questions, thoughts, ideas, wishes and proposal-)

[guardianru]

Question: am I right - Sovereignty is a Birthright successor?
It is in 1/3 probability like it:
No leaders, bloodlines and effects of leader in country management
No RPG playing activity for leader + party for gaining’s new special personal or country value artifacts
Yes – strategic command and management with bonus of new way of fighting gameplay.

Bugs of 1.6
- Ships (manowar like) disappear when successfully invade with army a coastal province (Ariele – I invaded Jotun province).
- No fights in the same sea of states in war
- If an agent go out – diplomatic status calm down without reason (so like I need to have a diplomat there constantly)
- Army without heroes fight only auto

Thoughts or recommendations
As I remember Birthright, there was a dice system and it was wonderfully implemented in province management improvement.
But for that we need:
- Heroes like leaders
- Some resource to invest (besides of money)
- Dice implementation “chance values”
- Number of structures to build

Firstly I wish to see and implement some province management setup.

It mean, I wish (and I could help to work with it) to see any province as a unique and wonderful place with its on advantages or disadvantages to different kinds of things.
That would give a better variation to “little like” countries and more headache to big ones (or it mean big ones probably rule all even without problem, but it must be a problem to them to hold them together).

So the ideas in province management

1. Province Buildings
Province contain a number of buildable things, not only one type – economy. In that way its too simplified and doesn’t act as appropriate strategy (in my thought).
But when we count in that things, we could have more variable and different way concentrated countries. That could give it a unique status and unique role in the gameplay, as economy, magic an ets.

So, lets describe, province could have:
- Forts (as same in game) – that is a structures, that defend special places and predefined.
- Resources (as in game) – that gives special type of res to economy of the country (and other stuff – all described down)
- Temples
- Unique province unit for recruit (not like now in game)
- Development (partly as it now in game mean economy levels)
- Economy values (not like now in game – “prosperity”)
- Trade routes
- Castles and towers
- Inns
- Landmarks as “Special places” (that need to be combined with some other stuff)

And now all stuff described

2. Province Forts
Forts are predefined structures, and could be placed only in special provinces and places.
So it mean they could be:
- Razed by attack
- Repaired or constructed (if there are none of them)
- Forts act as additional immobile unite in battlefield in special defense places which secure routes, cities or special places.
New forts are real great and hardened work so it couldn’t be constructed in game-time.

Add-ons here could be like that:
Fort leveling is the same as Castle level in province or just all the same (as in game now).
It mean that forts defenses vary in level so they aren’t all the same and yes – they cost money to have or they downshift levels (degrade and need to be repaired after)
*See castles for description

3. Province Resource
Resources give many different values, that for me doesn’t fully used in good way:
The aim is to make resources valuable, but not only trade and army building specific things but the things about which we need to play and make some work for gaining it before we could us it.

Resource gives:
- Income add-on to province based at market commerce level cost of that res (per number of gained, for example if there 2 res/turn = 2x cost income no matter of trading)
- Loyalty in the province if it is racial res and ½ lvl add-on in all racial (or country that have that res as a basic like wine to elfs) conquered provs *loyalty described down
- Add “unique” basic race specific (only one, not auxiliary) country-wide army unit to a recruitment list
- Add an item-res to sell in global market
- Add an item-res to trade in diplomacy
- Add an item-res to be raided/smuggled from province each turn (see description below)
- Give more than province type max level to development add-on
- Give res income by level of loyalty 1=25%, 2=70%, 3=100%
- Could be “raided” - so when attacked – take so much res in turn how it is gained by the owner (but in terms of loyalty dice check – d10= “1”=10% - if dice>loyalty level – raid gain res in that turn besides of it is wasted to owner and raider)

Resource could be “traded” in diplomacy, but to make it most value – its effectively using needs trade routes = constant trade that level income.
It mean selling resource in market doesn’t give much as it give when it is traded in trade route, but in other case trade routes could be smuggled by enemy agents so resource would give you half of its selling sum.
(smuggling agency would be down)

4. Province loyalty (Temples)
Now we have the something – there is economy level. When it 0 – province is claimed.
There other way to implement loyalty status (idea)

Loyalty of province gives from:
- Difference between race of country owner and province
- Development
- Events (global, provincial, successful attacks/failed defenses)
- Temples
- Availability of racial (country in which it was) main resource
- Overall medium country development in comparison with development in province


Loyalty generates:
- Income (degradation from 100% available)
- Revolt risks (degraded disloyal income flows in the investing of rebel army in that prov)
- Agent effectiveness (own/enemy)
- Pop growth (if population as the main income generator would be implemented)
- Events
- Availability to recruit province unique units
Btw loyalty from base and loyalty from suppression by garrison units vary – so none new unique units if there no basic loyalty match = mean no superb units if conquered totally country, because its loyalty never will be 100% even if revolt risk came to 0% because of garrisons.
So revolt risk counts as level of loyalty + garrison suppression till max = 99% in any non basic province.

Temples
Temples is the structure that generate XP, increase loyalty and raise the limits of unique province units available. It mean if there are 3lvl temple – you could buy 3 units, but if there low loyalty (just now because of events) - you can’t.

