Rules

Okay, I got tired of trying to move rules around here. This is the SRD for the system.

Ask rules questions below.

This was brought to me as a question, and I figured everyone would want to know sooner or later, so:

The base level of tech in the Covenant Lands is the 1600's give or take a decade. The exceptions to that currently are:
- There are warforged, basically, which are magically-powered robots, sort of sentient golems.
- There's firearms, though they're hard to come by. Many of them use enchantment over physics to work.

If there's special tech you need for your nation, run it by me, and I'll work with you as long as it's nothing too over-the-top.

It can be both! You have one workforce per province. That means if you have three provinces and three workforces, you can produce three available resources. For instance, you have the following resources available:
- Chemicals
- Cloth
- Cloth
- Gunpowder
- Metal
- Wood

You want to make ships. You can do that, because two cloth give you woven cloth, and woven cloth and wood give you ships. But, say you want to arm those ships. You can't just remove your workforces from what they're making, because then your ships disappear. The chain has to stay active as long as you want ships (think upkeep and repair). What do you do?

You expand, OR you develop provinces. A developed province is split in two, and you've got two workforces there now. Do that a few times and you've got three new workforces. Now you can take that gunpower, metal, and chemicals, and make cannons, and attach those to your ships. But to expand or develop, you need that RP post, and that's where you say, 'alright, we've got these factories now!'

One last thing. That's six resources, right? It's going to take a while to get that. Does that mean you just don't have ships until then? No. Your resources are supplies so sizable that they can affect your ENTIRE nation. If your nation has a merchant marine or just everyone and their pet squid owns a boat, that's perfectly cool. You're just not going to be able to use the ships for the use listed on the resource; in other words, you're not going to be able to transport military across the water. Until you build those ships.

Can we go a bit deeper into that Armed Ships example? As far as I can tell from the Rules, everything is produced as basic resources, and has to be combined. If we want an Armed Ship, that looks like this, I think:

Armed Ship needs Unarmed Ship and Cannons
Unarmed Ship needs Wood and Cloth
Cannons need Gunpowder and Metal and (Chemicals or Enchantments or Wood)
Gunpowder needs Chemicals and Chemicals

So the list of stuff we actually need is:
- Chemicals
- Chemicals
- Wood or Chemicals
- Wood
- Cloth
- Metal

(In your example you mentioned that Ships needed Woven Cloth, but that doesn't seem to be the case in the Rules. Woven Cloth isn't used for anything, as far as I can see. But anyway...)

Okay, six resources needed. The initial city produces three, each additional city seems to produce one, and you get an additional city for every ten provinces you develop. So to get six resources, you need to have developed thirty provinces. Is that right?

If so, there are thirty workforces available from those provinces. To make the Armed Ships, we need six to make the resources, and four to combine them as above. That's ten workforces accounted for... what can the other twenty do? There are no more resources available.

Not sure if I'm missing something.

Also on the subject of resources, Medicine and Stone seem to have no use in crafting and no other effects. Are they intended to have a purpose?

I think you need to factor in the number of workforce needed to produce 1 unit of a resource. Dedicating 2 workforce to the resource capability of a city means 2 units of that resource are produced. (I forget, but I think resources are produced weekly).

Yeah, I wondered about that. The Resources sections says that a Workforce can "Produce a unit of any resource you control (up to the maximum number that you control)," and "You can produce more than one of a resource, but only if you have more than one available to begin with."

I assume that the "maximum number" is the cities that can produce that resource. So you can only produce two Chemicals if you have Minerals chosen twice for the resources your cities produce. I'm not sure how to interpret "You can produce more than one if you have more than one to begin with".

If you can use two workforces to produce two Chemicals from one Mineral-city, then what determines the maximum number "that you control"?

