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Despite all the discussions going on in various current topics, I do believe most players agree that the game would do well with a few more wars.

Over the years, we have had this discussion many times. The best result we've arrived at is that wars are not fought because (doh) they are dangerous. What that means is that almost every war is an all-or-nothing affair, and could mean the total destruction of a realm.


So what we could use are better ways to wage limited wars. You know, that end when the dispute about that border region has been concluded. Sure, they might leave behind a diplomatic situation as tense and cold as the Middle East, and they might spark a total war, but let's just look at the small dispute. Can we make this happen? What game mechanics do we need to make people use that option, if it were to exist? What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult? Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?

Well, i suggested somewhere already, 1 city realms. Realm cant have anything else than 1 city. Every city would be indipendent "realm" with council, with its own RC's etc.

I bet it will lead to some big alliances and federations... but still, there would be so much variables to keep huge alliances/federations stick together... its not exactly what you asked for, but i think it could lead to much more dynamic warfare and gaming. To dominate continent, you would need helluwa lot trusted buddies and pray hard that they stay that way. Realm destruction is possible, but there would be new realm at some point anyway...

Mayby test it on one of the islands... mayby test it on the island you plan to "sink" before sinking it.

-Jaune

Quote from: Tom on August 08, 2013, 11:44:45 AM
So what we could use are better ways to wage limited wars. You know, that end when the dispute about that border region has been concluded. Sure, they might leave behind a diplomatic situation as tense and cold as the Middle East, and they might spark a total war, but let's just look at the small dispute. Can we make this happen? What game mechanics do we need to make people use that option, if it were to exist? What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult? Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?

I always liked very much the idea behind the new diplomacy system that you tried to introduce a few years ago with the fine-scale declarations of war, such as raids or wars with specific territorial goals. I still think it would make the game better.

Revive the claim system in a limited fashion? Make it so that if a Duke in Keplerstan has a frontier province on the border with Keplerville, he can stake a claim to an adjoining region in Keplerville under certain circumstances. I suppose potentially you could use sympathy/diplomats towards this purpose. If sympathy in a bordering region reaches a certain level, a Duke with adjoining territory could stake a claim to it. You could then make it so that rulers can then press the specific, but limited claims of their vassals in a war.

Quote from: Tom on August 08, 2013, 11:44:45 AM
Despite all the discussions going on in various current topics, I do believe most players agree that the game would do well with a few more wars.

Over the years, we have had this discussion many times. The best result we've arrived at is that wars are not fought because (doh) they are dangerous. What that means is that almost every war is an all-or-nothing affair, and could mean the total destruction of a realm.


So what we could use are better ways to wage limited wars. You know, that end when the dispute about that border region has been concluded. Sure, they might leave behind a diplomatic situation as tense and cold as the Middle East, and they might spark a total war, but let's just look at the small dispute. Can we make this happen? What game mechanics do we need to make people use that option, if it were to exist? What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult? Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?

With the changes of sea travel, we are likely to see less war, not more. Wars are a lot more dangerous now. Suddenly, not only your border is exposed, but all of your coastal regions. which, for many realms, means most of their cities (most cities are concentrated along sea zones), probably their capital, and perhaps even most of their regions in general. Suddenly, Luria Nova can land an army deep in Morek territory and start a takeover before Morek even realizes what happened, can skip TOing the Desert of Silouhettes and jump staight for Sallowwild and Sallowtown. Riombara can just walk to Ete City, despite not having a border, and start a takeover. Astrum can go all the way down to the Madinian isle and try to annex some land.

Feels like sea zones were added too hastily, and little work has been put to finish them off since implemented. It's now functional, but not balanced.  Shipyards don't even work yet. And the possibility to takeover just about any coastal region by almost everyone (few don't have a region bordering a sea zone) is completely and utterly broken. If a belligerent wants to takeover a region, why would it bother itself with a border region when it can just as easily take a bigger wealthier region a bit further inland?

Quote from: Chénier on August 08, 2013, 01:27:50 PM
With the changes of sea travel, we are likely to see less war, not more. Wars are a lot more dangerous now. Suddenly, not only your border is exposed, but all of your coastal regions. which, for many realms, means most of their cities (most cities are concentrated along sea zones), probably their capital, and perhaps even most of their regions in general. Suddenly, Luria Nova can land an army deep in Morek territory and start a takeover before Morek even realizes what happened, can skip TOing the Desert of Silouhettes and jump staight for Sallowwild and Sallowtown. Riombara can just walk to Ete City, despite not having a border, and start a takeover. Astrum can go all the way down to the Madinian isle and try to annex some land.

But all the fear you cite—which I agree is real—is because of the mindset of players toward war.

Honestly, I'm not convinced there is any simple change we can make to game mechanics that will make players significantly more likely to be willing to make peace after limited gains.

I think that there are several reasons why we have this current situation, and if you will forgive me for a bit of a ramble, I'd like to enumerate them.

• People are afraid to leave a defeated enemy around to come back and bite them. This can be quite a legitimate fear, as I've seen it come back and bite realms in the past, to the tune of complete destruction. (For a semi-recent, prominent example, see Ibladesh and Perdan.)
• People rarely really know when to stop fighting. A war over ideological differences isn't likely to be stopped because one side changed their mind, because no one in BattleMaster ever changes their mind about anything substantive.
• Relatedly, once a realm is badly losing a war, they have no real incentive to surrender rather than see their realm destroyed. This leads to them demanding utterly absurd peace terms, that sometimes amount to demanding that the winning realm surrender if they want to end the war. Part of the motivation for this is that (somewhat paradoxically, given this topic) realms that destroy other realms are, at least to some, viewed with significant disfavour.
• The difficulty of continuing a war does not scale with how much of a realm you've destroyed. By and large, taking a border region is not meaningfully harder than taking the region next to the capital.
• Destruction—in general, not just of realms—is just too darn easy. Looting regions rogue has become too much of a standard practice, and it leaves those lands a wasteland for, in some cases, RL years afterward.
• There is no reason not to remain at war—in a single war—essentially forever. Your soldiers and peasants suffer no "wartime fatigue" of any kind, nor do your resources deplete (for the most part).

These last three are things that we can actually address in code. In fact, Tom, if you'll recall, the devs had a discussion earlier this year in which you approved some suggestions that should at least significantly mitigate the last two. One of my suggestions that you did not approve would have made a big difference to #4, as well (the idea of cultural influence).

Maybe level 1 and 2 fortifications should be based on how long a region has belonged to your realms. That way it will be harder to take regions in the heart of the realm

Quote from: Anaris on August 08, 2013, 02:02:41 PM
stuff

My only concern with a few of your suggestions is that they seem to imply implementing mechanics that effectively punish wars that go on too long, by making TO's harder, or affecting region maintenance, troop morale, etc. Unless you simultaneously succeed at incentivizing people to start more wars more often, you're actually going to reduce the amount of war in the game in the aggregate.

Part of this problem is that you're dealing with human nature here... A lot of the behaviors exhibited in the game are a function of rational action given certain incentives and disincentives. You have to determine what those are and how to alter them if you want IG behavior to change. Anaris has his finger on some of them, but the biggest one is quite simply that people are inherently risk-averse. They tend to avoid wars that they're not highly confident they can win, and then once in them they usually do everything they can to mitigate any future risks that might result, which often implies completely destroying your opponent or otherwise ensuring that he'll never be a threat to you again, or at least not for a long time (See: Eston). I do not see any way around this that wouldn't involve implementing systems that significantly depart from reality.

Quote from: Geronus on August 08, 2013, 05:31:56 PM
My only concern with a few of your suggestions is that they seem to imply implementing mechanics that effectively punish wars that go on too long, by making TO's harder, or affecting region maintenance, troop morale, etc.

I don't recall offhand what all the ideas were that Tom approved, but they did not include making region maintenance harder.

If you want to disincentivize wars-to-the-death in code, then I'm sorry, but from where I sit, you have to have some kind of mechanic that makes a war harder to sustain as it goes on longer.

Quote
Unless you simultaneously succeed at incentivizing people to start more wars more often, you're actually going to reduce the amount of war in the game in the aggregate.

That is at least as important a part of the war improvements package the devs discussed, and while, again, I don't recall the specifics off the top of my head, Tom definitely approved some changes to push in that direction, too.

Quote
Part of this problem is that you're dealing with human nature here... A lot of the behaviors exhibited in the game are a function of rational action given certain incentives and disincentives. You have to determine what those are and how to alter them if you want IG behavior to change. Anaris has his finger on some of them, but the biggest one is quite simply that people are inherently risk-averse. They tend to avoid wars that they're not highly confident they can win, and then once in them they usually do everything they can to mitigate any future risks that might result, which often implies completely destroying your opponent or otherwise ensuring that he'll never be a threat to you again, or at least not for a long time (See: Eston). I do not see any way around this that wouldn't involve implementing systems that significantly depart from reality.

Well, actually, the other way you can do it is to make the system move much closer to reality. After all, if the fear is of losing everything the character has gained, and the character is going to definitely die within another 10-30 game years, and his heir isn't someone you control...you might be more willing to take some risks to gain more while you're alive.

But, in general, you're probably right. And I don't have a problem with making changes that reduce realism, so long as they make BattleMaster a better game.

For instance (just to give a relatively extreme example), I don't think it would be totally beyond the pale to say that once Realm A has taken 1/4 of Realm B's regions, or 5 of Realm B's regions, whichever is more, Realm A cannot take any more regions from Realm B until Realm A has had a period of at least 3 RL months at peace to consolidate its hold on those regions. (I'm not entirely thrilled with mechanics like this because of the arbitrary magic numbers involved, but I think it gives the general idea.)

1 City per realm fixes the problem! :D

-jaune

Quote from: jaune on August 08, 2013, 05:47:11 PM
1 City per realm fixes the problem! :D

We heard you the 5th time, you can stop pushing the same idea if you don't have something constructive to add.

Honestly, a simple mechanic that stops wars from being able to mechanically takeover an entire realm (unless they started small) makes sense to me.

The cultural idea also makes sense. Make it that much more difficult to takeover regions next to a capital. And make it even harder to hold onto regions far away from capitals.

Quote from: Dante Silverfire on August 08, 2013, 06:04:21 PM
Honestly, a simple mechanic that stops wars from being able to mechanically takeover an entire realm (unless they started small) makes sense to me.

The cultural idea also makes sense. Make it that much more difficult to takeover regions next to a capital. And make it even harder to hold onto regions far away from capitals.

If I can't take them, I will drive them rogue. It doesn't matter if I can have them, the important thing is that I deny them to you.

The idea of limited wars in a good one. But t is very hard to come up with some way to enforce or incentivize this. Tim's "grand cycle of war and peace" idea is a possible one that could have some good effects.

Quote from: jaune on August 08, 2013, 05:47:11 PM
1 City per realm fixes the problem! :D

-jaune

Why bother going to war if you can't take the profits of the enemy capital?

Also, this makes the problem of the "forever duke" even worse.

Quote from: egamma on August 08, 2013, 06:54:38 PM
Also, this makes the problem of the "forever duke" even worse.

In a city-state, duke = ruler. Tie two together. Lose one, you lose them both.

Quote from: Indirik on August 08, 2013, 06:47:46 PM
If I can't take them, I will drive them rogue. It doesn't matter if I can have them, the important thing is that I deny them to you.

The idea of limited wars in a good one. But t is very hard to come up with some way to enforce or incentivize this. Tim's "grand cycle of war and peace" idea is a possible one that could have some good effects.

That is a good point.

Well, one way to do it would still be to make regions more loyal (than they are now) the closer to the capital they are. This would prevent people from driving them rogue as well as slowing takeovers.

I don't think limited wars are very feasible without first addressing the imbalance in realm sizes. If we introduced a mechanic to allow realms to fight (e.g.) over one region, what would happen is that a larger realm would fight a smaller one over a 'claim' to one region. Then a little while later they'd declare another limited war over one region... rinse and repeat until the smaller realm is eaten up. The end result of realm death being a disincentive to fight wars would be just the same.

Forgive me for turning the problem on its head, but my take on this is that if you want more limited wars you have to stop realms being able to expand to huge sizes so that it gives more incentives to create new colonies. More realms = more different players in government positions = more political intrigue = more wars. The fact that no one realm could just expand right over the others actually creates incentives to fight wars because you know they physically won't be able to control all of your regions if they win the war unless they create a new colony, which in turn would create more political intrigue which would create more wars.

My way of doing this would be to introduce a hard cap on the number of regions one realm can control, with the actual number varying depending on the total number of regions on a particular map.

So here's an out of the box idea that might accomplish the above in a slightly more flexible fashion:

Implement "cultures." Similar to weather areas, regions would be grouped into "cultures," reflecting the nature and origin of the peasants of that area. A realm would automatically be identified with the "culture" of either its capital or perhaps whatever the majority of its peasants happen to be. You could even use existing realms as the basis of the first cultures.

Culture would affect control and take over mechanics; regions with an alien culture would be harder to take and control, as Evilstanis wouldn't like their Keplerstani overlords and resent being ruled by them. Similarly, taking regions that match your culture would be easier. If the mechanics were properly adjusted, you could effectively implement a soft cap on the number of regions a realm could safely hold.

There are some problems with this idea, but depending on how creative you're willing to get with it, you might be able to do interesting things. Perhaps there would be a way to (over time) artificially alter a region's culture and assimilate it into your own. Perhaps cultures would slowly change over time on their own reflecting migration and cultural assimilation, and also forcing realms to adapt to changing circumstances. Keeping a soft cap on the total number of peasants that could belong to each culture could prevent realms from forging some sort of cultural takeover of an island; maybe you can assimilate as many regions as you want, but by doing so you make your other regions progressively more susceptible to being assimilated by other cultures in turn to the point that there's an effective cap on how many you can assimilate, where every region you assimilate almost automatically causes another region to be assimilated by some other culture.

Just a thought. Might be too complex, but it seems like an interesting approach to limiting realm sizes and possibly even to forcing realms to take time to stabilize new acquisitions (if they have to culturally assimilate the new regions to hold them).

You would have to be able to chamge the culture of a region. Otherwise we are just predefining realms, and calling ti "culture".

Quote from: Indirik on August 09, 2013, 12:03:09 AM
You would have to be able to chamge the culture of a region. Otherwise we are just predefining realms, and calling ti "culture".

Alternatively you could make cultures integrate into a realm. So the first 5 months the culture is totally rejected, both ways. Then the next 5 months it is mildly tolerated. Finally it is accepted as an "integrated" culture that is recognized as part of the realm.

An idea that of course comes from Europe Universalis. In fact, I suggest Tom tries it out to find more ways about limited wars. Infamy is a very interesting thing there... and it works. Basically, you accumulate too much without a decent claim, you gain infamy - once you get too much, the entire world just decides you are an evil villain and you need to be chopped up.  8)

Quote from: Indirik on August 09, 2013, 12:03:09 AM
You would have to be able to chamge the culture of a region. Otherwise we are just predefining realms, and calling ti "culture".

This is why my suggestion for this (which Tom ended up rejecting, though IIRC not in an "over-my-dead-body" kind of way) didn't call it the native culture of the people living there, but rather spheres of cultural influence that spread out from cities you control.

This was, in turn, fed by Glory, so the more glorious battles and such you could sing about, the stronger your cultural dominance became, and the more regions you could control. So the longer you were at peace, without glorious deeds to sing about, the more your realm would (slowly) contract—though never beyond a reasonable distance from your cities, unless you were at peace for a truly absurd length of time.

