Topics

1

Helpline / City's max population seems very low?

« on: July 20, 2014, 11:06:39 PM »

Is it hard coded into the game? does it ever change? if so, what changes it?

I rule a rather small realm that has only one city, but that city's max population is set to 8.1k. Compared to other cities I've seen throughout the game, this seems VERY low. Indeed, I have two rural regions adjacent to my city region that both have populations above 10k.

All the cities stats are ridiculously high, Production 99%, Morale 100%, Loyalty 100%. I can build the same number of buildings as I can as another city I'm Lord of in one of the other continents, but that city has a max population of 37K.

Is a city with a max population lower than my adjacent rural's normal? expected? any way to improve it?

Thanks for any insight anyone can provide!

2

Development / Guild Logs cutting off messages due to long titles

« on: June 08, 2014, 08:22:44 PM »

Many guild log reports are cut off, due to very long titles taking up too much space in the log entry:

An example:

2014-06-03 01:55:25   Martin Octavius, Ambassador of Arcaea, Viscount of Mraulaxon, Priest of The Church of Sartan has enlarged the temple in Ni
2014-06-03 01:55:35   Martin Octavius, Ambassador of Arcaea, Viscount of Mraulaxon, Priest of The Church of Sartan has enlarged the temple in Ni
2014-06-03 01:56:10   Martin Octavius, Ambassador of Arcaea, Viscount of Mraulaxon, Priest of The Church of Sartan has enlarged the temple in Ni
2014-06-08 10:11:28   Martin Octavius, Ambassador of Arcaea, Viscount of Mraulaxon, Priest of The Church of Sartan has enlarged the temple in So
2014-06-08 10:12:24   Martin Octavius, Ambassador of Arcaea, Viscount of Mraulaxon, Priest of The Church of Sartan has enlarged the temple in So

In all other log entries that don't involve a temple construction or expansion, an abbreviated title is used instead, so the entire log entry can be read:

2014-05-21 17:44:50   Archbishop of Niel Martin has promoted Yarvik to the rank of Dean.

3

Roleplaying / A Young Rider Seeks to Join the Queen's Cavalry

« on: June 06, 2014, 09:24:55 PM »

Unotosa marked the northern reach of the great Empire of Arcaea, which spanned nearly 650 miles south, all the way to Idapur. Queen Eva quietly traveled west through the countryside with her Royal Dragoon riders, her four knights and their commands of archers and infantry. The rolling coastal lands were dotted with small fishing villages and shops catering to traders, but much of the land was empty of any settlements.

She conversed with her young knights: Mathias, Marche, Rolf and Wolfgang, who rode alongside their queen. She recounted for them some of the long history of these lands. How a legendary empire named Arachon once ruled here, before Sartania came and conquered it, and nearly defeated Arcaea then, as well. Sartania finally fell, and Arcaea and Arachon fought over what remained.

Arcaea grew into the great empire we know today, and marched north into the Dark Isle to defeat Arachon, leaving the island in a barbaric state. King Azgath broke away from Arcaea to found Coralynth, and then bent the knee to the Emperor and signed a treaty with the great empire to secure the future of our realm for all time. These were the same stories that her father told her when she was growing up. When she had finished recounting the histories of the area, a lone rider approached the company.

"Halt!" Captain Heimar, the queen's captain shouted. "You approach her majesty, Queen Eva Ji'Ardan of Coralynth, Lady Protector, Duchess of the Dark Isle, Margravine of Enlod, and Marshal of the Shield. State your business!"

"Sirs and your majesty, word has spread across the land that the hero Queen Eva was in Unotasa, and I knew that this was likely to be my only chance!" The rider was young, but sturdy for his age, and he carried a spear and a sword was attached to his belt. She could see the man's mount was a good breed as well.

"Your only chance to what?" Captain Heimar asked sharply. He was agitated that as his queen became more and more popular, a large part of his daily job was to keep the many suitors and so-called lotharios at bay.

The young man jumped down off his horse. Drawing his sword from the sheathe, he fell to one knee while holding the sword in the air over his head. "I pledge my sword to you, your majesty! Let me join your Royal Dragoons and prove myself a worthy recruit!"

