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BattleMaster => Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: Chenier on October 19, 2018, 02:31:02 PM
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Name: Dwilight Colonial Master
Summary:
Remove distance from capital penalties on Dwilight
Details:
Dwilight was the Africa of BM, colonization was always in its soul. Back when it was opened, we had the player base to sustain a model of expansion that involved spreading through the wildlands, creating one new realm at a time, and pushing the frontier continuously with more new realms until the whole space was occupied.
But we don't have the player base for that old model, anymore. We barely have enough nobles for the realms it already has, some would argue we'd even be better off with less realms in total.
But the density mechanics combined with the capital radius mechanics have a perverse effect: There is very little incentive for war. Why go fight the neighbor, when the new lands would be beyond your capital's reach, and you'd have a ton of penalties for them? Heck, why attack your neighbor if your realm has already attained the minimum densities the game doesn't want you to go below of?
Hinterlands might help a bit with the latter, but it's really complementary to this idea. Dwilight is testing. It's already the only island with seasons. Maybe we could experiment what it'd be like without the distance from capital penalties for (mercenary) troops and for regions?
Benefits:
Additional conflict, additional things to do for the realms. As it is, the game incentivizes conflict so much, that realms just don't bother. "We've already got all the regions we can hold". "Those regions would be too far, they wouldn't give us anything worthwhile". "The penalties for going so far would make our army completely ineffective".
Dwi has a lot of rogue regions, including a lot of rogue cities. If any realm could sail to take them over, it would certainly FINALLY create a lot of jealousy. "No, WE wanted those regions!" "Well nyuh uh, we took it first!" Successful realms like Westgard and the Lurias could start a colonial rush to secure greater resources, setting up outpost in remote cities, farming far-away lands, and perhaps finally getting some borders with other human realms.
Downsides:
Since this change only concerns 1) region penalties for distance from the capital and 2) (mercenary) troop penalties for distance from the realm, and has no bearing on any other of the density mechanics such as the monster migratory behaviors, the downsides should be limited. At first, it might further dissuade realms from attacking each other, since there will be empty lands to take... but this is both unlikely, and if it were to be, would be temporary as the colonial rush is CERTAIN to create jealousy. Secondly, it'll make some realms more able to project might and bully far-awar realms. Given how little PvP is left on Dwi and in BM as a whole, I'm not convinced this is such a bad thing. And since it's all just a very simple change that doesn't involve the creation of a ton of fancy new mechanics, it should equally be simple to just return things to how they were if we see it doesn't turn out as desired.
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+100
Remove unit morale penalty caused by distance as well.
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+100
Remove unit morale penalty caused by distance as well.
Yea I included this in the request, though I think it'd be fair to apply it only to mercenary units.
Wouldn't mind it halved on normal units as well, though.
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Yes please.
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Less penalties, more fun!
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Yes, and while where at it: reduce the army distance from capital penalty even more for Dwilight, or increase the range where it kicks in considerably as mentioned by Zakky.
Westwards, and onwards to adventure!
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Yes, and while where at it: reduce the army distance from capital penalty even more for Dwilight, or increase the range where it kicks in considerably.
Westwards, and onwards to adventure!
In case this has gotten lost or forgotten over the years, some time ago we linked distance from capital penalty to apply equally to allies' capitals, so if you're conducting a war in support of a friend, you shouldn't have any problems with that particular nuisance.
(I recognize that there are other impediments to long-distance campaigns, and have Thoughts about how to address them, but as yet no solid Plans.)
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In case this has gotten lost or forgotten over the years, some time ago we linked distance from capital penalty to apply equally to allies' capitals, so if you're conducting a war in support of a friend, you shouldn't have any problems with that particular nuisance.
(I recognize that there are other impediments to long-distance campaigns, and have Thoughts about how to address them, but as yet no solid Plans.)
Where mostly talking about heading/colonizing west and away from everything, including allies.
Increasing distance from capital range for these penalties would be particularly interesting for Dwilight.
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In case this has gotten lost or forgotten over the years, some time ago we linked distance from capital penalty to apply equally to allies' capitals, so if you're conducting a war in support of a friend, you shouldn't have any problems with that particular nuisance.
(I recognize that there are other impediments to long-distance campaigns, and have Thoughts about how to address them, but as yet no solid Plans.)
I am not a fan of promoting making too many allies to be able to maneuver through Dwilight.
Also, to even travel through the inner seas, you need to ally with either Astrum or D'Hara due to their locations.
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In case this has gotten lost or forgotten over the years, some time ago we linked distance from capital penalty to apply equally to allies' capitals, so if you're conducting a war in support of a friend, you shouldn't have any problems with that particular nuisance.
(I recognize that there are other impediments to long-distance campaigns, and have Thoughts about how to address them, but as yet no solid Plans.)
First I hear of that. Good to know.
But what I'm yearning for is more the potential to sprawl across the map on Dwi, in a way where access to some strategic ports could very much create jealousy between realms, and conflict. Cities like Golden Farrow and Paisly are likely to interest a few parties. The handling of the north-west, which a few realms use differently, as well.
I don't want rogues gone, though, just looking at more options are we press onwards, and the ability to set up strongholds in remote location in an attempt to fight them everywhere.
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Also:
Make it so that a realm baseline tax can never go below 5% (perhaps halving the size penalties on taxes overall?), and that tax tolerance due to distance from the capital also can never go below 5%.
We need wealth shared across the board, not just in the hands of the ruler/duke/capital lords, which is yet another byproduct of such boons for the capital and debuffs on size.
Perhaps remove the ducal inefficiencies, the one that makes troops less efficient in other duchies, and which means they don't get their taxes in gold in another duchy... because those too strongly inhibit the creation of more duchies and thus the share of wealth.
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Also:
Make it so that a realm baseline tax can never go below 5% (perhaps halving the size penalties on taxes overall?), and that tax tolerance due to distance from the capital also can never go below 5%.
We need wealth shared across the board, not just in the hands of the ruler/duke/capital lords, which is yet another byproduct of such boons for the capital and debuffs on size.
Perhaps remove the ducal inefficiencies, the one that makes troops less efficient in other duchies, and which means they don't get their taxes in gold in another duchy... because those too strongly inhibit the creation of more duchies and thus the share of wealth.
Personally I think 5% is too low. I'd go with 10
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Honestly, not sure where I'd put the minimum, but I will add that having decreasing tax tolerance from the capital only accentuates income disparity, which in turn tends to make some nobles dirt poor and thus unable to properly participate in the game. And/or regions that just can't afford to finance a knight, if they can even finance their lord, which in turn leads to punishments from density mechanics.
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Chenier's got a good point there.
The question we have to ask is whether it is more important to punish realms that get too big or to make it easier for players to play?
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Chenier's got a good point there.
The question we have to ask is whether it is more important to punish realms that get too big or to make it easier for players to play?
Distance from capital was implemented to make it easier for players to play, IE to make it so players in smaller realms had greater chance of survival.
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Distance from capital was implemented to make it easier for players to play, IE to make it so players in smaller realms had greater chance of survival.
When was it put in, though? Before or after the old tax system was scrapped for the estate based one?
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Does it matter? Distance from the capital provides some sort of limit against endless expansion by large realms, and the potential feedback loop that creates. Estates is not a fix, as estates only limits based on characters. Large successful realms attract more characters and thus perpetuate their own expansion.
The question should be, do we want a game that potentially ends up with a handful of large realms per continent, or do we want a game that encourages limitations.
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It is my understanding, from what I have read, that the Devs want fewer realms with higher density to allow for more player interaction.
Boiling this down to the basics, we would have two medium sized realms side by side that could continually war each other over each others lands while the rest of the map is ignored. Allowing for good density and effective player interaction while the balance of the map is ignored.
Better to attack the neighbours poor badlands for interaction while ignoring the empty city on the other end of your realm.
Works for density and interaction, but not a very realistic overall.
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I also believe that the excess spawning of rogues was also set into place to encourage this same density and interaction.
From what I have seen, the excess spawning of monsters has had the opposite effect. It has broken apart realms into smaller areas leaving little chance for interaction between realms. One can not leave their realm undefended so that they can travel through many rogue occupied regions with their entire army to either assist their allies or to wage war on their enemies. The goals of the devs may be laudable, but the path they follow to obtain those goals is, in my opinion, questionable.
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Here is what I think.
Devs: We want realms with higher density
-1 region with 5 nobles is more dense than 5 regions with 10 nobles but will 1 region with 5 nobles be more active than a realm with 5 regions with 10 nobles?
-10 realms with 10 nobles each won't be as active as 5 realms with 20 nobles each. More people in a realm makes it more active. Look at all these small realms with handful of nobles on Dwilight. They are inactive and they mostly only see red letters.
I don't think the perpetual growth model is bad. If you think a realm can grow forever, you are thinking this wrong. Do you really expect a realm that is mega large will manage to stay in one piece? More people you have, more conflicts you need to deal with in order to stay together. Realms will fracture if they fail to solve their conflicts thus naturally creating more smaller realms.
Devs don't want one realm unifying the whole continent because the game was never meant to be like that. But to conquer the entire continent, you need to have a system that can deal with internal issues. With some players looking to always cause chaos, good luck maintaining one contiguous empire.
Also, with BM's capital oriented system, you can't defend your border effectively when you grow too large. Even if you allow people to grow their realm without any limit, they will naturally run into their growth limit. There are roughly 250 regions on Dwilight and even back when realms could grow to 35 regions they mostly held those regions without lords. I think simply implementing some penalties for not having a lord in a region for longer than a week should be enough. Or maybe with Tim's hinterlands idea, it will all be changed.
