cRPG

Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: chadz on November 18, 2012, 11:33:04 pm

Title: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: chadz on November 18, 2012, 11:33:04 pm

... what would you do?
 Don't even base it on the current situation, start thinking from scratch. The current way strat battles work is a very simple one, and I'm sure there would be funnier and tactically more challenging version.

Just think about it like this:

Input: 2 parties, different troops, different weapons, fighting on different locations (villages, castles, towns, plains)
Ingame Battle: ?
Output: 1 party wins.

How should the battle be fought?

This is just a brainstorming really, I'd like to hear how you would do it if you could decide.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Digglez on November 18, 2012, 11:41:10 pm

allow factions to pick non-faction Sergeants/Lieutenants that can also control battalion flags

prime time battle windows ONLY and/or negotiated-scheduled battle times that both sides agree to

siege structures like forward spawn, healing tent, ladders should be imperious to ranged fire except maybe throwing

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: chadz on November 18, 2012, 11:43:03 pm

Not improving it - remaking it. I am aware of improvements that could be done, but that's not what this topic is about.

Think disruptive.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Digglez on November 18, 2012, 11:45:58 pm

Quote from: chadz on November 18, 2012, 11:43:03 pm

Not improving it - remaking it. I am aware of improvements that could be done, but that's not what this topic is about.

Think disruptive.

current model is great and respreents a good clan battle system.  If you want different game modes besides ticket count deathmatch, make a caravan attack/raid style play where attackers have to GET an object(s) and get them away from defenders.

Make defenders have to escort objective to escape point. Like TF2 payload maps


also, some sort of ambush system would be nice.  Where attackers flags were a huge circle around defender spawns.  attackers get to deploy first and get ready before defenders spawn

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: LordBerenger on November 18, 2012, 11:47:52 pm

Before you try to find a way to improve battles, remove raid completely first and foremost.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: DaveUKR on November 18, 2012, 11:48:03 pm

If you fix the balance in crpg, fix maps in Strat, if you fix the strat map itself - strat battles will be golden. I don't see any reasons to make a great revamp of Strat battles now, just make something that we have now working like clocks. And then we will see.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Vovka on November 18, 2012, 11:49:37 pm

would be desirable that the player's life was more valuable to the player himself. For example to limit the maximum number of respawns - all tickets / quantity mercs.


and how about try spawn at comander and mb 2-3 sergeants?

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Segd on November 18, 2012, 11:51:15 pm

I think simple returning of troop multiplicator would make Strat more dynamic & fun.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Camaris on November 19, 2012, 12:03:24 am

I really really enjoyed tonights battle.
If i would improve something then perhaps a bit better use for healing tents etc.
Perhaps something like "healing"-banners.

Or implementing some additional buffing banners.
More use to siege material would be cool too. Stationary arbalests etc.

At sieges there could be some "major" flags like in siege-mod. If you capture those all smaller flags in some areas are disabled and you can build a permanent spawnpoint there. If defenders dont manage to get it back before those permanent spawnpoint is build those flags are lost forever and attackers got a new spawning area.

If attackers could set their spawn areas before attack each map would get different tactics every time. If its possible to split spawns it would get even more interesting. Allowing mercs to finally bring their own equip would be really awesome too. (they would have to be around at stratmap). Probably not doable but getting battles with more factions would be awesome: Like 20 new people as new reinforcements after 20 minutes if someone came to help and joined battle late with his own troops.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Aztek on November 19, 2012, 12:12:58 am

^^^^^^

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Keshian on November 19, 2012, 12:13:03 am

1.  Allow max 61 fighters again on each side (scaled down with troop count like currently) - so many players cant get accepted to the really fun battles involving more than 200-300 troops and this would help.

2.  Make all hired mercs invisble to the opposing side, so on thee roster list for battle applications just lists Merc 1, 2, 3 etc.  - makes it more acceptable to apply for all battles

3.  Allow for waves of besiegers with large fights involving sieges - so instead of 3000 v 4000 you would have a 1500 v 2000, then the leftover tickets would continue to a new battle in the second wave 15 or 60 minutes later so maybe 1800 v 2000.  This would allow you to hire a whole new set of mercs and provide more opportunities for people to fight and would more closely resemble a real besiegement of a castle.  Force better preparation with more siege equipment as gear would be split equally between the waves.  We would have twice as many large fights as now where the norm is 100v 100 with no shows on one side for 80% or more of the battles list.

4.  Make the NA 3 server less laggy

5.  Double the xp gain

6.  Add battering rams

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Lt_Anders on November 19, 2012, 12:16:45 am

Ok First: Standardized(ish) battle maps. No random Generation. Make maps based on location. IE if you fight in a forest, make it a primarily forested map. If you attack in hills or mountain, defenders should get the height advantage over the attackers. Everything else should be some variation based on flat maps with various additives.(Like make one map fight in open plains with a farm in it. Battles were often fought near small villages and farms so perhaps add this into map scenes.)

Start there. Each type of terrain should bring about tactical choice: Do i attack on mountain and risk the offensive disadvantage or do I attack and prevent reinforcement(or otherwise). Add tactical choices into battle location. Keep it varied though, to few scenes and people start to develop plans.That's it for map scenes.

Though not battle related, this would make a good change to battle system.(Of course, not concerning fiefs)

For battles:
Use spawn wave system along with a capture and hold dynamic, similar to BF gold rush. Defenders have 3 "lines" so to speak and each successive line gets "harder" to penetrate. If the defenders manage to hold 1 line very long, then they can "time limit" win.(Spawn wave mechanic doesn't have to be used and the current death spawner time can work as well.)

If you combine this with a modified fief layout and open field maps(designed for this from the start) you can get tactical setups and battlefield commanding as well as you gear brought becomes important.

some refinements: Give the attackers 10/10 spawns at start with each successive "line" capture giving them a spawn point further in. Give the defenders 3/3/4 spawn points at each line. Capture of all  spawns each line wins that line. Spawns are UNABLE to be put up once taken down. Also once tickets are out battle is over. But make it OBJECTIVE rather than KILL BASED. Also, Add score as a report option.

Take some or all, of this if you wish. Make refinements based on what you see.

Better battles need two things. Proper(not necessarily balanced) maps and the mechanics to be used on those maps.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: BattalGazi on November 19, 2012, 12:20:08 am

Avoid multiple accounts and bug abusing. The rest will be fine.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Pentecost on November 19, 2012, 12:37:16 am

-One of the things I thought added some depth to battles in Shogun 2 was that when one army reinforced another, the reinforcements would not be available at the very beginning but would arrive at a time after the start of the battle proportional to when the reinforcement was made. If you routed the army that was being reinforced before the reinforcements arrived, you would basically win because of the huge negative morale penalty to the arriving enemy troops. I don't know if this mechanic could actually be applied to Strategus though.

-There is currently little point to defending villages during an invasion. The strategy that every NA faction being attacked has adopted so far after being attacked in earnest is to withdraw everything of value to inside a castle or town and to only mount a real resistance from there. If you made it so that holding villages in the vicinity of castles and towns had an effect on your ability to defend the castles and towns associated with them, it would make for village battles that were meaningful and not all population-ticket peasant slaughters.

-I second Diggles' ideas about implementing some game modes that focus on accomplishing objectives other than "wipe out the enemy army in its entirety". Strategus is about great battles, but not every great battle needs to be a reenactment of Waterloo.

-This is also a good suggestion that should seriously be considered if the game would allow for it (http://forum.meleegaming.com/suggestions-corner/repair-castles-after-sieges/). I feel it would add a greater element of strategy to decisions about how exactly to attack and hold territory, and it would add a sense of continuity to major siege battles that isn't currently there.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Kelugarn on November 19, 2012, 12:37:31 am

(click to show/hide)

Allow mercs to be hired in squads/battalions that have separate spawn locations that can be arranged within a given area of the map for each team. Allow faction leaders/battle commanders to set battalion spawns in the 120 seconds before the battle starts.

Allow commanders to call in reinforcements (respawns) in waves, divided by battalion.

Remove flag spawn point system and replace with something like a "control zone" for each battalion that the enemy must hold for a certain amount of seconds, uncontested, to disable spawns.

Allow defenders to spend gold/csites/con mats in the 5 hour reinforcement window to build fortifications/alter map.

Ability to restrict gear to certain battalions.

Get new servers.

Not much else coming to me right now that would affect strat only.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Mustikki on November 19, 2012, 12:37:52 am

I would like to get more influences from Single Player Mode.

See, there hero's have around 50-200 troops and kings 200-300 (but they are kings with lots of income). From those troops most are normal medium armored troops and only few knights with.
So what i want is to cut down the troop amount to get induvidual life more important and therefore healing tents and personal skill much more appreciated. That would require serious increase for troops cost and change for how they are taxed from daily base to hour check if troop amount have increased. Also gear would need to get higher to buy and repair/upkeep costs to cut down that there would not be shiny full knight armies all the time.

That could also cut down the battle time to lets say ~14mins = 60mins / 14mins = 4 battles per hour. When people would only have few lifes.
Of course then clans would need to move as packs having 5-10 guildies close each others and attack together castles to get the troop amount higher (like what single player is).
Also battles preparing time could get down too (dont know how much but a lot from current, if possible due to free server slot), that could require second server to handle all the battles, but if battle time would be only 6pm to midnight GMT that would still leave 4x6=24 normal/smaller battles per server. <- Battles only in primetime!

10 troops army could be "free" just like there are 10 friends ingame to have at max.

And so on, but taking elements from the single player. Back to the source! :D

Sorry for confused text but i'm getting ideas while typing.

