On Land and Levels

[Ruddertail]

Ok, my idea for land + levels goes something like this. Details are all up for adjustment, just a basic outline. This, I'm afraid, would move us away from being a promi. Now, some of the stuff we're talking about already does that, I'm assuming that's not a deal-breaker right away. Still, this is the most drastic change yet proposed, and if it's different-ness is unacceptable, I understand. I'm also not sure how well this will work with a discworld theme, since I've never read any of the discworld novels. Personally, I'd prefer to have features drive them, not the other way around, but again, I can see that you all might go the other way.

The system really has two parts: land and levels. The land portion may work without levels, but I don't see the levels idea working without the land change. They are somewhat interwoven, as well. The system is based on a fundamental revamping of our system. Right now, we get NW primarily from troops, after that (to an extent) from cash, food, and land. This system would switch that more towards a more general power, taking into account your cities, your overall economic productivity, your land, and your level, as well as your army and resources on hand. Further, the system will re-do troops from easy come/easy go to a system where an army must be built and husbanded, and the loss of the majority of one's army is likely to cause them major difficulties. Finally, system will re-do all the major strategies.

First, levels, in overview. Levels will be bought with gold - the same gold that goes to upkeep troops. Taxes will no longer supply gold - or at least not much gold. The primary sources of gold will be
1) Trade routes (passing merchants give you gold for your junk, plus, they have to pay for market stalls, etc).
2) Sacred/cultural cities and relics (Cities and relics are two distinct things. Either sacred or cultural works. The point is that people pay money to come to them. Rich people. People with gold, not peasants).
3) Mines. These primarily produce building and armor/weapon materials, but also produce a flow of gold.
4) Other players, as bounties, payments for resources or mercenaries, or payments for the use of chokepoint cities.

When bought, levels would give you a certain amount of credits. These credits could be spent on anything from upgrades to one's troops to upgrades to the economy to special abilities. Spy/mage in particular would depend on the last one. Levels and/or the upgrades they provide would count towards one's overall empire value. Levels WOULD NOT be lost due to kills.

Special cities/items: Special cities would be an integral part of the system. They are essentially what link the land and levels system together and make both work. Their are three types of special cities, one special item. I would certainly be open to more special items. Cities all start out in the hands of neutral players, and must be initially annexed by an empire. They are as follows:

1) Chokepoint cities. Chokepoint cities are required to attack between two empires, grouped into small regions. Since we don't have a real, geographical map, chokepoints and regions are randomly assigned. They are not required for every attack, five empires might be in a region and thus able to attack each other without a choke. For example, I might be able to attack Volkov without going through a chokepoint, but need to get through one to attack Beatles. Obviously, you can only attack someone on the other side of a chokepoint if you have passage through it. Chokepoints would start out in the hands of "neutral" but would quickly be taken by empires and clans looking to profit from them, or protect themselves by controlling all the chokepoints that allow attacks on them. The owner of a chokepoint city could chose to allow passage to anyone who paid a fee, deny passage to everyone, or allow only certain people/clans to pass through. Obviously, if you wanted to attack somebody beyond a chokepoint, your first action would be taking that chokepoint.

2) Trade route cities. Trade routes must pass through trade route cities; some pass through more, some through fewer. If you don't control a city, your trade route through it is taxed, the tax going to the cities owners. If you do control a city, not only do you get to tax the traderoutes going through it, any trade routes you have going through it receive a bonus. As such, controlling trade route cities is crucial for ensuring sufficient gold supplies, and thus leveling.

3) Sacred/Cultural cities. Rich nobles and people from distant lands pay money to come to these cities, and pay more money while they're there. As a result, these cities pay a steady supply of gold to their owners. (Perhaps this should be linked to the time the server's been open, in order to scale with level costs.)

4) Finally, cultural/religious artifacts. Unlike the cities, these could be stored in one's central citadel in their home province, for maximum protection. As a compensation, their production value would be much lower than sacred/cultural cities. The logic would still be the same; rich people come to see them.

