[Strat Suggestion] How to avoid carebear

[Zaharist]

Hello everyone

Here is my wall of text.
My dreams about better Strat future with non stop battles, dramas and insults.

Sorry for my english tried to do my best.

(click to show/hide)

If you have any *working* suggestion to stop people from creating large factions, feel free to tell me, because I've been looking for a solution for years now.

The truth is that it's ok that ppl create large factions. You don't need to solve it somehow.
Current "problem" in Strat is that being a big faction gives you lots of advantages and no disadvantages.

This is what we need to change.

BattalGazi suggested some great ideas:
http://forum.melee.org/suggestions-corner/faction-types-kingdoms-vassals-bandits/

But as kinngrimm said

I dont see this exactly as anti-carebear system, but more as a roleplay support. So that certain types of play become possible. The freest would be Kingdom/vassalges,

the most restricted but also most protected the traders.

The main idea of Gazi's suggestion is that we need IN-GAME DIPLOMACY AND FACTION MANAGEMENT.
And we really can build on that if we want to make anti-carebear system. It requires lots of coding, but it's obvious that without changing current strat mechanics we won't "move further".


What needs to be defined and worked in for such system:

0. Faction
1. Capital fief
2. Rebellion
3. Alliance
4. State of war
5. War exhaustion
6. Trade caravan
7. Trading agreement
8. Random events (fire, plague, disorders, bandits)
9. Neutrals (non faction players)
10. Embassy
11. Ceasefire
12. Peace agreement
13. Runner

Now I will try to explain how does this system suppose to work and describe restrictions and advantages.

Everyone starts factionless and have advantages and restrictions of "Neutrals".

advantages:
-Have 300 lightly armoured troops
-Can establish a faction
-No upkeep cost for troops
restrictions:
-Can't trade
-Can't transfer anything


In fact they can just walk around looking for fief to raid or to capture or play as a bandit.

Player Vasya_Pupkin captures a fief, makes it his capital and establishes Faction.

Faction advantages:
-Diplomacy
-Trade
-Recruting troops
restrictions:
-Maximum faction size is 80
-Can't trade and transfer with neutrals
-Not very profitable and not secure trade in other factions' fiefs without trading agreements
-Can't transfer troops, gold or equip to another faction
-When joining faction, Neutrals lose 200 of their 300 troops and 2/3 of equipment
-Player loses all troops above 300 and armour if he leaves faction
-After leaving faction player need to wait for 1 week to join another

Pupkin's friends come to capital and join the faction. Now they can act together as a faction.
They conquer some fiefs. Faction is growing bigger.

disadvantages:
-The more distance from capital the higher rebellion chance
-The more distance the slower fief develop's, the higher taxes etc
-For distant fiefs negative random events' chance is bigger

Pupkin's faction has to deal with such random events as disorders (lead to theft in fiefs, reducing gold and prosperity), rebellions (300-500 neutral rebellion armies spawning and attacking villages), plagues (reduces population to minimum, garrison to 10%. Once you had a plague in your fief you have a chance to cause plague in any other fief within 48 hours. Everyone besieging, attacking or entering plagued fief within 48 hours suffers from plague), fire (reduces prosperity to minimum, slightly reduces population and garrison), desertion (reduces troop amount, encreases rebllion chance in every fief).

(The idea is to make the biggest factions suffer from all these events at most)

To reduce chance of negative events Pupkin decides to form an alliance with his neighboor.
He needs to send an embassy from his capital to neighboor's capital.
Embassy is NPC unit that has 100 heavily armoured troops, average movement speed, costs gold to summon and upkeep, can carry "gifts", can be attacked and lose gifts, dissapears after diplomatic mission finished (when returns home).
Embassy moves to neighboors capital with a proposition of an alliance. Faction ruler needs to be in that fief in order to accept or decline. He receives gifts no matter what was his decision. Embassy moves back. If embassy is wiped on it's way, diplomatic mission fails.

Advantages for alliances:
-Free troop, equip and gold transfer
-Better trade
-Reduces rebellion and disorder chances for "inner" fiefs
Restrictions:
-Not more then 4 factions in an alliance
-Factions need to be neighboors (distance between 2 closest villages is sall enough)
-Not more then 80 (70, 100, whatever) players in an alliance
-State of war for all factions in an alliance if any faction is in war.
-Leaving alliance encreases rebellion and disorder chances for inner fiefs

To leave alliance you need to send a runner (NPC, fastest speed, low cost). Doesn't need to turn back, can be attacked.

