Bring Feudalism to Strategus - Making the individual player important

[Dexxtaa]

Excellent post. Top quality stuff.

+1

edit ; I also stole the top of Page3, there's important stuff at the bottom of page2

[PhantomZero]

Yeah that would work fine too.

Perhaps it would be possible to have two different types of "Clan Government". If you assign a Rank 5, then he acts as King as you describe. If you only have Rank 4's then it acts as a kind of "Council" or Republic, where each has equal amounts of power and perhaps a way to "vote" on who gets a new fief.

For instance in the area where you can currently assign fiefs (the one with the pulldown menu) when there is an unassigned fief allow it to select who you want to vote for, from the eligible Rank 4 members, and click "Vote". After enough votes are tallied the fief is assigned to whoever gets the most votes (similar to native). Also possibly have it so that the more fiefs you already own the less voting power you have. So:
No fiefs - 4 votes
1 Fief - 3 votes
2 Fiefs - 2 Votes
Ect.

I dunno, just some random thoughts.

Well you wouldn't need to add any voting to Strategus, I think that could be done separately. I would like the system to behave the same way for each clan, but maybe keep it freeform the way it is now, without hard limits on the number in each rank and such, this way people could still have different styles of governments. Any voting could be done on a clan's own forum or TS if they wanted a democracy or whatever.

[Tomas]

I like the aim of these ideas.  They are similar to what I was trying to achieve with my ideas posted in another thread - http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,13486.0.html

Your ideas however have the advantage of not screwing with the economy

I'd like to propose a couple of changes though.

1)  As pointed out by someone else - you need a 5th rank for the King/Faction Leader.  Only 1 person can occupy this role and they will always be awarded the first fief captured in Strat and must always own a fief if your clan has one (this is your capital and further down the line i'm sure people can think of interesting things to do with it).

2)  Rather than being able to award fiefs only to rank 4 clan members, make it so that awarding someone a fief is the only way to bump them up to rank 4.  This then seperates rank 3 and 4 people in a significant way and gives a real benefit to owning a fief.

3)  Faction Leaders should be able to re-assign fief ownership, but only if the current fief owner has been inactive for more than 10 days.  What if someone falls ill or for some other reason disappears altogether?  There needs to be a backup in place of some sort.

[bagge]

superawzmidea

[Sir_Ironlake]

+1

[Panoply]

Yeah that would work fine too.

Perhaps it would be possible to have two different types of "Clan Government". If you assign a Rank 5, then he acts as King as you describe. If you only have Rank 4's then it acts as a kind of "Council" or Republic, where each has equal amounts of power and perhaps a way to "vote" on who gets a new fief.

For instance in the area where you can currently assign fiefs (the one with the pulldown menu) when there is an unassigned fief allow it to select who you want to vote for, from the eligible Rank 4 members, and click "Vote". After enough votes are tallied the fief is assigned to whoever gets the most votes (similar to native). Also possibly have it so that the more fiefs you already own the less voting power you have. So:
No fiefs - 4 votes
1 Fief - 3 votes
2 Fiefs - 2 Votes
Ect.

I dunno, just some random thoughts.

Instead of set ranks or anything, you could just impose a general fealty system, whereby players declare their fealty to someone. That someone could then declare their fealty to someone else. This would be a relatively flexible system of lieges and vassals. You have power to control the rosters of any of your vassals, or their vassals, and so on, but your liege or your liege's liege, and so on, could control your roster.

Each faction can make up their personal own titles or hierarchies; whether the classic feudal pyramid, an oligarchy of lords, or even every member sworn to one king. Personally, I would like to see penalties such that it becomes impractical for any one player to have a large number of vassals, such that there is greater distribution of vassals, and not just everyone swearing fealty to the clan leader. (Eg. A tax based on the number of vassals). I feel this would be more in keeping with the spirit of feudalism, as well as distribute power more so that relative importance is not concentrated on a few people, but spread around.

Of course, one of the major obstacles to feudalism isn't just the infrastructure, but is also a matter of changing the mindset of players. This can be done to some extent by changing infrastructure, but some aspects can always be worked around. You have to have players feel as if they really own fiefs, and it should be a grievous insult if a faction leader asks a lord to give a fief to someone else. Also, we would probably need to inspire greater loyalty just to one's individual liege lord than to the designated faction leader. For example, if a lord goes rogue from a faction, it should be more common for said lord's vassals and their vassals to support their rebellion rather than rein them in. I'm not sure how you would encourage this kind of behavior by changing the system.

[Panoply]

As for the suggestion, I'm afraid it doesn't seem to address the problem of inactive members spamming their leaders with free troops/gold. You may not get your hands on the stuff they have left over from the tax, but the stuff that gets sent up is still a big bonus, now they just don't even have to come online to push the button. It seems to me the automatic army link-up feature you mentioned later would probably make this even worse.

My understanding is that there is already a mechanism to combat inactive players, by reducing their gold and troops to zero if they haven't logged on in ten days. You have a point, but as long as you can effectively combat inactive players, then I don't think it's really a major problem.

If we dropped the automatic army link-up idea and adopted a system of reinforcement by combination (rather than transferring), then on the whole, this suggestion would definitely make it important for clans to have an active and engaged player base as well as maintain effective intra-clan communication. Wars wouldn't just be transfer all your stuff to the leaders of your faction and have them duke it out with the leaders of another faction. Instead, it would be important for all faction members to co-ordinate so that they can reinforce each other, or form or warband.

[SPQR]

Instead of set ranks or anything, you could just impose a general fealty system, whereby players declare their fealty to someone. That someone could then declare their fealty to someone else. This would be a relatively flexible system of lieges and vassals. You have power to control the rosters of any of your vassals, or their vassals, and so on, but your liege or your liege's liege, and so on, could control your roster.

Each faction can make up their personal own titles or hierarchies; whether the classic feudal pyramid, an oligarchy of lords, or even every member sworn to one king. Personally, I would like to see penalties such that it becomes impractical for any one player to have a large number of vassals, such that there is greater distribution of vassals, and not just everyone swearing fealty to the clan leader. (Eg. A tax based on the number of vassals). I feel this would be more in keeping with the spirit of feudalism, as well as distribute power more so that relative importance is not concentrated on a few people, but spread around.

Of course, one of the major obstacles to feudalism isn't just the infrastructure, but is also a matter of changing the mindset of players. This can be done to some extent by changing infrastructure, but some aspects can always be worked around. You have to have players feel as if they really own fiefs, and it should be a grievous insult if a faction leader asks a lord to give a fief to someone else. Also, we would probably need to inspire greater loyalty just to one's individual liege lord than to the designated faction leader. For example, if a lord goes rogue from a faction, it should be more common for said lord's vassals and their vassals to support their rebellion rather than rein them in. I'm not sure how you would encourage this kind of behavior by changing the system.

In my first draft of my ideas this is actually how I had the system work.

I eventually abandoned the idea though as it seemed too clunky. I imagine everyone squabbling over who goes under who, and who gets the most active vassals, ect. That and some people may end up with lots of active vassals, and others with all the inactive ones and no troops or gold.

I dunno, I think if it could work, it would absolutely be awesome and a good incentive to keep players logging to maintain relations with their "vassals" and work towards gaining more for their own gain.

However I can also see how it could completely fall apart or be a huge pain in the ass/source of drama.