Clans: Clans would also level up. There could be a clan tax to get gold, or clan contributions could be voluntary. The leader would purchase levels and spend the level points. Clan bonuses would range from clan wide production bonuses to special abilities only usable by magic users (and maybe traders) in that particular clan. They could also more easily coordinate the passing of aid, combined attacks, etc.

Strategies: These are my sketches of how the strategies would work. They are, of course, open to revision.

- Casher will become based primarily on trade routes which will interact with special cities, trade route cities. Because gold will be the required resource for leveling, and trade routes the primary source of gold, cashers (renamed "traders") will now be primarily focused on levels, with most of the upgrades going to increase their gold production. They will primarily focus on trade routes and trade route cities.

- Indy will split into two strats; raider and indy.
*Raider will use cities/towns to build a big army, attacking other people for the resources need to build/maintain this army. They will also sack towns and pillage trade routes to get gold. Although their actions cause some harm to people, they don't take out of someone's empire supplies (that is, the resources one has on hand) so their impact is minimal. Raiders should be grudgingly tolerated as a minor nuisance not worth the effort to squash them, if they are merely raiding the countriside and trade routes. Sacking towns becomes another matter. Raiders will maintain a geographically small empire, and primarily focus on securing chokepoint cities. Its upgrades will focus on troop effectiveness and survival.

*Indy will split between cities/mines/free land, and will focus on producing resources itself to both upgrade its buildings/cities and build its army. It will build some trade routes to augment its mine gold production. It will be the most suited to taking and holding large amounts of land, and to holding special cities. It will focus on Sacred/Cultural cities and artifacts, it will also take chokepoint cities as needed. Its upgrades will be focused on army effectiveness and production, and on city defense.

- Magic User. This one is the most fun conceptually. It no longer has a way to generate resources through magic. It is a strictly combative strategy. Its only way to get resources, other than producing them itself (with detracts from its focus on magic users) is to either steal them from someone else or be given resources, either as a bounty or as clan support. Unlike raiders, they steal directly from an empire's stockpiles, and are the only way to do that without taking cities. These resource swipes would be tolerated, but less so than raiders, and would more easily provoke retaliation. They have a variety of magic abilities which must be purchased through level points. A magic user would start out with, say, a basic intel gathering ability, a basic troop killing ability, and maybe a basic resource stealing ability. These would all be very weak. They could buy upgraded versions of these abilities, as well as variety of other abilities, such as the ability to shield a city from attack with a magic shield (could be broken by other magic users or by sacrificing X number of troops to drain its power) or the ability to damage a city's defenses, a portal ability that can bypass a chokepoint city (for themselves and their clan), etc.

- Heroes: I'm not particularly sure how a heroes strat would work. I have some ideas, and am confident it could be made to happen, but don't really have the time to flesh it out at the moment. The basic idea for a heroes strat is heroes that make your empire more powerful then its size would suggest. Level upgrades might grant access to more heroes, make your heroes more powerful, or allow a higher number. We could also give heroes a special resource (honor/fame/lore) that would be generated from fighting battles, as well as naturally (bard halls, or something). They could even be allowed to use this to purchase levels, instead of gold.

I know we wanted to avoid "HPR strats" where you never really attacked much. As a result, I dropped agrarian all together. Theoretically, yes, it could attack to get cultural/sacred cities or artifacts, but it otherwise doesn't seem to have much of a function; other than a team supporter. If we want a pure team support strat, we could bring it back. However, I was thinking that trader would already largely play the team support role, and am even considering some sort of economic warfare/corruption abilities (bought to with level points) that would allow them to more directly participate in the action in a clan conflict. Something like bribing city governors, hiring the people of invaded territories as mercs, paying traveling merchants to avoid certain cities, thus reducing somebody's trade revenues, etc.

