M2TW PBEMs possible?

[Tamur]

Yes, intrigueing it is.

Sorry, did I miss something?

I can't comment intelligently on the Diet, but the HRE system had (has?) a tremendous amount of sophistication to it: the Electors, the Reichsvikarien/King/Emperor system for ruling, the electoral capitulation the king and emperor agreed to before assuming power, etc. Lots to play with as far as game mechanics, and lots to balance just as with the Senate.

More broadly, I would say three things:

1) A good discussion of game mechanics need not lead to complexity. However, I think the senate-style PBEM has a load of unexplored possibilities. Since we're not starting for a few weeks, we may have a great chance to carve out a design for this round.

2) The unexplored possibilities I'm most interested in are in the case where someone besides the Head-of-State (whoever that turns out to be) takes control of the campaign on a periodic basis -- not to do whatever he/she wishes, but instead to take care of specific segments of the campaign: economic activity, agent activity, etc. For example, what if, even though the Pope has nothing to do with the HRE itself, the HRE's religious affairs were controlled by someone playing the Pope? I'm not particularly stuck on that idea, I just give it as an example of what I'm talking about.

3) It took me a little while, even though the WoS is quite simple, to understand where and how I could contribute. Whatever we decide, I would very much like a straightforward document describing the function and duties of each position (or class of positions). It would go a long way toward bringing more people into the game.

[Dutch_guy]

Hmm I still stand by my earlier statement, I'd much prefer a non-European faction for a change. No doubt we'd have fun whichever faction we chose, but an Eastern/ Muslim faction would be good for the variation. Plus, destroying crusader armies does sound fun...

A system like we have now would probably be a bit less easy to implement, but I daresay that if we put our minds to it we'll work out something.

[Ignoramus]

Maybe we could play as the Turks? Each general would be partially independent but subject to the Sultan.

[Dutch_guy]

Maybe we could play as the Turks? Each general would be partially independent but subject to the Sultan.

Indeed, Either the Turks or the Byzantines would be my first choice.

[Braden]

Byzantian would be a good choice and quite a neat run through from the current WotS....

.....after all the Byzantian Empire is basically the remains of the Eastern Roman Empire isn't it. We could even quote occurances from our own pre-made history (i.e. what happened in the WotS).

[Lucjan]

Sorry, but I wouldn't play a muslim faction, though I see no reason why running two games at the same time would be an issue.

As far as what Tamur is talking about, I was toying with the idea of having each individual player in charge of their own duchy infrastructure and military wise, but subordinate to the requests of the Emperor.

First, let me say this is all speculation. But here's what I had in mind for the duties and regulations of being Emperor.

1 - Announce the current treasury and open discussion for edicts on the 1st, 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th turn of the emperor's reign (thereby meeting once a year for the emperor's five year term, people already know how to alter the game's time to do this). Players then make edicts in the same way the motions were made. Except, construction and recruitment for the Empire as a whole can only be planned and ordered with the passing of edicts. This forces everybody to try and think more critically with every edict session. What is going to be the most important over the course of the next four seasons? Any units recruited in a province are the property of that duke, unless said duke willingly gives that unit over to the Imperial Army, a joint force led by the Emperor consisting of units from throughout the different dukedoms of the Empire. A player who does not have his own city is a Count, and is subordinate to the Duke he serves under.

Example - Edicts urged through by the Duke of Bavaria require the Emperor to commission the recruitment of three units of halberdiers in Bavaria. These halberdiers are the property of the Duke of Bavaria and his to use as he sees fit unless he willingly transfers one or more of these units to the banner of the Imperial Army, which is under the Emperor's control, or to another duke. However, the Duke of Bavaria willingly gives these three units of halberdiers to the Count of Bayern, who moves them to a Bavarian fortification in the Alps to protect from Italy.

2 - Emperor can make decrees in regards to edicts, over-ruling the edicts given orders, the Emperor can only make 1 of these per year, and cannot force a decree on any specific player that would last for more than a year (unless the decree is to construct something in their duchy which requires more than a year to build). An Emperor cannot decree a duke to unwillingly relinquish control of military units to the Imperial Army or any other army.

3 - Dukes with 2/3 support from the other dukes can ignore an Imperial decree with impunity.

4 - The Emperor cannot force the cancelation of any work in progress or an edict passed in an edict session prior to the current year through Imperial decree.

5 - The Emperor, like all the other dukes, has the right to control the military of his own dukedom, and the Imperial Army.

6 - The Emperor may order a "Call to Arms" in a situation where Imperial lands have been invaded, or simply in peace time to ensure stability, in which all dukes are requested to provide military support to bolster the Imperial Army for the defense of the Empire. The dukes choose the number and type of units to be sent.

