cRPG

Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: Tristan on June 29, 2011, 02:10:25 pm

Title: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Tristan on June 29, 2011, 02:10:25 pm
This might change a bit, but:
there will be about a dozen raw materials.
Every village has 3 materials it can produce.
the owner can shift the production balance.
the amount of resources produced is defined by the workers in the village.
the workers are other players who get a gold wage, defined and given out by the village owner.

the real item production will then happen in towns.
a town can produce up to 5 goods at the same time.
the village owner can set a smith.
the smith's skill defines of what quality (=heirloom) the produced item is.
the amount of workers in the town (=players) define how many items will be produced.

there will be other (individual) ways of creating weapons, but that will be very slow and not feasable to equip an army with it.

you don't get gold in strategus.

Suggestion and TL;dr in the end of post.

Most likely if you read this thread you have read the other.
Thank you chadz for starting to reveal the wonderful project that Strategus is and let me just start out by saying that I was very much in doubt whether or not to make this post the simple reason being that it seems ungrateful to start raising concerns when you now finally have started to give us information. I realized that my post might be the single best reason for not sharing the information  with the public. Any way here we go.

I have posted earlier some concerns that gold poses quite a problem for. I think it is a great idea that something that holds value in strategus also will hold value in normal cRPG in order to get everyone participate in strat. But:

1) As the only way of getting gold is grinding on servers, clan might start to impose a tax on their own players in order to pay for strategus.
2) Players very active will start running around in peasant clothes.
3) Upkeep is so low that normal players have no problem having high upkeep and that means
3a) Most players won't care about the bit of extra gold that can be made in strat or
3b) We'll be back to the days of tincan cRPG.

4) The only way gold is getting "out" of this system is throuh upkeep. That gold sink is not large enough compared to all the gold getting into the economic system.

What I suggest is (tl;dr):
a) Make it so that some gold is made in strategus.
b) Make the gold coming out of strategus worth more (as in much much higher upkeep).

The thing is, that the clans then has to choose if they want workers or reward their players. In other words the ratio of gold coming in strategus and gold coming out of strategus should be hugely in favor of gold coming OUT because the gold sink is in public games.

Edit: I will actually go as far as to suggest another currency in Strategus caled Denars. When you take gold to denars (cRPG to Strat) you get 2:1, but when you take denars to gold (strat to cRpg) you get 1:1. Denars are made by owning land in strat. Combined with increased upkeep you will see that it balances out with what eq people use today if they make sure to make enough denars in strat.
With Denars the clans have to decide if they need more workers or want to reward their members.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: chadz on June 29, 2011, 02:17:55 pm
If I wouldn't want it discussed, I wouldn't have posted it ;)

I welcome a healthy discussion, because things could still change.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kazak on June 29, 2011, 02:20:23 pm
It won't be fun without gold, chadz. Most factions will want to get gold for supporting allied caravans or something. Also if a player won't be able to feed his troops with food that he has he can always buy some food from other players.
Gold is a must in strat
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gheritarish le Loki on June 29, 2011, 02:20:55 pm
I guess something is missing in chadz explanations, dunno what, but it's confusing now ! ;)
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: okiN on June 29, 2011, 02:29:34 pm
It won't be fun without gold, chadz. Most factions will want to get gold for supporting allied caravans or something. Also if a player won't be able to feed his troops with food that he has he can always buy some food from other players.
Gold is a must in strat

I think stuff like that is pretty much what he has planned, actually. From what it sounds like, I think gold just won't directly affect item production, aside from wages.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gheritarish le Loki on June 29, 2011, 02:32:36 pm
The question is how will come gold in the first place?
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: okiN on June 29, 2011, 02:33:14 pm
From playing cRPG, apparently.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Tristan on June 29, 2011, 02:34:06 pm
The question is how will come gold in the first place?

chadz clearly stated that Gold comes from public servers (or regular cRPG).

I edited my first post a bit with an additional suggestion (called edit). THis would actually be my final idea how to deal with it.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Jacko on June 29, 2011, 02:47:01 pm
WALL OF TEXT

So, I've been reading the "Ask a dev" and thread and gotten some ideas from it. I thought about making my own thread but I might as well post it here.
-Having constant wipes seems like gameplay fail. Why do we need to wipe? Too much gold? Troops? Equipment? I think "constantly" (the only thing said about it, is that it MIGHT happen every 6 months or so to keep things fresh) wiping is ignoring the real problem at hand.

Just look at other strategy games out there, like the total war series. You have x amount of population producing taxes, some of these turn into troops (thus costing money instead), some are allocated as workers, thus not generating tax. The money sink is troops and buildings. Now, in the TW games you get tax from different things, population, farms, trading and different resources. But the real money sink is troops. The higher tiered, the more they cost. This forces the player to make several different choices, like conquering with an overly expensive army, "economical growth" with a defensive army and so on.

This could be translated into Strategus, the players being the clan, being forced to choose between economy, crafting and "warmongering". Big clans could perhaps solve this themselves, but most would have to rely on other clans to help them out with certain needs, be it equipment, troops or resources (which seems to where Strategus is heading anyway).

