Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Forum Games and Roleplaying => Topic started by: Ghazkull on October 17, 2019, 03:56:51 am
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Hello and welcome to Royal Ambitions, a strategy game where you take the reins of a kingdom in a particularly unstable area.
Royal Ambitions will have a large focus on grand strategy and warfare and less on managing the minutae of your kingdom.
The simple goal of the game is to unite the varying Kingdoms of the Region under your rule, either by outright conquest or by vassalage.
IC-Thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174875.0)
The Kingdom
Each Kingdom has a number of Burgs and Provinces which represent its administrative units.
Provinces have both a Manpower and Prosperity Rating.
Prosperity is a general indicator of how well that province is doing. Be it mining, farming, trading or something completely different, prosperity indicates how wealthy that region is. It is capped at 100 and increases by itself by 1 every turn. On top of that Gold can be invested to increase propserity artificially.
Manpower meanwhile is just that it tells you the population of a Province.
Together the two determine how much Gold a province provides to you per turn.
Burgs also have a Manpower and a Prosperity Rating.
While each province has one or more Burgs, these are completely independent from the province as such. Burgs are not only cities but also strongholds and though a province might be lost you can still hold out in the Burgs dotted around a Province.
More so, while a Province can simply be conquered by the presence of your troops, a burg has to be sieged and/or stormed to actually come under your control.
Burgs and Provinces - a Dynamic of Unrest
Medieval Nobility often times had trouble with Free Cities (especially in the Holy Roman Empire) since peasantry tended to run off into cities for a better life. This is modelled in this game by the prosperity levels. The higher the difference in Prosperity between a burg and the province it is located in the more people will wander off to the burg or the province per turn. This causes unrest.
Unrest
Unrest is something that is almost impossible to get rid off. After all you are a Medieval Feudal Kingdom...there is always a lot of discontent people around. Thanks to the dynamic of prosperity your Kingdom might constantly get Unrest. Only if an when prosperity is equal across your province, does Unrest decrease again.
If a certain Threshold is exceeded you will have to deal with an uprising of your peasantry.
Worse even, these peasant armies roam your kingdom looting and plundering, causing even more devastation and thus even more prosperity damage and with it unrest.
So keeping a tight lid on popular unrest is of utmost importance.
Your Dynasty
Contrary to other feudal games if gmed, in this one your dynasty will play a (relatively) smaller role.
You have a designated King, who will rule your kingdom and more importantly lead armies.
You have a designated heir, one of your children who also leads armies and will take over once you die.
Every turn you are married, you have a chance of getting a child. To make things easier on management your child is assumed to be instantly grown up.
Children have two uses:
First as Generals.
You always need someone to lead your armies and that is an honor restricted to family members or hired mercenaries, should you really be so desperate.
Secondly as a Diplomatic Tool.
Children can be married to other players families to strenghten the bond of a diplomatic treaty. While players can break any alliance or non-aggression pact at their own leisure at any given time, they cannot break any treaties they agreed to under the auspices of marriage...for as long as that marriage lasts.
In other words if you marry your daughter to the son of the neighbouring kingdom your marriage will last until either one or both of them die.
But wait there is more and its not good. So you have somehow managed to luck out it seems and have more children than you ever needed. Well unfortunately for you thats a bad thing. Upon your Kings death each of your children that is not a general of your armies or your heir has a chance to press its claim upon your throne.
Succession Crisis
One might think those are rare. One need only look into a history book to find out how wrong that assumption is.
Succession Crises as mentioned above happen when one of your "unlanded" children (aka one which is neither a general nor an heir) decides to press its claim upon your monarchs death.
Once one such Claim is pressed, everyone of your other children has a chance to defect, or decide to press their own claim.
Even worse other Players can use this crisis to press the claims of children you married off to them.
There is however one slight ray of hope. Once a succession crisis has played out to its inevitable conclusion, Unrest across the entire Kingdom will be reduced to 0 to allow you some breathing room to fix the mess of a civil war.
However during such a Civil War Unrest is still a thing, so you might end up in a multi-decade lasting civil war with peasantry burning the countryside on top of various claimants trying to lay claim to the throne.
Warfare, the Levy-System and You
Medieval Armies by and large consisted of Levies. Which in turn consist of the folks you call up from the countryside.
You can decide to raise levies in single burgs and provinces or across the entirety of your Kingdom. Whatever your choose the affected areas will lose 1 prosperity per turn as you basically take farmers, administrators and craftsmen away from doing their Jobs to wage war instead.
