cRPG
Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: chadz on September 07, 2011, 09:28:49 am
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I'm currently considering changing the troop formula a bit:
Right now, cost for a day is [troops]*2.5
I would like to change it to ([troops]^1.05)*2.5
how would that influence strat? my hope is that it stops every faction from having one single big army, and distribute the troops across their members.
also, moving troops (like, attacking a distant fief) would look better - you'd probably see a horde of players attacking (to save costs), and then create a big army at the end.
I hope it means that more players get to have troops, and that smaller skirmishes occur, instead of just pooling all resources to one hero.
discuss!
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pow-addict
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Interesting, would be annoying at first until people got use to it. I don't see a problem with it....but then you'd have to equip multiple armies and it may become a huge hassel. *Shrug*.
Also the math you'd have to do along with the money management. Seems like a big headache. Glad I don't gotta do all that.
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The more you can engage the individual player the better. However with the raised cost of upkeep you also increase the need to micromanage and have people who farm gold and run and deliver it, which out of my experience, people seem to think is quite the "boring" job to do in strategus.
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ehhh i dunno... it has the potential to be good.. in such a sense that it could be like single player where everyone has a lil army and runs around and only accomplishes big things by traveling in groups.. but it also sounds like a logistical nightmare considering that strat is already a huge pain in the ass for logistics. if it does indeed engage players more and cause people to play more active roles... it could work out nicely... but if the majority of players just pop on one a twice a day as they do now... it could be horrifying. really depends on if it leads to players being more active or not.
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the upkeep of 2,5 is very hard to balance in the first place, maybe put it down to 2 instead.
other than that it would be an intersting feature to test out.
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I think it would be too much micromanagement. Micromanagement can be fun (min-maxing your gear in MMORPGs) but this is just annoying at the moment.
IMHO the fun about Strategus are the unique organzied battles/sieges. This whole browser based micromanagement isn't fun at all. No need to increase this part of the game.
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I really like the idea of having individual, smaller armies rather than the huge elephants we've seen. Every battle has the potential to be a Wiegraf battle in such a situation, and I am completely for that; the fun factor is much higher. Strat feels too passive right now, to me. I get gold/troops, I transfer them, then there's a big battle sometime... not the most exciting thing in the world.
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There are already a lot of battles every day, don't see the need to increase battles numbers, also more battles means more busy servers and more delayed battles.
I think you should try to implement crafting raiding caravans trade and that kind of stuff ASAP so the casual players will have something to do indipendently. But please don't make them clumsy and time consuming, there isn't really need to add more boring micromanagement into strat, the newest changes are already boring enough.
It's not that if you make better to have smaller armies it will change nothing for the casual player.
Most casual players don't want to bother with mercs recruiting for battle, or item buying or diplomacy, so an officier will just give to them some gold items and troops and say "go there and attack those guys". Also the officier will manage merc recruiting and strategy in battle.
How is that more interesting for casual player then just stay in the town and dump gold in friendly villages?
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You can do it like in singleplayer. Lets say every player can have max 100 troops. After attack during 24 hours other players can join the battle with their troops and equipment. So every player will became more like lord from singleplayer, right now they are like farmers.
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You can do it like in singleplayer. Lets say every player can have max 100 troops. After attack during 24 hours other players can join the battle with their troops and equipment. So every player will became more like lord from singleplayer, right now they are like farmers.
i like :D
but the players should have an higher max.
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Yay its so fun 100500 battles in day 100 by 100 and not 20k vs 20k :|
btw i think still better for faction if 1 hero move with army 20k and lost more money, but others 10 grind moneyz in fiefs
with that formula easier commit suicide :|
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Doesn't really make much sense does it?
In fact it is the opposite to real life sense where a commander with some acumen would be able to make use of economies of scale.
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Surely different slower movement speeds or being able to be seen from further away if your army is bigger are both more interesting and more intelligent mechanics that encourage the very same thing, along with having strategic effects.
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if you DO do that, give the option of multiple armies attacking a single target.(all being combined into 1 FINAL army with equip, etc)
Not worth it for the billion of battles. Don't increase management of players find ways to make it fun for everyone without making micromanagement heavy.