So a few things that you guys mentioned are the result of either typos or me not writing everything in one go. So here's some patch notes, so to speak:

- Textiles is the name of the resource. It takes two textiles to make Cloth, a manufactured good. The rest of the resources have been adjusted to bring them in line with this setup.
- Stability has been added to the manufactured Goods table by adding Stone back into the places it was accidentally removed from.
- 1 Workforce makes all the resources in a city available (this will generally only matter in your capital, although there could be other major cities in the future.). If a city produces 2 chemicals and 1 stone, spending one workforce will get you 2 chemicals and 1 stone. You can't spend another workforce in that city, it's already working.
- 1 Workforce combines resources into manufactured goods. It doesn't matter how many components it needs; if you have them all, one workforce will combine them.
- Cannons do not provide Military Supply; they make naval military action possible.
- Armaments now add +2 Military Supply. This is to balance the complexity of their creation.
- Guns now add +5 Military Supply. This is also to balance the complexity of their creation.

oh, cool! *totally has read all the rules*

So 1 workforce gives +1 basic resource per city (ten developments) and +3 per capital then?

That is correct. You're basically putting the city to work.

Ah, okay. That's good to know, but it still begs the question of what all the other workforces can actually do.

Let's say you've got your capital, and a second city, and you therefore have ten workforces. You can generate all four of your resources using two workforces, and combine those resources into something using another workforce. Do the other seven workforces just sit idle? What can they do?

I agree with kadeton's question, because the latest rules now differentiate between military force and workforce. Previously, spare workforce could be allocated to military or production. (So there'd be no idle workforces because non production workforces would simply be military). But now they are two different stats.

You're right, that is an unintended side effect. Let me review a few things and I'll have an answer for you.

Military Patch Notes

Automatic Generation: You get 3 military units from your capital and 1 per other city you control. This is a change from 1 per province, but was necessary considering the other changes.

Conscription: 1 Workforce can be conscripted to form 1 Military unit.

Unrest: Your nation can handle only so much of it's population being conscripted into the military. If more than a third of your total workforces (rounded down) are conscripted, you'll gain unrest each week equal to the number of Workforces that exceed that third.

Example: You have 9 Workforce total. You can safely conscript three of them. If you conscript five, you'll gain 2 Unrest.

Could having free workforce improve (slackers) or worsen (unemployment) stability? This way you'd get unrest from not having food, having a far too big army or having too much unemployment. Workforce would then be a really important factor to consider, instead of just putting it all in resources and then in the army and leaving the other just there. Maybe this would be making it too complicated as well, since I feel the idea is to be more a writing game than a mechanistic simulation ;)

Workforces are supposed to be groups that can be focused. If you're not using them, they're probably still working, just attheir own crap.

That being said, I do like that idea, but you're also right in that I don't want people to have to work TOO hard at the mechanics part. I want the focus to be writing. However, I am going to be generating events as we go. Some of those events might be related to how much free workforce there is...

ehehe not sure if you ever played EU, but there be events if you want inspiration :D

I agree with CESN, we'll focus on the writing. Not looking to play the PbP version of Civilisation.

CESN: I'm in the middle of a full run from CK2 > EU4 > Vic2 > HoI3

🤔 I see where this game is coming from ...

I'm pretty sure I still have a series of maps I did when I was 12 that take an alternate history forward by like 10 years at a time. I had too much free time, I think. Maps are fun, tho.

Just as a clarification: I'll be doing map and event updates every Sunday (Monday morning at the latest). The map has been updated with last-week's posts, and I've given you new events based on either the ends of your posts or map events that have been seeded throughout.

Thanks. I totally didn’t notice the new event! Are these new "3 posts" for this Sunday or do we have 2 weeks now?
Also, it seems my second event did not change. Is that on purpose? I believe I addressed it even though I left it a bit as a cliff hanger

I never would have seen new events. It doesn't show as a new posts, so I didn't check

Oh, wow. Yeah, I'd been waiting to see new events, I had no idea they were already up. If you prefer to edit the events post to remove the old events and add new ones that's okay, but please also make a new post in that thread to let us know it's changed!

