Solution for (dis)advantage when NAP ends

[KGB]

MoonKnight,

I have had this tactic used against me a couple of times, I think it should be programmed that if you are in a NAP then you can pass through the opponents players in non-cities.

This just leads to the inevitable problem of players placing stacks outside the other players cities waiting for the NAP to end so they can pounce on them. Blocking is the only defense against that.

The cons can exactly be countered by allowing stacks to pass friendly stacks and if this would make the issue bigger of players waiting at the other player's cities (which is a con anyway)... tadaaa, that's exactly what this thread's suggestion is about:
When a truce ends, all stacks that are close to the other player's cities have x % chance to "migrate" to the other player = you better stay away from his territory (or leave it by the end of the truce) and start your journey towards the other player's city when the truce is over.

This is a bad bad idea. Randomly losing stacks to another player has nothing to do with strategy. It's pure luck and if one player lost their best hero stack an entire game could change on an NAP ending rather than on the battlefield (in other words as an NAP ended if I was the weaker player I'd always attempt to stack my armies in the stronger players lands. If I lose them to luck, well I was going to lose anyway but if I don't lose them then I could well win by getting free strikes against his cities. The stronger player can't afford that risk). Other times you literally *have* to pass through the other players territory to reach a common enemy so losing armies/stacks in that case when the NAP ends would again be unfair.

Then how are you going to figure out where the border line is? Without a mark on the map or some kind of color shading to indicate zones of control it won't be possible to know if you are within their zone or yours. So this adds a lot of extra coding to show where this would begin and end.


The best I can think of is shorter NAP's. Down to as short as 2 turns. That way if someone blocks or attempts to move into your area you can very quickly respond by not renewing the NAP and going to war. If you want to sign a longer NAP you risk all the abuse I showed above.

KGB

[Moonknight]

MoonKnight,

This just leads to the inevitable problem of players placing stacks outside the other players cities waiting for the NAP to end so they can pounce on them. Blocking is the only defense against that.
KGB

I guess I don't understand how it leads to that problem when that problem is in-play with or without NAP opponents being passible in the field? Do you mean b/c you can't have a line of armies around your cities creating a "wall"?

It's not like the NAP opponents characters are invisible...

[KGB]

MoonKnight,

You wrote that you wanted to allow your stacks to pass through an NAP players armies. This would prevent the blocking technique that I mentioned in #1 that prevents enemy stacks from moving.

I said blocking is the ONLY thing that allows me to control where an NAP players armies go in my lands. In other words I can prevent him from placing his stacks outside my cities / on my bless sites etc by blocking him out. This is the primary reason I block so that I don't get creamed when an NAP expires. #1 and #2 that I wrote about above are just icing on the cake.

So my point is the problem of enemies stacking armies outside my city is not always in play right now if I can block. And many maps have nice easy ways to block thanks to ports and narrow passes.

KGB

[piranha]

Thinking along the lines of real world I think there would be a border, and if you cross that you would somehow break the NAP with could come at a cost. But to have such a border it would have to be clearly visible on the map and that would be a lot of extra work so that wont happen right now since there are many other important things to work on.

If you are able to move through units but not towers or cities, that way you could block a passage but not create a prison with cheap units. It should be better than the way it is now.
But it doesn't solve the problem of placing you armies in reach of the other player cities and being first to move.

The option to break a NAP at a cost might not be that bad. If 2 experienced players make a NAP and KGB decides to move his best hero army within strike distance from 3 cities that player can attack him before he is in position and perhaps that player have a horselord and heavy cav . What I mean is that if you move you best army to the other players land he have the same chance to attack you as you have so it should more or less be the way it is without the NAP to move into someones land except it costs some gold to attack.

You could say it's good to force the other player to attack and lose money by moving into his territory but that can cost you your army.