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Does it matter? Distance from the capital provides some sort of limit against endless expansion by large realms, and the potential feedback loop that creates. Estates is not a fix, as estates only limits based on characters. Large successful realms attract more characters and thus perpetuate their own expansion.
The question should be, do we want a game that potentially ends up with a handful of large realms per continent, or do we want a game that encourages limitations.
Yea, but there are many means to achieve similar results. Sometimes, diversifying is good. Sometimes, it's just... too much.
Mechanics like capital radius and density limits have the players fight against the game. It puts a roof up to which the players can aspire to reach, and then... stop.
Mechanics like recruitment in the capital only modulate how competitive realms are via each other. If there's no player to oppose a realm, then the recruitment limit lets them keep expanding very, very far, until rogues become too much of a hassle, if even that. But against another realm, it'll give an increasing advantage to the losing realm, by giving them much shorter refit cycles.
Do we really need both kinds?
The problem with density was the lack of competition for titles and excessive contentness. Having too many small realms, even if dense region-wise, doesn't help with that problem at all, because lack of competition for titles and excessive contentness is worsened by the multiplication of small realms, because each realm adds a ruler/banker/judge/general/duke/marshal/vice-marshal.
I see the hinterland idea way more promising to help keep title competition without forcing realms to stop expanding and inevitably making the continents look like swiss cheese via the density mechanics like capital distance.
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The only force I know of in game that managed to break all those strangeholds was the Cagilan/Taran alliance that ended up conquering all of Atamara to all intents and purposes.
And we broke that up real good in the end. Too bad they sunk the island before we found out how that little continent-wide war was going to shake out.
My bet is they're just trying really hard to keep that from happening again, which has both good and bad aspects to it...like the bad aspects we're seeing in Dwilight and BT right now.
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The only force I know of in game that managed to break all those strangeholds was the Cagilan/Taran alliance that ended up conquering all of Atamara to all intents and purposes.
And we broke that up real good in the end. Too bad they sunk the island before we found out how that little continent-wide war was going to shake out.
My bet is they're just trying really hard to keep that from happening again, which has both good and bad aspects to it...like the bad aspects we're seeing in Dwilight and BT right now.
Atamara had the same map as BT, pre-blight. And before the third invasion, Enweil had a series of alliances that basically covered half the map. Enweil itself, at its peak, had about 30 regions. And still, BT was the most dynamic continent, and there were tons of wars between every invasion, it never felt gridlocked. With time, may of these alliances fell, and old allies turned on Enweil. Enweil even fought a war solo against pretty much the whole continent at one point. I don't remember how many nobles we had, but given that in the fourth invasion more nobles died than most realms have nobles today, I'd reckon it was a fair amount. Around 60 probably?
And Enweil has many of my favorites memories of the game. When you have 60 people, you have competition for titles. Every title earned was a real victory. You didn't just get something for being the only one to put a vote in the ballot. We had two, and then three active armies at one point. The general title actually meant something. We had a large realm, and rotating armies to defend our South-Eastern border, without exposing our north-eastern border, all while fending off many realms on our western border... it was exciting. And it's just not the same with a tiny 1-city realm. We had Fwuvghor for the North-East, which was mostly secured, but which we couldn't take for granted as Rio could siege it if we gave them the time. We also used it for raiding into Rio. The South-East was rurals mostly, and the main front against Rio (and Alluran I believe), so that was an unfortified choke to deal with, near our capital and largest city, which again, could potentially be sieged if we didn't pay attention. To the West, a bunch of realms were attacking us... We had Iato and Fheuvenem to simultaneously defend, which themselves were surrounded by rurals and woodlands, so they didn't really block the enemy movement either.
Cities were vital parts of the economy, we had 6: Enweilieos, Ete City, Fengen (capital), Fheuvenem, Iato, Fwuvoghor. But they were valid targets, unlike today. Because for one, even if all but one of these cities was on our border, they still ran taxes fine, and gave the realm lots of gold. How much gold would Enweil get with the current mechanics? Probably a tiny fraction of it. Secondly, most of their income went to knights, and thus the mobile army. Not like today where 90% of it goes to militia. And where estate distribution means the average tax efficiency in the realm hovers around 66% Enweil could, solo, siege a city, thanks to its well-funded mobile army. But enemies too, many of them solo, could siege our cities, thanks to their well-funded mobile armies, and overall humble quantities of militia. Rio had 3 cities and rich regions overall. Most of our rivals had about that.
Enweil was *fun*. It was fun to play in. And certainly, a lot of the continent had fun either siding with it or, mostly, opposing it. Sometimes it did great. Other times, not so great. In its early days, it trekked half the continent and waged wars for purely RP purposes: to stamp out tyrannies, and spread democracy. And that's pretty much exactly the kind of behavior that's always said should happen more: realms shouldn't wait for wars to come to them, they should find reasons to create fun conflicts on their own. And if it slowed down a little after those campaigns, again it re-awakened not much later, and triggered massive conflicts with small things like the invasion of Republic of Fwuvoghor.
But at some point, people noticed that some large realms were... not so fun. Stiffling. And that some small realms were... more fun, more dynamic. Small moving parts like the misnamed Ceded City Alliance helped keep continental politics lively. And so it was extrapolated into a broad rule that "big is bad, small is good".
Problem is, not all big was bad, and not all small was good. And that "small", back then, was larger than your typical realm nowadays. I remember when I founded Fheuv'n (IVF), it didn't take very long for me to consider it to have been a mistake, that my new realm was way too small. And that by splitting from Enweil, I had essentially doomed both (well, Enweil was already doomed by the mass deaths and the blighting of its 2 richest cities). And yet, IVF had 17 nobles and 7 regions. Our mobile army was... I don't recall, around 10k I think.
This "tiny miserable non-viable realm"... was more populous, active, and stronger than many of the realms that now live on all of the continents of BM. And it probably would have been even worse off under current mechanics, because we were surrounded by blight, and could only expand linearly, pretty much.
But even before IVF came to be, even when Enweil was still fairly large with 17 regions and at least 30 nobles (40?)... there was almost no competition for most titles already. And this was 2011.
The player decline continued, and it's like the vision of the game stayed the same, focused on the big blocs of AT.
And so... despite the player base declining, we tacked a 1 noble per continent limit everywhere. So on top of having less players per continent, those could have less nobles per player. Now, let's be clear, I think that the removal of doubles was moderately beneficial, but that doesn't mean that we should just completely ignore the drawbacks. So we end up with depopulated continents because of both player trends and dev-driven mechanics changes. But... on the other hand, we are completely ignoring how much the continents have been bled, and keep on hitting them with new density rules. "You should have 3 nobles per region, even if most realms back with more players and double nobles never had that, or else." And "oh, you have too many regions, you should break up into more realms, otherwise nobody gets any tax gold". "You better go play in a realm that has a big city surrounded but smaller cities, because otherwise, your realm will never be rich, because those border regions will have !@#$ tax rates now".
This is all a caricature of reality, of course. The changes had good intentions. And many had positive impacts. But the drawbacks are cumulative. And it feels like they are increasingly choking the life out of many continents.
PvP wars are so much less fun today than they were in 2006-2013. And some of that are the result of the community evolving and the mechanics failing to catch up, while others are the results of newer mechanics always pushing towards the same direction. "Small realms are good". "Realm destruction is bad". "Large realms are bad". "Small border conflicts are good". "Density is good".
It's like... "Yes, but"... You can't code player behavior. Sure, sticks and carrots have potential... but when you start stacking so much of it, you end up with "everyone is condemned to play in a small realm", "realms are impossible to destroy", "large realms are unviable", "the gains of wars are never worth the costs", and "expanding actually makes you poorer due to the combined effects of tax tolerance and estate efficiency".
So many mechanics have been added to help prevent one realm from imposing boredom on the realm of the continent... that wars have become both unfun and pointless. "We could invade the neighbor... but why bother? We'll get distance from the capital issues." "We could war the neighbor... but then we'd just stare at each other from our fortified locations, and never achieve anything meaningful". "We could try to take this region, but then we'd need to sacrifice two knights from the capital who get good taxes, and that region will take ages to produce any taxes at all, only to produce less taxes than those estates even when fully productive".
And that's not just speculative fear mongering. Those are all conclusions that I, and other players involved in conflicts, have come to. That have guided our decisions. And arguments I have seen by many people in game.
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This is actually an excellent example of the problem with large realms. It's not just that they're stifling—it's that they create huge inequalities.
Chénier, you may have felt like everything was dynamic and awesome around the time of the Third Invasion, but being in Riombara at that time, you know what we felt like?
We felt like Enweil was strangling everything, and whenever we talked to anyone else about doing pretty much anything, there was always fear about what Enweil would do or think. And this wasn't even during the time when Rio was actively at war with Enweil, or being cut in half and nearly destroyed by Luz de Bia with Enweil's cheerful backing.
The freedom and dynamism you experienced during that time came at a cost, and that cost was the freedom of the rest of the continent to do what they wanted.
That's why I stand by the principle of restricting the ability of realms to grow that large, even as I recognize that some of the specific measures we've taken in the past (and even some we have in place now) to enforce that restriction are far from ideal.
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This is actually an excellent example of the problem with large realms. It's not just that they're stifling—it's that they create huge inequalities.
Chénier, you may have felt like everything was dynamic and awesome around the time of the Third Invasion, but being in Riombara at that time, you know what we felt like?
We felt like Enweil was strangling everything, and whenever we talked to anyone else about doing pretty much anything, there was always fear about what Enweil would do or think. And this wasn't even during the time when Rio was actively at war with Enweil, or being cut in half and nearly destroyed by Luz de Bia with Enweil's cheerful backing.
