cRPG
Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: Vibe on September 25, 2012, 04:03:41 pm
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Mind you this idea is very raw and needs a lot more work.
The point of this idea is reworking the current reward system of Strategus - the gold bank. It does not actually focus on changing the gameplay mechanics of Strategus, but rather focuses on the rewards (loompoints) one can get for actively participating in Strategus. The whole idea is to motivate factions to wage war and be more active instead of turtling up on their land with their pals.
The purpose of this suggestion is to make small and medium size factions be worth it and to discourage players from forming large alliances.
Strategus Points
The strategus gold bank is gone. It is replaced by Strategus Points (SP), that every player earns for himself by taking a share of Faction Points (FP) that your faction earns (solo player is a 1 man faction in this case).
There's a variety of ways to earn Faction Points:
- waging battles - most valuable
- taking over/defending a fief - mid value
- holding a fief - low value
- mercing in a battle - lowest
At the point when a faction earns Faction Points, they are immediately divided by the number of members currently in the faction and the value is rewarded to every member of the faction. These are called Strategus Points (SP). So, after a faction gains FP, every member gets:
SP = FP / # of members in the faction
At the end of a Strategus round the Strategus Points every player earned would be taken into consideration and much like it is currently with the bank, players with enough SP would be awarded loom point(s). Top players with the most Strategus Points would also get a title.
Winning battles
Winning a battle gives you Strategus points.
FP from a battle = (Equipment value * win multi * honor multi * 0.1)
Equipment Value = (team1 total eq cost + team2 total eq cost) / 2
Win Multi = 0.5 if lost, 1 if win
Honor multi
The point of honor multi is to prevent farming a lot of FP/SP from battles where you overgear and outnumber your enemy. It's basically gear cost and troop difference.
Honor Multi = (EnemyValue/YourValue)
Enemy Value = EnemyGearCost * EnemyTroops
Your Value = YourGearCost * YourTroops
( “,” - thousand mark, “.” - decimal mark)
Example: Enemy has 1000 troops with 100,000 worth gear. You have 800 troops with 60,000 worth gear. You win.
Equipment Value = (100,000 + 60,000)/2 = 80,000
Honor Multi = ((1000*100,000)/(800*60,000)) = 2.083
Win Multi = 1
Faction Points = 80,000 * 1 * 2.083 * 0.1= 16,664
You have 30 members in the faction:
SP per player = 33,328/30 = 555 (rounded down)
Taking over / defending a fief
Faction points = production points spent in a fief * x
X could be a constant, need more info on how many production points are actually spent in a fief. General idea is that taking over a fief would give less Faction Points than winning a battle, since you already win a battle when taking it over.
Holding a fief
A set amount of faction points gained per day, for example:
Faction points per day = production points spent in a fief
More developed fiefs will grant you more Faction Points per day.
Mercing in a battle
Every player that was a mercenary in a battle gets Strat points at a value of:
((1/(number of people in winning faction * 5))*win multi) of Faction points the winning faction gained from this fight
If we take our example, a winning merc in our case would get:
16,664/(30*5)*1 = 111 Strategus Points.
And a losing one would get:
16,664/(30*5)*0.5 = 55.5 Strategus Points.
Possible problems
- Trading wins/fiefs or wars between friendlies in an attempt to gain a lot of Faction Points in an against the odds battle. Would have to be admined?
- Unbalanced formulas, I'm actually not that good at math
- Unsure at how this will play in longer term and bigger factions/alliances, it should not be worth being a carebear
Now then, please comment, criticize and suggest. As I said, all this needs a lot of work, so any input is of much help.
If you found any possible abuse of this system, also post that so we can think of a way to prevent it.
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another micro management
We need to make strategus simple as possible imo not like Civ
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lol
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Well I personally think it's a good idea, or something like it. Something similar to Renown in single player.
There should be some brainstorming for ways to encourage people to fight each other (aka discourage huge alliances who never fight over territory). Both carrots and sticks would be good. I still think tax inefficiency should be put in place (as much as I hated it in single player).
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Sounds too complicated...
personally I think the solution would require more extensive diplomacy coding into strat and tied into the mysterious "corruption" function which is supposed to be which doesn't seem to be enabled.
