New setting: Upkeep [Poll for minimum reinforcements]

[HardAttack]

Here is a new reinforcement suggestion for those who are interested in. I have no idea with what name to assign for such a reinforcement type, however the idea looks to be excellent when i think in dept.

Concise description:Cost of Fortification

• Reduce the maximum available number of troops to be forted by 1/per territory to be passed through. This is the cost of fortification. In other words, you lose 1 army for every additional distance, this is the cost.

Specifics:

• An example, the player has a stack of 10 units in territ X, then player can fort all 9 troops to all adjacent territs, however s/he can fort maximum 8 troops to the 2nd order adjacent territories and loses 1 unit as a cost of forting 2 territs away. So on, if the player likes to fort somewhere, say territ Y, which is 6 territ away from territ X, then the max fortable units is gonna be 10 - 6 = 4, and the forting player loses 5 troops as a cost.
• Before saying that this to be a crazy idea , just think this a few times, and what kind of extra strategy this one would put in gaming. This one successfully models the cost of fortification of long distances. Current fortification types are excellent however why not enrich with some new ones ? For strategy lovers, for those who are looking for tougher games, this new fortification style would offer many

This will improve the following aspects of the site:

• A new, very interesting fortification style to put new line in this game.
• This fortification type offers a lot challenging gaming, makes the fortification step much tougher then ever before.
• And, first time in CC, but no where else.

[The Neon Peon]

Very good idea, I like it.

[slowreactor]

Simulating real-life possibilities when you move troops, I like it!

[max is gr8]

Love this idea could create quite a strategic game with this option available

[Halmir]

Simulating real-life possibilities when you move troops, I like it!

Only if u expect mass desertions en route or some very sloppy truck driving that kills loads of them lol!

However, I like it also. Stops giant hosts charging around all over the place.

[max is gr8]

Halmir, you expect some sort of decay along fortification routes and so on, if you cross mountains for example not everyone will survive.

[Doc_Brown]

This is actually very similar to the way things worked over at http://pickteams.com/#gocrosscampus:browse/ (the site is pretty well dead - you can browse and watch animations of completed games, but they're not starting any new ones). Games over there had a Risk-like feel, but you didn't have multiple armies. Each person had a certain amount of energy, and they gained more every turn based on how many territories their team controlled and whether or not they had conquered a territory on the previous turn. However, a player's energy could not be split into multiple pieces. All of your energy occupied the same spot on the map (with the exception that you could allocate part of it to attacking an adjacent territory and leave the rest to defend your current territory - but if you won the assault, all of your energy moved into the newly conquered territory). There was a penalty for moving in the amount of (2^N - 1) where N was the number of territories you were moving.

That site was based on the concept of a fairly small number of teams (4-12 usually) with large numbers of players on each team. When the site was at its peak, there were as many as 6000 players in a game. Each team elected commanders that were tasked with setting up a battle plan and handing out orders. Therein was the problem. I commanded in several games almost continuously for a full year. Imagine trying to get a team of 400+ people to all log in at least once every 24 hours and then actually do what you want them to do. Then, since it's a free-for-all between the various teams, you have continuous emails and chat messages going back and forth to the commanders of the other teams. Also, the site gave explicit approval to spying, though smart commanders learned to identify spies and rogue players (many of whom were actually multi accounts which were officially banned, but I don't think there was ever a single player kicked off the site as a result of using multis).

Anyway, most of this was off topic, and for that I apologize. I just thought I'd mention that this idea has sufficient merit to have been used in some form elsewhere.

[Doc_Brown]

One other thought: Wouldn't most people that played games of this type just treat them essentially as the "unlimited adjacent fortification" type game that has been discussed elsewhere in this form? It seems like it would suffer some of the same implementation problems: The game has to verify which armies have already moved in the turn to make sure you don't move 3 territories penalty-free by just doing adjacent forts 3 times. While programming this is feasible, it would be a major hassle that I suspect Lack wouldn't be terribly interested in unless there was a very good reason and massive demand.

On the other hand, this concept would be much more feasible in a single fortification type game. It would essentially be an adjacent fort game with an option for chained, albeit with a significant penalty.

[hahaha3hahaha]

well in real wars there WILL be casualties moving men from central Australia to Scandinavia. I like it.

[Little Witt]

Simulating real-life possibilities when you move troops, I like it!

Only if u expect mass desertions en route or some very sloppy truck driving that kills loads of them lol!

However, I like it also. Stops giant hosts charging around all over the place.