[Moonknight]

Sounds decent to me Piranha, as long as it is well documented

[Maze]

This is a bad bad idea. Randomly losing stacks to another player has nothing to do with strategy. It's pure luck and if one player lost their best hero stack an entire game could change on an NAP ending rather than on the battlefield (in other words as an NAP ended if I was the weaker player I'd always attempt to stack my armies in the stronger players lands. If I lose them to luck, well I was going to lose anyway but if I don't lose them then I could well win by getting free strikes against his cities. The stronger player can't afford that risk). Other times you literally *have* to pass through the other players territory to reach a common enemy so losing armies/stacks in that case when the NAP ends would again be unfair.

Let me try and put it more in a Warbarons logic. It's not "randomly" losing stacks to another player. It's statiscally risking to lose your stack if it is "too" close to a friendly city. Which is (1) statistically the same and (2) thematically comparable to ambush. Would you say ambush has nothing to do with strategy? Strategy is both qualitative (go through water or land, build this or that, ..., expand this or that way, truce, ...) and quantitative (army size, strength statistics, ambush, ...).
(1) statistically the same: having x% chance risk to lose your stack, what's the difference with a unit's ambush skill?
(2) thematically comparable: putting it in Warbarons terms: like you have a unit's ambush, why not introduce City Ambush, i.e. each city has x% chance of convincing an opponent stack to migrate to the city owner in the very turn that the NAP ends and if the stack is within the city's influence zone. What's wrong about saying "stay away from a player if you have a truce with him, we don't want you to sit and wait till you can attack"? You don't randomly nor statistically lose your stack if you stick to that - in my eyes fair - rule.

Then how are you going to figure out where the border line is? Without a mark on the map or some kind of color shading to indicate zones of control it won't be possible to know if you are within their zone or yours. So this adds a lot of extra coding to show where this would begin and end.

Is the visibility necessary? Yes and No.
But first, I think that comparing the distance between stack and opponent's city vs own city is not that good.
Reasoning and new definition of desertion:
- If both cities are close to each other, you might say that an army would not desert as it is still within the influence zone of its own city, regardless of whether he is that bit closer to the other city
- Similarly, if both cities are far from each other, you might say that the opponent's influence is too weak and your stack will not desert.
New definition:
Similar to a building's "view", install an "influence zone".
When a truce is over, calculate for each stack vs cities: "if stack is within opponent's influence zone AND not within own influence zone" then "ambush" roll of x %.

Now, back to the question how to make this visible and my reaction whether this is necessary, yes vs no.
No, you can easily count the tiles (thinking of an Influence Zone of +/- 10 tiles in each direction).
Yes, you might want to give this info to a player. I leave the "how to do this" to the developers as conceptually it's easy but coding-wise I have no clue how difficult this is. Giving it a shot and looking at what already exists to make it easy I would say it should look like a "mark" for the unit when it is at risk (comparable to the "set unit in attention until I move it again" dot or the elsewhere suggested "blessed" mark) or a mouse-over text "Risk of Desertion!) (mouse-over comparable to city information on mouse-over etc.) or on the right info screen for the units' blessings and moves etc.

Recap: introduce a new feature "Influence Zone" for cities
- what? In the first turn after a truce, all stacks that are within the influence zone of an fresh opponent's city might desert (x%) to this opponent unless the stack is within the influence zone of own city.
- why? To solve the issue of abusing a truce for sitting and "knocking" at the other player's door when the truce is over. Or thinking out of the box / issue: it's a cool new feature for the game. Desertion is an important element in warfare.

And you might even further expand this feature and give "Influence" (or call it "Culture") a bigger part in the game. Ideas:
- Non-fixed "Culture" level:
- Smaller/Larger influence zones depending on city size (size to be defined, e.g. depending on income)
- Smaller/Bigger chance to get "influenced" depending on number of citizens, theaters, ... or so (or again, depending on income, if we don't want to use the existing elements)
- Give all cities at all times "Culture" skill, not only in the turn after the truce. Of course, compared to armies that have been partying with the opponent during the truce, in a war situation the level of influence should be rather small but still existing.

