadn't been pushed onto anyone. There was no such thing as estate efficiency or lack of control due to estates, realms could expand as far as their military allowed it and the returns were far from as diminishing as they are now. Realms were like ant colonies, where the general controlled the whole forces and not following his orders would usually put you in serious trouble.
3) Looting isn't overpowered. All of the damage achieved by it can be more effectively achieved by TOs, if you have the nobles for it. If you see more looting being done than 5 years ago, it's because tying tax efficiency (and previously control) over the number of nobles a realm has makes expansion for a lot of realms nonviable, not because looting somehow became overpowered.
1. Sure, but they're far more destructive than they used to be. Just look at the regions near Coria that have seen the most battle and you'll see regions that have lost 6000 peasants out of an 8000 total. That's just the effects of normal, prolonged war these days and recovery of those regions will take months.
2. Yes, the game was more a game back then and less the cumbersome social simulator it has become. Many of the things you listed there are things the realism craze has brought on and made the game less fun, less dynamic, slower and all around a worse experience.
3. Perhaps so, but when the prevailing tactic in the game boils down to killing the enemy regions for months to come, there's something extremely wrong with the way the game works. Waiting for the peasants to return to a region is like watching paint dry. It's not fun in any way and should not be an element of the game that lasts months at a time.
Quote from: LilWolf on October 13, 2012, 06:20:26 PM
1. Sure, but they're far more destructive than they used to be. Just look at the regions near Coria that have seen the most battle and you'll see regions that have lost 6000 peasants out of an 8000 total. That's just the effects of normal, prolonged war these days and recovery of those regions will take months.
2. Yes, the game was more a game back then and less the cumbersome social simulator it has become. Many of the things you listed there are things the realism craze has brought on and made the game less fun, less dynamic, slower and all around a worse experience.
3. Perhaps so, but when the prevailing tactic in the game boils down to killing the enemy regions for months to come, there's something extremely wrong with the way the game works. Waiting for the peasants to return to a region is like watching paint dry. It's not fun in any way and should not be an element of the game that lasts months at a time.
Making regions recover faster won't bring back the old style of play, it'll just make wars meaningless.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 06:17:02 PM
1) Walls and militia... and your army? If you don't defend your cities, you deserve losing them.
2) Assuming that cities have walls, militia, and a mobile army defending them, you need a lot more troops and a lot of siege engines to penetrate their defenses. Unless your realm is many times the size of the other, this is usually quite difficult to achieve.
3) You reap what your predecessor sowed, then. You can't expect to have it all handed to you just because you weren't the one in charge back then. That's just not how politics work.
4) So your realm could have not destroyed it, but decided to anyways? Your collective fault. You failed to sway them into not doing this.
5) Bad strategists? Again, your collective fault for putting them there and listening to them.
Sure, a city is easy to cripple, if you leave it undefended, made no allies, have rulers that ruin relations with your neighbors, made sure to claim it in a bad state yourselves to begin with, and didn't plan on eventually wanting to hold it and profit from its economy.
But then again, if you do all of that wring, it SHOULD be easy to cripple. Otherwise, in normal circumstances, it would become impossible.
You guys did everything wrong. Population growth isn't the source of the problem here.
I don't think you understand what happened. I didn't put anyone, anywhere. My realm didn't take any actions that caused Oroya to become a wreckage of epic proportions. We have been screwed over by the realm's society,
the same realm society you propose holds the answer to this predicament. You think if people just act this specific way, this problem will be solved. People do not act that way. Therefore, the game must take that into account.
While I can say there is some truth to 'you reap what your predecessor sowed', many of these realms, if they have alliances, are at the mercy of a single more powerful realm. In Nivemus' case, it's Sirion. In Dunnera's it was Caligus. And even though they don't have relations: In Eponllyn, it's Perdan and in Armonia, it's Caligus. The only thing not crushing those realms on some arbitrary whim is because they don't have a reason, or just simply don't want to.
Nivemus has done exactly this: take devastated region, surround with well fed regions to help immigration possibilities, and put time and money into the city. Please explain to me how THAT is wrong!
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 06:40:37 PM
I don't think you understand what happened. I didn't put anyone, anywhere. My realm didn't take any actions that caused Oroya to become a wreckage of epic proportions. We have been screwed over by the realm's society, the same realm society you propose holds the answer to this predicament. You think if people just act this specific way, this problem will be solved. People do not act that way. Therefore, the game must take that into account.