Ps. After 3 weeks i'm having more time once again. So could spend some of that for map modifying/making :D

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Bjarky on November 19, 2012, 01:48:26 am

make items laying on the ground vanish faster or put a nr cap on them if possible, servers get quite laggy after a while with more and more items laying around.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Malaclypse on November 19, 2012, 01:52:45 am

A real-time map with no delay before the battle. Also, go old style, get rid of time limits. The tears and QQ generated by these changes should sustain the developers for many years.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Gmnotutoo on November 19, 2012, 01:55:36 am

Strategus Leveling System:

1. Make renown a personal thing dependent on reliability, performance rating based on score, and number of battles.

2. Find a system using the renown points to designate level up spots.

3. Create random Role-play skills that each character can level up.
These are just examples of what could be done.

Blacksmith: Increases chance to randomly repair items during a strat tick.
Luck: Increase chance of attacker gaining more gear after battles.
Recruiter: Increase chance to randomly recruit additional troops.
Leadership: Increases the max merc count above average.
Merchant: adds an increase modifier to distance trades.
Mercenary: Randomly awarded personal things the defeated army carries, spoils of war for people and not just the attacker.
Fleet Footed: Increases time of quick-march.
Carpenter: Can buy ladders, siege shields, construction sites & materials (Item availability dependent on skill level)
Caravan: Ability to carry more goods less slowly.
Seafaring: Ability to cross water, increases water speed.
Stealth: Other people outside of the clan have to get closer to you before they appear on the screen.
Espionage: While in a fief allows ability to mess with production or prosperity.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Smoothrich on November 19, 2012, 01:57:51 am

Remove the strategus map part completely because its garbage no matter how much you add or rework it.  It's an unfun buggy facebook game that no one actually enjoys, with a time-consuming awkward interface, random esoteric mechanics that no one understands except exploiters, and it requires 90000 minutes of bullshit drama/micromanagement of pixels every week or two for 90 minutes of "fun" battles.

It's seriously REALLY bad, I mean it's better now than it was in strat 3 (which was abysmal), but strat 2 was probably the best because it was simple and streamlined, and made getting battles to happen with select gear the easiest.  But it was still pretty bad.

I'm not trying to be a dick but the strategus web-page part of the game just does so much wrong, people have adapted to it because its the only way to achieve unique strat battles, but everything about it just holds cRPG back.  I can't imagine clan leaders have ever actually enjoyed spending 60+ minutes just cycling gear between fiefs and armies.  You have NO idea how unfun this is, chadz, unless you've dealt with it enough for a clan.  People often can't even deal with the shit and just quit the game entirely (often with entire clans) because its so much stupid effort.

Basically just leave this Strat how it is (bad) and focus your efforts and time in making a better battle type that your fans can play 24/7, not 90 minutes once every two weeks or so at best. 

http://forum.meleegaming.com/suggestions-corner/conquest-gametype-combine-strategus-siege-and-battle-into-1-bad-assed-mode/

72 +1's (and counting) (including yours chadz lol) can't be wrong.  Kill Strategus, modernize cRPG gameplay with Conquest. 

Mod has died, Mod is risen.  Mod will come again..

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Tydeus on November 19, 2012, 04:08:55 am

Make maps about three times larger and have "capture points" throughout the map(initial spawn, a center spawn and two in between for a total of 5). Either side can capture any of the points. If one side captures all points, they route the enemy. To capture a point you need a minimum of 10% of your team on the point, to stop a capture you only need one person. This goes for battle, siege, village, castle, or town. Capture based on proximity, not like pressing some arbitrary key at the right time between enemy spawns to lower the flag. Having 5 times the amount of players on a capture point than what the owning faction has, should keep the owner's faction from spawning there.

Wave spawns rather than spawn time relying on death count(besides, this seems to cause excessive lag). Either place a battalion flag on top of a capture point or have the battalion leader set that point as the wave respawn point to have his battalion spawn there(just press 'f' while standing over it). 35 second wave respawn timer base, -5~ seconds per capture point your team controls. So starting timer is 30, wave respawn timer with 4 of 5 captured points is 15 seconds.

Retreat mechanics should be reworked so that players have to actually run to the edge of the map to retreat. Add retreat requirements so that players can't simply retreat at 10 tickets to keep from getting teleported. If you are overwhelmed in troop count, you should not be able to retreat easily in a field battle. If your faction is severely losing, retreat should be harder to initiate. Possibly have the retreat requirement look at the K:D ratio of the previous 5 minutes of the battle and if it's too low (1:2), you are then unable to retreat. If not enough people have died(retreating side isn't getting pressured, for example) retreat becomes possible.

Upon retreat initiation, whatever percent of players successfully retreated(rather than getting chased down and killed) would be the percent of troops left alive after the battle end. Finally, battle victors should have a chance to capture defeated commanders who would stay captured until freed or exchanged.

Drastically increase upkeep so that you see army sizes much closer to what single player has. Make reinforcement work the same way it works in single player. Allied army sets a guy to follow, when he enters into a battle anyone on follow will continue to move until he is within reinforce range, then his party will "reinforce" and the troops/equipment will be added to the what the final battle has. Players not already on follow can simply move their character until they are within reinforcement range, then chose to reinforce to the same effect.

Remove (could rework it somehow, maybe) the raid system.

Allow fief owners to delegate others with fief privileges. (Garrison manager?)

Have catapults cause permanent damage to structures unless a fief manager repairs them.

Battering rams.

Ballistae.

Fief upgrades: Stronger walls, upgraded gatehouse, moat, iron as opposed to wooden doors, pitch drops.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: [ptx] on November 19, 2012, 05:01:45 am

How about having people spawn in "units"? Say, you don't get either one big blob of people spawning or a steady stream, but instead, you get groups of, say, 10 people spawning together. Both initially and the reinforcements as well, with each side having multiple spawn points spread out along their end of the map.  Respawning could happen when a battalion drops below some x% strength. Dunno, if it should keep the same players in the same battalion, or just take whoever and respawn them in that battalion.

Perhaps this would shift the battles from 2 blob clusterfuck into a more spread out, tactical battle?

Would probably also require each "unit" having its own battalion set for all people in it by default upon spawning.


Here is a 1337-skillz mspaint pic to illustrate:

(click to show/hide)

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Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Warcat on November 19, 2012, 07:00:32 am

Quote from: Mustikki on November 19, 2012, 12:37:52 am

I would like to get more influences from Single Player Mode.

See, there hero's have around 50-200 troops and kings 200-300 (but they are kings with lots of income). From those troops most are normal medium armored troops and only few knights with.
So what i want is to cut down the troop amount to get induvidual life more important and therefore healing tents and personal skill much more appreciated. That would require serious increase for troops cost and change for how they are taxed from daily base to hour check if troop amount have increased. Also gear would need to get higher to buy and repair/upkeep costs to cut down that there would not be shiny full knight armies all the time.

10 troops army could be "free" just like there are 10 friends ingame to have at max.

And so on, but taking elements from the single player. Back to the source! :D

I pretty much agree with Mustikki here. I'd like to see things a bit more like SP. One feature that I like from SP that I think would be good in strat is a prisoner system. You can carry so many prisoners, and when you lose a battle, the prisoners you have on you join the other side and when you are defeated, any surviving soldiers you have become prisoners.
Also I would like to see smaller armies both on the field and in cities. A large garrison in a SP city is up to 500 people. And the biggest individual armies are around 300 people. Id like to see a mechanic put in that limits the amount of troops one many can carry. If we had separate leveling for our characters within strat, the re-inclusion of Charisma and Intelligence stats could be part of determining party size along with reknown which could get bonuses for being a land owner.
When It comes time for the actual battle, nearby armies could join the fight anytime while continuing to be a separate army (that could decide to retreat separately from the main forces if their leader is there and without the current army destroying retreat penalties) in the 24 hours before the battle, with a delay on when the tickets and gear is added to their side based on how long it took to join the battle.
Overall I'd think having smaller armies would lead to more battles for castes villages and cities by reducing the amount of nearly unassailable settlements that have thousands of well armed troops , and also like in SP, would benefit factions that are active and organized since you could not have 3-5 people leading all of a large factions troops.

Also, I saw a thing a while back where I think someone was considering making strat control in game instead of on the site. I would love it if strat had an SP like interface.

Also I think it might be a good idea if instead of all troops being the same and then having various gear assigned to them, a system could be created where factions have their own troop trees which they could recruit as plain villagers in villages and have them upgraded in castles and mercenaries which could be recruited in cities and would be the players regular characters. Factions with more territory could have more troop tree options. whereas landless would have one class.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Keshian on November 19, 2012, 07:24:33 am

Dont do smaller armies - that would make 300 tickets a BIG battle, which only lasts 15 minutes.  You do 15 minutes pre-battle prep just doing role-call.  Longer fights are fun.  Not sure what Tydeus, Mustikki, and Warcat will think will happen when every battle is tiny.  Most of those battles already are boring and tough to fill rosters and wayyy too short.  If anything make battle sizes larger - more like strat 1 and 2 where epic fights were a LOT more common.  All the good fights people talk about this strat are the big cityd efenses and significant castle defenses or large field battles.  Those tiny little fights  of 300 v 200 are hardly worth remembering.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Warcat on November 19, 2012, 07:30:54 am

I've had plenty SP battles last longer than 15 minutes. Smaller armies doesn't have to mean smaller battles. Just like in SP, if you've got 10 guys joining in with 150-200 or more troops, you've got yourself a decent sized long battle. Perhaps an accompany option wouldn't be a bad idea. As it is, those big city defenses hardly ever happen because it's so hard to build up anything that can challenge them while keeping your own places protected.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: dodnet on November 19, 2012, 08:28:40 am

Change the spawning system, I hate all the spawn rapes and stuff and capping flags before the battle has at least begun. Spawn in groups from the map sides like in single player where you fight till one side is dead and then the next wave of enemies appears.

For caravan attacks I would like more specific battles like the defender has to defend an actual caravan and if he loses the position he loses the battle.

And remove the all-masterwork-clone armies. I hate it that every army of a large clan everywhere on the map consists of the same clones with full armor and masterwork items. I would like more diversity here, like different classes for archers, cav, polearm, officers, and so on.

Maybe even special roles for commanders, where killing the enemy commander makes their morale drop.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: MURDERTRON on November 19, 2012, 10:00:07 am

Quote from: Warcat on November 19, 2012, 07:00:32 am

I pretty much agree with Mustikki here. I'd like to see things a bit more like SP. One feature that I like from SP that I think would be good in strat is a prisoner system. You can carry so many prisoners, and when you lose a battle, the prisoners you have on you join the other side and when you are defeated, any surviving soldiers you have become prisoners.

