Yes, even I, an arrogant prick, can realize when things are getting toxic because of stubbornness on my part. This thread is so that we have a place that isn't mucked down in an argument that has gone on for far too long. Anyways, here we go.
Quote from: Lapallanch on November 27, 2014, 03:55:12 AM
What problems are still there?
The player density issue has only really been solved for Luria. On average the number of characters, and thus players, per region is still about the same, being about 1.49 before the monster invasion and around 1.5 afterwards. Also, areas that were already low in population have started to completely collapse (looking at Morek and Astrum here). They don't have enough nobles for the regions that they have.
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and what are the new problems that came with the changes?
Currently I would say that on Dwilight the issue now is that the map has become very linear in shape, meaning any politics are going to be stratified along those lines. It will be very hard for any realm to have a political relationship that isn't of an Alliance A vs Alliance B or Alliance A vs Nation B nature. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but it will be a lot harder for wars between 3rd parties to happen without involving the rest of the continent.
Quote from: De-Legro on November 27, 2014, 04:40:47 AM
What we can do is improve the current situation to a)Keep the players that have stuck around and b)attract new/old players to the game
A) I would suggest, and I know how everyone has been saying that changing the maps will cause a lot of heartache and will be difficult to do; but I would suggest sinking the part of the island in the very north where Thulsoma used to be. Morek and Astrum are the only realms that have regions there, and Astrum went down to where Corsanctum used to be. Morek and Astrum both have too many regions for the number of nobles they have anyway, so they won't be as affected as, say, Fissoa would be if we cut off that island. Now I know what you're thinking, this sounds like I'm advocating just cutting off another part of the island, which is what got us in this mess in the first place. Not so fast. I would suggest then preceding to have the seas recede in two areas. The inlet between the Corsanctum peninsula and Aegir, as well as the sea surrounded by Desert of Silhouettes, the D'haran main island, and Garuck Udor. I would suggest the regions be fertile plains areas, as they would make the adjacent cities much easier to sustain as independent powers.
This would hopefully provide some balance to the map, as well as making war less of an undertaking.
On one hand, since monster hordes are what keep certain regions inaccessible, I see no reason why these hordes couldn't shift about. On the other, I am still not really convinced that changes like those proposed here would make much of a difference.
I'm not sure I see how taking away regions, only to place more does anything for player density. Making war on Dwilight more feasible I suppose is a good thing. I always thought that Dwilight was never designed to be just another island, I much preferred the days of the frontier realms that had more to worry about from rogue forces then what ever was occurring on the other side of the map. The loss of that setting has only made the design flaws of the map in regards to the core game more evident.
Personally I am against any action that targets regions and realms, no matter how logical the application may seem. I would prefer a in game event that determines what occurs, and allows those players and realms that put in the effort to avoid the worst of the effect. Give the characters some control over what is occurring.
Quote from: Scarborn on November 27, 2014, 08:04:00 AM
On one hand, since monster hordes are what keep certain regions inaccessible, I see no reason why these hordes couldn't shift about.
I wonder if we could not reach of the same effects simply by moving the hordes around and shortening some of the sea routes rather than creating new lands? Like, instead of creating new rurals around Garuck Udor, remove the monster hordes from some of the rurals between Candiels ond Paisley on the coast and make them less 6 hours away from Garuck Udor by tweaking the sea zones.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kfql275inpr7pej/BM%20world%20map.jpeg?dl=0 (https://www.dropbox.com/s/kfql275inpr7pej/BM%20world%20map.jpeg?dl=0)
Based on my very rough and ready world map above, I have something of an idea.
If you were to sink the north of eastern Dwilight with floods, or evacuate it due to a monster invasion and then build a big wall on the map to separate it off, then hopefully you'd force all the SAers to move into the mountain region and form a concentrated SA state there.
With maybe a few region tweaks elsewhere (such as tweaking the Desert of Silhouettes and the Palm Sea to put rurals and townslands and maybe even an extra city or two in between the pair of them) you'd then have a concentrated area centred around the most densely populated realms but with enough townslands and cities to stop the Luria region from dominating the region, especially if you increased the populations of a few of the other cities to even things up.
Dwilight would be much, much smaller in terms of the area to play in but it could probably be done with only a very small loss of players since Astrum, Swordfell and Morek all have a common religious culture and could coexist happily in one realm.
Quote from: De-Legro on November 27, 2014, 10:46:43 AM
I'm not sure I see how taking away regions, only to place more does anything for player density. Making war on Dwilight more feasible I suppose is a good thing. I always thought that Dwilight was never designed to be just another island, I much preferred the days of the frontier realms that had more to worry about from rogue forces then what ever was occurring on the other side of the map. The loss of that setting has only made the design flaws of the map in regards to the core game more evident.
Personally I am against any action that targets regions and realms, no matter how logical the application may seem. I would prefer a in game event that determines what occurs, and allows those players and realms that put in the effort to avoid the worst of the effect. Give the characters some control over what is occurring.
The reason it helps is that it squashes the map down some while providing areas that are good for new realms. Currently Morek and Astrum are spread all the way to the north into regions that they literally could lose all at once and only one character would have to go lordless for any length of time. My idea isn't to solve player density directly, but to make the island geography better than it currently is. Dwilight is way too stretched out, leading to realms on either end that are completely isolated from the other end. Now that was fine when we had the west continent, so that there was always a realm that could compete from the western continent, but that is no longer the case.
As well, this would provide regions to feed the glut of cities that are in the Lurian area, as well as hopefully stopping the starve, population boom, starve cycle that happens so often on the D'Haran isles.
I don't think we need to remove anymore land from Dwilight, but I am certainly in favour of giving it more. In fact with the ice age the planet is experiencing this could just be the effect (if somewhat delayed) from all that new ice forming! Turns out some of the seas around Dwilight are conveniently shallow and are now reclaimable.
If the ice ages ever end then the excuse for them not reflooding can simply be "magic, work of the gods".
Quote from: Antonine on November 27, 2014, 05:13:12 PM
Dwilight would be much, much smaller in terms of the area to play in but it could probably be done with only a very small loss of players since Astrum, Swordfell and Morek all have a common religious culture and could coexist happily in one realm.
(http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/9869953.jpg)
Quote from: Sacha on November 27, 2014, 09:15:28 PM
(http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/9869953.jpg)
Mixture of both. They'd squabble and fight but they wouldn't do that until they were mostly safely in one realm rather than just quitting en masse because they couldn't possible see themselves at home in Swordfell.
Quote from: Antonine on November 27, 2014, 10:48:13 PM
Mixture of both. They'd squabble and fight but they wouldn't do that until they were mostly safely in one realm rather than just quitting en masse because they couldn't possible see themselves at home in Swordfell.
I seem to recall that we Devs though something similar with the western migration. Forecasting player reaction is a fraught issue. This is partly why I am more in favour of things that progress in game and provide mechanisms for players to feel relevant. In general I would suggest you don't target certain realms using logic regarding their culture and player base. Geographical arguments are I feel a different matter, it ends up targeting realms sure, but not because of the actions, play styles or other elements of the player interaction.
Since Dwilight is an RP island, I'd rather see something in-game influence island-wide events. Something akin to "Whatever army can battle their way to the Zuma decides" or some such. I think one of the problems with the monster invasion was the abruptness of it and the lack of ceremony. A great quest for all players, some island-wide RP events that tell a story...that would be neat. Something like that may not balance the game as well as omnipotent dev-touch, but it would at least give players control and the feeling of autonomy.
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With maybe a few region tweaks elsewhere (such as tweaking the Desert of Silhouettes and the Palm Sea to put rurals and townslands and maybe even an extra city or two in between the pair of them) you'd then have a concentrated area centred around the most densely populated realms but with enough townslands and cities to stop the Luria region from dominating the region, especially if you increased the populations of a few of the other cities to even things up.
Dwilight would be much, much smaller in terms of the area to play in but it could probably be done with only a very small loss of players since Astrum, Swordfell and Morek all have a common religious culture and could coexist happily in one realm.
Why try to change the game to suit the realms currently in power? If Luria has control of all the towns and cities in the area don't just ask for more to be created. Go to war, fight for those towns and cities; make a name for your family and realm!
Whatever complaints you have about player retention, what have you done to make people stick around? I'm in Luria, and I can say that there is at least a handful of people who keep people connected to the realm on different levels. Only when you put in an effort, you get a return. I've been in more realm than one that was bleeding dry (a couple of them on Dwilight) and while people may have been complaining about their realm running dry, they were not at all trying to create a good and fun atmosphere to play in.
