Strategus Co-Op Development Proposal

[Tomas_of_Miles]

I did actually read the whole of this post. Breathtakingly detailed. I have not got any criticisms concerning the outline, too well thought out. However, I would like to say if I were chadz, this mod would be incredibly personal to me, and the amount of detail in your proposition would possibly be too much for a project that I'd spent this long on, if you get what I mean. Whether Strategus becomes this or not, there really needs to be a mod of this game with your idea at the helm.

[PhantomZero]

Okay since no one else wants to nitpick, I guess I will have to.

There isn't enough opportunity for trading. Villages should constantly be consuming resources, not just lacking access to one or another.

Troops should retire, Wood/Stone/Iron consumed for upkeep of buildings, Food consumed for the population, the only way to get and maintain a city should be with the co-operation of several villages. Having a surplus will increase population, deficits for too long decrease.

Players shouldn't have to sit in a village and turn in their goods every day ( this is the most boring part of Strategus) the village should produce the goods and the players should be the means by which they move around and provide production or other bonuses to villages they are in in exchange for money.

As your village improves and attracts more people they should demand additional trade goods that get consumed (furniture, clothes, tools, different varieties of food, etc.) running out of these goods causes the population to stagnate and possibly start to decline.

Other trade goods could provide bonuses to production, farm plows, saws, looms, and etc.

These bonus-providing trade goods could be created by players who want to invest in a town by building some sort of shop, and require them to sit there if they wanted to produce their good. For more money they could develop a better shop  to make Luxury Goods, which could then be carted around the map and earn gold based on the current distance = greater money system, and increase the prosperity of other towns with your Luxury and Exotic goods, villages wouldn't find much use and wouldn't be able to afford them.

The fief design stuff will very easily be exploitable to create unassailable positions. A set of pre-determined maps based upon size,  terrain, and special enhancements would be best.

[AllTimeFail]

Okay since no one else wants to nitpick, I guess I will have to.

There isn't enough opportunity for trading. Villages should constantly be consuming resources, not just lacking access to one or another.

Troops should retire, Wood/Stone/Iron consumed for upkeep of buildings, Food consumed for the population, the only way to get and maintain a city should be with the co-operation of several villages. Having a surplus will increase population, deficits for too long decrease.

Players shouldn't have to sit in a village and turn in their goods every day ( this is the most boring part of Strategus) the village should produce the goods and the players should be the means by which they move around and provide production or other bonuses to villages they are in in exchange for money.

As your village improves and attracts more people they should demand additional trade goods that get consumed (furniture, clothes, tools, different varieties of food, etc.) running out of these goods causes the population to stagnate and possibly start to decline.

Other trade goods could provide bonuses to production, farm plows, saws, looms, and etc.

These bonus-providing trade goods could be created by players who want to invest in a town by building some sort of shop, and require them to sit there if they wanted to produce their good. For more money they could develop a better shop  to make Luxury Goods, which could then be carted around the map and earn gold based on the current distance = greater money system, and increase the prosperity of other towns with your Luxury and Exotic goods, villages wouldn't find much use and wouldn't be able to afford them.

The fief design stuff will very easily be exploitable to create unassailable positions. A set of pre-determined maps based upon size,  terrain, and special enhancements would be best.

Well let me critique your post now...

LOOK AT THAT PUPPY!! ISNT IT SOOO CUTE. I LOVE THE LITTLE PUPPY. YES I DO. YES I DO. and its got little glasses too oh ho ho ho. Ok, good post.

[Xant]

That's not a puppy.

[AllTimeFail]

agree to disagree

[Mike_of_Kingswell]

Hopefully an admin will read this!

[Garem]

stuff

tl;dr

Just kidding! Very glad to hear some critiques and comments.

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There isn't enough opportunity for trading. Villages should constantly be consuming resources, not just lacking access to one or another.

Hm. Theoretically, they WILL constantly be consuming resources because there's always something being built. The fiefs are designed to take far longer than a single Strategus round. The idea is to get those cities, over a dozen players will be needed to send resources from fiefs and castles to build one.

Trading is being downplayed, of course. Moving resources, stockpiling clan supplies in well defended cities and castles is now a factor, however. I'm not opposed to the idea of trading. Free markets from cross-clan development should be enough though because, again, SO many players' resources are required to build the most upgraded fiefs that clans will definitely want to trade with non-Clanners.

Or try to steal it from them, but that will have obvious repercussions.

