New war systems seem to be the current fad. I suppose since ships have finally been implemented and have brought about the pre-requisite storm of criticism and complaints ("fans are clingy, complaining dip-s who will never, ever be grateful for any concession you make, the moment you shut out their shrill, tremulous voices, the happier you'll be for it") all the idealists have now moved on to hoping for a war system that will make the game a million times better, evidently under the impression that all of the Divine's previous failures to meet our impossibly high standards were all just flukes and that this next improvement will be so jaw-droppingly good that it will become the WoW-killer everyone in the MMO market is always talking about while simultaneously transforming all of the twitchy morons who play conventional MMO's into mature, well-spoken RPers.

Cynicism aside, I have my own little pet system I'd like to see implemented for Achaean war, and now seems as good a time as any to unleash it on the forums to be devoured by the resident jackals (okay, so cynicism isn't completely aside, but it's taking a backseat to the actual idea now).

For starters, this system will be based on taking and holding territory in the real, actual game world, but all the conflict will probably take place in the wilderness where all the non-combatants will be left out of it. I'm kind of torn about this. On the one hand, I'd absolutely love to be some bright-eyed novice wandering through Delos when suddenly the local garrison is assaulted by Ashtani and I have to evacuate in a hurry. On the other hand, it'd get rather old if every time I swung by Vinci to get a tattoo I had to worry about being driven out by raiders because Delos is valuable real estate this week. I think it's worth the trade-off, but most players wouldn't, and the customer is always right and such, so let's put it in the wilderness.

Now then. Village control! The basis of this combat system is that every village has a fortress in it somewhere on its wilderness map representation, and that this fortress is controlled either by the locals (i.e. is neutral) or else is controlled by one of the six cities. How does one go about controlling a village? Well, you can either peacefully persuade them to join your cause by racking up respect, or else you can violently "persuade" them to join your cause by bashing down the fortress gate and killing everyone inside.

How does one go about doing these things?

First off, the peaceful method. This one I'm not too sure on, and I wouldn't be at all offended if it was suggested that it be culled from the plan entirely. Actually, I wouldn't be offended if you all tried to convince me that I'm a failure who'll never succeed in life, because I frankly don't care about the forums that much, so to rephrase, I would be perfectly willing to cut the peaceful method from the war system if it was my decision. The peaceful method basically entails bashing/questing for the town in question, preferably using existing mobs/quests, all of which would take place in the normal world. The more corpses you turn in/quests you complete, the more respect the village in question has for you. If your city is currently hostile towards another city (for example, Shallam and Mhaldor are always hostile to one another, even if they're not openly at war) then part of the respect you earn for your city goes towards negating the hostile cities respect instead. If you're hostile to multiple cities (for example, Shallam against Mhaldor and Hashan) then more of your respect will be leeched away to negate theirs. Your respect cannot go beneath zero. If ever you are in the lead and have X more respect than the city nearest you, the city will switch to your side.

Second off, the violent method. The objective of the violent method is to first destroy the gates of the enemy fortress, then invade the enemy fortress (which, like a bed, is a sub-room attached to an existing room) and kill all enemy denizens inside (a regent governor and a few guards). Once you've killed the enemy denizens and there are no adventurers inside other than the citizens of your own city you can begin claiming the fortress. After, maybe, five minutes, the fortress is claimed and a regent governor and his entourage depart from the nearest friendly fortress and begin heading towards the newly claimed fortress. Assuming they are not killed en route, then they will transfer the fortress and, thus, the village to the control of the city in question.

Now then, every fortress can produce certain war denizens. War denizens come in two flavors.

Flavor the first: Siege. These are used to attack fortresses. Different varieties cost more comms/gold and have different advantages, i.e. battering rams can only attack from the room the fortress is located in, ballistae can attack from one room away, catapults from two, trebuchets from three, or some such. Siege are reasonably sturdy but utterly helpless against adventurers and extremely slow. It's fully possible to ambush siege en route from where the fortress where they were created to the fortress they're attacking. The logical place to put siege you're not currently using to besiege someplace is within a friendly fortress close to your next target.

