So, I was thinking, and maybe this was already thought on or is already in use, but what if, say a villager is worth 10 'points' when you influence it, that if you have 5 villages already, you gain only 1-2 points of the villager you influencing during season, and if you have none you gain the full 10 'points'? I imagine influencing is much like a capture the flag event, first one to say 10,000 points or whatever, so would this work to help make sure each City gets chances at villages?

Yeah, I see your point. It'd make it so that the more villages one has, the harder it is to get another village. Though that'd balance it way too much, I think, and nobody could gain an advantage over everybody else.

There already is negative feedback in the form of competing villages, but I do not think it is strong enough negative feedback. Proof? The current politics. I agree with Rafael that there should be more negative feedback, especially to help keep an org with more than half of the villages from gaining more. Perhaps double the effect of competition?

Aye, I prefer Shorlen's suggestion to a blanket decline in influencing any village. It means that if you have five villages, and the one that your commune really wants to keep revolts, you're screwed.

Well IC does that really work, would you as a villager want to go with a larger organization who does a good job of protecting it's villages, since it has more, or would you prefer to go with a obviously weaker organization, who doesn't seem to be able to protect the village, since it has none. Then again, since they dont have any, the weaker organization will be able to focus more on your village, which would mean you would get richer.

Balance wise i would say, the more villages you have, regardless, the harder it is to get another village, but IC wise there is an explanation for both, since not all villages are looking for just protection.

Well, villages like the mines could look at in an IC way that they need food provided to them, hell maybe that could be something the City -must- provide in tithe's -back- to the village (thus dictating whether or not they can really afford as a City to influence another village) so that they can work, expect it of the City to give them that, and then like Delport or Stewartsville would need coals, linen, that kind of thing..

An IC way for a village to want to reject them could be that "Hey, you've got 5 other villages, I just odn't believe that you can possibly afford to give me 50 OreX every month!"

You're cool for posting about this, Rafael. Something like that seems necessary.

As nice as the idea of Glomdoring being so frickin elite it whoops everybody at a village when it's severely outnumbered at least 3/4ths the time of the event, it just isn't going to happen. We tried. Lotsa' times.

Realistically, the larger an empire is, the harder it gets to control, especially if assimilating a lot of different cultures.

The more a single empire dominates, the more unstable the villages should become. Thus as the territory expands, the more likely village revolts will occur. That gives you more of a chance to fight back, but it doesn't help if all the good players belong to one organization.

Maybe there's a finite number of guards that can be purchased for power--sort of a sliding scale--or dimished economic returns, such as power dwindling based on number. For instance, say a Guard costs 25 power, but the more guards you have over a number, the cost increases on a scale (first 25 guards = 25 power each, next 25 = 125 power each, next 25 = 250 power, or so on). That would make the territories harder to guard and you could have more unofficial revolts (such as some opposing organization invading the city). Inverse for the amount of power. (As you gain villages there are diminishing returns).

Roark might have some ideas about the economic costs of holding more territory. But War itself is a negative-sum game. Long-term wars play havok on an enconomy. Lusternia is more "low fantasy" than "high fantasy", so the Iron Council or the Moonhart Circle should be concerned with economics and politics as well as religion and culture. Want to conquer the basin for Fain or tear down the cities for Lisaeria? You can, but Magnagora or Serenwilde might go bankrupt if you do!

I think the effects of competition are just too little to truly matter in the grand scheme of things at the present. Southgard and Rockholm REALLY don't like each other. They really don't. At all. It shouldn't be so easy to have both as it is. Shanthmark and Paavik? We weren't beating Magnagora by THAT much in Shanthmark. Sure, they started late, but it *was* close near the end. It should have been harder for us. Same with Estelbar and Acknor - why should the furrikin be so ameniable to those who would enslave them?

I personally would really like the effects of competition to be more strongly emphasized.

