The problem, in my opinion, is exponential growth of factions in both number
of men and number of units. This is currently being done via the WORK
command as well as other means of making money.
But many of the OTHER uses of money are not harmful. Among them are
maintenance costs, studying, and buying equipment/trading items.
What needs to be done is to limit increasing the size of factions (men and
units) while allowing units to make enough money working to study, travel,
and be equipped in a reasonable manner. The idea of 1 weeks worth of
work can support 1 week of study or 2 weeks of travel is not unreasonable.
The idea that units could use that same money to build up to 1600 men in
less than a year is. I think it is on the unit building side of this
that changes must be made.
Here is a REALLY radical suggestion. Simply REMOVE the form command
as it exists at this time. INSTEAD, have the game randomly introduce
a number of "independant" units into the world at a variety of
locations each turn. These units would be marked "looking for
employment; ### gold to hire". If you have a unit in the same town as
one of these units, you simply issue "hire [unit #] [amount]" with
amount greater than or equal to the money requested (leadership, etc.
COULD be used to modify this). If more than one faction tries to hire
the unit at the same time, the unit will accept the highest bid. If
two or more factions tie for the highest bid, the unit will "wait for
a higher bid" or the "persuasiveness" of the hiring units could be
taken into account. Issuing a "hire" command would take 1 day. Units
up for hire could be skilled or unskilled, one man or many and this
would effect the amount of gold they request. In addition, "swear 0"
could put a unit "up for hire". Hired units would have a loyalty of
60.
The above system would allow Rich a reasonable amount of control over
the growth of the game and the availability of new units could vary with
terrain type and season. Persuade would also be an option instead of
flat out hiring. If no one wants a unit (although I doubt this will
happen often).
As for recruit, simply give all new recruits a loyalty of 5 or 10
until "persuaded" to have a higher loyalty. If you try to recruit too
many men into an existing unit without spending the corresponding
"persuade money", you will eventually have a unit with a loyalty of 5
or 10. Also, the amount of money needed to persuade a unit should
depend on the number of men being persuaded.
As for impress, all the men gotten via that method should have a 0 loyalty
or less. This would have a devestating effect on a units loyalty if nothing
is done about it.
A related idea is to give a unit "soft loyalty" for the equipment they are
carrying. In other words, as long as they are equipped at certain levels,
their loyalty will be temporarily increased by a certain amount until the
equipment is removed. Well equipped units are happy units...
I've got more to say but I gotta go.
John Morrow - Varian [856]