I'm sorry, I meant to, and it slipped through the cracks somehow. Won't happen again!

CESN: I left it because of the cliffhanger. If it's resolved, I'll change it.

No worries, I left the cliffhanger so it could feed into other events. Turns out the cost was being gone dragged until a war and having another defeat ;)

By the way, the way my post was with the old rules, so things may be a bit off. Another quick question about the rules. I understand the idea of rolling for combat, but it feels like battles between 8 or 9 armies will most likely end in stalemate give that it is likely that everyone rolls at least a 6. Do you think the number of 6s could break ties or maybe add some rules of engagement that counts the losses and keeps the battle going for the next week?

That is a good point.

The use of military supply to increase the die size was designed to offset that, but I should probably run this through anydice. I'll have to get back to you on this.

Quick check before week 3 :) If I understood correctly, attacking another province will be my army against 1 (in general). My question now is if there are limit to the number of provinces I can attack. Can I just use 6 military to attack everybody? And from there, if I attack to conquer and fail, do I loose my development opportunity?

Attacking an NPC province will result in however many armies you send in fighting their available military. For instance, if you attack Northcove, it'll be against 1, but if you attack Foundation, it'll be 2. Each attack you do will be one post and one attempted expansion. You can still make other attempts or develop internally.

following up from that :)

So, let's say I attack 6 neighbours with 1 army each and I'm just that lucky and win them all. I'd have the equivalent to 6 developments, while the other players will only be able to do 3 which is a bit unbalanced because I'm the only only with NPC problems at the moment ;)

Just to check I understood it correctly, I can write whatever I want and attack whoever I feel like, but I can only gain 3 provinces (be it by conquest or development)? So in the previous case, only 3 of those 6 provinces would be annexed, right?

I understood conquest to mean that 1 conquest is the equivalent of 1 expansion, except you're fighting with your military instead of simply annexing and expanding. So the 3 actions per week can comprise of up to any combination of 3 expansion/development/conquest.

Bedzone is correct. Since you can expand/develop up to three times, you can attack up to three times.

ah yes, sorry. I totally understood the opposite... these quick reading at work never work... :)
So, in summary, if I attack two places and fail one, this means I get a new province and can still develop once

Correct!

Alright... since i’m going to be definitely in a bad place next week (look at those imperial blobs next to me!), I have some questions:
1) so, does attacking need one army per "province distance" away from my capital as the regular expansion?
2) if I get someone else’s capital, what do I get in terms of workforce and army?
3) what are the defenders for unilith, foundation and cloudspire? I know where I will probably attack and I suppose they will be evenly spread per province. I can do the proper defence roll if I know this in advance, but I understand it may be "confidential"
4) can I do successive attacks? Let say a unilith provinces has 2 defenders. Can I roll their defence and then attack with one army, then if I don’t conquer it, attack with a another one and another one until it is conquered (roll one die at a time)? I feel this is kind of an optimisation cheating ;)
5) following from that one, can I launch a full scale attack, for example, march 7 armies on one foundation province and then move them to the next one and then the next (that is, with whatever is left from the same army?) until all is conquered or I am stoped?

1) Attacking an NPC nation means you attack whatever armies they have in reserve. The distance rules are not applicable.
2) You get to re-name it if you like, and you get two resources of your choice. I've not detailed any supply chains for any NPC nations other than the Ashen Empire.
3) 1 army per province.
4) You can attack each province once per week.
5) Once you take over an NPC province, the occupation rules (and thus the distance rules) DO apply, so you can continue on with any armies left over after you've satisfied those rules. In other words, if you don't leave occupying forces behind in a captured province, you're going to have to eat the unrest from that province.

