Transparency - What's up with war?

[Slorbin 2932]

5 minutes ago, argonian said:

think the problem with lairs is that they're supposed to be hidden, but the reality if nation rules is that that's not really feasible.

 

it'd be ridiculous for nations to NOT hunt and destroy lairs of dark mages or demons from Hell, but I get that having to move lairs constantly would be ridiculous overhead. Also the warclaim itself is kinda a waste of time because it's a guaranteed W so what's the point

 

freebuild would fix all of this, but alas

this is also a problem, lairs are no longer literal caves that look super unassuming, ppl kinda want to show something off at their build... have people actually interact with them. lairs are less a place to hide - you can do that anywhere - more a place where people can interact with your weird little darkspawn subculture and get neat esoteric rp, without ooc fear of Chaddicus Templaricus, the Knight of All Good And Holy (profile picture baldwin IV from kingdom of heaven) xraying ur house and tunneling straight into ur phylactery room /evicting it (COUGHCOUGH HAELUNOR)

[argonian 14254]

13 hours ago, Slorbin said:

this is also a problem, lairs are no longer literal caves that look super unassuming, ppl kinda want to show something off at their build... have people actually interact with them. lairs are less a place to hide - you can do that anywhere - more a place where people can interact with your weird little darkspawn subculture and get neat esoteric rp, without ooc fear of Chaddicus Templaricus, the Knight of All Good And Holy (profile picture baldwin IV from kingdom of heaven) xraying ur house and tunneling straight into ur phylactery room /evicting it (COUGHCOUGH HAELUNOR)

might need some creative solutions to this, like geographically inaccessible lairs which are e.g. behind a fog of poisonous gas (flashback to hanseti) or in a volcano or under the sea etc. etc. places where you can only go if e.g. you're a CA who's invulnerable to perils of the local habitat, or you have magicks for that, or you're able to TP past some boundary (magical doors into bases are cool).

 

those are just silly ideas off the top of my head which are probably unworkable for various reasons, but i guess the point is, in order to balance realism with convenience and fun, lairs should either be (1) hidden, or (2) inaccessible (at least with an army).

 

not being able to WC a lair you can walk right up to feels dumb, not being able to WC a lair because you are physically incapable is totally reasonable. rules should typically have reasonable in-universe explanations where possible. otherwise it ruins muh immershun

[truelarper 593]

9 hours ago, Spoopy_Duck said:

 

 

  Hide contents

 

Pillaging

 

Pillaging is where you, as the Attacker, seek to claim the resources and treasures of an enemy for yourself. A Pillage Warclaim is where you, as the Attacker, seek to plunder the resources of an enemy Realm without conquering any territory.

 

Upon winning a Pillage War, you steal 10% of the losing Realm’s Treasury as of the date of the Warclaim. The Defending Realm will not be permitted to unreasonably dissipate their Treasury in advance of the Warclaim. 

 

 

A Pillage Warclaim has a reduced cost of [COST POINT] [LOWER COST] per player (as opposed to the standard 25). After losing a Pillage War, a Realm cannot be Pillage Warclaimed (by anyone) for a period of 4 weeks. 

 

 

Pillaging. 

Despite being a roleplay server, the war-system does not include many viable opportunities for conflict aside of annexation. That is the core issue in the war-system apart of just bad resolutions to keep both sides happy. Once the beloved Empire will fall apart to the 17 nation hell again, wether it be in half a year or two, there should be an open space ready for conflict that isn't simple annexation.

I've argued about this since I believe Almaris, and this rule still hasn't changed, and from what I know there hasn't been an actual pillaging wc for 5~ years. Its just not worth it. 10%? That is honestly nothing unless you're going against the current Empire or Haense last map, who both were and right now are really rich. It should be raised to atleast 25%, and the cost to attack them should not be higher than 15 per. 

Arguably razing should also include some sort of profit, apart from destroying the terrible SMP builds the staff dont consider landscars. Perhaps through moderating the tile, and offering a judged amount of resources?

Edited January 21 by truelarper

[NightcastorKitty 2779]

Thank you for being transparent. 

