PvP mechanics brainstorming thread

[Ramses II CP]

Mmm, let me suggest this: Allow armies to move 3-5 provinces 'Risk' style per year but make the commanders issue all the movement orders at the start. For example Party A orders a move from Paris to Marsellies while Party B wants to go from Toulouse to Metz. The parties send the list of provinces they want to move through to the GM and the GM implements each province hop simultaneously. If they run into each other in the middle there's a battle.

If we stick to the one province rule wars are still going to be extremely slow and almost absurdly predictable. The two sides will essentially have to agree, OOC, on where they want to meet up to prevent wandering all over chasing each other one step at a time. I don't mind slanting things towards the larger standing army because, well, they have the larger standing army. Isn't that supposed to be an advantage?

If I had realized the Risk system was tied to single province movement I might well not have voted for it, although I suppose I should've figured that out from the Shogun/MTW comparison.

[TinCow]

Alright, here's my attempt at a simpler rule set for the Risk-style system. I'm writing this to slot into Zim's current rule draft under sections 6(d) and 6(e). Other tweaks will likely be needed to 6(a), (b), and (c) to fix any references in those bits to campaign map movement, but those would be minor.

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(d) - Civil Wars on the Campaign Map: While a Civil War is in progress, all players involved in the Civil War will lose their ability to make any moves on the campaign map. On every game turn, all players involved in the Civil War will submit a PM to Zim, or anyone he chooses, giving movement orders for that turn. These movement orders can include up to a maximum of two of the following orders:

(1) - Gather: The player may gather units he owns that are located in the same province as his avatar, but which are not currently located in his avatar's army. All units specified in this manner will be teleported into the avatar's army.

(2) - Move: The player may move his avatar's army into any adjacent province.

(3) - Defend: The player fortifies his army in a specific province, providing a terrain advantage if a battle occurs in that province before the player moves again.

After the turn ends, Zim will implement all moves for players involved in the Civil War, utilizing the console. The orders will be executed simultaneously for all players, but in the sequence they were listed in the PMs (i.e. Order 1 will be implement for all players, followed by Order 2 for all players). If this movement results in a player entering a province with a hostile AI-controlled army, Zim will determine whether a battle against the AI will occur. Movement will continue in this manner until two hostile player-controlled armies enter the same province. When this occurs, a PvP Battle will begin. All PvP Battles will be considered Meeting Engagements, in which neither side has a terrain advantage, unless one of the armies was Defending the province where the battle occurred. If this happens, the defending army will get a terrain advantage in the following manner: (1) If the province is owned by the Defender, the battle will be a siege assault of the settlement. (2) If the province is not owned by the Defender, the battle map will be chosen such that a terrain advantage, such as a high mountain, fort, or bridge is given to the Defender. The Umpire of the battle will determine the precise nature of the terrain advantage.

(e) - PvP Battles: Whenever a PvP Battle occurs, if both players agree, the battle... (the rest is all the same.)

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Using the above system, people can use a combination of Gather, Move, and Defend orders. You could Gather and then Move, Move and then Gather, Move twice, Move and Defend, Gather and Defend, etc. That provides for a decent amount of strategy, given that you can move into any province. It is also easy to tweak the pace of the war on the fly by changing the word "two" in the first paragraphs to whatever number is deemed appropriate. Issues of conflicts with AI armies are handled by Zim, which avoids having to deal with it now. These rules only apply to civil war participants, so no pausing of the game is necessary and turns will continue as normal for all neutrals until a PvP Battle occurs.

[edit] Just realized this doesn't provide a way for crossing water. I would suggest for simplicity and speed that we ignore the need to get a fleet and sail, etc. Instead, Zim can just determine that certain bodies of water take a certain number of turns to cross. For instance, if you're standing in Normandy and want to cross the English Channel, only 1 move order will be required to make this crossing. However, if you're standing in Provence and want to cross to Sicily, 2 move orders will be required to make this crossing, which might require the person to end the turn at sea.

[econ21]

TinCow, I don’t think we need gather or defend as options. Gathering can be covered by regarding all units in a province as already gathered to the owning player. Defending can be covered by regarding any player stationary in a province as the defender against an enemy that enters the province.

