Ren'Py Vae Victis - Khan: Conquer, Ravish, Breed [v0.12.5] [Doorknob22]

[mrttao]

That's the only possible way? You sure?
I'm sure I won the first battle without doing any hit & run.
Don't recall ever using that approach.
Just infiltrated them, gained double attack strength, then attacked & beat them.

which infiltration mission gives double attack strength? it has been some time since I played this game without VN mode enabled so it might be a newer addition.

Back when I first played without VN, I ran into the issue that I was outnumbered. I had to attack and retreat to chip at their defenders until I Could finally overcome them. only then could I start accumulating more troops. since your troop cap depends on the number of controlled lands you have.

 

[Doorknob22]

which infiltration mission gives double attack strength? it has been some time since I played this game without VN mode enabled so it might be a newer addition.

Back when I first played without VN, I ran into the issue that I was outnumbered. I had to attack and retreat to chip at their defenders until I Could finally overcome them. only then could I start accumulating more troops. since your troop cap depends on the number of controlled lands you have.

Oryeonguk. When you burn the temple, for 20 turns your forces will attack at double strength (thought their numbers will not be doubled, i.e. you' won't see anything). You can use it to attack either Oryenguk or Marbia. It doesn't matter which of the two because taking any of them will raise your cap to 50 which will allow you to overcome the one you didn't take.

 

[Mr.Hide]

It is "hit and run tactics" not "exploiting the game mechanics"
it is also literally the only possible way to win your first fief battle

Yep, but it is an exploit because the enemy doesn't generate troops back like us.

 

[mrttao]

Yep, but it is an exploit because the enemy doesn't generate troops back like us.

Not necessarily. a lot of those enemies are arrogant. they would be the kind to under invest in their military
And it takes a while to recruit new troops, the MC could just be really good at it considering just how fast he can do it.

 

[muschi26]

Is there really any debate about this? It's blatantly & obviously an exploit.
It's using a game mechanic, in a way that it was not intended to be used, in order to gain an advantageous position you would not have had without it.
That is the literal definition of an exploit.

Do we know it's unintended? Some enemy states initially have armies that are more numerous than what you can even mobilize, and using attrition is just about the only way to win.

 

[Doorknob22]

My first instinct was: "Hey, there's a design bug here, fix it! They can play VN mode if they want to cheat!" but then I thought "If people are aware of the VN mode but still enjoy playing the strategy by exploiting this bug, why stand in their way?"

My question is: what can I do to keep the attack/retreat bug in the game and make it more fun without breaking the strategy game? Discuss.

 

[muschi26]

Yes, we know it's unintended. Dev has confirmed that.
Infiltration is the intended mechanic for when you're outnumbered.
You start with 30 troops and have to conquer 40.
That's exactly why the Infiltrate option grants you double attack power for that fiefdom, so that it's effectively 60 v 40 & you can defeat them.
That is the intended mechanic, not repeated hit & run to deplete a small amount each time, accumulating.
That has only been found by people not following the intended route & then losing the x2 attack bonus, getting stuck.
They found a workaround, by way of an exploit.

But infiltrate is a one-time thing and the effects only last a couple of days. You mean to tell me that, if you don't invade during that couple day period, it's intentional that you're locked out of playing the game?

 

[muschi26]

20 days.
I think that the more pertienent question is, when the only (tactical) purpose of infiltrating is to weaken the opposition, why would you wait 3 weeks to invade, after achieving your goal?
Strike while the iron is hot.
Weaken them\strengthen yourself = gain an advantage.
Why would you not use that advantage?

I leave behind some 8 soldiers or so in each of my territories when trying to conquer a new one, to stave off any raiders, and some territories still had bigger standing armies than me post-infiltration, which means that even after infiltration, some territories require you to leave yourself completely vulnerable in order to assail them. Considering the cost of a successful raid against you, I think it's fair that you can beat enemies via attrition lol.

Also, the timescale doesn't matter. The fact that you can lock yourself out at all by waiting too long to strike is an oversight, in my opinion. If you really want to force the player to act posthaste, give them a game over after those 20 days are up.

 

[RandyTyr]

My first instinct was: "Hey, there's a design bug here, fix it! They can play VN mode if they want to cheat!" but then I thought "If people are aware of the VN mode but still enjoy playing the strategy by exploiting this bug, why stand in their way?"

My question is: what can I do to keep the attack/retreat bug in the game and make it more fun without breaking the strategy game? Discuss.

The weaker side takes more casualties, right? So by attacking multiple times and chipping away at the enemy, the player would overall lose more soldiers compared to an overwhelming assault. As attack/retreat seems weaker than the "intended strategy" it shouldn't really affect game balance, right?

