Voting Poll: Killing Off Population

I've been thinking about this for a minute. I got this idea from TW: Medieval 2. Killing off the remaing population would meant that you kill off as much of the population as you can and restating the Town to your faith. This would mean that relations would be very high. The only downside of this from a Warlords perspective is that population won't be robust until it grows to an exceptionable level. That means a city of few people who like you very much but few is the main thing.

Also the Warlord will suffer dishonor and be greatly disliked by that towns previous faction and owner.

Tell me what ya think. 

SN:
When you plunder a town the population will drop because your troops are pillaging it. Now a note to self: make sure damage done to population depends on actual active troops. The bigger the army, the more the damage, the more the reward. 

Naturally the more the interesting features the better. While for many of players we are rather scared to lose honor but relations no so much. Since faction relations can return back to 0 when peace is formed.

I think this is a good idea and sometimes the best when are face late game towns that are too large and loyal to their starting faction. In fact it could be the vital option if they are 100% loyal to another faith/faction and naturally hate you to begin with.

Massive honor hit, massive village relationship hit, massive prosperity hit. Wiping out the population is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and it will make the villages valueless if you ever own the towns.  This kind of behavior is almost worth implementing a badboy system, because doing this should get every right-thinking individual to come and wipe you out.

Mind you, I've known guys named Timur, but they were from central Asia, not the Middle East.  But killing off the population should

Could you implement a tiered system like in TW

take the city peaceably:
minimal money rewards, small relationship boost(unless very loyal to opposition perhaps?)
Pillage:
minor pop drop, relationship drop, prosperity drop and some money/loot
Enslave population:
Pop drop, relation drop, prosperity drop. Pop and prosperity boost nearest owned city (maybe with a slight relationship drop to represent the grumbling new arrivals)
Exterminate:
Big drop Pop, prosperity. boost to Faith and relationship. (No one would ever dare oppose you)
Exterminate and resettle:
Small drop Pop, prosperity. boost to Faith and relationship. Pop drop from nearest/largest owned cities/villages.


Could also have special affects from certain civic options, e.g. Holy War; Holy Extermination: as exterminate but with a boost to global faith or something. Or perhaps some kind of forced conscription option with a conscription civic. these sorts of things. (if it is even possible to implement?)

Sure Lib I'll think about all of those options. I really want any option and decision the player goes thru to have good and bad consequences.

Well, if you're going to implement genocide, I believe you should also implement blood feuds and such as well. I'm pretty sure that if you walk up and start another holocaust that every last person in that faction... or at least anyone related to the owner of the town, as well as everyone who knew someone in that town, will be out for blood. Immediate -50 relations with those mentioned, being marked KOS by all the towns of that faction (as in, you cannot even sneak in, as an angry mob would kill you. The guards are not the issue anymore.) and then all of that factions troops under your command would desert, or possibly mutiny, immediately upon the attempt.

Heh, though on the bright side, you could label yourself as a Crusader-King, offering options to attract large numbers of bandits seeking redemption, or lordless knights and zealous troops.

Another downside... every time this is done, it would also give a chance for a crusade against your faction, by the religion of whoever you're fighting... leading to the same benefits for the defender of that faith.


Should also trigger some random events for assassinations as well. Every wealthy merchant and crime lord who lost out from his buddies getting wacked in town is going to be sending somebody out to kill you.

Yeah you have a really good point there. I'm also going to have to put in a population migration system also. Maybe that can help with growth for villages and towns that are under there ideal population.

If you add a migration system, perhaps you should add in some ways to improve it direction? Offering benefits to specific ethic groups back in Calradia, to help the emigrate to your provinces? Could also result in the soldiers of this faction garrisoning your towns in small numbers.

This could cause a relations change with their faction here though. Either beneficial from the cultures becoming more related, such as for historic allies (khergits and vilianese for example), or negative for old enemies, due to your towns becoming a haven for rebels of that nation.

Heh, this could also eventually lead to major political ramification. Could cause the player to be looked at as the rightful king of that faction by some people, allowing for a civil war.  Or on the other end, it could cause a near unification of sorts, with the two factions gaining a massive relations boost and having a truly solid alliance.

Exactly. 

Well, I hope you realize what you're getting into. If you start down this path, you'll wind up with a game that's no longer mount and blade. It will eventually turn into something like Victoria (2?) but with a 1300s tech level.

