Messages

7651

Beluaterra / Re: next invasion

« on: June 09, 2011, 04:32:23 AM »

When it comes to GMs I think it should be quality more than anything else. If you can only get two good GMs then that's better than half a dozen bad ones.

To a certain extent. The military challenge is pretty lame when all the enemy forces are controlled by 1 guy. Also, good or bad, they are prone to inactivity after some time. The more you got from the start, the less continuity takes a hit and the more enjoyable fighting them is. Also, I have a hard time to see how one could be "bad", or that most of the previous were "good".

No hard feelings towards them, though, I just feel it's organized extremely poorly.

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Dwilight / Re: The Zuma

« on: June 09, 2011, 04:27:36 AM »

Then apparently you never talked to the right people. I believe someone already stated in this thread what caused the attack to happen.
If you don't like the Zuma, and don't care to interact with them, then leave them alone. I would bet that they'll pretty much leave you alone. Unless someone else provokes them. Again.

I believe you are referring to the incorrect statement that they were taunted by Asriel, which actually only happened after the initial attacks, not before.

I was pretty aware of all the stuff going on in the realm at the time, and we hadn't had any interaction with the Zuma in a while they they attacked, as far as I know. If it was because of a specific person, it'd likely have been made known (as the only thing did they bother to do was briefly react to Asriel). Maybe foreigners made them come, I could think of a few with such interests. But I can't think of anything that would convince the Zuma to actually do it for them. And even then, I'd find it *extremely* lame if that was the case.

Terran didn't provoke either. The Zuma just wanted their food.

Leaving them alone obviously isn't good enough.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Open Mic Thread: How do you manage refugees?

« on: June 09, 2011, 04:20:59 AM »

I've always found the idea of reviving dead realms to be extremely distasteful, in no small part due to Tuchanon and its dozen or so incarnations.

I honestly can't think of a reason for people finding it distasteful. If it's the same guys wanting to get the glory of old back, why not?

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

« on: June 09, 2011, 04:20:02 AM »

yeah and stupid Fissoas still blame Leon for coöperating with Allana....if they only knew

But heck there was to much peace, Madina decides to reclaim a city we held for a long time and was taken by a dammed group of guys from Libero Empire from the inside. We attack and all the surrounding realms go "stop the war, peace!."   ....."Damm liberal hippies"

To say so is to severely underestimate the stakes for those realms. Self-interest prevailed where Mendicant's diplomatic skills failed.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?

« on: June 09, 2011, 04:17:54 AM »

But is there any desire to make them more noticeable for someone (banker or dukes or rulers) or will they stay like this forever? It's really a pain for those up in the hierarchy to monitor food movements now.

I'd rather prefer it be made less visible.

D'hara pays for food? Hmmmm.. Nid Tek had quite a surplus during the summer

We don't only pay, we pay damn good for it. You should check to see if your caravans can reach us, it'll be completely unnoticed since you are the sender. Just don't send it all one shot, I'm not all too confident on how secure that land route is and you probably have a high chance of it not reaching. Mind you, a chance of profit is better than certainty of none.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?

« on: June 08, 2011, 01:01:40 PM »

I see. But food transactions are not invisible: bankers are informed when someone buys or sell food, dukes and rulers get food movement report and with a bit of math they can easily find out if a couple hundred bushels vanished. Clearly that holds only if they have some realm wide food policy and if they care. I suspected more realms had but it appears is not so.

As for the communistic approach, it's not about SMA or not, it's just about being reasonable. If Lords starve their own cities, this easily means they will sooner or later have no one defending it from monsters, as certainly one rural can't field by itself much of an army even with good trade deals. Plus usually judges are more tied with dukes than not, so it's really not hard to put lords in line if one wants to. For sure there are enough holes in the net for people to smuggle as much as they want, but I am surprised to discover it's not the exception.

Bankers only get note of huge transactions, if even that I believe. I don't quite recall, I haven't been a banker in a while. I could ask my banker to clear this up for me.

