Thoughts on trade caravans: bonuses for crossing EU/NA lines

[Slamz]

One of the problems of Strategus, I think, is "EU vs NA".  It's not that great to end up with a bunch of united EU clans fighting a bunch of united NA clans because there's hardly any good time of the day for fighting each other.  What you'd really like is something that encourages some EU-NA alliances fighting against other EU-NA alliances, such that they can schedule battles at almost any time and one half or the other of the alliance will be in prime time.  The nature of cRPG pings means that's not likely to happen on its own so I think we need to come up with a way to encourage it.


One option is to have "trade zones".

Bonuses are capped to 50% within your trade zone.  Bonuses are capped at 150% if you move to a neighboring trade zone.  Bonuses are normal (250% I think) if you can move more than 1 trade zone away.

Then you could do something like 3 trade zones --
Most of NA is "Trade Zone A"
Most of EU is "Trade Zone B"
A big swath of land in the middle forms sort of a "neutral zone" that's "Trade Zone C".

So trading within "A" is capped pretty low.  You can go from the southern desert to the far NW corner and only get 50% bonus because despite the distance, you didn't leave your trade zone.  Going from A -> C gives you a higher bonus.  Going from A -> B (deep NA to deep Euro) gives you the maximum bonus.


P.S.
This sort of screws anyone living in "Trade Zone C" but that's the penalty of living in the middle of the map, which is already somewhat true.

[Troyicide]

NA clan make EU clan trade agreement , ship massive amounts of goods in a caravan across a great distance = massive profits.

If your just making small trades , your not maximizing profits.

Thats it.

[BADPLAYERold]

there is only 1 EU alliance (in EU lands).

[Tears of Destiny]

there is only 1 EU alliance (in EU lands).

Small exageration, I think not counting minor ones, there are 3 or 4.

[Slamz]

NA clan make EU clan trade agreement , ship massive amounts of goods in a caravan across a great distance = massive profits.

Yes -- the problem I see is that you can do this now without ever leaving EU lands, or without ever leaving NA lands.

With this idea, you are forced to cross the EU/NA line for maximum trade bonuses, this fostering some potential NA-EU alliances.  (May be too late for this now, but it could be good for future Strategus maps.)

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Its an interesting idea in that it breaks up the geography of the current map. But what is to stop a clan from simply spreading across the trade zones, or caping 2 villages that sit on the border of the zone and send huge shipments a short distance for that 150% bonus?

I suppose you could create an uneven demarcation line so that it twists and turns around clumps of villages to get rid of the second problem. The clans caping a line through the trade barriers though, that's another thing.

The end of the day, people get cheesed by the big alliances by big clans but there was a lot of fighting in EU at the start and these guys emerged on top pretty early on. After that it was just a little bit of a punch up in NA with a predictable out come... being flattened by the monster in the south, and I don't just mean DRZ, the greys or the empire could have done it. The more I think about it the more I think that the end game for this strat was obvious about 3 months back when DRZ took all the cities and castles in its territory and got that 10mill. Its a biased position though, anything could have happened to disrupt DRZ's power and completely change the face of the map, but it didn't the only thing that happened was the Greys got into the same position as DRZ.

I guess now is a perfect time for the Greys to stab DRZ in the back... So is this strat over? I guess battle attendance will be the marker for that.

[Malaclypse]

I'd really just prefer to go back to the old system for NA/EU. If it's a Neutral fief, it's whatever server the member of a faction attacking it is. Fiefs can be set to either server. Being forced into a huddled corner of the map is kind of lame. Really lame. NA lost access to like 66% of fiefs on NA servers, EU only lost 33% by comparison. I'd like to be able to attack, say, Jelkala, or what have you, without being forced onto a specific server for no apparent reason.

Though this desire is probably at least partially because of the specific areas of the map were chosen as NA based. I feel like we got the short end of the straw.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

I think the map should be cut east west not north south, that way everyone gets a bit of everything and the center where the longest, cleanest trade route are will be a horribly dangerous death trap in which I can prance about sing to my self wearing a barrel for a skirt.

[Slamz]

Yeah I don't understand the current map divide.  I guess there are more EU strategus player than NA, which is why they got the biggest part of the map, but it just discourages NA players that much more.  ("This is all the space we get?  Well that's not very interesting.  Back to cRPG!")

My idea of trade zones would also be a lot simpler to do if the map was a straight east vs west divide rather than an arbitrary, snaking line.

[Knute]

@ OP: I like that idea, anything that makes more NA/EU cooperation like in Strategus v.2 would be good.

I was thinking about something kind of along the same lines, not trade specific but it would influence trade.  Instead of cramming the NA zone into one area why not split it up so if you're traveling from one side of the map to the other, you'd have to pass through both NA and EU zones.  Each side gets the same amount of towns/castles/villages as now but NA zones would be spread and bordered by mountains, rivers and other terrain so it's easy to see where the lines are. 

This isn't exactly balanced with the correct number of fiefs, but something kind of like this:

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[Tomas]

On the NA/EU split

Link each Castle and Village to a Town.

At the beginning of every round of Strat randomly pick 33% of the Towns to be NA.  All linked Castles and Villages then get to be NA as well.  Everything else is EU.  If sea trade is going to happen, then split the sea Towns first and then the inland Towns.

If you ever manage to capture a Town then you can decide to change the server of that Town and all its linked fiefs.  The change will take 2 weeks to come into effect with everybody getting fair warning of the change.  This gives factions a strategic way of gaining server advantage over their enemies, but to do it they have to attack the strongest part of an area first.

It also ensures every round of Strat is different and unpredictable as there is a good chance that all faction will have to re-assess their claims.

On trade bonuses

Halve the trade bonus percentages and make the maximum trade bonus available at 75km instead of at 135km (as it is now).  Then double the prosperity of Towns so that they run from 10 to 50 instead of 5 to 25. 

This adds far more thought to trade as it isn't simply about going as far as you can with your goods and selling in whichever of the many fiefs in the area have 25 gold goods prices.  Under this system people can travel in any number of directions to go 75km, but even then they might find they need to go further or not so far to find a Town with the 50 gold goods prices.  Alternatively they can choose to sell in a village or castle for a smaller but quicker profit.

Finally, if the prosperity drops in the Town you sell in, then you will have to completely re-assess your trade route which keeps factions on their toes.

Finally, this adds a nice bonus to holding Towns and having a transaction tax, which makes them worth holding.

[Camaris]

I would consider that it only would mean that some clans would invade NA-Territory to get fiefs in that trade zone.
If you dont counter the mega-blobs you wont get those things working.

[22nd_King_Plazek]

I'd really just prefer to go back to the old system for NA/EU.