Flavor the second: Raiders. This to differentiate them from guards. They're much the same as guards (although potentially stronger or weaker depending on balance issues, the nuances of which I am not fully aware of), except a tad more aggressive. Their AI is set with the following priorities: First, attack raiders from a hostile city within range, second, attack citizens from a hostile city within range, third, attack siege from a hostile city within range. Raiders can also be assigned to a siege unit, in which case they will follow it around and leap to the defense of it should anyone or anything attack it. Defending raiders (meaning those not assigned to siege) can be posted anywhere within the village of the fortress they're purchased from, and can be set to either stand ground or else wander around the limits of the village. They also respond to calls for help from adventurers or raiders of the same city, much like guards. Raiders remain even after a fortress has been seized, and thus will have to be mopped up by either adventurers or raiders from the new city. Purchasing guards for the city also purchases the same number of equivalent raiders for said city, the raiders going to whichever fortress controls the part of the city the guards are posted in.

Now then, you'll notice that last sentence was rather loaded. So let's move on to grand strategy and start explaining it.

All villages are not created equal. Each city has one village that is loyal to it. Shallam has Jaru, Mhaldor has Blackrock, Ashtan has either New Thera or Petra (both would be cheating), and so on. Each loyal village gets one fortress which has a bit more health than normal when held by the city it's loyal to, and the raiders and siege are both a bit cheaper. On the other hand, when any other city controls the loyal village, the fortress is a bit weaker than normal, and raiders and siege are both a bit more expensive. Since the village in question is always very close to the city in question, this means it's more expensive to use the strategically located village as a staging area for an assault on the city proper. The cities themselves each get a grand total of three fortresses. These three are like the village fortresses with the difference that first, siege is no cheaper for the city they're loyal to (that way the city will retake the loyal village to use it as a staging point for future battles instead of abandoning it), second, they're much, much more durable than normal, and third, the penalties to cost and durability when held by the enemy are much, much greater.

Now, every city has some off-plane camp (personally I propose the plane where Gruul and the rest of the Proto-Trolls hang out when they're not harassing novices in Ceylon) which can only be accessed by citizens. Any citizen of a certain city rank (which can be set by the city leaders) is allowed to portal to the plane at any time and from any place, however it takes five or six seconds and will be interrupted if you're attacked by an adventurer or denizen in that time, so you can't use it to escape combat. This area is not only totally, completely safe from all other cities, as each city has its own isolated, self-contained camp, and it also holds one last fortress. In the extremely unlikely event that the three uber-hard targets in the city itself are taken, the exiled citizens of the defeated city can regroup off-plane and prepare an army to retake the now uber-soft targets in their old city. When I say uber-soft, I really do mean really, ridiculously, uber-soft, as in any army that can last longer than a minute can breach the walls, and the regent and his guards are weak enough to be killed by a pair of novices who don't know their boar tattoo from their elbow. Pixie Queen levels of strength. Capturing a city is nigh-unto impossible, and holding it is even harder.

What happens when one takes a village? Well, if you took it violently, all other cities immediately lose all the respect they've built up with the village in question, and yours is increased significantly, making it difficult to retake the village peacefully (assuming that makes it into the end system at all). Regardless of how it's seized, all fortresses except the three in your capital pay a regular tribute of essence/gold/comms/sirens to your city. These aren't deducted from the cities coffers if it's a fortress inside an enemy city, it just poofs from nowhere. Villages loyal to other cities pay more tribute to you than normal villages (or your own loyal villages), and fortresses inside enemy cities pay larger amounts of tribute (not equivalent to the difficulty of capturing/holding them, however, so that seizing an enemy city is really only worth it for the bragging rights). Villages that have been captured by a city will fly the flag of said city (i.e. "A flagpole is here, proudly flying the flag of Hashan"). Should you (somehow) manage to seize all three enemy fortresses within an enemy city, that city loses all of its city functions. You don't gain them, they just go away. No new citizens can be inducted via denizens (except in Ceylon), no new guards can be purchased, no taxes can be collected, no elections can be held, no city or house newsposts/favours can be made/given, nothing. All city ranks and positions remain static until at least one fortress is retaken. What you can still do is boot people from your city, manually induct new members in through other citizens, collect money via donations, and spend that money on raiders or siege from any fortresses you still hold, whether they're villages outside your city you've managed to hold onto or your off-plane camp.

