Over the years, many new features have been implemented and that had probably unintended effects of making expansion much more difficult. It is now almost impossible to do a friendly takeover and then maintain the high sympathy in realms where lords are elected.
For example, ox carts used to produce no or little waste from my memory, and brigands have been made to steal a bunch of these transfers to favor caravans use instead. However, new regions without lords cannot set purchase orders, and as such caravans are completely useless in them. Bankers have also lost their options to move food around, and have much less power over warehouse settings in regions. As such, since most regions TOed tend to lack food, starvation always hits as soon as the TO completes, there is then no effective way to feed the new region, and sympathy drops to 1% within a day or two. And since control is often at occupied when the region is taken, ox carts aren't an alternative. Out of 100 bushels sent to a new region captured, 96 or so were stolen by brigands. Who can afford such a ratio to feed new regions? Even if people had caravans they couldn't sell directly to the region until a lord is elected.
Furthermore, the maintenance modifiers by duchy just aggravate the situation. It was desired to disfavor imperial regions in order to give incentives to lords to align themselves to a duchy... But all new regions are necessarily imperial. Maintenance efforts and therefore much less effective than they used to be. And to make matters worse: even when a lord is finally elected, it takes a full seven days before he can actually switch allegiance to a duchy. So that can easily mean about 12 days where all efforts show no gains.
And how is subsistence-level farming supposed to work? The other day, our new region was starving. Then it returned to subsistence level farming. Then this morning it starved again and all stats reset to 1%.
Also, without any knights, the region suffers a control penalty on top of the lack of estate penalties. But how could it recruit a knight when it has 0% production? And because of this, production suffers and a vicious circle tends to be created, one that takes disproportionate amounts of work to break out of.
On top of that are control issues due to the size of your realm that have a nasty centralizing effect. How can we honestly prone ducal independence and large-realm penalties at the same time? These harsh penalties force ducal cooperation, as expanding your duchy without the aid of everyone else in the realm is starting to get pretty damn hard.
All of these new features aimed at modifying how people act with a bunch of penalties are stacking up with what I believe was an unintended effect: expanding is now a hell of a lot harder than it was when I joined the game. This, imo, is a problem. Even if most these features affect those who elect their lords a lot more, they all affect everyone. And everyone switching to appointment is not a valid solution, as it only reduces the negative impact of new behavior-control mechanics and would reduce the gameplay possibilities significantly.
It is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will no get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay. Wars are significantly delayed because of maintenance issues, when they are not avoided completely. Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting. By focusing on the duchies and regions so much, we increased overall maintenance needs and made in sort that instead of having a few bureaucrats maintaining a whole realm, you now need a few per duchy if you want to avoid maintenance problems and seek to maintain reasonable tax levels.
Well, I think the original thought of this was "realism". Whole lot of good that did.
I think the original thought was to have food become much more valuable therefore turning food into a much more important tool in diplomacy and warmongering (which I think has succeeded.)
However the annoying maintenance control is indeed annoying and I think is a big turn off not only to new players but to old players who are too busy coordinating maintenance to care about any RP like religion, guilds, political battles, wars etc
Well, for one thing, as lords of various regions at varying times in my playing experience, food had eventually become almost a full-time job. Send food somewhere, receive food, move places. It's all part of the territory really. At least some places don't require so much work, but when you have a region that doesn't have enough knights, and ALL other knights in the realm are taken, then it gets to be not cool.
Basically, the report goes "Lack of knights reduces control. All your stats drop. lol" And I check and I'm like "No! Dude! I have over 100% authority! Dang it!"
Use diplomats/ambassadors/priests to improve loyalty at an astonishing rate. Your realm decided it could allow several faiths and has no hegemony? Tough luck.
That's not an issue in my experience. It's more like, some regions require you to have so many knights at a minimum, and sometimes, even that minimum can't be reached. For bigger realms, downsizing is not so much an issue. For smaller realms, it means they never get past the stage where they are a little puppy in a forest filled with wolves.
Quote from: Chénier on June 22, 2011, 01:15:56 PM
Over the years, many new features have been implemented and that had probably unintended effects of making expansion much more difficult. It is now almost impossible to do a friendly takeover and then maintain the high sympathy in realms where lords are elected.
For example, ox carts used to produce no or little waste from my memory, and brigands have been made to steal a bunch of these transfers to favor caravans use instead. However, new regions without lords cannot set purchase orders, and as such caravans are completely useless in them. Bankers have also lost their options to move food around, and have much less power over warehouse settings in regions. As such, since most regions TOed tend to lack food, starvation always hits as soon as the TO completes, there is then no effective way to feed the new region, and sympathy drops to 1% within a day or two. And since control is often at occupied when the region is taken, ox carts aren't an alternative. Out of 100 bushels sent to a new region captured, 96 or so were stolen by brigands. Who can afford such a ratio to feed new regions? Even if people had caravans they couldn't sell directly to the region until a lord is elected.
Furthermore, the maintenance modifiers by duchy just aggravate the situation. It was desired to disfavor imperial regions in order to give incentives to lords to align themselves to a duchy... But all new regions are necessarily imperial. Maintenance efforts and therefore much less effective than they used to be. And to make matters worse: even when a lord is finally elected, it takes a full seven days before he can actually switch allegiance to a duchy. So that can easily mean about 12 days where all efforts show no gains.
And how is subsistence-level farming supposed to work? The other day, our new region was starving. Then it returned to subsistence level farming. Then this morning it starved again and all stats reset to 1%.
Also, without any knights, the region suffers a control penalty on top of the lack of estate penalties. But how could it recruit a knight when it has 0% production? And because of this, production suffers and a vicious circle tends to be created, one that takes disproportionate amounts of work to break out of.
On top of that are control issues due to the size of your realm that have a nasty centralizing effect. How can we honestly prone ducal independence and large-realm penalties at the same time? These harsh penalties force ducal cooperation, as expanding your duchy without the aid of everyone else in the realm is starting to get pretty damn hard.
All of these new features aimed at modifying how people act with a bunch of penalties are stacking up with what I believe was an unintended effect: expanding is now a hell of a lot harder than it was when I joined the game. This, imo, is a problem. Even if most these features affect those who elect their lords a lot more, they all affect everyone. And everyone switching to appointment is not a valid solution, as it only reduces the negative impact of new behavior-control mechanics and would reduce the gameplay possibilities significantly.
It is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will no get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay. Wars are significantly delayed because of maintenance issues, when they are not avoided completely. Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting. By focusing on the duchies and regions so much, we increased overall maintenance needs and made in sort that instead of having a few bureaucrats maintaining a whole realm, you now need a few per duchy if you want to avoid maintenance problems and seek to maintain reasonable tax levels.
I have in the past used traders and the black market to feed a region if it has no lord. I've never seen 96% of food stolen, generally I consider 20% loss on a ox cart to be bad. We have also never had a problem finding a knight willing to take up an estate in a ruined region, unless we already have a shortage of knights, in which case it is kind of mad to be trying to take a new region. Can always just offer to subsidise his/her share for a while, or promise to fast track their own advancement up the ranks for their service. Our biggest problem these days is the actual TO seems to take forever to complete. Could be something about the size of the realm.
Subsistence levels seem to be something not to rely on. Every full turn the region improves a little, which ends subsistence levels, only then they starve back to to them, or so it appears.
If you like to elect Lords, one way to solve it is to have an election before the region is TO'd and then appoint the winner, though I really don't love that option. Perhaps we need some code to reduce the negative effects in a region until a lord is elected? I would imagine the code would need to hold the region in an almost stable position to stop people using this to try and get a few days were they can really invest time to bring a regions stats up though.
Quote from: Chénier on June 22, 2011, 01:15:56 PMOver the years, many new features have been implemented and that had probably unintended effects of making expansion much more difficult. It is now almost impossible to do a friendly takeover and then maintain the high sympathy in realms where lords are elected.
I've been noticing the same thing lately, too. When I first joined, it was common on EC for there to be region switching hands constantly. You'd get at least one region being TO'd a day, and quite often regions changing hands every turn.
QuoteFor example, ox carts used to produce no or little waste from my memory, and brigands have been made to steal a bunch of these transfers to favor caravans use instead.
As far as I am aware, Ox Carts have not changed at all. There has been no change to the effects brigands have on ox carts. I think we're just seeing it happen more often because we're trying to send food to more starving regions that have very low control, especially on Dwilight.
QuoteHowever, new regions without lords cannot set purchase orders, and as such caravans are completely useless in them. Bankers have also lost their options to move food around, and have much less power over warehouse settings in regions. As such, since most regions TOed tend to lack food, starvation always hits as soon as the TO completes, there is then no effective way to feed the new region, and sympathy drops to 1% within a day or two. And since control is often at occupied when the region is taken, ox carts aren't an alternative.
Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.
QuoteFurthermore, the maintenance modifiers by duchy just aggravate the situation. It was desired to disfavor imperial regions in order to give incentives to lords to align themselves to a duchy... But all new regions are necessarily imperial. Maintenance efforts and therefore much less effective than they used to be. And to make matters worse: even when a lord is finally elected, it takes a full seven days before he can actually switch allegiance to a duchy. So that can easily mean about 12 days where all efforts show no gains.
