[Community discussion] What can be improved on Strategus

[Tumble]

I personally think just hosting "strat battles" server side with set gear for both sides good tickets and in primetime would be the best solution.

So no strat map, drama, wasting time with strat in it's current form. 
Only the good things that most players are here for will remain.
Something like 500-1000 ticket battles throughout the week or only weekends.
Preset balanced gear for both sides, maybe even drop polls for themed gear.
Players still receive benefits that they want, i.e. EXP and FUN.

what the fuck kinda fun is that strat would be dead within 3 days. Lol there would be absolutely no reason to play. In return battle would die too because alot of people get on specifically before important strat battles to play. Who would wanna play when strat battles are for no reason, no real gain. Wars are only so intense because sides go at eachother. Sides wouldnt give a shit about each other so they most likely would not show. That idea of yours just gave little children in africa butt cancer.

[Havelle]

IMO

Bullshit battles are one of the bigger causes of strat decay.

Easier troop grinding and easier economy works towards the detriment of strat. If grinding is easy, more battles are had, mercs will get burnt out on shitty little battles more quickly.

A big problem is how villages have little impact, thus are regularly not defended, but still need attackers to show up. If balanced a certain way, lower troop grinding rates could make village population a viable option and incentivize people to defend their villages.

Basically, I believe that strat grinding should be tougher, and strat battles should be an event brought upon by hard work and coordination, rather than a strat battle being a routine occurrence. Contrary to something I've always thought.

Just spitballing.

[Tumble]

IMO

Bullshit battles are one of the bigger causes of strat decay.

Easier troop grinding and easier economy works towards the detriment of strat. If grinding is easy, more battles are had, mercs will get burnt out on shitty little battles more quickly.

A big problem is how villages have little impact, thus are regularly not defended, but still need attackers to show up. If balanced a certain way, lower troop grinding rates could make village population a viable option and incentivize people to defend their villages.

Basically, I believe that strat grinding should be tougher, and strat battles should be an event brought upon by hard work and coordination, rather than a strat battle being a routine occurrence. Contrary to something I've always thought.

Just spitballing.

I like this point. Or honest perhaps just raise village population. Villages are 200. Castles jump to 1000 and then cities are 2000. Why cant 500 people live in a village?

[Malaclypse]

I thought villages default was once 500, but maybe I'm nuts.

[Av3ng3r]

One other thing concerning raiding, not sure if it has been brought up (probably has).

Personally, I think the raiding concept at the moment is kind of broken, although I can understand that it encourages people to have garrisons.
However, if you have a 1k garrison and it gets raided by 200 people, surely at least, let's say 15% of the garrison should be able to fight in the battle, if the defender choses to deploy them (otherwise it could be abused to grind down troops).

The amount of garrison troops able to defend against the raid could grow with the amount of people attacking. (It's harder to sneak up on a village/castle the more troops you have.)
So there is an element of risk involved for the person who raids, however the battles would be roughly balanced and if he wins he gets some gear and one could maybe remove an additional 1-2% of the garrison (attrition due to the raid).

Otherwise, I think one could remove raiding alltogether.

[Butan]

Raiding will be changed into something useful. Or removed if its a hopeless case.

Villages are not really undefended in this Strategus. Its mostly because of the bad synergy crime/prosperity that they are not defendable, or at least it is disencouraged.
Crime will be overhauled and other things that will change villages's importance.
At the same time villages will always be less defended than castles and cities. It is only natural...

About troop grinding and economy, indeed if all the faction in the world can produce shiny armies by the dozen it is detrimental to the flow of battles, especially if we have only a small community and only 2 strategus servers. People get burn out quick as you said.
Because of that, if strat tickets are going to be given for participating in strat battles, its going to be only a few (like what you gain by playing cRPG) and also I intend to put lots of brakes on the economy so it cannot become completely inflated end-game.

I personally think just hosting "strat battles" server side with set gear for both sides good tickets and in primetime would be the best solution.

So no strat map, drama, wasting time with strat in it's current form. 
Only the good things that most players are here for will remain.
Something like 500-1000 ticket battles throughout the week or only weekends.
Preset balanced gear for both sides, maybe even drop polls for themed gear.
Players still receive benefits that they want, i.e. EXP and FUN.

As others stated this is a mercenary point of view. Strategus needs both those that play the wargame and those that play the battles to be alive. So it cannot be only the "strategy" part or the "battle" part alone, we need both! Always!