Bullet points of what this system means:

-Battles will be for control of actual places in Sapience.
-For the most part, when something is taken you don't lose anything that can't be taken back. What you do lose, the enemy probably lost some of as well.
-Strategy, deciding which villages to attack and when, is important, as is tactics and teamwork, to keep siege protected/destroy siege before it can break down the gates of your fortress.
-Battles take place in the Wilderness, far away from the uninitiated.
-Battles take place organically, not in pre-set locations/at pre-set times hammered out OOC.
-Enemy cities are almost, but not quite, impossible to occupy.
-Even when completely defeated, the exiled citizens of a city aren't down for the count, and are very likely to be able to retake their city quickly and easily (so that's why Ashtan was only occupied for about twelve seconds when Darius captured it!).
-There is a hard-coded incentive to capture villages/cities, but it isn't significant enough to make or break your economy.

Yes please.

What, this is it? Twenty-four hours later and I've got two one-word agreements? No one can manage to find anything to discuss or whine about concerning the two-page monster I wrote up there?

It met all of the following requirements: Killing, tactics, sirens, and a war system. That's all I need to know.

Will this increase the credit sales?

War is always good for business, espically for the ones who sell the weapons ie artifacts

If there are upgrades to fortresses that are destroyed when the fortress is, and which cost credits, then it will indeed bring in more credit sales. Of course, that brings up the inevitable "We don't have that many credits, waaaaaaaaah!"ing, but that just means you have to be careful with where you place your upgrades. Do you put them on the front where they'll be most useful, or in your city where they'll be safest?

Not that that will stop the "credit waaaaaaaaah"ing, but I'll still be satisfied with the system.

Seems good

I like the difficulty involved with capturing a village, that you have to guard the replacement town officials or whatnot. That will help to make it not turn into a game of trading towns back and forth every other day (which would get boring quickly)

Perhaps after the town is captured there should be a standoff period, say a month, in which it can't be recaptured.

I think that a city should produce a limited number of these officials per year, so that cities don't try and capture every village in sight just because they have a larger number of fighters on at that time.

following post above>
You didn't specify what happens when the officials are killed en route to the place.
Is the siege a must for getting into the fortress? If they die are you SOL? Cus really, I can't see Tribal mauling a gate
How far off into the Wilderness will the fortresses be? Surely, when the fortress is under attack, you can't expect a group to form up in the city, run all the way to the wilderness, and hunt down this fortress? If Shallam took the Mhaldor fortress, that means Shallam has to run clear to Mhaldor's wilderness area to defend? I think there should be like some sort of portal room located in each city. Individual portals to each fortress. I don't mean you do something like touch portal32346 and poof you're there ready for glory. I mean you touch portal32346 and wait what, like 5 seconds? Then poof. You're in the portal room of the fortress. Portals only light up in your city if you have the fortress in control. wormholes could help, true, but you don't want one of those linked from your city to a fortress that your enemy can take over.
Dunno. I like the idea in general otherwise. Just random stuff I was curious about >_> That you might've mentioned and I missed in the reading.

How would you work intelligent rogue planning into your war model? Raiders wouldn't attack me, so I could walk in and take over the fortress...only I can't because I don't have a city...so now it is a fortress with no Governor?

I'll be blazingly honest - it was too long to finish reading.

Major question I have is simply because I haven't been involved in any combat in the wilderness. How do area effects work? Could teams kai choke anyone in the wilderness, or is it based on distance? Or is all the combat meant to be taken place inside the fortress (basically an exit from the wilderness to a fortress area split off from the rest of the main continent) after the gate is breached by siege?

For some reason I could still imagine hours-long occupation raids of the city fortresses to harass Cities with even more incentive to keep them hours long. I suppose if it's in the city fortress instead of the city streets, at least people won't be killed on login and such.

