Warfare

Give peace a chance

from Stardock Forums
Ok in the latest blurb you mentioned that warfare is just a subset of diplomacy. Diplomacy is the core of the game - you build your little province - expand a little to a certain limit peacefully then go from there. I was wondering if there will be penalties for going to war, like taxes skyrocketing, unrest in your home province which grows as the war keeps going on, things like that. I think that there almost has to be or war becomes an attractive option - why talk when you can just invade and solve your problems that way. Other players could affect this with trade embargos...if you attack x a, b , c refuse to trade with you and perhaps start sending food and relief to the invadee. Perhaps there could be a reward for helping invadees - a subtle one of course. There should be penalties for a warlike policy - I mean here you dont just invade some one constantly - but you are rapidly growing due to always being at war.
I am sure that the Dev's will work this out if they haven't addressed this already. I am very interested in this game - and would hate to see it become just another war game. Let's see people use their brains and find other ways around problems. please feel free to add your opinions -
society
11,262 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Also what is pre-medieval? is it Feudal? If so then the Empires they talk about make sense. Also - obviously - this a "Guild" concept. But in the case of Society guilds/empires make more sense to me than in RPG's. I think that there could be a lot of interchange here - especially if you are a "border" province(s) on a large empire. Of course war will be a threat as Empires collide, but oppurtunities will arise for the sly player to play off 1 empire vs another...from trading of resources to actually defecting or being a "spy" - feeding info to the "rival" Empire. The more I think about this concept the more I love it.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

Given that we can't be online 24/7, I think that's why by and large players will certainly 'give peace a chance'. You might be very powerful but someone could still hurt your empire while you're away. I should also expect that war will be quite expensive in terms of your resources, and your "defense budget" is just going to get more and more bloated as you make enemies and invade new provinces. As a result, you risk becoming weak in technology and overall advancement by putting too much of your resources into war.

I suspect that the larger a player's empire is, the more territory they will have to protect, and that this will actually mean a more bloated military budget over time. If they make enemies, they have more to lose than a player who owns 4 provinces. Yes yes of course the 4-province player could lose 1/4th of their provinces in one invasion, but is that actually more of a time investment than any one province of a large player? Not necessarily. They might spend hours babying every province but then so might a player with a large empire.

Now let's say a powerful player does take that fourth province from them. The small empire now is protected from attack because it only has three provinces, while the large empire has many many provinces that are open to attack on any given day. Can they protect them all? Do they have enough of a technological lead or military surplus to manage this? That's all a matter of balancing and playtesting, but tactically the small empire has a tremendous advantage.

Rather than large empires bullying everybody, I think large empires may be the ones that are most needing of alliances and strong trade ties. Without allies they find themselves more at the mercy of small empires frittering away at their bloated borders, plundering the accumulated riches and technology perhaps. Meanwhile they have very little to nothing to gain from warfare with the small empires. Indeed, it may be in their best interests to befriend their little neighbors so that being friends is more beneficial than being enemies.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
well... however much fun it is to have a peaceful diplomatic safe community... I'm human... therefore I'm competitive and need war otherwise a game loses it's point... So... I definitely need lots of opportunity to fight and take over stuff and terrorize little kingdoms and build huge plexes... or be one of those little guys trying to stand my own against the attacks of those annoying bullying empires... then again... that's what rwk's for... eh?

Still... I love the idea of unrest and penalties due to length of war... whether caused by taxation, or tedium of war, or lacking resources in other areas, or rapage of your women and children... =\ (and cattle :o ), or whatever else... It not only simulates real life effects (lmao... anti-Iraq protests in front of your castles... ) ... It is also a great solution against players playing for overly long... for those people who didn't like the idea of penalties for those players... well... this is a great penalty... no player will be able to wage war on you for hours as his army will lose the will to fight and his economy might get a bit screwed...

So there you go... I believe that's an awesome idea... and I trust Stardock to figure out something balanced to satisfy most players...

p.s. Oh... and I hope all you great Stardock blokes have seen the Spore gameplay video... wow... like really... WOW! :O ... I of course expect you to surpass all that in every imaginable way possible... but still... that made quite an impression on me...
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
How about adding an actual existing supply units so that supplying an army has a new dimension to it. This way you maybe smaller but able to repel an attack because your forces can ambush these supply carts, starving the enemy into a retreat. Also the farther your army goes the farther the carts must travel and therefore the more carts you need to maintain that same army for greater distances (assuming that provinces you subjugated aren't prepared to supply food for your army) . Also if those annoying siege occur they may have to retreat because they don't have enough food for a prolonged invasion. Something to counter this for a large army is to raid farms for their food and such (and probably anger a few farmers). Weather could play a factor could determine if large armies fighting ablility (Snow would really hinder an invasion).