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Idea to force players to split big armies to small is good (in generally).
But with those "stopping rules" (about account sharing) - it can be impossible sometimes to merge armies
because of players inactivity\AFK\totally offline by many many RL reasons.
So - nice idea, but give please to the leaders\officers rights to command others faction accounts directly - without account sharing.
As someone wrote - create a command point (CP) pool, and let each command have a cost ... or whatever.
But smth must be done with this problem
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Do what you want donkey!
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I like the Idea of having smaller armies, and it would be more realistic, as large armies cost vast amounts of resources to move and maintain. And smaller armies would give the average grunt in strat a purpose other than collect troops and gold for the one or two leaders of the clan.
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I like the Idea of having smaller armies, and it would be more realistic, as large armies cost vast amounts of resources to move and maintain. And smaller armies would give the average grunt in strat a purpose other than collect troops and gold for the one or two leaders of the clan.
yeah the purpose of, click here, and then transfer all your troops to me, great thanks.
There already are benefits to doing these things, I don't see why you must make it mandatory.
Especially not before further cracking down on members that give passwords to the leaders.
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about having smaller armies ... what about sieges ? noone mentioned about it ? cities have 20,000 k troops.. lets say we have smaller armies ? like 1k .. we gonna attack 20 times to a city ? who ll join to every each battle ? find me some guy who will ever join 20 times to same battle ?
here is my math :
[(wait for 1 h to breach the walls by cata)+( attack & die attack & die attack & die attack & die ) * 20 = epic fail
so for smaller armies :
a) add an option which provides to attacking by multiple armies or add an option "choose a faction army" which will be an army can have huge numbers (like 60k-100k ) but the other armies will be smaller except that " main faction army".
b) add a "command center" interface, which leaders & officers can control other armies ( by cost or smth like that) to prevent account sharing.
c) and also that reinforcement time limit is the real bs. not realistic at all. there are lots of battles which have won by last minute reinforcements or lost by the delay of reinforcements.
those are my humble opinions.
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I dont like this idea currently as it does make it a mess to coordinate any sort of objectives for clans.
I think we need to think harder before anything is changed
I like the idea of higher ranks being able to issue orders, create waypoints/rally spots. So if you hop online u can see the rough plan, or what you've been ordered to do and commander can see that its being done.
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I'm currently considering changing the troop formula a bit:
Right now, cost for a day is [troops]*2.5
I would like to change it to ([troops]^1.05)*2.5
how would that influence strat? my hope is that it stops every faction from having one single big army, and distribute the troops across their members.
also, moving troops (like, attacking a distant fief) would look better - you'd probably see a horde of players attacking (to save costs), and then create a big army at the end.
I hope it means that more players get to have troops, and that smaller skirmishes occur, instead of just pooling all resources to one hero.
discuss!
I think its better than the current upkeep system. Anything that gives the common player more of a chance to affect things is a good thing.
Notice that the majority of those against it are those who feel that it will decrease the power of central leadership in clans, which is true, but is also increasingly necessary in my opinion. Make the game fun for the average player and clan leadership won't have to do everything for them.
I just posted a bunch of ideas about how to get the average player more involved here: http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,15250.0.html
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I'm with the people that would welcome the smaller armies (moving in coordinated groups) as opposed to dumping 100% of everything into 1 or 2 lords. The leaders of factions should be coordinating their officers and down to the foot soldier. They shouldn't be doing the work for them.
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Web browser micromanagement is unfun. I dislike it.
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Web browser micromanagement is unfun. I dislike it.
So you don't like trying to bring warband single player overview to multiplayer? I think it's an amazing goal. Why bother playing strategus then?
Would it make you happy if instead of a browser it was an overview with GUI's like in warband? It would essentially be the same thing except a more cleaned up version. The functionality is still basically identical (for all intents and purposes).
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Warband Single Player doesn't require me to have 10 real life people available for extended and synchronized periods to be able to execute an attack.
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Warband Single Player doesn't require me to have 10 real life people available for extended and synchronized periods to be able to execute an attack.
No it requires 10 AI lords to be available and synchronized for extended periods of time. Strategus is the multiplayer version of single player (in my eyes, or at least I see that as the goal)...so if that's the case, then yes, of course I want 10 real life people being synchronized and available at the same time in order to coordinate a larger strike (or any collaborative effort). That's kind of the point...
