warfare

[master]

When it comes to warfare between territories this is how I'd like to see it work.

First of all groups of players who want to to specialise in crafting shouldnt be harmed by warfare very often. So what I'd like to see is players who enjor pvp would stay on the edge of territories [which from now on I'll call marches] while non pvp players will stay in the midle [lets say each groups non pvp area could be called a barony].

Most wars would be minor skirmishes and a few battles along the marches. Marches culd be taken between each territory but the baronies would be untouched. Maybe the loser could send tribute to the victor. While I guess the best lands would probably be the baronies, I'd rather not drive off crafters.

Once every few months a major war could happen. These would last a few weeks and would include the capture of baronies.

Heres a way game mechanics could support this sort of territory structure.

First of all allow each city to be ruled by a different group of players. Each one could decide in what the territory could specialise in. A city based off of agriculture could have a cathedral dedicated to a godess of farming, where disciples could create relics or something to help with crop growth, a city didicate to pvp would have temples dedicated to war gods and the walls would be thicker [and would require more upkeep], etc.. Maybe a farming city could have aquaducts which could be poised while pvp ships in water for their crafts in jugs and pours them into a closed resevoir.

Obviously there would be more pvp on the borders of territory so the pvp groups would set up on the border of each territory. Capturing a city should require a lot of effort. It should take a day at least to build siege engines to get over a wall without any defenders getting in the way. And defenders should be able to hold off five times their number for a further day or two. Once thecity is taken it should take a few more days to capture the territory held by the city.

Since march cities are more heavily defended and you don't want to have an enemy base behind you while you are trying to capture territory you'll either have to capture them first, and each one will take a few days.

And taking territoy should require a lot of effort. A defender should be able to limti what resources an attacking army can gather off the land. requiring them to have carts which will take time to gather. Those carts should regularly be needed to supply a siege camp with food and they must be defended. A march city on the border would be easy to supply. But attacking territory filled with guirilla fighters taking you supply trains would be more difficult.

Each city should require a large travel time between them [though small villages in between are fine]. I hope the game world would be large enough to supprt this. But in a major war it shoulde be difficult to have enough people to fight and guard supply trains at the same time.

Even though barony cities would be easier to take they'd also require a long siege and if the game is designed around a large number of small cities instead of one big one than haveing eight sieges would probably require a lot of resources.

I'd like to give an advantage to defenders when it comes to wars. An attacker might come in at two in the morning and it should be possible to defend a territory even then.

I'd also liek to lessen the advantage of zergs. A city could be held with thirty players against a force of a hundred and fifty until help comes. And it would be more efficient to split players between multiple cities. When it comes to defenders entering cities I'd like it to be possible while a siege is hapening, but once they are in they can't get out. Not sure how to do this. But I've read mediaval sieges tended to focus their camps around the gates. if a city wall had camoflauged side gates fast horses might be able to get inside until they realise and guard it.

Preparing for a major war should be expensive. Food would have to be stockpiled, horses would have to be found to replace the dead ones, weapons would have to be crafted and siege modules wuld have to be made.

Marches should have skirmsihes along them almost constantly, but the effort required to wage a border war would be that it only happens once every few weeks. A major war should be so costly and time consuming it would only happen once every few months.

This way pvpers could have fun while everyone else don't have their banks raided every three days. A main incentive for warfare should be resources, but I'd like territories be large enough that even a small march would be useful for expanding infrastructure.

This would be done by making the captured march a new march and converting the old one to half march, half barony where economic stuff is viable, but assets arent built up becuase enough that reconversion would damage your industry.]

I guess these sorts of border wars could act as a slow conquest where they take cities one at a time. But it should be possible that a major counter attack could slow this expansion down even if the ones doing the counterattack are heavily outnumbered.

[TehRalph]

When it comes to warfare between territories this is how I'd like to see it work.

First of all groups of players who want to to specialise in crafting shouldnt be harmed by warfare very often. So what I'd like to see is players who enjor pvp would stay on the edge of territories [which from now on I'll call marches] while non pvp players will stay in the midle [lets say each groups non pvp area could be called a barony].

Most wars would be minor skirmishes and a few battles along the marches. Marches culd be taken between each territory but the baronies would be untouched. Maybe the loser could send tribute to the victor. While I guess the best lands would probably be the baronies, I'd rather not drive off crafters.

Once every few months a major war could happen. These would last a few weeks and would include the capture of baronies.

You can't really control how people are going to fight their wars, but I have a feeling it will mostly be like this anyway due to the large map.

Heres a way game mechanics could support this sort of territory structure.

First of all allow each city to be ruled by a different group of players. Each one could decide in what the territory could specialise in. A city based off of agriculture could have a cathedral dedicated to a godess of farming, where disciples could create relics or something to help with crop growth, a city didicate to pvp would have temples dedicated to war gods and the walls would be thicker [and would require more upkeep], etc.. Maybe a farming city could have aquaducts which could be poised while pvp ships in water for their crafts in jugs and pours them into a closed resevoir.

