WAR- We all want something better

Jinsun

So occasionally, the war system gets brought up on forums, and usually in the rants section. After seeing numerous discussions of what is wrong with the system, why people don't want to go to an open war, and what people think would improve the system, I think it's time that we get the ball rolling on dialogue of what things could improve the system. I'll get us started with some problems that I've noted along with a few ideas, and solutions that I think can help. Please keep in mind that some of these are large scale or big theme ideas (at least on my end), that I don't have a realistic expectation of immediate implementation or even planning. So here we go.

Perceived problems:

       No reward for "winning"

       Open pk and the resulting ganks and hurt feelings

       Undesirable resolution (i.e. two high ranking players simply agreeing on something to end things).

       Nothing for non, or less PK oriented members to enjoy in the system. 

Ideas:

Open pk- there is some headbutting that I've seen between "It's logical" or "It's just death, so what." to "I want to be in the military, but don't want to be open to ganking." Here's the solution that I've come up with that kind of ties in: We'd keep open pk, but make it extremely difficult if not impossible to get into a city during a war. This will be due to "strongholds" or "forts" near any city. Essentially, once the war begins, the cities have say a month or two to get funds together and fortify. This includes lending suppplies to the effort, making strategic decisions and stationing mercenary guards at points in the fort. The fort is essentially where the early war waging takes place. Until you get through the fort to the city. This should be -extremely- hard (think killing a guardian hard).

More to do than just pk- During war, comm markets should be entirely closed within the city so that they cannot fulfill normal things without supply lines. Each month during the war at different times, supply caravans and possibly ships will be en route along the highway to each city. Each city can either defend, protect, or attempt to rob (mechanically somehow), kill, or bribe the caravan guards. I think it would also be really cool to have naval supply lines, but that is hard for cities like Eleusis. Still see room for some workaround there. Essentially, if you don't get supplies through, you can't reinforce defenses, and you'll eventually buckle or want to sign a treaty. 

Even more to do than just pk!- Siege equipment! Part of getting through the fortifications should be to have to break them down with some difficult planning, work, and time. Essentially, people will have to build the equipment (maybe from military ranks), then use it to break down barriers into the fortification (while killing guards, too,YAY). If, and only if, they get through the fort, they can enter the city for a final battle royale. 

Nothing to win: A warchest. Each city can't just poor money into the war. They have to funnel it through the war chest. We put a time limit on how long the funds must be in before you can build fortifications or hire guards from them, say a month or two. That way, whatever you deposited last month to get a head, will be lost this month if you are beat. Also, would need a deposit cap.

More to win: Strategic locations. I think being able to control certain harbours or village points for a certain amount of time would be a -very- desirable goal. It creates complications to other things like ship trades or other things, but I'm sure it could be planned out.

Obviously, it's not an entirely complete idea, but I really think it gives us something more to look forward to than normal war, and I would love to see something like it to enhance combat here. Please feel free to give feedback or ideas.

Aodfionn

One of the things I've always though would be cool for the war system - purely in theory - would be to allow a short period (like a week) of city occupation, with insurgency vs invaders/puppet government as like a 'double or nothing' kind of scenario for the loser of the initial conquest.

Tael

I think it bears considering that what we have right now isn't really war. Raiding isn't a somewhat impoverished system for warfare so much as it is terrorism - a small group of elite people go into a city (remember that cities have very large non-player, non-denizen populations, as seen in room descriptions) and cause trouble. Hell, the main mechanic is planting a bomb. And the people responding are basically an elite counterterrorism team (even going so far as to coopt the local watch to help them sometimes). If a warfare system were ever put in place, it would make very little sense for it to be based on adventurer-scale conflicts, except in support for larger conflicts (interrupting supplies, placing troops, scouting, etc.).

To make any sense, warfare would have to happen in some sort of abstraction with players commanding or influencing armies, not being the army. The best proposals I've seen have involved a simple Risk-like game (or other simple resource-allocation minigame) played by city officials and interacted with by citizens (so citizens help gather supplies, interrupt enemy supplies, scout enemy army placements, take or destroy strategic locations, steal enemy intelligence, disrupt the enemy city by raiding with the current system, etc.). Think something like Natural Selection if you've ever played it - a commander is playing a sort of strategy game while everyone else is helping make that strategy happen by playing a different "game" (in this case, doing normal Achaea things). In terms of gameplay, I think something like that could actually be very compelling.

The rewards/penalties could then be tailoured to those sub-objectives. Maybe a particular tower decreases a city's access to certain types of commodity mines for instance (this would be especially interesting as a way to incentivise cities to develop differentiated economies - say Hashan is fairly unlikely to lose the objective that modulates iron, giving Hashani a reason to invest in iron beyond other resources/other cities). Maybe a certain objective increases the cost of guards or upkeep costs for city improvements. Maybe one makes sanctioning take one fewer raider or charging tanks slightly easier (and maybe that's one of the objectives tailoured to be easier for a smaller city to hold onto). Especially interesting is the possibility of cross-playstyle rewards - if your city has a lot of strong, committed bashers, but not much in the way of combatants, a bashing-based objective that affords some group-PK-related bonuses would actually be a nice way of helping to level the playing field a little bit and give people a chance to participate in activities that the existing balance of power normally makes less interesting.

You can pretty easily build in a lot of ways for different class/playstyles to contribute too. It's not hard to imagine ways for bashers or fighters to participate, but it's also not hard to figure out how others could too. Commodity or other supply systems are an obvious choice (including sea routes and trading). Who controls which strategic locations shouldn't automatically update unless it's your own faction gaining or losing a foothold - for other factions, people can go SCOUT the locations, which updates the listing. And perhaps there's a room in each city for serpents (or anyone else who can be sneaky enough) to break into to get hold of "intel" that lays out all the current holdings of that city and updates the listing accordingly. There are a lot of possibilities. It could be made a lot more interesting and a lot more varied than, say, landmarking or shrine conflict.

But there is one massive, massive problem. If the rewards/losses are significant, then the fact that factions are inherently unbalanced becomes a huge issue. If they aren't, the whole thing is destined to feel pointless. The only real solution would be giving cities a sort of "handicap" via placements of objectives and inherent advantages (perhaps some of Cyrene's assets are very easy for them to defend for instance), but that would take a lot of fairly careful balancing and likely a lot of post-implementation tuning to get right.

As for actual city warfare where someone can wholesale "capture" a city or something like that, beyond what you can do by raiding or a few other more circumscribed options like the above, I think that's actually a very bad idea. The notion of "siege engines" and the like sounds neat, but I just don't think there's a way of doing it that would actually be satisfying for everyone, especially with the inherent imbalance of the factions. There is just no good way to make an omnipresent, mechanical potential for capturing or sacking a city fun. To the extent that it should ever be possible (and I think there is such an extent), such things would almost certainly work best as an admin-supported event (perhaps one initiated by normal player initiative, but with any larger consequences managed by hand by admin).

So TL;DR: Conflict system good - probably hard to design, but lots of possibility to get people involved and add depth to the game. Actual "city warfare" system bad.

Aktillum

These are great ideas, Jurixe. I've long been saying that Achaea needs siege warfare mechanics, and your idea of fortresses around cities that must be conquered before entering a city is icing on the cake. The warchest is also a solid idea. I hope these are seriously considered for implementation, the war system is currently severely lacking and these are some of the best suggestions I've seen to date.

Selira

Didn't Achaea used to have a war system similar to what @Tael is describing, ages and ages ago, or am I just hallucinating? I remember reading interesting things about army movements and checkpoints and so on.