Also realize that this sort of thing requires HEAVY testing to work out. It will take a very long time, and a very large amount of work to fine tune, let alone implement. Every single thing you add in will destabilize everything, EVERYTHING that's already there. It's like trying to build an entire world on a platter that's balanced on the tip of a needle.... but worse, because the platter glitches out on occasion, or doesn't recognize the needle is there, and so forth.


My suggestion for this though, if you do choose to take this route, is that you create a population system from scratch. A very simple population system that's based on a needs(to survive), wants, and hates system. This would decide how the population wants to move around, with distance being an balancing modifier for this.  (Noted, I haven't looked at your pop code yet, so I don't know how your current system works... Well, I think I looked at the old SOD system a few years ago... A month or two before the strategic map was implemented. Doubt it's the same, not that I remember any of it. )

Needs would be basic trade goods produced by towns and villages. Basic foods (primarily grain and bread) and cloth, wool or linen, would be needs. This could also give you something to do with cattle to keep it from reaching insane herd sizes. Possibly pottery and salt, whatever. Healthcare as well.

Wants would be things like chicken, pork, velvet, spice, luxuries and tools and such.  Furthermore, all political aspects would fall into wants. This could include relations with a town and it's lord as much as freedom/serfdom scales. (those scales would also influence a people's ability to leave their towns. High freedom = high immigration, but high serfdom = low emigration since it's pretty damn much illegal. ) If you were to implement different casts for populations, then aristocracy would attract more noble families as well. Dominant faith could also play a role.

Hates would pretty much be more abstract things. Low health of a town, being raided, constantly changing ownership of a town, too many damned Swadians living there, ethnic hatreds, being a minority.


There would also need to be a breakdown of each culture as well, as well as an extra one such as Cosmopolitan. Each one would have slightly different needs, wants, hates and so forth.

Also, to account for population growth, there would need to be a population pool of people who immigrate from Calradia and other places, which slowly trickle in. This would help to offset the masses of people who are going to die from your new system of population.


If you need help, I might be able to spend some time balancing it. I'm rusty as hell and haven't done any real coding in years, and hopefully will be moving soon so I might be away for a time, but I might be able to help.   I might also wind up being intoxicated a lot as well. It's the only thing that makes me remember how to do this stuff, since I was never sober when I did this stuff in the past.

I'm not trying to make things that complicated. I'm merely giving the option to allow population to level out among different but nearby towns and villages with a higher prosperity and lower population. There will be certain restrictions the player can make. But as people migrate from one to another factions will come to like one another more and that city. Between enemy cities? Nah, Neutral? Only a one way system. A relation higher than that? Yes, migration can work both ways.

Computica said:

I'm not trying to make things that complicated.

Click to expand...

(emphasis by me.)

Ya know, I'm going to take one look at this mod, and come to an assumption about how this is going to go. You're going to TRY to not make it that complicated, but with every single tweak and patch it will slowly get more and more complex until it becomes convoluted, and then you'll streamline it, and make it better, and then it will wind up being almost that complicated. Almost, only because a month from now when you're working on it, I'll point out this thread and then you might slow down just to spite me. Then I'll be all "NooooooooooooOOooooOooooo! But... You could implement something like this and achieve almost the same thing, but simpler and easier..." and then once that's halfway done, I'll see if I can get it implemented the harder way, but easier and better... or a new RPG will come out and I'll disappear for a month or two, then come back hoping it was finished.

I think.... Input on this theory?


Oh! Also, how bad is the pop system right now? Should I be worried about conquering a specific Imperial town that's in the perfect location to expand in all directions, because it has under 500 taxpayers there?  Will it never become my sprawling metropolis of a capitol?

I think the 'becoming like victoria' is a bit of an exaggeration. That game has so many things going on in it. from what I have seen of population system from the original damocles, you can achieve most of the ideas without to much dificulty I would think.

The whole needs wants things isn't really relevant to the suggestions that came before, the idea of mount & blade is that your characters path through life is a significant one and as you grow the choices you make affect the end results for towns villages and factions. for instance if you went round raiding all the villages early on you have a head ache in the future when it becomes time to rule them because they hate you. Sword of Damocles merely introduces new choices to affect the world in a wider and more strategic sense (like the nation edicts) but everything still remains focused around your character and his/her actions and will.

but the basic mechanics for both population changes and relationship changes are already there, so tying these things into results of choices should not be too complicated. (Computica can obviously correct me).

