Messages

I thought that as well. I thought I recalled Juan taunting him that only Lords that can't mange their lands and troops required hand outs from the Dukes. A little bit insensitive since Juan had a townsland to call upon. But then since Juan only raised the issue because he was trying to work out who was sending the Ox carts so he could make sure they were paid from the profits he made sending the food on to the city, I guess he didn't have the inclination to write a nice reply.

Also don't get too eager for the colony to go Ramiel, we have been in PeL so long now it is getting harder and harder to want to leave.

Not all lands are equally inhabited. As far as the economy is concerned, there's no problem with draining uninhabited lands to supply the inhabited ones. I'm not making a moral statement, nor saying anything about feeding the earth's modern or future population. Nor am I saying investments should triple a region's food productions.

All I am saying is that the argument that it is not realistic that a temporary increase in funding (an investment) would result in a temporary increase in productivity (more food being produced) is completely fallacious. It would most certainly be realistic that food production could go over 100%. Just as realistic as investments increasing gold output, really. Some people don't think it would make sense for production of food to ever rise above 100%. That normal production *is* the maximum possible production, and that no amount of investments could increase this. That's just not how the world works.

And the limit you speak of is financial, not theoretical. It's not realistic to invest past a certain point, because the reward becomes negative. You could still do it, and seek to improve production as much as possible, but you'd just go bankrupt before seeing exactly how far you can take it. Financial limits are movable, and so things you'd consider past the limit today may not be tomorrow, just as many things they considered past that limit before are now the norm.

Like I said, it all hinges on their being some area or under utlised resource somewhere else that can be aquired for your use. If you remove all financial restrictions, then eventually even those resources will be fully allocated.

No where in the game does it suggest that 100% is "normal production" that I know of, so it is just as reasonable to assume that it is maximum. The fact that we are mostly obsessed with making our regions run at this level doesn't mean it is normal level.

With regards to temporary increases in a field production capacity, I have had some experience with that. The methods we used gave a few years increase, after which the production capacity dropped below previous norms and we had to spend yet more money to repair the "damage" or fatigue that was caused. Doesn't happen in all cases, but there are reasons that farmers do things like rotate crops and let field lie fallow from time to time.[/list]

You guys clearly don't understand the history or technical of agriculture all too much. Production can *always* be increased, but that doesn't mean that the marginal cost following the investments required to increase production are actually worth it. The more you invest, the lower the reward/$, especially at the bigger amounts.

If all rural fields were run like our western fields are, then hell yea, you'd say goodbye to world hunger. However, our insanely-subsidized agriculture is EXPENSIVE AS HELL. Why doesn't a crop field in rural Mexico yield as much as one owned by a big company in the states? It's not because the technology doesn't exist, it's because that mexican farmer can't afford it.

An investment is like buying a tractor. If the extra income you make on selling the extra products this tractor will allow you to produce doesn't equal the amount you paid on the tractor, then you won't be investing in new tractors for long and your old ones will rust and degrade. This is precisely how in-game investments are handled: production is increased to higher levels because of a one-time spending, but if that investment isn't recurring then production eventually returns to normal levels.

You can always have more efficient systems, regardless of available technology at your era, because the normal farm doesn't have access to infinite resources (quite the opposite, really). Your argument about plants is invalid. So what if x tomato plant has a maximum capacity of y pounds per year? Be creative and cross it with other species. You might be surprised by the outcome. You think all these specialized high-production breeds and species occurred naturally? Farmers did crossing experiments for millenniums to always come up with better and better species. With proper founding, one could afford to either do these experiments himself, or pay himself a trip and a few seeds from people who did it themselves. Need more water? The more cash you have, the more pipes you can afford to bring it from farther away, if needed. Need more nutrients? The more cash you have, the more you can import fertilizers from elsewhere.

Production will always grow with the more investment you make. As you go towards infinite investment, it will get closer and closer to a Z value, but it will never reach it. As such, one can keep investing to always increase their production, as nobody has infinite resources to spend. There is a clear difference between this and "we can raise food production to infinite", which you seem to believe I'm saying.