NPC cities won't be conquerable, but player cities will be. And player cities should be able to be built anywhere. It's up to the players to decide what their city specializes in.

Obviously there would be more pvp on the borders of territory so the pvp groups would set up on the border of each territory. Capturing a city should require a lot of effort. It should take a day at least to build siege engines to get over a wall without any defenders getting in the way. And defenders should be able to hold off five times their number for a further day or two. Once thecity is taken it should take a few more days to capture the territory held by the city.

You should turn days into hours and it should be fine. Also five times their numbers is a bit harsh. It should all depend on their defenses and how they have their city set up and how they defend and how the attackers decide to attack.

Since march cities are more heavily defended and you don't want to have an enemy base behind you while you are trying to capture territory you'll either have to capture them first, and each one will take a few days.

You really don't have to capture it, just cut it off from the outside world so it starves or something else.

And taking territoy should require a lot of effort. A defender should be able to limti what resources an attacking army can gather off the land. requiring them to have carts which will take time to gather. Those carts should regularly be needed to supply a siege camp with food and they must be defended. A march city on the border would be easy to supply. But attacking territory filled with guirilla fighters taking you supply trains would be more difficult.

I think the limit on how much the attacker can loot is dependent on how many horses and wagons they have to haul the loot off. Maybe defender can burn their crops if they know they're going to lose, or something excessive like that.

Each city should require a large travel time between them [though small villages in between are fine]. I hope the game world would be large enough to supprt this. But in a major war it shoulde be difficult to have enough people to fight and guard supply trains at the same time.

Players will build their cities wherever they want.

Even though barony cities would be easier to take they'd also require a long siege and if the game is designed around a large number of small cities instead of one big one than haveing eight sieges would probably require a lot of resources.

Yeah probably, but the devs aren't going to preplace every city on the map, so there could be 20 huge cities or 1 huge city outside of NPC cities, which again, won't be conquerable.

I'd like to give an advantage to defenders when it comes to wars. An attacker might come in at two in the morning and it should be possible to defend a territory even then.

Sieges will take awhile to complete and there will be NPC guards players can hire to help defend.

I'd also liek to lessen the advantage of zergs. A city could be held with thirty players against a force of a hundred and fifty until help comes. And it would be more efficient to split players between multiple cities. When it comes to defenders entering cities I'd like it to be possible while a siege is hapening, but once they are in they can't get out. Not sure how to do this. But I've read mediaval sieges tended to focus their camps around the gates. if a city wall had camoflauged side gates fast horses might be able to get inside until they realise and guard it.

If you have a superior force, that is your advantage, if you have control of supply lines, that is your advantage. Don't limit what advantages people are allowed to have. If the players are able to sneak defenders into the city walls, then let them, but don't make a system that automatically does this, and forces them to stay within.

Preparing for a major war should be expensive. Food would have to be stockpiled, horses would have to be found to replace the dead ones, weapons would have to be crafted and siege modules wuld have to be made.

True.

Marches should have skirmsihes along them almost constantly, but the effort required to wage a border war would be that it only happens once every few weeks. A major war should be so costly and time consuming it would only happen once every few months.

Again, it's up to the players to determine when and where they fight.

This way pvpers could have fun while everyone else don't have their banks raided every three days. A main incentive for warfare should be resources, but I'd like territories be large enough that even a small march would be useful for expanding infrastructure.

Banks outside of NPC towns will never be completely safe.

This would be done by making the captured march a new march and converting the old one to half march, half barony where economic stuff is viable, but assets arent built up becuase enough that reconversion would damage your industry.

What if the player citizens agree to pay the same taxes to their new lords? No production is lost in that case...

I guess these sorts of border wars could act as a slow conquest where they take cities one at a time. But it should be possible that a major counter attack could slow this expansion down even if the ones doing the counterattack are heavily outnumbered.

Wars should happen in any way the players have the means and motivation to make war happen.

[Stone Dog]

City owners are usually given the coding to defend their cities against large numbers. This is done by allowing their respawn point to be inside their city walls and quite often very close to a bank that they can access. What this leads to is the zerg element and creating a scenario where five can defend against 25 or 50 can defend against 250 is promoting that very thing.

Let's flip this scenario around. Let's say that the zerg element are the ones defending. So their 25 show up and now the five need to find 120 more individuals to "statistically" have the odds even. Worse yet is the scenario with 250 defending and the 50 now needing to find 1,200 more individuals to once again be "statistically even." In all honesty I don't like it.

I would much rather see someone finally come up with a system where leadership and strategy can win regardless of numbers. Certainly the movie "300" comes to mind when I speak of this but I'm not trying to recreate a Hollywood flick, I'm just looking for a game that will allow for smart leadership to have a chance against the zerg-to-win mentality.

Am I in favor of zergs? No. I do remember a time in Shadowbane where we had created an alliance (within the rules of the game, I might add...and boy, did we ever get some grief over that!!) and we set our sites on the "number-loving" leader of our enemy. We managed to take four or five of this target's cities and I was absolutely loving it. Why, might you ask, when we had such a huge advantage in numbers and these fights were typically so lop-sided that our enemy stood no chance? Because that's precisely what they had done prior to our alliance being formed.