Trying to do something like this in the Colonies (still)... Not sure how it will all work out in the end but it is a fun way to try.  Then again the Colonies are a completely different animal than any other location.

Background: Lukon and Oritolon were nearly taken out by a few realms years ago and over the last decade have taken revenge on all nations who were against them or did not help them (aka all other realms).

Problem: The Colonies have become very slow and very boring.  For a while Lukon was creating wars for the sake of it, or allowing factions I knew were against our realm to thrive so that they would make something for us to fight against.  Worked for a while but really hard to remain true to RP character and in the end was continuing the  stagnate environment.

Idea: Create something that would return the realms to one city each (Not very ideal on other islands...as mentioned 5 times before)... make a system of Guilds to unite the Colonies with an elected senate (United Nations) to develop a few laws: Allow Infiltrators to buy back bans...to prevent deportation or death; Freedom of religion...let the priests/religions have a chance to develop their own way of combating each other; Force a proclamation of war...so that everyone knows what the initial goal of the war is and what needs to be done to satisfy the end of it; lastly no nation will be destroyed by another intentionally.

Beyond those few initial laws I have no idea how the senate will progress.  But it is an idea we are trying to see happen if Oritolon would just stop fighting it so hard!  ;D

What I envision coming about are a series of federation voting blocs which may be united by other guilds (so that wars can still take place between the nations in the federations) trying to gain an upper hand in the senate.

It is not as complex as it sounds but I know it would be more complicated on any other island.  After all the Colonies have been reduced to only 4.

Credit goes to James (and another from Outer Tilog who I unfortunately can not recall) for the initial idea.

The key to it all is not the prevention of killing off a realm, although it is needed for starting, but the starting of small scale wars over boarders, gold, honor, evil, stupidity and eventually religion and skilled infiltrators once everything starts to fall apart.

Will it work?  Stay tuned...I have no idea.

Quote from: Geronus on August 08, 2013, 11:47:23 PM
Implement "cultures."

Sure. Pay us a professional full-time coder for a month.

Limited wars can be incentivized by massive short-term bonuses with steep precipices when they go away.

For example: there could be some kind of, I dunno, "Establish a Professional Military" option for a general. This would be like building a fortification in terms of financial commitment involved. When it's complete, it gives you, say, a 15,000 CS army you don't have to pay (and of course there's some kind of cap) which is placed as militia in the capital as, say, 1,000 CS units that the general can hand out to people, or whatever. I dunno exactly how it would work, but bear with me.

These units would appear very suddenly, and cannot be replaced. They can be added to current units without violating unit-size caps. They don't violate realism because attempts by medieval powers to create standing professional armies did occur, but never lasted for very long.

Now imagine you're the realm that saved all the cash and made this army. Now you have a free army that appeared all at once. Move fast and you can conquer several regions easily. Sure your army will be torn apart over time and is prohibitively expensive to replace: but the different time-schedule and unit characteristics make it a dynamic feature that can make systems highly unbalanced.

Now then, maybe we say that hiring a professional army has some side effects. Professional armies need quartering, you know, and they have a hearty appetite. They're not paid from the land incomes of nobles; they're salaried conscripts.... but they take some on the side too. So beginning, say, 7 days after recruitment, they automatically begin looting every region they're in: or maybe not looting, just taking some gold and food.

Let's think about the dynamics here, both domestic and foreign.

Domestically, this is an army that a general (or maybe ruler, whichever, doesn't matter) can call up without noble support, provided he can get gold. It's a way for the council to exert force over the lords. It's a damn expensive way, and it won't last forever, but it's a way. And it's a way that a ruler could pursue a personal foreign policy: so your lords don't want to support a war? Fine; get a couple willing knights and assign them some professional soldiers, fight your war as you like. At the same time, a ruler doing this is making a gamble: every moment these soldiers are in-realm, they're stealing gold from the lords and eating their food. Lords have a reason to be concerned about council members raising professional armies: especially since ultimately the gold used to pay for them was theirs originally. So it's a source of internal dynamism.

Also a few things: I would suggest that, in the event of starvation in a region or a huge defeat in battle, professional soldiers should have a chance of going rogue and/or flipping to a realm you're at war with. So the Janissaries can stage a palace coup, so to speak. In the event of a rebellion, professional soldiers should side with either their "sponsor" or whoever they're assigned to, based on, I dunno, who has the highest prestige or something.

In foreign policy, these armies would allow small realms to have powerful first-strike capabilities and conceal major military resources. Also, small realms with shorter marching distances could have professional soldiers spend less time in their realm eating food and taking gold. Finally, I would note my suggestion that a huge defeat in battle can affect these soldiers' loyalty: this suggests that realms have an incentive not to risk their professional corps. So after they take their regions, they will have an incentive to sue for peace.

And that's the last key item: make it so that any time you sign peace treaties ending all wars (so go to total peace), you have an option to peacefully disband your professional soldiers; or maybe quarter them or something. So instead of becoming casualties, they go home, and the sponsor gets a refund equivalent to what % of soldiers were left over at the end of the war(s).

You wanted a suggestion, there's a suggestion. A big incentive to start wars: asymmetrical army sizes, hidden strength. A big incentive to sign peace: major downside risk on defeats, refunded money. A way to solve the longstanding "council members are powerless" complaint: soldiers not dependent on lords. A way to provoke conflict between council members and lords: professional military corps supplanting nobles.

I have in mind as historical precedent, as I mentioned, groups like the Jannisaries, Varangians, Mamelukes, and to a lesser extent even Housecarls of Anglo-Saxon groups and even Roman Legions.

Don't like the idea? Fine, it'd be a massive coding project. I can come up with another idea.

I disagree with Tim that we can't make code that will incentivize more and limited wars. I think it's completely possible. All we need is to create conditions that make decisive, early victories likely, and rapidly-concluded peace treaties beneficial.

I should note:

I don't expect the above idea to be taken even remotely seriously. I'm just pointing out that there do exist ways to creatively put these incentives in the game, and even sometimes in ways that create beneficial effects on many levels and fit the historical period.

Quote from: Vellos on August 09, 2013, 12:56:46 AM
I disagree with Tim that we can't make code that will incentivize more and limited wars. I think it's completely possible.

I didn't say we couldn't do it. I said there was nothing simple.

What you have proposed here is not simple.

Limited Wars: A (Not Very) Modest Proposal

Limited wars sound good in theory, but players are worried they will become, like all other war mechanics, just another way to completely (albeit more slowly) destroy a realm. To counter this, I am proposing we add in a system of "coded casus belli" that can be used to start wars, a la Crusader Kings 2. This won't entirely prevent realm destruction, but it will make it much harder to achieve (and will add a host of interesting new mechanics for people to explore.)

What constitutes a 'casus belli'?

Claims.

A realm must have a claim they can press on a region before going to war over it. Claims can vary by type and strength, and here are some hypothetical examples:

+ A nobleman of your realm was previously lord of a region. He has a strong claim to the region, which the realm can use to go to war with the other realm currently holding that region. If they successfully take over the region, the nobleman is installed as its lord.

+ A region was once a part of your realm, but has since been taken over, has rebelled, or has been for whatever reason claimed by another realm. Your realm has the option to go to war to reclaim this region, and the strength of the claim would vary by the amount of time it had been a part of your realm, versus a part of this other realm.

+ A member of your realm is an elder member of the Church of Signs and Snakes. There is a region bordering your realm, or on the coast, that has a majority of Signs and Snakes worshippers. Their region lord, however, does not follow the religion. As a result, your realm receives a weak claim to the region they can press on behalf of the elder member of Signs and Snakes.

+ A member of your ruling council is an elder member of the Church of Signs and Snakes. Alternatively, your realm is a Theocracy and has pledged (in some coded fashion) to following the Church of Signs and Snakes. The Church has labeled another religion, the religion of Chutes and Ladders as "evil." As such, your realm receives a strong claim to any region owned by a realm that has a majority of Chutes and Ladders worshippers. (Potentially: make this dependent on if the Ruler is a member of Chutes and Ladders, or the number of "evil" churches in the area, etc.)

How does this fix anything?

+ Claims have a strength to them - strong claims, weak claims, etc. For example, you might have a strong claim to a region that you could press on behalf of another noble or knight (thus installing them as a lord if you win the war) and a weak claim you could press for yourself. If it's a wealthy city, or the noble is a rival of yours, you might want to press the weak claim and take it for yourself, rather than support their claim to it. However,

+ Claim strength prevents war fatigue. - By which I mean, add in some kind of "war fatigue" that peasants of the realm suffer the longer they are at war. Weak claims give you less wiggle room, and peasants begin to complain more quickly, or violently, or etc., the longer the war drags on - culminating in uprisings. (I'll go into rogue forces in a bit.) A strong claim would keep the peasants happy for longer, enabling you to war for longer.

+ Weak claims disappear if the war is lost. Strong claims become weak claims if the war is lost.

New "Rogue Forces"

+ Peasants

Peasants suffer from war fatigue, and will eventually form peasant revolts and uprisings: large in number, but low strength per individual. Similar to how peasants work now. These uprisings will attempt takeovers of the region they are in, and will continue to grow if left unchecked for long.

+ Soldiers

There used to be a "peace time fatigue" where region stats would drop and soldiers would get unruly if the realm was not at war. I don't know if it still exists, or was removed, but it was annoying as hell. However, I'm going to suggest something similar to it. Restablish a peace time fatigue that only affects soldiers - in units or as militia. Instead of region stat drops, too much peace time fatigue will cause "soldier revolts" or "armed rebellions" - like the peasant uprisings above, but with stronger CS. They would also attempt takeovers of regions they were in, but may not grow over time. This "peace time fatigue" would need to be balanced so that it was difficult to achieve, and was based in part around how much standing army/militia a realm had. A large standing army, and no war, should equal malcontents.

Fabricating Claims

+ What happens when there are no claims on a region, though? We're trying to make war both more appealing, and more easily introduced. If wars could only be fought over claims, and claims eventually fade, won't that mean wars will eventually cease? Hence - in Crusader Kings 2, you can send your (I forgot the name of it? Castellan? Steward?) to fabricate claims on another region on your behalf. This takes time, and your steward is in danger of being caught while there.

Do something similar with Battlemaster. Allow Stewards (aka Bankers - and yes, holy !@#$, I'm implying bankers get to actually do something cool) to attempt to fabricate claims to regions of other realms that your realm shares a border with. These claims would be weak claims and function as if the region was a part of your realm once, and was lost.

However, also make it dicey. The banker should be able to send minions to fabricate the claims (he won't have to be physically present there, since that would encourage meta-gaming) but these minions should have a chance of being caught. (Ie, like how scouts can be captured and show who they've come from.) Should the fabricating claim critically fail, the region lord should be alerted to the fact that someone was attempting to fabricate a claim to his region. Make it variable: sometimes they'll only get the "someone" echo, and sometimes they'll be given full information "John Hawkes, Castellan of the Land of Lamb, has failed in an attempt to fabricate a claim to your region."

So... You can create claims, and you can fail to create claims - but, good news! A failure to fabricate a claim on a region of a realm, if a critical failure, can in turn create a claim for the other realm. Instead of getting a claim on land, they receive a weak "revenge" claim on your realm - and have the option to go to war for tribute/gold.


Wars For More/Less Than Just Land

+ Not all claims would be on regions, and when fabricating a claim, you would have an option for which claim to attempt - each with differing levels of difficulty.

+ You could start wars to demand tribute, and any land captured during the war would revert back to their original owner at its conclusion.

+ War to capture a noble. IE, a foreign realm is currently holding an enemy of the state. You fabricate a claim to war with them, and at its conclusion, if you win, the enemy noble in question is transferred to your dungeons with rogue status. If the enemy noble flees to another realm before the conclusion of the war, the war ends inconclusively and the noble is not transferred to your dungeons.

+ Wars to install new leaders. Not sure on the specifics of this, but could be cool.

Also related: wars within a realm to force a duke to step down from his position, should a claim be fabricated. And furthermore: if intra-realm war did/could exist (I saw the post saying it was a pipe dream, but so is this) allow dukes to fabricate claims on regions in other duchies.

Also also: Allow dukes to appoint a council of their own that only function within their duchies - a Ducal Banker, Ducal Judge. "Ducal General" is already possible through the founding of armies and the appointment of Marshals.


Disclaimer: I have not spell-checked any of this, it's early, and I have probably typoed a heap.

Disclaimer #2: I know it's all probably impossible given the current coding abilities of BM staff. But the game needs change. Otherwise, stagnant like it is, it'll just continue to die slowly. As it stands, Might&Fealty will probably be its death knell.

tl;dr: Crusader Kings 2. Basically.

"Limited" wars aren't what they used to be. Back then, even if they were rare, at least it was for border (rural) regions. Nowadays, even if you only have enough nobles to take on only one more region, you can pick whichever region you want, even a coastal city deeper down.

Naval armies are also invisible, unscoutable. Aurvandil could sail a huge army past D'Hara and Barca, land right in the heart of Terran and occupy its capital before it even realized what was happening. This would never have been possible before. They would have been seen weeks in advance, and it would have been easy to devert a few forces to hold on the fortified regions.

Naval travel makes war a considerable amount more dangerous. If you go to war with someone, you don't just put your border regions at risk anymore, you put your whole realm at risk, because the enemy can land anywhere and depart before you can even start to rally to react.

I'm far from hating naval travel, but it went live unfinished and broken. Already one realm, Terran, was destroyed by a mild use of its power. And we haven't even seen the worse yet.

Quote from: Tom on August 09, 2013, 12:21:06 AM
Sure. Pay us a professional full-time coder for a month.

I did say it might be too complex  :)

I'm just going to reiterate my suggestion because it seems to be missed.

Allow level one and two fortifications in rural regions, but only if they have core realm control and have belonged to the realm for a set amount of time.

Quote from: pcw27 on August 09, 2013, 05:08:59 AM
I'm just going to reiterate my suggestion because it seems to be missed.

Allow level one and two fortifications in rural regions, but only if they have core realm control and have belonged to the realm for a set amount of time.

That will make it harder to change the status quo, not easier.

Besides, it's impossible to build a 30-mile palisade. We aren't playing Romans here.

I've never played a game that prevented map painting without resorting to draconian measures. One that did resort to such measures was the Magna Mundi mod for Europa Universalis 3, which made conquering land an extremely slow and taxing endeavour. So, in order to prevent map painting, that is probably what would have to be implemented.

We've had the base idea of cycles and short-term vs. long-term about 3 years ago. The problem is that some brainstorming in it quickly revealed how easily players would be able to abuse the mechanic.

The main problem we have is there is no code-wise way to determine whether a realm is really at war or just pretending to be in order to gain whatever short-term benefits we add.


We have tried to add something along this line many years ago with the RC system. The basic idea is that during peacetime, your RCs will fill up, allowing you to recruit a massive army quickly when a war starts, but as the RCs empty out, recruitment slows down.

Tell me how well that works.