[Drehar]

I would like to see NPC soldiers in battle. Its silly to have 2 armies with 500 troops and its a 2v2 battle. Every Soldier that joins your army gets a role randomly chosen. (Archer,1h,2h,Cav) You can gear your army according to the NPC skills. Also the option to trade NPCs with other players. Real players can still join and fight as their own characters.

[Butan]

Before making it a single-player bot fest we are going to make lots of changes to make battles balanced and interesting to play.


Couple ideas I already explained in the past, but I can repeat some and add new ones:

- under 100 men (from 0 to 99 men), you cannot attack nor defend yourself (auto-lose and teleport if attacked)
=> no more stupid battles, spies and small as shit caravans that are stupidly strong because of the poor attractivity to fight battles against them will be no more

- being flagged by the game as "unarmed", you cannot attack nor defend yourself (auto-lose and teleport if attacked)
=> no more "naked" runs, all battles should be done with both parties being fit for battles, everyone need to gear themselves up before making any moves

- the minimum 100 vs 100 battles will have max roster decreased to ~10
=> a faction can easily fight those most unepic fights by just relying on their own members and personal contacts, without having to suck people's dick to fight a battle that is debatedly shit

- for "average" to "huge" battle size, mercing system will be revised to adress roster imbalances as best as possible
=> this will be the big do or die imo


The smallest battles will be 100v100 lightly armed with a minimum roster allowed, making them somewhat longer too to increase the interest in fighting in them.
Under that there will be nothing anymore. Who didnt hate having to attack naked caravans or spies and losing against them because stupid time + noone wants to fight them? Even when you won against them the taste was like butchering a baby and losing one's time.
Big ass battles will still be there for the pleasure of most of the audience, max roster size will be scaled progressively from 100v100 to the 2000v2000 one can have.

[Drehar]

Large battles force mega alliances in order to have enough people to field an army. If you add in some form of AI as filler I think it would make fights a lot more entertaining. I Rarely see battles last until every troop is dead.
M&B has 90% of the code for AI battles. The only thing C-rpg needs to develop is a way for those NPC soldiers to Draw from gear supplies as they respawn.

I think more people would be active in Strat if they could do something without needing a massive faction to get anything done.
I've attempted strat a few times since TKoV broke up and it hasn't been fun. I trade build up an army give them gear and then get attacked during odd hours and lose every thing to a 3v2 battle. that lasts a total of 10 spawns on each side. And <10 mins of battle time. I can't speak for every one else but I'm sure this happens to many others. There is no reason for me to participate in Strat unless I join a giant faction. There is no room for Solo bandits or merchants. You should consider those types of game play styles to be viable and worth supporting.

I think putting artificial restrictions on battles is silly. Less then 100 solders is auto loss? Then what is the point of having a number of soldiers between 1 and 99? I don't know the numbers but isn't that a lot of Strat ticks to accumulate more then 99 troops from 1? I could have 1k troops and full plate vs a light armored group of 150 and lose a battle because I didn't have any one sign up to fight.

TLDR: I would strat more if I could play without a supporting faction. Don't make Battles auto loss.

[Butan]

I think more people would be active in Strat if they could do something without needing a massive faction to get anything done.
I've attempted strat a few times since TKoV broke up and it hasn't been fun. I trade build up an army give them gear and then get attacked during odd hours and lose every thing to a 3v2 battle. that lasts a total of 10 spawns on each side. And <10 mins of battle time. I can't speak for every one else but I'm sure this happens to many others. There is no reason for me to participate in Strat unless I join a giant faction. There is no room for Solo bandits or merchants. You should consider those types of game play styles to be viable and worth supporting.

I definitely want that.
Lone wolfing should become more viable, atm I just have few ideas in term of gameplay. I'm looking for some, you people can gibe ideas too 
Easier strat ticket generation, and lots of incentive for mercs to join even the smallest battles is going to help a bit.
One guy could YOLO some or at least not be easily ruined in stupid unbalanced battles.

I think putting artificial restrictions on battles is silly. Less then 100 solders is auto loss? Then what is the point of having a number of soldiers between 1 and 99? I don't know the numbers but isn't that a lot of Strat ticks to accumulate more then 99 troops from 1? I could have 1k troops and full plate vs a light armored group of 150 and lose a battle because I didn't have any one sign up to fight.

TLDR: I would strat more if I could play without a supporting faction. Don't make Battles auto loss.