Also, I don’t see the point of allowing two moves per turn. It over complicates things - your second move order has to be made before you know the outcome of your first. Hence it is likely to be contingent (if I conquer province A, attack province B; if I am defeated at province A, defend province C). It just seems an unnecessary headache.

Here’s a simplified version of your simple rules:

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(d) - Civil Wars on the Campaign Map:

While a Civil War is in progress, all players involved in the Civil War will lose their ability to make any moves on the campaign map. On every game turn, all players involved in the Civil War will submit a PM to Zim, or anyone he chooses, giving movement orders for that turn.

A player can order any unit he owns to move to an adjacent province. After the turn ends, Zim will implement all moves for players involved in the Civil War, utilizing the console. The orders will be executed simultaneously for all players. If this movement results in a unit being in a province with a hostile unit, a PvP battle will begin. All PvP Battles will be considered Meeting Engagements, in which neither side has a terrain advantage, unless one of the armies was stationary in a province and the other entered the province. If this happens, the defending army will get a terrain advantage in the following manner: (1) If the province is owned by the Defender, the battle will be a siege assault of the settlement. (2) If the province is not owned by the Defender, the battle map will be chosen such that a terrain advantage, such as a high mountain, fort, or bridge is given to the Defender. The Umpire of the battle will determine the precise nature of the terrain advantage.

(e) - PvP Battles: Whenever a PvP Battle occurs, if only one side has a noble present, the battle is fought against the AI. If both sides have players, if both sides agree, the battle... (the rest is all the same.)

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[econ21]

If I had realized the Risk system was tied to single province movement I might well not have voted for it, although I suppose I should've figured that out from the Shogun/MTW comparison.

Don’t worry, it was not tied - we are debating that now. You want 3-5 moves per turn; TC suggests 2; I'm suggesting one.

If we stick to the one province rule wars are still going to be extremely slow and almost absurdly predictable. The two sides will essentially have to agree, OOC, on where they want to meet up to prevent wandering all over chasing each other one step at a time.

I don’t see that - if you retreat from your settlements, you lose them. If we allow recruitment during war time, which I really think we should, that’s a pretty strong incentive not to let yourself wander or be chased around.

I don't mind slanting things towards the larger standing army because, well, they have the larger standing army. Isn't that supposed to be an advantage?

They will have an advantage in any system, the question is whether we want to amplify that advantage. I don’t because I don’t think players who attack other players should have an amplified advantage (I’m assuming the stronger army will tend to be the aggressor). If anything, I’d rather give the edge to the victim. Plus historically, my hunch is that in every civil war worthy of the name, the starting armies were small compared to the forces levied in the war. I’m thinking here of the English Civil War, the American Civil War, the Chinese Civil War. In all those cases, the decisive factor was the ability to raise troops during the war, not the starting armies.

[TinCow]

TinCow, I don’t think we need gather or defend as options. Gathering can be covered by regarding all units in a province as already gathered to the owning player.

If you do this automatically, you cause several problems. First, you're stripping all garrisons, many of which the owner might want to leave behind to defend against the AI or to provide defenses against his PvP foes so that they can't just walk into his settlements without at least some kind of fight if his main army is in a different province. Second, you have to deal with the issue of a player going over a full stack (which isn't allowed by the rules) just by moving into a province they own. Since this happens automatically, you're going to be having lots of PM conversations that would otherwise be avoided unless a person specifically desired to grab the units.

While I allowed people to go over a full stack army in the final war in LotR, I think for normal PvP we should stick to the normal rules which prevent anyone from being in direct control of anything over a full stack at any one time. If you want to bring more than one stack to a PvP battle, find an ally join your war and lead that army.

Defending can be covered by regarding any player stationary in a province as the defender against an enemy that enters the province.

This is necessary if Gathering is an option, because Gathering requires a person to ride all over the province assembling their army, just like they would have to do if they were doing it by normal movement. Thus, a person attacked while Gathering would not have time to fortify and it would be a normal Meeting Engagement. Plus, it penalizes people who fail to submit orders by removing an automatic defender terrain advantage from them just because they were being lazy.

Also, I don’t see the point of allowing two moves per turn. It over complicates things - your second move order has to be made before you know the outcome of your first. Hence it is likely to be contingent (if I conquer province A, attack province B; if I am defeated at province A, defend province C). It just seems an unnecessary headache.

