Topics

1

Mercenary Recruitment / Help nEUtrals!

« on: March 06, 2016, 04:21:48 pm »

Hey folks!

There are two sieges today.
Polanie and UIF as attackers.

Free peoples of Tevarin and Samarra castles need your help to stand against evil

http://c-rpg.net/?page=strategusbattlesupcoming#!?page=strategusinfobattledetail&id=731
http://c-rpg.net/?page=strategusbattlesupcoming#!?page=strategusinfobattledetail&id=733

Sign up for defence!

2

Suggestions Corner / [Strat Suggestion] How to avoid carebear

« on: March 12, 2014, 10:43:49 am »

Hello everyone

Here is my wall of text.
My dreams about better Strat future with non stop battles, dramas and insults.

Sorry for my english tried to do my best.

(click to show/hide)

If you have any *working* suggestion to stop people from creating large factions, feel free to tell me, because I've been looking for a solution for years now.

The truth is that it's ok that ppl create large factions. You don't need to solve it somehow.
Current "problem" in Strat is that being a big faction gives you lots of advantages and no disadvantages.

This is what we need to change.

BattalGazi suggested some great ideas:
http://forum.melee.org/suggestions-corner/faction-types-kingdoms-vassals-bandits/

But as kinngrimm said

I dont see this exactly as anti-carebear system, but more as a roleplay support. So that certain types of play become possible. The freest would be Kingdom/vassalges,

the most restricted but also most protected the traders.

The main idea of Gazi's suggestion is that we need IN-GAME DIPLOMACY AND FACTION MANAGEMENT.
And we really can build on that if we want to make anti-carebear system. It requires lots of coding, but it's obvious that without changing current strat mechanics we won't "move further".


What needs to be defined and worked in for such system:

0. Faction
1. Capital fief
2. Rebellion
3. Alliance
4. State of war
5. War exhaustion
6. Trade caravan
7. Trading agreement
8. Random events (fire, plague, disorders, bandits)
9. Neutrals (non faction players)
10. Embassy
11. Ceasefire
12. Peace agreement
13. Runner

Now I will try to explain how does this system suppose to work and describe restrictions and advantages.

Everyone starts factionless and have advantages and restrictions of "Neutrals".

advantages:
-Have 300 lightly armoured troops
-Can establish a faction
-No upkeep cost for troops
restrictions:
-Can't trade
-Can't transfer anything


In fact they can just walk around looking for fief to raid or to capture or play as a bandit.

Player Vasya_Pupkin captures a fief, makes it his capital and establishes Faction.

Faction advantages:
-Diplomacy
-Trade
-Recruting troops
restrictions:
-Maximum faction size is 80
-Can't trade and transfer with neutrals
-Not very profitable and not secure trade in other factions' fiefs without trading agreements
-Can't transfer troops, gold or equip to another faction
-When joining faction, Neutrals lose 200 of their 300 troops and 2/3 of equipment
-Player loses all troops above 300 and armour if he leaves faction
-After leaving faction player need to wait for 1 week to join another

Pupkin's friends come to capital and join the faction. Now they can act together as a faction.
They conquer some fiefs. Faction is growing bigger.

disadvantages:
-The more distance from capital the higher rebellion chance
-The more distance the slower fief develop's, the higher taxes etc
-For distant fiefs negative random events' chance is bigger

Pupkin's faction has to deal with such random events as disorders (lead to theft in fiefs, reducing gold and prosperity), rebellions (300-500 neutral rebellion armies spawning and attacking villages), plagues (reduces population to minimum, garrison to 10%. Once you had a plague in your fief you have a chance to cause plague in any other fief within 48 hours. Everyone besieging, attacking or entering plagued fief within 48 hours suffers from plague), fire (reduces prosperity to minimum, slightly reduces population and garrison), desertion (reduces troop amount, encreases rebllion chance in every fief).

(The idea is to make the biggest factions suffer from all these events at most)

To reduce chance of negative events Pupkin decides to form an alliance with his neighboor.
He needs to send an embassy from his capital to neighboor's capital.
Embassy is NPC unit that has 100 heavily armoured troops, average movement speed, costs gold to summon and upkeep, can carry "gifts", can be attacked and lose gifts, dissapears after diplomatic mission finished (when returns home).
Embassy moves to neighboors capital with a proposition of an alliance. Faction ruler needs to be in that fief in order to accept or decline. He receives gifts no matter what was his decision. Embassy moves back. If embassy is wiped on it's way, diplomatic mission fails.

