I have been one of the biggest agitators against the faction trees
and I guess I should explain why.
To me it seems fairly simple that if someone (lets call him noble y
who belongs to faction Y) kills/attacks one of my nobles that
faction has decided to act violently toward me/my faction. Now I
want to do three things (in rough order of preference)
1) Attack that faction or at least actively defend myself
2) Avoid having to develop really complex record keeping to keep
track of who belongs to who.
3) (relates to goals 1 and 2) Avoid olympus becoming a _huge_ time
commitment.
Flattening the tree lets goals 1,2, and 3 be realized.
There is a "compromise" but it really would require a ton of coding
(which I can't/won't do) and which only Rich can know if it is
possible to do.
1) Faction trees are left "as is" or only slightly modified. Then
every time I pick up information about a unit - what its number is,
and its lord, the information is autormatically collected and
"saved" at the end of my turn sheet. Then, if someone attacks me I
quickly go down, examine the "tree" appended to my report and see
what is up. As I run into more units, more of the tree is shown and
"filled in".
2) Now if in the real game, and I think this is open to discusion,
turns really are run only once a week, than it may be possible to do
#2 without a huge drain on time - one does the map on day 1, the
faction trees a couple of other days, communicates diplomatically,
and then writes the order sheet.
I hope this clafifies the reason for why I want to "punt" the FT
system. It seems overly complex and really designed to suck time,
time, and more time.
Erik