He's not saying you, personally, did these things. He's saying that the realm you were a part of did them. Therefore, you, as part of that realm (at the time), share the
collective blame for what was done.
Was there anything more you could have done? Maybe, maybe not. The point is, it's not the game's fault. It's the fault of the flesh-and-blood people making decisions about how to found the realm.
Quote from: LilWolf on October 13, 2012, 06:20:26 PM
1. Sure, but they're far more destructive than they used to be. Just look at the regions near Coria that have seen the most battle and you'll see regions that have lost 6000 peasants out of an 8000 total. That's just the effects of normal, prolonged war these days and recovery of those regions will take months.
I doubt that. War itself does very little damage to regions. It is the result of looting, starvation or other side-effects. But looting is INTENDED to be destructive. That's what it is FOR.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 06:40:37 PM
I don't think you understand what happened. I didn't put anyone, anywhere. My realm didn't take any actions that caused Oroya to become a wreckage of epic proportions. We have been screwed over by the realm's society, the same realm society you propose holds the answer to this predicament. You think if people just act this specific way, this problem will be solved. People do not act that way. Therefore, the game must take that into account.
While I can say there is some truth to 'you reap what your predecessor sowed', many of these realms, if they have alliances, are at the mercy of a single more powerful realm. In Nivemus' case, it's Sirion. In Dunnera's it was Caligus. And even though they don't have relations: In Eponllyn, it's Perdan and in Armonia, it's Caligus. The only thing not crushing those realms on some arbitrary whim is because they don't have a reason, or just simply don't want to.
Nivemus has done exactly this: take devastated region, surround with well fed regions to help immigration possibilities, and put time and money into the city. Please explain to me how THAT is wrong!
Making other realms not want to destroy you is called diplomacy. If you don't want diplomacy to be a factor, go play War Islands.
If repairing a devastated city sucks for you, then your mistake was deciding to settle there in the first place. Beggars can't be pickers.
And I don't know what "realm society" you speak of. If you mean the new game mentality, I'm not advocating it, I'm just stating as a fact that it wasn't there back then when looting didn't do damage. And that it's not going away, the mentality shift is, imo, irreversible.
I don't mean to be an !@#$%^&, but these are isolated problems that result from decisions players collectively made.
And citing an EC socio-political context doesn't justify game-wide changes. Enough changes were imposed on players throughout the years because some EC !@#$%^&s didn't care enough to create a fun environment for their peers, and because said peers couldn't be bothered to change things themselves. EC-specific issues are not mechanics problems, they are people problems.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 07:34:43 PM
EC-specific issues are not mechanics problems, they are people problems.
The reason the city got devastated in the first place is a people problem. The reason it takes a year or longer to get that city back to full production is not though. There is a clear distinction there.
Quote from: Uzamaki on October 13, 2012, 07:44:38 PM
The reason the city got devastated in the first place is a people problem. The reason it takes a year or longer to get that city back to full production is not though. There is a clear distinction there.
The city wouldn't have taken long to repair had people not decided to devastate it.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 06:39:29 PM
Making regions recover faster won't bring back the old style of play, it'll just make wars meaningless.
Aren't we playing this game to fight wars? After all this game is called BATTLEMASTER. I can't stress this enough, we are not playing a medieval simulator, we are playing a game. Do we have more people than when the game was more like a game than what is currently now? Something close to a simulator? Will slowing the game down bring more people? I doubt that.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 08:05:57 PM
Aren't we playing this game to fight wars? After all this game is called BATTLEMASTER. I can't stress this enough, we are not playing a medieval simulator, we are playing a game. Do we have more people than when the game was more like a game than what is currently now? Something close to a simulator? Will slowing the game down bring more people? I doubt that.
Whether you like it being a simulator or not, going to war for the sake of it will likely result in you getting killed.
Again, a people problem, not a mechanics problem.
I've instigated a lot of wars and conflicts myself, but they were done with specific purposes in mind. If you can't count on being able to pacify a foe in order to be able to then strike another, you are forced to always fight the same neighbor over and over again. Non-stop warfare with the same opponent gets dull.
