Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Foxglove

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 21
1
Helpline / Re: Food consumption
« on: September 28, 2019, 01:35:00 PM »
realms that have some sort of a surpluss, like TG :D

Tol Goldora could always sell their surplus to them anyway. There's a poetic beauty in getting gold for their war effort from selling food to their enemies  ;D

Tol Goldora's food production raises further questions, though. Is there something broken or imbalanced in the monster/undead spawn code on Dwilight that allows TG to produce so much? The only reason Westgard struggles for food is because NPCs numbering in the tens of thousands of total CS constantly attack its regions. In comparison, TG which is just a short distance south, appears to suffer little to no attention from the NPCs nor the NPC disruption to its food supplies.

Viewed objectively, there are few explanations for this just based on realm. Westgard and Tol Goldora have roughly the same number of regions, roughly the same density, and probably roughly the same estate distribution. Yet Westgard is hammered by NPCs and Tol Goldora isn't. That suggests something odd is going on with the code that's possibly specific to the far north of the western land mass (too many NPCs) or possibly specific to the more central area of the western land mass (too few NPCs).

2
Helpline / Re: Food consumption
« on: September 28, 2019, 03:07:24 AM »
The vast majority of realms on Dwilight struggle for food, with several being on the brink of starvation every winter. If something is broken, I dread to think what the situation would be like if supplies/penalties were worse.

3
I think limiting the size of large realms is riskly. Particularly a limit set at 25, which I believe would be too low. In most cases, there's a reason why the large realms are large. Players in them work hard to create welcoming atmospheres and help new arrivals - which is exactly the sort of environment you want new players to be entering to help with retention. The large realms are the realms that are doing something right. Blocking players out of them would be totally counter intuitive as they're the successful realms. In particular, forcing brand new players to join tiny realms that might be as dull as ditch water isn't a great idea.

Also, if you put a cap on the total number of nobles in a realm, before very long you'll see an epidemic of non-warrior classes disappearing. If you can only have 'X' number of nobles in your realm, warrior will become the essential class, because only warriors can secure the future of a realm. As far as I picked up from general chat, the introduction of the one character per island rule led to many people abandoning playing as courtiers, diplomats, and priests. Introducing another factor that encourages people even more to ditch these classes wouldn't be great.

The thing about the 'behemoths are negative for the game' argument is that Atamara is always held up as the disaster story. However, the Cagilan Empire has always been atypical. There have been many huge realms in the history of the game, and only the Cagilan Empire was really so dominant that it fatally damaged an island (although there is also an argument to be made that the Arcean Empire did the same in the Far East, there were exceptional circumstances around the Ice Age that influenced their dominance). This sort of behavior is the exception rather than the rule.

That being said, I wasn't ever advocating massive realms being created through untamed mergers. What I actually said is that if you think that around 25 to 30 nobles in a realm is a healthy number to try to encourage reasonable levels of interaction, every island can only really support in the region of 5 to 6 realms as a maximum. There just aren't enough players to support more realms than that and avoid having loads of realms with fewer than 15 nobles (which is apparently the level at which a realm is deemed too small to exist).

4
Trying to force people to do things through code changes that punish them for not going in the 'right' direction never works in this game. Punishing small realms will only create more disgruntled and unhappy players, just like things such as the ice age and Too Much Peace did in the past.

If you want more active, engaged, realms where people interact more, it comes down to a rather simple logistics problem. Generally speaking, the more players you have in a realm, the more likely it is for the realm to have more interactions and be interesting (although this isn't always true).

But, let's assume we think big realms are good and small realms are bad (which is the main thrust of what's said here). If this is the case, the realm merger rules are sending out mixed messages. Realms can merge, but only if the end-result merged realm doesn't end up being too big. The theory being that a large merged realm could come to dominate an island. The reason this is the wrong approach is because if two realms merge to create a large realm that can dominate an island, it would then actually encourage other realms to merge to create further merged realms to rival the size of the dominant merged realm. You can't say, on the one hand, we want big realms with more players in them. But then, on the other hand, say we don't want people to create big realms through the 'wrong sized' mergers.

If you want to see an end to small realms, just allow realms to merge regardless of their existing size and then let nature take its course. Fears of all islands being dominated by two or three monolithic realms are probably unfounded because it doesn't take in to account internal conflicts creating splits. However, even if most islands did end up with (let's say) four realms, why is that a problem? As long as they're roughly equal in size, wars will still happen. Frankly, based on the current player numbers, most islands could only really sustain about 5 or 6 realms (at the very most) with a decent number of nobles in each realm. Four realms on an island with 50 nobles in each of those four realms would probably be a decent result.