And if we are in the mood for more similar ideas:
- besides depending on income, a city's culture level increases when production is switched off
- stacks might desert also when not in an influence zone of an opponent's city but at any time, i.e. when they are too far from "home" or from "superior control". These stacks might turn into neutral (non-active) units or disappear completely (as opposed to hero offers and their allies who want to join you).
- units can die = similar to above but in this case of course they disappear, don't turn into a corpse (or maybe a ghost? :p). And this said, ghosts themselves cannot die of course, stacks can die from starvation in desert when no scout or sand unit is with them, lonely crows could die in mountains or on ridges (would solve "that other issue" ), they wouldn't live endlessly anyway, it's not that they only die when encountering an enemy. (This goes for all living units of course.)

Or what about giving cities Hero-like skills:
For walls you have to pay gold, but Culture could give a city points to spend on
- "City Boost" (1 point = +1 for all units in the city, max = +2)
- "City Panic" (1 point = -1 to all attacking units, max = +2)
- "City Go" (1 point = +1 move to all units leaving the city (only in that turn, unlike movement blessing), max = +4) (consider they get directions in the city on surrounding terrain etc.)

[Maze]

Piranha,
I like the idea of risking to see the NAP ending when someone is close to you city and allowing you to attack him. But I am also thinking of: what if player A and B have a truce and player A can only reach players C's, D's, ... territory through B's and the truce is exactly signed to allow A to go through B's territory to allow this passage without the one risking to be attacked by the other?
If it would then cost money or not, I would rather say that it comes close to having no binding truce at all and an informal truce would suffice.
Also, I like the certitude that it cannot be breached: it allows you to focus your forces elsewhere and not on your common borders. From the moment that it can be breached, you have to keep the same units in your cities as if you were at war. Even if you can only breach a pact to attack a player close to your city and then see the pact active again, you would still need a stack of your own over there (or how would you attack him?).
Another thing: a nice feature would be stats of how many pacts a player has signed and how many he breached. To be shown in the diplomacy screen. Even if you might gain this experience yourself (only possible for and against experienced players), this is definitely a must-have against undercover players (no experience to gain there).

[KGB]

Maze,

Let me try and put it more in a Warbarons logic. It's not "randomly" losing stacks to another player. It's statiscally risking to lose your stack if it is "too" close to a friendly city. Which is (1) statistically the same and (2) thematically comparable to ambush. Would you say ambush has nothing to do with strategy? Strategy is both qualitative (go through water or land, build this or that, ..., expand this or that way, truce, ...) and quantitative (army size, strength statistics, ambush, ...).
(1) statistically the same: having x% chance risk to lose your stack, what's the difference with a unit's ambush skill?
(2) thematically comparable: putting it in Warbarons terms: like you have a unit's ambush, why not introduce City Ambush, i.e. each city has x% chance of convincing an opponent stack to migrate to the city owner in the very turn that the NAP ends and if the stack is within the city's influence zone. What's wrong about saying "stay away from a player if you have a truce with him, we don't want you to sit and wait till you can attack"? You don't randomly nor statistically lose your stack if you stick to that - in my eyes fair - rule.

It *IS* randomly losing your stacks. It must be random because those stacks are being vaporized without being in battle since it requires no units. By the logic of what you describe I can have a hero stack with a L20 Paly, L20 DK both dripping with artifacts, Archon, Devil, 4 Green Dragons all blessed sitting right next to an empty enemy city when an NAP ends and BOOM that whole stack disappears. So what killed them? Who ambushed them? It's a magic random roll of the dice.

Also as I said this concept TOTALLY benefits the weaker player. Imagine you and I are in an NAP that's about to end. I look at the stats and see you now have 25 cities to my 15 and 150 armies to my 100. You are going to kill me as soon as the NAP ends. However I can attempt a cheese way to win by moving my armies into your lands and sit close to your cities. If I am *lucky* and my armies aren't magically lost to the dice roll I can potentially ravage 5+ of your cities cutting you down to 20 or less giving me a chance to steal a win. If I am not lucky, so what, I was going to lose anyway. You on the other hand would be stupid to risk your own armies in my lands because you already have a won game.

