It'll be next to impossible if the city/commune does the right steps in protecting their villages, by setting up a demesne by one of their mage archetypes and setting up statues. Now that statues take 10 minutes to destroy, and with a full demesne effects going while someone is trying to destroy a statue, makes village influencing against a village nearly impossible. The effect is that, from this day forward, no village will ever change hands, because of the changes to statues. It takes 5-10 minutes to destroy a statue, and in those 5-10 minutes, you can be dropped down on that same statue in a Hartstone demesne over and over, or you if you were in a Geomancer demesne you'd be dead since it does damage, and most likely the same thing with Aquamancer and Hartstone's demesne. What was, fast-paced action in village influencing has gone through many checks and balances and now has become one-sided, to never change sides, unless if its one of the mining villages.

What I propose is this: when a village declares independent from a City/Commune, it'll destroy everything that was left behind, as to get the general sense of a rebellion. So, if, lets say you look at Estelbar, there are statues and demesne and probably paintings, the village will destroy every single one of those, including the demesne. It'll be changed to its original state.

Thoughts, opinions?

A race to demense and statue, how fun! (no sarcasm)

I can agree with the statues but I see no reason and way for villagers destroying a demesne.

I think Silvanus' main concern is the statue+demesne combo. If a village rebels, statues should be destroyed. Forcing a demesne away is easy enough on its own, we've been doing that forever. It's just... 10 minutes to break a statue in such a situation is a little rediculous.

The statues do get destroyed, demenses in village influencing is the main problem though.

So you are saying that its inconceivable that the villages might have a nice rogue magey hermit type to come in and break the demenses? It would make the area a proper playing field instead of the farce that we are going through now.

Yeah, I just remember having NO CHANCE AT ALL in Dairuchi (and even if Magnagorans weren't outnumbered in, say, Estelbar a while back, Athana's and Munsia's demesnes were completely screwing them over (as well as letting me wisp folks into Rhysus, Shamarah and others) because Ravin's demesne was owning everyone, and it would have taken hours to break, and they were crusading in the meantime. Destroying demesnes sounds perfect. (Statues already get nuked, no need to change that. )

Take note about Delport just recently. Our Geomancers managed to claim the village area via Veonira's demesne despite the counterattacks. However, we did not win the village itself due to lack of influencers. Village influencing relies MUCH more on influencers than it does on demesnes. The demesnes are just there for combat support, and granted they're a HUGE boost in favor of whichever city's mage has it, its purpose is useless without the core influencing. I see no real reason for demesnes to break after a village revolts simply because of this. It's easy to break a demesne, any idiot mage can do it if they can find the proper edges and such. If revolts start breaking demesnes, then all we'll start seeing is hours and hours of huge "QUICK! SET UP A DEMESNE BEFORE THEY DO" wars. It would take away the feel of actually -influencing-. On a side note: I'd REALLY like to see people start debating more... c'mon people, Estarra made that stuff for a REASON.

Or you can have the obelisk in the vilalge wipe out the demsne

That seems like a logical explanation given how the discretionary power functions come from the obelisk.

I agree with this actually. The village should throw off remnants of it's previous occupation.

Villages already do destroy statues when they go into play. They have been for quite some time. (If not, then it's a bug.)

Not sure about demesnes though. We'll think about it.

Or make it like Gwylifar said. A discretionary power to destroy demesnes.

I think that demesnes should remain. Of course it offers a good advantage but in my eyes the previous owners should have an advantage and as Revan already wrote, the demesne is an advantage but doesn't decide the outcome of the battle.

I -don't- think the previous owners should have an advantage. Why would they? If anything, the village just rebelled against them, logically they should have LESS advantage. (But that wouldn't really be that good.)

Anyway, how would a discretionary power work? Seeing as no one controls the obelisk at that point? *hm*

I agree, clean the slate and let everyone start from ground zero. When a Village goes into play, every last vestige of the previous masters influence should be thrown off (demesnes melded and non-melded included).

I agree. Given that a melded demesne already in place is useless unless the owner is about and given that villages rebel randomly, the advantage is possible but more than likely small. For example, I remember when Dairuchi rebelled once and Ravin had a demesne there. He wasn't around so it did almost no good to the Magnagorans because they had to burn power to meld just like everyone else.

Agreed.

How long irl do villages last anyway?

We've been saying this ever since Ravin had his ubermesne and only -now- you jump on the bandwagon? Yeesh.

I just meant that it seemed consistent with discretionary powers, so it wouldn't strain disbelief to say that the obelisk does it. But it's not something someone has to do, because there's no one in charge to do it at the time.

I suppose it could be coded as a discretionary power, though. Whenever a village is in play, any city/commune could do it. They'd have to get a protector/security person to the obelisk and do a command, and it'd take a minute to take effect, and if he left the room or died during that time it'd be cancelled. But if he didn't, at the end of the minute for a cost of 500 discretionary power, all demesnes, melds, ethereal forests, taint, and flooding would be wiped from the village. This could be done as often as desired until the village is won.

But really I think it makes more sense for the village to do this automatically when they revolt. And if it did, then while the above might be cool, it might not be cool enough to be worth the coding time (unless making the revolt wipe these effects makes it easy to also make a discretionary power that just calls the same subroutine, or alias, or whatever it is).