The freedom and dynamism you experienced during that time came at a cost, and that cost was the freedom of the rest of the continent to do what they wanted.
That's why I stand by the principle of restricting the ability of realms to grow that large, even as I recognize that some of the specific measures we've taken in the past (and even some we have in place now) to enforce that restriction are far from ideal.
When was BT stiffled? Before I went to Enweil, I was in Fronen. And we warred Enweil and Luz de Bia alongside Riombara. And from Fronen, I don't recall anyone complaining at all. It was a fair distance of marching, but nobody complained about it. Then there were some rebellion shenanigans, and my side lost, so I moved on for a while, namely settling up in RoF. There, we weren't on Enweil's side, relations with them were cold at best. We still had a blast.
And from all accounts I had, Rio was dynamic and engaging. Was there a boogeyman next door? Sure. Did it bring stiffling peace to BT? No. BT never had stiffling peace. Not until rogue became the largest realm on the continent and realms were all impossibly far from each other (now), at least.
Now, the war with Enweil+LdB/Rio+Fronen was already in motion when I joined the continent for the first time, or started soon after while I was still too new to really grasp anything going on, so I don't know who started it or why. But every single other war following that, Riombara was the one declaring war on Enweil. After the third invasion, it was following a direct provocation, with Enweil swiftly conquering Republic of Fwuvoghor, but every other inter-invasion war was really just the continuation of that one. And they were always renewed by Rio, Enweil was always quite willing to put the war with Rio in the past and focus elsewhere.
So who stiffled who? Did Rio have limited paths to pursue? Maybe, but warring Enweil was never an obligation during my playtime, since 2006. And those limitations were due to Rio being an island realm, for the most part... a city choke to the north, and a peninsula with a bunch of chokes to the South. Once LdB was killed and it put a friendly nation there, what else were you going to do? And how was that in any way Enweil's fault?
And Enweil pretty much *needed* to be as it was. Rio was a powerhouse on its own. And with allies like whoever had Eno... that was quite a cluster of cities down in that corner of the map, many incredibly wealthy. Very concentrated. Enweil, on the other hand, all of its cities were on the border. You cut capital distance, and you cut out basically all of Enweil's cities, and basically none of Rio's. A Fengen+Enweilieos "Enweil" would have been pathetic. Rio would have steamrolled it, and then would have been surrounded by allies and the seas. I doubt that would have been a lot more fun.
Huge inequalities are worse than ever. Because now, you've got a select few elite realms, like Obeah (Rio) and Luria and Astrum (and to a lesser extent, Westgard), which with a minimum of nobles can overpower everyone else. Because they have dense rich region clusters. And the other guys? Even if they have a crap ton of nobles, they'll never compete, because the rich regions are out of reach, or inefficiently placed.
Huge realms like Enweil offered a counter-balanced to super wealthy cluster realms, because size allowed them to compensate for lack of quality. When Ete was blighted, and then later Enweilieos, Enweil quickly became a pathethic realm that contributed little to the continent, and got quickly overwhelmed by Rio, which in so doing isolated itself far from everyone, surrounded by seas of rogues.
And now let's go past Enweil-Rio, for most of my BT play-time, I had characters in different realms. One in RoF-Enweil, one in another central or northern realm. Again again, never did I experience any of these realms getting stiffled by Enweil. Even when Enweil was somehow involved, it was all proxy wars. And even that's a bit of a stretch. Old Grehk, Sint, Heen, Bara'Khur, Fronen, Thalmarkin, Hetland, Vlaanderen... they all had a bunch of wars for all of their own reasons. With Melhed joining in a bit later. And except for the numerous times where THEY declared war on Enweil, Enweil mostly had no role in their wars whatsoever. There were land disputes, religious disputes, who sided with what inhuman during the past invasion, and complex diplomacy. But Rio+Alluran alone was typically enough to prevent Enweil from doing anything anywhere else, though Hetland often also joined in to force a flank.
When Fronen fought its neighbors, we cheered on. But we sent them an army, like, once? In all of those years?
So whatever Rio had going on, "big realms are bad" is terrible conclusion to draw from it. Maybe it's a fairer conclusion to draw from whatever happened on AT, but definitely not from BT and Enweil. If ever there was a period when Enweil was stiffling, it was short lived. And as far as it imposing its will in the earlier periods, like the democratic crusades, that's always been exactly the kind of behavior that's been encouraged by the dev team. But to think realms will fabricate reasons to go to war against equal or stronger enemies is wishful thinking. BM has a strong reactionary culture, where the guy that declares war is automatically the bad guy for almost everyone else. Realms that want to dare to start a war need to have the confidence to be able to take on the inevitable gang-bang that follows. Otherwise, what you get is realms posturing during RL years, trying to goad the other realm into being the "bad guy" and declaring war first. To then gangbang and annihilate them anyways. Westfold being the latest example among many.
The old "inequalities" had balance. The new ones don't. Enweil almost got defeated a bunch of times, had the coalition against it been slightly better coordinated, slightly less dumb, OR slightly more persistent, Enweil would have fallen. Instead they attacked us all on their own, attacked us where we were strong, walked into probable ambushes, and quickly accepted bilateral peace accords. That's not an inequality problem, that's a political problem on the Coalition's side. The great thrill of being general in that war was how we constantly defied all odds, by continuously defeating a coalition that had like 5x our CS and economy. And which, for the most part, were all neighbors, and flanked us. Enweil didn't win because it was overpowered, it won because it was well organized, and its enemies did every mistake they possibly could.
But take Luria, and tell me who will invade it now? Or who would invade Astrum? Or who would invade Obeah? or Westgard?
Nobody. Because the game is now hard coded in favor of small clusters of dense rich regions like these realms have. There's no counterbalance. The only way to defeat these realms is to wait for their players to get bored and leave the realm, as seems to have partially happened in Astrum. But otherwise, even with average noble counts, those realms are now impenetrable.
Which is, again, on top of all other mechanical changes that make the mobile army lose potency/importance. Like ambassadors badmouthing the enemy and making every region spawn huge peasant militias. This mechanic has absolutely nothing to do with density... and yet, it still greatly amplifies all of the problems related to it. The synergistic effects are real, and the stymieing power it can have was blatant on EC. Fighting Caligus basically became pointless because of a single ambassador. What do you want to do, when entering a region causes a peasant horde that has more CS than half of the mobile armies? Does this sound "fun"? But even if I dislike that mechanic, if realms were more like the old days, and thus larger with a greater tax revenue, their mobile army would be much bigger, and thus the average realm mobile force would be much larger than this large peasant militia, and thus the stymieing power of it would be exponentially smaller.
I want to insist, though, that I totally understand that there were valid reasons behind these changes. But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In a similar vein, the loss of density led to an increase in individual wealth, and nobles having so much more gold than they used to started generating it's own array of issues. So measures were taken that reduce tax efficiency, so that while the average noble still gets way more than he used to way back, it's not a linear progression.
But what matters more than a noble's wealth is a realm's wealth, and this cut funding for realms drastically. With expenses remaining the same, available income dropped by a far greater % than the gross income drop. In other words, the mobile armies, on the whole, get less gold. Thus, less CS. But something else also made sure they had less CS: the declining density meant nobles had larger units, and large units get less CS/men than smaller ones. So bam, density loss now punishes mobile army CS twice, through completely unrelated mechanics. All while militia CS stays pretty much the same (or even increases, mostly, as now many cities have few knights and know that the mobile army isn't as able to defend it anymore).
The dev team didn't cause the player loss. And it was an impressive feat for them to put a stop to it. But it does feel to me like BT and Dwi, at the very least, are living on burrowed time. The game mechanics are stiffling. There's little to do, and the little to do, there's little reason to do it. People are bound to lose patience. I've enjoyed killing monsters there, it's the most fun I'm having with BM at the moment, but visibly most people don't enjoy it as much as I do. On BT, realms are dying, and we are just droning by, always considering to just give up. Some realms have the numbers, possibly maintain more fun... but how long until they bore themselves, alone in their corners? The most dense and populous realms are basically at opposite ends of the map. And between them, the realms are struggling to even survive. What will happen if BK, Vale, and Nothoi fall? And the other struggling northern realms? Even if 100% of the players of lost realms migrate to those two realms (they won't), then what? Not only are they too far to really war each other, those two realms are friends... allies working together.
Now the devs aren't responsible for all of the changes between 2006 and today. But before joining with Enweil, I've opposed them from various realms. And I still had much more fun seeing them as the vile giant next door, than... whatever it is we are doing on Beluaterra right now. BT was never peace-locked until now. And right now, the peace is mechanic-induced, because a bunch of realms would giddily gang-bang Bara'Khur.
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Sorry for that wall of text... that said, I can't help myself from wondering: how fun was Riombara, after Enweil was no longer around to stifle it? Enweil died in April 2014. Rio died in July 2016. That's 2 years and 3 months without Enweil to stiffle it. Without talking about how Enweil hasn't been a meaningful power since at least 2011, with the death of at least 27 nobles and the blighting of Ete, Enweilieos, and Fengen. Some of that even being in 2010 I think.
I've not played much in Rio, but to my eyes, it always seemed like a huge part of Rio's identity was about opposing Enweil. The other was their republican government and laws. Yet after fighting Enweil for over a decade, when they finally won... soon after they turned into a monarchy, and then were destroyed. And nobody ever attempted to remake it.
