ETW PBM Think Tank

[woad&fangs]

I came up with a very rough rule proposal for an ETW PBM. I read about the political situation of Poland-Lithuania at this time and came up with this

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

ETW PBM Idea: Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth
In game avatars are purely optional.

GM plays the role of King. Because the king is “elected” by the slachta and magnates, he will be played weakly and will mainly be content to lurk in the shadows and let the magnates run the country. He does however, have the ability to appoint the secretaries (the senate can override his decisions at any session)

Speaking of the magnates….Each province is controlled by a magnate. Magnates were exceptionally wealthy and powerful men in the commonwealth. They generally controlled vast tracks of land and had a political and economic stranglehold over their area. Magnates are responsible for running their province. They can build or destroy any building they wish in their province. They make requests for soldiers for their personal general(s). They move their personal general(s). They control all rakes, gentleman, and priests who spawned in their province.

Szlachta: They are all nobles but less powerful than the magnates. Players who are szlachta will be able to vote and run for chancellor. Aside from that, their power is limited to how benevolent the magnate of their province is.

Chancellor is the one elected role. He is in charge of recruiting armies and generals and he is in charge of diplomacy. He may declare war at any time. The only other way to declare war is through an edict. He must ensure that each magnate has at least one general. Magnates may have more than one general but those are prioritized with the rest of the army. The chancellor must abide by all army requests to the best of his ability.

Conquering a new territory: If a territory is conquered, an impromptu senate session will occur. Ownership of a province is “decided” by the king. However, the king is easily bribed. Each magnate will secretly bid for the right to name the new owner of the province. They may bid up to the amount that is in their personal treasury. The winning bidder will decide who will become the new magnate. He can either name one of his own szlachta or another magnate’s szlachta as the magnate of the new province. Magnates are allowed to pool their treasuries to bid.

Wealth: Every turn, each magnate will be allowed to use a certain % of the faction’s treasury (above the “rainy day fund” and “chancellor’s fund” level) to buy new soldiers and build new buildings. The rainy day fund is the amount that can not be spent by anyone. This amount is set by an edict. The chancellor’s fund is the amount of money set aside for diplomatic transactions. This amount is set by an edict. The % that each magnate receives is equal to their wealth level. Their wealth level is equal to the economic capabilities of their province + money gained through agreements with other magnates. Money that a magnate could spend but chooses not to causes their personal treasury to increase by that amount. Money in a magnate’s personal treasury may only be used for bidding purposes. Personal treasuries are virtually represented. The actual in game money that is left over can be spent however the chancellor wishes.

Wealth agreements: Magnates may make formal binding agreements that distribute a certain # of their wealth points to another magnate. Theses agreements are binding for a length of time set in the contract (minimum of 5 turns).

How Wealth is determined:

Cities/Villages/ports- 1 wp for each +1 wp for each economic upgrade

Wealth points to % income ratio

3 =10%
4-5=15%
6-7=20%
8-9=25%
10+=30%

I won't be able to play ETW until I get my new computer in May so I know there are probably lots of issues with my idea. Its rather hard to come up with rules when one doesn't know the gameplay mechanics available.

Hopefully this will at least provide food for thought.

[mini]

sounds good, and the mechanic is translatable to other factions.

[pevergreen]

The only problem is that Tax rates are set by theatre (europe, america, india) and the only changes are tax-exemption for a province.

[woad&fangs]

The only problem is that Tax rates are set by theatre (europe, america, india) and the only changes are tax-exemption for a province.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. I didn't mention taxes at all in the rules. Could you explain what you mean so I can attempt to claryify the rules?

[Cecil XIX]

It was mentioned here.

Speaking of the magnates….Each province is controlled by a magnate. Magnates were exceptionally wealthy and powerful men in the commonwealth. They generally controlled vast tracks of land and had a political and economic stranglehold over their area. Magnates are responsible for running their province. They may set taxes however they please in their province. They can build or destroy any building they wish in their province. They make requests for soldiers for their personal general(s). They move their personal general(s). They control all rakes, gentleman, and priests who spawned in their province.

[woad&fangs]

Oops! I thought I had remembered to take that part out

[TinCow]

There's another complication for ETW PBMs that I just notice: file save. The longer the game goes on, the larger the save game file size gets. After 40 turns in the Spain succession game PBM, the save game file is 74.6mbs. Even compressed it is 21mbs. Uploading and downloading multiple files of that size could cause problems for some people, and those files definitely cannot fit in the Org's file system.