Quote from: Fleugs on December 01, 2014, 02:57:26 AM
Whatever complaints you have about player retention, what have you done to make people stick around? I'm in Luria, and I can say that there is at least a handful of people who keep people connected to the realm on different levels. Only when you put in an effort, you get a return. I've been in more realm than one that was bleeding dry (a couple of them on Dwilight) and while people may have been complaining about their realm running dry, they were not at all trying to create a good and fun atmosphere to play in.
People in Luria have it easy. Please, let's keep the talk about how Luria is somehow better at retention than other realms out of it. The majority of your growth is from refugees of other realms, not people who have stayed because "Luria's such a cool place". A huge percentage of your realm is staying purely because they want to make their own realm, not because they want to be in your realm.
Quote from: Stoneward Family
Why try to change the game to suit the realms currently in power? If Luria has control of all the towns and cities in the area don't just ask for more to be created. Go to war, fight for those towns and cities; make a name for your family and realm!
For the same reason that I don't try to get realms to fight CE on Atamara. They're in such a dominant position, and the leading nobles there are so happy with the current status quo, that it'd be pointless. You do realize that the entirety of Dwilight is at war with Luria, right? And they're still losing.
Seriously, some (not saying all, but some) of the players from Luria who are commenting on this sound almost like people from the US who comment "why don't the people in Africa just get their act together?" (no, I'm not talking about Ebola, in case anyone wanted to take offense regarding that). It's both completely ignoring the circumstances that are causing the issues, and seen by those who do know the circumstances as an incredibly arrogant viewpoint by someone who more than likely doesn't have to deal with nearly as many problems on a daily basis as the ones they are casting judgement on.
Well, this is meant to be a player driven game so it really comes down to players utilizing their characters to change things. I do not thing that this game was ever meant to be controlled and molded by the devs to constantly ensue equal footing for all realms. If Cagilian Empire and Arcea happened without the devs stepping in, I doubt there is a really valid reason for the devs to step in here.
The only arguable reason I can think of is that Luria's strong position is a direct result of the changes made by the devs to increase player density. While it is true that Luria was not greatly impacted by this change I am willing to bet that one or two of the nations who are fighting against Luria also suffered little from the monster invasion.
I is my opinion that Luria's real strengths in this war are it's large player base and the fact that it is primarily in defense mode. If we had half the nobles we do I think that Luria would quickly fall. It is my opinion that the reason why we have so many players is because we see so much action. With 4+ realms coming at us we get to enjoy 4 times as many battles. I know that when I am looking for a place to start a new family i am always keen to find a country that is or will likely be involved n a lot of battles. I doubt i am the only one.
Further, up to now, Luria has been mostly on the defense. Most of our offensive actions involve short raids and the recapturing of lost lands. This means that our huge player base can quickly and easily refit and stay in fighting shape. Meanwhile half of our aggressors have to travel incredible distances to refit and even our neighboring enemies have some distance to travel for refits.
I can also attest to the active player base in Luria. It is bound to happen when you have so many players in a realm. All the same, players really seem to feel engaged, welcomed, included, and challenged here. So we not only have an incentive to join (lots of battles) we also have high retention.
So yes, things are stacked in Luria's favor right now - largely thanks to the entire continent (minus Swordfel) ganging up on us. All the same, I do not see this lasting. Even if Luria is victorious I doubt that there is much motivation to take over all the other countries. Even if there was, there would undoubtedly be schisms and the like. Things would certainly change but I am not all that worried about it. I know that, as a player, I dread a Lurian domination over Dwilight and am likely to take whatever action I can (within the bounds of my character and existing RP) to keep that from happening and I doubt I am alone.
Lastly, I really think that dev intervention should be kept to a minimum, especially when it comes to balancing power between realms. If we started having the devs step in and "rebalancing" things every time a country became strong, there would no longer be a reason to even play. Why try to build a strong nation and battle others of key regions when, if successful, the devs just change things so we lost that strength? Why try to fight against rising powers and strengthening our realm when we know that should the enemy become too strong the devs will just nerf them and buff us? This is just a bad path to go down in my opinion.
Quote from: Scarborn on December 01, 2014, 08:46:12 AM
Well, this is meant to be a player driven game so it really comes down to players utilizing their characters to change things. I do not thing that this game was ever meant to be controlled and molded by the devs to constantly ensue equal footing for all realms. If Cagilian Empire and Arcea happened without the devs stepping in, I doubt there is a really valid reason for the devs to step in here.
The only arguable reason I can think of is that Luria's strong position is a direct result of the changes made by the devs to increase player density. While it is true that Luria was not greatly impacted by this change I am willing to bet that one or two of the nations who are fighting against Luria also suffered little from the monster invasion.
You're seriously going to make this argument? Do you even know how many nobles Barca had at the beginning of this war, before the monster invasion occurred? We had at least 40 nobles, and were still on an upward trend in population. Do you want to know how many nobles Luria had at that point? 35, and they were likely losing players before the invasion happened and forced Asylon to merge. Do you know how infuriating it is for you Lurian players to flaunt how you have such a "large playerbase", when the same could have been said of Barca and Asylon before the monster invasion? The latter of which make up nearly half of your population. The reason you have so many nobles isn't as you believe, that you see a lot of action. It's because many of them came form elsewhere and are trying to create their own realm when this war is over.
As to the nations fighting Luria that weren't affected, there was only one, Morek, and it is collapsing from lack of nobles anyways. Astrum lost the majority of its realm, was forced to literally cannibalize Corsanctum, and also had to recover from a war it lost to Niselur and Asylon. The Astrum you see now is where Corsanctum used to be almost entirely, except for the northernmost regions. Barca is dead. Completely dead. So that's 40 nobles and at its height a 20 region realm, gone. D'Hara lost two cities and almost the entirety of its food production. Fissoa lost the regions on the southern tip of the western continent, so any regions it has taken now have had to be done in the face of Lurian armies.
Yeah, the coalition against you was "hardly affected".
Also, I have not said that devs should directly interfere with a realm that is dominant. Where have I said that? The suggestion I gave would give the Lurians a direct overland route to D'Hara! That's hardly what the D'Harans want, they're like Britain in that the sea between them and their enemies makes them hard to invade. And this is where we get to your point of players utilizing their characters to change things. There is a reason that whenever I want to bring up an example of an overly powerful realm that is bad for the health of the island, I bring up Atamara's CE and not FEI's Arcaea. From what I've heard, Arcaea is already planned to fragment so that new realms can form and the island will return to a healthy state of conflict. CE, on the other hand, just sits in the middle, together in their alliance with all but one realm on the island, squashing any chance of conflict just by its sheer presence. The status quo is the order of the day, and currently peace reigns over the entire island (the sole realm at war has lost its capital and all its regions). The power to make an island healthy or not falls squarely in the hands of its strongest realms. It is the choices of their players that tend to shape the island, for better or worse.
I never said, "Yeah, the coalition against you (Luria) was "hardly affected." I did say say, "I am willing to bet that one or two of the nations who are fighting against Luria also suffered little from the monster invasion." I am not at all sure how you managed to get one from the other.
I get it. Barca was an active realm with a high noble count before the invasion. Check. No disagreement and the numbers speak for themselves. I never said that Luria suffered just as much as Barca and managed to overcome it all so you Barcans should just shut up and move on. Why would I? I also get that Asylon suffered just as badly as Barca, that D'hara took a serious hit and that Fisoa lost some land too. I had no idea what impact the monster invasion had on Astrum and never pretended to.
It must have sucked for the players of these realms (especially Barca and Asylon). I have little experience in this game that compares. I can totally believe that a lot of players quit the game because of these changes and their effects. After playing the game for the first time back in 2004 I also ended up quiting when something outside my control ruined a long standing plan and a lot of effort. I have also played a lot of ether games, some of which involved years of investment, that went south due to factors outside my control. I know the feeling of frustration, at least to some degree, that some players must be feeling.
Regarding my 'bragging' about Luria's huge player base, I apologize. I never intended my statements to come off as bragging. I honestly do not contribute much to Luria's success and have no place to brag. The point I was trying to make is that a large part of Luria's success is a direct result of the whole island (minus Swordfel last I heard) ganging up on Luria and that a direct result of you all attacking Luria is making Luria a more attractive realm.
The fact that a large portion of Lurian players might be refugees is not really all that telling to me. When refugees are made, they get to choose where their characters go. When new characters are made, they get to choose where those characters end up. Likewise, when characters are a part of a realm they decide if they will stay or leave. The fact that Luria has so many players and that the players are staying (for the time being at least) means that Luria is offering something to these players.
Despite all of this, I only wanted to voice few points:
1. This is a player driven game and I want it to remain that way as much as possible - things are still in a flux but the players will and should determine the course of the game.
