Messages

466

Development / Re: Feature Cut: Paraphernalia

« on: January 28, 2012, 01:26:41 PM »

Or, hell, we could really simplify things...And just say that you recruit a unit.  You get to assign men to different functions.  So, you recruit 50 troops, call five of them scouts, three of them form a healing team, five of them make an engineering team, ten make a siege team...Or, if you desperately frantically need every man to fight, you call them all back to do so.

That sounds more complicated than the current system to me. :p

467

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 28, 2012, 01:25:02 PM »

If Bloc's functioned like the ones on Dwilight, they never would have been an issue. On Dwilight while powerful, they are also fragile, much like RL power blocs. Under the new system they will still exist, just they won't have that stale momentum that we sometime get with power blocs, where they have existed forever and feel like they would never change even if all the rulers started hurling insults at each other.

You should ask Caergoth (Atamara) how its "stale" alliances are doing. Or Norland... oh wait.

468

BM General Discussion / Re: New map geography layer

« on: January 27, 2012, 11:19:43 PM »

I cannot tell the difference between rurals and badlands.

I generally oppose sacrificing functionality for aesthetics on principle.

469

Feature Requests / Re: Bandits: a new rogue unit type

« on: January 27, 2012, 11:17:28 PM »

Peasants. If you poke them enough.

Oh, and apparently there are "beastmen", whatever those are (Since you can get their blood), and wyverns (ok, no problem), and unicorns since you can get their horns (OMG unicorns!!! Yay! lol)

Or maybe gullible adventurers. 

*Biting lip... don't say it.... no... holding back...*

Ahem, http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Elves

Pfft. Sirionites are just humans cosplaying as elves.

470

Development / Re: Feature Cut: Paraphernalia

« on: January 27, 2012, 11:12:20 PM »

But not if...the army refits in multiple regions. Or if multiple siege workshops are built. In fact, a small realm, with only one city, will have to wait a week, while a large realm can order half the army to refit in City A and half in City B, and be done in half the time. Both large and small realms will be able to build multiple siege workshops to cut the time down further.

Splitting up your army is a luxury that most realms cannot afford during war-time. You'll get defeated-in-detail and have at least one of your regions razed before you can recover.

Money is tight during war-time. "Just build more siege workshops" is not a viable solution. Just building one per city is expensive enough as it is.

471

Development / Re: Feature Cut: Paraphernalia

« on: January 27, 2012, 07:18:30 PM »

This is going to be a kick in the nuts for moderately large realms, Tom.

The refill rate of paraphernalia items would not change much, true, but the "stockpiling effect" would be gone. Demand for paraphernalia comes in spikes, when the army is refitting, and having a stockpile of them to hand out speeds things up.

A siege engine workshop that holds six siege engines can supply six knights immediately. If that workshop can only hold one now, you will have knights waiting for days before they can move out again. One of them has to wait nearly a week.

472

East Island / Re: Ibladesh secessions

« on: January 22, 2012, 04:11:56 AM »

OOC belly-aching doesn't count.

473

Helpline / Re: Regions missing - Beluaterra

« on: January 20, 2012, 11:06:22 PM »

I've seen this happen on Atamara as well. After CE took Strombran city from Carelia, the Carelian region next to Strombran was still listed as "Duchy of Strombran".

It used to be that "orphaned" regions (where the realm lost a city but not an rural region within its duchy) became imperial regions. Newly acquired rural regions also became imperial regions. This seems to be no longer the case.

Right now, orphaned regions stay attached to their original duchies. Newly acquired regions seems to be added to a duchy immediately, even before a lord can be elected/appointed. I don't know what logic it is using to decide which duchy to attach the new region to.

474

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 20, 2012, 01:11:21 AM »

I thought the reason was to make attacker/defender resolution during battles less of a guessing-game for humans.

I honestly don't know how you go about discouraging alliance blocs, short of disabling alliances. Every island I have a char in (Atamara, EC, Dwilight) have alliance blocs. BT had blocs the last time I played there. The first order of business for a new realm anywhere is usually, "are we in a bloc, and if not, how do we get into one?"

I hear FEI is the "lol-so-random" island, so maybe things are different there. Colonies seem to be too small to have significant alliances.