Ramses already discussed this. Without two moves per turn, the wars will go very slowly. Moving from one province to another in a single turn isn't much of a boost in movement over normal LTC movement rates, and it's certainly under 2x or 2.5x as proposed in the phased movement option. The point of this system was to be even faster than that, thus larger distances have to be crossable in a single turn. I also disagree about it being contingent... despite describing this as Risk, it's not Risk. You don't have to conquer every province you enter. Many will probably belong to allies or neutrals and you'll just be passing through. You can easily move multiple provinces in a single turn without any battles occurring. If a battle occurs on the first round a move, but the civil war isn't ended there, the Umpire can always use his powers to give the victory an extra post-battle order if he feels it appropriate.

In addition, multiple movements helps compensate for people submitting non-move orders, such as Gather or Defend (or any other orders which are inserted into the rules later on). Without multiple orders, Gather and Defend simply have to be eliminated because many turns would result in no movement whatsoever. In fact, I put in two orders per turn to be conservative, I actually think three would be better to keep the speed up.

[woad&fangs]

I like TinCow's system as it is.

[econ21]

I like TinCow's system as it is.

OK, I am happy to go with TinCow's system if - as seems likely - the Risk sytem wins the poll.

Anyone want to offer any opinions on the issue of recruitment during war?

I think the basic idea I presented a while back about allowing players to opt out of Seneschal recruitment and instead train their own men at their own settlement is solid, but the details need more thought.

In the spirit of trying to keep things simple, how about:

Recruitment in Civil War
(a) Nobles in civil war cannot prioritise recruitment. They can train (draft) one unit per turn at each settlement they own. This is done by giving the GM their recruitment order at the same time as they submit their movement orders. The GM recruits drafted units before the Seneschal takes the save, using the console to generate more funds if required.
(b) On turns in which a unit is drafted, the drafting settlement cannot train other units that turn or start new buildings (they can repair), and must set taxes to VH if possible
(c) Every unit drafted raises the combatant's war weariness by 1. Every full strength unit disbanded lowers a combatant's war weariness by 1. War weariness can never be allowed to rise above 5. As soon as the player stops being a combatant or every 10 turns of being at war, sufficient units must be disbanded so as to return war weariness to 0. If this is not possible, any units that come into the player's possession must be disbanded until war weariness is zero. To avoid exploits, players with positive war weariness cannot transfer units to others (or have their units seized by others).

[TinCow]

I like your abbreviated recruitment system, as it is simple and clean. My only concern is the war weariness, as that requires us to keep track of precise numbers of recruits and disbandings for every player. Keeping track of stats like this is one of the things that resulted in some of the worst rules nightmares in LotR. Can you think of a method of doing (c) that doesn't require quite as much number crunching?

Apologies for the continued push for short, simple rules, but the excessively complex rule system was one of LotR's biggest flaws. I think a lot of Throne Room players shrink back in horror now when they see a wall of rule text. If it's not short and punchy, people tend to run screaming for the hills.

[Vladimir]

OK, I am happy to go with TinCow's system if - as seems likely - the Risk sytem wins the poll.

Anyone want to offer any opinions on the issue of recruitment during war?

I just want to know how the money works. If the civil war is against the sovereign he should loose all revenue from those settlements. Any corruption from those settlements could be reduced or limited because it's based on distance to capital. The rebel leader would receive all money from the settlements but also be responsible for all the upkeep; but, what were his starting funds?

Then, once the war ends, how are the remaining funds calculated? What is done with the money? What about agents in the service of the rebel leader? I hope the king keeps a stable of good assassins because I see civil wars are a pain in the arse.

Okay, so I just took a look at the LTC map and crunched some numbers on what I consider to be our likely first term expansion, taking for granted that there won't be a civil war until after the first term at least, when we have something worth fighting over. Five provinces is definitely too much movement, I over-estimated there, but I'd say 2-3 is absolutely necessary. For the first term I think two is enough, but later if we expand through Germany, Italy, or into Africa we may want to consider revising the number upwards.

There are three that need to be taken straight away, and I have a plan for that. The fourth is also necessary and the fifth is a bonus. Watch out for Milan/Genoa.