So, appoint a lord as soon as you take the region, and cut five days off the schedule. Rewrite your realm laws to allow this for newly captured regions.
Although I would like to see some option of capturing a region directly into a duchy.
QuoteAnd how is subsistence-level farming supposed to work? The other day, our new region was starving. Then it returned to subsistence level farming. Then this morning it starved again and all stats reset to 1%.
I have no idea. Tim tried to explain it to me once, but I really don't get it. It has something to do with being at starvation levels for a certain time. I *think* that subsistence level is not a steady-state thing. I seem to recall that a region as subsistence level will bounce back and forth between subsistence and starvation.
QuoteAlso, without any knights, the region suffers a control penalty on top of the lack of estate penalties. But how could it recruit a knight when it has 0% production? And because of this, production suffers and a vicious circle tends to be created, one that takes disproportionate amounts of work to break out of.
I believe that the estate revamp is at the top of the list of planned revisions. That should make a major impact on a realm's ability to take and hold land, as well as allow regions to operate with stability at less than 100% efficiency. Some decisions have been made to the approach to coding that should allow the dev team to actually get back to implementing some real changes like this. Unfortunately Tom is still not yet able to return to active coding, and Tim is on vacation. Various other dev members are likewise occupied with that diversion we call Real Life.
QuoteAll of these new features aimed at modifying how people act with a bunch of penalties are stacking up with what I believe was an unintended effect: expanding is now a hell of a lot harder than it was when I joined the game. This, imo, is a problem. Even if most these features affect those who elect their lords a lot more, they all affect everyone.
I actually agree with this.
QuoteIt is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will no get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay. Wars are significantly delayed because of maintenance issues, when they are not avoided completely. Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting. By focusing on the duchies and regions so much, we increased overall maintenance needs and made in sort that instead of having a few bureaucrats maintaining a whole realm, you now need a few per duchy if you want to avoid maintenance problems and seek to maintain reasonable tax levels.
I think these are all valid observations. The overall pace of the game has really slowed down quite a bit. We've unfortunately moved over toward a more "maintenance" focus rather than a "conflict" focus.
So... I'm a bit new to this since I came after most of the "maintenance" was in place (about 2 years ago). What specifics can be done about this?
Well, we need to finish the estates overhaul. That should ease a lot of the pure maintenance concerns. We should probably add in certain exemptions for newly captured regions, and regions that currently have an ongoing lordship referendum, etc. But, really, overhauling the way estates work should really help this out a lot.
Very much agreed. I've grown increasingly frustrated with how difficult it is to keep newly conquered regions, and I'm nearly convinced at this point that you might as well just do a BTO as an FTO as every FTO I've seen succeed recently has still sent all the stats to rock bottom in a day or two.
Quote from: Indirik on June 22, 2011, 02:42:48 PM
Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.
I don't see this as a bad thing. What is bad, indeed, is to see realm who will not go to war because they are afraid they can gain nothing at all from it. That looting and rebuilding becomes a valid alternative to steady advance works well for me.
I'm in full agreeance with this - back when I started playing (what? 6 years ago?) it was very rare for the Realms I was part of not to be at war, or at least constantly fighting and on the move. It kept people active and interested in the game - something in other threads has been noticed is our retention and I would place our LACK of gaining people as an issue with this.
Now I find myself in two Realms that would LOVE to be actively going to war, but the inability to maintain regions and hold regions due to estates and control issues - has all but stalled them in doing anything. I don't think I've been in a real war since Madina attacked Paisly, and that was at least 2-3 years ago real time.
The heavy maintenance aspect has slowed game play to a crawl when it comes to fighting and wars - we don't have the player base in many Realms to properly run regions, which forces Realms to reconsider going to war because of the threat of beasts, undead, or just general likelihood of stat issues. Now toss in the "not enough fighting" issue . . .and well. Region control and maintainence becomes a huge issue.
Quote from: Phellan on June 22, 2011, 05:09:45 PM
I'm in full agreeance with this - back when I started playing (what? 6 years ago?) it was very rare for the Realms I was part of not to be at war, or at least constantly fighting and on the move. It kept people active and interested in the game - something in other threads has been noticed is our retention and I would place our LACK of gaining people as an issue with this.
Now I find myself in two Realms that would LOVE to be actively going to war, but the inability to maintain regions and hold regions due to estates and control issues - has all but stalled them in doing anything. I don't think I've been in a real war since Madina attacked Paisly, and that was at least 2-3 years ago real time.
The heavy maintenance aspect has slowed game play to a crawl when it comes to fighting and wars - we don't have the player base in many Realms to properly run regions, which forces Realms to reconsider going to war because of the threat of beasts, undead, or just general likelihood of stat issues. Now toss in the "not enough fighting" issue . . .and well. Region control and maintainence becomes a huge issue.
They would probably that some of their region maintenance issues ease when they have battles--or have these realms forgotten the dreaded "too much peace"?
Quote from: vonGenf on June 22, 2011, 05:07:31 PMI don't see this as a bad thing. What is bad, indeed, is to see realm who will not go to war because they are afraid they can gain nothing at all from it. That looting and rebuilding becomes a valid alternative to steady advance works well for me.
The problem is that it's not
"a valid alternative". It's become the only viable way. Even if you manage to take a region peacefully via FTO, they almost always drop out the bottom very quickly, with no practical way to rebuild them. So realms do't do it anymore. The only reason to TO a region is to deny it to your enemy, or destroy it.
Quote from: egamma on June 22, 2011, 05:44:39 PMThey would probably that some of their region maintenance issues ease when they have battles--or have these realms forgotten the dreaded "too much peace"?
TMP has been modified too remove the region-destroying effects.
Quote from: Indirik on June 22, 2011, 05:50:29 PM
The problem is that it's not "a valid alternative". It's become the only viable way. Even if you manage to take a region peacefully via FTO, they almost always drop out the bottom very quickly, with no practical way to rebuild them. So realms do't do it anymore. The only reason to TO a region is to deny it to your enemy, or destroy it.
I was going to say it's a generalization, but I have a hard time finding an example of TOed region that did not require a 2nd TO a few days after.... so ok, I am convinced.
So... we recognize it is a problem, suggestions on how to improve?
I think we need to revist how Estates and other issues related to it work - the mistake I think in the changes made, as poined out already, is that to "encourage" desired behaviours huge negative effects were applied to things. Whether it was TMP or Estates, the failure is that negative punishment is used. Not getting Knights? BAM bad things happen. Not fighting wars? BAM bad things happen.
This is the wrong mentality to be enforcing - we should be reenforcing the desired effects by providing positive things when you have knights and war. Taking over regions becomes extremely difficult because the negatives applied to them due to the inability to get food, knights, lords, and a duchy given to them. Much like holding onto any region - it becomes a fight just to manage the region with police work and courtier work.
To make this easier - and to encourage more war and expansion (along with smaller realms being viable again) we need to place positive benefits to having Lords, Knights, Duchies etc applied to a region - rather than negatives (which are what happen when you lack them, and most Realms do).
Estates should provide bonuses to the region's stats, rather than be required to KEEP the region stable. Duchy allegiances could provide control, loyalty, production, etc style bonuses (perhaps chosen by the Duke or based on the City/Ducal centre type). Perhaps Estates allow for higher taxes to be extracted without a negative influence? Or reduce the upkeep of buildings, or the cost to construct new buildings? There are a large number of in game mechanics that Estates could provide as bonuses to a region where they are - Ducal Knight Estates could even be created to give Duchy wide bonuses. This would make having Ducal knights something desirable. Estates could influence religious beliefs, effect TO functions, and even increase the range/weapon/armour of units recruited from them (by small amounts obviously). Increase wood/metal etc production for when those are implemented.
The key here is to make having Knights and Estates beneficial to a region, something the players will WANT to have, but that will not destroy a Realm if they don't have enough knights (or lose players to attrition).
Obviously though there would be diminishing returns - having one estate supporting something would provide good effects, but as you stack the same type of estate you see a smaller and smaller gain. This would encourage diversity and provide a wider range of uses for Estates.
Regardless - the idea here is that too many of the in game mechanics punish - reducing the enjoyability of the game and making players focus on meeting game mechanic requirements (which is tedious and boring), rather than focus on other players and the enjoyability of the game.
Quote from: Foundation on June 22, 2011, 08:00:40 PM
So... we recognize it is a problem, suggestions on how to improve?
There are a lot of possibilities, but my personal preference would be to make a takeover mean a lot more. When you finish a takeover, you should pretty much be guaranteed that unless something happens (like another army starting a takeover to take it back) you can keep the region for at least a week. Some sort of mod to control so that it stays at a level where revolts won't happen. And that's for all TO's. A Friendly takeover should end with morale and loyalty in the middle and actually stay there. I'm not sure exactly what's causing all of the problems, so I'm not sure what needs to be fixed, but that right there would be a big step in the right direction.
Other ideas would include: Making disruption of Courts held by the lord not happen if there is a large enough military presence (hard to riot when there are several hundred troops standing guard), assign the region to the duchy the Lord came from, or provide some option to raise loyalty/morale by pumping gold and/or troop effort into the region (yes, civil work helps until you hit the max production for the population, which often happens quickly and leaves loyalty and morale still in the toilet).
Alternatively, if we want takeovers to stay at the crappy situation afterwards, then it should happen in one day rather than a bloody week.
