Vae Victis - Khan: metagame discussion

[erkper]

Yes of course. I could also point out that it's a common complaint that these regions have many small virtually-indistinguishable countries.

Which I doubt the feeling is much shared by people actually living in those regions whose ancestors named them such...

Sharing a similar suffix (i.e. -guk) can be seen as a potential worldbuilding touch, but three territories that are G*guk? This is silly and bad practice. Would you write a story that had characters: Tom, Thom, Tomas, and Thomas? Sure, this happens in reality. My workplace has four employees with exactly the same first name. Yet it's common practice for writers to try to distinguish characters by giving them names with different letters and sounds because it's rarely beneficial to fiction to be intentionally obtuse.
This isn't the real world, it's a videogame, and the purpose of "worldbuilding" can easily be fulfilled, and is in-fact easier to fulfill, with better & more memorable naming.

I suppose Latvia and Lithuania owe you an apology. So must Austria and Albania. Next time they should consult you on how to name their countries. Those silly and obtuse fools, why would they go out of their way to make things confusing and complicated for you?
Oh and by the way, about the people's names - have you ever actually read the names of the elves of Lord of the Rings? Or, to narrow the scope and keep it simple, the lead villains in the trilogy? Sauron and Saruman? Really? They both start with "Sa," include a "u," and an "r," and end with an "n" for crying out loud! Somehow with such poor, silly, and bad naming practice JRR is still considered a fairly accomplished writer and worldbuilder...

 

[gojira667]

I would say it's safe to add UI to this discussion. It's unfinished enough with regards to strategy game that impacts play quite a bit.

We are overdue for a stats screen. I'm thinking a table based list for each fiefdom you control. Columns for name, obedience, moral, gold yield, troop yield, one for each building, one for the special building (unless a fiefdom can have more than one?) and number of troops stationed there.
Troop information possibly at the top: total troops, main army, stationed, in-transit and a button to view the individual transfers with ETA.

Raids - A successful raid razes every building to the ground. This seems quite unrealistic. Are we building all the buildings in the same city and that city is the one always being raided? Furthermore, it's a raid. These forces aren't occupying the fiefdom.
It would seem more realistic to not lose more than a couple of buildings. While this would make things easier you can offset that by having the pillaging and gold theft result in reducing the treasury rather than just flavor text as it is now.

• Popular: Higher productivity, more rebellious population. If Morale in all fiefdoms exceeds 30 (Base 20 + 5 Temple + 5 Nahir in Palace + 5 original ruler Wench is in palace) and not Feared:

Popular with higher productivity & Morale, but a rebellious population just doesn't make sense. What are they rebelling against? They like their life, they like their ruler and high productivity would also indicate a robust internal economy. I'm not seeing why they would be more likely to start burning down buildings.

Having said that, there's a lot which could be improved. It is a weird contrast to how buildings are built from one moment to the next while troops take full turns to move,...

It's a straightforward enough change to make buildings take x number of turns to build. You can still keep instantaneous for VN Mode.

For example, there are three territories that all start with G. Ganguk, Geoyanguk, Gauteinguk. They even have similar endings, as does Oryeonguk.
If a character references one of these regions in dialogue, can you picture which of these names corresponds to which country on the map? I know I can't.

Gaunteinguk is the "home" fiefdom and Barlin's fief. While I couldn't spell it, it's referenced enough I certainly know it. Oryeonguk is Angilia's. Geoyanguk I did recall is nearby and to the north. Ganguk I couldn't place. That's with us not having yet visited those last two fiefdoms.
E.G. I'm jumping in with the others in that the names work well as is.

• Another major problem is the "Send Troops" slider bar, which regularly bugs out, or has problems when the player has few troops (e.g. if you have 1 troop to send).
​

The obvious bug aside, you want the bar to get progressively shorter with very few troops? That's certainly doable and should give a much better feel when you only have 1-2 troops to send.

For some examples, I'd recommend looking at Harem Hotel which has great presentation of gameplay consequences via GUI.

What specifically are you thinking about with this. I've played Harem Hotel before and nothing is jumping out to me that this should be in Vae Victis. Maybe I'm not looking at the right area?

10. World-Map Events Must Be Improved

I +1 the idea and adding the positive events.