Land: The fundamental basis of the land portion is a rethinking of both the land and attack system. Land would be divided into provinces, each of which would need to have at least one city (not sure whether more cities would be allowed, or have a separate "town" concept) Each province would be defended separately, with its own garrison. This central town/city would be the centerpoint of the provinces defenses. Once a certain percentage of the province was in enemy hands, the central city could be attacked, and once it fell, the whole province would transfer to the attacker. Each empire would have a fairly small number of provinces - one might start out with 1-4, and expect to grow to 15-20, maybe a few more for a very large empire. As such, taking somebody's province would be a serious thing, and would likely leave them looking for their province back - and for revenge. We could even assign bonuses for recapturing provinces you once owned - one time resource rewards, short term production bonuses, etc.
Provinces would be organized into "rings" about an empire's central province. In order to drive inward without getting one's supply trains cut and getting isolated in hostile territory, one would have to take 1/3rd of the provinces in each ring before progressing to the next one. Rings might be as follows: Central province - surrounded by Ring 1: 3 provinces - Surrounded by Ring 2: 5 provinces - Surrounded by Ring 3: 8 provinces, etc.

Launching an attack on a province would require a number of actions, each requiring turns. When one first launched the attack, "invasion" might require a few turns. While your troops were in hostile territory, it would require turns spent to take land, or resources. As you took actions, you could "control" or "occupy" certain amounts of land. You would have to spend turns until you controlled enough land to initiate an attack on the citadel, which would then require more turns for various actions. You would pick different actions depending on the strength of the city's defenses, the strength of your army, and how many troops/turns you wanted to spend. (Some measures would cause more casualties, others take more turns, etc.)

There would be various items that could influence the results and costs of these battles. Special mage/spy missions could protect provinces/cities, requiring troop deaths or other mages/spy missions to break through, others might increase/decrease turn costs, or directly weaken city defenses.

Provinces could only be seized as a whole, though portions of a province currently occupied by an attacker would be unusable to both parties (the defender would just be unable to benefit from that region when running turns). Attacks would be launched by one person, but others could participate in them, supply not only additional troops, but additional turns.

The system would make it difficult to "land-lock" because each province would need to be defended separately. The more provinces, the more troops would be necessary to maintain the same level of defense in any particular city/province. It also provides a serious incentive to team play. An attack that could not succeed in a single run, thus giving the defender time to mobilize his army and push back the attack, would succeed with two or more people working together.
At the same time, because of the defenses on cities and the costs to take a province, as well as any city "resistance" factor, attacking for regular old provinces would be a less common thing. Sure, some empires might attack for a province or two here or there just to increase their land, but since it's costly and starts usually starts a war, it's unlikely to be appetizing for most people most of the time. The special cities and artifacts would be the impetus for wars, and taking land would be a part of defeating your opponents and claiming the special cities. Since special cities could be in inner rings of provinces (probably shouldn't allow this for the chokepoint cities, but it works for the other ones) and artifacts in citadels, land taking would be important for getting access to those. Additionally, when you're fighting somebody, you want to shut them down, and taking their land is a good one to do that.

Since holding cities is now more difficult, working with a good clan becomes increasingly important. Solo is possible, but will have problems fighting a clan, and will thus be unlikely to be able to control a large number of strategic cities. They will be able to survive just fine, but top finishes/places will be difficult. Still, solo should be possible, and raider especially, I think, will work just fine for placing well in the absence of a clan. Further, none of the strats are tied to clan support (magic comes the closest, but can still steal and shield their way into a high rank playing solo), so if nobody's clanning, it simply becomes a fight among solo players. The advantage of the clan will simply be the advantage of overwealming force and mutual assistance. HPR will not be practical - the only strat that can survive without more than one or two cities is raider, which actually attacks more than any other strat. So long as we ensure that the number of cities and artifacts is limited enough that there's clash over them (at some point, you can't take them from "neutral," you have to take them from other players. At the same time, "land grabs" will be a thing of the past, and empires and clans, rather than constantly attacking, will spend considerable time building up their resources to prepare for an attack on another empire.

