Messages

7546

Beluaterra / Re: 'Beluaterranism'

« on: June 17, 2011, 01:01:03 PM »

Yes, but if I recall correctly many of your suggestions have revolved around artificially forcing players to develop religions in more detail than currently. I'm sorry, but RP just isn't something you can force. If players want to take religion seriously and put in the effort to develop deep theologies, they will. If they want their religions to be powerful and influential, they will make them so IG through RP means. You cannot force people to involve themselves that deeply. They can only do that of their own free will.

My suggestions were to force superficial details, not to write 10 pages of text on theology.

And I'd argue that if people want their alliances, then let them have them.

7547

Beluaterra / Re: next invasion

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:59:05 PM »

BT was never meant to be everlasting. Tom will eventually drive everybody out of the continent.

Says who?

7548

BM General Discussion / Re: Traitor: What does it mean in the context of bans?

« on: June 17, 2011, 04:00:23 AM »

There is actually a great case of a French knight holding true to his oath, even as his liege waged war on him to appropriate land. Several times his liege offered a ceasefire and agreed to take no more land, and each time the liege would later break it.

lol, his liege was a total douchebag.

7549

Development / Re: Infiltrators

« on: June 17, 2011, 02:57:18 AM »

Getting 10%-20% in oratory before starting preaching or diplo work seems to increase the rate at which your skill increases from normal actions. I assume that because the training allows you to be successful more often. My experience is that getting that first little skill boost without the academy is slow going.

And some priests don't have anywhere safe to practice either. Usually I recommend not wasting gold on the academy, but if every preaching results in wounds, then you are better off using gold then being mobbed all the time.

7550

BM General Discussion / Re: Too much peace too much for Dwilight

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:17:14 AM »

Aurvandil won't fall, we are just taking our business back ^_^

Your ruler isn't really bothering with the peace talks anymore, nor has Florence testified as requested, nor any other Aurvandil nobles for that matter. Don't overestimate how much D'Hara and the others care about you, if you won't bother helping yourselves.

The way I see it, Aurvandil's lands have been contentiously mismanaged for some time now, due to poor leadership. The western realms don't want your realms to turn rogue and spawn tons of rogues, but you are looking more and more like a liability more than anything else, and the endless calls for food and gold and military aid is what seems to be ahead of us.

7551

Beluaterra / Re: 'Beluaterranism'

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:10:45 AM »

Unfortunately this is one area where we'll just have to disagree.
I wouldn't even dream of saying that, and I never have. I'm on your side on the treaty friction thing. I think the current mechanic is too onerous, and needs adjustment before treaties can be sent live.

I just feel that the current state of religion hampers the game experience more than the current state of alliances. Alliance problems were limited to a few isolated continents, and I personally hate having to live with the consequences of islands too lazy to help themselves. If the alliances lasted so long, it's because a lot of people just didn't care, despite the voiceful discontent. Why should everyone suffer lame mechanics because a bunch of nobles in a continent or two didn't give a !@#$?

Lame religions, on the other hand, are everywhere. And their presence saps the potential of those who care, making it hard to keep on caring. But this ain't seen as being as important, even if religions could be a whole lot better sources of wars than lame friction mechanics.

7552

Beluaterra / Re: next invasion

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:04:45 AM »

BT has always been testing as far as I know.

FEI switched to stable after DWI was created with DWI becoming the replacement testing continent.

This is indeed what I have always believed.

7553

BM General Discussion / Re: Bored

« on: June 17, 2011, 12:04:04 AM »

It's colourcoded and everything to give you an indication on how bad it is. If you spend some time on keeping regions in shape, you will figure it out quickly enough. The whole thing gives a lot less obsession with keeping it at exactly 100% at least.

I know it's colour-coded, but how dark is bad? For example, production. I read "slow", and thought it was awful, like around the 25% mark. Turns out its over 50%. Seemed rather dark to me...

100% is safe, without a doubt. There's a buffer under it in which it's still "safe". But then, bad stats tend to only get worse if left alone, so you want to make sure it never drops below a certain amount. What is this buffer's limit? Who knows. It's easier to play it safe than to take the risk of it dropping like crazy. It's easier to put a little maintenance work here and then to keep it at 100% than to only come when the stats dropped to critical levels.

I hated the idea of that particular change. Still don't really like it, but I can live with it. In fact, it wouldn't bother me at all if the words were completely removed and replaced with a simple colored box that went from bright green to dark red. (In fact, I think I would prefer that a lot more than the words.) But that's a bit hard on the color blind people, isn't it? 

Anyway, the point is that I have no idea what all the different descriptive words are. If you put them all in front of me I couldn't arrange them in order. The effect that they've had on region maintenance in general, though, I think has been positive. You don't see people obsessing over "Gotta get 100%" all the time.

I still don't like it. But I can deal with it. Because they have colors.

The sentiment is mostly similar here. Except that the color code often makes it feel worse than it actually is. And as such, I personally obsess over having top stats more than I used to.

7554

Dwilight / Re: Barca

« on: June 16, 2011, 11:54:38 PM »

You make it sound like you could make a difference even if you wanted to

Not all aid needs to be military. And honestly, grouped together, the southern realms sure could grant Caerwyn comparable assistance than Astrum gets from its buds. The south is distracted and somewhat divided, not impotent.

The king going against the express wishes of his entire council? Sounds like internal strife to me.

I wouldn't say so. Disagreeing on a single act which he thought to be innocent but which the lords correctly predicted to be disastrous isn't strife. It wasn't "we hate you and want to replace you, you tyrannical son of a dog!", but rather "You shouldn't have made Cato a duke, you twit". The lords didn't envision any scenario to replace him.

