Author Topic: Colonial Master!  (Read 21855 times)

Chenier

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Re: Colonial Master!
« Reply #15: November 02, 2018, 01:42:43 PM »
The only force I know of in game that managed to break all those strangeholds was the Cagilan/Taran alliance that ended up conquering all of Atamara to all intents and purposes.

And we broke that up real good in the end.  Too bad they sunk the island before we found out how that little continent-wide war was going to shake out.

My bet is they're just trying really hard to keep that from happening again, which has both good and bad aspects to it...like the bad aspects we're seeing in Dwilight and BT right now.

Atamara had the same map as BT, pre-blight. And before the third invasion, Enweil had a series of alliances that basically covered half the map. Enweil itself, at its peak, had about 30 regions. And still, BT was the most dynamic continent, and there were tons of wars between every invasion, it never felt gridlocked. With time, may of these alliances fell, and old allies turned on Enweil. Enweil even fought a war solo against pretty much the whole continent at one point. I don't remember how many nobles we had, but given that in the fourth invasion more nobles died than most realms have nobles today, I'd reckon it was a fair amount. Around 60 probably?

And Enweil has many of my favorites memories of the game. When you have 60 people, you have competition for titles. Every title earned was a real victory. You didn't just get something for being the only one to put a vote in the ballot. We had two, and then three active armies at one point. The general title actually meant something. We had a large realm, and rotating armies to defend our South-Eastern border, without exposing our north-eastern border, all while fending off many realms on our western border... it was exciting. And it's just not the same with a tiny 1-city realm. We had Fwuvghor for the North-East, which was mostly secured, but which we couldn't take for granted as Rio could siege it if we gave them the time. We also used it for raiding into Rio. The South-East was rurals mostly, and the main front against Rio (and Alluran I believe), so that was an unfortified choke to deal with, near our capital and largest city, which again, could potentially be sieged if we didn't pay attention. To the West, a bunch of realms were attacking us... We had Iato and Fheuvenem to simultaneously defend, which themselves were surrounded by rurals and woodlands, so they didn't really block the enemy movement either.

Cities were vital parts of the economy, we had 6: Enweilieos, Ete City, Fengen (capital), Fheuvenem, Iato, Fwuvoghor. But they were valid targets, unlike today. Because for one, even if all but one of these cities was on our border, they still ran taxes fine, and gave the realm lots of gold. How much gold would Enweil get with the current mechanics? Probably a tiny fraction of it. Secondly, most of their income went to knights, and thus the mobile army. Not like today where 90% of it goes to militia. And where estate distribution means the average tax efficiency in the realm hovers around 66% Enweil could, solo, siege a city, thanks to its well-funded mobile army. But enemies too, many of them solo, could siege our cities, thanks to their well-funded mobile armies, and overall humble quantities of militia. Rio had 3 cities and rich regions overall. Most of our rivals had about that.

Enweil was *fun*. It was fun to play in. And certainly, a lot of the continent had fun either siding with it or, mostly, opposing it. Sometimes it did great. Other times, not so great. In its early days, it trekked half the continent and waged wars for purely RP purposes: to stamp out tyrannies, and spread democracy. And that's pretty much exactly the kind of behavior that's always said should happen more: realms shouldn't wait for wars to come to them, they should find reasons to create fun conflicts on their own. And if it slowed down a little after those campaigns, again it re-awakened not much later, and triggered massive conflicts with small things like the invasion of Republic of Fwuvoghor.

But at some point, people noticed that some large realms were... not so fun. Stiffling. And that some small realms were... more fun, more dynamic. Small moving parts like the misnamed Ceded City Alliance helped keep continental politics lively. And so it was extrapolated into a broad rule that "big is bad, small is good".

Problem is, not all big was bad, and not all small was good. And that "small", back then, was larger than your typical realm nowadays. I remember when I founded Fheuv'n (IVF), it didn't take very long for me to consider it to have been a mistake, that my new realm was way too small. And that by splitting from Enweil, I had essentially doomed both (well, Enweil was already doomed by the mass deaths and the blighting of its 2 richest cities). And yet, IVF had 17 nobles and 7 regions. Our mobile army was... I don't recall, around 10k I think.

This "tiny miserable non-viable realm"... was more populous, active, and stronger than many of the realms that now live on all of the continents of BM. And it probably would have been even worse off under current mechanics, because we were surrounded by blight, and could only expand linearly, pretty much.

But even before IVF came to be, even when Enweil was still fairly large with 17 regions and at least 30 nobles (40?)... there was almost no competition for most titles already. And this was 2011.

The player decline continued, and it's like the vision of the game stayed the same, focused on the big blocs of AT.

And so... despite the player base declining, we tacked a 1 noble per continent limit everywhere. So on top of having less players per continent, those could have less nobles per player. Now, let's be clear, I think that the removal of doubles was moderately beneficial, but that doesn't mean that we should just completely ignore the drawbacks. So we end up with depopulated continents because of both player trends and dev-driven mechanics changes. But... on the other hand, we are completely ignoring how much the continents have been bled, and keep on hitting them with new density rules. "You should have 3 nobles per region, even if most realms back with more players and double nobles never had that, or else." And "oh, you have too many regions, you should break up into more realms, otherwise nobody gets any tax gold". "You better go play in a realm that has a big city surrounded but smaller cities, because otherwise, your realm will never be rich, because those border regions will have !@#$ tax rates now".

This is all a caricature of reality, of course. The changes had good intentions. And many had positive impacts. But the drawbacks are cumulative. And it feels like they are increasingly choking the life out of many continents.

PvP wars are so much less fun today than they were in 2006-2013. And some of that are the result of the community evolving and the mechanics failing to catch up, while others are the results of newer mechanics always pushing towards the same direction. "Small realms are good". "Realm destruction is bad". "Large realms are bad". "Small border conflicts are good". "Density is good".

It's like... "Yes, but"... You can't code player behavior. Sure, sticks and carrots have potential... but when you start stacking so much of it, you end up with "everyone is condemned to play in a small realm", "realms are impossible to destroy", "large realms are unviable", "the gains of wars are never worth the costs", and "expanding actually makes you poorer due to the combined effects of tax tolerance and estate efficiency".

So many mechanics have been added to help prevent one realm from imposing boredom on the realm of the continent... that wars have become both unfun and pointless. "We could invade the neighbor... but why bother? We'll get distance from the capital issues." "We could war the neighbor... but then we'd just stare at each other from our fortified locations, and never achieve anything meaningful". "We could try to take this region, but then we'd need to sacrifice two knights from the capital who get good taxes, and that region will take ages to produce any taxes at all, only to produce less taxes than those estates even when fully productive".

And that's not just speculative fear mongering. Those are all conclusions that I, and other players involved in conflicts, have come to. That have guided our decisions. And arguments I have seen by many people in game.
Dit donc camarade soleil / Ne trouves-tu ça pas plutôt con / De donner une journée pareil / À un patron