Quote from: Phellan on June 22, 2011, 10:52:23 PM
I think we need to revist how Estates and other issues related to it work - the mistake I think in the changes made, as poined out already, is that to "encourage" desired behaviours huge negative effects were applied to things. Whether it was TMP or Estates, the failure is that negative punishment is used. Not getting Knights? BAM bad things happen. Not fighting wars? BAM bad things happen.
This is the wrong mentality to be enforcing - we should be reenforcing the desired effects by providing positive things when you have knights and war. Taking over regions becomes extremely difficult because the negatives applied to them due to the inability to get food, knights, lords, and a duchy given to them. Much like holding onto any region - it becomes a fight just to manage the region with police work and courtier work.
To make this easier - and to encourage more war and expansion (along with smaller realms being viable again) we need to place positive benefits to having Lords, Knights, Duchies etc applied to a region - rather than negatives (which are what happen when you lack them, and most Realms do).
Estates should provide bonuses to the region's stats, rather than be required to KEEP the region stable. Duchy allegiances could provide control, loyalty, production, etc style bonuses (perhaps chosen by the Duke or based on the City/Ducal centre type). Perhaps Estates allow for higher taxes to be extracted without a negative influence? Or reduce the upkeep of buildings, or the cost to construct new buildings? There are a large number of in game mechanics that Estates could provide as bonuses to a region where they are - Ducal Knight Estates could even be created to give Duchy wide bonuses. This would make having Ducal knights something desirable. Estates could influence religious beliefs, effect TO functions, and even increase the range/weapon/armour of units recruited from them (by small amounts obviously). Increase wood/metal etc production for when those are implemented.
The key here is to make having Knights and Estates beneficial to a region, something the players will WANT to have, but that will not destroy a Realm if they don't have enough knights (or lose players to attrition).
Obviously though there would be diminishing returns - having one estate supporting something would provide good effects, but as you stack the same type of estate you see a smaller and smaller gain. This would encourage diversity and provide a wider range of uses for Estates.
Regardless - the idea here is that too many of the in game mechanics punish - reducing the enjoyability of the game and making players focus on meeting game mechanic requirements (which is tedious and boring), rather than focus on other players and the enjoyability of the game.
Yep, this was considered and Tom began coding something of this sort (details vary). I will consider taking up finishing this change in estate and talk to our dev team about it.
Quote from: Fleugs on June 22, 2011, 01:47:52 PM
Use diplomats/ambassadors/priests to improve loyalty at an astonishing rate. Your realm decided it could allow several faiths and has no hegemony? Tough luck.
Their efforts are useless when all stats reset to 1% at TC. I'm an ambassador with excellent oratory skill, and using those tools is a waste of time. I'm better off using my dozen or so men to do police raids, anything else before a lord is chosen is a waste of time.
Quote from: De-Legro on June 22, 2011, 02:34:51 PM
I have in the past used traders and the black market to feed a region if it has no lord. I've never seen 96% of food stolen, generally I consider 20% loss on a ox cart to be bad. We have also never had a problem finding a knight willing to take up an estate in a ruined region, unless we already have a shortage of knights, in which case it is kind of mad to be trying to take a new region. Can always just offer to subsidise his/her share for a while, or promise to fast track their own advancement up the ranks for their service. Our biggest problem these days is the actual TO seems to take forever to complete. Could be something about the size of the realm.
Subsistence levels seem to be something not to rely on. Every full turn the region improves a little, which ends subsistence levels, only then they starve back to to them, or so it appears.
If you like to elect Lords, one way to solve it is to have an election before the region is TO'd and then appoint the winner, though I really don't love that option. Perhaps we need some code to reduce the negative effects in a region until a lord is elected? I would imagine the code would need to hold the region in an almost stable position to stop people using this to try and get a few days were they can really invest time to bring a regions stats up though.
Enweil is surrounded by rogue regions. But we can't really expand because we lack the nobles. But so does everyone else, so nobody is taking these regions. And since we can't increase our income by expanding to compensate for the loss of two cities during the invasion, we can't restore our economy, meaning a stalemate is the best we could wish of any war. It's rather stupid. And the region is question was taken in order to increase my duchy. It was taken by the western army for the western duchies, without the support of the main army and without the ruler being there to appoint anyone. How are dukes to gain greater independence if they suffer so many penalties from being part of a realm? And even if we had been sponsored and it was organized by the whole realm, I've seen enough times how even that is way more difficult than it should be. This particular case just made me realize how tired I was of how this issue evolved and how nobody was saying anything about it yet.
One thing that is clearly needed is for a way for bankers to control the markets of lordless regions and for new lords to be able to switch duchies immediately. One week of being imperial is just aggravating, when you consider that this first week is when it'd be most useful.
Quote from: Indirik on June 22, 2011, 02:42:48 PM
Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.
I've been heavily involved in military affairs on a different occasions, and this is *exactly* how I adapted my strategy. "Kill Riombara and DoA first, then we can slowly think about setting up friendly colonies there, when everything is rogue and no one is left to bother us and interrupt repair efforts".
I love looting, and was not the least sad to pick this as the general strategy, but as others have said, it sucked that no alternative was viable. Hell, we even tried a colony takeover in Rines, but they are so bloody difficult to pull off. Does anyone know why they are so frigging difficult? Colonies should be encouraged, if you ask me, but that's a different discussion altogether...
Like what everyone said, I think many updates made things too complicated. 3 or 4 years ago things were a lot simpler. Too many things are getting in the way for a realm to start a war with another. This is BATTLE Master not Bureaucracy Master
Quote from: Indirik on June 22, 2011, 02:42:48 PM
Yep. I agree. This really slows things down a LOT. Most realms fighting wars these days don't really try to take and hold land anymore. War has changed to a game of beating your enemy to a pulp, removing their ability to fight a war at all, and then dealing with the region TO issues in the post-war-peace-treaty period.
Indeed. When I began playing in 2005, TO:s were a viable during-war strategy. From what I remember, you did not have to work that hard to get the stats back in order even when you used brutal TO:s. That allowed realms to almost always have a TO running, if they were at war (which basically everyone was all the time) and had an army that was alive.
All the take overs were done during the war and as such you didn't need any long maintinence periods between wars.
I liked the old way when regions shifted hands often and when a looted region wasn't destroyed for a year afterward.
Quote from: Kain on June 23, 2011, 07:14:20 AM
I liked the old way when regions shifted hands often and when a looted region wasn't destroyed for a year afterward.
I just noticed something which illustrates the changes very well. Back in 05, rogue regions were somewhat rare on EC. One here, one there but in no great numbers. Now it is 2011 and at the time of writing, EC has 12 of them, including 1 city, 1 townsland and 1 stronghold.
How about allowing knights to have more than one Liege? Doesn't sound historically incorrect, nobles often owed fealty to one Lord for this estate, and to another for a different property... That way you could have multiply estates for one knight, and need less knights to maintain your regions :) Of course diminishing returns would be needed.
i'm thinking it should be possible for raids to be profitable without destroying the region.
ie. not necessary to TO a region to reap its benefits
Quote from: fodder on June 23, 2011, 02:18:47 PM
i'm thinking it should be possible for raids to be profitable without destroying the region.
ie. not necessary to TO a region to reap its benefits
Under this scheme, it would be more profitable for two friendly realms to be constantly at war than to maintain peace.
Quote from: Shizzle on June 23, 2011, 10:06:12 AM
How about allowing knights to have more than one Liege? Doesn't sound historically incorrect, nobles often owed fealty to one Lord for this estate, and to another for a different property... That way you could have multiply estates for one knight, and need less knights to maintain your regions :) Of course diminishing returns would be needed.
An interesting way to do this would be have no diminishing returns under, let's say, 70%, but diminishing returns afterwards. That way, it would always be profitable for a realm to gain a new region, no matter its number of knights, and always profitable to gain new knights.
We should be careful that it should not be possible for a single player to hold a whole realm!
Quote from: vonGenf on June 23, 2011, 02:47:13 PM
An interesting way to do this would be have no diminishing returns under, let's say, 70%, but diminishing returns afterwards. That way, it would always be profitable for a realm to gain a new region, no matter its number of knights, and always profitable to gain new knights.
We should be careful that it should not be possible for a single player to hold a whole realm!
Well, of course, but that's easily cancelled out: unit CS rapidly drops with increasing numbers. Even with the money of a whole realm, I doubt a unit could go far over 2-3K CS...
Or we could allow Lords to also have an estate in another Lord's region? Though that sounds kind of artificial
Quote from: Shizzle on June 23, 2011, 03:06:29 PM
Well, of course, but that's easily cancelled out: unit CS rapidly drops with increasing numbers. Even with the money of a whole realm, I doubt a unit could go far over 2-3K CS...
Excellent point.
multiple liege just doesn't make sense. easier to say a lord can maintain multiple subregions (thus regions of changing sizes) on their own with no pc knights (today's 70% is new map's 100% for example).. gets bonus for assigning subregions to knights.
is the estate overhaul a stopgap until new maps? or is it done with new map in mind?
OK, I've skimmed the thread, and aside from the estate overhaul (which I will try to work with Foundation and the rest of the devs on getting started over the next few weeks), here are a couple of additional suggestions for relatively simple things that could help:
- Allow regions without Lords to have their base caravan offer settings changed by the Banker. Or possibly by the Duke if they're in a Duchy; either could work.