My family are predominately farmers, so while I can see where you are coming from, most of us rural folk accept that there must be some sort of limit to things like water/space/required gases and nutriments. While we have advanced fertilizers in the past, there is no reason to expect that there is ALWAYS a more efficient form of fertilize to develop or that the the world has infinite capacity to produce that fertiliser or water for that matter. While a single farm or group could conviceably continue the trend as you describe, it would more then likely be at the expense of other agricultural areas, as you acquire their supply of water and nutrient supplements. By the way, the world already produces enough food to solve world hunger, the issue is actually two fold

• Rich western nations spend a proportionally larger amount of useful land on products that produce lower energy/nutrient outcomes, such as meat
• Many nations destroy produce/store it or otherwise deny its movement onto the markets in order to preserve a market price point that they want to sell at.

A smaller effect is the over eating that is prevalent in our western world. All those extra calories that expand our bellies, potentially come at the cost of food that could have fed the starving.
[/list]

And if there continued unwilliness to respond is part of a greater plan? Say a plan to enrage our characters and force some sort of conflict that WE initiate with them for a change?

It's both.  If you don't have the setting and framework inside which to be "noble", then you can't have SMA. It's not a medieval simulator, obviously, but there is a definite setting in which we should strive to play.

A framework of what it means to be noble doesn't necesarily require alot in terms of physical settings though. We could for example simply say something like a noble should be (not saying this is how it should be)

• Respectful of the established Hierarchy
• Devout in the pursuit of their religion
• Superior to the Peasantry
• Mindful of their honour and how other percieve it

and have a basic framework without a whole heap of references to real world movements or ideas. To me there seems to be two sides to the SMA debate,

• those that think the RP and Behaviors are the alpha and reference to settings and frameworks function to support them
• Those that think the Setting and Frameworks are Alpha, and that the behaviors and atmosphere can only come about as a function of them

Both parties seem to have the same basic outcome desires, but as they approach the start point differently, you end up with the resultant conflict.
[/list]

. No justifications of "The Greeks did it this way in 300AD" or "the Romans had this in 300BC" unless it was still being done by 700 AD. It also means nothing that was invented in 1585, let alone 1985. And even if it occurred in 300 AD and then again in 1800 AD, if it didn't happen during 700-1300, then it's out. So no Roman war chariots.

The problem here is that many things that people might saw were in ancient times and then resurrected in say the enlightenment period were still present through out the gap in between in Europe. They would however be far less prominent and so the over "feel" that most people who don't specifically study such history would have was they were somehow absent completely. Nearly all aspects of Greek and Roman culture can either be found to have a direct descendant somewhere in Europe, or to influencing to some degree an organisation or belief. This to me is the true current problem with SMA, where is the cut off. Do we just use background that was extremely common, or are the rarer and more esoteric aspects of European culture also acceptable.

[is based on the real world]

This statement could be used as carte blanche to completely blow up SMA; you can use it to justify almost anything you want. Inherently, the concept of SMA means the Battlemaster world is based on the real world. I understand that on BT you have invaders, but BT isn't SMA.

I don't get this view of SMA. The wiki seems pretty clear

"This is our term for roleplaying the game as it is meant to be. That does not mean pages upon pages of text, but rather playing your character as if he were a real human being in a real world. You can be as short or elaborate as you want to in doing that, but try to be realistic.
Here are a few short guidelines, and further down you will find some points in more detail. Remember that all these are guidelines. Every now and then, there is a good reason to ignore one or two of them."

To me this spells out that SMA is all about our characters and how they act. Its about RP. Its not intrinsically about the physical world or the setting, but how our characters react to each other and the underlying principles that we as players base their actions on.

Ziode picked Zonasa. He had offers from half of the continent to join them, and had he picked Cathay, as he was invited there, this war might be singing a very different tune. (Zonasa, Cathay, C'thonia, Aenilia, and letters asking him to return to Kindara to try and retake the throne)  ;D

Wait so you couldn't hold on to your own throne after marching to war, but some how equate being invited to join Cathay as a indication you would have been able to reverse their decision? Was the vote to join the war against a realm that had violated the peace treaties Cathay brokered really so close that one new member to the realm was going to make that much difference?