The communistic approach is not reasonable, that's the whole point. Cities produce a ton of gold, and rurals very little. If their cities are unwilling to share their wealth a bit, then why should the rurals? None of my transactions are in tiny realms with food problems, there is always the gold there for it. And even when the realm is more conservative, it doesn't mean that their cities are starving either. It just means they want to be prudent at their rurals' expense.

Many rural lords would be willing to make a bit less gold by selling internally, I believe, so it's just for the local duke to offer a reasonable deal (and not necessarily as high as ours) and they will deal with them.

Finding food leaks is also not very easy.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?

« on: June 08, 2011, 12:46:35 PM »

Reading your numerous forum posts about D'Hara and its amazing trade I always wondered how much are you really able to gather. Almost every realm on dwilight struggles for food: very few have surplus and since food it's an insanely powerful strategic asset, food market is strictly controlled in several of those realms. I would bet that all lords or traders caught selling food where they are not supposed to is a free ticket for a ban almost in every realm of dwilight. Certainly you can have a few traders on your paybook that run around and steal food or perhaps some lord that sells to you without being noticed, but these would make such tiny quantities as to be completely irrelevant on the large scale. Also, not so many lords are playing the selfish greedy guy, I guess there are quite a few that would gladly sell food cheaply to their own duke without thinking twice.

Food transactions are invisible. Some places have no-trade policies on realm level, while we are finding very interesting deals there at region levels. We don't advertize this to their council, so it passes unnoticed to everyone but the lord.

Paisly is importing more food than it consumes currently, but it did have its stores depleted not that far back. Port Nebel is frequently depleting its warehouses, but it seeks out markets less and it seems the eastern markets to which it has access to are rather closed. Port Raviel isn't faring as good as Paisly, but it's getting there as they are multiplying imports as well. I, for one, always have like 10 active caravan missions. Port Raviel is starting to do the same. Our traders stop by every now and then with very large sums of food they purchased from lands our automatic caravans can't reach.

I don't think many realms would react as strongly as you describe to lords exporting their food, even if there is shortage within. It's hard to justify a communistic approach to food on the SMA island, and after all all realms welcome the additional gold the trade brings, even if it means their surpluses are significantly smaller.

We aren't using the black market as far as I know. Dwilight is big, there are still enough open markets to not have to rely on the black market.

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Beluaterra / Re: the conflict looming

« on: June 08, 2011, 12:37:58 PM »

The fact stays....it's battlemaster, so there will be war one way or the other. Nobody enjoys sitting around in a city all day with their shinny units and do nothing.

Won't stem from Enweil, our units aren't shiny and they aren't doing nothing. It's not that nothing brews, mind you, just not a war against Riombara.

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Dwilight / Re: The Zuma

« on: June 08, 2011, 07:14:55 AM »

Honestly, I'm with Dominic on this.  If they're not going to interact, that's one thing.  If they're going to interact, then they need to interact.

That is indeed what I have been saying.

We had as developed interactions with them as one might expect from talking to the wind after a nasty storm, it was not like interacting the sentient beings we know them to be in the established cities they told us to exist. If natural disasters are what is desired, then may as well code out the Zuma and there won't be any more problems.

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Helpline / Re: Investment

« on: June 08, 2011, 07:10:22 AM »

Like I said, it all hinges on their being some area or under utlised resource somewhere else that can be aquired for your use. If you remove all financial restrictions, then eventually even those resources will be fully allocated.

No where in the game does it suggest that 100% is "normal production" that I know of, so it is just as reasonable to assume that it is maximum. The fact that we are mostly obsessed with making our regions run at this level doesn't mean it is normal level.

With regards to temporary increases in a field production capacity, I have had some experience with that. The methods we used gave a few years increase, after which the production capacity dropped below previous norms and we had to spend yet more money to repair the "damage" or fatigue that was caused. Doesn't happen in all cases, but there are reasons that farmers do things like rotate crops and let field lie fallow from time to time.[/list]

The BM universe, just like the real world, doesn't work in a context where economic restrictions are lifted.

