[Suggestions] Slowing Strat Down and keeping it fun for smaller clans

[Tomas]

1) Fief Corruption

A very simple concept that sees a fiefs maximum efficiency linked to its distance from the owning factions Capital. The formula below would give max_efficiences between ~50% and 100% with fiefs that are close to your capital only getting a small nerf compared to fiefs that are much further away.

Max_Efficiency = 100 - 30*(EXP(distance/max_distance)-1)

2) Roster Limitations

You should only be able to hire a certain number of non-faction mercs depending on the size of your faction compared to the size of the largest faction.   The formula below should work to do this and will also discourage inactive grinding accounts that can't actually fight in Battles.  The MAX part of the formula ensure the largest faction size is always at least 100 which keeps the merc number right imo.

Max_roster_mercs% = 100 - 80*(#Faction_members/MAX(#Largest_faction_members,100))

3) Fief Loyalty.

Each Fief should have a loyalty %.  Every 24 hours a fiefs loyalty should go down by 1 and up by 0.2 x the # of same faction members present in the fief.  So if you have 10 faction members in your fief the overall loyalty change will be +1.  AI fiefs should always have 100% loyalty and whenever you cature a fief, its loyalty should start at 10% and all your fiefs efficiencies are mulitplied by the fiefs loyalty.  If loyalty ever hits 0% then the fief rebels and reverts to the AI.  If desired this could be made much more complicated but right now I think simple solutions that can be easily implemented are more valuable

4) No troop transfers between different factions

Gold and Equipment makes sense, but if you want to fight in a war and get your members involved, then you should have to march your army yourself and attack someone.  This will limit the usefulness of puppet and grinding factions.

5) Travel expense payments for roster applicants.

At the start of the Battle you should have to pay travel expenses for everybody you hired using the following formula.

Expenses = Char_level * (EXP(distance_from_battle/max_distance)*3 - 3)

So a level 30 person 10km from the battle will only cost 7 gold whilst a level 30 person at the other side of the map will cost 154 gold.  The gold does not go to the person - it just dissappears.  This means defending your own territory is much cheaper than attacking someone elses.  This would not count for AI Rosters which would be dealt with in a different way (see #5)

6) Travel Expenses for AI Rosters

I'm not sure how the AI works for picking its roster so I won't write down any formulas here.  However the AI should prioritise people who are closer to the fief being attacked.  For instance a level 25 person within 10km of a battle should get priority over a level 30 person 100km from the siege.  This would do 2 things.  First it would limit the influence large clans can have on AI fief defenses on the far side on the map. And secondly, it would open up the roster to more people so that they can get into AI battles and from there become more involved in strat.



Combined these 6 suggestions would encourage smaller more independent factions that war amongst their neighbours for fun, rather than huge coalitions that look for world domination illing people on the other side of the map.  It will also slow down conquest and limit steam rolling whi

[Konrax]

+1 for some of these ideas

[Dehitay]

I like ideas 1 and 3. Could prove interesting, but you kind of forgot to mention what exactly happens as a fief becomes more corrupted or more loyal.

5 and 6 will completely screw over small clans/alliances and make the game less fun for players in general. Let's say you're a gigantic clan like DRZ, Fallen, LLJK, or Grey. And you decide to go pick on the smallest clan next to you. They're going to need help and desperately. However, the majority of the people next to them are your gigantic clan. So unless by some luck, they can get every other clan around them to help out, they're more doomed than they originally were. And if your big clan doesn't really need extra fiefs, it can just promise little small clan's fiefs to any nearby clans that help out. Not to mention that anybody who is generally new to Strategus and doesn't have any connections will mostly likely be experiencing their Strat battles through AI villages. If AI villages suddenly start prioritizing whoever's closest, they'll be missing out even more.

2 is debatable, but personally, I think it's a bad idea. At best, it's an attempt to punish larger clans. But in the end, it just discourages letting others into battles. Fallen would be at a huge advantage if something like this ever went through. We have a massive amount of EU players and a massive amount of NA players. All we have to do is determine what time zone the majority of an enemy is in and attack them during the other time zone. We can get plenty to show at any time. Chances are the enemy won't be able to get many of their own to show during the time we choose and will have faction mandatory slots that they just can't fill. However, even that won't really matter as what will actually happen if this goes through is all big factions will split up into smaller factions to completely invalidate any extra programming done.

4 I can go either way on, but this will also be quickly invalidated as people can just switch factions.

Also, as a side note, your title of slowing strat down is going to immediately put people in a skeptical mood of your post before they even read it. Strat is pretty freaking slow as it is

[Osiris]

come on isnt strat boring enough without slowing it down even more?

strat for 90% of the players is     Step1 log on follow orders log out. repeat untill clan has enough gold to make an army.
                                                    Step2 If your lucky you get to move with goods or troops and press transfer!! if not skip to 3
                                                    Step3 Hope that the battle happens at a time when you can actually attend and hope your allowed to play

Repeat steps over and over


If anything we need to speed this boring as hell strat up

[Slamz]

I'm not sure #1 is necessary if you do #3.  I think you should be able to expand for as far as you have actual bodies able to cover.  I do like the idea of empty villages reverting back to AI control, though.

#2 seems like a good idea on the surface but would really impair large clans during off-hours.  That is, if you have 100 people in your clan but only 10 of them are available because the battle is at 6am then you're screwed -- you can't hire many mercs because of this rule and will be left short-handed, whereas a small clan would be fine.  So I'll have to disagree with this one.

I think #4 actually hurts small clans more.  Smaller clans may need troop support from allies that aren't in their faction, whereas a big clan would never need to do transfers anyway.


I like the "travel expenses" concept.  It would help prevent clans from opposite sides of the map from helping each other.  It would be more important to make some local friends.  Although I would make the formula have no charge for the first 20km or so.

[Camaris]

I especially do like 3.
Dont know about the others.
And if devs like more then they should add them one by one to see the impact.

But 3 is the best idea to limit huge empires so far.
It probably will leave some of the map uncovered by big alliances and can be adjusted
to the amount of players. This way it is possible to always have some villages in the hand
of smaller clans. So what size you got you will probably have a chance to find some place
to fight for.

With this system you could also make towns and castle more rewarding but also implement the need of
more manpower. So Bigger Clans can decide if they want 2 Towns 2 Castles 1 Village or get more villages and drop a town or castle.

[Turkhammer]

come on isnt strat boring enough without slowing it down even more?

strat for 90% of the players is     Step1 log on follow orders log out. repeat untill clan has enough gold to make an army.
                                                    Step2 If your lucky you get to move with goods or troops and press transfer!! if not skip to 3
                                                    Step3 Hope that the battle happens at a time when you can actually attend and hope your allowed to play

Repeat steps over and over


If anything we need to speed this boring as hell strat up

Thats' why you should favor independents over being a drone for "the man".

[Beans]

Someone suggested another good idea in the smithing thread about small vs large factions. chadz is looking for new ways to do the smithing skill instead of the shitty random grind it is now.

They suggested that smaller clans are better at crafting small amounts of heirloomed high quality items while larger clans can be better at creating mass quantities of lower level medium stuff. Smaller clans will always have difficulty raising armies and trying to conquer land vs larger ones but this way really helps them be just as important. Smaller clans would have a value that people are trying to get a hold of and use it for diplomatic bargaining.

[dodnet]

TL;DR... but "Slowing Strat Down" even more? Its damn slow already, don't make it slower!