Vae Victis - Khan: metagame discussion

[Doorknob22]

This thread is for fans of Vae Victis - Khan who want to learn more and discuss the metagame, i.e. the strategy game elements. Please don't raise plot, fetish, girls etc. related questions here.

Also, if you mostly play the game in VN Mode you'll probably not find anything interesting in this thread.

Since VN Mode was introduced, I assumed people (like me) who play it in conquest mode enjoy the (light) strategy elements of the game. As a developer, I believe that overcoming hurdles on the way to conquering a fiefdom (and its Wench) make the game more satisfying. I intend to introduce some changes to the strategy game that will enhance the experience without introducing complex mechanisms. For now, I only want to operate within the established resources and frameworks: Gold, Morale and Obedience.

The current problems I see with the metagame now, which will increase as the Khaganate grows larger:
1. Only one way to rule. For every problem there is only one solution.
2. Too much gold in later stages with nothing interesting to spend it on.
3. Land Raids are essential to the game's balance but repetitive.

In order to mitigate these problems (i.e. more ways to play the game, more things to do with Gold and more variety in random events) I'm thinking about the following changes to the game.

• Subversion raids(only if Khaganate is 3+ fiefdom). These take place randomly instead of a “land” raid, i.e. once a Raid has been rolled it will be randomly one of the below (or a land raid).
  • Spread lies - Reduce Morale by <number of fiefdoms>
  • Instigate population - Reduce Obedience by <double number of fiefdoms>
  • Steal gold <total gold/number of fiefdoms>
  • Assassinate troops <number of fiefdoms>
• Population control tools(For fiefdoms containing Shadow Institute)
  • Public Hangings -> lose 5 Morale, gain 10 Obedience
  • Festivals -> Spend 20 Gold, gain 10 Morale
  • Bribe the clergy -> Spend 20 Gold, gain 10 Obedience
  • Khan’s Pardon -> lose 10 Obedience, gain 5 Morale
• Khan’s image
  • Feared: More resilient to Subversion, lower productivity. If Obedience in all fiefdoms exceeds 119 and not Popular:
    • Subversive Raids automatically fail
    • Morale is capped at 15 regardless of other modifiers
    • Show Feared icon
  • 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:
    • When attacking a fiefdom, Morale only drops by 10 (currently 20)
    • Obedience is capped at 95 regardless of other modifiers
    • Show Popular icon
• Garrison upgrades
  • Constables - Contribute 10 to Obedience, even when empty. Cost: 100?
  • Trained Militia - Always fight as 10 troops, even if empty (essentially repelling 99% of raider attacks). Cost: 200
  • Indestructible garrisons - can't be destroyed by mobs (low Obedience) or Raiders. Cost: 100?

 

[Stil996]

Khan’s image
Seems to me that you have the Popular and Feared stats backwards
People are less likely to rebel against someone they like/love (in fact they tend to do heroic shit like sacrifice themselvs for their beloved leader), and are more likely to slack because they don't feel any pressure is put on them.
While people are much more like to rebel against someone they fear because they want a better life (for their children if nothing else)
and are more likely to work hard because they know what happens to people who don't

Laws/Stances
Have you considered setting laws/rights

• giving the army permission to rape/pillage increases army strength modifier/moral, but decreases a captured Cities recovery time/moral, while denying rape/pillage does the reverse
• Setting Citizen rights for various effects (when you increase the rights for one group, the effectiveness of the others drop slightly)
  • Special rights to the military, increase recruitment rates and army morale
  • Special right to the Clergy increases obedience, and influence in neighbouring cities as the faithful spread the word
  • Special rights to Traders for trade/tax bonuses

Since this game began I was looking forward to rebellions, putting them down to be exact and special scenes that might happen with prominent figures that get captured, is this going to be a thing? I realise this might be straddling the line for the parameters of this thread.
But Even if there aren't H scenes you should be able to develop more experience for your minions, recruit from the vanquished, establish holds over those who supported the rebellion, take hostages etc.

One thing about nations with regular rebellions is their troops get very experienced, very quickly. And the hatred of the general population pushes them into a tighter cliche, indocrinating them more fully into the cult of the military as it becomes their entire family.

 

[Stil996]

Maybe have a stance that the player sets which represents how their propaganda machine will present them.

• Noblesse oblige
  It is my duty as your ruler to be the father of this nation, I am here to protect and serve my people!
  
  
• Despotism
  I am the nation! you the people have a duty to serve me, and by doing so you serve yourself.
  
  
• Tyranny
  You will tremble with fear under my rule, you are maggots to me, if you do not please me I will grind you into dust!

 

[gregers]

My only comment on the metagame without having played 0.5 yet—so take this with a grain of salt—is that the troop limit seems unnecessarily restrictive: You can barely raise enough troops to defend your territories, which you then have to spend weeks withdrawing back to the core army every time you want to conquer a new territory, only to spend more weeks spreading them out in garrisons again after the conquest while trying to remedy what setbacks you may have suffered while the territories were defenseless.

I don't know, some people may enjoy that, but to me it's just the antithesis of fun or interesting gameplay.

 

[erkper]

Subversion raids(only if Khaganate is 3+ fiefdom). These take place randomly instead of a “land” raid, i.e. once a Raid has been rolled it will be randomly one of the below (or a land raid).

• Spread lies - Reduce Morale by <number of fiefdoms>
• Instigate population - Reduce Obedience by <double number of fiefdoms>
• Steal gold <total gold/number of fiefdoms>
• Assassinate troops <number of fiefdoms>

I like this. Maybe figure out a way to mitigate the success though depending on other factors (possibly those below.)

• Population control tools(For fiefdoms containing Shadow Institute)
  • Public Hangings -> lose 5 Morale, gain 10 Obedience
  • Festivals -> Spend 20 Gold, gain 10 Morale
  • Bribe the clergy -> Spend 20 Gold, gain 10 Obedience
  • Khan’s Pardon -> lose 10 Obedience, gain 5 Morale

This is good, but you'd have to limit the methods to one per turn or something or else it all boils down to spending gold to raise Morale and Obedience. (At least, that's how I'd game it...)

• Khan’s image
  • Feared: More resilient to Subversion, lower productivity. If Obedience in all fiefdoms exceeds 119 and not Popular:
    • Subversive Raids automatically fail
    • Morale is capped at 15 regardless of other modifiers
    • Show Feared icon
  • 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:
    • When attacking a fiefdom, Morale only drops by 10 (currently 20)
    • Obedience is capped at 95 regardless of other modifiers
    • Show Popular icon

Under the current rules how do you even get all fiefdoms' Obedience over 119? Seems to me the only way to get Obedience that high in the first place is to raise it to 100 via 30 troops and then it will raise as you defeat raids. But it feels like Obedience slowly drops back to 100 afterwards in fiefdoms with less than 30 troops - and you can't garrison EVERY fiefdom with 30 due to troop limits. (Might just be me using the excess points for Forced Yields to quickly make up the troop losses, but even when I don't it seems like the next time I look at the fiefdom it's Obedience is reset back down to 100...)

• Garrison upgrades
  • Constables - Contribute 10 to Obedience, even when empty. Cost: 100?
  • Trained Militia - Always fight as 10 troops, even if empty (essentially repelling 99% of raider attacks). Cost: 200
  • Indestructible garrisons - can't be destroyed by mobs (low Obedience) or Raiders. Cost: 100?