Derprelevant EVE story:
(click to show/hide)

Mercing out:
(click to show/hide)

Signing Up:
(click to show/hide)

Storing, equipment, resources:
(click to show/hide)

Markets:
(click to show/hide)

Caravans:
(click to show/hide)

Bands:
(click to show/hide)

TL;DR

"Make" most players sign up in bands/armies (better wage, higher risk). You hardly earn gold if your a worker, it covers your living cost (meta meta game; new shoes, broken shields etc).
Profit is in being in the right spot at the right time (battles / caravans / raiding mostly).
Gold only gained through taxes from population in villages / cities (not players). Governed by the owning player.
Trading items/resources is more important then gold.
With gold you can buy personal equipment (for use in "Band" fights), buildings, horses, carts, pay wages (and resources, if people are willing to trade for gold).
Strategus and cRPG gold totally separate (might go Strategus>cRPG)
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gheritarish le Loki on June 29, 2011, 02:48:43 pm
Thx for clarification guys!

It's easier to earn gold now, will that unbalance the economy?
We saw with marketplace that gold still have a value (for trading). Big clan will make a lot of gold (in cheap gear) then they can pay wages for workers, more gold more workers, that means that they will be able to produce gears faster than other small clan.
I know it's a simple réflexion, but that will change nothing compare to old strat.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: DarkFox on June 29, 2011, 03:42:54 pm
Quote
as in much much higher upkeep
This.  Personaly I dont care about job in strategus, I have 12k and I can run around with great bardiche and 60 armor, I will still earn gold. And there are a lot of players with really big amount of gold(like 500k). Would be nice to see upkeep with 20k equipment breaking point. So if player wants to have good equipment on crpg servers, he can find job on strategus as a  mercenary, merchant blacksmith etc.
The only disadvantage is that players who is not interested in strategus will have problems with upkeep. I dont think that transfarable gold is a problem since there will be no AI market.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gingerpussy on June 29, 2011, 04:36:41 pm
Why discuss this now. I rather have some ppl beta test it and have a thread about how they see the new stuff. As long as we basicly knows "nada" about the new strategus its pointless imo
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Jacko on June 29, 2011, 05:15:30 pm
Ginger, sure. But we can still speculate, cause.. why not? It's not like we got anything better to do, apparently.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: chadz on June 29, 2011, 05:27:15 pm
Also, it gives me new perspectives, possible abuses I haven't had a proper look at, etc.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gingerpussy on June 29, 2011, 05:27:27 pm
Ginger, sure. But we can still speculate, cause.. why not? It's not like we got anything better to do, apparently.
Wel u can always have wishful dreams...sure go ahead :P
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Olwen on June 29, 2011, 05:27:44 pm
i think that a tax should be implemented as in last strategus for people who stay in cities/villages
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Keshian on June 29, 2011, 05:34:16 pm
My biggest concern is that if it is too difficult to make goods/equipment and troops and gold that we have clans spending 1-2 months just to equip one army and then they fight with another army or attack a town/castle/village and lose most of the troops and go back to grinding equipment/gold/troops for 2 more months.  Part of the fun was being able to find a battle most times of the day on any given day.  If it becomes too grinding to get an army, people will fight less, fearing to risk what they have made and there will be less to fight with so there might only be 1 strategus fight a day at best, typically a really small fight.  This would get boring all too quickly waiting for something to happen as it would become more a market/trading/producing game (plenty of those already) than an actual extension of cRPG battle fighting.  Each battle was unique and had a lot more thrill than typical battle/siege servers and is much of the draw for strategus and also having interesting use of coordinated tactics where every player is one you personally are recruiting and paying.

Obviosuly don't know how it will be when it comes out, but its definitely something to be aware of to keep things interesting.


to irony commentary below, market trading/grinding game would lose most of the strategy as very few battles and obviously less tactics as so rarely an occasion to use them.  (i don't think you understand - tactics is immediate battle plans like flank left or ambush, etc. which can only occur in an actual battle.  less abttles = less opportunity to use tactics.  Strategy is an overall plan outside but also including battles including equipment, food, transport, etc. and with fewer battles and a much slower paced game there is less active attention to these things as everything takes weeks to months) 

Who doesn't like to change it up from battle/siege server and try cool battles on strategus?  If we only have 1-2 battles a day many people will only rarely (best mercs usually hired when fewer fights) get to experience strategus fights and will lose interest.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Olwen on June 29, 2011, 05:40:23 pm
yeh retarded fighting is way more interesting than developing strategy and tactic on a map

/irony off

and to the answer up there, you think that less battles with more important stuff means less tactics ? fail
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Torp on June 29, 2011, 08:12:04 pm
i fear too much leeching on public servers.

Imo the besst thing would be to keep cRPG and strategus finances seperate... but thats just me :)


Edit:
If you must have a wipe, you should combine it with a clan/alliance 'winning' so it won't seem as a wipe as much as a new 'round' of strategus.
I know several games that has this feature, and it makes the wipe less annoying.
Perhaps say the clan with most land or most value of total items (calculated?) is the winner or the alliance with most or something.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Dezilagel on June 29, 2011, 10:10:59 pm
Yah, the leeching is what would be my biggest concern.