Also, 100% is normal, because it's generally rather easy to get. Only poorly managed or otherwise unfortunate regions cap below 100%.

And finally, not all investments are good investments. It's often hard to tell before it's too late. That's why some investments result in less added wealth that it cost to do it.

Lowering the production % growth of investment in rurals and making it so food production isn't capped at 100% would be fully realistic and add interesting options to realm and region management. It would allow the trading game to develop even greater, as mercantile lords would have active means of increasing their outputs. If the average investment resulted in a 0 loss by selling at the 75th (or higher, 90th? 95th?) percentile market price, I think we'd have a balance encouraging people to involve themselves in trade, without being forced to.

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Dwilight / Re: The Zuma

« on: June 08, 2011, 07:02:41 AM »

No one said the answers wouldn't be revealed at some stage though. It might simply be that the story will be revealed at a later date, who knows.

A reader expects to have hints along the way, and wouldn't read a thousand pages of filler text just to finally get an idea of what's going on at the end.

Just saying, for those who insist on comparing with novels.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?

« on: June 08, 2011, 07:00:52 AM »

How many other buyers do they have though? The real issue in things like this is which party will break down first, the buyers that need that food, or the suppliers that want the gold. Of course you could go with a plan C and annex the damn food suppliers, but of course that is not always possible.

Far as I can tell, FEI has several realms that operate with food deficits or run so close to the supply that any bad weather results in starvation. Probably not on the level of D'Hara but I know Arcaea has been trying to buy food from pretty much any realm they can.

An exceptionally good harvest in those realms means a minor surplus, though, while in D'Hara is still means major deficits. That's the difference.

And considering that D'Hara's current policy is *buy everything*, it sure is a seller's market, though mind you it's my job to control this situation. Hence why D'Hara stepped in the south's war, after all, to protect the eventual exporter that Aurvandil will become and prevent Madina from increasing it's own internal demand for food by the annexation of Candiels. I wouldn't bother mediating the conflict if it wasn't for that, as the claims both realms brought forth before our involvement didn't move me much (didn't read the ones since yet).

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Dwilight / Re: The Zuma

« on: June 08, 2011, 06:33:36 AM »

The characters in a story rarely know everything.

But the reader expects to have a clue on what's going on in the novel. Intrigue in books isn't created by just leaving a whole bunch of pages blank, but by encouraging the reader to ask himself a series of questions.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Open Mic Thread: How do you manage refugees?

« on: June 08, 2011, 06:31:35 AM »

A modern-day Mordred, if you will...

Imagine all the trouble I could have saved BT if I'd found a way to kill him off?

Indeed, I had to settle with killing the realms he had his fingers around and getting his family blacklisted if not utterly banned in a whole bunch of realms, notably on Dwilight. Seems that managed to drive him into hiding, though, but a quick clean death back in the days would have changed history quite a bit...

Mind you, Mordred's move to get his hand on RoF was not refugees, but rather advies he and his buds ennobled. Cheap, but clever. Didn't see it until it was too late.

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BM General Discussion / Re: Sharing lords gold, whats up with that?

« on: June 08, 2011, 06:24:21 AM »

Unique in what way? I've played in several realms were region lords could expect payment for their food within the realm, or sell it outside the realm at a profit.

That the food supply is probably capped at like 10%, that so many big cities are bundled together without any major food producers. In most places, food supply is close to 100% (when discarding tiny realms that have extreme ratios), meaning a relatively small demand for food and keeping food prices down. In Dwilight, D'Hara has a demand that is unequaled anywhere else in the game, making a considerable pressure on food stocks and driving prices up.

I even predict it to eventually become problematic that the food prices are capped. Our suppliers are asking, on average, increasing prices. If we can't set a buy price higher than their sell price, then our traders can't make a profit. If they can't make a profit, then why would they bother? The 50 gold per unit limit is going to seriously hurt, if it remains too long.