 

[Doorknob22]

I'm toying with some random choice events. The benefits I see in these events are:

1. Increase Wench visibility and rile the players against them. The Wenches should gain more screen time before their fiefdom is conquered so the players will be more emotionality invested in them.
2. Give more ways to spend gold in meaningful ways
3. Provide players with opportunities to boost resources they are lacking (Morale, Obedience, etc)
4. Add variety to the meta game


The general idea behind these events is to have the first option ("Do nothing") carry a minor penalty and the next ones are more "expensive" (sometimes increasingly expensive) but offer better bonuses.

• Confiscated a caravan - Oryeonguk accuse the traders of being spies
  • Do nothing - lose 5 Obedience, lose 5 Morale
  • Punitive Raid - lose 10 garrison troops, gain 20 Obedience
  • Pay Ransom - lose 10 Obedience, gain 15 Morale
• Kidnapped nobility - Tinpingian agents kidnapped a popular noble family
  • Do nothing - Lose 5 Morale (all fiefdoms)
  • Khan Guard Rescue - Lose 40 gold, Gain 5 Morale (all fiefdoms)
  • Retaliatory kidnapping - Lose 40 gold, Lose 5 Morale (all fiefdoms), gain sex scene
• Tariffs hike - Marbia increases it border tariffs, hurting your traders and farmers
  • Do nothing - Lose 10 Morale
  • Tariffs War - Lose 20 gold, Gain 20 Obedience
  • Buy the people’s produce - Lose 40 gold, Gain 10 Morale
• Bridges damaged - Hawawtian agents sabotaged bridges across the Khaganate
  • Do Nothing - army transfer slowed by 1 turn for the next 20 turns
  • Fix Bridges - pay 30 gold to avoid army transfer slowness
  • Building Boom - pay 60 gold, army transfer decreased by 1 for the next 50 turns

Additionally, there will be "dumb" events with no choice such as Obedience Loss, Morale Drop, Assassinated Garrison Guards etc. These will only be for the benefit of bullets 1 and 4 above.

 

[Stil996]

I'm toying with some random choice events. The benefits I see in these events are:

1. Increase Wench visibility and rile the players against them. The Wenches should gain more screen time before their fiefdom is conquered so the players will be more emotionality invested in them.
2. Give more ways to spend gold in meaningful ways
3. Provide players with opportunities to boost resources they are lacking (Morale, Obedience, etc)
4. Add variety to the meta game

Looks like good stuff

My thoughts might migh taking this to more complex places than you are looking for, I'm not sure how deep you want to take the mechanics!

• Confiscated a caravan - Oryeonguk accuse the traders of being spies
  • Do nothing - lose 5 Obedience, lose 5 Morale
  • Punitive Raid - lose 10 garrison troops, gain 20 Obedience
  • Pay Ransom - lose 10 Obedience, gain 15 Morale

My suggestions would be more like

• Fail to respond -
  • Tax penalty for x turns (as traders lose faith you will protect them, so come less often)
  • Lose Morale (For being an ineffective leader)
  • Lose Obedience (for being Weak)
    
• Diplomatic Sanctions -
  • Lose a lot of Gold (in the form of Bribes, avoiding looking weak is expensive)
  • Gain Obedience, (for resolving the situation)
  • Gain Morale, (for not risking lifes)
    
• Military Response - , ,
  • Cost Troops (Battle)
  • Gain/Lose Moral (dependent on winnning the battle)
  • Gain Obedience (for being a Strong Decisive leader).
  • Gain Gold opportunity (on a Critical Win your troops manage to seize something extra)
    
• Tit for tat, Seize a caravan yourself -
  • Gain Obedience (for not backing down),
  • Lose Tax revenue for a time (Traders do not like being stuck between two nations who are having a dick measuring contest)
  • No direct Change to treasury (but if you are setting income for the AI, this could be an RNG event that could cause one side to lose more than the other in term of tax penalties, Morale & troops)
    • Possible Loss in troops if the situation escalates to battle (aka the other side chooses Military Response)
    • Moral Gains/Losses dependant on whether it escalates and whether you win or lose
      
• Bend over like a bitch - (this option is all loses, but not as much as you would lose by failing a more aggressive action
  • Lose gold (Paying the ransom costs half the gold diplomacy would cost but is much more damaging to your image),
  • Lose Obedience (lost face, but half as much as you would have lost by losing a more aggressive action),
  • Lose moral (Half as much as you would lose if you fought and lost)