As for the unhappiness of populations:
1. peasants generally don't get a lot of say they are the pawns of chess games
2. mobility and communication would be generally quite limited and mostly reserved for the well to do
3. and fear is a powerful motivator to inaction, if you think, a King (Player) could crush you like a bug you won't stick your head up, you will just bed down and go on existing.

Also you had the random event about Faction X did this nasty thing to a village full of peasants of Faction Y so king Y has a reason (if he so chooses) to declare war on King X. So it may be that you can adapt this mechanic to work for a set of diiferent scenarios.

As to the positive/negative aspects of the conquering choices the general balance is one of immediate gains against long term gains. So extermination immediately gets you a complian populace but in the future you may have a population crisis, and a financial one if this is the only choice you use.

Where as peaceful occupation, gives you a population that is probably indifferent or worse towards you and you won't get much of an immediate boost to your treasury, but you, with the right investments over time, will have a large, prosperous, healthy, faith filled nation, it is just much more effort and money will have to go into making it so.

Halrik said:

Computica said:

I'm not trying to make things that complicated.

Click to expand...

(emphasis by me.)
Ya know, I'm going to take one look at this mod, and come to an assumption about how this is going to go. You're going to TRY to not make it that complicated, but with every single tweak and patch it will slowly get more and more complex until it becomes convoluted, and then you'll streamline it, and make it better, and then it will wind up being almost that complicated. Almost, only because a month from now when you're working on it, I'll point out this thread and then you might slow down just to spite me. Then I'll be all "NooooooooooooOOooooOooooo! But... You could implement something like this and achieve almost the same thing, but simpler and easier..." and then once that's halfway done, I'll see if I can get it implemented the harder way, but easier and better... or a new RPG will come out and I'll disappear for a month or two, then come back hoping it was finished.
I think.... Input on this theory?
Oh! Also, how bad is the pop system right now? Should I be worried about conquering a specific Imperial town that's in the perfect location to expand in all directions, because it has under 500 taxpayers there?  Will it never become my sprawling metropolis of a capitol?

Click to expand...

We prefer the term "feature dense" to complicated. 

A handful of things about complexity.
1. The essentially modular nature of the game allows for features to be added as plugins.  This tends to be less naturalistic, with increases on salt taxes reducing rope production, but it does tend to allow additions to fail less catastrophically.
2. Computica has fun playing this game and tends not to include ego manifestations that infringe on the fun.  This is more priceless than words can say, and one reason why unfun complexity doesn't hammer into the mod. 
3. In large part the awesomeness of the Vanilla M&B SoD tends to set a high bar for new stuff, but hasn't prevented nifty new stuff from being included.  This is really weird in its functionality and a government commission should be set up to study this until it is no longer possible.
4. Although not all of the original SoD team is still active, a bunch of them are, and less fun stuff tends to draw negative attention from people worth listening to. 
5. The original SoD did a lot of things that didn't work out and got dropped, and an amazing number of things that went right and got continued.  I don't know what all has gotten added and removed over the years this mod has been in development, but it is safe to say that there is a lot of experience in play.

(As a side note, recently some unpleasant person was unkind to Computica in an irrational and unjust way.  It was like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table rose up from the earth to defend him, there were so many Grandmaster Knights.  The flip side of that protection is he also has that level of scrutiny.  Nobody said it was easy to be Computica, but he's doing a pretty good job of it.)

I like it. However, if it's going to be done the migration system would be key, otherwise you'd have significant issues. Maybe you could get bad boy points too. If you kill everyone, there should be a few options, these could be applied anywhere you conquer really to change population sizes.

Conquering Edicts
1) leave the items (same as taking a few cows) as an incentive to encourage a significant migration
2) take some items (a few items) to encourage a moderate migration
3) take it all (same as pillaging) to open the area to migration.

Tax Rates (I don't know its already in, so just suggesting, could be a one off cash injection or opportunity)
High
Medium
Low

Von Draxis said:

I like it. However, if it's going to be done, I'd like to see an ability to move population from town to town by edict or forced migration. For example, colonists or something. Just a thought.

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If I did something like I would make it so whichever town you make them move to, they'll be a relationship drop.

whoops, you were too fast for me, i was just changing my previous post, this is what I was thinking of:

Conquering Edicts
1) leave the items (same as taking a few cows) as an incentive to encourage a significant migration
2) take some items (a few items) to encourage a moderate migration
3) take it all (same as pillaging) to open the area to migration.

