Smaller Rosters

[Vovka]

And yet Quincy (and others) have shown no signs of wanting to attack Peacebreakers (or anybody else) and I'm guessing that part of the reason for this is that doing so is just too much effort for a reward that they can easily get from fighting on other people's rosters.

for proper attack u need atleast 2-3 people (for small clans its a half of active guys who for sure already fief owner)   who will lose 3 days in a way, three days in the fighting, and like 5-6 day for back way to home with shitloads of crates, during all dat time their village will be unguarded  too many worries for a couple of fights

[Tomas]

for proper attack u need at least 2-3 people (for small clans its a half of active guys who for sure already fief owner)   who will lose 3 days in a way, three days in the fighting, and like 5-6 day for back way to home with shitloads of crates, during all dat time their village will be unguarded  too many worries for a couple of fights

Yes, I agree completely with the high amount of effort that goes into having a war on Strat.  However this doesn't mean I think small factions should be encouraged to just sit around in their fiefs doing nothing. 

Smaller rosters may seem shit for smaller clans on the face of it because initially they will lose out on places in the majority of the battles that are going on in strat right now.  However by simply creating regular battles themselves (even just fun pre-arranged ones against a friendly clan) then smaller clans may actually start to grow and with growth comes the potential to do more.  In addition smaller active strat clans may even become more attractive to potential recruits than large Strat clans since it will be easier for these players to get into strat, easier for them to get into their own clans battles and they won't have to automatically buy in to all the UIF/Anti-UIF or FCC/Anto-FCC crap that every major Strat faction is inevitably forced into.

[Tomas]

Are you aware that Quincy began as a purely trade-based faction, and got all their fiefs through peaceful negotiations, and have absolutely no interest in making war? Nor have they ever had any intention of making any war regardless of how much land and how many faction members they have at any one time. It isn't due to game mechanics that Quincy don't attack, it's cos they've never wanted to. Perhaps they wanted to prove they could grow like this without fighting, i'm certainly impressed.

Quincy was probably a poor example but you can substitute OdE in for them pretty easily if that helps.  Or Conquistador, Balde, BROs, Companions, Stromgarde, etc

Also there may be an argument for reducing roster sizes if the player base decreases drastically (you did list some interesting reasons also), but in the meantime there are far bigger fish to fry- like the 1/3 rule needs to go/be revised, i think the community has been very clear about that for a long time and we've still seen no change to it.

I'd say that the playerbase has decreased drastically.  Not overall of course but per server yes.  Remember that in Strats 1 and 2 there was no EU/NA split and no nighttimes which meant that effectively Strat had a unified primetime of 18:00 GMT - 04:00 GMT with more EU players staying up late and more NA players attempting to get on early.  Now most players stick to their own server which has decreased the pool of players significantly for each server which is why I suggest this.

As a best case scenario max roster sizes should be dynamically linked to each servers playerbase so that it can fluctuate accordingly.  I have no idea how this could be accurately done though and so instead have suggested a manual change to a number that I think is more appropriate at this point in time.

[woody]

Really anti reducing numbers. Being able to get a slot in big battles is important because THEY ARE FUN. Why should this be restricted to a smaller and smaller group?

[Tomas]

Really anti reducing numbers. Being able to get a slot in big battles is important because THEY ARE FUN. Why should this be restricted to a smaller and smaller group?

Because so long as small clans have no need to create strat battles then they have no need of active strat players who all just migrate to the already over sized clans that do create strat battles (Coalition included).

Even the bigger clans have no need to do anything so long as 1 big clan is active.  The Coalition has been pretty much inactive in Strat for 2-3 months now with the exception of a few field battles.  However since GO are active there is no shortage of battles for our members that are active and so we can get away with not doing anything ourselves.  Reduce rosters and suddenly even our members will be struggling to always get into our allies battles which will mean we either have to go back to creating our own battles or we lose members.

I know this is counter intuitive to most people however if we want a more diverse Strat then we need more active Strat factions and the only way to get more active strat factions is to encourage all factions to create more battles which will only happen if factions can no longer piggyback of just 1 or 2 active factions by always having space on their rosters.

[KaMiKaZe_JoE]

Filling up rosters is never a problem if you've got a big battle at a reasonable hour. People come out of the woodwork and ask for slots. As has been said, people are quite often turned away from battles.

This on the NA side of things.

As for incentivizing battles: Fucking silly. How about, instead of making the whole battle process inconvenient, we make initiating battles rewarding outside of the battles themselves, on the Strat map? If you just want to get people to fight battles, then eliminate the Strategus map. Apparently, Strat's not fun enough to justify it's existence outside of the whole battle thing.

If you want battles, deal with the things that are really keeping battles from happening. I'm thinking of massive stacks of troops and gear in everybody's castles, and the almost paradoxically difficult process of recruiting enough troops as a small clan. I'm thinking, too, of the pre-WWI style, massive alliances that occasionally pop up and prompt diplomatic stasis. I'm thinking about the unpredictable geography, such that you cannot maneuver for a tactical advantage in the field based off of terrain--why fight a field battle at all, if it's just going to be a steady grind for both sides? Or, if there's a chance that the Terrain Gods will fuck you over.

[Tomas]

As for incentivizing battles: Fucking silly. How about, instead of making the whole battle process inconvenient, we make initiating battles rewarding outside of the battles themselves, on the Strat map? If you just want to get people to fight battles, then eliminate the Strategus map. Apparently, Strat's not fun enough to justify it's existence outside of the whole battle thing.

So you want in strat rewards for battles, like for instance owning more fiefs gains you more resources and then with those extra resources you can win more fiefs and gain more resources, etc.  We had this, it was Strat 3 and it was horrible with the only thing stopping the UIF steam rolling the entire map being ping. 