2. The reason why Luria is doing so well is because (based on present circumstances) a large portion of the player base wants it that way - for the time being at least.
3. All the stuff that happened in the past that made some players feel screwed over is in the PAST. Let us, as PLAYERS, reshape Dwilight to better fit our needs!
4. Sure, all these points are generic and idealistic but I don't rightly care.
I do concur that Luria has it "easy", or at least much easier than other realms.
Firstly, they are the target of the war, so travel times are short and battles are abundant. This is a lot more fun than for most other realms' nobles that need to march for a long time to just have one battle.
Secondly, their geography is overpowering. People join Luria because they know that Luria will have the might to push their agenda, be it to (re)form a (new) realm or to otherwise influence continental politics. All they have to do is convince the leaders and the rest pretty much falls in place. If they picked a realm like Swordfell or Fissoa, then they'd not only have to convince the leadership to go along with their desires, but then they'd have to fight hard as hell to achieve what they seek. It takes the whole continent just to arrive at a stalemate against Luria. Set aside history and current diplomacy for a moment, and just think... if Fissoa wanted to create a colony, how the hell would it achieve it? It couldn't. Not on its own. The monsters in the West are too numerous for them to take on alone, every other realm is both too far and too strong for a colonization attempt to succeed. Same for pretty much every other realm on the continent.
These two factors are largely independent of Luria's player base. Even if D'Hara had Luria's number of nobles, we could never achieve their might, because our cities are nowhere near as rich. Morek only achieves an appearance of strength and wealth by being ridiculously large, which is plenty compensated with resulting costs in militia and the like. Not to mention that our cities seem to take forever to recuperate from any population loss. And I think the players of the various non-lurian realms realize this, that the game is rigged against them, and that no amount of effort would be able to turn the odds.
Perhaps the single biggest imbalance at the moment is the vast size of LN's cities. If their population and gold was reduced then it would go a long way to creating more balance on Dwilight.
Map changes to "balance" the current situation are very very unlikely. None of the maps are balanced, partly because realms come and go as do their position and lands, thus their relative strength. Secondly it has always been a design element of Tom's to have areas that are preferable for realms to control, in a effort to create a carrot to drive war.
Quote from: De-Legro on December 01, 2014, 09:45:08 PM
Map changes to "balance" the current situation are very very unlikely. None of the maps are balanced, partly because realms come and go as do their position and lands, thus their relative strength. Secondly it has always been a design element of Tom's to have areas that are preferable for realms to control, in a effort to create a carrot to drive war.
Sure, but right now, I know I feel "Damn, I invested all of this time and energy in the wrong place, this is futile".
Some imbalance is inevitable... but the amount of it is perhaps too much. Mind you, region stats were changed dramatically since I joined Dwi too, perhaps things weren't the same then. I know I used to think that the D'Haran cities were pretty rich. Paisly was an important part of that, though... All I know is that back then, I used to swim in gold, and nowadays... for a realm that is mostly cities and townslands, sure feels poor.
Quote from: De-Legro on December 01, 2014, 09:45:08 PM
Map changes to "balance" the current situation are very very unlikely. None of the maps are balanced, partly because realms come and go as do their position and lands, thus their relative strength. Secondly it has always been a design element of Tom's to have areas that are preferable for realms to control, in a effort to create a carrot to drive war.
My suggestion at the beginning of this thread was more in line with the latter than the former kind of change. I was seeking to create more areas, so that it would be easier for competing realms to be formed.
When you start talking about adding regions, I personally think you are spending time on a proposal that simply won't be implemented. Region tweaks, well we do have a precedent of that.
Personally what I would like to see is a system that allows for the lost lands to be reclaimed. I've not come up with a system though that would only allow this to be achievable if we also increase the player density of the island, which I would assume would be a requirement since their loss was meant to address this.
A dynamic based on overall noble/region density could be devised without too much difficulty. It would be hard to tune, and would probably cause problems when it had to shrink again. Not worth the hassle and frustration for the players.
So now we're embarking on a slippery slope where enough complaining will result in your opponents regions getting tweaked :P
Quote from: Sacha on December 02, 2014, 05:06:25 AM
So now we're embarking on a slippery slope where enough complaining will result in your opponents regions getting tweaked :P
Maybe they were, I don't care about touching Luria's regions. I'd rather make the rest of the island more hospitable for independent realms.
Quote from: Antonine on December 01, 2014, 06:56:15 PM
Perhaps the single biggest imbalance at the moment is the vast size of LN's cities. If their population and gold was reduced then it would go a long way to creating more balance on Dwilight.
There was a continent wide region rebalance done not long ago. It
increased the population and gold of all of Luria Nova's cities, and increased the food output of nearly all their rural regions, while most other realms saw a large nerf across the board. More rebalancing like that would turn 99% of every region outside of LN into a wasteland.
Quote from: Sacha on December 02, 2014, 05:06:25 AM
So now we're embarking on a slippery slope where enough complaining will result in your opponents regions getting tweaked :P
This is exactly what I have been most worried about...
Quote from: Scarborn on December 02, 2014, 08:09:56 AM
This is exactly what I have been most worried about...
As Wolfsong stated, the value of areas of Dwilight was significantly altered after most of us picked our realms.
D'Hara, the city realm, was actually wealthy. It ran a crazy food deficit, but it shat gold. Luria was borderline for its food supply, and moderatly wealthy.
Now, D'Hara almost runs a surplus, and outputs little gold. Luria produces a food surplus and !@#$s gold.
Back in the first war between Kabrikskia and Asylon/Terran, I remember I was D'Hara's Prime Minister, and I secretly funded the war effort with tens of thousands of gold, because I didn't want to risk the war escalating by taking direct action. And that was just a small part of D'Hara's wealth. When I look at our tax figures now, there's no way anything like that could be done again.
I think the situation we have today is an imbalance of unprecedented nature.
I have a character in LN (not that it matters for what I'm about to suggest).
My thoughts for helping Dwilight are to improve travel times by sea and reduce/modify the winter travel penalties. The long travel times on Dwilight have been brought up here and elsewhere. It is a change that doesn't favor any specific realm.
Sea travel: There are many sea zones that take 13-14 hours to sail across and you can't auto set your next travel like on land. I would suggest increasing the travel speed so that most can be sailed across in 12 hours or less. Adding the ability to set your next destination would also be appreciated.
Winter travel: It takes a ridiculously long time to travel between regions in winter. While it might be realistic, it also isn't fun. Perhaps the winter penalties could be adjusted to not be as harsh.
Quote from: Sypher on December 03, 2014, 09:44:47 AM
Sea travel: There are many sea zones that take 13-14 hours to sail across and you can't auto set your next travel like on land. I would suggest increasing the travel speed so that most can be sailed across in 12 hours or less. Adding the ability to set your next destination would also be appreciated.
Yeah, the sea travel mechanics are kind of odd. Basically, a sea region takes one turn to cross, or two. "13 hours" is misleading. 12 hours takes one turn, 13 hours takes two.
You also can not change direction or turn back while sailing between sea zones which can only be an oversight.
I think some further thoughts need to be put in how to improve Dwilight.
As it has already been said a few times by a few people, distance is a major issue. It's hard enough to fight one's neighbor, let alone a realm that isn't next door. While, historically, I tended to oppose such measures, the context has dramatically changed since. Back in the days, this was mostly the demand of the northern block who, having eliminated all dissidents, found themselves surrounded by seas of fellow theocracies, and thus sought to travel impossible distances to continue on this model. This no longer applies, as the removal of the West has made a pretty linear continent, where all realms basically have just two neighbors at most, and where deserts, mountains, and seas separate them all. If this war was to end, even a powerful realm as Luria would have limited options should it wish a new war. Reducing the habitable continent size might have increased density (I don't think it has), or reduced its decline (perhaps), but it also means that each realm has a lot fewer realms to interact with. In the old days, I had a dozen of rulers I could write to, seeing how short the list is now was quite a shocker upon my election.
Distance which can be broken down into different factors.
- Travel times: Pretty straightforward, travel times between regions could possibly be universally reduced, say by 20% or any other number. This would mostly help reduce the impact of the continent's major geographic barriers (deserts and mountains), as one still can't move more than 1 region per turn, no matter how small the travel time.
- Troop morale & wear: Distance from realm can incur serious morale loss, stacked on top of high equipment wear. Reducing wear from travel and morale penalties can help realms be effective afar.
- Sea zones: the travel system is unintuitive. The sea zone limits are as well. Aside from the tweaks proposed of allowing one to turn back and the like, one could make it so that all sea zones take exactly 1 turn to travel, and the borders could be re-drawn to minimize zigzag paths the current ones favor. I had already proposed better sea zone limits some time back, I could dig these back up.