Tael

Selira said:

Didn't Achaea used to have a war system similar to what @Tael is describing, ages and ages ago, or am I just hallucinating? I remember reading interesting things about army movements and checkpoints and so on.

It did - but it involved cities actually being able to meaninginfully claim arbitrary territory. Which I think it was pretty universally agreed was a terrible idea in practice.

What I meant (and what the ideas of others I was refering to were about) was more "tucked-away" than that - a system with clear, discrete loci for conflict and ownership of particular strategic locations (that didn't have other significant gameplay functions - no one owning and controlling access to popular bashing grounds for instance (or at most only one or two that could be claimed like this)). Things like the ability to claim arbitrary land or actually "siege" cities or capture them or sack them are mostly bad ideas - they're conceptually compelling, but the gameplay implications are really ugly. A good system for city conflict is one that people can participate in many different ways and where people who don't participate don't feel like it's ruining what they want to do (a problem with the old land-claiming system, but not really a problem with a system where cities simply lose out on smallish bonuses when they don't control certain points).

The "Risk" element I'm talking about might best be thought of like this:

1. Guards and fortifications managed for city-controlled strategic points. So actually something very similar to current guard-placement systems, but only in circumscribed areas. There might be one or two areas with existing purposes (it would be kind of neat if, for instance, Dun Fortress or Moghedu were made controllable strategic locations (imagine Mhaldor only allowing Mhaldorians to hunt in Dun or Cyrenians disallowing anyone to hunt in Moghedu), but the vast majority of bashing grounds were left as-is (this is a little less punishing than it used to be now that mobs to hunt are in such greater supply)), but mostly these should only be guards and fortifications you run into if you are purposefully participating in this system.
2. Perhaps guards and fortifications exert "pressure" on adjacent strategic points a la culture or religion in Civ games. This has two benefits: (a) it makes the job of those controlling what is essentially glorified guard placement more strategically interesting and (b) it can be used to normalise ownership of strategic points (different rates of pressure between points can be designed to systematically favour a more-even division for instance, or used to help counteract the city imbalances, or to create clear "progressions" for encroachment (making it very hard to take points that are not adjacent to points you already control)).
3. It could even be used as a way to allow for actual city sieges. I still think once such a siege begins, it should be handled as an event by admin, by hand, but as a way to systematise initiating them, it could work nicely - just make the "pressure" a city itself exerts very high, so a pretty monumental effort has to be untertaken to lead to a "siege". And when one happens and the admin want to make them less frequent, they can just tune up that "pressure" and make it even harder.

Aktillum

Selira said:

Didn't Achaea used to have a war system similar to what @Tael is describing, ages and ages ago, or am I just hallucinating? I remember reading interesting things about army movements and checkpoints and so on.

Those never came to fruition. The war system has long been teased with plans for expansion, with hints at territory capture and guards playing a larger role and etcetera, but the most thats happened is guard tweaks and more guard tweaks. Achaea staff has a million things on their agenda and sitting down and ironing out a truly concrete and immersive war system has never been a priority, sadly.

Tael has points in his post that I both agree and disagree with. He's absolutely right in saying that currently, raiding is little more than text-based CounterStrike, with the terrorist team setting up the bomb and the counter-terrorist team trying to dismantle it. Its fun occasionally, but even I get bored of Achaea's raid mechanics, and group PvP is one of the things I love most about Achaea.

I must disagree with Tael on his idea giving handicaps to inherently disadvantaged cities. Even in the interest of leveling the playing field, I simply can't agree with handicaps for a disadvantaged team, no matter how finely tuned and tweaked they are. For a truly immersive roleplaying environment, a cities strength needs to be directly correlated to the strength of its citizens. I don't want to spend a lot of effort talking about this though, there are other more important things that can be addressed.

I don't understand why siege warfare would be a "very bad idea", especially since you support your position by saying not everyone would enjoy it, and it would lend to the imbalanced factions. Not everyone needs to enjoy a mechanic for it to be a good mechanic, and I think you're posting from the point of view that it wouldn't be fun because you feel like your own organization would be on the receiving end of the sacking, and losing isn't fun, not necessarily siege mechanics. Certainly, siege mechanics would be fun if you were on the winning side, right? And I believe therein lies the problem with your post - you're in favour of handicaps and a "fair" environment where losers don't have to feel bad. Apologies if I'm way off base, feel free to correct my thoughts.

Moving on, I actually don't see many incompatibilities between Tael and Jurixe's ideas, both certainly have merits, and the best of both could be drawn from to create something certainly infinitely better than what we currently have.

Edit: To clarify, I'm not implying you're a "sore-loser" type, Tael, or that you don't enjoy Achaea when you're not winning. I'm saying that the feeling I got from your post was that siege warfare is a "bad idea" because it lends to the "might makes right, big city dominates little city" aspect of Achaea. I think if yours and Jurixe's ideas were combined, it would be great if siege warfare was the end result of the Risk style gameplay you mentioned, where the siege sacking of a city was the final step, and entirely controlled by players, after all the little mini-games you described. This would please everyone, I feel, since non-PKers could participate in the minigames, and the PKers could participate in the sackings.

Arditi

I agree that noncombatants need something to do. Armies march on their stomachs and all of warfare is logistics.

However, hardcoding in a system is going to lead to gaming it. See the previous "getting sparks from Jeramun, meaning that if you constantly kill Jeramun, nobody else can get tanks" system. Furthermore, if you need a functioning war system to motivate noncombatants to do something, there's something wrong with the city.

Having leaders that are willing to negotiate an acceptable end is preferable, simply because it allows for an ending that both parties can agree on. For instance, nobody in their right mind is going to say "most essence raised" against Eleusis because lol @Penwize, Mhaldor wouldn't say "most enemy soldier deaths" because they're all soldiers, and nobody is going to say "best poem" against @Scarlatti's Order. There's acceptable compromises somewhere and it's up to leaders to work them out.

Tael

To add one more note about actual full-scale city sieges and why I think they shouldn't be implemented mechanically: a full-scale city siege should be a big, rare, special event. Each one should end up in the history books. If Targossas is going to occupy Eleusis, that shouldn't be a normal, unremarkable mechanical thing that could happen at any time, it should be a big, special event with both sides having special things to do, with surprising developments and twists and turns, with Eleusians performing rituals to impel nature to drive away the invaders and Targossans feeding holy cleansing fires. I want to see ents as siege engines clashing with the gleaming armies of the Dawnspear, not players spending comms on catapults and watching numbers go down until a message pops up that says "You win!". I want to see negotiations and lasting changes to the balance of power, not "warchests" changing hands.

Admin-run events are capable of making those sorts of things interesting and unique and fun in a way that systematised siege/warfare systems largely cannot.

And that sort of actual siege warfare directly on cities should be rare enough to handle each case by hand anyway. Any more frequent and it becomes more annoying for people who aren't interested in it and it becomes more boring for people who are.

Aktillum

@Tael I think you interpreted Jurixe's idea as cities being able to launch siege warfare at the drop of a hat, when she actually said it would be the final step, after city strongholds and forts were broken through. This would make city raids and siege warfare the end goal of long-fought campaigns, not an every day or every week occurrence. As I said above, certainly much of your Risk-style gameplay elements could be combined with Jurixe's ideas, so that city sieges were still a special event that cities worked hard to initiate.

Jurixe

@Aktillum: I am quoted a lot in this thread but I think you mean @Jinsun, not me!