These are good, except Indestructible garrisons might be over the top. Trained Militia combined with Constables would effectively allow you to keep your invasion army gathered and ready - no 6-8 turn massive vulnerability while your garrisons gather, invade, then disburse back to their garrison fiefdoms.

 

[Doorknob22]

Wow, nice responsiveness! I was a little concerned I'd find myself alone in this thread...

Khan’s image
Seems to me that you have the Popular and Feared stats backwards
People are less likely to rebel against someone they like/love (in fact they tend to do heroic shit like sacrifice themselvs for their beloved leader), and are more likely to slack because they don't feel any pressure is put on them.
While people are much more like to rebel against someone they fear because they want a better life (for their children if nothing else)
and are more likely to work hard because they know what happens to people who don't

Laws/Stances
Have you considered setting laws/rights

• giving the army permission to rape/pillage increases army strength modifier/moral, but decreases a captured Cities recovery time/moral, while denying rape/pillage does the reverse
• Setting Citizen rights for various effects (when you increase the rights for one group, the effectiveness of the others drop slightly)
  • Special rights to the military, increase recruitment rates and army morale
  • Special right to the Clergy increases obedience, and influence in neighbouring cities as the faithful spread the word
  • Special rights to Traders for trade/tax bonuses

Since this game began I was looking forward to rebellions, putting them down to be exact and special scenes that might happen with prominent figures that get captured, is this going to be a thing? I realise this might be straddling the line for the parameters of this thread.
But Even if there aren't H scenes you should be able to develop more experience for your minions, recruit from the vanquished, establish holds over those who supported the rebellion, take hostages etc.

One thing about nations with regular rebellions is their troops get very experienced, very quickly. And the hatred of the general population pushes them into a tighter cliche, indocrinating them more fully into the cult of the military as it becomes their entire family.

Maybe have a stance that the player sets which represents how their propaganda machine will present them.

• Noblesse oblige
  It is my duty as your ruler to be the father of this nation, I am here to protect and serve my people!
  
  
• Despotism
  I am the nation! you the people have a duty to serve me, and by doing so you serve yourself.
  
  
• Tyranny
  You will tremble with fear under my rule, you are maggots to me, if you do not please me I will grind you into dust!

Khan’s image - I'm afraid we're at disagreement here. Productivity in my opinion is not about meeting quotas, it's about going the extra mile, thinking in a creative manner on how to do more. A man with a whip can drive a slave only so far until the slave breaks, mentally or physically. I can't think of highly oppressive regimes which were productive on the long run, and on the flipside, in the more productive societies in history people were happy (could be a dominant group in the society, not necessarily each and every one of them).

Laws/Stances - These laws are awesome. I need to see how to implement them. Maybe simply as a menu after battle and a cool image showing the aftermath.

Propaganda machine- not sure how this translates to game mechanics.

My only comment on the metagame without having played 0.5 yet—so take this with a grain of salt—is that the troop limit seems unnecessarily restrictive: You can barely raise enough troops to defend your territories, which you then have to spend weeks withdrawing back to the core army every time you want to conquer a new territory, only to spend more weeks spreading them out in garrisons again after the conquest while trying to remedy what setbacks you may have suffered while the territories were defenseless.

I don't know, some people may enjoy that, but to me it's just the antithesis of fun or interesting gameplay.

The math here is simple: you get 20 troops cap per fief which (conveniently...) is the exact amount needed to "freeze" Obedience. Then you get an extra 10 for increasing Obedience where you need to or keep in the "main" army as a quick response team for fiefdoms which were raided and lost troops.

I'm toying with the idea of having a feature (Wench in council bonus? "Paved Roads" building?) that will allow you to ship troops directly from one fief to another.

I like this. Maybe figure out a way to mitigate the success though depending on other factors (possibly those below.)

This is good, but you'd have to limit the methods to one per turn or something or else it all boils down to spending gold to raise Morale and Obedience. (At least, that's how I'd game it...)

Good catch. I need to be wary of potential exploits like these.

Under the current rules how do you even get all fiefdoms' Obedience over 119? Seems to me the only way to get Obedience that high in the first place is to raise it to 100 via 30 troops and then it will raise as you defeat raids. But it feels like Obedience slowly drops back to 100 afterwards in fiefdoms with less than 30 troops - and you can't garrison EVERY fiefdom with 30 due to troop limits. (Might just be me using the excess points for Forced Yields to quickly make up the troop losses, but even when I don't it seems like the next time I look at the fiefdom it's Obedience is reset back down to 100...)

These are good, except Indestructible garrisons might be over the top. Trained Militia combined with Constables would effectively allow you to keep your invasion army gathered and ready - no 6-8 turn massive vulnerability while your garrisons gather, invade, then disburse back to their garrison fiefdoms.

I can't see why Indestructible Garrisons feels over the top for you. It only means that the building can't be destroyed in a Raid or a Riot, thus preventing you from sending troops to pacify the situation. It's a little frustrating that sometimes mobs burn the garrison and you can't even send troops there, so for a hefty sum you'll always be able to send troops if you have them.

While I want to give players the option to somewhat reduce the risk of the vulnerability while you muster your armies, I think it's a nice, tense moment in the game and I don't want to remove it completely. Or at least, not without the player earning it by paying a lot of gold for this hard earned peace of mind.

 

[PVNUser]

I'm glad a thread about this was started. Vae Victis has a lot of potential, but the management aspects of this game are unfortunately so lackluster that I don't find them appealing at all. I agree with the core assumption that having a game structure is fun and rewarding. The sexual conquest of the game are more meaningful when you have real conquest to accompany it. I want to enjoy this aspect of the game and not simply the visual novel elements. However, the current implementation is both tedious and uninteresting, providing no real decisions or sense of accomplishment.

I notice the OP here mentions discussion within the existing framework, so I won't suggestion major reworks to the structure of the management. However, I will outline some of my major complaints and offer some suggestions that I think may work without fundamentally changing the core elements of the management minigame.

1. Resource gain is irregular.

The single biggest complaint I have with this aspect of the game is that there is no meaningful way to strategize with irregular resource gain. Sometimes you will get lucky and your troops will replenish after conquering a territory, other times you will get a 10-turn long dry spell of no troops and have no way to beat the RNG raids. It is appropriate and acceptable to have some modifier on resource gain based on morale/other factors, but the RNG as a whole needs to go.

Personally I think the simplest way to address this is resource gain for each occurs each turn, but it would also be acceptable to have resources gain at some interval (e.g. resources every 3rd turn, every 7th turn, or whatever). If resources are gained every turn, this significantly affects the resource economy of the game, but I feel like this would make the game substantially better.


2. Troops should not take time to send.

One of the least fun aspects of the management game is constantly sending troops to various territories after an RNG raid. This is a bad mechanic for several reasons.

• It's tedious to constantly reinforce your troops in certain regions
• Sending troops takes several turns, but structures are immediately constructed. This is weird and counterintuitive.
• The UI does a poor job of communicating if troops are en-route to a location or not. En-route troops basically disappear for several turns. The only reasonable way to present this is to have an icon appear on the map in the territory they are going towards.
• There is no gameplay-strategy reason for troops to take time to send, because the player never has advance notice of enemy attacks. This might make sense if you knew that Province1 had barbarians attacking in 5 turns and Province2 getting raided by pirates in 8. Since the player never has advance knowledge of incoming enemy attacks like this, it doesn't add any strategy or decisionmaking to moving troops around, it just makes the game punishing with bad RNG.
• If you are unlucky you might find that a territory gets attacked multiple times before your reinforcements arrive. It's just not fun to conquer a territory and then have to send all your troops there (-- Wouldn't they already be there if they just conquered it?)