- When a new region is taken, the army that the game calculates as having done "the most work" toward the TO (something like "has the most troops there for the most time") adds that region to the Duchy of its base region.
- Bedwyr suggested military presence preventing riots disrupting courts: this is a good idea.
- Only relevant for taking rogue regions, but if a region has been rogue for some time, it should be more willing to accept being taken over by any realm (Note: This should actually be happening already, to some degree, due to some bugs in sympathy calculation that were fixed a month or three ago. Take a look, you might be surprised.)
- Subsistence is probably something I should revisit. It's supposed to maintain regions without food, and with very low population, but without other disruptions, in a steady state. It may need some sort of "buffer zone," whereby if the population drops below (say) 100 in region X, it goes into subsistence mode, but it won't come out of it until it goes back above 200. ...Also, it should be noted that subsistence won't be that helpful on Dwilight, with the constant monster attacks.
Finally, it's not something that's simple, but claims need a rework, and having a more sensible claims system might make it easier to get someone appointed that the Ruler/Duke actually wants as Lord faster.
Quote from: Anaris on June 23, 2011, 04:07:30 PM
When a new region is taken, the army that the game calculates as having done "the most work" toward the TO (something like "has the most troops there for the most time") adds that region to the Duchy of its base region.
Even if that duchy is not neighboring? That seems contrary to current practice. I would have gone for closest city.
Quote from: vonGenf on June 23, 2011, 04:17:10 PM
Even if that duchy is not neighboring? That seems contrary to current practice. I would have gone for closest city.
Not sure. Bedwyr, Indirik and I were actually having a discussion about this last night; in general, I'm in favour of keeping duchies contiguous, but if this made a significant difference in the ability of a realm to take a region and not see it go straight rogue again, then I would be more than willing to consider it.
Yes, perhaps only consider Duchies the Region can actually join. Perhaps also give a bonus / decide on which Duchy starts the TO, if relevant. (or only allow neighbouring Duchies to TO, but thats more ducal level play and doesn't make things easier, so that perhaps isn't such a great idea in this light)
QuoteBedwyr suggested military presence preventing riots disrupting courts: this is a good idea.
Perhaps lower the chance of a riot happening? And if having sufficient military presence prevents it, will the Court then fail without negative effects? If the Court is guaranteed to succeed with sufficient military forces, I'm wondering if that will make it too easy again.
I think one of the biggest problems with keeping new regions in the realm and in good shape is estates. A region without any estates at all will go south pretty fast. In realms that elect lords, this is a several day wait to get a lord, then possibly longer to get a knight and estates. The estate revamp may help. But newly taken regions should probably have some short-term exemption from estate requirements. At least long enough to get a lord and knights.
Quote from: Anaris on June 23, 2011, 04:07:30 PM
- When a new region is taken, the army that the game calculates as having done "the most work" toward the TO (something like "has the most troops there for the most time") adds that region to the Duchy of its base region.
This I have a bit of a problem with. One of the few real sources of power Rulers have left is appointing lords to newly-conquered regions. Auto-adding to a duchy takes that away and gives it to the already massively overpowered Dukes.
Quote
Finally, it's not something that's simple, but claims need a rework, and having a more sensible claims system might make it easier to get someone appointed that the Ruler/Duke actually wants as Lord faster.
This.
(fixed quote for you. ;) )
Quote from: Phellan on June 22, 2011, 10:52:23 PM
I think we need to revist how Estates and other issues related to it work - the mistake I think in the changes made, as poined out already, is that to "encourage" desired behaviours huge negative effects were applied to things. Whether it was TMP or Estates, the failure is that negative punishment is used. Not getting Knights? BAM bad things happen. Not fighting wars? BAM bad things happen.
This is the wrong mentality to be enforcing - we should be reenforcing the desired effects by providing positive things when you have knights and war. Taking over regions becomes extremely difficult because the negatives applied to them due to the inability to get food, knights, lords, and a duchy given to them. Much like holding onto any region - it becomes a fight just to manage the region with police work and courtier work.
To make this easier - and to encourage more war and expansion (along with smaller realms being viable again) we need to place positive benefits to having Lords, Knights, Duchies etc applied to a region - rather than negatives (which are what happen when you lack them, and most Realms do).
Estates should provide bonuses to the region's stats, rather than be required to KEEP the region stable. Duchy allegiances could provide control, loyalty, production, etc style bonuses (perhaps chosen by the Duke or based on the City/Ducal centre type). Perhaps Estates allow for higher taxes to be extracted without a negative influence? Or reduce the upkeep of buildings, or the cost to construct new buildings? There are a large number of in game mechanics that Estates could provide as bonuses to a region where they are - Ducal Knight Estates could even be created to give Duchy wide bonuses. This would make having Ducal knights something desirable. Estates could influence religious beliefs, effect TO functions, and even increase the range/weapon/armour of units recruited from them (by small amounts obviously). Increase wood/metal etc production for when those are implemented.
The key here is to make having Knights and Estates beneficial to a region, something the players will WANT to have, but that will not destroy a Realm if they don't have enough knights (or lose players to attrition).
Obviously though there would be diminishing returns - having one estate supporting something would provide good effects, but as you stack the same type of estate you see a smaller and smaller gain. This would encourage diversity and provide a wider range of uses for Estates.
Regardless - the idea here is that too many of the in game mechanics punish - reducing the enjoyability of the game and making players focus on meeting game mechanic requirements (which is tedious and boring), rather than focus on other players and the enjoyability of the game.
This is basically what the new estate system will provide to my understanding. The nominal region production/control level will be under 100%, but will reach a steady state without knights instead of collapsing like it does now. Adding knights with estates will help boost you towards 100%. The main thing to adapt to is under the new system, 100% production is not meant to be the "normal" level that all regions should run at.
Quote from: Chénier on June 23, 2011, 04:03:30 AM
Their efforts are useless when all stats reset to 1% at TC. I'm an ambassador with excellent oratory skill, and using those tools is a waste of time. I'm better off using my dozen or so men to do police raids, anything else before a lord is chosen is a waste of time.
Enweil is surrounded by rogue regions. But we can't really expand because we lack the nobles. But so does everyone else, so nobody is taking these regions. And since we can't increase our income by expanding to compensate for the loss of two cities during the invasion, we can't restore our economy, meaning a stalemate is the best we could wish of any war. It's rather stupid. And the region is question was taken in order to increase my duchy. It was taken by the western army for the western duchies, without the support of the main army and without the ruler being there to appoint anyone. How are dukes to gain greater independence if they suffer so many penalties from being part of a realm? And even if we had been sponsored and it was organized by the whole realm, I've seen enough times how even that is way more difficult than it should be. This particular case just made me realize how tired I was of how this issue evolved and how nobody was saying anything about it yet.
One thing that is clearly needed is for a way for bankers to control the markets of lordless regions and for new lords to be able to switch duchies immediately. One week of being imperial is just aggravating, when you consider that this first week is when it'd be most useful.
I've been heavily involved in military affairs on a different occasions, and this is *exactly* how I adapted my strategy. "Kill Riombara and DoA first, then we can slowly think about setting up friendly colonies there, when everything is rogue and no one is left to bother us and interrupt repair efforts".
I love looting, and was not the least sad to pick this as the general strategy, but as others have said, it sucked that no alternative was viable. Hell, we even tried a colony takeover in Rines, but they are so bloody difficult to pull off. Does anyone know why they are so frigging difficult? Colonies should be encouraged, if you ask me, but that's a different discussion altogether...
We too are taking rogue regions. Athios was taken using only 1 TO attempt, had 1 police unit supporting it and took a little less then a week to reach the point where it was stable in stats. Most the heavy lifting was done by a priest and a diplomat. One of the things that might have made it easier, was we did a RTO, so we had a lord instantly.
Quote from: Indirik on June 23, 2011, 04:35:43 PM
I think one of the biggest problems with keeping new regions in the realm and in good shape is estates. A region without any estates at all will go south pretty fast. In realms that elect lords, this is a several day wait to get a lord, then possibly longer to get a knight and estates. The estate revamp may help. But newly taken regions should probably have some short-term exemption from estate requirements. At least long enough to get a lord and knights.
I think this would be a great help. Not only for realms that elect Lords either. A few turns grace to get a region established after a take over might remedy the currently, rebel after one day TO again syndrome.
Quote from: De-Legro on June 24, 2011, 01:05:25 AM
We too are taking rogue regions. Athios was taken using only 1 TO attempt, had 1 police unit supporting it and took a little less then a week to reach the point where it was stable in stats. Most the heavy lifting was done by a priest and a diplomat. One of the things that might have made it easier, was we did a RTO, so we had a lord instantly.
[/quote
Having a lord immediately is what changes the situation. All of the regions we RTOed were stabilized rather easily, it's the ones taken by the good old military means that are godawfully hard.
What's the reason why a lord can't change allegiance before a week in office? It's useless delays. A week between subsequent changes, sure, but if the region is imperial you ought to be allowed to swear fealty to a duchy right away, imo.