I think hardattack said Fortification so after you end attacking then that's when this thing comes in to play. And i like the idea but New Recruits should not be able to use thing option cause they will not know what it means and Players might take advantage of this and start games with unlimited forts games and new players will reinforce and lose there troops and the player who knows how to play that type of game will be able to win the game cause he has to kill less troops. And another thing if they don't block New Recruits from these games peope might start another account and will have that new account join his game with unlimited Forts and will reinforce until he has no troops left and the main account will have a easier win.

LW

[max is gr8]

One other thought: Wouldn't most people that played games of this type just treat them essentially as the "unlimited adjacent fortification" type game that has been discussed elsewhere in this form? It seems like it would suffer some of the same implementation problems: The game has to verify which armies have already moved in the turn to make sure you don't move 3 territories penalty-free by just doing adjacent forts 3 times. While programming this is feasible, it would be a major hassle that I suspect Lack wouldn't be terribly interested in unless there was a very good reason and massive demand.

On the other hand, this concept would be much more feasible in a single fortification type game. It would essentially be an adjacent fort game with an option for chained, albeit with a significant penalty.

No it doesn't all it needs tp be able to do is:

a. Calculate The Quickest Route. Call that x
b. F (Fortifications) >= x+1
c. Kill x units on route
d. Territory moving to = Old Value + F-x

[Doc_Brown]

Sorry, I don't think I was clear. Let me give you an example. Suppose you're in a game on Classic Shapes with Unlimited fortifications with this option enabled. Now suppose you have 3 armies each in A7, O1, O2, and O4. You want to get as many as possible to A7. You can move 2 from O4 to O2 without penalty. Then you can move 4 from O2 to O1 without penalty (it's to an adjacent territory). Then you move 6 from O1 to A7 without penalty. Thus you end up with 9 armies at A7 and 1 each at O1, O2, and O4.

The goal of this suggestion would be that you can't even get armies from O4 all the way to O7. O4 could move 2 to O2 or 1 to O1. So moving armies as far as possible would give you 6 at A7, 2 at O1, and 1 each at O2 and O4. If you instead did all adjacent moves a single time for each army, you'd have 5 at A7, 3 at O1, 3 at O2, and 1 at O4.

If you're only allowed a single fortification move the implementation is trivial. If you do multiple fortifications, then the code has to be a lot smarter. (As an aside, I am a programmer, so I'm used to thinking through the implementation of these sorts of things.) I can think of ways to do it, but it would be a nightmare, especially if you wanted to include any sort of warning about how many armies would be lost in a given fortification step.

One slight variation that would be a lot easier to implement would be to increase the penalty by 1 for all fortifications after the first. By that I mean that on your first fortification step, which is of distance X, you lose X-1 armies. If you do a second fortification it costs you X to move X spaces, so it costs you 1 army to move to an adjacent spot. In the example above, you would end up with 7 at A7 and 1 each at O1, O2, and O4.

[max is gr8]

Adjacents is moving a single space therefore a single unit would perish.

[Doc_Brown]

Adjacents is moving a single space therefore a single unit would perish.

Not quite:

An example, the player has a stack of 10 units in territ X, then player can fort all 9 troops to all adjacent territs, however s/he can fort maximum 8 troops to the 2nd order adjacent territories and loses 1 unit as a cost of forting 2 territs away. So on, if the player likes to fort somewhere, say territ Y, which is 6 territ away from territ X, then the max fortable units is gonna be 10 - 6 = 4, and the forting player loses 5 troops as a cost.

The concept as originally expressed was that adjacents would be free and the cost to move X territories is X-1. However, I think the concept you expressed would be the simplest of all: You lose 1 army for every space moved during fortifications, so there is a 1 army penalty for every adjacent fort.

[OliverFA]

Concise description:
A new setting called "Upkeep". With upkeep enabled, part of your reinforcement income is deduced to pay for maintenance of your existing armies.

The setting has the following values:

• No upkeep
• Low upkeep (1/20)
• Medium upkeep (1/10)
• High upkeep (1/5)

Specifics/Details:
Each turn, the upkeep cost is calculated prior to the reinforcement calculation. That cost is

Code: Select all

Upkeep Cost=Number of armies *Upkeep modifier

Then, the reinforcement formula is changed to:

Code: Select all

Reinforcements=Reinforcement bonuses-Upkeep Cost

• Decimal values are rounded up.
• Reinforcements can never be lower than 0. So if you managed to create a big army you keep it but can't increase it until you get more bonuses.
• Autodeploys are not affected as they are placed directly in the region.
• Spoils are also not affected.