3. Troop Number Limitation & Troop Upkeep

The game enforces a strict limitation on the number of troops you can sustain. In the current gameplay, it's understandable why this is done, as otherwise players could simply hit "Pass Turn" until they gained an overwhelming army and then conquer any territory.

My suggestion is that there should be no maximum army size (or, at the very least, it should be substantially more generous). Instead, there should be an upkeep cost associated with larger armies. This solves OP's problem #2, because maintaining a larger army would thus cost more gold. A gold-cost makes sense because equipping, training, feeding, and paying the salary of professional soldiers is logical. With a properly-tuned upkeep cost, it would not be necessary to cap the army size of the player since the cost of maintaining an army would naturally achieve an equilibrium based on gold income.


4. Troops Should Cost Gold to Purchase

This relates to the previous point. I think it's probably a mistake to have "Troops Yield" as a resource that is automatically given by territories. The player should have to pay in Gold or Obedience/Morale to recruit soldiers.

The "Troops Yield" property can remain as a way to distinguish territories. e.g. Gaunteinguk would yield 4 (+/- modifiers) soldiers when the player purchases soldiers there. Logically this also implies that we could (much like Force-Yield) only purchase soldiers once per territory per turn.


5. Auto-Garrison Soldiers in Territories

This ties in with my point #2, it's very tiresome to constantly send troops to a specific territory. I want to be able to set a threshold to maintain a X troop count in a particular territory, and automatically pay some kind of gold & upkeep cost to maintain X troops in that territory.

I see some challenges with implementing this, but I think it's important to think about how to achieve this. It's particularly important when I look at the world map overall and imagine the endgame where the player is controlling ~15+ territories and might be forced to check every turn to send reinforcements to multiple territories. It's bad enough doing that with the current state of the game, now imagine 3x as many territories.

Simplifying this is a big QOL improvement (Especially because the "Send Troops" UI is often bugged, see point #9 below.)


6. Change Garrison Structure

I think the Garrison structure should not be required in order to station troops in a territory. The fact that you cannot station troops in a conquered territory is fundamentally broken. Here is a scenario that has repeatedly happened to me:

• Attempt to conquer a territory
• Conquer the territory, suffering losses
• Immediately spend 40 gold to buy a Garrison
• Immediately send the bulk of my remaining army to defend the new territory
• Before my troops arrive at the new territory, it is attacked
• The garrison I just spend 40 gold on is destroyed
• My army that I sent to defend it disappears into nothing
• New territory is repeatedly RNG-raided and since there is no way to station troops there without a garrison, you cannot stop it

The player must always have the option of defending territories they own. The garrison already states it provides a bonus to obedience. If necessary, the garrison should act as a force multiplier on the defensive troops, but it should not be a requirement to station troops in a territory.


7. Reconquering Territories Must Reset Obedience

This item follows on from the scenario described in #6. When a territory rebels due to low obedience, it is virtually impossible to reconquer it successfully because its obedience remains at a low ~40-50 level. At this level, even if you conquer a territory and immediately build a garrison and station troops there, it's unlikely you will stop the negative consequences of low obedience. This leads to a permanent failure spiral. I just played a game where I captured the Marbia territory at least 6 times in a row, but each time I recaptured it, low-obedience negative events caused it to rebel, destroy its garrison, or otherwise prevent me from even getting the option to salvage the nation.

I doubt this negative feedback loop was intentional, and it should be fixed.


8. Attacking With No Troops = Game Over

This shouldn't be permitted as it is an instant game over. Happens easily if you forget to returned garrisoned troops to the army, and it's annoying. Losing a single battle should never be game over for our Khan.

(In general the game should probably define a way to lose a battle without a Game Over, since it's pretty normal to lose battles occasionally in warfare, even if it costs you some gold, troops, wenches, or territory).


9. UI Needs To Be More Informative

This isn't technically a problem with the management game per-se, but it is a problem and it affects every aspect of the management game. The key to making this type of management game compelling is understanding how your choices affect outcomes.

For example, when the player goes to build a structure in a territory the effects of these structures are not clearly displayed:

What it Currently Looks Like	How It Should Actually Look
A Gold Mine to Increase Gold Production - 30 Gold	Gold Mine (+1 Gold / Turn) - Cost: -30 Gold
A Temple to Boost Morale - 40 Gold	Temple (+2 Morale / Turn) - Cost: -40 Gold

More detailed information is needed in many places, this is just one example.

In other circumstances, the UI needs to respond more intelligently.

• For example, if the player uses "Force Yield" on a territory, which can only be done once per turn, shouldn't the "Force Yield" button grey out, or disappear?
• 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).
• Other annoyances: When you've built all the structures in a territory, the build button is still present and not greyed out.
• The UI displays a numerical value for Obedience and Morale, but the numbers are arbitrary and unintuitive. Why not use a normal scale of 1-10 or 1-100 for Obedience / Morale stats? Why no tooltips explaining the benefits/penalties associated with high/low values?

Overall, UI is a big challenge. Personally, I think it's a challenge to do UI properly in RenPy, so my expectations are not high. However, I believe it's possible to do a better job without excessive effort simply by redesigning UIs. If I can find some time I will create some example UI mockups as suggestions. For some examples, I'd recommend looking at Harem Hotel which has great presentation of gameplay consequences via GUI.


10. World-Map Events Must Be Improved

The OP discusses this as well. I concur that more variety is needed. However, most of the OP proposals don't really seem to address what I view as core issues. The map-level management currently consists of a few things:

• RNG Nuisance Raids
• Troop Defections
• Low Obedience Penalties

First off, all of these events are essentially penalties (as are most of the proposed new types of events). There's nothing positive happening from any of these. When every popup is negative, the player just wants to avoid all of these annoying RNG items and hit "Next Turn." Not very encouraging. It's better if the events create choice and opportunity for the player, even if sometimes those events might have negative consequences.

Second, none of these events develop any kind of narrative or character. The mechanics of the world map are disjointed from the game's visual novel style sections. I think the game would be dramatically improved by trying to incorporate mini-events with more of a narrative style, rather than the current "Popup Bad Thing You Can't Do Anything About."

Here are some examples:

• Barbarian Warlord threatens <Territory> unless Karder Pays Tribute
  • Player sees Dialogue with Warlord
  • Gives Choice: Pay Tribute (-10 Gold) or Challenge to Single Combat or Fight Battle
• Trader Asks Karder for Protection on Trade Route
  • Player sees Dialogue with Trader
  • Gives Choice: Send Troops (-2 Troops) for +6 Gold (65% Chance Success) or Steal Merchant's Goods (+2 Gold / -10 Morale) or Decline (No Effect)
• Farmer Asks Karder Help Alleviate Famine
  • Player sees Dialogue with Farmer
  • Gives Choice: Pay Gold (-2 Gold) for Food (+10 Morale) or Sex with Farmer for Food (+10 Morale) or Decline (-10 Morale)
• Wandering Mystic Offers to Read Omens
  • Player sees Dialogue with Mystic
  • Random Effect: Omens of Wealth (+4 Gold) or Omens of War (+4 Troops) or etc...
• Diplomat from Neighboring Territory Visits
• Officer in Your Army Defects
• Mercenaries Offer Their Services
• Peasant Discovers a Hidden Treasure
• Your Spy Uncovers Valuable Information
• A Regional Festival Occurs
• A Rampaging Ogre Threatens a Territory
• etc.

