Goblin Squad Member
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@Being You may as well not have any kind of player created settlement laws at that point, which rather defies the spirit of the game. I do think it's reasonable to say that the Laws of the Gods are not those of men. If you go against the Laws of Gods, you change alignment.. if you go against the laws of men, you go criminal. The Laws of Gods have one thing to say in regards to the laws of men, and that is Criminals are unLawful. I can't approve of marginalizing the player impact of a region, nor altering the nature of the region itself, to the extent of the Gods dictating what each settlement is allowed to exhibit lawfully (meaning Criminals, not alignment).
Killing can still be a Chaotic act, and killing killers can still be a Lawful act, regardless of player laws.
@Dread That sounds like a great mechanic for a Theme Park, but too restrictive for a Sandbox. When you start saying "players can't" it's probably doesn't fit. War being rampant may not be desirable, but if extenuating circumstances call for it, and the mass leave-taking of good sense, it should definitely be on the table.
Good to suggest either way though, it can spark new ideas you might never have intended.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Darcnes although we have Federal laws we also have local laws and do not find it a small matter to so have. Yet where local laws contravene Federal law, local laws can be struck down. Similarly with divine law and local law in a fantasy setting.
Regarding the role of the Neutral in the case of War: The duty of the True Neutral in the event of War between other aligned forces should first be to stay out of it unless it will mean harm to the forest.
If the state of war keeps to subterfuge and assassination the Neutral has little stake unless it appears that all opposition to the dominant side is being overwhelmed. In the interest of world balance the Druid and Ranger would seek to intervene against the dominant side.
Where warfare reaches the stage of open conflict then the neutral would seek to either help end the war through diplomacy or, where diplomacy fails, throw in with the underdog in order to ensure that the impending victor does not achieve a state of too much power, even at the risk of prolonging said war. If the underdog they threw in with began to win, the neutral would seek to extricate from battle. This can lead to antipathy from the former ally.
The Neutral State, if there can be any such, would war against anti-nature or anti-neutral powers. Personally I doubt there would be true neutral settlements, but expect there would be neutral-other settlements.
Not to totally strike down the system your talking about, re. War tokens. But what many are advocating would put the cost of going to, and maintaining a war pretty high. Eliminating anyone from just warring with everyone all the time. Both in money, and resources.
Only a huge settlement that's harbored it's resources could have a war on two fronts and even then couldn't maintain those conflicts forever. Sort of like we are seeing play out now with the US playing world cop, heh.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you only pay the cost once, then it is possible for a good aligned kingdom to drop a war declaration every time they have the spare points. Imagine a "good" organization that is large and filled with veterans doing this to all the other good organizations. That would allow them to act nearly identically to chaotic-evil factions while being "good" aligned.
With an upkeep the costs of wars are persistent. If you want to maintain three non-mutual aggressive wars with non-evil factions, you pay the cost of that every week.
The thing is, I am trying to find in a historical setting where this would have any precedence, and I am not finding it. In the Hundred Year's War I do not think either France or England changed from being a "Good" kingdoms to all of a sudden "Evil".
Now I can see where the actual cost of the war; i.e. Resources, money, and even maybe travel times for supply caravans. Would go up after X amount of time. That would make sense, I just do not see the alignment changing.
Because, and correct me if I am wrong, GW has said that the alignment of our Kingdoms/settlements would be a mean of what our character' alignments are. So in order for the kingdoms alignment to shift all our character's alignment would have to shift as well.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the number of Wars a settlement is engaged in would largely be controled by resources and the perception of that settlements aggression by others. A settlement that is continiously engaged in wars of aggression is going to start making it's neighbors and other game powers. Probably no need for absolute controls like War Markers or Banners, etc.
@Darcnes, It's an interesting discussion. Clearly conflict causes a certain amount of Chaos but there are cases where the results/goal of a given conflict far outweigh the chaos caused by conflict itself and therefore are a lawful ACT. Otherwise you couldn't have Paladin's and other LG adventurers going off into dungeons and slaughtering orcs and goblins and undead and necromancers by the hundreds and remain LG. Clearly the restoration of order resulting from the elimination of such creatures outweights the chaos caused by the act of slaughter itself. Say killing causes a shift toward 2 on the Chaos scale but ridding an area of orcs is a shift toward 4 on the Lawfull scale. Thus killing orcs is a Lawfull act overall.
Now one thing that Law also relies heavely is that people will respect whatever heiarchy they are a part of and whatever oaths, bonds or commitments they make. That forms the basic structure for Order itself to exist. So if a person was part of a Kingdom, perhaps a soldier, and swore an oath to uphold it's laws and follow it's intructions and one of those laws was "It's unlawfull to kill orcs". Then the person who did so would suffer an additional shift towards Chaos for failure to keep thier sworn commitments...perhaps enough to make killing orcs a Chaotic act overall....although less so then killing bakers. YMMV.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you only pay the cost once, then it is possible for a good aligned kingdom to drop a war declaration every time they have the spare points. Imagine a "good" organization that is large and filled with veterans doing this to all the other good organizations. That would allow them to act nearly identically to chaotic-evil factions while being "good" aligned.
