BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => BM General Discussion => Topic started by: Medron Pryde on April 03, 2019, 09:20:39 AM
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In the games of Civilization, there is something called "influence." The more really cool statues and temples and cultural things you build, the greater your culture looks to others and the further the reach of your culture extends. To the point that you can surround a foreign city with your own cities until they decide to join you of their own accord. No fighting necessary.
We will soon be entering a stage of BattleMaster's history when we will have "Hinterlands" or something like that, all part of a nation without having a lord. And they won't count against the noble limit so recently imposed. They will be easier to conquer and all that, but taking them will still be an act of war.
What if we had..."influence" poring out of every realm that would encourage non-aligned regions to join nearby realms as "hinterlands" on their own? No massive takeover armies needed. Oh...still useful and something that happens of course. But in addition to that. Every region keeps stats of what they think about nations. Maybe they gravitate towards joining the nations they like the most? Modified by distance and stuff like of course. They'd be less likely to join a nation that recently looted them for instance. And having courtiers do work in that area would stabilize their control so they wouldn't flip easily. But what would you think of an idea like that?
Every single building we build in a region could increase the cultural influence of that region. Granaries would show that we care about feeding people. Training centers would should we care about physical security. Temples and shrines would show we care about their spiritual security. Imagine every single building in a region added together to give it a cultural influence rating that could increase or decrease a nearby region's willingness to join or be part of a nation.
It would give nobles another reason to invest in their region.
And it would provide an interesting new dynamic to the game. Another way for players to compete with each other. Imagine the competition for capitals over who has the most influence over nearby areas. Another stat for empires to measure against others. A crowing point that would factor in everything built up in a nation.
Imagine if winning battles increased your cultural influence. Or losing battles reduced it. Maybe even something as simple as having adventurers wandering around and hunting monsters and undead could give that influence score a boost. People would talk about the rumors of battles in the distance, or the adventurer who walked out of the nearby capital to save little Suzie from that band of undead that used to be her family. Of course they'd also remember that some rich noble came by and stole all their gold and killed off that entire village over by the river crossing. They would remember the festival that took place a week ago. And the jousting and swordsmanship competition that brought nobles from across the continent a month ago. And EVERYBODY remembers the name of the noble who won that competition, and the realm he went home to.
Everything members of our realm did would increase or decrease the cultural influence of a nation. Everything we built would influence it. Distance would influence it. Who cares about the capital a thousand miles away? But everybody cares about the big city a hundred miles away full of market places, training centers, and home to the giant temple that little Suzie's mother and father got married in.
Now this may not be easy to code at all. But I put this out for discussion here to see what other players thought of the idea.
Would something like this be fun for you all to play with in this game?
I know I personally LOVED playing that game in Civilization. And I think it would make for a very cool competition between players that wouldn't include going out and trying to bash each other's virtual skulls in.
What do you think?
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BM is not civilization. Culture is something players will have to create themselves not game mechanics.
However, I feel there should be something to encourage people to create more unique cultures in the game. The game used to have many unique cultures but it feels like for the past 5 years or so, many realms in the game are pretty much the same except a couple.
To allow this, I think the game should really integrate how religions work. The game should allow religious holidays which are chosen by different religions. Allowing different religions to choose different days as their holidays will change how each realm celebrate their culture. The game even has a system that tracks seasons. We can use that to implement this. If there are two religions called "Sun Lovers" and "Moon Lovers", they can choose up to 7 days (BM days) to be their holidays. They can even choose if those days will be separated or be combined to form a long festival.
Each lord can either allow religious holidays in three levels.
1st - Allow all religious holidays. This option will make the region celebrate religious holidays of all religions that influence the region. Depending on the ratio of people in each religion, region production will fall but morale will be boosted.
ex) Region X has 10,000 pop. 2000 are Sun Lovers and 6000 are Moon lovers. The remaining 2000 are pagans. Pagans don't have holidays so they don't celebrate anything. on Sun Lovers' holidays, X's production falls to 80% but morale and loyalty will rise by 20%. While production returns to 100% after the holidays end, morale and loyalty will stay for a few days. They will decrease over time. Same goes for Moon Lovers. 60% production will fall while 60% morale and loyalty will rise.
2nd - Allow the Lord's religion's holidays. The lord is a Sun Lover and only Sun Lovers' holidays are celebrated. This will make Moon Lovers rather unhappy. Pagans of course don't care.
ex) On Sun Lovers' holidays(SLH), Moon Lovers will be displeased. Depending on luck, anywhere from 0~25% of them will be unhappy. Since there are 6,000/1,0000 Moon Lovers in the region, on SLHs, instead of gaining 20% morale and loyalty boost, the region will gain anywhere from 5~20%. When 25% of Moon Lovers are unhappy, the region will only gain 5% while when 0% are unhappy, the region will gain full 20% boost.