Troops should retire, Wood/Stone/Iron consumed for upkeep of buildings, Food consumed for the population, the only way to get and maintain a city should be with the co-operation of several villages. Having a surplus will increase population, deficits for too long decrease.

Definitely not opposed to the idea. Although because rounds are so limited in time, at least 2 months no more than 8 IMO, this is just an additional layer of micro-management complexity. I don't see it adding much more to the game, since resources would be better spent upgrading other clanner's/friend's stuff.

Players shouldn't have to sit in a village and turn in their goods every day ( this is the most boring part of Strategus) the village should produce the goods and the players should be the means by which they move around and provide production or other bonuses to villages they are in in exchange for money.

I don't quite understand you here, but I 100% agree with the first sentence's idea- Action over Inaction.

Regardless, there is virtually no benefit to sitting in a fief except that (1) "overflow" resources beyond a fief's capacity can go to the player and (2) less upkeep.

Retainership kind of addresses the last sentence. What other idea do you have about how to make that work better, rewarding Activity over Inactivity?

As your village improves and attracts more people they should demand additional trade goods that get consumed (furniture, clothes, tools, different varieties of food, etc.) running out of these goods causes the population to stagnate and possibly start to decline.

Other trade goods could provide bonuses to production, farm plows, saws, looms, and etc.

These bonus-providing trade goods could be created by players who want to invest in a town by building some sort of shop, and require them to sit there if they wanted to produce their good. For more money they could develop a better shop  to make Luxury Goods, which could then be carted around the map and earn gold based on the current distance = greater money system, and increase the prosperity of other towns with your Luxury and Exotic goods, villages wouldn't find much use and wouldn't be able to afford them.

Just as a purely personal opinion, this is too complex. I prefer a focus on war developments, not SimCity.

The fief design stuff will very easily be exploitable to create unassailable positions. A set of pre-determined maps based upon size,  terrain, and special enhancements would be best.

This is my biggest concern. Cooties can probably address this whole Fief Design thing better, as it was originally his/her idea! I just like the principle of it. Committees and requiring Peer Review seemed the only quick and fair option for doing it.

[Kafein]

My reaction when I saw this for the first time : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zHZj8Xp-Ik


Then

I only have suggestions about the geopolitical aspect of Strategus :

- Taking a fief by force should severely hurt this fief's prosperity and income, probably reducing the amount of resources the new owner gets by 10 at start.
- Armies should be cheap to recruit and expensive to upkeep.
- Army movement should be much slower than battles (I think it's nearly ok though)
- Armies should consume food and suffer attrition whenever they are not garrisoned and have run out of food. The attrition should be faster in enemy lands. Fiefs you just conquered should give very limited supplies.
- Rebels, with various causes such as running out of basic resources.
- Integrate a "core fief" system. Basically, a faction that controls a fief during enough time would get a legitimate claim on it, which would make it harder for invaders to keep the fief under control if they take it. This unstability would be represented through rebels and a reduced production.


These are the minimal key concepts I think are needed to prevent Strat 4.0 from turn into a powerblock game as fast as Strat 3.0 did. Currently, players only fight against each other. They should also fight against the game.

[PhantomZero]

Well the idea behind upkeep on the buildings/population is that it would require multiple villages to maintain a single town, which would have the benefits of being able to field more troops and build the best buildings, as well as being very defensible. Cutting off supplies to the town to "siege" it would be an effective tactic, but give the town more time to rally soldiers to break the siege.

Otherwise after 6 months I think every fief would be a town, consider that you say "over a dozen" to have a single town, when there are some clans with "over a hundred" players.

Regarding retainers, well most of it ties into the "Sim City" idea, which isn't really so much "Sim City" but a way to expand the economics of Strategus. But it seems like we have the same idea, your village produces resources, with bonuses given by your retainer.

However, what if you don't have a fief and you aren't a retainer? Your time playing cRPG is useless. By being someones retainer, all your strategus money automatically gets turned into crpg money, which means you can never make any money in Strategus without owning your own fief by playing cRPG, so how are you going to be able to afford to start your trading operation or found your own village?

You could own property within someone else's village/town/city and you would gameplay-wise be the lord, without all the permissions to kick people out/set taxes/etc. But in title you would be a minor noble I guess or other vassal. This would be limited of course by the number of slots in each village/town/city with the Lord being able to confiscate/revoke your abilities if you are too inactive and not kicking up enough resources/money.