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All that would accomplish would be to make it significantly harder to launch an offense, which would lead to an even more stagnant Strategus.
Though, as a member of the former NE, I guess that's how you like it. Zing.
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Question: will the power based formula apply to the troops located in fief/castle or in the field only?
The chadz's OP idea influences small armies as well. If you have 100 troops in field you would need to pay for 125 troops effectively...
Assuming you have to move 1000 tkts, moving them by 10 guys @ 100 tkts each will cost you 1250*2,5=3125g/day. If you move entire 1000 in one guy it would cost you 1412*2,5=3530g per day. The difference is 405g.
Pricey... or not? I have no idea, it depends how much money you have. Note, that if we speak about 10000 tkts@10guys vs. 10000 tkts@1 guy the difference will grow to 4320g.
Now, it is a balance - what is more important:
- to enable raids (that requires big difference between wages in fiefs and in the field to motivate people to keep troops/gold/eq in locations),
or
- to force moving on the map will small no of tkts i.e in groups of players - being more vulnerable and more difficult to manage if large forces are moved (that requires power based formula for wages in the field to motivate splitting the armies).
Either way, moving troops from the fiefs becomes expensive. It slows the game action, doesn't it?
Actually, both elements promote freelancers and casual players over clans. I think I see where this is going to... we may not need a bigger map after all. But at the same time - forget about epic sieges. This game will truly be about warbands and not kingdoms
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On the whole, I think this would negatively impact smaller clans and just become a nuisance for larger clans but not really stop them from doing things how they do today in the end.
The concept of trying to split up these behemoth armies and force a lot of smaller armies to move around the map is something I really really do like. However... I don't actually see this occuring solely as a result of increasing the gold upkeep for troops. Larger clans can manage the upkeep through rapid gold grinding from larger numbers and simply overfunding a particular army to maintain the upkeep as the behemoth army moves across the map. They also have the ability to spread out across the map much more easily and pass gold through funding or alliances whenever needed to maintain their army.
IF clans choose to break apart the armies into smaller pieces and place them in the hands of various members... those members will have to take a decent sum of gold and be quite active to have any chance of not losing their own personal smaller army while they move across the map. The larger the clan, the higher odds of having enough active members who can sustain an army for a day or so while they are moving across the map before meeting up at their ultimate attack point... or higher chance they had some gold grinders pass them extra cash before they set off on their trip so they can make it. Smaller clans will only be able to sustain much much smaller armies with a lot less ability to move too far from wherever their home base is located.
Overall, it will slow down the rapid funding of armies and massively sending out large numbers of troops. Clans will be forced to grind out gold much more than just recruit new soliders. Previously, an underfunded army due to not having gold grinders to produce decent equipment ... but of equal number of troops... may put up a decent fight or even win due to strategy or skill from the players hired. In this case... you HAVE to have the playerbase to support the gold piece regardless... and you can not rely on large numbers of lesser equipped troops. Simply put, more gold grinders = more sustainability. Larger clans = larger footprint to work from and easier logistics.
Basically - I see it as forcing smaller clans into areas in which they won't be able to expand far from due to the inability to sustain troop movements or handle logistics like those with much larger numbers. There will no longer be a chance for a clan with less gold income to put up a fight with equal numbers, but less gold... simply because they cannot move their troops far without the gold to do so. Clans with larger numbers will not enjoy managing it as much... but they can handle it.
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Well this negatively impacts the mod as a whole even more, all this fucking balancing is slowly making the game is a stale repetetive thing to play...
Personally im going to dissapear when the new games such as BF3, MW3 and skyrim. And i think alot of people will do the same... I wish you would stop doing these stupid decisions to suck all the fun out of the game chadz.
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Hmm not a fan of the idea. Whilst I like the concept and I've always loved the idea of moving loads of guys across a map to siege something, I don't think the concept would work. It would simply mean excessive micromanagement for the higher ups. Plus, people still need to grind gold/troops whilst the main army is on the offensive. This would be ok for larger clans because they'd easily be able to move 10 guys with 1k troops and still have many to do the grinding. For smaller clans it would be nigh impossible to keep a sustained offensive going.