That's a good idea, it mimics the reality that resource constraints would have on crude warfare. Wars are, after all, not eternal affairs, and in a technologically limited setting where communication, industry and logistics are severely impaired, they would tend to fizzle out before a conclusive victory could be attained. In our industrialised world, amongst nations that can manage and commit resources with utmost efficiency, wars generally last about five years and can easily result in total victory; this is the kind of war that BM experiences now. Going back through time, to the age in which BM is set, you begin to find wars with excessively long durations. The Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628. These were wars that could last generations. Of course, they weren't singular wars, but rather sporadic bouts of fighting broken up by periods of peace, and that is key. The states of the world back then were so base that wars could drag on and on due to their limited capacity to wage them. This is what the type of situation that resource constraints could lead to. Conquests limited to whatever can be achieved within a controlled amount of time, via resource factors. Sounds good.

You might also want to take a page out of Machiavelli's book, The Prince. In it he mentions the difficulties states experience when trying to assert themselves in unfamiliar lands. The locals do not care for their new, foreign masters and so the new lands require expensive garrisons. These garrisons prove to be costly, perhaps resulting in a net loss, and are frail, in that they can be easily disrupted. So, relate these things to BM somehow. The ways are obvious and already done to some extent, but they can be made more extensive. Intensify the troubles that realms have in holding conquered lands far away from their capitals.

Also, Scarlett was always talking about how scorched earth style looting is unrealistic. Perhaps looting could be changed as well, so that it can only harm a region, not turn it into uninhabited wasteland.

Quote from: pcw27 on August 09, 2013, 05:08:59 AM
I'm just going to reiterate my suggestion because it seems to be missed.

Allow level one and two fortifications in rural regions, but only if they have core realm control and have belonged to the realm for a set amount of time.

Not missed, just dismissed  :-\

There used to be an option to build palisades in all regions, but it was removed because it made cavalry useless. Unfortunately it will not promote wars, but promote more stagnancy.

I have an insane idea and I am afraid of putting it in front of you all, but, here it is anyway :

1. Introduce something like "realm honor".
2. Realms can challenge any realm which matches their total CS into a duel (due to some dispute). It can be 1 vs 1 or N vs N fight.
3. Put something at stake (like regions, gold, official apology etc...).
4. Those involved in duel can loot/kill/burn each other's regions (regions can be driven rogue, but enemy take over is not allowed) till one of the party accepts defeat.
5. The winner takes the prize which was at stake. Winner gains "realm honor" and the looser looses it.
6. If somebody rejects an equally matched challenge, then they loose "realm honor".

This is not a perfectly planned idea, but I know that intelligent and thoughtful people might be able to take little hints from this.

Quote from: Elegant on August 09, 2013, 11:28:42 AM
I have an insane idea and I am afraid of putting it in front of you all, but, here it is anyway :

1. Introduce something like "realm honor".
2. Realms can challenge any realm which matches their total CS into a duel (due to some dispute). It can be 1 vs 1 or N vs N fight.
3. Put something at stake (like regions, gold, official apology etc...).
4. Those involved in duel can loot/kill/burn each other's regions (regions can be driven rogue, but enemy take over is not allowed) till one of the party accepts defeat.
5. The winner takes the prize which was at stake. Winner gains "realm honor" and the looser looses it.
6. If somebody rejects an equally matched challenge, then they loose "realm honor".

This is not a perfectly planned idea, but I know that intelligent and thoughtful people might be able to take little hints from this.

I luv this idea, althought it doesnt fit too well on the "realistic" part of the game or BM at all... and it should not be CS what we compare, it should be income. CS is too easily to manipulated, disband all armies, challenge... raise army.

I dream that BM could have "sandbox" island and resources to test out diffrent things :)

Quote from: Tom on August 09, 2013, 09:32:22 AM
We've had the base idea of cycles and short-term vs. long-term about 3 years ago. The problem is that some brainstorming in it quickly revealed how easily players would be able to abuse the mechanic.

The main problem we have is there is no code-wise way to determine whether a realm is really at war or just pretending to be in order to gain whatever short-term benefits we add.


We have tried to add something along this line many years ago with the RC system. The basic idea is that during peacetime, your RCs will fill up, allowing you to recruit a massive army quickly when a war starts, but as the RCs empty out, recruitment slows down.

Tell me how well that works.

I fear it would just make wars even more lopsided: the stronger enemy, with more RCs, has an even easier time to totally destroy his enemy, because his troop "stocks" will last longer.

Quote from: Chénier on August 09, 2013, 12:31:51 PM
I fear it would

Uh, "would"? This is the way the RC system has worked for... years... probably coming to a decade now.

Quote from: Chénier on August 09, 2013, 12:31:51 PM
I fear it would just make wars even more lopsided: the stronger enemy, with more RCs, has an even easier time to totally destroy his enemy, because his troop "stocks" will last longer.

But if you give a minor boost to the war time recruitment speed of smaller realms, a group of small realms has an easier time of fighting a large realm. What I'm afraid of is that this would give a new reason to be afraid to go to war again. You're using up your soldiers, and some other realm might abuse that - now for a lengthier period of time.

Quote from: Kwanstein on August 09, 2013, 06:57:20 AM
I've never played a game that prevented map painting without resorting to draconian measures.

I'm not sure what "map painting" means...

Quote from: Kwanstein on August 09, 2013, 10:20:37 AM
Also, Scarlett was always talking about how scorched earth style looting is unrealistic. Perhaps looting could be changed as well, so that it can only harm a region, not turn it into uninhabited wasteland.

Anaris has long had an idea for a way to do this, by adding a new "Infrastructure" stat. Infrastructure would then be the condition of the physical structures used to produce things, both crops and goods. This stuff would be hard for an invading army to destroy, and would thus be difficult to  affect too significantly without a long, concerted effort by a lot of soldiers. Production would then become the current, instantaneous, ability to use that infrastructure to produce things, either crops or goods. The production value would be easy to produce reduce through looting (you're driving the workers into hiding, so they aren't producing anything), and easy to restore (you're rounding up the workers, and sending them back to work). In this way you could drive down the production of a region to deprive your enemy of its use, without destroying it completely. If you drive the invaders out, you could quickly restore production.

But if the enemy made a long term effort to really tear up a region's infrastructure, it could take a lot of time and effort to restore it.

Quote from: Indirik on August 09, 2013, 06:17:33 PM
I'm not sure what "map painting" means...

In any strategy game of this sort there is a snowball effect that as a player gains land he gains power and with that power it becomes easier for him to gain more land and it eventually he reaches a point where he's simply conquering land with impunity -- painting the game map, if you will, with his faction's colours or emblem.

Battlemaster functions much the same way, despite it being a unique game in many aspects. Look at game worlds today versus five or more years ago. It's most obvious on the Colonies, but is present on all other maps except Dwilight and Beluaterra. Some realms have grown increasingly large, massive even, and the overall number of realms has fallen. On Colonies you can see that where once there was a realm for every city and then one, now there are three realms each controlling 2-3 cities and then some podunk realm up North that only exists because it has no city for anyone to bother to take.

Quote from: Kwanstein on August 09, 2013, 07:09:05 PM
It's most obvious on the Colonies, but...

To be fair... the Colonies became this way because of IC reasions... but also a refusal to step away from IC to make sure the game was supported long term.  Once a mental shift took place (realizing what was happening due to dwindling player base) realms were allowed to reclaim capitols.  But your point is still valid considering I had to use the word "allowed"...

A better example of painting is the war islands game.  Where once a realm has reached a tipping point there really is no reason not to hit the surrender button...your going to loose.

So this brings something to mind.  HOW do you make it not just OK but sweetly awesome for a family to loose?  In other words you have a character or even family who has been ruling a realm for a long time...how do you make it exciting/profitable/encouraged to step away from that?  Or on the reverse how do you make it more outstanding for someone to attempt a rebellion?

Remember that we as human, want to win...want to encourage our 'team' to 'win'.

I think the answer is in rewarding the behavior we want to see take place.  You want more rebellions then we must reward those with the nuts to attempt it...not just win at it.  Same thing for creating a realm from another... They may fail at it and be absorbed again into the mother realm but how do you reward the effort of trying?

(odd ball idea...  Let family wealth increase at a higher rate for noble families who become news worthy.  In other words...every action you take in game adds a ticker to your family name so that they become famous as whatshisnames family.... more successful business takes place, more money in the family pockets that can make its way to the characters)

Quote from: Valast on August 09, 2013, 07:53:50 PM
A better example of painting is the war islands game.  Where once a realm has reached a tipping point there really is no reason not to hit the surrender button...your going to loose.

I recall a truly epic game of War Islands, where my opponent achieved 170~ production while I was only at 100~. He maintained his advantage for a very long time and at the height of his power his armies outnumbered mine by nearly 2:1. Through clever movements and luck I was able to claw my way back from defeat. He'd concentrate his forces taking a region I left totally undefended, while I'd send small strike forces to do the same across multiple of his regions. He'd follow up by splitting his forces into small strike forces, but I would anticipate that and beat some of them down. Through this cost efficient play I was able to effectively nullify his production advantage, and in time the scales tipped into my favour.

Never surrender. When the enemy has an advantage on you, get riskier. You will still probably lose, but with enough luck and gumption you can still have a chance. At the very least, the enemy could go AFK for three turns and forfeit.

Quote from: Kwanstein on August 09, 2013, 07:09:05 PM
Battlemaster functions much the same way, despite it being a unique game in many aspects. Look at game worlds today versus five or more years ago. It's most obvious on the Colonies, but is present on all other maps except Dwilight and Beluaterra. Some realms have grown increasingly large, massive even, and the overall number of realms has fallen.

OK, I see what you mean with that. I thought it was something like that, but I wanted to make sure.

IMO, the reduced number of realms is due to the low player density. Crank up the density, and you'll start to see realms fall apart due to internal pressures. The way it is now, players generally have all the titles they want or can handle. If not, then they would generate more conflict trying to get them. This lack of internal pressure is why you end up with monstrous behemoths like Sirion, Perdan, Arcaea, Morek, Astrum, etc....

There are several game mechanics to limit this kind of spread. As they grow larger there are multiplying penalties that begin to grow, especially if a realm grows out of proportion to the rest of the realms on the island. Perhaps those penalties need to be increased.

Quote from: Indirik on August 09, 2013, 10:38:09 PM
Perhaps those penalties need to be increased.

Or perhaps new incentives need to be provided.  I understand the thinking of using mechanics to make things harder for those realms... but that is an idea of control.  Control will always leave the people being controlled feeling like they are being messed over.

Instead, find a way to empower.  Provide some reason for someone to secede a city or start a rebellion...or for a count to move a region to another realm.

The spirit of this game has never been about it controlling the players but about empowering them to go and do crazy awesome things.  I am not talking about creating new classes or protection for new realms.  Just bump up infiltrator skill advances... or provide a honor vs infamy scale for characters or the family gold idea I mentioned earlier.

What about giving the ruler a personal sort of "realm upkeep" cost that doubles (or something) with each duchy. The sort of thing where with one duchy it's irrelevant, but with 3 he needs to start taxing the Dukes, and at 4 the Dukes actually would make money from succesfully departing from the realm. This is a stick solution, but I feel the issue comes from the "sweetspot" that is being a Duke in a big realm, and the lack of reason for Emperors to turn crazy megalomaniacs. :P

But with the current player distribution it might not be the best thing to encourage smaller realms. It's boring to be split into <20 people entities, depending on the people of course.

All that would do is encourage realms to have only one, huge duchy.

I thought there were already some penalties for that. If not, the same system could be used for big duchies too. Or stick something else, like recruitment. I realize as I write now that what I really suggest, is turning the current large realm penalty that lowers production on the region level, into a top heavy model. No Lord will blame the ruler for not being able to put taxes to 20%, but if a large realm forces the rulers and dukes to tax more it might make ruling a large realm harder. Nobody likes being taxed.

What about something like Europa Universalis's infamy mechanic? (Not that different from the realm honor suggestion earlier.)
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Reputation

Of course we'll need a more complex and formalized war mechanic to go with it. Then TOing a region will not be the same as formally absorbing it. At the end of a war, realms "settle up", and those that took regions without historical (or fabricated!) claims gain infamy. Infamy slowly go down over time. If your realm's infamy becomes too high, then every other realm can take your regions without accruing infamy themselves. We can introduce additional penalties for high infamy to discourage it if necessary.

Quote from: Indirik on August 09, 2013, 10:38:09 PM
There are several game mechanics to limit this kind of spread. As they grow larger there are multiplying penalties that begin to grow, especially if a realm grows out of proportion to the rest of the realms on the island. Perhaps those penalties need to be increased.

Has the mechanics changed? The penalties seems to be more lenient than 5-6 years ago. Back then i thought 2 city realms in the colonies were the absolute practical limit and 5-6 cities in other island.

Quote from: Jaron on August 10, 2013, 05:54:43 AM
Has the mechanics changed? The penalties seems to be more lenient than 5-6 years ago. Back then i thought 2 city realms in the colonies were the absolute practical limit and 5-6 cities in other island.

Actually, I've ben curious about this as well, because that's my perception also, that it's easier to sustain a large realm these days than several years ago.

Quote from: Vellos on August 10, 2013, 05:50:00 PM
Actually, I've ben curious about this as well, because that's my perception also, that it's easier to sustain a large realm these days than several years ago.

With the new estate system came a lot of changes to made BuroMaster a thing of the past. We don't need any courtiers anymore, as long as taxes are set reasonably. The downside is that the large realm penalties can simply be negated by lowering the taxes by just a tiny bit.

You could make a soft cap against large realms this way:

Cities produce documents. Distant regions that do not produce documents require them in order to maintain some vital regional stat. If you fail to support your region with enough documents, it will require increasingly more bureaucratic work and courts to maintain it - the more so the biggest your realm is and the furthest you are from the capital.

So, you can have a large realm, but it will cost you the price of the documents that you buy from foreign cities that do not need them so badly.

Quote from: Tiridia on August 11, 2013, 11:06:08 AM
You could make a soft cap against large realms this way:

Cities produce documents. Distant regions that do not produce documents require them in order to maintain some vital regional stat. If you fail to support your region with enough documents, it will require increasingly more bureaucratic work and courts to maintain it - the more so the biggest your realm is and the furthest you are from the capital.

So, you can have a large realm, but it will cost you the price of the documents that you buy from foreign cities that do not need them so badly.

I dont see that as a soft cap against large realms as i understand it, the only thing it will limit is taking over too much regions that are not cities. And large rural realms with minimal number of cities are not that big of a threat to anything at all.

Quote from: Jaron on August 11, 2013, 12:26:06 PM
I dont see that as a soft cap against large realms as i understand it, the only thing it will limit is taking over too much regions that are not cities. And large rural realms with minimal number of cities are not that big of a threat to anything at all.

What is your definition of "large"? Mine implies that it is a realm that has many regions. Rural regions are regions too. What am I missing here?

Quote from: Tiridia on August 11, 2013, 11:06:08 AM
Cities produce documents.

This. You will just need more cities if you want to have more non-city regions. Heck, Sirion has like 7 cities?

Quote from: Jaron on August 12, 2013, 01:26:40 AM
This. You will just need more cities if you want to have more non-city regions. Heck, Sirion has like 7 cities?

Hmm, I suppose I was thinking with Dwilight perspective, as I do not play anywhere else.

Quote from: Indirik on August 09, 2013, 06:26:37 PM
Anaris has long had an idea for a way to do this, by adding a new "Infrastructure" stat. Infrastructure would then be the condition of the physical structures used to produce things, both crops and goods. This stuff would be hard for an invading army to destroy,

Unfortunately, in the middle ages almost everything was way easier to destroy then to construct. If it can burn, you can destroy it with a torch and 30 seconds of your time. And most things were made of wood.