 

[muschi26]

Simple risk & reward scenario.
Draw all your troops out & go & hit the enemy, risking being hit while undefended.
Them's the breaks.

That's not the tradeoff that's in the game, though. Assuming attrition combat is a bug and will be fixed, your options are:

• Withdraw all your troops and leave yourself extremely vulnerable while attacking.
• Don't withdraw all your troops and be completely unable to attack, because your troops are insufficient. This isn't a real option, because it can never succeed.

Exactly that. The player locked themself out, by not paying attention to the expiry notice.
The only oversight is on their part.

Fine, except it's the devs job too to prevent the player from fucking himself over in some scenarios. There's a reason no one makes games like old Sierra point-and-click adventures. If it is the dev's intention to let players screw themselves, then putting a game over if the player fails to capture the territory in the 20 days it's vulnerable makes the most sense, so that players don't keep playing past that point and waste their time unknowingly. If it isn't the dev's intention, then there needs to be a way to infiltrate again to refresh the debuffs, or just make the debuffs permanent.

Moreover, you don't initially know how many troops you need to conquer a territory. This means that you can very well infiltrate, take 4 days to gather your army (if you don't have Angilia on the love route), try to invade, then lose a chunk of your troops, and have only 16 days to build up your forces again (actually only 12, because you'll need another 4 days to bring them back to your standing army—you can't really afford to wait 20 days without protecting your territories), which can be pretty tight depending on just how many soldiers you lost and how many barracks you have in place.

 

[muschi26]

That's not correct, though.
You are not vulnerable while attacking. Only for the 3-4 days of troops moving, in preparation to attack.
Which is why I said you'd likely be safe if you waited until the enemy had just performed a raid.
Doubt very much they'll send 2 in succession, less than 4 days apart.

What? Your territories are vulnerable any time your troops are travelling or part of your standing army. It takes 3–4 days for your troops to move from your barracks to your army, then you invade the new territory, then it takes 3–4 days for them to move back to your barracks. That's 6–8 days where you're completely vulnerable. And the rate of raids is completely random—just because one just happened doesn't mean it can't happen the next day, or even that it's less likely. I've had 2–3 raids on some occasions during these 6-day periods (I always romance Angilia), and sometimes, if I'm unlucky enough, they'll even hit the same place more than once, in which case even my leaving 8 soldiers isn't enough lol. There's also the issue where, if you get raided and everything is razed, that leaves you completely open to more raids, because you can't station soldiers anymore until you collect enough money for a new barrack (which could get destroyed again anyway in the time it takes your soldiers to get to it).

I managed just fine. I do not understand how a couple of people found it difficult, but I do not think that's on the game.
It seems much more like PEBCAK\user-error, to me.

I managed too (with the war of attrition tactic). It doesn't make the game unplayabled or anything, but I still see it as a problem, which is why I'm being vocal about it. If other people are having issues, that's even more reason to look into it. It's never really productive for a dev to blame the player, unless it's especially egregious and they're deliberately trying to break the game.

 

[muschi26]

You'd be massively unlucky if the enemy returns in that short time,

Leaving it up to luck like this is not a good design decision, at any rate.

Again, bottom line is that the issue is with the player, not the game.

You might think so, but arguably, letting players have the option to screw themselves in the first place is the game's fault. It's like if you were playing a Zelda game, and instead of moving on with the main quest, you screwed around in the starting area for a while, only to later realize that you're soft-locked, because you didn't go immediately. If you want to give a player a time limit in a game, you need to a) give them a hard deadline (e.g. a proper game over) so that they know without a shadow of a doubt when they've fucked up, and b) make it very clear to them what the deadline is and how long they have. Now, Vae Victis might have point b, but it definitely does not have point a.

 

[muschi26]

To be fair, it's called reading & paying attention, not luck.
It is not "lucky" that you read the instruction, followed it & it worked.
Nor is it "unlucky" if you did not read the instruction and things got messed up.

To be clear, the luck aspect I we were discussing here is the possibility of being raided during the 6–8 days you have to leave your territories undefended to mount an offensive, during which some players will experience no raids and therefore no challenge, while other players will be raided one or multiple times, possibly with very frustrating consequences. Obviously, reading that you have 20 days to make your attack is not up to luck.

It is no-one else's fault that the player's decision not to read and follow instruction backfired.

I disagree with that. Anyhow, let's drop just it.

 

[muschi26]

I take it you've never heard of RNG?
It's quite a popular game mechanic. Used in triple AAA games, by top tier devs.

