Prospective EU campaign - Signups started, see new thread. Seeking adjudicator.

[Marin Peace Bringer]

If you cannot fight or are otherwise unavailable IMO you should be forced to fall back.

Thats what i was going for with my suggestion.

The post above me gave me a thought, what happens when a kingdom is defeated? should they become vessels of who ever beat them? or just work as mercenary's? could an ally of the defeated clan liberate them?

 

[socks]

My ideas seem to have diverged from okiN's, so I think I'll be changing up that one. Still inspired by you though

 

[okiN]

No worries, go for it! I don't mind at all, just as I don't expect the Oceanics to feel put out just because we're doing things a bit differently. Best of luck in finding your own way!

 

[kingofnoobia]

Exactly!

I fear some people think I am pushing this idea because I am head of a powerful clan, but I would LOVE to see weaker clans band together and force us to fight a war we cannot hope to win and find us relegated to the murky dephs of mercenary life having fallen from our once idylic pedestal of power.

It would be awesome!

Other clans will already have to band together to beat 22nd anyway, as you seem to have the highest average skill level per player, not to mention team organisation. Now already, most clans will only be able to think of victory if they can consistently outnumber you on the campaign map, which will require diplomacy. Other than that, if they do not do so in the early game, battlefield victories will lead you to map domination pretty quickly, forcing them to band together.

You see - it would be great to see smaller or weaker clans band together to destroy a powerful overlord, but that clan should only attain that status by being the smartest on the campaign map and having success on the battle maps, not by simply having the ability to field more players.

 

[okiN]

Exactly. The key thing here is to make the campaign strategic, but also functional and playable.

The things you're saying also have a lot of logistical problems to them:

a) I think it would be hard to design a good ruleset around "player pieces"
b) It would be a lot more work for the adjudicator to keep track of armies this way
c) This is probably the most important problem: think of how much harder it would make it to organize matches!

 

[MaHuD]

Armies are OK, but not with pre-set players.
I thought of it, and exactly because of reason C I dismissed the idea.

 

[okiN]

Most people seem to agree that whichever rules we use, a province map would be better than a hex map, so I'm switching the poll to the faction choice issue.

 

[Plazek]

But do you not see Okin it will balance itself!
If a clan is more powerful than the others other clans will band together to defeat it. Or they will fail the super clan will win the game will end and eveyrone gets to try again. However once a clan has been defeated and lost its fief it will be a fiefless army. It can do its own thing or fight for another clan.  should imagine a massive single clan going around destroying everyone and razing their cities could piss off enough clans enough that they will all work for free!

FURTHERMORE YOU DO NOT NEED TO TRACK EVERY SINGLE PLAYER ALL THE TIME. Look at what I posted here:

Firstly this is extremely simple, in fact it is arguably much simpler than having some roation system or other artificial means of working out who goes where. You have a general character and his troops, they are on a list, people on that list are allowed to fight in his battles. The list can only be changed when (a) the general is in town and (b) the troops he is tranferring into his army are in town. I mean that is NOT complex by any means!

You track only the army itself. No need to track each individual player in it except by means of a LIST. Now lists are not complex, are they?!


AS for forcing clans to form coalitions, I think they sure as hell should if they want to survive! When WW3 breaks out I am pretty sure Luxemburg is going to be holding on pretty damn tight to its allies. If you do not have enough individual power you really hsould be forced to make friends. I mean what is the alternative? Artificial limits on power that allow the smallest clan in the game to fucntion perfectly well and be perfectly defencible from the largest most powrerful alliance in the game because:

I don't think they should be forced to form coalitions if they don't want to

Well if they do not wanna do that they should prepare to be eaten!

If you want an interesting and dynamic game you cannot be carebearing all the tiny little clans that wanna join in, if they are not big enough to play with the big boys then that is just a fact! The alternative IMO is a slow boring and stagnating game. If people do not like the big powerful clan then make allies and destroy him! Balance of power is now totally skewed the other way, what we gonna do now nerf the alliance?!

 

[okiN]

Sorry, I really just don't agree with you on this one. You seem to have kind of missed my point on some of the key issues as well. I think it's probably best to agree to disagree and see what most of the others think.

 

[Rian Ó Fearghail]

Clan matches are played with equal numbers of players (agreed between the clans) on a territory they mutally agree.

Mutually choosing a territory may not be the best idea. The same map may be played over and over again.
Like the Oceanic campaign, two maps are played, A team chooses a map each. With any luck custom maps can be brought in for a more diverse game.

Another option looking at your handicap idea: The team with the lower handicap chooses the map. Simple, means weaker clans may have better chances against the larger more trained clans which may take part.

Just a shout in the dark.

PS.
Set up a seperate forum. Dedicated to this tournament. Will be easier to maintain and track ideas. no?

 

[okiN]

Maybe. I think taking things off-site would make it less accessible, though, and in any case I hope to get a ruleset together and start with proper signups fairly quickly.