Imagine entire clans just ab00zing the crap out of DTV to get strategus gold...
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: PhantomZero on June 30, 2011, 12:17:01 am
I still haven't figured out how gold is going to get into Strategus. If it is straight from cRPG then the powergrinder heirloom masters with their millions of hoarded gold will make gold worthless or essentially run strategus. A self-contained strategus is best with options to allow money to transfer into cRPG (Giving a reason to play strategus even if it is to just farm/mine and not participate in any battles), of course in this instance upkeep on items would have to be increased dramatically.

It seems to me there are two options here.

Option A: Full Communism - ("The game Pharaoh")

Abolish the idea of any monetary currency in Calradia, pretend they have never invented anything economically beyond Trade and Barter. Gold doesn't exist and no machines exist for minting. Instead the currency is food.

How this would work in game:

Fiefs could grow different foods and the fief owner could determine how much each farmer gets to keep for himself.  Fiefs could make food/ mine for resources/ breed horses. The government takes food taxed from farmers and uses it to purchase the resources/horses off the miners/etc. the government then takes these resources to the town, along with the taxed food. Fiefs would have a limit on total population, this stems from the fact that the more houses you have, the less space you have to farm, and the further away from the village you have to go to hunt/farm.

Towns would take the resources, pay the artisans in food, with more food going to better "Smiths", and base wages for the production line. Saddles could be made in towns and horses either devoted for caravans, or sent to castle to be trained for war. Trade caravans would originate and conduct business in towns as hubs of food, equipment, and raw resources.

Castles could receive leftover food from the towns or straight from the fiefs themselves in order to train troops and feed the armies/pay for generals. People could work in the castles as drill instructors or horse trainers. Castles could also be used to store food and keep it safe from raiders/enemy invasion. Castles would provide the lowest rate of consumption for garrisoned troops, due to occupying less land than a town, stricter rationing, and having no penalties to nearby fiefs for foraging. Wars would still require troops mustered from across the land to form armies of significant size however.

Any food leftover at this point could either be used to trade or maintain a "Strategic Reserve" in castles or towns (or even fiefs but they are not very protected and prone to raids) in case you suddenly lose a number of your fiefs in the opening assaults or surprise attacks. I say maintain because food will spoil over time, preventing hoarding of food and the increase the desire to trade it or convert it into troops, because a number of your troops will retire when they get too old.

In addition, larger armies in a single area would consume more food, as there would be less to forage. A small band of 10 men might simply be able to live off the wilderness, while armies of 1000's would depopulate the local fauna and hurt production in nearby fiefs. Armies garrisoned in castles/towns would consume less, but not fiefs for the previous reason. Fighting a defensive war would be very harmful and prone to greater attrition. But attacking armies would suffer  too due to food being expended to maintain supply lines  if the invading armies were coming from a great distance and such.

Pros:
Food Spoilage/Old Soldiers/Foraging provide great opportunity for tweaks  in order to balance gameplay.

Raider or bandit clans could raid fiefs and caravans while leaving castles and towns immune. Thus giving purpose to have your armies out on patrol or bribe bandits.


Cons:
Food doesn't translate into cRPG very well, a system for players to "eat" their food in exchange for cRPG gold could be put in place.

Mercenaries historically didn't fight for "food",  so players would receive the food planned for the troop salaries (so in essence troop tickets would only consume in the field and for initial training), and rather than be official "mercenaries" simply take the role of a faction's loyal soldiers. Players who both produced goods and fought in battles would naturally receive more food than those who just did one or the other, as a family could still work while the sons/husbands are off at war.

Option B:
Gold and machines for minting exist, commerce thrives as currency does not expire, caravans are faster and can carry more wealth/value than barter caravans. Laissez-faire and the free market forever.

How this would work in game:

Similar to the above, replace all instances of food with money. Except for a few differences, fiefs could produce precious metals which could be sent to the capital city for minting, this would detract from their ability to produce food/equipment. All fiefs would have this ability in order to have a single currency amongst all factions, but some fiefs might have this resource be more plentiful than others and produce more per worker.  The capital city would be responsible for making the currency and then distributing the coinage throughout the land to pay for everything.

Pros:
Money is money, and could easily be converted into crpg gold.

Food would still be important for war, but not for production. (Maybe this is a con to some?)

Cons:
Has a heavy emphasis on protecting your capital (maybe this is a pro?), losing your capital would shut down your empire for weeks.

Money doesn't spoil, hoarding would become prevalent especially amongst the merchant empires that won't war with anyone. Tweaking would be more difficult and I forsee more possible rollbacks or stagnation as the game goes on and some empires simply have enough gold stockpiled to have massive armies.

Inflation of the currency means the conversion factor to cRPG would have to be closely watched.

Raiders would be limited to cherry picking around the capital and trade routes between factions.


TL; DR I love words and 'sperging out, don't mind me, you could safely ignore this and have a much better day, this is just practice for when I go back to university and have to write lots of bullshit to increase the page count. This didn't seem like so many words on my 1920x1080 screen. Also I am high as fuck.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kafein on June 30, 2011, 01:13:23 am
I think that merged or even complelty coupled currency systems between cRPG and Strategus will fail.