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Sorry for that wall of text... that said, I can't help myself from wondering: how fun was Riombara, after Enweil was no longer around to stifle it? Enweil died in April 2014. Rio died in July 2016. That's 2 years and 3 months without Enweil to stiffle it. Without talking about how Enweil hasn't been a meaningful power since at least 2011, with the death of at least 27 nobles and the blighting of Ete, Enweilieos, and Fengen. Some of that even being in 2010 I think.
I've not played much in Rio, but to my eyes, it always seemed like a huge part of Rio's identity was about opposing Enweil. The other was their republican government and laws. Yet after fighting Enweil for over a decade, when they finally won... soon after they turned into a monarchy, and then were destroyed. And nobody ever attempted to remake it.
Note the very important part - to your eyes. This reminds me of Arcaea and other big successful realms, hell it reminds me of how everyone feels about my own realm in M&F right now. It is fun being part of the big winning team. It is generally less fun for everyone else, particularly when you are the target of the big team. This is only really a problem though once the imbalance becomes too large, particularly with the design of BM.
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Note the very important part - to your eyes. This reminds me of Arcaea and other big successful realms, hell it reminds me of how everyone feels about my own realm in M&F right now. It is fun being part of the big winning team. It is generally less fun for everyone else, particularly when you are the target of the big team. This is only really a problem though once the imbalance becomes too large, particularly with the design of BM.
Thing is, nearly all the wars that Enweil was involved in were the result of others declaring war on Enweil.
In all of my BM play time, since 2006, Enweil declared war, like, once. And it ended immediately.
So yea, I have a really, really, really hard time accepting the argument that Enweil was, at least after 2006, stifling to other realms. If anything, I'd argue that Enweil itself was stifled, by Riombara and the ridiculous coalitions it would always mount, because Enweil never got a say in what we would do, past that one time. We'd always be forced to defend ourselves from one invasion after the other after the other after the other. Sometimes, those coalitions would more than double our economic power, and our victories were almost miraculous.
Thing is, you can't really avoid losers in a competitive game. And the mechanics to prevent winners just make it so that everyone's a loser. How fun's the war on EC? How fun are the realms that were forced to secede? Highmarch seceded because Vix's tax tolerance was too low, and it quickly declined in activity after a short initial boost. Same thing in Luria, on Dwi. The game mechanics forced a secession, and then both halves total a fraction of what the unitary realm had. Same thing earlier on, when I split IVF from Enweil. Perleone wasn't having any fun until they recruited dozens of new players to turn on their neighbors. BT was filled with small realms that are just withering away one after the other.
Small is not fun. Some small realms are fun, but breaking a large realm into smaller parts does not make it any more fun, it usually makes it much, much less fun.
There are winners and there are losers, this is a competitive game. But when you just punish victory, and remove all incentives for people to strive for success, then nobody bothers, and everyone loses.
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Do you not understand that perception of a threat can be just as effective at shutting down action as a real threat?
At this late date I can't remember the details, but I remember quite clearly that when I, as ruler of Riombara, talked to other rulers on BT about doing things during the period before the wars against Enweil, at least two of them straight-out said that they didn't want to do anything that might risk the wrath of Enweil.
It's the same principle as the Inalienable Rights. It doesn't matter if you don't include an explicit threat of a ban when you talk about how much you hate people who don't log in at least twice a day within 15 minutes of the turn changes: if you're in a position of power, the fact that you can inflict negative consequences on people who just want to play at their own pace is enough.
Similarly, it doesn't matter if Enweil explicitly said anything threatening to the realms in question. The fact that a) Enweil was a monstrous powerhouse of a realm, and b) we had all seen Enweil go to war fairly recently to force other realms to change their government type told us all that Enweil was a realm that would happily throw around its weight to make the entire continent behave exactly the way it wanted them to.
To be clear, I don't think that "large realms are inherently evil." Nor do I think that we need to have code in place that prevents realms from ever getting large.
What I do think is that the type of restrictions we have, and have had, on large realms are good in principle, and where they prove to be counterproductive in practice, we should change them to be better balanced and achieve the overall goal of the most fun for all.
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I think pretty much everyone will agree, when thinking of their own realm out of context, that they would much rather their success and growth be limited by their own capabilities, than hard-coded limits to what they are allowed to strive for.
The inherent troubles of fighting far from the capital and defending a large territory are the fairest and most fun restrictions to growth. You end up with lots of equipment damage, rations can be an issue, salaries, troop losses from battles, the inability to be everywhere at once, etc. Because these allow players to do their best, and these allow skilled players to shine. IC action and coordination are rewarded.
Hard caps that can only be overcome by OOC actions, like recruiting more players (or multi cheating, because let's not pretend that cheating will never again occur and that these mechanics don't give huge incentives for it), are the least fun. They prevent players from even trying, and tend to just make realms sit contently on their asses, unable to aspire for more, just waiting to wither away.
Large realms were one form of behemoth. But we still see behemoths anyways. Obeah on BT, if you removed the rogues, could still just steamroll everyone, and moreso than ever, because the difference in noble count means the other realms, for the most part, just struggle to maintain a livable core of regions that will both produce a minimum of wealth and feed their capital. If you look at Luria, everyone tells me that it's "dead" since the secession. In Westgard, my greatest fear is that we become "too successful". If we reach a hard cap, I strongly fear that it may demotivate players, and plunge it into a spiral of decay. Less players, a lower cap, which in turn drives more players away, and so on. We've had cycles of various sizes, but at least it was always the result of glorious combat, not hitting an super meta gamey limit on density. But to return to behemoths... the large realms were, in my opinion, needed to balance out the dense realms. Luria and Rio are examples of dense realms, a small cluster of rich and fertile regions that tend to attract lots of nobles and benefit from low distance from the capital. Luria fended off the whole continent united against them, even when they had lost many regions. Rio held its own quite well against Enweil, when it didn't have other realms helping against it. I mean, in a sense, Luria was "stifling", D'Hara could not, ever, stop thinking about the Lurian menace. But... there was also the North. We couldn't even stop thinking about the northern menace. And the Zuma... and the various realms that tried to colonize our islands when we lost regions to rogues. But it was thrilling nonetheless. Same thrill as when I commanded the armies of Enweil against invaders from all sides, in 2009. It wasn't about being an overpowered realm, quite the contrary, it was about the stakes being sky high, and player agency being determining for what would happen next.
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Do you not understand that perception of a threat can be just as effective at shutting down action as a real threat?
Regarding this point specifically, yes I would agree, but I would counter that with the fact that BT was never stagnant for any significant amount of time, and thus would cast into doubt the correlation between realm size and stagnancy, because there are many other things that can shut down action, and indeed that *have* shut down action, creating stagnation in places that don't have any realm with any scope comparable to what Enweil had.
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I fully remember the iron lock that Enweil once held in the diplomacy of Beluaterra. No one dared do anything if they thought Enweil would not approve. And when Enweil marched, entire alliances trembled. And Enweil could decapitate and destroy entire realms with a single campaign lasting a matter of days. I remember well the sudden fall of Fowagher. (sp)
It reminds me very much of the iron lock the Cagilan Empire and Tara once held over Atamara. Between those two and their Federated compatriots, they held something like half the continent and had locked it in a web of alliances that made warfare all but impossible. After all, who could do anything when the top four nations in the world could simply curbstomp them? Not that we were really that powerful towards the end you understand. The rot of nothing interesting to do had set in and even maintaining noble lords was hard due to the falling noble count. And this was when we could still have two nobles. Tara for instance couldn't send out a 10k armor when I became ruler. We would have lost pretty much any war with any of our border realms back then. It took me months and a good general to bring the army around again to be able to do something, but even then it wasn't powerful enough to break a tough city with a major militia presence. Remember...in the two noble time period with months of preparation...we couldn't do that.
Breaking the Cagilan/Taran alliance was probably the hardest thing we players did. And honestly, the Cagilan/Taran alliance had done what was supposed to be impossible. We WON the game of BattleMaster. Over a period of years, we broke every nation that fought us, turned more into federated partners and alliances, and bent an entire continent to our will. It was amazing. And it was devastating to the game. We had to end it to breathe life back into the continent. The continent WAS dying even for those of us on the top. And those on the bottom were probably at least as frustrated as non-Enweilians were in the era of Enweil on BT. So we as players made the OOC decision to break the alliance, put together some IC reasons to do it, and sparked the biggest war seen on that continent in years.
The death of the Cagilan/Taran alliance was as good for Atamara as the death of Enweil was for Beluaterra. It's a shame we never got to see how things worked out for Atamara after all that work...but...such is life. We don't always get what we want. *shrugs*
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I'd say that isn't really the problem caused by large realms at least on AT. On AT, a problem rose when a large realm like CE and Tara became federated allies. And more realms joined over time. Can't do anything when the center of the map is owned by a giant federation when the game doens't allow you to travel too far. Can't meet your allies across the map etc.
I think what the game needs is reducing the effectiveness of having a giant alliance. One giant single realm can't fight a multiple realm alliance unless the alliance is poorly organized (which usually is the case with so many generals having different ideas).
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I'd say that isn't really the problem caused by large realms at least on AT. On AT, a problem rose when a large realm like CE and Tara became federated allies. And more realms joined over time. Can't do anything when the center of the map is owned by a giant federation when the game doens't allow you to travel too far. Can't meet your allies across the map etc.
I think what the game needs is reducing the effectiveness of having a giant alliance. One giant single realm can't fight a multiple realm alliance unless the alliance is poorly organized (which usually is the case with so many generals having different ideas).
The Federation though showed what might be possible for a single realm to achieve if there were not systems in place that restrict the size a realm is theoretically able to grow to. It was for all intents and purpose a single realm.
