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BattleMaster => Development => Topic started by: Chenier on February 12, 2018, 01:31:40 PM

Title: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Chenier on February 12, 2018, 01:31:40 PM
Through a large number of changes over the years, demographic as well as mechanic, average knights have become less and less meaningful in the face of increasing passive mechanics and gimmicky tools available to a few.

Wars used to run over a pretty simple premise: get more nobles and organize them better and you will win, or at least make steady progress until the few passive limits came into play.

But now? Realm radius was decreased. Colony takeovers were removed. Family wealth cap was increased, which combined with lowered density and "new" (very old now) tax system make a few easily insanely rich (at the detriment of the majority) and actions like buying regions much easier, peasant militias are widespread and practically automatic, etc. The rank-n-file knight with some men used to be able to achieve significant results. Now? It's some kind of click race where, even with an appointed lord, a single noble can buy a region from under a huge coalition army.

This kind of war is not FUN. Not for everyone outside the tiny minority with access to these gimmicks.

Wars were a lot more fun in 2006.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: CryptCypher on February 12, 2018, 02:44:19 PM
...And 2012. :)
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Vita` on February 12, 2018, 08:49:03 PM
While we probably disagree about specifics, I do endorse this.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 12, 2018, 10:56:06 PM
Doubt there will be too many changes but I do hope the game focuses on player interactions again instead of all these automatic defense stuff. Also, the game is trying too hard to force a certain type of gameplay on people. Not a big fan of that. But good luck bringing changes without bringing in people who know how to code.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Gildre on February 13, 2018, 01:15:04 AM
Don't worry Zakky. I am bound to win the lotto one of these days. When I do I will hire a programming team and we can gangbang them from the forums for everything we want.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Vita` on February 13, 2018, 02:54:03 AM
Don't worry Zakky. I am bound to win the lotto one of these days. When I do I will hire a programming team and we can gangbang them from the forums for everything we want.
This somehow reminded me of Bender with hookers and blackjack, except its programmer prostitutes and battlemaster.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 13, 2018, 03:34:57 AM
1) Make it possible to TO cities with which you don't share a border, possibly automatically creating a new duchy for them, as a new version of the old CTOs
2) Bring back (the option of) communal taxes.
3) Bring back wealth tax
4) Lower the family wealth cap to 5000
5) Make any action that uses family gold for military purposes instead use personal gold
6) Make buying regions only possible in your own realm or in realms you are allied with.
7) Make religious takeovers factor in realm sympathy and a bunch of new factors to make it almost impossible to pull off, at least when done on human-held lands. Enable it anew in rogue lands.
8) Remove peasant militias completely: only player actions should stop player actions.
9) When too much looting is done, instead of peasant militias, locals should run away to nearby regions.
10) Convert 15% of all militia units to local population every week. Reduce this decay by 2% per fortification level.
11) Add a looting option that specifically targets loyalty and control.
12) Return the distance from capital radius to what it used to be, if not larger.
13) Add a "Demesne" alternative to lordships, where a region goes lordless without penalties other than a tax penalty or 100% of it going to the communal pot. Referendums don't run for it in democracies. The game has too many regions like Wasteland and the Desert of Silhouettes that don't deserve putting any nobles to them, but which in some cases must be taken for a number of other reasons.

In short, make wars about the knights again, and not about the gimmicks.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 13, 2018, 05:16:41 AM

1) Make it possible to TO cities with which you don't share a border, possibly automatically creating a new duchy for them, as a new version of the old CTOs
-- Actually any region should be possible to TO. With the distance penalty, if you try to TO a region too far away, they will revolt anyway.
2) Bring back (the option of) communal taxes.
--Why? I'd rather see redistribution of gold through region rebalancing. Less gold for cities and more gold for rural regions. We won't see any additional resources being added back to the game so might as well rebalance regions so they don't need to ask for gold all the time.
3) Bring back wealth tax
--Not sure.
4) Lower the family wealth cap to 5000
--I think just lowering it to 2.5k should do it. If people can't buy regions, there is no point on keeping it so high. Or if you want to keep it to 5k, I'd suggest making it so you can't put any gold in as long as your family gold is over 1k.
5) Make any action that uses family gold for military purposes instead use personal gold
--Actually wouldn't mind seeing people using their family gold to recruit units. Maybe make it twice as expensive or even three.
6) Make buying regions only possible in your own realm or in realms you are allied with.
--Not a bad idea.
7) Make religious takeovers factor in realm sympathy and a bunch of new factors to make it almost impossible to pull off, at least when done on human-held lands. Enable it anew in rogue lands.
--No. Just get rid of religion. The game has too few people for religions and priests.
8) Remove peasant militias completely: only player actions should stop player actions.
--Agreed
9) When too much looting is done, instead of peasant militias, locals should run away to nearby regions.
--Instead, I'd just make it impossible for people to loot a place to the ground. Let's say once a region is left with 25% or lower production, you can no longer loot in that region or something.
10) Convert 15% of all militia units to local population every week. Reduce this decay by 2% per fortification level.
11) Add a looting option that specifically targets loyalty and control.
--I think this is what the current unfinished TO will do eventually.
12) Return the distance from capital radius to what it used to be, if not larger.
--I thought it hasn't changed? I'd agree with making it larger especially on Dwilight.
13) Add a "Demesne" alternative to lordships, where a region goes lordless without penalties other than a tax penalty or 100% of it going to the communal pot. Referendums don't run for it in democracies. The game has too many regions like Wasteland and the Desert of Silhouettes that don't deserve putting any nobles to them, but which in some cases must be taken for a number of other reasons.

In short, make wars about the knights again, and not about the gimmicks.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 13, 2018, 03:08:50 PM
1) --Actually any region should be possible to TO. With the distance penalty, if you try to TO a region too far away, they will revolt anyway.
2) --Why? I'd rather see redistribution of gold through region rebalancing. Less gold for cities and more gold for rural regions. We won't see any additional resources being added back to the game so might as well rebalance regions so they don't need to ask for gold all the time.
4) --I think just lowering it to 2.5k should do it. If people can't buy regions, there is no point on keeping it so high. Or if you want to keep it to 5k, I'd suggest making it so you can't put any gold in as long as your family gold is over 1k.
5) --Actually wouldn't mind seeing people using their family gold to recruit units. Maybe make it twice as expensive or even three.
7) --No. Just get rid of religion. The game has too few people for religions and priests.
9) --Instead, I'd just make it impossible for people to loot a place to the ground. Let's say once a region is left with 25% or lower production, you can no longer loot in that region or something.
12) --I thought it hasn't changed? I'd agree with making it larger especially on Dwilight.

1) No, you need a border. The exception to this is Testing, with sea regions, as realms with coastal regions can take other coastal regions with which they don't share a land border. That doesn't allow inland TOs, and that doesn't apply to Stable.
2) Some rebalancing of the regions could be good, but that does nothing about the fact that some regions can be devastated which will have an extreme effect on the few who settle there. Equally, few people want to be lords of some key regions or border regions, because the war, militia, or other factors make it that they make little income. On Dwi, this is even worse, where many regions are completely depopulated, but that also exists on EC and BT. Manual transfers are tedious and unfun, giving realms at least the option to use either a balanced or a mostly communal system would help keep everyone engaged in realm activities, and not leave poor knights and lords (of sometimes potentially rich regions) just missing out because they tire of begging and their region gives them no taxes.
4) Sure? I mean, the cap used to be 10k, which was raised afaik to 20k. The logic behind it I'm not sure, other than "a lot of people reached the cap, so might as well raise it". I have always hated family wealth. It's the result of parasitic nobles funneling gold from where it could be used to achieve something fun to a barely touchable safe haven abroad where, if it is used, will likely be used by another realm.
5) I would mind it a lot. As per the previous point, nobles squatting high titles to farm gold in order to finance the activities of another realm on another continent are not only unfun for that other realm's competitors, as there's nothing they can directly do about it, but are also unfun for the sponsor realm's other nobles, who see the realm parasitized and left with little to do something with. Family wealth could be used, like fame, to give new characters a higher starting h/p, and better starting unit stats, but should otherwise absolutely not have a direct use in warfare.
7) That's clearly not going to happen. A softer approach would be adding a new subclass (Cleric, Crusader, Inquisitor, something of the like), available to all classes (including priests, warriors, and adventurers), that gives non-priests a greater ability to involve themselves in the religion game. Especially with the new limit of 1 noble per continent, the "you cannot have a unit" restriction on priests makes it extremly unappealing, even to people who would want to involve themselves in the religious game.
9) I'm actually in favor of being able to loot a region to the ground, but would also like a way to bring it back up. I think wars would be a lot more interesting if you could more reliably bring production to zero, but if such extensive damage could be fixed in about 2 months. Perhaps a forced deportation looting option. As a mix of this point and another, I don't think regions should ever revolt on their own, there should be a lower cap under which stats will not go on their own, but player actions should be more easily able to make the stats go below this cap and revolt.
12) It was significantly reduced, which has absurd effects on some realms.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Anaris on February 13, 2018, 06:49:10 PM
1) Make it possible to TO cities with which you don't share a border, possibly automatically creating a new duchy for them, as a new version of the old CTOs

Ehhh...maybe. I'd rather just reimplement CTOs.

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2) Bring back (the option of) communal taxes.

In some form, maybe. The way they used to be, no.

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3) Bring back wealth tax

Strongly supported.

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4) Lower the family wealth cap to 5000

Nope. I'm not going to do anything that's just going to take thousands of gold from mostly long-running families.

I might well put in some things that act differently when your family gold is high, though. Like increasing ransom dramatically, having bandits sometimes actually capture you and try to ransom you from your family, that sort of thing.

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5) Make any action that uses family gold for military purposes instead use personal gold

...Which military actions use family gold now? I can't recall offhand. I'd rather have them use army gold.

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6) Make buying regions only possible in your own realm or in realms you are allied with.

That's the opposite of the direction we went a while ago, and though I won't say "no," I certainly won't say "yes" either. This, I think, needs a detailed explanation & discussion.

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7) Make religious takeovers factor in realm sympathy and a bunch of new factors to make it almost impossible to pull off, at least when done on human-held lands. Enable it anew in rogue lands.

