cRPG

Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: Tomas on December 10, 2011, 10:25:20 pm

Title: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Tomas on December 10, 2011, 10:25:20 pm
I've been playing this game for a long time now and have made many suggestions that would make the game better in my eyes.  I have always based the ideas (rightly or wrongly) around the idea that Strategus is meant to be a persistent world that once finished and set going, will never need resetting and will dynamically shift with its population, always leaving room for new clans/people whilst naturally countering factions & Empires that over expand. 

At the moment though, Strategus gameplay seems to be more like a short term war game, where clans use diplomacy, backstabbing and anything else they can think of to knock all their rivals out of the game entirely.  Once they have suceeded in taking over the entire map with their Mega Alliance then Strat either dies, or restarts with a new map and therefore a new challenge.

Neither option is wrong but they are mutually exclusive in my eyes and right now I think that Strat is hovering between the 2 options.  It would be nice if chadz could confirm which way he actually wants Strat to go so that I (and others) can tailor our ideas to match.  Or maybe there is some other aim i'm missing?  Either way, it will save a lot of people a lot of time and typing if they new before hand whether or not their ideas take Strat in the right direction.

Failing that I've added a poll to see where the vocal minority of Strat want it to go ;) :D
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Sphinxer on December 10, 2011, 10:43:30 pm
Big MMORPG will focus on Blue vs Red , or Blue vs Red vs Yellow , with clans within those alliances. So you always have Blue vs Red happening, making sure such thing of a carebear alliance is almost impossible, or if it's possible, at least the new clans will be pushed on the other side to balance.

Strategus has no such thing, so people ally themselves to as many people possible sometimes, and focus on making gold and getting good equip , get a big army well equiped and since there's no one to fight, backstabb someone or pick on the new small clans.

Lame ? I think so. If clans had Clan Level , where the more XP your members earn, the more XP your clan gets, and that level would decide how many fiefs you can have, then big alliances wouldn't bother picking on small clans if their limit is reached , giving a chance to newcomers to get a fief and start trading without having to pay ridiculous gold to another clan or being raped and becoming one big alliance's bitch and do their willing.

Strategus is now so based on trading to get gold that battles suck now. To win , you have to be 3:1 ratio , attack at night where only no-lives can play and have big alliances backing you up. There's no more 1 on 1 clan wars.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Tomas on December 10, 2011, 10:50:47 pm
Just removed the neither option as I've decided it is irrelevent.  You either want a game that gets reset as somebody wins (option 2) or you don't (option 1).
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Slamz on December 11, 2011, 12:28:28 am
It would be interesting to hear which way chadz is aiming.

Personally, I like both.

EVE is long term.  Massive map.  Alliances rise and fall but nobody has ever "won".  I think beyond a certain point you can just rely on people's natural tendency to upset each other to prevent super-huge alliances from forming.  Eventually some sub-leader gets pissed off and takes his 150 sub-members with him.

POTBS and Battleground Europe are short term.  If I recall correctly they both tend to take around 1-2 months for a map to end.

Planetside could be said to be super-short.  You could conquer a continent, break for dinner, come back and find its already been lost again.  This was one of Planetside's underlying flaws, incidentally.


But I hear chadz saying he wants a bigger map, which suggest he may be aiming more for EVE-style: a persistent world that doesn't have to ever end -- a world where if your clan gets routed, there's always some towns somewhere on the hinterlands that you can poke around in without anyone noticing and build your power back up.

There's certainly more work, beyond just a bigger map, to get us to that point, though.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Torben on December 11, 2011, 01:02:45 am
adding this:  http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,21813.msg315676.html#msg315676 

this:  http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,11407.0.html


and maybe the red vs blue whatever thing,  like mentioned here: http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,21948.0.html

would help.

chack how many plus votes those posts have.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Tomas_of_Miles on December 11, 2011, 01:08:06 am
I would assume since there are tonnes of different clans and non-clan players it would make more sense to have a long term persistent game with lots of neutral land as opposed to a only a couple of factions.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Lepintoi on December 11, 2011, 02:34:08 pm
 Also add the Anonymous sign up for village defends (I really have a problem with the fact no one defends a village against the big alliances...)
 and MOAR XP for strategus battles to get new and independant players to play strategus!

