My zone of control is large enough at the moment that we could coexist peacefully for a while, at least
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My zone of control is large enough at the moment that we could coexist peacefully for a while, at least
Alliance accepted. There's plenty of room out east to expand if I indeed spawn there.
So I guess this turn it's...
ATTACK ON YORK II:
This Time It's Personal
Come see the Scottish army try to put an end to the last Anglo-Saxon city on Britain, while the Defenders of York try to hold off the forces of the largest army in the world for a second time!
The Anglo Saxons have suffered a series of crippling set backs as all other civilizations on the Britain and Ireland allied to attack them, capturing nearly all their cities and castles with combined assaults. Yet the Anglo Saxons managed to defeat the Scots on the very walls of their capital in their only victory so far, holding on to their last refuge.
Place your bets, ladies and gents. As tradition demands, I will be eating roast deer and drinking heady mead whilst enjoying the show.
Crazed "The Pharaoh" Rabbit
:laugh4:
Oh yeah, that reminds me. I need to send in my orders. Thanks. :yes:
Corisca today announces that it will offer support and military assistance to anyone FLEEING the British Isles and this unholy alliance. I shall protect you if you are attempting to set up colonies elsewhere, and we shall have an alliance if you so wish.
Funny, I've been called "unholy" a lot recently. :laugh4:
Maybe we are telling you something...
Lucjan have I sent in my orders? I can't remember
King Cedric thanks the Corsicans for their offer of protection, and urges them to put an end to the massacres of the Scots and Normans.
I would do so, but I fear I am too far away.
Your kingdom is abnormally, and disturbingly, scarce of voids.Quote:
Originally Posted by GeneralHankerchief
Egypt wishes to announce that, for a modest* donation**, it will form a League of Civilizations United for Peace Committee that will harshly denounce any nation that mongers war*** and bring down the wrath of the civilized world upon them!****
Act now and get a discount - have the LCUPC act against two warmongers for the price of one! Base price is 1000 gold.
You're welcome. Wouldn't be much of a show if one side forgot to show up, would it?Quote:
Thanks.
Crazed Rabbit
*Substantial
**Bribe
***Anyone you dislike
****We'll send a sternly worded letter
Anyone willing to be my ally?
I just discover I have plans to grow up.Just contact me.
I could use more friends.Quote:
Originally Posted by Caius Flaminius
Fixed it for you :P :laugh4::clown:Quote:
Originally Posted by Motep
I'm sending out all financial reports today, and the turn report will be released tomorrow in order to pull the Mongols into the game on a fair footing. There's a few things I need to work out with him and then we'll be good to go.
interesting, lucjan. but i'm guessing you have your hands full :)
a couple of suggestions for your next game. put all the buildable city locations on the map to start with, but no provinces. all those locations are considered villages until someone joins the game and is assigned to it. then, it's automatically upgraded to the size of your choice.
if a player settles/conquers 3 or more adjoining villages, THEN that area becomes a province and ONLY then can it have a castle and only one castle per province. if it's not a province, then no castle allowed.
once a castle is established, shld a player lose one of his cities (or it becomes un-taxable) within a province, the castle remains in the player's hands until such time as the other cities are lost or the castle is successfully attacked and overrun.
if any city is attacked within a province with a castle, the castle defences AUTOMATICALLY come into play. in other words, attacking a city in a province is the same as attacking the castle.
if the province loses all of its cities, the castle is automatically abandoned and lost. it either becomes neutral or falls into someone else's hands.
by fixing the village locations before the game starts, you eliminate all this stuff about how far a settlement has to be from a current settlement and you dont need to worry about the exact location of the castle in the province.
the best population increase rate is simple, a certain percentage increase per year, not season. or, even simpler, a city increases by +1 size per year or by 0.5 or whatever you wish. taxes are based on city size.
a successful raid on a city decreases it by -1 (or whatever). and your other rules for sacking or ruining apply.
trade routes are simple. neighboring cities only by land. by sea increase this by +2 or so. or, for sea, allow all mediterraens to trade by sea and all atlantics to trade with each other. this fosters trade among the actual players and rewards them for getting closer to each other.
