I believe that one of the oft-proposed changes to Olympia - to
implement some kind of automatic border-keeping - will lead to more
conflict and violence. Not so much from isolated muggers, but from
empire-builders. In a way, Dr. Pain had almost the perfect setup for
this. The New Lands had one very defensible land exit, and if I
hadn't blown it, the Dark Empire would probably have worked. Once
everyone has access to automatic border-keeping (and especially if
people can fortify their borders) then there should be more
empire-building and eventually conflict. So you have the kind of neat
result that the same changes that will lead to safe havens will also
lead to new kinds of conflict.
Limited resources will also drive conflict.
> So, some specifics. First off, if one side kills or captures
> another side in combat, that person should recieve no information
> about what happened or who did it - there's no units to report this
> back to him.
I argued for this long ago. I was particularly perturbed by the fact
that people sitting in the Old Lands could follow my exploits and
prepare to attack me when there was no reasonable explanation for how
they knew these things. Obits did disappear for one turn, and later
were delayed for one turn, but since the defender can still publish
his turn reports, that does little good.
I like your idea very much, though I might implement it so that you
need 2-1 at least to pull it off. Otherwise stragglers might get
away to report to the faction head.
This idea also blends well with the "automated rumors" I suggested at
one point. So you send a unit into an area, it disappears, and when
you send someone to investigate, he finds rumors that say "Joe Blow
was killed by the Evil Marauders" and "A dragon is wandering around
Sherwood Forest".
> In fact, I'd suggest that if a unit is killed or captured during a
> month then no reports will be recieved at all from this unit. Thus,
> if I enter a province with 3 seperate stacks and wipe them all out,
> noone is left to tattle on who did it.
Certainly something like this needs to be done. If your turn report
says:
511: 14> The Evil Marauders arrive from Flambia
511: 14> Joe Blow has been killed!
you're going to have a pretty good guess what happened, even if you
don't get the turn report. Maybe you should just lose the previous
week of report instead of the whole month? Can this be easily
implemented?
> Next, I'd also like a smaller number of people per area.
Are you talking NPCs or players?
> Geez, maybe I should have gotten into the Dark Empire when I had the
> chance!
Heh, heh, heh. So speaks the only player ever to be ejected from
the Dark Empire for being too (shudder) *nice*. Blech. :-)
-- Scott T.