I would say not almost impossible, but a lot harder than it's been. Otherwise, yes, I support this.

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8) Remove peasant militias completely: only player actions should stop player actions.

I presume you mean the automatic type that pops up on looting? Yeah, I'm still not happy with those, or with the consequences of looting generally. I might open a topic about this for general discussion and brainstorming.

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9) When too much looting is done, instead of peasant militias, locals should run away to nearby regions.

See, like that. That's a fantastic idea! ;D

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10) Convert 15% of all militia units to local population every week. Reduce this decay by 2% per fortification level.

Mmm, no, I think not, though I do have some Thoughts on changes to how militia work that would, at least in a geographic sense, drastically reduce their prominence.

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11) Add a looting option that specifically targets loyalty and control.

I don't think that's looting. I think that's some kind of propaganda engine. Which I have some ideas for, too.

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12) Return the distance from capital radius to what it used to be, if not larger.

So we can have huge hollowed-out realms again? I lean toward "no," but I also lean toward "I have ideas for making that restriction much more nuanced."

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13) Add a "Demesne" alternative to lordships, where a region goes lordless without penalties other than a tax penalty or 100% of it going to the communal pot. Referendums don't run for it in democracies. The game has too many regions like Wasteland and the Desert of Silhouettes that don't deserve putting any nobles to them, but which in some cases must be taken for a number of other reasons.

I have a plan in mind that's very similar to this—and if you can tell me why you call it "Demesne", I might even use that name for it, because I didn't have a good name yet.

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In short, make wars about the knights again, and not about the gimmicks.

That's great to say, but always hard to actually implement.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 13, 2018, 07:15:27 PM
Ehhh...maybe. I'd rather just reimplement CTOs.

In some form, maybe. The way they used to be, no.

Strongly supported.

Nope. I'm not going to do anything that's just going to take thousands of gold from mostly long-running families.

I might well put in some things that act differently when your family gold is high, though. Like increasing ransom dramatically, having bandits sometimes actually capture you and try to ransom you from your family, that sort of thing.

...Which military actions use family gold now? I can't recall offhand. I'd rather have them use army gold.

That's the opposite of the direction we went a while ago, and though I won't say "no," I certainly won't say "yes" either. This, I think, needs a detailed explanation & discussion.

I would say not almost impossible, but a lot harder than it's been. Otherwise, yes, I support this.

I presume you mean the automatic type that pops up on looting? Yeah, I'm still not happy with those, or with the consequences of looting generally. I might open a topic about this for general discussion and brainstorming.

See, like that. That's a fantastic idea! ;D

Mmm, no, I think not, though I do have some Thoughts on changes to how militia work that would, at least in a geographic sense, drastically reduce their prominence.

I don't think that's looting. I think that's some kind of propaganda engine. Which I have some ideas for, too.

So we can have huge hollowed-out realms again? I lean toward "no," but I also lean toward "I have ideas for making that restriction much more nuanced."

I have a plan in mind that's very similar to this—and if you can tell me why you call it "Demesne", I might even use that name for it, because I didn't have a good name yet.

That's great to say, but always hard to actually implement.

1) Maybe. They were always awkwards, though. A city in the middle of enemy lands is hard to make a viable realm in off the bat. No RCs, no economy, right next door to the rest of the enemies...

2) Maybe simpler, less-gamey, and more hybrid form. Ex: allow rulers to give to all troop leaders half of their realm share taxes, which when selected, also allows them to double the max tax rate they can impose on their dukes (and so on down the line).

4) Gold past the new lowered cap need not be completely removed. You could have a decay of maybe 10% of the excess per week, during which time half of the decayed gold is shared between the active characters of the family. Gotta remember, though, people with 20k gold are people who horded key positions in their realm, and instead of helping their realms do stuff, they were parasites that funneled funds elsewhere. BM would probably have seen a lot more wars if the super rich had nowhere to send their gold other than in-realm (especially if wealth taxes were back).

5) Buying regions, namely. On Dwi it got pretty silly how widespread it was used. On EC too. I vaguely seem to recall something else, but it's not coming to mind right now.

6) Yea, I think it does need discussion. An alternative to buying regions would be to bribe referendum results, but I'm not sure if undermining elections is something we really want to do. In any case, my general feeling is that one-player gimmicks should not easily undermine the collective actions of a large number of players.

8 ) I am referring to two things: peasant militias that spring up in reaction of looting, and peasant militias that spring up for the mere presence of enemy nobles from realms they hate. On EC, one priest/ambassador in particular has gone to a few regions and made them utterly hate every single SA realm, and utterly love every single northern realm. Just entering those regions causes 10k of militia to appear, and holding them after a TO is practically impossible due to the insane amount of protest debuffs. We are starting to counter with out own ambassador work, but it's super gimmicky that one noble can build an impenetrable trench line that even one of the largest armies of the continent sitting in the region doing police work and civil work cannot stabilize it and prevent it from revolting.

9) Fight or flight! The natural response of people towards invaders is to flee. If peasant militias defending their homes really needs to be a thing, I think it should be a form of drafting where the lord pays a lot of gold for it, and where it does huge region stat penalties.

11) Propaganda or simply killing off all the loyal government officials (without bothering to put new ones in place). Could use TO mechanics, but easier and not limited by having a border.

12) and 13) These points are actually intertwined. I'm still in favor of density, in some form, but just not for the sake of it. Density is a tool, not an end in itself. Thus the idea is to allow realms to continue expanding into each other, otherwise once the density sweet spot is reached all incentives to fight a neighbor are almost gone, without necessarily giving a title to everyone for it. In other words, realms could keep expanding to 10, 20, 30 regions, even if they only have 15 nobles, but they would either be dissuaded or prevented from appointing all 15 nobles to the various lordships. And that even when all nobles have the titles they can have, the realm still has incentives to acquire new regions, because these would feed the communal taxes, and thus make everyone richer. Remember, the goal of increased density is, among other things, make sure that realms don't become filled with people that have nothing more to gain. But the current density mechanics kind of still do this in an indirect way (on Dwi).

As for why that specific word, I looked up "crown lands" or something like that in Google, and was offered that as an synonym. It seemed feudal yet less overtly monarchic, thus better fitting with non-monarchy government flavors. In the early days of the new estate system, there were imperial regions that relayed directly from the ruler, who could be a region lord without being a duke. It's somewhat inspired from that, but also mechanically very different.


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de·mesne
dəˈmān/
nounhistorical
noun: demesne; plural noun: demesnes

    1.
    land attached to a manor and retained for the owner's own use.
        the lands of an estate.
        archaic
        a region or domain.
        "she may one day queen it over that fair demesne"
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Vita` on February 13, 2018, 07:34:19 PM
I should point out that it's already approved to bring back wealth and property taxes as *options* for governments, not mandatory like before.

Also approved, but never implemented, are the option to have council shares of ruler/realm distribution. It's not a big jump from that to my preferred form of reimplementing communal taxes being having the government option of subsidizing classes and subclasses from the ruler/realm distribution. Yes, currently those are nil, but I don't think it'd be impossible to have public pressure on dukes to contribute more heavily if it was subsidizing the realm. And pressure from council members if it boosted their incomes.

I like the idea of high wealth families being more subject to kidnapping and extortion attempts, reimplementing a system allowing for simpler new realm creation than secessions but am neutral on CTO vs Chenier-suggestion, opposed to lowering family wealth limit, opposed to reducing distance from capital limit, and I'm in the same boat as Anaris regarding buying regions in-realm or in-alliance realm. Anything not specifically mentioned can best be described as being considered, ambivalent, apprehensive but not rejecting, needs further discussion et cetera.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 13, 2018, 07:47:49 PM
I should point out that it's already approved to bring back wealth and property taxes as *options* for governments, not mandatory like before.

Also approved, but never implemented, are the option to have council shares of ruler/realm distribution. It's not a big jump from that to my preferred form of reimplementing communal taxes being having the government option of subsidizing classes and subclasses from the ruler/realm distribution. Yes, currently those are nil, but I don't think it'd be impossible to have public pressure on dukes to contribute more heavily if it was subsidizing the realm. And pressure from council members if it boosted their incomes.

I like the idea of high wealth families being more subject to kidnapping and extortion attempts, reimplementing a system allowing for simpler new realm creation than secessions but am neutral on CTO vs Chenier-suggestion, opposed to lowering family wealth limit, opposed to reducing distance from capital limit, and I'm in the same boat as Anaris regarding buying regions in-realm or in-alliance realm. Anything not specifically mentioned can best be described as being considered, ambivalent, apprehensive but not rejecting, needs further discussion et cetera.

Optional is fine by me. Not sure the communal taxes would need to be as complicated as before, with the option for more "weight" to some (sub)classes or titles than others. I don't think government members really need extra gold either, though I guess that the increased income for them could help increase competition. Then again, with more customization comes greater player agency. As long as there's something to help ince into realm activities, at the very least, the extremely poor (lords/knight of regions that are either terrible by design, forced to be filled with militia for strategic region, or utterly devastated into non-production).
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 13, 2018, 07:51:56 PM
Also in line with this topic: https://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,8082.0.html

Removing some of the intent-based rules to let people just lug it out without regards to how good they are at weaseling legalese into being granted the right to do something others would not.

Additionally, a return on the realm radius issue: with a declining player base, it's much easier to maintain a large per-realm noble count with sprawling empires, which limits the number of council positions and thus increases competition, than with a large number of tiny realms that don't have much leadership potential and where many completely delegate many responsibilties to foreign parties. Large does not always equate stagnant and hollow.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Anaris on February 13, 2018, 08:10:11 PM
1) Maybe. They were always awkwards, though. A city in the middle of enemy lands is hard to make a viable realm in off the bat. No RCs, no economy, right next door to the rest of the enemies...

Yeah; something different needs to be done, and perhaps some of my other ideas about changes in region ownership should play into them—with the basic idea be that you essentially half-take-over the city and some surrounding regions, then declare them en masse to be a new colony.

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2) Maybe simpler, less-gamey, and more hybrid form. Ex: allow rulers to give to all troop leaders half of their realm share taxes, which when selected, also allows them to double the max tax rate they can impose on their dukes (and so on down the line).

Yeah, something along those lines—optional, like Vita says, and working with the new system, not trying to replace it.

