Account sharing & overproduction & players without factions

[kinngrimm]

Problems:
1. Account sharing
2. outproducing through huge player numbers
3. getting single players to participate more without getting bored



action points to manage other members of a faction:

actions are
- entering a fief
- leaving a fief
- starting to recruit
- getting a job
- entering tavern(what does that do anyways or are you by default in a tavern when entering a fief)
- buying equipment
- selling equipment
- transfer stuff
- move character on the map

Restrict action points to a limited amount per day and also they need to bee seen as a pool for rank 10-8
So all rank 10-8 Faction members have overall/together f.e. 4-7 action points per day.

In my eyes, this should make account sharing less interesting.



diplomatic relation system to support smaller(10-30) and medium(30-70) sized factions

I am speaking of production and trade to be regulated over the knowledge of who works with whom.

For the sake of the argument lets also go with the term efficiency peak and that of say 70.
After reaching the efficiency peak, the more players there are, the less they produce overall and/or the less they get out of trading. Still a 100 players would produce more then 70, but perhaps calculated as more like f.e. 80.

This should regulate
- single factions with 70+ members
- openly allied factions with overall 70+ members
- not openly allied factions who pretend not to work together (large factions splitting up into smaller once) also reducing their efficiency when they have all in all more then 70 members.

How do we get the numbers to calculate, if the peak is reached?
Offer incentives to participate within a diplomatic relation system.

how would that work?
By default all factions are neutral to each other. Now include an option in strategus to define other types of relations. A Factions who wants to be related to another faction with another type of relation ship offers this and the second factions needs to  confirm it.

types of relations, advantages and restrictions could be:
- war, no trade allowed, automaticly entered when attacking another faction(fiefs should be able to be traded without the need for an attack)
- neutral, trade loss of 21% of the stuff which is been traded (forget about the particular numbers, those are just examples)
- alliance, no trade loss

now we have the incentive to you join an alliance openly, therefor we can calculate the overall players working together.
With that overall player count we come back to the production, the efficiency peak. If the alliance has overall more then 70 players, their production efficiency goes down. A lot of single clans without alliance have to pay a lot of trade loss, overtime there will be better numbers the devs will calculate with and therefor a hopefully good balancing will be reached.



missions without a faction without taking part in battles

It always has been like that someone needs something what another one can give, so there is payment.
Questions for me are what can be done as a single faction-less player and what would he do with his payment anyhow, what gets he out of it?

- scouting
he is somewhere on the map and sees stuff i as a faction leader would like to know.
What if i could see what he sees and i pay him for that in gold.
The contract giving faction, gets information about troops in different places, sees the troop movements on the map, sees what gold in a fief.
Perhaps there could be even a special mission with a chance of failure to get knowlege on the equipment in a fief or on a player, if failure, the scout/spy would be handled like loosing a battle and relocated randomly on the map and the faction who was scouted gets a message that that player was doing so.
- sabotage troops, the more troops the less the chance of success, if success a percentage of the troops would die of water poisoning 
- steal gold/equipment, the more there is the higher the chance of success, the more troops there are the lower the chance of success
- transport stuff between 2 defined characters or fiefs and get a profit, for that time he can not be attacked by factions with more then 30 members or factions who are in an alliance. Bandits ftw 
- offer to attack other single player ;)

include time for how long such task take and make the outcome dependable on it.

Gain for a single player
- thrill, will he succeed with his mission, will he fail
- Not only gold through scouting and getting payed regularly for it from another faction but also by selling stuff he steels
- exp
- something more to do, he can offer himself and needs to get into contact with factions, offer his services



There is a saying, if the wind blows, some build walls to protect themselves others are building windmills!

PS: Multi accounting is something still needs to be addressed by deleting these accounts, but if you see a windmill for that let me know. Till then delete and ban those, with the might of the equus africanus asinus

edited:typos

[HarunYahya]

I approve this !
Every steps to convert Strategus to Total War series should be taken imo.

Solution 1 = Perfect

Solution 2 = Good idea we can also add more features like splitting "Alliance" into "Military Alliance" and "Trade Rights" therefore you won't have to form an alliance to have a good trade agreement with a faction.If 2 of your allies go to war on each other you should break one of your alliance (Let's say if you didn't do that in 2 days you'll automatically break your alliance with both of them !) . Diplomatic relations of each faction should be linked on cRPG.net so people will see all relations of all clans.Maybe giving each fief an area of effect which will form fief borders.(Like total war, region borders.)Let's say faction x has region A , if you want to enter Region A , we should have one of these diplomatic relations below:
-Military Alliance
-Military Access
-War
Otherwise, you cannot enter region A.

Solution 3=Epic ! Saboteurs and ninjas incoming !!!

[Erasmas]

I really love that. Kinngrimm - thx for pointing that out.

About Solution 1 - if I understand correctly, leaving fief, moving char to another fief, entering fief, transfer of gold, transfer of troops would consume 5 points? If so, it would be great if the total number of points was dependent on number of faction members. Brilliant idea.

About Solution 2 - I have some doubts. I think that one of the fantastic things about strategus is that it does not have any features on diplomacy, therefore everything needs to be actually agreed between human beings. There is no obligation to disclose the diplomatic relations as of now, and I do like it as well.

@koyama - your idea about Regions actually disables raid ability, or sudden attacks. You do not need to have any relations to raid someones fief, especially if you are a freelancer, or a faction that specializes in raids. I can imagine those will appear pretty soon. Also, automatic breach of alliances may be to harsh, such things may be agreed in amicable way without creating conflict of interests. The beauty of current lack of diplomatic limitations within game is that you actually can create such situations freely and arrange for that with your allies or enemies. And noone have to know about it except for the interested parties.

About Solution 3 - sounds really great. 

[kinngrimm]

about suggestion 2:
I know that one of the biggest advantages within strategus is the free and boundless diplomacy you have to engage only through means of communication tools like forum pm's, irc/steam chat, ts/vent and others, i love that and i wouldn't want to reduce it.

the 3 basic states aren't secrets in the most cases, alliances, neutrality, war are all seen through who is attacking whom, who is where on the battle roster and what chitchat happens in the forums. Anyone who puts a little effort in this like diplomats and leaders will see those relationships. Then there are surprises from time to time when factions switching the sites or new combatants come along. I don't see how this suggested system would interfer with that, but tell me if and how i am perhaps wrong there.

Then there will still be secret pacts and stuff but, the enormous ressource machines will be a bit balanced.
Still 200 player will accomplish more then 100 players but they have perhaps only the productivity of 150.(still those numbers are examples, what makes sense needs to be implemented and tested first)

The goal isn't only to fuckup the huge pools of players, you guys still should have a better chance then others who have less,
but it is also a psychological sign to smaller factions, to let those know , hey guys you have a chance it isn't worthless from the start to try something here, as the biggies have some chains where they have to carry some extra weight.
Also if some cheaters think of just creating 0-1billion cd keys, these have less value, it doesn't make sense so much in terms of production anymore ... you are not only a cheater ... you are a dump cheater!