I've an idea. Each city/commune has ten 'administrators'. The actual denizen changes from city to commune; Magnagora has slave drivers, for example. Celest has preachers, Glomdoring has villagemasters, Serenwilde has ecologists, Hallifax has bureaucrats, and so on.
City leaders can assign administrators to villages, but they have different effects, all beneficial; villages without administrators, or villages with only one, will lose some productivity and revolt faster; having a single administrator stops them from revolting faster, but still impairs production. The effects:

Serenwilde Ecologists increase production of leather, wood and food commodities.
Celestian preachers increase the Power output of a village.
Magnagoran slave drivers make revolts more frequent, but increase the output of metals.
Glomdoring village masters increase production of silk and wood, making the village revolt more slowly. Production of a few random commodities is reduced slightly, though, as the villagers turn into zombies.

That way, the less villages you have the more they produce. Capturing too many villages means their production is low. Village's overall Power and commodity output would be reduced to reflect this change.

Noooo, burn the filthy undead!

Other than that, it's an interesting idea- though why not put 6 administrators in a mining village and 1 in the others (metals are more important, and losing a little production of Stewartsville for instance isn't quite as bad). Why not a limit of 5 administrators total- if you get five villages, you can keep all of them from revolting faster but will suffer some commodity loss as a result. You can pile a few together to keep a village you really want to keep longer (for RP reasons or for certain commodity choices), but the rest will start to go faster. If you get more than five villages, well... you don't have the resources to keep them all happy! At least one will revolt faster.

We aren't playing an RTS

I meant zombies of the 'stare blankly into the wall and do your job' kind, not the undead 'Brrraaaains... Braaaaains' kind. Of course it'll have to be fine tuned, and perhaps the administration effects don't stack very well: 2 administrators have 100% effect each, 3 have 90%, 4 have 80%, and so on. 10 is a nice round number, but it could be five.

EDIT: One thing I was going to add to the first post but didn't: Killing administrators would be possible, but they would have a couple of burly bodiguards with them at all times. They'd wander through the village. Administrators would cost gold and Power to recover once they're killed.

EDIT2: Also, empowering an administrator would increase his efficiency for one month, slightly; making him paranoid would decrease it. Administrators would take an unusually long time to become laidback again (After all, they're bureaucrats with slow minds).


This would make village raids actually matter. And it would add some strategy to a system that is basically dependant on how many people you have and how skilled they are.

The more villages the city has, the bigger the chance that with one revolt another one (or even two!) will revolt simultaneously.

If that city is able to win them both at the same time... then really, they deserve to have them.

Hey, that's not a bad idea.

Yea we seriously need something more with Influencing, in Celest it is like, we are given orders to stand down and not even try for the village...it is like man...have we been kicked in the groin so many times we can't walk any more? Seriously...it is kind of getting shameful.
I miss the old school infleuncing, prior to sanctuary, now when we do try for a village it is all about move+sanc, move+sanc....no one ever gains city rank unless they kill Taint it seems, so we are not really gaining anyone who can give more cityrank to the young ones, Project 25 is still backlogged...anyone else see a few issues here? Maybe I'm just being an today...
What id during influencing, everyone looses 1% exp per death, regardless of if they have conglute/transmogrification/random other skill to save your arse/lich etc. so it promoted the insane influencing warfare of old?
Thoughts, ideas, love, hate?
love-mimi

I really like the idea of bringing simultaneous village revolts to bear on dominating organizations.

It's better than penalty solutions where you have to expend twice as much effort as other teams, but get nowhere. And it brings strategy and personal biases to the fore.

It also makes it far more likely that the villages end up spread out across various organizations.

Explaining why it happens would be hard, and getting the balance right difficult also, but its a beautiful solution.

You guys have jumped the gun on us. We had been discussing changing the design for village revolts and you've actually stumbled upon what we considered planning (which kind of sucks as now we can't surprise you). Actually, I'm going to close this thread and ask for your opinion on a new thread regarding what the actual plan may be.