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4) Gold past the new lowered cap need not be completely removed. You could have a decay of maybe 10% of the excess per week, during which time half of the decayed gold is shared between the active characters of the family. Gotta remember, though, people with 20k gold are people who horded key positions in their realm, and instead of helping their realms do stuff, they were parasites that funneled funds elsewhere. BM would probably have seen a lot more wars if the super rich had nowhere to send their gold other than in-realm (especially if wealth taxes were back).

I'd still rather not just make the excess gold decay away.

Frankly, it sounds to me like what you really want isn't so much the removal of family gold, but the removal of the "buy region" option, and that's something I am open to, though I'd like something to replace it with—not necessarily another way to take a region, but something that's sneaky and highly disruptive.

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6) Yea, I think it does need discussion. An alternative to buying regions would be to bribe referendum results, but I'm not sure if undermining elections is something we really want to do. In any case, my general feeling is that one-player gimmicks should not easily undermine the collective actions of a large number of players.

No, I definitely don't want to start undermining referenda. But yes, I tend to agree with your general feeling.

However, I would also say this: If the one-player gimmick required a lot of time and effort to set up, its payoff should be proportional to that. So if there were an infiltrator option that required several days or even a week or two of RL time for setup, but that allowed you to, say, wound all or most of the troops in a region (simulating poisoning a water supply or something similar), that is something that I would consider as probably viable.

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8 ) I am referring to two things: peasant militias that spring up in reaction of looting, and peasant militias that spring up for the mere presence of enemy nobles from realms they hate. On EC, one priest/ambassador in particular has gone to a few regions and made them utterly hate every single SA realm, and utterly love every single northern realm. Just entering those regions causes 10k of militia to appear, and holding them after a TO is practically impossible due to the insane amount of protest debuffs. We are starting to counter with out own ambassador work, but it's super gimmicky that one noble can build an impenetrable trench line that even one of the largest armies of the continent sitting in the region doing police work and civil work cannot stabilize it and prevent it from revolting.

There are a few different things going on here, and yes, I think all of them need some kind of overhaul.

One thing that would help a lot is to increase the game's memory further—not as in RAM, but its ability to remember what happened when. Then we wouldn't be working with simple numbers like loyalty and morale all on their own quite so much.

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12) and 13) These points are actually intertwined. I'm still in favor of density, in some form, but just not for the sake of it. Density is a tool, not an end in itself. Thus the idea is to allow realms to continue expanding into each other, otherwise once the density sweet spot is reached all incentives to fight a neighbor are almost gone, without necessarily giving a title to everyone for it. In other words, realms could keep expanding to 10, 20, 30 regions, even if they only have 15 nobles, but they would either be dissuaded or prevented from appointing all 15 nobles to the various lordships. And that even when all nobles have the titles they can have, the realm still has incentives to acquire new regions, because these would feed the communal taxes, and thus make everyone richer. Remember, the goal of increased density is, among other things, make sure that realms don't become filled with people that have nothing more to gain. But the current density mechanics kind of still do this in an indirect way (on Dwi).

So I have the first outline of a way to strongly encourage, without mandating, dense realms. The basic gist is this: A fully-controlled (non-city; cities should be handled at least slightly differently) region is one that has at least a Lord and one knight. If the capital has even one non-fully-controlled region (of those belonging to the realm) adjacent to it, all non-capital regions suffer a certain amount of penalty. If the capital is fully surrounded, then check if all those regions have fully-controlled regions around them. If not, then all regions beyond that first ring suffer similar penalties, and so on.

Essentially, it puts strong pressure on a realm to concentrate its Lords and knights in the regions around the capital.

However, as I said, in addition to adding this higher control state, I would also like to add a lower control state, like demesne or crown lands, or possibly call it hinterlands, that more or less consists of regions that your realm claims, and can extract a small amount of benefit from, but doesn't really own in any very meaningful sense. As soon as someone else comes in and stakes a claim with a military presence, the region becomes part of their demesne.

So if you can only really hold regions with a Lord and a knight, and those have to be concentrated around the capital or you risk unrest and red tape, but you can extend your realm's influence with very little limit, that makes warfare a much more dynamic experience, not measured in weeks spent taking over each border region as you tediously push through your enemy's outer regions, but in days marching across them, planting your flag and briefly intimidating the peasants, and moving on toward the lands they are actually willing and able to hold onto in the face of an army...

I think that makes it much more about the knights and the fun.

Edit:

Had another idea about family gold (or remembered an idea I had some time ago): Right now, once gold goes to the family, it is essentially removed from the game until it is spent.

What if it existed just the way gold getting ready for taxes did?

It shouldn't be anywhere near as easy to steal, but families need to have a home (and if they don't have one, we can force them to pick one, or just pick one for them, if they're dragging their feet about it), so shouldn't their gold be there?

Perhaps we should even let families have estates, that exist as regular estates within a region, help with efficiency, and generate gold (at a vastly reduced rate, due to expenses) for the family, but don't confer the same benefits that having a knight there does (like my fully-controlled regions above). Then the family gold is divided between all the various family estates, and if you happen across one when you're looting, you have the opportunity to try to rob its vault.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 13, 2018, 09:29:40 PM
Yeah; something different needs to be done, and perhaps some of my other ideas about changes in region ownership should play into them—with the basic idea be that you essentially half-take-over the city and some surrounding regions, then declare them en masse to be a new colony.

Yeah, something along those lines—optional, like Vita says, and working with the new system, not trying to replace it.

I'd still rather not just make the excess gold decay away.

Frankly, it sounds to me like what you really want isn't so much the removal of family gold, but the removal of the "buy region" option, and that's something I am open to, though I'd like something to replace it with—not necessarily another way to take a region, but something that's sneaky and highly disruptive.

No, I definitely don't want to start undermining referenda. But yes, I tend to agree with your general feeling.

However, I would also say this: If the one-player gimmick required a lot of time and effort to set up, its payoff should be proportional to that. So if there were an infiltrator option that required several days or even a week or two of RL time for setup, but that allowed you to, say, wound all or most of the troops in a region (simulating poisoning a water supply or something similar), that is something that I would consider as probably viable.

There are a few different things going on here, and yes, I think all of them need some kind of overhaul.

One thing that would help a lot is to increase the game's memory further—not as in RAM, but its ability to remember what happened when. Then we wouldn't be working with simple numbers like loyalty and morale all on their own quite so much.

So I have the first outline of a way to strongly encourage, without mandating, dense realms. The basic gist is this: A fully-controlled (non-city; cities should be handled at least slightly differently) region is one that has at least a Lord and one knight. If the capital has even one non-fully-controlled region (of those belonging to the realm) adjacent to it, all non-capital regions suffer a certain amount of penalty. If the capital is fully surrounded, then check if all those regions have fully-controlled regions around them. If not, then all regions beyond that first ring suffer similar penalties, and so on.

Essentially, it puts strong pressure on a realm to concentrate its Lords and knights in the regions around the capital.

However, as I said, in addition to adding this higher control state, I would also like to add a lower control state, like demesne or crown lands, or possibly call it hinterlands, that more or less consists of regions that your realm claims, and can extract a small amount of benefit from, but doesn't really own in any very meaningful sense. As soon as someone else comes in and stakes a claim with a military presence, the region becomes part of their demesne.

So if you can only really hold regions with a Lord and a knight, and those have to be concentrated around the capital or you risk unrest and red tape, but you can extend your realm's influence with very little limit, that makes warfare a much more dynamic experience, not measured in weeks spent taking over each border region as you tediously push through your enemy's outer regions, but in days marching across them, planting your flag and briefly intimidating the peasants, and moving on toward the lands they are actually willing and able to hold onto in the face of an army...

I think that makes it much more about the knights and the fun.

Edit:

Had another idea about family gold (or remembered an idea I had some time ago): Right now, once gold goes to the family, it is essentially removed from the game until it is spent.

What if it existed just the way gold getting ready for taxes did?

It shouldn't be anywhere near as easy to steal, but families need to have a home (and if they don't have one, we can force them to pick one, or just pick one for them, if they're dragging their feet about it), so shouldn't their gold be there?

Perhaps we should even let families have estates, that exist as regular estates within a region, help with efficiency, and generate gold (at a vastly reduced rate, due to expenses) for the family, but don't confer the same benefits that having a knight there does (like my fully-controlled regions above). Then the family gold is divided between all the various family estates, and if you happen across one when you're looting, you have the opportunity to try to rob its vault.

4) I really dislike both the "buy region" option and the amassing of family wealth. I never liked the amassing of family wealth, because it encourages people to have secondary characters who have no other purpose than to farm gold. These characters are parasites that decreases the realm's ability (and will) to take risks and go to war. As for "other things to do with family gold", I know there was calling family aid, that I just remembered. I think that was nerfed since Thulsoma abused the hell out of it, but I think it still allows for one character to fund another on another continent. Continents should work independantly, I don't like the idea of some people on some continents helping other people on other continents. All continents need war, and all realms need their tax gold for it.

6) I think that would be way overpowered. Balancing great gains with great risks only goes a certain way, it still comes down to "risking/wasting 1 noble to potentially destroy a realm". Because if you can wound a whole foreign army without even fighting them, and you prepared for it, in many cases you can outright kill them, or just about. And I don't think a few weeks of RL time to setup is all that much either, compared to typical refit times.

One player gimmicks, in my opinion, should target one other player. Like assassination attempts. A key strike can have a huge impact, but it's still only just affecting one player, and largely works around how much power people are concentrating. I'm fine with the existence of specialists who can do things that maybe the masses can't do, but I also think that their impacts should be, overall, small compared to the masses of troop leaders.

12/13) I think the details for any system addressing this will probably be tricky to sort out.  There's also the issue of balancing them around changing demographics. Some features that didn't make sense back in the days could work now, and vice versa, just because of how many (active) players we have now vs then.

I'm not sure how I think about very quick TOs. Seems like to could be rather demoralizing to players if everything they have can be taken in a week.