Also, since when was an incentive for having battles an automatic dis-incentive for the rest of Strat and why are smaller rosters  "inconvenient"?

As for massive stacks, yes they do hinder battles but it is not the stacks themselves that need addressing.  Changing the 1/3 rule has already been suggested and accepted as a way to negate their influence however we should also look to combat the reason they build in the first place and that reason is mostly fear.  Fear that your enemies have more troops than you do and that by attacking you will leave yourself open to a counter attack.  The fact that any attack on any faction on the map is likely to drag you into the full 2-block wars that are occurring makes it even worse.  Conquistador have over 60k tickets in their 3 fiefs but who can they attack for a fun war?  They have everything they need but if they attack Kapikulu/CotgS/Balde/OdE (all similar sized clans) then they will be considered to have sided with the Apostates. If they attack Peacebreakers/Barabe they will be considered to have sided with the UIF.  And so instead they sit and do nothing.

You also forget the main thing which is preventing battles (certainly on EU) and that is the lack of battle commanders.  There's only so many battle commanders and the burn out is pretty high meaning there's only so many full scale battles that can happen in a given time frame.  Speaking as the Leader of a clan that has actively tried to encourage more people to get involved in leading battles, I can tell you that one of the main reasons people don't step up and volunteer is that the thought of trying to command 50 players from many different clans (with varying languages as well in EU) is pretty daunting.  If on the other hand they were just leading mostly their own faction members, that they know well and are comfortable with, then I know they wouldn't be so reluctant.  Now imagine how daunting this is to a small clan that is going to get at most 10% of the roster as their own players.

[Heibai]

As for massive stacks, yes they do hinder battles but it is not the stacks themselves that need addressing.  Changing the 1/3 rule has already been suggested and accepted as a way to negate their influence however we should also look to combat the reason they build in the first place and that reason is mostly fear.  Fear that your enemies have more troops than you do and that by attacking you will leave yourself open to a counter attack.  The fact that any attack on any faction on the map is likely to drag you into the full 2-block wars that are occurring makes it even worse.  Conquistador have over 60k tickets in their 3 fiefs but who can they attack for a fun war?  They have everything they need but if they attack Kapikulu/CotgS/Balde/OdE (all similar sized clans) then they will be considered to have sided with the Apostates. If they attack Peacebreakers/Barabe they will be considered to have sided with the UIF.  And so instead they sit and do nothing.

Fun war? How about arranged wars/battles, without an intervention in the "big war"?

There, you can even arrange how big the armies should be and how many mercenaries are allowed for the roster.~ Like you wanted, 41 vs 41.

[woody]

Simply dont agree. All that would happen is there would be same battles as now with fewer participants. At any sort of primetime hour does any clan actually struggle to fill a roster if they put any effort in?

What I think strat needs is the real simple - 1800 man or so army can attack anything. Probably 5 mins of coding and would reinvigorate strat.

[Harpag]

Tomas, we are not idiots and we truly understand that your intention of making  roster smaller have potential to increase number of sides of conflict (+1), but here is very serious concern that sole and unintended effect will be no space for players with low lewel or less talented. Have you thought about that aspect of this case? That would be a total failure. No, thank you. Too much risk. In other words, fu and -1 

[Butan]

Smaller rosters for smaller fights : OK (50 slots limit begins at 700 tickets! thats too much, it doesnt scale appropriately for small clans without alliances)

Smaller rosters for big fights : NO

[Tomas]

Tomas, we are not idiots and we truly understand that your intention of making  roster smaller have potential to increase number of sides of conflict (+1), but here is very serious concern that sole and unintended effect will be no space for players with low lewel or less talented. Have you thought about that aspect of this case? That would be a total failure. No, thank you. Too much risk. In other words, fu and -1 

People will miss out no matter what the roster size is.  People miss out now.  Nobody cares though because they are almost exclusively just random pubbers or newbies who don't shout about it on the forums or have the knowledge/ability to do anything about it.

I want more people to miss out because if we can tip it far enough we will cause vocal, competent and established strat players to miss out who might actually go away and do something about it by creating their own battles instead of just being able to idly sit back and let other clan do it for them. 

[Lt_Anders]

I want more people to miss out because if we can tip it far enough we will cause vocal, competent and established strat players to miss out who might actually go away and do something about it by creating their own battles instead of just being able to idly sit back and let other clan do it for them.

Wait, you want smaller rosters, for the over stacking EU side of the map? Cause other clans will do wars if they can't get on rosters? Wait wait wait, that is NOT how crpg operates. If people, more and more and more are turned away from fights, you will get LESS fights and more inactivity.

[Tomas]

Wait, you want smaller rosters, for the over stacking EU side of the map? Cause other clans will do wars if they can't get on rosters? Wait wait wait, that is NOT how crpg operates. If people, more and more and more are turned away from fights, you will get LESS fights and more inactivity.

I think you underestimate cRPG players. 

Just look at how many clans or solo players there are with fiefs in Strat (38 in EU alone, plus another 20ish in NA).....  Strat is not in the slightest bit easy and yet lots of people have got themselves or their faction on the map with troops and gear/gold.  Nobody else can do this for you and so players that wanted it worked out how to do it for themselves. 

The final step though of creating, managing and leading battles, is something you don't need to do as you can simply ally with, or befriend, a bigger clan that will do all this for you, giving you and your players all the roster spaces they want.  Take this away and I think the vast majority of these solo players and clan leaders will want to at least try and fill the gap by creating their own battles, especially if they can have smaller battles that are easier to lead.

[Varadin]

i guess cRPG just need lot of new and active players , lets say few hundreds