Equally, if you want to reduce the number of small realms, you have to ease the pain players in those realms experience in letting them go. People become hugely emotionally attached to their realms, which is both a beautiful thing about BM, but also its curse. Again, instead of hitting small realms with penalties for being small, give them incentives to encourage them to merge. On a simple level, introduce Duchy banners so that if a small realm merges with a larger realm, they can keep the banner of their lost realm as a Duchy banner. This may just be cosmetic fluff, but most of the things about realms are cosmetic. Also, when they merge, allow them to take a certain number of recruitment centers with them to be rebuilt in the new merged realm (i.e. a Dev manually moves an existing recruitment centers in a region that's going to be lost over to a region that will be in the merged realm). Basically, allow them to take as much with them from their old realm to the new merged realm as possible. Nothing can be done about the sentimental attachments to specific locations on the maps, but things can be done to preserve other things associated with the 'vanishing' realm. Let them take everything they possibly can to the new merged realm so they feel their lost realm is just relocating and not dying.

At any rate, encouragement and incentives are the way to go. Not punishments and penalties.

5
BM General Discussion / Re: This not medieval role play game
« on: July 25, 2019, 02:53:15 PM »
If you mean in terms of the atmosphere and players trying to get as close as possible to the mindset of a medieval person when they're playing their characters, again, it varies from realm to realm. And from player to player.

Of course, what 'medieval' means is also different from player to player. Some will put a lot of importance on concepts like personal honour and loyalty within the feudal hierarchy, while others will take a much more loose and modern approach to it. But, hopefully, everyone should be making some sort of attempt to play as 'medieval' characters, since atmosphere is 90% of what makes this game different to a thousand button clicking browser games.


6
BM General Discussion / Re: This not medieval role play game
« on: July 24, 2019, 01:20:31 PM »
It varies depending on where you play. Some realms are more focused on the strategy game element, others are more interested in roleplaying. Most realms probably have a mixture of both aspects, with the emphasis changing from time to time.

7
Development / Re: Alliance Size Restrictions Discussion
« on: May 22, 2019, 05:36:41 AM »
Restrictions on alliance sizes make no sense what-so-ever in RP terms, historical terms (game history), or in any number of other ways. It's clear that a lot of people across the game on various sides of wars are pissed about this change.

I would be interested to know what it's hoped this change will achieve. The EC has been thriving for a long time now on the continental war between the southern and northern blocs. Dwilight was stagnant for years before its 'bloc war' kicked off. I'm genuinely interested in what the perceived problem is with wars between large alliance blocs, and why it's thought it would be better to encourage wars between smaller alliances.

Also, I wonder how the planned introduction of Hinterlands is going to work with this change. I thought the whole point of Hinterlands was to allow realms to control a larger number of outer regions and not be as bothered by the loss of hinterlands as opposed to fully productive regions. To me, it seems like Hinterlands and region-based restrictions on alliance blocs are going to work against each other.

8
Feature Requests / Re: Religious Map Mode
« on: March 22, 2019, 03:32:47 PM »
An actual map showing regional spread of religions would probably be a bad idea. I can remember many times when religions have been declared evil and had to play a cat and mouse game with realms that wanted to destroy their temples. The Angels of Ulrith on Dwilight is probably the most recent case of this, but I can think of many others. The Church of Ibladesh, for example, had a long cat and mouse game to stop all its temples from being destroyed.

I'm far from convinced that giving people a map to pinpoint the locations of temples they need to destroy would do much to improve the religious game.

9
Ah!

"the magic" does not mean wizards.

I look at my first post. I see i only say "maps are magic". I never say word about wizards or hocus pocus.

I join knights and sorcery game, I want - explore map. I want fight battles. I want become prince. I want magic sorcerers.

That's why people thought you were talking about 'magic' in the game.

10
BM General Discussion / Re: 1 Ruler Per account
« on: March 13, 2019, 03:22:14 PM »
Bad idea. There's a reason individual players have a ruler character in more than one realm - other people either choose not to run against them in elections because they don't want to be a ruler; or, they can't be bothered to write letters and campaign during said elections; or, if they become rulers, they don't put in any effort to try to make their realm (and the game) more interesting. There are numerous realms across the game where people could virtually walk in to ruler (or other government) position if they put in the slightest bit of effort.

Hard restrictions of this sort never work in this game. How would people feel if everyone was forced to play one priest character to revive the religious game, for example? The game works best when it's as open as possible.