Then again, if regions were less binary in control, maybe it wouldn't be a big deal. For example, taking over a region takes only 3 days instead of about 7, but when the TO is "finished", you only have 30% control, which means you only get 30% of the taxes you otherwise would. If you really want to, you can continue "takeover options" to bring it to 100%, or you can move on to the next region. Regions could directly work from control: takeovers first deplete the current control pool, and then begin to fill your own, but having low control doesn't mean it will revolt and that all your work will be wasted, just means that the region won't give much until control is increased.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 13, 2018, 10:48:18 PM
I'd just reduce the capability of family gold in general.

Investment should only be limited to your estate. Too often family gold is used to funnel gold from one continent to another. May the way it is used should change completely. Maybe instead of family investment increasing the gold output, it should maybe used to increase loyalty and control so there is no financial gain from using family gold but to help your realm overall by aiding them in stabilizing unstable regions.

Or be used to get your new character off the low honor and prestige status quickly. When you spend a large sum of gold, you can quickly gain honor and prestige to get to the point where you can change to any class like cavalier.

Or like Vita's idea, after getting rid of the inability to read letters in prison, maybe increase the time you are held in prison by a lot. Like 2 weeks if you are a member of a wealthy family. If you are a new family you are probably broke so get them released sooner (maybe after 2-3 days. Same goes for poor families as well I guess.). After all medieval people held other nobles to get ransoms and some people had to be stuck in a place for a very long time because they refused to pay. Maybe this will make people less likely to send thousands of gold to their families.

As for control, maybe lower your control over a region, the faster TO should be conducted. Core regions requiring 100% while regions that don't even have a lord and lack any control should only require 20%.

As for war, it should definitely be overhauled. I'd try to make people fight more often but shorter wars. Make recruits lose training and morale as the war progresses. Make training and morale don't recover until the war ends. While there is a war going on, then every time RCs produce new recruits, make training and morale drop slightly. The longer the war, the more drop they suffer since the penalty accumulate over time. Maybe if a war lasts for a very long time, RCs should produce less recruits as well.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 14, 2018, 03:00:52 AM
Oh yea, investments. That's a third way where family wealth can directly help in a war effort, along with calling in family aid and buying regions.

The possibility to tax/raid/interact with family homes more would be interesting, but would need proper thought.

I'm not sure we really want to force people to end ongoing wars through fatigue mechanics. Ideally, yea, more shorter wars sound fun, but inertia is so huge in this game, and it's so hard to get a war going... that you really don't want to end it sooner than it has to, because making the war shorter won't necessarily make the inter-war peace any shorter.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 14, 2018, 05:31:39 AM
Oh yea, investments. That's a third way where family wealth can directly help in a war effort, along with calling in family aid and buying regions.

The possibility to tax/raid/interact with family homes more would be interesting, but would need proper thought.

I'm not sure we really want to force people to end ongoing wars through fatigue mechanics. Ideally, yea, more shorter wars sound fun, but inertia is so huge in this game, and it's so hard to get a war going... that you really don't want to end it sooner than it has to, because making the war shorter won't necessarily make the inter-war peace any shorter.

You are talking about the same inertia that drives people to fight until they demolish a realm.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Bronnen on February 14, 2018, 03:43:38 PM
I had an idea of some things to do with family gold.

Allow the family itself to have control of recruitment centers. Have these centers be able to send troops out to family members for a massive premium, but the center is tied to the family itself and cannot be used by anyone else, does not have an upkeep, and cannot be disbanded as militia.  Think of it as a private bodyguard that your family pays for.

Allow people with family gold to use that gold to purchase more votes in elections. Would give more opportunities for people to suspect elections of being rigged and cause more strife within realms.

Last thing, embargoes. People with incredibly wealthy families would in theory have massive trade routes everywhere in the world. Allow families to embargo realms at a penalty to their family gold, would impact tax gold of the realm itself by a percentage. I know this one would require a lot more coding and a lot more effort to make workable but i think it's pretty cool.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Eduardo Almighty on February 14, 2018, 05:05:07 PM
BM evolved... we moved from bearded Vikings behind a shield wall to rich, well-dressed nobles leading a sea of archers. Of all the natural changes that have happened, this is the one I hate the most since I came back to play.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 14, 2018, 10:01:40 PM
You are talking about the same inertia that drives people to fight until they demolish a realm.

I don't think that's fair at all. First of all, that inertia at least gives people something to do. Second of all, the inertia that leads to realm destruction is usually based on the losers refusing to accept defeat, preferring death to surrender. You can't ban people from being suicidal...

As for Bronnen's suggestions, I'm firmly opposed to allowing characters in one continent from sponsoring characters on another, which is what all these family gold mechanics are.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Bronnen on February 14, 2018, 10:41:04 PM
I think those ideas would give people a way bigger incentive to actually use their family gold and actually lose it for maybe no gain. Right now we've got so many people with almost maxed out or actually maxed out gold, which yes would give those people an advantage, but only until they've spent enough that they're equal with everybody else. It would force another bit of strategy to the game.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 15, 2018, 01:00:58 AM
I think those ideas would give people a way bigger incentive to actually use their family gold and actually lose it for maybe no gain. Right now we've got so many people with almost maxed out or actually maxed out gold, which yes would give those people an advantage, but only until they've spent enough that they're equal with everybody else. It would force another bit of strategy to the game.

I don't think you get my beef with family gold and its usage for war purposes.

If player A has a city duke in realm A and another in realm B, and realm A is at war so he constantly pulls out family gold to help it, and his noble in realm B keeps funneling gold out to him to help him, then
1) The enemies of realm A can do absolutely nothing about what's going on in realm B (on another continent)
2) Realm B is deprived of a huge % of its wealth, and thus is greatly disincentivized from taking any risks, both passively by maintaining low war preparation indicators (mobile CS, RCs, other infrastructure, etc.), and actively by making the one of the most powerful nobles of that realm not WANT war because that player NEEDS that gold for his other character in another realm.

Allowing players to use family gold in wars increases anti-war inertia in the sponsoring realms. And it's really unfair to the players of the sponsoring realms because most of them probably have no clue about their peers funneling gold away from the realm.

If players had no way to stash their gold, then they'd end up having to spend it locally, or amass it locally. If they amass it locally, eventually when a crisis sparks up they might go "well, I've got 50 000 gold on hand if we really want to teach them a lesson", and if they just end up autopausing, that wealth goes back to the realm.

Though we probably don't really want players amassing 50k or more either, though, because that can also be kinda cheesy.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: GustavKuriga on February 15, 2018, 01:13:17 AM
I don't think that's fair at all. First of all, that inertia at least gives people something to do. Second of all, the inertia that leads to realm destruction is usually based on the losers refusing to accept defeat, preferring death to surrender. You can't ban people from being suicidal...

That's anecdotal at best. I highly doubt that the ratio is any more than 60/40 one way or the other. Usually it's ridiculous terms from both sides and an inability to settle for anything more than complete and total victory. See the Sirion war against Oligarch, where until Greater Xavax nobles joined there was literally no way that Sirion would have the forces to break Oligarch. Yet they refused to settle for anything but the destruction of Oligarch.

The players of this game on both sides of any war generally have little sense of what is a sensible negotiation.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 15, 2018, 01:56:11 AM
That's anecdotal at best. I highly doubt that the ratio is any more than 60/40 one way or the other. Usually it's ridiculous terms from both sides and an inability to settle for anything more than complete and total victory. See the Sirion war against Oligarch, where until Greater Xavax nobles joined there was literally no way that Sirion would have the forces to break Oligarch. Yet they refused to settle for anything but the destruction of Oligarch.

The players of this game on both sides of any war generally have little sense of what is a sensible negotiation.

Anecdotal? I'd place it between 80% and 95% of realm deaths due the losing realms digging their own graves, at least 75% due to the dying realms refusing reasonable offers being made to them, the rest dying because they did their best to make their enemies utterly despise them.

People are proud. They'd rather keep their OOC pride than keep some virtual holdings. A lot of things RL people would be delighted to accept as surrender conditions would just never be considered by BM players for this very reason.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Bronnen on February 15, 2018, 02:14:54 AM
My thinking though is that if a character does that, that would then give incentive to the realm to get rid of that one character.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: GustavKuriga on February 15, 2018, 02:21:26 AM
Anecdotal? I'd place it between 80% and 95% of realm deaths due the losing realms digging their own graves, at least 75% due to the dying realms refusing reasonable offers being made to them, the rest dying because they did their best to make their enemies utterly despise them.

People are proud. They'd rather keep their OOC pride than keep some virtual holdings. A lot of things RL people would be delighted to accept as surrender conditions would just never be considered by BM players for this very reason.

You say this, but you've yet to provide anything other than your word, and I've brought nothing but my word. Thus I would be skeptical about taking anything said by either of us at face value. In all likelihood it's biased one way or the other.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 15, 2018, 04:00:41 AM
Are we even talking about the same game here? People rarely accept terms in this game. The winners usually want a city at least. Losers don't want to give up anything. Even when a sensible guy is on the throne and is willing to accept terms, players of that guy's realm sometimes overthrow the guy for accepting terms. Since you don't really lose much, people don't willingly give up. I think there should be a huge penalty for getting your realm destroyed like losing 90% of your honor and prestige you've earned in that realm upon your realm's destruction. Even after you run, this penalty should track you down. Maybe people will think twice about fighting to the end. Then again I doubt that will stop people since people quit once their realms get destroyed.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: GustavKuriga on February 15, 2018, 07:47:34 AM
Are we even talking about the same game here? People rarely accept terms in this game. The winners usually want a city at least. Losers don't want to give up anything. Even when a sensible guy is on the throne and is willing to accept terms, players of that guy's realm sometimes overthrow the guy for accepting terms. Since you don't really lose much, people don't willingly give up. I think there should be a huge penalty for getting your realm destroyed like losing 90% of your honor and prestige you've earned in that realm upon your realm's destruction. Even after you run, this penalty should track you down. Maybe people will think twice about fighting to the end. Then again I doubt that will stop people since people quit once their realms get destroyed.

This is a perspective piece, not anything that tells us what actually happens. It's what you "feel" happens.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 15, 2018, 08:48:07 AM
This is a perspective piece, not anything that tells us what actually happens. It's what you "feel" happens.

