KOTR Postmortem and Next-Gen Rules Discussion

I must say that the recent discussions have helped me get a much better understanding of the rules. For this alone they have been worthwile to me. Right now I've toyed enough with the system in my head that I'm ready to put it to the test. All things that bothered me have been adressed and the system seems to come out okay. Really a great job you did with the rules there TinCow!

I'm really looking forward to hearing from the people in the Test Game how their experiences are. After that I'm good to go! :2thumbsup:

Ah, but in my post I said it was not the person at the top who would fear death. If he dies, or his immediate subordinate, the whole House might lose a small amount of power as a whole (probably not, if he rejoined it with his new character) and he would lose the hard work invested in his character, but the House would remain substantially intact. If I were a Duke or a Grand Duke I'd probably lead some battles myself and rejoin at the bottom if my avatar died. I'd also let those in the lower ranks fight a lot, as you made the rules to encourage. It's the counts and viscounts and such in the middle I'd be reluctant to let fight, as a death of someone in the middle completely throws off the chain and creates (hopefully temporarily) two mini-Houses. If I were one of the midle ranks, I'd want to fight battles but would be surprised if the guy on top was eager to let me.

Of course, this is from the same Zim who, after losing his first character in battle, refused to let knowing the game was about to end and final lines be drawn prevent him from throwing his second avatar into a battle he thought it would be IC to take, and then lost that guy. Truth be told, assuming I ever found myself in a top rank it wouldn't be fear of destroying my accomplishments regarding a single avatar that would prevent me fighting battles, but the sense of responsibility in ensuring everyone in my House has fun and gets to fight them. :yes:

Anyway, I imagine in the game this won't matter with tight-knit Houses, and the bottom people will generally reswear loyalty an relink the chain. If not, then it may result in an interesting power play. ALl my fears will likely be for nothing, and now I'm advocating a wait and see position on most of these issues. We'll have to play for a while to really see the ramifications of some rules. :yes:

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Originally Posted by TinCow

That's the entire point of the rules. I specifically stated in my commentary that I wanted people to be afraid of dying once they reached a high rank. The idea is to make battles too risky for Dukes and Grand Dukes and such, so that battles are given to the low level ranks like Knight and Baron/et. This was to spread out some of the action in the game and ensure that it wasn't monopolized by people who grabbed the first few provinces early.

I was working for a system which would have heavy and immediate involvement for new players who joined mid-game. A brand new Knight character that popped up would be courted by multiple Houses, all of whom want him, and he would get to see immediate action leading armies. I created it like that to keep the game interesting for new people and to make it easy for people to join in mid-way through.

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Seconded. And every change I seem to suggest not only makes things more complicated but causes its own problems, increasing my appreciation even more for the rules as is. :yes:

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Originally Posted by Ituralde

I must say that the recent discussions have helped me get a much better understanding of the rules. For this alone they have been worthwile to me. Right now I've toyed enough with the system in my head that I'm ready to put it to the test. All things that bothered me have been adressed and the system seems to come out okay. Really a great job you did with the rules there TinCow!

I'm really looking forward to hearing from the people in the Test Game how their experiences are. After that I'm good to go! :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Zim

Seconded. And every change I seem to suggest not only makes things more complicated but causes its own problems, increasing my appreciation even more for the rules as is. :yes:

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Your not the only one. Pretty much every "hybrid" or "revision" causes us to keep more things in mind every time we do something in the game.

Another reason why I like the current rules is because they are simple. I think the OOC rules should be very simple.

IC however, we can make things as complicated as we want as long as it is still fun.

I can see you and I taking our RBG's and passing horribly complicated legislation that mandates that "for flemish cloth" should be our warcry and that flemish pikemen should be given to each noble on the first monday of the year of the monkey when the moon is in it's 3rd phase and Jupitar aligns with Mars. Buried in that horribly complicated CA will be a small footnote directing you to another piece of legislation we will pass. In that 2nd CA will be a tiny fine print buried in a footnote in the index that says that all RBG's have 200 influence. :clown:

That's not complicated, that's just common sense. :clown:

For Flemish cloth!

So, is it just me or did almost all of that discussion end with most people just liking things as they are? :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by Privateerkev

Your not the only one. Pretty much every "hybrid" or "revision" causes us to keep more things in mind every time we do something in the game.

Another reason why I like the current rules is because they are simple. I think the OOC rules should be very simple.

IC however, we can make things as complicated as we want as long as it is still fun.

