BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: acrandal on September 01, 2011, 07:25:17 AM
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The title says it all. If a region lord wants the Banker to handle those mundane issues of food and money within the region, then let them!
I know this will bring some regions/realms back to the good ol' days where the Banker ran all of the food distribution, but the region lord would have 100% control over who their Steward was, it is their region after all! The profits of food sales would still go primarily into the Lord's pocket anyway.
Just something to consider.
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With the Banker steward of multiple regions (and Lord of his own?), abuse could be very powerful...
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With the Banker steward of multiple regions (and Lord of his own?), abuse could be very powerful...
Tempting aint it :D
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Tempting aint it :D
:D
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With the Banker steward of multiple regions (and Lord of his own?), abuse could be very powerful...
No more so than back when the banker could move food around, and change the buy/sell price in all regions, at will.
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Then you might have Realms order all their Lords to put the Banker as Steward so he gets full control over the Food situation again. That is taking a step back. I much like the current interaction between Banker and Lords.
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inalienable right to appoint whoever as steward?
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Or just appoint stewards, and let more players share in the responsibilities... It's like the general-marshal. Why not have the option to make the general marshal of all armies...?
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Or just appoint stewards, and let more players share in the responsibilities... It's like the general-marshal. Why not have the option to make the general marshal of all armies...?
Because the General isnt the True General and instead listens to the True General who is just a Marshal :D
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It's like the general-marshal. Why not have the option to make the general marshal of all armies...?
Just have one army, and make the general the marshal.
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Just have one army, and make the general the marshal.
Right, but that's not what I meant. I meant that the distribution of power is very good and keeps players interested. There is no better way to learn the military aspect in Battlemaster than starting as (vice-)marshal. So what I mean is: do not make the general marshal of all armies, do not make the banker steward of all regions. ;)
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banker/steward is a world of difference from general/marshal. I think a lot of lords and realms would kill to be able to have the banker take care of food for them. (Yes, I know there are notable exceptions.) But I don't think you'd find too many realms where they would love to have the general be marshal of all the armies. The difference being that quite a few players love the military aspect of the game. A significantly lower number actually *enjoy* the food game. Most lords are forced to deal with it, and would rather not.
Besides, the general already *can* take control of all the armies. There is nothing in the game rules that prevents the general from issuing orders twice daily to the entire realm.
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Anything that simplifies the food game is a Good Idea in my opinion, and I've always wanted a checkbox where lords could say "give Banker full control of the food", but uncheck it if they wanted to handle it themselves.
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I've always wanted a checkbox where lords could say "give Banker full control of the food", but uncheck it if they wanted to handle it themselves.
QFT.
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Once the automatic caravans get working I think this issue will be moot.
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Then you might have Realms order all their Lords to put the Banker as Steward so he gets full control over the Food situation again. That is taking a step back. I much like the current interaction between Banker and Lords.
+100
I can start listing realms who will order you to hand control over to the Banker. A big step backwards.
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Maybe we have advanced enough as players that it would not be so egregious as it could have been some years ago?
I think the example of generals sums it up well. Realms could order everyone into one army with the general as marshall; most don't.
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+100
I can start listing realms who will order you to hand control over to the Banker. A big step backwards.
And I'll ignore them like I'm ignoring the duchess who told me to send her my excess food for free.
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+100
I can start listing realms who will order you to hand control over to the Banker. A big step backwards.
And many lords will sigh in relief when they don't have to deal with the food issues anymore. Seriously, managing food just isn't fun to a great many lords. I hear complaining about it from lords(that it's complex, that they don't like it etc.) almost every time food gets mentioned.
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Don't we have automatic caravans by now? Just set it up once and you're done if you don't care. Or just get a Knight who does want to do it.
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Don't we have automatic caravans by now? Just set it up once and you're done if you don't care. Or just get a Knight who does want to do it.
They break. A lot.
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I can start listing realms who will order you to hand control over to the Banker. A big step backwards.
