>> 3) To harp some more on the faction tree note the real hardship of
>> the death of a particular noble can be how bad it screws up your
>> faction with the loyalty oaths/etc.
>
>Yes. I'm very, very close to removing faction trees.
Please don't.
>One player has written a program to read his turn report, constructing
>the hierarchy for every units he sees, so he knows what units belong
>to what players.
Well if by default lords didn't advertise their allegiances, this would be a
lot less useful. Besides. Lords should really announce thir faction
allegiances (if any) rather than whom their immediate superior is. That only
really matters to the controlling player. [Should be a way to find it out, so
you can work out whom to steal]
Making oath nobles stay with their liege lord even when he defects would be
more interesting. Its all very well having a totally flat heirarchy, but it
means you have to get your leader to all the new nobles you create, or obtain,
to swear them to their oaths.
>Unfortunately, while interesting, I don't think arbitrarily complicating
>a report such that you need a program to untangle it for you makes for good
>game atmosphere. A slightly strained analogy would be if I arbitrarily
>encrypted some sections of the report. Those with caesar or Crypt Breaker's
>Workbench handy could decode them; others would miss out on the info. Yuk.
I agree with this though.
>I like the concept of known units vs. masked units. We can still have
>this with flat hierarchies.
I'm not happy with explicit masking. I prefer explicit advertising of
loyalties. That way people with no shown leader don't have big signs on their
foreheads saying 'KILL ME'.
>Also, having all unmasked units showing their player will make setting
>attitudes and permissions much simpler for players.
>
>--
>Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com>