[Chuuwys 502]

Lowering the costs doesn't just lower it for smaller nations but for larger ones with the capacity to likely survive most wars, and certainly aren't getting scratched up by raids in the same way either. That's why defenders don't pay, cos smaller nations are likely to BE the defenders, and 

 

Also big agree that lairs stand to lose the most if there are WCs against them, especially when I hear consistently of struggles from villain players about the wait for upgrades, how weak some are when others are too strong to ever truly kill. There's no way of fixing constant raids against them and unless staff help them make truly hidden lairs or ways to not be taken down so simply by chaining attacks, much as the RP may support it, they get dealt a bad hand of being that high school kid who's parents keep forcing them to move schools so they never settle down. I can't imagine it's fun. They also get the worst hand in terms of being heavily CRP/RP based while facing PvP attacks

[LithiumSedai 5750]

3 hours ago, argonian said:

No one wants to go to war over EU4 (LOTC hasn't moved on to EU5 yet) provinces. It's a total waste of everyone's time to do so. The only result of increased war costs would be to make wars drag out even longer, an issue exacerbated by the return of skirmishes and the requirement to encircle capitals.

 

Longer wars further divorced from RP impact (by restrictive costs impeding large demands) might be ok if all you like doing is raiding daily for months on end, but for everyone else it just makes things worse: a longer disruption to regular RP and less interesting things to talk about or consequences to deal with when the war finally does end. Somehow that seems like the exact opposite of what you're going for.

 

If you want to make wars less miserable for players, winners and losers alike, you should make primarily focus on them *shorter* while tweaking the rules to encourage more hands-off subjugations and make total annexation/eviction comparatively more difficult.

 

You could also make wars more interesting and less death-wary by expanding out the list of CBs. Wars to install a claimant or help a vassal gain independence are currently only possible through annexation and then making the relevant change afterwards - why not encourage CBs like these as cheaper alternatives to total annexation or subjugation? You have to promote CBs that have real impact (not "you pay us 100 leather" or "handover of border empty tile") if you want wars waged to something other than the death.

 

Quick wars contribute to this too because anyone's logical reaction to spending 6 months and their entire treasury warring some guys will be to wipe them off the map so it never happens again. Let them finish the war in a month without breaking the bank and there's room for maganimity.

I think the strangest thing about the staff mindset @ wars is the dissonance between wanting to prevent pure conquest/destruction wars, but refusing to enforce any consequences beyond PRO transfer and eviction resulting from conquest. These are two opposing viewpoints whose clash ultimately leads to preventing wars altogether, even though that outcome, ironically, also results in RP being affected through OOC command and barriers - the primary excuse for refusing to empower non-annexation outcomes through the force of OOC rules to begin with.

It's been mentioned already in this thread that pursuing lower-stakes war goals left the winners without any capability to actually enforce them without escalating the scope of their invasion to annexation. I understand that the belief is that any staff enforcement of RP outcome does veer into anti-RP territory, but what is the alternative? Conquest, as such, also depends upon staff-enforced PRO transfers and evictions, and the utter (also staff-mandated) inability of most RP actors to engage beyond mechanical systems. If it's anti-RP to compel a PRO to OOCly uphold a non-mechanical treaty, or introduce staff-mandated consequences for breaking it, then, following that logic, enforcing conquest is no different and any defeated group should be able to perpetually resist their displacement until they're physically removed by continuous CRP/PvP on live.

The conclusion and discussion nobody's ready for is to fundamentally remake the mechanics of tile and region ownership, of course. But until that can happen, I see no point in not altering the war system to support non-final outcomes of war.

 

[Smmer 2441]

idc abt the post, 

 

SPOOPY SHOULD BE MOD ADMIN

[Jentos 9422]

yeah guys lets make the magic evil people homeless now. 

 

i dont think warring lairs will do much for the server, especially considering CA/Magic groups suffer from the greatest activity strain. my group may be considered quite active for a CA group but it can be quite spotty at best. 

 

if anything itll risk dwindling them into underground death pvp forts or poorly thrown together builds because why try and make something time consuming when a wealthy nation can just blow you up? pretty ridiculous 

[Spoopy_Duck 3217]

4 hours ago, truelarper said:

Pillaging. 

Despite being a roleplay server, the war-system does not include many viable opportunities for conflict aside of annexation. That is the core issue in the war-system apart of just bad resolutions to keep both sides happy. Once the beloved Empire will fall apart to the 17 nation hell again, wether it be in half a year or two, there should be an open space ready for conflict that isn't simple annexation.