If one cRPG gold equals k Strat gold, we will have :

- people farming cRPG to get Strat gold.
- people with fiefs/member of big clans in Strat using their gold to upkeep more and buy more heirlooms.

And I think boths are bad things. People that only want to play cRPG should still be competitive in it.

So instead of a basic conversion, what about a different system :

Each tick in cRPG gives you a fixed amount of Strategus gold, with the multiplier applied. You cannot transfer gold between cRPG and Strat, but playing cRPG gives you Strat gold this way. I don't think people should be able to get cRPG advantages by doing things in Strategus at all. But now that I think of it, maybe giving a free and fixed masterwork equipment for holding a town. For example, the owner of Rivacheg would get a +3 Broad one handed axe, and loose it immediatly when he looses the town.

What do you think ?
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: PhantomZero on June 30, 2011, 02:05:35 am
- people with fiefs/member of big clans in Strat using their gold to upkeep more

This was mentioned as a reason when switching to the upkeep system in the first place. Eventually strategus would come back and clans would be able to 24/7 hurf derf plated chargers every day if they wanted.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gondemar on June 30, 2011, 02:16:07 am
I totally agree with Kafein or Phantom, keeping cRPG and Strategus' Gold appart seems the best thing to do to avoid leech in either, if transfering gold goes both ways.
And I don't know how this worked in the first Strategus, but having a good food system will probably be really interesting (attrition wars, supplying armies...).


And I assume the Smith part will be related to the "chadz text" ?
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Thomek on June 30, 2011, 03:03:39 am
Gnjus:
Claims will of course be made. Of course they are pointless from a game-perspective, but it goes into game theory.. If one clan claims a village, and promise war if taken by someone else, it's easier for the attacking clan to take the one next to it in an early-game scenario against AI villages.

About currency:
People traded in butter and used it as money not-that long ago. Something similar, abudant and generic would take it's place in strat. (basically the most useful item, probably food.)
A problem for cRPG if strat money (Even if gained from cRPG work initally) could pose a threat to game-balance. *if a clan had great success in strat* This is only OK if balancers truly balance out items, no matter the cost.

About wiping strat every 6 months.
I rather think this should go up for popular vote. At some point it will be clear who won strategus, be it after a month or 8 months. I think devs together with popular opinion should decide when it's time to start fresh. (Perhaps with a fog of war brand new hex-map that no-one knows what looks like completed. Then players would have to stick the pieces together themselves and scout. Scouting info could mean GOLD!) for those inclined.
 
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: CtrlAltDe1337 on June 30, 2011, 05:38:03 am
IMO the whole gold crossover with cRPG/strategus has been a failure in the past and will be a failure in the future.  It just doesn't work well.  All it does is encourage people to grind on crpg for strat, making the most powerful clans the ones with the most members grinding.  All we need is a way to make money in strat.  No crossover of gold.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: PhantomZero on June 30, 2011, 06:10:08 am
IMO the whole gold crossover with cRPG/strategus has been a failure in the past and will be a failure in the future.  It just doesn't work well.  All it does is encourage people to grind on crpg for strat, making the most powerful clans the ones with the most members grinding.  All we need is a way to make money in strat.  No crossover of gold.

Then there really isn't a point for clanless people to participate in strategus. No reason for people outside of a clan to work the fields/towns/whatever in this "new" strategus. I guess it would be for small clans to work the fields for larger ones? Hoping for one day a fief of their own?
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Topsnus on June 30, 2011, 07:16:39 am
Then there really isn't a point for clanless people to participate in strategus. No reason for people outside of a clan to work the fields/towns/whatever in this "new" strategus. I guess it would be for small clans to work the fields for larger ones? Hoping for one day a fief of their own?

Think of it as a different game. If you want to participate in this game you either join a clan, make a small group (as bandits or something), or try your best to tough it alone (possibly by working for a larger clan or by making deals with people.) If you dont want to do any of that than you can just participate in the battles. It's stupid to design the game so that a bunch of people can simply sit in a town in order to make more cRPG gold, they may as well not be playing.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: DesertEagle on June 30, 2011, 01:01:44 pm
My suggestions so far:
1. Make each weapon ( weapon type maybe ) crafting tehnique learnable and/or researchable. This will create diversity of demand. For example - you need a Steel pike, but your smith can`t research it`s crafting technology. You heard that is one distant town live a smith you can craft it (and maybe he needs something, that he can`t produce , but what you can offer to him ). So you sent a caravan to him.

2. Make a fair, maybe once a month ( 2 months maybe ). Server will choose map, with selected town and players will spawn without weapons to walk near counters, watch goods, argue with merchants :) . Town that is holding a fair must make an advance payment for the organization of trade fairs. During a fair town will get some amount of money, from taxes,trades and so on. There maybe a fights on arena like in singleplayer.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Razor1 on June 30, 2011, 01:18:02 pm
My suggestions so far:
1. Make each weapon ( weapon type maybe ) crafting tehnique learnable and/or researchable. This will create diversity of demand. For example - you need a Steel pike, but your smith can`t research it`s crafting technology. You heard that is one distant town live a smith you can craft it (and maybe he needs something, that he can`t produce , but what you can offer to him ). So you sent a caravan to him.