It's about the range of outcomes which come about as a result of that RNG, buster. It's not a problem if during combat, you lose 2 soldiers and your enemy loses 3 because of RNG, but here the outcome of this 6–8 day period can range anywhere from "nothing bad happens" to "your entire base is destroyed, thousands' worth in gold, and you have to spend the next however many days trying to rebuild as your buildings are continually razed again before your troops can arrive to defend them". It doesn't matter if that latter scenario happens one in ten times, or even one in thirty—it's not acceptable.

There is nothing to disagree with. It's an absolute fact.
The game is responsible for it existing.
The player is responsible for not paying attention to the information they were given & not acting before the bonus ran out.
The player backed themself into a corner. No-one put a gun to their head & forced them to ignore the crucial information.
Yes, the game could do more. Maybe a reminder 8 days before it expires, so that you still have time to move troops, would help.
Either way, the same information is available to all of us & only a couple of people have managed to mess things up.

I'm trying to find an anecdote I read about planes during WW2, but unfortunately I can't. It went something like this:

The engineers made a piece that was supposed to be inserted a certain way into another, and if it was inserted backwards, the plane wouldn't be able to take off. So they send the plans to the manufacturer with a note saying clearly: this piece has to be inserted in such a manner, so don't get it backwards. Nonetheless, following this, there were several reports of plane malfunctions due to the piece being inserted backwards by the people working for the manufacturer.

Now you might read this and think "Wow, these people are dumbasses, how could they get it wrong when it was explicitly told them?" and there is some truth to that, but the real question is: "If it was so primordial that that piece be inserted a certain way, why was it even designed in a way that let it be inserted backwards in the first place?" Moral of the story: someone's going to fuck up somewhere—there's nothing you can do about that—, and so it's your duty, if it's within your power to do so, to make it so a fuck-up isn't possible in the first place.

 

[LWtbo]

Has any one else worked out that you don't actually need to move all your troops to your amy to invade.
Or that should you not pay attention and attack before you Infiltrate bonus expires that you don't even need the infiltrate bonus.

As yet the Dev hasn't made invading or failure to invade very costly.
If I have 80 troops and my oponent has 80 troop's but they are better fighter's for what ever reason.

In the first area if I attack them with say 20 troops leaving some defending my lands most likley to be attacked.
Since you can defend my land with 10 troops in each sector easy.

As for my invading 20 who are now fighting 40 if i keep fighting till all my men die I lose.
But I can retreat and only lose some or if I want to win faster most of them.
Either way works just as long as I retreat before losing them all.

Since at the moment the game as it stands lets me replace my 20 troops before my enemy can replace their losses.
Meaning I can hit them with my replacement 20 troops and again kill even more of their's.
Then I retreat and replace my losses rince and repeat.

I may lose a few times but they just get weaker untill my 20 cream their asses.
True it will take more game days to do it and I may need to top up my 10 guarding if my lands are hit.
But they will lose to me so whats a few extra day's.

Atleast this way you can still play even if you miss the Infiltrate deadline or till the Dev alters the game.

Just Sayin.

 

[Madara_404]

this game is so cool but i have idea why dont u add other kingdoms to conquer with random queens out of the story

 

[PVNUser]

To be clear, the luck aspect I we were discussing here is the possibility of being raided during the 6–8 days you have to leave your territories undefended to mount an offensive, during which some players will experience no raids and therefore no challenge, while other players will be raided one or multiple times, possibly with very frustrating consequences. Obviously, reading that you have 20 days to make your attack is not up to luck.

You make some good points on the mechanics. I have raised similar issues in discussion about the game mechanics here: https://f95zone.to/threads/vae-victis-khan-metagame-discussion.114229

 

[Doorknob22]

Thanks everyone for taking time to express your opinions on a subject which some players bypass completely.
1. As whichone noted, the possibility of raids increases as your Khaganate grows: the more fiefdoms you control, the bigger the chance for a raid.
2. muschi26 I agree that it's my responsibility to ensure (or at least reduce the possibility of) being soft-locked. Perhaps I'll add a counter reminding the players how many turns they have left until the bonus expires.
3. Thinking off the top of my head, if the bonus runs out and you didn't conquer any fief, perhaps you'll get an option to extend the bonus for 20 turns for X gold. This would be a one-time thing so people won't perpetually repeat it.
4. As of 0.6.X, raids are far less devastating than the complete massacre they were before. Instead of completely obliterating every building in the fief, now there's a random chance (usually 50% for any building) to be destroyed. To compensate a little, some gold will be stolen with each successful raid.


Since I believe not every Vae Victis - Khan player is a fan of the strategy game, I've added more ideas in the strategy discussion thread.

 

[Creed Brtn]

0.6.11 Android link anyone.. Please

 

[SamApocryph]

Is there rape in the game ? Because it shows the #Rape when clicking on the thumbnail but not on the actual page?