Messages

Save the Colonies?  Well, I guess you took matters into your own hands and sorted that one out on your own, eh Val?
'Cuz I gotta feeling things are gonna perk up around there shortly.  In eight years, not one team landed one troop
on a single Lukonian wall. But I'm pretty certain if they had a pirate or two with them, all that would change overnight. har

I love the idea of magic. How funny would it be if 500 incoming barbarians were suddenly in their underwear?
"There is an odd flash of green light. Your weapons and armor turn to dust. Your troops, not being idiots, turn tail and run away." har

More battles, less results.  Troops should be cheap and plentiful, but it should take scads to even dent a fortress.
City sieges should last for weeks. There should be supply caravans bringing in food and gold. The defenders should
get free troops during sieges. No replacement cost. No solider is going to say, "Well, if you can't pay me, I would rather
the guys that are going to kill us all, kill us all." When the enemy is at the gate, you fight to stay alive, not to make a buck.
Then there could be real battles. The defenders could defend aggressively. Even drive their way through the lines and
march off the counter attack the attacker's city. It should be freaking damn near impossible to take out a fortress five.

We need scope, scale, flexibility, uncertainty, fickle fate. Cut and dried is boring and how the game died.

Rogue regions should heal quickly and return to the nearest fold. No way they would prefer to slip back into subsistence
existence after they had enjoyed the markets, goods and services and culture of their urban neighbors. It is just dumb
that we can kill powerful kingdoms by driving a few regions rogue. Either maintain significant military forces there, or they
pretty much immediately repair their roads and reestablish their trade routes back to their nearest markets. The attackers
made a bit of loot, but the actual damage done is not great or long lasting. If anything, it should cement their good will
towards their local Lords, who do not pillage them and burn their crops. This idiocy of needing to spend weeks to get them
back up and running, when it took a hot three or four days to drive it rogue, is well, it's retarded.  It models nothing and
effs up game play massively. Hard for me not to come right out and call Tom stupid here. Oops.

"You did not answer the verification questions correctly. "
But obviously, I AM a spambot. har
Geez, like a spam bot is going to answer at all. I can't believe there is a right or wrong to that.
Or is the presumption that a spambot smart enough to know it needed to say something there, would
also programmed ethically to provide the correct answer? "Aw, ya caught me, I am a spambot, darn it."

A few random notes in passing (my passing away, that is, har)

I've played most of the islands. The Colonies is hands down, by far, the best.
Now that the travel times have been halved, it is even better. Best people. Best cultures
(as in distinct and unique, where I found pure homogenization everywhere else, all like the other.)

This board was like a walk down memory lane.  So many great and interesting characters
have roamed the Colonies through the years.  I'll add a couple that I didn't see mentioned,
The Mighty Wolfgang and the Noble Margrave. Both enemies, both men of character and honor.

There is plenty of RP. It's just not the fake, idiotic, pretentious, pretend RP of other places.
It's the real deal. Real people saying real things about the in game activities they are engaged in.
But yes, it is true that we have killed so many for so long, that it really is just business to us and
we do not really put the effort into making the passing of our enemies as special as they deserve it
to be. I am completely serious about that. It is lazy and disrespectful, and, if I had it to do over again,
I would try harder to let the corpses on the end of my sword know how very much I appreciated them
being there for me. har  On the other hand, I do not think you will find anyone saying we ever said anything
disrespectful to or about them, neither are we braggarts and buffoons, drunken with self affection.

OT is my favorite realm.  Don't get me wrong. My heart belongs to Lukon, but OT is just the most fun.
There is just nothing you can say to them that puts them off in the slightest and they will always say something
spunky and crazy and in your face and funny as hell, no matter what the odds or potential outcomes.

I like it that the Assassins are allowed to exist and operate pretty much unfettered by the other realms.
Lately, they have been acting more like a normal, land grabbing, out in the open warring, Colony kingdom.
But the idea that all the realms (well, save Wetham maybe) accepted them as an interesting part of life,
said a lot about the unique politics of the Colonies.

I wish they would open that little island (Linden Stones) as a two region realm with a boat or bridge to mainland.
I wish you could go to the Anrak area and find monsters and stuff to fight.
I wish wars were easier to fight and harder to win.  And there was a more complicated battle system for city attacks.
And that rogue regions quickly healed themselves and returned to the nearest fold.  This going around starving out
entire realms without fighting a single battle is just hella, mega lame. No rural area that has enjoyed trade and goods
and markets and the culture of their urban neighbors, is likely to willing slip back into primitive subsistence.

I don't know if it is a secret, and I do not want the "Forsooth Fair Lady..." crowd to even think about it, but again,
the Colonies are the best. A TL can make a mark there and not be lost in the crowd and ignored by the cliques.