Storymod Chapter 2: War Feature Brainstorming

[Neophyte]

If you want villages to have increased importance how about giving towns a money-income based on it's "connected" villages, and require money for raising/maintaining troops. Probably towns should have some level of income from itself so they're not fully dependant on villages, and also to let you tune the level of importance of villages by adjusting how much of a towns income comes from itself and how much come from the villages.


Historically, even castles with very low number of garrisoned troops were never (or at least hardly ever) ignored by invading troops, for fear that the troops would be able to disrupt supply-lines to the fighting armies. Even very low number of troops could do considerable damage to an army if they were bypassed, by disrupting the supply of food and other necessary materials.
To model this, you could have some level of attrition (simulating desertion, etc) of armies fighting in areas with unbesieged hostile castles in them.


Some other ideas:
- Raiding parties. Small-ish parties roaming enemy areas, reducing income to the controlling town while they're around.
- Patrols, primarily for keeping raiding-parties at bay.
- Razing villages, and burning them to the ground rather than attempting to capture-and-hold. Probably villages should be allowed to be rebuilt aver a period of time after being razed (the most valuable part of a small village would be the farmable land, and crops, most of which wouldn't be destroyed by razing the village).

[Winter]

If you want villages to have increased importance how about giving towns a money-income based on it's "connected" villages, and require money for raising/maintaining troops. Probably towns should have some level of income from itself so they're not fully dependant on villages, and also to let you tune the level of importance of villages by adjusting how much of a towns income comes from itself and how much come from the villages.

I'd like to avoid a money-based system, at least for the first release. I like the idea of hiring mercenaries and all that, but right now I don't want another stat to complicate debugging.

Historically, even castles with very low number of garrisoned troops were never (or at least hardly ever) ignored by invading troops, for fear that the troops would be able to disrupt supply-lines to the fighting armies. Even very low number of troops could do considerable damage to an army if they were bypassed, by disrupting the supply of food and other necessary materials.
To model this, you could have some level of attrition (simulating desertion, etc) of armies fighting in areas with unbesieged hostile castles in them.

Now that is an interesting idea. I could very easily code attrition scripts for any territory with a neighbouring, unsieged  hostile castle. I think I will incorporate that.

Some other ideas:
- Raiding parties. Small-ish parties roaming enemy areas, reducing income to the controlling town while they're around.

I already have orders scripts for parties to harass enemy food caravans, trade caravans and prisoner trains.

- Patrols, primarily for keeping raiding-parties at bay.

Also already done.

- Razing villages, and burning them to the ground rather than attempting to capture-and-hold. Probably villages should be allowed to be rebuilt aver a period of time after being razed (the most valuable part of a small village would be the farmable land, and crops, most of which wouldn't be destroyed by razing the village).

This was already in the plans, although maybe not rebuilding. I like the idea of forcing the player to make a conscious choice about raiding villages. If you destroy all of a city's villages permanently, then that city will be very hard to hold for any faction, and any neighbouring castles of the same faction will be negatively affected as well.

[LionNinja]

I seem to remember in the Total war game series after taking over a town you could choose, whether to: keep the population and make some money; Kill off the population and make quite a bit of cash or completely pillage the town and leave it for dead giving you a lot of cash. There were repercussions of course, if you kept the population you had higher tax income rate but happiness would be low as the people would be loyal to their previous rulers; killing the population would end up having a lower income but a more loyal population as you would raise them under your rule and the last one is for a quick injection of cash

[Kinsume]

Hm what i'd like to know is does each city have only one village or something? or do they have multiple... if the answer is only one, would it be possible to make it so more villages can be built for the cities?

Also something about the game has had me wondering for quite some time now, i know how your hero's party can consist of the number of people his leadership skill allows him/her to have. What i would like to know is would it be at all possible to make it so you can control more then one party.

For example say Borsha and Marid have atleast 1 in the leadership skill, would it be possible to code in something allowing them to have control of seperate parties, that in turn are under the players control as well. With an option like that being able to be done i think it would prove fairly interesting. Seigeing of multiple villages could become possible, you could use one of the smaller parties to lure in some enemies that you couldnt normally catch with your main force then move the main force in as reinforcements. Then again im not sure if the game would allow something like that to take place since the map stays centered on your main hero, just figured id see if it was possible to alter that.