475

Development / Re: Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

« on: January 20, 2012, 12:46:42 AM »

• Cities: 60% population, 80% food, 78% gold
• Townslands: same population, 125% food, 126% gold
• Rurals: 140% population, 180% food, 144% gold
• other regions: 120% population, 165% food, 144% gold

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting Tom's post, but that seems like an adjustment to population, food production, and gold income. The uniform adjustment to "other regions", and giving mountain regions a 165% food boost, is what I'm arguing against.

476

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 20, 2012, 12:42:43 AM »

And for how long did wars suffer on that continent specifically BECAUSE you needed a larger better co-ordinated bloc to even stand a chance?

I may be suffering from selective memory here, but as I recall only Coria and maybe Talerium was suffering from TMP significantly. CE and allies conquered Falasan, and was in the process of curb-stomping BoM when six other reams piled onto CE and its allies.

No, we don't want to drag realms into a massive gang bang because of a common enemy. For all we know the realm has good relations with everyone else IN the bloc, so the common enemy may be an attitude forced upon them by game mechanics rather then reflecting actual politics.

If you have such good relations with every other realm in the bloc, then ask them to kick your target out of their bloc. If they refuse, then I guess you were not such good friends after all.

And your hypothetical scenario seems unlikely to me. Group-think tends to settle into an alliance bloc pretty quickly. People are social creatures and want to agree with their friends.

Do you really see a realm leaving a successful alliance just because some other realm decided to go to war with one of the members and game mechanics FORCE that war upon everyone? I certainly don't. Like I said the likely outcome is people ignoring the war deceleration, or being force to team up against a realm because of over reaching game mechanics.

If an even bigger bloc declared war on your bloc, jumping ship will suddenly look a lot more attractive.

And what's wrong with ignoring a war declaration? Under-the-table negotiations with the "enemy" to stay out of the war de facto seems perfectly reasonable and BM-ish to me, especially if your allies are preoccupied enough to let you get away with it.

Look, we're not going to reduce the number of possibly confusing diplomacy configurations by making the system more complicated.  And if we make things more simplified, the diplomacy system will not be as expressive as before. We're going to have to balance between clarity and nuance here.

477

Development / Re: Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

« on: January 20, 2012, 12:21:37 AM »

Fair enough. I'm just worried that giving mountain regions a large food production boost would turn them into food exporters. Realms which previously imported food would suddenly find themselves with a large food surplus... which may nip a few future wars in the bud.

478

BM General Discussion / Re: So TMP is gone. Are you enjoying all the new wars?

« on: January 20, 2012, 12:00:11 AM »

That would just hurt wars. Nobody would even consider declaring against a member of a large alliance block in that case, since the game mechanics would instantly make them declare war against so many other realms.

Tell that to all the realms that declared war on Cagilan Empire et al. All you need is a bigger bloc than the other guy, or maybe subvert and break down your opponent's bloc beforehand.

You would be left in the position of realms IGNORING war decelerations, or having to march to war because of them.

Sounds like a good source of inter-realm and pvp conflict, and getting mad at your allies for not helping you against a common enemy. I mean, heaven forbid that we drag realms into wars when they don't want to fight. 

And you forgot a third option: Leave your current alliance bloc and make peace.

I'm not claiming it's a perfect system. If the devs are discussing improvements to the current diplomacy system, I figured you guys would want some player suggestions/feedback. I'm just throwing ideas out here.

479

Development / Re: Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

« on: January 19, 2012, 11:52:06 PM »

Any Barca players want to take offense at this? 

480

Development / Re: Population Rebalance and Harvest Change

« on: January 19, 2012, 11:38:54 PM »

We don't balance realm choices. Just like we don't balance so every realm has a net food surplus. It would be impossible anyway as the Dev team don't control where and how realms form. However
 towns are also generally able to feed themselves and produce good gold. At the end of the day region envy is supposed to create friction, if every realm had the same access to similar regions, bang there goes that friction.

Right, so make the regions "more different" then. Make the mostly mountainous realm and the mostly woodlands/badlands realm next to it salivate after each other's regions. Don't make them all the same.