PvP mechanics brainstorming thread

[Vladimir]

What about the go to war with what you have truism (demonstrated in early Iraqi Freedom)? Spawn the maximum amount of the most basic free upkeep troops for garrison purposes and disband them when the conflict it over. Don't let the combatants recruit any additional troops (except for mercenaries, maybe?) This will create an in-character incentive to ensure no avatar controls too many units.

Get rid of all this confusion and wasted effort. Let’s try to be respectful of people’s out of character time.

[econ21]

What about the go to war with what you have truism (demonstrated in early Iraqi Freedom)? Spawn the maximum amount of the most basic free upkeep troops for garrison purposes and disband them when the conflict it over. Don't let the combatants recruit any additional troops (except for mercenaries, maybe?) This will create an in-character incentive to ensure no avatar controls too many units.

Free upkeep troops are poor troops, so I don't think it addresses the issue that motivated discussion of this topic - the desire to model genuine civil wars, rather than military coups. In most civil wars I know of, most of the combatants were levied during the war. The early Iraqi Freedom was not a civil war. The insurgents in the more civil war like later Iraqi Freedom were "units" that did not exist when Iraq was invaded.

Get rid of all this confusion and wasted effort. Let’s try to be respectful of people’s out of character time.

This is a brainstorming thread - there's no obligation to waste any of your time reading it. When we have identified the best solution or clear options, Zim or a poll will decide. As I said, I think we are nearly done.

[Vladimir]

You’ve misinterpreted my entire post.

Free upkeep troops are poor troops, so I don't think it addresses the issue that motivated discussion of this topic - the desire to model genuine civil wars, rather than military coups. In most civil wars I know of, most of the combatants were levied during the war. The early Iraqi Freedom was not a civil war. The insurgents in the more civil war like later Iraqi Freedom were "units" that did not exist when Iraq was invaded.

The point is that the US went in with an army unprepared for the fighting they encountered and weren’t able to use consol commands or wait X amount of turns to train additional forces to attack. That is merely an example.

I’m not concerned with civil wars you or anyone else know of. I’m concerned with civil wars in LTC Gold. My belief is that if a noble wishes to start a civil war he does so with the troops he has direct control over. No drama.

The free upkeep troops are to protect the settlement while the avatar and his army are away.

This is a brainstorming thread - there's no obligation to waste any of your time reading it. When we have identified the best solution or clear options, Zim or a poll will decide. As I said, I think we are nearly done.

How much time will the GM, Senchel/Chancellor thingy, or whoever, waste with a lot of monkeying around? If you want them to be able to raise troops, let them use an in-game function: Mercenaries.

You're too deep in the weeds on this one.

[TinCow]

Hmmm.... the mercenaries concept is interesting. The game already provides mercenaries at a limited rate, and once a province is depleted of them, it takes a while for them to reappear. That could be used as a method of limiting the number of units that could be 'drafted' without needing to count turns: just restrict Civil War recruitment to 1 Mercenary unit per player per turn. This is somewhat realistic, as mercenaries formed the bulk of many, many armies throughout the entire timeperiod covered by M2TW. In addition, using mercenaries opens up an easy method to implement econ21's post-war disbanding without relying on anything other than the game engine itself. Mercenary units are very easy to distinguish from normal units in an army. We could simply say that all Mercenary units owned by all participants in a Civil War are disbanded when the Civil War ends. Clean, efficient, and requires no one to take notes of which units were recruited when. The only issue would be mercenary units that were owned before the war began, but those tend to be few and far between, since they cannot be gained by prioritization anyway, so they would be rare and small in number and thus relatively easy to keep track of.

My main concern with mercenaries would be that I'm not sure whether the replenishment rate is slow enough to properly fit into the limits we want to impose on civil war recruitment. Does anyone know how fast mercs 'spawn' in LTC?

[Vladimir]

That's a good point. I wasn't thinking about simulating the historical role of mercenaries but I like it.

Disbanding them once conflict is over is also a good idea. They're much easier to track.

The merc spawn rate always seems slow to me but I don't know the rate.

[Ramses II CP]

If it's capped at one unit per player per turn then we don't have to worry about the replacement rate, right? There's a trick to mercenary recruitment everyone should know about; if you disband a partial unit in it's usual recruitment zone (And outside a settlement) then next year there will be a full company of that same merc available (In vanilla anyway, not tested in LTC). This makes common sense but I've found people to be surprised that things work that way. There are a few circumstances where this can be useful as opposed to retraining the mercs in a settlement.

Now, would merc recruitment by participants be first come, first serve?

[TinCow]

Now, would merc recruitment by participants be first come, first serve?

First come, first serve wouldn't matter because only one person can own a province at a time. Since you can only recruit mercs in provinces you own or have conquered, other people wandering through your lands won't be able to recruit them there.

Or should we change that? Recruiting only in your lands might tie people down to their lands for longer and discourage them from attacking like we want them to. Would it be better to allow merc recruitment anywhere, as long as they were available?

[Ramses II CP]

First come, first serve wouldn't matter because only one person can own a province at a time. Since you can only recruit mercs in provinces you own or have conquered, other people wandering through your lands won't be able to recruit them there.

Or should we change that? Recruiting only in your lands might tie people down to their lands for longer and discourage them from attacking like we want them to. Would it be better to allow merc recruitment anywhere, as long as they were available?

Mercs have a more than one province wide recruitment zones. The same mercs I can buy at Bordeaux will deny the player at Paris from buying them. I think there's a map somewhere of the exact zones.

[ULC]

Hmmm.... the mercenaries concept is interesting. The game already provides mercenaries at a limited rate, and once a province is depleted of them, it takes a while for them to reappear. That could be used as a method of limiting the number of units that could be 'drafted' without needing to count turns: just restrict Civil War recruitment to 1 Mercenary unit per player per turn. This is somewhat realistic, as mercenaries formed the bulk of many, many armies throughout the entire timeperiod covered by M2TW. In addition, using mercenaries opens up an easy method to implement econ21's post-war disbanding without relying on anything other than the game engine itself. Mercenary units are very easy to distinguish from normal units in an army. We could simply say that all Mercenary units owned by all participants in a Civil War are disbanded when the Civil War ends. Clean, efficient, and requires no one to take notes of which units were recruited when. The only issue would be mercenary units that were owned before the war began, but those tend to be few and far between, since they cannot be gained by prioritization anyway, so they would be rare and small in number and thus relatively easy to keep track of.

My main concern with mercenaries would be that I'm not sure whether the replenishment rate is slow enough to properly fit into the limits we want to impose on civil war recruitment. Does anyone know how fast mercs 'spawn' in LTC?

TC, I made that suggestion EONS ago, minus the disbandment afterwards.