Topics

16

Feature Requests / Significant penalty for intentionally starving a region

« on: September 04, 2018, 04:50:22 PM »

    Title: Significant penalty for intentionally starving a region
    Summary: As it is, realms often take all the food away from a region when the enemy is about to take it over. It's a very gamey/meta strategy.
    Details: There are absolutely no downsides to taking all the food out of a region that is being taken over. Enemy troops will start to wear out their provisions, but the region will not suffer any significant penalties until after the region is lost. The result is that the peasants stay very happy with the realm that intentionally brought starvation upon them, and quite angry with the realm that immediately gives them food. Thus, the request is that when someone takes out food and leaves less than the region needs to continue for a week, it immediately gets an important morale, loyalty, and control debuff. If you take *all* of the food away, the debuff is much stronger. Furthermore, when regions are starving, takeovers should take less time to accomplish, maybe half as much.
    Benefits: Starving a region you are about to lose is extremely gamey, lame, and offers a no-lose strategy that makes no RP sense whatsoever. It's akin to "screen units" that were recently removed.
    Possible Downsides or Exploits: It's an exploit fix on its own, imo, but care should be taken with the limits and penalties in order to take into consideration legitimate food transfers across a realm. I don't think that's a big issue, though, and it's fairly logical that if you starve one region to feed another, the region starved shouldn't like you.

17

Dwilight / To all ye miserable souls

« on: August 30, 2018, 01:48:58 PM »

Tired of watching all your efforts go to waste? Your achievements undone? Being relegated to capital-watch?

No more!

Join a team that knows what it's doing. A team of growth! Performance! Kick back the monsters at for breakfast, do it again for dinner! Tame the untammable! Defy the odds!

There's only one place for you to get your daily dose of glory, and deep down, you've always known it!

Join Westgard, today!

Arrows strangely get what they deserve

18

Feature Requests / Starting Unit tweaks : Archers

« on: August 09, 2018, 03:11:03 PM »

    Title: Make all starting archer units have R4
    Summary: Currently, archer starting units seem to have a random range rating. It's often 3. Maybe always? I propose that all archer units generated at character creating have a range of 4.
    Details: No further details necessary.
    Benefits: Just about nobody uses R3 archers. At most, experienced players will mix them in with R4 archers in order to benefit from superior stats, while keeping the final unit at R4. The problem is that newbies don't typically know how this works, and that them starting with R3 units can make it difficult for them to increase to R4, since they'll typically recruit as much as they can, or at the very least, more than half of their recruitment limit. But having R3 units, and being the only ones to have them, can often result in your unit walking out in front of the rest of the army, thus much more likely of getting killed or captured, or at the very least having costly damage forcing them into an early refit. In any case, not something desirable for newbies. Defaulting them to R4 always has almost no game-balance impact given how rare new units are and how the difference in combat efficiency is limited, but it can make a big difference for those few players at their beginnings.
    Possible Downsides or Exploits: Negligible.

19

Feature Requests / Message cut-offs

« on: August 03, 2018, 04:31:35 PM »

The game used to warn you when your letters were too long, and place a marker where it would cut off. Now, it just chops your text without warning. And if you noticed it did so, you can't get the lost text back.

Could 1) the warning be brought back, please, and 2) the text cap doubled, if not tripled?

20

East Island / The Bloody Battle of Evora

« on: February 23, 2018, 04:19:16 AM »

