Factions Discussion

[wickedshot]

There's two different types of factions as I see it:

Basic Factions
Peasants, Adventurer, Mercenaries, and Bandit.
Basically they're just general types of people, not a cohesive organization that works together with a king/queen at the top.

male adventurers:
traveller>adventurer>fighter>bodyguard>^royal bodyguard (requires castle, costs 5,000 gold)
traveller>adventurer>fighter>barbarian>^berserker (free agent, costs 1,000 gold) powerful, roams around alone, unpredictable
traveller>adventurer>scout>strider>^ranger (requires castle, requires a patrol to give to them, costs 1,000 gold) high spot and pathfinding
traveller>adventurer>scout>watcher>^spy (requires manor, free agent, costs 1,000 gold) can be instructed to acquire information or sabotage

female adventurers:
voyager>adventuress>protectress>champion>^paladin (requires castle, requires a patrol to give to them, costs 5,000 gold) high healing skills and training
voyager>adventuress>protectress>troubadour>^errant knight (requires castle, free agent, will roam around trying to help peasants and such, 1,000) skilled and well balanced
voyager>adventuress>archer>speedshooter>^flurry (requires manor, costs 1,000 gold) really fast shooting
voyager>adventuress>archer>sharpshooter>^sniper (free agent, costs 1,000 gold) amazing shot, can be instructed to take out targets

male peasants:
militia>watchman>crossbowman>marksman>Warden (elite troop)
militia>watchman>crossbowman>mechanic>Engineer (engineering, spotting leader)
militia>watchman>guard>spearman>Sergeant (tactics, training leader)
militia>watchman>guard>swordsman>Gladiator (elite troop)

female peasants:
sentry>sentinel>archer>speedshooter>Flurry (elite troop)
sentry>sentinel>archer>sharpshooter>Sniper (free agent, assassin type)
sentry>sentinel>warrior>defender>Warder (elite troop)
sentry>sentinel>warrior>champion>Paladin (healing leader)
male mercs:
outcast>hireling>hired soldier>hired crossbowman>Professional Crossbowman (elite troop)
outcast>hireling>hired soldier>hired infantry>Bounty Hunter (prisoner management leader)
outcast>hireling>hired veteran>bodyguard>Royal Bodyguard (elite troop)
outcast>hireling>hired veteran>hired blade>Ronin (free agent, searches for battles to join for money)

female mercs:
refugee>mercenary>mercenary horseman>mercenary horse archer>Free lancer (elite troop)
refugee>mercenary>mercenary horseman>mercenary cavalry>Mercenary captain (leadership leader)
refugee>mercenary>mercenary swordswoman>sword sister>Soldier of Fortune (free agent, searches for battles to join for money)
refugee>mercenary>mercenary swordswoman>mercenary blade>Blademistress (elite troop)

male bandits:
looter>raider>mountain raider>brigand>Blackguard (tactics leader)
looter>raider>mountain raider>pillager>Ronin (free agent, searches for battles to join for money)
looter>raider>sea raider>storm raider>Storm Razor (elite troop)
looter>raider>sea raider>pirate>Corsair (elite troop)

female bandits:
thief>bandit>forest bandit>stalker>Assassin (free agent, assassin type)
thief>bandit>forest bandit>rogue>Ringleader (looting leader)
thief>bandit>steppe bandit>marauder>Free Lancer (elite troop)
thief>bandit>steppe bandit>robber>Tax Collector (free agent, takes money from caravans and peasants and settlements without lords nearby)

and

Kingdom Factions
Like Swadian, Nord, the Player's, etc.
Basically a culture with great organization and a defined ruler at the top.

Later on I'll want to make a lot of interesting culture based Kingdom Factions.

But I'm currently trying to get a better setup for the Basic Factions.

Anyways, I'm interested in others take on it and new ideas.

 

[Liquidninja]

Well, let's get the ball rolling!

First off, what colours do you have available? Do you get a choice of hex-codes, or is it generic presets to choose from? (Mint, Pink, Deep Red, Sky Blue, Dark Blue, etc). If it's a 6 digit hex-code, that would be terrific, you can literally set out a colour grid, with gradients fading between each quadrant? And then just place your factions on that grid. Players would be able to tell, oh hey, that's between Green but also slightly blue; lots of behavioral information in one bit. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here regarding colours. They ARE only colours after all.

Regarding Basic Factions & Troop trees: I think a lot of this has to do with what you have in mind for the end product: When you think Custom Settlements, do you see the end days as having all roaming parties in fantastic gleaming armor riding about in full plate, uniformed to the T with indistinguishable polished helms, rows of spears, and shields? A world where denars are exchanged between hands in the tens of thousands per battle? Or do you imagine a world where only the top-tier troops have a few pieces of decent chain mail, and plate is the only within the reach of kings and legends?