11
I think there are also other things you should try if you feel there's something about the game that you like, but you're just not currently getting the experience you hoped.

You mentioned that you like magic at the start of this thread. Well, you could look at Angmar on Beluaterra. That realm is all about magic, and it has nobles and adventurers working closely together. It's been a bit disorganized since it lost its previous ruler, but is trying to get back on course. Of course, in this game, magic means collecting and casting scrolls, as well as prizing unique items. The game as a whole isn't a full on 'hurl a fireball at your enemy' sort of game, but Angmar puts more emphasis on magic than any other realm in the game.

On Dwilight, I'm the ruler of Westgard (which tends to be a very active realm in terms of player interactions - so conversations even for those not in positions of power), and I'd invite you to create a character there and I'll try to find aspects of the game for you to enjoy if you can clearly tell me what you're looking to get out of the game. If, after I've tried to create a role in the game to suit you, you're still not enjoying things, you (and the rest of us) will at least understand that BM just isn't the game for you.

On the other hand, I know that Avernus on Dwilight is a very active and organized military realm and actively seeks out battle. You would definitely get to fight battles there, but probably also have to run or support takeovers (which you seem to hate).

Looking more widely at the game, there are also different character classes that may suit you better. The infiltrator class gives a player much greater freedom to play the game in their own way. If you think that being an assassin and thief could be something that would interest you, that could be a class to try. Although it does take time to train up the skills to become an effective infiltrator.

Looking at the other classes, there's the priest. The priest game is very different to the normal game. It depends a lot on social interaction and communication and is very good for people who like to roleplay. However, it has nothing to do with fighting and battles, and so may not suit you for those reasons. However, there's scope for you to create a new religion almost anywhere in the game (perhaps apart from in the Sanguis Astroism realms on Dwilight).

Finally, remember that you have several different character slots for a reason. You could play one or two characters as warriors to get the war-fighting aspect of the game, then a third character as an infiltrator to get that part of the the game, and a forth character as a priest to try that part of the game (in addition to adventurers). This game has a lot of potential diversity across its playing experience if you choose to seek it out. It also allows you to play several different characters in several different places so that if on place is boring, there's probably something of interest happening in one of the other places where you have a character. The game design itself acknowledges that some areas will be dull at some times, and gives you a way to have another area were something of interest is going on.

Again, assuming there's something about the game that's kept you playing this far when you're not getting satisfaction, think about trying the things I've suggested. But, ultimately, not everyone will enjoy BM. Just as not everyone will enjoy every game.

12
Development / Re: 15 Nobles! 15!!!!
« on: March 07, 2019, 04:45:56 PM »
I think the 15 nobles threshold to found a new realm is reasonable enough. The game doesn't really need new realms at this stage, anyway. The conversion of Alara to Sydgard shows there are other ways to have fresh starts and try out new things. The same goes for realm mergers. Merge realms and create something new out of the merger (or meld existing cultures to provide a new twist).

New realms founded with a few nobles tend to be vanity projects that some times hit gold, but more often crash and burn.

13
Feature Requests / Re: Make Peace Temporary
« on: January 25, 2019, 05:51:27 AM »
That seems a bit pointless. I get the idea of maybe making people think about their diplomatic status, but defaulting it back to neutral occasionally isn't going to make anyone just decide to declare war. People create wars, not a diplomatic default.

14
Feature Requests / Re: Colonial Master!
« on: December 27, 2018, 02:23:42 AM »
Limit alliances to no greater than 1/3rd total regions

People will always find ways around hard limitations such as that. You might as well say, make sure every realm can only have 1 or 2 alliances. Any limitations of that sort would just lead to creative work arounds. For example, having an informal block of 4 realms (e.g.) with realms 1 and 2 as allies, and then realms 3 and 4 as allies, with the armies of all 4 rotating in and out of the theatre of war or attacking from different sides.

Artificial limitations to diplomacy don't really work very well.

15
Dwilight / Re: The Shameless Westgard Recruitment Thread
« on: December 20, 2018, 05:04:50 PM »
A force that hadn't refitted in a month, I would add.

Ah, wait 'till they see what we look like when we actually have a fully refitted army back at maximum strength, rather than when they're facing an army that's been in the field for a month  ;)

Somewhere in a private chamber in Westgard, Rosalind issues an order to put the 1st Gelene Washerwoman Company on standby to march to the front to help the enemy with their soon to be soiled breeches as an act of nobility and charity to the less fortunate.

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 21