3rd - Disallow holidays. If the region is majorly pagan, this won't affect anything. However, if the people mostly believe in one religion, this will make them quite unhappy.
On holidays, filling kegs is free if it is being held in a region with a marketplace.
Maybe religions can declare saints from a list of dead characters to name their holidays after.
Wouldn't mind seeing something akin to wonders. I think each realm should build something that represents them or differentiates them from other realms. Also, to show off to other realms what they can build. But this should be a long term project which requires combined efforts of all its members. Once built, you get an announcement across the continent with some realm wide stat boost to celebrate.
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I have thought about ideas of culture and cultural influence in BattleMaster for a while now, but what you describe here is not something I think I would be interested in implementing. Each region already tracks how much they like every realm on the continent—it's called sympathy (or, for the realm that owns the region, loyalty). And we don't need more ways for big, strong realms to win more easily.
If I were to implement culture, it would only be on a new island or a complete reset (probably not the South Island, because the idea doesn't go too well with its War Island nature), and it would be giving culture to the peasants and minor nobility—or rather, cultures. Several distinct native cultures, with nobles created on the island having the option to come from one of them or not, shifting as populations shift, having greater or lesser affinity for the realms on the island. Ideally, it would (somewhat as Zakky suggests) go along with an overhauled idea of religion, one that is much less player-driven, such that each culture has opinions on each religion.
That would provide an organic basis for conflict between player desires and the wants and needs of the NPCs they rule, something much more interesting than just another stat to maximize by doing what they already want to do.
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The basic idea as I had it wouldn't help large realms actually.
Well, it COULD depending on how some of the stuff was handled. But I assume we wouldn't go that way.
And yes, I was assuming we would use the existing sympathy/loyalty stats for this that regions already have.
The most basic look at my idea would be to say that every region looks at the regions around it to see what they are like.
Region A borders two regions. Region A is rogue.
Region B belongs to Realm 1. It has recruitment centers, a granary, a scouts guild, a large temple, and numerous shrines.
Region C belongs to Realm 2. It has a single recruitment center and one shrine.
Region B is pretty nice, so Region A's sympathy for Realm 1 goes up, increasing the chance of them automatically choosing to join Realm 1.
Now Realm 1 and Realm 2 have been at war for a while, and there have been several battles in Region A. Realm 2 has won most of those battles, which increases their sympathy towards Realm 2. But there's been a lot of devastation caused by these fights, reducing the sympathy held for BOTH nations.
Now add Region D to the mix, belonging to Realm 3. It is a townsland with a marketplace, several recruitment centers, several granaries, a massive temple, and multiple shrines. Realm 3 has not been fighting in Region A. They are profoundly neutral and have done nothing at all to hurt the people of Region A. They in fact look like a calm in the storm that is battering Region A from both sides. They are scoring a perfect 10 on the sympathy rating. Region A is desperate from some peace and quiet and nobody is giving it to them, the RNG rolls high at the turn change, and they join Realm 3 in hopes that the nice guys will protect them from both of the other nasty bad guys.
Which leaves Realm 3 in the position of having to decide if they want to get involved in the fight, or leave Realm 1 and 2 to plow each other over Region A. Or force them to take a different route in their fighting.
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Why would recruitment centers, scout guilds, temples, and shrines matter to determine how the nearby regions' people think of that region/realm? They aren't exactly there to serve the peasants (unless they are of the specific religion those temples and shrines belong to, in which case you can use its levels instead).
Aside from that, though, pretty much everything you mention either is the case now or has been at some time in the not-too-distant past (regions revolting to other realms from rogue is not, I think, currently possible, but it was a few years ago). It mostly frustrated players when regions would join realms apparently at random like that. I can recall hearing of maybe one or two cases where the equivalent of your Realm 3 actually tried to keep their Region D and play politics around it; mostly, they either just willingly gave it up, or got war declared on them by at least one side in the pre-existing conflict before they could even take a position.
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Recruitment centers show that the noble leaders are concerned with the protection of the realm. Also job prospects.
Scouts centers and healers would do the same when it comes to jobs.
Temples would show a concern for spiritual health.
Basically, every single building would show a dedication to bettering the lot of the commoners by giving them jobs or opportunities they otherwise would not have.
And that would make neighboring regions look more favorably upon those regions as someone they might want to get closer to. And by extension, the realm that protects them.