Looting reform

[BarticaBoat]

We need to reform looting to make it more of an even game. Right now, no looting option beyond looting for tax gold is usable because of peasant mobs, and looting for tax gold is overpowered.

I propose these looting options:

Loot for tax gold: loot minor nobility, wealthy merchants, and tax offices for their gold. The productivity is related to the wealth of the region, region type, and how much tax gold is collected. The downside is that these targets have substantial guards and if your unit lacks enough CS are likely to sustain casualties or even be totally driven away. Obviously cities and townslands are the most profitable with badlands the least. This option also targets the same people who are administrators, morale, loyalty, and productivity are not directly affected but realm control will drop swiftly. This will also not tend to cause peasant mobs to form. Only a few people will die.

Pillage and maraud: attack the populace, stealing what you can and burning what you can't steal. This is less profitable than stealing taxes, but peasants generally don't fight back until they organize into mobs. This option decreases the soft cap on productivity, morale, and loyalty to both the home and attacking realms. Realm control won't suffer too badly. More people will die. This is most profitable in cities, mountains, and townslands in that order. Emigration will increase.

Steal grain: attack granaries and farms, trying to steal as much as you can. There is a CS check based on population, falling below the check causes them to repel the looters and cause casualties, meeting the first check but not the second causes some casualties and proportional amounts of grain stolen or burned so the looters can't have it, and meeting the second check causes complete theft without loss via burning, some peasants will die.

Kill rape burn: attack populace directly without stealing much. Nets little gold but is effective at killing off the population. Population, morale, and loyalty will directly suffer, productivity will have a lowered hard cap due to lowered population. This will increase emigration. The peasants are not likely to fight back appreciably, because by the time they form mobs there are too few.

Damage military infrastructure: same as before.

Loot an isolated village or caravan: same as before but there is a delay in how long the looting message goes out based on region type. A caravan lost in badlands may not be reported for a week.

Thoughts?

[Anaris]

I've just skimmed so far, but it looks like a solid basic set of ideas.

I'll take a closer look later. Fixing the damage I did to looting the last time I overhauled it has been on my TODO list for a while.

[Zakilevo]

I think it should be changed a bit. Adding something like resistance value as well.

Especially gold/production.

Looting tax gold = if you steal from minor nobility and merchants (both will most likely reside in townslands and cities) you get more tax gold out but you hardly do any production damage. Will also be less hate invoking meaning realm loyalty toward your realm will not fall that much. But this causes you to fight street battles - not really a battle but more like a chance to lose your men during the action like hunting enemies except it happens instantly. If you are unlucky, you can lose a good chunk. Happens more often to those with a small unit since they will have to fight more evenly matched fights against personal guards of minor nobles and merchants. Maybe unavailable in other areas other than cities and townslands? or just reduce efficiency of the action a lot in other regions.

Pillage and Maraud = More of stat damaging option. Reduces overall stats in cities and townslands but not so much in rural and other regions with more sporadic settlements. People will either choose to flee or form mobs. Rest is the same as what was proposed.

Steal food = Same as the proposed idea. Maybe require carts? Otherwise only refill your provision?

Burn food = A lot easier to execute than Steal food.

Burn fields = Heavily reduces food production for a week or puts a soft cap on production. Instead of reducing food production of the region, it just puts a cap on it like 45(80)/100% 45 is after the cap and 80 is without. More people performing the action will accumulate the reduction. Most efficient during autumn maybe? Or can simply focus on reducing production of rural and forest regions.

Kill Rape and Burn = Same

Loot an isolated village or caravan: Maybe change to hit or miss?

As I was writing this maybe something could be done to certain region types as well.

Like Badlands not suffering much from any looting options except ones that impact population. Even then maybe make it much harder to kill or damage since badland regions will have very sporadic settlements and some might even on the map. Since badlands are bad stat wise maybe making them harder to damage will be a nice boost it needs to make it more useful.

For mountain regions maybe add something like collapse mines which will reduce income for up to 2 weeks by x%?

[Gabanus family]

I agree with most of this. The rising of peasant mobs right now kind of ruined looting in many ways, unless you come in with your entire army full blazing. That is, if your realm is strong enough to even have a decent enough sized army. The small realms can't well do much looting at this moment because of the mobs.

[JDodger]

Are peasants really that tough these days? Ive held off hundreds of them with a good unit and barely took casualties lately. Much better than when they were practically militia units.

[Anaris]

Are peasants really that tough these days? Ive held off hundreds of them with a good unit and barely took casualties lately. Much better than when they were practically militia units.

Peasant militia on testing have been beefed up considerably, because the peasant spawns are not intended to be a cheap and easy way to let you slaughter the entire population of a region.

[JDodger]

oh right. so are they intended to be an unstoppable detriment to looting? cuz that is what i remember them being in the southern league war.

im not in favor of beefed up peasants, there are not a huge number of incidences where an untrained peasant rabble actually stood up to a trained army, much less defeated one.

[Vita`]

I would say it depends. As Tim said, testing moreso than stable. And as I told him privately, I think it should always be dangerous to loot in a high-population region like Ibladesh, Giask, Darfix, Oligarch etc. (high-risk for high-reward) And if you're looting alone, you should have an exit strategy instead of lingering around. But I would not say they are intended to be absolutely-unstoppable as much as sometimes-unstoppable-sometimes-stoppable. Situational or proportional. There will be outliers where peasant mobs are just too much for looters (Giask fully-populated) or where looters are just too much for peasant mobs (a 2k pop badlands), but the majority should be somewhat more up-in-the-air depending upon specific circumstances.

That does not mean we have achieved Perfect Proportionality and that it might not need readjusted in one way or another.

[JDodger]

i agree with cities being riskier than rurals, cities are in fact the only situation that makes sense for peasants to stand a chance.

and there are still more examples throughout history of entire cities being butchered like sheep than of untrained peasants so much as mounting a decent counterattack on an occupying force.

what would make a lot more sense is giving nobles the ability to foment resistance... actively arm and encourage the peasants against the invaders with help from trained troops.

[Andrew]

Leadership is the difference between a mob and a militia, no?

The advantage that soldiers have, even when facing larger numbers, is they're a trained, regimented force, under proper leadership. They don't break up, but stay together at least to some degree, when in a hostile environment.

That and when cities are looted, this means that the attacker has already broken in, likely after a significant siege has already taken place. How many people would honestly fight back after being sieged for an extended period? Would they even have the energy left?

[Shulee]

Andrew's just defined the proper 18th C meaning of the phrase, "well regulated militia."

[JDodger]

Andrew, you bring up a fair point, but as we all know that is not how sieges function in BM.

[Andrew]

True, true.

The closer you code something to how it is in real life the less you have to explain about why it works that way. It's just "because that's how it works in real life (or as close as I can code to and still sleep at night)".

I'm a few years out from the last time I was in a BM siege, but I remember them maybe lasting a week at the longest. I'm going to not pursue this line of thinking any further though, because it's going to end up as a long discussion about the relative lengths of time and such in BM versus the real world and no.

[Vita`]

While the real world may inspire a game, it cannot be forgotten it is still a game and some things need done for enjoyment or balance. If we were to perfectly simulate medieval life, even just as nobles, it'd be rather dreary. Medieval life was *hard*.

[Anaris]

For starters, it would take forever to do anything, including send and receive messages, and your character would probably die of Yersina pestis or some random disease.