2. Make a fair, maybe once a month ( 2 months maybe ). Server will choose map, with selected town and players will spawn without weapons to walk near counters, watch goods, argue with merchants :) . Town that is holding a fair must make an advance payment for the organization of trade fairs. During a fair town will get some amount of money, from taxes,trades and so on. There maybe a fights on arena like in singleplayer.

I never played the old Strategus but this sounds interesting IMO.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: ManOfWar on July 01, 2011, 09:12:33 pm
My suggestions so far:
1. Make each weapon ( weapon type maybe ) crafting tehnique learnable and/or researchable. This will create diversity of demand. For example - you need a Steel pike, but your smith can`t research it`s crafting technology. You heard that is one distant town live a smith you can craft it (and maybe he needs something, that he can`t produce , but what you can offer to him ). So you sent a caravan to him.

2. Make a fair, maybe once a month ( 2 months maybe ). Server will choose map, with selected town and players will spawn without weapons to walk near counters, watch goods, argue with merchants :) . Town that is holding a fair must make an advance payment for the organization of trade fairs. During a fair town will get some amount of money, from taxes,trades and so on. There maybe a fights on arena like in singleplayer.

neat
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Varyag on July 03, 2011, 03:42:53 am
What do you think about this: Allow players to buy houses in cities and villages.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Sir Henry on July 03, 2011, 04:42:09 am
What do you think about this: Allow players to buy houses in cities and villages.
if you could buy houses maybe you could rent them (You set rent to X gold.  if someone stayed there you would get X gold a day)
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Cepeshi on July 03, 2011, 04:45:22 am
loving how everyone has tons of ideas, but i believe just a small amount of you, if some, has any idea if and how could this be coded (me including), so could some dev perhaps tell us if those suggestions are like manageable or totally off the "realistically implementable" train?
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Prosed on July 03, 2011, 10:27:51 am
if you could buy houses maybe you could rent them (You set rent to X gold.  if someone stayed there you would get X gold a day)
And what if a horse dies?
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kafein on July 03, 2011, 08:14:05 pm
loving how everyone has tons of ideas, but i believe just a small amount of you, if some, has any idea if and how could this be coded (me including), so could some dev perhaps tell us if those suggestions are like manageable or totally off the "realistically implementable" train?

Everything that is only consisting of number crunching will be easily doable. Anything requiring complicated heuristics (for example : when and AI should attack), multifactor and abstract evaluations (for example detecting a human faction aggressiveness towards another) or a big amount of game content (new scenes, textures, animations, meshes, texts, maps...) will be noticeably harder.

For example, buying houses and renting them will be easy to implement, although I don't really see the point.

These, however :

My suggestions so far:
1. Make each weapon ( weapon type maybe ) crafting tehnique learnable and/or researchable. This will create diversity of demand. For example - you need a Steel pike, but your smith can`t research it`s crafting technology. You heard that is one distant town live a smith you can craft it (and maybe he needs something, that he can`t produce , but what you can offer to him ). So you sent a caravan to him.

2. Make a fair, maybe once a month ( 2 months maybe ). Server will choose map, with selected town and players will spawn without weapons to walk near counters, watch goods, argue with merchants :) . Town that is holding a fair must make an advance payment for the organization of trade fairs. During a fair town will get some amount of money, from taxes,trades and so on. There maybe a fights on arena like in singleplayer.


Are way more harder to do. For the first, the code would not be a real problem (just a bit boring probably), but balancing everything will be a nightmare. The second would require a shitload of content, a shitload of headache-prone scripting for spawning the right objects on the right spots. Also, fairs have no reason to exist apart form RP in Strategus. If you can't trade out of fairs, it will likely turn them into complete chaos. Furthermore, you can't make a map for hundreds of players to have stands and show their goods.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Cepeshi on July 04, 2011, 01:41:40 am
(click to show/hide)

thanks for insight in the matter
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: DesertEagle on July 04, 2011, 08:28:04 am
Quote
And what if a horse dies?
House, not horse.
Quote
but balancing everything will be a nightmare
balancing a fair?) what you suppose to balance?
Quote
a shitload of headache-prone scripting for spawning the right objects on the right spots.
this can be done just by creating a fair-version of a town by town-owners.
Quote
The second would require a shitload of content
nothing except the standard
Quote
Also, fairs have no reason to exist apart form RP in Strategus.
Well, that is partly true, part of idea was about RP.
Quote
to have stands and show their goods.
Sellers will be bots - players will be customers.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kafein on July 04, 2011, 07:38:35 pm
balancing a fair?) what you suppose to balance?

About the first suggestion, balancing what items you can craft, were and for how many gold/items.


this can be done just by creating a fair-version of a town by town-owners

With 22 towns to make fair versions of, it's still a big work for map makers. Not to mention that those scenes would need more objects than the usual battle map.


.nothing except the standard

Actually, you're right on this  x)

Well, that is partly true, part of idea was about RP.
Sellers will be bots - players will be customers.