• Kidnapped nobility - Tinpingian agents kidnapped a popular noble family
  

  • Do nothing - Lose 5 Morale (all fiefdoms)
  • Khan Guard Rescue - Lose 40 gold, Gain 5 Morale (all fiefdoms)
  • Retaliatory kidnapping - Lose 40 gold, Lose 5 Morale (all fiefdoms), gain sex scene

I like the basics of where you are going with this, but I think this should be a much more extreme event,
Nobles are very important in this kind of society, they generate Taxes, Troops, Political support. If one gets kidnapped without you responding in a very assertive manner you will not only lose everything they bring to the table, but you risk all out rebellion as their friends and family switch sides to a liege they see as more worthy of their loyalty.

• Tariffs hike - Marbia increases it border tariffs, hurting your traders and farmers
  • Do nothing - Lose 10 Morale
  • Tariffs War - Lose 20 gold, Gain 20 Obedience
  • Buy the people’s produce - Lose 40 gold, Gain 10 Morale

I think Tariff war should gain gold in the short term as you seize gold in fines, but damage your tax revenue for x turns for a net lose that is less than buying the produce, but costs you Moral and Obedience, as your people get caught in the middle, while buying the produce is the best way to make your people love you for saving them from the hardship

• Bridges damaged - Hawawtian agents sabotaged bridges across the Khaganate
  • Do Nothing - army transfer slowed by 1 turn for the next 20 turns
  • Fix Bridges - pay 30 gold to avoid army transfer slowness
  • Building Boom - pay 60 gold, army transfer decreased by 1 for the next 50 turns

I think this event should demand troops to protect those fixing the bridge, if you can't/won't supply them then there is a chance the engineers will be slaughtered/captured, and maybe an option to assign resources to tracking down the sabatours. with maybe an additional event spawning from this where you track down a hideout, giving you options to commit troops to and assault, a diplomat to turn them to your side, or simply pay them to leave.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

I skimmed through the thread, and I gotta say all the crunchy game mechanics are making me salivate even more than the lewds, lol.

Don't have time to play the game (yet), but I'll get around to it eventually... looking forward to it, tho!

Have a bump!

 

[Doorknob22]

What was changed for 0.6?

1. When a fief rebels, its Obedience is set to 85, breaking the vicious cycle of "taking it again, losing it again".

2. Automatic Gold gain. If Morale rolls fails for a fief, you still get 1 gold out of it. If Morale rolls succeed, you get the full Yield of that fief. To compensate for the rapid growth of gold, I doubled the cost of buildings. The result is that you get the same pace of game but when you click "End Turn" you always see something happening (This is coming in 0.6.7 which will be deployed on Wednesday 20.7).

3. Two new garrison upgrades:
-Trained Militia adds 10 troops to your garrison for the purpose of defeating rebels. This essentially means that when you pull all your armies out of a fief, if it has Trained Militia they will be able to repel any raid. You will need to complete the Limtinia quest for this upgrade.
-Fortified Garrison prevents mobs and raiders to burn your garrisons, allowing you to take them back rapidly. You will need to complete the Limtinia quest for this upgrade.

4. Subversion events: events where enemy Wenches send operators to sabotage your fiefdoms by damaging Obedience, Morale, etc (This is coming in 0.6.7 which will be deployed on Wednesday 20.7). Sadly didn't get around to implement them in high quality for 0.6.

5. Wench Reactions: when you conquer fiefdoms, you will see a reaction of opposing Wenches (currently only Teniya, Sumia and Dian).

6. Failed raids are less devastating. Instead of automatically destroying every building and lowering Obedience, buildings and Obedience drop now have roughly 50% chance to take place, with garrisons only 25%. However, raiders will always steal some gold (if they win).

 

[Doorknob22]

Idea (for 0.7 or later): Add another statistic (temporarily) called Fame.

When you do "bad" things your Fame drops towards Infamy. Bad things are putting Wench in the dungeon, Force Yield and other Shadow Institute activities that will be introduced in 0.6.7 (Public Hanging etc). If your Infamy is low enough you begin receiving Obedience bonuses but your Morale drops (people fear you but are depressed).