Fundamentally, this would help to integrate narrative into the overall management gameplay, while also adding much-needed variety. It is easy to imagine short events like this and once a structure is established such events could easily be dropped in as semi-randomized repeatable units. I also think this is a good way to add (light) amounts of characterization to both Karder and the wenches, who could provide assistance in solving problems from their respective regions.


11. Map Battles are Too Simple

"Bigger Number Beats Smaller Number" is not fundamentally interesting. This game already has the concept of Rock/Paper/Scissors style battles in single combat, so I think it's reasonable to try and map this idea onto larger scale combat. This change is pretty significant, so I don't really expect this degree of rework, however I'm throwing this out there so perhaps a few ideas can be picked off of it.

Here's what the battle scene currently looks like:

Your Force (#)

Enemy Force (#)

Options:

• Fight
• Retreat

Here's what I think the battle scene should look like:

Your Force: Infantry (#) Archers (#) Cavalry (#)	Enemy Force: Infantry (#) Archers (#) Cavalry (#)
Modifiers: Morale (+12%) Obedience (-2%) Domia's Dominatrix (+15% Infantry) Khan's Cavalry (+50% Cavalry)	Modifiers: Nahir Leadership(+20% All) Fortress (+50% Archers)

Battle Log
Turn 1: Karder used Cavalry Charge! Nahir used Archer Volley!
Turn 1: Karder Cavalry slew 216 Marbia Infantry. Marbia Archer slew 31 Karder Cavalry.

Options:

• Infantry Push
• Archer Volley
• Cavalry Charge
• Pillage
• Retreat
• etc.

Here's what I think this accomplishes:

1. Provide meaningful interactivity in the battles with RPS-like choices on the strategic level (e.g. Infantry Push / Archer Volley / Cavalry Charge)
2. Give players a battle log that breaks down the blow-by-blow. It's vastly more interesting to see blow-by-blow and the game is doing this anyway, you just need to generate some text to accompany it.
3. Define modifiers and then show them. This depends on some programming infrastructure but gives you way more power to make interesting gameplay. If players can see their low Obedience value is hurting their troops then they will try to maximize that value, if they can't see it spelled out, then they just wonder why the dice always roll low.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I might try to come up with some more and do some mockups if I can find time.

 

[Stil996]

Khan’s image - I'm afraid we're at disagreement here. Productivity in my opinion is not about meeting quotas, it's about going the extra mile, thinking in a creative manner on how to do more. A man with a whip can drive a slave only so far until the slave breaks, mentally or physically. I can't think of highly oppressive regimes which were productive on the long run, and on the flipside, in the more productive societies in history people were happy (could be a dominant group in the society, not necessarily each and every one of them).

I'm a bit confused by what you mean then, for Productivity, for me it is very simple, it comes down to how fast/hard your people swing their picks/scythes, to gather those resources that are so important to the war effort and maintaining you cities. And trust me fear works great at keeping that pace. (within the context of a War)

Sure, inspiring people for creative gains is most likely to happen from a "Love" perspective. but for this to be a productivity bonus, it would need schools/hospitals/colleges!
"Reinventing/Producing the new equipment"/"Training people how to use it" all takes a massive investment of time & resources. (generations really, and I can't imagine it is possible while sustaining a war)

The best you could hope for in such a short time is individual Engineers building unique creations that help in a very localised fashion.

Propaganda machine- not sure how this translates to game mechanics.

I see the propoganda in two ways,
1. From a Narrative stance, changing dialogue options and how new people engage with you (but that isn't really what this thread is about so I'll leave that there)

2. From a Mechanical perspective your propaganda machine would give the player the option of locking in a playstyle that infers global bonuses/penalties from diplomatic alignment

• Noblesse oblige
  (It is my duty as your ruler to be the father of this nation, I am here to protect and serve my people!)
  Noblesse oblige is all about being nice, making promises that with you, everyone will have a better life,
  
  
  • It confers massive bonuses on your popularity based modifiers and makes it much easier to gain popularity.
    This is how you attract all these special, talented, wonderful people who might invent better ways to be productive, strengthen your cities, create better armour/weapons, etc
    
    
  • The down side is that if you try any fear based action you will incur MASSIVE (Note all caps ) penalties on almost everything, using fear tactics with your people will been seen as a betrayal, undoing most of the benefits you gained from your good deeds (people have short memories), while magnifying the usual negative modifiers normally incurred from these actions, while minimising the benefits, (after all having your belief in your beloved leader shattered will leave you dazed and confused for a while).
    
    
• Despotism
  (I am the nation! you the people have a duty to serve me, and by doing so you serve yourself.)
  Despotism is a mostly neutral stance that doesn't really gain many significant bonuses or penalties.
  
  • This path isn't as good for attracting special, talented, people, as many tend to have strong views about what they want from the world, and the guy taking the middle ground is not so inspiring.
    The kind of people who do value the middle ground though are traders and mercenaries who are looking for easy low risk profit.
    
    
• Tyranny
  (You will tremble with fear under my rule, you are maggots to me, if you do not please me I will grind you into dust!)
  Tyranny is all about being feared, and leaning into that for maximum effect, the direct counterpoint to Noblesse Oblige
  
  
  • It confers Massive bonuses to Fear based actions, and lowers the penalties (everyone knows you don't take shit, so a few executions don't shock anyone anymore)
    
    
  • This is the path that attracts those don't let silly moral codes stand in their way, those who seize opportunites that weaker individuals fail to grasp, the visionaries who take chances (so what if a few dozen families died), they are building a better, more profitable future.
    
    
  • Doing "Good" actions will confuse your minions, creating MASSIVE penalties just like for Noblesse Oblige as your followers will see them as a sign of weakness, evidence that maybe their time has come to make a grab for power.
    You will also get minimal benefits because nobody will believe it's not a trick.
    

 

[Doorknob22]

I'm glad a thread about this was started. Vae Victis has a lot of potential, but the management aspects of this game are unfortunately so lackluster that I don't find them appealing at all. I agree with the core assumption that having a game structure is fun and rewarding. The sexual conquest of the game are more meaningful when you have real conquest to accompany it. I want to enjoy this aspect of the game and not simply the visual novel elements. However, the current implementation is both tedious and uninteresting, providing no real decisions or sense of accomplishment.

I notice the OP here mentions discussion within the existing framework, so I won't suggestion major reworks to the structure of the management. However, I will outline some of my major complaints and offer some suggestions that I think may work without fundamentally changing the core elements of the management minigame.

1. Resource gain is irregular.

The single biggest complaint I have with this aspect of the game is that there is no meaningful way to strategize with irregular resource gain. Sometimes you will get lucky and your troops will replenish after conquering a territory, other times you will get a 10-turn long dry spell of no troops and have no way to beat the RNG raids. It is appropriate and acceptable to have some modifier on resource gain based on morale/other factors, but the RNG as a whole needs to go.

Personally I think the simplest way to address this is resource gain for each occurs each turn, but it would also be acceptable to have resources gain at some interval (e.g. resources every 3rd turn, every 7th turn, or whatever). If resources are gained every turn, this significantly affects the resource economy of the game, but I feel like this would make the game substantially better.


2. Troops should not take time to send.

One of the least fun aspects of the management game is constantly sending troops to various territories after an RNG raid. This is a bad mechanic for several reasons.