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The Federation though showed what might be possible for a single realm to achieve if there were not systems in place that restrict the size a realm is theoretically able to grow to. It was for all intents and purpose a single realm.
Hmm I see it differently. With BM's system, you can only have one place to recruit troops from.
What the federation achieved was what happens when you allow multiple places to recruit from in a single giant realm.
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Even with distance in place, on Colonies island, Lukon(include current Portion lands), Oritolon and Outer Tilog basically rule over the island. We understood that better than Tom reset whole Colonies island, we players reset ourselves pretty much.
Then the Colonial Senate stuff happen where we:
-create a few new realms(one realm one city)
-giving Assassins realm monopoly over infiltrators(While trying so hard not to break game rule where you cannot force people to change to other classes from infiltrators. As Oritolon Ruler at that time I even allowed an infiltrator by the name of Himoura who likes to play infiltrators so much, he ended up visit all Assassins realm infiltrators and wounded them all. Good times)
Colonies island has long distance war going on between Aren/Halycon/Oritolon versus Outer Tilog/Giblot. As current Army Marshal of Oritolon, I can attest that I did not even use Mercenary setting as we go from Oritolon city down central south all the way to Outer Tilog lands(Hilly Holes?) to fight battles.
As I understand this request, so next time Oritolon army can travel all the way to Giblot city, maybe plunder the northland of Outer Tilog lands while troop leaders pay little to no gold for not-even-Mercenary setting? Do please correct me if I am wrong.
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I fully remember the iron lock that Enweil once held in the diplomacy of Beluaterra. No one dared do anything if they thought Enweil would not approve. And when Enweil marched, entire alliances trembled. And Enweil could decapitate and destroy entire realms with a single campaign lasting a matter of days. I remember well the sudden fall of Fowagher. (sp)
It reminds me very much of the iron lock the Cagilan Empire and Tara once held over Atamara. Between those two and their Federated compatriots, they held something like half the continent and had locked it in a web of alliances that made warfare all but impossible. After all, who could do anything when the top four nations in the world could simply curbstomp them? Not that we were really that powerful towards the end you understand. The rot of nothing interesting to do had set in and even maintaining noble lords was hard due to the falling noble count. And this was when we could still have two nobles. Tara for instance couldn't send out a 10k armor when I became ruler. We would have lost pretty much any war with any of our border realms back then. It took me months and a good general to bring the army around again to be able to do something, but even then it wasn't powerful enough to break a tough city with a major militia presence. Remember...in the two noble time period with months of preparation...we couldn't do that.
Breaking the Cagilan/Taran alliance was probably the hardest thing we players did. And honestly, the Cagilan/Taran alliance had done what was supposed to be impossible. We WON the game of BattleMaster. Over a period of years, we broke every nation that fought us, turned more into federated partners and alliances, and bent an entire continent to our will. It was amazing. And it was devastating to the game. We had to end it to breathe life back into the continent. The continent WAS dying even for those of us on the top. And those on the bottom were probably at least as frustrated as non-Enweilians were in the era of Enweil on BT. So we as players made the OOC decision to break the alliance, put together some IC reasons to do it, and sparked the biggest war seen on that continent in years.
The death of the Cagilan/Taran alliance was as good for Atamara as the death of Enweil was for Beluaterra. It's a shame we never got to see how things worked out for Atamara after all that work...but...such is life. We don't always get what we want. *shrugs*
The death of Enweil was pretty much the death of PvP on BT. That said, Enweil was dead long before it was removed from the map.
The fall of Republic of Fwuvoghor, in 2008? Don't forget that:
1) Republic of Fwuvoghor had used daimons against Enweil's ally, Avalon
2) Republic of Fwuvoghor was created from a secession from Enweil
3) Republic of Fwuvoghor was clearly aligning itself with anti-Enweil realms
4) It took a huge amount of lobbying by RoF's former ruler, now in Enweil, to march on them
5) Fwuvoghor quickly died because Enweil and Riombara's armies arrived at the same time, but Riombara had been a dumbass about diplomacy and hadn't declared war on Enweil (and maybe wasn't allied to RoF). So Enweil got to start the TO without a major battle. Had RoF+Rio had the walls, it would probably have taken much longer to annex Fwuvoghor.
Now, I can't speak for pre-2006 days, when Enweil had allies like Luz de Bia, Plergoth, Mesh, Avalon, etc. But LdB was quickly replaced by Alluran, which was hostile. Mesh turned hostile to Enweil. Avalon was rarely meaningful for the time it lived. Plergoth got replaced by hostile realms.
Other than for the siege on undefended Fwuvoghor, I can only recall one siege on a city, Rines I think, which took the perfect storm to pull off, and a number of allies (contributions from Avalon and Iro, I think).
So, please, define the "Era of Enweil". Because if it was, like, 2004. Then, maybe, but I wasn't there back then, and it clearly didn't last. CE/Tara federation was nothing like Enweil. Enweil never* (from late 2006 forward) rallied the whole continent to them, or told others to be at peace or suffer the consequences. And even when it was a powerhouse, in those years before I joined, it did stuff like march to Melhed to reform their government system, NOT impose the creation of a grand federation.
Because to claim that Enweil was stifling is to claim that BT was stifled. But BT was non-stop war, between the invasions. Having a scary big neighbor is not, in itself, "stifling". Because otherwise, why don't we just give every realm on BM exactly the same economy and mobile army? That logic would suggest that inequalities are stifling.
But that's not the reality. The inequality pushes the "underdog" to (over)compensate. On BT, on Dwi, elsewhere. Maybe Rio got a few letters now and then from cowardly rulers. But the fact remains that they still rallied a 6 realm coalition against them at one point. And that's without counting the smaller coalitions mounted at almost all other times. And that Enweil killed none of these realms. The only realm Enweil killed, from 2006 to... 2013 I think? Was RoF. And that wasn't really a war as much of an annexation. Declared war, walked in, started the takeover of the capital, won. Just as Enweil declared none of these other wars.
And other than for jealousy, Enweil also spurred action in many other aspects. By housing in a number of active blood cultists, it probably helped drive a lot of hostility towards them, and thus action and war. The Imperial Raiders of Ete, Enweil's third army, participated in a lot of religious warfare with daishist Hetland and hemaist Sint, notably, during those wars. It also served to consolidate relations with the new Fronen, which was also another war-torn state, in some senses a proxy for the northern theater.
Enweil was the driving force of action on BT, and much of what happened on BT revolved around it, but that's the opposite of stifling. BT was the most active and thriving continent. Some of that thanks to the invasions, no doubt, that helped kill many realms and keep things fresh every era.
While the idea of small localized wars is appealing, truth it, it seems more like an idealistic fantasy. Those are rare. Not because players are bad, but because they are incredibly impractical. A realm with 5k mobile forces fighting another realm with 5k mobile forces... isn't going to achieve much. Large realms have been the source of much more conflict and action, both by their direct actions, and passively by inciting others to band against them.
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And honestly, the Cagilan/Taran alliance had done what was supposed to be impossible. We WON the game of BattleMaster.
Wow. The point has never been that's it's impossible to win BattleMaster. The point is that winning Battlemaster is not the point of the game. No one has won Battlemaster because that's not what the game is about and never has been. Claims otherwise demonstrate just how much one misunderstands the game. If it's possible to 'win', then more limits need added to prevent these players from achieving WHAT SHOULD NEVER BE PURSUED IN THE FIRST PLACE.
How much did anyone win when the hegemonic superpowers reduced conflict, crushed people's fun atmospheres just because they could, and drove players from the game in boredom and exasperation?
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From my understanding the CE/Tara alliance was terrible for AT. But I stand by the statement that they are but one example of large, and probably one of the only ones to have results of that kind. Even the other successful nations, like Arcaea... I don't think anyone else really managed to gridlock their continents and force peace. I remember loathing EC and it having many political problems, but I'm not overly familiar with its history. It seems to have had war for most of its history, though, even if it was maybe a repetitive one.
I don't think re-toggling the possibility for larger nations, at at least what they were before, would decrease warfare or fun. I think the opposite, actually. Keep the density limits on lordships, with the hinterlands coming in to yield a 50% gold income (like estateless regions) and no infrastructure bonus (can't recruit scouts, doesn't provide recruits, etc.), and then the trend would be for fewer, larger realms, where there is more competition for titles, more incentives for border disputes, and greater means to wage actual wars.
Dwi and BT could have great benefits from this. EC, I wouldn't expect any changes in the short term. Colonies either, but I'm less familiar with it.
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I also believe that the excess spawning of rogues was also set into place to encourage this same density and interaction.
From what I have seen, the excess spawning of monsters has had the opposite effect. It has broken apart realms into smaller areas leaving little chance for interaction between realms. One can not leave their realm undefended so that they can travel through many rogue occupied regions with their entire army to either assist their allies or to wage war on their enemies. The goals of the devs may be laudable, but the path they follow to obtain those goals is, in my opinion, questionable.
It's certainly had that effect on Ar Agyr. We went from being a realm which regularly engaged across the continent and was developing an active maritime culture to one that's now hobbled to the regions bordering our capital because of the constant onslaught of rogues. We have 11 nobles, 8 adventurers, 4 regions, and a major monster migration route right in the heart of them.
I'm thankful that the majority of our players have stuck with the realm under these conditions because it's not clear to me this situation is fun for anyone (I'm notoriously stubborn about keeping realms alive but even I don't enjoy fighting the same battles every turn with only an occasional sense of progress).
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I fully agree that the "win" the Cagil/Tara Alliance had on BattleMaster was not good for the continent.