Going back to the Sim City comment, it would give an economy to the game. Currently it is chadzinomics which is very simply Move Crate from point A to point B, make sure point A and point B are very far apart, oh and the prices to craft and sell at point A and point B change randomly. There is no actual demand for any of the goods, no value, chicken feathers are worth the same as baskets of kittens and the faction that is the largest length-wise will be the most prosperous. Trade agreements consist of meeting halfway between two fiefs, exchanging the exact same number of goods, and then walking back.

You could simplify it, but as it stands the only reason to acquire more resources is to build more buildings, but there isn't any reason to trade those goods because everyone needs to buy their own buildings. You produce everything for the same cost as everyone else (time spent playing cRPG) and there would be no reason to trade on a factional level, as a faction would be able to have a village to produce at least one of each good. Sure individual villages might be better at producing one good more than others, but that still doesn't promote faction level trading, or even trading between cities, as you would want to keep all the surpluses to yourself in order to make more cities.

Cities would ultimately just become better castles, which already are kind of useless.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

3.a. Attachment to cRPG; Character Locking

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They cannot level beyond 30, and automatically lock as cRPG characters level past this point. When a player retires his cRPG character, he gains a "locked" status on the Strategus, unless the character was already locked. You never have to worry about being unable to participate in Strategus merely because your character hasn't leveled up yet so long as you lock your character.

This system allows players to enjoy cRPG at their own pace, either by retiring or working up to level 34. Neither will provide a major benefit or hindrance to the player.

However, to use a particular character build in Strategus, you do have to play it through in cRPG to lock it.

Most importantly, characters (including alts) in cRPG are the primary method of resource production in Strategus by dictating the production rate.

Heirlooms may increase your ability to win cRPG games, and to hence to increase your production rate, but they have no other bearing in Strategus.

Not a huge fan of this idea. I really like being able to improve my clans crafting and fighting capacity with the heir loomed gear, it seems a bit big change to ditch the whole crafting system/mechanic...

My main problem with locking is, well the "locking" bit. How would one change ones build? Its not the biggest pain in my arse given that I roll an 18/18 shield/pole arm/xbow hybrid built for strat.

Why would you want to vanilla all the gear? Personally the only reason I have loomed gear is for the purpose of crafting, it gives me no in game benefit (I have huge ping to NA which is where I play). I think the current system needs to be tweaked, but not wholeheartedly thrown in the bin. I like the idea of changing the way weapons craftin, recruiting and trade good crafting is done. Separate trade goods and recruiting and make it c-rpg play boosted (as in http://forum.c-rpg.net/index.php/topic,28451.0.html). My other issue with it is that it knocks out an advantage a small clan like mine has. We have a handful of players that have developed fantastic crafting in a handful of items, like siege ladders and Arbs, it gives us an edge, we can given a bit of time kit ourselves out for half the price of most other clans given our crafting skill is sitting around the 90s for all our major kit (although mine is complete crap).

*still working on this, just posting in case I can't finish it today*

3.c.2. Map Options

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Characters can move around the map, enter fiefs in their Grid, set movement waypoints, and start a Camp in Grids without an existing Fief.

From the Strategus Map, players can also check a full income/expense report with every change being accounted for.

They can also make changes to their fief from afar, if their character is in the field.

I think you should only be able to do this if you, a member of your faction or a retainer are in the fief, or perhaps some kind of "message post" to recieve your orders. Its basically just a spanner in the works. Its probably totally pointless :/ thinking about it, it is. I don't know why I want it.

3.d. Losing Battles

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When a character loses a battle, he loses all of his troops, Silver, and equipment. The character is put into limbo for 12 hours when it is sent to the character's fief.

If the character does not have a fief, it is sent to a clan headquarters after 12 hours.

If the character has no fief and no clan headquarters, it is sent to Zendar after 12 hours.

You should be able to select a clan headquarters of an ally and have them accept it, as you would a person entering a faction. Like a landless baron fighting for a landless king.

4.a. Leadership and Members

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All factions have four ranks. The ranks' names start as follows can be changed to be more appropriate; the powers are set.

King - There is only one. The King can give and strip ranks; he can also change the rank names. The King's fief is the "Faction Headquarters". If the King changes fiefs, this becomes the new HQ. The King can accept faction members, expel members, and set battle rosters.

Lord - These are the faction administrators. They can set battle rosters and accept members.

Vassal - These are standard faction members. They have no particular powers, but can hold fiefs.

Retainers - These are not necessarily members of the faction, but they do support the faction by increasing resource output. They cannot hold fiefs; when they do, they lose Retainer status. Retainers may still be used to carry troops, equipment, scout, or any other such activities.

1 King blows, I won't RP to anarcho syndicalist commune, and I want there to be a chance of "smoothrich" style clan boning to take place.

  eureka!