Finally, it incorporates levels, without making it impossible for a late comer to work their way up; or an alliance of weaker groups to take down a stronger one: provinces are always vulnerable, the more powerful can always be damaged. Concentrated raider attacks can kill economies while magic users break through shields and rob treasuries. Skill will be tested in how well one builds their strategy, uses their levels, and organizes their alliance. Since levels will be tied to accounts, and not lost when the account dies, it will be difficult to permanently put people out of commission, and thus there is always the possibility, even on long-running servers, for clawing your way back to the top.
It would change FAF. We would no longer be promi game. And maybe that's not what we want to do with FAF. In any case, though, I think this would make for a really good game sometime in the future, even if not here, and not now.

If something doesn't make sense, let me know. It made sense in my mind, but may not have had all its components put on paper.

- Rudder, who wishes he could write 3000 word papers for school with this much focus, attention, and enthusiasm, and in this short of a time.

[Freenhult]

I know the feeling. I've written many a post or AIM conversation in less time it took me to write a paragraph it seems.

I think that... while we all have an idea of what we want. It comes down to practicality. This sounds like it would make a spectacular game. However, the amount of work that needs to go into this... is most likely enormous. I can only imagine that we'd be moving into a hexagon map system of sorts to make the most sense of how land/provinces/cities work.

I think a change like this is not only what we need, but I think that it may be too late. The only way that I can forsee this ever being done, is with multiple serious coders and the intent to make a profit from our venture. You don't put this much work into an idea, or a game and expect nothing back. Satisfaction won't allow for that. As such, are we even for considering the lunacy of creating a real game that we'd expect people to pay and support us with funds? Do we have enough admins, coders, experience to pull something like this off in a reasonable time period?

A serious idea like this is good, it brings debate and much thought. We've grown up a lot. Our abilities have also changed and we're all starting to enter the real world, all at certain levels and degrees. At this point, the details of Rudder's plan are moot. The first and foremost question is... are we serious about how to change our game. Serious enough to do what we ALL know we need to do, and serious enough to reimburse our selves for all the time and dedication we put into it?

If so, then we can do this and we should. Otherwise, good thoughts, and let's move back towards realism. Just my two cents.

[The Beatles]

Let me give two answers...

1. Because I'm a lazy bastard, I like what's easy to do. So I immediately grabbed on the bits of Rudder's ideas that are easy to do and could work even without the rest:
- levels
- clan levels
- gold mines

I would prefer to implement only those things we need to get a working game as soon as possible, and embark on big changes only when we have a working game, on a completely separate development server. I am not saying we shouldn't, but I think we should focus on what's easily doable first.

But really this one's for Rudder to pitch in on. What do you think is pretty easy to do that we could do right now? We'll add that to the other thread and work through it, and leave the rest for when we have a release. To give an idea of timeframes, I think we should have a working game within at most 2 months from today, so June the 1st. I'd prefer to leave the rest until after June.

2. Beyond the first tier, the "low-hanging fruit", I don't think Rudder's ideas are that hard to implement. We wouldn't need a tiled map or anything. Frankly, Freen's multiple resources idea is also hard from a coding perspective. Doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss them and try them, they're just harder, and we all know that.

To answer your last question personally, I am happy to improve FAF in my spare time, and make time for it instead of some reading or whatnot. But I'm obviously not prepared to work on it full-time, and I don't think many of us have that capacity. If we should get more members, I'm not in any way opposed to going the commercial route - advertise, sell ads, solicit donations, etc., and I'm happy to let contributors divvy that up amongst themselves as compensation for their time. I can't accept money on my visa and I kind of started this anyway, so it wouldn't be very fair. We're a long way from that right now though.

But I agree that paid or not, we each need to decide a level of involement and commit to it. In my case right now, though, I'm underused, as we're still chewing through ideas.

[Ruddertail]

In terms of a map, Beatles is right. We don't need one, other than maybe sketches of empire layouts to justify not being able to attack the first ring until you've broken through the second. But since games like this have always included a somewhat nebulous geography, I think we're justified in having provinces suddenly switch to a whole different region. No hex map needed.