Then don't do it. And if they try and force you, then raise a big stink over it. Protest the banker and ruler daily. Get your knights to support you, since the banker will be taking gold out of their pockets. Demand support from your duke to prevent the erosion of the lord's, and by inference the duke's, rights. If he won't support you, swap to another duchy that will. Sell all your food to another realm. If worse comes to worse, leave and go elsewhere. preferably taking your region and knights with you.
i.e. do something other than bitch, moan, and try to get the rules changed.
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They break. A lot.
Yeah, well, I've fixed them now :P
And if you just tell people not to use them because "they break a lot", we're never going to see if they work.
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Anything that simplifies the food game is a Good Idea in my opinion, and I've always wanted a checkbox where lords could say "give Banker full control of the food", but uncheck it if they wanted to handle it themselves.
+101.
I love the food game. Its a shame imo that playing a trader/warrior hybrid is hard. I would think that a trader with 10 loaded caravans should somehow earn a higher maximum unit size (but I guess thats what other TLs are for!).
But seriously, I have played a Banker where I literally had to teach people how to use the caravan and auto transfer system, by referencing my other characters. It was so broken and complex.... my banker had to reference pages of the game he doesn't even have access to. Try teaching someone playing their first lord char how to use the automatic transfers without being able to open that page, I dare you. It can be downright impractical at times to have a banker who isn't a steward, region lord, or duke.
The same character who was the banker I mentioned, was a trader not long ago and steward of his region. Even that role relationship made things so much easier moving food around, and even earning a profit for the region.
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Yeah, well, I've fixed them now :P
And if you just tell people not to use them because "they break a lot", we're never going to see if they work.
Hey, every so often I have someone test them in PeL. And then the food disappears, or doesn't arrive for a week, or the game resets, and Askileon starves again. No point in having other realms hurt by it.
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Then don't do it. And if they try and force you, then raise a big stink over it. Protest the banker and ruler daily. Get your knights to support you, since the banker will be taking gold out of their pockets. Demand support from your duke to prevent the erosion of the lord's, and by inference the duke's, rights. If he won't support you, swap to another duchy that will. Sell all your food to another realm. If worse comes to worse, leave and go elsewhere. preferably taking your region and knights with you.
i.e. do something other than bitch, moan, and try to get the rules changed.
yes, Indirik - that's always been your answer to everything.
Rebel!
Doesn't work (outside of a few basket cases on Dwilight). You are usually the only voice, get to listen to a lot of "do it for the realm" crap, get to deal with fines, bans, threats, etc., get to try to rally silent, apathetic lords to your side
"Leave the Realm - and take your region with you!" - yes, if you are lucky enough to be in a border region, you can. And have them contact your new ruler, asking him to tell you to give the region back because it is "theirs", or to ban you if you don't. Which he often will.
Or you can penalize yourself by throwing away the closest thing to a Duchy you'll probably ever have in the game - a rural region with food to spare.
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The problem is, there are supposed to be checks and balances throughout the game. But most of them only work if the players stand up together as a group. If you have a realm where 90% of the players don't give a !@#$, then you have no checks and balance. You have one vocal knight against the Council and 90% of the realm who just wants you to shut the !@#$ up with your letters of protest so they don't have so much to read and can click their buttons in silence.
Your suggestions are based too much on the "theory of BM", but ignore the practical side.
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Doesn't work It's hard (outside of a few basket cases on Dwilight). You are usually the only voice, get to listen to a lot of "do it for the realm" crap, get to deal with fines, bans, threats, etc., get to try to rally silent, apathetic lords to your side
FTFY
The problem is, there are supposed to be checks and balances throughout the game. But most of them only work if the players stand up together as a group. If you have a realm where 90% of the players don't give a !@#$, then you have no checks and balance. You have one vocal knight against the Council and 90% of the realm who just wants you to shut the !@#$ up with your letters of protest so they don't have so much to read and can click their buttons in silence.