Of course. Do you think anyone knows what actually happens? But we can derive some stuff from the results of past wars. Luria Boreal for example. The war would have ended if they simply surrendered and apologized. What happened instead? They fought to the end and got destroyed. Didn't even put up a fight to be honest. However look at Farronite Republic. They surrendered when Farrowfield got sacked and they did not need to give up anything in return because they were smart about it.

Here are few other examples:

Perdan - Refused to give up their namesake city. Forced the ruler who was willing to accept the terms. After a couple battles, they accepted the same terms they originally refused.

Ibladesh - fought to the end. Got their realm split in two.

GX - fought to the end and got destroyed.

Caligus - lost a bunch of regions. Trying to get back what they lost. They probably won't since the north can't seem to win any battles recently. Maybe they will fight to the end too.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Bronnen on February 15, 2018, 03:39:16 PM
In my ten years of battlemaster, I can count on 1 hand the amount of wars that didn't end with the destruction of one realm or another.

Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: GustavKuriga on February 15, 2018, 06:07:58 PM
Of course. Do you think anyone knows what actually happens? But we can derive some stuff from the results of past wars. Luria Boreal for example. The war would have ended if they simply surrendered and apologized. What happened instead? They fought to the end and got destroyed. Didn't even put up a fight to be honest. However look at Farronite Republic. They surrendered when Farrowfield got sacked and they did not need to give up anything in return because they were smart about it.

Here are few other examples:

Perdan - Refused to give up their namesake city. Forced the ruler who was willing to accept the terms. After a couple battles, they accepted the same terms they originally refused.

Ibladesh - fought to the end. Got their realm split in two.

GX - fought to the end and got destroyed.

Caligus - lost a bunch of regions. Trying to get back what they lost. They probably won't since the north can't seem to win any battles recently. Maybe they will fight to the end too.

Do you think that reasonable terms were provided to GX? That was a war of extermination from the get-go by a hugbox of realms that were scared that GX was going to become the "next Ibladesh/CE" despite the fact that it was repeatedly stated that they did not want more land, thank you, they just wanted Robb Starfall out of power for being a duplicitous ass please (please note I mean the character, not the player).

I know for a fact that the one who instigated the whole mess in the first place definitely wasn't going to settle for a meaningful peace. I was in his realm where he openly talked about it.

The issue regarding peoples viewpoints of GX is that most only saw one side or the other in that war. I got to see both. Trust me when I say that Robb wanted them dead and was convincing the realms around them that GX was a threat that couldn't be left alive.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 15, 2018, 07:49:03 PM
On what bases should I trust your words? If GX merely wanted to get Robb out of the way, they shouldn't have attacked Perleone to try and take Ibladesh. I am sorry but GX didn't just focus on getting rid of Robb. They tried to expand and become a larger realm. Also, let's not forget GX's internal problems also spilled out. Kellen Dodger once was a member of GX then joined Perdan to see GX destroyed after GX went through some power struggles.

I don't know what was so unfair about dividing a realm that wanted to expand into two. GX would still have done fine even after being split in half. Also, when a realm becomes ridiculously large in noble count, people do tend to be afraid.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: GustavKuriga on February 15, 2018, 08:35:54 PM
On what bases should I trust your words? If GX merely wanted to get Robb out of the way, they shouldn't have attacked Perleone to try and take Ibladesh. I am sorry but GX didn't just focus on getting rid of Robb. They tried to expand and become a larger realm. Also, let's not forget GX's internal problems also spilled out. Kellen Dodger once was a member of GX then joined Perdan to see GX destroyed after GX went through some power struggles.

I don't know what was so unfair about dividing a realm that wanted to expand into two. GX would still have done fine even after being split in half. Also, when a realm becomes ridiculously large in noble count, people do tend to be afraid.

So your proof that GX wanted to expand was that they attacked the city of someone they were at war with? That's definitely a certain kind of "logic". Considering the only way to knock either Alara or Perleone out of the early war would have been to take out their city anyways, as they weren't surrendering. GX went through some power struggles because Robb straight up lied to GX about allying them (thus saying that GX wanted to expand in that direction is bull!@#$, they were trying to ally starting out and Robb pulled one over on the ruler at the time), and the Kellan Dodger started off a rebellion against the then ruler. A rebellion specifically aimed at putting someone who would attack Alara for betraying GX's trust into power.

Do you want to know how I know this? I was the one who was General of Alara when the ruler explained what he planned. When Sayuki reacted poorly to this plan of his, he banned my character and claimed Sayuki (my character) was a spy of GX. He wasn't a spy of GX, he had no proof of anything, but it got me out of his way. What he forgot was that my character knew everything about his plan of his, and that my character was the lord of one of the regions bordering GX. So when I switched over to GX, my region came with me, and I proceeded to tell Kellan Dodger about what Robb was planning. Magnus, then the ruler of GX, wasn't having it and believed I was trying to foment discord between Alara and GX. That's why the rebellion kicked off. I was approached by then Duchess Selenia about joining the loyalist faction if I pledged my loyalty to her, which my character did.

After the rebellion failed, Kellan Dodger was banned for the obvious act of fomenting rebellion, yadayada, ended up in Perdan. The reason Perdan even got involved likely had much to do with Kellan Dodger (the character) blatantly lying about what actually happened in order to get some revenge.

The reason that GX became so large in noble count anyways comes to two reasons. A) The people there did a wonderful job creating a realm culture and recruiting players. B) They weren't afraid to take risks. They didn't try and gangbang the smallest realm with a bunch of allies, they fought against a coalition of all the old-guard players who wanted the status-quo of CE on East Island. That was Robb's whole shtick you see...
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 15, 2018, 09:04:20 PM
We warned GX not to attack Perleone several times. Wasn't really my problem when GX decided to ignore that warning. Perleone never sent any army into GX. Why would I trust your words over Robb's when you did nothing to show your trustworthiness? I don't know how poorly you've reacted to Robb's plan but it was enough to guarantee a ban apparently. Robb has been pretty trustworthy throughout the war at least enough to get the support of Perdan and Vix. GX on the other hand...didn't really show any sign of backing down. Plus some GX members constantly badmouthing Selena probably didn't help.

I honestly never bothered with all the crap flying between GX and south. I just didn't like the fact Vita used a healing scroll to revive her. So I wanted to destroy GX for it. Was pretty easy to throw mud at the whole Perdan peacing out of the war by marrying Selena as Caspian couldn't handle all the criticisms. Protested him day and night until he just quit the game. So yeah at least for Perdan while I ruled, I wanted GX destroyed completely. Didn't really care about other people having fun at least I could throw mud at that XD. As for Kellan, he was hellbent on getting rid of Selena. Never bothered why he was mad at her but at least he was mad enough to try his hardest to finish GX off. I think Vix was worried about GX's noble count plus had to defend Perleone. After all Vix was created out of their disagreement with Perdan's desire to reintegrate Perleone. As for Minas Nova, not sure why they joined.

P.S Looks like the thread got derailed. This reply will be my final two cent about GX. I won't add anything else after except regarding War Overhaul.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 16, 2018, 02:20:01 AM
Are we even talking about the same game here? People rarely accept terms in this game. The winners usually want a city at least. Losers don't want to give up anything. Even when a sensible guy is on the throne and is willing to accept terms, players of that guy's realm sometimes overthrow the guy for accepting terms. Since you don't really lose much, people don't willingly give up. I think there should be a huge penalty for getting your realm destroyed like losing 90% of your honor and prestige you've earned in that realm upon your realm's destruction. Even after you run, this penalty should track you down. Maybe people will think twice about fighting to the end. Then again I doubt that will stop people since people quit once their realms get destroyed.

Hmm, an interesting idea, but that would lkikely cause increased defections when the boat is sinking, maybe even more realm deaths.

In my ten years of battlemaster, I can count on 1 hand the amount of wars that didn't end with the destruction of one realm or another.

Really...?

Sint, Hetland, Riombara, and Kingdom of Alluran vs. Enweil did not result in any realm dying.
Republic of Fwuvoghor vs. Avalon did not result in any realm dying.
D'Hara vs. Pian en Luries did not result in any realm dying.
Pian en Luries vs. Fissoa did not result in any realm dying.
Caerwyn vs. D'Hara did not result in any realm dying.
Astrum vs. Westgard did not result in any realm dying.
Swordfell vs. Astrum did not result in any realm dying.

And I can think of a bunch of other wars where I'm just not sure enough of the specifics anymore.

Wars don't frequently end in the destruction of a realm, but when they do, it's almost always the loser's fault.

Dwilight vs. Thulsoma, they were just really happy to trigger the religious folk with their blasphemy and everyone in general with their blatant exploits
Half of Dwilight vs. Aurvandil, for being such an obnoxious bunch of blatant multicheaters
SA vs. NA (Caligus), almost went for the kill, did not yet, but had we done it... well Caligus completely refused to negotiate, even if down to 1 city

Plus all the ill-fated colonies that were just never meant to be.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Zakky on February 16, 2018, 04:31:19 AM
Astrum vs Westgard never happened. Westgard got scared and backed out when Hemmings chickened out by pausing. (might have deleted not sure)

Westgard's new ruler (who is the current ruler now) decide to apologize and normalize the situation. Dragomir accepted and moved on.

It was simple really. Unlike now, monsters were being funneled into Westgard so they really couldn't afford to fight Astrum. Hemmings was just stupid to think he could take on Astrum.




Realms started to survive more wars as the player base shrunk. People could no longer afford to set up colonies to replace existing realms. With the game stuck at 400 players, I doubt people want to destroy any realm but they probably still want to take at least a city or few regions.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: GustavKuriga on February 16, 2018, 07:33:25 AM
Hmm, an interesting idea, but that would lkikely cause increased defections when the boat is sinking, maybe even more realm deaths.

Really...?

Sint, Hetland, Riombara, and Kingdom of Alluran vs. Enweil did not result in any realm dying.
Republic of Fwuvoghor vs. Avalon did not result in any realm dying.
D'Hara vs. Pian en Luries did not result in any realm dying.
Pian en Luries vs. Fissoa did not result in any realm dying.
Caerwyn vs. D'Hara did not result in any realm dying.
Astrum vs. Westgard did not result in any realm dying.
Swordfell vs. Astrum did not result in any realm dying.

And I can think of a bunch of other wars where I'm just not sure enough of the specifics anymore.

