End of Game / Next Game?

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DM Juan
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End of Game / Next Game?

Post by DM Juan » Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:20 pm

Things to consider...

1) It is prohibitively difficult for me to sort through what is/isn't done now. Unfortunately, life intervened, and well things went off the rails. Looking at it, I don't think I can functionally finish the turn, without hand waiving most of it.

2) It has been 6 weeks, roughly - a lot of players probably also have been derailed from what their characters were doing.

3) I don't actually think the game, as is, is manageable anyway. The wars are immense, and probably going to get worse. The scale of the game is basically Anuire-level right now, with there being 3-4 factions and at least 3 of them involved in wars...

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DM Juan
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by DM Juan » Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:23 pm

Potential solutions:

Automate War-Resolution: would be ideal anyway, to at least partially automate this.

Increase army costs (muster/upkeep/training points)

Decrease (dramatically?) income from adventures

Start a game in a smaller bound geographic area, anyway.

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TH - The Hunt
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by TH - The Hunt » Thu Mar 28, 2019 3:32 pm

A smaller area sounds good. This was fun, but the average player interacted with fewer than a third of the other players. For me, the game area was only about twice the size of my realm, the rest was forever in dark fog. Though I don't know what it'd be like if most of the game was 'in the light' for everyone...

I don't know how we'd automate battle resolution. Players could resolve battles between themselves and have you check their work, I suppose. Or the work could be partially delegated to an assistant for each war.

The 'mercenary work' option we had this game would have definitely increased army sizes, since it allowed anyone with a large army to mitigate the costs of raising it by sending it away to unspecified native wars for a good rate of return. Without options like that, large armies should be harder to build and maintain on that basis, already. That won't fully address the issue of the scale of wars increasing over time, though. I think the best way to keep that under control is to limit the potential for growth with a smaller game area, and more difficult terrain.
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DM Juan
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by DM Juan » Thu Mar 28, 2019 4:17 pm

Well, automate via java applet, or whatever I meant. I actually have a basic battle-running program that uses default Birthright war rules already.

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WB - Water's Blessing
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by WB - Water's Blessing » Thu Mar 28, 2019 4:42 pm

Yeah, fewer province slots probably would be good. An old-fashioned "Southern Coast" game has ~25 provinces, and I think you had 90+. So a smaller-scale game (lots of Iliens and Medoeres rather than duchy-sized domains) would have made sense for both the theme of the game and for managability. But, I think part of the problem was that there was too much growth as well. Had growth been slower/harder, the game would have stayed smaller for longer too. So, maybe we could think about ways to slow down province growth, etc, to keep the game from getting too unmanageable.

Glad to have you back, Juan.
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JB - Jontinius Bruin
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by JB - Jontinius Bruin » Thu Mar 28, 2019 4:49 pm

Population Growth like always is the culprit, Make it target a Regent instead of a province, and a cap on it for a regent like Gold Rush would be my suggestion

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WB - Water's Blessing
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by WB - Water's Blessing » Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:05 pm

Well, population growth and bless. Population growth makes ruling large provinces too easy, and bless pumps a lot more gold into the system. Priest spells, in general, are pretty meh, but those two are so good that they're basically mandatory. If Pop Growth is the problem (and I think you're right that it is), then the solution might be just to drop it from the game.

I've thought for a while that the priest realm spell pool could use some freshening up and modification. IMO, there should be one realm spell per sphere. Coming up with a few new realm spells that are situationally useful and dropping the problematic spells might be the way to go.
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WM - The Waste Mage
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by WM - The Waste Mage » Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:11 pm

6 provinces in Anuire Southern coast. Jam everyone into these 6 provinces. all around us are goblins and orogs and elves and dwarves and barbarians who hate us. We try to gain personal power within the realm balanced by trying to survive and having to cooperate against the attacks from outside the realm. Role play for favor with the npc king. favor leads to higher nobility rank. Can have tournaments and random events can be demands/requests from the king. You succeed in a task or provide the RP/GB he wants and you gain favor or lose it if you fail or refuse. Cooperative wars and adventures into surrounding hostile lands. Contesting against each other with our single digit RP and GB incomes. everyone had 1 unit of personal guards. Rank gets you more units. If you can scrape enough GB eventually you might can make a play for power by raising a larger force. But if you fail your house is destroyed.

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WM - The Waste Mage
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by WM - The Waste Mage » Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:12 pm

Maybe a few PC enemy realms just so Juan isnt playing all the enemy lands.

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KB - Kargrim Bronzebeard
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Re: End of Game / Next Game?

Post by KB - Kargrim Bronzebeard » Thu Mar 28, 2019 5:38 pm

Smaller area would be definitely more manageable but too easy growth a problem as well. Would agree with population growth dropping or at least making it much more restricted e.g. max law and temple holdings and state faith and limiting it to 1 casting per 4 turns by a faith - the God will only extend their blessings to the most worthy. Could also restrict by a % chance of regent's alignment against the God's alignment. Could also try more negative loyalty consequences for regents waging war abroad unless booty is clearing going to his own nobles quickly or it is against a hated enemy. Some games double military upkeep costs for troops abroad in unfriendly lands which makes war more challenging.

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