When any faction starts a war (or is being attacked) whole alliance becomes "at war".

State of war encreases negative chances (rebellion, disorder, fire) the longer war continues, decreases trade efficiency, encreases troop upkeep. If village is close enough to enemy's villages and closer to enemy's capital, randomly spawned rebellion army can belong to an enemy. If captured village left without garrison within 48 hours, rebellion chance is 100%, spawned army belongs to enemy. Runners or embassies can be sent with ceasfire mission or in order to make peace. Both end state of war.

To start trading with factions you need to send runners with trading agreements. Runner needs to return. To stop such agreements you need to send runner again and it doesn't need to return, or just attack caravan. This will start war and end trading agreement.
Once you have trading agreement with other factions you can buy and sell goods in their fiefs secure.
To trade you need to send caravan (NPC, average speed, one way or two way, can be attacked by bandits, caravan has 300 medium armored troops) or send faction member with trading goods. Sending caravan will give you much bigger profit. "Lord trading" would be profitable only when selling goods were captured.
Bandit attacks are random events: bandits are 200-400 troops party, lightly or medium armored, can attack embassies, caravans, runners, raid villages, can attack faction members.
Also caravans can be attacked by bandit-like player.

Advantages of trading agreement:
-Lower taxes
-Secure passage
-Trading partner can support you caravan with troops and equip if caravan was attacked (everything automatically goes back if supporter stays in transfer range)
disadvantages of trading without agreement:
-Higher taxes
-Faction can attack your caravan without declaration of war
-Can't support


General restrictions:
-Village garrison not more then 500, castle 1500, city 1000
-Maximum faction army size depends on amount of faction players. 400 troops per player.

To summ up.
How all this ideas would help:

1. Restricting alliance size
We won't have alliances formed by biggest factions. Splitting into small factions won't help them.

2. Restricting transfers
With system like this GO and DRZ won't be able to help each other with troops, gold, or equipment.
It won't make them start fighting each other, but at least they won't team up on Strat.
Also having half of faction members as neutrals won't help due to transfer restrictions, also having palyer in faction will benefit more then having him as neutral supporter.

3. Random events and rebellion
Will make it harder (almost impossible) to control vast territories.

4. Trade agreements
Taking into account that faction will be able to control only villages close enough to their capital, they'll have to make some trading agreements. That gives opportunity for "economical blockade"

5. Caravans
No faction will be able to send 20k shiny army with 100k goods to make billions.
On the other hand every faction or even neutral bandit-like players will have a chance to raid caravan.
This will benefit smaller factions a lot.

6. Armed neutrals
You can "hire" neutrals to scout or patrol areas.

7. Maximum faction army size.
Thanks to equal maximum player capacity restrictions for factions and alliances we'll have equal armies (at max 32k per side if 80 players and 400 troop per player).


Thanks for reading this, hope you like it and support.

[MURDERTRON]

It will never work because off the books alliances will always exist.

[imisshotmail]

In game mechanics for diplomacy, factions and ect are so much worse than what we have now. It completely restricts things people can do and makes it all arbitrary and stupid. I'll give you guys a hint in EU- the main reason you keep losing to larger alliances is because the UIF are much more likable people and better at the game generally, so more people join their clans and ally with them.

This isn't a single player paradox game, you guys can't keep acting like annoying assholes and then wonder why the UIF are the biggest alliance and how it's not fair. All of you deserve to lose because of this, and the fact that you are is the reason Strategus is good, not bad.

[CrazyCracka420]

Murder you could make it so that people can't merc for you unless they are in some sort of "alliance" or agreement with you/your faction.  You could also make it so that you have to officially declare war through some system before you can attack.  In order to trade with a faction's fiefs you have to be "Friendly" or have some "trading partners" tag attached.  This way the system can keep track of who your enemies are, and who your friends are. 

I do think it would be possible to try and put some penalties in place for huge alliances.  Random rebellions would be possibly one, the other would be making it so that you have tax inefficiency (like in single player warband) if your faction (or overall "alliance") owns too many fiefs.

Didn't care to spend more than 30 seconds making this post however, since it will never have the possibility of seeing the light of day.