 

[Plazek]

@ Okin's percieved problems

Problems with having 1 real player = 1 real soldier on the map:

a) There are no player pieces only army pieces and the players within them. As I mentioned on my FIRST post pushing this idea.
b) It would be easy if you use the extreemely simple form of organisation called a LIST. As I also mentioned in my first post.
Obviously this list would only be allowed to be changed in certain conditions of which I gave possible examples.
c) So check with your clan mates in advance! "So mates were going to be going on the offencive and the battles are every weekend on Sunday so I need X guys who will be free for the next 2 weeks."
Of course you would also take extra people just in case of emergencies, however with the game on the scale I see it working at where one clan probably only has the manpower to hold and protect 1 city and hold one or 2 armies if you cannot rely on the entirey of you clan to be ready at pre-arranged times that is the clans problrm. Do not base the game rules around people who are not prepared to actually play the game and turn up for fights they agreed to turn up to.

Also consider that if nations and alliances are formed of multiple clans as I suggest then how big a problem is it going to be? Oh no a few of my guys cannot turn up. WAIT WE HAVE 3 WHOLE CLANS IN OUR ALLIANCE!? A few guys unable to make a single battle are peanuts!

Sorry, I really just don't agree with you on this one. You seem to have kind of missed my point on some of the key issues as well. I think it's probably best to agree to disagree and see what most of the others think.

Interesting debate.
Man I do not know why I bother. I post long detailed posts describing my views and all anyone seems to be able to reply with a vague 1 liners saying it fails. No real reasons no real debate. I only post my ideas because I can see a game working like this in my head so well and perfectly that I need to see it become a reality but all anyone says is no.

I think ima give up.

 

[socks]

D-;

Noooo.

Plazek, I'd make the US campaign international just for you - your ideas are great, and I've already incorporated the 'evolution from village' concept you had going in it.

 

[okiN]

Plazek: I just don't think there's anything to debate, so I'm not really interested in using any more space going over it repeatedly. We obviously want very different things from this campaign, and I think our desires are almost certainly unreconcilable. That being the case, I think the best move here is to just see how everyone else feels.

 

[Marin Peace Bringer]

This is my idea about the player pieces.

Have an army piece with X number of soldiers in it (like say X is 20)

So that army fights another army with Y (Y being 30)

The army with X(20) soldiers have 20 lives, the army with Y(30) have 30 lives.
This may be hard to keep track of, but there are two was i thought of.

One - having a game admin (some one not from either fighting clans) who keeps track of the lives.
or
Have some kind of mini-mod were you could put in the number of "reinforcements" each team gets" (this would be harder i know)

But either way i think this would be a cool idea. Thoughts?

 

[Nireco]

Why bother with multipliers and non-simple stuff like that? Why not just keep it real? Why not let each p;layer have a real position on the map. Why stop powerful clans being powerful in the game?

I think keeping it functional, fun and balanced is more important than keeping it "real". Not only would keeping track of specific player movement be a huge hassle, I'm sure a lot of the smaller clans would object to a scenario where they're inherently disadvantaged in a massive way. I don't think they should be forced to form coalitions if they don't want to, either. You have to keep in mind that even in a scenario where teams are more or less balanced, clans like 22nd will still have a huge advantage simply because they have a much larger and overall more skilled pool of players to draw from. There's no need to skew that even further.

There would be supply centers as in diplomacy and they would give the nation additional army as in Diplomacy. The clan would then assign some players to move with this army. The amount could be larger than the battle sizes are, this would decrease the chance for missing players. Some amount of army could be replaced with mercenaries, if army's own players are not available. Same nation should not use same mercenaries constantly as this would mess the player location idea. When getting new army the players could be taken from players not yet in any army or existing armies, when they of course would not be in that army anymore.

In my original idea I don't think it would break functionality or be less fun or break balance. Keeping track of specific player movement needs only watching separate file, which tells in which army is who player. For it to really work well, it should maybe not be possible to add any players to armies. This would also need some default battle size. Of course in some battle there could be more players if both sides have enough for that. It might even add to fun factor, as this forces clan to assign it's weaker players to some armies and then also them can play. And there was possibility to put more than that limit to armies to compensate with inactivity. This will also cause all the teams see where the enemy's best army is. Then as it approaches they could form temporary alliance. Maybe even make the armies slower, 1 or 2 tiles per turn.

c) This is probably the most important problem: think of how much harder it would make it to organize matches!

Well, that could be problem as even with larger number of players on army there might be some problems.

Man I do not know why I bother. I post long detailed posts describing my views and all anyone seems to be able to reply with a vague 1 liners saying it fails. No real reasons no real debate. I only post my ideas because I can see a game working like this in my head so well and perfectly that I need to see it become a reality but all anyone says is no.

I think my rules are at least to same direction and I too see in my head them working.

Also sorry for repeating the stuff already said, it's somewhat because of this: Warning - while you were typing 9 new replies have been posted. You may wish to review your post.

Yes, I'm slow to write these posts. And there was actually more new replies...

Also do we have enough people who want to write short complete rules for campaign? We could then write them and make a poll and discuss some details on the rules.

Edit: awfully long post..

 

[okiN]

This is my idea about the player pieces.