Queen Eva looked at the man and smiled briefly, "If you can stay on your horse for longer than one minute against any one of my men, I will take you with us." The rider quickly jumped back on his mount. Captain Heimar barked orders to one of the queen's riders who came up to meet the stranger.

They faced off, the stranger and the horseman. The soldier was not impressed, he drew his sword and the two hacked back and forth at each other, while on their mounts. It was a duel, but not to the death, the goal was to unseat their opponent. Finally, the Royal Dragoon rider's skill and training caught the young man off balance, and he slid over the backside of his mount.

"Hah! Your minute is not even up yet and already you're off your..." the captain stopped speaking. While he was no longer on top of his horse, neither was the young man in the dirt. With all his strength, he was clinging to the saddle, still hovering inches above the ground.

At such a ridiculous sight the Queen allowed herself a laugh, and a smattering of chuckles could be heard throughout the rest of her company. "Captain?"

"Yes, your majesty!"

"I'm quite sure the young man's tenacious spirit has won the day," at which point the young man's spirits soared into the clouds. "I'd be proud to count him as one of my riders."

"Yes, your majesty!" The Captain turned to the rider, "Fall in with the other Dragoons in the rear! We will get you proper armor and attire when we return to Enlod. Until then, you will have a lot of hard training to do to earn your place here, keep your mouth shut and your eyes open!"

They continued on to Athios, their company now enlarged by one very happy rider who had just become the queen's newest cavalryman.

4

Feature Requests / Captured by a unit that is defeated or wiped out

« on: June 05, 2014, 09:41:44 PM »

Summary: When someone is captured in battle and the capturing unit is later defeated or wiped out in that same battle, the prisoner should be released (or set free) by the victors.

Details: In the battle code, do a simple check for when a unit is defeated or wiped out to see if they were carrying any prisoners, if they were, set them free. Perhaps the chances for escape would be lower or higher depending on which side won the battle.

Benefits: a more realistic outcome when it comes to battlefield expectations for captured prisoners.

Possible Downsides or Exploits: The downside is that the losing party not only lost the battle but they also lost their prisoners. I can't think of any way such a change might be exploited, since being captured or released is entirely out of the control of the player.

5

Helpline / What is the point of a friendly takeover exactly?

« on: June 04, 2014, 04:36:46 AM »

I've now seen this several times, so hopefully it's a bug or someone can explain it to me....

Going through the extra time and patience of leading a friendly takeover of a region doesn't seem to give any morale/realm sympathy boost to the region once the takeover is complete.

What good is a friendly takeover, if they're still going to hate me once I've nicely convinced them to join my realm?

Am I missing something?

6

BM General Discussion / Character creation is broken

« on: May 27, 2014, 11:33:51 PM »

I brought this up once before, but apparently not much attention was given. The character creation page does not work at all in Google Chrome. Since mostly only new players have to deal with the character creation page, it makes sense that the Devs wouldn't notice if it's not working, but since its the first thing new players have to deal with and BM desperately needs all the new players it can get, it should still be a priority.

The "new" character creation page doesn't work in Chrome (after you select a world, the Realm list does not populate with realms from that world so you can't go any farther), so I always have to use the "old" character creation page, and now it's not working either. Once you pick what world you want to be in, I picked South Island, I am trying to join a specific duchy so I selected "show full list" (I went back and tested the other options and got the same error), and then I immediately got the following error:

Choose the duchy that you wish to start in. Your starting region will be randomly chosen from the regions in that duchy:

Error during database query
Please report the following error to the bugtracker, together with a short statement on when it occurred, especially on which page or action:
You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ') order by D.Name' at line 1

Query was: select D.ID, D.Name, R.Icon, R.ID as RealmID, R.Name as RealmName, R.Glory from Duchies D JOIN Realms R ON D.Realm=R.ID where R.ID in () order by D.Name

Calling script: /CharacterCreation.php

7

Helpline / Character Creation broken

« on: February 20, 2014, 08:03:33 PM »

I just realized I had some new character slots unlocked. So I went to go and try and create a new noble. The part where you select the continent does not react to the "next" button push, so I'm unable to choose a realm or anything after that state. I tried this in both Chrome and Firefox and got the same result.

