Strategus Suggestions

[Phyrex]

Continuation thread/Needs its own thread by popular demand from: http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,21727.0.html

I've been reading threads this weekend+yesterday and today. Clearly, FotM is raging at Strategus. Justified rage, I must add.

The problems are as following.

- Nothing to do for your standard faction grunt.

- Small clans and individuals have nothing to do.

- Massive alliances.

One solution would be to make Strategus more Total War-like.

For this we need a few things.

- Sign up system for factions at start of every Strategus round. This would require rules and admin supervising.

- Random faction spawning. Once you've signed up and Strategus begins, you and all your faction members will spawn at a random location and each faction is given a starting village.

- Settlement regions. Every village has a region with clear borders, owner of the village owns the surrounding lands. The land would need clear borders + more obstructive/impassible terrain which in turn would make it slightly more linear, throw in a choke point here and there too(Don't over-do it!) I believe this would encourage factions to deal with their closest neighbours first, making the start of Strategus a lot more small-scale, more local wars instead of block 1 vs block 2.

- Settlement recruitment. Instead of having one hundred players camp-recruting in one village you'd have the village owner recruiting troops. The number of troops who are recruitable are set to a specific number each day.

This would perhaps not fix all issues but help it greatly.

There's a lot of reasons why we see huge alliances, this is one of them.

Look at the entire western part of the map, the pattern is obvious. Allies like to stay close to each other. Random faction spawn would help. You'd end up with your faction spawning at a random location with random neighbours. A lot more small-scale, more local wars instead of block 1 vs block 2.

A set amount troops which the faction leader could recruit each day at the village would make the playing field equal. Mass recruitment and mass alliances are linked, you win because you have a massive numerical advantage.

Let's keep this thread rage-free.

[Keshian]

Like the idea, except everyone should be allowed to recruit troops - I know within my faction sometimes people like to go do their own thing and having only person control all the troops in that village/zone would hurt individual fun.

More fief development in general sis good - farms, roads, etc. and having everyone neighboring as ally shouldn't be good as you should ahve no way to possibly expand unless you attack one of your neighbors.

[Harafat]

I can only say i support this thread. +1 for the brilliant idea, this would make strat less repetitive over different rounds and far more interesting each seperate round.

Maybe the regions thing may be a bit over the top, however, the random faction location on the map would be absolutely awesome.

Plz refrain from raging and diplo-trash talk in here, debate this good idea pl0x

[Keshian]

Yeah, maybe have less of a grid and more just a very low upkeep for troops close to or in a fief you own (like 1/5 what it is now) and goes up to 1/2 what it is now for a neighboring fief (so can attack), but then goes up rapidly to 10x normal upkeep when you get 4-5 fiefs away (2x for fiefs 2 over).  This would severly crimp huge alliances and lond distance aid, but would heavily favor aggression toward neighbors.

[Phyrex]

Like the idea, except everyone should be allowed to recruit troops - I know within my faction sometimes people like to go do their own thing and having only person control all the troops in that village/zone would hurt individual fun.

More fief development in general sis good - farms, roads, etc. and having everyone neighboring as ally shouldn't be good as you should ahve no way to possibly expand unless you attack one of your neighbors.

That's both the main problem and an issue.

Massive alliances are formed to increase your "power" (Power = Troops + Gold). And with power you "win". Random faction spawns with regions(+More obstructions like mountains and bodies of water.) means you spawn at a random location with your faction, surrounded by other random factions. Thus, allies won't be able to support you, they'd have to march through hostile regions, navigate impassible terrain, there is no need to ally with someone who is located on the other side of the map. The only way to get out of from/expand where you are is to attack nearby factions.

A fixed amount of recruitable troops per day would keep everything equal, smaller factions could compete with anyone and more importantly, massive alliances lose their value because everyone would need every single troop they have. Their neighbour is just as strong as they are.

And the issue is - What would your standard faction grunt do?

Well, add more stuff to do, basically. Could be anything from border patrol and road patrol if bandits were to block trade. Put a cap on how many troops each general can have(Like Plazek or whoever said.), would make some kind of feudal system. Raid/Tax nearby enemy villages and enemy trade routs. Conjure up and instagate a peasant rebellion in an enemy territory. You could add secondary skills, such as trading,  spying, assassinations, religion, etc.

[Xant]

Great suggestions Phyrex.

Biggest problem of Strategus currently, in my opinion, is that having five people who can barely breathe on their own producing goods/troops is a HUGE advantage already. Make it twenty such people and a smaller faction can't really do much at all.