This issue I think is so important because it affects the Faction design bottom up:

If you were going for the fancy metallic legions where you ultimately wanted your Peasant Faction troops to end up as Champions of Over-eager-peasantry justice-executors, while your Adventurers turn into Smiters of Awesome, despite the fact that Smiters may be stronger than Champions in a balanced way, you would have to know that high-tier Peasant troops would be more than capable of holding their ground against lower level bandits, deserts, and their ilk. This will certainly make you reconsider: Do I really need to group mercenaries with Peasants? Is it necessary? Your very web of interactions between "sub" troop trees will change depending on the relative strengths you have in mind. I find a good question to consider is, "At Day 300, if I suddenly put a new player in at level 1", what would happen? Could they play and get on their feet the same way they could at Day 1?"

If the answer is yes, then the idea is on a great track. Sure times are hard, but on the whole, the world should remain relatively consistent. (Ie. Player presence nudges worldly events this way and that way, but should by no means change the overall composition of the world!)

Meanwhile, you can go the other way of course, with no penalty at all; Peasants: should the strongest peasants only be strong enough to stand toe-to-toe with a mid-tier bandit troop? In this case, a rationale (dependency) for mercenaries is justified, as well as a good relation with the merchants.

Edit: Ah yes, faction Idea.

Revolting Prisoners, Official Army Deserters could be one faction. All of them are outcasts. I think in this case, both Merchants and Peasants should be the aggressor to them (maybe not literally engaging them in fights as bandits would do to peasants) but they should be the "bully". Why? 1) I think it's interesting to cast Peasants & Merchant class as the big oppressing force up top. But certainly, I think it is more than likely. To the peasants, the prisoners are scum and slaves; sub-citizens really. And no one would like deserters, as they must all be "traitors" or "cowards". As such, they could become the lowest of the low - however, the fact that Deserters are soldiers will lend to the fighting capability of this faction (Exiles? Outcasts?). Especially given that such a faction can recruit/have soldiers from ANY faction, potentially making them one of the most diverse armies available. In this case however, diversity would be counter-balanced by their limited numbers. They are not the official army, so they do not have a wealth of recruits to train into the soldiers they need. It's touch and go.

The social hierarchy can then look something like this:

Peasant Faction (Peasants & Merchants) vs Exiles (Deserters & Former Prisoners)
Both sides can recruit mercenary help (who for the most part will wander around and only target bandits).

Why not just get rid of the adventurer faction? (re-work the troops into something else?) At the end of the day, what really IS an adventurer faction? As heroes become aligned with various factions; I'm finding it hard to imagine what is truly adventuring....aren't they all doing it, albeit for different sides, causes, and reasons?

 

[wickedshot]

Colours can be anything, ala hex code.  In fact I'm planning to make choosing your own factions colour done by adding/subtracting from the amounts of Red, Green, Blue currently in it.

My general desire for colours of the Basic factions is lighter colours that contrast with each other.
And for Kingdom factions I'm planning intense colours with some bite to them, kind of how the Deep Red or Deep Purple are currently.

As for relative strengths.  For Basic factions I want it fairly simple and nothing too impressive.  The way the bandit and adventurer troop trees are excepting the final tier which will be restricted later.
My general plan is to make the current bandit/adventurer trees:
Traveller>Adventurer>Fighter>Bodyguard
and then make it possible to make bodyguards into Royal Bodyguards through special limited means, fighters would be strengthwise about between the current adventurer and bodyguard, and so on for all the current highest tiers.

For the peasant tree i might want a similar setup.  Basically good leather or lower tier chain is probably all a troop could aspire to through normal means in the basic factions.

So peasants could get a fairly impressive unit, but theyd be rare and only as party leaders, or require them using a lot of their settlement gold and such.

Mercenaries I'm thinking would be about the same in strength but more mobile, wouldn't conquer settlements on their own, instead theyd behave more like the adventurer faction in that sense.

Kingdom factions will be a complete other story, but theyll be worked on later.

Atleast, thats my current thinking on the subject, and I'm open to ideas.

Edit added:
About removing the adventurer faction, I've considered merging it with another faction now that heroes can choose their faction.  Its worth considering just need more specifics on what to do with it.

 

[MartinF]

I personally actually like the adventurer faction idea.. independent heroes (like you) roaming around and making the most of things. Some will join a faction, some will start their own faction and some will just say 'to hell with all this bureaucracy' and keep roaming and fighting. If you can couple this with good AI, you've got a way better system than native where lords are too set in their ways imo.