Tael

Aktillum said:

I don't understand why siege warfare would be a "very bad idea", especially since you support your position by saying not everyone would enjoy it, and it would lend to the imbalanced factions. Not everyone needs to enjoy a mechanic for it to be a good mechanic, and I think you're posting from the point of view that it wouldn't be fun because you feel like your own organization would be on the receiving end of the sacking, and losing isn't fun, not necessarily siege mechanics. Certainly, siege mechanics would be fun if you were on the winning side, right? And I believe therein lies the problem with your post - you're in favour of handicaps and a "fair" environment where losers don't have to feel bad. Apologies if I'm way off base, feel free to correct my thoughts.

I think you are absolutely crazy if you don't see a problem with the "might makes right, big city dominates little city" aspect of Achaea. It isn't a thing to be avoided at all costs or anything (I've written, at length, more than a few times, about why I think it's a good, interesting, and immersive thing that the cities aren't balanced), but it is absolutely something that has to be borne in mind in any discussion about a city-based conflict system. This has nothing to do with the fact that my main character is in a smaller city (I'm honestly surprised that this already devolved into "YOU'RE ONLY SAYING THAT BECAUSE IT BENEFITS YOU" nonsense). Edit: If you truly want to say "I think you're saying that losing wouldn't be fun, and I disagree that that should be a consideration.", you can just say that. Instead of apologising, you can just entirely leave off the bit that goes: "because you feel like your own organization would be on the receiving end of the sacking".

To an extent, I am definitely in favour of a "fair" environment where losers don't have to feel that bad. Neither absolute is an acceptable design for conflict - you don't want the losers facing no repercussions, but you also don't want to ruin the game for them simply because it makes the game fun for the winners. The fact that winners feel good does not mean you throw the losers under a bus. You have to strike a balance between the fun of being on the winning side and the effects of being on the losing side. That's especially true in a game like Achaea where there's an effort to retain spaces for people who want to remain relatively uninvolved in and unaffected by faction conflict - if a person loves crafting and playing the economy, but not faction conflict, they probably shouldn't have to deal with big long sieges that make them feel like they shouldn't even bother logging in (and if the sieges aren't big and long and interesting, how disappointing!). That's not just hypothetical either - that was a real problem that happened several times to Shallam and people popped into the forum expressing frustration that they didn't feel like there was any point logging in.

I also don't think siege mechanics would be particularly fun on the winning side either. They'd be fun for a little while perhaps, but ultimately you're talking about what should be a really huge, special, unique thing (a city actually meaningfully defeating another city - think the end of a real-life war) and reducing it to another minigame with some predefined reward and system in place for things to just immediately return to a largely unchanged status quo as soon as the conflict is over. And, with no balancing mechanism, it's mostly just a minigame that Ashtan can choose to win whenever the city gets bored rather than a source of actual, interesting conflict.

Re handicaps: I think they are absolutely necessary. I'm not talking about handicaps that product a level playing field. I'm not saying give Cyrene such incredible bonuses that they end up equal to Ashtan in terms of group combat potential. I'm not saying Ashtan shouldn't ultimately end up with an easier time initiating a city siege. I'm saying give them a handicap that lets them participate in this system of strategic control points somewhat equally. Ashtan still remains dominant in every way, but the system of bonuses doesn't allow them to snowball that dominance and make it even greater.

The fact that Ashtan can raid right now in a way that other cities can't match is essentially fine - that Ashtan can successfully raid other cities isn't much of a problem because it doesn't mean other cities can't participate in raiding themselves (and the benefits attached to successful raiding don't snowball Ashtan's dominance). That doesn't work for a system that involves exclusive control of resource points by cities. In a system like that, you may as well just forget the whole thing and apportion the rewards you design based on city population. And that gets even worse when control of resource points offers further strategic advantages.

Re "drop of a hat": I didn't interpret it that way. Having to take "fortresses" or whatever is basically what I was describing. I just think it should be more interesting, should appeal to more playstyles, should be designed to generate more interesting conflict, and should (very rarely) initiate city sieges or other substantive in-city warfare run as actual events (befitting the seriousness of the situation) rather than as yet another little minigame with predetermined rewards.

Silas

I don't really agree with the idea that there are huge problems with the current war system, and most of the proposed "fixes" in this thread aren't great.

For instance, if you make cities almost impenetrable during war, why would they go back to being wide open to raids from any passing brigands after the war ends? Or do you propose that we remove the ability to raid cities fr the game outside of war altogether?

The problems for me with the war system, having been to war a few times, are not mechanical. If cities were willing to lose gracefully, then you'd see more "rewards" for winning. Shallam paid Ashtan 2 or 5 million gold at the end of the war (when Shallam could have maintained the war in perpetuity if I'd felt like it), whereas in later wars people would pretend like they weren't getting their shit pushed in, so we'd push for a guard wipe, declare victory and end it so everyone could move on. Both of these had rewards, even if one of them is only bragging rights, but nothing about the rewards needed to be hardcoded.

The stubborn attitudes that result in the latter won't magically disappear if you change what it says in HELP WAR, and any mechanics changes will also be thwarted by people who will find a way to game the system in such a way as to never have to admit defeat.

The best way to do it is for people (especially city leaders) to stop being so pointlessly negative about the war system, make use of it, and then highlight the issues that came up that you think need admin attention.

Aktillum

@Tael I tried to edit my post to soften the blow of what I was saying, I really didn't mean to imply you have a sore-loser or only interested when you're winning mentality.

I too am in favour of a fair environment that allows people both interested in PK and non-PK to participate in city conflict.
If we're simply going to fundamentally disagree over whether or not siege warfare is a good idea, so be it, let us offer no concessions or find compromise. However, I am in favour of compromise and finding a system that is enjoyable for everyone involved, and I still stand by my idea that a combination of yours and Jinsun's ideas would be ideal.

Thank you for clarifying what you meant by handicaps, and I can agree with the idea of cities having certain territories or mechanics that are easier to defend than others. I don't think they should be based on predefined notions of what a city is "good at", since that would pidgeon-hole cities into concrete roles like "Cyrene is a city of bashers, Eleusis is a city of harvesters, Ashtan is a city of raiders". City strengths and weaknesses do shift throughout Achaea over time. Ashtan wasn't always the powerhouse it was today, a group of 3-4 good combatants could give them massive grief a few years ago, the same way Jhui & Co can give grief to other cities today.

Non-PKers can participate in the economic and stronghold upkeep part of a war, and the PKers can find fun in the PK aspect of war, including a siege-sacking of a city that becomes possibly only after prerequisites have been fulfilled, and the road to siege-sacking should be a long and hard fought campaign that comes about after your city has successfully controlled surrounding territories (bashing areas should definitely not be "city territories", I agree), and other economic and strategic minigames. There are virtually no incompatibilities between yours and Jinsun's ideas, other than the fact you simply abhor the idea of siege warfare.

Tael

Silas said:

For instance, if you make cities almost impenetrable during war, why would they go back to being wide open to raids from any passing brigands after the war ends? Or do you propose that we remove the ability to raid cities fr the game outside of war altogether?

I think this speaks to the issue of what "raiding" really is. If raiding is seen as a form of basically open warfare, then it doesn't make any sense. If raiding is seen as an elite infiltration and sabotage operation by extremely talented individuals (which adventurers are compared to the average populace of the world - they're definitely not mere passing brigands), then it's not really quite as unrealistic that actual siege warfare involving city-sized armies (which would be a lot bigger than any adventurer army) can't make it up to the city, but small groups of raiders can.

Ultimately, I'm not sure that that there are huge problems with the war system either - my view is more that there's just a lot of missed opportunity for conflict systems that could be more interesting, leverage the game's mechanics better, and involve more people.

