Feedback and Suggestions

[RuffRydeR]

If you want a bodyguard unit, ask your ruler to add it into his counterplot.

Hell, I've always RP'd being followed around by a virtual train of handmaidens who are also all members of the standing army of Yin. They're basically my bodyguards and they're all soldiers. =P

Though, honestly, I don't see how much harm each officer in a kingdom having a 500 man PA would do. =P

[Nanjun Tiger]

Mechanics-wise, I'm not sure how it would effect things either. In real life, no ruler would ever allow all of his officers to have 500 man units. They had hundreds, if not thousands, of officers (unless we're only talking about the elite, high profile guys) and each of them having that many men was a huge security breach. I think he would be too paranoid that they would gang together and kill him, which was a very easy and reasonable event to occur with that many soldiers running around unchecked.

[Liu Kang]

Mechanics-wise, I'm not sure how it would effect things either. In real life, no ruler would ever allow all of his officers to have 500 man units. They had hundreds, if not thousands, of officers (unless we're only talking about the elite, high profile guys) and each of them having that many men was a huge security breach. I think he would be too paranoid that they would gang together and kill him, which was a very easy and reasonable event to occur with that many soldiers running around unchecked.

That depends on the ruler...
Some may not accept, others who knows how to use it might...
You know, get you to kill someone and blame it all on you, stuff like that...
Plus wouldnt you love the satisfaction of being able to RP your guards however the hell you like.. It wont make sense to have these guards wearing big black armour with humungous swords, whilst the army itself are these punny men with green armour or something along those lines...

[ann]

Mechanics wise it gives rulers - especially those 'who know how to use them' as Liu Kang says - a way around rank and kingdom size limitations on military forces making them, essentially, meaningless. If one rank allows two field armies and another costs less and only allows one the difference is meaningful now - you want mor armies at your command than one field army and a garrison you need to step up and declare, pay more, and offer more ranks down the line. With your proposal this is complete junk - who would bother when they have as many forces as officers to send out and attack as many targets as they wish in a single turn. It would never take more than a turn to subdue an entire province early in the game. It also makes spying pretty meaningless - you could have no force to speak of in your KT but a massive one outside it. This sounds nifty for the hider, and bad for the spy - in fact it's not reasonable to assume that huge forces, however one pretends they are split into smaler groups, can be hidden in this way from someone going to look. But, for us, it wouldn't be possible to track force size in meaningful way which would do away with IC spying.

As for the other issue, whether it makes any sense for a ruler to allow each person working for them to march around with a private army. I think this is silly on its face. The only reason you would feel secure doing that in a game like this is because of OOC reasons. From an IC perspective it would be insanity - and chaotic and horrible for the populace who would have to somehow feed all these mini forces etc. We do try to keep things as IC as possible in a strange situation like this.

Another consideration: On sims people frequently dart around involving themselves in roleplays all over the map. That's part of the fun. Currently we do have some trouble with people pretending their forces are with them - all over the map. In fact your PA is only in the province you last took an official action with them until they are moved - and moved just two provinces at a time. If everyone had PAs this would be compounded horribly.

[Ni Zan]

ann, all you've written above is written from the perspective of a kingdom ruler. What about the perspecive of players who are not rulers?

Such players either join a ruler, or they don't. If they join one, their personal army gets subsumed into the kingdom, the ruler makes all the decisions that matter, and what is the player left with? Afaict, a bit of rp, and perhaps plotting. Maybe someone here would be kind enough to explain that its really not that way and why, but I have spent the last two weeks thinking about this, and I have no answer.

If a player does not join a kingdom, the only ways he can accomplish anything are either by banding together with a group of other such players, or by cooperating with a ruler. To my dismay, I've discovered that cooperating with any one ruler for long enough will cause a player to be deemed part of that ruler's kingdom, whether the player desires it or not. Banding together with a group of players is only a temporary solution, since the ultimate objective of such a group will be to gain control of a city, so that one of their number becomes a ruler, at which point the others either join the new kingdom, or they don't and are right back where they started.

If, on the other hand, players retained control of their personal armies, rulers would have to negotiate with their officers if they wanted to make use of those forces, thus keeping some of that beginning-of-the-game flavor that I think Liu Kang had in mind when he began this whole personal army discussion.