And you might even further expand this feature and give "Influence" (or call it "Culture") a bigger part in the game. Ideas:
- Non-fixed "Culture" level:
- Smaller/Larger influence zones depending on city size (size to be defined, e.g. depending on income)
- Smaller/Bigger chance to get "influenced" depending on number of citizens, theaters, ... or so (or again, depending on income, if we don't want to use the existing elements)
- Give all cities at all times "Culture" skill, not only in the turn after the truce. Of course, compared to armies that have been partying with the opponent during the truce, in a war situation the level of influence should be rather small but still existing.

Culture? Me thinks you have been playing some Galactic Civilizations lately

Culture only works if player sides belong to actual races (Elves, Dwarves) rather than being a hodgepodge of units mixed together like Warbarons is. There is no real culture concept in the game unless Warbarons changes to be more like DLR where you get limited sets of armies that thematically belong together (good vs evil or elves/Dwarves vs Orcs/Giants type thing) rather than just allowing them to freely mix.

KGB

[smursh]

I agree that the NAP feature has some real issues. KGB's point that the player moving second is at a big disadvantage is absolutely correct. I would prefer not to have NAP's but in a FFA if you dont make them your opponents will end up with NAP' and all attack you. There are really only two good options:

#1: No Naps. Make your alliance based on a mutual agreement. You will have to judge if you should trust somebody, but that's life.

#2: The previously mentioned option to have open ended NAPs which either player can end, but doesn't end untill the other players turn. In this case by ending the NAP you give your opponent the first strike advantage, but he may not be prepared for the end of the NAP. This way if your ally is acting against you, you aren't locked into a NAP. I would probably allow NAP partners in this case to move past blocks, if you don't want them in your territory tell them to get out, or end the NAP.

[Maze]

KGB,
If it *IS* randomly losing your stacks and you are afraid something that bad happen to your pumped up stack, what's the difference with a high ambush stack with cheap units? Same randomness, same pumped up stack you can lose against a "cheap" ambush stack and benefit the weaker player. And I am not talking about "something magical that killed them" but a city that makes an army desert like in real life warfare. And it's not "an empty city" like it's not an empty city producing the goods and creating the income. A non-defended city is not an empty city. Sure military-wise no-one will blame you for calling a non-defended city empty in Warbarons (we all do so), but when talking about a new feature that can make an army desert, it's not "magic": production does not come from a box: normal citizens were trained to become high infantry etc. and normal citizens are producing swords, catapults, ... and even the walls that you can upgrade.

And so what if a weaker player wants to risk his stack (at let's say 70% risk to lose it) and hopes to be able to hurt you in case the odds are against you? Again that can happen with a cheap ambush stack vs your pumped up stack as well and is part of the game and strategy. But which player would do something like that? Most cases are not when there are other players involved but when it's just the two of you left, and if you are really that much stronger than him and he hopes to be able to raze your cities, why can't you do the same with not one but three or four stacks? A loooooot must happen before the balance flips over from one player winning to the other. If still that is too much for you, then take away all the dice roll and make it a Stratego or Chess game where you always know the outcome of each fight. Early game dice rolls are much more game decisive than one weak player's single stack with still a small chance to flip over the balance vs another player's three-four stacks and counting on the field, mass income and huge production.

On your last two paragraphs (don't have it open anymore):
Never heard of Galactic Civilizations. I have played Sid Meier's Civilization more than ten years ago though and that had diplomacy, culture, religion, etc indeed, but to a much larger extent.

I like the idea of having a limited set of armies and e.g. good vs evil. There are already a couple of maps having such starting positions but after a couple of turns no-one remembers who is who and it's actually not relevant anymore due to the having the full set of units available for production.