Now that we are down to 500 players - not 500 active btw,
it is becoming quite difficult to siege a fortified region. A city guarded by 20k CS is pretty much invincible now that most realms can't even field that much CS. Hack, even 15k CS militia is too high even with 50 SEs.
With the introduction of Vita's latest militia calling feature - which lets you add even more militia once you are down to 4 regions, I think it might be worth changing some numbers on militia.
As we lose more people, it will become increasingly hard to besiege any fortified region.
Here are few ideas:
1) Make militia units consume a considerable amount of food. To maintain high number of militia, you have to be both well stocked in gold and food now
2) Militia units are police units unless they are stationed in a stronghold. They are more likely to ditch the field.
3) Make militia units twice as more expensive to keep them. If you fail to pay them, they pillage your own city to earn their pay.
4) Make SEs more deadly and effective (Doing more damage to fortifications per battle) or make them more abundant.
5) More blocks are required to build a fortification. A lot more so it is impossible to recover walls Lv3 and higher within a month maybe?
I've been wondering how to deal with militia, too. They are way too powerful right now.
Personally, I like the idea of making SEs more effective. They're already a burden to carry around and only useful when fortifications are present, so I don't think increasing their power will imbalance anything (whereas the gold and food options offer more advantage to well-endowed realms). Additionally, it might make the game more active since cities in general would be more at risk. Right now, it's not usually a good strategy to bother with cities until you've dealt enough damage to the rest of the realm... putting them back on the menu might increase the pace of the game a bit.
Actually, I had another thought:
Militia is so prevalent because it's an easy solution. You don't have to worry about them not following orders because they're not human controlled. They'll always be right where you told them to be. If we can force players to take a more active role in their defense, we might see more opportunities for strategy to pay off and region turnover.
Is there a way we can set a hard limit on the amount of gold spendable on militia (at the realm, duchy, or region level)?
This would obviously limit the amount of militia you can put into any given region, potentially making where you place them a much more meaningful decision while also limiting their maximum strength. Consequently, this would also encourage better gold distribution because what was being spent on militia can now go to players instead, increasing mobile strength which promotes active campaigns.
I feel like I haven't quite adequately expressed what I'm thinking here, but hopefully you get the gist. The primary point is that militia is abused because it's such a reliable option - push the power back to inherently unreliable players and place a higher emphasis on their involvement.
I know for a fact that most characters (unless they're very new) don't hit their recruitment caps on a regular basis and often don't get enough gold despite the claims of too much gold in BM (and are probably bewildered by such claims). This solution might address all those concerns simultaneously.
It's an interesting thought, but very important to decide on what the goal is.
To help with some numbers, Sirion attempted a siege with about 24k attackers vs 28k defenders and about 65 SE's (give or take, don't have the battle report anymore). They did about 75% damage to the wall in that battle. If we make SE's stronger for instance, then a wall will be surely at least 1 level destroyed even if attacking forces is equal to defenders. This would mean that about 5 sieges would be more than enough to break any city.
I'm not saying that's good or bad, but it would be the situation for single city realms in that case.
65 se's is a pretty respectable force. Assuming you had a lot of infantry, I'm not surprised you did that much damage.
I'm not really sure that se's really need a buff. But something definitely needs to be done about militia.
Let's think about what the major problem is at the moment...
1) Cities generate a lot of gold - Ever since the change in the whole estate system, we've been getting a lot more gold than before. This allowed everyone to put more militia.
2) Loss of players - As the player count declined, everyone now has less people to lead troops. Now we are low enough to be unable to besiege a well defended city without allying with multiple realms.
3) Food - Doesn't seem to play have any impact on militia. Also, there hasn't been that many starving regions due to the new food system. Meaning, you can't even starve the region you want to besiege but can't due to high militia count.
4) Militia CS - Due to #1, militia count has gone up quite a bit. Combined with #2, it is becoming almost impossible to besiege a city.
I see few more ways to solve this.
Directly and Indirectly.
Direct method - Make militia weaker in general.
1) By increasing the cost - You can do this in various ways. More militia = Less production + militia pay can work pretty well I feel. EX) For every 1k CS of militia, reserve 5% of region's production. 10k CS = 50% production reserved. This will essentially limit CS to less than 10k CS at most for most regions as they still have to pay militia with their reduced income.
2) Setting their withdraw rate high - Make them ditch the field a lot sooner.
3) Change how it works - Militia must be gathered before being able to used. Once gathered they will stay around for a week then return to their other duties. Only 25% of the militia will always be stationed by the walls. If the region lord forgets to call them, only the stationed units will fight.
4) Weaken their strength in general. Make militia lose CS by 30~40% upon its creation. Only mobile units can have 100% CS.