Your suggestions are based too much on the "theory of BM", but ignore the practical side.
You will never achieve it in one day. However, a big part of the game is putting yourself in a position where you can achieve it, one day.
Those people that I have seen succeeding have been preparing themselves for months, and I'd bet they had fun doing it.
In a sense, that is the game. It's the closest thing to winning at BM.
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The problem is, there are supposed to be checks and balances throughout the game. But most of them only work if the players stand up together as a group. If you have a realm where 90% of the players don't give a !@#$, then you have no checks and balance. You have one vocal knight against the Council and 90% of the realm who just wants you to shut the !@#$ up with your letters of protest so they don't have so much to read and can click their buttons in silence.
Then *make* them care. If you want to buck the system, then, yes, it *will* be hard. But that's what you're gong to get if you want to be the very small minority of characters that doesn't want to participate in what 95% of the realm decides they want to do. So you can either change their minds, which may take a very long time and be very hard, or you can go elsewhere to find other realms that already agree with your play style. That' why we have more than just one realm in the game.
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Then *make* them care. If you want to buck the system, then, yes, it *will* be hard. But that's what you're gong to get if you want to be the very small minority of characters that doesn't want to participate in what 95% of the realm decides they want to do. So you can either change their minds, which may take a very long time and be very hard, or you can go elsewhere to find other realms that already agree with your play style. That' why we have more than just one realm in the game.
No, no, no.
I don't care anymore about changing their minds.
Just stop giving away the few things I left to do in the game. No Banker as Steward. My region's food is my own.
People can't be bothered to set up auto-caravans one time, screw 'em. It's a minuscule amount of work. Let them put a little effort into being a Lord if they want the title.
what about MY time and effort in the game? You know how much effort I put into writing people and trying to do these suggestions? And never get a single response, yea or nay? !@#$ 'em if they can't be bothered to put a minimum effort into the game. Their realm can starve.
You all work so hard to build up an atmosphere where Region lords are actually the lords of their regions, then you turn around and want to give it all back to the banker cuz it's too hard to click on one button, one time? How about a consistent roadmap for the game?
Bare minimum, I want it to be a clear Lightning bolt offense to say anything more than "it is possible to give banker control if you can't be bothered". I want an IR. If going to a tournament can be an IR, then controlling your own region's warehouses can be as well.
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And I'll ignore them like I'm ignoring the duchess who told me to send her my excess food for free.
+200
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yes, Indirik - that's always been your answer to everything.
Rebel!
Doesn't work (outside of a few basket cases on Dwilight). You are usually the only voice, get to listen to a lot of "do it for the realm" crap, get to deal with fines, bans, threats, etc., get to try to rally silent, apathetic lords to your side
"Leave the Realm - and take your region with you!" - yes, if you are lucky enough to be in a border region, you can. And have them contact your new ruler, asking him to tell you to give the region back because it is "theirs", or to ban you if you don't. Which he often will.
Or you can penalize yourself by throwing away the closest thing to a Duchy you'll probably ever have in the game - a rural region with food to spare.
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The problem is, there are supposed to be checks and balances throughout the game. But most of them only work if the players stand up together as a group. If you have a realm where 90% of the players don't give a !@#$, then you have no checks and balance. You have one vocal knight against the Council and 90% of the realm who just wants you to shut the !@#$ up with your letters of protest so they don't have so much to read and can click their buttons in silence.
Your suggestions are based too much on the "theory of BM", but ignore the practical side.
You pigeonhole every player into two categories, the lame players and you, basically.
There are many realms who are committed to decentralization. And in most cases, it's easy to say that the duke is being greedy for not accepting to pay for the food, because he and his knights usually earn more than the rural lord and his knights do. Furthermore, it's better "for the realm" that caravans be used, since ox carts can result in massive spoilage. And since caravans cost gold to send, it's *normal* that at least a little gold be given for the transfer, so that at least the lord isn't paying for the duke's gold. Arguing for control over one's food supplies is not that difficult.