The only problem I'm having atm is that there seem to be an awful lot of heroes who join the peasant faction and not nearly as many who actually start their own faction which creates problems (especially if the peasants don't like you, hehe). But that's not really a discussion for here.

As far as troops go.. I find that your peasant troops (or adventurers) are quite hard to level up since you're mostly fighting low lvl troops. I've had a swadian man-at-arms (who's actually a woman) for about 30 game days now and she still needs tons of xp to lvl up to knight, whereas mercenaries will lvl much quicker since they usually already start at a higher xp rating when you get them. For some reason bandits lvl much faster as well.

As for prisoners, well that's a bit of a hard one since they were obviously something before they became prisoners, so it seems strange if they suddenly become something else altogether. On the ohter hand liquidninja makes a point, there would be social standings involved.

I guess ultimately it depends on what you think a realistic destiny for certain troops would be. If recruits from your town are mainly meant as guards for said town, then I would say limit their path to reflect that. If you want to get strong units to be aggressive and raid and such, you could either implement something like extra buildings such as a barracks, which would somewhat mess up the current scene system, although you could add it as an indoor feature for a manor/castle (a troop trainer), or you could make the player rely more heavily on mercenaries for that.

The thing is, right now, all factions function the same basic way, whether they are peasants, bandits or independent (i.e. heroes who start their own faction). Maybe the key is in that. A bandit faction won't be interested in building a nice village and setting up trade, they're interesting in fighting and looting. Similarly, peasants want to grow and produce stuff and sell it. Maybe you could move towards diversifying that which would naturally lead to different troop trees for those factions. Peasants would guard, bandits would raid..

 

[wickedshot]

Heroes join peasant or bandit factions as a preamble to starting their own factions or joining other factions.  A peasant/bandit hero Lord/Lady is just part of that faction because they haven't got what it takes yet to form their own faction yet and there's no nearby Kingdom faction interested in them yet.
Peasant settlements do veer towards economy upgrades and bandit settlements do veer towards military upgrades.  Peasants for instance conscript less of their population.  Bandits conscript at a much higher rate, and for professions tend towards quarrymen (more stone, needed for military) and capture more slaves usually (more stone and gold).

Peasants and Bandits are meant to set the stage for an underlying conflict, not to be real foes.  Thats where Kingdoms come in heh, though they usually take a while to develop.

 

[MartinF]

and once again you prove that more thought and coding has already gone into this than some of use realize I'm just at like game day 100 atm so I guess they haven't had a chance to evolve yet.

One thing I did for SWC was make a neutral type faction which are merchants. Basically they don't care about war, just about profit. So they'll still trade with you if you have bad relations, they'll just charge you more.

So maybe merchants should be a separate faction as well? just interested in trade and not so much in politics. One of the things that struck me as odd about CS (same as native in a way) is that the bandits who hate my bloody guts, would still let me prance around their settlements with my sword dangling out and would even be willing to set up a trade caravan to help me out.

 

[wickedshot]

Ya, I just haven't gotten around the making hostile settlements actually hostile (or just disabled "Ride towards settlement" for such).

I've considered a merchant faction, but ultimately I want less factions, and instead make each faction fill multiple roles that make sense.

Right now the Peasant faction is pretty aligned with economy and prosperity/production, and the Bandit faction is pretty aligned with military and corruption.

I'm thinking either 2 total roaming non-settlement factions, like the current adventurer faction, or just one and sort of separate heroes from specifically being adventurers as standard.

I'm just not sure how to balance all the basic groups between only 3 factions in a clean succinct way.

 

[MartinF]

I'm thinking either 2 total roaming non-settlement factions, like the current adventurer faction, or just one and sort of separate heroes from specifically being adventurers as standard.

I'm just not sure how to balance all the basic groups between only 3 factions in a clean succinct way.

Well yeah, that's basically how my merchant faction operates (although they don't have heroes yet, I just implemented them). They do have a few bases but those are mainly for the player to visit and trade with and such, they're not actual town,  while the 'units' of the merchant faction are the merchant caravans. Atm they just trade in prisoners and some of the units that tend to stack up in towns/castles after a while. Eventually I want them to be fully fledged traders who have their own money and will, if they make enough profit, eventually morph into something greater, or retire. Mostly to stabilize the economy and avoid pile-ups of cash.

Anyway I guess you're right, this is pretty much covered already so not really necessary but in a way it does make sense.. production and trade are not the same thing, after all.