- Seasons: the travel penalties could be revisited. I don't think BM really has a Scandinavian climate, so the travel modifies don't need to act as if the troops must cross through two meters of snow.
Then there are other things that can also affect fun, for example, the prospect of recolonizing the West. By this, I don't mean having every western region part of a realm as it was before the invasion... while reducing the habitable continent size might not have increased density much, increasing it would have a certain effect. However, maintaining the possibility of limited establishments would open many opportunities. I haven't seen the size of the western hordes in quite a while, so it's hard to comment, but PvE has always been a significant part of Dwilight, and most realms had or still define themselves by their achievements over the overwhelming hordes of the days, of having beat the odds to settle something stable. Many of these failed, but it is undeniable that overall, the prospect of colonizing impossible lands seduced a great number of players, and made Dwilight unique. I think we need to bring this back.
- Monster spawn tweaks: Make it so that (massive) rogue spawns don't occur in held land. There will always be plenty of rogue regions for them to spawn in, I don't think it necessary for them to spawn in realm-held lands as well.
- Monster size tweaks: Huge hordes that no coalition of realms could ever defeat are not much fun. I don't know what the situation is right now, but more numerous smaller hordes than fewer larger hordes offer more possibilities of a struggle against them, instead of an instant total wipe out.
- Monster behavior tweaks: huge static hordes that can't be displaced aren't much fun. In the west at least, rogue units should frequently travel, perhaps every single turn, and not simply squat regions. Monsters blocking the path to one's destination? Wait and pray they don't come your way. Cleared some land? Don't assume the neighboring hordes will stay away. Additionally, rogues shouldn't just be waiting on the shore for the ships, as an organized army would. Disembarking onto a coastal region from the sea that's held by rogues shouldn't incur the same penalties as doing so in an enemy region would.
Again, this isn't to spread the current player base over twice the land once more, but to return a limited form of PvE back to Dwilight. Make it possible for the realms to reclaim the coastal cities with reasonable effort. Make it possible for the realms to reclaim a few adjacent non-fortifiable regions with great levels of effort, often failing and often having to restart. Lurians might find the current war fun, but no one else does. PvE, however, has kept Dwilight vibrant for most of its history.
I'm not sure where you got the impression that Luria was ever poor, or producing a major food deficit. As someone who's played in PeL and LN in the first five years of Dwilight, there was plenty of gold from the get-go, and starvation was mostly the result of Lurian lords screwing each other over. Poryatown and Giask starving as Askileon sat on 5000 spare bushels, that sort of thing.
Quote from: Sacha on January 03, 2015, 08:48:38 PM
I'm not sure where you got the impression that Luria was ever poor, or producing a major food deficit. As someone who's played in PeL and LN in the first five years of Dwilight, there was plenty of gold from the get-go, and starvation was mostly the result of Lurian lords screwing each other over. Poryatown and Giask starving as Askileon sat on 5000 spare bushels, that sort of thing.
Where did I say that?
Feels like Luria got filthy rich after the region value update, but I never claimed it was poor before. Double so because it feels like the rest of the continent got much poorer, or at least I know I haven't seen D'Hara sitting on gold in any way as it once did. As for food, that always seemed to be thanks to Giask being repeatedly screwed over and intentionally starved.
I'd also merge Valkyrja and Yggdramir into a single region, and allow the rouges to cross those bridges.
I would'nt favor implementing any of these changes before the current war came to some sort of settlement, though.
Also, regarding the rebalance, I think it's a good part due to the fact that it favored coastal regions a lot, and Luria is basically all coastal, and has a buttload of regions. D'Hara, on the other hand, was always a concentrated economy, with but a few regions surrounded by sea, and the loss of just the traditional Paisly duchy (without the land absorbed from Terran) amputated it from a third of its income, with no possible way to compensate in any other direction. So while all D'Haran regions got richer, there were too few of them to make much of a difference.
Isn't war the thriving factor for a continent, regardless of that being a PvE or PvP war? If the "stalemate" or distance is boring, you can always create an enemy close at home. There's still so many "empty" lands that could split off and form new realms to blow life into, say, the entire Northern part of inhabited Dwilight atm. In the end whatever greatness you achieve in Battlemaster is not worth keeping it, as this is a game, and creating an environment of war which the game is centered around is prefferable over wishing to stabilize and monopolize land with your realm.
Quote from: Fleugs on January 05, 2015, 01:12:59 PM
Isn't war the thriving factor for a continent, regardless of that being a PvE or PvP war? If the "stalemate" or distance is boring, you can always create an enemy close at home. There's still so many "empty" lands that could split off and form new realms to blow life into, say, the entire Northern part of inhabited Dwilight atm. In the end whatever greatness you achieve in Battlemaster is not worth keeping it, as this is a game, and creating an environment of war which the game is centered around is prefferable over wishing to stabilize and monopolize land with your realm.
All realms of the League have rogues at their doors.
While this is a typical response from a Lurian player, no, splitting off is not a solution. Luria Nova has DOUBLE the number of players of the second-most populous. The others just don't have enough nobles to split into multiple viable realms.
Also, weakening themselves, or turning themselves against each other, would leave them all completely merciless to Luria's will. I'm sure you would find that fun, but players usually don't enjoy that all of their realms are so weak that a foreign superpower can do whatever the heck it wants.
Quote from: Chénier on January 05, 2015, 01:55:21 PM
All realms of the League have rogues at their doors.
While this is a typical response from a Lurian player, no, splitting off is not a solution. Luria Nova has DOUBLE the number of players of the second-most populous. The others just don't have enough nobles to split into multiple viable realms.
Also, weakening themselves, or turning themselves against each other, would leave them all completely merciless to Luria's will. I'm sure you would find that fun, but players usually don't enjoy that all of their realms are so weak that a foreign superpower can do whatever the heck it wants.
It is getting wearying hearing the typical naive responses from Lurian players, right?
Mock it all you want, you seek difficult solutions while the easiest ones are right in front of you. And for what it's worth, I'll speak as a real Lurian player now and say you this:
I don't care whatsoever if you guys cry about how boring this has become. It was your choice. You may try to deny it all you want, but someone from the League pressed a little button called "war!" and now we are where we are. It is not my duty to care about the players of the League or how they are enjoying themselves. It is my job to thank them for adding another thirty nobles to the ranks of Luria Nova, much against their will, and turning it into a powerhouse with the capabilities to singlehandedly change the dynamics of Dwilight.
If the players in control of the League foresake their duties towards their other players, that is an issue that should be resolved amongst yourselves. Name Luria a scapegoat all you want, this situation is not Luria's choosing. It was forced upon it, and it payed out handsomely with about 60 nobles now populating it. That's bigger than, say, Sandalak, a realm in which theoretically one third of the playerbase could play a character. It is due to the dedication of people such as Renodin and his merry band of roleplay fetishists, who keep creating wonderful and in-depth content for their characters, allowing you to have a good read if you want (or scroll further if you don't). It's about having opened our doors to new players, to new characters with their own traditions and history, and respecting them and incorporating them from the very first day. It's about conceptualizing yourself as a caring player, who desires every new character that joins, be they new players or old, to stick around for the ride. It's about building a team, about maintaining that spirit and that content creation which keeps your group of players going. Which keeps them coming back daily because they enjoy Luria. It's about not hogging all the power for you or your (ingame) trusties, but allowing other people with entirely different views to speak out and represent yet another portion of the playerbase. It's about merging that together, sometimes with great ease and sometimes with great difficulty, only to conclude that in the end we work as a team as long as someone is there to be called a collective enemy.
It disgusts me that in the past month or two there have been voices going out claiming Luria is driving Dwilight into the abyss by not conceding a thing. It furiates me, firstly, that this could even be an out-of-character discussion. It is a matter that directly involves the gameplay of Dwilight and should be done entirely in character.
But you know what is the worst part about blaming Luria for the misery? It is denying the endless dedication of so many players who have worked towards creating a good and nice environment to ensure that people stay interested. For that reason alone you should be ashamed to even imply that Luria has a root in the "decline" of Dwilight.
Quote from: Fleugs on January 05, 2015, 02:26:38 PM
Mock it all you want, you seek difficult solutions while the easiest ones are right in front of you. And for what it's worth, I'll speak as a real Lurian player now and say you this:
I don't care whatsoever if you guys cry about how boring this has become. It was your choice. You may try to deny it all you want, but someone from the League pressed a little button called "war!" and now we are where we are. It is not my duty to care about the players of the League or how they are enjoying themselves. It is my job to thank them for adding another thirty nobles to the ranks of Luria Nova, much against their will, and turning it into a powerhouse with the capabilities to singlehandedly change the dynamics of Dwilight.