I like the short term idea, Strategus should be a 5-7 month board game that gets reset when there is a clear winner.

EDIT : add strategus info on load page of M&B, it took me half a year to find out and want to play strategus.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: FRANK_THE_TANK on December 11, 2011, 10:34:02 pm
Strat is more like the bored/table top game Diplomacy.

The great thing about it is that its rules are simple and small and the game play is left up to us.

The funny thing is that it is both of the options you presented. If a clear winner came about it would only take a week or so before the clan started to fall apart and turn on its self for shitz and gigglz. And the whole damn thing would explode with a weeks of CIVIL WAR! Until all the armies had been wrecked and much loling was had by all.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Tzar on December 12, 2011, 12:30:42 pm
visitors can't see pics , please register or login
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Tomas on December 12, 2011, 02:36:36 pm
Quote from: dangah on December 11, 2011, 10:34:02 pm
The funny thing is that it is both of the options you presented. If a clear winner came about it would only take a week or so before the clan started to fall apart and turn on its self for shitz and gigglz. And the whole damn thing would explode with a weeks of CIVIL WAR! Until all the armies had been wrecked and much loling was had by all.

This would be true if the definition of a "clear winner" was someone that has taken every fief (village, castle and town) on the map.  Unfortunately, Strat is currently won as soon as you control every village since this cripples your landless enemies gold production.  This still leaves months of taking Castles and Towns, fighting on each others rosters, and seeing off the occasional underfunded clan that turns up.  More than enough to keep the winning clans interested.  Meanwhile do you really think the losing clans will hang around long enough for the winning alliance to fall apart? 
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Keshian on December 12, 2011, 04:41:45 pm
For me its about adding a whole new level of fun to cRPG where you apply your skills from the abttle server in unique tactical battles with clear objectives to further strategic goals.  Within that there needs to be sufficient number of battles to fulfill the enjoyment, while enough strategic (micromanagement) choices to make those battles feel more worthwhile.

The worst part of Strategus 3.0 for me is that the overall strategic choices have become overwhelmingly the whole game where its all about micromanagement and upkeep and everything else all to get a 5-10 battle that in the end you stop giving a shit about anymore as it only leads to 2-3 more weeks preparation fo a nother 5-10 minute battle.  The game, quite frankly, has become a tedious Civilization game and the abttles almost feel the same with autocalc.

You spend 30 minutes getting people on ts, talking tactics, waiting 5 minutes to sapwn - all for a 5 minutes peasant fight or a bunch of no shows!!!  You need both startegy and tactics, but with how slow troopsa nd gear are to produce and burdensome upkeep you end up just having strategy with little opportunity to experience tactics.  Go back to Strat 2.0 pleassssseee, keep trading if you must, but go back to having decent amount of gold so at least we can have cavalry and armor so the whole tactic in every fight isnt to just pew pew to victory against peasants.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: SquishMitten on December 12, 2011, 08:29:28 pm
Quote from: Keshian on December 12, 2011, 04:41:45 pm
(click to show/hide)
I agree with Kesh :shock:
(click to show/hide)
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: CrazyCracka420 on December 12, 2011, 08:31:12 pm
Well I respect, but disagree with Kesh.  Didn't necessarily want to neg rep your comment, but I can't undo it without giving you a positive review :x

I think if you try and satisfy immediate "fun" it will really screw over the long term of strategus.  I actually like that it's taking months to capture castles and months longer to capture towns.  This sets the game up for a long term outlook.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: SquishMitten on December 12, 2011, 08:38:03 pm
Quote from: CrazyCracka420 on December 12, 2011, 08:31:12 pm
(click to show/hide)

It also means people get bored and stop playing
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Slamz on December 12, 2011, 08:47:43 pm
I do like the "micromanagement" but I agree with Kesh that in general battles should be longer and better equipped.