Everyone would be registered, and would have to align themselves to be "supporters" of another faction to actually sign up for their battles.
The more people your faction supports, and is supported by, the more corruption you get. You could still sign up supporters at last minute for battles, but the corruption effects should spike so that wouldn't be a great loophole around it (more efficient to manage corruption by keeping long term supporters).
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another micro management
We need to make strategus simple as possible imo not like Civ
I like Civ :P
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Not uninteresting (and surprisingly similar to what I came up with in the last 24 hours).
Although I would possibly give some direct ingame benefit to it as well (possibly hard troop cap). Having no SP gives you a troop cap of 100, and gaining more SP means raising your troop cap. That way factions with many members don't profit from them, because the troop cap is shared.
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Mind you this idea is very raw and needs a lot more work.
Now then, please comment, criticize and suggest. As I said, all this needs a lot of work, so any input is of much help.
There's a variety of ways to earn Faction Points:
- waging battles - most valuable
You said it yourself the easiest way is too leech battles against upto 5 allies on a weekly basis, no risk and plenty of FP(Faction Points), and you can even set up same gear armies to avoid this penatly related too gear. Especially with this system of PP you can simply set your economy to produce the same high end gear as your friends inside 9 days. (This bonus should have a cool down timer of at least 20 weeks for fighting the same enemy, the side effect of this is, if the Strat lasts for 1 year you can only fight a limited number of enemies unless you decide to attack your allies).
- taking over/defending a fief - mid value
Fief rotation, unless you give fiefs a cold time after they have been taking of at least 20 weeks also, there is nothing to stop factions (we'll stick with the number of allies at 5) each giving up 2 fiefs for trading, meaning you can "conquorer" over 2 fiefs a week for the points. If you combine this fief trading with a real battle you actually kill 2 birds with 1 stone. (The cooldown introduces the same effect as mentioned above).
- holding a fief - low value
This should have the highest value, as it would encourage the clans to attack each other, otherwise what use are fiefs once you have the few you need to grind your gear, if this stays as a low value it only encourages clans to organise the set peice battles. I know this would slightly negate the points I made in Waging battles and Defending a fief, but i feel this would be the best system to encourage clans to move around the map aggresivily with purpose.
- mercing in a battle - lowest
Definatly should have the lowest value, or left out all together, as factions tend to have set roster partners with their alliance members. Means the big clans farming the points from this one.
The only abuse of the cooldown period I could see would be the actual creation of a new faction then wiping it from the map once a day or once every second day, but that would be easily controlable with mininium admining.
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Maybe I am missing something but doesn't this only address large clans based on members, but not the actual problems of clans plus vassals making mega alliances? I am not seeing how these proposed changes, which are an interesting base I admit Vibe, address that? To me, the mega-alliance issue, is more of a pressing matter than just large clans. Both EU and NA have this issue. If I missed how this addresses alliances my apologies.
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So you mean to tell me the 54,000 strat gold we already have in the bank is going to be wiped? Better get a refund.
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Maybe I am missing something but doesn't this only address large clans based on members, but not the actual problems of clans plus vassals making mega alliances? I am not seeing how these proposed changes, which are an interesting base I admit Vibe, address that? To me, the mega-alliance issue, is more of a pressing matter than just large clans. Both EU and NA have this issue. If I missed how this addresses alliances my apologies.
It motivates single clans to try and take as much area as possible (fief hold / taking points), while waging as much war as they can (battle points), possibly "fair" ones. If you're in an alliance, sooner or later you're going to just destroy little factions with inferior troops/gear, granting you little points. Not to mention that your borders will be set by the alliance and you probably won't be allowed to expand and take new fiefs, so you'll basically be idle and just get the fief hold points, which are low compared to how much you get by waging war and taking new fiefs.
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I see how this benefits smaller factions, but now how it is a disadvantage to big alliances.
Edit: Nevermind, thanks for clearing that up. A motivation for fighting equal opponents sounds good, while the disadvantages that large factions get through this system, remove the option of just joining different clans in one huge faction. Could work, seems rather complex though.
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I like this, with some polishing it could work.