Prisoner system is too easy to abuse between friendly factions once a significant number of prisoners was taken from actual enemies.  You could have a certain number of loser survivors be automatically converted into troops for the victor.  Also enemy troops KOed with blunt weapons could also have a percentage automatically converted into troops for the victor as well.  The downside is that if you attacked someone with blunt weapons and lost, the victor would be able to recover some of their troops lost to blunt KOs.  That way blunts have a higher risk/reward and all cut/pierce stuff plays to more of a scorched earth policy.  You could even have another percentage of loser survivors converted into prisoners which would essentially just be goods.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: buba on November 19, 2012, 12:01:47 pm

Caravan battle's could be made more fun by letting the defenders defend an area with a few carts like suggested before.
Let the defenders set up a defensive area like you can in With fire and sword.
Caravan defenders need a certain amount of trade goods otherwise it would be exploited by everyone.

Never understood why you need to kill every single one in a battle, I feel that a capture the point system might not be very original, but its a proven system.
And could work within strat and crpg battles.

Time limit on mayor battles makes sense i guess, however on very large siege's it favours the defenders to much.
Not sure how to work around this, but the general feeling is that the favour is on the defenders side in strat.

This is a natural thing of course, defenders should have an advantage.
But as it stands now, strat is slowing down to a crawl, instead of it being the big battle bringer it (supposed?) used to be.

I support the multi spawn points, commander/sergeant vote's and differentiating items for army's.
How all of this is to be implemented, I have no idea.

Thanks for asking input,
 

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Vibe on November 19, 2012, 12:28:07 pm

Well, I think that Strategus battles themselves (the in-game part) are completely fine. It's the game around it that isn't much fun.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Bjord on November 19, 2012, 12:44:24 pm

Fiefs now need to be upgraded in order to be able to buy certain types of equipment. I.e if you want horses, you build a stables, if you want ranged (throwing included), you build an archery range, blacksmith for weapons and a market for trading goods. +3 items will only be possible to buy in Castle fiefs once you've done the necessary upgrades to the pertaining structure. Building stuff costs PP. Prosperity can be boosted by building structures like a hospital, general store, bath house, market, etc etc. Villages starts with farms etc.

Attacking on the strat map could be done in two ways: Either you attack with an army under your command, or you create an AI commander (10, 000 gold or so) whose waypoint can be set. You still have to outfit the AI commander's army. The downside of AI commanders is that renown gain is reduced by 50%. AI commanders can do anything but trade, this is still only available for players.

That way, Strategus gets a more in-depth and dynamic setting. Attacks of any kind will be more common, and wearing fiefs down before you launch a coup de grace becomes valid (taking for granted that the defender no longer gains 50% of the items used in the battle).

Currently, Strategus feels like the Cold War. Ironically enough, DRZs are the main cause of this.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Tomas_of_Miles on November 19, 2012, 12:49:39 pm

Quote from: chadz on November 18, 2012, 11:33:04 pm

Input: 2 parties, different troops, different weapons, fighting on different locations (villages, castles, towns, plains)
Ingame Battle: ?
Output: 1 party wins.

Two parties. Troop number is the amount of tickets that human players can use. However, independent of this figure there are a number of commandable bots on either side. They are equipped with selections of the weapons that the commanders bought, with stats that allow them to use any weapon, to a minimum of use, i.e. enough power throw to use throwing spears but not enough wpf. Or perhaps power draw for any bow but no horse archery. Locations would have to be redesigned with AI maps (which is a crazy stupid amount of work but it's ok because brainstorming). These bots might make adequate spawn guards if commanded by a single human player. Also bots could populate random roving parties (opportunity for creative dev with ideas for custom troop design) and attack Strat players, and people could still sign up and fight on either side etc. Maybe devs could even have limited control over the movements of such parties.

Cons: bots in Strat?!?!?! Impossibru.
Pros: bots in Strat. Always some kind of standing army (albeit a naked one if you have no equipment).

Expecting lots of minuses.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Corsair831 on November 19, 2012, 01:29:15 pm

2 ideas --

[IDEA A]

Make the 3 flags spawn at the start of the battle, and change the ticket system so it works in a similar way to the way it does in some ticket games (battlefield 2 off the top of my head) ...

 Where if team 1 controls 2/3 flags and team 2 controls 1/3 flags, then every time a person from team 1 spawns it will use 2 tickets, and every time someone from team 3 spawns it will use 3 tickets. If someone captures all of the flag points, then their team loses just 1 ticket per respawn whilst the enemy loses 3 tickets per respawn. Basically whoever controls the most flags loses the least tickets.

This means teams will have to think more tactically about taking areas of the map and holding them, rather than just constantly deathmatching into each other. Splitting up into units per team using teamwork and stuff could spice things up a hell of a lot :).

Injection of tactics and map control into strat would not be a bad thing i think ? ;)

---

[IDEA B]

increase the respawn timer by a Lot -- make it so that people have to really really value their lives (im talking like a 30 second starting respawn timer increasing by ~~3 seconds per death)

 -- that would make people value their lives a lot more, and therefore ... make tactics more important ...

of course if you were doing this, you'd have to make the battles a lot shorter by reducing tickets by ~~ 1/3 what they are atm.

Also the tickets system in strat battles, what do you think about this, completely separate from my other idea,

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Chagan_Arslan on November 19, 2012, 01:37:28 pm

Add physical presence on map as a factor in how big roster is.

This is just an example so numbers could be worked out:

If every battle would have 50 slots available for battle, half of which would be for people from anywhere on the map and the other half for people in the close proximity to the person that attacks/defends, i think this would make strategus/battles much more dynamic.

- You would punish large faction for streching too much, leaving them vurnable in certain parts of their empire (No 50 man roster in every battle)
- Players that are in physical range of battle would have very high chance of joining (instead of not being accepted due to lack of place in roster)
- More power to small factions, which can make use of the bigger roster if they play it smart on strategus map
- A true place for mercenaries in strategus, by getting hired they would follow their employer and make use of the close proximity slots.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Andswaru on November 19, 2012, 01:40:40 pm

Quote from: Chagan_Arslan on November 19, 2012, 01:37:28 pm

Add physical presence on map as a factor in how big roster is.

This is just an example so numbers could be worked out:

If every battle would have 50 slots available for battle, half of which would be for people from anywhere on the map and the other half for people in the close proximity to the person that attacks/defends, i think this would make strategus/battles much more dynamic.

- You would punish large faction for streching too much, leaving them vurnable in certain parts of their empire (No 50 man roster in every battle)
- Players that are in physical range of battle would have very high chance of joining (instead of not being accepted due to lack of place in roster)
- More power to small factions, which can make use of the bigger roster if they play it smart on strategus map
- A true place for mercenaries in strategus, by getting hired they would follow their employer and make use of the close proximity slots.

Sounds nice and I +1 the general idea but it screams to me "please engage in account sharing as i need 25 mindless clones to follow my army around the map".

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Casimir on November 19, 2012, 03:23:03 pm

1.) A greater emphasis on commander skill and tactical prowess should be implemented.  IMO player skill should be less important in strat battles than cRPG.  Players should fuction far more like a drone for the commander and team cohesion and strategy should be rewarded.

2.)Aggressive play should be rewarded, dropping enemy flags and control of the map should result in reward.  Players should not be punished for attacking and should be incentiviced to take the initative and attack and enemy rather than waiting to defend.

3a.) Spawn waves should also be introduced, of which the commander may decide what gear the players may choose from.  Commanders should be able to automatically see players stats so that they may pre assign them to a battalion which can have certain equipment available to it, i.e. Heavy inf, Lancer, Archer etc.

3b.) A central area of the map should also be the key objective, controlling this area would allow for ddecreased time between spawn waves. 

4a.) Auto-generated maps should be removed entirely fram strategus and replaced with a series of precreated battle maps.  I believe a project for briges has already begun, but i believe all maps should be premade to avoide the rediculously unbalanced maps.

4b.) Make it so an attack may select the map he wishes (available froma  regional pool i.e. desert, mountain, plains, snowy etc.) as well as the time for attack, which is limited to prime time depending on the continent he is on.  Defenders should be allowed to appeal this via seperate selection, at an expence of reduced set up time in game.  Failure by the attacker to meet the defenders appeal should result in increased defender set up time.  The aim of this would be to encourage cohesion and better battle times / maps.

Feel free to comment and critize these ideas, there just a few that popped into my head while sat in uni. I'm sure many have terrible flaws or abuses that i havent seen. :)

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Erasmas on November 19, 2012, 03:36:42 pm

Quote from: Andswaru on November 19, 2012, 01:40:40 pm

Sounds nice and I +1 the general idea but it screams to me "please engage in account sharing as i need 25 mindless clones to follow my army around the map".

This. uhhh did I really say that???? :rolleyes:

It would mostly mean forum wars: "c'mon loosers, y u no attacking us, carebearing should be banned, we are waiting for u", instead of "real" ones....

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Chagan_Arslan on November 19, 2012, 03:51:03 pm

Quote from: Andswaru on November 19, 2012, 01:40:40 pm

Sounds nice and I +1 the general idea but it screams to me "please engage in account sharing as i need 25 mindless clones to follow my army around the map".

follow mode on map is already in ;]

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Firebrand on November 19, 2012, 05:20:32 pm

I don't know. Firstly i wanna say that gathering good army to enjoy battle takes ages. Buying loomed equipment around whole map, endless trading, crazy slow movement speed makes whole gameplay procces really boring. It would be good if devs could add more dynamic in gameplay. Faster travel, faster army gathering and faster money earning...

 About battles. As we have eu map splitted on two huge sides - UIF vs Anti-UIF - so problem with roster for small clans partitially solved cause if you will attack or defend against UIF faction for example, so you can count on guys from Anti-UIF coalition to join battle on your side, there is always ppl who wants to help you with battle even comanding and they even can allow you to use their TS channel. So to roster its not big problem untill we have this "cold war" (thanks to UIF).