I can see you and I taking our RBG's and passing horribly complicated legislation that mandates that "for flemish cloth" should be our warcry and that flemish pikemen should be given to each noble on the first monday of the year of the monkey when the moon is in it's 3rd phase and Jupitar aligns with Mars. Buried in that horribly complicated CA will be a small footnote directing you to another piece of legislation we will pass. In that 2nd CA will be a tiny fine print buried in a footnote in the index that says that all RBG's have 200 influence. :clown:

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It seems where are naturally coming back to the beginning which is a testimony to TC and his subtle but clear vision of what he wants to create.

I'd say we can leave the basic building block rules alone, now that we've had a good intellectual tilt at them and found them to be a very good base to build our IC world on.

Nice work TC. I’ll send you the usual retainer for your services in the mail. :clown:

How are people feeling about the alternate branching Feudal structure? The vast majority wanted it in the poll, but I haven't heard many positive comments since I posted the draft. If we want branching, but don't like the current proposal, how should it be changed to make it better?

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

It seems where are naturally coming back to the beginning which is a testimony to TC and his subtle but clear vision of what he wants to create.

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Somewhere in DC, a man is sitting at his desk cackling madly as he sees that we have all fallen into his carefully prepared trap. :clown:

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Originally Posted by Zim

So, is it just me or did almost all of that discussion end with most people just liking things as they are? :dizzy2:

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I've always liked things as they were. I've just been trying to see if everyone else can like them. :clown:

On a more serious note, you guys did point out a lot of holes and I'm glad some of this is figured out. You also convinced a little bit of stability might be a "good thing".

In general, it seems that people just wanted to "understand" the rules. Of course it took us over 10 pages of discussion, but hopefully everyone has a better grasp on what it is we're getting ourselves into. I know it's helped me figure things out.

I thought the new structure you came up with was good. In the end it would take what, about 3 more vassals to reach Grand Duke?

I haven't said much because I'm not sure how to tell when we've made it hrad enough to reach the higest ranks. The test game shows that with a decent number of players (I think during my KOTR career 15 active players was a norm) we not only had no Grand Dukes but no Dukes. Without knowing for sure how many active players we'll tend to have, and how likely people are to coalesce into a couple very large Houses versus multiple smaller ones, it's hard to say that what the best level of branching. :sweatdrop:

I trust you judgment, and am happy with the revised rule. :yes:

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Originally Posted by TinCow

How are people feeling about the alternate branching Feudal structure? The vast majority wanted it in the poll, but I haven't heard many positive comments since I posted the draft. If we want branching, but don't like the current proposal, how should it be changed to make it better?

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Originally Posted by TinCow

How are people feeling about the alternate branching Feudal structure? The vast majority wanted it in the poll, but I haven't heard many positive comments since I posted the draft. If we want branching, but don't like the current proposal, how should it be changed to make it better?

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I think that we should make the rank that requires a branch, in consideration of how many people we want it to take until you can be a Grand Duke.

Currently, from the rules on top of the page, it just takes 7 people. Some have feared that is too few.

In TC's revision, Baronet got knocked off and Marquess needs 2 Counts. It will take 9 people total to have a Grand Duke.

I'm worried that might be too hard. Especially if we keep the time requirements.

Since Count seems to be the first mid level rank, maybe make that the one that needs a branch? Or would that make it too hard to get a private army? On one hand, it would only take 8 people to make a Grand Duke but it would take 5 people to get a private army. Which would be bad since we want small Houses of 3 to form and go off to explore strange new worlds.

So um.. my answer is I don't know... :embarassed:

My proposal on page 10 basically allows both branching and a ladder structure with branches being more stable. Did anyone actually read it? :tongue2:

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

My proposal on page 10 basically allows both branching and a ladder structure with branches being more stable. Did anyone actually read it? :tongue2:

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I read it but you have the land go back to the Lord. Since I had made my opinion of that clear before, I didn't want to "beat a dead horse". :clown:

Only at the lower levels does it go back though.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Only at the lower levels does it go back though.

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Yeah and I still don't like it. If I'm a Baron, I want to be able to take my piece of land and leave my chain if I want. If my Lord has a problem with it, he can declare a "oath-breaking caused civil war" and come get me. :balloon2:

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Originally Posted by OverKnight

I'm still having a difficult time wrapping my head around all the rules, much less the debates about the rules. :dizzy2: I won't have a true appreciation for the game until we start playing.

My personal preference is to keep things as simple as possible. The Chancellor will be doing the heavy lifting on keeping track of all this, so we should avoid over burdening that position.