Taking medium reinforcements as a sample, this means that each bonus allows you to place a new troop each turn or to pay for 10 existing troops. If you have Africa in the classic map, that's a bonus of +6. If you already have 10 armies on the map, you will only get 5 reinforcements. If you have 30 armies, you will get 3 reinforcements. If you have 50 armies only 1 reinforcement. And if you have 60 or more armies you get no reinforcements.

Some posters have expressed their concern about the minimum reinforcements being 0, because this leaves the player with absolutely no reinforcements in extreme situations and in some starts depending on map size and number of players.

In my opinion, that's exactly how the setting should work and there is nothing wrong with it. But because I always listen to comments and feedback, I have a way to fix this issue. The fix is raising minimum reinforcements from 0 to 3 (in fact to the minimum reinforcements in that map, which usually is 3). If the majority of people think that's a change for the best, I will apply it to the proposal. I am making a poll to learn people's feelings.

How this will benefit the site and/or other comments:
This will make the game a lot more strategic. Is not only about conquering but also about holding the resources to boost your economy and pay for your army. Autodeploys become a very precious resource, as they are not affected by upkeep.

As upkeep is incorporated in reinforcement formula, it is simple yet effective.

And as it would be an option, it would not piss any player that did not want it.

But players who want their games to resemble more the real war, would love this setting.

It opens the door for an XML update, incorporating an <upkeep> tag that would allow for upkeep bonuses and a whole new family of maps. (This would be in a second phase).

To do:
close the poll and process feedback
Ammend to include defered troops
write a log example

[macbone]

Intriguing idea. Would you go into negative troops at any point? If you have 70 troops, would a troop be randomly deducted somewhere?

So in a 6-man Classic game, since you start with 21 troops, on the Medium setting, you'd get no troops to place on your first turn? Very interesting. I'm not sold on the idea of creating an entirely new setting, though. What about a single On/Off for Upkeep instead to keep things simpler?

[OliverFA]

Intriguing idea. Would you go into negative troops at any point? If you have 70 troops, would a troop be randomly deducted somewhere?

The idea of randomly deducting a troop is interesting, but I think that is best to keep things simple. With this suggestion I want to make the game more complete but keep it as simple as possible.

I think that not receiving any income is enough "penalty" for not paying all your upkeep. Also, it would allow for strategic retreats. Take all your troops to a corner in the map and sleep until the opportunity arises. With the negative income, the only option would be to attack and strategical choices would be reduced.

Another problem would be that escalating spoils would directly clash with negative income. (Even if I think that this option would be best played without escalating spoils, better to make them compatible).

So in a 6-man Classic game, since you start with 21 troops, on the Medium setting, you'd get no troops to place on your first turn? Very interesting. I'm not sold on the idea of creating an entirely new setting, though. What about a single On/Off for Upkeep instead to keep things simpler?

On the medium setting, you would get only 1 troop (3-21*.1=0.9, rounded up is 1). On the high setting you would get no income. And on the low income you would get 2 troops (3-21*.05=1.95, rounded up is 2).

A single on/off setting would work for me (Would have to be medium in this case). I think that those three settings make for more interesting and varied games. But if having only one setting was the price to pay for getting it implemented, it would be ok for me.

[Victor Sullivan]

Brilliant! Sam, ian, Widowmakers and I are playing a Feudal Epic game with Escalating spoils (we're up to 250 per cash!) and it's still a stacking game. Upkeep solves this problem.

Well done Oliver! You continue to amaze me

[AndyDufresne]

Interesting idea, I kind of like it. Basically, 'the costs of war/campaign'!


--Andy

[OliverFA]

Brilliant! Sam, ian, Widowmakers and I are playing a Feudal Epic game with Escalating spoils (we're up to 250 per cash!) and it's still a stacking game. Upkeep solves this problem.

Well done Oliver! You continue to amaze me

Thanks! Victor

Interesting idea, I kind of like it. Basically, 'the costs of war/campaign'!

--Andy

And also thanks to you, Andy. Now that You have honoured me with your attention, I would like to add that this adds a whole new world for mapmaking. I'll try to explain it in a simple way: It makes room for a new resource, the upkeep bonus.

"Current bonus" is the deploy bonus. "New bonus" would be the upkeep bonus. It would not increase the reinforcement rate, but it would increase the army limit. I'll give an example:

In a medieval-like map, an iron mine would be the deploy bonus. The iron allows you to equip more soldiers for war. A windmill would be an upkeep bonus. It gives you more food for feeding those soldiers.

And all this could be done just with a single new XML tag. But of course this would be a second phase after the upkeep option gets implemented.