Also, since it probably wasn't clear, this actually includes the addition of a number of resources. I'd probably like to have at least 3, maybe more - food, gold, and one or more productive resource. Maybe iron, wood, and stone?

In terms of the project long term, I really don't have the time within the next month and a half to put any serious work into this place. That said, I could probably put some time into it - evenings, Saturdays, etc. - starting mid May. I'll be back home from college and looking for a job. Will actually be taking a year off from school, though I might take some classes fall term.

In terms of the low hanging fruit, I'm fine with introducing a levels system and clan levels system, but I'm not really sure how we'd do that with cash the way it is, as an easily available resource. Just make the costs insanely high? We'd also have to figure out what levels would do, since most of the abilities and such I've come up with are geared towards a more stable system (i.e., land doesn't change hands, troops don't die and respawn by the millions). Also, we'd still have land going as it is. I know there were some minor tweaks to land in the other topic; we could try those. It wouldn't readjust land flow, but it might minimize it. Still, I don't want to commit to any serious time right now - classes have to come first.

[The Beatles]

I think the few things in the other thread already go some ways toward those goals. Increasing building costs will cut land flow, and decreasing troop losses will mean more stability to troops. In the interim, we might make levels not purchasable but based on something else, like maybe just the number of turns run. We can make it purchasable once we get started on your bigger changes. Sounds good for a transition plan?

No worries about time right now. We need to work out a stable game first, the rest will come later.

[Ruddertail]

I do like the land ideas that came out of the other topic, as you said, a change in the right direction. Probably the big thing that makes troops unstable is the PM; the problem is that nerfing that makes everybody use markets/tents. But, again, stable game first, idea game later. Levels might make things more exciting, which would allow us to recruit more easily. In terms of what to base them on, I don't particularly like turns run - the idea with gold is to make it a trade off between levels and doing other stuff. If levels are linked directly to turns, they just sort of happen, they don't need to be "earned."

Maybe insert a third resource into the game, and use that, for our stop-gap?

Edit: I guess not everybody has to use markets/tents, but we basically have two strats - spies and not spies. With troops the main source of NW, everybody's going to have to go to some sort of barracks + markets + foragers strat, unless they do dens for resources and switch some to barracks here and there.

[Ruddertail]

Bumpy

[Shadow I]

I haven't been following the development topics here very much, but an important balance area would be to make it just a little bit harder to lock down the game/easier to take down a lock once it has happened. A lot of activity drops off after someone gets a good lead because there is really no point to trying.

[Ruddertail]

Shadow,

We're going way beyond tweaking with promi, if these suggestions get adopted. If you have input on this whole scheme, I'd like to hear it, but the difficulty of locks is a subsidiary area - with this, a "lock" as we know it won't even exist.

[Shadow I]

What I have read so far seems like solid ideas that would make for a great game, the only issue is coding time and feasibility If you guys have the time to commit to completely redoing the game that would be wonderful.

[Ruddertail]

It sounds like Beatles has the time/enthusiasm to code the whole sucker up. I'm willing to do most of the non-coding work, so hopefully we can make it happen. When it's done, you'll try to get RWLers to give it a try, yes?

[Shadow I]

sure, long as you sign up for RWL

[Ruddertail]

I'm already there.

Anyhow, Beatles - you want to catch me on AIM/Gtalk some time and we can start talking through this, or do you just want to start coding?

[Freenhult]

Yeah. I can help too Rudder. If anything, I can work with Beatles for a few more work sessions to remember what I learned before finals and then maybe start to build my own pages. If we have a good outline for what we want done with specifics, I think we could realistically start in about 2-3 days.

[The Beatles]

I have folks in until Tuesday, then I'm free until Sunday, then my schedule will get weird again. But I'll face that when I come to it. Until then, just try to give me specific tasks, either here or on PM or even email.