Lady Svetlana Gildre, Duchess of House Highmarch has been wounded by Crimson Blades (15).
Lilith Vermiculus, Dame of Commonyr has been wounded by Dark rain (58).
Feldric II Selemnir, Baron of Gadlock has been wounded by Aephoran Elites (49).
Maximus Arcturius, Knight of Domus has been wounded by Ghosts of Abington (20).
Sandra Jimenez, Duchess of Eleador, Margravine of Ashforth has been wounded by Archival Arrows (52).
Eliza Arial, Dame of Krimml has been wounded by Amphisbaena's Wrath (50).
Flavia Arindal, Margravine of Montijo has been wounded by Archival Arrows (52).
Tsingu Orobar, Knight of Perdan Mines has been wounded by True Xavax Guard (44).
Nympha Raven, Dame of Domus has been wounded by Ranged Crimson Guard (37).
Azreal ap Gaenvan, Knight of Sirion has been wounded by Cor Darei (57).
Smiddich Fontaine, Knight of Aestus has been wounded by Stormwalkers (39).
Greatjon Mormont, Knight of Oligarch has been wounded by Queen's Royal Guard (77).
Barthogan Starck, High Magistrate of Highmarch, Representative of Nascot has been wounded by The Scarlet Sentinels (42).
Hannelore von Lucker, Baroness of Meuse has been wounded by de Wies Guards (16).
Grathe Geg, Representative of Moyale has been wounded by L. Infantry (29).
Serina Kye, Dame of Mulhouse has been wounded by Black Swan Guards (.
Lachram Kah, Count of Oc Lu Pesh, Marshal of the First Alarian Army has been wounded by His Shadow (25).
Daedalus Dogsbody, Lord Vixir of Vix Tiramora, Royal of Vix Tiramora, Duke of House Ghrest, Representative of Abadan has been wounded by Northern Avengers II (33).
Brock Ketchum, Kronogos of Nivemus, Royal of Nivemus, Duke of Rancagua, Margrave of Oroya has been wounded by [DD]Bathgate Bowman (92).
Aramon Abjur, Xerarch of Redhaven, Royal of Redhaven, Duke of Oligarch, Margrave of Oligarch has been wounded by Zadvar Vestiege (91).
Godric Tórrarin ka Habb, Arbiter of Redhaven has been wounded by Pavus Arrows (75).
Alistair Pavus, Knight of Nascot has been wounded by Eyals (19).
Lucienne Kessler, Countess of Bruck has been wounded by The Raven (88).
Edvard Perfect II, King of Fallangard, Royal of Fallangard, Duke of Leibo has been wounded by The Grey Guard (41).
Ragrick Stoutbone, Knight of Fontan has been wounded by Unchained Bowmen (90).
Rhiannon Archival, Dame of Nascot has been wounded by Eyals (19).
Alistair Pavus, Knight of Nascot has been seriously wounded by Dim Archers (17).
Harrion Karstark, Knight of Hagley has been wounded by Tentil bows (85).
Daedalus Dogsbody, Lord Vixir of Vix Tiramora, Royal of Vix Tiramora, Duke of House Ghrest, Representative of Abadan has been wounded by Nivarchers (32).
Walsh Adam, High Justice of Minas Nova, Count of Jariedma has been wounded by Aurelius Dragons (6).
Christofer III Kane, Earl of Braga has been wounded by Kuda Hitam (72).
Shorloc Soul, Dame of Fontan has been wounded by Queen's Royal Guard (77).
Gloria Wader, High Treasurer of Minas Nova, Duchess of Semall, Margravine of Semall has been wounded by Dragoon Archer (18).
Benjamin Pryde, Knight of Winkamus has been wounded by Dragoon Archer (18).

Total:
48 attackers (2118 Inf, 211 MI, 1205 Arch, 154 Cav, 171 SF)
44 defenders (967 Inf, 1924 Arch, 196 Cav, 287 SF)
Total combat strengths: 40705 vs. 37849
Defender Victory!

The battle does some damage to the local infrastructure. Production falls 10 %.
The local roads network has also been damaged.
The battle does 45 % damage to the fortifications.

21

Feature Requests / Approved: Ability to flag new noble reports

« on: February 19, 2018, 02:59:46 PM »

Title: Ability to flag new noble reports

Summary: Every time a new noble joins a realm, everyone in the realm gets a message alerting them. But unlike a normal message, this can't be flagged (marked).

Benefits:
Often I see those notices when I'm on my cell and just scrolling for important tactical info. I always mean to write them a welcome, but since I can't flag them, sometimes I forget. Allowing players to flag new characters joining would help them remind themselves to greet the new players.

Possible Downsides or Exploits:
Not exploitable.

22

BM General Discussion / Old Gems

« on: February 16, 2018, 02:26:42 AM »

Ah, the memories.

http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Republic_of_Fwuvoghor/The_Enweil_Situation

23

Development / Make Battlemaster Great Again - War Overhaul

« on: February 12, 2018, 01:31:40 PM »

Through a large number of changes over the years, demographic as well as mechanic, average knights have become less and less meaningful in the face of increasing passive mechanics and gimmicky tools available to a few.

Wars used to run over a pretty simple premise: get more nobles and organize them better and you will win, or at least make steady progress until the few passive limits came into play.

But now? Realm radius was decreased. Colony takeovers were removed. Family wealth cap was increased, which combined with lowered density and "new" (very old now) tax system make a few easily insanely rich (at the detriment of the majority) and actions like buying regions much easier, peasant militias are widespread and practically automatic, etc. The rank-n-file knight with some men used to be able to achieve significant results. Now? It's some kind of click race where, even with an appointed lord, a single noble can buy a region from under a huge coalition army.

This kind of war is not FUN. Not for everyone outside the tiny minority with access to these gimmicks.

Wars were a lot more fun in 2006.

24

Beluaterra / Old Map

« on: December 22, 2017, 02:54:51 AM »

The pre-blight BT map seems gone from the servers, which makes it a pain to reconstruct historical events.

So I uploaded it to the wiki. Had it on my HDD. http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/File:Beluaterra-Large-Details.jpg

25

East Island / Wanted: Secessionist Northern Duke

« on: December 21, 2017, 08:40:14 PM »

Contact me for details

 

26

Helpline / Capital Moves

« on: December 14, 2017, 05:09:10 PM »

"Strategic capital moves" are against the rules, but it's also been established that moving a realm's capital to a more central position is not, in itself, against the rules.

I was wondering if some titans could pitch in on the matter of whether moving the capital to a more central location can ever be considered against the rules, and if so, what circumstances would make it illegal (war, etc.).

27

Development / Rethinking the rules

« on: December 07, 2017, 07:37:50 PM »

To start of, I firmly believe that, as long as the rules stand, they ought to be applied. And that in general, the cases that bothered me the most were not when people were punished for breaking them, but when they were broken by people who weren't stupid enough to admit their reasons for their actions and thus weren't sanctioned, given how many of the rules are based on intent.