I've argued about this since I believe Almaris, and this rule still hasn't changed, and from what I know there hasn't been an actual pillaging wc for 5~ years. Its just not worth it. 10%? That is honestly nothing unless you're going against the current Empire or Haense last map, who both were and right now are really rich. It should be raised to atleast 25%, and the cost to attack them should not be higher than 15 per. 

Arguably razing should also include some sort of profit, apart from destroying the terrible SMP builds the staff dont consider landscars. Perhaps through moderating the tile, and offering a judged amount of resources?

Actually thank you for pointing this out. The number is supposed to be 20% and not 10% slight discrepancy in the doc that I pasted over from. It is not 25% but it is higher than 10%. Thank you for the feedback


(Also there are a lot of comments I promise all are being read I am just not responding to everything atm)

[Unwillingly 18096]

7 hours ago, squakhawk said:

lairs have always been able to be warclaimed they just have to be on a realm owned tile and known about

 

the lair rules have a clause that they can leave/move if they choose not to fight and get a new lair location of their choice

 

Also they cannot be evicted by PROs?  ? They have to be warclaimed to be gotten rid of. This has not/never changed since their inception

this doesn't address like 95% of the concerns presented by myself or others, whether or not they could even be warclaimed in the first place isnt really the claim bc regardless we now know they definitely can be and all of those concerns still stand

[Nectorist 12869]

warclaims on lairs should be a crp, mandatory-pk, squad-based tactics fight 

[Harold 3386]

I just can't believe how many times you tried to make it sound like this staff team is competent, while also suggesting nothing has happened.

 

You've made a post about not being able to post about a post you said you would have done, what is effectively a good long while ago.

 

AND YOU get the praise, because this is what is classed as transparency nowadays - that's utterly diabolical.

 

 

[argonian 14254]

5 hours ago, Nectorist said:

warclaims on lairs should be a crp, mandatory-pk, squad-based tactics fight 

I like this idea a lot but it could still get very silly if the crusader knights keep losing 10 man CRP assaults on a lair that they could just level with trebuchets and swarm with 100 men.

 

I think ultimately if a lair doesn't want to be assaulted by an army it should be situated so that such wouldn't be feasibly possible. Otherwise what you have is not a lair but a very, very poorly manned fortress. Which we're all supposed to ignore, or something.

 

Very easy to come up with some RP explanation for this though. "uhh there's some kind of magical barrier so you can only enter with a... uhh special talisman". Don't need to write groundbreaking lore to explain rule restrictions; it's just awful when rules inhibit RP without any IC explanation whatsoever.

[PrimnyaQuorum 3999]

2 minutes ago, argonian said:

I like this idea a lot but it could still get very silly if the crusader knights keep losing 10 man CRP assaults on a lair that they could just level with trebuchets and swarm with 100 men.

 

I think ultimately if a lair doesn't want to be assaulted by an army it should be situated so that such wouldn't be feasibly possible. Otherwise what you have is not a lair but a very, very poorly manned fortress. Which we're all supposed to ignore, or something.

Sieges have been done in events in RP. The framework exists for a reasonable CRP conflict, its just that its so much easier [game theory!!!!] to pvp warclaim the nerds who dont get anything you get for signing names to a peition and making them move.

 

7 hours ago, Unwillingly said:

this doesn't address like 95% of the concerns presented by myself or others, whether or not they could even be warclaimed in the first place isnt really the claim bc regardless we now know they definitely can be and all of those concerns still stand

 

just want 2 add onto this the rules have stated nowhere lairs are entitled to a new place to set up upon fleeing a WC; if it has, its probably been the most poorly communicated thing

[argonian 14254]

7 minutes ago, PrimnyaQuorum said:

Sieges have been done in events in RP. The framework exists for a reasonable CRP conflict, its just that its so much easier [game theory!!!!] to pvp warclaim the nerds who dont get anything you get for signing names to a peition and making them move.

No one's ever CRP'd an actual battle. Specially planned map-antag events once or twice a map involving several ET RP'ing multiple characters and fighting like 20+ players each don't count - you cannot expect every time people attack a lair to work like that. You'd need months to plan each WC.

 

And even if they tried it - most lairs don't house armies of Inferi. A CRP assault by 100 men would be just as much of a guaranteed win as a PVP assault. The only difference is that it'd be death-by-wall-of-text rather than death-by-clicking.

 

You just cannot have a CRP WC without severely limiting the number of players allowed to participate. And if we go down that route (good - it sounds fun, like I said), it needs to make sense in-universe.