Messages

1546

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 02, 2011, 10:25:12 PM »

I talked to Matt about some of this via IRC, but here's some of my thoughts organized here for the forum readers.

Depending on how large your guild gets, with the people of three realms in it, I think you're biggest issue will be message traffic. I stepped down as leader of Sanguis Astroism on Dwilight so I could get away from all the messages. I just couldn't handle the flood of traffic, hundreds of messages in a couple hours, when some topic came up that *everyone* had to argue over.

Might be a problem, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Ritualized combat? What if one of the realms is in danger of wiping out the other? How far will the Empire let things go before he steps in and stops it? War without risking your life, or the life of your realm, is a bit stale.

If your realm gets wiped out during a challenge, then tough luck.  No one, Emperor included, will be able to intervene in challenges (with the possible exception of some threat arising that is a danger to the existence of the Empire as a whole, but I'm not certain even that should be an acceptable excuse).  In practice the only way I see challenges interrupted is if one of the Order of the Hawk military requirements is activated.

The Emperor will probably intervene with realms that are getting wiped out by out-Empire realms, but for internal wars, why would the Emperor care?  Only changes who owes him fealty, not how much.  Now, if you're wiping out the realm of, say, the Emperor's wife, when he's psychotically obsessed with her to the point where he thinks destroying realms and leveling cities and sowing the ground with salt because someone offered her a minor insult, then you may have a problem, but that's just politics.

I hope you get enough people interested in that many positions. That's always been one of the most difficult things I've encountered lately: Finding enough volunteers to fill position vacancies.

Oh, it'll be interesting, I'm sure, but even if I can't make it a hard rule it's going to be a rule to appoint anyone without a position over anyone with a position if they are a candidate.

1547

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 02, 2011, 10:16:18 PM »

Gloria:

Yes, I'm fairly certain that an experienced player can tell the difference between his noble character and his adventurer.  As for your other comment, I would suggest that this is not the proper place for it.

Igelfeld:

I'm sad about Arcachon's culture as well, but you may recall that Arcaea already did one of those "restore good relations and give back regions to a new group of ruling characters".  The response was to ignore all provisions of the peace treaty except territory, refuse to negotiate on imaginary disputes over what the terms meant, and send an assassin.  Second chances, sure.  Third?  Not so much.

1548

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 02, 2011, 06:34:38 AM »

Well, Cathay is crumbling, with people leaving on a semi-regular basis, and I keep thinking James is going to auto-remove out.

Aenilia is willing to fight so long as there's no possible risk for them to do so...But Xarnelf's latest trip to Enlod is going to make things very interesting, and I might be able to spin a war out of that.

Zonasa and C'thonia are fighting with Kindara getting more annoyed that the two aren't listening, and Kindara is worried about Zonasa getting more powerful, so you may see the southern war get bigger shortly.

And if all else fails, we wait and do internal wars until the peaceniks collapse or start a war in desperation...But I really doubt it'll get that far.

1549

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 02, 2011, 05:05:18 AM »

Sundar's the one who talked about slippers and stuff.

Guy who played Tammo shot me the torture report, as I recall, so unless he decided to forge that OOC to send to me as well as lie repeatedly since then about it, I'm pretty sure it happened.  Maybe a misclick/misread?

1550

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 02, 2011, 02:44:43 AM »

Gloria:

Everything Jenred sent to you is true so far as he and I know it.  I confirmed with various people OOC, and while it is possible they were all lying, I rather doubt it.

1551

Other Games / Re: Mount and Blade (Warband)

« on: March 02, 2011, 01:11:11 AM »

Mmmm...The PoP mod is amazing, yes.  A full cavalry charge of Knights of the Dragon and Mounted Rangers is just sweet to watch.

1552

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 01, 2011, 11:20:03 PM »

The precise powers of the Emperor vs the constituent Monarchs is...Unclear as of yet.  (Fairly) definitive powers at this point are:

1. Control of X% of each realm's income, where X is their ranking, delivered each winter (going to try and make winter the party/tournament/RP season).