I like that regions be automatically be given to duchies. This would eventually mean that there would no longer ever be any imperial regions. Not sure if this is intended or not. I do understand the point of rulers being weakened even more, though, but it makes little sense that if a duke sponsors an attempt to take a region, it be up to the whole realm what happens there.
Perhaps it could be part of the realm government options? To make it that regions automaticly join the conquering duchy, and maybe even add the option for region elections to be run within the duchy only while at it?
So the "conquering duchy" would be calculated based on...the guy who starts the takeover, or the duchy to which the majority of forces in the region belong? They can be different, and that can definitely matter. On one hand there's the initiating party, and on the other hand there's the majority stakeholder. When those two are at odds, how would game mechanics solve that? Would it be arbitrarily one over the other?
Quote from: Artemesia on June 25, 2011, 12:25:18 AM
So the "conquering duchy" would be calculated based on...the guy who starts the takeover, or the duchy to which the majority of forces in the region belong? They can be different, and that can definitely matter. On one hand there's the initiating party, and on the other hand there's the majority stakeholder. When those two are at odds, how would game mechanics solve that? Would it be arbitrarily one over the other?
It makes sense that it would be the initiating party. If you don't support his claim, leave the region and don't support him.
Quote from: vonGenf on June 25, 2011, 10:20:03 AM
It makes sense that it would be the initiating party. If you don't support his claim, leave the region and don't support him.
I kinda agree with your logic, but a failed TO attempt can seriously hamper following ones. If someone from another duchy goes and starts the TO before any of your men in a region that could only switch to your duchy, you wouldn't really want to let him ruin the region's sympathy for your realm.
I kinda like the idea of it being calculated by the army with the more men present.
Somewhat unrelated, but this makes me think that ducal sympathy might be an interesting stat to add to the game. Regions with high ducal loyalty and low realm loyalty would get nice stat boosts in a secession, and vice versa. Regions TOs and maintenance could run on an average of both stats. I dunno, just some crazy idea off the top of my head. More stats could just mean more maintenance, though...
Quote from: Phellan on June 22, 2011, 10:52:23 PM
This is the wrong mentality to be enforcing - we should be reenforcing the desired effects by providing positive things when you have knights and war. Taking over regions becomes extremely difficult because the negatives applied to them due to the inability to get food, knights, lords, and a duchy given to them. Much like holding onto any region - it becomes a fight just to manage the region with police work and courtier work.
To make this easier - and to encourage more war and expansion (along with smaller realms being viable again) we need to place positive benefits to having Lords, Knights, Duchies etc applied to a region - rather than negatives (which are what happen when you lack them, and most Realms do).
(...)
Regardless - the idea here is that too many of the in game mechanics punish - reducing the enjoyability of the game and making players focus on meeting game mechanic requirements (which is tedious and boring), rather than focus on other players and the enjoyability of the game.
over many practical details mentioned in thread, i agree that this is at core of problems as i feel it myself too.
usual state in bm should be some gray average state, and things that apply should provide bonuses.
currently, we work very hard just to hold what i call average gray state - stable regions. this apparently gives no push to things to go on.
sometimes i suceeed to do something myself that will move quite large number of players to get involved. and i feel pleasure, but all the time awareness exists that it is very hard to keep story going, as almost everything works as obstacle, and as you play light-weight give too often you think to just give up from any motivating endeavor, as you are exhausted, so, many things in game mechanics scream: "give up from actions, join "avoid all troubles" club.
so:
- estate troubles prevents expansions and warring
- religious upkeep slowed most of religion game down
- improved wounding gave lot of frustration and slowing down through so frequent wounds worsening, while light wounding is hardly felt as some positive experience because it is fetl to mostly give benefit to younger nobles who are healthier anyhow
- even new diplomacy system with all these announcements mostly show that lot of work will be needed just to keep things at level they are on now, when no particular work is neede (all that documents that will be necessary to sign just to walk through you allies' lands, and so...)
it looks like it comes from some sub-conscious level, but punishment is felt from many sides: "today things are as they are; tomorrow, when we apply new feature X, you will have to work a lot just to bring things to the level where they are now... incentive? you will not be punished if you work good"
that is simply not incentive. i do not feel myself impatient to work on things for longer period of time, to have some outcome, but feel very much that there are only two options for many things: being punished or being at flat-stable level, which is not particularly funny for most of us.
Quote from: Stue (DC) on June 28, 2011, 10:11:50 PMusual state in bm should be some gray average state, and things that apply should provide bonuses.
Currently, we work very hard just to hold what i call average gray state - stable regions. this apparently gives no push to things to go on.
Personally, I think you're pretty close with this. Things should be able to run on their own, without any attention. They just won't run at 100%, or as efficiently as possible. But they should still be self-sustaining. It should then take additional effort to improve them beyond that. Right now, it can take continual effort just to keep things going, unless you have a surplus of nobles to fill out estates to >100%.
Although, an important point to keep in mind is the typical gamer mentality: "If it's not 100%, then something is wrong, and you
must fix it!"
I suppose we could always try to play mind games with the players. Set the normal steady-state, non-attention-provided values to 100%, and allow good estate coverage and attention to raise it to 200%. :P That way people can be happy with the old 50% that we just renamed to 100%. That should work, right? (And really, I'm only half joking with that...)
Quote- estate troubles prevents expansions and warring
This is being worked on now.
Quote- religious upkeep slowed most of religion game down
This is mostly true in smaller, budding religions. Once you get your religion established past a certain point, "maintenance preaching" should be mostly non-existent. Unless, of course, you're the typical gamer who has to have everything at "100%".
Quote- improved wounding gave lot of frustration and slowing down through so frequent wounds worsening, while light wounding is hardly felt as some positive experience because it is fetl to mostly give benefit to younger nobles who are healthier anyhow
I'm not sure what you're saying here. You seem to be saying being lightly wounded is a good thing for young nobles? ??? Can you maybe try to restate your point a bit?
Quote- even new diplomacy system with all these announcements mostly show that lot of work will be needed just to keep things at level they are on now, when no particular work is neede (all that documents that will be necessary to sign just to walk through you allies' lands, and so...)
I tend to agree on the treaty friction issue. I like the different treaty types. But the friction mechanic will
definitely be adjusted before it goes live.
.... except it doesn't work for food production... unless you are halving food consumption.
.... you really want everything, don't you?
I think one of the issues with dropping production values to mid-low levels as "normal" is that the game play already established relies on regions being able to provide the 100% levels for food / gold production.
This again falls under the punishment idea - it doesn't matter if you reduce the normal gold output or not. You're fundamentally altering the game play because of the changes to food and gold incomes from regions and cities.
I still think there should be a variety of estate types and that these should provide minimal bonuses to the regions in different areas - production, maximum tax level, travel speed, loyalty, food output, cost to repair, cost to train (effectiveness of training), or religious conversion / happiness. There could be all sorts of secondary bonuses for fielding different combinations of estates as well. It provides a larger set of "options" for players, can make each region unique (a city with say estates that boosts training effectiveness for a unit type and decreased repair costs would make for a more military oriented city, then one which had estates that provided a small bonus to tax collection unhappiness levels and production facilities and focused on making money.
Small, beneficial effects to the region that provide incentive to have estates - INCENTIVES.
None of this "well just take stuff away and make it normalized". That's the same idea that was running around when estates first went into the game. Put benefits in to estates - rather than taking away things and make estates readjust them to the way they were previously. Its not a benefit if it just makes up for something we reduced that was there previously.
Sure - make 80% a normal - but maybe then there should be a 25% increase to gold and food productions for all regions? THAT makes it equal and normalizes the game play - that way if you get to a 100% there actually is some positive effect on the net outcome as it stands now, rather than just having the net outcome of reducing all food and gold supplies by 20% as it stands proposed.
I think part of this issue is that there is maximum achievable production level at all. You're at peace, you have enough knights/estate coverage, and everything goes to 100% but not a fraction more. Then the realm is at peace for a while, and what was seen as a new region and a nice boost to realm income becomes thought of as the standard that must be maintained no matter what. If war comes or a knight leaves and the region drops below 100% then everyone freaks because the region that used to provide them with a reasonable income now makes less and they feel they are getting shafted. Simply put, if there is a reachable maximum level then everyone will want to be there all the time. Take a look at your typical mmorpg's (WOW, etc) and you'll see a large number of players don't even consider the game started and their character fully created until they hit the level cap and have the best available gear.
So here's my thoughts:
1. We remove hard caps on production (and possibly other region stats, I haven't thought those through completely). A region that hasn't been looted and has only a lord's estate will be some baseline value. (call it 50% production). War and looting lowers the value, having knights and maintenance will help to increase it. But instead of a hard cap, you just have strongly diminishing returns. Having 1 knight might be able to increase production by 20%, but adding a second only increases it by 5%. Do civil work for 12 hours and the production increases by 5%, but the next person can only boost it by 2% after twice the hours. If it goes above the current 100% value, so be it, reward the additional effort but make sure that the opportunity cost increases drastically.
2. Rubber-band production. I can't remember if this is one of the repeatedly asked/rejected things, so I'll appologize in advance. Anyway, once the production values get outside a specified "average" range then the region is prone to minor fluctuations in production value that increases in magnitude the further away from the average value it gets. So, if production is slightly above the average then it would decay by 1% a week, whereas being far above the center value could cause a 5% drop in 1 day. The same would happen if production was below the average, but in the opposite direction. (so a region at 0% production would repair much faster than one that was just roughed-up a little)
I hope that makes sense to more than just me. To sum up: make it easy to maintain a modest production value and difficult (but still possible) to reach the extremes.