And I really have a hard time accepting that there are so many of these unbreakable governmental molds where lower-placed nobles can't decide much on their own if there is an option to delegate the power. In Enweil, way back when I hadn't really earned a place for myself, I ended up becoming a marshal, and was frustrated by the incompetance of the general. The general kept getting re-elected because he was a long-time realm member and respected by many influential people who saw me as being probably more of a threat than anything, despite him being bad at it. And at the time, nothing was really moving in Enweil, it was quite stagnant. And yet, my little marshal eventually got fed up with the general and decided to completely and blatantly ignore his orders, stating that his army would no longer be following the general's commands. By your arguments, the institution that is the established realm should have come to crush this new noble thinking he could do things on his own instead of letting the general, a long-timer, decide everything. But they didn't. And I wasn't marshal of some random bureaucratic army, I was marshal of the main army.
Don't assume that every time a person in power is granted the opportunity to centralize power onto himself, he would do so. Some would, but many wouldn't. And that some realms do it while others don't would be a good thing, it would create another aspect for which governance would vary from realm to realm. And the more possibilities there are, the less identical governments there will be, and therefore the less ideological "natural allies" there will be.
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meh.. caravans cost like 1 gold for the whole train. but honestly, they should just remove that gold cost and instead speed up trade when there's a caravan shop.
for example, if region doesn't have shop, there's a delay of 1 day to find and load up caravan... if there's a shop, there's no delay.
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meh.. caravans cost like 1 gold for the whole train. but honestly, they should just remove that gold cost and instead speed up trade when there's a caravan shop.
for example, if region doesn't have shop, there's a delay of 1 day to find and load up caravan... if there's a shop, there's no delay.
Caravans are already slower than ox carts, which is a big annoyance. Making it worse will just make the caravan system that much more annoying to deal with.
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Just stop giving away the few things I left to do in the game. No Banker as Steward. My region's food is my own.
Then don't give it away.
Oh, what's that, the banker asks you to give it away? Oh noes! Conflict in the game? A power struggle? Whate'er shall we do?
You all work so hard to build up an atmosphere where Region lords are actually the lords of their regions, then you turn around and want to give it all back to the banker cuz it's too hard to click on one button, one time?
If that's all it really took, was "one button, one time", then we wouldn't be having this discussion. And, of course, this discussions isn't about giving all the power back to the banker, either. It's about offering lords who don't want to deal with it the option to let the banker handle it for them.
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Caravans are already slower than ox carts, which is a big annoyance. Making it worse will just make the caravan system that much more annoying to deal with.
I'm looking into the best way to fix this, too. I'm not sure it was ever intentional.
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I am more or less in favor of this. However, I wouldnt want to see entire realms forcing lords to accept the option when they wanted to deal independently. Would it not be possible to make it against the rules to force that on a lord? Perhaps a version of a lords inalienable rights to manage their region's food if they choose?
The reasons why I support it mostly come down to my personal preference. As a lord I usually get pretty annoyed playing with a food game I dont always understand even after all this time. As a trader I get pretty annoyed playing with lords who dont bother replying to letters about trading when having to contact a banker for those lazy lords would work just fine (Seriously, running around Dwilight to places claiming to be selling food and getting zero response from the lords who said they'd sell food gets old after a while. If traders could just directly contact bankers it'd be nice.)
On the flip side I'm glad we have given lords to ability to be independent and control their food. Jens, for example, has made a pretty good run of it in the Barony of Makar, as does the lord my trader serves in Dwilight. It'd be a shame to see that lost.
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As a sidenote: Traders can contact the Banker directly of the Realm they are currently in.
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Would you look at that! I could have sworn I could but it sort of got lost in all those contacts.