But what i have miss in strategus is RPG element for building my army. In singleplayer i enjoyed travel around map and hire different units in different fiefs. Each unit had different stats and upgrade tree. With every battle units are gaining xp, they lvl up and become stronger. From peasants to knights. It was fun. Why we cant use this in strat? Let players hire different units with pre-defined builds that they will reach in the end of trainings and lets players play in battles for those units in battle. And only army generals can use they "real" cRPG builds - to feel them selves as heroes against low lvl soldiers! :)
There is many others ideas about such kind gameplay, more strategic and RPG elements to discuss to make strategus playable and joyfull. :)

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Elindor on November 19, 2012, 05:30:10 pm

 :arrow: The making of more location specific strat maps that many mappers are working on right now is clutch.

If the battle occurs at a bridge, it should be a bridge map.
If the battle occurs in the forest, it should be a forest map.
If the battle occurs in the snowy mountains, it should be a snowy mountain map.

This way armies engaging in the open would have options available to them.  One might actually WANT to go through forests to avoid a big army trailing them or something, especially if they are low on horses (a forest map would cut down the effectiveness of cav).

 :arrow: In addition to this, make it so that an army on the map could "fortify" itself.  It would take 2h or something but it would basically mean that if an army fortified and got attacked, they would spawn as defenders in a very very basic defensive area - like inside a circle of spikes with a couple raised platforms for archers, some tents, etc. 

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Tomas on November 19, 2012, 09:02:44 pm

Other than maps I don't think the battles themselves need to change.

I would like to change the roster system though and here's how

Split rosters into two

Section 1 = Soldiers
- Soldiers' rosters are done via a white list. 
- All your own faction plus your "listed allies" automatically get white listed.
- Individual Players can also be white listed
- The roster size for these is approximately half what it is now but it only controls the number of your white listed players that can be spawned at the same time.
- Spawning is done in turn with the spawn timer determining your place in the queue.
- Soldiers use up whatever equipment your character has on them

Section 2 = Commoners
- Commoners' rosters are done via blacklist
- Your "listed enemies" are automatically black listed and individual players and clans can also be black listed
- Players can also be black listed mid battle.
- Commoners' rosters are unlimited in size but with the same limit on troops spawned at once.
- If both sides have extra commoners present within a battle then the spawned troops limit will get automatically increased.  It cannot go lower than the default though.
- Commoners do not use up tickets and will continue to spawn until the Soldiers have used up all the armies tickets.
- Commoners use default free equipment (both as attackers and defenders)
- The level of the free gear is increased to include 20-25BA stuff and slightly better weapons so that people are no longer peasants.
- Commoners can earn some sort of Valour based XP reward for doing well (Soldiers can't).

What the above achieves
- A Drop in nature to Strat Battles whereby casual players don't need directly accepting but won't damage their team by dying often or not following orders.  If they are truely annoying or TK they can be immediately black listed though.
- Less stress on normal players in battle.  If you can only fight the first 20 mins then this is now fine.
- A nice reward for players that die less
- A bad side to having too many players in your alliance as your good players will spawn less often.
- Room for less skilled players and newbies in battles

The above is more than a little complicated and I have explained it very badly so have fun working it out :D

Here's an example to help though
1000 vs 1000 battle
 old roster size = 50
Max Soldiers spawned at once = 25
Max Commoners Spawned at once = 25 (unless both teams have extra commoners)
Max Soldier tickets = 1000
Max Commoner Tickets = infinite
Battle ends once a team loses all its Soldier Tickets

There's a few other ways or doing this as well rather than black lists and white lists - but you did ask for big changes :D

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Teeth on November 19, 2012, 09:22:05 pm

First of all, good luck reading all these wall of texts, if you ever will.

Idea 1
I'll start with the TL;DR version: Strategus battles like regular battle mode

With that out of the way, let's elaborate. The current battles are basically a huge grindfest, where only global tactics have any use and yet it is mostly equipment and ticket count that decides who wins. Respawns make the game an hour long deathmatch. I say remove respawns, imagine regular battle mode with 120 players on, with all of them on teamspeak. Wouldn't that be glorious? Every order a commander gives matters, every player that dies, is gone for good. If you manage to catch the enemy archers off guard, they are dead forever, instead of just respawning ten seconds later, making your clever ploy a waste of time. I know it is pretty crazy, but just think about it.

Example of ticket scaling. 500 troops (A) attack a 1000 troops (B). If 120 players is the total troop count that means A gets 40 players while B gets 80. They spawn, fight until 1 side is dead, end of battle. Yes, A will get its buttraped by B. That is what you get for fighting a 1 to 2 battle.

I am convinced that this would be epic for field battles, but sieges would pose a problem, Their defensive position will grant them to many kills before the attackers are able to get a foothold. I have some solutions but I am pretty sure that my idea is deemed too radical anyway, so I can't be arsed to double my wall of text.

---

Idea 2
In any case, the respawn speed should be reduced and there should be ticket scaling. 2000 tickets actually meaning 2000 players that have to die, makes any battle devoid of tactics. Scale everything to 500 per team and do reinforcement respawning like in singleplayer. The dead people of your team respawn as soon as you get below 1/4th or maybe 1/2 of the players alive. This will create a natural wave system and a tactical element that will greatly increase the importance of proper commanding, maneuvering and troop composition.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Elindor on November 19, 2012, 09:45:10 pm

Something like this  :arrow: http://forum.meleegaming.com/strategus-general-discussion/strat-only-stats/

Basically stats for STRAT only which you get to assign and can respec (with some delay) that make your character on the map different than someone elses.  Maybe some people are generals, others are traders, others are lords, etc etc...with different skills.

(This is for strat in general but applies to battles since, for example, those that choose combat leading skills would be have advantages when they led an army)

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: BaleOhay on November 20, 2012, 12:14:21 am

I would like to see it where you do not always have to play your regular Crpg build.

Maybe make the person when they hire build a ratio of types of troops they hire.

archer/shield/two hander.. Would make buying equipment easier since you know how many of each type of unit your army is marching with. Then when you spawn pick the type you want. Comes with the load out already purchased and a pre determined build by the owner of that army.

When that army is out of archers... no more spawning as one. Pick a different type.

Would make planning for fights more interesting.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Arathian on November 20, 2012, 01:59:43 am

I generally like strategus chadz. It doesn't need a re-design.

I would do 2 big changes. Both of them I analytically laid down in the 2 following threads.

http://forum.meleegaming.com/strategus-general-discussion/uses-of-renown-(suggestion)/msg647303/#msg647303

(click to show/hide)

Since this is a strategus suggestion, I thought it would fit here more. If this is the wrong place, feel free to move it.

Right, as of now, we have renown that does...well, nothing. chadz has some basic, good, ideas of what it should do, however alone these ideas could create an imbalance.

The original suggestion was for renown to increase troop recruitment. That is a very good idea, and I would like to start with that. It should certainly do that. For example, it could increase recruitment by 10% per 20k renown or so (rough numbers). However, this leads us to a problem: old players simply get a big advantage over new ones.

There is a way to solve this. Make renown also a resource. This means that give players a way to "spend" renown for big short-term benefits. That way players will (usually) not just accumulate huge amounts of renown but instead spend it thus keeping it down to reasonable levels.

A few ways renown could be spend (again, rough ideas)

-forced march: removes exhaustion, replaces it with a full time quick march again but doubles the exhaustion twice afterwards (can't be used twice in a row).
-surprise attack: give defenders less time to prepare for the attack.
-recruitment drive: increases troop recruitment by a huge % for a day (make it worth it)

I am sure you gentlemen can think of more. Ideally, most players will want to at spend a big part of their renown gains but not spend it all as soon as they get it.


The second part of this suggestion is about trading. chadz said he wanted to give renown for trading. That is, in my opinion, a mistake under my current suggestion. Instead, renown should be for millitary combat only. Traders should have a different resource, let's call it "fame".

Fame could be gained by...well...trading. Unlike renown, its benefits should be to trading itself. So, fame passively will decrease weapon and good prices but then can also be spend on various things.

-bargain: reduce prices for weapons and armors by X big amount for a small period.
-logistics: weight from goods will temporarily slow you down much less
-hide cargo: will stop the enemy from taking a percentage of your cargo in case he beats you.
edit: -kind of silly to forget this. <insert appropriate name for selling stuff more expensively> : you sell stuff more expensively for a small period of time  (surprising effect, init?  )

something cool I also came up with (but very unlikely to be implemented) is "caravan defence" where, when you defend, you start in a mini-fort made of carts.


This would not only help make the game more deep and interesting (at least until the gr...certain clans decide to abuse it :3) but also help strategus specialization. While everyone can technically still do everything, clans will want to have dedicated traders and warriors in their ranks which would make for an interesting dynamic.

http://forum.meleegaming.com/suggestions-corner/surrender-retreat-and-battles-a-strategus-suggestion/msg629851/#msg629851

(click to show/hide)

Hello, I have been playing strategus a bit more lately and I have a suggestion about our current "retreat" system.

First of all, "retreat" is miss-named. Currently, for all intends and purposes, it is "surrender". You lose all your troops AND gear when you retreat. While functional (it ends pointless battles quicker), I think this functionality could very easily be vastly improved.

First of all, there should be 2 options: surrender, and retreat. 

Surrender would require the enemy team to accept the offer of surrender. If this happens, the team that surrenders loses all its troops except the first 100 and all its gear BUT is granted a 2 hour battle immunity. That could be used in a hopeless situation for the one side where surrendering could at least preserve SOME of the troops if the other side is generous enough.

Retreating would be a different beast entirely. Retreating wouldn't be bilateral. You could just retreat. It essentially simulates the "well, shit guys, this is impossible. Time to leg it" situation. The team that retreats keeps all its troops and a very small amount of gear (let's say, 5% of the original?) but has a very very big speed bonus reduction for about 2 hours (for example 70%). That way, attacks on cities don't have to be suicidal afairs in case of the attacker losing.

These changes would help give more than 1 potential outcome to a battle. Currently, the ONLY possible outcome is: one side gets destroyed. The potential for tactical deepness with retreats, surrenders and, of course, battles to the end gets vastly improved not to mention it eases up the pain of a mistaken attack a bit.