Well, use your imagination, there are more ways to get gold than through tax days. That said, we looted more than a thousand gold from Astrum, in effect.

Besides, how can you rule out foreign backing from realms to affraid to fight themselves?

Like I said, I can see way of doing it, but personally don't agree with most of them. Its just an opinion. And no, I doubt that on Dwilight, given the military strength the possible realms that would want to oppose Astrum, that such a force could be funded properly from Foreign Backing. I could be wrong, but I have a hard time seeing it.

While Reputation has no programmed effect in the forums, it does have an effect. Just like some people worry about their reputations in RL, there are going to be those people that worry about their reputation on the forum. Those little numbers should be away to gauge how your posting and behavior is received on this board, and allow people to self moderate if they believe it indicates that they are behaving in a way the rest of the forum deems unacceptable. At the moment all it seems to indicate is that you annoyed someone that is persistent.

All these accusations are completely ridiculous, and no self respecting player should believe them.

There is NOTHING suspicious about the number of nobles in Averoth. Before Thulsoma's fall, Thulsoma had 25 nobles, and Averoth had 26, Thulsoma banned about five of them, and executed 1, Averoth lost a few also. The current number of Averothian nobles is derived from a mixture of original Averothian's, 15 of the 25 Thulsomans, some defectors from Astrum and Libero Empire, and a few others from Summerdale and Caerwyn. By sheer mathematics, the number is actually lower than it should be if we are all multiple accounts, and if we were multiple accounts, don't you think we'd be doing better?

As for our fast movement rates, well like Lex said, if you live in Europe, then Turn change conveniently comes just after the time you get home from school, or work, whereas the morning turn change happens before you get up, generally. So late turn moves are far from suspicious, besides which, Thulsoma always had excellent movement rates, and late turn movements, and so did Averoth. If you like, I can copy half a dozen orders from Sextus where he clearly orders us to make a later turn move as possible, or only sends the orders an hour or two before turn change. So to sum up, there is absolutely nothing suspicious about our numbers of nobles, or their movement.

Lets compare it to Astrum, Astrum had 42 nobles before the war with Averoth, now they have 62, that's an increase of around 20 nobles, and Thulsoma only gave Averoth an increase of 15 nobles, and yet it is somehow suspicious when Thulsoma joins Averoth? But not when Astrum gets an even greater number of nobles? Where else was Thulsoma going to go? IC we hate Summerdale, Libero Empire wouldn't agree to our terms, Caerwyn were to complacent, and Averoth was our only ally, the only realm that helped us and defended us, and the only realm that was fighting our enemies. Besides which, Averoth is a genuinely pleasant realm to be in, by contrast the prevailing image we get of the SA realms, is that they are all very bitchy and rude, with no roleplays and no fun wars. There is nothing at all fun in fighting a gang war on a tiny three region realm when combined you control most of the continents wealth and military power, BUT it is insanely fun to fight the fight of an underdog against impossible odds, that's why so many nobles loved Thulsoma, ignoring the epic roleplay, friendly atmosphere and fun players, the war was incredible. It was a heady sort of awesome to be a badass "no nonsense" sort of realm that said to the continent leaders that they can shove their influence up their arse and leave us alone, I can tell you, realms that are subservient in those situations sicken me, but they are also the norm, which is another reason why Thulsoma was at times hilarious, I can remember multiple instances where I and a lot of other members in the realm burst out laughing at some remark or other about continental happenings.

By sheer comparison, Averoth and Thulsoma make for better realms than the SA realms. They have a good sense of community and friendship, they have roleplays and a fun war, and they have players who go out of their way to make you feel welcome and to become your friends. SA realms just seem really grumpy and moody, a bunch of complacent players sitting around doing nothing, never saying anything, until there is a chance of them to have a massive gang war. Looking at it objectively, the war on Thulsoma was utterly pathetic, and so is the war on Averoth, but what's truly pathetic is all the Out of Character griping coming from Astroism, why? Because we're defending ourselves, we're not rolling over and dying. Would you like the war to last a month and be no challenge at all? Or like Thulsoma, a war that lasts over a year and has the biggest battles ever seen on the continent, and has the best roleplay and contributes the most to the continent? It's ridiculous, it really does seem like SA is super pissy because they aren't getting their own way, which is to say, having everything come easy to them on demand.