[mini]

I wouldn't mind playing an admiral in an ETW PBM :D
The seas would be mine, yarrrr!

The savegame size doesn't bother me, I got several possibilities to upload these.
I hope somethign can be thought out to apply the current gamestyle to ETW.

[mini]

Has anyone given any thought to the faction we'd use? So far I've only played France, but I've been kicked around by the AI enough to know that it'd be challenging, and we have enough colonies to make things interesting enough for all players.

From what I've seen so far, the campaign will definitely be harder since we just can't point our finger at a territory and then own it a few turns later anymore.

Prussia also gives a nice challenge.
However, If we have a big starting playerpool, we might go for a nation which has colonies to start with.
The UP would be cool, as they do have colonies but are still the underdog to GB/France/Spain.


As to actual game mechanics, it can be done. Although we will be facing a toning down of actual live players.
We can't recruit generals by the dozens (well we can, but wouldn't work well). But still, there are always a few generals playable.

We have rakes, I think it would also be nice to play a rake.
We have gentlemen, of course it's best to stay in school most of the time you can pick fights with nearby gentlemen if you wish. So it's rather cool for the casual pbm'er.

Admirals. Especially when we have colonies, we'll also have to tend a few fleets in each theater.


When it comes to ruling our nation, we can have a few players RP'ing the ingame Fl and ministers.
But we might have to face the fact that some will have to be content with RP'ing a char which has no relation with anything ingame (but if you count rakes, gents, generals, and admirals, atleats a decent amount of peepz get live chars)

Before we start we should have a poll about who gets to be king/ministers at the start of the game.
King is a lifetime tenure (unless there's a revolution) and ministers can be fired upon decision by king & council. If your char is a minister and gets fired, you'll have to start Rp'ing a made-up new char, while someone else gets to play the new minister. This is just an example.

It's best that we first see how many ppl are interested in an ETW PBM with a skeleton ruleset.
If we have a smallish base, we can give everyone somethign to do and see how far we get.

If we play a monarchy, much depends on who is the king.
Let's say he gets to chose who is minister.
The First Lord (prime minister) is the one who ends turns.
The financial minister is in charge of taxes obviously
The military minister dishes out the general jobs
Same thing for the naval one

of course, the military one wants troops for a war, so he has to convince the financial one to recruit troops, etc. That kind of dynamics.

I believe we can also get governors in the colonies? They can function in a sorta way like the ministers in their own theater. (even more playable stuff for peepz)

The ministers make up for the King's council. They meet at the kings behest. Ministers can make a petition to the king to call for a council.




That's all I can come up with atm, I should've been a sleep 2 hrs ago.
I've I think about this a bit more, surely more will come up.

But a lot depends on participation. With a select group, it's certainly doable. We can figure out a way to include people with fictive chars along the way. But the game certainly provides for enough possibilities to play something
-FL
- ministers
- governors
These are on the governement level, so they have no real chars to move etc, they just call the shots.

-rakes
-gents
-generals
-admirals
These are all playable. With generals frequently dying of age (average age of fresh recruited general is 32 and they dont become 65+ in my experience) we can work with a wait list.
You might have to wait until you get to play, then you get to play until your char is dead, and back on the list etc. While your on the list, you can participate in the council. You can debate etc. For actual proposals you'll have to petition a minister. Ministers who propose stuff will need votes, so they have to woo the people in the waiting lists, as generals/admirals and stuff do not get to vote (they're no politicians, they're soldiers). Favors can be done either way.


It's just mindless brainstorming by someone who's at zombie mode behind the pc, but it might give the more experienced PBM GM's somethign to chew on :)

[mini]

I guess there isn't much want for an ETW PBM atm :)

[TinCow]

I guess there isn't much want for an ETW PBM atm :)

I think there's plenty to work with for an ETW PBM, but it would probably be a good idea to wait for the game to be patched up a bit first. Since we won't have access to any console commands, there's not going to be any way to alter the in-game situation if we have problems or don't like it. Combine this with a lack of naval invasions, and you've got a major risk of an unchallenging AI. I personally think that the AI will be a much bigger factor in an ETW game than in the RTW/M2TW games, so this is somewhat important.