Wars don't frequently end in the destruction of a realm, but when they do, it's almost always the loser's fault.

Dwilight vs. Thulsoma, they were just really happy to trigger the religious folk with their blasphemy and everyone in general with their blatant exploits
Half of Dwilight vs. Aurvandil, for being such an obnoxious bunch of blatant multicheaters
SA vs. NA (Caligus), almost went for the kill, did not yet, but had we done it... well Caligus completely refused to negotiate, even if down to 1 city

Plus all the ill-fated colonies that were just never meant to be.

I completely disagree with what I view is a biased viewpoint on your part, but we're not going to change each other's minds here, so let's just drop it.

Truce?
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: CryptCypher on February 16, 2018, 12:34:22 PM
Gustav:

You're right about a few things, sadly. Magnus (I) didn't want to believe you (Sayuki) because he thought Robb was a friend and actually meant what he had promised. As a player I was cynical but as a character, Magnus' personality dictated his reaction.

Starfall straight up informed me OOC that he'd be pursuing an alliance with Caligus to wreck GX due to us pulling out of the alliance negotiations due to that ill-advised referendum after the no-allies faction got loud, and did roughly the same IC albeit more veiled. Apologies were said both ways, and we parted. To each his own.

Robb never liked Selenia, nor her personality or playstyle, nor did a number of other people. I was warned (for reasons I did not comprehend at the time) not to let a JeVondair take power for what it'd do to Xavax, but Selenia was my 2nd-in-command and the only person I could trust not to completely derail Xavax and erase its history&culture.

Also, for the record, Xavax had a secret faction super-early-on that wanted to conquer Ibladesh, so you're only half-right. They put pressure on certain key figures, including Magnus, in exchange for favors and support. I dunno what went on after Magnus abdicated early, but I doubt they just abandoned their entire plot-arc of reconquering Ibladesh and founding a Xavax-Ibladeshi satellite realm just because Selenia took power. I, at least, had convinced them to do it my way rather than overthrow the government and gun for Ibladesh right off the bat. They were even open to peaceful religious conversion, so long as their religion ended up being in charge of Ibladesh.

That one noblewoman was their leader, I forget who else was part of the faction though. God, we had so many factions... Too many influential, powerful players used to running the show.

Too many leaders, not enough followers. Probably what screwed us in the end.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 16, 2018, 02:51:26 PM
Realms started to survive more wars as the player base shrunk. People could no longer afford to set up colonies to replace existing realms. With the game stuck at 400 players, I doubt people want to destroy any realm but they probably still want to take at least a city or few regions.

Yes, I'll agree that realm survival increased with time.

The feasability in colonies is one factor, but there was also a culture shift, fed by a specific "anti-destruction" movement on the d-list and then forum and an increasing individualism and anti-coalition sentiment that encouraged realms to go on their own paths instead of following their bloc all the time.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on February 18, 2018, 06:42:19 PM
Here's an idea for family wealth...

How about: remove the ability for players to send any gold to their families, and replace it completely with a greater passive growth. The passive growth could cap at 5k, and it could be based on the amount of traveling the nobles of the family are making (because it makes IC sense and because it's a good proxy for activity and desirable behavior).
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: CryptCypher on February 20, 2018, 10:46:34 AM
Hmm. Good idea. Prevents abuse from people siphoning gold to enrich their family coffers, and makes things more intelligent.

Would be cool to slate a few more passive growth messages too. Make it feel more intimate/connected.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Ketchum on March 07, 2018, 04:03:19 AM
Of course. Do you think anyone knows what actually happens? But we can derive some stuff from the results of past wars. Luria Boreal for example. The war would have ended if they simply surrendered and apologized. What happened instead? They fought to the end and got destroyed. Didn't even put up a fight to be honest. However look at Farronite Republic. They surrendered when Farrowfield got sacked and they did not need to give up anything in return because they were smart about it.

Here are few other examples:

Perdan - Refused to give up their namesake city. Forced the ruler who was willing to accept the terms. After a couple battles, they accepted the same terms they originally refused.

Ibladesh - fought to the end. Got their realm split in two.

GX - fought to the end and got destroyed.

Caligus - lost a bunch of regions. Trying to get back what they lost. They probably won't since the north can't seem to win any battles recently. Maybe they will fight to the end too.
I still do not know Caligus defended Domus city, their former capital before it fall.

But Caligus with 3 regions certainly on backfoot. Not to mention Redhaven land, Krimml city got looted by Vix.

Realms started to survive more wars as the player base shrunk. People could no longer afford to set up colonies to replace existing realms. With the game stuck at 400 players, I doubt people want to destroy any realm but they probably still want to take at least a city or few regions.
I agree realms started to survive more wars. Think Nivemus on EC.

Survived the war with OI when OI hold the Kazakh Peninsula and even when Perdan(by virtue of being OI ally) tried knock on the war door hard by destroying whole Nivemus army in Kazan. How do you rebuild that whole army is how you know your own capability to survive.

Survived the war by Perdan on Nivemus on the war justification of some North tribe thing, thanks to probably the greatest Sirion General in history, Ryu. Imagined you watching Perdan army stuck on the road of 2 regions, you just need be smart to put 2 almost similar strength armies in 2 regions: From and To region Perdan army travel. Perdan army had to turn around, turn around until their units could no longer turn around. That was the war when Brock was Nivemus General and not Ruler.

Even survived war with Westmoor, Perdan which finally led to Westmoor demise and even Fane brief founding.

Nivemus even got a brief chance to war with Vix Tiramora and even our army came to Vix mountains and rural lands looting.

Nivemus even got chance to almost absorb OI whole lands, but Nivemus only managed to get Duchy of Kalmar through its former Emperor agreement but new Emperor proved tough to Brock charms, that was before the ice melted in the south and many characters migrated from sunken continents.

Probably the only war where Nivemus army got wiped out by Perdan while helping Perleone who was still its ally under attack from Perdan. It was a massacre of whole army. It was probably my character greatest regret as one by one the south realms started to fall under Perdan hegemony since then.

My character Brock was Nivemus Ruler through majority of these wars.

Now I feel my character has achieved a lot, that he has reached the stage where he may not be able to do more. Brock will do something soon.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Eduardo Almighty on March 07, 2018, 11:57:00 AM
Fontan, the Sultanante and even Westmoor. At one point, every ruler of Sirion (or someone on the Council) tried to force a surrender that would allow those realms to still exist in some way. Or because at first they thought Sirion couldn't win (like when Romul almost accepted peace with Fontan and the Sultanate because they eviscerated OR and Sirion could not fight back properly), or because they were convinced that these realms would indicate some ruler that would change everything and bring peaceful terms of coexistence, like Thomas Foxglove becoming King of Westmoor -- too bad the previous King did everything to be hated and make Westmoor be hated by Sirion, especially the Blood Elf of Sirion, as they called Erik.

Too bad they meet Erik as Judge of Sirion and Duke of Avamar by the way. He did everything in his power to win the public, instigate the war and the total destruction of his enemies. I think you can put the destruction of those realms in my account, at least as far as denying any terms of surrender; either because they were unrealistic, or because they simply were not convenient to a character who saw the opportunity to expand Avamarian borders until Krimml and Oligarch.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: CryptCypher on March 07, 2018, 06:07:19 PM
In effect, Erik was exactly the type of character everyone is complaining about? :P A few of those are good to have, but at least those types have an excuse - and can be balanced by less-aggressive personalities.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Eduardo Almighty on March 07, 2018, 08:55:53 PM
Another times, I would say...

In the end, these realms were reduced to doubting individuals: Gabriela in Fontan (a torturer), the king of Westmoor (a wacky racist) or the Sultan who would never accept to be deposed, etc... for Erik, a realm that was not willing to kick these people did not deserve to survive to have the opportunity to fight against Sirion another day. Also, some of them asked for Erik's head while they had an advantage. Or, as was common, each new Ruler tried to ignore the whole history of his realm during the war. Erik was not willing to forget, as most of Sirion who always voted in favor of total elimination wars.

Luckily Perdan was far away and Atanamir was overthrown by greater forces, or they would suffer the same fate. And OI has always been very indifferent, some threats of bringing the Silver Legion up there and plundering everything down to the ground usually worked.

Ah... good times. Today I 'm trying to guide my characters differently, first because they do not have that level of power and influence and the game needs smaller realms and wars that do not end in a pile of dead realms. Erik was a result of his time and was directly affected by how his enemies dealt with him. Of all my RPG characters, he was the one who had the most interesting development.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Gabanus family on March 08, 2018, 10:07:36 AM
Alright, time to get back to the actual discussion on improving the game, rather than argue who is what and who in which war.

1) Make it possible to TO cities with which you don't share a border, possibly automatically creating a new duchy for them, as a new version of the old CTOs

- I like suggestions in this area because of the following: Right now war is generally very static with chokepoints and risk areas defended by militia etc. When you add the risk that regions beyond the direct border (sometimes just 1 or 2 regions) and introducing the risk that regions beyond that can be taken is interesting. Some additions and options to such a view:

--- Regions which are cut off from the main realm cannot be taxed, or far less because of a broken supply line.

--- In stead of direct TO, allow realms to create true colonies where they can also cash bonds. This would enable war campaigns further from home, but also grants the risk that the colony suddenly demands autonomy and removes this special status. Downside is that it would require an additional diplomatic option "Colonized"

2) Bring back (the option of) communal taxes.

- As Delvin said, I would prefer a more mixed version where the central government is better able to levy taxes on the Dukes/Lords

3) Bring back wealth tax

- I agree with Delvin's view on introducing it, but making it optional.

4) Lower the family wealth cap to 5000
5) Make any action that uses family gold for military purposes instead use personal gold
6) Make buying regions only possible in your own realm or in realms you are allied with.

- I'm not sure how I feel about the family wealth thingies. I do agree that the leeching of gold from realms to a family can be quite problematic, so in that sense I agree with it. Also a lot of the guys with high family wealth actually never spend it, they just keep it high.

I can attest to the fact that you can funnel a lot of gold through, because I've done that with Oligarch. So in that sense I understand there's an issue, I'm just not so sure about what the solution is. I'm more in favor of changing the mechanics than removing them tbh. (Ps, Chenier, all my family wealth comes from looting rogue DWI lands, we're the new breed of 'wealthy').