Please read the suggestions chadz. I think they would vastly improve strategus.

Also yeah...get rid of raid, or at least re-design it so the defenders get at least a part of the population to come to the battle.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Tot. on November 20, 2012, 02:18:50 am

Two free-floating commanders who are pretty much in spect mode, they assign their troops to different groups and set flags like go-to/assault here/defend this for them. Basically RTS game for two people, TPP for the rest. Link it with XP/gold for being near your group-flag like it was in the ancient times in cRPG battles.

(click to show/hide)

There's obviously more, ie. Strat with hex grid, turn-based with 24-hour turns, movement speed tiles/day, certain number of actions per day, initiative to determine opposing actions priority, possibility to hide your army in a woods tile and prepare an ambush, battles only in primetime 20-24, if there are more at given day than can be fought in that time just pause the whole thing for a day; that way every evening there would be some fun battles to participate in for everyone instead of current travian-like system.

Most importantly though link Strategus with substantial cRPG rewards, so that people actually do give a fuck. XP and gold isn't enough. Holding cities/mines/whatever should generate in cRPG ie. periods of free repairs/bonus multi/items/gold/heirloom points.

Though it might be way too late.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Arathian on November 20, 2012, 02:21:17 am

Quote from: Tot. on November 20, 2012, 02:18:50 am

Two free-floating commanders who are pretty much in spect mode, they assign their troops to different groups and set flags like go-to/assault here/defend this for them. Basically RTS game for two people, TPP for the rest. Link it with XP/gold for being near your group-flag like it was in the ancient times in cRPG battles.

(click to show/hide)

There's obviously more, ie. Strat with hex grid, turn-based with 24-hour turns, movement speed tiles/day, certain number of actions per day, initiative to determine opposing actions priority, possibility to hide your army in a woods tile and prepare an ambush, battles only in primetime 20-24, if there are more at given day than can be fought in that time just pause the whole thing for a day; that way every evening there would be some battles to participate in for everyone instead of current travian-like system.

Most importantly link Strategus with substantial cRPG rewards, so that people actually do give a fuck. XP and gold isn't enough. Holding villages/cities/whatever should generate in cRPG ie. periods of free repairs/bonus multi/items/gold/heirloom points.

Though it might be way too late.

That would be pretty cool. A natural selection style mode in strategus.

Yeah, I would approve of that.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Farrix on November 20, 2012, 05:34:37 am

I think a significant problem is the differences between how we interact with cRPG and Strat. Elindor referenced strat skills, and I think that could play a huge role so I will describe my thoughts in reference to this.

Right now in strategus battles, if you are level 30, you will be hired over a level 20 guy no matter what. In the application for a battle we can provide our cRPG stats, but they really are pretty insignificant in the decision making process for who is gonna get hired. Replacing these cRPG stats in the application with Strat stats, or just having them both available would be pretty simple.

The strat character is base-lined off of the cRPG character, so there are a few things that would need to be addressed if we wanted to actually customize our strategus characters. These include: Character level, and Generations.
 
One of the developers earlier in this thread mentioned something about returning to single player mindset. Well I agree with that. If we added skills from single player such as trainer, leadership, etc., (more detail on these later) they would need to be formatted and dispersed according to cRPG character level. There are 15 skills in single player that play no role at all in cRPG. So lets say a character gets a strat point for every level they gain in cRPG. So if you are lvl 34, then you could have invested 34 points into trade and nothing else. (I'll describe what each of these 15 diff skills could do in a spoiler here in a bit.). No caps on how high an individual can invest into skills, which would keep us from having to mess with intelligence/charisma (a mitigating factor will be described later).

Now of these 15 possible skills, a Gen One character should be limited to investing in only 3 skills at a time. A gen two being able to invest in up to four, gen three in 5, etc... This would be so that there would be an incentive to retire and would provide a further purpose to the generations mechanic.

These 15 skills would be divided according to the two arenas of strategus. Lets say six of the skills benefit an individual or clan during a strategus battle, and 9 of the skills benefit the individual/clan on the strategus map. If you just wanted to sit in a fief and farm troops, and play in strategus battles then you could focus on battle skills. If you wanted to be more proactive in strat and move around/trade then you could invest in map skills. With either arena, every single one of these skills would have to be applied to the game in a mathematical fashion so that each would have diminishing returns. Each skill would require an equation that will effect game balance and accordingly is very significant. For instance at level one trade skill I could get an extra 10% bonus for my goods. Level 30 trade skill would only get me an extra .2% percent (the numbers can be tweaked later, focus on the general idea.).

Now this setup could lead to some abuses pretty easily, most notably within the battle skill sets. These abuses are obvious and the fix simple, but the potential map skill set abuses would require some of the more innovative criminal minds out there to figure out. Now if there were no limitations then a clan could have all their members invest into a healing skill (first aid, surgery) and no one would die in a battle because they would be surrounded by medics (further described in spoiler below). I think the best fix for this would be as follows: Every battle already has a limit in the amount of mercenaries one can hire which is determined according to army sizes. Lets use this same number to set a limit on the amount of skill can be used in an individual battle. For example: If I could hire 35 mercs for my battle, and I want an engineer. I would have the option of hiring either one guy at lvl 20 engineer skill and an assistant at lvl 15 engi skill, I could hire 5 guys at level 7 skill, or I could find one guy completely invested in engi skill at 35. Point of the story being: of all my mercs, I could only hire a limited # whose engineering skill would actually apply. This would make the game a lot more engaging because the leaders before a battle would have to make hiring decisions according to the statistics they have available, not based strictly on the character's level. For instance, a level 20 guy with 20 points into first aid is probably going to be hired before someone invested solely in map skill sets even if he is level 30. It gives the newbs another method of greater involvement.

So you can hire 35 mercs. You've got one 20 skill engi hired and only one other guy with engi skill who applied for the battle. He also has 20 engi skill. One of these two mercs is going to have some of their skill reduced in order to participate. Not reduced in reality, just in that particular battle. In this situation, the leader(s) of the battle would have to decide who they thought would be a better engi and hire that guy at full skill, the other at reduced. Point being that the leader decides who to hire, which skills to emphasize, how to use those skills in battle, and how to distribute the available skill points within their mercs. IMO this makes the hiring process a lot more intricate and interesting. If a character wants to put everything they have into one skill, they can. They just gotta keep in mind, it may be better for a battle if there were several players with a small amount of that skill, rather than one player with a shit ton of it.

Ok, so here are the skills in detail which I would propose implementing.

(click to show/hide)

Battle Skills: Looting, Trainer, Tactics, Surgery, First Aid, and Engineering

Map Skills: Tracking, Path-Finding, Spotting, Inventory Management, Wound Treatment, Persuasion, Prisoner Management, Leadership, and Trade

Looting: We have a system in place that gives all the unused gear an enemy uses and A certain percentage of the used gear which has been damaged. Those with this skill would contribute to their commander's collection of the used gear. You could have certain landmarks that if they are reached in the battle, there would be greater rewards. Say you can bring in 30 looting skill among all your mercs, then the damaged items will only be -1 rather than -2. If you can bring in 60 looting skill (large armies) then the items wouldn't be damaged at all. Now if we ever implement gold as being fully lootable then this skill could apply much more directly.

Trainer: Increases the amount of experience you receive from strategus battles. Potential landmarks could include a x2 multi at 30 skill and a x3 multi at level 60 skill

Tactics: Increases the amount of mercenaries you can hire for a battle. This one would be important seeing as the # of mercs determines the amount of skills you could utilize. Landmarks could include at 30 skill, an extra 5 mercenaries. At level 60 skill, an extra 5.

Surgery: I may be limiting my vision here, but I can only really see this applying if injuries are implemented into strategus. Then it would be just like single player. Each additional skill-point would increase the likelihood that a ticket is injured rather than killed. Landmarks could include: At 30 skill, there is a % chance that a ticket is neither killed nor injured (obviously the person would respawn). At 60 skill, the chance would increase.

First Aid: This is the one that would be most significant. In rageball your health goes up constantly. I think we could do this in strategus battles as well. Yeah yeah yeah, there are already healing tents that do this. However, if a medic could have an area around him say 10 M, where all players present receive a small recovery per minute (less than the rate of rageball) lets say at skill level 1 a medic could recover 5 hp per minute for the players around him. That's 1 hp every 12 seconds. Now the absolute key to this would be that medics could not heal (other than a tent). This would prevent a clan from stacking its players with 1 healing skill apiece so everyone gets like 30 hp every 12 seconds. Potential landmarks could include 30 skill giving an extra 2 meters proximity for each medic, 60 skill giving an extra 5 meters proximity.

Engineering: The health of every item (ladders, c-sites) thrown by an individual with engi skill would have increased health. Landmarks being: 30 skill health benefits apply to ALL ladders, no matter who throws 60 skill: small proximity repair feature


Map Skill Benefits:

Tracking: You can't really implement this as is from single player to strategus. I do like the idea though of making this into a hiding/reducing nme sight of u type of skill. Any good tracker is gonna know how to cover their own tracks, so it makes sense. Landmarks for the map skill benefits are gonna be a bit trickier, but I'll give it a go: At 15 skill, enemy tracker's skill would be nullified, at 30 skill trackers can also cover the tracks of accompanied (if implemented) parties.

Path Finding: Increases the speed for which one moves. At 15 skill, accompanied parties also enjoy the benefit. At 30 skill, rough terrain would have no effect on the path finder's party (doesn't apply to accompanied parties)

Spotting: Increases range in which you can see enemy parties. At 15 skill, nullifies negative sight effects of forests, at 30 skill either have it nullify the effect of trackers, or have it so one could see how many players are inside a fief.

Inventory Management: Increases the amount of items which can fit into a crate. At 15 skill gives you 200 free crates (you could carry 200 crates worth of items, but on map your character would still say 0 crates). At 30 skill, your first 500 listed (not the free 200 above) crates do not effect your army's speed.

Wound Treatment: I could only see this implemented if injuries were also implemented. It would increase the rate at which injured tickets heal. At 15 skill, 1/4 of injured tickets are healed at the end of the battle they were injured in. at 30 skill, 1/2 of tickets injured during a battle are healed after that battle. 