For the type of game created, I do like your suggestions. I think decentralized control systems like that will have to become the norm. I also think that we need to discard any internal PvP system at least for the first game.

[mini]

Yeah, we probably will have to avoid pvp situations since we can't enforce the results without console.

I've only played a prussia campaign so far, i've been playing more MP at this point.
Though in the prussia campaign i'm 40 years deep and have faced some serious perils left and right. Though I tend to play slow and don't blitzkrieg, which may account for it.
I've now got about 4-5 regions, and had to fight tooth and nail for everyone, spending rounds and rounds on trying to negotiate my behind out of disastrous situations.

But the AI does need patching indeed. Unless you stir it up a bit, they tend to get static when it doesn't involve you.

Bring on those patches, cuz i'd love to see an ETW pbm ^^

[TinCow]

Your observations tend to mimic my own. ETW is definitely MUCH more challenging in SP than the last few games, even with the AI in its current state. If the game starts with a nation without overseas provinces (i.e. Prussia, Sweden, Poland/Lithuania, Austria) it will probably be decently challenging at the start. Our old problems of massive initial expansion due to everyone conquering whatever is nearby with a 3 unit army is no longer a concern. With a decent rule system that allows for effective internal 'political' competition, the AI could well be enough to keep us occupied with fun ETW PBMs for a good while. Not all PBMs have to last 1+ years, after all.

[mini]

Perhaps we should create various governement system according to the possibilities ingame.
That way we can cope with ingame revolutions.

So, if you read my big post above, that spares me half the explanation.

For absolute monarchy, we place all authority with the king in theory.
He will be able to select 5 players to act as his ministers (just like the ones ingame). These players will stay ministers until a new king comes to power, or until the king decides a new minister is needed (thus if the ingame minister dies, this does not effect us. Lets say the ingame ministers are the right hand henchmen for the IRL ministers)

Discussions take place in the Council of nobles but it does not have any power. But everyone is allowed to IC there, and the purpose is that the 5 ministers will take the discussed topics into consideration to present to the king, who eventually gets to decide. Of course, disregarding the advice of ministers too much, will have effect on the power of the king.

As I stated in previous post, ministers will be able to appoint stuff in their jurisdiction. Military ministers get to appoint players to generals, same thing for naval minister and admirals.
Taxes will be done by the financial one.
troop recruiting is co-junction of military minister and financial one, etc etc.
The prime minister ends the turns and provides turn reports.


Of course, when/if we ever switch to republic system, things change.
A parliament will be created, where everyone can get a say.

players will have to roleplay the ingame ministers now (who the lucky players are might be decided by ooc elections aswel?) and they will change when dying or with new elections.
The only big difference is that the ministers now have to put their proposals to the vote in parliament, instead of letting the king decide.
The prime minister will still end the turn. What exactly will be the role of the president, I haven't figured out yet.
Perhaps give him veto power, and the ability to fire ministers.


Like I said in the previous post, if we have a large playerbase there will be a lot of people forced to roleplay a character which has no physicial representation ingame. But I think there are people who are ok with that.



I think that the last 5 posts by tincow and me are sufficient to build a skeleton of rules, on which we can build a test game.
We could start out with Prussia as it is smallish without colonies.

I'll make a new thread to see how many people are willing to participate in this testcase, if noone replies to this thread in a few days.

[mini]

internal competition is necessary of course, but it's harder to implement since many players will be forced to RP imaginative chars.

Until we find a way to track internal competition with a mathemathical system, I suggest we can base this on personal feelings. We can all try to make a fair judgement of anothers effort and contributions towards the game.
People who actively RP'ed imaginitive characters deserve a chance to assume control of something physical ingame when the next chance comes around.

[TinCow]

You make a very good point about the different government systems. Like you suggest, it would be wise to create basic rules about how the game is run depending on which of the 3 systems are currently in effect. However, this means the rules will also need some kind of mechanism for determining when a government system can be changed. Whoever is playing the King is not likely going to approve of a switch to a Republic, so there's got to be some method of determining which side wins.

[mini]

how about an unweighted poll?

As to when it is to happen:
when it happens ingame + when a vast majority of players are calling for it (this will press the ones currently in power, to atleast pay sufficient attention to the wishes of the rest :) )

[TinCow]

I have never had a change of government in-game myself, so I'd like some clarification on how it works. When the option is presented in-game, is it true that there's a pop-up message box that asks whether you want to support the old regime or the revolutionaries? I understand that if you pick one side and that side loses the subsequent battle, the game ends. Is it possible to save the game with that pop-up box still open, or will the person playing have to make the choice right then and there?