Yes, Storm's Keep had level 7 walls, and Thulsoma with 20 nobles could field 8kCS on the back of a total realm income that probably never exceeded 500 gold a week on a good week, and probably averaged closer to less than 250, especially as they lost their outer regions. As Indirik pointed out, we did not all show up at once to kick them down with overwhelming force. The war escalated gradually as it became clear that Thulsoma was not your average one-region realm.

I doubt they could still field such a force after the loophole was closed. Circumstances may nuance it, but to outside observers who couldn't care for nuances, that was pretty much the equivalent of 100 regions going to war against one or two. Patience would have served SA's PR better than acting as a bloc.

Any realm that says such things to/about such a massive behemoth should expect to get squashed.  (Honestly, I'm frequently surprised Riombara didn't get squashed long ago for the things I said about Enweil—and they weren't a tenth as bad as what Thulsoma was saying )

You can thank invasions for that. The western coalition saved you in the first round, and all of Enweil's progress against you had to be restarted, but by the time the invasion started we were back in business deep in DoA's turf, having some nice looting times. With hindsight, I wouldn't have pulled the army back and would have continued looting the peninsula dogs. After all, you guys only took advantage of the retreat to ambush our stragglers, turning what would have been a glorious Enweilian victory into a useless and frustrating defeat. Should have known that the start of the invasion didn't matter as much to you.

As for before I had any political pull in Enweil... well, what can I say. People were too passive when I arrived.

7555

Development / Re: Infiltrators

« on: June 16, 2011, 11:41:34 PM »

If some option allows infiltrators to bypass the academy altogether (because it is always strictly superior to academy training), then it's a buff for that class.

My claim is that the classes are balanced just fine right now. To make things fair again, you would have to add options that allow every other class to train up their skills faster than at the academy. Even if they take little to no risk, diplomats and priests are useless the first few weeks.

Infil risk is inherently risky as diplomat's is safe. Priests, however, totally depend on the context in which they operate.

7556

Dwilight / Re: Barca

« on: June 16, 2011, 12:48:17 PM »

I am quite surprised that Thulsoma, Averoth and Cearwyn don't seem to put energy into this kind of indirect warfare.
If only two of the allies would not be able to join the fight and Cearwyn adjusts to the right strategies, the alliance won't be able to really destroy Cearwyn that easy as they could now.

Obviously down south, no one really cares (yet).

We are all too busy.

7557

Dwilight / Re: Barca

« on: June 16, 2011, 05:58:45 AM »

You are unaware then.  They discovered an exploit where they could raid their family gold via visiting the aunt and sending the gold away or into a guild/temple and drop it to incredibly low levels.  The game then immediately began auto-replenishing the family gold to get in the neighborhood of a thousand gold.  How many of them were multis is unclear, as the situation was and is quite tangled, but the system only worked because they had a /lot/ of new families starting with their family home in Thulsoma, so make of that what you will.

In other words, using brand new families they managed to scam several thousand gold out of the game and didn't even lose any honour because they went through the visit the aunt feature.  The exploit was closed, but that got them a lot of gold to play with, and combined with various other schemes (starting a new character to get the starter troops, then pause/delete and start a new character to get starter troops as an example) got them an army several orders of magnitude larger than they could have had otherwise.

I was aware of the loop to take out more gold than normal, but not that this was game-generated gold. Honestly, I don't even see the point of poor families getting extra wealth: takes wealth to make wealth, it this was just abused by many over time. Thulsoma aren't the first to do this.

I generally dislike IC actions being taken to compensate OOC actions, though. Bolts would have been more appropriate than sending 5 extra armies.

7558

Dwilight / Re: Barca

« on: June 16, 2011, 05:19:33 AM »

Are you unaware of the blatant and ridiculous ways they abused the family gold system and new characters to get several thousand (I believe in the tens of thousands) gold?

Yes. So? Gold alone doesn't recruit an army, soldiers don't pop out of thin air. And family coffers eventually deplete themselves. As long as there weren't any multies involved (which honestly would seem doubtful to me, but I don't know much of the situation), I don't really have a problem with families massively funding realms. It's not a limitless supply, after all, and someone somewhere is paying for that support.

7559

Dwilight / Re: Barca

« on: June 16, 2011, 04:37:55 AM »

The abuse they pulled removed all sympathy I felt.  It took that many realms to crack the bogus armies they managed to build.

Which honestly says more on the bunch of bullies than on them. Anyone with the least bit of pride would not have participated in this gang bang...

7560

BM General Discussion / Re: Bored

« on: June 16, 2011, 04:33:11 AM »

That might help the flavor, but will certainly do no favors to BM as a strategy game. Are some of us forgetting that BM is as much a strategy game as it is a roleplaying game? There will always be a conflict to get the right balance of both genres, but I'm pretty sure making everything too descriptive with no reliable way to make even semi-precise estimate is going to lead to lots of people going "this combat system sucks! (more than it already does!)"

Most people I talk with, myself included, have no idea what the descriptive texts mean, other than the really good and really bad ones. When I see something else than Hateful, Worshipful, or Enthralled for loyalty, for example, I have no idea how bad or acceptable the situation is, and whether or not intervention is really required. So I'm just prompted to try to bring it back to Worshipful, which I know is safe and for which possible drops will not put the region in the danger zone.

Same with huge battle reports, and I'm actually the one to have suggested that, that we only know the number of men. Sure, it's more realistic, but I still feel a feeling of disappointment by not knowing if one's soldiers were any better than the other's.

I like when alternatives to raw numbers and the like are present, but unfulfilled when they replace them. That's just me and the bunch I tend to socialize with, though. I've gotten a liking to expressing myself simply and not wasting my time with a ton of fluff to say simple things over time...