Messages

1

BM General Discussion / Re: "today we fight back" banner

« on: February 11, 2014, 09:14:30 AM »

I am all for a good message, but the banner covers up important information (what region I am in, how many hours I have left, etc).

And I do not see how to remove the banner, even temporarily, to see that information.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Duchy/City separation

« on: October 28, 2013, 12:54:20 AM »

As far as the capital leaving, again, it's the Duchy leaving, not the specific land. I believe the Duchy would take any lands under it, though, so I wonder if the capital conflicted with that rule and now resides under a different Duchy, still within Sint?

That would have made more sense, but it is not what happened. Fianik has moved with the entire duchy (entire duchy switching makes sense, the lord of Fianik is also the duke of the duchy), but Fianik remains a capital of Sint listed with realm information.

It's even possible for a Duchy to exist without regions, but at that point it becomes just a title.

I believe I saw an example of that, but can then someone explain to me what is the purpose of allowing this? I am fairly certain you cannot form a duchy unless you do that around a city, so why would only creation but not existence of a duchy be tied to a city? Why wouldn't an empty duchy (or even one without a city) automatically dissolve?

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BM General Discussion / Duchy/City separation

« on: October 28, 2013, 12:13:38 AM »

I am very confused as to how the new duchy system works now.
(This is regarding Sint in BT, which is going through a thorough destruction)

The Lord of Firbalt had switched his city's allegiance, but because my character is the Duchess of Firbalt, the duchy of Firbalt remains in Sint, consisting of a few randomly scattered regions, some very far away from the city of Firbalt.  Meanwhile the city of Firbalt belongs to another duchy.

And today, the Duke of Fianik had switched allegiance as well. So the duchy of Fianik is now gone to another realm in it's entirety, but the city of Fianik still lists as the capital of Sint.
I did not think that the realm capital can even switch allegiance because realm mergers are not allowed.

The structure makes absolutely no sense to me. How can a city remain listed as Sint's capital if it isn't even part of Sint?

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East Island / Re: returning after deleting accounts

« on: April 08, 2012, 02:20:57 AM »

The case currently under discussion in Fontan has mostly caused waves because the character who's returned was swiftly appointed vice-marshal of an army by one of my characters who knew him well. If that sucks for people who've joined the realm in the period since the other player deleted his account then I'm sorry, but OOC grievance has no place IC and IC there is no better candidate for the job as has been made very clear to the critics.

I think you missed the point.  It's not an OOC grievance -- it's you using an unreasonable OOC basis to appoint someone.  Basically "there is no better candidate" because you know the player.  I personally really hate OOC appointments that have no basis in RP at all.  The turn-around in positions is slow enough as it is, without OOC appointments

Now recreating the same family name is fine, but trying to RP the same character with same name but with 17-year old noble is just wrong.  For example, he won't be able to command SF forces at all due to lack of honor/prestige, no matter how experienced you claim him to be.

5

Development / Re: Feature Cut: Buying Regions

« on: October 23, 2011, 02:00:15 AM »

I think it is a shame to remove this feature (unless that's beneficial in some background coding way).  It isn't used much, but BM does not suffer from too many features or too many options, so having less wouldn't help.

And with all due respect page2 does not hold as many interesting suggestions for family gold as may seem. 

Running investments on a regular basis. Which can be a tremendous benefit to any realm.

That may be true, but they are not much fun, nor are they of much benefit to my character (except for certain amount of bragging rights of being a major investor).

Using family gold to ransom yourself out of jail. Not sure how exactly it works, but it could basically be a 'get out of jail unbanned' card.

This one is not true.  The family gold option appears on the 3rd day as opposed to the ransom out with cash (if you have enough) that appears on the 2nd day.  So it will be a full day later and double the amount.  The extra cost would make sense if you could do more with it but you can only do less --- it will not protect you from a ban since ransoming out with cash is available a day sooner.

Fame points.

True, but I think this is one time only.  I am pretty sure the family fame will not drop if you spent the fortune.

