Author Topic: Distance Penalties  (Read 1566 times)

BarticaBoat

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Distance Penalties
« Topic Start: May 18, 2020, 05:35:16 AM »
Instead of adding tons of rules around alliance blocks and who is at peace with who and why I can declare war, why don't we increase the penalties for units being distant from their realm/allies? Also add control penalties for being at war with very distant realms - calculate a theoretical centre of the realm based on capital and geometry and then region penalties are proportional to distance to the other realm's centre. Perhaps in case of allies, the penalty is modified such as based on proximity of the allied realms, ally distance to enemy and your distance to the enemy. The formulas would require some refining but I think the end result would be realms are forced to engage in wars on their own borders or are unable to project force across the continent.

Think of the psychology of it: instead of modifying rules and enforcing change in how people play, modify the constraints of the system so people adapt. Being told you're doing things wrong is an overall negative experience while being given new constraints is not offers the opportunity to explore new possibilities. I can extrapolate on any of my ideas if there is interest in this.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2020, 05:40:59 AM by BarticaBoat »

Anaris

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Re: Distance Penalties
« Reply #1: May 18, 2020, 04:05:56 PM »
Frankly, I don't want to be penalizing distant wars as much. We used to penalize them much more—and I'm pretty sure you were around for that.

The problem with large alliances has very little to do with fighting enemies very far away.

More importantly, I'm happy to have 2 allies fight a realm that's only close to one of them. I'm not happy to have the entire continent gang up on one realm, even if that realm is centrally located so they all have short marches to it.

In any case, what you suggest, as I said, not a new restriction, but a return to an old one—and people have both complained bitterly about it, and done their level best to find ways around it, for many years now.

I don't yet have a better answer as to how to prevent entire continents from locking themselves up in alliances, polarizing to two warring factions, and/or ganging up on one or a small number of realms.
Timothy Collett

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

BarticaBoat

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Re: Distance Penalties
« Reply #2: May 18, 2020, 06:36:41 PM »
Yes, but back in the days if you couldn't march halfway across the continent to support an ally, there was no point in having distant allies. You can support an ally with an enemy close to them by taking a triangle of the theoretical centre points of realms and creating a penalty equivalent to the square of the direct distance less the sum of squares of the other sides. Thus any triangle formed where your direct distance is longest and you aren't immediately adjacent to your ally (forming a right angle triangle) you will be penalized far less for having an ally close to the enemy. Other sets of circumstances can use more standard formulas to derive a penalty.

We can return to an old penalty but use new game features to make it more intuitive and scalable. I recall us moving to a coordinate system for the regions - this enables us to use realm geometry to logically apply penalties in ways the players can control. Very long thin realm? Extreme ends have extreme penalties. Capital isn't near the geographic centre? Far end has amplified control penalties. Instead of applying top down measures we should look to structure the environment, imo.

The way this can be applied to alliance blocks is in the region control penalties. Central region of the alliance? Great! You will have great realm control because bandits can't escape to unfriendly regions. Very large alliance and it's a peripheral region? Well now you have the undesirables of 5 realms congregating in the rim - it becomes much harder to control such a region.

Zakky

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Re: Distance Penalties
« Reply #3: May 18, 2020, 07:24:06 PM »
Gotta make alliances temporary. It should only last 3 months at most. If they still want to stay allied, then re-ally. If they want a realm to be a permanent buddy of theirs, form a federation.