With regard to your concerns about the number of armies which can be fielded at one time by a ruler, this problem could be solved by some restrictions on the use of personal armies. Something like: only one PA may be added to a field army, 2 to a garrison, and only 5 PAs may band together to form an army on their own.

On what it would mean for spying, I have no meaningful input.

As for whether it makes sense for a ruler to allow PAs in his kingdom, I find it reasonable to ask: could a ruler prevent it? Admittedly, I know vastly more about European history than I do about Chinese, but as I understand things, China at this time is reverting from the Legalism of the Qin to the more feudal pattern of the previous dynasty, so perhaps some parallels with Europe can be allowed. Feudal vassals in Europe did certainly have armies of their own, which often engaged in private wars, and were sometimes a threat to thier sovereign. Consider the wars between the Counts of Anjou and the Dukes of Normandy, both vassals of the King of France, or the near-independence of the Border Lords in England. Given the state of communications in those days, totalitarian control wasn't possible, and the resultant chaos was horrible for the populace, but few of the nobility cared about that. I further submit that the burden on the populace isn't affected by the organization of the military forces, just by their total size.

Finally, when I RP'ed a visit from Di to distant Yue, I was aware of the PA restrictions, and left my army home So that problem could be solved by gently referring players to the rules.

[Nanjun Tiger]

As for whether it makes sense for a ruler to allow PAs in his kingdom, I find it reasonable to ask: could a ruler prevent it? Admittedly, I know vastly more about European history than I do about Chinese, but as I understand things, China at this time is reverting from the Legalism of the Qin to the more feudal pattern of the previous dynasty, so perhaps some parallels with Europe can be allowed. Feudal vassals in Europe did certainly have armies of their own, which often engaged in private wars, and were sometimes a threat to thier sovereign. Consider the wars between the Counts of Anjou and the Dukes of Normandy, both vassals of the King of France, or the near-independence of the Border Lords in England. Given the state of communications in those days, totalitarian control wasn't possible, and the resultant chaos was horrible for the populace, but few of the nobility cared about that. I further submit that the burden on the populace isn't affected by the organization of the military forces, just by their total size.

If it was completely made to be the same as real life, as you are sort of hinting at, the game would be a genuine clusterf***. Think of it this way: A King has his own army under him, as well as several prominent leaders and nobles who in turn have their own forces that fight for them. Those leaders and nobles employ men who have have their personal forces that fight for them... If you try to let everyone who could have an army control them completely and entirely, it would be entirely too difficult to oversee for the staff, too difficult to keep track of for the playerbase, and too chaotic in general for rulers to control (in real life, vassals were given material goods, lands, power, titles, prestige and security. In a sim game, all of those things are pipedreams and really, nothing can ensure loyalty and can in no way relate to real life feudal vassalage).

Although it would add more realism to the game and would also give more freedom to the players, it would just be impossible to implement.

[ann]

It's true that one chooses to rule or not on warlords. That's the way it is. There is currently, we think, considerably more flexibility than in past versions of this sim or in other sims we've played in what a non-ruler can do. People may hold villages and towns, build forces to a fairly large size, and use them for whatever they wish as mercenaries or on their own. We allowed more freedom initially but this created game balance issues at the outset which we hadn't forseen and so we adopted the rule that mercenary forces must be roleplayed as mercenaries in a real sense and that if they merely behaved as an extra-rule army and officer of the kingdom that they would, after two turns, become part of the kingdom. There were, I kid you not, PA forces in the hands of players who felt even having to PM their intent to cooperate in an invasion was too much to expect of them as we should just know so-and-so ruler was in charge.

Players can do far more than 'leave it all up to their ruler' however. You get your personal turn actions, you may control your own battle ploys, you may leave a ruler when you wish, you may roleplay to change things all over the sim etc etc. There are players who refuse to do certain kingdom turn actions for their rulers. But yeah - this game is about nation domination and that's not an individual thing.

We do have vassalage in warlords. And those vassals do have thier own forces. Wei Quan is a vassal of Fusu (Jianglu) for example, Yi Lian has vassals. Chen She has many vassals - though not all agree with that view. Wu Chen has a vassal.

[Choso]

Dunno if anyone has posted this, But the Scribe and Doctors skills are worthless on NPCs.

They should at least do something like contribute to the gold obtained from Forage, or something like that.

[areon]

Npcs can doctor in KTs.

[Choso]

Really? I haven't heard this...