Getting financial aid from your family

This had been capped so that poor characters who need the gold can't get much (30 gold).  Mind you, the uncapped system was disbalancing, so capping was a right thing to do.  But since only the wealthy contributors (who typically don't need it) can get significant amounts of gold now, I think it is nearly useless now.

- Buying family influence for equipment repairs and entertainment in foreign, non-allied realms.
- Placing a bounty on someone with family gold.
- Moving your family home. (Doesn't that take some gold form you, and some from your family?)
- Higher starting gold for your new characters.

These are true, but as has been pointed out don't require a lot of wealth or cost much.

Personally, I have been looking forward to making a risky bid and attempting buying a region for a while (haven't tried it yet, the circumstances weren't right).  So it'd be a shame to remove it for no compelling reason.  Of course the rigged election idea is a much better mechanism and would be awesome to have.  However, it also sounds non-trivial, so what are the chances that it will get implemented instead?

 

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BM General Discussion / Re: Estate System

« on: July 07, 2011, 08:32:21 PM »

That'll just cause Lords to park their second characters in their region as clones. Hardly helpful. And it would be a rather pointless solution to a problem that is already planned on being fixed when the estate reforms come through.

I am sure there is a better way to allow additional nobles for existing players.  For example, allow more nobles and 3 per continent but with a limit of 1 per realm.  I find it great to play in 2 different realms and could probably play in 3, but even the best/eldest players who have 2 nobles in the same realm regularly send messages from the wrong sender and generally don't do a very good job of separating them.

Well, my numbers might be off since it was over 4 years ago but it worked out to around 50 gold each which, at that time on the EC was the average character income.  And who said building a recruitment center was even on the list of things that needed to be accomplished?

Well, all of my Lord characters seem to be building RCs and walls (where possible).  Perhaps because I got the war-torn regions that were demolished.   As a lord I want to build up my region and the realm needs recruitment centers...

As far as income -- 38 is a far cry from 50.  I doubt that the average _lord_ income was ever 50 (you'd hope to make more than your knights).  Anyone receiving 40 or even 50 gold ends up relying on help from a wealthy noble -- assuming you're doing anything at all that causes you to lose men.  Plus, as had been rightly pointed out, there simply aren't enough nobles.  Getting a 2nd noble is pretty difficult, even when I can offer well above 50/week.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Estate System

« on: July 07, 2011, 08:03:50 AM »

Long story short:  regular merciful courts and about 40 estate points in authority let him/me crank up the tax rate over 20% and keep 6+1 knights with respectable weekly incomes without losing any control or production in the region.

In short:  Inherit very poor barony, add lots of estates, rival marches in both income and vassals, flaunt what ya got

You must have a very, very different concept of what "respectable weekly income" is!
A rough estimate says that running 20% (at 150 gold) gets you ~215 and, 25% gets you ~268.

The 268 evenly divided by 7 works out to average income of 38 gold a week.  While impressive
from a poor region, that's far from respectable income and you also had to run court to maintain
that?  With such income it would take years to build and enlarge a single recruitment center...
(a reasonable infantry center took me 100+300 and needs another 500 to go to size 3)

8

Development / Adventurer Page Refresh

« on: July 07, 2011, 01:26:23 AM »

One of the new changes looks to have messed up the refresh when Adventurer does stuff.

So if I go "hunt undead", the new pages says what happened, but the bottom bar does not
update the hours remaining/fatigue accumulated until I open a new page or do a manual
refresh.  I ended up being a little optimistic in my actions seeing low fatigue numbers

Can we bring back how it worked before, automatically updating the hours/fatigue status
on the same page as the actions happen?

Thanks

9

BM General Discussion / Re: Council Power

« on: July 01, 2011, 09:52:53 PM »

The topic of Dukes having too much power is fascinating - and that is something I strongly agree with.  It is quite possible to evict a council member, including a ruler (by protesting, even if the position is un-electable), but good luck doing that with a Duke.  Oh, and you can also remove most council members by assassination.  To me that says that Dukes have waaay too much power, being mostly immune to this as well.