I was there in Thulsoma when we were actually shown messages of SA discussing how to get Thulsoma banned, it was sickening.

"Oh, they once tried to merge, can we get them banned for that?"
"They claim to be Saxons, can we report them for that?"
"Is their religion a copy of Anglo Saxon  Paganism, isn't that punishable by game rules?"
"They usurped the realm, they aren't allowed to do that!"

And yes, I am not !@#$ting you, these were ACTUAL messages shown to us Out of Character about stuff being said in Astromancy. Did we bitch about it? No. Did we ever resort to OOC insults and accusations? No. When some player in SA, put obvious multiple accounts into Thulsoma to have them rebel, did we do all we could to have all the SA realms deleted? No, we treated it entirely In Character, and if the player behind it is reading, they surely remember that we used their obvious OOC multiple accounting as an excuse to make epic roleplays, execute a Morekian and demand death duels from them.

Thulsoma and Averoth, are better realms run by better players, the best in the game in my opinion. If nothing else, we go out of our way to accommodate friend or foe, to make the best out of a bad situation. Those in Astrum can see that, I got moved to Astrum by a bug, did I bitch about it? No, I used it as a perfect chance to RP and get Astrum to RP back to me, I at least had fun, I hope some of you in Astrum did as well.

If Averoth gets ban hammered for this clear OOC prejudice and lies, then I won't ever return to this game. I am fed up of listening to spiteful and petty players trying to destroy everything we worked so hard to make, the work of years of effort and mutually collaboration just because they cannot get their own way in the game.

I swear this game is rocketing downhill because of some players determined to destroy us on any level possible.

You created a forum account just for that post? Amusing. To me its not that the number of players in Averoth implies multies. It is that the standard game mechanics are not designed for a realm of that size to support that many nobles with a reasonable income. Sure I'm aware of many ways to work around that, but to me and I suppose other players, that is pretty much against the spirit of the game. Like Tom has said, the game is meant to be played as if you are playing a board game with friends.

To me a largish group of players, that purposely play together in realms because they know they are super effective together, who have admitted to attempting to unravel the game mechanics in what appears to be  a manner similar to the worst excesses of min/max of MMORPG games etc is not behavior I would expect from my friends in a board game. Nor is the constant complaints of a OOC conspiracy based on such flimsy evidence. If the devs and Titans had any interest in destroying you, don't you just think they would declare half the realm multies and lock the accounts?

When you have 50 nobles supported by two regions people are going to be suspicious. Some people are going to take those suspicions too far and make unfounded accusations. When you react like a bunch of kids throwing a tantrum, you are simply going to reinforce the idea amongst those that are already pre-disposed to believe it.

I'm just asking for what those basic stand on opposite sides of the battlefield and fight type of battles resemble. I know that such a strategy was not uncommon even in th ancient world, but not all cultures used such forms of warfare due to things such as resources, terrain, lifestyle, etc. Besides, those links provided by Vellos are many times more help than any "This is so hard to answer" comments. Yeah, I get that it's difficult because we're talking about the realism of a game. That naturally means unrealistic...I know. Now let's just get on with trying our best to look at what we have, because it might improve our understanding of the background.

I think people were just trying to point out that for the time period that BM is generally associated with, you are likely to find battle reports that both confirm that style of battle, and dispute it, depending on which conflict we are looking at.

Who cares what part of Europe? As long as it's somewhere in that general landmass. Who cares about what time period? As long as we're talking post-western Rome and pre-firearms. What part of "Find the closest thing to what BM does" is unclear?

Probably the fact that BM tends to be a grab bag of ideas from throughout the period.

A RL colony would generally still have the mother countries Sovereign as their head of state, so its not exactly comparable.

Can they boot out priest though? I seem to remember people complaining about how you can kick out a heretical priest, so as long as the prophet is a priest they are safe from that consequence. Course they could be demoted to a special rank that has a large monthly fee.