Well I can't think of any manner to implement fairs in a good way. If they are mandatory for buying and selling goods to towns, they should be active all the time. Otherwise the economy wouldn't really be one. Furthermore, towns will be controlled by players and afaik all the economy will be run by players. So I don't know how you could have bot merchants. And finally, most people willing to trade will not like to have to run the game and connect to a server for simply buying or selling something. Forcing this would kill 99% of the player motivation to become an active merchant. So maybe I didn't understood your suggestion correctly but there are a couple of logical flaws in my interpretation.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Tydeus on July 05, 2011, 10:06:37 pm
Lots of people talking about not allowing gold from crpg to be transferred to strategus. What I see this doing, is only helping the clans that already have a foothold in strategus and making it impossible for those that don't already hold a territory. How exactly is a new clan supposed to compete when the clans owning territories are the ones setting prices for everything? There is too much talk of exploiting the upkeep system to farm gold for strat and not enough about how to simply fix this problem to GREATLY enhance gameplay for everyone.

First of all, if done right, I don't see how more members shouldn't mean more gold, as someone mentioned earlier. Obviously if you have more members you'll have more expenses over all and you need more gold to balance that out.

If we assume for a second that each player makes just as much profit after upkeep costs, as the next, then no clan should be at a disadvantage. So the fallen clan and all of its archers with low upkeep, won't be the only ones able to employ massive armies with the best equipment. "Playing more" isn't something that only benefits one clan, either. I've never seen a clan that only played on weekends. Roughly every clan averages the same weekly time played per player.


An easy way to get rid of leeching altogether, is to simply not have upkeep for the first 20-30K of someone's equipment cost. This may seem difficult at first but it would be rather easy to code for. For every tick of gold one gets in a server they gain 40-50 gold in insurance for that round, on any items that break. So you're not gaining any gold, you're just not losing the gold either. This way, there would be no benefit to leech or run around naked with only a torch for example. A player with 500 gold in equipment would make just as much per round, as someone with 20K gold. This would encourage players to use equipment and participate in battles. This would increase the gold income of course, but I hear chadz had intentions of lowering upkeep costs anyway. Even so, you could easily just reduce gold per tick by 10 gold per tic and people would be back to where they were.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Gheritarish le Loki on July 06, 2011, 10:06:39 am
Reduce or increase upkeep in crpg will not change anything, individual earnings is the same for everybody, so clan with more members will make more gold anyway.

It´s necessary to find a gold sink inside Strategus, this sink should be scale on members or troops or fief.
More your ¨empire¨ is bigger more you must pay for maintenance, taxes, expenses and corruption.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kafein on July 06, 2011, 01:49:22 pm
If we assume for a second that each player makes just as much profit after upkeep costs, as the next, then no clan should be at a disadvantage. So the fallen clan and all of its archers with low upkeep, won't be the only ones able to employ massive armies with the best equipment. "Playing more" isn't something that only benefits one clan, either. I've never seen a clan that only played on weekends. Roughly every clan averages the same weekly time played per player.


Ahem... you base all of the following on a terribly false assumption. Clans with a good part of cav (gk, legio, pecores, templars, bandits...) will have an hard time keeping their cav focus if everyone else makes even only 2x more gold in Strategus. People that play cav usually struggle to break even so I don't see how they could earn money without respec or retire and go inf or even better, archer.

Most of the active cRPG clans will want to set foot in Strategus. So cRPG will likely become a goldfarmingfest for those clans, as Strat will likely be very competitive. I want to play Strategus, but I don't want cRPG to become crap because of it.

Therefore, the upkeep dead zone seems a good idea. It's rather silly to have high level people intentionnaly gimping themselves and their team to gain more gold.

I think having very high (somewhat realistic) standing troops upkeep and low recruitment costs would encourage people to make many little wars. If you can keep your army doing nothing ad nauseam, then I doubt people will come up with many aggressive plans. If upkeeping armies is expensive, then people will likely use them as fast as they can, and have as little standing defense as possible.

Imagine two factions start the first war. They both have a good amount of stacked gold. They build armies and fight a little. Soon a fief of the second is conquered by the first and a peace agreement is signed. Now both have big, expensive and rather useless (they are at peace) armies. They have two choices : either decide they have enough cash to upkeep their army a little more and start a new war, maybe against another faction, or decide they are running low on gold, disband a part of the army and start making gold again. If big armies are expensive, then having a small army makes you earn money very fast. So you can very soon have enough gold to build an army and start another war.

Standing armies won't make the game feel medieval, nuff said.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Tydeus on July 06, 2011, 02:17:06 pm

Ahem... you base all of the following on a terribly false assumption. Clans with a good part of cav (gk, legio, pecores, templars, bandits...) will have an hard time keeping their cav focus if everyone else makes even only 2x more gold in Strategus. People that play cav usually struggle to break even so I don't see how they could earn money without respec or retire and go inf or even better, archer.

Most of the active cRPG clans will want to set foot in Strategus. So cRPG will likely become a goldfarmingfest for those clans, as Strat will likely be very competitive. I want to play Strategus, but I don't want cRPG to become crap because of it.

Therefore, the upkeep dead zone seems a good idea. It's rather silly to have high level people intentionnaly gimping themselves and their team to gain more gold.

