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1

Faction Halls / [CSA] The South Shall Rise Again

« on: October 13, 2011, 09:19:29 pm »

THE SOUTH SHALL RISE AGAIN
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Are you tired of being told what to do? Of having some jackass from USA clan trample you with his horse while calling "FREEDOM FOR EVERYMAN"?

Are you a cotton enthusiast?

If you answered yes to any of those questions then CSA may be the clan for you. A clan for TRUE patriots who understand that freedom, REAL freedom is about having choices. Like the choice of whether to import servants from other continents. Or to choose to sleep with your cousin and brew moonshine in the hills. Or to take your ball, and go home, if someone is being mean to you (sometimes known as succession). Choices the USA clan says are bad, and wrong.

Well there's an old southern saying goes:
Y'ALL CAN BLOW ME YANKEE SCUM, I DO WHAT I WANT

BANNER:
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NATIONAL BIRD:
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Koalas: steadfast supporters of dixie and the southern way of life

Diplomacy
WAR: USA Clan
ALLIED: Kotton Kulture Klub

Clan Tag:
CSA_

Member List:

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CSA_Gen_Robert_E_Leet
CSA_Lady_Gaga

TEAMSPEAK INFO:
LLJK Teamspeak: ts.crpggoons.com

Defend your freedom from NORTHERN AGRESSION, Join the CSA today!

2

Strategus General Discussion / Bring Feudalism to Strategus - Making the individual player important

« on: September 07, 2011, 07:22:04 pm »

This thread is about ideas to help make the average individual strategus player more important and engaged in the game. Currently, the only thing the vast majority of the populace experience in this game is sitting in a fief transferring all their earnings to the clan occasionally. Here are my proposals to fix that:


Bring Feudalism to Strategus
Feudalism, as you probably all know, was the enduring political/military structure during the Medieval ages. In this system, power was distributed down the ranks in a layered fashion, with each rank swearing fealty to those above them. The King or [Insert Title Here] was on top and below him were the land-owning Counts and Dukes who swore fealty to him. Below the Counts and Dukes were lesser land-owning nobles who in turn swore fealty to them. And below each of these were knights and assorted peasantry. Unlike today, the state itself did not have a monopoly on power. Each layer (besides the peasants) had their own private funds and usually their own private army. They were expected to pay tribute to their feudal lord, of course, but each person down the ranks still had the final say on where and what would happen with their army and funds.

In strategus, on the other hand, the current political setup is more like a total war economy. Every player sends all their resources  in to the clan to form the the biggest dick-swingest army possible. There are two problems with this: 1) Its not realistic at all and 2) It's not any fun for the vast majority of those in it.

So, how can we change the political structure of strategus and empower the common player?

Three changes that I will discuss in turn:
1) Re-arrange Clan ranks and privileges
2) Change fief ownership rules
3) Implement a new taxation system and nerf transferring


Change 1: Re-arranging clan ranks and privileges

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Currently there are 10 ranks in clans. Not only is this way too many, many of the ranks are redundant and undefined. What is the difference between rank 4 and 5? Who knows. Instead of having ranks 1 thru 10, reduce them to just a total of four ranks, each with an easily identifiable name and privileges.

Here is an example of rank names and their privileges, each rank also has all the privileges of the ranks below it:

Rank 1 - Knight - Can see other clan players on map, does not pay fees in clan-held fiefs, can hire for own battles only
Rank 2 - Captain - Can see clan roster, can hire for Rank 2 battles or lower
Rank 3 - Noble - Can hire for Rank 3 battles or lower, can promote players to Rank 2, can accept players to faction
Rank 4 - Lord - Can own fiefs, can promote players to all Ranks, can hire for any battles, can expel players from faction

This way you have roles for players of all different activity levels. Occasional players will probably be Rank 1, which is not much of a change from now. More active players would be rank 2 which would allow them more freedom to initiate battles and help hire players instead of relying on high-level leadership to do it for them. Rank 3 could be for ambitious and active players who can do a lot of things Rank 4 can to help ease the responsibilities off their shoulders. And finally Rank 4, for the people who are highly active and like running things.

Change 2: Changing how fiefs are owned

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As it currently stands in strategus, fiefs are like a bag of chips everyone passes around to whoever wants it at the time, and then get it back when they're done. Fief owners can have their fief taken away at any time with a click of a button and likely without even noticing. Needless to say this shit would not fly in Feudal Europe. Once someone gave you a fief it was yours for life, and if they wanted it back they had to take it from your cold dead hands.

Here is the proposed change:

When a fief is taken, it is not assigned to anybody by default until an eligible Rank 4 is selected.