If the players in control of the League foresake their duties towards their other players, that is an issue that should be resolved amongst yourselves. Name Luria a scapegoat all you want, this situation is not Luria's choosing. It was forced upon it, and it payed out handsomely with about 60 nobles now populating it. That's bigger than, say, Sandalak, a realm in which theoretically one third of the playerbase could play a character. It is due to the dedication of people such as Renodin and his merry band of roleplay fetishists, who keep creating wonderful and in-depth content for their characters, allowing you to have a good read if you want (or scroll further if you don't). It's about having opened our doors to new players, to new characters with their own traditions and history, and respecting them and incorporating them from the very first day. It's about conceptualizing yourself as a caring player, who desires every new character that joins, be they new players or old, to stick around for the ride. It's about building a team, about maintaining that spirit and that content creation which keeps your group of players going. Which keeps them coming back daily because they enjoy Luria. It's about not hogging all the power for you or your (ingame) trusties, but allowing other people with entirely different views to speak out and represent yet another portion of the playerbase. It's about merging that together, sometimes with great ease and sometimes with great difficulty, only to conclude that in the end we work as a team as long as someone is there to be called a collective enemy.
It disgusts me that in the past month or two there have been voices going out claiming Luria is driving Dwilight into the abyss by not conceding a thing. It furiates me, firstly, that this could even be an out-of-character discussion. It is a matter that directly involves the gameplay of Dwilight and should be done entirely in character.
But you know what is the worst part about blaming Luria for the misery? It is denying the endless dedication of so many players who have worked towards creating a good and nice environment to ensure that people stay interested. For that reason alone you should be ashamed to even imply that Luria has a root in the "decline" of Dwilight.
"Our choice". Right. We CHOSE for Barca to be annihilated. We CHOSE for D'Hara to lose a third of its economy. We CHOSE to have half as many realms to interact with. Right? We chose all of this.
I am not "blaming" Luria for anything. But allowing Luria to gain CE-like hegemony is NOT the solution either, and yet all of the "suggestions" from Lurian players tend to be in that direction. "Hey, allow us to become unchallengeable, that's fun!"
You will also note that none of the suggestions target Luria. Some of them would even benefit Luria. PvE defined Dwilight for most of its history, and the desire to fight them seems very, very widespread. We don't know the difficulty for this, yet, but the horde strengths have been modified a great number of times in the hopes of making things more fun.
So bring your persecution complex elsewhere. In my posts where I brought suggestions, I named Luria only twice, once to say they could benefit from the measures and the second time to point out they are the only ones who appear to be having fun. If you call that "blaming Luria for all of our problems",
you have a problem. And if you want to completely disregard how geography, updated region stats and dev-decided monster invasion has benefited your realm and given it an insane advantage, and want to hog all of the success on just how great players you are, sure, go do so. Think that every other player on Dwilight sucks, and that if only they were as good as Lurian players, then everyone would be having fun. Because they just aren't trying hard enough, right? If they keep losing, it has nothing to do with the fact that they lost a good chunk of their economies and military infrastructure, right? And that a lot of the allied nobles just quit because of the hordes, they aren't worth anything either, because despite what they all said, they couldn't have been having fun.
Seriously, Fleugs. The players of Luria aren't being blamed for anything, except for their lack of perspective.
It sounds like a chief advantage Luria has is in the huge number of upper nobility (player characters) it possesses. Can anyone think of a way to lure some of these nobles away? The only think I can think of off the top of my head is to give the refuges within Luria what they want more quickly than Luria can.
I can imagine a good number of players could be lured if they were convinced that by joining the league they would be quickly allowed to establish their own realm in southern Morek (or northern, or western, or eastern). Sure, you technically lose some land but if this new country honors the agreement and fights on the Leagues side, the land is not really all that lost and you will have more players than before. Maybe not the best of ideas but the first I could think of. Additionally, these refugees will want their own land sooner or later. Eventually Luria may be forced to try and carve out a piece of land for them.
I would be curious to hear of other ideas that could get players to join the League...
Quote from: Scarborn on January 05, 2015, 03:11:11 PM
It sounds like a chief advantage Luria has is in the huge number of upper nobility (player characters) it possesses. Can anyone think of a way to lure some of these nobles away? The only think I can think of off the top of my head is to give the refuges within Luria what they want more quickly than Luria can.
I can imagine a good number of players could be lured if they were convinced that by joining the league they would be quickly allowed to establish their own realm in southern Morek (or northern, or western, or eastern). Sure, you technically lose some land but if this new country honors the agreement and fights on the Leagues side, the land is not really all that lost and you will have more players than before. Maybe not the best of ideas but the first I could think of. Additionally, these refugees will want their own land sooner or later. Eventually Luria may be forced to try and carve out a piece of land for them.
I would be curious to hear of other ideas that could get players to join the League...
1) Luria doesn't have an advantage because it has lots of nobles, it has lots of nobles because it has an advantage.
2) Again, another Lurian idea that would make Luria even more of a hegemony.
I was actually looking for an IC way of getting more players on the League side of the war. I have a hard time believing that Luria losing players while the league gains players would do anything but better the Leagues odds! I did not at all suggest that the league give the refugees in Luria in land with the condition of them becoming a subservient state to a non-existent Lurian hegemony. That would be plain stupid! Granted, it may not be the best idea but it is something that could be done by the players, IC and right now.
It's always the same thing on every continent. Big war kicks off, the 'bad' guys win, and suddenly the island stagnates because of them. You have now become the Cagilans of Dwilight.
Honestly, at this point, I'd say Luria should invade its enemies on all fronts. That'll bring some excitement back, nay?
Not a bad idea. We would badly lose (as in be totally stomped and not just fail at our invasions) should we do so but it is worth considering. Now I just need to convince a few dozen more or less sane Lurians to go along with the plan.
I really think that the League overestimates Luria's strength. Can Luria hold off everyone else (minus Swoedfell) should they remain so uncordinated? Sure.
Can Luria hold off everyone else (minus Swoedfell) if they managed a concerted effort? Maybe.
Can Luria launch a massive, multi front attack against the League without breaking a sweat? Apparently...
Quote from: Scarborn on January 05, 2015, 08:09:56 PM
Not a bad idea. We would badly lose (as in be totally stomped and not just fail at our invasions) should we do so but it is worth considering. Now I just need to convince a few dozen more or less sane Lurians to go along with the plan.
I really think that the League overestimates Luria's strength. Can Luria hold off everyone else (minus Swoedfell) should they remain so uncordinated? Sure.
Can Luria hold off everyone else (minus Swoedfell) if they managed a concerted effort? Maybe.
Can Luria launch a massive, multi front attack against the League without breaking a sweat? Apparently...
I don't get what you are trying to say, and if that's sarcasm or not.
As it is, I don't think Luria can invade anyone. Which kind of makes it boring, because the others can't really invade it either. Everybody knows the war is a dead-end stalemate.
If the League breaks up or weakens itself one way or another, though, as Lurian players constantly suggest it does, then yea, at that point Luria could stomp on them with relative ease. Staying united is the only way to make sure that each individual realm has the means to do what it wants, because otherwise every realm of the continent will just be at Luria's mercy. And nobody likes to be in that situation, especially not in a game.
The fact of the matter is, Luria has nobles, the League has lands. So unless you're willing to give up land, the situation's not going to change.
Quote from: Chénier on January 06, 2015, 12:08:08 AM
I don't get what you are trying to say, and if that's sarcasm or not.
As it is, I don't think Luria can invade anyone. Which kind of makes it boring, because the others can't really invade it either. Everybody knows the war is a dead-end stalemate.
If the League breaks up or weakens itself one way or another, though, as Lurian players constantly suggest it does, then yea, at that point Luria could stomp on them with relative ease. Staying united is the only way to make sure that each individual realm has the means to do what it wants, because otherwise every realm of the continent will just be at Luria's mercy. And nobody likes to be in that situation, especially not in a game.
The League is already weak. At least during my time in Fissoa, we've suffered five major defeats for every minor victory. Our last campaign, which was announced as a punitive march of epic proportions, with most of our forces thrown behind it, ended in spectacular failure after three days. To me, we're already at the mercy of Luria.
Quote from: Lorgan on January 06, 2015, 12:25:48 AM
The fact of the matter is, Luria has nobles, the League has lands. So unless you're willing to give up land, the situation's not going to change.
Change... to make things worse?
