Feedback and Suggestions

Dao Xia · Post by **Dao Xia** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:35 pm

This is more of a concern, and no bright ideas have really popped up yet on how to solve it for me. The fact of the matter is that whole concept of backround points has really messed up alot of things here. While items and dedicated study really only help to holder, things like NPCs, troops, and rank and add up to be a massive un-balancer for rulers.

Troops would be the first problem. As we can already start to see, rulers can grab two or three troop-oriented BP guys at the start, and they have a large, well trained and equipped army to attack a city. NPCs aren't as much of a problem, as they aren't nearly as crucial in the start as troops. Rank just gets an extra twon if someone surrenders it to a ruler I guess.

Anyways, the main point I'm adressing here is that no matter how much one ruler can work at it in a KT, the ruler that gets the troops and NPCs early on will be the one who wins. If the battle rules alowed for more flexibility (which I understand they can't feasibly do with so many battles) than it wouldn't be bad because you could pull a planned out win. Now even if you deal them a crushing defeat, it still a good chance that the next rock-paper-scissors will end up with you losing. I have seen blatant things where a busy ruler ignores other AH posts to be able to hire a guy with troops within the invasion limit. I don't know a solution for this yet, but I'm just putting it out there I guess.

areon · Post by **areon** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 10:46 am

I would disagree with the troop assessment. Any decent character with atleast military administrator can crank out a lot of troops each turn just from controlling a city. Take into account that recruiting and drilling is added onto this, so after the first or second turn it won't be as important. Yeah if 3 or more people with 4 bp in army join someone they'll be able to attack people. But not all of the lords would be on fair playing fields and they sacrifice the choice of having NPCs or high quality skills come with those officers. Not to mention a lot of rulers are in GMNPC territory and would want a deterrant force and might not want to go aggravating the area by attacking. There also are a lot of independent forces running around that don't want to join rulers.

Shi Zhi Mi · Post by **Shi Zhi Mi** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 11:36 am

areon wrote:I would disagree with the troop assessment. Any decent character with atleast military administrator can crank out a lot of troops each turn just from controlling a city. Take into account that recruiting and drilling is added onto this, so after the first or second turn it won't be as important. Yeah if 3 or more people with 4 bp in army join someone they'll be able to attack people. But not all of the lords would be on fair playing fields and they sacrifice the choice of having NPCs or high quality skills come with those officers. Not to mention a lot of rulers are in GMNPC territory and would want a deterrant force and might not want to go aggravating the area by attacking. There also are a lot of independent forces running around that don't want to join rulers.

Wrong.

Players can get 1600 troops with a 65 morale and armed with bronze armor and halberds/crossbows/horses. If a ruler wished to go full military then can get a good sized amount of troops but no money to buy armarments. Should the ruler go full money they can can blow it on crappy recruits and armarments. If they go balanced then they get a mixture of both but far below simply snagging a player who dropped 4 pts into troops and has an uber force.

Rulers have to spend all of their BPs on rulership alone. So one ruler snags pcs who spent their backgrounds on npcs, items or other fun stuff for themselves. A nearby ruler picks up 4 pcs who spent their bps on level 4 troops. That gives the ruler 6400(65) Bronze Armor and halberds. Tell me what ruler starts off with that at the beginning and can fight off such a force that doesn't involve doing the same thing with pcs.

I like the Background Point system and thing it is a nice change of pace from other Sims. But the troop system is woefully unbalancing for rulership at large. For next sim the troop option should be completely removed so rulers can start off equally.

Duke Williams · Post by **Duke Williams** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 3:59 pm

Yeah... Troops dont even need any matience. You can hold as many as you want aslong as you have room in your amy to put them there. With no cost for Troops the Troop BP's can be abused freely and have little to no pentality. To the Ruler that wants to start out huge atleast. To the PC Officer they either go AFK or they just sit around with their troops taken away.

fire_i · Post by **fire_i** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:55 pm

I absolutely agree. Not only are the reasons SZM and Dao Xia provided true, but I also must point out that, while it is easy to rise suspicions against someone who seem to get an unusual amount of troops via joinees who took all BPs in troops, it still is a much harder thing to a) prove they cheated and b), if they did cheat, punish them. Presumption of innocence is good even for sims, after all...