Depending on the size and prosperity of your provinces and burgs, your levies may vary in size and composition. Which means in the beginning you will almost certainly start with a conisderably better equipped levy than later in the game.
Professionals
Of course many Kingdoms had often varying numbers of professional soldiers at all times and so can you.
Professional Soldiers, contrary to your levy, can be rather unique divisions of troops. Be it heavy cavalry, Coastal Raiders or janissary corps.
Whatever they may be Professional Soldiers want Land and Gold. To keep them going you can either hire them on as Mercenaries by paying a going rate in gold or you can settle them as a landed professional soldier class.
Which means you have to pay a fee of Gold to outfit them and then reduce the prosperity threshold in one of your provinces permanently. In effect a large number of landed professionals not only will cost you money, but will also slow population growth, prosperity growth and recovery and increase unrest (at least potentially). On the other hand you have no upkeep whatsoever.
Generals and Terrain
Beyond your militaries capabilities and experience there is also your Generals to consider, which grow more experienced and skileld with every battle.
Terrain and things like city walls obviously also impact combat. While your levy will have no bonuses either way, professionals can be hired with the express idea of them performing better in certain terrains.
And obviously cavalry performs worse in mountaineous or forest terrain rather than plains...
Occupation and Raiding.
Until a peace treaty is concluded all that land that you occupy will produce nothing for either you or your enemy. In fact occupied land will consistently lose 1 prosperity per turn. So a province which is occupied and has a levy raised becomes very quickly very unusuable. Which is not in the interest of either war party...or is it?
You can of course deliberately raid enemy provinces. This will reduce prosperity by 10 but will gain you gold depending on total population in the province...which will also suffer.
Finally If Prosperity sinks below 50 population will start to decline.
The outcome of a battle
The Battle is over you have won, and the enemy is defeated before you. But wait there is more. Not everyone simply dies. A lot of soldiers will have fled or retreated, but a considerable number might also have simply surrendered to you or might have been captured.
All these prisoners can be dealt with in three ways: release, execute or ransom. You can sell them back to their owners, simply release them back home or kill them all. Releasing them decreases unrest in your own lands (if the numbers are significant enough), killing them all removes them from enemy manpower pool and ransoming them, well that depends on what the other side is willing to pay...
Vassalage 101
So you lost the war, but you could still fight on and the other side really has other concerns. Agree on Vassalage! Vassalage is an easy out to avoid complete annihilation or protracted warfare. What exactly the stipulations of said treaty is is up to you to negotiate, but remember a marriage pact is a binding pact!
Trade, Espionage, Minor Players and so forth
No.
Trade and Espionage almost always ate up massive chunks of time in such games and tended to grind them to a halt. So no, unfortunately not in this one.
And no you can't be a spy, assassin, mercenary, wizard or inventor either. Become a King or later surrender to be a vassal if you really don't want to rule yourself.
Technology
High/Late Middle Ages, Gunpowder is and will stay rare. There is no research so don't even try to bring about steam-powered robot soldiers with piston-machinegun crossbows.
And i think that covers it all.
Sign-up
Name of your Kingdom: (includes the title of your realm: so Jarldom, Despotate and what have you)
Name of your Dynasty:
Name of your First King/Queen:
Asymmetric Start: Y/N (important here, decides whether Kingdoms are randomly generated or whether you start with roughly equal Nations)
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Name of your Kingdom: Principality of Magnamica
Name of your Dynasty: House Honore
Name of your First Queen: Queen Ellana I of House Honore
Asymmetric Start: Y
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accepted!
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Name of your Kingdom: The Noble Republic of Appalachia
Name of your Dynasty: Riley
Name of your King (First Among Equals is the technical title): Russel Riley
Asymmetric Start: Y
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accepted as well, you must be aware hwoever that i won't simulate any democratic proceedings...so in the end it will still function as a kingdom.
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Name of your Kingdom: Kingdom of Noveria
Name of your Dynasty: Halian
Name of your First King/Queen: Theoderic
Asymmetric Start: Y
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accepted. Three are in, i'll wait till we have at least 5 though.