Entire villages being burnt to the ground was way too common for comfort.

I completely agree that we need to put a stop to the "loot rogue" abuse.

On that note, I think rogues regions need to be more dangerous in general. Currently they are not really living up to their name.
Population also die off too easily, its not that hard to reduce a region to 0 pop.

Quote from: Tom on August 12, 2013, 09:22:51 AM
Unfortunately, in the middle ages almost everything was way easier to destroy then to construct. If it can burn, you can destroy it with a torch and 30 seconds of your time. And most things were made of wood.

Entire villages being burnt to the ground was way too common for comfort.

Then screw realism; it's that attitude that's led to this game not being fun far too often.

And regions are much bigger than a single village, its like burning and killing of an entire county (or more) which i dont think happen often even in the real world.

Well, perhaps a start could be to remove the feature that triggers hundreds of peasants to stupidly take up arms every turn and get slaughtered. That would at least stop the rapid depopulation of regions which then need RL months to even start to recover. It's highly unrealistic that one morning, 700+ peasants get massacred while inflicting only half a dozen casualties, and 12 hours later another 500+ think "Well those guys may have gotten absolutely slaughtered for nothing this morning, but by the gods, we'll do better!"

That is true, Sacha. The new combat code, which works great for normal mobile units and militia, complete breaks with peasant mobs. They are a horrible joke. Most people refer to them as target practice or training dummies. A single unit of about ~50 or soldiers soldiers can slaughter hundreds and hundreds of peasants and only lose a couple men in the process. The only practical use for them is raising the attacking soldier's cohesion/training, or as meat shields for the real defending soldiers. I'm not saying that they need to be as good as real soldiers, but they need to be more than a joke. As it it, popping militia is a quick and risk-free way of depopulating the region.

Quote from: Jaron on August 12, 2013, 01:56:02 PM
And regions are much bigger than a single village, its like burning and killing of an entire county (or more) which i dont think happen often even in the real world.

Yes, I think that is a good approach. It should be easy to do SOME damage, and it should be very hard to inflict total carnage.

Quote from: Tom on August 12, 2013, 09:22:51 AM
Unfortunately, in the middle ages almost everything was way easier to destroy then to construct. If it can burn, you can destroy it with a torch and 30 seconds of your time. And most things were made of wood.

Entire villages being burnt to the ground was way too common for comfort.

I completely agree that we need to put a stop to the "loot rogue" abuse.

"loot rogue" is a direct product of lowered noble density combined with the period of harsh region maintenance for regions without knights that we lived through. Most wars are done for destruction, not conquest. They are done to harm the enemy more than to increase oneself. The military leaders then have to choose which method will help them achieve this better: looting or TOs? When there are many excess nobles, the realm will choose the latter. In most cases, though, the nobles:lord ratio is close to 1:1, so the former is more worthwhile.

Quote from: Chénier on August 12, 2013, 08:09:43 PM
"loot rogue" is a direct product of lowered noble density combined with the period of harsh region maintenance for regions without knights that we lived through. Most wars are done for destruction, not conquest. They are done to harm the enemy more than to increase oneself. The military leaders then have to choose which method will help them achieve this better: looting or TOs? When there are many excess nobles, the realm will choose the latter. In most cases, though, the nobles:lord ratio is close to 1:1, so the former is more worthwhile.

That's only true in some places. On Atamara it's often true because some realms are so large and/or alliance-locked that they cannot effectively expand (and neither can their regions be taken from them, hence the reliance on looting to harm them). On Dwilight it's often true because few realms have enough nobles to meaningfully expand. On Beluaterra it doesn't appear to be true at all, as Thalmarkin just fought a war of expansion, as is Riombara, as will Melhed I think.

Quote from: Geronus on August 12, 2013, 08:23:42 PM
That's only true in some places. On Atamara it's often true because some realms are so large and/or alliance-locked that they cannot effectively expand (and neither can their regions be taken from them, hence the reliance on looting to harm them). On Dwilight it's often true because few realms have enough nobles to meaningfully expand. On Beluaterra it doesn't appear to be true at all, as Thalmarkin just fought a war of expansion, as is Riombara, as will Melhed I think.

Thalmarkin didn't loot rogue, because it had the nobles to spare. Thus, that does not contradict what I said. What Melhed will do, I don't know, but considering it lost half of its territories, it likely has the nobles to spare for expansion, and thus will likely not loot rogue. Riombara has not made significant conquests, and it remains to be seen how effectively they will conquer. Where TOs were more effective, they did so. But they also did not show any serious desire to expand and take on more regions: they are already pretty large as it is.

My statement did not target continents as wholes, but realms. Realms with surplus nobles and manageable realm sizes will favor TOs over looting in most cases, realms with 1:1 noble:region ratios or oversized realms will favor looting.

There's nothing "overpowered" about looting. It's the same as always. It does not need nerfing or fixing. If the balance of takeovers/looting change in favor of the latter over the years, it is purely a result of lower noble density and harder realm maintenance. Though realm maintenance isn't as bad since the last estate system overhaul, we lived with that system for quite a while, where the acquisition of new regions often meant that the realm was poorer instead of richer. It can still be the case, though, when knights of rich regions with high tax efficiency estates become the lords of newly-acquired poor fringe regions. The realm's overall wealth does not increase, not for some time. If anything, takeovers were nerfed over the years. Looting really isn't the problem.

The thing about RC seems good, but they are too 'fast' right now. They need to be greater in number of recruits, but slower in the time for recruit them.

To make a 'better' war?... A good beginning would be to forget the 'loot a region rogue'... if you kill peasants, they will flee, not rise in arms against their realm... and the moment the aggressor left, they will come back to their lands. To eliminate the peasant militia could be good, too.

I think it's good to let the 'profitable looting', but make the regions not affected by it (or very little)... or make them really good in recuperation. In short, looting would take the enemy gold, not destroy the region.

...And an idea to make war not -realm destructive-... T.O.s ONLY OCCUPY REGIONS during war! To 'own' them, some kind of agreement must be made to 'legally' pass the region from a realm to other... War can't change the ownership of a region, this must be made by a peace treaty. If you totally destroy a realm, why would the enemy ruler give you 'his' regions?.

Quote from: Chénier on August 13, 2013, 12:25:29 AM
There's nothing "overpowered" about looting. It's the same as always. It does not need nerfing or fixing.

Looting will be changed. It will be made significantly more effective in the short term, so that economic warfare becomes truly viable as an alternative to conquest. However, it will lost much of its long-term effectiveness, because the form that effectiveness takes is swaths of wasteland that no one wants, that take months or years to recover.

Right now, if you want to force a realm to surrender, you most generally have to do one of two things: Either take or loot rogue enough of their regions that they are utterly unable to produce an army, or serve them defeats for so long that they are utterly demoralized and no longer wish to fight.

Imagine, instead, a BattleMaster where you can win wars by actually winning battles in the field, combined with sabotaging your opponents' production, so that you can successfully march your army across their realm to their capital, where you can camp and, again, destroy their production to prevent them from recruiting. Their regions, while unproductive during the war, would recover relatively quickly once peace came, whether they held them or you did. This would allow the next war—for both realms—to start again sooner.

Quote from: Poliorketes on August 13, 2013, 12:28:48 AM
...And an idea to make war not -realm destructive-... T.O.s ONLY OCCUPY REGIONS during war! To 'own' them, some kind of agreement must be made to 'legally' pass the region from a realm to other... War can't change the ownership of a region, this must be made by a peace treaty. If you totally destroy a realm, why would the enemy ruler give you 'his' regions?.

Much as I like the idea of this, we did try it, and it was totally unworkable. The problem is that a realm that is losing a war has very little incentive to grant you the legal claim to the regions you have taken. All it leads to, sadly, is a lot of griefing. :-\

Quote from: Anaris on August 13, 2013, 12:33:06 AM
Looting will be changed. It will be made significantly more effective in the short term, so that economic warfare becomes truly viable as an alternative to conquest. However, it will lost much of its long-term effectiveness, because the form that effectiveness takes is swaths of wasteland that no one wants, that take months or years to recover.

Right now, if you want to force a realm to surrender, you most generally have to do one of two things: Either take or loot rogue enough of their regions that they are utterly unable to produce an army, or serve them defeats for so long that they are utterly demoralized and no longer wish to fight.

Imagine, instead, a BattleMaster where you can win wars by actually winning battles in the field, combined with sabotaging your opponents' production, so that you can successfully march your army across their realm to their capital, where you can camp and, again, destroy their production to prevent them from recruiting. Their regions, while unproductive during the war, would recover relatively quickly once peace came, whether they held them or you did. This would allow the next war—for both realms—to start again sooner.

Are you saying that regions will recover from starvation a lot quicker? Because that's one of the biggest reasons looting hurts so much.

And you can... already march your army across their realm, to their capital. Heck, in most cases, you can sail it there. What's the big change here?

As for quicker peace-time rebuilding... I hope you don't mean the game would check diplomatic status, which would be way too easy to abuse.

Quote from: Chénier on August 13, 2013, 12:48:54 AM
Are you saying that regions will recover from starvation a lot quicker? Because that's one of the biggest reasons looting hurts so much.

That's part of the plan, yes. Starvation should be much less of a cliff than it is.

Quote
And you can... already march your army across their realm, to their capital. Heck, in most cases, you can sail it there. What's the big change here?

It becomes more practical? I mean, yes, it's possible now, but it's a very rare thing to attack a capital that's got more than a few regions between you and it.

That part is meant as an illustration of what a common situation might look like after the changes. To be honest, I don't know for certain what all the outcomes will be, but that's the general sort of thing I'll be aiming for.

Quote
As for quicker peace-time rebuilding... I hope you don't mean the game would check diplomatic status, which would be way too easy to abuse.

Heh, no, I'm not that thick. Again, I'm not sure exactly what the methods would be, nor even if there's going to be an explicit check for peacetime in any form (though the devs have been examining things of that nature for a while now).

Quote from: Anaris on August 13, 2013, 01:25:01 AM
It becomes more practical? I mean, yes, it's possible now, but it's a very rare thing to attack a capital that's got more than a few regions between you and it.

I just can't see how any changes to looting would make attacks on capitals any easier or even different than they are nowadays.

Quote from: Chénier on August 13, 2013, 04:03:42 AM
I just can't see how any changes to looting would make attacks on capitals any easier or even different than they are nowadays.

The point is that the changes are intended to make it feasible to completely deny your enemy the productive capacity of their regions, without completely destroying those regions.

The extent to which they will have their intended effect, only time will tell.

It seems like the key is essentially to encourage border disputes that don't usually end with sacking a realm's capital. What if distance to the capital also effects the ease of capturing a region?

Maybe the problem is that it's too easy to keep even your most distant regions at core. That message "distance from the capital causes anarchists to prosper" really isn't accurate since it's so easy to keep regions at core.

Adjusting this system could create the potential for more limited wars. Distant border regions can remain contested provinces ready to turn coat for whoever happens to show up with an army while the core regions will resist invaders to the bitter end.

Also border regions could have a "sympathy bleed".  If your region borders another realm sympathy gradually improves unless diplomats or priests intervene.

Realms will just keep more of the army as police force/home defense force to counteract those effects. 
the sympathy bleed is a nice idea, though am I the only one who's thinking that Diplomats are now playing a larger role in region maintenance than actual Courtiers (assuming that lords are holding court and doing their jobs).

Quote from: Jaron on August 13, 2013, 07:12:32 AM
Realms will just keep more of the army as police force/home defense force to counteract those effects. 
the sympathy bleed is a nice idea, though am I the only one who's thinking that Diplomats are now playing a larger role in region maintenance than actual Courtiers (assuming that lords are holding court and doing their jobs).

You are not the only one who thinking Diplomats play a key and larger role than usual. Even Priest that has a lot of people following can play the same role as Diplomats. Both Diplomats and Priests have laud the realm and badmouth other realms. Even work much better than Courtiers. Ever hear the saying "Pen is mightier than sword"? ;)

In my humble opinion, the key during peacetime is to run low tax on border region with your going-to-be competitor region, drawing away all their region peasants. Then you have sufficient peasants, your region Production will recover much faster. Speaking from my previous Region Maintenance Master experience of course  ;D
That is as much limited war as it can be, without war declaration at all.

Quote from: Chénier on August 13, 2013, 04:03:42 AM
I just can't see how any changes to looting would make attacks on capitals any easier or even different than they are nowadays.

real-life wars often ended when one side could not feed the frontlines anymore, with either food or fresh men. Production and logistics have decided more wars than battlefield strategy. Looting has always been intended as a part of that strategy.

Quote from: Anaris on August 13, 2013, 12:33:06 AM
Looting will be changed. It will be made significantly more effective in the short term, so that economic warfare becomes truly viable as an alternative to conquest.

Huzzah! \o/

Quote from: Anaris on August 13, 2013, 12:34:14 AM
Much as I like the idea of this, we did try it, and it was totally unworkable. The problem is that a realm that is losing a war has very little incentive to grant you the legal claim to the regions you have taken. All it leads to, sadly, is a lot of griefing. :-\

The incentive of not to be destroyed is not enough? It's a shame (and somewhat a bit OOC)... Maybe council members/Dukes would loss a big amount of Prestige/Honour (and gold?) if their realm is destroyed?
...

Two (or three) maybe-stupid ideas:

Make looting more destructive, but only to production, and make civil work much more efficient, too.

If looting is changed to a more 'economic' level (hurrah!) Why not to eliminate the take overs? A defeated (and looting-ruined) realm would agree to loss some regions to gain peace (and access again to their looted regions), or accept the possibility of total destruction.

To make more limited wars, we could make winters destructive for any unit out of cities (or town-lands?... or home regions?). Men would fall sick and die (as occurs with starvation)! Usually, when winters comes, all wars are stopped... This would avoid the fast destruction of realms.

Quote from: Tom on August 13, 2013, 09:24:49 AM
real-life wars often ended when one side could not feed the frontlines anymore, with either food or fresh men. Production and logistics have decided more wars than battlefield strategy. Looting has always been intended as a part of that strategy.

This has so much potential.  Cutting off supply lines causes troop starvation which drives up desertion.  A poorly fed army vs a well fed army....

Quote from: Jaron on August 13, 2013, 07:12:32 AM
... am I the only one who's thinking that Diplomats are now playing a larger role in region maintenance than actual Courtiers (assuming that lords are holding court and doing their jobs).

I have said it before, many times, and I will say it again here: Diplomats have become too powerful, and too invisible. The effects that a highly trained diplomat can have in a region are absolutely ridiculous. Add on the Ambassador tag, and you've got an insane propaganda machine that is totally untrackable. IMNSHO, influence actions by diplomats/ambassadors should not ever be invisible. They should be just as visible to other players as priest actions. When one of them walks into a region next to your capital and starts badmouthing your realm, you should know it's happening. As it is, they are too essential, and too powerful for them to merit the kind of invisibility they have.

Quote from: Poliorketes on August 13, 2013, 05:59:13 PM
To make more limited wars, we could make winters destructive for any unit out of cities (or town-lands?... or home regions?). Men would fall sick and die (as occurs with starvation)! Usually, when winters comes, all wars are stopped... This would avoid the fast destruction of realms.

Three weeks of enforced sitting in your city, with no travel, and no battles? You want people to quit?

