Messages

5776

BM General Discussion / Re: Population movement (that is.. the automatic stuff)

« on: March 23, 2011, 12:02:21 PM »

The only really worrying thing I've found is that people seem to emigrate into rogue regions. Anyone else noticed that?

No, and there are plenty of rogue regions around us. I guess if the region only recently went rogue, and still had reasonable stats they might immigrate.

No one emigrates to rogue regions.

5777

Feature Requests / Re: 'Too Much Peace' Realm-exceptions, an edit to the current code.

« on: March 23, 2011, 02:48:33 AM »

Aha! This explains something that has been bothering me. After months of 14% taxes the peasants in my region on BT suddenly decided they hated it and dropped my stats through the floor for no reason I could explain... Until now. It's a good idea.

That only explains it if you've also been getting Too Much Peace messages...

There was, around the same time, a fix to a bug that's existed for as long as I've been in the game, that made certain large realms no longer be able to run such high tax rates.

5778

Feature Requests / Re: 'Too Much Peace' Realm-exceptions, an edit to the current code.

« on: March 23, 2011, 01:07:39 AM »

Is this true across the board, or just on testing so far?

I believe it's just testing at present.

However, we should check up on how it's going, and if it's working properly, we can move it to stable within the next week or two, I think.

5779

Feature Requests / Re: Secret Religions

« on: March 23, 2011, 01:06:21 AM »

I disagree. Its existence must be common knowledge, but in places it is not unrealistic to expect that members of a certain sect might want to practice secretly to avoid persecution.

If you are practicing as a noble secret sect, that works perfectly as a secret society.  If you want to gain common followers, you are going to have to make it public sooner or later.

For temples and shrines to be of any use, they must be known about.  For a sermon to be able to convert people, you necessarily have to bring in people not already part of the faith.

If you just want to keep your membership in a religion secret from your realm, then don't become a priest and don't accept a lordship. Then no one who's not already in the religion can identify you.

In the end, you can choose: secrecy, or power over the commoners.  That's the tradeoff you have to make.

5780

Feature Requests / Re: Secret Religions

« on: March 22, 2011, 10:39:20 PM »

This has been rejected by Tom in the past.

If you want to run a secret cult, just make it a secret society.  By its very nature, a religion must be public.

5781

BM General Discussion / Re: Tops and Flops

« on: March 22, 2011, 10:38:30 PM »

not for a nationality but for a language, dutch instead of english. But when it happens, battlemaster needs to grow very much so I don't expect it will ever happen.

I still seriously doubt this would happen. Segregating the community by language just seems wrong for a game designed to be role-play as well as strategy.

Let's put it this way:

If BattleMaster ever has as many Dutch players as it now has total players, Tom might be willing to consider something like that.

5782

BM General Discussion / Re: What you really wanted to do in BM but never did

« on: March 22, 2011, 06:57:39 PM »

Did Argus ever get off the ground? I was never much involved in it.

I should think not, as it was largely targeted against Hireshmont...

5783

Development / Militia, Magic, and Monkey Business

« on: March 22, 2011, 05:56:06 PM »

Three major new changes were committed so far today, which will go live with revision 5339.

The first is notifications of militia attrition.  Militia units have always lost a few men every few days, and small militia units auto-disbanded.  However, until now, there has been no notification of this.  Now, Lords will be notified each day of the militia losses that day—both from attrition, and from undetected murder by infiltrators.

The second is the implementation of three previously unimplemented scroll types, Magic Steeds, Magic Weapons, and Magic Armour.

The third is the implementation of a feature that has been sitting with a little "TODO" tag on it for years now: the ability to buy a region, but have the fraud delayed till sunrise.  This will make it indistinguishable from a normal region revolt. Of course, it also gives the guards more time to cotton on to the scheme, and an extra chance to catch the fraudster.

5784

Development / Re: New Player Retention

« on: March 22, 2011, 02:56:03 PM »

A new Knight is needed in the region of Region.

Definitely possible.

15 gold per week.

Obvious extension to the above.

Potential advancement to steward.

Possible, but I sort of doubt people would actually say that a brand-new knight position had "potential advancement to steward."

Immediate assignment to "Army of Soldiers."

Also easily possible, and a sensible extension of the above.

Local lord is known to be fair but strict. Expects strict obedience but is a proven mentor and teacher.

That part's nearly impossible to do.  Any sort of subjective judgment of regions, lords, realms, duchies, or any other such group is so obviously open to abuse that I don't see any good way to make it informative and accurate, and still not take a full-time group of people with full access to everybody's messages and actions making such assessments.

5785

Feature Requests / Re: Assigning Militia

« on: March 22, 2011, 01:58:01 PM »

Militia units lose men over time? 

Certainly.  There is a small amount of attrition built in, and militia units that are too small simply auto-disband.

5786

Dwilight / Re: The Zuma

« on: March 21, 2011, 10:50:53 PM »

My 'LIE' indicators just went of the scale 

No, it's real OOC truth.  I know a bit more about what the mechanics behind the Zuma are, but I've never read any of the accounts of people who've gotten close to them and talked to them.

For the inside scoop, you need to talk to Artemesia.  He's their ambassador, after all.

5787

Feature Requests / Re: instant messaging

« on: March 21, 2011, 03:56:38 PM »

All messages are sent instantly.

If you mean something more like a live chat, it's called IRC.

5788

Dwilight / Re: Maroccidens!

« on: March 21, 2011, 03:06:43 PM »

I think you may not understand the situation between Bowie and the Zuma...

He has, as I understand it, been deliberately provoking them for months now.

5789

Helpline / Re: Marshal formation

« on: March 21, 2011, 02:04:27 PM »

Not sure if this would really work well in the game, but perhaps the Marshal could have a "Formation Builder" that allows him to specify where various unit types should start, what formation they should use, and how they should conduct themselves. If he is successful in "Commanding the Field" the units in his army will conform to his custom formation. Perhaps the Marshal could also save and name a certain number of these custom formations formations for use within his army. Also, it would be cool if the General could build and tweak formations that could then be used by all Marshals under his command. In the end this could result in three kinds of formations, Game Wide Formations, Realm Formations and Army Formations...

That wouldn't be impossible, of course, but it's not a priority at the moment.

5790

Background / Re: Human Nature

« on: March 21, 2011, 01:55:45 PM »

That is partly true. Obviously, yes, there were philanderers. But it is rare that I see RPs of conventional marriages, stable relationships, or anything like that. Every RP is some horribly complex drawn out romantic love affair. Which is just bogus.

One of my characters fell deeply in love, and eventually got married, and had a stable relationship with her husband.

However, they weren't really able to "settle down" and have a normal married life until they ceased to be actively played characters.  They left the continent and settled down outside BM, where they weren't being constantly interrupted by the craziness that is life here.

I think part of the problem is that conventional, stable relationships are boring to roleplay about! There's just not enough conflict.  And if you can get one going, there's a good chance it will be upset by one thing or another, BM being what it is.  Maybe your wife will be deported.  Maybe your husband will be executed. 

Maybe there will just be a war, and you won't have time to RP about anything for three months, and then the player playing your husband will have gotten busy with school, and the character gone completely inactive.

And, of course, because there is no game mechanic to model marriage and children, and no consensus whatsoever about how many IG years make up one RL year, there are constant problems figuring out when and whether to have children, how to handle them, etc.

It's certainly not impossible, but there are a lot of perfectly good reasons not to see normal, stable relationships in BM.