It be cool if you could surrender to a large force and simply become a part of that empire as a viceroy with the conqueror deciding whether or not you can maintain an army and how much food and other resources he requires from you. The obvious advantage would be that you avoid destruction and the conqueror can utilize some of the technologies from the surrendered and the infrastructure is maintained to allow you to use it as a base to attack another province and such.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I think supply lines are an excellent idea - and I also think - at least in the case of them any country should be able to sent anonymous raiders to loot the supply line - thus causing the invaders to have to put part of their military guarding them. The only way that the owner of the supply line would lear who was the attacker is if the attacker was repelled.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Society will be better than Spore in some ways, and less in others. You won't get UFOs and terrorize the galaxy and you probably won't get tanks, nor will you create a creature from scratch.. what we ought to expect is a much more in-depth look at the society, their infrastructure (I mean buildings), culture, etc. Spore will basically just breeze through this Feudal-era stuff on its way to giving you a UFO and a universal sandbox, it won't be even near as in-depth as Society could be.

Plus, Society's online. Spore's single-player with the content of other players added. That's just different. In other words they're just different, totally.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

   If Socians live for three months (aging about a year per day?) then the typical citizen would spend two weeks as a kid, followed by maybe five weeks during which they would be most fit to be soldiers. Like all other citizens, soldiers grow old, retire, and disappear from the army. New soldiers must be recruited all the time, and trained (meaning they're not available for other stuff). Constant investments are needed just to maintain skill levels and so on. Simply working these dynamics of age and the life cycle into the structure of the game could greatly increase the costs of large standing armies? Sending armies into the field should require LARGE supply costs; "foraging" off the land sounds good, but only the most primitive armies actually can live this way for long campaigns. These costs could be not only direct costs of materials and money (wages for soldiers) being consumed, but also production foregone? Defensive military can "work around the house" but not an army on the march....


 
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Supply Lines should be an feature in my opinion built upon provinces whereas adjacent province could be suspectible to convoy raid without losing the entire province to an opposing empire but reduce the effectiveness and effciency of your soldiers, especially it should be capable of breaking down alltogether under intensive attacks, which would be maintained however by the amount of soldiers you have in that specific provine.
Supply Lines should be from your Capital Province towards whereever your soldiers are and from there they're vulnerable to major province invasions and raids or sea supply raids.

Perhaps what should be worked upon is an system of Conscription and Standing Army. Whereas your Society has an small, meager Standing Army consisting of professional soldiers with at your league the top-grade technology. From here on they can operate as defense/offensive/raid, ecetera.
They are not your elite however they can stand and gain grasp more battle experience than your Conscripts, furthermore fight more ferociously and standup agains't numerically superior opposition.
Conscripts are your peoples pulled away from your Societie's farms, shops, schools, ecetera and drawn into barracks and mildly trained. Society should have an slider system to determine whether how much training and equipment you put into your military for conscripts for those players that don't want an expensive large Professional Army but however want very armored and armed, especially large amounts of Conscripts to defeat opponents smaller or of an equal but perhaps technologically inferior.

But an really awesome system that should be implemented for all players, all Socieities is an large list of military skills and professiencies.
The idea is in your military screen their is two lists of abilities your population, ethnicly or something inherited,training wise or geographically, that gives soldiers unique or common techniques and abilities that increase their stats, capacity, ecetera.

Skills - This is an system of constant upkeep whether you're online or not and gained from wars and good, kept Standing Armies or an basis of yours.
Skills in this sense are those that improve and give your soldiers good and alienating traits. Before I go onto possible Skills, the Standing Army can only ulitize all or most skill at once and so much more than Conscripts that can only minimally use them in battle.
What Skills. Skills allow Soldiers to furthermore effectively use heavier armor or weaponry. An category of weapons such as stabbing, slashing, piercing or blunting.
Unlike Proficiences, Standing Army won't be using so many Skills and be capable all-at-once. However these Skills reach into Pioneering, Convential and Unconvential Warfare as well Psychological.
Proficences - This is an system of inheritency and fighting, also various other traits and Societie life gained abilities. This is an system where most players won't have the same trait as in my imagination there would be hundreds that come from so many different things from Society.
For example.
Mountaineering would be an trait earned and born with all of your X Societie's citizens and constantly aid your soldiers with maneuvering and operating in mountainish provinces and areas. Farming and Foraging, camping and hunting, fighting would be boosted alot in those areas.
Many other possible Proficiences could be obtained like, Mining, Herbalism, Foraging, Farm Machetting (can't think of an name, would boost cutting weapons and farming), Swamp pioneering and farming, ecetera. Many players would be so much more distinct with an system as this.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
perhaps mercenaries could be added in, also. Keeping in mind that after the end of a war surplus soldiers will be around. If you have just lost all but your core areas the large army you had when you were a much larger kingdom will be surplus now. I am playing Knights Honor currently and these "suplus" troops show up as avaailable mercenary units. I think this could be a good way to help out players who are expanding or players who are new to the game and want some experienced soldiers to be at the core of their army. just a thought.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Supply lines in many conflict stretch as far as the next town, village, etc. anything that can be a source of supply. The only war where the supply lines were very long and easy to raid were the germans supply lines during WWII because of the soviet "scorched earth" tactic consisting in burning every town, village, etc. near the front line to force the enemy to make long, high cost, inefficient and easy to raid supply lines.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Fistly supplys should be from the nearest source of supplys, not the capital. Its just logical.

Mercanaries should not be "included" in the game, IMO its far more fun for people to ask another player to wipe out empire X rather than some AI troops.