You spawn with 100 troops and you cant transfer below 100 troops, so if you have less than 100 troops = you lost a battle at some point. You then need to rest and generate tickets before coming again or face annihilation. This is pretty fair.
If you want to play Strategus with ~50 shiny troops you're going to make a lot of people unhappy because of the bad synergy of unnatractive small as hell battles... In that sense its better to sacrifice 0-99 parties for the sake of everyone else. There is absolutely no way to make 0-99 battles attractive with the size of our community. The "available room" for battles is finite in term of player activity, these battles are mostly a waste of room.


Since you're not renown capped like in the single-player, you can easily field more than 100 troops so I dont see the problem. It will just force you to field armies that people want to play in.
To avoid getting spam wiped in the 0-99 range I can make people randomly teleport in fiefs for example.
Also if someone is on 0 strat tickets and cant recruit from 1 to 100, I can either give "free" troop regeneration up to 100 (which would be a bit cheaty but small impact) or people will just need to farm ticks a bit.


Anyway dont worry too much I have been playing this game long enough to feel most of the pain people have felt, I want to make it less painful but its not going to be easy and some adaptation will need to occur.

[Drehar]

I can drink to the push for large battles.

My Ideal C-RPG experience would be never to step foot in "Battle Mode". If I could log on to play and see a Strat Battle I can hop into the battle as a spectator, Request to take the place of a Bot or empty slot and  battle it out would be great. Instead I find most of my time in NA 1 because there:
A) there are not any battles going on.
B) as you mentioned a battle going on isn't worth fighting
       This can be for many reasons (20v2) battles, Pitchfork battles, 100v100 naked battles, AFK 10v0 Battles, fief transfer (Why this even takes a time slot is beyond me)
C) what ever battles have already started you didn't sign up for
D) A battle during a time which I might not be able to make it to because of other plans that could pop up
E) Strat Battle is full

If I was going to try to #MakeStratGreatAgain
1.I would add Bots with random builds/Levels (within reason)
2. Allow for a commander to auto accept recruits
3. Allow for players to join a strat battle on the fly that they did not sign up for
4. the majority of peoples EXP gains should be from strat battles not "Battle Mode"
5. Increase the Bar for your average battle via making mid/low cheaper
6. Close down Siege servers and open them as Strat servers (If people have soldiers they are going to be more likely to do something in strat)

[Butan]

Instead I find most of my time in NA 1 because there:
A) there are not any battles going on.
B) as you mentioned a battle going on isn't worth fighting
       This can be for many reasons (20v2) battles, Pitchfork battles, 100v100 naked battles, AFK 10v0 Battles, fief transfer (Why this even takes a time slot is beyond me)
C) what ever battles have already started you didn't sign up for
D) A battle during a time which I might not be able to make it to because of other plans that could pop up
E) Strat Battle is full

Bold part are going to be mostly solved.
For the rest its just reality of timing with life and game 

[KaMiKaZe_JoE]

Trading sucks get rid of it or rework it or something. It's a chore.

Update: I'd say make villages and cities produce gold for their owners. Just make it every X hours. Trading can act as another source of income for people who are into that crap. Think of people playing as merchants vs commanders of armies vs bandits.

Oh and let players travel by setting way points. This way less micromanagement.

Make armies bigger on the map. 1300 soldiers would easily be able to block a bigger area on the map.

[Malaclypse]

Trading can act as another source of income for people who are into that crap.

Similarly I'd like it if we had multiple ways to get gear- the old way, crafting style (obviously with refined "all thine hard work" messages that trigger up to 36 instead of 31) and then the current way of upgrading fiefs for discounts.

[Butan]

Well there is people that enjoy trading, whether it is by way of pillaging or making commercial agreements and making things work. Its a chore but I'm one of the people that enjoy it and pretty sure lots do.
But yeah if you are in a faction that most of the active people hate trading, it is as shitty as forcing people to fight uninteresting battles.


For that reason (and also to diversify the game) I'm gonna introduce new ways to make money:

- reselling of gear will become viable (but its going to need the removal of discounts for obv exploit issues (or if you know how I could avoid that, always interested to hear ideas))
- possibly gonna implement some way to make prisoners and make them have a certain value (ransom brokering) maybe even introduce other items that would have 0 combat value but lots of commercial ones (mostly things that would be cool lore-wise)
- most certainly going to add fixed revenues to fiefs, independant of trade somewhat (will be very small to keep people motivated to trade and make battles)
- possibly overhaul raiding so that it gives money without having to fight a garrison at all

I would add a fifth - and put "crafting" here but I completely forgot how crafting worked in the first rounds of Strategus? Would it be viable again or it would need overhauling too? Afai remember it was a bit shit but maybe my memory is wrong.