It seems even more than KotR the emphasis will be on role-playing, and the rise and fall of Houses and characters will depend on it. I'm all for that. The strength of countries and noble Houses often depended on the charisma and command abilities of their leaders. All the land in the world won't mean anything if you can't keep vassals. For this and simplcity, I'm opposed to adding land into the equation for titles.

If any glaring weakness emerge in game play, we can address them then.

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I was thinking this while reading this active discussion and OK again expressed my thoughts exactly like he has in other post. :2thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Privateerkev

Yeah and I still don't like it. If I'm a Baron, I want to be able to take my piece of land and leave my chain if I want. If my Lord has a problem with it, he can declare a "oath-breaking caused civil war" and come get me. :balloon2:

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You're such a rebel PK :clown:

and yes OK has summed up things nicely from where I'm sitting.

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Originally Posted by AussieGiant

You're such a rebel PK :clown:

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Well, it depends on my avatar's traits and how I feel like RP'ing them. Basically, I want the option... :clown:

I imagine it would not be a decision taken lightly since it could very well end in my avatar's death. I don't plan on doing it on a whim (unless I have some serious disloyal traits or madness traits).

But I like that we have the option to do so if we feel we have to for IC reasons. There are severe consequences of course and there should be. But it would be up to those in my former chain to figure out what to do about it IC. :yes:

I'm just a bit worried about the lower ranks having a bit too much power. Part of the fun of a rebel is knowing your facing huge odds. I knew that Wolfgang hadn't a hope of being able to single-handedly conquer Swabia, but the fact that my rebellion lasted 16 years is what it made so fun. I never knew whether the current turn would be my last.

If your friends with the Chancellor, you are basically safe from retribution from your own house, as the Chancellor can throw all sorts of obstacles in the house's way.

(Side note: Has anyone else noticed that TC used the rank names from EUII?)

Wow, I was busy over the weekend and avoided coming onto the forums last night because I was afraid I would have 700 posts to catch up on. Turns out this thread had a grand total of 1 new post. So much for my fears.

I am going to put up a poll on the draft changes I wrote up last week, along with several of the changes that other people have proposed. Once we get a feel for where we stand on those, we can push forward on any areas that remain unresolved.

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Originally Posted by Ignoramus

(Side note: Has anyone else noticed that TC used the rank names from EUII?)

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That's pretty amusing actually. I had never played a single EU game until about two weeks ago, certainly not when I wrote the rules. However, I recently picked up EUIII and have been addicted to it since then. That' why I didn't want to read 700 posts last night... it would have cut into my EUIII playtime! :laugh4: I'm currently trying to figure out how I can cut France down to size, when it has an army twice as large as the next largest army in the world.

I have just removed a post from this thread. This discussion is complex enough without it being inundated with completely off-topic posts that exist only to spam smileys. Please do not post in this manner again.

I think a lot of us are waiting to see how the test game turns out before discussing the rules again. Or maybe we've just temporarily run out of things to nitpick about. :clown:

Re:EU3, One of the best ways I've found to take on monster factions like France is to wait until they're at war with a major power (preferably Castille or Burgudy if you're not playing one of them, and they hasn't kicked the bucket yet). Then declare war one them and take a few of their settlements as fast as possible. They probably have high war exhaustion and will take a deal that isn't too outrageous. I find getting them to release factions is easier than getting land off of them, at least early on. Normandy is nice, in that it's just big enough to be a challenge for France to retake. Have France release as many nations as possible, each province that goes to one is one less province for France and another ally for you. Repeat until you can take them one on one.

If they have extensive colonial holdings, however, it's extremely hard to grab enough territory off of them to get them to take a deal. :furious3:

I agree with Zim. I'm really looking forward to hearing about the experiences people have in the Test Game. After obsessing about the rank system in my mind and in this thread it will be interesting to see how the Civil War mechanic works. I hope they fit in smoothly and make Civil War a viable extension of internal politics. It will be interesting to see how the parties at war, the Chancellor and also the Faction Leader play together in this.


Concerning the Votes on rule extension. After familiarazing myself with the rules more and more I now tend to keep the ruleset as is. Most of the time additional rules tend to overcomplicate the matter and instead of preventing abuse more often than not open up avenues for even more abuse. So from my point no additional rule changes are needed right now. IC actions and reactions should suffice in most cases. I'd rather see some wonky bit of changing loyalties that gets the respective IC reaction, than having to make up some strange IC reasons for OOC rules.
I would even go further and tone down the current inheritance rule a bit. There are already too many clauses in that one. Since only land and no titles can be inherited I find the risk of someone hogging one province to be neglectable.