I mean to do a battle you have to get people lined up to log in, arrange a Vent/TS server to meet at, set your alarm so you actually log in on time, get ready, etc, and if it's 49 vs 49, it's over in minutes.  Way too much prep for way too little action.

I think chadz may need to reconsider the formulas and aim for something more like 150 free troops before upkeep kicks in, as well as get a hustle on that 50% crafting cost reduction he mentioned a couple weeks back.  I don't particularly want to see massive plate armies but massive peasant armies isn't really an improvement (and has lead to archer problems both in Strat and cRPG).


Basically I think Strategus 3.0 has some really good concepts to it but has also had some crippling problems that devs have been slow to address.  We're like one or two good updates from having a really good thing here, I think.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Keshian on December 12, 2011, 09:01:04 pm
I like the 150 troop formula thing making no upkeep for individuals.  It was around 100 in end of strat 2.0, not sure why dropped to 49.  At least 150 v. 150 is some kind of battle.  49 v 49 is like 2-3 spawns each side.  This would also favor the small independents that dont owna fief and may be running caravans or acting as bandits as the upkeep is pretty horrendous if you only make 1 gold at x2/x3.

Thats the other thing, why remove 1 gold for x1??  Things like that focused on more active clans than passive clans, which is what chadz wanted, right??
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Gristle on December 12, 2011, 10:14:21 pm
I definitely agree that 30+ minutes of prep for 5 minutes of actual gameplay gets old fast.

Quote from: CrazyCracka420 on December 12, 2011, 08:31:12 pm
Didn't necessarily want to neg rep your comment, but I can't undo it without giving you a positive review :x

You just have to hit the "-" again to make your vote neutral.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Taser on December 13, 2011, 01:34:04 am
As it stands now I don't see a real concrete way of Strat being a persistent world where kingdoms rise and fall. It'd need changes if it was going that way. It's taking a while but strat will only be playable right now as a game that must be reset everytime a clan/alliance takes over the map. There's no real way to attack back once a clan/alliance takes over every territory. It will definitely take time in this version of strat though.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: chadz on December 13, 2011, 09:36:08 am
The problem with raising the limit from 49 to 100 or 150 is, in my eyes, that it doesn't fix the problem. How much do 100 troops cost right now per hour? It's not really expensive, it's just this psychological thing that people are not allowed to go over that limit unless there's a huge battle coming up.

Also, it would just mean that recruiting would take twice as long, which means sitting around in castles doing nothing. Maybe I'll bring back buying troops in fiefs, don't know.

Also, as to the OP, strategus will be rounds of about 5 months, give or take, depending on how long the round is still fun to play.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Matey on December 13, 2011, 09:59:27 am
Quote from: chadz on December 13, 2011, 09:36:08 am

Also, as to the OP, strategus will be rounds of about 5 months, give or take, depending on how long the round is still fun to play.

when does this round start to be fun?  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Slamz on December 13, 2011, 01:50:20 pm
Quote from: chadz on December 13, 2011, 09:36:08 am
The problem with raising the limit from 49 to 100 or 150 is, in my eyes, that it doesn't fix the problem.

It fixes the problem we are talking about, which is that making real life arrangements to log into the game at a specific time in order to have a small battle just isn't worth it, yet the game mechanics encourage small battles.

I think game mechanics should encourage 150 vs 150 as the minimum.  We CAN do that now, but mechanics don't encourage it.

Time to recruit troops isn't a problem, in my opinion.  It's just the simple fact that battles with too few tickets in them is just not worth the real-life trouble.


An alternative could be this:

All battles MUST have a minimum of 150 troops per side (or 100... or whatever we decide is "worthwhile").
If you have less than 150 troops, you cannot initiate an attack.
If your enemy has less than 75 troops (half of the amount required to initiate an attack), they will automatically lose if you attack them.

You already have something like this in place, I think, to prevent 1 troop armies from wasting people's time, but frankly a 49 troop army is a waste of time too.  The minimum size needs to be raised to something worth the trouble.