Persuasion: Reduces the amount paid for all items. at level 15, cuts taxes by 1/3. At level 30 eliminates taxes.

Prisoner Management: Ehhh I don't really know how I feel about this one. Might be more work to implement than it is worth. Anyone that wants to propose an appropriate benefit for this skill is more than welcome to.

Leadership: This would have to be something that would benefit fief owners. Having never owned a fief in strat 4, I don't really know what it could benefit, so please if you got an idea, post it.

Trade: increases the rate at which a distance bonus grows. At level 15, adds 10% (minimum of -40% and max of 360%) at level 30, adds 20 % (minimum of -20% and max of 380%)

Well there is my essay, I hope you found it interesting and read the thing. chadz if you actually read the whole thing and found it to be engaging, or even happened to like some of the ideas, please inflate my ego and make it publicly known!

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Mannhammer on November 20, 2012, 07:28:18 am

In chadz OP he asked how would you do Strat from scratch. It's a good question. Considering we have been beta testing this game for years I thought about what works, what doesn't. This is a simple summary of my thoughts on the subject. I can go into a lot more detail on these thoughts if anyone is interested.

1. Make Strat a turn based game.

(click to show/hide)

I realize that this is a huge change, but I think it would be very cool. Example: Once a day you give your Strat character a command. (For Example Move, Attack, Defend, Raid, Recruit, Train or Collect Taxes.). Then at a specified EU central time all of the orders from all of the players resolve at the same time. Battle times would now be set based off the actions taken.

2. Break-up the Strat map into small regions with defined boarders. Each region consists of a village, castle, town or something else.

3. All Strat players play on the same map

4. Delineate time regions on the Strat map that correlate to real life time zones. (IE. Longitudinal lines) Battles fought in these areas automatically start building off of that regions RL prime time(7PM, 8PM, ect...).

5. Get away from micromanagement.

(click to show/hide)

For example: Strat players would recruit peasants, then could train them to higher levels. Say Foot man, soldier, knight ect... Players from the cRPG page would create gear load outs for each troop level(peasant, footman, soldier knight ect..) for their character. Each troop level would have a cap on gold that could be spent. When a strat battle occurs players select the troop level they will spawn as, from the available troop types, then they spawn with the equipment they set on the cRPG page.

Lastly we need to define what type of game Strat will be. Is Strat a persistent world MMOSG(Massively Multiplayer Online Strategy Game) that has no defined end point? Or is it a strategy game like risk or chess that has a clear victor and end? Answering these questions is crucial for determining the mechanics of any game.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: buba on November 20, 2012, 02:15:39 pm

Good idea's Mannhammer.
I am not sure about the turn based idea but its a new and original.
The last question you asked about what kind of game strat is going to be, like risk, or mmosg is vital. 

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Firebrand on November 20, 2012, 02:24:20 pm

Farrix +1 Nice idea, i would support this kind of gameplay! We should bring more RPG elements! Near to singleplayer! :)

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: _RXN_ on November 20, 2012, 03:01:39 pm

Make a limited number of tickets on the map for the entire round. Make the restoring of tickets to be very slow. IRL model.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Warham on November 20, 2012, 03:11:43 pm

Quote from: Smoothrich on November 19, 2012, 01:57:51 am

Remove the strategus map part completely because its garbage no matter how much you add or rework it.  It's an unfun buggy facebook game that no one actually enjoys, with a time-consuming awkward interface, random esoteric mechanics that no one understands except exploiters, and it requires 90000 minutes of bullshit drama/micromanagement of pixels every week or two for 90 minutes of "fun" battles.

Strat without map is nothing. So this is the worst idea I've ever heard about strategus. Just play on eu1 or eu2 and do not bother about strat.

Quote from: Keshian on November 19, 2012, 12:13:03 am

5.  Double the xp gain

Quote from: Mannhammer on November 20, 2012, 07:28:18 am

For example: Strat players would recruit peasants, then could train them to higher levels. Say Foot man, soldier, knight ect... Players from the cRPG page would create gear load outs for each troop level(peasant, footman, soldier knight ect..) for their character. Each troop level would have a cap on gold that could be spent. When a strat battle occurs players select the troop level they will spawn as, from the available troop types, then they spawn with the equipment they set on the cRPG page.

Quote from: _RXN_ on November 20, 2012, 03:01:39 pm

Make a limited number of tickets on the map for the entire round. Make the restoring of tickets to be very slow. IRL model.

Realy good suggestions.

And make something with it:

Quote from: Segd on November 19, 2012, 08:45:26 pm

Current battle & loot system prevents dynamic warfare. Even within 4 months you couldn't do much.
For example current Tshibtin situation: UIF & Anti-UIF have about 10k troops each. UIF could attack the village only with 1.5k max(constant charge, little tactics) due to battle timer. & Anti-UIF need to have 2-2.5k troops in the village to always win & to get shitload of loot. So all we could do is to send 1.5k armies one by one, until one side will finally run out of tickets(which is hard since every side have more than one hundred active recruiters).
Same goes for Anti-UIF. They can't counterattack our armies in the field, cause we could reinforce our 1.5k armies to unbeatable 2.5k amount & get a lot of loot after battle.
Thats why Strat is boring as hell right now on EU.

P.S. same shit was at the beginning of the Strat 4 when Coalition, Crusader alliance, Peacebrakers, Caravand Guard & others brought about 10k troops to the DRZ desert. They besieged Jameyed castle, lost a loot of troops, saw UIF reinforcements(who could prevent any fief capture) & retreated to homeland. Because they couldn't take any fief without loosing almost all their army.

This is the most important problem for strategus now.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Elindor on November 20, 2012, 03:56:47 pm

Quote from: Mannhammer on November 20, 2012, 07:28:18 am

2. Break-up the Strat map into small regions with defined boarders. Each region consists of a village, castle, town or something else.

Ohhhh....like continents in RISK.

@ chadz, if we went to defined time periods for Strat like you mentioned (campaigns), this would be a great model to use....(Im assuming you know how RISK works).

Owning a region could confer certain bonuses, and count towards victory points in a defined campaign.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: [ptx] on November 20, 2012, 04:02:20 pm

Oh gosh, there was a discussion about this on IRC a while back, i promised to sum it up in a thread >_<
Will do that later today, if i don't forget again :(

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: KaMiKaZe_JoE on November 20, 2012, 07:11:44 pm

*See "3." and "4." for a direct response to "what do with battles?".
**I see all of the battles as opportunities for groups of players to get together to attempt to out-think and out-play each other, with certain things being at stake as a form of incentive (equipment, fiefs, troops, prestige, etc.).

1. Keep the sieges and village fights basically the way they are. The defenders and attackers have to fight dynamically (usually) over a given objective(s), and these objectives are usually player generated (which requires creative thinking). Thus, a section of wall is an objective not because God Says So, but because there's a legitimate tactical advantage to be had. Maybe add new features like, as someone else suggested, a battering ram for siege, and tweak some of the town/castle/fief maps a little. Otherwise, it's good brah.

Quoted for Truth:

Quote

Siege gives you a basic objective and frees up the stress from a single life, kiting and cav, and keeps up a sustained level of intensity that is very fun to play for short gaming sessions.  This is why "bads" go on siege:  casual type players, who this mod honestly drive away in flocks, probably like this kind of gaming much better instead of the counter-strike ONE LIFE MAD CAV OPEN FIELDS GOOD LUCK BRO mode.  But Siege is full of shit maps, cav can't do anything, it just feels half assed.

2. Field battles really are just big fucking TDM grindfests, the winner of which is determined by a) number of troops and b) equipment quality. There's not enough tactical thinking or creativity.

Don't get me wrong, I like being able to fight a lot, and spawn a lot, and kill a lot of shit. I like the epicness of large, 1000+ armies clashing. I like long battles, with lots of screaming on Teamspeak and rage.

The problem is that tactical thinking doesn't play enough of a role in field battles. Field battles should offer an opportunity for players to come together and try to out maneuver and out think each other on a tactical scale. Unlike sieges, I think field battles should emphasize maneuverability and interaction between different player classes.

3. Spawn in waves in field battles, but don't do this for sieges, and don't make players wait long to fight. I'm thinking, like, 2:00 minutes here. And don't make the destruction of a single wave the "end of the game" for a given side. Right now formations and movement don't matter so much because there's a constant, steady stream of troops feeding into each team's blob/gaggle-fuck. Make the well-being of each side's blob/gaggle fuck more important.

4. Tweak how the classes work a little bit so that fighting in a group is even more advantageous than fighting solo. Please, though, for the love of god don't add random, magical, stupid bonuses that don't make sense. The shieldwall bonus is ok, because that's reasonable, but archer shooting speed bonus or damage bonus for being in a group isn't. This isn't WoW, where people get magica buffs.
- Buff polearm/shield class
- Add a (small) percent chance that a horse will NOT rear if struck with a polearm. One of the things that makes cavalry charges retarded is the horse rearing mechanic, whereby a horse, and every single fucking horse behind it will come to a dead stop if somebody wiggles a pointy thing in its face. This makes what should be an awesome heavy cavalry charge useless and turns it into a fucking traffic jam.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Perceval on November 21, 2012, 12:23:13 am

Not sure if I'd like to see this actually done, i'm just throwing it in the brainstorm. Remaking strat entirely from scratch:

Doing it kind of like DayZ, every player is 1 ticket and actual players form a party. No battle respawn. The map would be scaled down to a handfull of castles and villages.

Perma-death. Getting killed in a strat battle turns you back to a peasant and teleports you to EU. Let's say if you couldn't make it to a battle and your side lost, you end up as a prisoner (and maybe you can somehow surrender in battle) - ransom drama. inb4 yes, i'm a frenchie.

You get some xp over time from people in your party that are higher level than you are, like the single-player "trainer" skill, and strat battles. Marginal xp from crpg.