Tax Rates (I don't know its already in, so just suggesting, could be a one off cash injection or opportunity)
High
Medium
Low

Stimulus (rep hit is bad boy rep i guess. Also the option to force people to take it or take it by choice)

      Fair Value - Average Stimulus Rep hit - pay for their land and move em, they're happy they're not dead
   
      Above Fair - No rep hit - pay for their land and move em, they're happy they're not dead, and happy at the amount of cash they've been given
   
      Below Fair - Large of Stimulus Rep hit - pay for their land and move em, they're happy they're not dead, but angry to get a cheap deal
   
      Use force - see below, the only option if you have no cash
 
Force (Ideas on how to make people leave a city)
    Lethal - everyone dies
   
    Enslave All- everyone is enslaved to help the new masters. Gives large number of slaves. (Slavery could give a temporary increase in population or encourage migration by your own people due to free labor.
   
    Enslave Stragglers - everyone who stays is enslaved. Gives a small number of slaves.
   
    Dispersal Mild - force people to leave by intimidation (small rep hit) small number leaves
   
    Dispersal Moderate - force people to leave by beatings (medium rep hit) moderate number leaves
   
    Dispersal Extreme - force people to leave by execution anyone who stays. (large rep hit) all leave or die

Religion
    Conversion:
        Forced Conversion - convert or die
        Stimulated Conversion - pay incentives with varying degrees of success for pay

General Payment
      Payments (essentially bribes) to all who stay to ensure loyalty
   
I just think that moving people forcibly isn't the only way to make a migration occur, but I bow to your superior knowledge as I am still downloading the game (just bought it today) and haven't played the new SOD. Hopefully these ideas give you something to work with, i feel that if you have a small country with lots of cash, you shouldn't have to kill everyone, especially as cash is a great tool when you're working with the poor.


Also, thanks for porting this, I had to stop playing SOD due to windows 7 and I was heart broken lol. I look forward to spending many an hour here.

Ah, I hope you like it Draxis. The Law System isn't in the mod yet but hopefully I will port it soon. It is one of the last things that need to be implemented since it is thrown all over the place.

LibSpit said:

As for the unhappiness of populations:
1. peasants generally don't get a lot of say they are the pawns of chess games
2. mobility and communication would be generally quite limited and mostly reserved for the well to do
3. and fear is a powerful motivator to inaction, if you think, a King (Player) could crush you like a bug you won't stick your head up, you will just bed down and go on existing.

Click to expand...

This isn't exactly accurate. People migrated all the time. Very few ethnic groups in Europe could be traced back to their specific region for too far back in history, since people had a habit of being forced out of their lands by war, or moving into better ones... by war. Take a look at the British Isles. Almost all of the natives were slowly wiped out (or bred into) over time, while other groups moved in. The Saxons and various Scandinavian types especially. Hell, the moors went all the way to Spain, and some European peoples migrated all the way across north Africa.

Even without all this, during the crusader periods, pilgrims from all over Europe, all the way from England even, would make their way to Jerusalem! It could take a while, and a lot of them would wind up tied down to the local women along the way, but tons of people did this. Many of them even settled in the middle east.

As for communication? Eh... that came down into two parts. One, couriers could send letters for a fee, or maybe if you're lucky, pigeons... who might get eaten by the bird of a local falconer when he's drunk. I think the church might have played a role in this as well, don't recall.

Computica said:

Ah, I hope you like it Draxis. The Law System isn't in the mod yet but hopefully I will port it soon. It is one of the last things that need to be implemented since it is thrown all over the place.

Click to expand...

There's a really good book by H. Beam Piper called Little Fuzzy that has adventures on a frontier world; this year an author named Scalzi make a really bad reboot in a book that will go unnamed here.  One of the critical differences between the two examinations of frontier is that in the original law proceeds from order, and in the reboot order proceeds from law.  The original book makes sense because individuals create order and organize themselves under law. The second book denies that there is a place called London, that it has a plethora of laws, and that none of those laws meant a damn this summer. 

While I am in favor of a legal system in the mod, the legal system lives and dies on the willingness and ability of the rulers to impose order and the acceptance of the subjects/citizens of the laws imposed.  There is a freight train of cultural reference material about this, much of it quite confusing and a lot of it good, guilty fun. Certainly, Yojimbo/A Fistful of Dollars/Last Man Standing covers this in a variety of ways: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1161271 When social systems break down, especially when bandits flourish, a wave of grim justice is often welcome...by the survivors.