Re: Comments

C.M. Yearsley (cmy@cs.keele.ac.uk)
Thu, 17 Mar 1994 16:17:56 +0000 (GMT)

> out monster lairs etc.) and setting up guilds, marketplaces, etc. Under
> your system someone can set up a castle and just sit their practicing swordplay

No they can't! The real currency by which things are valued is surely
the noble/day. I have no intention to tie up a _noble_ for a _whole_month_
just to get a few more combat points. I'd be much better off training
more troops and besides, it's very boring. I think the curent general
skill system is fine. No, more, I think it's great; it meets players'
needs and is clean and simple. I think the proposed changes would
give slightly better behaviour at the price of much more complexity
and unnecessary detail.

Perhaps change the combat training so learning archery gives you say 40
or 50 straight away, then 1 point/use thereafter. I'm not going to
practice a noble above the minimum necessary to train troops now, and
it seems a bit silly to have a noble being the worst archer in the
stack, when he's training the others!

> forever getting some ridiiculous skill level without ever interacting with
> anything or anyone in the game. Luckily in Legends their are enough lairs
> and things to kill that you don't necessarily need to go after other players
> to get increases.
>

Cleaning out sublocations gives rewards; that's enough.

>
> Castle building:
>

More customisation on castles is a nice idea, but I think I'm against it.
As things are there are many possible careers in Olympia. If we make
castles any better, 'castle builder' will be the only realistic career
path, which is a Bad Thing. Under the current rules of taxation
and land ownership I think they're just right. If castles became more,
"scenic" that would be okay, but they're physically and financially
plenty as they are.

Concerning 'overpillaging'; if anyone pillages in one of my garrisoned
provinces they're in trouble! Generally it's far too heavy to have
rules or events to stop pillaging. Small forces are discouraged by
peasant mobs, etc. Large forces can be stopped by castle owners. If
there are no castles near, let them pillage, why not? Certainly for a
contract loyalty noble the overall returns are not that great - it
takes a lot of noble/days, trained soldiers, and horses to make a great
amount. You can make more with a castle, or with trading, which is as
it should be.

Mines:

> sk> This sort of idea comes up fairly often. Everyone wants to make
> sk> Moria, with twisty deep tunnels, lord-knows-what kinds of evil
> sk> monsters lurking in them, multiple entrances, fantastic treasure
> sk> jackpots, etc.
> sk>

Yes!

> sk> There aren't any implementation reasons why something like this
> sk> couldn't be done. We just need a new system. Something like:
> sk>

There are design reasons though. We'd have two maps - above
and below ground - that would have very different scales. What would
it be? Above ground you can more several provinces a turn, but below
you can only move one or two _rooms_? Ugh. I don't think it would
fit. I'd like to build - and fight over - and explore - an
underground kingdom, and if anyone wants to develop such a game,
count me in! Let's keep Oly firmly above ground, an area it handles
very well indeed.

> sk> build mine as now: one per province
> sk> mine [x] mine current location for X
> sk> current location runs out eventually
> sk> tunnel <dir> attempt to create a new underground
> sk> location in direction <dir>

I can't see this making sense, but I'm open to further explanation.
For example, could you tunnel to another province? (No! No!) If not,
the rooms are too small scale to integrate movement with the above
ground scale of time and distance.

Chris

--
Chris Yearsley
cmy@cs.keele.ac.uk


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