Different clans can have their own structures. Hell there's nothing to stop the players grinding gold and troops to insist they play a bigger role and take more of a part. The factions that have trouble with this are the ones that insist on an enforced officer system (may be needed for bigger clans), but many clans let whoever wants to get involved do so. I don't think clans should be forced to play one way and organise things one way. Currently, people will always need to grind regardless of whether there are smaller armies or not, this will simply make managing clans that much harder.
I get the feeling a lot of players insisting that lower downs need a bigger role in strat come from clans where such a strict system is involved. Hell, I've often taken charge of GK's armies, I look after a fief, but even I understand that I should also spend lots of time grinding gold/troops. I simply have the time to sort out other people to centralise a place to filter them.
I personally prefer Plazek's solution to an economic one:
Surely different slower movement speeds or being able to be seen from further away if your army is bigger are both more interesting and more intelligent mechanics that encourage the very same thing, along with having strategic effects.
That makes a lot more sense from a balance point of view to me.
Hell if you really want to get crazy, I'd be interested in whether it would be possible to code certain features such as the ability to buy certain things to speed up movement of large armies. For instance investing in training for your troops on long marches, or buying pack horses in abundance rather than wagons, or the possibility of siege equipment being in an army slowing it down. The insistence that all armies move the same pace in the game really doesn't make much sense to me. Or perhaps give some kind of bonus to smaller armies, guerilla style combat for example. Small bands of troops could be hidden until right at the last moment. Whilst large bands can be seen roaming for miles around.
The economy is not always the best way to balance things. I see no reason why larger armies would have more upkeep per troop. They have to pay more over all anyway as a result of having more troops but the cost per individual troop should remain the same.
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Simply put, more gold grinders = more sustainability. Larger clans = larger footprint to work from and easier logistics.
That, obviously, is true (except for the logistics part - managing large clan is more difficult and more time consuming than a small one).
You have touched a very interesting subject. Our almighty chadz, with all his dislike for grinders, created two fantastic games for grinders - cRPG (level up, level up!) and Strategus (more troops, more gold, more eq, more fiefs!). The grinding side of cRPG was limited already. Now the time has come for Strategus.
As I understand it, the point of all most recent changes is to limit ability of the large clans to use whatever such clans can work out and grow until they reach natural opponent, which is devastating for small clans and freelancers. To increase the power of such small clans and freelancers. Thus - enabling raid capabilities by dramatic change of wages for troop is field and in location (btw - it hits freelancers more than clans,a as the latter have the place to hide the troops).
Removal of the cash from the system limits the ability to maintain troops and equip troops. For everyone. What will have to happen now is cutting down grinding side of the game. That can be done by sort of softcapping amounts of troops and gold. That can be achieved by creating sinks for money (wages and eq costs) and tickets (battles!) and by progressive increase of the costs of holding, moving, equipping etc. vast amounts of tickets and gold. That is why chadz is a "pow lover".
As I see it, the removal of the cash from the system is a shortcut, a temporary solution. If we were to start fresh after wipe out, the current map would look entirely different with new set of rules... with more clans present, I guess.
The new idea (see OP) aims in limiting ability to move large amounts of troops. I also agree that Plazek's idea is better for getting that done. However, by splitting the moving troops armies are more vulnerable for attack and require greater co-ordination - and that means opportunity for small clans and freelancers, as well as and some job for players... in theory. In practice - more micromanagement by clan leaders and... nolife'ing (lol)!
The longer I think about it - balancing this thing is a bitch. There is a loooong way to introduce sensible economy (like producing, buying and selling stuff) to Strategus if we think about stuff like this.
PS. Idea for another sink for the gold: maintenance, or repair costs of the equipment held by the army, works similar way as the regular wages for troops, but is directly related to property, not troops.
ooops...
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Eh, not a huge fan of the idea. It does make some sense though.
If you do decide to implement it, how about also gently scaling roster size to army size? That is a bigger army costs more, but you gain a slight edge in the number of mercenaries you can hire if you're battling a smaller army. There should be costs and benefits to both.
It would be cool if Strategus were more feudalistic though.