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Name of your Kingdom: Sovereign State of Solaria
Name of your Dynasty: Ayes
Name of your First Queen: (Solar One) Aywen Ayes
Asymmetric Start: Y
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I'll join -
Name of your Kingdom: Nannan Empire
Name of your Dynasty: Ro
Name of your First King/Queen: Protector Hhin Naf Ro
Asymmetric Start: Y
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two more accepted, bringing us up to 5, ill let it run for the rest of the day in case we get some more apps and then I'll set up the game :D
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Name of your Kingdom: Duchy of Taramdar
Name of your Dynasty: Tabara
Name of your First King: Sorlen Tabara
Asymmetric Start: Y
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Okay the map is almost set up and the intro post as well, your specific kingdom stats will take some time though. In other news, unfortunately due to the mapthingy i used the maps come in svg files, i'll leave some dropbox links of cultural, religious and political maps. You can download them and then open them with your browser, allowing you to look at these rather detailed maps :D
EDIT: IC-Thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174875.0)
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Maps and write up looking great!
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Room for one more? I'll accept being a weak, newly rebelled 'king' of one of those subjugated peoples or something, really anything, if there's no room for more nations, I just really want to take part in this forum game. Been looking for something like this for quite a while.
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At the moment no. But, there is no guarantee that there won't be successful revolts and/or rebellion so if you stick around you can claim a split-off in the process of the game.
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Sounds good to me!
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So... I guess, 'what actions are we allowed to take?' is the question.
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apologies, you will be getting your sheets tomorrow, this week has been awfully busy with work...once you have them you can go ahead and do your actions.
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Okay the Sheets are up, i expect you to be gentlemanly enough not to peek into other peoples sheets...too much.
There also have been some major rule changes:
Unrest
Unrest has been changed in several ways:
First of All you have differing Groups of Interest and a General Unrest Level. These minor groups will only gain unrest when the provinces they inhabit sink below the national average of prosperity. Once their Unrest reaches 100 a full blown revolt will break out which will grow eventually if not put down in time. You can negotiate with them at any given time. What they demand depends on the situation.
The General Unrest level represents your entire nation as such. It rises with low prosperity across the nation, ongoing revolts and civil wars and once it reaches one-hundred you will face random rebels from peasantry to nobles who want all kinds of things. If your nation reached that point, congrats you are in the thirty years war and order will be hard to restore.
Provinces, Cities and why they are not in your sheet
Simply put there are too many of them for you and me to care about. Nannan has after some considerable province redrawing still some 56 provinces and some 140 Burgs...nobody wants to keep track of that so the provinces will only be listed once they become relevant or interesting to you personally.
Furthermore the population movement mechanic is removed for now...the game is simply to big to keep track of that :(
Armies
Armies (as in their locations and compositions) will not be in the sheet and only kept in a seperate notepad document, so nobody gets tempted to peek for enemy armies...
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Have the provinces been drawn out? If so, is there a version of the map with them on (or even just the burgs). The political map only seems to have the capitals.
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Towns are actually on the political map, you just need to zoom in close enough ;)
Province Map (https://www.dropbox.com/s/ps3d4u6z38bt289/Provinces.svg?dl=0)
That won't be updated though since Provinces are a bitch to manage in that map generator.
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Ah I've been stuck on phone this week, and wasn't able to zoom in on the files. Have now since managed to download a viewer which zooms all the way in.
Should all actions be posted publically or privately?
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Publicly except for military orders.
That being said i realized that i forgot half of the rule updates -.-"
Culture and Religion
As you probably have already seen, culture and religion is so far only a nuisance, the damn roimlanders or Hesklanders seem to only be there to rebel right?
Well thats true, but Culture and Religious Diversity brings interesting options.
All Cultures and Faiths bring unique troops to the field, be it as levies or professionals, giving you a more diverse set of military options.
On the other Hand you might want to reduce future unrest by reducing your diversity:
You can spend money each turn to start conversion of your people, be it culturally or religiously.
It is a slow process, which can cause extra unrest, but once complete you can reduce the group of people who will more easily rebel, giving you a more stable country.
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I'm intrigued by the scenario, where things only get worse for everyone as the game goes on. Players want wars to be very brief, to limit damage, but if cornered, have the tools to wreck havoc.
In some ways starting everyone at maximum prosperity does limit a boring initial build-up, since the only peaceful thing to do at the start is to be boring and save for mercenaries. But I feel like it's a little bit of a waste of the asymmetric start, and leaves whoever strikes first exposed to their neighbors. I feel like it could have been a more interesting scenario if some players wanted to try to buy time to fix infrastructure or quell unrest, while others were ready to strike at the outset, perhaps with a few turns' of possible fixing things up to add uncertainty to when they'd strike.