I'm sure that, next version, if rulers keep the ability to take players's BP points troops, someone will find a way to abuse of the possibility and make himself very powerful extremely fast. Such an obvious possibility can, and will be, abused. It's only a matter of time.

And heck, that's if it hasn't happened already.

Rurouni Kenshin · Post by **Rurouni Kenshin** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 6:59 pm

Well then if it is such an advantage to have troops, then why didn't we take troops. You have to realize that all BP are supposed to be equal in bonus. If you want to deposit your gainings in order to recieve more take a city. If you want to have soldiers and a city, take soldiers and capture the city if it is as easy as you guys say. I mean I understand it is a little unbalanced, but they may say the same, we just have to affirm our alliances and we will be ok. Hopefully. After all a guy with a descent lead can double 1600 in one turn with just one city.

I however do agree with Shi Zhi Mi. If a guy brings his OOC friends to the game and asks them to take the Military BP, it leaves the ruler with a definite advantage over the other rulers, but I mean it all comes down to the people you get. You may be getting 1600 well trained and equipped men, but you are missing a PC with two LV III skills, or someone with 1900 gold to donate etc. It is in a way balanced, not perfectly but balanced if you look at it.

Shi Zhi Mi · Post by **Shi Zhi Mi** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 8:14 pm

Rurouni Kenshin wrote:Well then if it is such an advantage to have troops, then why didn't we take troops. You have to realize that all BP are supposed to be equal in bonus. If you want to deposit your gainings in order to recieve more take a city. If you want to have soldiers and a city, take soldiers and capture the city if it is as easy as you guys say. I mean I understand it is a little unbalanced, but they may say the same, we just have to affirm our alliances and we will be ok. Hopefully. After all a guy with a descent lead can double 1600 in one turn with just one city.

I however do agree with Shi Zhi Mi. If a guy brings his OOC friends to the game and asks them to take the Military BP, it leaves the ruler with a definite advantage over the other rulers, but I mean it all comes down to the people you get. You may be getting 1600 well trained and equipped men, but you are missing a PC with two LV III skills, or someone with 1900 gold to donate etc. It is in a way balanced, not perfectly but balanced if you look at it.

You are forgetting. They can have 4 pcs join with the uber troops then have other pcs join with awesome stat and skill lines. What does this mean? Uber troops with uber generals. This isn't counting some lovely npcs that can be created or found.

It is hardly balanced. What is the point of having awesome npcs or items or what not if your neighborly ruler can wipe you out in two months with 4 times the amount of troops you have?

The BP system is very balanced as long as the bonus troops are not added in there. Otherwise it is heavily unbalanced. After all, one can wipe out the nearby ruler and recruit all those uber npcs and steal all those uber items from captured officers.

Rurouni Kenshin · Post by **Rurouni Kenshin** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 8:29 pm

But I mean it isn't like only a few have access to that. It would sort of be like me complaining about you getting more officers. But I do understand that isn't your point, but I do suggest maybe not allowing PC's with troops to join Rulers next game or something along the lines of that.

Fessek · Post by **Fessek** » Wed Apr 26, 2006 8:48 pm

Perhaps there should be a morale penalty for troops given to a ruler. I wouldn't be very enthusiastic about working for someone else all the sudden.

Or place a limit as too how long a PC has been in the sim before they can hand over troops/gold. Make it so you that 3 months have to pass from character creation before you can hand stuff over. It'll somewhat diminish the effects of creating characters just for troops.

Bourne · Post by **Bourne** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 1:18 am

On a somewhat newer note. I was just checking over the PT rules and thought that there should be an option to tutor/aid/help whatever you want to call it, a person in stats. You can tutor someone so they learn a new skill but you can't help someone train one of their stats. I think that should be added.