If I remember right, abilities that can target anyone in the same area are instead based on distance in the wilderness. I don't remember the exact distance though.

I have yet to realize why raiders feel they're allowed to do this, either.
You no longer need cause to kill someone if you raid? Just because you see them in the city you suddenly decided is yours for the pickin, you're allowed to kill them? I call b/s.
>_> Wait. That's off-topic isn't it? Uh... The fortresses should be free pk too! yup. Unlike cities. The logic of this game is uncanny sometimes..

^^^ it is based on distance. I remember Track at least used to be allowed to go clear across the wilderness. They put area restrictions all over the wilderness in the most random places it's not funny. Did you know some places in the wilderness are so screwed up you can stuff like puppetry, track, kaichoke, etc. on someone standing in Cyrene/Ashtan's subdivision? They should've left wildy alone

Actually, I would have no problem with this system being in the real world, because of cause people aren't going to be getting killed (hopefully) just because they happen to be wandering through the area where combat is going on. So I don't see the problem with having the combat occur on the normal plane. And really what's the worst that can happen, some newbie gets killed once. They get cause and can hire or whatever. Also they only lose like two minutes of experience.

It already is like this in raids, technically (cause and whatnot), but how often do you see raiders leaving people in the cities alone even if they do nothing to harm them? Most of the time they yell "leave or die", and if they don't leave, they assume they're partaking in defence and can be killed (which, by the way, is also false, technically. They cannot be attacked unless they attack first).

So your post is the way it should be, but reality is far far different.

Well that seems pretty clear, if you don't leave you die. So....if you don't want to be killed leave.
You are 'allowed' to kill people without cause, you just can be punished for it.

Still, even in everyone in the village is killed, assuming one of these events occur only once a day or less it won't effect people who are in the village, questing, bashing, RPing, or just standing thing. They can leave, and not die. or stay and maybe die.

Also note that attacking a village will be different then attacking a city because when a city is raided there are already quite a few people in it. Unlike in a village, which might have a couple of innocent characters in it at the time of the attack. In this case the 'defenders' are actually likely to arrive after the 'attackers', because the defenders will not know which village the attackers are attacking until the attackers are at the village. So the attackers will probably be focused on taking down the fortresses defenses, instead of killing random people in the village, until some defenders show up and attack them.

I don't like this, it feels inorganic, totally arbitrary. A major part of this war system was making everything feel natural, and saying "you can't attack that village because it's already been attacked this month" would break that feeling, on top of which a rapid counter-attack is a perfectly valid tactic.



I think this is a better way to do things, have the governor denizens take time to produce, this way if you really want you can save them up for a long time and blitzkrieg later on (assuming you can hold the territory, of course, keep in mind you don't get the spoils from these things every five minutes, more like every twenty-four hours or more). It also means that if cities went to spend their resources fighting over a single village, they can.




Apologies, you're right. The fortress reverts back to local control if there is no governor present, either because one is en route or because all the potential candidates were killed.



Until I see evidence that defending siege denizens is too impractical to be a reasonable method of attack, then siege is indeed a must.



They'll be located somewhere in the wilderness's representation of the village it controls.



Exactly! It bloody well should be nigh-unto impossible for Shallam to hold fortresses that are actually located in Mhaldor. Also, the distance between village/fortress and another lends itself to further strategy.



Okay, I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with this, but like I said, villages that are a long distance away from your city are supposed to be difficult to control.



Sometimes you have to take those risks in combat. Other times you may decide it's better to just run/prism there.






You have no siege. Another city would have to beat the gates down for you, in which case you could then attack the resident governor, but his guards will leap to his defense as soon as you attack. Also, this wasn't mentioned in the post, but it would make perfect sense for raiders to attack city enemies on sight, like guards.

