Messages

31

Helpline / Re: Priest Claiming Rogue Region?

« on: June 15, 2018, 12:44:39 PM »

It's possible to cause a region to change realms with diplomatic actions alone (if your diplomat can avoid being arrested) but I can't remember whether it's possible to perform those in a rogue region.

The religious equivalents only change sentiment towards the realm controlling a region so I wouldn't expect them to cause a rogue region to join a realm.

And RTOs are one of those features that make perfect sense when you play a priest and have had to work hard preaching to get the necessary level of religious support, but to everyone else look like instant magic and totally unfair.

Now I need a rogue region to play with so I can play and find out for sure.

32

Feature Requests / Re: Improving Adventurers and Trade

« on: June 15, 2018, 12:30:02 PM »

I'd love to see the Adventurer class more involved with the BM world at large:

• hunting bandits for bounties (which would improve control)
• telling tales (which would improve morale and maybe weaken control)
• doing some of the messy, hands-on things infiltrators can but probably shouldn't because of the risks like sabotage and murdering militia
• doing a bit of banditry themselves like robbing tax collectors or thieving or running protection rackets in cities (which would gain gold and lower control)
• being able to set up gangs/parties and secret societies so there could be thieves guilds, etc. without noble involvement
• smuggling and black marketeering
• being lay clergy or rabble-rousing demagogues
• kidnapping for ransom
• being those anonymous scouts and secret police
• becoming a wizard or sage

Some of these would also require new shiny things to spend the extra gold they produce on.

33

BM General Discussion / Re: Best Wiki Pages

« on: June 15, 2018, 12:00:06 PM »

I love the Templates on the Wiki. I have several crammed onto my main family page, http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Gildre_Family, the characters have the character box templates, and Jessica has the Infiltrator template.

I can see my day's going to be less productive than I'd anticipated

34

BM General Discussion / Re: Best Wiki Pages

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:58:28 AM »

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Dubhaine_Family

Perhaps not because it looks fancy or anything (although I must say I really like the drawn family tree), but because of the insane amount of data that is stored about all that the characters do.

It is being kept up to date by the player of the Dubhaine Family almost daily.

I say bravo.

Thank you!

When I first started playing there was a lot of chatter in the tech community around the 'quantified life' and I thought it would be interesting to capture lots of raw data on the various Dubhaines. I'm still slightly annoyed I gave up on keeping their battle reports sometime in 2010 or 2011 but reformatting them for wiki markup was taking up too much time and other data like unit composition usually only gets updated when significant changes happen.

More recently Ciarghuala's personal journal has become the place to go for a running history of Luria Nova as I now capture all RPs she receives. It's fascinating being able to look back through the months and see how different characters have developed as the Hegemony's sought to rebuild.

Whilst I've considered writing a grand Tragedy of House Dubhaine several times work projects take up most of my non-BM time. Hopefully that will change now that Tom's started compiling a BM book.

35

BM General Discussion / Re: I want your BM Stories !

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:44:08 AM »

There'll definitely be some kind of Dubhaine contribution when I can make time as I've not been capturing all that random fluff in the wiki for no reason

36

BM General Discussion / Re: Discussion on Monsters

« on: June 15, 2018, 11:34:41 AM »

Even Ar Agyr is restricted to a small coastal strip now and those who know us know we're usually up for a bit of mayhem anywhere on BT. The only upside is that Aibhlidhn's honour has sky-rocketed since we first got involved with defending The Vales

37

Feature Requests / Re: Abolish autopause for adventurers if other characters are still being played

« on: February 26, 2018, 05:00:16 PM »

Was talking to feyeleanor.

I was originally going to make that suggestion myself, but it read much less clearly when I wrote it up so I decided to push for my ideal solution and see where discussion took it.

An indication that autopause is happening in a couple of days would certainly work for me.

38

Feature Requests / Approved: Abolish autopause for adv. if other characters are still being played

« on: February 18, 2018, 12:39:39 PM »

Title: Abolish autopause for adventurers if other characters are still being played

Summary: Only autopause adventurer characters if all of a player's noble characters are also to be autopaused

Details: Change the way the current autopause for adventurers is activated by first making sure that all of the player's noble characters are paused.

Benefits:
The adventurer game can be a bit of a grind-fest and I often find I don't want to play my adventurer characters for several successive days (sometimes a couple of weeks) - especially when my nobles are busy. Sometimes I miss-count how long some or all of them have been unplayed and then one or more autopauses will happen, dropping guild and religion memberships along with any positive balances or debts they've accrued. I know I could quick-play them every turn but clicking for clicking's sake is just more grind and that plays into the whole reason why those characters aren't being played at the time.

By only autopausing adventurers when the account itself hasn't been played for a while it makes the adventurer game a little more casual without breaking the guild and religion ties which are often its main social aspect.

Possible Downsides or Exploits:
The proposal only applies to adventurers so this wouldn't make it any easier for players to sit on government positions, Dukedoms or Lordships without maintaining reasonable activity. It might interfere slightly with the disbanding of guilds when they lose all other members but if so it would only be a question of a few extra days.