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Just make something like command points or let faction leaders to move their members on map but members that u can move must gain experience from different IP at least each 3 days.So there wont be zombies that are not playing but getting troops.Its really impossible to find members that gonna play 24/7 strategus.We are trying our best but its getting really boring.
Really too many people already quit the game and these peasant wars... no need to comment.If you want to test something make these things a bit better for us so we can do something on map instead of earning money 24/7.People already started calculating like gingerpussy told me that 20k troops ( for taking a city ) can be ready in 9 months.Not really logical.We are trying our best but if you are not gonna test anything before u made them like flags: no offense mercs and chaos ; i joined those sieges ( mercs > dhirrim , chaos > telhrog castle ) and people were spawning inside? I mean how can u test something if noone can attack any city ? Maybe you can just combine strategus a bit more with cRPG ( like old time crpg gold gain/20 was best which i suprised chadz to made something like that).
This community is really trying his best to help you chadz.But really you are making this a bit harash:
At the moment , earning money from a city per hour near 40 gold.A faction that got 40 members which assume as all of them earning money. 40x40=1600 per hour 1600 x 24 = 39000 .Also think that they had 5 k army before gold wipe 39000 - 5000 = 34000 in 1 day. Normal items for 1 k army near 100k.But this is only gonna happen when all faction gonna mass earn gold.Think about splitting faction recruit/gold.
Also with this update you forced little clans to leave this game already.I just want to play strategus and today its impossible.Give us normal strategus and test other things till christmas otherwise i can just understand that u want people shut up before you gonna release new strategus.Strategus will be paused now so u cant even check any new things.
Actually if you want us to test things just give all factions some gold and troops so we can kill each other to test ?
I hope you will change somethings...
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if you DO do that, give the option of multiple armies attacking a single target.(all being combined into 1 FINAL army with equip, etc)
Not worth it for the billion of battles. Don't increase management of players find ways to make it fun for everyone without making micromanagement heavy.
yeah i was just thinking of that
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I cannot agree with you more, Cicero. It is frustrating. But the point is chadz cannot simply give money to the factions, if he wants to get any sensible data on how the parameters should be set. He can, however, increase the earnings in locations a bit. Also, I believe it is going to get better over time, cause numbers of tkts that are maintainable will settle at certain level, and more money will show up on the "world market". But then - I still believe that new money sinks will appear... aaa, there is one that is very important - battles, esp. with lowered loot, as it seems to be implemented.
Obviously the question is, how many guys will be patient enough to wait so long...
Down @ Cicero,: sorry man, its so late i have to think loudly :D Anyways, I still agree with you...
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Actually erasmas its really better than grinding 24/7 but i couldnt understand that u selected only that idea to comment cos it was the only nonserious idea which is the last option =)
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Really too many people already quit the game and these peasant wars... no need to comment.If you want to test something make these things a bit better for us so we can do something on map instead of earning money 24/7.People already started calculating like gingerpussy told me that 20k troops ( for taking a city ) can be ready in 9 months.Not really logical.We are trying our best but if you are not gonna test anything before u made them like flags: no offense mercs and chaos ; i joined those sieges ( mercs > dhirrim , chaos > telhrog castle ) and people were spawning inside? I mean how can u test something if noone can attack any city ? Maybe you can just combine strategus a bit more with cRPG ( like old time crpg gold gain/20 was best which i suprised chadz to made something like that).
This community is really trying his best to help you chadz.But really you are making this a bit harash:
At the moment , earning money from a city per hour near 40 gold.A faction that got 40 members which assume as all of them earning money. 40x40=1600 per hour 1600 x 24 = 39000 .Also think that they had 5 k army before gold wipe 39000 - 5000 = 34000 in 1 day. Normal items for 1 k army near 100k.But this is only gonna happen when all faction gonna mass earn gold.Think about splitting faction recruit/gold.
+1 we know it's an alphabetabeta we shouldn't play it etc. Still it's out since more then 1 year, at least give us the chance to equip proper armies so we can have fun while testing battles.
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I would just like to link this thread to post 19 in this thread:
http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,15250.msg216940.html#msg216940
Just to see some opinions on what people think as it is very much related to this.