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Caravans are already slower than ox carts, which is a big annoyance. Making it worse will just make the caravan system that much more annoying to deal with.
well.. old caravan (as in when caravans were 1st introduced).. 1 region per turn . current caravan. 1 region per day. but the description in the game does say trips cost X days.. as opposed to X turns..
now... they don't have to make everything slower than current, because as it stands, if you set a caravan trip, it won't start moving until the next day... so.. you can say that can correspond as what will happen with no caravan shop. thus, if there is a shop, they could start moving immediately. and starts selling in the next region the next day. thus speeding things up.
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As a sidenote: Traders can contact the Banker directly of the Realm they are currently in.
yes. but they need to know there's stuff to buy in the 1st place before heading there or it's a bit of a wasted trip. by the time you get to write to bankers directly (as opposed to using old contacts or getting contacts from your banker) it tends to be a bit late.
bit silly to be able to write to a foreign ruler who's got nothing to do with trade but not the banker.
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Don't we have automatic caravans by now? Just set it up once and you're done if you don't care. Or just get a Knight who does want to do it.
The problem is that the automatic caravans work great until an emergency happens. Mostly this boils down to looting/monsters or regions changing hands for other reasons. Then the region lords who have never seen the trading pages stumble, and all too many just give up. I'm not sure how to remedy the giving up part.
Someone mentioned that it's a much smaller percentage of players who enjoy the trading aspects, and that's good, but if we force a larger portion to try and understand it, that's were a problem crops up, especially when the results of the region lords failing in food management eventually tumbles realms.
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And I'll ignore them like I'm ignoring the duchess who told me to send her my excess food for free.
Did you at least write back to the Duchess saying you wouldn't give it away? If it's an unreasonable request, then please let the requester know you're telling them to stick it. After the initial "up yours" notice, then ignoring them is fine.
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Just ask your Banker what to do then :)
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Did you at least write back to the Duchess saying you wouldn't give it away? If it's an unreasonable request, then please let the requester know you're telling them to stick it. After the initial "up yours" notice, then ignoring them is fine.
There was a request to send food to a different region, which was starving, so I sent my food in that direction and sent a letter to the lord of that region, notifying him that the food was on the way. That was probably 3 days ago, and I still don't know if he has a buy order in place, so my food may reach the region and be forced to turn around.
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Did you at least write back to the Duchess saying you wouldn't give it away? If it's an unreasonable request, then please let the requester know you're telling them to stick it. After the initial "up yours" notice, then ignoring them is fine.
Why? Nothing forces you to write to people you don't like... It can sometimes be convenient to have "not seen" a particular person's request.
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Why? Nothing forces you to write to people you don't like... It can sometimes be convenient to have "not seen" a particular person's request.
I only worry about total lack of communication over such things. A complete blank wall in a game/system where it's incredibly hard to see if someone is doing anything at all can be incredibly frustrating. I understand that sometimes you need to "not see" a letter to buy time for something else, but if people make a habit of it as a way to just not do what people want then it can be quite frustrating. I've got one region lord that I'm starting to jack up their duchy tax because they're "not seeing" any letters anyone sends them, though they keep wandering around. If they just wrote back I would be more than happy to not tax the pants off them.
I do wonder how high they'll let me get their duchy tax before they deign to respond, though. Maybe I should take bets.
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I only worry about total lack of communication over such things. A complete blank wall in a game/system where it's incredibly hard to see if someone is doing anything at all can be incredibly frustrating. I understand that sometimes you need to "not see" a letter to buy time for something else, but if people make a habit of it as a way to just not do what people want then it can be quite frustrating. I've got one region lord that I'm starting to jack up their duchy tax because they're "not seeing" any letters anyone sends them, though they keep wandering around. If they just wrote back I would be more than happy to not tax the pants off them.
I do wonder how high they'll let me get their duchy tax before they deign to respond, though. Maybe I should take bets.
So you tax them, sounds reasonable to me. I agree it can be frustrating to not ever be replied to by some people, but that's inevitable when you have to deal with many people. Nobody should be forced to reply to anyone if they don't want to, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to react accordingly if they do so, such as by taxing them.