if a city is completely destroyed, it can only be rebuilt in the same location. dont allow new cities all over anywhere.
also, by fixing the starting villages, you avoid all the 'how can a desert city produce as much as my fertile city?' questions. this keeps it simple. you simply dont put villages in the desert, unless you do want to do a nomad type. you also avoid the small island having 16 cities on it thing. a small island that only has 1 or 2 cities cannot be a province by itself. however, it could be a province if an adjoining land mass has a city on it that the player owned.
also, you'd best define 'adjoining' here, since someone is going to inevitably say that london adjoins alexandria by virtue of the sea and thus my province is london, alexandria and some city on gibraltar :)
keep it simple. conceptualize everything. the micromanagement, as i see you've found out, can drive you nuts in a hurry. also, pawn off some of that management to the players, if possible. have them compute their taxes collected and submit it to you for approval.
and perhaps most importantly, it would be vastly better if you played the gamemaster rather than gamemaster AND player. you have a vastly superior knowledge of what's going on behind the scenes. so, it might be judicious in this first game, to make all trades, deals, pacts, and so on, public, just for the sake of fairness. but that's up to you and the other players.
you might also delineate 'sea provinces', which would be a somewhat arbitrary area that one could travel by sea in a given turn. and show this on the map.
and, i think you shld add a fourth military unit. ships. these are bought and sold like other units. i'd keep it simple and call it a 'fleet'. one fleet can either transport one army or set up blockades or whatever else ships do. fleets could be combined into 'armadas' for the sake of fighting and transporting. just have a generic ship/fleet that can both fight on sea and transport troops.
ships/fleets/armadas that get sunk that are carrying troops, lose the troops too.
'pirate' fleets follow all the same rules as other ships/fleets. same cost, same transport rate and so on. the only thing that makes them pirates is that the player chooses to call them that.
fog of war is VERY important in a game like this. you might want to set up rules for this. how far away can a potential enemy see your army coming?
i would also consider adding roads/paths to the map. just travelling 250 km in one turn is pretty broad and loose and takes nothing like mountains and rivers into consideration. generally, villages were a day's ride away from each other. i'd be very tempted to add road 'segments'. a segment would the distance one could travel in a day or so. so, in a season, you could travel X number of segments and only by road. there was a game many years ago set in japan that did this somewhat, only you traveled by road in one turn from one city to the next. as your map fills up with owned cities, roads become crucial and strategic. ;)
anyways, i admire what you're doing. looks like fun. i've read the entire 12 pages of the thread and am watching to see how this progresses. i may even join in at some point :)
Interesting suggestions, Kraellin. I'll comment on a few, if I may.
I have to disagree - part of the fun is placing new cities. Having a pre-set map of cities would take away from the fun and strategy (and be a pain to make, methinks). There should be some limit on concentration of cities, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kraellin
I'd prefer a castle remain in the hands of who built it until it's taken, and that there are no prerequisites for castles. Enemy armies could still loot around the castle, to try and bait them out.Quote:
if any city is attacked within a province with a castle, the castle defences AUTOMATICALLY come into play. in other words, attacking a city in a province is the same as attacking the castle.
Population adds a lot of difficulty, and I'm not sure what the best approach is yet.Quote:
the best population increase rate is simple, a certain percentage increase per year, not season. or, even simpler, a city increases by +1 size per year or by 0.5 or whatever you wish. taxes are based on city size.
I think ports should be able to trade with most of the other ports on the map. Inland cities should only be able to trade with other cities they are 'connected to' which would need defining, and also benefit from nearby port cities.Quote:
trade routes are simple. neighboring cities only by land. by sea increase this by +2 or so. or, for sea, allow all mediterraens to trade by sea and all atlantics to trade with each other. this fosters trade among the actual players and rewards them for getting closer to each other.
Right now we're using the simple solution.