Besides, only two islands have seasons. This would only affect Dwilight and FEI.

Quote from: Indirik on August 13, 2013, 06:58:33 PM
Three weeks of enforced sitting in your city, with no travel, and no battles? You want people to quit?

Besides, only two islands have seasons. This would only affect Dwilight and FEI.

Oppsss!... Maybe I'm a bit too patient player...  ::)...Well... We could do winters shorter!  ;D

Quote from: Jaron on August 13, 2013, 07:12:32 AM
Realms will just keep more of the army as police force/home defense force to counteract those effects. 

That's the point. They can't conquer their way straight to the enemy capital if they have to keep their border provinces in line. Gaining and holding a couple regions will be doable, but destroying an entire realm will take a series of wars over several in game years.

Quote from: Anaris on August 13, 2013, 12:33:06 AM
Looting will be changed. It will be made significantly more effective in the short term, so that economic warfare becomes truly viable as an alternative to conquest. However, it will lost much of its long-term effectiveness, because the form that effectiveness takes is swaths of wasteland that no one wants, that take months or years to recover.

Right now, if you want to force a realm to surrender, you most generally have to do one of two things: Either take or loot rogue enough of their regions that they are utterly unable to produce an army, or serve them defeats for so long that they are utterly demoralized and no longer wish to fight.

Imagine, instead, a BattleMaster where you can win wars by actually winning battles in the field, combined with sabotaging your opponents' production, so that you can successfully march your army across their realm to their capital, where you can camp and, again, destroy their production to prevent them from recruiting. Their regions, while unproductive during the war, would recover relatively quickly once peace came, whether they held them or you did. This would allow the next war—for both realms—to start again sooner.

Wait, you're saying this WILL happen?

That's very good news. It's often bothered me how many battles happen in BM wars: RL armies are hard to rebuild. A few decisive battles can win a war.

Quote from: Vellos on August 14, 2013, 12:50:05 AM
Wait, you're saying this WILL happen?

Yes. The general plan and several specific changes have been discussed and approved. I plan on implementing this stuff—war and combat related improvements—this fall and winter.

Quote from: Azerax on August 13, 2013, 06:18:45 PM
This has so much potential.  Cutting off supply lines causes troop starvation which drives up desertion.  A poorly fed army vs a well fed army....

Obviously doesn't work in BM. Long campaigns are already difficult with EQ dmg and payment. If you are warring 3-4 regions from home, and someone 'cuts off supply lines' (what a romantic notion), you just turn around and fight them like you were already going to. It is just a meaningless concept. There is no front line in BM, only army balls.

Quote from: Anaris on August 14, 2013, 12:55:05 AM
Yes. The general plan and several specific changes have been discussed and approved. I plan on implementing this stuff—war and combat related improvements—this fall and winter.

Wonderful news!  ;D

And combat improvements!... even better!  :) We will have a system of marshal bonus, or it will be 'battleground/units' improvements, or maybe something totally different?

BTW. I'm sure sometimes this must be somewhat overwhelming! THANKS for your generous efforts! We really appreciated it!

Quote from: Anaris on August 08, 2013, 02:02:41 PM
But all the fear you cite—which I agree is real—is because of the mindset of players toward war.

Honestly, I'm not convinced there is any simple change we can make to game mechanics that will make players significantly more likely to be willing to make peace after limited gains.

I think that there are several reasons why we have this current situation, and if you will forgive me for a bit of a ramble, I'd like to enumerate them.

• People are afraid to leave a defeated enemy around to come back and bite them. This can be quite a legitimate fear, as I've seen it come back and bite realms in the past, to the tune of complete destruction. (For a semi-recent, prominent example, see Ibladesh and Perdan.)
• People rarely really know when to stop fighting. A war over ideological differences isn't likely to be stopped because one side changed their mind, because no one in BattleMaster ever changes their mind about anything substantive.
• Relatedly, once a realm is badly losing a war, they have no real incentive to surrender rather than see their realm destroyed. This leads to them demanding utterly absurd peace terms, that sometimes amount to demanding that the winning realm surrender if they want to end the war. Part of the motivation for this is that (somewhat paradoxically, given this topic) realms that destroy other realms are, at least to some, viewed with significant disfavour.
• The difficulty of continuing a war does not scale with how much of a realm you've destroyed. By and large, taking a border region is not meaningfully harder than taking the region next to the capital.
• Destruction—in general, not just of realms—is just too darn easy. Looting regions rogue has become too much of a standard practice, and it leaves those lands a wasteland for, in some cases, RL years afterward.
• There is no reason not to remain at war—in a single war—essentially forever. Your soldiers and peasants suffer no "wartime fatigue" of any kind, nor do your resources deplete (for the most part).

I think these are all very valid points and some might really be the main issue. I think we discussed this somewhere else before, but the limited amount of options the code offers to support treaties are certainly a relevant limitation.

In short: the limitations to sizes of realms, the difficulties faced when attacking far away enemies coupled with the fact that winning a war without total annihilation of your opponent doesn't really lead to any concrete advantage for the winner make war pretty unrewarding or too risky for many realms. (note: I am not saying that limitations to sizes or distance-based penalties are to be removed, not at all. But that they make the problem worse because picking enemies gets hard after a while.)

We all know that several attempts over time have been done by players to somehow implement a vassallage and/or tributary system, but only the naivest among us would propose something like this again without code supporting it. With a more complicated diplomatic system which gives the chance to winners to actually benefit from leaving the defeated realm alive more than vanquishing them and driving everything rogue, I believe wars would be stimulated considerably.

What you gain out of war is space and money and the game has massive excess of both.

Maybe it would help to make recruitment take longer. I can't remember the last time I saw any realm call a draft. In the middle ages drafts would have been an inevitable part of any war. That might give realms an incentive to reach a stalemate rather then finish off their enemies.

I think the peasant population need to be tinkered with, they die too easily to looting/revolts/starvation but drafting for recruitment centres does almost nothing to the pop.

How about allowing people to choose who to kill? Maybe add an option to kill healthy young male adults who may serve as recruits?  8)

Let's say there is a region with 10 000 people. Out of that maybe 2500 are 'recruitable' population? The current option we have is just slaughtering anyone on sight I think but I do not believe they did that. Wars tend to leave orphans and widows but in BM they tend to leave nothing :o

Or we could have recruit figures increase by factor 10. Instead of drafting, say 50 men, you'd now draft 500, so the longer a war drags on, the bigger the strain on the population. Units would also get 10x bigger, but I don't see that as a problem if the cost stays the same. This would also make battles appear much bigger. I've always found it a bit silly that an army of 3,000 men is one of the hugest in the game...

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 17, 2013, 10:52:56 PM
How about allowing people to choose who to kill? Maybe add an option to kill healthy young male adults who may serve as recruits?

Quote from: Sacha on August 17, 2013, 11:11:06 PM
Or we could have recruit figures increase by factor 10. Instead of drafting, say 50 men, you'd now draft 500, so the longer a war drags on, the bigger the strain on the population.

I like both these ideas, but they don't really address limited wars. They seem to limit war in general.

I don't see how raising troop recruitment numbers limits wars in general, unless you're in a realm stuck with a bunch of severely depopulated regions. Of course, under the current looting system it would give realms even more incentive to just mass slaughter peasants, so the looting aspect of the game would need to be tweaked for this to be viable.

But, if killing 1,500 peasants a day in a region is no longer possible, I don't see too many issues with it. People will say that big realms will have an edge, but they have one already so I feel it's kind of a moot point. Also, this would make realms more inclined to take enemy regions as undamaged as possible, reducing the perceived need for mass looting campaigns, which in turn will - hopefully - foster less irreparable hatred between realms, reducing the number of wars fought til one side is absolutely destroyed.

I think if we somehow can incorporate 'war fatigue' to the game, we can limit the war but if we want to add this similar to the real world, the game will have to change quite a lot. I am sure the devs don't want that since it will require a lot of coding.

I think the easiest solution will be enforcement like Europa Universalis or CK2. EU uses 'war score' to enforce your demand. Maybe we can do something similar. I think we know from the accumulated game history people hate losing and mostly would rather see their realm destroyed than admit their defeat. We can maybe allow people to set how the long 'peace' period would last. Of course we do not want to prevent people from declaring war during that time but there should be some kind of punishment for dishonorable actions such as breaking peace before it expires. Maybe 25% honor and prestige loss for every member of the realm wouldn't be so bad.

Or if possible maybe the dev team can program something that would track the casualties, maybe when the casualty rate reaches certain percentage compare to the total population, it would pop a message saying something like 'war is draining too much manpower' which makes the realm lose 1~3% drop in production realm wide every day? Reducing the number of recruit you get won't be bad either.

What if we added a "metal" resource, that was gained by each region automatically? And each new recruit--and every repair--would drain the metal, so that a long war would deplete it, so that you couldn't repair your equipment or have RC's gain new recruits.

A metal resource could be a good thing or it could backfire but it is a good idea.  Why don't you tie it to population, the longer the war could lead to less population growth so less men to be available to recruit and fight. 

Some may recall that there was a previous attempt to bring in metal, wood, and other new economy goods....

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 18, 2013, 01:28:41 AM
I think if we somehow can incorporate 'war fatigue' to the game, we can limit the war but if we want to add this similar to the real world, the game will have to change quite a lot. I am sure the devs don't want that since it will require a lot of coding.

I think the easiest solution will be enforcement like Europa Universalis or CK2. EU uses 'war score' to enforce your demand. Maybe we can do something similar. I think we know from the accumulated game history people hate losing and mostly would rather see their realm destroyed than admit their defeat. We can maybe allow people to set how the long 'peace' period would last. Of course we do not want to prevent people from declaring war during that time but there should be some kind of punishment for dishonorable actions such as breaking peace before it expires. Maybe 25% honor and prestige loss for every member of the realm wouldn't be so bad.

Or if possible maybe the dev team can program something that would track the casualties, maybe when the casualty rate reaches certain percentage compare to the total population, it would pop a message saying something like 'war is draining too much manpower' which makes the realm lose 1~3% drop in production realm wide every day? Reducing the number of recruit you get won't be bad either.

Building off of this, make all war decs identify specific regions as targets, and limit their number to something like, say, five (arbitrary, could be anything reasonable). When all those regions are no longer under the control of the target realm, the war immediately ends. Then stick some cooldown period on the function so that one realm can't repeatedly war dec another.

Almost by definition, any mechanic we add to limit wars is going to be punitive, so we may as well define the limits clearly.

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 17, 2013, 10:52:56 PM
How about allowing people to choose who to kill? Maybe add an option to kill healthy young male adults who may serve as recruits?  8)

I actually really like this idea.

Another thought along the same lines. Suppose recruitment could be tied to peasant satisfaction with a war. If a realm is at war with a hated enemy then recruitment stays steady, however if the war is unpopular recruitment drops significantly, requiring drafts, which in turn will lower morale and damage production in the realm waging war. This could also go region by region. If a particular region hates the war then their RCs will be just about empty. This makes looting more risky as it could end up flooding the enemy armies with new recruits.

Maybe if there wasn't infinite money, defeats would actually mean something and one side could gain an advantage after slightly less than an eternity. The winning side, then, doesn't feel they have put forward an absurdly huge amount of effort and obligation to finish the job.

Quote from: Kai on August 18, 2013, 08:07:45 AM
Maybe if there wasn't infinite money, defeats would actually mean something and one side could gain an advantage after slightly less than an eternity. The winning side, then, doesn't feel they have put forward an absurdly huge amount of effort and obligation to finish the job.

There isn't infinite money, gold is very much an issue for many realms. Some older established realms have rich dukes with large reserves but many realms do have gold issues during war.

Is there really a realm that can't rerecruit 2/3 of a CS loss in a week?

So far, people have brainstormed and given excellent ideas about changing game mechanics to promote a "Limited War". But, I feel that most of the ideas would either prolong or quicken an ongoing war, but, will not limit them in a true sense.

I would like to quote two lines of Tom from the first post:

"What that means is that almost every war is an all-or-nothing affair, and could mean the total destruction of a realm."
"What needs to change so that more realms start small wars with their neighbours over one region, or one insult?"
"Limited wars with a specific purpose that don't blow up into World War ?"

I have played this game for fairly long time and I know how small border conflicts turn into total wipe-out war. This is because any small conflict becomes a matter of honor, prestige and ego and ends in either death or extreme weakening of a whole realm.  You may make damaging/TO any region less/more effective, but how will you control this (sense of honor and ego)? That's why nobody wants to take the risk of starting small conflicts.

Wars are limited due to the political situation of the continent. Like, USA and USSR, two opposite poles, prevented full blown wars between their supporter countries. Both sides had nukes. Wars are also limited due to pressure from other countries (UN). So, what should this game Battlemaster have which would prevent all-or-nothing wars?

IRL there are barely any limited wars. Maybe a few due to distance. A lot because asymmetrical.

I think that part of the problem maybe that large realms have no reason to keep around the smaller realm  instead of just absorbing it or creating a colony. And the problem is feeding on itself. Realms are afraid of going into war and getting destroyed, therefore there are less wars going around. With so little war around, realms have an interest to keep the war going and destroy the opposition to keep their nobles happy.

If that is the main issue, the solution is easy: Limit the number of regions that realms can absorb in a short time, irrespective of realm size. So if you can only take 1 or 2 regions before half your realm blows up in unrest, you'd go for peace after that, and ready for the next war to take another 1-2 regions.

How would people circumvent this (because I know they will) ?

Isn't that just taking it from one extreme to the other? I agree that wars to the death shouldn't be the norm, but to disallow them completely isn't the solution IMHO. Some situations do warrant total destruction of either party. And unless I'm missing something, this idea would only make giant realms even more powerful, since a realm with fewer regions will suffer far more from losing 1-2 than a realm that has 20+ regions to start with.

Quote from: Tom on August 18, 2013, 02:50:15 PM
If that is the main issue, the solution is easy: Limit the number of regions that realms can absorb in a short time, irrespective of realm size. So if you can only take 1 or 2 regions before half your realm blows up in unrest, you'd go for peace after that, and ready for the next war to take another 1-2 regions.

How would people circumvent this (because I know they will) ?

Well, first of all, they'd resort even more to driving regions rogue, rather than taking them.

Second of all, they'd make sure to have a large coalition of realms so they could actually take over as many regions as possible (thus making gangbangs much more the thing to do).

Third of all, it depends greatly on what you mean by "blows up in unrest"; if it ramps too slowly, then people will just sic their diplomats and courtiers on it, but if it ramps too quickly, realms will just disintegrate. Also, how long would the unrest last after the third takeover?

In general, I'm not a fan of this idea.

Actually, I'd say that since we've already got a package of changes intended to improve the warfare situation discussed and on the slate for being implemented this fall and winter, we should hold off on trying to make any more major changes to the way war works until after they're in place and we can see their effects. Some of them are going to have very large effects on the way people conduct warfare in BattleMaster already (or at least, if they don't, then we've done it wrong!).

Quote from: Tom on August 18, 2013, 02:50:15 PM
If that is the main issue, the solution is easy: Limit the number of regions that realms can absorb in a short time, irrespective of realm size. So if you can only take 1 or 2 regions before half your realm blows up in unrest, you'd go for peace after that, and ready for the next war to take another 1-2 regions.

How would people circumvent this (because I know they will) ?

My guess is that after each time Realm A conquered a region from Realm B, they would give one region away to Realm C. Things would go on in that manner until Realm A had conquered the desired lands and Realm C had been properly rewarded for their trouble.

