[Community discussion] What can be improved on Strategus

[Keshian]

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.

The old crafting was really really tedious.  You basically had people that used the same weapons all the time get crafting bonuses in strat with those weapons.  SO they would have to sit and craft only that gear and never move (this was instead of city looming and discounts).  SO you had a few people that could do nothing but craft and the rest usually just sitting around waiting for them making 10 gold per hour or doing trading moving 2 meters a minute.  3rd strat we all quit because these two things made it incredibly tedious.

Selling back items should get 40% not 20% return, max discount should be 50% so you would never have be able to glitch abuse it.

Could have a new form of "crafting" where people can sit inside fiefs and make money in addition to building troops (for those least active members that just want to fight in strat battles and help primarily with recruiting troops now).


Though I could see something interesting with old crafting system if your specialty allowed you to produce a new level of +4 items (legendary) in very limited quantities for some interesting addition to battles.

[Dynamics_BRD]

I like Joes idea of being able to set way points for your dot to move on the map.

[Butan]

I like Joes idea of being able to set way points for your dot to move on the map.

Last time I asked Chy about it it was only a matter of putting weight on the bandwith, we can easily set something up with 3-5 waypoints max and maybe even a auto-pathfinder if there is a terrain mapmode in the database (probably there is with the "zoom" option).

Selling back items should get 40% not 20% return, max discount should be 50% so you would never have be able to glitch abuse it.

Could have a new form of "crafting" where people can sit inside fiefs and make money in addition to building troops (for those least active members that just want to fight in strat battles and help primarily with recruiting troops now).

IMO it would be way cooler if we could just resell items at 100% of their values though, imagine the encouragement of destroying enemies armies and capturing their flags? All the remaining stuff that is not compatible with what you want could be exchanged for lots of things you do, and for example if you were a "quality over quantity" kind of guy you could easily sell 1000 gear to then buy 3000 new ones 

I would really like to do that and keep discounts though..


To have a passive  "craft" stance available to all in fiefs could give fixed amount of silver indeed, and maybe add a couple other effects that would be realistic and not too OP.



Thanks for the good stuff.

[Malaclypse]

I'd also like to post on behalf of CHN. They have a lot of active players, more than either EU or NA from the looks of it. They might be more inclined to participate in Strategus if they had some kind of fair shake, their own CHN_3 server set up along the same lines of EU/NA's planned recombination. Or they could probably support their own map, even.

[Butan]

I for one would welcome our new chinese overlords.

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Yuang emperor!

If CHN_3 and can happen, it shall be done.
I can already taste the tears of the german and polish masterrace.

[oguz]

I for one would welcome our new chinese overlords.

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Yuang emperor!

If CHN_3 and can happen, it shall be done.
I can already taste the tears of the german and polish masterrace.

+russians but really they dont care it like polish guys

[Butan]

We have finally received the sacred grail (in its binary form). Praise chadz, real work starts NOW!



First on the fix list is :
- remove invisibility of crates (between 10 000 and 100 000 crates)
- check fief reset cost effects (heard reports of problems)
- remove PP cost difference between old and new strategus (its cheaper on the old interface than on the new)
- check PP/prosperity functions (PP not accumulating regularly and prosperity being broken)
- rework strategus map to remove the stuck zone and re-spawn anyone stuck


I'm gonna develop on the bold part.
Here is the terrain map mode of strategus (EU side and a part only for size reason).

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The black parts are the impassable cliffs, the only impassable terrain (with river and ocean).
The region behind the cliffs on the steppe border are going to be filled entirely in cliffs so that it is impossible to spawn here. The spawning system works in a way where players are randomly placed on the map, if they are on any impassible terrain (cliff, river, ocean) their position is randomly changed until their coordinates is placed on a passable terrain, they then spawn. Having full cliffs regions guarantee no respawns in these regions.


Now for some non-technical good stuff, I am heavily interested in totally re-drawing the Calradia terrain map mode (and possibly use a different normal map model). What it means is that I can change where forests, hills, etc are; what do they do and how do the map illustrate them.

Three things seems extremely important to me:
- making the terrain map mode more "pixel perfect" with the normal map (less pixel per pixel incoherence, better navigation and feel of the land)
- adding more impassable terrain in the mountainous area (rhodok, sarranid, khergit and the praven-tihr mountains) to create strategical pathways and choke points
- adding/modifying terrain type: this is the most exciting stuff, stick to your hats gents

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* add roads connecting cities (network to be specified, but it would feel its way between the hills and forests and go for the most cost/efficient route, AKA realism)
* remove bridges and replace it with river passes (roads are going to replace the bridges really, but there is a couple passages on the rivers where there will be no roads = river pass)
* make ocean passable and thus add boats (will have to add cliffs a bit everywhere on the coast to make passing on the ocean possible only in certain crucial positions)
* modify speed/visibility on some terrain type to make everything work together

Do you think any of this is a good idea? Do you have others that might fit into this "map" rework? Please share.

[the real god emperor]

If you add boats, will there be sea battles or will they be coastal?

[Butan]

There would be sea battles but only if we manage to grab a sea battle map (from a mod or from a map maker). I need to find person with the required skills in mapping or the permission to use maps from 1257 AD naval battles maps for example.

[Butan]

When I'm done redrawing the new terrain map, I will post here old/new comparison, so that you know what will be the differences compared to what you have today.
You will be able to discuss and ask why things changed and I will answer, based on that, and also it will give you a good appreciation of the work that is being done.
Rest of the work currently done is what was listed before and Chy is on it.

[Butan]

From analyzing the last battles, I decided to add a few things on top of the ready patch I have.
I am going to put a few stop-gap measures that should help battles in the dying round 6.


Max army size to attack is going to decreased from 1800 to 1000.
Max battle time is going to be halved.
Max mercenary size is going to be decreased from 50 to 25.

These measures are strictly for end-game round 6 and will not be ported to round 7 which should begin in a few months (time needed to finish all the features we want to put into strategus).
Discuss if you think it is a good idea, and maybe if more extraordinary changes like that could be added.

[Butan]

Patch should be deployed today or tomorrow, expect some downtime! I still have to learn how Strategus work around patching, so bear with me, I cannot yet warn you of all the after effects.
I pray for the upcoming battles to not be affected too badly, but it could potentially kill them.

After that first patch is deployed, there should be a large patching pause of a few weeks.
We are going to begin what is called code refactoring, it is a very heavy process especially when you have to work on a very old and long code. It will serve to create a healthy code basis for the features we want to implement right after this step is done.


Now is the time for patience, next will be the time for excitement.
Meanwhile, I will keep you posted on the map progress in a separate thread when I completed the bulk of the work.

[Turkhammer]

Good luck.

[the real god emperor]

EU and NA should be on the same map again. The playerbase is too small for 2 seperate maps imo. Especially Americans don't get those huge pings in EU, I am assuming it is playable for most of them. Can't say the same for myself or some EUs, cus we are shit.

[Butan]

The patch should have been applied, I'm going to check if things are alright for a couple days and announce the changes officially 


There is a PP glitch atm, so in the last days fiefs generated nothing. I manually generated some worldwide just now, I might do again tomorrow and again each day, until I manage to fix it permanently.