New Mod Idea

[Kraellin]

k. i was thinking, there shld be a way to change the default maps in the campaign game. we've got a lot of custom maps now and why not have some of them in the single player campaign? i dont know where this trigger/code might reside, but if someone wanted to find out i think it'd be kinda cool.

K.

[Asakura Lord]

great idea, I'll take a look and see if I can find anything.

[candidgamera]

Kraelin:

If that were a randomized selection somehow, might really shake things up in campaigns:
less predictable.

BTW OT: Am thinking of adapting my "rules" below on the multi-maps per province to a point-to-point system. Been playing GMT's Path's of Glory of late (WW I, old style mapboard wargame) which does this. Very elegant way of managing relative movement allowed on a map: more squares, harder terrain. And, canalizing: just can't move anywhere: would think this would be very appropriate to STW Japan.

Opinions?

[Kraellin]

candid,

yes, it does seem a bit odd that you can capture an entire province with just 1 unit sometimes. it might be nice if provices were divided up into townships or something and that an army could take just a portion of a provice or occupy part of a province and put the entire province in a 'contended' mode or something where no one actually owned it but that it was 'in contention' by 2 or even more armies. the original owner wouldnt be able to draw koku from it or make units in that province until he once again 'owned' the entire thing. or at least something along those lines. i suppose there's several variations of this that could be done, but i think you get the idea.

K.

[Toranaga sama]

Kraellin-

I like that idea... Like the two armies are camped, and battle whenever. Me likes what me hears.

[candidgamera]

Kraelin:

Thats kind of what the thrust of my rules were, but they are complex, think the point-to-point might simplify.

In "We The People" (American Revolution), same series of games as POG, political control of each colony was based on a majority ownership, last occupation of the colonies point set - seems like that could work for who gets the koku in STW. I'd be for picking and choosing - some points in the provinces would have the bulk of the resources. This would make it work something like POG with its victory point hexes - some places are more valuable than others, and you might have to fight to get to them.

Can imagine, with some thought, work, and reading, selection of map sets, one could really craft the nature of taking a province from the strategic sense:
You have to take the pass first, before breaking out onto the rich, fertile plains.

I'd be for contested province status, but not contested point status.

Geographic relationship becomes a simple point of entry orientation for offense/defense going from strategic to tactical.

Example of point-to-point in POG:

North/south movement between points around the Pripet Marshes in Russia is very restricted - means the Russians have to consider pulling back or risk being cut off

Russia in general: lots of East-to-West points-Russians have a lot of fall back room, Germans have a long way to invade.

In STW I could imagine Shinano having a lot of points, connected corresponding to valleys, and it being a long campaign to take it.

This would of course affect river provinces: suggest defining river lines as lines that cross certain province, inter-province point to point lines at right angles.

[BanzaiZAP]

If you guys do go about changing the scale of the game from province-based to a smaller area, you'll have to change the time scale as well. Right now it's set up to go by seasons, so it makes sense to control a larger section of land - it took that one unit three months to take over an empty province. If you were to break the province down into pieces, you'll want to set the time frame to weeks. Otherwise, you could spend years squabbling over Shinano. That one season/one battle is turned into weekly skirmishes moving slowly across the countryside.

Getting back to K's original topic, what about simply renaming some maps? It wouldn't randomize, but it would let you replace some provinces for your own creations.

-- B)

[Kraellin]

yes. i wasnt suggesting that points were contested. a point is controlled by someone, but that doesnt mean the whole province is owned by one person. i was speaking about the whole province. so, i agree with you.

i guess we shld define terms here. i'm not really sure what you mean by a point. i'm assuming you're talking about the same thing i am when i said township. it's a sub-set of a province. let's say a province is like how shogun currently has them on the camp map. you would then take, say as an example, 10 sub regions which comprise that province. and that's what i'm calling a township. is that what you're calling a point?

then, 'ownership' would be that no one else has any claim over that region, whatever the size is. this would apply to both provinces or points. if another player moved into your owned province, they would move into one of the points. if there are no troops there then they would then control that one point, but not the whole province. thus, the province is now 'contested' someone else is making or has a claim over some part of it.

you could then do things several different ways. you could say that because the province is now contested, no one gets any koku, or, you could say that the original owner only gets x amount of koku minus the contested part but that the new owner of the one point does or doesnt get any koku from it. i could see arguements going either way on that. then, if the new owner went about and captured the majority of the points he would start receiving the koku rather than the original owner and the original owner would or wouldnt gain any koku from the portion he still owned. this would sort of simulate who the peasants were willing to support in the province.

the only drawback i see in this is actually getting the two armies to fight for complete ownership. the contender might be able to dance around in that province and avoid the original owner's army for quite some time, depending on how you did it and i dont think that's a good idea, though it probably did happen historically a bit. so, i would tend to make it possible for the orininal owner to simply jump on anyone in his province with an army he already has IN the province at the time. just be able to attack the guy no matter where he is and where the opponent is.

if for some reason the original owner were to remove his own army from that province while the contender still had his army in there, then the contender would automatically get the entire province as there is no longer any contention by another army.

K.