So we've just had an umpteenth case of someone blatantly breaking the rules, then being a sore loser about it, and then quitting with a bunch of his adepts. Should things have been handled differently? I have a hard time seeing how. But is this a phenomenon we need to keep, to allow to regularly return? I don't think so.

Many of the rules, like with some of the mechanical aspects of this game, were designed in what is nothing less than a different era. I'm not sure when the game launched, but for the wiki that's 2005... A lot of the players have since become parents, and it's plausible some of our current players were not even born yet when the game started.

In the early and middle days where most of the rules were made, the game had few continents, the realms had lots of nobles, and overall the culture of both online games in general and this one specifically were quite different than they are now. The game also had less built-in mechanics to guide/force players into acting a certain way. But when you compare realms of today with realms of back then, the contrast it stark. The social issues that were rampant back then are now isolated cases, the most damaging tools (OOC bans for example) have been removed, and overall inflicting lasting damage upon anything is much harder to achieve than it once way (ex: automatic half rations on starving regions instead of mass starvation). So all in all, there are few !@#$%^&s, they are more universally shunned, their power to impose upon others is greatly diminished, and, none the less, people have abundant alternatives to just go find better people to play with (no automatic ban for quitting the realm, much more open realm cultures in general, etc.).

So maybe we should take a good long look at the social contract, the rules, and the policies, and think hard at what REALLY needs to be there.

If I'm to start the ball, I'd say the social contract is fine as it, doesn't need a touch up.

As for the IRs, I'm not so sure. I mean, who really cares for the unit types, what does it change? People are often looking for suggestions and guidance, and it's a hassle to address these questions when told not to touch the issue even with 10ft poles. It'd be nice if it were at least clarified/modified to allow people to issue recommendations (as long as sanctions for non-compliance aren't also used). The IRs in general are fine, though.

The core of the problems, in my opinion, lie in the "policies". They are based so much on intent, which cannot be verified, and with the game in its current shape, don't really offer much.

• What does it matter how people use duels?
• What's the big deal with strategic secessions? Most realms don't have enough nobles to split. And in most cases, splitting only makes the sum of the parts lesser than the original whole. Yes, the realms get numerical buffs. But the only cases where this is not offset by the human logistical aspects are when the realms were ripe to split anyways, and that this rule therefore only really regulates the context (ok to do so when there's no war, not ok during war). This rule doesn't contribute to anything anymore, we don't have the player counts for it to matter.
• Why have OOC rules against strategic capital moves? For starters, moving capitals is very costly. Secondly, the distance from capital allowance was greatly reduced over the years. A realm that moves its capital to the front will have an advantage in terms of refit cycle, but a HUGE disadvantage to its economy, as region stats and tax tolerance will drop. Furthermore, many current capitals barely allow for any wars, if they don't make it outright suicide, so why not give people a bit more flexibility if it means that, as a whole, BM gets more war?
• Why not just make realm mergers legal? This has caused so many scandals in the past, for no gain. What's equal footing? What's friendly? What's hostile? Why does it all even matter? And what's the logic in banning strategic secession if the opposite is also banned? Are small realms the threat or are big realms? Or are any at all? Mergers mean less titles to share around, lower tax tolerance, a lot of people being moved away from their traditional area. There are a LOT of costs to it. And we don't have a ruler who can OOC ban the whole realm to make it happen anymore, either. Players will not willingly give up their realm unless they have strong reasons to do so, why not respect these reasons without threatening sanctions over them?

28

Feature Requests / Under Debate: Color coding scout reports

« on: November 26, 2017, 02:10:37 AM »

 Title: Color coding scout reports
    Summary: There are currently two color schemes for scout reports, one for realm-mates, one for everyone else.
    Details: The request is to modulate the color codes, by adding new ones, as per diplomacy with said realm.
    Benefits: I'm new to EC, and seeing scout reports with 9+ realms in them confuses the hell out of me. Experienced players may get used to which are allied realms, which are enemy realms, but I don't really remember any other cases in my long career of so many realms being involved in battles so regularly (instead of split on multiple fronts). It's hard to learn about so many realms at once, and to memorize the diplomacy page with so many actors involved. Color coding would make it more easy for newer players especially to decipher scout reports.
    Possible Downsides or Exploits: Esthetics to be considered.

29

Helpline / Lost family home

« on: October 26, 2017, 02:39:40 AM »

The family currently has no permanent home. The next time a noble is created, the region they start in will determine your family's home region.

Wait, what? I just saw this today. No idea why this would happen.

The Chénier family, originally from Ammando (Dwilight), has a fame of 13 and family wealth of 1115 gold.

Family was started in Ammando, thus there was the family home. Never moved it, never had a hero on this account. Not sure how long this has been the case, but it's the first I notice the message.

30

Helpline / Name rules

« on: October 21, 2017, 09:50:33 PM »

Are we still applying the rules we had on names? Because crap like this is seriously obnoxious:

Letter from Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe U Ossa Uvuvwevwevwe Onyetenyevwe Ugwemu   (1 day, 2 hours ago)