Evaluation: Bigger armies - higher cost?

[chadz]

I'm currently considering changing the troop formula a bit:

Right now, cost for a day is [troops]*2.5

I would like to change it to ([troops]^1.05)*2.5

how would that influence strat? my hope is that it stops every faction from having one single big army, and distribute the troops across their members.

also, moving troops (like, attacking a distant fief) would look better - you'd probably see a horde of players attacking (to save costs), and then create a big army at the end.

I hope it means that more players get to have troops, and that smaller skirmishes occur, instead of just pooling all resources to one hero.

discuss!

[Paul]

pow-addict

[SeQuel]

Interesting, would be annoying at first until people got use to it. I don't see a problem with it....but then you'd have to equip multiple armies and it may become a huge hassel. *Shrug*.

Also the math you'd have to do along with the money management. Seems like a big headache. Glad I don't gotta do all that.

[BaldRider]

The more you can engage the individual player the better. However with the raised cost of upkeep you also increase the need to micromanage and have people who farm gold and run and deliver it, which out of my experience, people seem to think is quite the "boring" job to do in strategus.

[Matey]

ehhh i dunno... it has the potential to be good.. in such a sense that it could be like single player where everyone has a lil army and runs around and only accomplishes big things by traveling in groups.. but it also sounds like a logistical nightmare considering that strat is already a huge pain in the ass for logistics. if it does indeed engage players more and cause people to play more active roles... it could work out nicely... but if the majority of players just pop on one a twice a day as they do now... it could be horrifying. really depends on if it leads to players being more active or not.

[Bjarky]

the upkeep of 2,5 is very hard to balance in the first place, maybe put it down to 2 instead.
other than that it would be an intersting feature to test out.

[Freland]

I think it would be too much micromanagement. Micromanagement can be fun (min-maxing your gear in MMORPGs) but this is just annoying at the moment.
IMHO the fun about Strategus are the unique organzied battles/sieges. This whole browser based micromanagement isn't fun at all. No need to increase this part of the game.

[Malaclypse]

I really like the idea of having individual, smaller armies rather than the huge elephants we've seen. Every battle has the potential to be a Wiegraf battle in such a situation, and I am completely for that; the fun factor is much higher. Strat feels too passive right now, to me. I get gold/troops, I transfer them, then there's a big battle sometime... not the most exciting thing in the world.

[Sharky]

There are already a lot of battles every day, don't see the need to increase battles numbers, also more battles means more busy servers and more delayed battles.
I think you should try to implement crafting raiding caravans trade and that kind of stuff ASAP so the casual players will have something to do indipendently. But please don't make them clumsy and time consuming, there isn't really need to add more boring micromanagement into strat, the newest changes are already boring enough.
 
It's not that if you make better to have smaller armies it will change nothing for the casual player.
Most casual players don't want to bother with mercs recruiting for battle, or item buying or diplomacy, so an officier will just give to them some gold items and troops and say "go there and attack those guys". Also the officier will manage merc recruiting and strategy in battle.

How is that more interesting for casual player then just stay in the town and dump gold in friendly villages?

[DarkFox]

You can do it like in singleplayer. Lets say every player can have max 100 troops. After attack during 24 hours other players can join the battle with their troops and equipment. So every player will became more like lord from singleplayer, right now they are like farmers.

[Bjarky]

You can do it like in singleplayer. Lets say every player can have max 100 troops. After attack during 24 hours other players can join the battle with their troops and equipment. So every player will became more like lord from singleplayer, right now they are like farmers.

i like 
but the players should have an higher max.

[Vovka]

Yay its so fun 100500 battles in day 100 by 100 and not 20k vs 20k   

btw i think still better for faction if 1 hero move with army 20k and lost more money, but others 10 grind moneyz in fiefs
 with that formula easier commit suicide 

[22nd_King_Plazek]

Doesn't really make much sense does it?
In fact it is the opposite to real life sense where a commander with some acumen would be able to make use of economies of scale.

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Surely different slower movement speeds or being able to be seen from further away if your army is bigger are both more interesting and more intelligent mechanics that encourage the very same thing, along with having strategic effects.

[Lt_Anders]

if you DO do that, give the option of multiple armies attacking a single target.(all being combined into 1 FINAL army with equip, etc)

Not worth it for the billion of battles. Don't increase management of players find ways to make it fun for everyone without making micromanagement heavy.

[3ABP]

Idea to force players to split big armies to small is good (in generally).
But with those "stopping rules" (about account sharing) - it can be impossible sometimes to merge armies
because of players inactivity\AFK\totally offline by many many RL reasons.

So - nice idea, but give please to the leaders\officers rights to command others faction accounts directly - without account sharing.
As someone wrote - create a command point (CP) pool, and let each command have a cost ... or whatever.
But smth must be done with this problem