8

Feature Requests / Easier access to Message Groups

« on: August 28, 2013, 02:00:57 AM »

This began here: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,4887.0.html
Then continued here: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,5048.0.html

Title: Easier access to Message Groups

Summary: Adding drop down menus to the Message Screen for easier access to view the conversations in a person's various groups.

Details: If I want to view the active conversation in a group I'm a member of the process is a little convoluted. I usually copy and paste the name of the group into the "recipient field", select the to AND from. Now I've got a nice message board of all the posts in that group, which is what I wanted all along. Unfortunately this isn't exactly obvious to people who hadn't already figured this out, "Oh, you can put a Group Name in there??" And if you're the member of a couple groups, you have to start all over again for each group.

My proposal is to add a drop down menu which is populated with groups the player is a member of. With one click they can access the ongoing conversation of a particular group.

Benefits: I imagine this would go a long way towards making IG communications within the game's various groups much more organized and accessible than the manual method of doing a manual search by recipient, as I don't think many realize that the recipient can be the name of a group.

Possible Exploits: None.

9

Feature Requests / Message Group filtering CONTINUED

« on: August 24, 2013, 07:06:46 PM »

Firstly this was brought up by Sacha previously here: http://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,4887.0.html

He asked for the ability to filter the list of messages by a particular group he was a member of. Which is a feature that I too desire, especially now at my characters are members of more than a couple of groups where there are multiple ongoing deliberations.

Dev Anaris somehow pulled the Jedi mind trick on Sacha and told him he could already filter messages by recipient and poor Sacha nodded his head and said thank you.

Now while you can put the name of the group in the recipient field, and get what I'm looking for, it's not AT ALL obvious that that can be done, akin to a hidden feature.

It would be much more convenient to have ready access to your groups via a drop down menu, the way you do for "Senders", only have another one for "Groups".

I believe the obscurity of this feature may have contributed to problem of IG conversations taking place on the forum.

10

BM General Discussion / Character count

« on: July 27, 2013, 01:14:17 AM »

Seriously? Am I the only person who would like to play on more than 2 islands?

11

Feature Requests / REJECTED: Wizard/Sage Class Suggestion

« on: April 14, 2013, 02:21:30 AM »

Title: Wizard/Warlock/Sage Class

Summary: We have undead, we have monsters, we have magic items. Where do these things come from? What ancient lore is out there that must be studied and deciphered?

Details: Whatever you want to call him/her, the Sage is the delver of esoteric knowledge, whether this involves the study/creation of magic items, the summoning and dispelling of the dead, the creation or control of monsters. Obviously, such a position would require lots of money for research & study, and even more money to actually craft items or creatures. Maybe the presence of a tower/library and/or a guild increases the odds of success in endeavors.

Benefits: Undead and monsters become something more than random things that pop up out of nowhere. Depending on where you want to fall on the realism vs fun scale, you could have wizards on the field of battle that can attempt to control the weather, sow confusion and fear, or they could just be fancy and expensive librarians doing academic research. It seems a sage's tower would be the perfect place for adventurers to bring that mysterious item to have identified and studied. Poisons, new weapons of war (wildfire anyone?), could be researched via some sort of tech-tree. In short, this could be a way of introducing certain weird/wild elements into the game. Did some fool wizards dark experiments accidentally create dragons? Whoops!

Possible Exploits: Obviously when you're talking about esoteric arts/magic, you have to be careful. The balance on all these additions should be that research takes time and money and the building of a place to do that research in. Someone who spends all their days looking through old tomes is not likely to be very good with a sword or lance. It is also quite likely that you would want to limit the powers of what a wizard could create vs the items that were made aeons ago by ancient wizards who possessed arcane knowledge that is lost to modern wizards. If a tower is sacked, ongoing research would be lost and have to be started over. And there should always be a possibility of something going horribly wrong, the tower explodes, a tentacle reaches through a portal and snatches the wizard, etc...