5. Province Recruitment
Each province need to be recruitment implemented in it specially.
Why?
That because we can specify different way of making some provs more valuable for recruitment and others for finance and stuff, so getting defenses would be more strategically based.
And because some provinces would have special units in they could be very specific.
In others we could implement for example “forge types” by adding resource to the unit construction so it would have +20% damage to something because there is gems in that province and making weapons with it gives +20% damage to evil units
The overall pool as it consists now could stay the same – just put the name of province after the unit icon, or it could be locked to the province where it is recruited. But in other case it could make bad things with stacking in one prov that we see now when ai collect garrisons in one prov for max and they can’t do anything


6. Province development
Mean how much “structures” could be built in province in sum or/and of each type
The development implements the overall “growth” to each province, that could make it unique and specified by the game-type of an each country play-style

The development values vary from the province:
- Type (plains, hills, mountains, river add-ons, forests ets)
- Race (it mean each race develop different provinces differently, mean elf could develop forests more, people plains, dwarfs – mountains, ogres – hills, dead ones – marshes and ets… need to balance if used)
- Special recourse type in province available (add +to level)
- Special places (landmarks) (add +to level)
- Special magic inserted (permanently=eat XP each turn or X-turns) (add +to level)


We have overall development level on % (0-100%), that gives us “overall status” and “type oriented limits”

Development types are
- Castle level (gives army recruitment, garrisoned basic defenders and time till province conquer by razing 1 lvl/turn +0,5 lvl per siege unit, +1 lvl/turn max in sum, gives prosperity 0,3x)
- Inn level (gives agents, gives income, mercs, prosperity 0,2x)
- Temple level (gives loyalty, revolt deny chance, event generation, magic XP, prosperity 0,3x)
- Trade route level (gives an additional free trade route to resource in that province or income from trade 1% of all reses per level with other counts in the provs where no reses, prosperity 0,5x)
Mean province has dev: W/X/Y/Z way.
As basic we could set plains 3/3/3/3 and than balance it

Other development specifications.
- Add speed to travel=”roads” (if dev 50% = +1 prov, 100% = +2)
- Constantly degrades when attack comes in province (even raids without total conquer – each turn destroy some development)
- Gives prerequisites to the buildings, resource mining and leveling (so in low development you can’t make good leveled structures – firstly invest in economic “basis”)
- Give loyalty in province (good developed provs like sovereign more)
- Gives prosperity level growth – the main generator for leveling (and overall medium by provs that affect diplomacy influence with other states – some like high level, some doesn’t and ets)

7. Prosperity
As it is settled in Birthright – there is to things that you use to invest in actions (contests, development and others – money and bloodline). Here it could be uses as money and prosperity from development of your country (in some proportion to its leveling and size), because we have no leaders.
That could implement dice system more diversely
The prosperity is used as the most influential value to investments in developments/reconstruction/trade deals and trade routes constructing/contest of regions/loyalty
It used to up the dice chance of successful action done

*BTW - In contest regions could be used 3 parameters – money, prosperity and agents


8. Trade routes
Trade routes act as main source of resource trading. They give
- Diplomatic bonus from trade
- Income in 2x of res market values
- Ability to be smuggled by agents
- Loyalty growth in prov
- Pop growth speedup
- Basic income growth in prov
- Mercenary discount
- Most prosperity growth

9. Province Castle defense
Castle if the definition to:
- How much turns need to conquer the province.
- What militia garrison are in province
- What rebel suppression is in province
- What fort level could be sustained
- What level of country units could be recruited here

In the birthright – castles act as turns need to destroy the defenders, after what you can contest the province. There was a “contest region” specific table, where conquering of it isn’t the same all full taking and integration in your country.
It mean that those region if it is taken but not contested – would return to the owner when the war ends. But when in war – its taxes and all reses (based at loyalty and development and other things – are transported to conqueror – so that implements total “raiding” source of gameplay)


10. Province inns
Inns act as tax house, agent-resource collectors and merc hire places
Higher inn level gives more merc probability (chance) – it mean the pool of mercs isn’t constant, but they travel and could be hired not in each turn
(could describe the system more widely)
Inn as Tax-house operate as how effectively you could gather income from population
Inn as agent-reqruitment – shows how much agents are trained here per turn
Tax/agents are contrast – more one – lesser other. And in more loyal province you get lesser agents, but better defence from enemy+ more taxes – and in less loyal more agents and less defences and lexx taxes.


11. Province agency
Agency is too the province based implementation
Agents act not as now – those ones are like diplomats, that have diplomatic “force” for actions.
That “force” named agents is generated by inns.
Agents pool is a pool that used for operations.
Mean province concentrated (sabotage, smuggling, infiltration, revolt), diplomatic (relations, trade upgrade, actions).