Tithe to the king. The king should be able to set a tithe and automatically take a % of the silver earned by a faction member.

The king can select weather the clan is Despotic or Democratic. If its democratic the members have to vote on Tithe changes and various other things.

4.b. Map Actions

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If a player is a member of a faction, he carries that banner above his head while traveling and it flies proudly over his fief on the Strategus map.

Kings and Lords can see the locations of all fiefs owned by members of their Faction, including Bandit Camps and those hidden by the Fog of War.

Perhaps the heraldic symbol/banner of the clan could fill the region area on the ground with a nice opacity so its not glary and ugly... would need a big old update for the strat website.

5. Battle System

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The Strategus battle system was an impressive innovation on Warband Multiplayer. Very little has been changed.

Fights occur 24 hours after the attacker initiated.

I'm still a big believer of having fights only happen during peak server times. At least then you know exactly what is going to happen when you attack a fief and you aren't going to get boned by some crazy time setting the fief owner has.

5. Battle System
5.b.1. Attacking the Wall

A

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ggressors can attack the walls whenever they choose.
Of course, they'll need a Siege Camp to build siege equipment to give to the army if they want to make a serious attempt at taking the fief.

5.b.2. Waiting it Out

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Doing nothing is always an option! If the attacking army can pay the Silver, they can simply wait. If the defender thinks it can outlast the attacking army(-ies), it too can wait for the enemy troops to desert. It becomes a battle of time and attrition.

5.b.3. Sallying Forth

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Defenders don't have to do nothing while they wait. A besieged fief may always Sally Forth, attacking the enemy outside the gates of the Palisade, Castle, or City defenses, thus liberating themselves to continue resource production normally.

I like all these, a while back i chucked the idea out there that armies could build siege shields and other goodies by sitting in a forest and the out put was based on the amount of troops you had to knock them together.

What about also having a "food reverser" for the sieging army, just to complicate it a little bit. But the food counter doesn't kick in for say 33% of the defending fiefs food reserve. And after that you have to make regular hauls of food for the siege camp.

6. Fief Design[/b]

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One is not necessarily locked in to using existing battle maps. Players are welcome to create their own fief's battle map to suit personal tastes!
This does come at some cost, and changes must be reasonable. Guidelines will enforce designs to certain objects so that every castle is not "maximized" and made into ideal conditions.

The spirit of Fief Design is to allow players unique control over their fief's development and appearance, not to give a player the ability to create overly powerful or unbeatable defensive structures. Any designs to this effect will be immediately discarded. A voting committee will be given control of the map to explore and test before voting on approval. Denied Fief Design applications will be given the best feedback possible.

Absurd or imbalanced proposals will be dismissed out of hand immediately.

Once created, your Designed Fief will be put into circulation for the random-map selection process for the geographies groups it fits within.

Sounds complicated... Why not use the system from that game mode that I can't remember the name of... and give them a randomly generate plot of land and let them build on it using those tools. Have a set of basic structures and so on, and enough limits on deployment of things and stuff to stop it getting out of hand. I mean who is going to approve 253+ maps? Also perhaps it would be wise to have pre-built castles, let people do what they will with the towns and maybe the cities but keep the castles controlled.

Still a work in progress.

[PhantomZero]

In regards to making weapons, I always had an idea where you could choose to make quality, or quantity. You could have Masterwork items very slowly, but regular or worse weapons quickly.

In this manner small clans with smaller armies can have better equipment, while large clans with large armies can equip them.

[Garem]

Thanks for the continued discussion. Good stuff.

Much of this reply is "Oops, I described it wrong, you're right." My bad, edits to clarify the OP will go in later. Feel free to suggest what it should be replaced with specifically!

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@Frank

Sure. I disagree, of course. I hate the idea that when you retire you can't be as effective in Strategus. The guy who gave me the "level lock" idea actually advocated just a pure "Everyone starts and stays at 30, you can change 1/week like STF's". I tried to preserve the development aspect without forcing you to refrain from Strategus action.

Also, the language wasn't clear at all for the "Map Options" post. All of those things are character specific. A player can only see his information, change his fief, etc. Nothing about other players. My bad.

Clan HQ is always the King's fief. Want to change it? Change King. Easy as that- this is virtually the only reason to be King anyways, there's no other benefit that Lords can't do. Again, my bad on being unclear about this- it is as you describe, which is the goal. Also, having one HQ makes sense as players then are benefited from focusing on teamwork-building up fiefs.