If you just want to stay with the basic three factions +mercenaries I'd say

Bandits: quick, cavalry, high dmg, low armor type thing
Peasants: guardians, so heavier infantry and ranged, no real cavalry, maybe just light scout type units
Adventurers: mix, but leaning more towards the bandits side, generally more eclectic

and then the mercenaries can fill up the gaps.. problem is this isn't terribly exciting. Also I guess you're still balancing them against the native faction troops (since the heroes choose one of these cultures when they start their own faction, if I'm not mistaken).

I'm off to bed but I'll think about it in my dreams

 

[wickedshot]

Revolting Prisoners, Official Army Deserters could be one faction. All of them are outcasts. I think in this case, both Merchants and Peasants should be the aggressor to them (maybe not literally engaging them in fights as bandits would do to peasants) but they should be the "bully". Why? 1) I think it's interesting to cast Peasants & Merchant class as the big oppressing force up top. But certainly, I think it is more than likely. To the peasants, the prisoners are scum and slaves; sub-citizens really. And no one would like deserters, as they must all be "traitors" or "cowards". As such, they could become the lowest of the low - however, the fact that Deserters are soldiers will lend to the fighting capability of this faction (Exiles? Outcasts?). Especially given that such a faction can recruit/have soldiers from ANY faction, potentially making them one of the most diverse armies available. In this case however, diversity would be counter-balanced by their limited numbers. They are not the official army, so they do not have a wealth of recruits to train into the soldiers they need. It's touch and go.

The social hierarchy can then look something like this:

Peasant Faction (Peasants & Merchants) vs Exiles (Deserters & Former Prisoners)
Both sides can recruit mercenary help (who for the most part will wander around and only target bandits).

Why not just get rid of the adventurer faction? (re-work the troops into something else?) At the end of the day, what really IS an adventurer faction? As heroes become aligned with various factions; I'm finding it hard to imagine what is truly adventuring....aren't they all doing it, albeit for different sides, causes, and reasons?

Interesting ideas.  I missed them originally because of the ninja editing heh.

So your main thinking is merge Mercenaries, Former Prisoners, Deserters, and Adventurers into one faction called something like Exiles?

Or maybe they could be just a grittier version of adventurers and have neither claim settlements and both be roaming nomads?

 

[wickedshot]

I think I want to avoid making a specific merchant faction because I want merchants to be in every faction to some degree, and just make the peasant faction just more preoccupied with such.


I could associate the Adventurer faction with the peasant faction, and associate the Outcasts faction with the bandit faction.

Basically they'd have symbiotic relationships with their associated faction while still being separate.

Or I could just do only peasant and bandit as the basic factions, and integrate all the ideas for such into either peasant or bandit factions, and force heroes to choose a side.  Maybe maintain 2 troop trees for each faction.. tho that would mean adventurers would be all peasants and all mercenaries would be bandits, which doesnt make sense.

I dunno, its a complex problem to solve heh.

 

[wickedshot]

Here's my plan for the adventurer troop tree:

Three special upgrade types:
Free Agent:  will roam around as a 1 person party and have special behaviours and abilities
Elite Troop:  can join the players party or settlement, powerful troop with great equipment
Leader Troop:  assigned to a patrol, leads the patrol, benefitting it through their special party skills
These couldn't be upgraded to with experience, instead this step would require spending gold and meeting certain requirements.

traveller>adventurer>fighter>bodyguard>^royal bodyguard (requires castle, costs 5,000 gold)
traveller>adventurer>fighter>barbarian>^berserker (free agent, costs 1,000 gold) powerful, roams around alone, unpredictable
traveller>adventurer>scout>strider>^ranger (requires castle, requires a patrol to give to them, costs 1,000 gold) high spot and pathfinding
traveller>adventurer>scout>watcher>^spy (requires manor, free agent, costs 1,000 gold) can be instructed to acquire information or sabotage
voyager>adventuress>protectress>champion>^paladin (requires castle, requires a patrol to give to them, costs 5,000 gold) high healing skills and training
voyager>adventuress>protectress>troubadour>^errant knight (requires castle, free agent, 1,000) skilled and well balanced, roam around helping peasants/allies
voyager>adventuress>archer>speedshooter>^flurry (requires manor, costs 1,000 gold) really fast shooting
voyager>adventuress>archer>sharpshooter>^sniper (free agent, costs 1,000 gold) amazing shot, can be instructed to take out targets

Then the bandit troop tree could be structured similarly with the 3 types of special upgrades, and same for peasants, but geared more towards their feel.  So like the bandit Leader troops would have like Looting skill, and the peasant Leader troops would have trade/inventory.
The special troops would be rare and expensive, and the 4th tier would be moderate, with things like non-armored horses and leather or somewhat better armour and such.
Kingdom factions would each have their own troop trees that could have their own troop trees that are completely different and unique.