7) Make religious takeovers factor in realm sympathy and a bunch of new factors to make it almost impossible to pull off, at least when done on human-held lands. Enable it anew in rogue lands.

- What is the reasoning behind this needing any change? I have not seen a RTO in ages myself. So did I miss something here? And allowing this for rogue regions will just mess up Dwilight entirely I fear. Then priests become the only ones to TO and then the army just marches to defend and we'll see quite some expansions lowering the density further.

8) Remove peasant militias completely: only player actions should stop player actions.

- When it comes to the peasant militia which rises upon arrival due to hatred, I completely agree. I've raged against this for IRL years by now, pretty much since it was introduced. It's a rediculous mechanic which completely ruins any form of fun warfare, especially for smaller realms. As Oligarch we were ultimately unable to leave our capital without facing 6k peasant armies in an instant.... It also completely destroyed the option of looting, which is a shame.

- When it comes to the peasant militia based on looting, I think it should be reduced, but I'm not 100% certain it should be removed. What is the reasoning behind this in more detail?

9) When too much looting is done, instead of peasant militias, locals should run away to nearby regions.

- And will they then return later on in your plans?

10) Convert 15% of all militia units to local population every week. Reduce this decay by 2% per fortification level.

- Right now militia doesn't really leave when they're getting pay. I'd suggest fixing this first to avoid a lot of militia in regions which can't really support it. This should already help. Now what you're proposing goes into militia being much more short term, but that would require some more thought than just this I think.

12) Return the distance from capital radius to what it used to be, if not larger.

- For all I care it's nearly reduced, especially for travelling armies.

13) Add a "Demesne" alternative to lordships, where a region goes lordless without penalties other than a tax penalty or 100% of it going to the communal pot. Referendums don't run for it in democracies. The game has too many regions like Wasteland and the Desert of Silhouettes that don't deserve putting any nobles to them, but which in some cases must be taken for a number of other reasons.

- I liked the discussion on this matter. Now Delvin has some plans on this so I'll react to those in stead:

I like the idea of a more dynamic war, but do have quite a specific question about Delvin's plan:

Realm A has 20 nobles and core regions + some outer regions
Realm B has 7 nobles and a ring of core regions + no outer regions

Realm A attacks B and takes two of their core regions (which becomes an outer region for realm A) and then has to go to refit
Realm B uses the refit to quickly take back both regions (outer regions, so they're taken super fast right?) and they become realm B's core regions again and then withdraws back to the capital once Realm A's army arrives again (possibly attacks some more outer regions from A first)

I'm trying to better understand your plan to see the pros and cons of it, to help also identify pitfalls. Because if it works like the above, it will become nearly impossible to destroy a realm or really damage them once you reach the core regions around the capital.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on March 09, 2018, 08:04:27 PM
A point I've made on the IRC I feel the need to bring up here:

Large hollowed out realms are bad. But splitting large hollowed our realms into multiple small hollowed out realms is not any better. Arguably, it is worse.

The argument around capital radius shrinkage (and by capital radius, I mean the region mechanic, not the troop mechanic, which afaik does not work off the capital) was that it would force smaller realms, which would be more dense, and thus more dynamic. And largely, this is accurate. At least, in places where all realms basically just grow into rogue lands, without competition except from the monster spawns when people grow too much. Namely, Dwilight.

That's not the effect, though, in more dynamic continents, where land is mostly taken from other realms, and significant player migrations between realms have been seen. The effect is actually the opposite there.

Because if you take one large 21 region realm with 21 nobles, and you then tinker the capital distance allowance to force realms to be even smaller, you then end up with, say, three 7 region realms with 7 nobles each. Congratulations, you've made the realm full of smaller realms! But each realm just maintains the same low 1:1 density, so you've done nothing about all about everyone already being a lord and having no reason to expand. Not only that, but if you consider government positions, and duchies, the 21 region realm with 1 duchy had 26 titles to share around. The broken down version? 36 titles to spread around. For the same 21 nobles. So you've got even less competition going on, and even more titles where only 1 candidate runs or, worse, none at all. All while taking that pool of people that could interact with each other and breaking them down into small parts with very few people to interact with.

Small is not always better. And I say this despite historically always having been a fan of small realms, and having had many of my fondest memories in them. But the community isn't what it used to be. And promoting small realms was never about preventing successful dynamic realms from becoming sizable, or at least shouldn't have been.

To Gabanus,

On point 7, I haven't seen an RTO as of late. But it's in the same spirit of things than the rest. Would rather not wait for it to become a problem before dealing with it.

On point 8, because I feel player actions should stop player actions. If you want an army to stop looting you, attack it. If peasant militias due to looting must remain (those due to travel should absolutely be utterly removed), then they should spawn in lower numbers (maximum 4k CS in the best of cases, more typically 2k CS), and they should spawn with the scattered condition, rallying only on the following turn, so that when an army decides on whether to loot or not, they already know ahead of time what forces they will fight. This would eliminate the risk of having a 7k army loot, and after the 14th noble does it, 10k militia spawns: "SURPRISE!". It's dumb, and it seriously limits tactics.

On 9, I wouldn't have them return. I mean, I'd love for realms to have an option to actively move population around, but I'm not counting on it. Looting is supposed to hurt, reduced population is one way to achieve that. The kill count could be lowered to compensate, though. After all, looting many regions in a row would mean population moves back and forth, they aren't all lost. I think it would be too much hassle to script something for a return mechanic, but the natural migration of high pop regions to depopulated regions could certainly be increased.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Ketchum on March 16, 2018, 03:34:18 AM
Quote
3) Bring back wealth tax

Gabanus- I agree with Delvin's view on introducing it, but making it optional.

I like this wealth tax idea. In medieval age, nobles and common folk are expected to contribute towards their countries. Common folk contribute farm grains(food) since they do not have wealth. While nobles contribute wealth or if they prefer fighting, they join the army. In this current time and age, we have income tax where the wealthy are being taxed more than the poorer.

Quote
7) Make religious takeovers factor in realm sympathy and a bunch of new factors to make it almost impossible to pull off, at least when done on human-held lands. Enable it anew in rogue lands.

- What is the reasoning behind this needing any change? I have not seen a RTO in ages myself. So did I miss something here? And allowing this for rogue regions will just mess up Dwilight entirely I fear. Then priests become the only ones to TO and then the army just marches to defend and we'll see quite some expansions lowering the density further.
I remember my character who was a Priestess conducted RTO on rogue lands, it was very long time ago. It is probably the fastest Takeover compared to other types of Takeover. If you wish to balance this RTO out, you can give a % chance where the rogue(can be bandit who govern the small villages) to capture the priest. Also maybe balance on how many numbers of the priest religion followers in that region that can protect the priest from harm after failed RTO. So the priest at the very least must put in some efforts to preach and convert followers in that region before the priest can conduct RTO. We do not want everyone to turn and become Priests and conduct RTO easily, which is the fastest Takeover type.


Quote
Gabanus: 13) Add a "Demesne" alternative to lordships, where a region goes lordless without penalties other than a tax penalty or 100% of it going to the communal pot. Referendums don't run for it in democracies. The game has too many regions like Wasteland and the Desert of Silhouettes that don't deserve putting any nobles to them, but which in some cases must be taken for a number of other reasons.

Chenier: Large hollowed out realms are bad. But splitting large hollowed our realms into multiple small hollowed out realms is not any better. Arguably, it is worse.
A much more precise point here. We have issue where lands more than nobles numbers can support.

Let put a case here for some review. On EC, there is Nivemus. We have many regions lordless. Gabanus know this idea of mine. Now if I ask the Dukes to split up our realm into 2 realms(Nivemus+1 new realm), we are still not any better in terms of regions lordless and few nobles. New realm still has some lordless regions while Nivemus remains same. Now I like Gabanus idea here to penalize those realms with lordless regions. I can foresee people going to abandon their outer lands to become rogue and consolidate their realm inner lands. Perhaps in near future when their realm has more nobles than lords, they will return to reclaim the former rogue outer lands.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on March 16, 2018, 04:49:26 AM
Just to point out: wealth tax used to be a thing. Bankers could set between 5-20% (or so?) on gold and bonds, past X limit. RTOs on rogue regions is no longer possible, it was quickly removed after how easy it was seen to be.

I'm also very reticent with all mechanics that inhibit growth. Growth comes from success, first and foremost. I see no reason to arbitrarily limit success. The solution to having both the "discourage or prevent realms where 100% of the nobles have titles" and the "encourage wars by allowing realms to grow as much as their military will allow it" is to make it so that something can allow for a realm to grow much larger without it automatically meaning that every region taken adds 1 title to attribute. Essentially, a new lordless status. But not as it is now, but one that incites realms to grow as much as possible while also inciting realms to not have more than half of its nobles as lords. This can potentially mean having some of the lordless regions fall more under the purview of dukes or rulers, that, while less effective than if it had an actual lord, is still beneficial enough to encourage realms to go to war for.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Gabanus family on March 17, 2018, 12:37:56 AM
Yeah I remember the wealth tax but Dukes eventually avoided this through personal guilds they used as separate banks. I say Dukes as the main reason wealth tax was used in those days was to counter a hoarding semi inactive Duke whom you couldn't get rid off as half of the time these 'bastards' were royals as well. I remember complicated plots with infils (which often failed). So I'm not sure how much effect the wealth tax would have. Those with much to lose can safely circumvent it still atm.

On the other proposal. This one I love, not just like, but love. I think it would add much more incentive for war and makes realm more realistic as there are too many !@#$ty regions in the game. Ketchum is right about Nivemus. Being lord of just about anything around Oroya and Parm is more a punishmebt than a reward.

Of all the ideas you put forth, this remains my favorite by far.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Constantine on April 05, 2018, 07:05:03 PM
Right now I only have one suggestion off the top of my head.
Buying regions is not a terrible mechanic, it is actually kinda cool. But the way it is implemented does create a leaving-a-bad-taste-in-the-mouth situation where you can just steal a region from under opponent's nose if after days and days of TO you manage to log in earlier than their ruler. This grants an unfair advantage in my opinion.
So just make buying a region a non-instant action. Make it take at least a turn and fail if the region gets a lord successfully appointed in the meantime.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Vita` on April 05, 2018, 08:38:36 PM
It should already be implemented that you can't buy a region shortly after a takeover is completed. I thought.