Indirect method - Strengthen mobile units or other features related to militia
Make mobile units stronger by maybe 30%
Alternatively:
Militia are peasant soldiers not under a noble's direct control. If they outnumber the main army (or even are a significant fraction of the army), wouldn't they start getting ideas? Like, they should be the ones in charge? So if your mobile army is 20K, then 5K militia can be kept under control relatively easily, but 10K starts getting restless, and 20K is insanity as you are outright risking a peasant revolution?
Quote from: Bedwyr on October 03, 2015, 03:44:04 AM
Alternatively:
Militia are peasant soldiers not under a noble's direct control. If they outnumber the main army (or even are a significant fraction of the army), wouldn't they start getting ideas? Like, they should be the ones in charge? So if your mobile army is 20K, then 5K militia can be kept under control relatively easily, but 10K starts getting restless, and 20K is insanity as you are outright risking a peasant revolution?
Add a cumulative chance for that peasant revolt to actually happen and you've got my vote! Temporary NPC realm! No movement or orders necessary, just treat it like a rogue region.
How about this,
If militia + mobile > enemy CS, militia will leave the walls to fight enemy mobile CS thinking they are stronger?
OK, were trying to reduce effectiveness, not utterly overturn things. Militia is still about the only way that small realms can defend against big ones.
Quote from: Indirik on October 03, 2015, 07:41:55 PM
OK, were trying to reduce effectiveness, not utterly overturn things. Militia is still about the only way that small realms can defend against big ones.
True. But the difference between small and big are becoming quite close at this point.
Perhaps make militias give out negative influence depending on size. When you have a thousand armed soldiers stationed permanently in a city, there's going to be trouble, especially if they don't get to fight every once in a while. Basically a limited version of Too Much Peace. Bored militia will start to get unruly and harass the locals, causing drops in production, morale and loyalty. They'll start thieving for gold and food. Riots might ensue, killing dozens of peasants and militia alike, and men might outright start deserting in droves.
Quote from: Indirik on October 03, 2015, 07:41:55 PM
OK, were trying to reduce effectiveness, not utterly overturn things. Militia is still about the only way that small realms can defend against big ones.
As with most things, have it scale by size of the realm. Smaller realms could support a higher percentage of their total mobile force as militia than large realms.
Quote from: Bedwyr on October 03, 2015, 09:26:57 PM
As with most things, have it scale by size of the realm. Smaller realms could support a higher percentage of their total mobile force as militia than large realms.
Total mobile strength. I like that idea. Having courtiers/priests will actually have an impact on how big your militia is going to be.
Sounds interesting.
I agree with the idea of realm size = mobile strength. Priests and Courtiers don't really count toward it. It would indirectly force people to become warriors though.
Also, instead of right out putting a hard limit, how about adding desertion? So if you go past the limit, your units will desert rapidly maybe lasting only a turn or two before deserting to meet the limit.
What if you could bribe a region's militia to desert?
I do think we have to be carefull not to make large realms too attractive again, but also not to make city sieges impossible. If sieges become easy, then small realms are dead in no time and we'll see even fewer seccessions than we've seen so far. I like the idea of realm size to have an impact, but it would have to be well thought out.
We also don't want small one region realms to last forever. If they only have one region, they should die against a giant.
We want small realms to last but not by having so many militias that other realms can't even besiege their last region.
At the end, I think we want to make sieges challenging but not impossible like it currently is. At the moment, most realms can't hit cities if those cities have maxed out on militias.
We've lost that many players. Now we need to find a way to adjust this to the current number of players. One thing is for sure. It needs to be cut in half at least. Gold has become more abundant over the years while players have not.
I think if we do decide to go with total mobile CS based approach, we will need to think of max and min.
Up to 5 nobles = 100%?
and from there for every noble, you lose 2.5% up to max of 25%?
So realm with 10 nobles = 75%
15 nobles = 50%? 20 and over = 25%?
Let's say with 10 nobles yon can reach 7000 CS.
So by that calculation, you should be able to reach 14000 with 20, 21000 with 30 and 28000 with 40. Of course this calculation doesn't take courtiers and priests at all meaning for normal realms, it will be even smaller.
So at 10 nobles they have up to mobile 7000 + militia 7000(0.75) = 12250
at 20 14000 + 3500?
I agree that single city realms shouldn't be able to last forever. Granted, Oligarch is one of the richest cities, but that it can hold out almost forever against Sirion is a bit odd as well. But with the proposed numbers you give, it'd be dead in one siege. On the other hand, smaller realms than Sirion currently can't siege a city at all, which is an even greater problem.