And the players agreed in the end.
That's why we broke it up. :)
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But, see, what would have been good for BattleMaster...
is if you had not spent several RL years pursuing and consolidating it in the first place, destroying the fun on the continent (and leading very, very directly to its sinking) just so you could put a little feather in your Internet cap and say "I won!"
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But, see, what would have been good for BattleMaster...
is if you had not spent several RL years pursuing and consolidating it in the first place, destroying the fun on the continent (and leading very, very directly to its sinking) just so you could put a little feather in your Internet cap and say "I won!"
Maybe it should have been treated like war islands? Win, get reset? :P
The thrill of colonization, like with early Dwi, does miss me.
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I wasn't there for a long time.
That said, I don't blame any players for trying to win. I think the players of Cagil and Tara did an awesome job of conquering the center of Atamara and tying up the rest of it in alliances. It was a fun game for them to play and they played it very well. Then there was nothing to do and players started to hemorrhage from the continent.
That was when I stepped up to become Tyrant, looked around with the eyes of a realm leader for the first time, and realized....well...this sucks. We're going to have fix this somehow. And other realm leaders were thinking the same thing, and we started working together to break the Cagil/Tara alliance and start up the biggest war in a very long time.
To reiterate. I don't blame the players for playing the game the best they could. I may wish they had figured out how to fix it after they realized things were broken, but if we're being honest that's not what I EXPECT from players. But a new generation of leaders did manage to work with the remaining old school leaders to break it up after everybody realized something had to be done. We did it. I'm proud of the fact that we did it. :)
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I think Cagil and Tara did great actually. At least half of the continent had fun unlike now where not even half enjoys the current state. I would take Cagil and Tara over what we have now to be honest. This is coming from a person who was on the receiving end of Cagil and Tara. I still remember days of Abington and Falasan because of Cagil.
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First off, its not about blaming players at all. We've all done things that have been beneficial and suboptimal for the game. The concern is more confronting an attitude that BattleMaster was ever intended, or is acceptable, to try to win BattleMaster, and that is something to be congratulated. Willfully ignoring that BattleMaster is not a game about winning, and then doing just that, and patting oneself on the back for it is not a good sign. And I say this as someone who started playing BattleMaster in CE, Cagil is near and dear to my heart. But the whole situation seemed every much that "we had fun while it worked for us even though over the years lots of players expressed concern with the island's direction, and we only realized we need to change when it began affecting us by loss of players" and even now in your argument, that seems to be the case. I'm glad players stepped up to make changes, but they were far too little too late and should've happened years earlier.
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I do agree it should have happened earlier, but I don't blame the players for not realizing it.
They were playing the game the way they knew to play the game and doing it to the best of their abilities.
And those abilities were very great indeed. ;)
Of course the abilities of their enemies were very great indeed as well.
I doubt Cagil and Tara ever would have become as strong as they were if they did not have enemies the caliber of Falasan and Abington that drove them to become stronger to survive. It truly was the best of times in one of the greatest continent-wide conflicts ever seen in the game, and the fact that someone truly did "win" and gain effective control over the entire continent was amazing.
I should have been saved for all time. I'm honest here. It should have been enshrined as one of the crowning moments of the game and saved so anyone could log in and look at it to see just what things were like. The database forever paused and never moving another day so people could pop in and take a look whenever they felt like it.
And then Atamara should have been reset on an active server like every war island ever was when someone WON THE GAME. But that wasn't on the players to decide to do. The admins should have done that. I don't blame them for not doing it either. They kept hoping if they tweaked something they could force the players to change how they played and do something different. But the players were stubborn and didn't cooperate because they didn't see the problem.
I didn't see the problem when I was just another player on Atamara. I didn't see the problem until I became Tyrant of Tara and looked around and thought...well...frak. This sucks. What do we do with this pile of crap? I've always assumed that is why the last Tyrant before me stopped playing. He couldn't figure out what to do. Honestly, neither could I. But I did know one thing after my third day as Tyrant. The Cagil-Tara Alliance had to die if there was too be any future on Atamara.
In the end, we did it. The players broke the alliance and started the biggest war since...well...the LAST big war on Atamara. And it was shaping up to drag the whole continent into it with fractured alliances that were going to blow the kittens out of the rafters.
Then the admins sunk Atamara on us.
I don't blame the players for winning on Atamara. And I don't blame the admins for failing to figure out how to fix it. I do credit the players for figuring out how to fix it with the powers they had bringing life back into the continent.
And I blame the admins for sinking it after the players did all of that hard work. They proved that they would punish the players even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do. And that object lesson was not good for the game. A lot of players left over it and never returned. And that's just a bloody shame in my mind.
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...even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do.
Well, the only reason there was such a big problem to fix was because those exact same players ignored many years—RL years—of nearly everyone else telling them, over and over again, "This is bad! This is a problem! You are killing the game! You are making people stop caring about Atamara!"
But no, you were having fun because you were in charge. So you didn't listen until everything we warned you about came to pass.
The fact that, once everything was stagnant and broken, those players were able to turn around and come up with ways to make them dynamic again is not, as you seem to think, a laudable thing that proves they were Right After All.
What it proves is that they could have made that choice any time, and instead they chose to make things awful for years while they got their jollies.
So there is one thing I agree with you on. We, the devs, should not have sunk Atamara in 2015.
We should have deleted or broken up the Cagilan Empire in 2010.
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They were playing the game the way they knew to play the game and doing it to the best of their abilities.
No. The game, from the beginning and especially more prominently in the beginning, was very clear that BattleMaster IS NOT MEANT TO BE WON.
It truly was the best of times in one of the greatest continent-wide conflicts ever seen in the game, and the fact that someone truly did "win" and gain effective control over the entire continent was amazing.
No, it is *not* amazing to have won and gained control over the entire continent. It's not what was ever intended for BattleMaster. In fact, I would go so far as to say this is a violation of the Social Contract by playing against fellow players to win an island instead.
Also, you probably weren't around for it, but EC from 2003 to 2007 was a much more dynamic conflict than the Atamaran conflicts.
I should have been saved for all time. I'm honest here. It should have been enshrined as one of the crowning moments of the game and saved so anyone could log in and look at it to see just what things were like. The database forever paused and never moving another day so people could pop in and take a look whenever they felt like it.
And then Atamara should have been reset on an active server like every war island ever was when someone WON THE GAME. But that wasn't on the players to decide to do. The admins should have done that. I don't blame them for not doing it either. They kept hoping if they tweaked something they could force the players to change how they played and do something different. But the players were stubborn and didn't cooperate because they didn't see the problem.
ABSOLUTELY NOT. How can it be made any clearer? It was one of the most disappointing, shameful moments in BattleMaster history and should never repeated. Nobody won the game. If anything, trying to win the game caused many people to lose the game by pushing players out of the game due to some players' selfish desire to play against other players in an attempt to win. If anything, these players were not playing BattleMaster, but playing their own game in BattleMaster. The continents are about the living history and are not to be reset.
What the admins apparently should have done is to punish these shameful players for their despicable actions, but it should be noted that claims of 'winning' the game didnt begin until after their dominance was a fait accompli.
I didn't see the problem when I was just another player on Atamara. I didn't see the problem until I became Tyrant of Tara and looked around and thought...well...frak. This sucks. What do we do with this pile of crap? I've always assumed that is why the last Tyrant before me stopped playing. He couldn't figure out what to do. Honestly, neither could I. But I did know one thing after my third day as Tyrant. The Cagil-Tara Alliance had to die if there was too be any future on Atamara.
I'm sorry you as a regular noble experienced such !@#$ty rulers. All the more reason we need to address the !@#$ty rulers still around the game, because I doubt all those other regular nobles know any different than you did, especially newer players being introduced to the game and joining realms ruled by those more concerned about their titles, positions, character history, continental dominance, and 'their' fun, rather that experience a new player receives.
In the end, we did it. The players broke the alliance and started the biggest war since...well...the LAST big war on Atamara. And it was shaping up to drag the whole continent into it with fractured alliances that were going to blow the kittens out of the rafters.
Then the admins sunk Atamara on us.
Actually, we decided to sink it and *then* the players started doing something. Too little, too late. But hey, we need this *same* thing done across BattleMaster, not only Atamara. Maybe not specifically in terms of mega-alliance, but in terms of realms engaging one another actively.
I don't blame the players for winning on Atamara.
NOBODY WON ATAMARA. EVERYBODY LOST ATAMARA.
And I blame the admins for sinking it after the players did all of that hard work. They proved that they would punish the players even if the players did everything right and went out of their way to fix things it wasn't normally in their job description to do. And that object lesson was not good for the game. A lot of players left over it and never returned. And that's just a bloody shame in my mind.
No players were punished for doing the right thing. Players lost Atamara because of all the hard work they put into playing against their fellow players by attempting to play a different game than BattleMaster and trying to win an island. It's absolutely in the governments members' job description to fix it, the state of their realms and the continent as a whole has always been their responsibility. A lot of players left the game thanks to those players with complete disregard for their fellow players and never returned and that's a bloody shame in my mind. Meanwhile, thanks to various changes that included island sinking, the playerbase loss was stemmed and a relatively more positive experience for new players was created. If the players had done the right thing at any point in the years they had the opportunity, Atamara would have not needed to be sunk. Atamara's closure is entirely upon the rulers of that continent forgetting their responsibilities to the game.
Finally, anyone attempting to win BattleMaster is to be adamantly discouraged and shamed. This is not, and never has been, what BattleMaster is about and most of the rules and policies that have been added over the years tend to be specific limits to prevent exactly the attitude of trying to win an island.