When you do "good" things your fame increases towards... well... Fame. When your Fame is high enough you receive Morale bonuses but your Obedience suffers (people love you but might find you lenient).

Some players may opt to play Infamy style with a slower and less productive yet obedient Khaganate, others will be willing to deal with some unrest and bickering for a highly productive Khaganate.

On top of that, I can offer the players the option to have their activities during the quests count towards the Fame stat or not: if you choose a Dominance, you lose Fame points, if you go Seduction/Gentleman, you gain them.

 

[Stil996]

Idea (for 0.7 or later): Add another statistic (temporarily) called Fame.

When you do "bad" things your Fame drops towards Infamy. Bad things are putting Wench in the dungeon, Force Yield and other Shadow Institute activities that will be introduced in 0.6.7 (Public Hanging etc). If your Infamy is low enough you begin receiving Obedience bonuses but your Morale drops (people fear you but are depressed).

When you do "good" things your fame increases towards... well... Fame. When your Fame is high enough you receive Morale bonuses but your Obedience suffers (people love you but might find you lenient).

Some players may opt to play Infamy style with a slower and less productive yet obedient Khaganate, others will be willing to deal with some unrest and bickering for a highly productive Khaganate.

On top of that, I can offer the players the option to have their activities during the quests count towards the Fame stat or not: if you choose a Dominance, you lose Fame points, if you go Seduction/Gentleman, you gain them.

Sounds a little like what I suggested in #8
Maybe rephrase the terms? as the old saying goes all publicity (fame) is good publicity, just as long are you are on peoples minds.
Maybe call them Rep points? (reputation) Infamy vs Nobility?

 

[gregers]

Maybe rephrase the terms? as the old saying goes all publicity (fame) is good publicity, just as long are you are on peoples minds.
Maybe call them Rep points? (reputation) Infamy vs Nobility?

Velvet Glove vs. Iron Fist (not that one)?

 

[Stil996]

Velvet Glove vs. Iron Fist (not that one)?

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking.
Getting a Rep is good, whether it is a rep for being Tough or Generous you will likely attract people useful to that play style, the worst thing would be for people fail to recognize you at all, Annonymity isn't a good thing for a ruler trying to win his kingdom back.

I think there should be penalties for inconsistency, people tend to need a certain level of predictability in their rulers, the ability to know that actions A/B/C will bring rewards and E/F/G with bring punishment.

 

[gregers]

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking.

Not a question, just riffing on your Infamy—Nobility suggestion.

 

[Doorknob22]

Sounds a little like what I suggested in #8

I started this thread to get good advice, and I got it

And yes, Reputation points is much better than my Fame points.

 

[Doorknob22]

PVNUser Stil996 gregers erkper and of course gojira667 now that 0.6.9 is out with several meta game changes, I'm curious to hear your opinion on the improved gameplay. No rush, next changes train leaves in 0.7...

 

[Stil996]

PVNUser Stil996 gregers erkper and of course gojira667 now that 0.6.9 is out with several meta game changes, I'm curious to hear your opinion on the improved gameplay. No rush, next changes train leaves in 0.7...

View attachment 1940316

looks nice but TBH I only really used Force Yield and National Festival exclusively, I think did a couple of public hanging by accident as I was clicking quickly through the kingdoms.

I've got to say I really hate the caps on gold and troops
if you have too much gold you should be able to use it to build treasure vaults (which could be captured if you lose a city), and maybe make building take time (a couple of days for a small constructions minimum, You might be able to dig faster with lots of slaves, but you can't make mortar cure faster).
Got too many troops instead of just stopping recruitment provide options to make new training camps (temp camps outside of cities take excess men) assign some as drill sergeants for new recruits and guards for your treasure.

Let wages (and supply costs) be what keeps your gold in check, everyone needs paid, make the Troop Cap a user defined number based on how much they can afford to pay and manage (try to keep too many men and they will desert, perhaps raiding the Treasury on the way out), as gold grows beyond your abilities to house/protect, make it attract theives/raiders, make "Army Wage Convoys" and "tax collectors" targets for bandits which will further control gold management. I doesn't need to be complicated just text notifications that you Tax collector in distrct "X" have been attacked, "Y Gold and "Z" Men have been lost


PS
I had something of a bug with Oryeonguk where no troops would garrison there (I'd send troops but after a while they seem to appear back in my army as though they were in transfer but then immediately returned to army with more transfer delay (though this might have been natural troop spawning), eventually I just let it be overrun and recaptured it, and after rebuilding the garrison it started working again.