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Ah and here is the interesting part Nirur: you can muster levies in secret, which scouting rolls (don't worry those are automatic and it is assumed you are guarding your borders) may or may not reveal. So the first attacker is not necessarily exposed. Similiarly those in the corners of the map, and those who start in weaker positions all do not need to fear enemy attacks or being exposed( as much), since Naval Landings take a considerably longer time to prepare and set off and are far far more noticeable.
Speaking of things:
You can have several professional troops raised. So having Varangians and Immortals and four or five other different "types" of troops is entirely possible.
You can take as many actions as you like, be they secret or not, i will however take the right to simply say no when you overdo it, this might be subject to change if you folks abuse it.
Levies as mentioned can be mustered in secret and the first strike also CAN be secret. Beyond that however your path of ruination pretty much tells players at least to some degree where you are. Scout rolls will be made upon you mustering levies, to figure out if other players notice.
by the by notquitethere is that ic post an action or fluff?
I would request that you folks bold your actions for ease of parsing the posts later on for actions.
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Can bold in future. Having a festival for the purpose of drawing champions from across the country is an action, yes.
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I'm still missing orders from a lot of people, guys please submit your stuff, or ask questions if you are unsure what to do, otherwise i will assume you lost interest and replace you.
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I'll hereby open up the Nannan Empire and Solaria for interested players to take over.
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I am unsure what to do.
Can I just try and give money to the peasants telling them to improve the economy? Or do I need a detailed plan?
If I want to raise troops, I should PM you? Or is only troop movement secret?
Is trade a thing? What about tariffs? Or can I assume that just happens automatically?
[Generic "I understand there's no research, but can I just command my minions to do X renaissance thing?" question]
Are regions different in terms of fertility/mineral riches? Or is there a just a formula based off of prosperity and population?
Are all religions the same? Maybe some of them demand lower tithe (=moar taxes without starving the population) or reward martial prowess (=better troops) or particularly emphasizes obedience to authority (= lower unrest)
Speaking of cool troops, should we already know what culture/religion troops excel in what terrain/type of battle or do we learn this as we raise them?
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You don't need a detailed plan for your Economy. Currently there is no reason to invest money since everyone begins at 100 prosperity in every single province.
To increase prosperity you need to invest money, simple as that, no complicated plans ala: Start prospecting for mineral resources, close the banks to prevent collapse of the currency or somesuch. You just invest money to increase prosperity.
How much depends on the population of the province and the amount of prosperity. say you are at 90 Prosperity in a province with 100.000 people. To increase that provinces prosperity back to 100 you need to invest 1 ducat per thousand people in the province. So for 10 prosperity 1000 ducats.
Of course that does not prevent you from making fluff actions, that you rebuilt villages, improved infrastructure and done what not, just that its not necessary.
You do not need to disguise any of your actions in pms, that is utterly optional. Raising Troops and moving them both triggers automatic scouting rolls for neighbouring or subjected players, making those movements/raising visible to them.
Trade and tarrifs are not a thing, you can assume they happen automatically already via the prosperity mechanic. (see stuff about fluff when improving your province from above ^^)
No you cannot do renaissance, period. No cannons, No Guns.
Actually let me rephrase that, you can go for it but you won't get beyond those really ancient arquebuses and ship cannons, which were not really an improvement on longbows, crossbows and trebutchets/scorpions. So yeah no tech advantage for anyone :P
That is to say nothing prevents you from raising some 200.000 Portuzi Arquebusiers and simply going for it. It simply means you won't have a great tech advantage through the use of early gunpowder weapons.
Regions only differ in terrain,prosperity, population, culture and religion...beyond that there is no difference. So if the region isnt interesting due to prosperity or population reasons it might be interesting due to its strategic terrain or because it shares a certain culture or religion with you.
Religions have no intrinsic differences beyond providing unique units for you. So raising a levy in Religion As and Culture Bs territory will give you some different levy units than Religion C and Culture Ds territory.
While certain cultures will certainly excel in fighting in certain terrains (Shwazen in Bogs, Roimlanders in Mountains/Hills and Astellians on Plains) it is not unique to them. So yes you can raise Portuzi Heavy Cavalry who excels at Plains Fighting even more so than Astellian units ever would...its just far more expensive.
So yeah if you raise levies you will also get some info on who does what...and is good or bad at which things.
On the other hand if you raise professionals, you will in all probability tell me what you want so yeah...unless you just want me to provide you with a list of potential things to raise/train/do.
going by this post i assume you are still interested so i'll re-reserve your spot...just got tired of waiting for folks. :P
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Okay chaps, there has been some demand for fortifications.