If you think this game is just about war, then why do so many people complain when a war starts stretching for a long time? War must alternate with peace.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 06:39:29 PM
Making regions recover faster won't bring back the old style of play, it'll just make wars meaningless.
How so? I doubt anyone in the game starts a war with the goal of "I want to destroy all the regions so they're of no use to anyone for months". What they do start wars over are all sorts of diplomatic reasons, grudges and so on. None of those would disappear if regions weren't so fragile. There would still be the same goals to accomplish.
Quote from: Tom on October 13, 2012, 06:49:39 PM
I doubt that. War itself does very little damage to regions. It is the result of looting, starvation or other side-effects. But looting is INTENDED to be destructive. That's what it is FOR.
But that's pretty much what all wars are now. You loot and destroy everything, save for the 1-2 regions you might actually be able to take. Killing peasants is very easy once they start to rise up as militia every turn(why do they do that anyway? They're never any use and only make the damage worse). You can literally slaughter a thousand of them in just a few turns even in a rural region. Compound those damages over the course of a war that rages for months and the region is dead pretty quickly and thoroughly.
Quote from: LilWolf on October 13, 2012, 08:33:17 PM
How so? I doubt anyone in the game starts a war with the goal of "I want to destroy all the regions so they're of no use to anyone for months". What they do start wars over are all sorts of diplomatic reasons, grudges and so on. None of those would disappear if regions weren't so fragile. There would still be the same goals to accomplish.
Because if you eventually want to move on against your neighbor's friend, odds are you want to make sure that this neighbor won't backstab you the moment you do so. If there's the possibility to cripple him for a while, then you can start a war against him first while the other guy's distracted (or not quite as committed as the first target would have been to his friend). If you succeed in putting him down, you then know you have enough time to launch a war against the other guy without having to seriously fear the first guy. If your ambitions are greater than a meager addition of a rural to one's realm, knowing you can incapacitate another is important. Because seriously, gaining a rural region is of little interest to realm-wide prosperity and to ambitious people's agendas. The ones that have the most to gain from small border skirmishes are usually those who don't have a say over whether a war will take place or not.
I am pretty sure people would run instead of forming militia to fight a big well armed army. People's emotion can only take them so far against something much more powerful. Unless you corner them and leave them without a choice, people tend to look for an exit.
Also, Chenier, I don't know about you but I don't think many people actually start a war just to completely devastate a few regions. When a realm attacks another realm, they will either do it to gain regions or for political regions not to cause genocide to depopulate a chunk of a map.
Quote from: Chénier on October 13, 2012, 08:42:40 PM
Because if you eventually want to move on against your neighbor's friend, odds are you want to make sure that this neighbor won't backstab you the moment you do so. If there's the possibility to cripple him for a while, then you can start a war against him first while the other guy's distracted (or not quite as committed as the first target would have been to his friend). If you succeed in putting him down, you then know you have enough time to launch a war against the other guy without having to seriously fear the first guy. If your ambitions are greater than a meager addition of a rural to one's realm, knowing you can incapacitate another is important. Because seriously, gaining a rural region is of little interest to realm-wide prosperity and to ambitious people's agendas. The ones that have the most to gain from small border skirmishes are usually those who don't have a say over whether a war will take place or not.
Will the neighbour's sit idly while you stomp their friend? I doubt it. You will get attacked from two sides instead. Nice theory though.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 08:53:04 PM
Will the neighbour's sit idly while you stomp their friend? I doubt it. You will get attacked from two sides instead. Nice theory though.
Diplomacy, my friend. There are often parties more willing to defend their friend than their friend is willing to defend them. Then there's timing: one of them can be busy with something else, or be blocked by a treaty that hasn't yet expired. Then there's diplomatic strategy.
Quote from: Zaki on October 13, 2012, 08:51:04 PM
Also, Chenier, I don't know about you but I don't think many people actually start a war just to completely devastate a few regions. When a realm attacks another realm, they will either do it to gain regions or for political regions not to cause genocide to depopulate a chunk of a map.
Had the daimons not interfered and resumed their invasive ways, Nicolas Chénier would have successfully genocided a good chunk of Beluaterra. 8)
Genocide starts to be the only viable strategy, once your noble count is too low to justify colonies.
