Questions / Suggestions

Halflings + Frail + Professional Army = Above Average Halflings. No?

Indeed. I'm just considering whether my triremes would have excellent discipline and combat ability, or above-average ability combined with stalwart morale and fighting spirit.

I think I'm going to give all the races 2 bonuses and 1 malus. I think so.

So all races will be getting an additional positive while retaining their current malus that's excellent! These extra positives won't come into effect for current battles or will they immediately come into effect when you get all the new bonus' figured out?

Suggestion Theo for the military...

We should put what age or metal units are ie 2 Spearman Companies [Iron] or 1 Light Cavalry [Mithril] ect. That way those of us modding battles or wars know what type of unit they are since we are now doing where you have to have the metal resource for better armor and weapons instead of having say a stone tipped spear. Unless something changed while I was dealing with my father and we aren't doing it where new units are basically stone age warriors.

Mhm. Sounds good.

Also, I'm about to implement this rule:

If at war, a kingdom does not receive Population Growth and Military Points, but still receives Cultural and Economic Points.

How are people supposed to replenish units and maintain the front? And if you have a massive stockpile of MP sitting around during war time, no matter how tactical of a genius the other player is he's just going to get spammed with fresh units every time he faces them in the field...and don't people make babies during war time? lmao

The point I think is you have to tactically think about it rather than each Friday churn out a bunch of fresh new units and never worry about losses. However, I would like to see something like MP pointed halved or put into a third reflecting that your troops are fighting, not training recruits.
And yeah, I would take out the pop increase

Well yeah..agreed I guess. But I don't think a total ban on MP is the way to go, because some units have to be replaced. If we're not getting MP, what about maintenance costs and such?

Hmm. I'm thinking it over.

The point here is like Ejhrahk said, I don't want people to just spam units over and over, otherwise no war will ever have a victor.

Why do some units have to be replaced? You failed to mention why, besides " I want more units. "

The point is that kingdoms raise armies, fight, and whoever loses usually loses the war.

I don't really approve of the measure, since it gives peaceful states a pretty big advantage. Wars can easily last months on this forum, and that's a lot of MP and population to lose. Plus, people would need to reinforce units and such.

Perhaps a better idea is an extension of the basic game mechanics. Why not say that Maintenance and/or recruitment costs increase - perhaps double - during wartime? That makes sense, because the army would have to manage logistics and combat as well as recruiting and training new soldiers, and it forces people to be very deliberate about recruiting units in a conflict. If you get caught "off guard" you're at a disadvantage, so there's also an incentive to maintain an active army during peace.

Double it? Let me run some numbers than, and I'll take a look.

That's also kind of the point to me, Talis. A peaceful, healthy, prospering country has people, resources, and time to maintain and grow an army, whether it be for an attack or otherwise. A country that has been at war for an extended period of time suffers. As men (or in countries like Ejrahk's case, women as well) die, more are taken from the reproducing populace to supply constant reinforcements. As all the able bodied men and women are taken the less babies are born and there becomes a population gap between children and those too old to fight. At the very least, constantly drawing from the civilian population should cause high public dissent as people who normally would live a peaceful life are expected to enlist or forced to. Or there should be a problem with the fact that a country has recruited all the willing troops for an extended period of war, and now must be clever or start taking from the unwilling, able bodied populace.

If a country wishes to reinforce their numbers throughout prolonged periods (a year has already passed in king casmir's war), there should be a consequence beyond increased maintenance. From a numbers standpoint, the only reason these sieges and battles go on for months is both sides can diddle while waiting for fresh troops every Friday.

I took it in earnest after reading Lord of the Rings and looking over some of the extended appendix information.

Tolkien has the decline of the Kingdom of Gondor primarily due to extended conflict with Mordor. The Kingdom of Gondor extensively exhausts its army in Ithilien and Osgiliath trying to keep Mordor at bay and thus it's standing army is severely decreased. You have the following, for example.

Kingdom of Gondor
Population: 500,000 ( + 1,000 a week)
Army = 500 MP worth of soldiers (plus or minus at the whim of Military Maintenance)

With the current Warring Fronts system, even if Gondor loses all of its soldiers in a battle, the next Saturday it can literally replenish every soldier it lost plus at least 1 MP worth of soldiers. It makes for a meat grinder effect.

True, we want to counteract a meat-grinder effect, but on the other hand, we don't want to cripple it entirely. A legitimate tactic in warfare has always been to utilize superior population and resources to grind an enemy down. I do think that a kingdom with the proper mechanics (high population growth and cheap units) should have the option of trying to wear down enemy factions through repeated attacks.