• It's tedious to constantly reinforce your troops in certain regions
• Sending troops takes several turns, but structures are immediately constructed. This is weird and counterintuitive.
• The UI does a poor job of communicating if troops are en-route to a location or not. En-route troops basically disappear for several turns. The only reasonable way to present this is to have an icon appear on the map in the territory they are going towards.
• There is no gameplay-strategy reason for troops to take time to send, because the player never has advance notice of enemy attacks. This might make sense if you knew that Province1 had barbarians attacking in 5 turns and Province2 getting raided by pirates in 8. Since the player never has advance knowledge of incoming enemy attacks like this, it doesn't add any strategy or decisionmaking to moving troops around, it just makes the game punishing with bad RNG.
• If you are unlucky you might find that a territory gets attacked multiple times before your reinforcements arrive. It's just not fun to conquer a territory and then have to send all your troops there (-- Wouldn't they already be there if they just conquered it?)

3. Troop Number Limitation & Troop Upkeep

The game enforces a strict limitation on the number of troops you can sustain. In the current gameplay, it's understandable why this is done, as otherwise players could simply hit "Pass Turn" until they gained an overwhelming army and then conquer any territory.

My suggestion is that there should be no maximum army size (or, at the very least, it should be substantially more generous). Instead, there should be an upkeep cost associated with larger armies. This solves OP's problem #2, because maintaining a larger army would thus cost more gold. A gold-cost makes sense because equipping, training, feeding, and paying the salary of professional soldiers is logical. With a properly-tuned upkeep cost, it would not be necessary to cap the army size of the player since the cost of maintaining an army would naturally achieve an equilibrium based on gold income.


4. Troops Should Cost Gold to Purchase

This relates to the previous point. I think it's probably a mistake to have "Troops Yield" as a resource that is automatically given by territories. The player should have to pay in Gold or Obedience/Morale to recruit soldiers.

The "Troops Yield" property can remain as a way to distinguish territories. e.g. Gaunteinguk would yield 4 (+/- modifiers) soldiers when the player purchases soldiers there. Logically this also implies that we could (much like Force-Yield) only purchase soldiers once per territory per turn.


5. Auto-Garrison Soldiers in Territories

This ties in with my point #2, it's very tiresome to constantly send troops to a specific territory. I want to be able to set a threshold to maintain a X troop count in a particular territory, and automatically pay some kind of gold & upkeep cost to maintain X troops in that territory.

I see some challenges with implementing this, but I think it's important to think about how to achieve this. It's particularly important when I look at the world map overall and imagine the endgame where the player is controlling ~15+ territories and might be forced to check every turn to send reinforcements to multiple territories. It's bad enough doing that with the current state of the game, now imagine 3x as many territories.

Simplifying this is a big QOL improvement (Especially because the "Send Troops" UI is often bugged, see point #9 below.)


6. Change Garrison Structure

I think the Garrison structure should not be required in order to station troops in a territory. The fact that you cannot station troops in a conquered territory is fundamentally broken. Here is a scenario that has repeatedly happened to me:

• Attempt to conquer a territory
• Conquer the territory, suffering losses
• Immediately spend 40 gold to buy a Garrison
• Immediately send the bulk of my remaining army to defend the new territory
• Before my troops arrive at the new territory, it is attacked
• The garrison I just spend 40 gold on is destroyed
• My army that I sent to defend it disappears into nothing
• New territory is repeatedly RNG-raided and since there is no way to station troops there without a garrison, you cannot stop it

The player must always have the option of defending territories they own. The garrison already states it provides a bonus to obedience. If necessary, the garrison should act as a force multiplier on the defensive troops, but it should not be a requirement to station troops in a territory.


7. Reconquering Territories Must Reset Obedience

This item follows on from the scenario described in #6. When a territory rebels due to low obedience, it is virtually impossible to reconquer it successfully because its obedience remains at a low ~40-50 level. At this level, even if you conquer a territory and immediately build a garrison and station troops there, it's unlikely you will stop the negative consequences of low obedience. This leads to a permanent failure spiral. I just played a game where I captured the Marbia territory at least 6 times in a row, but each time I recaptured it, low-obedience negative events caused it to rebel, destroy its garrison, or otherwise prevent me from even getting the option to salvage the nation.

I doubt this negative feedback loop was intentional, and it should be fixed.


8. Attacking With No Troops = Game Over

This shouldn't be permitted as it is an instant game over. Happens easily if you forget to returned garrisoned troops to the army, and it's annoying. Losing a single battle should never be game over for our Khan.

(In general the game should probably define a way to lose a battle without a Game Over, since it's pretty normal to lose battles occasionally in warfare, even if it costs you some gold, troops, wenches, or territory).


9. UI Needs To Be More Informative

This isn't technically a problem with the management game per-se, but it is a problem and it affects every aspect of the management game. The key to making this type of management game compelling is understanding how your choices affect outcomes.

For example, when the player goes to build a structure in a territory the effects of these structures are not clearly displayed:

What it Currently Looks Like	How It Should Actually Look
A Gold Mine to Increase Gold Production - 30 Gold	Gold Mine (+1 Gold / Turn) - Cost: -30 Gold
A Temple to Boost Morale - 40 Gold	Temple (+2 Morale / Turn) - Cost: -40 Gold

More detailed information is needed in many places, this is just one example.

In other circumstances, the UI needs to respond more intelligently.

• For example, if the player uses "Force Yield" on a territory, which can only be done once per turn, shouldn't the "Force Yield" button grey out, or disappear?
• 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).
• Other annoyances: When you've built all the structures in a territory, the build button is still present and not greyed out.
• The UI displays a numerical value for Obedience and Morale, but the numbers are arbitrary and unintuitive. Why not use a normal scale of 1-10 or 1-100 for Obedience / Morale stats? Why no tooltips explaining the benefits/penalties associated with high/low values?

Overall, UI is a big challenge. Personally, I think it's a challenge to do UI properly in RenPy, so my expectations are not high. However, I believe it's possible to do a better job without excessive effort simply by redesigning UIs. If I can find some time I will create some example UI mockups as suggestions. For some examples, I'd recommend looking at Harem Hotel which has great presentation of gameplay consequences via GUI.


10. World-Map Events Must Be Improved

The OP discusses this as well. I concur that more variety is needed. However, most of the OP proposals don't really seem to address what I view as core issues. The map-level management currently consists of a few things:

• RNG Nuisance Raids
• Troop Defections
• Low Obedience Penalties

First off, all of these events are essentially penalties (as are most of the proposed new types of events). There's nothing positive happening from any of these. When every popup is negative, the player just wants to avoid all of these annoying RNG items and hit "Next Turn." Not very encouraging. It's better if the events create choice and opportunity for the player, even if sometimes those events might have negative consequences.

Second, none of these events develop any kind of narrative or character. The mechanics of the world map are disjointed from the game's visual novel style sections. I think the game would be dramatically improved by trying to incorporate mini-events with more of a narrative style, rather than the current "Popup Bad Thing You Can't Do Anything About."

Here are some examples:

• Barbarian Warlord threatens <Territory> unless Karder Pays Tribute
  • Player sees Dialogue with Warlord
  • Gives Choice: Pay Tribute (-10 Gold) or Challenge to Single Combat or Fight Battle
• Trader Asks Karder for Protection on Trade Route
  • Player sees Dialogue with Trader
  • Gives Choice: Send Troops (-2 Troops) for +6 Gold (65% Chance Success) or Steal Merchant's Goods (+2 Gold / -10 Morale) or Decline (No Effect)
• Farmer Asks Karder Help Alleviate Famine
  • Player sees Dialogue with Farmer
  • Gives Choice: Pay Gold (-2 Gold) for Food (+10 Morale) or Sex with Farmer for Food (+10 Morale) or Decline (-10 Morale)
• Wandering Mystic Offers to Read Omens
  • Player sees Dialogue with Mystic
  • Random Effect: Omens of Wealth (+4 Gold) or Omens of War (+4 Troops) or etc...
• Diplomat from Neighboring Territory Visits
• Officer in Your Army Defects
• Mercenaries Offer Their Services
• Peasant Discovers a Hidden Treasure
• Your Spy Uncovers Valuable Information
• A Regional Festival Occurs
• A Rampaging Ogre Threatens a Territory
• etc.

