Messages

[no]

It is nearly impossible to design a game such that those with more time to devote to it gain no benefit over those who do.

Unless, that is, you enjoy playing ProgressQuest.

BattleMaster is designed so that you can enjoy it while putting in very little time.  Human nature being what it is, people who talk more (subject to the caveats I mentioned in the "how to gain influence" section) will get thought of more highly.  That means they will get more positions. 

There is nothing we, or anyone, can do about that.

Sorry for the delay; here's a link to the profiles as of the end of my term.

[is]

Funny. I swore that I read somewhere when signing up on how Tom once ran a country on a few minutes a day and this was presented as a "This game is cool because you can do so much while having a real life" advertisement. I think I will seek that out now. If BattleMaster is meant to be as Anaris describes then please say so clearly and up front so new players know what they are getting themselves into. As it stands most people coming into the game are likely to have what, from your responses indicate, a very wrong impression of how much time they will have to dedicate to the game to accomplish something beyond blindly following orders...

First of all, when Tom did that, it was about 9 years ago.  The game was different back then; I don't even know offhand what all the differences are, because a lot of them are cultural, not in the code.  Could he do the same now? I don't know.  Maybe he's just smarter than me (he did build this game mostly by himself, after all!).  Or maybe he'd find that it doesn't work that way anymore.

Second of all, yes, it is possible to be a successful ruler in a few minutes a day.  I've done it myself for significant stretches of time.

However, there are problems with it.

• It's hard to remain ruler if you're not following up on lots of things, and making sure people see how effective you are (especially in a Republic or Democracy).
• If you're not putting in the time to make the big plans and communicate them to the realm, someone else has to be doing so.
• Closely related to #1, it's hard to become a ruler if you're just logging in once a day for 20 minutes or so.

So basically, someone's got to keep the people in the realm moving in the right direction, and if it's not you, you're likely to be replaced by the person who it is.

Sorry but I fail to see how "guide on how to be duke" or "guide on how to be ruler" qualifies as to helping newcomers.

There are a LOT of people in those positions, or trying to gain those positions, who haven't been in the game as long as us.

You're a "newcomer" to me, Peri, and so's Bedwyr. 

Do you know the story of Napoleon? Exiled first, banished later.

Of course I understand it's about the mechanics, just think it could be done better than that. BM is great because the mechanics support a variety of situations, but this seems to be a rough edge. Would be great if it could be fleshed out.

The only thing this really needs is a clear statement on the Exile page that someone who has been exiled cannot be banished.

This has been added in rev. 5409.

[play]

I think that having such a steep learning curve discourages new players. I think that it would be perfectly reasonable to seek guidance in game but this does not always pan out. Most importantly, as I understand it, BattleMaster is intended to be a game in which the guy who spends 20 minutes a day playing is not extremely disadvantaged when competing against a guy who spends 8 hours a day logged in, pouring over the wkik, searching through archived mailing lists, lurking in IRC and so on. It is meant to be a light game that one can succeed at with just a few minutes a turn.

It is intended that someone can play the game, and enjoy it as a guy who follows orders and maybe eventually gets a minor lordship, in 20 minutes/day.

It is not expected that you can learn to be an expert at the game in 20 minutes/day, nor that you can get to be actively running realms or making huge complex plans.

If you want to get more out of it, you have to put more into it.

(Note: if this sub-discussion is to be continued, it should be broken out into a separate thread.)

[your]

If population is the problem, I can not get to it with some common sense that the building would deteriorate so fast that it is not usable any more. The rate at which you will train soldiers is already reduced due to lowered population, and additional to that the buildings will decay as well. Then I would say as well, restrict the amount of RC's (and there level) and/or workshops you can build. To allocate extra gold for repairs would help greatly, but is does not take away that the buildings deteriorate just too fast, and the cost for repairs and maintenance would be insanely high. That's just my opinion.

This game's philosophy is not to hold your hand, but rather to give you enough rope to hang yourself.  If you want to build RCs when they're just going to fall down, that's your problem.

But for the moment, Anaris, do you know at what population/production can we successfully construct workshops and RC's without having to fear that the gold will be wasted?

Not offhand, I'm afraid.

[something]

Not only is a judge unable to stop the loss of prestige by punishment it is also possible for the player of the exiled character to leave the realm and the game and even when the character is paused he can't be removed, still destroying the kings prestige.

That's a bug, and will be fixed.

When a ban would remove him in shorter time and that's not intended why make it possible anyway. What I mean is that I think the exile function wasn't intended to protect someone.

No, it was not intended to protect anyone. 

As I believe I have stated previously, it was intended to give the Ruler and his government something that they can do against people who cannot be banned.

So if you can ban someone...just ban them!

It's really bad in this case, because the judge (my character) asked the king for the permission of banishment when that character became known as traitor IC (OOC it was known much longer). The king agreed, but exiled the traitor before the judge had a chance to click the ban button. I know, it's a misfortune, but it's been more  than a month since then. The traitor became inactive and active again, we don't know where he is, ...

So, your king's an idiot.  Sorry, we haven't coded a cure for stupidity into BattleMaster.

[could]

Still, I think it would make sense if a region with 5'000 commoners could fitted out like a rural region with max 5'000 peasants. It doesn't matter if there is room for 95'000 commoners in the city.

Thing is, when you've got the 5000 people in a city built for 95000, they're not all concentrated in one part of the city.  They're spread out all around it, trying to keep as much of it running as they can.

So yeah, maybe we could make it so you could keep an RC going in a city without enough population to normally sustain it—but the price for that is that you can't cash bonds.  Or you can't actually trade any food, because the warehouse managers were conscripted to help maintain the RC.  Or the food all rots, because the people trying to maintain the warehouse itself were pressed into service, and now the warehouse has fallen down.

You see, it's just not that simple.

The one change that would make some sense—and we're considering something like it as part of a near-future feature—would be letting you allocate some extra gold to repairs, so you make less money, but at least your RC doesn't fall down. 

Yet.

Yes but an example as that can easily be prevented.

Exactly—by not letting paused characters keep their estates.

If there's an auto sell at 20, max 200 bushels, and a manual sell at 20, for another 200 bushels, then a caravan SHOULD be able to purchase all 400 bushels, as long as the caravan has sufficient gold and was told to buy at 20.

Is this the way it will work, or will two caravans need to be sent?

That's not the way automatic offers work; they're not "for X bushels" but "as long as the warehouse has at least Y bushels."

That said, you are correct (I believe); a caravan that uses up part of its funds buying from a manual offer will not then go on to check if there is an automatic offer to finish spending its money.  And similarly with a caravan selling food.

I think.  I always have a hard time remembering which bits of the food & trade system I've finished and which I haven't ;)

If you report a bug on this subject, that will help me remember to check on it, and fix it if it needs fixing.

Some notes from a dev on changes to expect in the trade system Real Soon Now™:

• Automatic caravan missions—to be sent out to buy or sell food when under or over certain thresholds
• Ox carts going away entirely
• The prices and limits for caravans actually going into effect
• Troops being able to loot or in some other way interdict caravans from passing through the region they're in—including both lord-sent caravans and trader-owned caravans

There are probably a couple of others, but I can't remember them just at the second.

[me]

The food system confuses me, and I can look at the frakking codebase.

The food system confuses me and I wrote half of it!

When a character pauses, he loses his oath altogether.

Characters without oaths get no taxes (save realmwide), and have no estates, by definition.

Do recommendation expire after some time or if the recommending character leaves the game?

Recommendations are only valid if the noble who gave it is still on the same continent as you.