Provincial activity
There two ways to make activity (as I look at) – magical and agency
Agency mean “hard” activity:
- Incite Rebellion (loyalty downgrade, financial add-on gives more units in rebel army)
- Smuggling resources (free tradable in market resources are smuggled for ½ price to you)
- Sabotage buildings, trade routes, army movement in province, garrisoned units/forts
- Infiltration of country wide
- Sabotage army
- Defend provinces
- Generate negative events in the aimed country (if supported with magic XP)

Magical as most it used now – its ok – but I need to see how it is planned to be implemented.

idea*So in low in loyalty and development provinces inns generate more agents


12. Special places – landmarks
The ideology of special places mean for me an special hiding places for different quests (army specific of text specific).*besides of what they give or trigger now
- Add unique province army to recruitment list
- Add magical, economical, diplomatic, prosperity, agency flow, activation-events, provincial development type, quest-like, special mercs\unique units, special magic casts, teleportation’s, and ets

That quests mean an army could:
- Search for special encounters
- If find – attack them
- If won – get some bonuses, income, special army artifacts, personal attributes
attack a special place

Province type
- Set level of development available in different types
Mean(for example):
plains give 5 points which 5/5/5/5/…
mountains 3 points 3/0/1/2/…
waste 2 points 1/1/1/2…
So we will make a matrix here to collect the data and summarize (number of provs, number of provs each type, maximized levels, appropriate leveling and other balancing/proportions)

Province pop
For now each province income just set from the economy level. For big countries it is just the question of time to overcome by army numbers the little ones.
And elfs for example get theirs 5-5-5-5-5-9 very fast.
That have no chance to develop in rnd (dice mode that was described and how it is in birthright).
So the idea is to balance territories with population, so it would have that way:
- Each prov type has start and max population level
- Each race could afford to live in special prov type for some level (mean elf in mountains would live less likely than dwarfs)
- So each conquered non race specific type of prov lows the limit of pop in it
- Population limits upp by development level
- Pop killed I raids and it give raiding “blood money” per turn
- Pop gives personal income and other things just add steady or % to it
- Speed of pop growth is low and speeding up in high development provinces, but basic low means you’ll need to secure your population not to be massacred
It all gives variety things to agenda, to having garrisoned loyal militia, income, rebellions and other factor specifications


**what have the army
- Hero slot and lvl of its abilities
- Artifact slot
- Magic inserted in personal unit/army
- Number of units
- Experience of units

**What have hero
- Level
- Abilities
- Artifact slot

**What have a sovereign
- Hero avatar for the army (if heroes are killable or captured that’s the question how to be-) )
- Sovereign parameters (as an artifact slots as a sovereign signs of power, diplomatic values, prosperity value that could be counted as “bloodline” of birthright and used to upgrade all things-buildings besides of money to upgrade the dice probability)

**Unit types
We have now disproportion in unit parameters and types
We have:
- Infantry
- Archers
- Horseman
- Siege
- Naval

Infantry vary:
- Backbone race specific (standard soldiers of light, med, tough levels)
- special units (leaders, super-units from some things)
- irregulars (as i understand – hit&run tactic – so they have additional move after hit)
- auxillary&merc units that are awailiable in some sort ways, but not everytime race-specific
- garrison (can’t attack)

Archers vary:
- backbone
- special units
- auxillary&merc
- garrison

Horesman vary:
- backbone
- special
- auxillary&merc

Siege vary:
- backbone
- special
- auxillary&merc

Naval vary:
- backbone
- special
- auxillary&merc

The most disproportion in types is in the source what specific activity that unit could implement in battle field.
Archers – fire in distance so low in def
Soldiers – hold the line and very different in type
Irregulars – could hold the line but have some shoot (javelineers) tactics that could for example pin targets
Horseman – shock/charge, long run, sometimes shot so making running for them diabolic task if they could be “irregular horseman”
Siege – slow walking but the only for now things that could mess forts and if it is dwarf mountain forts… than only in close and defending ( they can’t take them by them own – defense is like 9 and attack is 7)

Some add-ons here
Irregulars could hide and ambush (become stealth to enemy in race-specific terrain)
Need special attack variation – so 1 to 3 close (slash by greataxes or greatswords), 1 to 2 in line (like long pikes), armor negates to crossbows (but lesser damage than bowsin higher grounds/forests because they need straight line),

Balancing of units need some basic aspects to know:
- specifications of country alignment (like evil most get more damage less def, neutral – balance, good – defense prevail)
- specification of country race (aiming in sort of army type like knights is good for plain big countries not for sea or elven, sea – more irregular and merc variation and elf bows)
- sort of economy – finance or magic most (agents and ets things, but here – the magic units, special abilities, healing or lifestealing and ets)
- sort of aggression – more buffs on speed, attack or defence, hp ets
- sort of basic race territory (movement, abilities, unit types)
- sort of country placement – so there closed neighbors doesn’t feel totally different (in some ways)

Parameters.
Need to see matrix


Asks
I have some free time to make something like birthrights “new age” version (love it but it was to fast to play).
Wish to look at (and to help with)
- Race specific matrix of units/territory types/resources
- Country specific matrix of aims, rivals, friends and ets
- Hero specification matrix
- Resource matrix
Or skype to talk about (mine: guardianru)