>
><A bunch of stuff on Faction trees deleted>
>
>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.
Its not the only way though.
>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".
Easier just to report the faction of units rather than their immediate
superior in the tree. I never really saw the point of that.
>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
I see no real reason to have to manually work out the trees, just to
determine who is which faction. I can see the point of it if you want to
find out who is at the top of a branch, so you can bribe/terrorise/kidnap
him, but it should be a stealth or magic spell to find that out.
Punting FTs seems to be throwing the bathwater out with the baby. You lose
a lot of the political possibilities.
I realise that Olympia is tending more towards the 'run around and hit
people' type game, but I'd rather it didn't.
John