Once someone is selected to own the fief, it is theirs until they either
A) Choose to relinquish it to someone else
B) It is taken from them by force

The idea is the fief is now their personal property, not that of the clan, and it ought to be extremely difficult to get it back from them. And if a player leaves his clan, he takes all his fiefs with him. Clans will have to be very careful who they give fiefs out to instead of tossing them around wily-nily and taking them back whenever they want like they do now.

To reclaim a fief you would need to either convince them to hand it over, or attack it and take it by force. This means when clans disband or implode the result is a bunch of independent fiefs owned by the person who controlled it before the split instead of one person running off with all the fiefs.

It also means being an inactive fief owner is a big problem for clans and they might have to use force to rectify the situation.

Change 3: Taxation and Transferring

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Taxes
Finally, the most important change. As I said earlier, the most frequent action in strategus is transferring your stuff to someone else. Not only is this menial and boring, it is essentially handing off your ingame power so someone else can use it for you.

The goal of this proposal is to help restore some power and importance to the average strategus player and eliminate a large source of menial work. The way to do this, in my opinion is to implement a clan tax rate. Clans would be able to set taxes on troops and gold to different levels, between 0 and 20%. At the end of each day, each clan member would automatically kick up the percent of troops and gold set by their clan tax rate to the rank above them.

So, for instance, if clan Lazer Catz had a 20% Troop tax rate, and a 10% Gold tax rate then at the end of each day all Rank 1's would send up 20% of their troops and 10% of their gold to be evenly distributed to Rank 2's. Then the Rank 2's would send up 20% of their troops and 10% of their gold to be evenly distributed to Rank 3's. And Rank 3's would send up 20% of their troops and 10% of their gold to be evenly distributed to Rank 4's (who don't kick up to anyone).

I've done the calculations and what eventually happens is a balance forms, where each rank can typically support a certain amount of troops and income based on the number of players below them, and the clan tax rate.  For instance, I calculated that in a 15 man clan with a 20% Troop Tax rate a Rank 1 player could support about 50 troops, a Rank 2 could support about 175, a Rank 3 could support about 450, and Rank 4 as many as is sent to him.

You can see my calculations here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av7noDOFrOQbdEJoQ3NBalJLNWxtTGdoYjZfSTBwN2c&hl=en_US
(Note: Gold income values were pre-strategus gold nerf, however my calculations were based on Working in cities only, not cRPG gold, so I believe these calculations are essentially still valid)

So, as you can see, a large majority of the gold and troops are still being sent up to the top ranks to form armies, but the lower ranks are able to keep a certain amount of their troops and gold for themselves so they too can participate beyond just sending all their guys in. Furthermore, this system has automated "transferring in your troops" so players can focus on doing more interesting things.

Lower rank players will probably have to switch between Working and Recruiting occasionally to have a good balance of gold and troops while higher Rank players can afford to leave fiefs and patrol around or whatever as they'll have the lower ranked players feeding them gold and troops.

Inactive players who just sit in a fief recruiting will quickly run out of gold through this method and be kicked out.

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How taxes are sent up
Taxes will only be collected and distributed to you if you are within a certain range of other clan members or clan fiefs, say twice the attack range. So, for instance, if you are away from the rest of your clan off scouting or attacking an enemy you will not be sending off taxes to the rest of your clan so you don't dwindle away. On the other hand, you won't be receiving reinforcements either if you are Rank 2 or higher. So in that way, it may be wise to bring clan-mates with you on campaign so if you capture territory you can stock it with players to feed you reinforcements via tax.

One advantage of having a fief could be that your portion of the taxes will be collected at your fief if you are off on campaign or otherwise out of range.

What this also means attacking the lower rank players in a clan can have a more pronounced effect. Anything that disrupts the flow of troops and gold to the top of the pyramid can have a huge effect on a clans ability to field large armies. In this way, it may be much more important to attack and defeat lower ranked enemy players instead of just their main army. In this way, raiding and skirmishing with smaller armies gains importance and gives lower ranked players a more important role.

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Nerfing transferring
With a clan tax rate in place transferring becomes much less important, but it still has a place in strategus. For instance, different clans will still need to transfer between them, as well as clan-less people. So how do you balance this with the clan tax rate?

Implement a transfer fee of 5,000 or 10,000 gold. What this does is makes big transactions still possible, for instance, the sale of a large number of troops from one clan to another, but makes small day-to-day transfers unprofitable so clans must rely on the clan tax rate for the majority of their transferring needs.

Conclusion:
I know many of you will not like this idea because it decreases the power of the central clan leadership, but that is exactly the point. This game should not be a select few running everything and everyone else sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Strategus needs to be balanced so that the average joe can affect the game and have fun doing so and that is what I've tried to do here.

The idea is to make the individual matter. Medieval drama was all about conflict between individuals as they vied against one another for power, thats what makes it interesting, and thats what strategus should be about.