About the dev-approved starting locations etc:

For smaller clans, individuals and people who want it... give a "start as a bandit" option, or as a merchant or what have you. Maybe have some kind of bonuses for those individuals to make it interesting for both the bandits/merchants and the clans having to deal with them (but there'd have to be limits to stop abuse: bandits can't give villages or other players troops, can't enter certain cities and so on).

[Vibe]

Like the idea, except everyone should be allowed to recruit troops

Well, one of the main points is to not have people recruiting/farming gold. The point is in removing the player number advantage (of bigger clans) and giving that power to fiefs, making owning fiefs more valuable and also giving a better incentive to fight over fiefs with your neighbours.

[Tomas_of_Miles]

I agree with pretty much everything except giving factions a fief at the beginning. I think there has to be some kind of adversity to overcome before taking a fief. But +1 for everything else.

[Tomas]

Random starting fiefs would also solve the no village defenders problem. And if clans try to split up to gain more starting fiefs, they run the large risk of being split up and therefore unable to combine resources.

[Phyrex]

As for the Regions.

They're not really needed, allthough some kind of natural barrier would be preferable so you'd have to chose which way to expand.

I was originally thinking, just as in Total War, every region has a settlement and a resource type building.

Examples of a resource building could be:

- Giant Crab Farm which will produce fine Giant Crab products for trade and sale.

- Stables which will make the faction able to produce and breed Warhorses.

- Goldmine whihc will give the faction 1000 Strategus Gold each day.

Stuff like that could add more depth to strategy and jelousy from neighbours, valuable resources like that is always an instagator for war.

[Keshian]

Actually the main benefit is localizing conflicts, making carebear alliances with all your neighbors disadvantageous.  Rapidly increasing upkeep the farther you get froma  self-owned fief, fixes a lot of this, with decreased upkeep for troops anywhere in your fief's general radius before hitting reaching the next fief.  Random start locations too. 

The reason I don't like only 1 fief owner controlling all troop production is that it disenfranchises the everyday player even more.  Easy fix for what youa re saying - you only get troops 2 times a day when recruiting (say 5 at a time or something), but only if you logged into strategus in the alst 24 hours of the troop recruitment time.  This would remove the zombies ability to recruit (thoughwe still have to keep an eye out on these clans that like to multi-account).

[Xant]

Well, one of the main points is to not have people recruiting/farming gold. The point is in removing the player number advantage (of bigger clans) and giving that power to fiefs, making owning fiefs more valuable and also giving a better incentive to fight over fiefs with your neighbours.

I don't think removing player number advantage completely is the right thing to do. It just shouldn't be an auto-win to have 50 mindless drones farming stuff for you.

[Phyrex]

I don't think removing player number advantage completely is the right thing to do. It just shouldn't be an auto-win to have 50 mindless drones farming stuff for you.

Yep, that's one of the issues, really.

It should be advantegous to have a clan with members in it, but at the same time, as you said, not equal auto-win if you have 50 accounts camp-recruiting in villages. Same goes for massive alliances, which is pretty much the same thing.

Aside from the obvious free soldiers during battles, they're your clanmates after all, regular faction grunts need stuff to do and at the same time contribute to the faction as a whole. As I said earlier, we need activities for them.

Alternative skills? Examples...

Subterfuge - High skill in this will make your character invisible on the map. Now we have a perfect spy, obviously he can infiltrate armies and settlements and view what's inside them. He could sabotage main gates, gate would be open at the incoming siege. He could attempt to assassinate specific targets, which would in the end turn up as an 1 on 1 fight. This would all be based on some kind of formula to decide wether he is successful or not.

Trading - Trading in person with high skill would increase the profit.

Etc. I'm sure we can come up with more stuff.

[Vibe]

I don't think removing player number advantage completely is the right thing to do. It just shouldn't be an auto-win to have 50 mindless drones farming stuff for you.

The player number advantage will still show in more active stuff, like sending scouts in all directions, or more people moving troops... but player number advantage when it comes to grind is just wrong.

[Keshian]

Like I said all you have to do is have any activity someone is doing on strategus, that is currently easily done by autopilot, stop at any time its been over 24 hours since that person has logged into strategus.  This would slow things down and focus more on active players and less on large numbers of players (activities like crafting goods and recruiting troops).

We absolutely should not remove individual players' ability to craft or recruit troops as this removes individual power to participate on strategus as they choose (and no you cant fill it up with enough new fairly useless tasks), having troops and gold allows them to take actions independently.

Also, the whole new terrain liek grid/valleys for each village isn't needed and would just clutter the map and make it less appealing.  All you have to do is have upkeep increase dramatically based on distance from a clan owned village with significant deductions close to home and huge increases at middle and large distances.  Voila - big reasons for having wars with nearby neighbors onlya nd not fostering an alliance with all your neighbors.