With an upkeep the costs of wars are persistent. If you want to maintain three non-mutual aggressive wars with non-evil factions, you pay the cost of that every week.
The thing is, I am trying to find in a historical setting where this would have any precedence, and I am not finding it. In the Hundred Year's War I do not think either France or England changed from being a "Good" kingdoms to all of a sudden "Evil".
Now I can see where the actual cost of the war; i.e. Resources, money, and even maybe travel times for supply caravans. Would go up after X amount of time. That would make sense, I just do not see the alignment changing.
Because, and correct me if I am wrong, GW has said that the alignment of our Kingdoms/settlements would be a mean of what our character' alignments are. So in order for the kingdoms alignment to shift all our character's alignment would have to shift as well.
Well England and France had (theoreticaly) a Casus Belli for thier conflict. In other words something that by the standards of thier time was reasonable and just to fight over.
Those are things which I think Andius has suggested and is probably correct is just too difficult and complex for a game of this format to model in most cases.
"Good" fighting "Evil" would probably actualy be an example of one that was simplistic enough for the game to model. There may be some others, I haven't abandoned the idea completey. But I do think Andius is correct, it's a very difficult thing to model in an automated fashion without opening the door for significant exploitation.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the Casus Belli system, I just think you guys were getting way too specific and expansive with it in that other thread.
My suggestion was just give Casus Belli to settlements of opposing alignment on one of the axes (good vs evil or law vs chaos) and for neighboring settlements.
This would encourage warring (indeed, Ryan stated that he expects there to be plenty of reasons for conflict between neighbors) in an uncomplicated way. It would also lead to things like moderately-sized powers supporting smaller settlements between them and a large power, sort of like propping up 'buffer states' for mutual benefit.
Of course, I imagine a settlement could still declare war on whomever they wished; the Casus Belli system simply removes some of the costs for war declarations.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really curious how much of the map is intended to be settled. If there are typically 4 or 5 empty hexes between my Settlement and my nearest non-allied neighbor, that's going to create a drastically different environment than if most Settled Hexes are expected to border at least one other Settled Hex.
I would also be interested in a fresh post that tried to lay out the mechanics of the Casus Belli system without trying to explain the logic of it, so that it's easier to understand from an engineering perspective.
I'm really curious how much of the map is intended to be settled. If there are typically 4 or 5 empty hexes between my Settlement and my nearest non-allied neighbor, that's going to create a drastically different environment than if most Settled Hexes are expected to border at least one other Settled Hex.
I would also be interested in a fresh post that tried to lay out the mechanics of the Casus Belli system without trying to explain the logic of it, so that it's easier to understand from an engineering perspective.
I agree on both points Nihimon <grin>. Perhaps we can get Ryan to give us a rundown on their thoughts on the hex density and uninhibited region plans. Which would be subject to change. But we would at least see what direction they are currently leaning.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@GrumpyMel Under the proposed WarDec system, only settlements who engaged in scenario A (one-sided war) would shift alignments, and only because each member would collectively be taking the cloud for unlawfully attacking another where the situation warrants it (see Alignment thread for discussion on what warrants alignment shifts). Of course if they are engaging in scenario B (agreed upon war) then there certainly shouldn't be any alignment shifts as it as all agreed upon. I think we're in agreement on this topic.
@Björn Renshai I love your name, see above points regarding Alignment shift. I think we are also in agreement.
Re: Casus Belli .. I think if we can identify a situational need, benefit and consequence it's definitely worth devising and proposing a system. In this case I agree that it's worth looking into.
@Nihimon Great question!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm really curious how much of the map is intended to be settled. If there are typically 4 or 5 empty hexes between my Settlement and my nearest non-allied neighbor, that's going to create a drastically different environment than if most Settled Hexes are expected to border at least one other Settled Hex.
I would also be interested in a fresh post that tried to lay out the mechanics of the Casus Belli system without trying to explain the logic of it, so that it's easier to understand from an engineering perspective.
Nihimon, the Casus Belli system would simply look at the conditions that exist (pretty much a CASE function, in old style programing) when War was declared in order to determine the standard set of penalties for declaring War on the agressor.
Simplest example would be If attacking settlement is LG and defending settlement is CE, no penalties are applied to the attacker (e.g. the LG settlement doesn't shift toward CE).
You could maybe have other conditions like, if more then X percent of the defending settlements members currently had CRIMINAL tags or BOUNTIES on them (i.e. they were "bandits" and the settlement was harboring "bandits").
I think the concept of the system is valid and not particularly hard to impliment from an engineering standpoint.
What's hard is coming up with the details of what conditions fit, and won't be easly exploited. Also figuring out what an automated program could possibly determine by examining existing conditions. I mean most of us would probably say assasinating another settlements monarch would be a justification for war, but unless the game actualy had a way of tracking who hired assasins and a mechanism for "discovering" that and storing it in some sort of data array, then it would be a non-starter.
I'm really curious how much of the map is intended to be settled. If there are typically 4 or 5 empty hexes between my Settlement and my nearest non-allied neighbor, that's going to create a drastically different environment than if most Settled Hexes are expected to border at least one other Settled Hex.