Sure, by saving up their Military Points than declaring war. It works.

I gave everybody their routine update and found a problem in that if you entire eliminate MP growth Military Maintenance would have to go out the window, but see it's like .. for example Ehjrahk has like 341 MP and gets 110 or so MP a week, but since he's at war he wouldn't get those which would be much more realistic than him being able to field huge armies.

Hey, I just had a really interesting idea. See, we have the "hire mercenaries" option, but we have no set mechanics for it, so why don't we do something like this:

1. Native Mercenaries
Allying with "native" (moderator controlled) factions allows the player to hire mercenaries from those factions. Each faction has certain types of mercenaries available, and their bonuses are listed with the mercenaries.

Example:

Allying with the Sithras Lizardmen Tribe allows the player to purchase the following Mercenary Units:

Sithras Skirmishers
Type: Skirmishers
Status: Regular (could also be advanced/elite/etc)
Bonuses: Improved combat in Forests
Price: 7 EP / company

. . . and so-on and so-forth.

There could also be mechanics for offering your own troops as mercenaries - losing control of them, but gaining EP in exchange.

I like it. Except that I'd limit it to like a single type per kingdom. How would you determine how you would purchase mercenaries from the kingdom? Would it effect that kingdom's standing military? What's the limit?

I fear Carthage .. I mean Shidrus might benefit from this a lot unless properly done.

Well when it has to do with Native troops, you have to find them and convince them to ally and/or hire out mercenaries. ...

Here's an idea: Have a thread where you keep track of the "Pool" of mercenary units available. You can hire units from the pool if you have contact with that Kingdom (for soldiers from other kingdoms) and do not have hostile relations with them. Native factions would only have so many units available, so there'd only be so many in the "pool" available for hire.

This would also let factions provide their own mercenaries: when a player hires out troops they sell their own soldiers to the "pool" and receive EP in exchange. Once that's done, the soldiers stay in limbo until another kingdom which has contact hires them.

There could be some other restrictions too. For example: Mercenaries are paid to fight, so they always have less morale than native troops. Also, you cannot hire mercenaries to fight for the faction they came from.

So it would look something like this:

------------------

Currently Available Mercenaries:

Sithras Skirmishers (3)
Faction: Sithras
Type: Skirmishers
Status: Regular (could also be advanced/elite/etc)
Bonuses: Improved combat in Forests
Price: 7 EP / company

Union Steel-Shields (1)
Faction: Shidrus
Type: Heavy Infantry
Status: Elite
Price: 15 EP/ company

-

If a player hires one of the mercenary units, they get subtracted from the available units.

Okay but what determines how many mercenaries a faction gets?

Well there's no set limit, but there'd be plenty of limitations:

1) There are only so many units in the pool to hire.
2) You have to be in contact with and at peace with the mercenary's native faction
3) They cost EP

Capping that, I suppose you could put a maintenance price on mercenary units. If you don't keep paying them they walk off. Considering how valuable EP is that's pretty hefty.

Question about the new Mercenaries. Seems like if every mercenary faction got 10 in the pool battles could go on for a long time still just using mercanies to supplement your own me. Shouldn't it be less because 6000 mercenaries in every nation would enough to rival their own militaries half the time. Wouldn't it be best to have like a cap of the mercenary companies in the pool being from 1-5?

Another question does Matainence costs apply to those at war? If so what happens when you can no longer maintain your army do they simply lay down their arms or are matainence costs not included during war but only during peace?

EDIT: Liked to know about that last one because Ezria's and mine would be effected. If they don't apply then great cuz I got some saved up if they do apply then troops that can't be maintained shouldn't be able to fight. Would greatly effect the outcome of battles and how they're fought and how wars are started.

They don't have military maintenance costs.

How's this look so far?

I'd say this is fairly accurate of the Known World so far.

Light Green = Plains
Grey = Mountains
Brown = Barrens / Volcanoes
Yellow = Desert
Pink = Taiga
Blue = Tundra
Dark Green = Forests

looks pretty good. I wouldn't differentiate between tundra and taiga, since there's little reason to mechanics-wise. It's an ecological distinction, not one that would factor into nations RP.

White out the gap between Sessau and Merendez for now. I haven't modmarked you yet and I might put something besides plains there. Especially since looking at this map plugs into my sense of geography and gives me an idea how things should look depending on the climates...