Advantages for alliances:
-Free troop, equip and gold transfer
-Better trade
-Reduces rebellion and disorder chances for "inner" fiefs
Restrictions:
-Not more then 4 factions in an alliance
-Factions need to be neighboors (distance between 2 closest villages is sall enough)
-Not more then 80 (70, 100, whatever) players in an alliance
-State of war for all factions in an alliance if any faction is in war.
-Leaving alliance encreases rebellion and disorder chances for inner fiefs

To leave alliance you need to send a runner (NPC, fastest speed, low cost). Doesn't need to turn back, can be attacked.

When any faction starts a war (or is being attacked) whole alliance becomes "at war".

State of war encreases negative chances (rebellion, disorder, fire) the longer war continues, decreases trade efficiency, encreases troop upkeep. If village is close enough to enemy's villages and closer to enemy's capital, randomly spawned rebellion army can belong to an enemy. If captured village left without garrison within 48 hours, rebellion chance is 100%, spawned army belongs to enemy. Runners or embassies can be sent with ceasfire mission or in order to make peace. Both end state of war.

To start trading with factions you need to send runners with trading agreements. Runner needs to return. To stop such agreements you need to send runner again and it doesn't need to return, or just attack caravan. This will start war and end trading agreement.
Once you have trading agreement with other factions you can buy and sell goods in their fiefs secure.
To trade you need to send caravan (NPC, average speed, one way or two way, can be attacked by bandits, caravan has 300 medium armored troops) or send faction member with trading goods. Sending caravan will give you much bigger profit. "Lord trading" would be profitable only when selling goods were captured.
Bandit attacks are random events: bandits are 200-400 troops party, lightly or medium armored, can attack embassies, caravans, runners, raid villages, can attack faction members.
Also caravans can be attacked by bandit-like player.

Advantages of trading agreement:
-Lower taxes
-Secure passage
-Trading partner can support you caravan with troops and equip if caravan was attacked (everything automatically goes back if supporter stays in transfer range)
disadvantages of trading without agreement:
-Higher taxes
-Faction can attack your caravan without declaration of war
-Can't support


General restrictions:
-Village garrison not more then 500, castle 1500, city 1000
-Maximum faction army size depends on amount of faction players. 400 troops per player.

To summ up.
How all this ideas would help:

1. Restricting alliance size
We won't have alliances formed by biggest factions. Splitting into small factions won't help them.

2. Restricting transfers
With system like this GO and DRZ won't be able to help each other with troops, gold, or equipment.
It won't make them start fighting each other, but at least they won't team up on Strat.
Also having half of faction members as neutrals won't help due to transfer restrictions, also having palyer in faction will benefit more then having him as neutral supporter.

3. Random events and rebellion
Will make it harder (almost impossible) to control vast territories.

4. Trade agreements
Taking into account that faction will be able to control only villages close enough to their capital, they'll have to make some trading agreements. That gives opportunity for "economical blockade"

5. Caravans
No faction will be able to send 20k shiny army with 100k goods to make billions.
On the other hand every faction or even neutral bandit-like players will have a chance to raid caravan.
This will benefit smaller factions a lot.

6. Armed neutrals
You can "hire" neutrals to scout or patrol areas.

7. Maximum faction army size.
Thanks to equal maximum player capacity restrictions for factions and alliances we'll have equal armies (at max 32k per side if 80 players and 400 troop per player).


Thanks for reading this, hope you like it and support.

3

Strategus General Discussion / [Suggestions] First things... last?

« on: December 24, 2012, 01:53:43 am »

Hey everyone!

      First of all I would like to ask you to forgive me my pure language skills. I wish I could speak english fluently and write understandable grammatically correct sentences, I should've learned better at school %) I will try to do my best, please try not to be too grammarchocolate chip cookie.
Thank you in advance! ;)

This thread is all about my personal thoughts about strat development and expresses my personal opinion. I can be absolutely wrong, that's ok ;)


I think we are going in wrong direction since the end of first strat.

What made strat2,3,4 boring comparing to first strat?
They had the same scenario, same roles and same participants. UIF - antiUIF.
Small factions have no chances to settle down without "permission" or protection, no faction can survive alone, big factions (with adequate leaders) are overpowered etc.

What changed since Strat1?
Fixed numerous exploits, changed local fief micromanagement, added and then changed several times economy, battle management changes etc
Are these things really first to do?

IMO first thing that should be implemented in Strat is GLOBAL faction management.
Diplomacy should be in-game, not forum.
Factions should have bonuses/disadvantages according to their diplomacy (agreements, wars..), political system, size, number of fiefs, village-town-castle ratio, number of players.
Factions' fiefs should have global parameters like loyalty, rebellion chance, distance from capital.