7 - The Emperor may declare war with a 2/3 vote of support from the rest of the dukes, in which case the dukes order the moves of their ducal army in any way they see beneficial to the Empire or whatever way an Imperial decree may command them.

I think these ideas would be good to make everybody really develop some strong internal alliances and to work together for a greatter good, while also maintaining the naturally argumentative and treacherous state of affairs we all loved so dearly in the WotS game.

Ideas? Comments?

EDIT - Never really played as Byzantium, I was kind of hoping to get away from the Roman feel with this next game.

[Braden]

Lucjan,

That all sounds good to me but I’ll break it down.

1 – I like this generally and you’ve accommodated the fact that we can have two tiers of players taking part: Dukes and Counts. My assumption is that Dukes will be “game active” avatars, able to take control of the avatars and play battles whilst Counts will be “free” avatars of various types (i.e. those players unable to install M2).

Generally it’s a good idea, though I can see that so many sessions within one Emperors reign might get confusing.

However, I particularly like the self allocation and control of troops and the interaction between Dukes and the Emperor this will cause (and the arguments!).

2 – Can’t see a major issue with this as it just expands on the points put forward in 1.

3 – Sensible, and clear. I don’t know what “influence” mechanism is in M2 but we’ll have to decide if such a mechanism would be a factor or if such things would be a plain 1-man-1-vote thing.

4 – An emergency system, one that’ll be needed.

5 – This makes the Emperor (rightfully) able to field more “muscle” than any one Duke. Makes sense.

6 – This would be a worthwhile mechanism, you haven’t put any limits no how many times the Emperor could use this but my assumption again is that this is intentional as you’ll never know how many times it would be needed. Obviously, if it was the 4th time in a term that such a call was made the Emperor would have to be very explicit as to why he was doing this and garner the support of the Dukedoms.

7 – Tricky one this. Ok, first off is the issue of weighting or unweighted voting. However, the most tricky issue would be that each Duke actively moves their own forces; I can’t really comment on the potential complexity of this as I don’t know what facility M2 has that could make this easier. Certainly in Rome it would be virtually impossible as a Save file would be rushing over to a dozen or so players and it would take weeks to resolve one turn! That’s not counting all the automatic encounters/battles that could happen during each persons move.

Byzantian – I used to like playing them in M:TW but never finished with them as they always ran out of “decent” units late on. And the interest with them ebbed, I can certainly see a valid point for moving away from “Romano” influenced games though.

[econ21]

I think it is good to explore the idea of decentralised PBM - each player being associated with a province or provinces, and with some military force. We've chewed it over several times with the WoS but never really done anything about it. I think that is because of the technicalities of keeping track of budgets & troops; and reconciling the needs of the faction as a whole with the whims of individual players.

However, I am not sure decentralisation is necessarily the right direction to go with a M2TW PBM, as at least playing it as England, it feels less "provincial" than Roman RTW games. Maybe for a faction like HRE, where there are many borders, it may make more sense (like the east vs west tensions in WoS at the moment).

A few observations about relevant aspects of M2TW:

(a) With M2TW, there seem to be no titles to speak of, so there's no simple "in-game" representation like those wonderful legion banners we enjoy in WoS. A shame, but I guess it gives us some freedom. However, I have a feeling that trying out a decentralised PBM might work better say with EBs Greek cities, where the division between cities is represented by in-game ethnicities.

(b) I'd be reluctant to do 4TPY with M2TW. Out of the box it is 0.5TPY and we'll start doing violence to history (Gothic knights at Hastings etc) if we deviate too much from that.

(c) The ratio of generals to provinces feels like RTW - ie slightly more provinces than generals. So the provinceless Counts may be necessary at the beginning but would not be an important game mechanic.

(d) We have to bear in mind the castle/town distinction. Dukes of towns may feel shortchanged but towns at the margin are arguably best for the kingdom as a whole (specialise troop production in a few upgraded places; let the rest be cash cows).

My instinct would be to fix on a faction first and then sort out suitable arrangements. I think it's a given that we want some WoS type elements - notably elections of players; "motions" constraining them; and delegation of battles to the "lower house" generals on the ground - although the nomenclature may change. How we package this for role-player purposes and whether we need to add extra elements, such as provincial decentralisation, may depend on the faction we choose. Personally, I don't think we could run two WoS type games simultaneously, although multiple traditional PBMs would be possible.

For now, let's keep brainstorming and chewing over ideas. I think we probably should have a poll or something to choose the faction in a fortnight or so. (I'd like someone to actually make a go of HRE in soloplay before I was confident to vote for it for a PBM, for example.) Ideally, we could choose between different "proposals" - someone develops a concept for a particular faction, someone does the same for another and we see which has the widest appeal. I am toying with the idea of restricting the poll to players of the WoS PBM. Not because we'd exclude others, but because this hardcore of players is probably more reliable and should have more "influence".