Cities recover quite slow from war. Is there a mating season so that peasants in all regions nearby city can go on to populate the city?
Quote from: Ketchum on October 14, 2012, 02:54:12 PM
Cities recover quite slow from war. Is there a mating season so that peasants in all regions nearby city can go on to populate the city?
I always was in favor of a system that allows to increase growth somehow, though. As long as it's costly and not really effective.
Quote from: Chénier on October 14, 2012, 04:14:07 PM
I always was in favor of a system that allows to increase growth somehow, though. As long as it's costly and not really effective.
It sounds wonderful... as a mean to spend big amounts of gold for nothing! ;D
Really, the thing is when you loot a region, (or is under 'local' hunger), the people would not to die in enormous amounts, but to flee to neighbour regions (or hide in the woods), and come back to their region when the situation got better. I can understand destruction of production, or even the destruction of a City, but usually the people is hard to exterminate... they usually don't wait for death but flee! :P Maybe this would be a bit more realistic and better for the game.
Honestly, I can't see as realistic a region go from 3000 pop. to 20... or even 1!!!
Quote from: Chénier on October 14, 2012, 04:14:07 PM
I always was in favor of a system that allows to increase growth somehow, though. As long as it's costly and not really effective.
So, in a medieval world, where cities are NOT generally considered places you want to live in, how exactly would you increase population growth?
Quote from: Poliorketes on October 14, 2012, 06:18:30 PM
Really, the thing is when you loot a region, (or is under 'local' hunger), the people would not to die in enormous amounts, but to flee to neighbour regions (or hide in the woods), and come back to their region when the situation got better. I can understand destruction of production, or even the destruction of a City, but usually the people is hard to exterminate... they usually don't wait for death but flee! :P Maybe this would be a bit more realistic and better for the game.
Errr... you need to read up on history. Starvation was a huge killer in the dark ages, and generals back to biblical times regularily put entire towns to the sword.
Quote from: Tom on October 14, 2012, 06:39:16 PM
So, in a medieval world, where cities are NOT generally considered places you want to live in, how exactly would you increase population growth?
Migration subsidies, free housing, free entertainment, greater-than-average infrastructure.
Stuff that costs a lot more gold than is probably worth it. But hey, if you really want to repopulate the cities, and don't have any war to dump your gold on, you might be tempted to do anyways.
Quote from: Tom on October 14, 2012, 06:40:37 PM
Errr... you need to read up on history. Starvation was a huge killer in the dark ages, and generals back to biblical times regularily put entire towns to the sword.
Oh, yes... but I said 'local' hunger... one region, or two...for big hungers there is no way out!... and yes, often a town or a city was destroyed and all the population killed... but a whole region? ... even the worst plagues, (as the Plague of Justinian or the Black Death) only killed half of the population.
Well... Maybe BM regions are smaller than I supposed...
Quote from: Poliorketes on October 15, 2012, 01:16:27 AM
Oh, yes... but I said 'local' hunger... one region, or two...for big hungers there is no way out!... and yes, often a town or a city was destroyed and all the population killed... but a whole region? ... even the worst plagues, (as the Plague of Justinian or the Black Death) only killed half of the population.
Well... Maybe BM regions are smaller than I supposed...
Half of general populations. I believe some localities were completely wiped off the map by the plague, and the damage it caused was certainly not spread evenly.
Quote from: Chénier on October 15, 2012, 01:34:52 AM
Half of general populations. I believe some localities were completely wiped off the map by the plague, and the damage it caused was certainly not spread evenly.
It's hard to tell... the medieval sources are not very reliable... These kind of plagues would affect cities more than the country regions. Modern sources believe around 40% of Constantinople and maybe 25% of rural areas population died in the Justinian plague. The Black Death probably killed around 50% cities population and 30% of rural areas... (It was 'a bit' more in south Europe and 'a bit' less in the north areas.) :P
Quote from: Poliorketes on October 15, 2012, 01:34:59 PM
It's hard to tell... the medieval sources are not very reliable... These kind of plagues would affect cities more than the country regions. Modern sources believe around 40% of Constantinople and maybe 25% of rural areas population died in the Justinian plague. The Black Death probably killed around 50% cities population and 30% of rural areas... (It was 'a bit' more in south Europe and 'a bit' less in the north areas.) :P
Again that's just averages.