No "ticks". You're either part of a clan that can take over a village and get tax income from it, or a merc for one of these clans (as in putting the char you grinded on the line for gold, as opposed to current strat mercs)

Disclaimer: I've never played DayZ.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: ArysOakheart on November 21, 2012, 04:27:23 am

After we die on Random Plains, we should be brought back in through the use of hang gliders, similar to that of the Ewoks. That way, we will always be equipped with stones (I suggest larger size stones for dropping off said hang gliders upon re-entry). Once we gather into a sizable force, we use materials strewn about the battlefield to construct a shoddy Ewok like base in the trees. From there we can build bridges connecting us to the other trees, in which we can do battle.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Oberyn on November 21, 2012, 06:35:09 am

If we're talking ground up remake, I say something like NW commander mode battles with bots. A system more like Warband singleplayer. Make physical presence on the map matter, allow other players to join your "army" or caravan or whatever, every player is a commander that control his own squad of troops. Different troop trees and equipment depending on location. Formations, orders and terrain matter so much more when it's bots fighting, this would turn Strat battles into more of a tactical rts than a battlemode with respawns, with players in the role of commanders. Gigantic armies in formation would be epic if only for the visual.
It would probably require many different servers and a ton of work, or only a few people would get to play battles everyday. And I'm not sure how many bots a server can handle before it starts to slow down, and lowend computers probably wouldn't be able to handle it. This is totally unworkable but meh, just throwing ideas out there.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Grumpy_Nic on November 21, 2012, 07:40:38 am

Making it more like singleplayer would make it more attractive for me. I've played Native Singleplayer and Prophecies of Pendor and enjoyed both.

Now at the moment the only thing that matters are combat skills. It would be great to have passive skills as well (spotting, loot, path finding... just look at the skill list in SP).

Playing somebody that is not good in battle but has other benefits like engineering or stuff like that would be very interesting for me - like a Counselor for a Warlord or something similar.

If you're rather a passive player you could join another hero and become his companyon, if you like to sit in front of strat 24/7 you could hire these people and have great bonuses depending on their skills and wealth.

In order not to overpower people that do not contribute to RL society by being worthless scum without ever looking for a job a certain number of "Action Points" could be implemented per day. Mannhammer already suggested a turn based game. The number of points could be 1 per day or 10 per day, whatever. They should however not be cumulative as this would be exploited a lot.

Basically make the SP playable as MP.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: kinngrimm on November 21, 2012, 09:12:46 am

Get rid of this elitism in strat, always the same faces people with high K/D or high level and people who just started with strategus are left behind, because efficency rules the minds of the commanders so that only the best people get the spots in the roster ... fuck this shit

Give those who recruit inexperienced and low level players more renown or other carrots.
Or if nothing else goes work with quotas, say 10% or 20% needs to be taken from the low lvl players or players with only less renown or less strategus battles then...

I have a clan of players who want to have fun, not to be trained to be machines using other machines to be the most efficent on the assembly line. I got talked down to by other faction leader(s) to get better players on my roster with the threat that otherwise no reinforcements would come and not take certain people into the roster, wth i want to take those in which i have a personal bond to without needing to fear i would loose a war over it.

EDIT: Mannhammers and Firrix idears seem both challanging but also very appealing

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Gingerpussy on November 21, 2012, 10:45:53 am

How to change Strat:

1. make commanders role more important and a new system for picking people to the battles. IE when applying for a side that clan roster should be split (by the peoples skill set) So example if im making the roster i could then see all shielders, 2h, pole/cav , Cav , Xbower and archers. This because often you have to do a % due to looting system and pinpointing exact numbers of shield-er or some other class would seriously improve tactics in the battle. IE if you have 40n % shields/1h as equipment you need many 1h players. And they system itself should adivce you based on if they join there battles and there previous score. Allmost a automatic chooser for roster basicly.

2. Make roster so that you can have 10 people as spares. the can join the battle on the side they are accepted as long as there is room in max players.
This would mean that more people will have the ability to play battles, as kinngrim say earlier the same faces are playing because they are some of the best players.

3. More equipment for open field battles.

More stuff to build can be anything, wagons as preset if the army thats defending have trade goods or something simular.

4. More then 8 hours night time, some say 12 some say 14.

5. Fix all bugs in strat map

6. Make a ability to make a giant battle, IE if both armys have excess of 2500 troop make it a Mega Battle with alot more players on each side. We need some epic battles. And if implemented someone will take the cost going with so many troops or reinforce eachoter more to make Mega Battles. IE 60 vs 60 or 70vs70

Thats a few ideas.

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: IR_Kuoin on November 21, 2012, 11:39:09 am

Maybe add the "Tactic skills" to Strategus / battle advantage that is on the singleplayer. Perhaps if the attacker / defender has a higher battleadvantage skill, moral of troops would be slightly lower or the defending / attacking player could chose the battlefield before the battle not just what server its going to be on. Like picking your battleground before the actual battle, giving you a starting advantage. And by moral I mean the lower moral your troops suffer a little % in damage, also battleadvantage can boost your soldiers damage equal to the damage lost by the enemy?

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: SoA_Sir_ODHarry on November 21, 2012, 01:24:23 pm

The current Strategus and Strat Battels are quite stare.While they are both basic Concepts they offer alot of opportunitys but make it complicated too actually use them.
For exampel u can form a Formation,like a Shieldwall,with other Players but they is no Help the Game provide u too do it.Same "Problem" with plenty of other Stuff too.
Diplomatics or playing Bandit in strat etc... too actual do such Stuff consumes a huge amount of Time and are complicated.
Thats 1 Reason why most players not interested in Strat...

There are plenty of Ideas u can connect too create a new Battelmode for Strat but manys of them also would influence it indirectly and improve Strategus on the Map.

First i will state Ideas which i think could be connected very well:

-Battels are fought in several Rounds (Waves)
-Limited Tickets per Player per Battel
-Tasks u gotta achive too win a Battel akay Conquest mode
-different Batteltypes like Fieldbattels,Ambush,Caravan Raid etc.
-genreally more involvment of "Siege"Gear             
-new Reinforcement System
-Maps that fit too the Terrain of the Position at the Stratmap
-Mercenaris that use their own Equipment
-improved Commander options
-improved Bataillion mechanics
-fixed retreat Option
-Horses just can be Reared with 2nd Spear mode
-limited amount of Troops per Player
-some Sort of Skill System too improve Actions on the Map
-more availabel Actions on the StratMap
-make it harder too get shiny equipped Troops
-Fiefs gotta be repaired after taking Damage
-addabel Buildings too improve the Fiefs
-Create Battelgroups at the Map
-repairabel Equipment
-get strategus closer too SP
-Territorrys with Borders
-Delineate time regions on the Strat map that correlate to real life time zones

If u put these things togehter u could create something like this:

Basiclly u splitt big Battels with Thousands of involved Tickets in many smaller ones or Rounds,that will create plenty of free Slots in the Rosters and give more Players the Chance too take part in Battels and also open up plenty of Opportunitys too add more Depth in the Battels.
Like in Siege u need too capture the Flag too win but first u need too take the Walls too open the Gate.Too take the Walls u will need too have an Siege Tower,place Ladders or make an Catapult too destroy the Walls and so on...u should make this kind of Tasks more important,epic and harder too achieve.
I think of the Game Chivlary in this matter ,just the basic concept of splitting an Battel in several tasks 8-),or how it was suggested OVER 9000 times CONQUEST MODE.
Also Teeths Suggestion would fit in perfectly ,limited Tickets per player per Battel(Round). Furhtermore it gives an Option too add RP and so a 2nd Skillsystem besides the 1 we have already.If u besiege someone u should do more then having one epic Battel u need too have Engineers too gain access too the Castel then u need s1 too actually break through or if u rob a Caravan u need someone who can set an Ambush etc..

Many Peeps support the Idea of making an max. Cap of Troops one Player can have. Instead of one Guy controlling Thousands of Troops he should have max. Cap of 300.
I would choose a fixed Cap over higher Upkeep because that will prevent Exploits.Renown is already introduced that can add a Bonus too the Cap besides 1 or more Skills maybe.
Add the Option too create Battelgroups consists of several Players too create large Armys.If the respawn System would be changed from induvidual Respawns too reinforcement Waves ,Battelgroupss would be resonabel as u would need too be in the same Battelgroup like the Player that have the Battel too reinforce him.That needs too be done before the Battel and u have too be close too him too create or be added in the Group.Also this Group could have an Range if s1 left it hes out auto so Skills and Roles could set the Range wider.
If the different Players that are part of the Battelgroup can have Roles u have an perfect Option for MERCENARIS.They just need too have that Role in the Battelgroup.With that Role
they fight with their own Gear.They just abel too spawn one time in the Battel and when they died they are injured so they have an penalty next Battel or they wait till they are healed.So even an independant Player could have an strong 1 time Army like for Exampel an Caravan Raid.But there would need to be harsh Penaltys for defeated Mercs too prevent Exploits, probably damaged Equip,less Athl. and IF if they fight too many Battels in a row.
That will decrease the Power of Big Clans and raise the Power and Options of the Small Clans and independant Players.It hinders Inactivity and just let the Guys who actually play the Game being succesfull.This is Keypoint A ,Keypoint B would be a Skillsystem.This Skillsystem need too splitt the Effectivity of Actions of each player.Keypont C are different availabel Actions.
So Clan A want too take a Castel of Clan B but since it is an Castel he will need Thousands of Troops but now 6 or more Players of this Clan need too move this Army and actually take Action instead of 1... like in SP... .
The Attack was planned well so Clan A created a Battelgroup for it.They have an General,Quartermaster,Siege Engineer. Scout,Blacksmith and a Medic.
The General gives a Moral Bonus so no Troops desert and the Troops of the created Battelgroup move fast also he hire Mercs and set the Battelgroups range by his Skillz,the Quartermaster lowers the needed Upkeep for such big amount of Troops and also lowers the crates for equip and take care of prisoners so they not flee,the Engineer take care of the Siege Gear ,the Scout provide the Spotrange and also some speed ,the Blacksmith repairs broked Equip and the Medic heals wounded Troops and hired Mercs.
The Roles can be done however just need too add reasonabel Bonuses too the Battelgroup so u want too have them in urs.
So u have an 2k Army of Clan A that will besiege the Castel of Clan B.Too create such an Force they needed like 5-7players  6 of them are an active part which without that Army loose alot of power+ number of Mercs.So a big Faction of lets say 50 players have an Army Cap of  ca.18k without Bonuses too actually take Action with them ,if every1 plays active and if they have too much Fiefs they not will be abel too defend them if they play too agressive ,and so active Small Clans and Independant Players have alot more Options other then being Vassals or none.  8-)
A small Battelgroup of 7 players would be equal too 7 of a big faction so every active Foe u have on the Map counts.