I think having very high (somewhat realistic) standing troops upkeep and low recruitment costs would encourage people to make many little wars. If you can keep your army doing nothing ad nauseam, then I doubt people will come up with many aggressive plans. If upkeeping armies is expensive, then people will likely use them as fast as they can, and have as little standing defense as possible.

Imagine two factions start the first war. They both have a good amount of stacked gold. They build armies and fight a little. Soon a fief of the second is conquered by the first and a peace agreement is signed. Now both have big, expensive and rather useless (they are at peace) armies. They have two choices : either decide they have enough cash to upkeep their army a little more and start a new war, maybe against another faction, or decide they are running low on gold, disband a part of the army and start making gold again. If big armies are expensive, then having a small army makes you earn money very fast. So you can very soon have enough gold to build an army and start another war.

Standing armies won't make the game feel medieval, nuff said.
I actually worded that terribly. I'm well aware that archers have the lowest upkeep cost out of any class and that heavy cavalry and plated infantry are the highest. Though I do see how cavalry clans will run into a problem, but it wouldn't be any worse with my system at the very least, while it would fix active leeching(You'd still have the people who spawn and go afk, but we have QML for that) and strategus gold farming.

I made a thread for this system and I go into more detail on how it would work: http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,9782.msg142228.html#msg142228


To the rest of your post:
Having too high of upkeep on troops could make attacking too easy and defending much harder. As a vanguard would only need, say 1000 troops to take a castle of 1500 troops, but on another front, you'd still need to have a significant number of troops positioned there or your territory could too easily be taken. If the upkeep cost is too high and you don't hold any territories your whole clan could just farm gold for the first month or two while not having an army at all and then build the largest force imaginable and take over nearly every territory simply because of your mountain of gold. Now I'm sure this won't happen, as chadz probably has foreseen such obvious events. My point is that you can't also have upkeep too high, there needs to be a careful balance.

My suggestion would be to have recruitment costs much higher than upkeep as that would force people to plan ahead and not just attack the nearest territory without risk of consequences because they could easily just recruit several more troops if they lost.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kafein on July 06, 2011, 02:56:40 pm
To the rest of your post:
Having too high of upkeep on troops could make attacking too easy and defending much harder. As a vanguard would only need, say 1000 troops to take a castle of 1500 troops, but on another front, you'd still need to have a significant number of troops positioned there or your territory could too easily be taken. If the upkeep cost is too high and you don't hold any territories your whole clan could just farm gold for the first month or two while not having an army at all and then build the largest force imaginable and take over nearly every territory simply because of your mountain of gold. Now I'm sure this won't happen, as chadz probably has foreseen such obvious events. My point is that you can't also have upkeep too high, there needs to be a careful balance.

My suggestion would be to have recruitment costs much higher than upkeep as that would force people to plan ahead and not just attack the nearest territory without risk of consequences because they could easily just recruit several more troops if they lost.

Yes, ofc. everything got to be balanced. Although I don't think that high recruitment costs are a good idea.  Something like recruitment cost = 1 or 2 weeks of upkeep seems reasonable to me. Increasing the recruitment cost/upkeep cost ratio will make the game less dynamic. But as you said, having it too low will turn the game into a big chaos. I don't want people to raise giga armies in one day either. Therefore recruitment speed should remain slow. Not as slow as in the previous Strategus though. If an average army controlled by one player is 100 men, then you should be able to get that many, alone, in 3 or 4 days. But this doesn't take equipment into account, and I don't have any details on how it will be changed.

Your scenario of a landless clan farming gold and building an army very fast is exactly what I want to be possible (although not to the point that you could conquer the whole map ofc. just getting your own share of the cake). If surprise wars are possible, then the diplomacy will be interesting.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: EponiCo on July 08, 2011, 02:00:37 am
Lots of people talking about not allowing gold from crpg to be transferred to strategus. What I see this doing, is only helping the clans that already have a foothold in strategus and making it impossible for those that don't already hold a territory. How exactly is a new clan supposed to compete when the clans owning territories are the ones setting prices for everything? There is too much talk of exploiting the upkeep system to farm gold for strat and not enough about how to simply fix this problem to GREATLY enhance gameplay for everyone.

Yeah, that's kind of the point. Large landowning faction should be able to crush random ragtag group from nowhere. Where does the money (or more exactly the gear and troops) come from? Imo all should come from strategus and be conquerable there. Yep, it will make it very hard for newcomers to establish themselves but where exactly is it written that everyone should be able to have land? Heck, I remember back then many people from destroyed factions complained that you were actually allowed to conquer their lands. But what isn't earned isn't worth it (*). I think if it is done right it would be far more interesting.
For example you could strike a secret deal with an existing power that they support you against their rival, or make money by hiring yourself out as mercenaries, etc.
Still it would require some thought to not make it scale linearily but rather give large empires fairly high running costs  to give smaller factions a chance.


(*) This doesn't apply to wine women and w ... tobacco, or generally anything that's fun by itself. And by earned I don't mean "hey, we earned it by playing this game more than the others and had more members" but actually putting some thought behind it so it's an achievement.


