[Discuss] War Island Change

[Tom Vogt]

John P. Murphy schrieb:
> If you want nothing but mindless war, you've already been given the  
> only solution: disallow realm-to-realm messaging.

As has already been mentioned: That will only cause people to move to 
mail and IRC.


>   Nothing short of  
> that will prevent the "diplomacy" that people are decrying.  No  
> matter what, the players will always, always, always find the optimal  
> strategy for victory, and then attempt to follow it.  But mindless  
> war is not going to make the south islands any more fun: mindless war  
> ultimately means much more time spent sitting in the capital waiting  
> to get enough taxes to hire another unit, which is just going to get  
> destroyed anyway.
>   

Then we need to reduce the amount this matters. We can do that.


> Wrong.  Suddenly you have people seeking the most conservative and  
> incremental strategies imaginable.

Not we way I intend it to be. Here's how it works:

Every looting, victory and some other things add to a score called 
"glory". That's not new code, it's been in the game for a year or soo, 
but so far it hasn't been used in any visible way (mostly as a tool for 
me to judge how things are going).

Now, every week the governments on the war islands will get a notice 
about how they're doing in relation to the other realms.

Every three weeks, whoever is last loses their jobs and a point of prestige.


Judging you in comparison to the others means you can't go the "let's do 
one looting to get a positive score and we're done" route.


> On top of that, you've added a nice positive feedback loop to that  
> once a realm starts to lose it gets engulfed in weekly chaos, which  
> in turn will ensure that they continue to lose.
>   

Good. On the war islands, more chaos is good.


> The likely result is twofold: first that the south island realms will  
> start choosing their leaders informally: no matter who actually holds  
> the post of ruler or general, they'll wind up picking a "real" ruler  
> and council and just rotating the throne-warmer.

That's an interesting idea, but I doubt it will work very well. There 
are two kinds of people who will volunteer for that position: The very 
loyal ones and those with plans for themselves. Sooner or later, you'll 
have one of the later in charge.

>   Second that they'll  
> become so risk-averse that only sure-fire victories will be pursued.   
> The most risk-averse strategy?  Two realms ganging up on a third,  
> where that third is losing its government every week.
>   

The code takes that into account. You get little glory for trashing a 
very small enemy, and much for a heroic defense (or charge). The small 
realm stands a real chance of having the weaker of the attackers suffer 
instead.

And even if not, then there's only two realms left and one of them 
_will_ draw the shorter straw the next round.


> I don't think you've defined the problem nearly well enough to be  
> talking about solutions.  Before you start implementing fixes, it  
> would be a very good idea to sit down, think about, and articulate  
> exactly what you mean by "war island".
>   
Why? That's already very plainly stated in the game itself. Constant 
warfare.