An Idea to remove carebear mechanics from strategeus.

[Anti]

Admittedly, I've very little experience with strat and junk but from what I've seen, this current form of gameplay is boring as hell to experience, and even more boring to watch. The developers took a step in the right direction by introducing trading and the ability to attack such trading caravans, but in regards to geopolitics, shit stagnates pretty fast. There is little no reason for anyone to go to war other than shits and giggles.


That said, strategus needs to seriously start looking at things that occur in native single player and implement those features here. For example, every so often you'll get a notification that  Villager from X village stole a horse from another village located an enemy kingdom. Based on random events such as these, the faction leading AIs would determine who they should go to war with.

However seeing how the faction leaders in strat aren't fucktarded AIs (and its a bit unreasonable to ask people to Roleplay), developers will somehow artificially force leaders into fighting one another. This brings me to my next suggestion: Fief relations.

Aside from holding onto your fiefs (which is pretty damn easy to do in a massive alliance), fief owners have it pretty easy. I propose that if random event occurs in your fief, you start losing relation with said fief. In order to placate your fief you must either A) enact martial law- lowers fief production and taxes earned for a month real time, B) Raze the offending fief -Severely lowers production of targeted fief if successful, C) Bribe your fief with resources(more on this later). If players fail to choose any of these options within a fair amount of time, the townspeople rebel and they lose the fief and all gold, troops and equipment inside of it.

Which brings me to my next suggestion: Natural Resources. Strategeus needs something far more substantial than land to fight over. That said, each area should have different resources associated with it. For example, only lands in the khergits have spices...rhodock lands have large deposits of gold and silver etc etc... As I've said before, these resources would be used to placate pissed off fiefs and become another commodity for trade.

These features would force conflict and punish/discourage passive play, which seems to be the desire of everyone.

Anyways, questions?

[Xant]

So developers artificially force people to fight random people? That.... does not sound very interesting. At all. Not to mention it'd completely remove diplomacy and well... the whole reason for Strategus.

I don't see how any of this prevents carebear alliances from forming, except maybe the random "you have to fight faction X for no reason at all other than we say so. I hope you're very pumped up to be fighting them! For no reason!"

[RibaldRon]

I think instead of the devs inciting conflicts, neutral parties of bandits and as you said, the chance for fiefs to rebel, would be a better idea.

A system such as the tax inefficiency of the original campaign would do well, maybe even if it simply reflects the fief's chance to rebel.  I.E. more fiefs for fewer people = lower control, higher chance to rebel or be taken over.


I do like the idea of RANDOM events however, I think that players, and what a player can do, becomes predictable and easy to counter.  Random chances that occur to everyone, but favor those with larger control of the map (simply because.. they control most of the map..) would help.

[Anti]

So developers artificially force people to fight random people? That.... does not sound very interesting. At all. Not to mention it'd completely remove diplomacy and well... the whole reason for Strategus.

Thats the why there would be resources.  Factions would be able to trade for cotton or gold in order to placate the fief. However, Bandits or other factions would then have the opportunity to intercept such trading caravans and make their opponents weaker.

[Slantedfloors]

I just don't see how it is supposed to stop carebearing.

It's a nice idea to start resource wars, but a very large chunk of Strategus's player base has already proven that they enjoy running trade caravans for months to having battles. Changing the necessity of the resources carried by the caravan won't change the fact that some people don't like actual medieval battles intruding into their medieval battle game.

And that's ignoring what would happen if a UIF situation pops up wherein 3/4 of the map are allied and refuse to allow the remaining quarter access to any resources.

[Xant]

Thats the why there would be resources.  Factions would be able to trade for cotton or gold in order to placate the fief. However, Bandits or other factions would then have the opportunity to intercept such trading caravans and make their opponents weaker.

Don't you see how this would just encourage carebear alliances? Be allied to everyone on the way from you to the end destination, complete safety. And get enough combined men to keep the trade routes 100% safe. It's basically the current situation with trade routes except it'd encourage being allied to everyone on the map even more.

Edit: And Slanted brings up an excellent point: mega alliance could deny everyone else those resources, giving the "carebears" even bigger advantage.