If we assume for a second that each player makes just as much profit after upkeep costs, as the next, then no clan should be at a disadvantage. So the fallen clan and all of its archers with low upkeep, won't be the only ones able to employ massive armies with the best equipment. "Playing more" isn't something that only benefits one clan, either. I've never seen a clan that only played on weekends. Roughly every clan averages the same weekly time played per player.

You are quite wrong here. In the old strategus large active clans would make far more money than small ones, differences in gameplay too.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: 22nd_King_Plazek on July 11, 2011, 03:46:00 pm
When money into the system > Money out of the system -> Inflation -> Crap economy.

So if

Money earned in CRPG > Money spent on upkeep.  -> Take a guess.

This is a basic economic fact and one that is not being adressed.

Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Kafein on July 13, 2011, 03:09:15 pm
When money into the system > Money out of the system -> Inflation -> Crap economy.

So if

Money earned in CRPG > Money spent on upkeep.  -> Take a guess.

This is a basic economic fact and one that is not being adressed.

inflation != crap economy.

But it's true cRPG lacks a real goldsink. Like a skill or partial respec merchant or something like that. Many possible solutions exist.


Now, I'm pleased with the dev choice. cRPG and Strat gold seem to be separated exactly like I suggested :P
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Beans on July 13, 2011, 05:50:54 pm
Yeah, that's kind of the point. Large landowning faction should be able to crush random ragtag group from nowhere. Where does the money (or more exactly the gear and troops) come from? Imo all should come from strategus and be conquerable there. Yep, it will make it very hard for newcomers to establish themselves but where exactly is it written that everyone should be able to have land? Heck, I remember back then many people from destroyed factions complained that you were actually allowed to conquer their lands. But what isn't earned isn't worth it (*). I think if it is done right it would be far more interesting.

Clans should rise and fall not based on how much shit they have had in the past, but how well they operate. Just because you own a bunch of fiefs and shit shouldn't make you untouchable to little new clans. I agree you should be able to beat them in most cases but this really puts off new players. Literally the worst thing in strat is stagnation, which is what we had towards the end before it got shut down. Everyone who owned land was just kind of sitting around consolidating their shit because they didn't want to risk a war and lose it. Makes sense, large land factions will always be hesitant to do anything that might risk losing their territory.

This is where we need the little clans and new guys. They have nothing to lose, they are the instigators and agents of change. I'm not sure exactly how to work it but I would like to see them be able to recoup troops at maybe a faster rate than large factions, but not in a larger total quantity. Also I think that once factions reach a specific size(could be whatever we decide on) after that point taking new land doesn't benefit them linearly. That is to say, if you are a small faction and you take 2 towns, you get 2x the benefit. If you are already very large, you take 2 towns and maybe only get 1.25x the benefit. The incentive for growth is still there for both sizes of factions.


Encouraging more factions will be way more interesting because people are crazy/smart/stupid/sneaky/backstabbing/loyal. The more wheeling and dealing we have with factions and diplomacy the more active and interesting strategus will be.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Tydeus on July 13, 2011, 06:17:52 pm
Can't say I'm pleased that gold isn't transferable, but that doesn't mean new strat won't be different. I guess strategus ignores the fact that armies were paid in gold though, regardless of how you got that gold. From merchants, bribes, fiefs, gold was just that, gold. Whoever had the most, generally had the best troops, maybe not the most experienced, but certainly the best equipped and possibly the largest force. Strategus is linear in both aspects, troop recruitment and quality of equipment. There's absolutely no room for a merchant guild.

Lets look at other things as well, either with new strat or the current one. Being an information broker for example would be impossible, you could make more gold just sitting in a city not doing anything just racking up gold over time. To spy, one has to travel to the required destination meaning you're not able to sit in a territory to recruit troops or work for gold so whatever information you sell, has to be worth more than the time it took you to get to that destination, which isn't likely(otherwise your employers would just do it themselves). With gold being transferable to strategus, it's far more likely that you could make more gold this way(depending on just how much competition there is) than sitting in a village doing absolutely nothing.

To people who complain about stockpiling gold, you can only stock pile for so long, eventually you have to spend it. And then once you spend it, it's gone, so much for the life savings. A few weeks down the road after a few battles, you've already lost all your gold and the vast majority of the troops and equipment that gold bought. Seems to me that this would only be an issue "initially", if even at all.
Title: Re: Strat economics discussed after news from chadz.
Post by: Knute on July 13, 2011, 07:40:10 pm
This might change a bit, but:
there will be about a dozen raw materials.
Every village has 3 materials it can produce.
the owner can shift the production balance.
the amount of resources produced is defined by the workers in the village.
the workers are other players who get a gold wage, defined and given out by the village owner.

the real item production will then happen in towns.
a town can produce up to 5 goods at the same time.
the village owner can set a smith.
the smith's skill defines of what quality (=heirloom) the produced item is.
the amount of workers in the town (=players) define how many items will be produced.

there will be other (individual) ways of creating weapons, but that will be very slow and not feasable to equip an army with it.

Hmm, it might be beneficial for a large group of workers who aren't in clans to form a union for better pay.  Solidarity brothers!

(click to show/hide)
(click to show/hide)