[Discuss] All realms feudal monarchies?

[John P. Murphy]

On Feb 5, 2008, at 1:20 PM, Jaune Cosula wrote:

> I havent ever played StarCraft, but maybby i should.

It's pretty fun, yeah.

> What i tried to say that we are losing "cultures" what we have at  
> battlemaster.
>
> Tara used to be realm which has Tyrant whom word is the law, whos  
> orders were almost like orders from god. Now he "request" things,  
> Tyrant requesting things...
>
> Darka used to be very militaristic realm, very strict hierarchy and  
> higher guys were always treated like higher ups, now this is  
> changing so that all but king are "equal" and cant be bossed around.


The problem is that these were pretty much the only cultures there  
were.  Almost every single realm had the same setup: ruler and  
general gave strict orders, everyone followed them.  There were more  
variations in peacetime, but invariably when it came to war, every  
realm became a strict Darkan/Taran hierarchy.
A lot of the reason for that is that the game was set up to encourage  
people to do that.  Only the people at the top got to give Important  
Orders.  Only the General got a bulletin for military purposes.

The game is evolving, to put more emphasis on Dukes and on lower- 
level organization.

> Mayby i have played totally diffrent game what you had on your  
> mind, i dont care if English nobles were not able to being ordered,  
> Darkan nobles used to be ordered. English Kings used to request  
> things, Taran Tyrants used to order things. He used to be FEARED.

If the inability to use special-colored messages marked "Orders"  
completely prevents your tyrant being feared, then your tyrant sucks.

>  What i want is that we arent forced to play English nobles,  
> instead of that let us build our own hierarchy, chain of command,  
> army structure...

I agree with this, but Tom has said that other changes are coming.   
It would not kill us to try it this way for a while -- y'know, whine  
*after* the fact instead of before we've given it a shot.

> before you could have asked someone else to issue orders and  
> settings after seen scout reports. Now orders can be given only by  
> Marshalls and if poor marshall happens to live timezone where turn  
> changed at 2.am it is too late to issue movement orders 6 hours  
> after turn change.... and what a catastrophy if he fails to login  
> before turn change and his army will have wrong settings.
>
> how it works now, is people get scoutings, general and marshalls  
> who happens to be early turn around analyze scoutings and issue  
> orders and everybody gets those orders. After this change you must  
> appoint to Marshall person who are available shortly after turn  
> change to make sure half of your army isnt missing battle or using  
> wrong settings.

This is true.  Sorta.  You're making a few assumptions that aren't  
necessarily true, though: first, that the people in your realm will  
ignore anything except the bright red messages.  Second, that orders  
must be given every turn, and only once all the scout reports have  
come in.  Why can't you plan ahead as best you can, give out orders  
the day before, and just live with the results?

Third, who cares if you lose a few battles because orders didn't get  
out?  Winning battles is not the whole point of the game.  Having fun  
pretending to be medieval nobles is.  Only some of our characters can  
even be killed in battle.  It's nice to win, sure, but it's good to  
get a wide range of experiences with both winning and losing to  
really develop our characters beyond the factory standard, "Loyal  
noble who follows orders and wants what's good for the realm, and  
maybe some gold and honor, too."

John
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