Quote from: J-Duds on June 29, 2011, 01:16:04 AMI think part of this issue is that there is maximum achievable production level at all.
That is partly true. As I mentioned before, typical gamer attitude is that if there is a 100%, then anything less than 100% needs to be fixed to make it 100%. That's part of the reason why the region stats were changed to descriptions: To try and remove some of the pressure of "Gotta be 100%!" Overall I think that has worked. Mostly. It still bugs some people, like me. :P But I'm willing to deal with it because I think the net effect has been good for the game.
Quote1. We remove hard caps on production (and possibly other region stats, I haven't thought those through completely). A region that hasn't been looted and has only a lord's estate will be some baseline value. (call it 50% production). War and looting lowers the value, having knights and maintenance will help to increase it. But instead of a hard cap, you just have strongly diminishing returns. Having 1 knight might be able to increase production by 20%, but adding a second only increases it by 5%.
This is something very similar to what is being considered currently for estates. Not quite so simple, though. But very similar.
A few things:
1. Agreed that steady-state levels are what is required. If you have 80% estate coverage on production, then your production should tend toward 80%. If your authority is at 80%, it should tend toward Main. I know the new estates system is going to change things a lot, but steady state is the desired end result.
2. What if we make taking a region more like starting a colony? Instead of waiting to finish taking the region before assigning a lord and knights, what if as soon as the takeover begins the appointment/election process starts, and you can get "knights" and have them "set up estates" so that everything is set up properly by the time the TO is finished? Then you have extra time to set everything up during the takeover, which is frankly what a takeover is supposed to be representing.
Quote from: Phellan on June 28, 2011, 11:49:44 PM
Small, beneficial effects to the region that provide incentive to have estates - INCENTIVES.
None of this "well just take stuff away and make it normalized". That's the same idea that was running around when estates first went into the game. Put benefits in to estates - rather than taking away things and make estates readjust them to the way they were previously. Its not a benefit if it just makes up for something we reduced that was there previously.
Hey hey, hey there. Wait a minute.
I do agree with estates overhaul, reducing requirements to make stability possible. I also like the idea that came up centuries ago that the knight could make small investments in his estate that would give a tiny advantage to the region, but would give him (the knight) some extra stuff (gold, food ?).
But hey, wait up. Estates weren't made to be punishment. Estates were made the way they are now to give knights some power on the overall scheme of the realm. "A region shouldn't be able to survive without a knight" - that's what we thought then, because many people didn't bother with oaths at all, they preferred to keep their money to themselves.
Okay, nowadays we think "fine, then the region should be able to survive without a knight, but at non-optimum values, like 50%" Except maybe cities. Optimum values should take in regards the local population, and estate requirements. A city can't be able to function at 50% without any knights, it's still a fortune in a single person's hands.
Yes, there must still be a net benefit for the lord. If he gives away a share of maybe 60-80 gold a week for one knight, that knight must compensate that somehow (like now, but obiviously better in some fashion).
Not so easy to get all of these requirements together.
Quote from: Bluelake on June 29, 2011, 06:53:37 AM
But hey, wait up. Estates weren't made to be punishment. Estates were made the way they are now to give knights some power on the overall scheme of the realm. "A region shouldn't be able to survive without a knight" - that's what we thought then, because many people didn't bother with oaths at all, they preferred to keep their money to themselves.
Okay, nowadays we think "fine, then the region should be able to survive without a knight, but at non-optimum values, like 50%" Except maybe cities. Optimum values should take in regards the local population, and estate requirements. A city can't be able to function at 50% without any knights, it's still a fortune in a single person's hands.
Estates were the punishment for people not having knights (get knights or your regions will not work). The work around before estates was having high-cross wide taxes that everyone received instead, however that was nixed with the "administration fee" - effectively making Realm taxes at above annoyance levels being useless except to maybe give the Council some gold. Before a Realm could tax its cities fairly heavily, allowing for that gold to be redistributed to the rural, duchy, and unaligned knights easily.
Now if you want gold redistributed to rural knights: City produces gold - offers to buy food - rural offers to sell food - gold is transfered to rural - knight receives small % of gold
It's all a very long process to get a low-gold producing region some extra funds at the end of the day.
I still want to see a middle ground - regions that can function properly without knights, but something extra added in that makes it worth while for knights and lords to have an Oath exchanged between them. We're lacking that kind of positive incentive - all we have are "your regions don't work right" warnings and half-mangled realms as a result.
Estates have *so* much potential to be interesting, unique, and viable aspects of game play. Right now they are just a gimmick to make Lords require knights.
Quote from: Phellan on June 29, 2011, 08:02:09 AMEstates have *so* much potential to be interesting, unique, and viable aspects of game play.
We're working on it.
Quote from: Phellan on June 29, 2011, 08:02:09 AM
I still want to see a middle ground - regions that can function properly without knights, but something extra added in that makes it worth while for knights and lords to have an Oath exchanged between them. We're lacking that kind of positive incentive - all we have are "your regions don't work right" warnings and half-mangled realms as a result.
I agree we lack the positive incentive, but I think you have to reword that phrase: "regions that can function properly without knights" to "regions that can function poorly without knights" (but at least function at all, which doesn't happen today). And you know why? There were lots of lords around whom, even after estate requirements just showed up, didn't bother with hiring knights (or doing anything else about their regions, for that matter). Being a lord was just about getting a bit more gold a week than your regular knight. Surely, we don't have the problem of excess knights now, after Dwilight and all, but there will still be lords who'll ignore their regions if the game allows them to.
So, I'm totally in favor of offering the carrot, but for those horses who don't care about the carrot there must still be some sort of whip to push them from behind.
Quote from: Bluelake on June 29, 2011, 07:26:47 PM... but there will still be lords who'll ignore their regions if the game allows them to.
In all fairness, once things are set up properly, a lord *should* be able to mostly ignore the region. It won't operate at 100%. But it should still be functional, not need constant attention, and provide a modest income to both the lord and his knights. This is why so much effort is being put into things like automated caravans.
At the same time, we need to allow for the people who *like* the micromanagement, or courtier aspect of the game. So those people can spend the extra time manage regions, micromanaging estates, holding court twice a day, etc., and still get something for their effort.
Quote from: Indirik on June 29, 2011, 07:46:58 PM
In all fairness, once things are set up properly, a lord *should* be able to mostly ignore the region. It won't operate at 100%. But it should still be functional, not need constant attention, and provide a modest income to both the lord and his knights.
Yes—once it's set up properly. I think Bluelake is referring to the type of lord who would be appointed, and then never visit his region again, just happily collecting the extra money.
Until it went rogue from neglect, of course.
Quote
At the same time, we need to allow for the people who *like* the micromanagement, or courtier aspect of the game. So those people can spend the extra time manage regions, micromanaging estates, holding court twice a day, etc., and still get something for their effort.
It's important to make sure that people who micromanage don't get too much for their effort. If it's enough to confer a solid advantage, it will be seen as necessary.
Quote from: Anaris on June 29, 2011, 07:57:01 PM
It's important to make sure that people who micromanage don't get too much for their effort. If it's enough to confer a solid advantage, it will be seen as necessary.
Could some of these micromanaging bonuses be given to the character, instead of all the bonuses conveying to the Region (and hence the Realm which can make it seem "necessary"). Beyond the additional honour and prestige. Improved ability to do do courtier work, additional gold or goods given to them by appreciative minor-nobles for their work, etc. Bonuses that are applied to the character (or Lord) for their efforts.
Quote from: Phellan on June 29, 2011, 08:10:54 PMCould some of these micromanaging bonuses be given to the character, instead of all the bonuses conveying to the Region (and hence the Realm which can make it seem "necessary"). Beyond the additional honour and prestige. Improved ability to do do courtier work, additional gold or goods given to them by appreciative minor-nobles for their work, etc. Bonuses that are applied to the character (or Lord) for their efforts.
Almost any bonus you can give to the character will benefit the realm. Either that or the "benefit" really isn't worth it. The main benefit of micromanagement is improved income. You do buro work to improve the region so you make more gold. Shortcutting that to make buro work directly produce gold for the lord doesn't seem like it would really have much effect. You're still generating more gold for putting in more time.
I think that depends on what you define as a benefit. I think it would be nice to see that a courtier who spends a LOT of time maintaining the regions of a realm should be more effective at doing work - but only in those regions. They know the region, what's going on, and who to talk too. If they take some time off from that - the locals change, new minor nobles take over positions and so they return to normal abilities.
The gold/produce suggestion is more like how you can gain honour and prestige from doing this work - if you bring a region up 20% as a courtier you yourself may not see any benefit (its probably not your region). Maybe unique items specific to doing courtier/lord work? Like a ledger, syllabus, book of law, etc - it provides bonuses to your ability to do the work but it suffers wear and tear (or fills up) and eventually you'll need a new one. The only way to get another one is to be rewarded one for your work or efforts.
