I've been doing a lot of thinking the last few days, and one of the conclusions I've come to is that I believe we, the devs/admins, have made a mistake in the way we implemented alliance bloc restrictions and war declaration rules. Specifically, those changes don't go far enough—not as in "don't restrict enough," but more like "paint the restrictions on a flat wall," when what we really need is a recognizable tangible thing that helps players to feel more immersed in the milieu, while still encouraging the behaviour we're seeking.
To that end, I've come up with a proposed new feature that takes these ideas and moves them further—and it's along the lines of some things many of you will have heard of or even advocated for yourselves in the past (to some extent, it will look a lot like the scrapped Treaty System). As a whole, I would call it an Entity-Based Diplomacy Overhaul. Please bear in mind that this is all very preliminary, so if there are serious flaws found in it, there's plenty of time to fix them or scrap the whole idea (though the latter would be somewhat disappointing).
Right now, we have what I, as a programmer, would describe as
state-based diplomacy. That is, "war" is a status you can have. It doesn't tell you anything except that you and one other realm are at war with each other. We've added a reason to that, but it's still fundamentally just a bandaid on top of the existing system.
The new system would create fully
entity-based diplomacy, where every war, alliance, and other kind of diplomatic relationship is represented by a full-fledged database object, with names, start dates, end dates, reasons, participants, etc.
To flesh this out a bit more (again, bearing in mind that all specifics are still open to discussion):
- All realms start at "neutral" with respect to each other, which, in the new system, essentially means "no relationship."
- If you want to be allied to another realm, you need to form an Alliance.
- Each realm can only be in one alliance.
- An Alliance can contain multiple realms, but defines a strict hierarchy among them, to ensure a clear chain of command on the battlefield.
- Alliances have official names
- If alliances are small enough—under 1/3 of the total nobles on the continent, with buffers for shifting realm sizes—members of the alliance can send messages to each other with a standard option on the Messages page.
- Alliances can specify a variety of levels of support: for instance, whether members will aid each other in combat only in defense within member realms, defending in neutral territory, defending in enemy territory, or even joining in to attack together.
- They also specify how changes to the alliance, including changing the name, adding and removing members, and adjusting the conditions, can be made, with possibilities like "dictated by the top realm in the hierarchy", "majority vote by member realms," "unanimous vote by member realms", etc.
- It will keep track of the complete history of the alliance, with every change remembered and dated.
- If you want to go to war with someone, a realm or alliance can declare a War against a realm or alliance. Wars are mirrors of Alliances in many ways.
- Wars are automatically named by the game while they're underway, but once they're finished, the victor gets to set the name recorded for posterity
- They can specify where the parties involved will fight—only the attacker's regions, only the defender's regions, only neutral regions, or some combination
- They can specify which regions can be taken over, including "all" or "none"
- Unlike alliances, changes to wars happen unilaterally, including joining as an attacker; however, once the war is started, the only way to join as a defender is to join the defender's Alliance
- All attacking parties must give a reason for attacking or joining the war—if an Alliance declares war as a whole, individual member realms don't need to give reasons
- All participants in a war (whether realm or alliance) must clearly state their goals; defenders are automatically given a war goal of "obtain peace terms from the attackers", and can then change that
- Peace Treaties will exist, but be much simpler (they just state "we will not fight each other if we end up in the same region")
- Defensive Pacts will exist, allowing small groups of realms that are not allied to specify conditions for triggering an automatic alliance
- Considering making alliances only able to be active as part of a war—either you found one to declare a war, or to defend against a declaration, and as soon as the war is over, the alliance is automatically dissolved
- Parallel to this, a simple state-based "cultural diplomacy" will be created, to allow realms to unilaterally indicate which realms their nobility likes and dislikes. This will have no mechanical effects, but will be informative both to current and new players.
It is my hope that a system such as this would be able to address many of the concerns that currently plague BattleMaster, especially related to the war declarations and alliance restrictions, though I certainly recognize that it would be far from a panacea. In particular, Hinterlands is still desperately needed to create a much safer way to lift the density restrictions and allow realms to take regions without worrying about their noble count.