But let's get back to the original post.
I have long argued that in the council, only two of the four positions have any actual power -- the judge and the banker (probably in that order).  Ruler and general really have none.  There is no gold associated with the position (unless the banker says so).

Yes, the ruler controls diplomacy, but that just gives you the power to seriously damage the realm by drawing it into a war.  Having a big suicide button does not equal to having actual power.  And if your realm-mates realize you are trying that, they can easily protest you out in a moment.

And yes, yes, I am talking about the power of shiny shiny buttons.  And yes, one may have power in the realm by commanding respect and support of other nobles without having any buttons.  But that does not require you to have a position of power.  In fact, you'd be better off having a dukeship position instead (which is subject to less risk of losing it and comes with much more gold), if your plan is to lead through respect of other nobles.

I think it would be helpful to add some additional buttons for the ruler and the general -- because now I would (and have!) chose to be a marshal instead of general any time.  Either to provide these two positions with additional power or at least to make it more interesting to play these prestigious positions. 

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BM General Discussion / Re: Favorite Government System

« on: July 01, 2011, 09:17:40 PM »

Having not been a ruler, I can't speak from ruler's position
I also don't really know what other (notable) effects are caused by the different government system, except for the election frequency.

Even as a knight, however, it is good to have a stable ruler.  They tend to determine much of the diplomacy and realm direction, so a distinct possibility that a new ruler may come to power in a week or two is bad for the realm (imho).

11

BM General Discussion / Re: Council positions and assasinations

« on: July 01, 2011, 09:13:37 PM »

Imprisonment is the strangest of them all.

I think it works similarly to the assassinations (government positions are instantly lost, other posts are kept. Possibly with the same exception for rulers as given earlier for my question)

However, rogue imprisonment strips your noble of *all* positions.  At least on BT -- I have lost both the lordship and the marshal position instantly when captured by rogue.  I guess there are no rogue assassinations to compare this to.

12

BM General Discussion / Re: Council positions and assasinations

« on: July 01, 2011, 06:55:16 PM »

Oooh, except some rulers.  Thank you for clarifying!

You may want to consider changing (shortening) the wounded period for position loss *if* you want it to occur.  I have seen someone lose their position due to wound timeout exactly once in my total 3 and a half years of playing BM.

Young characters recover in a day or two.  Older characters (in their sixties and older) take longer to recover - so several times I heard that they went as far as the first warning that they will be removed from the position if they don't return.  But then they always managed to recover before actually losing a position.

You should be able to check how often people *actually* lose their position due to a serious wound (again, assuming you want this to happen from time to time - maybe you don't).

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BM General Discussion / Council positions and assasinations

« on: July 01, 2011, 06:27:43 PM »

I have asked this question before (several times) and the answer has always been
"A serious wound automatically removes a character from a council position (dukes/lords are immune)"

Has that changed once again in order to mess with the infiltrator class?
It is difficult to take out a council member as they are well guarded, so it takes me a while to collect data points -- but I just seriously wounded the king of Westmoor and he remains king anyway.  Can someone please clarify?

14

Development / Banker can change tax settings too quickly

« on: May 08, 2011, 06:35:23 AM »

This is some combination of complaint and feature request.
As it currently stands, banker can *really* surprise the realm with new taxes, collecting a few thousand dollars before running off somewhere or otherwise transferring the gold to the family.

We just had a banker hike up all taxes (wealth/property) to 25% and set the wealth/property taxable amounts to 1 and 2 gold respectively.

1.  It should not be possible to tax gold in excess of 25-50 coins.  Minimum of 1 gold makes little sense.  A noble that only has 25 gold coins would likely kill any tax collector.

2.  Changes to the tax code should be announced to the realm - particularly the major ones. That's the kind of thing that would start lots of rumors among the nobles.

3.  It shouldn't even be possible to make such a quick change!  In the region taxes, as a Lord, I can only raise taxes by 3 percent every turn.  The banker should be similarly limited to 1-3% every day and maybe even in how much the taxable limits can be changed too (ours was several thousand before he changed it to 1.).