There is however no rules of them. I have rules for the use of them (aka all your burgs are fortified automatically) and for temporary fortifications in the form of wooden forts and encampents build by your men.
So lets do a short tally:
Should we continue with either:
a) Fiating Fortifications (aka i come up with stuff on the spot and hope it somehow fits into the game)
or
b) the original idea that only cities and temporary fortifications are a thing (which would mean there is no necessity to build them...)
On another note, your countries start at maximum prosperity...it can't be raised further so taking economic actions the first turn, is pointless... I do apologize for all the restrictions, i will try and keep things clearer in the future ^^
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A
Being able to fortify certain important areas and chokepoints will make for far more interesting wars in my opinion. Means an attacker has to be more creative and a defender has to make important decisions regarding which areas they want to fortify, something I personally think will be far more fun than what is already in place. Also means there's choices to make about rushing defences before they're finished or preparing for war yourself and all that.
Basically, the game will have more tactics and strategy, which I personally see as a major plus.
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I'm happy you taking an ad hoc approach, but I'll go along with whatever people want to do. Ideally something that doesn't make it harder for you to process a turn.
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Also, if fortification is a thing, make sure it's balanced. Otherwise the game will devolve into people turtling behind max level forts. That makes for a boring game.
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Though it is historically accurate for the period field battles became rarer in the late medieval period though it might be much to start with that is something to be expected further into the game.
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General Consensus has been reached i feel...so fortifications are in...they will be costly and will cost you maintenance, in exchange you gain good strongpoints. Unfortunately i cannot properly mark them on the map without some major fuckery so yeah...you have to go to the documents...or ask me ^^
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Sweet.
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Info in Regards to Fortifications:
the Total sum displayed in your sheet merely means what needs to be paid for it to be finished, once the sum has been paid construction can finish. Partial Fortifications can also be used, depending on the state to more or less effect.
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If you are still accepting Kingdoms
Name of your Kingdom: Wilsonia
Name of your Dynasty: Wilson
Name of your First King/Queen: Esmarelda
Asymmetric Start: N
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Name : Wololoo
Name of dynasty : von Krampf
Name of first king : Bob
Asymetric start : Y
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Currently not no, but i will keep you waitlisted in case players drop out.
Sorry for the delays i have been without internet for a week, updates should resume tomorrow
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Currently still missing orders from Ardas and Taricus
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I'll hereby open up the Nannan Empire and Solaria for interested players to take over.
Ok with taking Solaria for their cool name
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And I will take. Nannan
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I'm dropping out of the game, as I cannot for the life of me think of any actions whatsoever to perform in the game.
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...That quote was a post made 12 days ago. Those people have already been replaced or encouraged to continue making actions. I'm the Nannans and my action has already been sent by way of PM.
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Sorry. Ignore my post, then.
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What is open is Taricus nation.
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How many actions are allowed per turn and how are actions formatted?
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Only format is that you bold your actions otherwise you can go wild with roleplay.
actions are only restricted by staying reasonable...basically the soft limit is me going: "ARE YE FUCKING KIDDING ME?"
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Okay Naturegirl, as it is there is currently no big economy building component. The Kingdoms all start at 100 prosperity so at the best they could be for the purpose of the game.
If you get in wars with people your economy starts to drop...then you can try and start doing economic actions. But right now there isn't really much to do beyond either going for fortifications or raising your forces for war.
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Fixed. Thank you
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Sorry to everyone still involved in this but im closing the game at this point, too many folks are opting out after one round or after not giving orders...clearly this one can safely be given up. Sorry to those who still held interest.
Can't do much more than offer you preferred treatment (aka i'll pm you and reserve spots for you) in the next game im gming...
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Well it was a good run and a game with a lot of potential so I’m sorry to see it go, but that’s the way of it I suppose. Look forward to whatever you come up with next.
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I’m looking forward to the next game too. Too bad I found this game too late
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That's unfortunate. It seems like the major issue was that people simply didn't understand what to do, and there was some confusion of what we were actually allowed to do.
Regardless, you've inspired me to work on something similar with the same map generator and I look forward to your next game.
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Neat map and some good concepts here but players weren't sure what kind of actions were expected or allowed. This might have been okay if the game was completely freeform, but there were definitely actions that were disallowed. So this leads to uncertainty.
My suggestion in your next game is to try to be much more explicit with the game mechanics.