Quote from: Sacha on January 06, 2015, 12:28:25 AM
The League is already weak. At least during my time in Fissoa, we've suffered five major defeats for every minor victory. Our last campaign, which was announced as a punitive march of epic proportions, with most of our forces thrown behind it, ended in spectacular failure after three days. To me, we're already at the mercy of Luria.
But the League remains on the offense. Luria can't afford to leave its lands, else it would give too much opportunity to the other realms. Also, a few of those recent (and critical) defeats were due to bugs. Huge peasant militia spawning on TC as the armies are disembarking, killing 95% of it?. That's no achievement of Luria's.
Quote from: Chénier on January 06, 2015, 01:37:50 AM
Change... to make things worse?
More than anything Luria's power comes from the sheer amount of nobles. If Luria had significantly less nobles, the threat it poses would be far diminished.
But hey, maybe you'll manage to take a city and colonize Luria... And then you'll just have an ally next to a very angry realm with an even higher density of nobles that you need to perpetually support or it will be destroyed. Whatever you're trying to achieve, I fail to see how it would change anything. Unless you think you can all-out destroy Luria.
The fact that with the exception of Swordfell, ALL of Dwilight is, and has been at war with Luria for a not insignificant period of time, and they have yet to crack Luria. They might not be able to go on the offensive as a result, but that just displays a staggering amount of incompetence on the part of the League. Give Luria its due credit, even I expected them to crumble.
Quote from: Chénier on January 03, 2015, 07:58:21 PM
...
Distance which can be broken down into different factors.
- Travel times: Pretty straightforward, travel times between regions could possibly be universally reduced, say by 20% or any other number. This would mostly help reduce the impact of the continent's major geographic barriers (deserts and mountains), as one still can't move more than 1 region per turn, no matter how small the travel time.
- Troop morale & wear: Distance from realm can incur serious morale loss, stacked on top of high equipment wear. Reducing wear from travel and morale penalties can help realms be effective afar.
- Sea zones: the travel system is unintuitive. The sea zone limits are as well. Aside from the tweaks proposed of allowing one to turn back and the like, one could make it so that all sea zones take exactly 1 turn to travel, and the borders could be re-drawn to minimize zigzag paths the current ones favor. I had already proposed better sea zone limits some time back, I could dig these back up.
- Seasons: the travel penalties could be revisited. I don't think BM really has a Scandinavian climate, so the travel modifies don't need to act as if the troops must cross through two meters of snow.
...
Re-drawing the sea zones is probably too time consuming to happen, but if the travel options were fleshed out and the speed increased maybe 10% it would help.
I completely agree on winter needing to be revamped. The travel times get ridiculous, especially in regions with bad roads. I would prefer to have the winter travel times make all regions act as if the roads were bad instead of stacking on top of road condition penalties.
Quote from: Lorgan on January 06, 2015, 01:45:17 AM
More than anything Luria's power comes from the sheer amount of nobles.
I think I've been pretty clear that I completely disagree with this statement.
Luria's power comes from its filthy rich regions, densely-packed cities, and large geographic barriers from its neighbors. The number of nobles increased due to the strength these gave.
Quote from: Lorgan on January 06, 2015, 01:45:17 AM
More than anything Luria's power comes from the sheer amount of nobles. If Luria had significantly less nobles, the threat it poses would be far diminished.
But hey, maybe you'll manage to take a city and colonize Luria... And then you'll just have an ally next to a very angry realm with an even higher density of nobles that you need to perpetually support or it will be destroyed. Whatever you're trying to achieve, I fail to see how it would change anything. Unless you think you can all-out destroy Luria.
You assume that the only thing every cares for is Luria. If we could ignore it, most of us happily would. All the barcans already quit, basically, so there's no reason to grab land anymore. There certainly isn't enough of them left to make a viable realm. At this point, it's becoming rather clear that people would rather focus on other things, namely fighting monsters and taking back land lost to them. Which really, is about what most suggestions were about. Making fighting the monsters a viable and fun option, as it was for most of Dwilight's history.
Quote from: Sypher on January 06, 2015, 01:56:19 AM
Re-drawing the sea zones is probably too time consuming to happen, but if the travel options were fleshed out and the speed increased maybe 10% it would help.
I completely agree on winter needing to be revamped. The travel times get ridiculous, especially in regions with bad roads. I would prefer to have the winter travel times make all regions act as if the roads were bad instead of stacking on top of road condition penalties.
I'm not certain, but I don't think so, I don't think redrawing the sea zones is all that complicated. Plus, I've vectorized region borders in the past... I could volunteer redrawing the sea zones. Heck, I think I already did draw up the changes I suggested for some of them, so the work is already partially done for a complete rewrite.
Changing sea travel time I believe would be pretty trivial, at least for a superficial fix.
Quote from: Chénier on January 06, 2015, 01:37:50 AM
Change... to make things worse?
But the League remains on the offense. Luria can't afford to leave its lands, else it would give too much opportunity to the other realms. Also, a few of those recent (and critical) defeats were due to bugs. Huge peasant militia spawning on TC as the armies are disembarking, killing 95% of it?. That's no achievement of Luria's.
Offense? Barca was completely destroyed, and Morek's sneaky plan to take Poryatown failed in the end. Fissoa lost all hope of holding Irvington. We've completely failed to make a dent, and I wouldn't feel too great about the fact that Luria isn't currently curbstomping anyone in retaliation. Consider it a blessing rather than an accomplishment.
Hey, here's an idea: If you can't win, and the war sucks, and you're not having any fun, stop fighting. Call it off. Turtle up an tell Luria all you want is out of the war. Quit complaining that this war you started isn't any fun, and demanding that the developers make changes to the game to make it better for you. Have fun fighting your war, our go have fun doing something else while Luria has another of their trademark meltdowns.
Quote from: Indirik on January 06, 2015, 04:22:40 AM
Hey, here's an idea: If you can't win, and the war sucks, and you're not having any fun, stop fighting. Call it off. Turtle up an tell Luria all you want is out of the war. Quit complaining that this war you started isn't any fun, and demanding that the developers make changes to the game to make it better for you. Have fun fighting your war, our go have fun doing something else while Luria has another of their trademark meltdowns.
Many within the allied realms are calling for this, as I understand it the problem is the rulers want every realm in the League behind a peace so that the league survives.
Quote from: De-Legro on January 06, 2015, 05:00:02 AM
Many within the allied realms are calling for this, as I understand it the problem is the rulers want every realm in the League behind a peace so that the league survives.
10 bucks says they'll think they've won, too :P
Quote from: Sacha on January 06, 2015, 05:26:16 AM
10 bucks says they'll think they've won, too :P
Nothing I have seen in D'Hara suggest that anyone thinks we have won. Some suggest victory is possible but I've not seen anyone deluded enough to think that we have achieved it.
Quote from: Sacha on January 06, 2015, 12:28:25 AM
The League is already weak. At least during my time in Fissoa, we've suffered five major defeats for every minor victory. Our last campaign, which was announced as a punitive march of epic proportions, with most of our forces thrown behind it, ended in spectacular failure after three days. To me, we're already at the mercy of Luria.
To be fair, our last defeats were all attributed to crippling bugs (movement bugs) or unexpected new features (peasant militia).
If that stuff was fixed or we learned how to circumvent it we would do much better.
Too bad so many just chose to ragequit instead.
Quote from: Sacha on January 06, 2015, 05:26:16 AM
10 bucks says they'll think they've won, too :P
To certain extent they have, I guess.
Fissoa at least will come out of the war with more regions in Toprak than it had right before it. Other realms have little to no gains but at least they didn't lose anything. Sans Barca of course, but they weren't even trying.
Quote from: Constantine on January 06, 2015, 09:03:03 AM
Sans Barca of course, but they weren't even trying.
That is complete bull!@#$. I'd like to see you try and claim new land against hostile forces right after the devs wipe out your entire realm and half your players quit as a result. The fact that Barca lasted as long as it did is frankly a miracle.
Quote from: Chénier on January 06, 2015, 02:39:41 AM
I think I've been pretty clear that I completely disagree with this statement.
Luria's power comes from its filthy rich regions, densely-packed cities, and large geographic barriers from its neighbors. The number of nobles increased due to the strength these gave.
Well, Chénier, you're wrong. There is a cap on useful gold decided by the amount of nobles you have. Sure you can put it in reserves but ask Morek how useful that really is when you keep making more gold unencumbered every week. No matter how much gold Luria has, if we had 30-40 nobles in stead of 60 you wouldn't need the whole continent to fight us, we could simply not field as big an army.