On a general note, the underlying fear of that rule is that people might limit the OOC fun of other players. In these games I have always found it important to keep a good OOC relation with everybody within the game. This should stand above all decisions within the game! It's sad that special rules should be needed to make this happen. If somebody is really just out to ruin the game for the majority, I have always thought it nice that we have two Mods within our ranks. :2thumbsup:

Exellent set of rules TC and gentlemen attending the discussion. Now i see the possibilities of feudal infighting which i longed for before i had to stop playing KOTR. These rules sounds almost like it would be too much fun to play.:2thumbsup: One question, what is the role of the King in all this?

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

Exellent set of rules TC and gentlemen attending the discussion. Now i see the possibilities of feudal infighting which i longed for before i had to stop playing KOTR. These rules sounds almost like it would be too much fun to play.:2thumbsup: One question, what is the role of the King in all this?

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Kag! :balloon2:

I thought you'd like these rules because this stuff is what you were asking for back when we had the KotR cataclysm discussion. :2thumbsup:

As for the King, he has some power but it will probably decrease a little over time as people go up in feudal ranks. In the beginning of the game he'll be able to mold things to his vision but later on it will get harder.

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

One question, what is the role of the King in all this?

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The Faction Leader is the single most powerful rank in the game. However, he's essentially alone and cannot have formal allies. One on one he can take on anyone and win, even a Grand Duke. However, he can be overpowered by large Houses or other alliances of lesser nobles. These will require time to develop, though, so at the start of the game the Faction Leader will have almost absolute power, especially when he chooses to become the Chancellor. Over time, as the faction gains more provinces and other nobles rise in rank, the Faction Leader will have to ally himself with at least some segment of the nobility in order to see his will done. If played well, the Faction Leader role could dominate the entire game. However, he could also be marginalized to a less powerful position like in KOTR if he backs the wrong side or angers too many nobles.

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Originally Posted by Privateerkev

Kag! :balloon2:

I thought you'd like these rules because this stuff is what you were asking for back when we had the KotR cataclysm discussion. :2thumbsup:

As for the King, he has some power but it will probably decrease a little over time as people go up in feudal ranks. In the beginning of the game he'll be able to mold things to his vision but later on it will get harder.

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Hi Privatererkev!~:)

I have a thought about the king, which i hope you would consider.
Now since we are really going into a feudal structure and internal wars will be option for everyone, it would be pretty easy to have Kings, pretty much like they really were during the feudalism. This can be done with a single rule, which would give a King huge amount of possibilities in order to manipulate the different houses (factions), but it wouldnt be game spoiler anymore, because if King would be too authoritarian, he could be done away by his own subjects in revolt. Please consider giving the King power to veto any edict made by the Diet.
With this power, he could both support the ones who support his policies and also make life miserable for those who oppose his policies.
This would create a character, which could not dictate what the houses could or could not do, since a single powerful or alliance of houses could in fact attack the King and kill him, if they would be too disgruntled of how they are treated. So by giving the King veto over diet, we would create a feudal king, who could rule through manipulation of the competing factions, but couldnt dictate his power over everyone, because of his own limited power base.:yes:

I've got my first rules question from the test game:

As Chancellor I am authorized to do this:

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Originally Posted by The Rules

The CHANCELLOR may move any avatar or army that has not been moved in this way [during the 24 hour free move period] as he best sees fit, including moves that result in battles, except that he cannot move a player’s avatar, Private/Royal Army, garrison units, or fort units in any manner that player has expressly prohibited.

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Certain parties wanted me to move Michiel and Marcel, currently in Iberia, east. However in their SOT entries I have these orders.

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Originally Posted by deguerra

No units may be removed or disbanded.

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Originally Posted by PrinceofTroy

Please do not remove or disband any of my units.

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So I can't move the garrisons of the two cities, but can I move the two avatars? What complicates this issue, is that both avatars are in the cities with the garrisons. Would the orders, as given, allow the Chancellor to move just the avatars while leaving the other units in place?

Thoughts?

I would have done exactly what you did; when player's orders are ambiguous err on the side of caution. If those men's Lord had informed them of his intent for them they could've altered their orders accordingly.

:egypt:

Sorry, I assumed "avatars" are different from "garrisons". If I knew they would be seen as one and the same, I would have asked my people to be more clear. :bow:

Trust me, "those men's Lord" informed them of his intent many many times. I think they just assumed that they could give an order for their garrison to stay put while their avatar could still be moved.

At least that is how I read the rules.

Overknights decision seems to be the correct one. The orders issued refer to 'units', which the nobles in question definitely are.