Fundamentally, this would help to integrate narrative into the overall management gameplay, while also adding much-needed variety. It is easy to imagine short events like this and once a structure is established such events could easily be dropped in as semi-randomized repeatable units. I also think this is a good way to add (light) amounts of characterization to both Karder and the wenches, who could provide assistance in solving problems from their respective regions.


11. Map Battles are Too Simple

"Bigger Number Beats Smaller Number" is not fundamentally interesting. This game already has the concept of Rock/Paper/Scissors style battles in single combat, so I think it's reasonable to try and map this idea onto larger scale combat. This change is pretty significant, so I don't really expect this degree of rework, however I'm throwing this out there so perhaps a few ideas can be picked off of it.

Here's what the battle scene currently looks like:

Your Force (#)

Enemy Force (#)

Options:

• Fight
• Retreat

Here's what I think the battle scene should look like:

Your Force: Infantry (#) Archers (#) Cavalry (#)	Enemy Force: Infantry (#) Archers (#) Cavalry (#)
Modifiers: Morale (+12%) Obedience (-2%) Domia's Dominatrix (+15% Infantry) Khan's Cavalry (+50% Cavalry)	Modifiers: Nahir Leadership(+20% All) Fortress (+50% Archers)

Battle Log
Turn 1: Karder used Cavalry Charge! Nahir used Archer Volley!
Turn 1: Karder Cavalry slew 216 Marbia Infantry. Marbia Archer slew 31 Karder Cavalry.

Options:

• Infantry Push
• Archer Volley
• Cavalry Charge
• Pillage
• Retreat
• etc.

Here's what I think this accomplishes:

1. Provide meaningful interactivity in the battles with RPS-like choices on the strategic level (e.g. Infantry Push / Archer Volley / Cavalry Charge)
2. Give players a battle log that breaks down the blow-by-blow. It's vastly more interesting to see blow-by-blow and the game is doing this anyway, you just need to generate some text to accompany it.
3. Define modifiers and then show them. This depends on some programming infrastructure but gives you way more power to make interesting gameplay. If players can see their low Obedience value is hurting their troops then they will try to maximize that value, if they can't see it spelled out, then they just wonder why the dice always roll low.

Anyway, that's enough for now. I might try to come up with some more and do some mockups if I can find time.

Wow, PVNUser, you really put effort into this. Hard for me to express how deeply I respect this effort.

1. Resource gain is irregular: Probably will stay like now in the short term. The resource system works, and it ties nicely with Morale which is in turn tied nicely with the story/characters (Wenches providing Morale bonus, Nahir's Morale bonus etc). On the longer term, I might opt for something less random. Perhaps the best solution would be a fixed base yield (say 1/1) with Morale bringing the extra Whoomp!

2. Troops should not take time to send: They should (although the system should be improved). Why not change? For starters, it's historically accurate, moving medieval armies took weeks, sometimes months. Second, it adds tension to the game, I give this sigh of relief when "they make it" on time and the fiefdom wasn't raided. Lastly, it's a resource I can use, as in Teniya's bonus and future buildings which further reduce transfer time.

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, the game misses indications on armies in transit, advance warning on raids would do wonders for the feeling of control and you didn't mention how it's not possible to send troops from one fiefdom to another directly.

All these should and will be improved but the core mechanic will stay. Troop movement will take a few turns.

3. Troop Number Limitation & Troop Upkeep: yes. Perhaps you gain up to the current cap (20 per fief + 30 for Geoyanguk) for free and once you exceed it you start paying extra. This mechanism poses problems in the current "automatic yield" system which I'll need to address one way or the other but yes, I'll need to remove the cap and replace it with cost.

4. Troops Should Cost Gold to Purchase: Interesting. This may be part of a future overhaul of the resource system or once I implement Troop Number Limitation & Troop Upkeep, it will be a mechanism to buy extra warrior slaves.

5. Auto-Garrison Soldiers in Territories: Cool. Perhaps the troops after a Yield stay in the fief garrison until it holds <configurable X> and the rest are "spilt" to the main army.

6. Change Garrison Structure. Yes. Garrison should not be a requirement for sending troops to a fiefdom for raider defense.

7. Reconquering Territories Must Reset Obedience: Absolutely.

8. Attacking With No Troops = Game Over: Yes. There are probably more elegant ways of handling defeat.

9. UI Needs To Be More Informative: Lot of a good suggestions here.

10. World-Map Events Must Be Improved: Lot of good ideas there, but whenever possible the main focus will be ruling Wenches and not some "Barbarian Warlord". I need to give the ruling Wrenches more "face time" so the player will be more riled up when they attack the fiefdom.

11. Map Battles are Too Simple: Obviously need to change, not sure this is the direction I want to take.

Again, thanks for the effort you put in this! I intend to implement some of these ideas as early as 0.6.

I'm a bit confused by what you mean then, for Productivity, for me it is very simple, it comes down to how fast/hard your people swing their picks/scythes, to gather those resources that are so important to the war effort and maintaining you cities. And trust me fear works great at keeping that pace. (within the context of a War)

Sure, inspiring people for creative gains is most likely to happen from a "Love" perspective. but for this to be a productivity bonus, it would need schools/hospitals/colleges!
"Reinventing/Producing the new equipment"/"Training people how to use it" all takes a massive investment of time & resources. (generations really, and I can't imagine it is possible while sustaining a war)

The best you could hope for in such a short time is individual Engineers building unique creations that help in a very localised fashion.

I see the propoganda in two ways,
1. From a Narrative stance, changing dialogue options and how new people engage with you (but that isn't really what this thread is about so I'll leave that there)

2. From a Mechanical perspective your propaganda machine would give the player the option of locking in a playstyle that infers global bonuses/penalties from diplomatic alignment

• Noblesse oblige
  (It is my duty as your ruler to be the father of this nation, I am here to protect and serve my people!)
  Noblesse oblige is all about being nice, making promises that with you, everyone will have a better life,
  • It confers massive bonuses on your popularity based modifiers and makes it much easier to gain popularity.
    This is how you attract all these special, talented, wonderful people who might invent better ways to be productive, strengthen your cities, create better armour/weapons, etc
    
    
  • The down side is that if you try any fear based action you will incur MASSIVE (Note all caps ) penalties on almost everything, using fear tactics with your people will been seen as a betrayal, undoing most of the benefits you gained from your good deeds (people have short memories), while magnifying the usual negative modifiers normally incurred from these actions, while minimising the benefits, (after all having your belief in your beloved leader shattered will leave you dazed and confused for a while).
• Despotism
  (I am the nation! you the people have a duty to serve me, and by doing so you serve yourself.)
  Despotism is a mostly neutral stance that doesn't really gain many significant bonuses or penalties.
  • This path isn't as good for attracting special, talented, people, as many tend to have strong views about what they want from the world, and the guy taking the middle ground is not so inspiring.
    The kind of people who do value the middle ground though are traders and mercenaries who are looking for easy low risk profit.
• Tyranny
  (You will tremble with fear under my rule, you are maggots to me, if you do not please me I will grind you into dust!)
  Tyranny is all about being feared, and leaning into that for maximum effect, the direct counterpoint to Noblesse Oblige
  • It confers Massive bonuses to Fear based actions, and lowers the penalties (everyone knows you don't take shit, so a few executions don't shock anyone anymore)
    
    
  • This is the path that attracts those don't let silly moral codes stand in their way, those who seize opportunites that weaker individuals fail to grasp, the visionaries who take chances (so what if a few dozen families died), they are building a better, more profitable future.
    