Quote from: Gabanus family on October 06, 2015, 10:55:16 AM
I agree that single city realms shouldn't be able to last forever. Granted, Oligarch is one of the richest cities, but that it can hold out almost forever against Sirion is a bit odd as well. But with the proposed numbers you give, it'd be dead in one siege. On the other hand, smaller realms than Sirion currently can't siege a city at all, which is an even greater problem.
Yeah. Unless numbers become low enough, no one can siege anything. Sadly Sirion and Oligarch case is an outlier compare to all other cases. There are not that many realms with over 40 nobles or a city that can generate as much gold as Oligarch to allow them to hold out indefinitely.
You can't have a case where one region realm can survive forever against a giant. That just doesn't make any logical sense. If even a giant can't besiege a city then who can?
If we don't want to reduce militia numbers too much, we will have to make SEs more powerful and abundant so they can bring down walls even faster. We might as well lower all city walls to lv3 since lv5 is practically impenetrable. And will have to reduce militia's strength by 50% so while they still maintain their number, they become a lot weaker.
True, the Oligarch/Sirion case it a bit special. But in other cases I know medium sized realms have no way of sieging a city in a semi-fair war. A 15k army these days can be considered a pretty good one, good luck sieging a city with that. So in that sense, I agree something should be done. I'd be willing to lose Oligarch for that :p
I like the idea of Militia being weaker or something, because they're not led by actual noblemen and therefore their organisation and spirit to keep fighting will be lower. The SE's I'm not so sure off though. Quantity is fine, if you want you can get 80 SE's in a single city in stock. Quality, I'm not sure yet tbh.
I don't mind two medium sized realms being unable to siege each other.
but if one side is winning by a big margin thanks to their military having a better general and they managed to corner the other realm all the way back to their capital, it should become different.
if your city doesn't have any adjacent region, it should not its food teleported into the city through its market place.
I think starvation should really be implemented again to address this. Instead of making starvation kill off population to reduce the city's population, how about change it a bit to affect militia, morale and production?
If your units are out of provision, make them lose morale instead of having a few men getting wounded. Your men are more likely to revolt and flee/desert before they actually starve under your command anyway.
I think starvation should become a very viable strategy if you don't want to reduce militia strength too much - it should be reduced either directly or indirectly however.
The problem is that aside from the donut cities on Dwilight, it's almost impossible to besiege a city in a realistic fashion. You can't surround them unless you spread your army out over 4-5 regions, you can't really blockade them or starve them out. What we're calling a siege here isn't really a siege at all, but a straight-up direct assault on a fortified positioin.
But honestly, I don't think super complex arithmetics are the answer. 90% of players won't understand how they work, and the other 10% will waste no time in figuring out how to bend them to their advantage. BM is already enough of a numbers game these days IMO.
City of Oligarch, impenetrable 8) 40k CS of troops guarding the wall with only 10k being mobile. Give up on sieging folks.
Quote from: Lapallanch on November 07, 2015, 09:06:41 PM
City of Oligarch, impenetrable 8) 40k CS of troops guarding the wall with only 10k being mobile. Give up on sieging folks.
Actually about 14k was mobile :p
But yeah, if you have sufficient gold reserves like Garas does and happen to command one of the richest cities, it is (nearly) impossible to siege it. Granted, due to its wealth and the fact that it has 5 (4 inf, 1 arch) good quality RC's makes the city somewhat a special case. But it would make you wonder why all the CE Dukes never secceeded, they too would be inpenetrable with their 100k+ gold reserves.
Because Atamara.
I think the militia-garrisons are overpowered in most cases.
Antiqualia had an issue with Springdale and Cold Spring, where CS doughnutted Springdale and was owned by another realm, basically cutting off any travel on Arnor's whim. Not possible to siege it with 10 nobles, since Arnor just dumped piles of militia into it once they realized our intent, and bam, more than a match for the max mobile force we could bring. Despite being right next to our capital recruitment zone, it was still ludicrously easy to just have them recruit replacement militia for the ones we killed, and/or for their mobile army to drop off more militia in the townsland.
As it stands, we can buy food from other regions (assume transport by sea, I guess) and effectively survive indefinitely if we dump militia. That plus our mobile force is ohh 'just' too high to consider attacking by Arnor's easily-available resources.
In both cases, it's making piles of peasants able to hold their own lands - which begs the question, What do they need Nobles for?
I think every effort should be made to make the militia armies far less powerful, and/or far more costly. Prepare the island for a higher noble density, and we'll have less net need for militia anyway.
I understand some people think having powerful militia helps small realms but like Antiqualia's case it can also work against it. Enemies don't have to attack the city. They can just take the surrounding regions and make the people trapped in the city suffer. I can't even imagine what it feels like to be trapped in a city being unable to do anything.