There's also two methods of buying regions - immediately and at turn, with different risks.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Gabanus family on April 05, 2018, 09:37:11 PM
Not so sure that's already implemented.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Constantine on April 05, 2018, 10:42:51 PM
Well, what are the risks really? You lose some gold and go to jail for a week? If so, those are laughable.
Just don't allow people buy regions instantly. The pay off is just so high while possible repercussions are the same as if fighting in a normal battle.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Vita` on April 06, 2018, 01:22:17 AM
go to jail for a week?
When you get caught trying to buy a region, you go to jail as a criminal just like infils caught in the act, which allows banishments and executions (if previously banished).
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: pcw27 on May 17, 2018, 01:32:24 AM
I have some thoughts on peasant militias.

The original point of this mechanic was to make it more challenging for realms to depopulate enemy regions. It sounds as if the peasants are now way too powerful. Rather than completely eliminating this mechanic which might usher in another period of excessive use of total war tactics it would make more sense to just tone them down.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhault
Post by: Chenier on May 18, 2018, 02:15:08 AM
I think I've stated it already, but I'm of the opinion that the solution to armies completely killing a region's full population is, instead of having that population all rise up to get slaughtered even faster, they instead flee to neighboring regions which will then overcrowded and, gradually, migrate back to the original location. If massive devastation merely moved population instead of killing it, it'd be harder to have zones uninhabitable for ages. While still allowing players to cause somewhat lasting harm instead of something that's auto-fixed within a refit cycle.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Chenier on November 30, 2018, 01:36:58 PM
I would like to reiterate how extremely lame click-wars are.

And how incredible lame it is for 1 dude with a little paper boi to be able to completely undo the work a continent's largest army has spent a week doing.

Corruption is an increadibly unfun mechanic, and it's largely to blame for why I don't like PvP at all anymore, and try to avoid it. You get a handful of privilieged freeloaders, who defunded their realms' mobile armies for years, able to completely undo whole realms' worth of efforts, with nothing but a single click, and barely any risk.

Raising the family wealth limit was an incredible mistake. It should have been halved to 5k, not doubled to 20k. There's really no reason people should be defunding their realms this much.

And please, do something about corruption. It's an utterly terrible gameplay feature.  It should be utterly removed.

But assuming you aren't willing to do that, at least nerf it, please? Getting caught even trying to corrupt a region from an enemy should be an automatic ban from that realm, not just gold confiscation. Big whoop 2k gold was lost, when these defunders have tens of thousands? And cities should NOT be corruptible. It's just game-breaking. Some random rural, okay, maybe, if there's no army around, no lord...? Also an auto-fail for the next week the follows a TO? Just like regions aren't meant to be able to revolt the turn they were taken anymore, at least give the ruler or the elections the time needed to put a new lord instead of turning this game into some increadibly lame click-war.

BM was NEVER meant to be a click war.

But it has become standard in PvP that within minutes of a region being taken over, the enemy tries to corrupt it. It's goes completely against the spirit of what PvP used to mean in this game. It's not collaborative team efforts that dominate anymore when these single-click gimmicks are so overpowered.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: De-Legro on December 02, 2018, 12:18:02 PM
I would like to reiterate how extremely lame click-wars are.

And how incredible lame it is for 1 dude with a little paper boi to be able to completely undo the work a continent's largest army has spent a week doing.

Corruption is an increadibly unfun mechanic, and it's largely to blame for why I don't like PvP at all anymore, and try to avoid it. You get a handful of privilieged freeloaders, who defunded their realms' mobile armies for years, able to completely undo whole realms' worth of efforts, with nothing but a single click, and barely any risk.

Raising the family wealth limit was an incredible mistake. It should have been halved to 5k, not doubled to 20k. There's really no reason people should be defunding their realms this much.

And please, do something about corruption. It's an utterly terrible gameplay feature.  It should be utterly removed.

But assuming you aren't willing to do that, at least nerf it, please? Getting caught even trying to corrupt a region from an enemy should be an automatic ban from that realm, not just gold confiscation. Big whoop 2k gold was lost, when these defunders have tens of thousands? And cities should NOT be corruptible. It's just game-breaking. Some random rural, okay, maybe, if there's no army around, no lord...? Also an auto-fail for the next week the follows a TO? Just like regions aren't meant to be able to revolt the turn they were taken anymore, at least give the ruler or the elections the time needed to put a new lord instead of turning this game into some increadibly lame click-war.

BM was NEVER meant to be a click war.

But it has become standard in PvP that within minutes of a region being taken over, the enemy tries to corrupt it. It's goes completely against the spirit of what PvP used to mean in this game. It's not collaborative team efforts that dominate anymore when these single-click gimmicks are so overpowered.

I admittedly am only fighting in one war, but I have never seen anyone attempt to use corrupt on a region we have taken.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Gildre on December 02, 2018, 04:35:27 PM
You are very lucky then. I have to say, I agree with Chéniers opinion regarding corruption. It seems like every major region you TO, there are nobles without a unit from the other side just waiting for the TO to finish so they can try to buy back the region before a lord gets appointed.

It is annoying when you grind for days doing a TO, and someone is online waiting for 10 seconds after turn change to snatch the region back. If it is kept, I definitely agree that they should be harder to be successful, and DEFINITELY if they are caught it should be an automatic ban, or at the very least give the Judge the option to ban in the same way as a priest arrested for doing dastardly deeds.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Vita` on December 02, 2018, 05:05:25 PM
It is a longstanding TODO to prevent region purchases and normal revolts for a week after a region is taken.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Gildre on December 02, 2018, 08:01:26 PM
Ah! Perfect!
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Chenier on December 03, 2018, 12:04:25 AM
Yea, a week grace period sounds fine.

And yea, I've seen corruption done or attempted on nearly every region we've taken over, plus a number of times my side doing it as well. It used to be something I would say a few times per year, at most, back before I deleted my account. But now it's almost systematic. You see that unitless noble just standing there during the TO, just waiting for his click battle...

Actually, yea, I think unitless nobles should risk capture during hostile TOs.

On way or another, I hate the mechanic.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Eduardo Almighty on December 03, 2018, 07:50:12 PM
So, why to have the option at all? The only place I imagine it will work is in Sirion, the only realm I saw with Lordless regions for weeks...
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Chenier on December 04, 2018, 01:34:38 PM
So, why to have the option at all? The only place I imagine it will work is in Sirion, the only realm I saw with Lordless regions for weeks...

Don't forget Nivemus!

Jest aside, regions occasionally go lordless due to revolts, wounds, inactivity, title swaps, etc. Corruption would still be possible then.

I wouldn't mind it being removed altogether though.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: pcw27 on December 12, 2018, 05:23:37 PM
So, why to have the option at all? The only place I imagine it will work is in Sirion, the only realm I saw with Lordless regions for weeks...

There was a pretty interesting situation when Lapalach took Freke, especially given that he took it from an allied realm. I think it makes more sense as a type of intra-realm intrigue as opposed to a military tactic.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Vita` on December 12, 2018, 05:33:55 PM
There was a pretty interesting situation when Lapalach took Freke, especially given that he took it from an allied realm. I think it makes more sense as a type of intra-realm intrigue as opposed to a military tactic.
Except you can't buy regions of your own realm.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: L. K. on December 21, 2018, 11:04:52 PM
Wars is what makes this game enjoyable.
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Zakky on December 21, 2018, 11:54:17 PM
Wars is what makes this game enjoyable.

And it is the most outdated part about this game beside the government XD
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Hinamoto on July 17, 2019, 04:04:15 PM
Theres more than simple "changes in mechanics" to do, in order to make battlemaster "great again". The ones in charge of the game did everything they could to kick away the players that actually made the game fun to play.

But hey... let people have two characters in the same island again, that could be a start...
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: Fireborn on July 17, 2019, 05:54:11 PM
made the game fun to play.

Sorry that i write here, i got my other forum account locked because Anaris just hates me since forever, lol. I've unpaused my characters, deleted them, and created new ones and not even a SINGLE PERSON in either of the three realms wrote me either privately or realm widely in order to welcome a new noble, and that is what i mean. Battlemaster was great, because it is a great game that HAD great players, people that was fun to play with and that helped new players to understand how great this game is, unfortunately, many or most of them left and some others pushed away.

Hopefully this post does not get deleted, because i dont mean to harass anyone or "insult" anyone but maybe give a different insight of why the game is not as great as it was in the past.

Regards,
Title: Re: Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul
Post by: D'Espana on July 18, 2019, 05:59:20 AM
Yeah, right. First of all, holy mother of necromancy, guys.

Secondly, sure, there's a conspiration of the ruling BM classes dating back to 2010 to drive away all the great players, of which there are none left in BM, not even a single one of them, nah, not at all. I mean, it can't possibly be people leaving the game as they grow older and get !@#$ to do with their time and find no longer any interest or time to play BM properly, plus newer players not arriving in mass due to the well known loss of interest of browser games after their decay caused by the arrival of mobile platforms and the new generations being more familiar with 3d games in their much more powerful PCs and consoles. That must surely be a coincidence, for sure.

Thirdly, I can't comment on the other realms you joined, Fireborn, but one of them was Madina, a widely regarded hub of inactivity where you made a couple of characters over 2 days, not sending a single letter to the realm nor trying to interact with anyone before deleting them altogether. I believe your experience would have been significantly different had you bothered to maybe ask/look at which realms might be more active at the moment (cause you know, turns out different realms have different levels of activity, even the same realm can vary throughout time depending on the events happening in and around it.) Hell, even in those realms you'd have probably been greeted had you just taken the time to write a single paragraph introducing yourself. Who could've thought!

Finally, I would give you a brief summary of the most interesting realms to join atm and why, of which I am well aware in EC, BT and Dwi, where I'm playing right now. However, since your mind seems already made up and you believe there's literally nothing or no one left in BM worth playing for, I don't think I feel like writing it out for you just for my advice to go to waste. Hit me up if you reconsider your position, and if you don't feel like it, good luck and have fun wherever your gaming path takes you.

Regards to you as well.