They're conglomerations of nomads, dangit! ~;p I may be biased, being Egypt.Quote:
also, by fixing the starting villages, you avoid all the 'how can a desert city produce as much as my fertile city?' questions. this keeps it simple. you simply dont put villages in the desert, unless you do want to do a nomad type.
That is true. He knows all my cities, military might, and where I send my forces. The tough thing would be if anyone got in a war with Poland - no sneak attacks there. However, everyone knows who's trading with whom, and I'd rather only one person knew everything about my turns than everyone.Quote:
and perhaps most importantly, it would be vastly better if you played the gamemaster rather than gamemaster AND player. you have a vastly superior knowledge of what's going on behind the scenes.
I completely agree. They'd have to be 'purchased' in ports, too, methinks.Quote:
and, i think you shld add a fourth military unit. ships. these are bought and sold like other units. i'd keep it simple and call it a 'fleet'. one fleet can either transport one army or set up blockades or whatever else ships do. fleets could be combined into 'armadas' for the sake of fighting and transporting. just have a generic ship/fleet that can both fight on sea and transport troops.
ships/fleets/armadas that get sunk that are carrying troops, lose the troops too.
Well as you've seen, it seems possible to join late. You may suffer some due to starting out late, but I'm sure you could handle it.Quote:
anyways, i admire what you're doing. looks like fun. i've read the entire 12 pages of the thread and am watching to see how this progresses. i may even join in at some point :)
Crazed Rabbit
There's a few good points there and a few I'd disagree with, but I'm one person, and making all these changes mid game would be disastrous to not only my ability to keep track of everything, but our players understanding of what's going on.
Maybe in a second run when this game ends we'll look at some alterations.
As far as me playing and being the game master at the same time. The top 5 players speak for themselves. I'm not even up there. I started the game and there are players with a better grasp of it's strategic elements than myself. :sweatdrop:
Thank you for the time you took to write all that up though, and it is appreciated, maybe when this game ends we can talk more about it, or, like you said, you'll join this one later?
TURN 5 WORLD REPORT
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The tide has turned in the British isles, with unpaid soldiers deserting en masse from the Scottish ranks following yet another repelled attack at the walls of York and a defeat by the hands of the Faroe Island fleet. The Anglo Saxon king has led his people back to their homelands in eastern Germany where they have been guaranteed safety and a defensive alliance by the King of Poland in exchange for becoming a Polish vassal.
Irish and English armies arrived after the failed Scottish assault and managed to throw the Yorkish defenders into desperation. The city withheld, but will likely not stand another assault, even by the routing Scots, the city would most likely fall.
In the meantime, a Corsican fleet landed just south of a French city that recently gave its allegiance to the French crown, and appears to be heading west in a direct route along the Pyrenees towards the sea.
The Faroe Islands seem to have united the international community behind them in their plight, and gold from around the world was used to draft soldiers into the army that sent the Scots packing on the seas. Their new found military superiority and their ability to unite the international world makes them strong. Their army has pushed the Scottish agressors back to Stornoway, where they wait for their kings orders.
The might of the world's growing nations is beginning to show, with cities springing up without the monetary aid of royal coffers and allying themselves with their cultural brethren.
But a new power has emerged in the east. The Mongol horde has come from the far east, settling around the Aral and Caspian seas. Their intentions are as yet unclear, but they have come in vast numbers, equal to a moderately powerful kingdom of the west. However, they are new to these lands, and some call their ways barbaric, uncivilized. Can they survive and earn their place?
Sorry for the double post, but actually Kraellin, send me a pm, I'd like to talk about a few ideas with you, since you've taken such an interest in the game mechanics.
Does anyone wish an alliance? All emissaries should be instructed to the Imperial Capital of Khaanstantinople.
What are your intentions in the Kingdom of France, Arach?
If you're looking for new colonies, I suggest Northern Africa looks more hospitable to you genteel Corsican folk. If you're stopping off for a rest, then I welcome you with open arms.
York held? From combined assaults of Scottish, Irish, and English forces? Whoa, good thing I didn't bet on that.