Have an army piece with X number of soldiers in it (like say X is 20)

So that army fights another army with Y (Y being 30)

The army with X(20) soldiers have 20 lives, the army with Y(30) have 30 lives.
This may be hard to keep track of, but there are two was i thought of.

One - having a game admin (some one not from either fighting clans) who keeps track of the lives.
or
Have some kind of mini-mod were you could put in the number of "reinforcements" each team gets" (this would be harder i know)

But either way i think this would be a cool idea. Thoughts?

Well, that's a different idea entirely, not really even related to what Plazek is on about. It's been mentioned before as well.

I think it's nice in theory, but having to keep a running tally of all the deaths on either team and then artificially capping respawns when they run out would be a lot of work, and I dunno if it'd really be worth it. I'd personally prefer to do battle advantages through team ratios.

Also do we have enough people who want to write short complete rules for campaign? We could then write them and make a poll and discuss some details on the rules.

Yes, that's something I've been wondering about as well. There are lots of ideas, but so far only one really coherent proposed structure for the campaign has materialized, namely Marmalade's ladder idea. I'll be submitting my own ruleset for review soon enough, and I think anyone else who wants to should feel free. But people with big ideas for fundamental changes should be prepared to come up with fully functional systems of their own to make things work.

 

[kingofnoobia]

隐藏

@ Okin's percieved problems

Problems with having 1 real player = 1 real soldier on the map:

a) There are no player pieces only army pieces and the players within them. As I mentioned on my FIRST post pushing this idea.
b) It would be easy if you use the extreemely simple form of organisation called a LIST. As I also mentioned in my first post.
Obviously this list would only be allowed to be changed in certain conditions of which I gave possible examples.
c) So check with your clan mates in advance! "So mates were going to be going on the offencive and the battles are every weekend on Sunday so I need X guys who will be free for the next 2 weeks."
Of course you would also take extra people just in case of emergencies, however with the game on the scale I see it working at where one clan probably only has the manpower to hold and protect 1 city and hold one or 2 armies if you cannot rely on the entirey of you clan to be ready at pre-arranged times that is the clans problrm. Do not base the game rules around people who are not prepared to actually play the game and turn up for fights they agreed to turn up to.

Also consider that if nations and alliances are formed of multiple clans as I suggest then how big a problem is it going to be? Oh no a few of my guys cannot turn up. WAIT WE HAVE 3 WHOLE CLANS IN OUR ALLIANCE!? A few guys unable to make a single battle are peanuts!

Sorry, I really just don't agree with you on this one. You seem to have kind of missed my point on some of the key issues as well. I think it's probably best to agree to disagree and see what most of the others think.

Interesting debate.
Man I do not know why I bother. I post long detailed posts describing my views and all anyone seems to be able to reply with a vague 1 liners saying it fails. No real reasons no real debate. I only post my ideas because I can see a game working like this in my head so well and perfectly that I need to see it become a reality but all anyone says is no.

I think ima give up.

No offense, Plazek, but despite your detailed posts, you do not really respond to several of the arguments given from our side either. I have stated, twice already, that I feel that a clan should only gain a numerical superiority by making more intelligent moves on the campaign map and by winning on the battlefield, not by simply having larger numbers, and okiN said that was one of his concerns too. On top of that, okiN and MaHuD both have expressed their concern on the matter of organising the battles using your idea.

Nevertheless, for the first argument you keep hammering on it that it would 'balance itself out'. That is not the point. It would probably balance itself out, but most of us simply want the clans to be a bit more equal at the start, so a clan doesn't attain superiority in early game by simply having more players. It's a personal preference, really, and there's no point debating it to death. Democracy will have to solve this one.

For the second argument, you say that one does not need to base the set of rules on "people who are not prepared to actually play the game and turn up for fights they agreed to turn up to". I say that we do have to base the rules on that. Really, your idea, while being great in theory, will simply make it impossible for most clans to participate, excepting the few large, established clans like 22nd, CoR and Einherjar-Shieldings. Other clans simply lack the numbers or the organisation to actually play. If several clans have to fight togehter, it'll even be more chaotic. They will not be able to team up effectively, as it will take days for them to come to an agreement when they can get the required number of players on. The negotiation for such a complex system between two or more clans is simply too complex to organise on the short term.

 

[Rian Ó Fearghail]

Reading through I may have missed it, but whats the story on cash amounts or pre-set equipment?
some-one post me the page?

 

[Marin Peace Bringer]

Well, that's a different idea entirely, not really even related to what Plazek is on about. It's been mentioned before as well.

I think it's nice in theory, but having to keep a running tally of all the deaths on either team and then artificially capping respawns when they run out would be a lot of work, and I dunno if it'd really be worth it. I'd personally prefer to do battle advantages through team ratios.

I do not think it would be that hard.  Think about it, you have a list for each army (like each clan has a army list and it has how many "lives" it has) when a certain army is fighting, you look up the list then go in-game and keep track of how many people die.
Its not that hard, you just need a pencil and paper. Right down how many are alive, then subtract how many died, then you have how many are left after the battle....

And as far as making people do it, if a clan leader can not get his men to follow the rules, then the game admin can kick them from the server.