Reminds me of the Dark Age of Camelot points system, where you gained points for holding fiefs, with a multiplier if held within enemy lands. That way people aspired to both conquer keeps (fiefs) within their own territory plus in enemy territory. Also holding more and more enemy lands would weaken the defences on the main castle which held a relic that gave a faction wide buff (5% xp etc).
I personally don't care much for having looms as the main reward though, rather XP then (trade points for XP bonus or pure XP), or simply vanity rewards.
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I like this, with some polishing it could work.
Reminds me of the Dark Age of Camelot points system, where you gained points for holding fiefs, with a multiplier if held within enemy lands. That way people aspired to both conquer keeps (fiefs) within their own territory plus in enemy territory. Also holding more and more enemy lands would weaken the defences on the main castle which held a relic that gave a faction wide buff (5% xp etc).
I personally don't care much for having looms as the main reward though, rather XP then (trade points for XP bonus or pure XP), or simply vanity rewards.
Yeah, the reward should be related to strategus, not crpg. Maybe the points could be a lvling system for strategus that lowers upkeep or something?
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Yeah, the reward should be related to strategus, not crpg. Maybe the points could be a lvling system for strategus that lowers upkeep or something?
Sorry if I understand you wrong, but do you suggest that there is some kind of bonus for the next round for those players ranked best in the previous? Sounds like a very bad idea.
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imo the main (and obvious) reason why big alliances are formed (and why there is no multi polar world in strategus) is so that players from these alliances win the game as easily as possible. those that are unlucky and won't get into the first alliance will form a second alliance hoping they will be the winners. in big alliances you have the numbers, you have the money, you have full roster so its easy to pwn everyone weaker and feel like the boss.
some loom points, strategus points, faction points, titles or anything else is far far far behind and won't change a thing. 9/10 players will prefer to pwn to pwn to pwn to pwn (even being the last one peasant in their alliance) over solo getting some crappy loompoint or crappy title.
the game how its designed now just works this way. there is no objective, so the only objective everybody is able to come up with is to conquer all the others. well what else would u expect from a medieval simulation? and how to conquer others easily without being a part of a care bear? you would have to completely change the game/rules if you'd want to achieve anything else than what you saw in previous strateguses (and what you will see in this one too).
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Right now there's no downside to a big alliance empire. What's missing is this "corruption" element, and also a diplomatic relations network that ties allies/mercs into it (though battle support).
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To address the large alliances (not just large factions) you could make it so that you had to set diplomatic relations (not necessarily publicly) for your faction. The only way to merc for another faction would be to have your relations set to allied, or mercenaries. The more allies you have, the more chance for corruption, I'm not sure about the mercs though.
Very rough draft idea, but something like that would make sense to me.
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To address the large alliances (not just large factions) you could make it so that you had to set diplomatic relations (not necessarily publicly) for your faction. The only way to merc for another faction would be to have your relations set to allied, or mercenaries. The more allies you have, the more chance for corruption, I'm not sure about the mercs though.
Very rough draft idea, but something like that would make sense to me.
That's not a bad idea Huseby, although it would need some kind of cooldown on changing from a faction to merc as potentially clan A and clan B could be allied; then clan b switches to merc to avoid costing either clan the corruption charge. Hopefully that makes sense.
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Fighting for possible loom points? Yeh that's gonna prevent alliances pfft. Easier just to level to 31.
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That's not a bad idea Huseby, although it would need some kind of cooldown on changing from a faction to merc as potentially clan A and clan B could be allied; then clan b switches to merc to avoid costing either clan the corruption charge. Hopefully that makes sense.
I wrote this out on first page no one read it :mad:
The way to balance switching support should not be fake cool down, but corruption spike instead. So a clan that switched support/supporters a lot would be able to do it but would pay for it.
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Mind you this idea is very raw and needs a lot more work.
Without reading anymore I can tell you Rodrick_Of_Chaos will have a vested interest in your idea.
Present this to chaos and particularly him and I believe you will find some Chaotic results.
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Sorry if I understand you wrong, but do you suggest that there is some kind of bonus for the next round for those players ranked best in the previous? Sounds like a very bad idea.
It wouldn't be rewards, I'm suggesting that instead of the FP giving loompoints it is used in a lvling system. The levels could decrease troop upkeep costs, give extra gold from trade runs, etc.