Tael

Aktillum said:

@Tael I tried to edit my post to soften the blow of what I was saying, I really didn't mean to imply you have a sore-loser or only interested when you're winning mentality.

I too am in favour of a fair environment that allows people both interested in PK and non-PK to participate in city conflict.
If we're simply going to fundamentally disagree over whether or not siege warfare is a good idea, so be it, let us offer no concessions or find compromise. However, I am in favour of compromise and finding a system that is enjoyable for everyone involved, and I still stand by my idea that a combination of yours and Jinsun's ideas would be ideal.

Thank you for clarifying what you meant by handicaps, and I can agree with the idea of cities having certain territories or mechanics that are easier to defend than others. I don't think they should be based on predefined notions of what a city is "good at", since that would pidgeon-hole cities into concrete roles like "Cyrene is a city of bashers, Eleusis is a city of harvesters, Ashtan is a city of raiders". City strengths and weaknesses do shift throughout Achaea over time. Ashtan wasn't always the powerhouse it was today, a group of 3-4 good combatants could give them massive grief a few years ago, the same way Jhui & Co can give grief to other cities today.

Non-PKers can participate in the economic and stronghold upkeep part of a war, and the PKers can find fun in the PK aspect of war, including a siege-sacking of a city that becomes possibly only after prerequisites have been fulfilled, and the road to siege-sacking should be a long and hard fought campaign that comes about after your city has successfully controlled surrounding territories (bashing areas should definitely not be "city territories", I agree), and other economic and strategic minigames. There are virtually no incompatibilities between yours and Jinsun's ideas, other than the fact you simply abhor the idea of siege warfare.

Regarding what a city is "good at", that's not really what I meant. I mostly just meant that the holdings near Mhaldor probably ought to be easier for Mhaldor to defend with a given level of player activity than the holdings near Ashtan with the same level of player activity. Heck, maybe even give Ashtan larger, more interesting capture points so they end up being equally hard to hold as everyone else's, but perhaps offer more substantial benefits. Or go with the "pressure" concept and simply make it very hard for Ashtan to control points farther away from itself, so they can still own more of the more central, "neutral" points, but have a hard time just unilaterally dominating all of the points. I have no problem with Ashtan being bigger and better than the other cities, the problem is just ensuring that other cities can meaningfully participate in the conflict system, which is harder to do when the thing people are fighting over is exclusive to the winner. And to the extent that you do balance them like this, or even that you do balance them based on what a city is good at, they can always be periodically reviewed and modified as cities shift (it's not like the bonuses would be so huge as to entrench the cities in certain playstyles they don't normally gravitate toward). Nothing has to be set completely in stone forever and periodically updating the bonuses and "capture conditions" wouldn't be hard if the system were designed with that in mind from the beginning.

Regarding siege warfare, I don't abhor the idea at all. I think siege warfare is an absolutely great idea. I think it offers a potentially incredible source of drama and interest and fun. And I think trying to build a defined, mechanical system to implement it almost certainly ends up squandering that potential. I'm not saying don't have sieges, on the contrary I'm saying they should be a bigger deal. A warfare system that creates a defined way to initiate a siege would be interesting and give people a clear (difficult, long-term) goal to work toward. And when that goal is reached, it should be a huge deal. The best way to make something a huge deal is an actual event. And since sieges should be difficult, rare, long-term goals, in practical terms it's not really unrealistic to think that they could actually be run as events.

Running them as events means a captain can try to recruit a group of adventurers to act as sappers to blow out a section of a wall while defenders try to stop them. It means ritualists can try to summon spirits to defend the city while invaders try to kill them and prevent the completion of the ritual. It means the conflict can be larger and more interesting than a defined mechanic for sieging. It means it can be implemented in a way that doesn't totally exclude people who aren't interested in a set of designed, known siege mechanics. It means each siege can be unique and interesting. Each one can be a big deal that people remember as historically important and distinct. It means people can log in and wonder what's going on with the event that affects them (and maybe occasionally help in some noncombat way) rather than saying to themselves "I know how sieges work, I'll just log in when it's over". And it means admin can help clearly define victory, sidestepping the problem @Silas mentions without waiting for Achaea's playerbase to suddenly become more mature than it typically ever is.

Also, strategic capture points with attendent bonuses would offer a nice, more-tangible chip for negotiation. If Ashtan crushes Hashan in a big siege, they could demand ownership of one of the border strategic resources and agree that Hashan will cease trying to contest it. Negotiating over actual city interests in the world would be a lot more interesting than city officials just handing over lump sums of gold that most citizens have no real appreciation for anyway.

Silas

I'd love it if the war system turned the game into Achaea: Total War, but I just don't really see how that would work. Achaea's not designed for grand scale battles in any way. If you put each participating adventurer in command of a unit, for example, how do you visualise the battlefield when the armies are deployed by the Generals/Ministers of War? How do you turn the Eastern Reaches into a battlefield on that scale in a way that isn't a complete mess?

Arditi

If an org has an active God, they don't need a war to create opportunities to galvanize the populace. If an organization doesn't have an active God, that's the time to fire up people and get them caring beyond "welp, time to turn numbers into bigger numbers".

The current system allows for RP terms of victory/defeat. The proposed systems would lead to someone figuring out that if they can just kill X mob every Y hours, then the other side can't win, or if the entirety of X city logs in and teabags city Y, then they can grief city Y out of commodities or gold.

Always assume that the playerbase will figure out maximum victory for minimal risk, and I think you'll see that an open-ended RP option is preferable. This is the same game that allows us to stack vibes/harmonics/rites/totems and beckon enemies into them rather than rush in all 300-style. The same game that spawned a lucrative business for Vadi selling a way to let you not think about how to cure paralysis. Why would you not expect that a set war condition would be unabusable?

Tael

Silas said:

I'd love it if the war system turned the game into Achaea: Total War, but I just don't really see how that would work. Achaea's not designed for grand scale battles in any way. If you put each participating adventurer in command of a unit, for example, how do you visualise the battlefield when the armies are deployed by the Generals/Ministers of War? How do you turn the Eastern Reaches into a battlefield on that scale in a way that isn't a complete mess?

I think the only way it works is if you have particular little spots set up for conflict, like a mixture of landmarking (without the repetition of each node's ownership being periodically reset like landmarking) and shrine conflict, but with more variety in the ways to "capture" a location, more tied into the world, and more interesting. And with no defined system for actual siege warfare so it can be kept interesting when it arises and so there can be things like set pieces of the Eastern Reaches turning into a battlefield alongside events that are more appropriate to an adventurer scale.

To really spell out my proposal:

1. Put up a network of "control nodes" in the world. Some nodes are captured via bashing, some via trading, some via PK conflict, some via bribery, etc. All remain open-PK, you might be able to turn a bribery-based node without being a combatant, but you still run the risk of someone showing up to stop you.
2. Clearly mark the nodes in the UI - something in the room title similar to "(road)" like "The foot of a marble tower (control node)" (ideally something better and less meta-sounding than "control node").
3. Each control node offers some modest benefit that incentivises holding it and ties it into the world (a camp near the coast offers a new ship trade, a camp near a village comm shop offers a small steady supply of that shop's most quintessential comm type to the city that holds it, a tower on a mountain offers immediate notification of attacks on surrounding control nodes, etc.).
4. The Minister of War can place city guards in any control nodes that the city owns (perhaps they can be totemed as well).
5. Control nodes nearest a city are easiest for that city to capture, easier still the more surrounding control nodes the city controls, easier still the higher the proportion of the city's deployed guards are in the surrounding control nodes, and harder the proportion of the enemy city's guards are stationed in that control node.
6. If an enemy city owns all of the control nodes adjacent to a city, a siege event begins, run like any other planned event in the game. (The above coefficient should be tuned until this is possible, but very difficult to the point of extreme rarity).