That sounds good :) Sorry for being so annoying, but just to be sure, let's say I want to conquer all of Unilith in one turn (impossible I know ;) ). I'd gather 10 armies and attack one province at a time, rolling one die per province for the defenders and reducing my army by one for each consecutive attack right? Then I reach the capital... would it be defended by 1 as well?

Sorry, I wasn't explicit enough. The defending nation will defend with all their armies in the territory that you attack. So for Foundation, for instance, they would defend with 7 armies. If you win that, that would leave them with 6, so 6 would defend the next one.

There are a few people who don't have as much time as they'd like for the game, and I want to try to accommodate them, but I also don't want to change things without getting buy-in from everyone else, so... Please answer this poll.

I'll let everyone know if there's going to be changes at the end of the week or after I hear from everyone.

With the results of the poll mathematically set, we'll be moving to a max of 4 posts that have mechanical effects, and the minimum length for ALL posts will be 300 words. The SRD has also been updated to show this.

Another very specific question... Since peace came to the Old Lands and I'm stuck in between two massive blocks, I can't really expand nor conquer. There is a lot to develop in what I have now I know :) but, if I got myself some boats to move some armies, what would be the (sea) distance to the capital to establish a new settlement, let's say next to terminus or the league cities?

You can yes, however, you are stronger than Foundation by a good bit if you conscript, and you're almost as strong as Unilith. They're not nearly as developed as you are.

True. But peace has just been made, so I'll probably play it for a couple of weeks and then get back to it :D
Maybe turning towards the growing unrest and some imperialist/colonialist ambitious now could be a good change in the narrative ;)
I was considering expanding north, closer to Terminus (who were part of the convenant but became independent this week), that would be one region + sea + coast distance. My question is basically how many armies and boats I'd need for that?

For example, lets say I count willowvale + 3 sea regions to get to the other side. I'd need four armies and 2 boats to do that. But is sea is just 1 region, then I'd need 2 armies and one boat ;)

That is a good question that I don't have answers for yet, so lets leave that for now. I'll get back to you on that.

So.. I just noticed that the new rules is the same amount of writing as before (1200 words) but split so it is easier to gain benefits...
I voted for this option without realising it 😅 just double checking that everyone’s intention was actually to keep 1200 words per week, since the original problem was the time it took to write 😝

Well, now, you get MORE for writing 1200 but you also only need 900 to match the previous speed of development, rewarding more detailed people while also allowing the less detailed players to expand quickly

Oh sweet! More actions per week!

And that array of reactions was just about what I was looking for so i think we're on the right track.

Re: Overseas Expansion if you can draw a straight line across the water to connect two areas, then it does not take additional armies to take that area. Remember, you're already spending extra in your navy. If you can't draw a straight line between your current address and where you want to go, then you can't go there. (This might change if i come up with a better system that's still easy.)

Sounds good :) similar to what I expected actually. since it replaces "expanding to the next province" then is removes any bias.

For non linear colonies... maybe count the distance between a linear place and add it? This could work in land as well if we wanted to expand to a non contiguous region for some reason.

Non-contiguous areas via land are already covered under the current rules. I may do something similar to your suggestion for non-linear areas over sea later on though.

Not really sure when we were going to switch to 4 post of 300 words, but just to clarify that this week I did the 300+400+500, as I was under the impression we’d change next week. If you want, I can add a 4th post :)

This was supposed to start tomorrow, but I was not as clear as I should have been, so anyone who posted four times this week can have the fourth one carry over to week five.

Oops, sure I'll just carry it over!

My bad. I'll carry over as well.

I'll try to figure what to carry over, or maybe GM decide.

Edit: I shall carry over "The Prophet's Teaching" post. But the other posts may not be 300-400-500, so let me know if you want me to still check and edit accordingly.

RoAries: You don't need to move the posts, just carry over the expansion/development move. Don't worry about word count.

I've updated THIS THREAD to show some variance in military use. You can pick the one you like best, but it will take significant rp to change it.