Finally, to the post above (well, Irion's post, it was the post above when I started this), people getting caught in the crossfire of a raid is a major complaint. I'm hardly ever in whatever city my characters happen to actually belong to (when they have a city at all), so it's never been a problem for me, but I understand it's rather a point of irritation for some, and thus decided to win support from that crowd by drawing the battles away from populated areas. This isn't the war system exactly as I'd like to see it, because like I said, I'd prefer the battles take place in the real world to, because I like getting caught in the crossfire when I'm an uninvolved third party. It makes the world more immersive. But the system has to be designed for everyone, not just me (and you, or even the forums population in general).

hmm I see your point about it being about everyone. I happen to also like getting caught in the crossfire, even it just means that I run away, it makes life more interesting. I should have refined what I was saying I wasn't saying you could only have one governor denizen at a time, just that they take some period to come. Perhaps it should be a fairly random time for a new one to come, perhaps influenced by some in-game factor. (for example: offering denizens to a specific place, like for city guardians)

Should opposing cities be allowed to kill the governors before they even leave the city? If they are it could lead to more in city raiding. Which is what we are trying to get away from. Maybe the governors should be "kept" in the fortresses in the city. This way if a city stocks up a huge amount of them it is plausible that another city would raid and kill that cities governors. This would add some more strategy into the mix.



good point, I didn't take into account the limit on governors when I typed this, I was worried about engaging a constant state of warfare (which would get boring, not to mention frustrating to those trying to pass through the area)


How long would it take to get the governor the the town, that part of the whole operation sound very complicated, not to mention hard. Would the new governor leave before or after the fortress was taken over? If it's after then the attackers will essentially have to fight through the defense all over again because the old controllers of the fortress would have set up base there. This would take a long time. Better plan would be to have the new governor come first and then destroy the fortress. Or we could leave it totally up to the players, which one they want to do.

The battles will take place in the wilderness, making it moot.




I'm rethinking the whole governor thing, now. Initially I assumed it would be something automatic that would happen whenever a fortress was claimed, but now I'm thinking a governor should be like a siege unit, only more expensive than most, and also with an extremely long wait between purchases, so that no matter how wealthy you are it will still take quite a while to get a lot of them. Just like siege, they can be sent to attack a fortress, but instead of being sent to attack the gate, they'll be sent to claim it for one side or another instead. Unlike siege, raider AI will target governors before ANY other unit.

EDIT: Also, governors would move pretty quick and be reasonably tough, so ambushing them en route to the fortress would stack the odds to the governor's side.

I'm not sure that the wilderness map can support items/denizens. From my understanding this has always been some sort of issue and among other things - denizens in a wilderness map tend to disappear after a while. However I do agree that if a war system was implemented that it take place in the wilderness map. Not so much to limit collateral damage in a war but to give necessary scale and size to the system. Additionally, factors like terrain and logistics should come into play. And I believe it was Tribal, who correctly noted that there's also some weird area divisions in the wilderness map. Would Tecton or Maya be able to provide clarification on this?

I don't really see the problem with having this take place on the 'real' map. If a city only gets a governor every so often then they won't interrupt the flow of people very much. I can't really see people complaining about it. But I don't really know how much people complain here. Especially if the wilderness won't work with denizens then we should use the real (Achaean) world.

I don't remember the details very well at all, but I think wilderness/subdivision are dynamically generated, and not static like other rooms. So unless players stay in the area, the items/denizens will either disappear or move to a different room. If there's a way to work around that, I also agree with having a war system in the wilderness.

In theory, maybe you could give the siege/governor denizens the same sort of "DON'T MOVE ON ME" flag that keeps wilderness rooms from shifting around on players? Or then again, maybe not. I have no idea how the underlying coding of that works.

Unfortunately that work around isn't likely to happen because of the amount of time and work for the coders (unless for whatever reason it's really easy, which it doesn't seem to be). Think about it the whole point of dynamically generated rooms is they aren't taking up space when no one is in them. To work around this seems pretty much like re-coding the wilderness. So....if we want this to happen -ever- we should have it take place on the continent, as this will be easier to implement.