Attendant ideas:

1. Don't offer an automatic listing of which control nodes are owned by which cities. Make the listings for your city update automatically when that city gains or loses a control node, but unrelated control nodes can only be SCOUTed from the location (and thus might be out of date), giving a way for even newbies to help out (while learning their way around) and adding some elements of information-gathering to planning and strategy of guard placement.
2. Create things like a "map room" in each city for stealthy adventurers to sneak into or plans for them to steal from denizens that show how many guards an enemy city has stationed in each of their held control nodes or that automatically SCOUT all of a city's current holdings.
3. Incorporate existing raiding - specific rooms to destroy that influence taking or holding control nodes.
4. Offer noncombat ways to make it easier to hold/take control nodes - things like building fortifications, raising shrines, etc.

The idea of this isn't "Achaea: Total War". It isn't really so much a "war system" as it is an "area of influence" system - to give cities mutable borders and material interests that might generally remain quite stable and might be the subject of treaties and agreements, but would serve as meaningful stages and stakes for conflict when it does arise (and for its resolution). And, as an added bonus, if you do want siege events, it serves as a way to offer a clear path to them and, from a design perspective, to easily modulate the length and difficulty of that path.

Vansittart

Jinsun said:

Perceived problems:

       No reward for "winning"

       Open pk and the resulting ganks and hurt feelings

       Undesirable resolution (i.e. two high ranking players simply agreeing on something to end things).

       Nothing for non, or less PK oriented members to enjoy in the system. 

I'd love to see a better war system, and I thought your posts were interesting, but I disagreed fairly fundamentally even with your perceived problems (and so I've started there, because if I disagree with your analysis, I'm definitely not going to agree with your fixes).

1.  No reward for "winning":  This is a massive misperception of the problem with Achaean conflict.  Winning is, always, more fun.  Even if you had an amazing, fun event chock-full of RP interest and innovative mechanics, being on the winning side of it adds a tiny bit of deliciousness.  Winning is, also, its own reward - particularly in an RP-driven game.  You get bragging rights, you get to buff your image, you get to RP as the big swinging dick of the world.  A satisfactory win though always depends on a fun opponent.  The key question is always how you make losing fun enough. 

Yes, there are only a few more annoying things than a "lala you can't touch me" issue-happy conflict avoider.  However, one of those things is someone who just doesn't know how to win with anything resembling good grace.  And because the winners have the power, and the fun that just comes from winning, the prime responsibility is on the "winners" to make the whole process fun.

2.  Open PK, ganks and feels:  This isn't a problem on its own.  It would be a problem if your war system, consisted of nothing but open PK ganking but that's a more general fail of your system.  What you need is a fun, time-limited, goal-oriented war system and then those feelings go away.

3.  Undesirable resolution (two high ranking players agree to stop):  Despite how strongly I disagreed with item 1, I probably disagree with this more.  If it's going to be anything worth having, your war system is going to need to rely on factional roleplay to drive its (i) beginnings, (ii) process and (iii) resolution.  That is always going to mean empowering the duly elected or appointed faction leaders - Divine or mortal.  If you don't like the resolution, then your recourse is what it always is - militating to get them kicked out and someone better in their place.

4. Non-PKers - Again, I disagree quite strongly.  I don't really like the idea of a war system that incentivizes non-PK stuff (particularly as it would inevitably be something tedious like gathering).  A war system, properly designed, should incentivize everyone to pick up their ploughshare and beat it into a sword.  A good system would hopefully encourage that by meaning that even a team of well organized, and trained lowbies should be able to make an impact.


My ideal system would consist of a war system which would be invoked in favour of time-limited, RP objectives.  Control this plot of land, capture this McGuffin, slaughter/defend x number of people, whatever.  The winners would get the RP objective, the losers would not (but hopefully would get access to some quality RP anyway).  I defer to others on what the actual mechanics of the war itself would be but it should be entirely in service to RP - which means, principally, Garden-planned events.  Anything else will fail.  If what you do is create a better form of raiding that can be done all the time, and makes everyone open PK, and results in concrete advantage to whoever happens to have all the combatants at the relevant time, then you've made a complete fricking disaster.  I don't think we've gone nearly far enough down the line of "All Garden planned events, all the time"  - I'll never be satisfied on that front, but we're closer than we used to be so who knows.

Mishgul

Achaea is not really fair (through things like balance, population and, composition of people; it shouldn't be fair in my opinion, it is part of the charm), so anything implemented will be gamed and will only be fun <50% of the time. (like the current raid system). Though if your goal is to make something fun 10%-50% of the time then I guess that is fine.

War never has a set criterion either, in the irl sense of war. There are thousands upon thousands of different things that can be fought over/fought towards/gained/lost. By taking those branches away and create only set paths, you take away a lot of the storytelling sides of war, and just make it more of a boring statistic. The fighting would be fun for sure, but nothing memorable would come of it.

I'd prefer one off events that vary massively rather than a system that fires off city relations. Bal'met, which was admin led, was amazing, but it would be less amazing if it was repeated in a similar fashion. There needs to be a proper story driven series of actions that lead to a war (With some fun for everyone in one way or another) and then story driven points to lead to its conclusion or else it would not feel worth participating in. I don't play to get numbers on my stat stats, I play to be part of the story. 

Grandue

There are a couple of problems that need to be fixed:
1) Non-coms want a way to take part but not necessarily through combat.
2) There is no way to "win"
3) Raids are, for the most part, pointless because they don't have lasting damage and very little reward.
4) There isn't a whole lot of strategy to war right now, there isn't a real "long game" that can be played.
5) Wars are mind numbing for those in the cities who aren't/can't participate in the combat. Having to always leave the city because City X has been raiding for 8 hours sucks. 
6) Alliance/Enemies costs vs. benefits. Right now, no one cares if City Z is their enemy or ally because City X could overpower City Y even if City Z helped them or fought against them. City A could care less if another City B is at war with City C, even though City C is right next door to them. 
7) The rinse-repeat of raiding. It all boils down to who is one and who feels like raiding at that particular moment. Most raids are so similar and it can get boring. "Oh, you guys are back to do the same exact thing you did yesterday and the day before and the 100 days leading up to today...how original and unexpected..."

Landmarking sucked because it was a constant chore and they were so quickly and easily changed. I think a possible solution to most of those problems would be a scenario similar to landmarking, but without the chaos and endlessness that was tied to it.  A more strategic approach to selecting which "landmark" to conquer and maybe a certain way it could be prevented. More "Game of Thrones"ish, where more alliances could be formed and breaking alliances would be more risky. 

The System:

This war system is a mix between Risk, Game of Thrones, Settlers of Catan, Achaean icon wars, and our current raids. There are a fixed number of strongholds across the mainland (this could be expanded across islands and even Meropis). I would suggest 18, three per city. Each city has a certain number of troops to start out with to properly man the three strongholds their city begins with. To win a war, troops must first make it to the enemy's city then win a battle. Before reaching the city, they would need to go through a handful of strongholds and stretch the limit of their supplies, thus weakening their army. Actually sacking a city would be extremely difficult and likely impossible. Most of the wars would be played out between the strongholds, this would get the wars out of the city proper so that non-coms aren't required to leave their city for hours at a time while the combatants duke it out.  To conquer a stronghold, you must first march your troops there, which could take a minimum of 1 Achaean day to a maximum of 3-4 Achaean days, depending on the distance of the stronghold from the troop's current position.

