Possible LotR Successor Game discussion thread

[Ramses II CP]

I still favor the simplest system when it comes to voting. One province = one vote. Kill someone and you get all the provinces they had when you declared war. We don't have to give people a reason to distribute land to their vassals, let's keep the game heavy at the top and new avatars will have something to do... steal from the old generation.

Ranks and provinces never really meant much in LotR. We almost immediately had more land than active players. It'll mean more in the next version if a successful field general can hoard some of it and build himself into a threatening powerhouse. No matter how powerful someone gets in the end they can only control one stack of troops, can only attack in one direction at a time. If you want more than that you've got to trust someone, and if you don't want more than that then you will quickly find that younger players are just as happy to siege your cities with just their bodyguards as they are the AI's cities.

It's a simple scenario, right? One big player with 5-6 provinces, well established, powerful, and 3-4 new players with just what they can scrape together. If they want to advance they need land, and the big guy can't protect it all. Let's give each other motive and opportunity to be distrustful and aggressive.

We still have one other thing to fix, however, which is what we vote on! Voting sessions in LotR tended to be rather dull. The edicts were rarely impactful on gameplay. This has to be solved in the game by the players that start off with powerful avatars IMHO.

[Zim]

I see some very good ideas here to discuss. I just finished a test and have spring break this week (seems odd for someone of the ripe old age of 25... ). I will be making some rules proposals this coming week. We've got a lot of ideas now, it seems a good time to start thinking about how to implement them.

In the meantime I'm thinking of moving the faction choice discussion to a poll. So far I've seen the following factions brought up:

England
Denmark
Sicily
Spain
Milan

Am I missing any? We might want to think a little bit more about whether we're using Kingdoms, since there are some fairly light mods that add Kingdoms specific factions we might consider (like the Order of other crusader factions).

[mini]

Kingdoms is fine by me.
What does it cost nowadays in stores?
I picked it up for 3 euro few weeks ago.

England and Milan are my favourites.


Just one Q: why aren't we considering France? The tensions between the king and all the barons could be easily translated into the game, it's quite central in Europe and pretty much has enemies on every border. It can expand in a lot of directions, and has a nice troop roster.

Since we're playing a christian faction, it will be a matter of not expanding too much to keep our papal relation in check?

[TinCow]

Ranks and provinces never really meant much in LotR. We almost immediately had more land than active players. It'll mean more in the next version if a successful field general can hoard some of it and build himself into a threatening powerhouse. No matter how powerful someone gets in the end they can only control one stack of troops, can only attack in one direction at a time. If you want more than that you've got to trust someone, and if you don't want more than that then you will quickly find that younger players are just as happy to siege your cities with just their bodyguards as they are the AI's cities.

I agree that it would be good to find a way to give more significance to provinces. When writing the LotR rules, I tried to make it so that people would become invested in their provinces and work towards improving them. I very much wanted to encourage the type of thing that Cecil did during the KotR Cataclysm, but it simply didn't work out in LotR. For LotR, the problem is accurately identified as being way too many provinces. This wouldn't have been an issue if the player base was higher, but despite consistently having a much larger base than KotR, LotR still had too few players to make province ownership competitive.

Making provinces more valuable is definitely one area that should be explored. However, I also think there should also be some focus on slowing down expansion a bit. If provinces can be kept somewhat scarce, their value will naturally increase and people will be more concerned with keeping and improving what they have. I'm not sure how to slow down expansion without imposing rules that feel artificial, but if a method can be discovered for doing this it would be a good idea IMO.

[mini]

Like I said, if we play France for instance, we cannot lash out in all directions because of papal relations.
We can snatch a few rebel provinces, and then it's waiting until the AI triggers war with us so we can justify snatchign a few christian provinces.
Also France is big enough to give us atleast a few starting provinces, since we will have a serious starting player base.
I wouldn't be suprised if we are 10+ to start with, and if we play milan/denmark for instance, and we slow expansion, we might be too tight for such a player base.

[ULC]

Like I said, if we play France for instance, we cannot lash out in all directions because of papal relations.
We can snatch a few rebel provinces, and then it's waiting until the AI triggers war with us so we can justify snatchign a few christian provinces.
Also France is big enough to give us atleast a few starting provinces, since we will have a serious starting player base.
I wouldn't be suprised if we are 10+ to start with, and if we play milan/denmark for instance, and we slow expansion, we might be too tight for such a player base.

France was used for the test game I believe, and was voted fairly high - However, their unit roster is very similiar to the HRE's, where as the Danes and English unit rosters are much more unique.

I too like Ramses system, it's simple, and well thought out. However, can I suggest a vote cap? Thus, the guy with 5-6 provinces needs a few vassals to gain a little bit more power. Not sure how that would work out, but it at least begins to force the creation of Houses - you gain power from doing so, but your vassals also have a lot of indepedence as well.

As for slowing expansion, EDICTS! We could need an edict to capture a settlement, and another to commission the units to be trained. This should help I should think

[Ibn-Khaldun]

May I suggest something. It's not something new and was in LotR as well..
Well, I propose "Rules-Constitution-Edicts" system something like this:

• Rules - They will always be OOC and they are .. well.. Rules!
• Constitution - IC laws that are discussed and accepted before the game starts. These are laws that must be followed all times. Only high ranking player can propose Constitution Amendment. Here can be mentioned what settlements England(example) considers theirs and thus those settlements become fair game for players to take from AI or another player.
• Edicts - Laws that are in effect only between two Council Sessions. Penalties for braking them could be mentioned in the Constitution. Edicts can not contradict Constitution.

This way you can slow down expansion and make all those settlements be worthy and most of all.. there will be lot of fighting for taking/keeping those settlements.

Hope that what I just said makes sense!

[AussieGiant]

KotR was fairly effective at using edicts and CA's as a means to limit expansion.

It's down to resources and game balance.

If it costs too much to have more than one war going then the internal fighting over who could expand and who had to wait was a big part of KotR's balance mechanism. The problem is that some players can take on whole armies with little or no support except GB units. Likewise an ingenious piece of legislation was that all provinces taken had to be "ratified" and officially absorbed into the Empire. Because this was further legislation it became very political, which was very effective. If you set out expansion in the “constitution” of the game it can be role played as such and allows land to be the centre of political manoeuvring and voting.

I think it was fairly realistic that you had to decide as a group of Baron's and nobles in the Diet about who to attack and who not to.

-EDIT-

I honestly think CA and Edict that are "in-game" need to be policed and enforced in the game and not outside it. If you don't do this you will need a babysitter for all the toys that get thrown out of the pram. *grin*

[GeneralHankerchief]

Let's definitely add France to the "probable" list. I advocated that to be our faction for LotR, and I will continue to advocate it in this next game.

As far as the rules/CAs/Edicts go, I think TC's three-tiered system implemented midway through LotR was a very good solution to a somewhat flawed system and we should continue it.