Rules Questions / FAQ

I don't understand this. This doesn't seem to be the way war is described in the doc. Am I missing something?

I'm talking about conditions to END a war, not how the war is actually carried out. There is a blurb in there about wars over land that says this, but without the example in detail.

I guess it's not explicitly stated that you can only do that to each enemy once per turn. But you're probably right on that. I'll look at it this evening when I'm home. In the meantime, do you have any suggestions? I'm open.

My main issue is that those benefits of having high land seem kind of niche in usage. For the first point, defense seems like a more efficient and direct way to defend important parts of your territory. The second point is really more neutral, since both good and bad things would happen to you, with no way to influence it. For the third, it seems like status would be a more direct indicator of the power of a house. Besides, there's no apparent benefit to being top house, you just get a lot of responsibility. Point for point, land is the one stat that lags way behind the others in terms of functionality.

Now that it's being brought up, I'm reading the rules for warring again, and I'm confused by the whole thing. I agree with Chal that the example you've given here doesn't match with what's in the document.

Also, once again, I ask for the third time, why does a city cost 25 when two villages give the same amount of dice for a cost of 20? I think this is something left over from when cities used to give three dice instead of two.

Re: status move
I agree, once per turn per opponent probably makes sense.

I actually thought I'd answered this a few posts back, but it might have been in a different thread. I agree with you on this, but I'm not sure changing it NOW would be the best option. Most everyone already has their settlements done, so do we really want to make them go back and do them all over again? I'll handle the change as part of a event later on, unless there's a general consensus that EVERYONE would rather it be changed now.

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As for the rest of it, I agree with the assessment that Land seems to be left behind as a stat. Perhaps it was a mistake to label it a stat at all. It was originally just meant to determine which NPCs and events you'd interact with. I'd really rather leave it at that. However... I've got a couple ideas on how to 'fix' land, but I need to model them a bit. I've also shot out a couple PMs about the issue to people that I know that are good at thinking about that type of thing, and we'll see what they say.

A brief revisitation of war.... Here's what the book says (in OOC). Adjoinders are in between.The goal of the war can be anything. It doesn't matter. It could be because you both use the same house colors. As long as it makes sense to you, go for it. (And get the okay of the other person if it's a PC; I'd rather not have full-on pvp without everyone's buy-in.)This is what I was referencing the the previous posts. Note that this is talking about the war overall, not a single battle. Side Note: What might be confusing (not sure) is that there's a section after this bit called ending the war. I'm going to move this block out to that section as regular text to make sure it doesn't seem more contradictory than intended.

I guess the easiest way to "quick fix" it so it is not exploitable would be to inverte the limitation that a city needs 3 villages to be made to having the 4th "village" must be a city (or was it 2? Anyway...) the idea being that, flavour wise, if you already have 3 villages your population density will force you to make a city that serves as an administration Center. For for every 3 villages you must have a city, and that is just an extra cost of population admin.

Okay, I think I have a fix for both issues. It's sort of a reversion, but not quite in the same direction.

Originally, you can only buy a number of settlements equal to (Land / 10). That meant that if you had 10 land and 50 pop, 40 of your pop was wasted. That's why I went to the second version...

The second iteration was you can place as many settlements as you like, as long as you have land to place them. This brought up two unintentional issues though. First, cities were now less than optimal because of their outsized cost. Second, land had less meaning than intended. The third iteration will hopefully fix this. I present it to you for feedback here:

You may build a number of settlements equal to (Land / 10). This is a reversion back to iteration 1. However there is no longer a village/city distinction. You can create a new settlement for 10. You can add a level to it for 15 (up to a max, probably of 10). This means that if you have 50 population but only 20 land, you could have a city that gives you 1 die, and another that gives you 4. This lets you spend your population, but still means that land is important because it lets your population spread out more and therefore become cheaper. In addition to this, every 10 land (20 cells) you have will give you +1 status each turn, up to a max of 50. Therefore, if you have large holdings, you will always have your relative importance reflected in your status.

How does this interact with our capital? Does it still start at 3D6? And can we upgrade that as well?

I like that fix, btw

I've also adjusted the way Wealth works. Before when you got Wealth, you might as well have gotten another stat, because that's what you were going to do with it anyway. Now, each stat has its own use for Wealth.

Are fortifications dependent on land as well? Or villages/cities for that matter? Like a 2 fort needs a level 3 city to support it or something like that?

That would make the use of Defense difficult again. If you need land to build cities, then population to upgrade them and then you need upgraded cities to be able to spend Defense on fortifications...

Clarification: does 10 land give you a settlement, or is it just a requirement for a settlement? For example, if you want a level 2 city, does it cost 10 land (level 1 city) + 15 pop (level 2 city) or 10 land (requirement) + 10 pop (level 1 city) + 15 pop (level 2 city)?

Also, are we referring to land the stat or land the # of cells?

I thought about that, but decided against it. Defenses are not reliant on the Land stat in any way.
Land does not give you settlements. It gives you the ability to have more individual settlements, and therefore make them cheaper.
Land is the stat, When I'm talking about cells I will try to always say cells.

Interesting changes.

So if I understand the new population/lands interaction properly, the philosophy is based on the efficiency of population use? I like it, it's more fair to those with lower land count while still giving high land houses an advantage.

Can you explain the upgrading of settlements more though? How much of what stat does it cost to upgrade a settlement?

What does wealth do for population, land, and defense? Wasn't able to find anything that detailed those interactions.

Wealth does nothing for land, but it couldn't be used to purchase land before either, so no real change there. It also doesn't do anything for population. There wasn't really anything that made sense, save introducing slavery. For Defense, 2 Wealth can be spent to gain 1 defense, and can be spent retroactively to avoid losing fortifications (bottom left, page 5).

When you have enough land to be able to throw a new settlement down that costs 10 population. That's a level 1 settlement. To upgrade a settlement, it costs 15 population.

As an asie, your capital i free and starts as a level 3. (I'm probably going to name the levels, but I might not...)

Quick question... 1) Is the +3 bonus a flat bonus or is it per military dice ?
ex: I have 3d6, it costs 6 wealth to gain... A) +3 B) +9

2)Is the cost different for 1d6 and a 1d8 ?

I worded that weirdly, didn't I? Lemme rework that so the benefit isn't wonky.