Why the time limit:

The movement time is meant to give the enemy troops time to gather forces and start moving their own troops. This provides a HUGE amount of strategy to the placement of troops. Let's say Ashtan wants to take a stronghold near Jaru because it would mean they are super close to Targossas and could launch attacks on the city quickly because of the proximity of the stronghold. But it takes troops 4 hours to move from Ashtan to the stronghold near Jaru but only 1 hour for Targossas to move troops from their city to the stronghold near Jaru. That would give Targossas 4 hours to realize that Ashtan is targeting Jaru (or somewhere in that general direction) and send troops to fortify Jaru and prepare for the assault. But it is only 1 hr to move troops from the stronghold in the Mhojave desert to the stronghold by Jaru. Cyrene holds the Mhojave stronghold. So it would mean that Ashtan would be focused on capturing the Mhojave desert stronghold first (or forming some kind of agreement or alliance with Cyrene so they may store troops there) and having troops stationed there so that they are only 1hr from the stronghold by Jaru for whenever they planned on launching the attack on Jaru, which would give Targossas less time to organize and send out troops to defend Jaru. At the same time, Targossas would want to pull their troops from the stonghold up by Hashan because that is 4 hours from Jaru and if Ashtan attacked Jaru from the Mhojave there is no way their troops could get there in time to defend it. So as different cities move their troops around the map to different strongholds, other cities have an opportunity to somehow figure out the movement of the troops and try to guess which stronghold they are headed for and organize their troops in response. This is the Risk factor you've been talking about.

Strongholds:

I would suggest that there be some kind of intrinsic value to possessing a stronghold. It could be a source of commodities or some other kind of benefit and the benefits could vary by stronghold. A stronghold in a forest could provide the city with a steady supply of wood and a small amount of wild game. A mountain stronghold could provide metals, a plains stronghold could provide a lot of food, a stronghold by the sea could provide fish, a stronghold with an active market could provide money. When I originally thought up this idea, the strongholds didn't have any rooms in them, it was just a one room kind of tower with a wall around it where the troops would fight it out. There could be room for expansion here, even with player/city run shops or commodity markets. There needs to be a value to having a stronghold so that it would suck to lose one. It would be necessary to have strongholds in order to feed and supply your troops. You can't make more troops if you don't have the strongholds to supply/train/store them. Your city can't just bitch out and say, "Meh, I don't care if they take that stronghold from us, we'll just pull all 10 troops back to the city" because without it the city would see a dramatic drop in their revenue and supplies that are required to properly feed and supply the troops to defend their city and other strongholds, troop moral would drop, etc. You would need certain types of stronghold (or trade with other cities) in order to build troops with the wood/iron/leather/food/mounts that they produce. 

A stronghold must have 1 troops stationed there in order to keep possession of it.

Here is an example layout:

Troops:

Each city would start with the same amount of troops. I would suggest something between 10-15 troop, this would allow them to properly defend three strongholds and anything more than three strongholds would weaken the ones they hold already but would give them the potential to secure 6+ strongholds and weakly hold them all without any additional troops. We could get into different types of troops (knights, archers, footmen, bards, etc.) and I think that would be fun and add another dimension to the war system, but I'm not going to go into that here. 

Troops would be raised and trained as a group and the group would be named. These troops move as one unit, fight as one unit, and require a fixed amount of food/gold/wood/etc. per month. They would function similarly to a ship crew. They would gain experience slowly over time by training. They would also see a quick and significant boost in their experience when they win a battle. As they gain experience, they fight better. This would allow cities to move veteran troops to strategic strongholds because of any number of reasons (that stronghold is more important, or they need to station a lesser number of troops there so they send their best, etc.) One highly trained, veteran troop could stand their own against two brand new, greenback troops, or at least last a long time against them, giving the players more time to defend/attack a stronghold. 

If a troop dies, a new troops would need to be trained. This is a lengthy process, taking several years. This does several things. It makes troops valuable, they aren't just a commodity you can easily risk or throw away because you can just churn out another one and try again tomorrow. Another huge reason for this is so that when a city wins a battle against their enemy and steals one of their strongholds, the results are felt for a while, by both sides, because they'll both lose troops more than likely. It also slows down the war process. When a city takes control of a new stronghold, it may take a year or two before the fields are repaired or the market rebuilt, so it will take a little while before they gain the flow of commodities/food/supplies that comes with possessing a stronghold. If they lost 2-3 troops taking the stronghold, they won't immediately be in a position to attack the next stronghold, they'll need to wait until more troops are trained, giving the enemy time to accept your terms or accept the alliance of another city who offers them help in return for whatever.
There would be no hardcoded maximum number of troops, but there would be a realistic limit to the number of troops because the city wouldn't be able to feed/supply 30 troops, even if they held 10 strongholds that supplied them with resources.

Resources:

Each stronghold would produce certain resources. There are four things that could be done with these resources.
1) First, they would be used to feed/supply their current troops.
             Any leftover resources could be used for other things.
2) They could be stored. A city would be required to purchase storehouses, each storehouse could stockpile X amount of resources/food. These would be stockpiled for times of war when they might need to train more troops than their current number of strongholds could supply.
3) They could be be passed along to the citizens in the form of credit sales or some other kind of reward (the city could trade x amount of resources/food per year for an xp boost or critical hit boost or some other kind of icon like power boost for all citizens)
4) They could be traded with other cities. 
The more troops your city has, the more strongholds that are required in order to feed/supply them all. A city could be plenty happy with their three strongholds because they've pared down their military to just 9 troops and they have enough surplus resources coming in that they're able to get the XP and critical hit boost. They wouldn't want to start a war because they would lose this, thus they would be more open to an alliance with some other city because they city doesn't want your resources, they just want to be able to store troops in your stronghold so they can more easily attack someone else. 

(CONTINUED IN NEXT POST)

Grandue

Alliances/City Relations:

As it is, a city's proximity to another city is of no consequence. Under this system, temporary and longterm alliances would be formed because it would be beneficial to both sides. Troops would need to be allowed to stay as guests in ally's strongholds or they would need to conquer that stronghold in order to complete their longterm goal.

Example:
Hashan doesn't really have any reason to care if Mhaldor is pummeling Eleusis into the ground because it doesn't effect them, even though they are neighbors. Right now, Mhaldor doesn't care about Hashan or their strongholds, they've been at war with Eleusis for the past X years and are finally in place to begin the main assault on Eleusis' strongholds. Mhaldor demands Hashan let them temporarily station troops in Hashan's strongholds so that they can better attack Eleusis, under the threat that they'll take them by force after they are done with Eleusis if Hashan doesn't comply. Hashan is faced with a decision. They can either aide Eleusis by supplying them with troops to better garrison their strongholds against Mhaldor's attacks, or they can make a deal with Mhaldor and let them stay in their strongholds.

There are no real longterm consequences for breaking an alliance or treaty right now. This system would place a certain level of trust on each city that couldn't be ruined by the bloodlust of some raid-happy citizen who doesn't listen. There were all kinds of accusations during Ashtan's war with Shallam after Eleusis had signed a treaty with Ashtan saying they weren't going to aide Shallam any more. A couple of Eleusians ended up assisting Shallam anyway, ruining the treaty between Eleusis and Ashtan even though Eleusis had no intention of breaking the treaty, it was all the work of a couple rebel Eleusians who didn't listen. Sure, they can punish their citizens, but the damage has already been done. In this system, it would require an official response from a city in order to break an alliance/treaty/agreement that was made.  If Mhaldor promises Hashan that they won't attack Hashan's strongholds for x amount of years if Hashan lets them station some troops in their strongholds while they are at war with Eleusis, but then Mhaldor breaks that treaty... all of the other cities will never forget that. Mhaldor's reputation has been tainted. If Mhaldor attempts to make a treat with another city, it will be brought up that Mhaldor promised Hashan the same thing and then went back on their word. 
Cities can also trade resources. If one city has a surplus of iron and leather because they hold multiple strongholds that produce that, but they need some other resource in order to support their troops, they can either conquer a stronghold that produces that resource, or they could trade resources with another city. This could be worked into treaties between cities. 

