Any Room for new factions?

[engurrand]

Is there any room for new factions or is the number of "good players" too static and already in factions...? ... and the rate of new players who become good enough to not suck = too low.

[_Tak_]

Is there any room for new factions or is the number of "good players" too static and already in factions...? ... and the rate of new players who become good enough to not suck = too low.

you need to joni a faction as quick as you can or people can attack you for no reason. Faction like the one i joined is small

[engurrand]

why should i even leave a town until i have enough wealth / troops / items to do something....

[RandomDude]

I think the question should be "who's side are you gonna be on if you're thinking about owning fiefs?"

[Garem]

why should i even leave a town until i have enough wealth / troops / items to do something....

You shouldn't, unless you want to hop out and raid a caravan or something. That's about your only option.

Call me crazy, but this is a systemic flaw in Strategus design. =/

[CrazyCracka420]

Just a tip, villages are where you have the best percentage for crafting success (if only 5-10 people there, you'll have a good chance for crafting an item every hour). 

Castles have the highest percentage for recruiting troops.

Towns are generally bad for crafting and troop recruitment, but generally where you want to sell crafted goods (the farther you travel from where the goods were crafted, the more money you make).

[KaMiKaZe_JoE]

I think the real question here is: "why havn't I joined Cavalieres yet? Why am I not groveling at the feet of the Great Gay Huey to be a part of the best clan ever?"

[Tristan]

Strat in it's current design is hardly a single player game.

And no, at the current map size, there is not room for any clans consisting of entirely new players.
(Unless they come in significant force. We talk 20+ players who know the game).

[Tears of Destiny]

I suggest new clans practice first on the Battle servers, any of the public servers even Siege, and get very used to the game first.

[Tomas]

And no, at the current map size, there is not room for any clans consisting of entirely new players.
(Unless they come in significant force. We talk 20+ players who know the game).

The Map doesn't need to be any bigger, they just need to make castles and Town's more important to take than villages.  It takes 5 times the resources to take a Castle than a village so that would more than slow the rate at which the map is populated, giving more room for new clans to get a foothold in the game.

The other problem is that groups of clans can plan their claims before the game has even started and so land is owned without ever having to be taken.

Solve both these issues and you won't need a bigger map or a new map.

I would suggest reverting to the SP Warband System of village ownership depending on the ownership of the local Castle/Town.  But allow villages to be held by force. So if you capture a village and maintain a garrison greater than the village population, then the village will be yours.  If the villagers outnumber your troops for 24 hours at any point then the village will rebel.

Next they need to add random starting locations.   Based on the size of your clan at the end of this Strat, you get a number of castles at the beginning of next Strat. 20 players = 1 Castle, 50 players = 2 castles, 90 players = 3 castles, 140 players = 4 castles.  By my count that is 50ish castles being handed out.  So there are plenty to spare.  If a clan decides to split to gain more castles, that is fine but the castles will NOT be adjacent.

This system
- forces a reset of diplomacy at the beginning of every Strat,
- creates more room on the Strat Map,
- adds a large number of unclaimed villages that are connected to their local town
- increases the cost of holding extra villages without taking the associated castle/town which slows down expansion.

[Tristan]

We still need a larger map.

Currently all clans gang together in order to be able to project some sort of force.

If you ain't got some 50+ members you're completely reliant on you alliances.

[Tomas]

We still need a larger map.

Currently all clans gang together in order to be able to project some sort of force.

If you ain't got some 50+ members you're completely reliant on you alliances.

Even if you had 100 members you are still reliant on your alliances.  The Desert Alliance (+Occitan/Hospitallers) is approx 320 people,  the Green Alliance is approx 310 members and the "Group of friends formerly known as the UIF" is approx 560 members.  Strat right now is purely a numbers game - if your enemies have significanly more people backing them, then they will win.  This will not change with a bigger map.  All a bigger map means is more room for the large alliances to occupy and more dev time spent on new fief maps and a new Strat map when they won't really change anything.

If the Devs really want to expand Strat, then they should just create a new world to run along side the current one.  Same map, same fiefs, but completely isolated from each other and your char can only be active in one world at a time.  At least then if a mega-alliance wants to occupy both worlds then they have to split their membership and therefore weaken their power bases.

[Knute]

It takes 5 times the resources to take a Castle than a village so that would more than slow the rate at which the map is populated, giving more room for new clans to get a foothold in the game.

About how much does it cost now to take a castle or a village?  As far as total amount of gold spent on equipment and troop upkeep.

I would suggest reverting to the SP Warband System of village ownership depending on the ownership of the local Castle/Town.  But allow villages to be held by force. So if you capture a village and maintain a garrison greater than the village population, then the village will be yours.  If the villagers outnumber your troops for 24 hours at any point then the village will rebel.

So if they captured a castle/town all the connected villages would be theirs and they wouldn't have to maintain forces in the villages anymore?

I've been a fan of this suggestion about having properties within fiefs for small clans.  That way big clans could fight over who owns the map and smaller clans could stay in their fiefs and fight/work for them kind of like vassals.  If your clan isn't active enough or big enough to compete at the top level, if you're able to adjust your expectations you could still have a place in the game.  So instead of increasing the size of the map, this would give it layers.  Plus with more people working together there might be more gold for better equipment, bigger battles and it would create the structure for a feudal system to develop. 

It just seems like towns should be hubs with a lot of trade activity between players, where the faction that owns one would want lots of people to be there instead of turning them into ghost towns that are locked down with high fees.

[Tomas]

So if they captured a castle/town all the connected villages would be theirs and they wouldn't have to maintain forces in the villages anymore?

Yes - that's what i meant   You can either take a castle and gain rightful ownership of a village, or you can take the village directly and hold it by force.

Renting a fief out to a vassall would be as easy as just letting them take it and then they maintain a defensive army there.  This would be beneficial to the overlords as they get an extra 500 tickets defending the village.