Unless of course I'm wrong and the work around is easy

Attached to every adventurer is a flag that says to the wilderness "don't poof while I'm here." Now, there is a good deal of difference between the code between an adventurer and a denizen, obviously, but it may just be that the fix is as simple as copy-pasting the anti-poofing script into a denizens code. I doubt it, but it could be. If not...Well, then, a massive chunk of the appeal of this system just went out the window. People complain about being caught in the crossfire all the time. Sure, some of us are interested in the conflict and like to see signs of it even if we have to run away in a panic, but others just want mudsex to be left alone, and that's hard to do if places which are, by design, population centers are regularly under attack. Sure, only one or the other will be under attack at a time, but you can bet that at least once every (RL) day or two there is going to be someone going to blows over one village or another.

Which pretty much leaves us where we are now. I think we need some input from other people. Is there anyway to talk with the larger non-forum Achaean community? Like have a vote or something?

Let's be honest with ourselves, this isn't going to happen. As the thread title suggested, this was made primarily for purposes of wishful thinking. Besides which, I doubt the Divine would bother asking Achaeans at large before implementing a change.

The whole "items disappearing in the wilderness" issue has been solved, I think. Been solved for a few RL years now. Lemme see if I can dig up the announce.


I would assume this also applies to denizens.

Oh, well then in that case it sounds like it should could work.



The Divine really don't talk to people before a major change? (although on the forums most people's thoughts don't seems terribly useful) That sounds like a poor business model, you should always try to please the customers.

Or are you just saying they don't have people vote on changes at large, they just talk to a few select members?



Actually, I wasn't thinking about the divine asking people; I was thinking about us asking people for input.

The idea is well thought-out mechanically. I like the general idea of capturing territory using the wilderness and I like your consequences of losing territory.

That said, it feels somewhat tacked on. It's more organic than most with the lack of timed and scheduled battles (good job there), but it has some oddities as well. It seems sort of odd that cities would suddenly all have some defined number of fortresses, which, should they be lost, lose the city. That bit about having a new area off-plane that people would go to as a staging ground feels REALLY tacked on (WHY are they going to this plane and how? Why does this plane exist for this incredibly specific purpose?). Also, having the fortresses in the wilderness and not in the game creates some logical problems. The wilderness is the same place as the non-wilderness, it's sort of just a different perspective on the land. It doesn't really make sense that a fortress could be in the wilderness, but not seen in the corresponding place in the actual world.

In other words, I like the overall idea, I just think it could use some additional thought on better integration into the game.

I agree with your thoughts. That would be the problem with adding a war system to the game. How to add it without making it seemed 'tacked on'.

Maybe the cites shouldn't get these fortresses, because there really isn't a reason why they need them We don't actually want Shallam or Eleusis to be taken over any more than they can be taken over now. So that leaves the town's fortresses to figure out how to work into the picture. Maybe there could be a slow buildup of towns asking cities for more protection in the game. The agreement would be that the governor (from the city) would command a military presence to defend the town and in return the towns give the cites some commodities or gold. Fortresses could be constructed gradually. Eventually all the towns would have governors and then the war system could be unveiled. So now all we need is a reason the towns feel they need protection.

Actually, I do want cities to be taken over. Or rather, I want it to be possible, but extremely difficult. Why would an enemy army seize Jaru but then stop and twiddle their thumbs at the gates of Shallam, waiting for a counter-attack?

Also, most villages are bashed with regularity. A military presence to protect them would make perfect sense. On the other hand, most villages are bashed with regularity and having a bunch of raiders on hand to stop that would be rather a buzzkill. True, it makes little sense for there to be raiders guarding the wilderness version of town and normal denizens up in the "real" version...But again, battles taking place in the wilderness is a big plus to this plan. Maybe there could be some environmental emotes that get triggered in the "real" area whenever the fortress in that area has been hit by siege recently?

As for where the new plane came from...Same place as Nishnatoba? The gods just opened up a portal there because they thought one was necessary?

This probably is a stupid question to ask, but is the wilderness like a copy of the 'real' map or something is it just under laying the map? I've never been there, could you explain it to this newbie?