Obviously I'm just tossing out random suggests here, but there are ways to "reward" a character - items, skill improvements, volunteers to the unit (or improvements to the captain), etc. They may indirectly benefit the Realm (but, all courtier work does) - but they could be specific things you get for those actions that help you preform them later on (lilke combat helps improve your leadership, which helps your unit later on).
Quote from: Phellan on June 28, 2011, 11:49:44 PM
I think one of the issues with dropping production values to mid-low levels as "normal" is that the game play already established relies on regions being able to provide the 100% levels for food / gold production.
This again falls under the punishment idea - it doesn't matter if you reduce the normal gold output or not. You're fundamentally altering the game play because of the changes to food and gold incomes from regions and cities.
I still think there should be a variety of estate types and that these should provide minimal bonuses to the regions in different areas - production, maximum tax level, travel speed, loyalty, food output, cost to repair, cost to train (effectiveness of training), or religious conversion / happiness. There could be all sorts of secondary bonuses for fielding different combinations of estates as well. It provides a larger set of "options" for players, can make each region unique (a city with say estates that boosts training effectiveness for a unit type and decreased repair costs would make for a more military oriented city, then one which had estates that provided a small bonus to tax collection unhappiness levels and production facilities and focused on making money.
Small, beneficial effects to the region that provide incentive to have estates - INCENTIVES.
None of this "well just take stuff away and make it normalized". That's the same idea that was running around when estates first went into the game. Put benefits in to estates - rather than taking away things and make estates readjust them to the way they were previously. Its not a benefit if it just makes up for something we reduced that was there previously.
Sure - make 80% a normal - but maybe then there should be a 25% increase to gold and food productions for all regions? THAT makes it equal and normalizes the game play - that way if you get to a 100% there actually is some positive effect on the net outcome as it stands now, rather than just having the net outcome of reducing all food and gold supplies by 20% as it stands proposed.
+1
Need to listen to this guy, people.
Quote from: Phellan on June 28, 2011, 11:49:44 PMI still think there should be a variety of estate types and that these should provide minimal bonuses to the regions in different areas - production, maximum tax level, travel speed, loyalty, food output, cost to repair, cost to train (effectiveness of training), or religious conversion / happiness.
All of this stuff, and more, is already planned for estates. Eventually. It won't be in the first release of the estate revamp, which will set up the framework for a completely revised method of assigning estates and collecting taxes. Once that is done and functional, then there are plans to allow nobles to buy buildings for their estates, each with different effects. Some buildings will have beneficial effects on the region, some will have direct benefit, financial or otherwise, for the knight. It is even possible that there may be some buildings that may benefit the knight, but have slight negative effects on the region overall. Hooks should also be in place to extend estates easily into the New Economy, whenever that comes around.
Quote from: Indirik on June 30, 2011, 02:23:35 PM
All of this stuff, and more, is already planned for estates. Eventually. It won't be in the first release of the estate revamp, which will set up the framework for a completely revised method of assigning estates and collecting taxes. Once that is done and functional, then there are plans to allow nobles to buy buildings for their estates, each with different effects. Some buildings will have beneficial effects on the region, some will have direct benefit, financial or otherwise, for the knight. It is even possible that there may be some buildings that may benefit the knight, but have slight negative effects on the region overall. Hooks should also be in place to extend estates easily into the New Economy, whenever that comes around.
Awesome. Sounds like a good and interesting change :D
Quote from: Indirik on June 30, 2011, 02:23:35 PM
All of this stuff, and more, is already planned for estates. Eventually. It won't be in the first release of the estate revamp, which will set up the framework for a completely revised method of assigning estates and collecting taxes. Once that is done and functional, then there are plans to allow nobles to buy buildings for their estates, each with different effects. Some buildings will have beneficial effects on the region, some will have direct benefit, financial or otherwise, for the knight. It is even possible that there may be some buildings that may benefit the knight, but have slight negative effects on the region overall. Hooks should also be in place to extend estates easily into the New Economy, whenever that comes around.
Which makes me think:
1. people will be much more attached to their estates than they are today (which I think is great, improves roleplay, loyalty, etc)
2. when a knight leaves the service of the lord, what happens to the buildings? one way to put it, rp-wise, would be to say the estate in abandoned, and the next knight instead of building new stuff actually finds old buildings and gives them a purpose (this is only a text/rp suggestion)
3. will any of this show anywhere? will lords or anyone be able to know? theoretically, it should be quite easy to see what's built in a noble's estate (if anything with a scout report), and it would provide good RP material, but it can also provide micromanagement material and I don't see how to get the rp benefits while countering this effect.
But, this is off topic. Did the discussion about taking new regions already give everything it could give?
Quote from: Bluelake on June 30, 2011, 08:13:45 PM
Which makes me think:
1. people will be much more attached to their estates than they are today (which I think is great, improves roleplay, loyalty, etc)
2. when a knight leaves the service of the lord, what happens to the buildings? one way to put it, rp-wise, would be to say the estate in abandoned, and the next knight instead of building new stuff actually finds old buildings and gives them a purpose (this is only a text/rp suggestion)
3. will any of this show anywhere? will lords or anyone be able to know? theoretically, it should be quite easy to see what's built in a noble's estate (if anything with a scout report), and it would provide good RP material, but it can also provide micromanagement material and I don't see how to get the rp benefits while countering this effect.
But, this is off topic. Did the discussion about taking new regions already give everything it could give?
- I agree. Attachment to the land is a good thing. Buildings would allow the knight to customize their estate, and perhaps increase its income potential.
- I'm in favor of leaving the buildings on the estate for the next knight. One possibility is that the chance of the buildings being there depends on how long the estate has been abandoned. The faster w new knight is given the estate, the more likely the buildings are to still be there.
- This has, so far as I'm aware, not yet been determined. Yes, some buildings, such as a mill or blacksmith shop, should be obvious. But some things, like a private chapel, would not be so obvious.
Of course, we need to actually get the revised estates put in and working before any of this building stuff can be added.
What's the ETA to not having any knights not ruin your hopes of your region ever quickly recovering anymore?
Quote from: Chénier on July 04, 2011, 02:04:58 AM
What's the ETA to not having any knights not ruin your hopes of your region ever quickly recovering anymore?
New estates. We're working on it, but no ETA.
Quote from: Anaris on July 04, 2011, 03:59:13 AM
New estates. We're working on it, but no ETA.
Blizzard-style? I guess BT will be back in shape in '17, then. ;)
Peasant Revolt (2 hours, 37 minutes ago)
The people in XXX are revolting!
The revolting peasants have kicked the local lord and his court out, and demand that a more capable leader be put in his place!
Getting rid of their old, disliked lord results in the peasants being more hopeful and content with their lot. Morale rises 9% and independence falls.
This happens on turn change, after lord took command of the region, before any sensible work could be accomplished. Few days ago, peasants also got rid of other lord, hating him, being a little more happy when he is ousted.
At the same time, those two nobles are the only ones with sensible claims, so appointing someone else creates even more dissent.
Sometimes I think situation is nearing absurd... What was discusses in some other thread as cumulation of punishment seems to be visible in this case too.
After 2,5 years of play I had enough opportunity to learn how to deal with stubborn regions, but these days it seems there is no way to accomplish things. We had one region where several courtiers plus lord made attempts for about month and a half, and whatever, really whatever we do makes no any change: estate coverage 300-400%, taxes lowered to bare minimum, and tons of courtier, priest, diplomat work, royal presence - and region of 1000 population cannot move from very bottom in month and a half.
This is not fun at all, and I am becoming to believe that tweaks made some things unplayable.
I myself have record of bringing very hard regions to great stability, not once, when many did not believe it is possible, but let us assume i am still not competent enough... who is competent, than? if other nobles have the same problem, also lords with much experience, is it really possible that all of us are completely incapable? i doubt so.
Translation:
"I'm having trouble with this one region. Therefore, the entire game sucks and is unplayable."
If you can't get a region to stability with "several courtiers plus lord...estate coverage 300-400%, taxes lowered to bare minimum, and tons of courtier, priest, diplomat work, royal presence", then you're obviously doing something wrong, because I've seen dozens of regions brought from absolute rock bottom to full stats with way less than that.
Just got Enubec patched up and ready to go with just a few Nobles, so yes it's still very much possible. Of course it's getting looted to the ground now, yet again, but the point remains. My main tip is to use your diplomats / Priests before you TO the region, it will make a huge difference. If you do have a destroyed region, make sure to keep control up with Police Work.
as i mentioned it can be up to me and others who make efforts.
and i also mention that, though possible, I do not believe that. it is neither issue of one region nor even one continent, that is what i currently see in these times in many regions on many continents.
i think key point was in reducing courtier effectiveness.
before, when region was at bottom, army normally took care of control. civil work in such regions is mostly limited because of low population. so good number of courtiers that would work very hard while region is on low could raise region from very bottom, and than lot of additional effort would further improve the region in days to come.
currently, it seems courtier effectiveness is largely reduced, so they never raise region so much to at least overcome what falls back at next turn change, and region remains to endlessly perpetuate at the very bottom.
and i admit to not understand some daily reports any more - if estate coverage is reported as excellent, if people enjoy low tax rates, if there is no mention of independence on that turn, no mention of distance from capital, no mention of majority religion issues, than why the heck morale is falling 11%, which is in contradiction with the rest of report and has no any conceivable explanation?