Sure geography is a big advantage as well, but it hasn't changed, if anything Luria has become less isolated due to the disappearance of rogue-dominated lands. Besides, how many armies did Luria waste assaulting the fortress that are the D'Haran isles? Luria is less isolated than D'Hara. Not to get started even on the concentration of cities.
And finally, the number of nobles increased because vast amounts of nobles from Niselur and Asylon (unwelcome in the League) joined Luria and stayed. That and populous realms have an attraction to players who are tired of small but quiet realms.
Quote from: Lorgan on January 06, 2015, 03:40:00 PM
Well, Chénier, you're wrong. There is a cap on useful gold decided by the amount of nobles you have. Sure you can put it in reserves but ask Morek how useful that really is when you keep making more gold unencumbered every week. No matter how much gold Luria has, if we had 30-40 nobles in stead of 60 you wouldn't need the whole continent to fight us, we could simply not field as big an army.
Sure geography is a big advantage as well, but it hasn't changed, if anything Luria has become less isolated due to the disappearance of rogue-dominated lands. Besides, how many armies did Luria waste assaulting the fortress that are the D'Haran isles? Luria is less isolated than D'Hara. Not to get started even on the concentration of cities.
And finally, the number of nobles increased because vast amounts of nobles from Niselur and Asylon (unwelcome in the League) joined Luria and stayed. That and populous realms have an attraction to players who are tired of small but quiet realms.
Except there's a problem with that. More nobles means you need less soldiers per unit to have the same amount of soldiers in an army. And as anyone who's played this game long enough will know, if you have the same amount of soldiers total, but split up into smaller units, they will have more efficient combat strength. Not only this, but as nobles gain more honor, they will eventually be able to support more soldiers than the lesser amount of nobles could. The increase in number of units will allow multiple armies to be formed, and for those armies to move faster because they aren't massive 100 man units for the most part.
I don't see the problem... How is this an argument against number of nobles being the deciding factor in a realm's strength?
Quote from: De-Legro on January 06, 2015, 05:00:02 AM
Many within the allied realms are calling for this, as I understand it the problem is the rulers want every realm in the League behind a peace so that the league survives.
It'll take time. I, for one, just got elected a few days ago. And before going to the allied rulers, things need to be settled internally first.
But the requests aren't to make the war with Luria more fun, they are to peace the post-war period more fun.
Quote from: Lorgan on January 06, 2015, 03:40:00 PM
Well, Chénier, you're wrong. There is a cap on useful gold decided by the amount of nobles you have. Sure you can put it in reserves but ask Morek how useful that really is when you keep making more gold unencumbered every week. No matter how much gold Luria has, if we had 30-40 nobles in stead of 60 you wouldn't need the whole continent to fight us, we could simply not field as big an army.
Sure geography is a big advantage as well, but it hasn't changed, if anything Luria has become less isolated due to the disappearance of rogue-dominated lands. Besides, how many armies did Luria waste assaulting the fortress that are the D'Haran isles? Luria is less isolated than D'Hara. Not to get started even on the concentration of cities.
And finally, the number of nobles increased because vast amounts of nobles from Niselur and Asylon (unwelcome in the League) joined Luria and stayed. That and populous realms have an attraction to players who are tired of small but quiet realms.
The large number of players makes Luria stronger than it would be without so many players, but it is not the root of its strength, but rather a consequence of it. Might creates might. Many people are attracted to strong realms because it will allow them more opportunities than a failing realm. Thus, because that realm is strong, it attracts the people that will make it stronger. But that large number of nobles is not the source of its strength, just both a factor and a result of it. Luria didn't always have 60 nobles, after all.
Quote from: GundamMerc on January 06, 2015, 02:49:38 PM
That is complete bull!@#$. I'd like to see you try and claim new land against hostile forces right after the devs wipe out your entire realm and half your players quit as a result. The fact that Barca lasted as long as it did is frankly a miracle.
Pity more than a miracle. Those who stayed might have tried, but most of Barca gave up and quit without giving a fight. Those who remained just weren't enough.
And thus, no, I don't really count Barca in the tally either. Every week we were hearing that they were giving up and about to join another realm. It became clear very early that they wouldn't remain for long, OOC at least.
Quote from: GundamMerc on January 06, 2015, 02:49:38 PM
That is complete bull!@#$. I'd like to see you try and claim new land against hostile forces right after the devs wipe out your entire realm and half your players quit as a result. The fact that Barca lasted as long as it did is frankly a miracle.
You're still on about that?
Go on, shoo!
Or perhaps Luria drew more nobles because of the League's own politics, particularly in regards to the Asylonians. The Niselurians going to Luria was pretty much a forgone conclusion, as they had strong ties already. The nobles that immigrated didn't do so because Luria was strong, they did so because they were either disgusted with, or unwelcome in the remaining realms of the continent.
I was having a lot of fun when I played in D'Hara. Eventually my character died, as characters doing fun things sometimes do. I joined Luria because it looked fun too. And it is! And I'm sure D'Hara still is!
They're all fun places to be. People play wherever they like.
Quote from: Stabbity on January 06, 2015, 08:14:37 PM
Or perhaps Luria drew more nobles because of the League's own politics, particularly in regards to the Asylonians. The Niselurians going to Luria was pretty much a forgone conclusion, as they had strong ties already. The nobles that immigrated didn't do so because Luria was strong, they did so because they were either disgusted with, or unwelcome in the remaining realms of the continent.
Well no, to be honest Luria was one of the last places where I wanted to bring Niselur.
Quote from: D`Este on January 06, 2015, 08:51:03 PM
Well no, to be honest Luria was one of the last places where I wanted to bring Niselur.
Pretty sure long time Luria players were just as thrilled to have a D'Este return.
Less so as a willing choice by Niselurians, and more so as a result of policies and grudges held by nobles in Nieslur and other realms.
Quote from: De-Legro on January 06, 2015, 10:19:56 PM
Pretty sure long time Luria players were just as thrilled to have a D'Este return.
Some were, some not, luria was rather different. Anyway, joining luria meant giving up the hope of keeping niselur alive or revive it
Have another migration west, now that everyone's settled in on the east island. The single most exciting time of the last year was the migration, then it went quickly downhill. Flip it again!
Quote from: D`Este on January 06, 2015, 08:51:03 PM
Well no, to be honest Luria was one of the last places where I wanted to bring Niselur.
Could have settled peacefully in Corsanctum; would have landed you a duchy easily in exchange for a token supplication. I don't recall Cathan ever being reached out to, though.
10 players of D'Hara don't find the war fun, 5 do. 2 abstained, 9 votes not cast.
One of the first things I wanted to do after taking power was quantify people's positions. It's easy to make an impression from the most vocal, but they don't always represent the majority. I think it'd be a worthwhile initiative for the other rulers of the League, too.
Then we can start thinking about offering peace offers that aren't as ridiculous as the past ones.
Quote from: OFaolain on January 07, 2015, 06:45:43 AM
Could have settled peacefully in Corsanctum; would have landed you a duchy easily in exchange for a token supplication. I don't recall Cathan ever being reached out to, though.
That was something I didn't think about as corsanctum was pretty hostile to Niselur before and also when we came close to their regions. And I was looking for a place to settle down without too much effort as RL was taking most of my energy.
Quote from: D`Este on January 07, 2015, 11:13:53 AM
That was something I didn't think about as corsanctum was pretty hostile to Niselur before and also when we came close to their regions. And I was looking for a place to settle down without too much effort as RL was taking most of my energy.
You must have talked to Wassiley; I had quite a nice conversation with your General about that time and sent someone an offer to settle (to Astroists, mind, but that could have been negotiable). It was also scary on our end since relations didn't get upgraded to neutral and peace until you were at sea, IIRC.
Quote from: OFaolain on January 07, 2015, 02:26:47 PM
You must have talked to Wassiley; I had quite a nice conversation with your General about that time and sent someone an offer to settle (to Astroists, mind, but that could have been negotiable). It was also scary on our end since relations didn't get upgraded to neutral and peace until you were at sea, IIRC.
That was because Morek first promised us Corsanctum to conquer.
It'd be nice if adventurers could contribute against the western monsters.
Quote from: Chénier on January 08, 2015, 05:05:53 AM
It'd be nice if adventurers could contribute against the western monsters.
Are not the monsters there for a reason?
Quote from: De-Legro on January 08, 2015, 05:14:22 AM
Are not the monsters there for a reason?
Yes, to make the game more fun.
The metric used was to make Dwilight denser, but the purpose of that was to make Dwilight more fun.
Monster hordes have always been an integral part of Dwilight, and perhaps the part that attracted most of its players there.
I'd point out that fighting the monsters doesn't mean exterminating them. If the realms take back the 5 coastal cities, plus the stronghold, plus the doughnuts... that's like 13 regions. Dwilight has 175 nobles, and it's pretty much just two regions per realm.