This is an awfully good show. *eats more deer, washes down with mead*
The Mongols certainly became a presence overnight in the east.
The Egyptians are always seeking peace - perhaps a non-aggression treaty, or an alliance?Quote:
Does anyone wish an alliance? All emissaries should be instructed to the Imperial Capital of Khaanstantinople.
Crazed Rabbit
Lucjan, York isn't still under siege is it? It shouldn't be, since it repulsed the assaults.
no, i wouldnt change anything in this game. it's started; let it run.
the fixed cities thing has another couple of advantages. one, lucjan is going to find himself with a full time job pretty quickly here. just project things out a bit more the way they're going and you'll see that a couple hundred cities are going to task lucjan pretty hard to keep up with all the management.
and two, fixed cities gives you some control over things like central europe being highly populated while outer russia shld be quite a bit less populated. so, the cities in russia would be further apart.
you could and would still have desert cities, but they would be spread way out.
another advantage of this is that if you take a regional area like germany or france, you would have a higher concentration of people and cities and this would draw folks to take that as a starting position, but be a bit harder to defend, perhaps, because of its central location. whereas russia would be more protected simply by being more remote, but it would have a smaller population and city count and thus have the draw of being somewhat isolated and therefore safer, at least in the early game.
roads and trade routes simply add a convention of common paths of travel and therefore eliminate the difficulties of crossing mountains and rivers and wide deserts. you can just ignore those terrain conditions when moving by road. and if all movement is by road, then there's never any question of how far an army or group of settlers can move in one turn. again, this makes lucjan's life easier.
also, if you got really tricky, you could just do movement as 'city to city'. a group traveling would travel one city to one city in one turn. that would change the length of the turn from 'season' to something else, but that's easy to do. if two armies meet during that travel, on the road, and are hostile, they simply resolve things before moving to their final destination city.
there are other concepts coming into play here too that i find interesting. the whole 'i claim this land in the name of ____' is a very good concept. possibly hard to actually implement in mechanics but certainly great for role play. i loved the declaration by the russian factioni of 'these lands are ours' regardless of the fact that they had no cities anywhere close to some of that land :) very bold :)
i also see another thing going on i hadnt thought of. folks are purposely putting cities further away from their first one that i thought they would. this is securing them vast amounts of territory into very large provinces. tricky :) but, can they now go back and build new cities within those provinces? some of these questions are unaswered as of yet.
yes, i already said you'd have to take the castle, since a city has to be attacked to take it and if the castle is auto-defending, you'd essentially have to take the castle to take the city. but, i also agree that my system is arbitrary and i generally hate those, but i'm trying to think of lucjan's job here and how much he has to do.Quote:
I'd prefer a castle remain in the hands of who built it until it's taken, and that there are no prerequisites for castles. Enemy armies could still loot around the castle, to try and bait them out.
the problem with ports being able to trade with any and all other ports on the map is the complete disregard for time and distance. going from egypt to sicily isnt bad, but going from egypt to london is, at least, all in one turn. so, trade by port shld be somewhat based on distance. and again, to make life easier for lucjan, i simplified it quite a bit. if you did sea boundaries/territories, that would work, but is more work to manage.
the only reason i mentioned gm'ing and playing in the same game is that i've done it. if you win, some raise their eyebrows and even make accusations and if you lose, i always found myself holding myself back because if i won it would look too suspicious. and i hate holding myself back :) but, if the other have no grief i wouldnt worry about it. just have fun :)
as for pm'ing you, i'd rather just keep all this in the open and let others contribute and debate the ideas. besides, i hate the pm system :)
i do find watching this quite interesting, though. so, good luck to all!
Mongols, you show promise of becoming good romans, we wish to ally with you good people.
The ottomens also wish to ally with the fair mongol people.
There's still troops outside your walls.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignoramus
Ichigo, did you nab Lancaster off the Irish?
Not sure how that happened.:dizzy2:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignoramus
The mongols may secure a NAP with Russia by vowing not to expand north or westward into russia but rather in the south.
It is reccomended that they obey.