Quote from: Stue (DC) on July 21, 2011, 05:13:09 PMi think key point was in reducing courtier effectiveness.
There has been no change to the effectiveness to courtier work since the duchy influence was added
years ago. Like 4 or 5 years ago.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2011, 05:34:51 PM
There has been no change to the effectiveness to courtier work since the duchy influence was added years ago. Like 4 or 5 years ago.
Didn't they also get slightly reduced in effectiveness when the limit on buraucrats per realm was removed? Seem to recall at least some talk to that effect around that time.
Any mention of peasants hating the Realm in the Daily Region Report?
People can very easily repair regions, so it doesn't seem to be a problem if you do it right.
Quote from: LilWolf on July 21, 2011, 06:08:00 PMDidn't they also get slightly reduced in effectiveness when the limit on buraucrats per realm was removed? Seem to recall at least some talk to that effect around that time.
There were some changes made in June 2007, but they would not affect the situation being described by Stue. I could go farther back, but I really don't see a point.
Quote from: Anaris on July 21, 2011, 01:29:16 PM
Translation:
"I'm having trouble with this one region. Therefore, the entire game sucks and is unplayable."
If you can't get a region to stability with "several courtiers plus lord...estate coverage 300-400%, taxes lowered to bare minimum, and tons of courtier, priest, diplomat work, royal presence", then you're obviously doing something wrong, because I've seen dozens of regions brought from absolute rock bottom to full stats with way less than that.
Could the code about peasants not liking their lords not kick in for the same grace period as estates after TOs? I always did find it rather distasteful that they kick out the first lord put in office right after he was appointed or elected. And I don't remember *ever* seeing that when I first joined the game. It adds absolutely nothing to gameplay, other than frustration.
Quote from: Anaris on July 21, 2011, 01:29:16 PM
Translation:
"I'm having trouble with this one region. Therefore, the entire game sucks and is unplayable."
If you can't get a region to stability with "several courtiers plus lord...estate coverage 300-400%, taxes lowered to bare minimum, and tons of courtier, priest, diplomat work, royal presence", then you're obviously doing something wrong, because I've seen dozens of regions brought from absolute rock bottom to full stats with way less than that.
Also, don't forget that you also *disabled* estate bonuses, for those lucky enough to manage them, for the first week or so after TOs.
Quote from: Indirik on July 21, 2011, 05:34:51 PM
There has been no change to the effectiveness to courtier work since the duchy influence was added years ago. Like 4 or 5 years ago.
Not true, since new regions are imperial and now everyone is less effective in imperial regions, whatever they do.
That's not recent either, though.
Imperial knights and ruler...?
Quote from: Artemesia on July 22, 2011, 01:24:27 AM
Imperial knights and ruler...?
I hope you are intentionally trolling, to claim that imperial knights and the ruler result in an average of the same effectiveness for new acquisitions under that code than the old ones before it. >:(
Quote from: Chénier on July 21, 2011, 11:14:47 PM
Not true, since new regions are imperial and now everyone is less effective in imperial regions, whatever they do.
That's not recent either, though.
When you make the claim of "everyone", make damn well sure you mean EVERYONE. I got no bridge to guard, playa, so let's cut to the chase: Are Imperial Knights and the Ruler more effective in Imperial regions? If that is so, then your statement is false and you can go modify it. Your implications are worthless because your explicit statement was quite direct and strong in claiming the universal: "EVERYONE is less effective in imperial regions"
Quote from: Chénier on July 21, 2011, 11:14:47 PM
Not true, since new regions are imperial and now everyone is less effective in imperial regions, whatever they do.
That's not recent either, though.
I believe that was added at the same time as the duchy bonus/penalty adjustments were made.
Rulers don't if they're part of a duchy, which most are.
Quote from: Artemesia on July 22, 2011, 02:26:15 AM
When you make the claim of "everyone", make damn well sure you mean EVERYONE. I got no bridge to guard, playa, so let's cut to the chase: Are Imperial Knights and the Ruler more effective in Imperial regions? If that is so, then your statement is false and you can go modify it. Your implications are worthless because your explicit statement was quite direct and strong in claiming the universal: "EVERYONE is less effective in imperial regions"
"Everyone", as in, the collective whole, and not every individual making it up. It does include 99% of the individuals, though, because even the ruler can be aligned to a region.
when i can, i am trying to use available opportunity to the maximum, that is best way to explore how much effort is needed to reach something, where are diminishing returns threshold and so on.
therefore i feel very much when something is nearing absurd.
if 10+ nobles (majority of them years-long players) are killing themselves for 10 rl days by civil and police work, morale of most of troops is around 40% or lower, estate coverage is excellent, people enjoy tax rate all the time, king is present all the time, production is already restored close to possible population limit, but region never ever moves from very bottom in terms of morale and loyalty, i am wandering whether it is playable at all?
what else should we do?! in situation when not enough time and nobles are dedicated to task, we always have explanation that we could not afford to dedicate ourselves enough, so region naturally fell.
in this particular case we dedicated our major resources over prolonged period of time, but are unable to reach even tiny improvement.
saying that we are "doing something wrong" i.e. there is some magic trick we are failing to see, makes no sense at all, that is either assumption that we are all stupid unable to learn things after years of play, or that IQ 150 is needed to raise region stats. something is apparently skewed in that region work balance.
again, i am wandering - is it playable? if our daily time pool is so easily smashed to absolutely no effect, day after day, where is the fun?
Quote from: Stue (DC) on July 26, 2011, 09:33:04 AM
when i can, i am trying to use available opportunity to the maximum, that is best way to explore how much effort is needed to reach something, where are diminishing returns threshold and so on.
therefore i feel very much when something is nearing absurd.
if 10+ nobles (majority of them years-long players) are killing themselves for 10 rl days by civil and police work, morale of most of troops is around 40% or lower, estate coverage is excellent, people enjoy tax rate all the time, king is present all the time, production is already restored close to possible population limit, but region never ever moves from very bottom in terms of morale and loyalty, i am wandering whether it is playable at all?
what else should we do?! in situation when not enough time and nobles are dedicated to task, we always have explanation that we could not afford to dedicate ourselves enough, so region naturally fell.
in this particular case we dedicated our major resources over prolonged period of time, but are unable to reach even tiny improvement.
saying that we are "doing something wrong" i.e. there is some magic trick we are failing to see, makes no sense at all, that is either assumption that we are all stupid unable to learn things after years of play, or that IQ 150 is needed to raise region stats. something is apparently skewed in that region work balance.
again, i am wandering - is it playable? if our daily time pool is so easily smashed to absolutely no effect, day after day, where is the fun?
I remember the re-annexation of Fengen... Damn that took a LONG time. 35+ nobles sitting in a region, doing courtier work, police work, civil work, priest work, and all you can think of. No diplomats back could, could have considerably helped, but still. When the daimons made us lose it, it really did take quite a while to get back under control. Failure of reclaiming our old capital was obviously not acceptable, though, so after about a month of doing this I think we had it stabilized.
is it related to current invasion?
and how much population fengen had at that time? I mean it was always understandable by itself that large cities need so much knights to support stabilization that small realms cannot even think of it, but region with population of ca. 3000 should be different story.
anyhow it is possibly matter of time, when such "break-over"changed things if it is not my fantasy.
i remember times in itorunt when, in middle of heavy war, after whole army dealt with rebels initially, i was able to lead group of 3 to 4 skilled nobles, and we were bringing regions of 7-8.000 population up from bottom.
in current terms it means reaching at least "depressed/disdainful" condition.
on bt we have some informal blood truce period of about a month during heavy continental war, where we managed to bring region from deep hatred to the realm to top conditions with 6-7 nobles working permanently there, region of about 6.000 population.
is it my bad memory or things changed? i am not able to keep paper data of such things, but just looking at maps on continents where there are large wars shows a lot.
of course, lot of ravaged regions in heavy wars do add to realism, but the question is: were troubles raised too much. if whole realm's army need 2 rl months to bring some moderate region up from very bottom, than... our possibilities for different strategies are likely very limited.
Quote from: Stue (DC) on July 26, 2011, 07:20:17 PM
is it related to current invasion?
and how much population fengen had at that time? I mean it was always understandable by itself that large cities need so much knights to support stabilization that small realms cannot even think of it, but region with population of ca. 3000 should be different story.
The third invasion. Fengen is a small city to begin with, and had little population left.
Quote from: Chénier on June 22, 2011, 01:15:56 PM
It is becoming more and more frustrating to takeover new regions. And I've been seeing more and more people say, over the years, "No, we will not get into a conflict with our neighbor, because we do not have the means to sustain any more regions". It's suffocating the gameplay.
Players are spending more and more time and effort on region maintenance over the years, and less over actually fighting.
Hear ye, hear ye.
Refocus the game on battles rather than maintainance. Is not the name of the game BattleMaster?
Alternatively rename the game MaintainanceMaster... ? I prefer the first option myself and believe most would agree. If we wanted to play Sim City we would probably... well ... play Sim City..
Put the battle back in BattleMaster !
PS: Credits to the Development team which is constantly working to improve the game. Yes we may take a wrong turn every now and then but everything done is in with the best interest of the game in mind and should one make a wrong turn one can always turn right again at the next corner. No doubt we will see the game improve soon enough. gogo Dev team!