What would happen if a city was taken over? It is unlikely that the enemies would hold it long enough to get a 'delivery' of goods from the city (if the cities just acted like villages). Maybe is should really be a raid, as in the successful attack of the city allows the raiders to gain a portion of that cities commodities and/or gold (probably not since the gold is in the bank)? That way there would be no point in just camping out in a city after it was destroyed. You would need to use at least one (perhaps three) governors, or they could be special denizens "robbers" or something) to carry out this raid. At which point they would disappear from the game. Otherwise taking over a cities fortress would be relatively pointless (actually it would be the same as raids today) . This would afford the defenders with multiple strategies, they could kill the governor/robbers or just drive off the players to defend.

Agreed. That was one of the things I was trying to say I very much liked about the system. It makes it difficult to take a city and essentially impossible to hold one for too long a period of time (which would essentially be griefing). This part of the idea is really good.


I don't have any particular problem with having this stuff in the wilderness, I just think that it should SOMEHOW exist in the normal world too. Perhaps place the fortresses in the normal world, but they simply can't be interacted with outside of the wilderness to solve that problem.

Nishnatoba has a history, an explanation, and a purpose. It is also large and houses all of the icons. This mysterious new plane that people suddenly get the ability to go to when their city is taken feels very, very odd. You get to Nishnatoba by touching the icons, the icons transport you. You don't just suddenly get the ability to transport yourself there under some rather arbitrary circumstances.

Like I said, I like the system and I think that it's well-thought-out, I just think that it feels very inorganic. It feels like someone thought "hrm, we need a place for people to regroup...what the hell, let's just make a little plane they can go to!" It also seems odd that every city would suddenly have the same number of cookie cutter fortresses capable of producing roughly the same units. Why wouldn't the more militant cities just build MORE of these fortresses? I think that you could potentially ANSWER these questions in some way. For instance, if these fortresses were FOUND somehow and were tied into something in the mythos, you'd have immersion and you'd have an answer to these questions. Perhaps the fortresses actually need certain denizens that are capable of attuning them to your side or some such (rather than simply having denizens which come in and take over the fortress, why wouldn't players just be able to do that?).

What I'm trying to say is that I think there is a better way to integrate this without substantially changing the whole idea. As for the plane bit, I think changing that to just a secure room inside a city would be less jarring. Cities might have something resembling a panic room for this very purpose. Magically locked doors, unprismable, unbrazierable, essentially a bed. But put it INSIDE THE CITY rather than on another plane. Also, the idea of launching a counter-attack from within the city just sounds more fun.

@Irion: The wilderness is just a scaled version of the normal map. Rooms on the normal map vary in size quite substantially and the wilderness map is uniform.

@Tael Thanks

Would it be possible that the fortress could be built up kind of like an arena? So the city decides to buy the ability to train some type of siege engine, just like they would buy the ability to host certain games in the arena. Fortresses could have a maximum number of supported types of things, so the city would have to pick and choose which ones they wanted. This could lead to some variation in the capabilities of a city. One might have super-powerful siege machines, while another has a stronger defensive denizens, or possibly high governor growth rates. As for how the cities would actually get the fortresses I'm at a loss.

It would be cool if there we manifestations of the wilderness fortresses in the city, they could change appearance to show the state of the battle or something.

Is it really necessary to have a safe room? Since the defenders won't be able to travel from inside the city to the wilderness there is no reason why they can't just regroup in the city. It's not as if the attackers have enough power to take down a fortress and raid a city at the same time (if they do the defenders have no chance, no matter how much 'regrouping' they do).

Still working on a response to Tael, but @Irion: They need a place to purchase siege weapons with which to retake their fortresses.

Yes please. Especially the part about using quests to win over villages peacefully, which will be lovely even by itself.

Reading through the post now, but first things first. Ashen, your first post, the bit about fans, is a Yhatzee quote. Do I get a credit?

Yeah, you're the first person to notice and say as much. The whole first paragraph was meant to be read in an English accent without stopping for breath (go ahead, read it again like that, it does sounds a bit like him, doesn't it?), but that bit was actually a direct quote, not just an imitation of the style.