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can you explain in more depth how exactly huge clans with 80+ upto 200 members or alliances with 300+ upto 500 players would be balanced by this?
same topic different angle and a suggestion done a while ago (http://forum.meleegaming.com/strategus-general-discussion/mega-alliances-who%27s-to-blame-what-to-do/msg617098/#msg617098)
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can you explain in more depth how exactly huge clans with 80+ upto 200 members or alliances with 300+ upto 500 players would be balanced by this?
same topic different angle and a suggestion done a while ago (http://forum.meleegaming.com/strategus-general-discussion/mega-alliances-who%27s-to-blame-what-to-do/msg617098/#msg617098)
By making smaller factions viable. I never said this could completely balance the game, since it's all about loom rewards, but it could help break some larger factions.
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By making smaller factions viable. I never said this could completely balance the game, since it's all about loom rewards, but it could help break some larger factions.
i am all for that. Complettly counter productiv to that goal is the S&D introduced recently. I might be wrong here but i would now tend to attack randomers even befor they reach my claims so they don't fuck up the S&D. Before that the goods production was dependent on each single guy. Therefor at some point he was able to get his caravans done as also the factions, which then still needed to move their stuff. No problem for a faction to allow some more people to fill in within fiefs for troop production. Now a single guy who may have amassed 20k gold can just buy thousands of trade goods and be gone in an instant. I think randomers will get attacked more often now because of that.
Still i like the S&D System, not sure how it could be improved to make randomers less threatening to factions who fear to loose some S&D. I'd like to have the system in a way, so single players can make caravans and even come to the state to attack and take a village(holding is a different thing) And perhaps even give more jobs to randomers which Faction Palyers can't even take part in. Like espionage missions or sabotage(then perhaps been able to destroy S&D) but as a built in task which anonymous would offer and they take a risk if caught but if successfull get rewarded by the anonymous contract giver.
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i am all for that. Complettly counter productiv to that goal is the S&D introduced recently. I might be wrong here but i would now tend to attack randomers even befor they reach my claims so they don't fuck up the S&D. Before that the goods production was dependent on each single guy. Therefor at some point he was able to get his caravans done as also the factions, which then still needed to move their stuff. No problem for a faction to allow some more people to fill in within fiefs for troop production. Now a single guy who may have amassed 20k gold can just buy thousands of trade goods and be gone in an instant. I think randomers will get attacked more often now because of that.
Still i like the S&D System, not sure how it could be improved to make randomers less threatening to factions who fear to loose some S&D. I'd like to have the system in a way, so single players can make caravans and even come to the state to attack and take a village(holding is a different thing) And perhaps even give more jobs to randomers which Faction Palyers can't even take part in. Like espionage missions or sabotage(then perhaps been able to destroy S&D) but as a built in task which anonymous would offer and they take a risk if caught but if successfull get rewarded by the anonymous contract giver.
I agree that S&D system atm is pretty shit, specially for those that are not fief owners since fief owners will be very protective of their S&D. Also like your other suggestions, there definitely needs to be more to do for a solo player.
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I just can't see any mechanic that couldn't be circumvented by players determined to create a big mega alliance. The only thing I could think of is to award a trophy to the faction that controls the most fiefs at the end of each strategus and limit the total number of players in an individual faction. My only hope is that personal clan glory would cause big alliances to disintegrate once they have defeated their big alliance enemy. The worst thing about the UIF is that they refused to do this once they had conquered the majority of territory.
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...The worst thing about the UIF is that they refused to do this once they had conquered the majority of territory.
That may have happened if Strategus wouldn't be in beta and would just keep on going without resets.
Admitted there isn't a perfect system, but you could get damn close. By giving Factions insentives to use a diplomatic system by which them, they are catagorized then, it would be possible to balance depending on player counts(within a faction AND within an alliance) and other defined relations. That combined with an unrest system against inactivity would surly be a great improvement.
EDIT: And to those who say it would only make things more complicated with more micromanagement, not true. You make your realtion settings for your factions, those you want treaties with get a notifier and either reject or confirm. Done. Everything could be calculated by Strategus without any hustle to anyone else.