2016 The Choosing Philosophy and Other Stuff

[VballMichael]

Have to agree with JF here. My Tyrant group has had 5 battles with villages or small groups. Each time, I only lost a little bit and was not "blooded" in any one encounter.
However, I have lost leaders and accumulated attrition and the group certainly feels blooded over this period of time.
I would favor a percentage chance of promotion/advancement being lower for crushing victories, but drawing out a battle to a certain number of rounds on purpose does not feel like a good plan.  

[HeadHoncho]

On politicals and 310, please see below.

http://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/showt...8#pid35498

This is a huge philosophical change, with enormous gameplay implications. Will make attacking a region a lot harder, politically.

[Ry Vor]

Yes, experience is the key.  A brigade that never engages in combat because the battle was won by missile fire and magic doesn't gain experience.   You can win with overwhelming numbers, that's fine, but that's not how you get elite units.

Some of this might just be due to the word "veteran".  In the US, it means you were in the military service.  You are a veteran of a war if you were in the service when the war was going on, even if you didn't leave the US.  In the game, it means your unit has experienced combat, likely more than once, and were an integral part of that engagement, counted on to make a difference, and that title of veteran in the game means your brigade is fighting at a 25% bonus over "regulars". 

[Ry Vor]

Blooded.  Couple issues with this one.  
The concept that having a certain percentage of your friends die to get promoted is ridiculous to me having served in the military.   The average Roman Legionair had a mortality rate of 40% over 25 years of service compared to a normal mortality rate of 25% over the same period during that time.  I think there is no arguement that the Romans were likely the most veteran and elite organized military of there time.  The US lost 6800 troops out of 2.5 million that were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan or 0.3%.  Iraq lost 50k of its approx 350k military troop during that time, 14%.  Would you say the US basically has no veterans? And the Iraqi has more?
From a game perspective it is basically dictating a tactic that to my knowledge never exitisted any where in history where you purposely send in a force with the goal that you will loose a certain amount of troops.
I think blooded and other items like battle ratio, battle length are fine to be a part of troop/brigade advancement but should not be gating items.  Experience is the number 1 item for advancement being involved in the real situation.   Some experiences have a greater chance to advance.   If your unit has fought in 5 battles (1/8 a maximum length game just in battles) with no brigade advancing under any condition likely something is wrong.

Promotion is not about friends dying.  Getting promoted only because your friend died would be ridiculous and baseless.  The term "blooded" actually comes from Roman legions, where a newly formed legion was not trusted in combat unless it had been blooded and they would be assigned missions to overcome this hurdle.  Within a legion, its least experienced legionaries were in the front lines so that they might become blooded. Veteran troops were in the second and third manacles. These blooded units went on to become the veteran legions.  This is also where the term "decimated" comes from: a legion which showed cowardice would be decimated, meaning every tenth (deca) legionnaire would be executed to ensure such behavior was not repeated.  I'm looking here at my bookcase of at least 40 books on Roman, Gothic, and Ancient military history and could pull any number of examples on how various military cultures integrated the concept of units being blooded to prove they were battle-worthy.

I have posted that the algorithms that are in use to evaluate elevation, brigade losses, leader death and promotion, are under review.  When they are settled upon and enacted, I will publish them. 

[Ry Vor]

On politicals and 310, please see below.

http://kingdomsofarcania.net/forum/showt...8#pid35498

This is a huge philosophical change, with enormous gameplay implications. Will make attacking a region a lot harder, politically.

Not sure which post you meant to reference (the above just seems to come back here), but it might be related to the Causi bella post. 

I also feel there should be more universal results, to bring the whole world feel more into the game, rather than the feel of discreet, disconnected contests that might occur without more news on what is going on around the world.  So while gaining a region is one of the few universal results now, perhaps Enamorings and Denigrations should also be public knowledge.  It would be unlikely a king could spend all kinds of gold to bump up his reputation in a region without it being widely known, or likewise, spend resources to denigrate a kingdom without it being public knowledge.

[HeadHoncho]

The post is in the link I shared, UM confirms that unlike Second Cycle, 310 efforts in Third Cycle "are adjusted by regional reaction level. Friendly is the full amount that you were used to back in 2nd Cycle, less for the others correspondingly."

[Ry Vor]

Philosophy on Pace of the Campaign

I'm curious about the pacing in the betas as perhaps not exactly what I was expecting with the changes implemented in 3rd Cycle. 

My intention was to slow down the early game, so to extend that phase and allow therefore more strategic alternative directions than practical if the first five turns are considered most critical as in 2nd Cycle.  Some of the steps in that direction were the reduction in emissary range to 8, eliminating about a PC per region and having not just the cities, but a town and village in each region as well, so don't swing on gaining the region as a neutral would.  Starting militaries are about one brigade lighter than in 2nd Cycle (but T5 reinforcements are about a brigade stronger).  Companions can't be hired until T4 at earliest, most kingdoms may not have a HP by turn 4, low level recon is 10% more likely to fail, and various other changes to slow things a bit including more training, more encounters, lower in general starting influence, many hidden capitals.

But we have seen plenty of regions controlled on Turn 4 and a few on Turn 3.  What more needs to be done to allow for a longer early game period?  Or is that not an important objective?

 

[HeadHoncho]

If you want to slow down early region taking:

- Maintain Second Cycle number of towns and villages and placement algorithm;
- Reduce production at all towns and villages;
- Slightly reduce census at all capitals and villages that start in the same region as a Kingdom's capital;
- Slightly reduce census at all cities;
- Delete one Governor from each Kingdom.

I am neutral as to whether it's a positive goal or not. Are you increasing the max turn length?

[Jumpingfist]

What HH mentioned about towns and villages would have best impact. But here are some other things

Something I was thinking to slow down things was not give access to the kingdoms last brigade until maybe turn 5 when reinforcements show up. This would cancel a good amount of the early scouting that needs to be done.

Requiring ESO, extra talents and SVC to be selected T1 also slows things down allowing for fewer orders effectively. You could still allow them to be changed until T3 as long as they were entered on T1 incase of mistakes.

Reducing starting gold maybe by 25% will also have an impact over the first few turns.

[Ry Vor]

What HH mentioned about towns and villages would have best impact.  But here are some other things

Something I was thinking to slow down things was not give access to the kingdoms last brigade until maybe turn 5 when reinforcements show up.   This would cancel a good amount of the early scouting that needs to be done.

Requiring ESO, extra talents and SVC to be selected T1 also slows things down allowing for fewer orders effectively.   You could still allow them to be changed until T3 as long as they were entered on T1 incase of mistakes.

Reducing starting gold maybe by 25% will also have an impact over the first few turns.

These are good ideas.  I think in the betas a major factor was I allowed the census for cities and capitals to exceed the paramaters.  Interesting on the advantage of the 5th group for non-dispersed kingdoms, as these seem also to be Devout (Sacred Order and Amazons and Nomads).