Basically if I have to set my alarm to log into cRPG at 9:34pm to do a Strategus battle, I would like to know that it's going to last more than 4 minutes.  If I log in and the enemy has 49 tickets with 25 players, then, I feel I have had my time wasted.  I don't want to set my alarm clock just to log in for what amounts to one round of Battle.

Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Tomas on December 13, 2011, 02:10:12 pm
Quote from: chadz on December 13, 2011, 09:36:08 am
Also, as to the OP, strategus will be rounds of about 5 months, give or take, depending on how long the round is still fun to play.

So is it 5 months in order to find an actual winner/winning alliance?  Or 5 months in order to reach some sort of status quo where all fiefs are taken and we're just left with 1 or 2 dominant powers, with the other clans being knocked out?

Basically - please define who it needs to fun for :D
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Lepintoi on December 13, 2011, 04:25:58 pm
If the round lasts 5 months the movement speed needs to be fixed.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: CrazyCracka420 on December 13, 2011, 06:23:42 pm
Well if 5 to 6 months is the aim for a strategus map then everything is way too slow.  I'd wager most of the towns will still be computer controlled in another 2 or 3 months.  And even if most were player controlled (which I doubt they will be at the rate we're going), there'd still be a lot of room for fighting to take over faction controlled castles and towns.

I like how Firefox's spell check tries to tell me that there'd isn't a word...
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Ufthak on December 14, 2011, 12:41:20 am
chadz, let's not forget you stopped strat 2 in the middle of a massive war. Granted there was so many bugs that strat... so very many bugs...
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Jarlek on December 15, 2011, 12:05:32 am
Quote from: Slamz on December 13, 2011, 01:50:20 pm
It fixes the problem we are talking about, which is that making real life arrangements to log into the game at a specific time in order to have a small battle just isn't worth it, yet the game mechanics encourage small battles.

I think game mechanics should encourage 150 vs 150 as the minimum.  We CAN do that now, but mechanics don't encourage it.

Time to recruit troops isn't a problem, in my opinion.  It's just the simple fact that battles with too few tickets in them is just not worth the real-life trouble.


An alternative could be this:

All battles MUST have a minimum of 150 troops per side (or 100... or whatever we decide is "worthwhile").
If you have less than 150 troops, you cannot initiate an attack.
If your enemy has less than 75 troops (half of the amount required to initiate an attack), they will automatically lose if you attack them.

You already have something like this in place, I think, to prevent 1 troop armies from wasting people's time, but frankly a 49 troop army is a waste of time too.  The minimum size needs to be raised to something worth the trouble.


Basically if I have to set my alarm to log into cRPG at 9:34pm to do a Strategus battle, I would like to know that it's going to last more than 4 minutes.  If I log in and the enemy has 49 tickets with 25 players, then, I feel I have had my time wasted.  I don't want to set my alarm clock just to log in for what amounts to one round of Battle.

You know. I've been playing around (nudge nudge) with this idea. Instead of making them small scale battles instant-win/loss, why not just quicken them? If the ammount of troops is less than X, then instead of the battle happen after 24 hours, it happens after 12/6/3 or even 1(!) hour! Would make for some interesting situations to happen...
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Lt_Anders on December 15, 2011, 12:33:07 am
Instead of that, make the RAID feature  happen 12 hours(instead of 24) and change the reinforcement limit. attackers can't reinforce a raid, defenders get 1-2 hours. Would be interesting mechanic.
Title: Re: What is the aim of Strategus?
Post by: Sphinxer on December 15, 2011, 09:35:08 am
Haven't you learned your lesson yet ?

chadz says left, he goes right. That 5 month rounds is bs as always. When he feels like it, he'll just reset it. Probably when dev clans are being raped or bored of having raped everything .... It's funny to see that devs aren't neutral in this mod, but actively playing with their real name (you could at least fake it ffs..).

Minimum troops required (about 100~150) is a great idea. Enough of those mini-battles, if you wanna do 49 vs 49 , go play on the battle server instead of annoying us with those useless (and mostly no good equips) battles.