Example:
Cyrene needs more wood in order to support their troops. Ashtan took one of their strongholds that produced wood. Ashtan doesn't need the wood, they just needed the stronghold because it put them in a better position to attack Targossas. Targossas offers to help Cyrene retake the stronghold if Cyrene forms an official alliance with them against Ashtan and helps them conquer another one of Ashtan's strongholds. Cyrene is hesitant in forming an official alliance with Targossas because they don't want to get dragged into this war between Ashtan and Targossas, but they need the wood and have to consider the alliance or they'll lose even more of their troops because they can't supply them. Ashtan hears of this alliance that Targossas is offering and makes a counter offer. Ashtan tells Cyrene they'll give them all of the wood the stronghold produces for as long as they hold possession of the stronghold and promise to return the stronghold into their possession in x years or after they've taken the next stronghold on the way to Targossas, so long as Cyrene doesn't ally with Targossas. Cyrene accepts this offer because it means they get the wood they require and aren't dragged into the war and don't risk losing any troops trying to retake the stronghold. 

Raids:

Raids are shorter and more spontaneous than battles. A raid doesn't involve troops, it only involves players. Players can raid a stronghold, attacking some guards and staying in room doing whatever needs to be done (similar to the current war system) and the result is they run away with resources that the stronghold produces and maybe some XP or something. This wouldn't have the longterm consequences that battles have. This would provide combatants the opportunity to have the skirmishes that they love without ruining alliances or city relations or disturbing citizens who don't want to get involved in combat. 

Battles:

Battles are more strategic than normal raids. They involve the movement of troops and more severe losses/gains. These would be similar to an icon raid but with more ramp up and a longer cool down between attacks. 
Once the troops have arrived at the stronghold, they begin the process of taking over, which requires a presence of players to keep the area free of any enemy players for x amount of time (probably something like 30 minutes total). During this time, the enemy will be wanting to move their troops to defend the stronghold. Once their troops arrive, the two troops begin to fight (this is where splitting the troops up across the map or keeping them in larger pools comes into play). Both troops start to see losses, but whichever side can keep the room clear of the enemy players has an advantage and their troops kill the enemy troop at a faster rate. This would mean that if you have a smaller army at the stronghold but your player force is able to keep the enemy player force at bay, you still have a chance of taking over the stronghold even though the enemy has a larger army there. Once a stronghold is captured, your troops can be stationed there.

Example:

5 years ago Mhaldor conquered a stronghold near the Great Rock. They keep 5 troops there and Ashtan has learned this through whatever means (spies or process of elimination by knowing that Mhaldor has x amount of troops at the other strongholds or through the years their scouts have seen a total of 5 troops making their way from some other stronghold to the stronghold near Great Rock). Ashtan holds a stronghold near Thera. Ashtan has kept 3 troops in the stronghold to defend against an attack by Mhaldor if Mhaldor ever decided to attack them (they haven't ever tried in the last 5 years, so Ashtan has doesn't see  it as too much of a threat). 

Gameplay:

0:00 Mhaldor decides to attack. They begin moving 4 troops to the stronghold near Thera (leaving 1 to station the stronghold, as required). It will take 1hr for the troops to arrive. 
0:40 It takes 40 minutes before one of Ashtan's citizens notices and reports back to the city that Mhaldor is marching on the stronghold. Ashtan immediately begins to move 2 troops from a stronghold near Minia. It will take an hour to arrive.
0:45 Mhaldorian scouts notice and report that Ashtan has started to move troops, "They know we're coming!" Mhaldor begins to raid Ashtan, trying to disorganize and distract them so they can't start preparing the stronghold for attack.
1:00 Mhaldor's 4 troops arrive at the stronghold and begin to knock down the gates/summon something/erect pillar of takedown/whatever. Mhaldor pulls out of Ashtan to attack the stronghold. Because Ashtan has only three troops stationed there and Mhaldor has 4, the Ashtani troops must stay on the defensive, this begins a 30 minute timer after which the stronghold will fall as long as there are 5 Mhaldorians in the room. The Mhaldorians get X amount of damage bonus or X defensive bonus because they have more troops than Ashtan.
1:25 Despite the bonus that Mhaldor has by having more troops in the room, Ashtan manages to remove all of the Mhaldorians from the room (or lessen the number to less than 5), this pauses the 30 minute timer, which has 5 minutes left on the clock. Mhaldor still requires 5 more minutes of room control with either an equal amount of troops or more to take the stronghold.
1:40 Ashtan's two troops arrive from the stronghold near Minia. They now have 5 troops against Mhaldor's 4, which means they go on the offensive and the timer is paused until the troops are even or Mhaldor retreats. Mhaldor's players no longer have the damage or defensive bonus because they don't have a great number of troops any longer. This bonus passes to the Ashtani players. The two city's troops begin to battle. Ashtan's troops will kill Mhaldor's troops X% faster since they have more troops (5 vs 4). 
1:43 Ashtan's troops manage to destroy one of Mhaldor's troops, bringing the fight to 5v3. However, Mhaldor is getting more player kills than Ashtan is, which has given their troops a moral bonus, eliminating most of the bonus Ashtan's troops are receiving because of the troop ratio.
1:50 Soulspears are unleashed and a backstab group manages to take out most of Ashtan's players, affording them a huge advantage for the next few minutes while they all pray. Mhaldor's troops manage to take out two of Ashtan's troops (because Mhaldor has secured the room and is essentially winning at king of the hill), which evens the troops numbers (3 vs 3). The timer is un-paused because Mhaldor now has an equal or greater number of troops.
1:55 Mhaldor has succeeded in keeping 5 players in the room for the remainder of the 5 minutes that were left on the clock. The stronghold falls, Ashtan's troops begin an automatic retreat to the nearest stronghold controlled by Ashtan.

Aftermath:

Mhaldor lost 1 troop. Ashtan lost 2 troops.
Mhaldor's remaining troops receive a moral boost.
Ashton's remaining troops receive a moral loss.
Mhaldor's AND Ashtan's remaining troops receive an experience boost by participating in the battle.
Mhaldor AND Ashtan's remaining troops are fatigued and wounded (similar to hull and sail damage), they'll want to spend sufficient time recovering before going to battle again. 
It will take Mhaldor a year to train another troop to replace the one they lost. Ashtan will take two years to replace the two troops they lost.
Because Ashtan will be in a weakened state for the next 2 years and Mhaldor now stands at their doorstep, this has forced Ashtan to consider more seriously the alliance that City X has offered them because it would mean City X could help them retake the stronghold and fend off Mhaldor until they regain their lost troops. Mhaldor, however, left one of their strongholds manned by only 1 troop in order to take the stronghold by Thera, leaving it vulnerable to Targossas, should they decide to attack. 