[GeneralHankerchief]

I have never had a change of government in-game myself, so I'd like some clarification on how it works. When the option is presented in-game, is it true that there's a pop-up message box that asks whether you want to support the old regime or the revolutionaries? I understand that if you pick one side and that side loses the subsequent battle, the game ends. Is it possible to save the game with that pop-up box still open, or will the person playing have to make the choice right then and there?

I do confirm the mechanism (I tried to see if a Russian revolution would bring out the Soviet Union 200 years early), but I'm not sure if you can save beforehand. I imagine you can, though, as it lets you save before other critical events like battles.

[mini]

About saving, I do not know.
I'll have to try that tonight.

I myself only had 1 revolution so far.
My Prussia Campaign, the revolution started in capitol region brandenburg. I sided with the revolutionaiers and attacked brandenburg immediately. I won that battle, and then I was a republic, with the current german flag and all.

I'll have to test the save thingy though.

[TinCow]

If we can save, that's probably a good place for the transition mechanism. If people want to act in a way to push the country towards a rebellion, that should occur under the normal rules. Once the rebellion pops up, the game is saved and the mechanism for determining which government is supported then goes into effect.

It's tempting to allow the minority to resist the change with arms, but it's still probably best to avoid PvP in the first version of the ETW rule set.

[mini]

What we CAN do is this:

if the decision on change is close and thus unclear, both parties selection a 'champion' and they battle it out in pvp.

Winning champion decides whether the gov changes or not.
But this is probably for when the change-poll does not meet a specific majority.

for instances 2/3rd or 3/4th majority not reached by either side => champion battle.

[TinCow]

Hrm... perhaps. I would recommend developing the draft rules without PvP first. Let's see how complex they are before we toss any PvP on top of them.

[mini]

If you want, I can create a seperate thread with the skeleton rules, extracted from this thread and just see how many ppl are willing to spent time on a test case

[TinCow]

Hold on a new thread until you're actually ready to start a game. If it's still drafting and tweaking rules, this thread is the right place for it.

[mini]

So, an effort into bringing all discussed items into a rule draft.


playable ingame avatars
First off the bat are the dtermintion of what is playable and what not.
Generals
rakes
gentlemen
admirals
These are the only ingame figures who can be chosen and played.
They will form the bottom tier of our 2tier system

Generals
These guys do what they have to: lead armies into war. They will receive general objectives from the people in the upper tier, but can independantly decide how to reach this objective without interference.
Generals do not interfere with politics, unless they wish to rebel. (will not be a viable option until we have a console and pvp options, so I will not explain this for now)

Rakes
These guys are rogues, and take orders only from the prime minister. As long as they have no orders, they're free to roam the world and do as they please.
Rakes therefore can stuff up a lot of politically plans if they get caught in actons tha weren't orders.
So whoever is prime minister has to be in control of the situation or risk everything.

gentlemen
These guys are in total control of themselves. They can duel as they please and roam around.
When they are in schools, they get to decide what is to be researched in their school.
If multiple gentlemen are in the same school, they have to poll about the next research withing the 24hrs of the save game.
Poll will be held by the gentlemen with the most stars. Poll will be in weighted votes: each star counts as a vote (someone with 4 stars has thus 4 votes in that poll).
The governement can request a technology to be researched, but no more than requesting. Gentlemen decidefor themselves.

admirals
Same principle as generals, but on the sea.

If you chose to play a har from the lower tier, you chose to abstain yourself from any politicl participation in the game. You cannot influence political machinations by any (official) way.
The only time you get to post something IC in the roycal council thread (or the likes) is when some politician asks you to comment on somthing, in the like of professional advice.


Those are the lower tier, the easy tier. Now onto the difficult part.