2. Right to set campaign seasons.

3. Right to influence diplomacy if there is a major benefit to the empire as a whole.

4. Right to disallow religions/guilds/nobles throughout the empire (though /not/ to force acceptance).

5. Right to all communications upon request.

Some of that is, of course, vague.  We may leave it that way, though I'm not sure yet.

Common external diplomacy will sometimes fall into point 3, but again that should be a power used sparingly if ever.  Emperor will have no direct powers over the legitimacy over member Rulers (though informally having the Emperor as your enemy would make life quite difficult).

1553

Far East Island / Re: Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 01, 2011, 09:38:36 PM »

Not out of line at all, especially since it'll be going public in (hopefully) short order.

And no, CTO isn't running yet as loyalty is too high.  Which is an annoying mechanic, even if it does make a certain amount of sense.

Indeed, three realms are going to be swearing to the Empire.  I think there are a few things that are going to make it viable.

1. We're going to have (the guild has been built, just need to finish the fighting so everyone has time to join) an empire-wide guild.  Now, Arcaea currently has discussions in three main ways: The whole realm, the Phoenix Court (where most everything gets discussed), and the Military Conclave.  The guild is going to simulate that with the all guild, full members, and elder members.  The idea being that a good portion of the conversations will shift to empire-wide instead of realm-wide, helping with the unity problem.

2. I fully anticipate that over time (though probably a long time for Jenred if he stays in the position) people in one of the other realms will decide they don't like someone from a different realm being in control.  This is one of the (many) reasons why there is going to be an internal war system with internal rankings.  Each realm will have a rank, which will also determine what percentage of their taxes have to go to the Imperial throne, and the highest ranked realm chooses the Emperor.  The Emperor then stays in position until their realm loses their rank and a new Emperor is chosen.  Ranks change via a formal challenge where no outside assistance is allowed and the two realms fight from the first day of Spring to the last day of Autumn, with the winner taking the higher of the two ranks and the loser the lower of the two ranks in dispute.  Determining winners and losers may be non-trivial in some cases, but I think a system where the loser is whoever has the worst change in weighted production (production of a region multiplied by its population) on a percentage basis over the course of the challenge would work well enough.

3. The secession you referred to is going to be Topenah and Talex duchies, leaving the Kingdom of Arcaea with Lasop, Remton, Nocaneb and Niel in an excellent defensive position but not the best offensive position and being much less scary without the context of the Empire.

4. One of the (probably few) powers of the Emperor is going to be the ability to declare whether a campaign season is open or restricted.  Open means each realm of the Empire can fight whatever wars it pleases (challenges, other internal wars, external wars, what have you).  Restricted means wars require the approval of the Emperor as there may be a situation where the entire Empire need work together for some goal.  Clearly there needs to be some check there, and Jenred is going to set a very firm precedent that restricted campaign seasons are only used sparingly.

5. The empire is certainly going to have the one position per family per realm rule Arcaea does now (at least after the initial colonization stages where it may be unavoidable) and I'd really like to make it one position per family for the entire empire.  The idea is to suck as many interested people in as we can by making positions more available than they are most places.

I'm happy to explain more if you have further questions (hey, this helps me organize my thoughts for the big speech Jenred's going to have to give about all this, which is handy).

1554

Far East Island / Phoenix Talk, with Jenred Kindon-Bedwyr or Matthew, as you choose

« on: March 01, 2011, 06:05:16 AM »

I thought I'd bring back two things I always liked.

1. I've heard tales of people on the FEI originally talking about plans and the like OOC so that those who couldn't be in the loop for IC reasons could still hear about the fun stuff.

2. A few newspapers used to do interviews with various nobles, and I always liked reading them.

So!  Anyone who's interested, ask away.  Just direct the question to Matthew for OOC questions and Jenred (with titles as appropriate) for the IC ones.

For those who just want to level accusations and question Jenred's sexuality and the like, keep it IG.  This is just for a bit of Q&A.