    
  • Doing "Good" actions will confuse your minions, creating MASSIVE penalties just like for Noblesse Oblige as your followers will see them as a sign of weakness, evidence that maybe their time has come to make a grab for power.
    You will also get minimal benefits because nobody will believe it's not a trick.

Ok, so it's choosing a playstyle and gaining bonuses/penalties for following or not following it. Neat!

 

[PVNUser]

Wow, PVNUser, you really put effort into this. Hard for me to express how deeply I respect this effort.

Cheers. I want to help create a better experience. I appreciate that you understand this feedback took a long time to think about and write, and that you seem very interested in improving the management aspects of Vae Victis.

1. Resource gain is irregular: Probably will stay like now in the short term. The resource system works, and it ties nicely with Morale which is in turn tied nicely with the story/characters (Wenches providing Morale bonus, Nahir's Morale bonus etc). On the longer term, I might opt for something less random. Perhaps the best solution would be a fixed base yield (say 1/1) with Morale bringing the extra Whoomp!

Agreed on the point of fixed base yield with Morale (or Obedience) based bonuses to resource production.

2. Troops should not take time to send: They should (although the system should be improved). Why not change? For starters, it's historically accurate, moving medieval armies took weeks, sometimes months. Second, it adds tension to the game, I give this sigh of relief when "they make it" on time and the fiefdom wasn't raided. Lastly, it's a resource I can use, as in Teniya's bonus and future buildings which further reduce transfer time.

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, the game misses indications on armies in transit, advance warning on raids would do wonders for the feeling of control and you didn't mention how it's not possible to send troops from one fiefdom to another directly.

All these should and will be improved but the core mechanic will stay. Troop movement will take a few turns.

I understand the reasoning here, and in theory I agree that troop movements should take time. However when I look at the game as a whole it's a weird bit of friction that doesn't seem to add much. Clearly buildings that take months or years to construct should also take time. There's no real concept of distance because you can't transfer troops between territories, you only can have them free-roaming or garrisoned. The protagonist's adventures also seem like they should advance time on the world map, but none of this happens.

As a player, I'm playing a game where my army takes time from move from A to B, I expect to see the army units on the map traveling the distance so it's easy to tell at-a-glance what's happening with them. However, as a developer, I think displaying army units moving across the map would be challenging to do and the development effort required to do it right doesn't justify the gameplay value it has (to me). YMMV.

3. Troop Number Limitation & Troop Upkeep: yes. Perhaps you gain up to the current cap (20 per fief + 30 for Geoyanguk) for free and once you exceed it you start paying extra. This mechanism poses problems in the current "automatic yield" system which I'll need to address one way or the other but yes, I'll need to remove the cap and replace it with cost.

4. Troops Should Cost Gold to Purchase: Interesting. This may be part of a future overhaul of the resource system or once I implement Troop Number Limitation & Troop Upkeep, it will be a mechanism to buy extra warrior slaves.

5. Auto-Garrison Soldiers in Territories: Cool. Perhaps the troops after a Yield stay in the fief garrison until it holds <configurable X> and the rest are "spilt" to the main army.

6. Change Garrison Structure. Yes. Garrison should not be a requirement for sending troops to a fiefdom for raider defense.

7. Reconquering Territories Must Reset Obedience: Absolutely.

8. Attacking With No Troops = Game Over: Yes. There are probably more elegant ways of handling defeat.

9. UI Needs To Be More Informative: Lot of a good suggestions here.

Excited to see improvements in these areas.

10. World-Map Events Must Be Improved: Lot of good ideas there, but whenever possible the main focus will be ruling Wenches and not some "Barbarian Warlord". I need to give the ruling Wrenches more "face time" so the player will be more riled up when they attack the fiefdom.

Agree 100%. One of primary reasons why I suggest this type of format is precisely because it gives opportunities for the MC and the Wenches to interact. in my head, the wenches are still experts on their own realms, so when events pertaining to those realms occur, it provides opportunity for the MC to interact with the women and provide opportunities for them to help (or not) your cause.

11. Map Battles are Too Simple: Obviously need to change, not sure this is the direction I want to take.

Again, thanks for the effort you put in this! I intend to implement some of these ideas as early as 0.6.

Sure. There are a huge number of ways to take this so it will be interesting to see how you decide to develop and improve this aspect of the game. For myself I tend to view the conquest aspect of the game as a tabletop game, similar to a mix of Risk, Settlers of Catan, Scythe, and other games. I think there's quite a few ways to develop this to make it more engaging, so I encourage you to experiment and see what feels right.

 

[PVNUser]

Since I am already adding excessive amounts of feedback, I wanted to make a comment on a few minor things. Here is the world map.

1. Many Territories have Similar Names or Difficult to Pronounce Names

I have no idea if you have a deep attachment to any of the named territories in the game, but personally I feel like it's worthwhile considering renaming some territories so that their names are more distinct and more memorable.

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.
Other names are very tough to pronounce. Tsogsogtian Khaganate? Waikokipia?

Renaming with simpler & more distinct names would be helpful.

2. Labels on the Map are not Localize-able

The names of the countries on the map are embedded into the image. This means they cannot be translated into non-English languages. I don't know if you plan on having support for other languages, but it might be worthwhile to add text-based labels to the countries on the map.

This is also a problem for very small territories like Cheunia and Taishing that are labeled much smaller than larger territories. Text that is too small (especially on mobile) is illegible, whereas labels can help address this.

3. There are Too Many Territories on the Map

This is purely my opinion, but it looks like there are between 18 to 20 territories on the map to conquer. Each territory has a female ruler and a female side character for sex, which implies ~40 characters to potentially keep track of. This is an unreasonable number of characters in my eyes, both for player and developer.

I would eventually like to see an ending for the game where the MC reclaims his birthright. Assuming ~5 updates per year with a new territory per update, that is at least 3 years off in the current map configuration. My feeling is the game seems about 1/3rd complete now, where the MC has established a power base. The next few conquests would cement his empire over the Eastern Sister, and the last act would see him returning to the Western Sister to take revenge and reclaim what is rightfully his. Based on this rough outline I think an ideal map size is likely to be 15 (or fewer) territories.

Not trying to force you to do anything here just that I know firsthand as a developer that smaller scope is important to complete projects. Vae Victis 2 can always happen if there's new lands and wombs to conquer.

 

[erkper]

1. Many Territories have Similar Names or Difficult to Pronounce Names

I have no idea if you have a deep attachment to any of the named territories in the game, but personally I feel like it's worthwhile considering renaming some territories so that their names are more distinct and more memorable.

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.
Other names are very tough to pronounce. Tsogsogtian Khaganate? Waikokipia?

Renaming with simpler & more distinct names would be helpful.