Governement!
Governement into ETWPBM, will have to foresee a rule set for each possible governing system available.
Though the core of every ruleset can be maintained I believe. In previous posts I've already spilled some ideas:

no matter the governement type, we will need to elect players to fullfill some of the available functions in the ingame system. Of course, the number of these are limited, and will result in the others having to roleplay in imaginitive character. Let's just get on with the examples

Absolue monarchy:
player is elected t play the king, and will remain in power for as long as his character is ingame.
He will choose 5 players to fullfill the minister roles that are ingame. These 5 players stay minister until the king dies, or the king removes them from office (ergo, the ministers are not bound to the ministers ingame. The ingame ministers will act as the IRL players right-hand)

The king has absolute power, and the last say in anything. The only exception, is a decree that is signed by all 5 ministers. This decree will always be implemented. Of course, ministers who go against the will of the king, are open to get fired.
A king can be removed of power if all 5 ministers and the majority of generals agree to revolt (ingame revolution will be machinised)

As the king is in total control, the official politics thread will not be in the usual manner. There will not be councill sessions. Best way to describe it is as follows: in an absolute monarchy, the politics thread will be a continous councill session. Discussions will take place anytime, people can suggest all sorts of thing all the time.
It will be up to the ministers to decide which proposals they shall present to the prime minister. It will be the prime minister who in the end wil ltake the proposals to the king as thé advice.
And it will be up to the king to choose whether he takes it or not.



Republic

Every election ingame, we do an election on the forum. Available positions are president, prime minister and the 5 ingame minister posts.

The president will call for councill sessions, and retains veto powers. Any proposal by the president will automatically be voted upon, will not need seconding. He will also be able to use presidential privilege to push 1 decree through without votes.

in this councill session, everyone is allowed to spill ideas. Each ministers can choose which ones are to be taken to the vote (when the proposal lies within their minister domain), and the prime minister must approve of everything (which comes down to having veto power) except the presidents proposals.

Obviously, it will be the republic in which people playing in amiginitive charater, have the biggest say in things out of all possible gov. types


... monarchy
I forgot the full name, but in the normal monarchy, it will be a mix of the previous types.

The king will call sessions. Ministers will present their selected proposals out of the suggestions from the crowd, to the prime minister, who will take them to the king for ratification.
The king has veto power.


THIS POST WILL BE EDITTED SOON, AS I DO NOT HAVE THE TIME TO COMPLETE IT RIGHT NOW, THOUGH I AM OPEN TO COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

[TinCow]

I like the basic layout, but I'd like to suggest some changes. First, I don't think anyone should play the 'agent' avatars. They die easily and the trait system in ETW is extremely cut-down, making the RPing benefits of a particular avatar pretty much pointless. I don't really see any benefit to having individual agents controlled by a player, especially since agents like gentlemen and priests generally spend their lives sitting in one spot.

Instead, I think it would be better to focus more on delegating responsibilities to different players. I like the idea of the ministers being chosen as players, but let's go further and give each minister specific powers. For example, the Navy minister is responsible for all naval recruitment and repair, and he also gives command of the various fleets to whoever he wants. The Army minister is responsible for all army recruitment and retraining, and gives command of the various land armies to whoever he wants. The internal affairs minister is responsible for all domestic construction and european taxation. The various colonial theater governors are responsible for taxation and construction in their provinces. Etc...

The Prime Minister/King appoints other players to these positions, based on whatever reasoning he wants. PM/King also is responsible for all foreign diplomacy, determines when the nation goes to war, etc. The army/navy ministers then in turn appoint other players to take control of specific fleets or armies. Essentially, it's an entire game of RPing the government. The top level make the big choices, but they have to rely on those lower down to carry them out.

Overall, I think the player base in this game would be smaller than the previous games, but that might not be a bad thing. A game like this could run very well with 12-15 players, which is very sustainable. There's no rule saying that the PBMs have to handle 40+ players all the time. Smaller can be fun too.

[mini]

that's what i said in previous posts aswel

there are 5 different ministers ingame, with each their own jurisdiction. Players should act within it.

[TinCow]

So, the question then becomes how to add in some kind of conflict into the scenario. If it's just a hierarchy of job assignment, it's little more than an elaborate succession game. While that's not a bad thing, I think a lot of people would be interested in a ETW version of the current mega-PBMs. So, how do we create (or at least, allow) inter-player conflict in this system?

[johnhughthom]

With the imminent arrival of the new patch I was wondering if there is any interest in an ETW PBM still alive?
Reading through the thread there are still a number of questions to be answered as to how to proceed, I'm not sure the E:TW government system lends itself well to this type of game, but I'd certainly be willing to take part in a test game based on mini's rules if anybody is interested.

edit: of course I mean after a few days of playing with the new patch...