 

[Doorknob22]

1. Gold is only capped when you control one fiefdom. I do it because you'll never be attacked when you're controlling only one fief: I want to give new players some time to adjust on one hand, but not abuse this "immunity" to hoard endless amount of gold on the other.

2. Troops are capped and I need to think whether I want to change this or not. It makes sense that fiefdoms can only X amount of mouths but I don't change this stat from fiefdom to fiefdom so it's a little unrealistic that they all support 20. I'm thinking about have the first X troops free, with new ones costing gold, allowing the player to adjust this stat.

Hints of the bugs you mention pop here and there, I'll look into it.

 

[Stil996]

1. Gold is only capped when you control one fiefdom. I do it because you'll never be attacked when you're controlling only one fief: I want to give new players some time to adjust on one hand, but not abuse this "immunity" to hoard endless amount of gold on the other.

Ok that makes more sense now I know the reasoning .

2. Troops are capped and I need to think whether I want to change this or not. It makes sense that fiefdoms can only X amount of mouths but I don't change this stat from fiefdom to fiefdom so it's a little unrealistic that they all support 20. I'm thinking about have the first X troops free, with new ones costing gold, allowing the player to adjust this stat.

I guess the big problem is deciding how much energy you want to commit to this mechanic, after all the best way would to have a Food resource to deal with too, along with logistics of making sure Food/Money make it to where it needs to be (I imagine unpaid hungry troops are the most prevalent reason wars are lost), but all that might be too much for a porn game.

What about?
If we think of every city having a "Free" contingent of soldiers representing the people who will rise up to fight intruders without any promises of payment. (say 10? in the absence of a formal Garrison, when the Garrison gets built these people tend to expect payment, they would still be "free" in the sense they don't need you to feed them, they are part of the common population in terms of food and upkeep, think of them as the Part time soldiers, they have normal jobs when the city isn't under attack)

If we think of a Soldier costing "x" per day representing all their normal upkeep costs up the a certain limit as defined by the capacity of it's supporting kingdom (the limit representing the population and how much food that kingdom produces)
then after this limit is reached the cost increases to "x+y" to represent having to buy the food from foreign sources and possibly the added cost of foreign mercenaries. (with potential added costs representing the trouble foreign mercenaries wreak if they are kept in strange cities too long)

Possibly with modifiers representing whether you are taking resources needed by the common populations, letting the common people starve to feed your army might be worthwhile in the short run, recruitment will rise representing people following the food, but sooner or later there will be an inevitable revolution, you can starve the population only so long before they rise up.

 

[gojira667]

PS
I had something of a bug with Oryeonguk where no troops would garrison there (I'd send troops but after a while they seem to appear back in my army as though they were in transfer but then immediately returned to army with more transfer delay (though this might have been natural troop spawning), eventually I just let it be overrun and recaptured it, and after rebuilding the garrison it started working again.

I take it you didn't cheat yourself a garrison there? Was the garrison working there initially in this save? Did Oryeonguk ever rebel completely, burn down the garrison or was successfully raided and you then rolled back?
I don't see how the game gets into that state and I'm not noticing anything wrong in the code. I would love to have a better idea of where to look.

 

[Stil996]

I take it you didn't cheat yourself a garrison there? Was the garrison working there initially in this save? Did Oryeonguk ever rebel completely, burn down the garrison or was successfully raided and you then rolled back?
I don't see how the game gets into that state and I'm not noticing anything wrong in the code. I would love to have a better idea of where to look.

Nope no cheats, not at that stage anyway. I tried some save edits after the 3-4th time trying to send troops there, to fix it which didn't seem to have any effect either way.

It happened after it lost a raid and had some buildings destroyed, I'm assuming there is a bolean somewhere telling the game the Garrison was lost that didn't switch back after I rebuilt everything, after a while I ignored it until it completely seeded from me so I could reconquer it, then after I rebuilt, it worked fine from then on.

 

[gojira667]

It happened after it lost a raid and had some buildings destroyed...

Perfect, thanks. I see the bug.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Bumping for visibility. Games with actual mechanics like this one need more love!