[Woodruff]

I like the idea IF it doesn't ever cause someone to receive less than three armies (the default). Yes, I know this can occasionally happen on certain maps (which pisses me off), but it shouldn't happen as a setting.

[OliverFA]

I like the idea IF it doesn't ever cause someone to receive less than three armies (the default). Yes, I know this can occasionally happen on certain maps (which pisses me off), but it shouldn't happen as a setting.

I see your point. After all with the current system players get 3 reinforcements even if they don't have the required 9 territories.

But I am not sure this would make sense. I would prefer the minimum reinforcements to be 0 and not 3. I think it makes a lot more sense. A single territory shouldn't be able to create additional reinforcements forever. On the other hand, having a minimum of 3 reinforcements just makes the slow building situations a lot more slow.

And from the gameplay perspective, remember that receiving 0 reinforcements would mean that you already have a decent army (15, 30 or 60 depending on the setting, or bigger if you retreated.).

[SirSebstar]

Conquerman and hive use a simmular arrangement where you get less armies per country when you have reached a certain amount of countries.
So this suggestion would be based on the amount of troops instead of countries availiable?
it would certainly make stackking less attractive.

playing on huge maps or small maps should get a different upkeep number. placing 30 on doodle earth is an accomplishment in itself. getting 30 troops total on world 2.1 .. well you'd better! or you loose right away.


strategies that would go boom.
it does mean you need the bonussess of countries more then the amount of countries. So if you get a lucky drop. its better to stay relativly small and gather forces then to keep whacking and winning the game more quickly.

I would like to see the proposal amended so that if you have a lot of countries, you do not also loose your income..., if that defeats the purpose (and i can see how that could be) then I would vote against this proposal

[OliverFA]

Conquerman and hive use a simmular arrangement where you get less armies per country when you have reached a certain amount of countries.
So this suggestion would be based on the amount of troops instead of countries availiable?

Yes. It is completely different. Conquerman's approach you could say it's upkeep per territories. But this suggestion is about upkeep per army. Your soliders is the real stuff you have to pay for, and not having more or less territories.

it would certainly make stackking less attractive.

It would. But the goal is to make the game more strategic and interesting. A side effect is that stacking is less atractive, and in my opinion is a good side effect.

playing on huge maps or small maps should get a different upkeep number. placing 30 on doodle earth is an accomplishment in itself. getting 30 troops total on world 2.1 .. well you'd better! or you loose right away.

This should be controlled by the mapmaker. The values I suggested are standard values. But in a second phase an XML tag could be added for the mapmaker to specify the upkeep multiplier. Something like <UpkeepMultiplier> of similar. The standard values would be multiplied by this number.

strategies that would go boom.
it does mean you need the bonussess of countries more then the amount of countries.

That is what already happens. Isn't it? You need the bonuses of countries in order to have a good income.

So if you get a lucky drop. its better to stay relativly small and gather forces then to keep whacking and winning the game more quickly.

Again, in my opinion that's also the current situation. Take the classic map. It's better to secure yourself in Africa or even Australia than try to get all the Asia territories.

I would like to see the proposal amended so that if you have a lot of countries, you do not also loose your income...,

I am not sure I understand what you mean, so if I misunderstood it, my apologies. I understand you want the upkeep limit to be bigger the more countries you have. That is the way it would be. Taking a standard map as an example, you get 1 additional reinforcement each 3 countries, which also means higher upkeep limit.

The proper way to do it would be to assign different bonuses (a reinforcement bonus and an upkeep bonus) to each territory. But I chose not to do that way because as I said I want to keep things simple. The more complicated are things the less likely is that people will accept them, and also the more difficult it will be to implement them.

Sumarizing, each threee countries increase your upkeep limit. So the more countries the more income you have.

if that defeats the purpose (and i can see how that could be) then I would vote against this proposal

Excuse me again. I don't understand what it means "if that defeats the purpose". Could you please explain it again? Thanks!

[Dako]

I like the idea, but I think the formula should be changed to reflect number of territories. Maybe together with armies.

For example, take classic map 1v1. You have 14 starting regions with 3 armies on each - that will result on 2 upkeep cost deduction at the very start. And you will get 2 armies to deploy.

Also, you cannot add <UpkeepMultiplier> to current maps as they are already quenched and to balance 100+ maps for this feature seems impossible.

We need a solution that will work for all current maps without their XML tweaks. Some new maps may implement that multiplier, but only as a new feature. Which is a doubtful feature because it affects only 1 game type. No one has <FlatRateValues> for some maps because those values are basic and should be shared by all maps.

So... I think we should work towards changing the formula, but I really like the idea.