Ever looked at a map of central Asia? I see:
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Kazakhstan
Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan
Tajikistan

Eastern Europe?
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Romania
Bulgaria
Austria
Slovakia
Albania
Croatia

Need I go on? This is the real world. If you aren't native to the lands, or speak the native language, it is fairly likely you could have difficulty pronouncing the name of the land. I think if anything Doorknob has done an excellent job of creating a believable realm, especially with his use of similar names for lands in close proximity with a shared history.

 

[Doorknob22]

Since I am already adding excessive amounts of feedback, I wanted to make a comment on a few minor things. Here is the world map.

1. Many Territories have Similar Names or Difficult to Pronounce Names

I have no idea if you have a deep attachment to any of the named territories in the game, but personally I feel like it's worthwhile considering renaming some territories so that their names are more distinct and more memorable.

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.
Other names are very tough to pronounce. Tsogsogtian Khaganate? Waikokipia?

Renaming with simpler & more distinct names would be helpful.

2. Labels on the Map are not Localize-able

The names of the countries on the map are embedded into the image. This means they cannot be translated into non-English languages. I don't know if you plan on having support for other languages, but it might be worthwhile to add text-based labels to the countries on the map.

This is also a problem for very small territories like Cheunia and Taishing that are labeled much smaller than larger territories. Text that is too small (especially on mobile) is illegible, whereas labels can help address this.

3. There are Too Many Territories on the Map

This is purely my opinion, but it looks like there are between 18 to 20 territories on the map to conquer. Each territory has a female ruler and a female side character for sex, which implies ~40 characters to potentially keep track of. This is an unreasonable number of characters in my eyes, both for player and developer.

I would eventually like to see an ending for the game where the MC reclaims his birthright. Assuming ~5 updates per year with a new territory per update, that is at least 3 years off in the current map configuration. My feeling is the game seems about 1/3rd complete now, where the MC has established a power base. The next few conquests would cement his empire over the Eastern Sister, and the last act would see him returning to the Western Sister to take revenge and reclaim what is rightfully his. Based on this rough outline I think an ideal map size is likely to be 15 (or fewer) territories.

Not trying to force you to do anything here just that I know firsthand as a developer that smaller scope is important to complete projects. Vae Victis 2 can always happen if there's new lands and wombs to conquer.

1. Many Territories have Similar Names or Difficult to Pronounce Names: I don't completely disagree with you here, I'm the dev who needed a year to learn to spell Oryoenguk properly (and still can't spell the name of it's eastern neighbor without a reference) but I think these names add unique flavor to the game, and, as erkper noted, hint at ethnic and historic continuity.
2. Labels on the Map are not Localize-able: Solvable once this becomes a problem.
3. There are Too Many Territories on the Map: Sometime in the near future I need to decide how big this game is going to be: whether I take it all the way to the Western Sister or split it in two. Once I do that, I'll set myself a timeline which will allow me understand how many updates I need. From there I can either resize the map or add some fiefdoms to "no man land" fiefs, containing only an opposing army but no Wench/quest, so the conquest becomes faster. All the options are on the table.

 

[Stil996]

1. Many Territories have Similar Names or Difficult to Pronounce Names: I don't completely disagree with you here, I'm the dev who needed a year to learn to spell Oryoenguk properly (and still can't spell the name of it's eastern neighbor without a reference) but I think these names add unique flavor to the game, and, as erkper noted, hint at ethnic and historic continuity.
2. Labels on the Map are not Localize-able: Solvable once this becomes a problem.
3. There are Too Many Territories on the Map: Sometime in the near future I need to decide how big this game is going to be: whether I take it all the way to the Western Sister or split it in two. Once I do that, I'll set myself a timeline which will allow me understand how many updates I need. From there I can either resize the map or add some fiefdoms to "no man land" fiefs, containing only an opposing army but no Wench/quest, so the conquest becomes faster. All the options are on the table.

Please don't shrink the map. the size of the map lends gravitas to the game (likewise for the names), if you don't want the conquer every region personally, remember that no invasion force in history conquers every region on their campaign, some preemptively surrender to avoid certain death, while others will try to curry favour by attacking their neighbours on the invaders behalf in an attempt to gain positions of power in the new world order.

 

[justpassingbyreally]

these names add unique flavor to the game, and, as erkper noted, hint at ethnic and historic continuity.

Somewhat off-topic, but if you ever do any territorial changes,

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adding Massuria (Massury?) as a splinter region of Varimia.

 

[PVNUser]

Ever looked at a map of central Asia? I see:
Eastern Europe?


Need I go on? This is the real world. If you aren't native to the lands, or speak the native language, it is fairly likely you could have difficulty pronouncing the name of the land. I think if anything Doorknob has done an excellent job of creating a believable realm, especially with his use of similar names for lands in close proximity with a shared history.

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

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.

Please don't shrink the map. the size of the map lends gravitas to the game (likewise for the names), if you don't want the conquer every region personally, remember that no invasion force in history conquers every region on their campaign, some preemptively surrender to avoid certain death, while others will try to curry favour by attacking their neighbours on the invaders behalf in an attempt to gain positions of power in the new world order.

Agreed, and my feedback is in the context of assuming we maintain the same structure Parley/Infiltrate/Conquer for every territory in the game. Obviously in history, conquest is rarely complete, and countries don't just wait to get swallowed up. It makes sense that as the MC's empire grows, other territories might try to form alliances both with or against it.

 

[Stil996]

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

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......

I don't think it's silly at all, many nations have similar Prefixes/Suffixes depending on their languages and cultural base. In the case of Weguk, Ganguk, Geoyanguk. Guk feels like it probably means Land, you know like EngLAND, IreLAND, ScotLAND. I like the names used in this game, it feels alien enough to make me think a little more about how different their cultures are from what I grew up with, but not so different that it lifts me out of the game. I like how the way the map is divided you get a sense of the history of this place, how some of these kingdoms probably began as parts of larger empires that were then broken up through rebellion and conquest.

 

[PVNUser]

I don't think it's silly at all, many nations have similar Prefixes/Suffixes depending on their languages and cultural base...

This isn't the issue I raised. I encourage you to read my actual point and respond to that, since either you have failed to comprehend what I said, or are purposefully misrepresenting my position to score internet debate points for some reason.

The goal here is to improve the game. Cheers.

 

[Stil996]

This isn't the issue I raised. I encourage you to read my actual point and respond to that, since either you have failed to comprehend what I said, or are purposefully misrepresenting my position to score internet debate points for some reason.

The goal here is to improve the game. Cheers.

I quoted the issue you raised, You think the names are too complicated I disagree.
if you feel I have misunderstood, try clarifying your point instead trying to make me out to be a cunt.

 

[PVNUser]

I quoted the issue you raised, You think the names are too complicated I disagree.
if you feel I have misunderstood, try clarifying your point instead trying to make me out to be a cunt.

I explicitly pointed out the -guk suffix is not the problem.
Does it improve the game to have three territories with extremely similar names: G*guk?
I think the answer is obvious. This does not improve the game experience in a meaningful way.

You're allowed to have your personal tastes, but it is objective fact that the more similar two entities are, the harder the human brain has to work to distinguish them. Consider this hypothetical, is it easier to distinguish between: a red cube and a green ball, or two red cubes?

This applies to language as well. The more similar two words are (across multiple dimensions: Spelling, phonemes, complexity) the harder it is for humans to distinguish them (See:

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). From the standpoint of improving the UX, this is low hanging fruit to improve game accessibility.

I'm not making any specific recommendations or suggestions here, I'm simply pointing out that Yes, this can be improved.
If we accept that Yes, this can be improved, then lets focus discussion on improvement, instead of being dogmatic and bickering for no reason.