Quote from: Tom on August 18, 2013, 02:50:15 PM
How would people circumvent this (because I know they will) ?

At the moment, stopping a war requires the agreement of both sides. If one side is getting hammered by penalties, the other side may not agree to stop the war out of simple spite, or the belief that they can use the penalties to gain an upper hand and take back what they lost. If both sides are getting hammered by penalties, you still have the spite factor to worry about - it will go exactly like the Exile mechanic does. The losing realm will simply hold out as long as it can (maybe forever) just to spite the winning realm and take them down with them, and the losing realm will end up virtually (if not actually) destroyed anyway.

To accomplish this I think you have implement mechanics that will automatically end wars. This can be based on player input by allowing players to outline a specific duration when making a war dec, after which the war immediately ends, or maybe it can involve setting recognizable goals (i.e. gaining control of regions x, y and z), which once met will also automatically end the war.

Quote from: Anaris on August 18, 2013, 03:00:13 PM
In general, I'm not a fan of this idea.

Of course not. It's a simple solution to a complex problem, it can't work (I'm not being sarcastic, I am serious).

My point was that this is not everything it's all about. The issue is more complex than that, or we would've added a simple solution like that long ago.

Quote from: Anaris on August 18, 2013, 03:00:13 PM
Actually, I'd say that since we've already got a package of changes intended to improve the warfare situation discussed and on the slate for being implemented this fall and winter, we should hold off on trying to make any more major changes to the way war works until after they're in place and we can see their effects. Some of them are going to have very large effects on the way people conduct warfare in BattleMaster already (or at least, if they don't, then we've done it wrong!).

I agree. if they are already decided big changes in warfare, the logical way would be to wait the effects of them, before to decide to change it even more.

If you only want ideas to prevent this kind of 'to-death' wars... Well, it could be useful some kind of 'all useful men at arms'. It could generate some big amount of free militia in the capital, with a high cost... maybe to loss a big amount of population, or production, or morale, etc... The objective would be to have a last recourse to defend your realm if its existence is endangered (it would be powerful but highly damaging for the realm), and make the destruction of a realm a very serious thing.

Recently TOed or rogued regions could wage actual effective guerilla warfare, that would make further progress difficult.

I would like the peasants feelings toward a realm have more weight. That might be a quick-fix for stifling wars from rogueing regions and oppressive TO. If the mechanic for regions casting off the shackles of hated (or rogue) rule and joining whatever other beloved realm they had then it would be more difficult to change (and keep changed) the established realm.

Only way I could see it being gamed would be with diplomats...and I thought that was part of the point of diplomats. I could imagine the unintended consequence is border regions may start switching willy-nilly when it would be implemented.

Quote from: Dishman on August 19, 2013, 04:45:05 AM
I would like the peasants feelings toward a realm have more weight. That might be a quick-fix for stifling wars from rogueing regions and oppressive TO. If the mechanic for regions casting off the shackles of hated (or rogue) rule and joining whatever other beloved realm they had then it would be more difficult to change (and keep changed) the established realm.

Only way I could see it being gamed would be with diplomats...and I thought that was part of the point of diplomats. I could imagine the unintended consequence is border regions may start switching willy-nilly when it would be implemented.

No please, its already annoying enough as it is, and it makes it even harder to declare war against your allies/friends/realms your peasants like

Quote from: Dishman on August 19, 2013, 04:45:05 AM
I would like the peasants feelings toward a realm have more weight. That might be a quick-fix for stifling wars from rogueing regions and oppressive TO. If the mechanic for regions casting off the shackles of hated (or rogue) rule and joining whatever other beloved realm they had then it would be more difficult to change (and keep changed) the established realm.

Only way I could see it being gamed would be with diplomats...and I thought that was part of the point of diplomats. I could imagine the unintended consequence is border regions may start switching willy-nilly when it would be implemented.

Another issue is they decrease to fast. Loot the region for a day pretty decently, they hate you, a lot. Don't have food for the region? They hate you, start to die, go rogue, then a whole lot more dies because they still can't feed themselves.

So related to regions going rogue, it should be impossible foodwise because its a dumb idea peasantwise? Maybe if we are independant but still don't buy food, it will magically get rid of this food issue. They should be likely to switch to a different realm, but it should be hard to go rogue just because you are starving because it takes some stupid peasants to say, well the only way we are ever going to get food is through our lord so lets kick him out, leave our realm so no lord can be reappointed, then see what happens. Kicking lords out willy-nilly for not providing food is fine and fair since the banker can still fix the issue, but its dumb for them to go rogue.

Not if they're a rural. Their thinking would be that the enemy is looting the food from this region because it's part of Realm A, if they're not part of realm A maybe the looting will stop and they can till their fields in peace.

For cities you argument might make sense but I see it more as the city descending into total lawlessness due to desperation rather then any conscious effort to usurp the governing authority.

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 17, 2013, 10:52:56 PM
How about allowing people to choose who to kill? Maybe add an option to kill healthy young male adults who may serve as recruits?  8)

Let's say there is a region with 10 000 people. Out of that maybe 2500 are 'recruitable' population? The current option we have is just slaughtering anyone on sight I think but I do not believe they did that. Wars tend to leave orphans and widows but in BM they tend to leave nothing :o

This seems an excellent idea to me. It would allow a winning realm to effectively destroy the war-waging ability of their enemy, forcing them to surrender, without actually destroying the whole realm.

maybe we should just divide pop into soldier material and non-soldier material

Isn't that what RCs essentially are? Destroy an RC, and you destroy the ability (to some extent) of an enemy realm to wage war.

Pretty much, yeah.

And another of the major changes planned to come this fall is making recruitment centers much easier to temporarily disable, while making them harder to outright destroy. This should, again, make economic warfare more viable, while reducing the frustrating super-long rebuilding times that players face when dealing with regions that have been fought over for long periods.

Recruitment centers are actually quite hard to destroy. I had 15 people sitting in one region to destroy one recruitment center and we couldn't accomplish that for 4 days.

Also, what if you want to keep the recruitment center but you want to prevent your enemy from getting recruits from the center?

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 20, 2013, 05:09:46 AM
Also, what if you want to keep the recruitment center but you want to prevent your enemy from getting recruits from the center?

If it doesn't happen already, perhaps regions with defenders being of a realm that region is at war with shouldn't have any new recruits.

Quote from: Vita on August 20, 2013, 05:39:34 AM
If it doesn't happen already, perhaps regions with defenders being of a realm that region is at war with shouldn't have any new recruits.

Could you clarify a bit? I am confused.

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 20, 2013, 05:09:46 AM
Recruitment centers are actually quite hard to destroy. I had 15 people sitting in one region to destroy one recruitment center and we couldn't accomplish that for 4 days.

This is true. With 15 people in the region for 4 days, it would have been easier to kill the entire population by looting. The enemy realm wouldn't have been able to use the RC for a long time afterwards anyway.

Also, if you manage to kill half the population, at least you've done that. If you damage 50% of a RC center, you really haven't accomplished anything.

Quote from: vonGenf on August 20, 2013, 09:00:56 AM
Also, if you manage to kill half the population, at least you've done that. If you damage 50% of a RC center, you really haven't accomplished anything.

Well thats not completely true. If you damage 50%, that doesn't do anything then, but if you come back a week later you can do finish off the RC again. Do that to enough RC's or at least the higher quality ones, they start to really feel it. Winning a war through destroying RC's might be more work than just looting their region's to oblivion, but its much more profitable receiving regions with a full population then 2000 men with a region that supposed to have 12000, and then waiting 6 months for a region to be at full pop.

Well if you going to take over the region anyways, I dont see a reason not to keep around the RCSs

Quote from: Jaron on August 20, 2013, 10:03:45 AM
Well if you going to take over the region anyways, I dont see a reason not to keep around the RCSs

They have a bigger army, consistently. You are unable to be able to start a takeover and get it finished as the other realm keeps coming and beating you in battle, so a possible solution would be to loot the RCs. That way you continuously get progress unless they go the spendy route of upgrading RCs to fix the damage, and when the RC is at max level they can't so it can at minimum cost them a lot of gold if they keep upgrading it, or eventually they start to lose the ability to wage war as effectively. Destroying a few RCs might not completely prevent them from waging wars, but if you take out enough, especially the higher quality RCs, they start to not have enough recruits to get a big enough army to keep beating and you can actually take over their regions.

There is more than one way to use the destruction of enemy RCs to your advantage/more than one reason. They keep putting decent militia down so when you go to fight, the other realm keeps winning, then rush there and work on destroying the RCs. While in my first example it was an underdog, trying to even the playing field, my second example was a more dominate force removing that advantage of the underdogs so the dominate force can no longer have issues. A weapon can often be used in many ways against an enemy. this is one that just happens to be underused, I believe because there is a lack of better generals.

A good general IMO isn't someone who is on every turn to give the marshals orders who then relay them, I consider that the opposite, because day-to-day operations of the army should be the marshals job in most cases.  Maybe the general devised a special plan which works best with certain settings or something, but generally its should be the generals coming up with plans and strategies for the war while the marshals do the specifics of what needs to be done/responding to what happens.

Quote from: Anaris on August 20, 2013, 01:24:48 AM
And another of the major changes planned to come this fall is making recruitment centers much easier to temporarily disable, while making them harder to outright destroy.

I'll be interested to see how that pans out. Unless there's also some other sort of balancing effect planned, it sounds like it might make it even easier for larger realms to stomp all over smaller ones. Larger realms with more regions will naturally find it easier to disable many of the RC in a realm with fewer regions than a smaller realm will find it to disable enough RC in a larger realm to make any significant impact. If players in a smaller realm have to sit in the capital unable to recruit, Big vs Small wars are going to become even more of a fun killer than they already are.

Quote from: Penchant on August 20, 2013, 10:23:03 AM
A good general IMO isn't someone who is on every turn to give the marshals orders who then relay them, I consider that the opposite, because day-to-day operations of the army should be the marshals job in most cases.  Maybe the general devised a special plan which works best with certain settings or something, but generally its should be the generals coming up with plans and strategies for the war while the marshals do the specifics of what needs to be done/responding to what happens.

The problem is that most realms don't have enough players who are interested in the strategic game to make that sort of chain-of-command anything like viable. It's becoming harder and harder to find players who are willing to take on military leadership and are actually enough of a strategy gamer to be any good at it (if they're not good at it, it usually leads to massive frustration and loss of enjoyment for other players who have defeat after defeat). Part of the problem is also that most of the strategy gamers appear to gravitate towards the realms with established military strengths (Perdan, Arcaea, CE, etc). So the lesser realms might have only one player who has both the will and ability to play the strategy side of the game. Or they luck out and get a brand new player who's into strategy gaming.

Quote from: Foxglove on August 20, 2013, 04:20:14 PM
I'll be interested to see how that pans out. Unless there's also some other sort of balancing effect planned, it sounds like it might make it even easier for larger realms to stomp all over smaller ones.

There are some other changes on the slate that should hopefully help to improve things more for small realms (or make it harder for large realms, I forget exactly which those are offhand).

Quote from: Penchant on August 20, 2013, 08:43:49 AM
Could you clarify a bit? I am confused.

Keplerstan owns Regionville.
Keplerstan is at war with Evilstani.
Evilstani has an army in Regionville that is the region defender (the units of Keplerstan in Regionville are either scattered, retreated, or aren't in the region).
Thus, if it doesn't happen already, maybe Regionville should have no new recruits while Evilstani is the region defender/occupying Regionville. Who would be recruited while a foreign army you're at war with is in effective control of the region?

It should come with some kind of minimum limit though... otherwise this would be oh so exploitable. Putting a 10 man unit in an undefended enemy region shouldn't prevent recruitment. Only a sizable army would be able to manage that.

Quote from: Sacha on August 20, 2013, 06:05:53 PM
It should come with some kind of minimum limit though... otherwise this would be oh so exploitable. Putting a 10 man unit in an undefended enemy region shouldn't prevent recruitment. Only a sizable army would be able to manage that.

I understand the principle of a limit (taken to an extreme, just dropping 1-men limitia everywhere would be abuse), but I can see it working with the limit being quite small. We have looking for solutions to make small armies desirable over large blobs for some time, and this is a very good example. A scattered army would be able to effectively 'occupy' a territory, as in denying its military use to the enemy, temporarily without immediately resorting to long and costly TOs.

1 men per 200 population seems a reasonable limit. It would set a minimum occupying force at 30 men (a small unit) for a typical 6'000 people rural, and accordingly higher limits for townslands and cities.

Quote from: Foxglove on August 20, 2013, 04:20:14 PM
I'll be interested to see how that pans out. Unless there's also some other sort of balancing effect planned, it sounds like it might make it even easier for larger realms to stomp all over smaller ones. Larger realms with more regions will naturally find it easier to disable many of the RC in a realm with fewer regions than a smaller realm will find it to disable enough RC in a larger realm to make any significant impact.

Quote from: Anaris on August 20, 2013, 04:27:26 PM
There are some other changes on the slate that should hopefully help to improve things more for small realms (or make it harder for large realms, I forget exactly which those are offhand).

Keep in mind that it is completely reasonable, and logical, that a significantly larger realm (or one with significantly more nobles) should find it easier  to achieve victory over a significantly smaller realm (or one with significantly fewer nobles). The changes that we are talking about are ways to help prevent total destruction, or provide incentives to end the war short of total destruction.

If you pick a fight with a significantly larger realm (i.e. Eponlyn V. Perdan in a 1v1 war), or they single you out and you can't get help, you *should* get your ass kicked. We're not here to ensure that all realms have an equal chance to win every war. If that were true, then what would be the point of struggling to become a big, powerful realm in the first place?

While we will need to evaluate this feature to ensure that larger realms can't rampantly exploit this feature to make it ridiculously easier to roflstomp smaller realms, in no way is it intended as any kind of ground-leveling feature.

QuoteKeep in mind that it is completely reasonable, and logical, that a significantly larger realm (or one with significantly more nobles) should find it easier  to achieve victory over a significantly smaller realm (or one with significantly fewer nobles). The changes that we are talking about are ways to help prevent total destruction, or provide incentives to end the war short of total destruction.

Completely true.

QuoteIf you pick a fight with a significantly larger realm (i.e. Eponlyn V. Perdan in a 1v1 war), or they single you out and you can't get help, you *should* get your ass kicked. We're not here to ensure that all realms have an equal chance to win every war. If that were true, then what would be the point of struggling to become a big, powerful realm in the first place?

Equal chance, no but you should get your ass kicked is an issue with me. Although I am not on the continent so I don't know the specifics. (Is Eponlyn about the same size as Carelia and Perdan=CE?)

If so, then I say how the odds should be in CE's favor by a lot, but currently its just about impossible as I can can't think of a single viable strategy against CE if being Carelia. Carelia vs CE,  I can see Carelia never really winning the actual war, but there should be someway to end up in about a draw if Carelia had extremely good strategists and military leadership and all that. Right now, I can't think of a way with even say Caergoth helping that Carelia could end up in a draw. Should it be highly unlikely? Yes. Should be possible with a lot work, skill, and a little luck? Yes. An example would be Sun Tzu where his 30,000 men beat 200,000 men do to military expertise of Sun Tzu over his enemies. Should that particular situation truely be possible in BM? Probably not, but the idea that a smaller realm has a chance against a larger realm without just saying the solution is calling in allies should exist in BM. Am I rambling on a bit too much? Yes.