(click to show/hide)

1. In-game diplomacy

ATM we have no Diplomacy ingame interface, so we have to form alliance, declare wars and make agreements on forum. This should be done in game.

For example


forming alliances can be done only during war. Faction A declares war on FacB, FacB ask for assistance FacC, B and C form alliance, FacC automatically becomes "at war" with FacA.
Every faction management action should affect some aspects of faction management.
Forming war alliance allows you to transfer troops within your alliance, may have positive affect on troops' morale - bonuses, on the other hand it can slightly increase corruption or rebellion chance in your fiefs.

without declaration of war no faction member can attack member of another faction. if FacA declares war on FacD, FacD automatically at war with A. Being at war should increase troop recruiting speed and items production, but also increase rebellion chances, taxes, decrease loyalty etc. The longer you stay at war - the less positive affects, the worse negative.

With trade agreements you can change taxes in your fiefs for each faction separately.

Having defensive pact with FacB you automatically join them in case they are attacked by FacX. But you can garrison your troops in FacB fiefs, FacB pays wages, not you.

and so on

2. Faction size, number of fiefs and players. Random events.

The more players in faction, the more fiefs it can hold without significant flaws.
Like 5 players per fief for factions <20ppl, 10 players per fief for factions 20+ppl. If FacA (19players) conquers 4th fief they face some problems, like low loyalty in that fief, high corruption etc.

The bigger territory faction has the more it suffers from corruption and rebels in province. Rebels - AI light-medium equipped armies 300-500 tickets randomly spawning to attack province villages with low loyalty (prime-time only).

Village-town-castle ratio. Town without villages is useless. Factions holding towns without villages should suffer somehow. Low prosperity or production. Castle population growth should depend on number of faction's nearby villages. The more villages - the sooner castle has full garrison/population. Owning a castle should affect positively on surrounding villages, decreasing rebellion chance. The bigger castle garrison, the closer village - the less rebellion chance.

3. Fiefs global parameters.
smt like
-Capital: yes/no (towns only, affects loyalty, corruption, rebellion chance, prosperity)
-Distance from capital (affects corruption rate, loyalty, rebellion chance, prosperity growth)
-Loyalty (affects corruption, prosperity, random event: ppl leaving your village)
-Rebellion chance (causes random event: rebel army spawn)
-Corruption (decreases the amount of gold fief produces)


Please, don't pay attention to details, names, figures, numbers... I want you to understand the idea in general.

Global faction management should solve current problems like:
1. Forming enormous alliances. Should be useless.
2. Managing big faction should be difficult
3. Small factions should have a chance to play on par with bigger ones.
4. Faction should be encouraged to play actively, making more "concentrated" wars (short duration, large number of battles), more diplomacy
5. Make multiaccaunting almost useless

Example of how it should work:

(click to show/hide)

Faction A has 80 players, 2 towns, 2 castles, several villages. Faction B has 10 players and 2 fiefs.
Faction A wants to wipe them and do it easily. One evening, two sieges, no Faction B.
But. Due to it's big size FacA suffers from at-war status greatly (losing loyalty and stability). The very far FacA's village attacked by fairly strong rebellion army (troops, equip, gold partly taken from nearby fief garrisons. figures depend on global parameters). Rebels take the village, it goes to FacB (as they are the one who are in war with FacA), 2-3 facB leaders are teleported to their new fief. Rebellion chance of surrounding villages grows.

fiefless FacD strike, attacking A's fief on the opposite to D side. due to high rebellion chance and low loyalty village garrison with equip and gold partly joins the attacker's side. A suffers even more. Sure, FacA can wipe B and D, but it isn't an easy task. Isn't just a matter of two sieges.

Attacking bigger factions should benefit attacker more then attacking smaller factions. The smaller faction you are at war with the less bonuses you have, the bigger losses u suffer.
Global faction management shouldn't be "realistic" or anything like that, it should balance the game, making it challenging for everyone.

In conclusion I would like to thank chadz and devs for their great work and with them patience and inspiration to overcome current mod's crisis.


Thank you for your time and attention.

4

Strategus Issues / Need to reset pass without launching game

« on: September 18, 2012, 06:51:07 pm »

First of all I am sorry for my English
also I am sorry if I chose wrong board

I want to reset my start acc pass without launching Warband, wondering if it is possible.
atm I am in the army and don't have an opportunity to play Warband, but I want to participate in new Start with my clanmates. unfortunately I forgot my pass and can't log in c-rpg page.

if admins can help me to solve this problem (if it is allowed to play start-only), would be great. thanks.

Zaharist