[Discuss] Limiting recruitment to centres from the region/duchy (not recruiting within the duchy)

[psymann]

Rob Croson wrote:
>
> I have never known any realm that tells people to pick from specific 
> RCs. Other than general guidance of the "I really like the Kepler 
> Heavy Swordsmen

That's pretty much the same thing.  The general guidance recommends that 
people all pick the same troops each time.  And that guidance is 
probably good.  So most people follow it, and recruit the same troops.

 > People generally don't recruit troops because they are cheap, unless
 > they are going for TO units. They pick the training/EQ they want,
 > then hire however many they can.

Yes, because all troops are very sensibly auto-priced at the moment, so 
they are all equally good value for money.  If they're all equally good 
value, people pick the best.  If the prices vary, you have a personal 
decision, based on where you have your estate, as to which is the best 
value, and you choose that.  And it might vary over time.  A choice!


>>>> -----Involvement for the Simple Knight-----
>>>>
> Making region lords or knights have to manually draft 
> troops? What's the point? You're locking people in to doing something 
> that is *not* part of the core focus of the game: Battle!

 > Now instead of spending time doing
 > interesting things like fighting...you have introduced drudge
 > work.

Ok.  Somewhere in there you have a point.  Shame that you feel the need 
to be so aggressive and unhelpful with it.

But battle is not the core focus of the game for every character. 
Bureaucrats do not focus on battle.  Traders do not focus on battle. 
Infiltrators only partly focus on battle.

Compare your response to Dorian's:
"What you'd get is some poor hapless knight left behind during wartime 
to draft as necessary while the rest of the army goes away. No fun. An 
interesting derivative might be to add a third estate setting, 'military'"

You just spend a whole post rubbishing anything I write.  Dorian points 
out her concerns, and helps to develop something better.

A third estate option, for drafting, could be an interesting option. 
This would mean that you are still doing the drafting, but it's being 
done for you, by your estate, without you having to leave the 
battlefront.  And if you have the options of switching between drafting 
and the other options, and the region would suffer a penalty when you're 
drafting, then knights have more to do with their estates than just set 
them up at the beginning and forget about them.  Would be even better, I 
reckon, if only knights, and not lords, could do the drafting (or 
possibly just knights do it more effectively) so that there is more of a 
need for a lord to use his knights to help in his region.  Make them 
earn their taxes.


> we're doing this all for the sake fo the hypothetical "simple 
> knight" having more buttons to click? 

Simple knights are not hypothetical.  There are plenty of them out 
there.  Just because you don't have any, doesn't mean other people don't.


 > clicking yet
> more buttons and links in order to have to satisfy some arbitrary 
> game mechanics function that a trained monkey could do better, 
> because at least the monkey won't get bored and quit.

Whereas not-clicking-any-buttons-or-links is such a fascinating pastime.


> And yet the system you have introduced requires no thought at all. 
> The knights/lords will just go back to their regions and hit the same 
> links every time.

The thought it could require is:
- how early do we need to send knights back to do drafting, so that when 
the rest of the army arrives, there's something there to recruit?
- who do we send back?  how many do we send back?  do we have volunteers 
or do we need to find another way to persuade someone to return?
- should I refuse to go back to draft unless someone pays me to do so?
- should I ask for a bigger oath share if I'm the one always helping out 
to draft?
- should I offer to go back and draft in order to get in my 
lord/duke/ruler's good books?
- should I offer to go back because while all the people with tons of 
expensive troops are still out fighting, I've only got 4 wounded troops 
left, so I'm little more than a bystander in the battles anyway, and at 
least this way I can be useful?
- will I, a trader, be back in time to do some drafting in my region 
before heading back out on another trading mission?
- am I, a bureaucrat, better placed to improve regions over here so that 
the lord can stay away from his region, or to draft at home, so my lord 
and knights can stay away from theirs?
- do we have enough knights in Blobville to supply Blobville Infantry to 
the whole realm, or are we going to need a supply of Splodgeville 
fighters, because we can't sit waiting here for ever for more Blobville 
Infantry?

Having said all that, I accept Dorian's point that you could find 
yourself stranded at home drafting for ever if you weren't careful, and 
that wouldn't be all fun.

 > People will have to
 > spend more time sitting around in their regions doing
 > paperwork/clicking buttons. And all that will lead to less battles.

If they wanted, people could head home, all recruit in their own home 
region, and all buy their own home troops.  (Even quicker if you allowed 
them to recruit their own home troops directly when they're drafting) 
That would take no time at all.  If you really want everyone to have the 
one best troop unit in the realm, then yes, you'll have to wait longer 
for it.  So what?  Choice is good.

psymann