1 Idea was too create an Option too set Armycamps.Armycamps would give the Defender an fortificated Position on the actual Battel.With Pikewalls,Siegeshields,Healing Tents etc..
More such Actions could be Ambushes with Fortificated Positions of the Attackers and Nighttimebattels which would reduce the Dmg of Archers.
Actions u choose on the Stratmap but influence the Battels and the Tactics and Playerclasses a Commander use and so add plenty of new Dynamics+Depth too Strat.
If they are connected too a Skillsystem they add even more Depth and RP.
Another suggestion of Bjord is too let Fiefs take damage after a Battel.The Factors could be used Sieg Gear and captured Flags within the Fief.If u add upgrades like Buildings too improve the Fiefs which u pay with PPs this Buildings could be damage- and destroyabel and so take Effect on the Fief.
Also the Loomed Equipment Production could be handeld with it.Different Types of Equipment afford different Types of Buildings and Levels of them too get the Discounts and +3 ones.Others raise the Prosperty and Population.
so it will be alot harder for the Big Factions too get them and make Free Traders alot more important.Also they would like too prevent them from being attacked even more and so leeds too more Fieldbattels.

U once tried too implement the Strongholdmode too strategus 8-)
That would be my Solution too make Fiefs progressive influenced by the Players.

(click to show/hide)

My suggestion for strat 4 would be too make all Fiefs too Villages and let the Players decide where they raise a City or a Castel.But that affords helluvaalot Maps ^^
Since all Fiefs are Villages u need no Votes because they easy too take for everyone.
When a Fief reach a certain Lv. consists of certain Buildings,Population and Prosperty .the owner can choose the Type of what they want it too be.With a Battelmode that set Tasks too win a Battel and consists of several Rounds,Waves or smaller Battels u even could create Citadells and really strong fortified Castels without makin it impossibel too conquer them.
Let Fief holders(Kingdomes) gain Taxes determined by Population and Prosperty since they need their Members for their Armys.
Kingdome Borders was suggested before so Fiefs would influence each other and are Options for plenty of new Mechanichs like Taxes,corruption Rate and less Upkeep for Members of that Kindome/Faction.
The first Lv a Fief reach is where u can choose if the Fief stays a Village gets a Castel or City.Villages could produces some Goods ,but most important, Food for ur Kingdome and have certain addabel Buildings for it.So u couldnt make all ur Fiefs too Citys and Castels or u run out of Food.They can have less Army that stationed there ,less Population and nearly no Fortifications other than Citys and Castels.
-Citys need alot of Ressouces too grow so u need a coupel of Villages in ur Kingdome or constantly raid or buy alot of Food of Traders elsewhere too get 1 and hold it at that Lv.
They produce huge Amounts of Trade Goods and some Food by theirself and its the Place too sell ur Stuff they also can produce some Loomed Equip if u build the certain Builduings , but they can have the Highest Population and Prosperty so the Owner probably will concentrate on that too earn more Taxes.They can have strong Fortifications which addabel.
They also can hold big amount of Troop at less Upkeep.
Since many Caravans would head for them they would be a Magnet for Mercs and Bandits.
Maybe they could have Builduings which produce Loom stuff over +3 just accesabel for Mercs.Since that would make an reasonabel Advantage for Mercs which just have 1 Ticket in Battels and attract them even more.
-Castels will produce the most LoomEquip also produce some Food and can have very strong Fortifications.They most likley will be build at important Positions so if some want too take the castel he need a huge amount of Troops for it if the owner concentrated at Fortifications and less at loomed Equip.They have some more Population then Villages  and can station bigger amounts of Troops If the owner builded more Barracks.
So Castels are mainly exist too defend important Positions and produce Equipment.They also lower the corruption of an Kingdome which lessens the Taxes.Courruption of the Kingdome could be determind by numbers of Fiefs,Population,Prosperty,Troops in the Kingdome and certain Builduings of the Kingdome maybe even  by Skills of the high ranked Members of the Faction.If u fighting in enemy Territorys ur Upkeep could be a bit raised so defending is easier givin small Factions even more Advantage and adds even more Tactical Depth on the Stratmap.

Basiclly i think an Improvment of Fieldbattels ,is too make them more like Siege.As i said above, Siegemode already gives naturally Tasks u have too do too win the Battel too get the Final task done which is too capture the Flag....
The best u could do is too make it simply more epic :D.One Factor could be more new tactical Siegegear like for exampel Battering ramps and Ballistas on Towers too give Map makers more Oppurtunitys.Stuff like that would add automaticlly more Goals that gotta be done too win the Battel and adds more Dynamics in the Battels theirself.
Also Siege kinda already use Wavespawns because its happens naturally through the Tasks.Also in the Strat Battels its already like this because the commanders command too attack in Waves and not one by one.So the Game should start too adapt what the Players already do because they can ,and improve it.
Too improve Fieldbattel such adapt the nature of Siege.Conquest mode do this ,instead of a Wall u gotta take ,however u do it,u will need too take the Flags.
Too bring more Dynamic and Mechanics into Fieldbattels other than just big Blobs fighting TDM style u need too improve the Enviroment they take place in and add Varity too how the Tasks look like instead of capture a Flag and Varity in the Oppurtunitys the Players have too achieve them.
Strategus is perfect for it because it naturally creates such Tasks u just need too adapt them too the Battels.A Caravan Raid for exampel do this.The Goal is too rob the Caravan and so naturally creates a Scenery for the Battel.Just use that Scenery like Siegemode do it.Even if u just use Conquest mode which is about Zone control like Siege ,really good Maps just could do it.With Positions u can Fortificate like Village Maps and Hills.With improved Healing Tents and Wavespawnsystem u create natural Tasks for the Team that try too take or destroy that Position too win.
My Idea for Strategus would be too connect big Battels with the Stratmap too create more such Scenerys like a Siege or a Caravan Raid.And then adapt the Concept of Conquestmode too it which is flexibel enuff too tweak him too every Scenery.

Well imagine u have splitted big Armys in several small ones but through the Battelgroupsystem they are still act as 1 Force and with a Skillsystem more Factors are added.
Back too our Siege:
Clan A attacks the Castel of Clan B.With the current System it would be 1 singel Battel too take the Castel.But i imagine too splitt this Battel in many ones through creating severel Scenerys.Instead of 1 Battel for 1 Castel represented on 1 Map u could splitt The Castel simply in 5 Parts with 5 Maps or how much u ever want.Like 4 Maps represent the South-,West-,East-,Northside and the Inner Ring of the Castel the Inner Ring is the Part too conquer too get the Fief.So u need too win 1 Battel too be abel too attack the inner Ring and so win the Fief.
Thats the Basic of my Concept.Someone suggested too introduce Armycamps in Strategus,so if its attacked the Defender gets a Fortificated Position.
Now imagine Clan A set  Armycamps arround the Castel :D.Like the Castel got 5 Positions u can attack ,the Army of Clan A also got several Positions because of the Battelgroup System.If u introduce Armycamps u could add Actions too them the owner can do.Like Build a Trebuchet Position too bombard the Part of the Castel u want too attack.
Such Factors will create natrully different Scenerys and Dynamics.
Then u take in the new Reinforcement System so every Battel can turn out too really large Fights or stay small ones.In the end it just would be a number Game of the Factors:
-Troop Caps
-Maps
-Skills
-availabel Actions
-Numbers of Scenerys/tweaked Conquest Mode

Also this seems too be perfect for it :D
http://forum.meleegaming.com/strategus-general-discussion/a-different-strategus-and-stuff/

Another big Thing too improve any Strat Battel is too create Comander tools and improve Bataillion Functions.
Both is used too the maximum both is none existing ingame.
Bataillions currently just have the limited function too roughly mark Positions and attack Directions .
But they should help the commander of a Battailon too better organize his guys and so improve the Tactical Depth in the Battels.
I think the Voicecommands are completly useless because of TS but they could be used a bit like in SP.Like a commander can set the Movementspeed for his Bataillon.
Shieldwalls are the only really Formation that get used.They already improved through the Bonus they give but break apart as soon as they start too move..
So if the commander could set the movement speed of his shieldwall that would help alot too move in Formations.
Also its complicated too fortifie Positions.So some Tool too actually mark the Positions where Siege stuff gotta be placed would make it alot less complicated and raise and improves the use of Tactics in Battels.
Idk bout that but it could be something that just the certain Battailon can see.Generally a tool too mark Positions better and also set Waypoints would improve the Tactics massivly and make it less complicated too use them.
Too help peeps who take command it would be very usefull too give them an aerial perspective too some point otherwise they not have the overview and so its complicated too command and decrease the Tactical Depth of Battels...
Too generally improve Tactics u cant do much else then give more Opportunitys too create newones and improve the ones that already exist like Shieldwalls...
U just can create new ones with new Content..like make a 2nd mode for certain Weps and just them abel too stop Horses and more Opportunitys too fortificate Positions with placed Pikewalls,Obsticals and Ballistas.Create new Maps maybe with such Positions already existing.Riders fell of Horses when they Stopped at high speed.Conquest mode stuff...
and iam sure there are 1 million more such things floating in the Forums.

If u think that post was too long just think of Jokers xD

greetz OD

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: Bjord on November 21, 2012, 01:43:32 pm

Actually, Joker uses paragraphs and makes intelligible sentences. :shock:

Title: Re: If you could change the way strategus battles work...
Post by: SoA_Sir_ODHarry on November 21, 2012, 01:46:50 pm

i just talked bout the length not bout the intelligence of the post :wink:
also my english is bad...