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@PhantonZero

My numbers suck. Hard. Take them with a grain of salt, as I tend to throw them out at random. My bad! I like the way "dozen" sounds. I should have said like, "over four score".

Cities, in my mind, should take at minimum a dedicated and aggressively organized team of 50 crafters, raiders, and traders. Cities should NOT be common. Building them up and capturing them should take an enormous amount of time and drastically change the tides of war.

"What if you aren't a retainer, don't have a fief?"

It takes 24 hours to make a Camp- this is absolutely free. After your first day or two in Strategus, you should be able to move around the map, find a spot, plant a camp and start pumping out gold and troops. If you want to produce, a day or two is all it takes.

"... then your time is useless..."

In Strategus- yep! And you don't get the bonus gold, either. This heavily incentivizes players to get involved in Strat, find people willing to pay well for their services. Nobody is forced to join Strat, but they are encouraged and rewarded.

Also, if a Retainer wants a reward in Silver, Troops, hell even Heirlooms then that's absolutely possible with agreements outside the suggested mechanics. That gold can be converted from the Master's Silver is just facilitating the already thriving Cash-4-Gold market on the forums.


"Nobody needs to trade those goods, just need them for their own buildings..."

Well, sort of. If they really want to try and build a city with all the trimmings, yes, you're going to need some serious resources. Problem is, that's really, really hard. I wish I could throw numbers on it, but they'd just be arbitrary like every other number I've used so far.

Would simply having more resources be better? I envisioned a system akin to Settlers of Catan when I started writing, but cut out several of the resources later on to avoid complexity for complexity's sake. Again, totally just a personal preference thing, but I don't like that. Simple is, usually, better.

Then again, the market of the game gets more interesting with complexity. Your point isn't lost on me.

Lastly, on this point, inter-factional trade would DEFINITELY happen. If you need 1000 wood and stone, but have 1500 wood and 200 stone, that faction would be stupid if they didn't get rid of that extra 500 wood to speed up their pace towards the stone quota, EVEN IF they actually needed that 500 for the next level of the project. Stockpiling resources, even with this simple 3-resource and silver system, keeps resource balancing very important. Again, I look towards the uniqueness of random number Settlers of Catan games.

Is there a happy medium between trading too few resources like my system and trading Chairs for affluence-structures in yours? Again, open to the idea, just needs more specific details.

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@ Everyone

I really, 100% hate the chadztext for heirloom benefits in Strategus. It makes a mess of inventories, they provide really big benefits for people who grind cRPG at stupid high rates, and are completely arbitrary for when you get it. I thought it was cool in theory, it just wasn't in practice. I used to feel otherwise, so I understand if you disagree.

No heirlooms in Strategus, imo. These are big battles between armies with mass produced weapons; not the King's favorite sword made 500 times. The only, ONLY exception might be for like, if the Commander of the battle shows up for his own fight he gets one round with one or two MW equips of his choice. Still... meh. Not crazy about that, either, as it could upset the balance.

Anywho, I'll edit-for-clarifying the common ground stuff tomorrow!

[PhantomZero]

Happy medium might be that "Merchants" could come to your town and setup shop with their retainers, and be able to make unique resources specifically for trading to other towns that would work as it does now, based on distance. It would also make towns more valuable.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

@ Everyone

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I really, 100% hate the chadztext for heirloom benefits in Strategus. It makes a mess of inventories, they provide really big benefits for people who grind cRPG at stupid high rates, and are completely arbitrary for when you get it. I thought it was cool in theory, it just wasn't in practice. I used to feel otherwise, so I understand if you disagree.

No heirlooms in Strategus, imo. These are big battles between armies with mass produced weapons; not the King's favorite sword made 500 times. The only, ONLY exception might be for like, if the Commander of the battle shows up for his own fight he gets one round with one or two MW equips of his choice. Still... meh. Not crazy about that, either, as it could upset the balance.

Anywho, I'll edit-for-clarifying the common ground stuff tomorrow!

I also hate the current crafting system, but I do like the concept. I've thrown up a good half dozen threads about it, hell the thread in my sig is a protest against the current shit pile. But I still think it should stay in some form. My preference is selecting gear and then boosting it with a trickle of xp, but it also degrades at the same rate it gains. So that people will slowly loose what they currently have (unless its the gear they won't to craft) at the same rate they gain. *sorry a bit sleepy and pooped*

[Havoco]

I really like the idea of sallying out because it would also counter battles at bad times.

@ the rest of OP. I like the ideas on here, but I imagine it would take a long time before they could implement all of this.