 

[Pehu Wizzard]

Kingdom factions would each have their own troop trees that could have their own troop trees that are completely different and unique.

I didn't get this bolded part. As for the rest, great ideas. That would make this mod even more unique.

 

[wickedshot]

can probably ignore a part of that heh.

basically kingdoms (like swadia, nord, or new ones) could have unique troop trees that have no specified structure

 

[Pehu Wizzard]

Nice. And the idea of your personal custom culture will remain, right?
Edit: By the way, sorry for the lack of presence on the mod this last couple of days. Had to work, non stop, during two nights.

 

[wickedshot]

Ya, there will be either the same or much more custom culture.

 

[Wu-long]

Here's my plan for the adventurer troop tree:

Three special upgrade types:
Free Agent:  will roam around as a 1 person party and have special behaviours and abilities
Elite Troop:  can join the players party or settlement, powerful troop with great equipment
Leader Troop:  assigned to a patrol, leads the patrol, benefitting it through their special party skills
These couldn't be upgraded to with experience, instead this step would require spending gold and meeting certain requirements.

traveller>adventurer>fighter>bodyguard>^royal bodyguard (requires castle, costs 5,000 gold)
traveller>adventurer>fighter>barbarian>^berserker (free agent, costs 1,000 gold) powerful, roams around alone, unpredictable
traveller>adventurer>scout>strider>^ranger (requires castle, requires a patrol to give to them, costs 1,000 gold) high spot and pathfinding
traveller>adventurer>scout>watcher>^spy (requires manor, free agent, costs 1,000 gold) can be instructed to acquire information or sabotage
voyager>adventuress>protectress>champion>^paladin (requires castle, requires a patrol to give to them, costs 5,000 gold) high healing skills and training
voyager>adventuress>protectress>troubadour>^errant knight (requires castle, free agent, 1,000) skilled and well balanced, roam around helping peasants/allies
voyager>adventuress>archer>speedshooter>^flurry (requires manor, costs 1,000 gold) really fast shooting
voyager>adventuress>archer>sharpshooter>^sniper (free agent, costs 1,000 gold) amazing shot, can be instructed to take out targets

Then the bandit troop tree could be structured similarly with the 3 types of special upgrades, and same for peasants, but geared more towards their feel.  So like the bandit Leader troops would have like Looting skill, and the peasant Leader troops would have trade/inventory.
The special troops would be rare and expensive, and the 4th tier would be moderate, with things like non-armored horses and leather or somewhat better armour and such.
Kingdom factions would each have their own troop trees that could have their own troop trees that are completely different and unique.

Damn is the sniper a work of progress or already done lovely can't wait your one hell of a modder Wicked so they will be out in the map at random? is there relation with them too? And this is for the adventurer faction right? What about heroes they roam around do they hire these ppl still or some thing else?

 

[wickedshot]

The plan is Traveller troops and their upgrades will not randomly spawn.

Instead, sometimes peasants parties will turn into little adventurer parties.

Also, heroes will be able to recruit travelling peasants into their armies as whatever faction the hero belongs to.  They'll also attract existing little adventurer parties to them.  They'll need enough leadership to do so tho.

I haven't gotten to making the special upgrades process yet, just finished up a rough version of the expanded adventurer troop tree.  So while snipers exist, they aren't optimized yet and the code to make them roam alone and do your bidding is not in.

 

[Wu-long]

The plan is Traveller troops and their upgrades will not randomly spawn.

Instead, sometimes peasants parties will turn into little adventurer parties.

Also, heroes will be able to recruit travelling peasants into their armies as whatever faction the hero belongs to.  They'll also attract existing little adventurer parties to them.  They'll need enough leadership to do so tho.

I haven't gotten to making the special upgrades process yet, just finished up a rough version of the expanded adventurer troop tree.  So while snipers exist, they aren't optimized yet and the code to make them roam alone and do your bidding is not in.

Oh i see but at least you have the intention XD so do you mean heroes can have snipers and barbarians too/?

 

[wickedshot]

yep, tho there are special requirements for each of the special upgrades, like they need a castle to make Errant Knights, and it costs money, and such

 

[Wu-long]

yep, tho there are special requirements for each of the special upgrades, like they need a castle to make Errant Knights, and it costs money, and such

so a hero can have a traveler for about a billion years and it will still be weak if they have no land that is or are you going to make it so that they can also hire mercenaries.