However, at one point in our last successful siege, a high-ranking member from our allied clan spoke up in Vent and actually questioned the enjoyment factor of the game under such circumstances. He asked if we actually thought this was fun and I was the first to answer "Hell yes!! This SOB has it coming!!" He said something along the lines of "Well, I don't think it is" and then logged off. Certainly his choice. Shortly thereafter he left the guild that we were allied to (the next day, I believe) and it wasn't very long after that when the alliance was nullified. (btw, both of the guilds that formed this alliance were attacked by the zerg we had been fighting and lost our capitols as well as a number of minor cities equal to the number of the cities we took from the zerg...payback's a bitch, ain't it? )

What's the point to all of this? Simply to once again state that had the system allowed for tactical ability to have a fair chance to win over numbers that this particular zerg wouldn't have become our target. Did we have the battle commanders to take this group on ourselves? mmmmm...hard to say. We did have one or two individuals who could find enemy weaknesses and use them to our advantage but I'm not sure that we would have had the talent to pull it off. Dubanka's crew, yes. We're there others as capable? I believe so. Regardless, there were enemies of this enemy who had engaged them prior to our war that had the ability, but not the numbers, to have kept this zerg from gaining the steam it had.

The problem is that at some point the numbers become too great and there's little to no chance that strategy can overcome numbers and I've just never been a fan of that. Either side should always have the chance to "define the moment" and snatch victory from their enemy when certain defeat seemed inevitable. A pipe dream? Perhaps...but a fella can always dream, can't he?

I'll have to re-read this to make sure I got my point across...a few interruptions while I was writing it so my thoughts may be a little scattered.

[bmfof]

Combating zergs in larger scale fights should be done through:

- positioning;
- AoE tools that are useful only through focus fire.

You don't like the prospect of having a huge army? Pick a well hidden spot for your settlement with a nice, natural chockepoint where you'd pile up your defences. That usually does the trick. I've been in a successful Aradoth defence with 50 against 150 people in DF.

Any other arbituary methods would just be annoying.

[TehRalph]

Combating zergs in larger scale fights should be done through:

- positioning;
- AoE tools that are useful only through focus fire.

You don't like the prospect of having a huge army? Pick a well hidden spot for your settlement with a nice, natural chockepoint where you'd pile up your defences. That usually does the trick. I've been in a successful Aradoth defence with 50 against 150 people in DF.

Any other arbituary methods would just be annoying.

Yep, with buildings supposed to be built wherever you want, a small group can strategically position their city. Also AOE tools might consist of things like rolling logs, catapults, boiling oil, etc.

[Stone Dog]

Combating zergs in larger scale fights should be done through:

- positioning;
- AoE tools that are useful only through focus fire.

You don't like the prospect of having a huge army? Pick a well hidden spot for your settlement with a nice, natural chockepoint where you'd pile up your defences. That usually does the trick. I've been in a successful Aradoth defence with 50 against 150 people in DF.

Any other arbituary methods would just be annoying.

The problem with the Aradoth example is that the player didn't specifically choose that spot for the location of Aradoth...that was done for them by AV but I do get your meaning.

As for "arbitrary methods" that again is a generalization based on assumption. Just because "positioning" and "AoE tools" are two good examples of how a smaller number can defend and even conquer larger numbers doesn't mean we shouldn't look for other possibilities. You should know by now that FS are not willing to put things into EoC that don't work and "arbitrary methods" should fall under that category.

[bmfof]

other possibilities

Like for example?

[TehRalph]

Like for example?

Attrition. They could ambush supply routes and take the food the enemy was meant to get.

[Rob Steele]

Just a simple reminder - please use caution in how you phrase things. To say something will or won't be possible falls to us as the developers. A community member stating something as fact when there has been no such statement by the FS team discredits the discussion by potentially dead-ending a topic that we might have otherwise found very useful in gauging the communities feelings on a specific subject. It also creates a problem for newer arrivals to figure out what is fact versus what is rumor or assumption made by another member of the community. We wouldn't want someone misinformed, or worse, driven off by such statements.

...and if, by chance such statements are due to a FS member stating they are fact and I don't know about it... well lets just say I may have to borrow Lees whip.

[TehRalph]

Just a simple reminder - please use caution in how you phrase things. To say something will or won't be possible falls to us as the developers. A community member stating something as fact when there has been no such statement by the FS team discredits the discussion by potentially dead-ending a topic that we might have otherwise found very useful in gauging the communities feelings on a specific subject. It also creates a problem for newer arrivals to figure out what is fact versus what is rumor or assumption made by another member of the community. We wouldn't want someone misinformed, or worse, driven off by such statements.

...and if, by chance such statements are due to a FS member stating they are fact and I don't know about it... well lets just say I may have to borrow Lees whip.

Could you possibly outline which statements are or are not true to clear up any future confusion? :P