QuoteWhile we will need to evaluate this feature to ensure that larger realms can't rampantly exploit this feature to make it ridiculously easier to roflstomp smaller realms, in no way is it intended as any kind of ground-leveling feature.

This shouldn't be ground-leveling but it should be balanced in the sense thats its not just a tactic for big realms thats useful for big realms.

Quote from: Vita on August 20, 2013, 06:02:06 PM
Keplerstan owns Regionville.
Keplerstan is at war with Evilstani.
Evilstani has an army in Regionville that is the region defender (the units of Keplerstan in Regionville are either scattered, retreated, or aren't in the region).
Thus, if it doesn't happen already, maybe Regionville should have no new recruits while Evilstani is the region defender/occupying Regionville. Who would be recruited while a foreign army you're at war with is in effective control of the region?

hmmm, maybe we should introduce an "occupied" status to regions, maybe it should be part of the TO process too. not sure how to go about it though.

Quote from: Indirik on August 20, 2013, 06:22:02 PM
If you pick a fight with a significantly larger realm (i.e. Eponlyn V. Perdan in a 1v1 war), or they single you out and you can't get help, you *should* get your ass kicked. We're not here to ensure that all realms have an equal chance to win every war.

Like Penchant, this is also something with which I'd take issue. Going from the historical point-of-view, there are many examples of smaller medieval nations/armies defeating larger ones. In BM, there's no possibility to do anything akin to the Battle of Sterling Bridge (5000 English killed because the theoretically weaker Scots used unconvential tactics). It's been said a few times that BM doesn't simulate unconventional tactics because most battles took place by prior arrangement on a fixed field of battle, but even then there are historical cases of smaller armies defeating bigger ones (e.g. Agincourt, famously). Something which is impossible in BM.

Setting the historical argument aside, there's also the simple enjoyment of the game argument. Part of the reason why there are fewer wars is because it takes an awful lot of effort to set anything up that won't just be a stomp-fest. Many times while fighting for smaller realms I've felt as though I'm doing charity work so that the players of large or giant realms have something to do. Quite a few times now, I've seen players just give up and move on because they know that the realm they're in will have no chance at all. But Indirik and I have been on opposite sides of this debate before.

Quote from: Penchant on August 21, 2013, 03:54:41 AM
This shouldn't be ground-leveling but it should be balanced in the sense thats its not just a tactic for big realms thats useful for big realms.

And that right there is the key point, as far as I'm concerned.

Quote from: Penchant on August 21, 2013, 03:54:41 AM
Equal chance, no but you should get your ass kicked is an issue with me. Although I am not on the continent so I don't know the specifics. (Is Eponlyn about the same size as Carelia and Perdan=CE?)

Eponlyn has, I think, 5 regions, including one small city. Perdan has 25 or so, including three rich cities, and about 4-5 times as many nobles.

So not quite an exact parallel, but close enough, I guess.

QuoteIf so, then I say how the odds should be in CE's favor by a lot, but currently its just about impossible as I can can't think of a single viable strategy against CE if being Carelia. Carelia vs CE,  I can see Carelia never really winning the actual war, but there should be someway to end up in about a draw if Carelia had extremely good strategists and military leadership and all that. Right now, I can't think of a way with even say Caergoth helping that Carelia could end up in a draw. Should it be highly unlikely? Yes. Should be possible with a lot work, skill, and a little luck?

Not unless CE was ridiculously incompetent, sabotaging themselves, and Carelia were full of hyperactive, late-logging geniuses.

QuoteThis shouldn't be ground-leveling but it should be balanced in the sense thats its not just a tactic for big realms thats useful for big realms.

....which is kinda what I said.

The only way to give a small army a chance of victory over bigger armies would be to use a General/Marshal skill bonus system. Maybe there will be something of this in the new changes in warfare?  :)

Quote from: Foxglove on August 21, 2013, 04:29:23 AM
Like Penchant, this is also something with which I'd take issue. Going from the historical point-of-view, there are many examples of smaller medieval nations/armies defeating larger ones. In BM, there's no possibility to do anything akin to the Battle of Sterling Bridge (5000 English killed because the theoretically weaker Scots used unconvential tactics). It's been said a few times that BM doesn't simulate unconventional tactics because most battles took place by prior arrangement on a fixed field of battle, but even then there are historical cases of smaller armies defeating bigger ones (e.g. Agincourt, famously). Something which is impossible in BM.

There are numerous cases of smaller armies defeating larger armies in BM. A highly trained 30-men SF unit would trounce a badly equipped freshly recruited 100 men archer unit. Conveniently, however, the SF unit would also have a similar or higher CS value. The calls for a smaller army to be able to defeat a larger army are not related to medieval examples where small number of men beat a larger number; they ask for more differentiated tactics to be available in the face of a high CS differential.

I really don't think anyone here was counting army 'size' by number of men, or else peasant militia would be the best army around.

Quote from: vonGenf on August 21, 2013, 09:31:36 AM
There are numerous cases of smaller armies defeating larger armies in BM. A highly trained 30-men SF unit would trounce a badly equipped freshly recruited 100 men archer unit. Conveniently, however, the SF unit would also have a similar or higher CS value. The calls for a smaller army to be able to defeat a larger army are not related to medieval examples where small number of men beat a larger number; they ask for more differentiated tactics to be available in the face of a high CS differential.

The problem here is We KNOW almost exactly the force of the enemy, (and because the Generals/Marshals and even Heroes are irrelevant... ) So when a small but strong force defeat a big but weak force, we know before the battle the relation of forces... and we know the small force had the upper hand!... So, no surprises here...

Is very strange that to know what is doing our own army, in the same region, we MUST use a scout... but even more strange is to send a scout to the enemy army and KNOW every unit and very accurately their strength.... THE SAME INFORMATION, AND EQUALLY ACCURATE THAN THE ONE ABOUT OUR OWN ARMY?

IMHO for a scout of enemy armies a approximation to the number of men (and only MAYBE a estimation of their quality) would be enough!
400-600 (average) Infantrymen, 200-300 (weak) archers and 100 (light) cavalry.

Quote from: Poliorketes on August 21, 2013, 02:11:28 PM
The problem here is We KNOW almost exactly the force of the enemy, (and because the Generals/Marshals and even Heroes are irrelevant... ) So when a small but strong force defeat a big but weak force, we know before the battle the relation of forces... and we know the small force had the upper hand!... So, no surprises here...

Is very strange that to know what is doing our own army, in the same region, we MUST use a scout... but even more strange is to send a scout to the enemy army and KNOW every unit and very accurately their strength.... THE SAME INFORMATION, AND EQUALLY ACCURATE THAN THE ONE ABOUT OUR OWN ARMY?

IMHO for a scout of enemy armies a approximation to the number of men (and only MAYBE a estimation of their quality) would be enough!
400-600 (average) Infantrymen, 200-300 (weak) archers and 100 (light) cavalry.

The cost for making your own troops appear weaker/stronger on scout reports was adjusted downward sometime in the past year. People simply don't use that as a frequent tactic.

Quote from: egamma on August 21, 2013, 02:24:08 PM
The cost for making your own troops appear weaker/stronger on scout reports was adjusted downward sometime in the past year. People simply don't use that as a frequent tactic.

Or if they do so successfully, then no one knows, which is the point!

Quote from: vonGenf on August 21, 2013, 02:33:59 PM
Or if they do so successfully, then no one knows, which is the point!

It could be... but I think the people prefer better to spend their gold in recruit more soldiers, than making them look stronger or weaker, before they know if it will be useful or counter-productive. Maybe if you could do it in any moment and region... but as it is, is too 'slow' and difficult to coordinate...

I'm sure in some occasions can be useful, but I think the ignorance about the enemy must be continuous, and not something about 'troop camouflage'.

Quote from: Poliorketes on August 21, 2013, 09:19:29 AM
The only way to give a small army a chance of victory over bigger armies would be to use a General/Marshal skill bonus system. Maybe there will be something of this in the new changes in warfare?  :)

Keep in mind that any change you add to allow some kind of tricky tactics, or character skill bonus to allow small armies to defeat larger armies could also very easily be utilized by those same larger armies to even more thoroughly defeat the smaller one. In fact, larger armies would be more likely to be able to take advantage of them, because they are more likely to be the ones to have the people with the requisite skills, simply because they have more people, and more resources to invest in those people.

People keep talking about adding the ability for a good general/marshal to allow them to use superior tactics to defeat larger armies as if only the smaller armies would have access to those tactics. Or as if the larger armies are dumb/incompetent/clumsy simply because they're large, and that the smaller armies as smarter/expert/agile simply because they're small. I have to say that this is just not the way the world works. How do you think those larger armies got large in the first place? Because the people that made them  and run them are smart.

Small armies beat large armies because the people that led those large armies made mistakes or were surprised. But the small armies can make mistakes and get surprised just as easily as the big ones.

Furthermore, the way to make it more possible for small armies to surprise or outflank large ones is not to simply add some in-game skill bonus that directly buffs the entire army. It's to add more actual strategic and tactical options, so that (for instance) a small force might be able to hold off a large on in a chokepoint, while a raiding party from the smaller realm goes around a back way and starts harassing the larger realm's regions, disabling recruitment centers and stealing tax gold.

Naturally, if the larger realm is smart, they'll make preparations for this kind of situation, and the smaller realm will still lose. But it makes one more way that the larger realm could make a mistake that gives the smaller realm a fighting chance.

If some tactics took cohesion to pull off....  We know that smaller units build this at a faster pace, I wonder if it is possible to use the same sort of thing BETWEEN units.  Not listed for everyone to see perhaps but still something that would understand how well units work together.

Not just the use of encounter settings that are controlled by players but something at a social/common/humanistic level.

Bigger armies won more often than smaller armies. It is because most of the time, only stronger nations could field big armies.

There are a lot of examples where bigger armies lost but most of the time, bigger armies were the invaders. Defenders either used guerrilla tactics to harass the invaders from multiple fronts to lower their morale or they had their men in strategically advantageous positions. Invaders always were in somewhat disadvantageous positions because 1) they had to fight in unfamiliar environments, 2) their supply lines were getting stretched as they invade deeper into their enemy's territory meaning it usually became increasingly hard to stop their enemies from harassing their supply lines, 3) morale issues, 4) political issues back in their home and others.

Remove CS numbers from scout reports. There's no logical reason to be able to assess that. All you should see is the rough number of men in each unit, and what they are (infantry, cavalry, etc.). I also think SF should look like normal infantry to scouts. Might add a bit more uncertainty into the strategic game since you can't be sure just how good the enemy troops are; all you know is how many of them there are.

Quote from: Geronus on August 21, 2013, 11:58:48 PM
Remove CS numbers from scout reports. There's no logical reason to be able to assess that. All you should see is the rough number of men in each unit, and what they are (infantry, cavalry, etc.). I also think SF should look like normal infantry to scouts. Might add a bit more uncertainty into the strategic game since you can't be sure just how good the enemy troops are; all you know is how many of them there are.

Good God, that sounds like a horrendous idea. Do you want to make everyone run screaming from the General position? :P

It's hard enough for players to properly evaluate relative strengths of armies, what with factors like army composition, movement rate, siege engines, etc. Removing CS from scout reports wouldn't just make it impossible for Generals to asses enemy armies, it would make it impossible to assess their own! And seeing SF as Infantry just doesn't make sense. You might as well say that Archers should look like Infantry; after all, when they're lounging around the camp, you can't tell if they fight with a bow or a sword.

No. I do not think this would help in any way, shape, or form.

Uncertainty can be added by other means, if we really feel that it's necessary. Crippling (or removing, since this would make people scout a lot less) the one tool people have for knowing what's going on around them is not the way to do that.

Quote from: Anaris on August 22, 2013, 12:09:28 AM
Good God, that sounds like a horrendous idea. Do you want to make everyone run screaming from the General position? :P

It's hard enough for players to properly evaluate relative strengths of armies, what with factors like army composition, movement rate, siege engines, etc. Removing CS from scout reports wouldn't just make it impossible for Generals to asses enemy armies, it would make it impossible to assess their own! And seeing SF as Infantry just doesn't make sense. You might as well say that Archers should look like Infantry; after all, when they're lounging around the camp, you can't tell if they fight with a bow or a sword.

No. I do not think this would help in any way, shape, or form.

Uncertainty can be added by other means, if we really feel that it's necessary. Crippling (or removing, since this would make people scout a lot less) the one tool people have for knowing what's going on around them is not the way to do that.

I think adding uncertainty is definitely a plus. Something like infantry units not being as effective as they are in a certain terrain. Infantry is just too good at the moment while archers are somewhat unreliable.

Quote from: Lapallanch on August 22, 2013, 12:39:37 AM
I think adding uncertainty is definitely a plus. Something like infantry units not being as effective as they are in a certain terrain. Infantry is just too good at the moment while archers are somewhat unreliable.

I definitely like the idea of different kinds of terrain modifiers. Various versions of that have been suggested over the years, to mostly positive reception. The trouble is implementing it in a clean and balanced way, that has enough effect to be meaningful, but not so much as to completely throw the game out of whack.

Quote from: Anaris on August 22, 2013, 12:09:28 AM
Do you want to make everyone run screaming from the General position? :P

I thought that's what you wanted when the general's access to information of their own armies was first restricted.

Honestly, I think it's a pretty neat idea (as far as the CS is concerned, not so much the unit type-mangling). It's pretty much the same as the "change appearance" option that was introduced a while back except that it's for everyone and not any hassle or waste of time at all. It could be made viable by removing the above mentioned restriction, heck why not remove it for everyone? It's always nice to be able to compare your unit with that of your army members.
And people would still need to scout and could still differentiate between a big-ass army and a small raiding party. Only sometimes they couldn't. And hilarity would ensue.

Quote from: Lorgan on August 22, 2013, 01:01:43 AM
I thought that's what you wanted when the general's access to information of their own armies was first restricted.

You'll note that that wasn't my call.

Quote
Honestly, I think it's a pretty neat idea (as far as the CS is concerned, not so much the unit type-mangling). It's pretty much the same as the "change appearance" option that was introduced a while back except that it's for everyone and not any hassle or waste of time at all. It could be made viable by removing the above mentioned restriction, heck why not remove it for everyone? It's always nice to be able to compare your unit with that of your army members.
And people would still need to scout and could still differentiate between a big-ass army and a small raiding party. Only sometimes they couldn't. And hilarity would ensue.

That's not the kind of hilarity we want. That's the kind of "hilarity" that makes people hate the game.

This whole line of thought reminds me of the "delayed messages" idea. Sure, it makes some sense from an IC perspective, and if it were accepted by the playerbase, it would add an interesting dimension that would require rethinking a lot of strategy.

But it would make people leave the game in droves, because it's not fun. Indeed, it's the opposite of fun.

I don't look at it from a realism perspective. I look at it from a gameplay perspective: everyone should have access to all the information of their own army, and the general should have access to that information for all armies. Battles would still need to show actual CS and I do believe you should be aware of the CS in your current region as well. However, showing a certain randomness in scout reports (you can still tell the strength of an army by looking at it's numbers, just compare it to your own, that's how everyone, everywhere does it), which is actually already something that's going on to a lesser extent today, does add gameplay. Not only does it give more worth to training and to RC quality but also actual tactical advantages to those who have put time, effort and gold into it (as is with everything in this game).

