Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Borders  (Read 1625 times)

Ramaraunt

  • Bay Watcher
  • Armok is Laughing
    • View Profile
Borders
« on: May 11, 2014, 08:40:58 pm »

Its annoying how kingdoms become intertwined. Here is an example of what I mean:

This is The Confederacy of Doors, a human civ.



This is The Uncommon Confederacies, another human civ.



This is The Confederation of Paddles, another human civ.



Notice how all three civs are overlapping each other. It should be impossible for a kingdom that's as disconnected as that to stay unified. I would like it if kingdoms could only claim land witin a polygon, so they aren't so weird looking.
« Last Edit: May 11, 2014, 08:42:57 pm by Ramaraunt »
Logged
The moment you realize that there is no iron.

stabbymcstabstab

  • Bay Watcher
  • OW SNAP!
    • View Profile
Re: Borders
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2014, 09:11:15 pm »

Probably planned, but I think this is going to get more or less fixed with site claims and armies.
Logged
Long Live Arst- United Forenia!
"Wanna be a better liberal? Go get shot in the fuckin' face."
Contemplate why we have a sociopathic necrophiliac RAPIST sadomasochist bipolar monster in our ranks, also find some cheese.

GavJ

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Borders
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2014, 12:15:44 am »

Note that although it is unrealistic, if you were to fully enforce borders, it would also make it a lot harder to make fortresses that get visited by everybody, because there would be much larger tracts of land that were mono-race.

I suppose you could just increase the valid range of "civs that can visit you this far away or closer" to compensate though.
Logged
Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.

Loud Whispers

  • Bay Watcher
  • They said we have to aim higher, so we dug deeper.
    • View Profile
    • I APPLAUD YOU SIRRAH
Re: Borders
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2014, 08:03:42 am »

For all we know they might just be a collection of Polis rather than a Kingdom in the medieval sense. Would be interesting to see how borders change over time though, in the next updates.

MDFification

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hammerer at Law
    • View Profile
Re: Borders
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2014, 10:55:57 am »

There are several factors at play that lead to the current weird borders IIRC;
-Civs of the same type are never hostile to each other, so sites don't get traded between then.
-Armies can freely march (not that they're currently represented, they just launch blitz attacks from a home site) to an enemy site regardless of whats in between. Neutral territory does not impede them. Deserts, rivers, mountains or other geographic features that heavily influence borders IRL are also irrelevant to army movement.
-Civs that are hostile to eachother rarely occupy the same areas because they use different biomes.
-Civs aren't hostile that frequently anyway. During worldgen they just all fight goblins (with the occasional war between elves and humans/dwarfs).

So here are some things that should fix borders (some of them are in the next versions, idk about others);

-Armies cannot path through impassable obstacles (high mountains, long deserts, rivers).
-Armies do not path too close to a neutral site (if the PATROL_TERRITORY duty for nobles works, this can happen easily) and if marching close to a hostile site run the risk of being engaged by forces from that site.

-Settlers will not make a new site too close to a neutral (or even friendly) site (again, PATROL_TERRITORY). This could cause problems though; some civs could be hemmed in and rendered unable to expand. I think it would be offset by forcing populations to be more distributed though, as opposed to the current situation where civs cluster in very specific areas.
-Sites such as bandit hideouts also repel settlers. This could lead to problems though if bandit camps multiply uncontrollably, cutting off territory unless destroyed by civs in worldgen (not currently implemented I think) or by adventurers.

-Cultural variation might lead to wars based on one party's racism, or religious wars could be reimplemented to force otherwise friendly civs to have wars occasionally.
-On the other hand, if an enemy of a civ becomes the leader of their civ, it could cause a war to remove them from the throne.
-Site claims might also lead to internecine wars; say Dwarf Civ 1 looses a site to goblins. Then, Dwarf Civ 2 conquers the site from the goblins. DC1 now has a claim to a site occuppied by DC2, and might conceivably start a war to get it back.

If these were implemented, I think the following would happen;
a) Civs form 'natural' borders during peacetime to avoid ridiculous population density.
b) Border changes based on conquest will roughly follow natural borders due to geography.
c) Enclaves will be less common due to it being a lot harder for troops to reinforce them, making them easy prey for hostile conquest.
d) More wars will happen, and more sites will change hands, accelerating the rate that borders take a more reasonable shape. The only problem is that internecine wars might turn into continuous struggles as each side just gets more claims, more enemies of each civ have a chance of reaching a position causing another war, etc. This could lower population considerably.
Logged

Ramaraunt

  • Bay Watcher
  • Armok is Laughing
    • View Profile
Re: Borders
« Reply #5 on: May 13, 2014, 08:55:43 am »

I'm hoping in the next version there will be inter-racial wars. I agree that this would probably clean things up, along with rebellions forming new civs and such.
Logged
The moment you realize that there is no iron.

Manveru Taurënér

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Borders
« Reply #6 on: May 13, 2014, 09:08:43 am »

I'm hoping in the next version there will be inter-racial wars. I agree that this would probably clean things up, along with rebellions forming new civs and such.

I assume you mean intraracial i.e. fighting between dwarves and dwarves etc, since wars between the different fantasy races have been in for quite some time. There will be some minor fighting between human settlements in the next version, but no more than that afaik.
Logged