Birthright: Chimaeron

AB - Anders Borsson wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 06, 2020 12:27 pm

I'm not interested in starting an OOC discussion of IC things, but just from a perspective of "how did raid function in relation to war"

Early game, when treasuries were small and loyalty hits likely, it seemed to be used as a tool of war. Later, when losing a few GB here and there was less deadly but still troublesome, it was definitely an act of aggression but didn't immediately start a full blown war and was treated differently than an occupation would have been.

I agree. I see it more akin to a contest action.

I think you should be able to send ships to a sea zone for raiding. Any trade routes that pass through that sea zone have a chance of being hit. Pirates are attracted to areas with more targets. Who wants to spend an action hitting one trade route for 2 GB? This way you'd have a chance to hit multiple trade routes. Maybe NWPs, ship types, escort ships lessen your chances of being hit? And the Guilder being hit should lose not only what he would have made but maybe half of what the trade route is worth out of his treasury to denote the goods he risked trading for profit. Or maybe make it a Sea Zone occupation and the raider can raid as many routes as he has war moves. Or really to have fun make a list of things that can happen. Smuggled goods trove found (extra GB amount raided). Captured royalty (A relative of someone important in one of the families with holdings in one of the provinces the trade route goes through.) Can come up with more if it sounds appealing.

I think we need to differentiate between Raid / Contest / Armies marching. When the response to all 3 is the exact same (marching armies back) - it begs the question of why?

Is it because militarizing conflict is deemed to be easier? Does that mean contesting is too hard? Is it because the party doing the raiding/contesting is less powerful and it is easier for the powerful party to simply swamp the pest with an army? I am genuinely wondering.

Raid seemed to be appropriate for most of the game. When it was overused on someone it elicited a stronger response (the contest actions in Spiderland). This elicited the military response as SET wasn't able to meet the wide-contest action themselves (nor able to counter their military counter-response).

That seems to be the way it should be. Don't keep poking a bear (or a bunch of bears) next to you, unless you realize you could lose a hand or more to the bear(s).



Contest in general is expensive and resource intensive. In general it is easier to pay the military/loyalty costs and burn them out. This is mitigated, in part, by large realm groupings. A good example was the contest efforts by RR in the lands of BSB. These were not countered effectively and a decision for whether to escalate to armed conflict had to be made. Since there was not a war over holdings in BSB it is clear it wasn't quite worth it (for a number of reasons most likely).

So contest seems to be a good tool, expensive -- but effective.

I agree with Haelyns assessment. I knew what I was getting into and raiding too much on anyone will always trigger aggression. It does seem to only be useful in the early stages of the game though.

Since the RR contest in BSB's land was right after AD's military strike at the Dwarves and right before Unseelie attack, little could be done and it was felt it would put the dwarves in a 2 front war which we didn't have the resource after getting stomped by AD/RR. So response was put on hold and we never got far enough out from under Unseelie threat to do anything about it. There was a lot of talk about screw it and just send in the troops but we weren't sure that the Kingdom would support that.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the raid action, but it should be forbidden to raid the same province multiple times in one turn. Otherwise, it's too easy to use it for griefing, and it also won't be realistic... the purpose of raiding is to get loot, not to inspire a revolt in an otherwise loyal province.

If I'd started this game a ship instead of a road, I could have really ruined someone's day. I'm not just saying that in hindsight. I deliberately chose not to have that option, because otherwise I could just knock another player out of the game early on.

Raiding a province multiple times in a turn should be fine -- the loyalty adjustment should only apply once per turn though.

I guess that would reduce the 'griefing' aspect of it. I think it's still more interesting, and more true-to-life, if raiders have an incentive to spread their attention, and can be more successful if they have more potential targets. It's also still a balance problem if only one target's treasury is reduced, especially if that target is a realm with only one province. It's bad enough if the same province gets hit turn after turn, or the raids are combined with other forms of aggression.

(Since occupation reduces a province's loyalty to poor instantly, occupation plus raiding is a deadly combination. Though occupation forces make raiding difficult.)

What if Raiding just let the raider do a severe tax on the province plus tax roll on all holdings with resulting loyalty loss to province ruler but no actual GB loss from province ruler. And a temporary reduction in province level that would go back up the next turn if not raided again.