I would also be interested in a fresh post that tried to lay out the mechanics of the Casus Belli system without trying to explain the logic of it, so that it's easier to understand from an engineering perspective.
Nihimon, the Casus Belli system would simply look at the conditions that exist (pretty much a CASE function, in old style programing) when War was declared in order to determine the standard set of penalties for declaring War on the agressor.
Simplest example would be If attacking settlement is LG and defending settlement is CE, no penalties are applied to the attacker (e.g. the LG settlement doesn't shift toward CE).
You could maybe have other conditions like, if more then X percent of the defending settlements members currently had CRIMINAL tags or BOUNTIES on them (i.e. they were "bandits" and the settlement was harboring "bandits").
I think the concept of the system is valid and not particularly hard to impliment from an engineering standpoint.
What's hard is coming up with the details of what conditions fit, and won't be easly exploited. Also figuring out what an automated program could possibly determine by examining existing conditions. I mean most of us would probably say assasinating another settlements monarch would be a justification for war, but unless the game actualy had a way of tracking who hired assasins and a mechanism for "discovering" that and storing it in some sort of data array, then it would be a non-starter.
Well said! This also tracks back to my desire (and i know its not only MY desire) to aid the devs by working our thoughts,suggestions,desires into a format that the game can recognize and understand :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ALL Take a look here for Casus Belli thread.
I kicked it off with some of Nihimon's and GrumpyMel's suggestions. I encourage anyone with thoughts from earlier in the thread to migrate these thoughts to this new thread!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I addressed the issue of duration a bit further in this post since it was sort of left alone after not really agreeing between Nihimon and Andius proposals, and the actual source of war costs.
Regarding the cost of wars, I want to be clear that I feel the cost should be one of consequence rather than mechanic. It COSTS to build and maintain siege weapons and whatever other accouterments must be provided for. I do not believe this should be a Tax levied by the system to charge for the privilege of war. It begs too many difficult questions, like what happens when one side runs of out of money to pay to continue the war, but the other side is very wealthy. If approached from a tax perspective, it turns this scenario into a bit of a silly mess. If approached from one of consequence, it's a bit more simple. The one who runs out of money first, is almost definitely going to lose because they're no longer able to supply their war efforts. This in and of itself becomes a motivation to end the fighting quickly.
One of the points we did not finish settling in WarDec was duration. Whether it should be renewed regularly and maintained, or left open until ended or otherwise finished. The former would not really have an impact except on Scenario A type WarDecs in which participants would take an Alignment cloud again. It would also inspire the attackers to finish their business quickly, else they face descending into CE rather quickly and possibly tearing their own organization apart along the way as personal and organization alignments start to stray further (supposing some members stayed out of the war, or just didn't log in for the duration). Scenarios B (and C from up above) would have no actual cost in this fashion as they are being done by mutual consent. (Murdering a monarch and getting caught or a series of embargos being tantamount to a formal declaration.) The latter duration would be less detrimental to unlawful WarDecs, and more closely match what would essentially be the case between two lawfully warring organizations that have no intention of ending things quickly.
Both have their merits, I believe renewing the alignment costs is just a better way of encouraging wars to be shorter in some cases, but not necessarily any better of a solution than letting them be declared in perpetuum.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I just had a thought on this subject, and would like to see what you all think....
Instead of wars having to be consensual, which is kind of strange to begin with, why not have a requirement that the war can be justified by the settlement or company looking to initiate the war?
There is already a flag system, and hexes that can be shifted in alignment and control away from settlements. All of these things are being tracked by the game mechanics. The game mechanics can tell who did what to whom. So a points system can be used, and once a certain threshold is met, the aggrieved party can then declare war against the aggressor.
There can be a short period, where both sides will be aware that a war is pending. During that brief period, they can bring additional companies into their settlement.
In the last hours before the war begins, the initiating settlement will still have the option to withdraw the declaration. Perhaps the two sides broker a deal to not start the war.
If war breaks out, neither side can hire new companies or recruit new members. The war will last one week, unless the two sides agree to end it earlier. But, in that case the decision to end the war must be mutual.
At the end of the week the war will end. Either side can opt to reissue a new war declaration, but new conflict will still have a short cool down / recruitment period.
And so on.....
The key point I'm making here is that wars need to start for some tangible reason. But requiring them to be consensual is just too high a threshold to meet.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe I misread the War section, but I thought the comment was that you could declare another organizaion as "hostile" and if the other organization also declared you "hostile" you would have a defacto state of war.
The question is what does declaring another company as "hostile" mean?
Does it give you freedom to attack them?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are two facets of wars that should be analyzed separately.
A. The ability to attack another Settlement/Nation.
B. The ability to freely attack Members of the Settlement/Nation even in "safe" areas.
I would like to see it possible to do A without automatically being able to do B.
So, in order for Settlement Alpha to be able to launch an attack against Settlement Beta, Alpha must first have declared (unilateral) war against Beta. This would not require Beta to consent.
However, if Beta did consent, and declare war on Alpha in return, then both sides would be able to freely attack each other even in lawful areas.
I like very much your idea.