Just imagine: a realm invades you. They send 1,000 men. You have 1,400 men of medium quality troops who have 16,000 CS. You estimate their CS based on what you know of their RCs, the time they've had (you've given them) and/or previous encounters and then you decide whether to engage them or not.
You'd think that you should be able to beat them at those odds, but maybe those are 1,000 killer troops, diligently trained and recruited from RCs that have taken tens of thousands of gold to perfect. Or maybe it's simply all your enemy could muster.

The point is, you're not just mindlessly comparing CS to see whether you can or can't win a battle, adding or subtracting for fortifications. You're thinking about it and learning from your enemy. For the first time ever, to fight a war you would have to find out AND take into account the quality of your enemy's forces when devising a strategy. Strategy would be more than just getting the biggest number in the right place at the right time.
It would tie military operations in nicely with everything  on which you also spend thousands upon thousands of gold just for the purpose of those same operations.

Quote from: Anaris on August 22, 2013, 12:58:15 AM
I definitely like the idea of different kinds of terrain modifiers. Various versions of that have been suggested over the years, to mostly positive reception. The trouble is implementing it in a clean and balanced way, that has enough effect to be meaningful, but not so much as to completely throw the game out of whack.

I am sure we can tweak numbers and think about the best way to implement it. But I think it would be a nice to have terrain modifiers since it definitely add uncertainty. Values shouldn't be fixed I think like the weather modifiers. Regions are big and I doubt even plain regions are entirely plain unless those regions are in the middle of a big plain.

Quote from: Lorgan on August 22, 2013, 03:25:00 AM
I don't look at it from a realism perspective. I look at it from a gameplay perspective: everyone should have access to all the information of their own army, and the general should have access to that information for all armies. Battles would still need to show actual CS and I do believe you should be aware of the CS in your current region as well. However, showing a certain randomness in scout reports (you can still tell the strength of an army by looking at it's numbers, just compare it to your own, that's how everyone, everywhere does it), which is actually already something that's going on to a lesser extent today, does add gameplay. Not only does it give more worth to training and to RC quality but also actual tactical advantages to those who have put time, effort and gold into it (as is with everything in this game).

Just imagine: a realm invades you. They send 1,000 men. You have 1,400 men of medium quality troops who have 16,000 CS. You estimate their CS based on what you know of their RCs, the time they've had (you've given them) and/or previous encounters and then you decide whether to engage them or not.
You'd think that you should be able to beat them at those odds, but maybe those are 1,000 killer troops, diligently trained and recruited from RCs that have taken tens of thousands of gold to perfect. Or maybe it's simply all your enemy could muster.

The point is, you're not just mindlessly comparing CS to see whether you can or can't win a battle, adding or subtracting for fortifications. You're thinking about it and learning from your enemy. For the first time ever, to fight a war you would have to find out AND take into account the quality of your enemy's forces when devising a strategy. Strategy would be more than just getting the biggest number in the right place at the right time.
It would tie military operations in nicely with everything  on which you also spend thousands upon thousands of gold just for the purpose of those same operations.

You can make anything look good on paper but all this results in is more tentativeness and less precise tactics. As it stands it just makes the game more punishing because you reduce information given to the player without giving him tools or options (i.e. gameplay) to get it back.

Quote from: Kai on August 22, 2013, 03:33:37 AM
You can make anything look good on paper but all this results in is more tentativeness and less precise tactics. As it stands it just makes the game more punishing because you reduce information given to the player without giving him tools or options (i.e. gameplay) to get it back.

For once, sir, I completely agree with you.

Quote from: Kai on August 22, 2013, 03:33:37 AM
You can make anything look good on paper but all this results in is more tentativeness and less precise tactics. As it stands it just makes the game more punishing because you reduce information given to the player without giving him tools or options (i.e. gameplay) to get it back.

There's enough tools available. Knowledge of RC quality in neighbouring realms is something that comes overtime, just as it does for enemy realms. All you really have to do is fight them. You don't even have to, you could easily send in someone to scout their regions, or just send an army. A sample of a couple of regions will do, then compare their RCs to your RCs and you have an idea of how to compare your men to their men. But again, you could always just fight blind that first battle or two and depend on your own troops. And the only way that's going to happen anyway is if you're fighting against someone far away, any neighbour shows you that sample every minute of every day.

Quote from: Anaris on August 22, 2013, 02:23:38 AM
This whole line of thought reminds me of the "delayed messages" idea. Sure, it makes some sense from an IC perspective, and if it were accepted by the playerbase, it would add an interesting dimension that would require rethinking a lot of strategy.

But it would make people leave the game in droves, because it's not fun. Indeed, it's the opposite of fun.

Remember the delayed scout reports experiment? ::)

Quote from: Indirik on August 22, 2013, 04:06:43 AM
Remember the delayed scout reports experiment? ::)

Yep. That was a fiasco and a half—even when they weren't bugged all to hell :P

Quote from: Lorgan on August 22, 2013, 03:25:00 AM
I don't look at it from a realism perspective. I look at it from a gameplay perspective: everyone should have access to all the information of their own army, and the general should have access to that information for all armies. Battles would still need to show actual CS and I do believe you should be aware of the CS in your current region as well. However, showing a certain randomness in scout reports (you can still tell the strength of an army by looking at it's numbers, just compare it to your own, that's how everyone, everywhere does it), which is actually already something that's going on to a lesser extent today, does add gameplay. Not only does it give more worth to training and to RC quality but also actual tactical advantages to those who have put time, effort and gold into it (as is with everything in this game).

Just imagine: a realm invades you. They send 1,000 men. You have 1,400 men of medium quality troops who have 16,000 CS. You estimate their CS based on what you know of their RCs, the time they've had (you've given them) and/or previous encounters and then you decide whether to engage them or not.
You'd think that you should be able to beat them at those odds, but maybe those are 1,000 killer troops, diligently trained and recruited from RCs that have taken tens of thousands of gold to perfect. Or maybe it's simply all your enemy could muster.

The point is, you're not just mindlessly comparing CS to see whether you can or can't win a battle, adding or subtracting for fortifications. You're thinking about it and learning from your enemy. For the first time ever, to fight a war you would have to find out AND take into account the quality of your enemy's forces when devising a strategy. Strategy would be more than just getting the biggest number in the right place at the right time.
It would tie military operations in nicely with everything  on which you also spend thousands upon thousands of gold just for the purpose of those same operations.

This was the point.

Anaris, you're effectively railing against the blob vs. blob nature of BM combat, and yet you don't recognize that the fact that nearly exact CS numbers being available to both sides just encourages this type of behavior, not to mention enables risk aversion. As a General I assess the CS of the enemy force, take into account the (comparatively minor) considerations of unit type distribution and total number of men, and then I know if I can win or not. This guides almost all my decisions.

Removing CS numbers would not in any way reduce the value of scouts. After all, you still need to know where the enemy is and what he's doing, as much or more than needing to know his combat capabilities down to a T. My suggestion wouldn't change that. What it would do is make battles more unpredictable, but that's a good thing. As it is right now, people just avoid fighting at a CS disadvantage unless they feel they have no choice. It is something that enables risk aversion.

Quote from: Geronus on August 22, 2013, 06:36:04 AM
This was the point.

Anaris, you're effectively railing against the blob vs. blob nature of BM combat, and yet you don't recognize that the fact that nearly exact CS numbers being available to both sides just encourages this type of behavior, not to mention enables risk aversion. As a General I assess the CS of the enemy force, take into account the (comparatively minor) considerations of unit type distribution and total number of men, and then I know if I can win or not. This guides almost all my decisions.

Removing CS numbers would not in any way reduce the value of scouts. After all, you still need to know where the enemy is and what he's doing, as much or more than needing to know his combat capabilities down to a T. My suggestion wouldn't change that. What it would do is make battles more unpredictable, but that's a good thing. As it is right now, people just avoid fighting at a CS disadvantage unless they feel they have no choice. It is something that enables risk aversion.

I don't like the idea of completely removing any kind of way of knowing the quality of the enemy army when scouting although I see your point on people waiting until they know they have a CS advantage.

More unpredictable -> more defensive -> more boring

Your goal should be interesting strategy, not boring "overtime".

"I don't know how much CS they have unless I pour hours into the game, then when I know I'll do the same thing I did before"

Quote from: Kai on August 22, 2013, 07:00:11 AM
More unpredictable -> more defensive -> more boring

Your goal should be interesting strategy, not boring "overtime".

"I don't know how much CS they have unless I pour hours into the game, then when I know I'll do the same thing I did before"

Allowing defense to generally be stronger than offence is good. The issue is its the latter. By that I mean, if being defensive was generally stronger, say a CS bonus for knowing the landscape of the region you are in because it belongs to your realm allows defense to be stronger. Its good because people can declare wars and be less certain of winning but more certain they can at least hold off the other realm.

I would bet it would awefully hard to find a war declaration where the realm declaring it or its group of allies who participated in the war weren't stronger than the realm being declared war on, or at least appeared so before the war began. People who start wars are people who believe they can win them because not winning means losing right now, almost never a draw or inconclusive war ending. Both sides having defensive advantages, allows more draws/inconclusive, which means more limited wars, the point of this thread.

If you think limited wars are boring and you want to talk about it here, then leave the thread, because thats not the purpose nor discussion of this thread.

Favouring defensive strategy is not the same as a defenders advantage. Do you even know the primary source of defenders advantage?

Defenders advantage is the advantage of having your enemies come to you. They expend time, you don't.

QuoteI would bet it would awefully hard to find a war declaration where the realm declaring it or its group of allies who participated in the war weren't stronger than the realm being declared war on, or at least appeared so before the war began. People who start wars are people who believe they can win them because not winning means losing right now, almost never a draw or inconclusive war ending. Both sides having defensive advantages, allows more draws/inconclusive, which means more limited wars, the point of this thread.

Neither World War was started by people who expected to win. Austria merely saw a chance, a slim one, at reversing her fortune, while Hitler was role playing as if he were in a Wagner production. Those were both the kinds of wars that would be exciting to play in, if translated into Battlemaster.

The reason BM mostly just has gang bang wars, wars started with 100% odds of victory, is because the people in power suck and are anti-fun. They just aren't very creative. That is the problem with electing people democratically; the safe, bland candidates have the broadest appeal, while the extremists, those who are interesting, do not.

About Generals:

Its ridiculous easy to make big armies to be hardest to control than smalls ones. Your General with 50% leadership will manage a small army perfectly and give it a big bonus, while you enemy General with a 50% too, but with a big army will not, and would give no bonus. 

Problem solved!

Quote from: Kai on August 22, 2013, 07:00:11 AM
More unpredictable -> more defensive -> more boring

Your goal should be interesting strategy, not boring "overtime".

"I don't know how much CS they have unless I pour hours into the game, then when I know I'll do the same thing I did before"

Yes but:

More predictable->more boring

To know ALL about you enemy not create 'interesting strategy', but boring strategy.

They have 4345CS, I have 3243CS. It's they turn to loot my regions, and my turn to wait in a city... Tax day! Now I got 5543CS and they only 4013!!! It's they turn to withdraw and wait in a city and my turn to burn their regions... With some luck I will destroy some left-behind unit!... Not very trilling!

...

Yes, with more limited information, bad Generals will do NOTHING if they don't now ALL about the enemy, they will not take any risk (the same way they play now)... and they will lost wars.

And good Generals will know when to take risks and will win wars...


Honestly, right now, the wars are a bit booooring. The only 'variable' is, for the attacking army, how many nobles will not move, and will miss the battle.

If unpredictability is not good for the game, Then We must eliminate the battles. The army with more CS win, and lost a 10%, the army with less CS loss and loss 50%... You think this will make wars better?

THIS IS A GAME, AND GAMES NEEDS UNPREDICTABILITY... If not, we would be playing chess!!!

Removing CS values won't do anything to reduce blob armies. Instead of comparing CS, they'll compare raw numbers, but they'll treat the numbers just the same. In fact I'd wager it would only increase trench warfare since both sides will just recruit as many men as possible to improve their odds, but at the same time they will be hesitant to attack since they don't know exactly how strong their enemy is, and you'll just end up with huge armies staring at each other and not moving. 

Quote from: Sacha on August 22, 2013, 02:56:23 PM
Removing CS values won't do anything to reduce blob armies. Instead of comparing CS, they'll compare raw numbers, but they'll treat the numbers just the same. In fact I'd wager it would only increase trench warfare since both sides will just recruit as many men as possible to improve their odds, but at the same time they will be hesitant to attack since they don't know exactly how strong their enemy is, and you'll just end up with huge armies staring at each other and not moving. 

Not, it will not make anything to reduce blob. For this, it would be good to make some General/Marshal rule as I proposed before... and give more strength to the nobles, specially to the heroes! This is a role play game! Give more power to the nobles! ;D

And it's a bit risky to suppose it will be the way you said. I could be equally this way:
-Some General recruit a big army of cheap almost useless infantry, and the other realm don't attack him afraid of the the size. The General wins the war easily...
-Or a big army attack a smaller army thinking is an easy prey, and is destroyed because they were all elite...
-Or a big army see a smaller army enter in their region, and decide to withdraw, thinking the other army must be all elite. Maybe, or maybe not...

Right now, there a almost no risk in wars because we know too much about the enemy army and there is so little variables.

And I agree... Delay Scouts is make the game slower... is a bad idea. But this is not the same!

Terrain Modifiers: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5043.0.html (http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5043.0.html)

Quote from: Poliorketes on August 22, 2013, 02:55:05 PM
About Generals:

Its ridiculous easy to make big armies to be hardest to control than smalls ones. Your General with 50% leadership will manage a small army perfectly and give it a big bonus, while you enemy General with a 50% too, but with a big army will not, and would give no bonus. 

Problem solved!

I have in the past proposed a few different changes to add this kind of thing. It's not the general that should determine single-army performance, though, it's the Marshal. The is the one in charge of the army.
Rather, the generals should help with coordinating the actions of multiple armies. Especially when the armies of multiple realms work together. The presence of a general should give a bonus when multiple armies try to work together. And if you have multiple realms, you should have the generals of all involved realms. Getting more generals onto the battlefield is also a good thing, as it allows for them tog et wounded, and knocked out for a while. Or to help increase some turnover.

You do have to be careful with stuff, though. Adding a bonus in some situations is almost the same thing as as giving a penalty in the situation where the bonus does not apply. When some realms get a general-is-there bonus, then it will eventually be interpreted as a general-not-present penalty. This is especially true if the bonus is large.

QuoteTo know ALL about you enemy not create 'interesting strategy', but boring strategy.

....

Honestly, right now, the wars are a bit booooring. The only 'variable' is, for the attacking army, how many nobles will not move, and will miss the battle.

This just simply isn't true. We had loads of wars, and loads of fun, for years. And we had even more accurate information than we do now. We used to know the exact CS and soldier count for all units on every scout report. And we still had plenty of wars, and plenty of fun. Adding the variability to scout reports didn't have much effect at all.

This all goes back to lack of nobles. When you have more nobles you can have more armies, and those armies can be doing more things. You can have looting armies, and flanking maneuvers, and fast-reaction cavalry forces, etc. But when you only have 20 nobles, and your enemy has 30, neither side can really afford to break 7 or 8 nobles loose to run special missions. When you have 100 noble,s you can cut 10-15 loose to do special stuff, and it won't cripple your main army.