The unrest rules had an unintended problem due to wording. It's been corrected. ALso, some have asked what their unrest is at. I'd suspended my own calculations in light of the event that I put on hold for now, so I'm going to start tracking and listing current unrest in the current events thread, that way, no one will be caught off guard by it. If you see a problem with my calculations, please let me know.

I'm going to open things up a bit since right now, we only have three players, and I haven't been approached by anyone else.

If you want to run a second nation, I'll let you. There's a few ground rules for this if you want to do it, and keep in mind this is completely optional.

1) You'll split your posts between the nations. That way you're not having to do twice the amount of posts.
2) The two nations cannot trade or ally with each other outside of crises, where it might be necessary for everyone to group up.

This probably only something you want to do if you want to explore another angle of the world, it's not expected, just an option.

so many angles to explore!!! Rivellesk would be a prime candidate, functioning as an independent nation within the confederacy... but if they can't be allies...
The sea of grass and it's common elves could be interesting, but then again, when they meet it would be trade or war ;)
A new nation in the desert , maybe?

If we get a new nation, do we still get 4 development for each nation (each post counts as 2), or are development split as well?

I think it would be better to split it. I don't want people to feel like they need to keep up with two all the time.

so that means that, if I start a new nation, the Marches will lag a bit behind?
New angle or more power 🤔 (and now that I just started dedicating a post to the past!)

CESN: Yes it is, and no, I they don't.

There's a problem with unrest. Or more correctly, two problems. It's difficult to track, and it's just generally not fun. That being said, I'm adjusting the way it works. Until I have something final, we're not going to track it. I will think about it this week, and if you have any suggestions, I'm open to it. I just don't want to have to do a lot of math every week.

I lost track of unrest at some point and the effect of culture :(
Maybe have +1 unrest per provinces and city at the start of the turn and then bring it down by pumping culture "peace points" and using food. Larger empires would be more difficult to sustain and unrest would be a simple value. Also, it may be interesting to know how culture is being used to spying/diplomacy and what effects it has. Maybe there could be a culture roll like an invasion, so it is clear how far along diplomacy/sabotage we are?

That's possible. Let me look at that.

Possible approach:

Each province gives 1 Unrest.
Each food lowers Unrest by ten. Each culture lowers Unrest by one.
If Unrest grows to more than the threshold, provinces break away.

The threshold for Unrest risks the number of provinces inside your original province plus one per city.

For culture spends in other nations, you can spend any amount of culture over any number of weeks. Once you think you have enough saved up, you can roll a d 20. If your roll is less than YOUR SPENT CULTURE minus the other country's NUMBER OF PROVINCES IN THEIR ORIGINAL PROVINCE, the province furthest from their capital will break away. If the province borders you, it will be yours. If it does not, it undevelop until it simply goes away.

I can see that working. so if I pump 20 culture into a country I'm sure to get someone breaking away? Could that work as diplomacy?

Let's say there is a country with 6 provinces, so I could pump 120 culture to annex it diplomatically?

+ the war effort / army size ! that was an logical unrest producer ;)

CESN: I hadn't thought about either of those, but yes, given how long the culture pump would take, I'll allow those.

I have an idea about stealing territory through use of Culture. We spend Culture to give a special type of Unrest to a specific Province. The Unrest can be removed through the targeted Nation spending province, but the normal Unrest must be cleared first before this special one is. Another way to removed the special unrest is by surrendering the province to the "corrupting" nation. The Province is then part of the agressive nation. There could be limit of Unrest that belongs to the corrupting nation, whereby Riot starts when the unrest reached a point.

That sort of fits in with what we're doing already, so I'll probably add a way to do this.

At the end of this crisis, we'll be needing a rework because of the changes to the rules. They're already available, but won't be used until after the crisis.

Specifically, resources and unrest have been simplified, and rules have been added to expand culturally. I will attempt to track your potential unrest each week so that you will know ahead of time what is needed to offset it.

Feedback is welcome.