Grandue

Advantages of this system:

It allows non-coms to participate by keeping track of enemy troop movement, moving resources between strongholds, spying on enemies, getting close to citizens in neutral cities to gain information that may be useful. Maybe they aren't great combatants but they are amazing strategists or always roll nat 20's on their diplomacy checks and are great at getting foreign city officials to bend to their wishes. Maybe they can't swing a sword but they can seduce a member of another city's council and give them incentive to let their home city house troops in their stronghold for "just one itsy bitsy, teeny weeny month pretty please I love you baby" 
Decisions have long term effects. Your city leader made a dumb ass move by moving troops from Stronghold X to Stronghold Y because he thought it was best and then you lose Stronghold Y because it wasn't poorly defended? Guess who will be contested. You decide to make a deal with City A because you're attacking City B and need to use their stronghold, but then you go back on your word to give them X amount of resources for the use of their stronghold? Don't whine and complain when you try to make a deal with City C in the future and they refuse because you have a history of not holding up your end of the deal. You spend 10 years turning your resources into an xp boost instead of stockpiling some of it in the storehouses but then you lose two strongholds back to back and don't have enough supplies in reserve to keep your troops supplied so you have to take out a loan with interest from some other city in order to stay afloat? You don't have anyone to blame but whoever made that decision. 

There are longterm and short term goals in this system. Want to be able to get some more resources so you can buy whatever boost you're citizens have been wanting? No need to win a war, just win a battle, take that easy stronghold that is poorly manned on the outskirts of the map. 

You can actually "win". I don't know what that could look like, but you could call conquering all of an enemy's strongholds a "win". Or conquer all of the strongholds that produce a certain commodity, forcing a monopoly and requiring other cities to pay a steep price for it. Or pummel your enemy's troops until they only have 1-2 troops left and have to take out loans from other cities or form alliances to get back on their feet, which will take them 10 years or however long. There wouldn't be a way for you to realistically hold all of their strongholds AND properly defend your own, and other cities wouldn't want you to be able to hold so many strongholds for too long because you could become a super power so they'll take advantage of your troops being spread thinly across so many strongholds. So your enemy would eventually be able to get back on their feet and train their armies. Now they won't run so quickly to declare war on one of your strongholds because they've tasted defeat at your hands once and just got done spending 5-10 years recovering from it and they've just now been able to get that xp/critical hit bonus their citizens have been without for the last however long years. 

You can get to a point of contentment, an era of peace where all cities are happy with what they have and don't want to risk losing one of their strongholds because they declared war on someone else. Of course, eventually this won't last forever, but there will obviously be times after a brutal war where cities MUST take a break so they have time to train new troops to replace the ones they lost and replenish their storehouses with reserve resources. 

City leadership positions won't be based on popularity or combat prowess. Over time there will be those who prove to be the better strategists or excess at negotiations and they'll stand out over the people who would have normally just gotten elected because they're well known. So-and-so so skillfully worked the negotiations out with City A and during the war with City B they advised we move troops from this stronghold to that stronghold and to release possession of stronghold X so that we could take the troops to blah blah blah and look, they were right, it played out exactly how they said it would, it worked out, they obviously know their shit... and now Mr. Popular who is only good at bashing in skulls wants to step up and take his position? Good luck. Likewise, bad leaders will be more obvious. If someone is a hot head and is on an ego trip they won't be able to form important treaties that may be needed to secure their victory. If some smooth citizen is able to step in and secure those terms, it won't be forgotten. 

There will be a lot of unknowns. You may notice City A is taking certain strongholds, but you may not know why. Maybe they're trying to get certain commodities, maybe they're trying to save up so they can train more troops, maybe they're trying to get strongholds closer to your strongholds so they can attack you. Maybe your neighbor only has their own troops in their stronghold, or maybe they secretly made an agreement with your enemy and that stronghold is actually full of your enemy's troops and they're preparing for an assault. Maybe City B is using their excess resources to get a bonus for their citizens or maybe they're stockpiling them so in a few years they can do a mad rush to secretly train a handful of troops and march them out at once against your nearby stronghold. Maybe that city is moving that veteran troop to that stronghold because they fear that some other city may attack it or maybe they're moving it there because they plan on launching an attack from it on you. 

I've posted this proposal before. Another thing that I thought of while reading one of the posts in this thread is when it comes to player soldiers and their role. We could make it where players must go through a year long period of "Training" or have to spend X amount of time in the barracks or some other kind of time sink before being officially welcomed into the city military. Once in the military they are now open PK to other cities/enemy cities BUT during a raid on a stronghold they more significantly influence the performance of the troops. This will stop everyone from being in the military because they don't want to be open PK while at the same time giving the role a significance other than a title and will stop people from just joining the military on the spot into to win a decisive victory and then leaving the military once it is finished. 

Tharvis

@Grandue that is a really nice design, really.
Though the main downside I can see is how resource heavy it'd be to implement

Grandue

You may be right, one of the admin would have to enlighten us on that thought. An upside is that many of the systems are actually already in place in some form. A lot of it could be borrowed and tweaked from the current war system and fonts, icon wars, land marking, the walk-to system for troops, maybe even some of it can be tweaked from arena games like KotH. 

Any my meaningful change to the war system is likely to have some pretty significant coding to it. The solution. Would probably be to get it right the first time through instead of creating a war system that people are just going to want to change in a few RL years. 

A system like like this will likely create eras where one city is on top for 30-40 years before certain alliances are formed or the right ministers are elected into office or the right military leaders step up and another city rises from the depths. It will keep things changing and thus interesting. 

Alaskar

Troop movement: I've always thought something like that could take advantage of the wilderness map.  I imagine cities being able to establish stronghold/forts in the wilderness map and moving troops and armies via the map, almost like a giant, intense game of chess. Less combative players can act as scouts, using portals or flying or other movement abilities to traverse through the wilderness terrain. I think the way wilderness terrain works would add a nice bit of strategy to it all, with the limited visibility of certain terrain, the movement penalties, etc. And, overall, I feel it'd attract more people to the wilderness.

As for the current war system, I think Silas brought up a great point when he said that it really relies on players. The leadership of the cities have the power to create some really interesting scenarios between cities regarding war, if they'll work and establish win/loss criteria up front, even though I imagine it'd perhaps take some OOC communication between leaders. I've always wondered what it'd be like if two city leaders agreed that something like the first to destroy 10 rooms wins, or something to that effect. But, as Silas said, it requires someone to be willing to lose when it comes down to it. 

Prolonged city siege is a bad idea. Pushes non-coms out and ties up a huge part of the game for the interests of a few. 

Jacen

My problem with @Silas's "graceful defeat" description is that hell yeah it makes sense for the losing city to pay 2 or 5 million gold to get the winning city off their back. Its makes no sense for the winning city to accept it. That's like a few days worth of a solid reward-driven gold fundraiser's worth of money for a city, and what reason does the winning city have to accept it? They entered war because they wanted the Open PK situation, they're winning so they're probably having fun, and they aren't going to stop the fun thing to go back to the not-so-fun thing, at least not for a good while.

And after how many times does "Yes Team Chaos, though you are a threat to the very fabric of our reality and all that is Good and Holy and its written in our code that we should eradicate you, ehhhhhh we'll take 2mil. Fair compromise" get unbelievable?

Arditi

Hence why it's the responsibility of leaders to swallow pride and compromise.

Compare @Silas' description of Ashtan-Shallam to the recent Mhaldor-Eleusis war.

Silas

None of those are constructive ways of looking at it. Shallam accepted defeat because we were beaten and outmatched militarily by Ashtan. Accepting and admitting that, and paying a few million gold in reparations, is a sensible step to take, so that you can regroup and come back stronger.

Also, the reason for the winning side to negotiate terms is so that they can say they won the war. Nobody in a leadership position wants to go to war for the endless PKs - that would be retarded.

Ahmet

I think you should all go to the Siorraidh and play Nishnatoba. That's how the war system should be. 100%.