Evaluation: Bigger armies - higher cost?

[Casimir]

Do what you want donkey!

[Flawless]

I like the Idea of having smaller armies, and it would be more realistic, as large armies cost vast amounts of resources to move and maintain. And smaller armies would give the average grunt in strat a purpose other than collect troops and gold for the one or two leaders of the clan. 

[PhantomZero]

I like the Idea of having smaller armies, and it would be more realistic, as large armies cost vast amounts of resources to move and maintain. And smaller armies would give the average grunt in strat a purpose other than collect troops and gold for the one or two leaders of the clan.

yeah the purpose of, click here, and then transfer all your troops to me, great thanks.

There already are benefits to doing these things, I don't see why you must make it mandatory.

Especially not before further cracking down on members that give passwords to the leaders.

[mustg]

about having smaller armies ... what about sieges ? noone mentioned about it ? cities have 20,000 k troops.. lets say we have smaller armies ? like 1k .. we gonna attack 20 times to a city ? who ll join to every each battle ? find me some guy who will ever join 20 times to same battle ?
here is my math :
[(wait for 1 h to breach the walls by cata)+( attack & die attack & die attack & die attack & die ) * 20 = epic fail

so for smaller armies :

a) add an option which provides to attacking by multiple armies or add an option "choose a faction army" which will be an army can have huge numbers (like 60k-100k ) but the other armies will be smaller except that " main faction army".
b) add a "command center" interface, which leaders & officers can control other armies ( by cost or smth like that) to prevent account sharing.
c) and also that reinforcement time limit is the real bs. not realistic at all. there are lots of battles which have won by last minute reinforcements or lost by the delay of reinforcements.

those are my humble opinions.

[Digglez]

I dont like this idea currently as it does make it a mess to coordinate any sort of objectives for clans.

I think we need to think harder before anything is changed

I like the idea of higher ranks being able to issue orders, create waypoints/rally spots.  So if you hop online u can see the rough plan, or what you've been ordered to do and commander can see that its being done. 

[SPQR]

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!

I think its better than the current upkeep system. Anything that gives the common player more of a chance to affect things is a good thing.

Notice that the majority of those against it are those who feel that it will decrease the power of central leadership in clans, which is true, but is also increasingly necessary in my opinion. Make the game fun for the average player and clan leadership won't have to do everything for them.

I just posted a bunch of ideas about how to get the average player more involved here: http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,15250.0.html

[CrazyCracka420]

I'm with the people that would welcome the smaller armies (moving in coordinated groups) as opposed to dumping 100% of everything into 1 or 2 lords.  The leaders of factions should be coordinating their officers and down to the foot soldier.  They shouldn't be doing the work for them. 

[Elerion]

Web browser micromanagement is unfun. I dislike it.

[CrazyCracka420]

Web browser micromanagement is unfun. I dislike it.

So you don't like trying to bring warband single player overview to multiplayer? I  think it's an amazing goal.  Why bother playing strategus then?

Would it make you happy if instead of a browser it was an overview with GUI's like in warband?  It would essentially be the same thing except a more cleaned up version.  The functionality is still basically identical (for all intents and purposes).

[Elerion]

Warband Single Player doesn't require me to have 10 real life people available for extended and synchronized periods to be able to execute an attack.

[CrazyCracka420]

Warband Single Player doesn't require me to have 10 real life people available for extended and synchronized periods to be able to execute an attack.

No it requires 10 AI lords to be available and synchronized for extended periods of time.  Strategus is the multiplayer version of single player (in my eyes, or at least I see that as the goal)...so if that's the case, then yes, of course I want 10 real life people being synchronized and available at the same time in order to coordinate a larger strike (or any collaborative effort).  That's kind of the point...

[Elerion]

All that would accomplish would be to make it significantly harder to launch an offense, which would lead to an even more stagnant Strategus.


Though, as a member of the former NE, I guess that's how you like it. Zing.

[Erasmas]

Question: will the power based formula apply to the troops located in fief/castle or in the field only?

The chadz's OP idea influences small armies as well. If you have 100 troops in field you would need to pay for 125 troops effectively...

Assuming you have to move 1000 tkts, moving them by 10 guys @ 100 tkts each will cost you 1250*2,5=3125g/day. If you move entire 1000 in one guy it would cost you 1412*2,5=3530g per day. The difference is 405g. 

Pricey... or not? I have no idea, it depends how much money you have. Note, that if we speak about 10000 tkts@10guys vs. 10000 tkts@1 guy the difference will grow to 4320g.

Now, it is a balance - what is more important:

• to enable raids (that requires big difference between wages in fiefs and in the field to motivate people to keep troops/gold/eq in locations),

or

• to force moving on the map will small no of tkts i.e in groups of players - being more vulnerable and more difficult to manage if large forces are moved (that requires power based formula for wages in the field to motivate splitting the armies).
  

Either way, moving troops from the fiefs becomes expensive. It slows the game action, doesn't it?

Actually, both elements promote freelancers and casual players over clans. I think I see where this is going to... we may not need a bigger map after all. But at the same time - forget about epic sieges. This game will truly be about warbands and not kingdoms

[Zanthos]

On the whole, I think this would negatively impact smaller clans and just become a nuisance for larger clans but not really stop them from doing things how they do today in the end.

The concept of trying to split up these behemoth armies and force a lot of smaller armies to move around the map is something I really really do like. However... I don't actually see this occuring solely as a result of increasing the gold upkeep for troops. Larger clans can manage the upkeep through rapid gold grinding from larger numbers and simply overfunding a particular army to maintain the upkeep as the behemoth army moves across the map. They also have the ability to spread out across the map much more easily and pass gold through funding or alliances whenever needed to maintain their army.

IF clans choose to break apart the armies into smaller pieces and place them in the hands of various members... those members will have to take a decent sum of gold and be quite active to have any chance of not losing their own personal smaller army while they move across the map. The larger the clan, the higher odds of having enough active members who can sustain an army for a day or so while they are moving across the map before meeting up at their ultimate attack point... or higher chance they had some gold grinders pass them extra cash before they set off on their trip so they can make it. Smaller clans will only be able to sustain much much smaller armies with a lot less ability to move too far from wherever their home base is located.

Overall, it will slow down the rapid funding of armies and massively sending out large numbers of troops. Clans will be forced to grind out gold much more than just recruit new soliders. Previously, an underfunded army due to not having gold grinders to produce decent equipment ... but of equal number of troops... may put up a decent fight or even win due to strategy or skill from the players hired. In this case... you HAVE to have the playerbase to support the gold piece regardless... and you can not rely on large numbers of lesser equipped troops. Simply put, more gold grinders = more sustainability. Larger clans = larger footprint to work from and easier logistics.

Basically - I see it as forcing smaller clans into areas in which they won't be able to expand far from due to the inability to sustain troop movements or handle logistics like those with much larger numbers. There will no longer be a chance for a clan with less gold income to put up a fight with equal numbers, but less gold... simply because they cannot move their troops far without the gold to do so. Clans with larger numbers will not enjoy managing it as much... but they can handle it.

[Serth]

Well this negatively impacts the mod as a whole even more, all this fucking balancing is slowly making the game is a stale repetetive thing to play...

Personally im going to dissapear when the new games such as BF3, MW3 and skyrim. And i think alot of people will do the same... I wish you would stop doing these stupid decisions to suck all the fun out of the game chadz.