In fact, this is one of the core rules from the Social Contract - "You can not win BattleMaster. Therefore, playing together is more important to us than playing against each other. We expect you to play the game as you would play a board game with good friends, and to value fair play above any victory or power. " So as far as I'm concerned, all claims to have won the game are a claim to have cheated and broken the rules.
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I think you are too emotional about the issue here Vita. It was up to those players to choose to listen or not. The game should have limited mega alliances. 5 realms all allied to each other sitting in the center was definitely not fun for those not in that mega alliance.
As much as Tom had hoped to see people play as a group of friends playing a board game, it is not possible for a game of BM's scale. Do you honest believe hundreds of people can be close friends playing a board game? A typical board game is for 1~4 players. Even then you see friends fight and argue. Be realistic here. That rule can only go as far as making people not be an a-s-s-h-o-l-e to each other. It can't make people go 'oh I think our realm has been too dominating. Maybe we should cut back on being too dominating.'. People will always to try and strive to make their realm more successful over others. That is just how people work. You can introduce mechanics to encourage different behaviours but you will always have people trying to win the game.
As for CE dominating AT as being a celebratory moment, well it was for them and not for those out of it. Half of the continent had fun while the other half suffered. It is not really possible to make everyone have fun. I think what Anaris implied in his messages is to make this game fun for as many as possible. To achieve that the game obviously needs to have more activity. But unfortunately game limits how far you can travel and forces you to fight your neighbours. You can only fight the same neighbour so many times before you can sick of fighting them. At least board games have an end goal.
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What the admins apparently should have done is to punish these shameful players for their despicable actions, but it should be noted that claims of 'winning' the game didnt begin until after their dominance was a fait accompli.
I don't think an admin on the forums should go around calling other players "shameful" and "despicable". :(
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I don't think an admin on the forums should go around calling other players "shameful" and "despicable". :(
Did you even notice it was in proportionate response to the disgusting suggestion that violating the social contract was a praiseworthy crowning moment of BattleMaster history?
Most of that previous reply was meant to demonstrate the disgust in like proportions to the praise being rendered for violators of the social contract after my more moderate, reasonable response resulted in continued insistence on blaming/not-blaming and effusive praise for poor player behavior.
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As a player, I'm all about building/expanding. This might actually get me 'active' on Dwi again.
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There's nothing wrong with trying to win. It is admirable in fact.
The drive to win, to outmaneuver the other guys, is one of the things that makes BattleMaster such a great game. It is always in flux, with alliances shifting as time goes and everybody is scrabbling for an advantage.
That and various mechanics in the game makes alliances truly winning the game all but impossible, and I think that is a good thing. It helps to drive the competition to win that keeps all of the continents flowing back and forth and ever changing.
Atamara was one of the few instances where all those mechanics failed to account for one single thing. The single thing that kept Tara and Cagil from ever betraying each other. Loyalty. Pure and simple loyalty. I remember when Tara was Foda and two other regions. That's it. Hemmed in on three sides by nations that wanted us dead. And who stood with us in those darkest of all days? Cagil. Only Cagil. We fought together as brothers and broke back attack after attack and in the end we began to break one enemy after another. Enemies we destroyed or turned into allies. And then we marched on, brothers in arms until the very end. Because no game mechanic, no shifting alliances or drive of personal power or averice, could override the deep and abiding loyalty that Tara had for the nation that had saved her in her darkest hour.
Tara and Cagil together were unbreakable. Beatable? Yes. But their brotherhood was unbreakable and every nation that fought one of them knew, if one called, the other would come with no questions asked. Neither wished to beat the other. And in the weirdest way, neither wished to win over the other. They were brothers, and they stood back to back through thick and thin and no one could come between them. Soon other nations began to realize that the only path to survival was to ally with one or both of them. And as the years passed, that resulted in the lock of alliances that held sway when I became Tyrant.
The fact was that no gentle or ungentle admin pushes, no player connivings, no game mechanic, no nothing could get Cagil and Tara to break up because it just wasn't their story. It broke every bit of their shared history and culture to even consider betraying the other. It was roleplaying and camaraderie at its finest. I don't think I've seen another alliance as solid and neverending as that one was anywhere else in BattleMaster.
It took a YEAR of hard work and consistently higher tensions to drive enough of a wedge between the two to pull the trigger and actually have a realistic and fun story of how that alliance finally broke up. And that was with the rulers of all the realms combined working together to pull it off. It was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I did as a player, and you know what? You know the really tough thing?
I still feel like I betrayed Cagil. We all decided as players that we had to do it for the good of the game. We had to kill the Cagil-Tara alliance. And I still feel guilty to this day that I had to do it.
That is how much power there was in the shared history of Cagil and Tara. They were brothers. Period. End of Line.
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As a player, I'm all about building/expanding. This might actually get me 'active' on Dwi again.
Yea... let's back back to the topic on hand, shall we?
Recent BM history is getting full of examples where realms are splitting with friendly secessions because of ridiculously low tax tolerance. Vix/Highmarch and Luria Nova/Luria Ferrata are fairly good examples. The result is that those otherwise thriving realms have gradually turned into shadows of their former selves.
"Too many realms" is the worst form of low density, because of the fixed amount of titles each realms adds to the continent.
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Did you even notice it was in proportionate response to the disgusting suggestion that violating the social contract was a praiseworthy crowning moment of BattleMaster history?
Most of that previous reply was meant to demonstrate the disgust in like proportions to the praise being rendered for violators of the social contract after my more moderate, reasonable response resulted in continued insistence on blaming/not-blaming and effusive praise for poor player behavior.
Did anyone violate the social contract? If so, did you complain to the Titans? If so, what was their verdict?
And even if someone did something wrong, an admin on an internet forum shouldn't be publicly airing his personal bias like this. How can you claim to be unbiased and impartial after this?
Would you still sit down for a board game if the person in charge of explaining the rules calls your past behavior "shameful", "despicable", and "disgusting"?
If you really need to vent, may I suggest making a throwaway account to do so?
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Tom was still around those days. I don't remember him telling players not to do what they were doing. If Tom felt what CE was doing was so harmful to the game, he would have stopped it. It is his game after all.
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Tom made a lot of decisions over the years that were more driven by dogmatic vision than by what would actually be better for the game.
And attempting to claim that us not intervening in unprecedented ways to stop the trainwreck that was CE's takeover of Atamara from happening means that it must have been OK is patently absurd.
It's a very big step to go from hoping that the people actually doing things will stop and say,
Huh. Y'know, lots and lots of people, including prominent people in the community, are telling me the things I'm doing are wrong and are going to lead to serious problems down the road. Thinking about it logically, I can see how conquering the entire continent would both drive people away because they've lost everything they built in the game, and create an environment where it's harder for new people to get engaged because there's not much going on. Maybe I should stop doing what I'm doing, despite how much fun power-trip fantasies are, and try to make things more dynamic, instead.
...to saying, ourselves,
Well, we've told these people again and again to stop, because it'll cause problems, but they're really not listening. Despite the fact that the strongest intervention there's ever been on this island—nearly the strongest ever outside Beluaterra—is lightning storms killing individual characters, it's painfully clear that won't be enough, because the people that would succeed them are of exactly the same type. Let's upend years of reasonable restrictions on our own powers, and reshape a stable-branch continent according to admin fiat, rather than the players' collective will.
And yeah, hindsight is 20/20, and yeah, we should've intervened.
But no, we shouldn't have had to. Because first, you and your brethren in CE and Tara should have recognized the harm your fun was doing to everyone else's—like so many people were telling you—and done something to change that.
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Hmmm, at what point should a realm decide that it is doing to well for its own good?
Well, we just got our 30th noble and everyone else has less than 20. Maybe it is time to chase off some of our nobles to keep the game fun for those realms that have only managed to attract a few nobles.
We finally have all the alliances that we need to survive, maybe we need to back stab a couple of our long-time allies to make the game more fun for those who are too lazy/unable/unwilling to make alliances.
It seems our realm is larger than any of our three neighbors who are all allied against us. Time to piss one of them off and get decimated by all three to keep the game fun for others.
Really... where does one draw the line?
How many nobles were in CE and Tara? How many nobles were not part of that alliance?
What percentage of the players were actually enjoying/not enjoying Atamara?
Did anyone actually win the game? NO, it stagnated and we all lost a continent to play on.
Not one winner there.
CE/Tara shared a long-time brotherhood that seen both realms grow and prosper together.
To have one or the other break that bond would likely have seen one or both of those realms totally destroyed.
Asking the players to give up that bond at the cost of one or both realms, so that other players can have more fun, is just not reasonable.
I have heard reasons for not resetting the island, but maybe it should be a consideration when a situation like stagnation occurs.
Another possibility could have been huge tornadoes/earthquakes tearing through the island killing any nobles and destroying everything (buildings, populations, walls, much longer travel times, etc) in their paths (partial reset).
A huge tornado 2-4 regions wide that ripped through the middle of CE/Tara lands (and beyond) could have reduced the power base and allowed many options.
A separated CE and/or Tara may have promoted/encouraged the formation of separate realms on either side of the devastated lands.
It would have made both of the realms harder to defend or to co-ordinate offensive actions.
It would certainly have allowed for many RP possibilities.
Players that had nobles killed in the tornadoes may have started new characters in different realms.
We would likely have lost a few players to this solution, but I recall hearing we lost lots to the sinking of the island anyway.
It is human nature to grow.
Would you tell your employer "No thanks, I am already earning too much money. Give my next raise to the poor janitor so he can enjoy life as much as I am."???