We don't need to wipe them off to make fighting them fun.
Quote from: Chénier on January 08, 2015, 05:45:16 AM
Yes, to make the game more fun.
The metric used was to make Dwilight denser, but the purpose of that was to make Dwilight more fun.
Monster hordes have always been an integral part of Dwilight, and perhaps the part that attracted most of its players there.
I'd point out that fighting the monsters doesn't mean exterminating them. If the realms take back the 5 coastal cities, plus the stronghold, plus the doughnuts... that's like 13 regions. Dwilight has 175 nobles, and it's pretty much just two regions per realm.
We don't need to wipe them off to make fighting them fun.
Anaris would know better then I if it was intended that the the western monsters could be reasonably fought, I had assumed they were designed to make any success against them pretty much impossible, just as the glaciers of the other continents can not be forced to melt no matter how big a fire we build.
Quote from: De-Legro on January 08, 2015, 05:54:31 AM
Anaris would know better then I if it was intended that the the western monsters could be reasonably fought, I had assumed they were designed to make any success against them pretty much impossible, just as the glaciers of the other continents can not be forced to melt no matter how big a fire we build.
Perhaps it was intended that no realm could survive them, but it was also said that this could be revisited in the future.
There was a time when the hordes were pretty huge. Though sometimes it was overwhelming and hopeless, it was mostly fun. Now, as long as we have our safe land to fall back to, it's easier to tweak things so that it's difficult, and that sometimes efforts need to be restarted, without it being completely hopeless.
If you look at the Dwilight forums, it's been mentionned a few times by different people that it'd be really "cool" to establish a "monster-fighting colony". When you think about it, that's essentially what all of Dwilight's colonies were, especially in the West, and they attracted a lot of players. If you want to fight other human realms, you can do that just about anywhere. If want to fight against relentless hordes, you've only ever really had Dwilight for that. Until it got all populated... and started to decline. BT had sporadic invasions, which also attracted many players.
We just don't have any of that left. PvE was a big source of fun for many players, and it's completely gone. I do think that Dwilight's monsters should be fine-tuned to be just the right strength: easy enough for a large coalition to take the coastal cities, too hard for any of the realms to hold a non-fortifiable region on their own.
Maybe even set official spawning zones, such as the Corridor of Torment and Volcano Nightscree, which would be the only regions to spawn new monster units (that however travel every turn), and which are impossible to defeat.
Quote from: Chénier on January 08, 2015, 06:12:38 AM
Perhaps it was intended that no realm could survive them, but it was also said that this could be revisited in the future.
There was a time when the hordes were pretty huge. Though sometimes it was overwhelming and hopeless, it was mostly fun. Now, as long as we have our safe land to fall back to, it's easier to tweak things so that it's difficult, and that sometimes efforts need to be restarted, without it being completely hopeless.
If you look at the Dwilight forums, it's been mentionned a few times by different people that it'd be really "cool" to establish a "monster-fighting colony". When you think about it, that's essentially what all of Dwilight's colonies were, especially in the West, and they attracted a lot of players. If you want to fight other human realms, you can do that just about anywhere. If want to fight against relentless hordes, you've only ever really had Dwilight for that. Until it got all populated... and started to decline. BT had sporadic invasions, which also attracted many players.
We just don't have any of that left. PvE was a big source of fun for many players, and it's completely gone. I do think that Dwilight's monsters should be fine-tuned to be just the right strength: easy enough for a large coalition to take the coastal cities, too hard for any of the realms to hold a non-fortifiable region on their own.
Maybe even set official spawning zones, such as the Corridor of Torment and Volcano Nightscree, which would be the only regions to spawn new monster units (that however travel every turn), and which are impossible to defeat.
I do recall. I was one of the few to protest reducing the monsters back years ago, destroying some of what made Dwilight different from the other continents. The more vocal and numerous wanted a standard BM continent, were the focus was on fighting other realms. People wanted every region to be under player control, not the constant fight to maintain the smallish safe places painstakingly carved out. People did not want the constant colony attempts against all odds to settle the north east.
Things like travel time were never an issue when you had all the battles you needed right on your own borders as monsters attempted to invade after all.
Quote from: De-Legro on January 08, 2015, 06:19:46 AM
I do recall. I was one of the few to protest reducing the monsters back years ago, destroying some of what made Dwilight different from the other continents. The more vocal and numerous wanted a standard BM continent, were the focus was on fighting other realms. People wanted every region to be under player control, not the constant fight to maintain the smallish safe places painstakingly carved out. People did not want the constant colony attempts against all odds to settle the north east.
Things like travel time were never an issue when you had all the battles you needed right on your own borders as monsters attempted to invade after all.
Well, to be fair, I think that many people wanted to
colonize, without much thought as to the end result. It was the process that was fun. At some points, those hordes did get so big that there was absolutely nothing, at least at the time, anyone could hope to do against them. I think they wanted a challenge, not to play Russian roulette.
But indeed, Dwilight's linear geography, combined with its ever-decreasing density, makes for poor wars that need to be fought over long distances. There just isn't enough nobles to pack the land with more realms that could provide closer combat. Monsters are really the only viable venture to keep things fun.
Quote from: D`Este on January 07, 2015, 04:32:55 PM
That was because Morek first promised us Corsanctum to conquer.
A significant portion of Luria's current head count are exiles from the West. Please note the word exile. As a rank and file member of that group I think the almost everyone but Luria's leadership have preferred to see us as immigrants -- new souls for their cultures. From my point of view nothing could be further from the truth.
My first choice would be to have succeeded in establishing Asylon in the east. When that failed to come about the choices ranged between becoming a puppet/client state of the League or join Luria. The majority of us joined Luria because it was the least offensive to us and acknowledged our desire to establish our own nation in the east. None of us thought that the coalition war against Luria would last too long and we believed we'd soon have a chance to build anew.
The war though has dragged on and on. And, again from the rank and file point of view, the offers of peace from the coalition have consistently refused to recognize the aspirations of the exiles from the West. You need to know that we saw ourselves as victors over Astrum and Corsanctum. In our view, we should have a seat at any peace convention. We should have lands appropriate to our noble count. Instead, over and over offers were proposed that made only Luria smaller (puzzling in the face of the unremitting military losses of the coalition) and recognized none of the needs of the exiles.
My three point plan is underway!
1. Stab Hrok
2. ?????
3. Profit.
Quote from: Shulee on January 08, 2015, 07:48:18 PM
A significant portion of Luria's current head count are exiles from the West. Please note the word exile. As a rank and file member of that group I think the almost everyone but Luria's leadership have preferred to see us as immigrants -- new souls for their cultures. From my point of view nothing could be further from the truth.
My first choice would be to have succeeded in establishing Asylon in the east. When that failed to come about the choices ranged between becoming a puppet/client state of the League or join Luria. The majority of us joined Luria because it was the least offensive to us and acknowledged our desire to establish our own nation in the east. None of us thought that the coalition war against Luria would last too long and we believed we'd soon have a chance to build anew.
The war though has dragged on and on. And, again from the rank and file point of view, the offers of peace from the coalition have consistently refused to recognize the aspirations of the exiles from the West. You need to know that we saw ourselves as victors over Astrum and Corsanctum. In our view, we should have a seat at any peace convention. We should have lands appropriate to our noble count. Instead, over and over offers were proposed that made only Luria smaller (puzzling in the face of the unremitting military losses of the coalition) and recognized none of the needs of the exiles.
I don't think anyone recognized the exiles as a distinct entity. The League views them as Luria does: Lurian immigrants. I don't think I've seen a Lurian proposition for them that wasn't just a thinly-veiled plan to set up a client state for themselves to more easily launch attacks against D'Hara.
It doesn't help that the exiles don't express themselves on any international forum, either.
Quote from: Chénier on January 08, 2015, 08:17:49 PM
It doesn't help that the exiles don't express themselves on any international forum, either.
Then that's something we (the exiles) should take steps to correct.
Quote from: Shulee on January 08, 2015, 08:39:47 PM
Then that's something we (the exiles) should take steps to correct.
Being mostly anti-SA it's difficult to find some sort of medium for the exiles to reach an international audience, especially as Luria is pretty diplomatically isolated.
True enough Graeth and that alone explains our affinity for Luria. Acceptance of our culture and enough of an undertaking of support for our aspirations. I do think we're seen mostly as exiles in Luria. More than convenient allies perhaps and however lukewarm someone cares to spin that it's tons better than anything we've seen from the League.
I also agree that we haven't made an effort to pass on our view to others. Even if it's barren ground we might try.