39

Dwilight / Re: Lurian Resurgence

« on: January 29, 2018, 12:43:49 AM »

So is this a continuation of the Third Lurian Empire or the constitution of the Fourth? you mentioned 'old federation of kingdoms', are the lurian dukes no longer considered kings who vote for their emperor with foreign rulers unvoting but more independent?

The Kings still elect the Emperor and we've 5 active nobles who've been in the realm for 1000+ days. Ciarghuala would be as well if it hadn't been for the whole Luria Boreal thing but she's never been that interested in politics.

40

Dwilight / Re: Lurian Resurgence

« on: January 26, 2018, 11:22:01 AM »

There's a massive problem with the current leadership in Luria as well. They're all about "restoring the lurian empire" and allow for very little diversity and excitement.

That's not been my experience which is why I choose to play in Luria.

And do note that we have restored the Lurian Empire. Not only have we reclaimed the lost cities, we've also rebuilt a functional economic base. The question now is what to do with it and what additional infrastructure we need to support player interaction and commerce if we return to the old federation of Kingdoms rather than remain the current centralised realm.

Civil war would be an easy way to keep things busy, as would war with Fissoa or Medina. However personally I'd prefer us to try something more ambitious like war with a northern realm or perhaps some coop play like aiding Westgard or Medina in securing more of the western continent. Ever since Ciarghuala was driven from Golden Farrow she's been keen for some payback.

41

Feature Requests / Under Debate: Show Banker granary & spoilage information in Regional Food Status

« on: January 21, 2018, 01:56:16 PM »

Title: Show Banker granary and spoilage information in Regional Food Status

Summary:
Add two additional columns to the existing table.

• One column will show the number of granaries in each region.
• The other will show how much food spoilage occurred in that region on the current day.

Details:
The spoilage information is produced daily for each region so this would need to be recorded for the region. No history is required so a single variable/property per region should suffice.
The granary information is already stored for each region.

Benefits:
Bankers already have lots of useful data with which to plan a realm's food policy but this would allow them to make better informed decisions about where to stockpile food when necessary.

Possible Downsides or Exploits:
The most obvious downside is that Bankers will be better informed without additional effort, making them even less dependent on player interactions to do their jobs. However in many realms Bankers already do most of the trading so I don't think the impact would be that great. And anyone who doesn't want their realm's Banker managing their food can already achieve that by barring access to their granaries.
Having this information readily available will also allow Bankers to more effectively micromanage food distributions.
I can't think of any additional exploits this change would enable but perhaps I'm just not being devious enough.

42

Dwilight / Re: Lurian Resurgence

« on: January 19, 2018, 02:57:28 PM »

I'd like to get boots back on the Western Continent so if Madina wants help they'll find a supportive voice in Luria's council.

43

Dwilight / Re: Lurian Resurgence

« on: January 17, 2018, 11:10:36 AM »

The current mission for Luria is to reclaim the Imperial heartland around the Euschean Sea. We already have a land border with Fissoa and will soon have one with D'Hara. Perhaps that will lead to friction and war, or perhaps our realms will band together to launch expeditions elsewhere as happens on other continents.

44

Dwilight / Re: Lurian Resurgence

« on: January 14, 2018, 12:49:48 AM »

Luria Nova is the largest realm on Dwilight by region count, by population, and by adventurer count. It's also second-largest by noble count.

If anyone should move it's all you northern laggards in your pokey little realms

45

Development / Re: Different way to nerf militias

« on: December 01, 2017, 08:44:06 PM »

Since you like to bring your BM career as an example here, I spent over 6 years on leading armies of various sizes. Unlike you, I spent my time both fighting off gangups and besieging cities both small and large. What changed everything was the archer bug fix. They hit harder than the days when Fontan fell with you. Or the days when I besieged Oligarch against Fane. With enough infantry to keep men off of archers, your militias are a lot more cost efficient than before. They are different from melee militia days of old because archers can damage your men long before you can even get near the walls. Either the walls need to be limited to lv3 at most for cities or militias need to be nerfed in one way or another. It is way too easy to defend fortified regions due to various changes over the years. While defenders got stronger, attackers did not. Actually there are less attackers now so even easier to defend.

I've spent most of the past three years focused on siege defence and ranged tactics. With preparation and good planning it's possible to make it very hard for attackers to take a city but unless you're manning your walls with Range 5 SF 100/100/100 an attacker with better ranged forces will wear down your garrison and take your walls. They don't even need more men than you if their range is longer and the weather favourable.

I put this to the test with the siege of Alowca. A defending garrison of Range 4 SF behind lvl 5 walls was decimated by an attacking force of Range 5 SF. It took several days of stalemate battles before the garrison were defeated, but they were defeated. Whilst several realms were involved in the assault, only two of them brought the SF and the number of those was smaller than the number of SF defenders.

I am trying to provide an easier solution until these new features god knows when come. All the things you've mentioned need to be coded from scratch. Also some of them are planned already. Why do we need to unit status even.

Because unit status would be a simple and discrete hook to use. It's already used for evasive to avoid battles. I can't comment on the amount of coding involved to add sieges this way to the existing codebase, though the feature set required would be small. I'd be willing to implement the feature if the Devs think it's a good idea.