I don't believe that realm density was a problem back then, so limiting the size of a realm was not practical.
To be honest, I feel that the current rogue/density "solutions" are also stagnating both Beluaterra and Dwilight.
Other than the adventurer "incident" that was reversed and certain players were punished for their efforts, Beluaterra has not seen any significant conflict since the rogue/density solution was introduced.
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Really... where does one draw the line?
I don't know. It's a hard question, and I won't even try to deny it.
But when you've got significant chunks of the playerbase, including major figures on the dev team, telling you, repeatedly, over the space of RL years, that your actions are detrimental, you need to change them, and you're going to ruin/are ruining the fun of many people, then maybe that should mean something.
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I was still fairly new back then (in CE) and do not recall many specifics, but one of the major concerns was being able to get out of the federation in one piece.
Breaking the federation meant automatic war with each other.
There were hard feelings against each realm throughout most of the other realms of Atamara.
There was justified concern that the split would have seen at least one of the two realms destroyed.
Likely gang-banged by many realms depending on how diplomatic talks were handled.
A one sided battle in the other direction. I guess the other guys would have had fun erasing CE (or Tara) from the map.
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I recall Tom implementing various mechanics, plus threats, because of it. So... woudln't say the titans were idle about it.
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While not taking part in this entire topic, as Moderator I would like to gently remind everyone to keep the discussion civil and friendly.
Thanks.
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Being Taran, I didn't feel anything about being part of the Tara/CE hegemony except boredom. Things eye only just starting to get interesting when the island was sunk, like others, forcing me to split up the two characters I had on that island.
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Unfortunately, many of the things meant to push things into action only punished other realms and left Tara and CE untouched.
The icebergs that hit the north and south and destroyed entire realms didn't twitch us in the center of the map at all. They actually weakened our enemies and caused the Taran-Cagil alliance to be even stronger by comparison.
A giant tornado or earthquake or something crazy like that blew the center of the alliance into dust bunnies actually would have weakened us and given the others a chance to do something. Yeah we would have bitched about it, but it would have saved the island.
Imagine something like the continent-wide stoppage of emigration that has been used on Beluaterra during Invasions aimed at Cagil and Tara. Have a storm smash Foda and all the other border regions to dustbunnies. Randomly kill the second character of anybody who had a character in Tara and Cagil.
Yeah, it would have been heavy handed. But at least it would have been targeted against the nations that were seen as the problem instead of the last few who had enough fighting spirit to stand against us. Yeah, we would have bitched, but it sure would have made things exciting.
Instead, nobody made the hard call until the end, when the players finally made the hard call and brought about a circumstance that allowed all of us to break it up and start a new crazy war. And then the island was sunk anyways.
1) the players shouldn't have been forced to make that decision in the first place.
2) the admins had the responsibility to make something stick to push what needed doing.
3) the admins shouldn't have punished the players after the players showed the moral courage to do what the admins had the power to do but never did.
The point in the end is that sometimes the admins have to make a hard call that nobody will like for the good of the game. They have to have courage to do. They also have to do it in a way that doesn't attack the players. Just say...look...we've got an issue here. We have to change it for the good of the game. Nobody did anything "wrong" by doing it this way, but it had unintended consequences and we need to change things. Yeah, the players will grumble and bitch, but if you say it's for the good of the game and if you don't blame players for playing badly, they'll understand. They'll move on, and look for another way to find an advantage in the never ending competition to outmaneuver the other players.
Which is exactly what we all should do in a game called BattleMaster filled with armies and medieval warfare. ;)
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Gotta stop talking about the ice age. We all agreed it was a terrible move.
I think the diplomacy system needs to be reworked. It is really bad.
I think Vita had a plan to limit # of allies you can have back in the days.
I was actually on board with his idea to limit # of allies to 2 at most.
If we want to continue the current system, there should be some downsides to having too many allies. Maybe reducing CS when all your allies are fighting the same enemy. For every allied realm in the region, reduce CS by 20% maybe? So Sirion, Nivemus, Highmarch and Caligus in the same region vs Perdan and Vix would reduce Sirion, Nivemus, Highmarch, Caligus's CS by 60% while reducing Perdan, Vix by 20%.
Or instead of touching CS, you could also go for increase in recruitment cost. Each ally adding 20% more cost.
Also, provide an easier way to break an alliance. Not from alliance to peace to neutral. More like alliance to straight war. But at the cost of huge honor and prestige drop. Like 50%.
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Gotta stop talking about the ice age. We all agreed it was a terrible move.
I think the diplomacy system needs to be reworked. It is really bad.
I think Vita had a plan to limit # of allies you can have back in the days.
I was actually on board with his idea to limit # of allies to 2 at most.
If we want to continue the current system, there should be some downsides to having too many allies. Maybe reducing CS when all your allies are fighting the same enemy. For every allied realm in the region, reduce CS by 20% maybe? So Sirion, Nivemus, Highmarch and Caligus in the same region vs Perdan and Vix would reduce Sirion, Nivemus, Highmarch, Caligus's CS by 60% while reducing Perdan, Vix by 20%.
Or instead of touching CS, you could also go for increase in recruitment cost. Each ally adding 20% more cost.
Also, provide an easier way to break an alliance. Not from alliance to peace to neutral. More like alliance to straight war. But at the cost of huge honor and prestige drop. Like 50%.
This just makes cities even more stupid to attack.
Remember what it took to destroy Oligarch?
Imagine with these penalties...
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This just makes cities even more stupid to attack.
Remember what it took to destroy Oligarch?
Imagine with these penalties...
Cities are hard to take due to militias. Militia nerfs are already planned.
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Cities are hard to take due to militias. Militia nerfs are already planned.
Until/despite then, nerfs to mobile armies make sieges more difficult, and sieges are already more difficult than they should be.
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I'm not certain I agree with a hard limit on allies, but I can see where it would be interesting. And it could work.
That said, I prefer the gradual idea of making larger alliances less...efficient at doing what they do.
Possibly one way of doing it that wouldn't be a blanket "alliance does less damage the larger it gets" could be a "army is less effective the further it gets from your capital" idea. My first inclination would be to actually have that be a distance from your border idea, but that would quickly be played with by empires asking to "acquire" land closer to the fight so their armies would work better. Making armies less capable the further they roam from their capital would act as an empire-size limiter as well.
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I'm not certain I agree with a hard limit on allies, but I can see where it would be interesting. And it could work.
That said, I prefer the gradual idea of making larger alliances less...efficient at doing what they do.
Possibly one way of doing it that wouldn't be a blanket "alliance does less damage the larger it gets" could be a "army is less effective the further it gets from your capital" idea. My first inclination would be to actually have that be a distance from your border idea, but that would quickly be played with by empires asking to "acquire" land closer to the fight so their armies would work better. Making armies less capable the further they roam from their capital would act as an empire-size limiter as well.
Armies already become weaker as they travel farther. Equipment damage and morale penalty are current major concerns and to top it all off, you have gold issue.
There needs to be a way to deal with mega alliances. Federation should just be removed from the game as it promotes a certain kind of game play that the devs don't want to see. As for mega alliances, it needs to have some serious downsides to discourage alliances that are larger than 2 realms. There aren't that many realms left when you get 2 alliances with 3 realms each. If the game had 20 realms, it wouldn't be a problem, but no island has that many. Even then you will just see bigger alliances. I am not quite sure where the game is heading at the moment to be honest. The devs might clear things out a bit.
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Federations are easier to break than alliances.
Also, please, keep in mind: where are mega alliances an issue?
It was bad enough when the whole game got rekt for the social issues of 1 continent.
We don't need the whole game to get rekt for the social issues of years back on 1 sunk continent.
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I'd like to see federations removed for simplicity and maybe even neutral. Keep war, peace and alliance.
Limit alliances to no greater than 1/3rd total regions as proposed AND treat the disposition of realms towards the alliance, not the member. It makes no sense to question wars against realms you hate. Introduce some consequences into alliances and make the actions of allies affect the perception of those allied nations.
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You don't think the six nation alliance on East is a problem? You might not .... You're in it!
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I'm sorry, but I can't help but read that as "limit alliances to the size of my own alliance bloc". Lurian bloc members demanding a limit of 33% when their own bloc forms almost exactly 33% rings obnoxious to me, doubly so given they were what caused these alliance blocs to begin with.
If there was no problem with a large alliance gangbanging a lone realm, I see no problem with a similarly larger alliance forming in response. Unless you think alliances should not be able to declare war on parties less than 75% of their strength, for example?
Also, yet another "don't fight the war you want to fight" mechanic.
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Limit alliances to no greater than 1/3rd total regions
People will always find ways around hard limitations such as that. You might as well say, make sure every realm can only have 1 or 2 alliances. Any limitations of that sort would just lead to creative work arounds. For example, having an informal block of 4 realms (e.g.) with realms 1 and 2 as allies, and then realms 3 and 4 as allies, with the armies of all 4 rotating in and out of the theatre of war or attacking from different sides.
Artificial limitations to diplomacy don't really work very well.
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At the moment, your ally's regions count toward 1/3 of your region count.
Which is a very nice limitation. If you want to defend yourself, there is no downside. But if you want to expand, you can sever ties with your allies to do so.
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I'm sorry, but I can't help but read that as "limit alliances to the size of my own alliance bloc". Lurian bloc members demanding a limit of 33% when their own bloc forms almost exactly 33% rings obnoxious to me, doubly so given they were what caused these alliance blocs to begin with.
Sorry, Chenier, this proposal's been on the table since long before the current Dwilight status.
If there's any particular situation that prompted it, it's the Cagilan bloc on Atamara.