Rules Questions / FAQ

Q: How do you acquire settlements and defenses?

A: Settlements and defenses come directly from your stats. That mean at the beginning of your game, if your Defense score is 20, you already have 20 points worth of defenses. As your score rises and falls, you'll adjust your holdings to reflect your score, and that's where your posts will come from.

just quickly adding the rules link here so I can find it when I have time, if that's ok :D

Fine with me. I was going to do that and forgot.

BTW, how do you select territories with the red borders?

that was a paint program. If you don't have a good one, Pixlr works. It's online.

Question about status use against factions, what are the limits or drawback of using multiple plots of only 1 status?

Is there a mechanical reason to choose a city over having 2 villages? Both give 2d6 military dice, but a city costs 25 population, while the villages cost only 20. I think this might be a holdback from that change you made clarifying the capital's role.

so... bowl just pointed out that the rules under defense mention: For every 10 land you have, you can build one of the following fortifications, as long as your total fortification cost does not exceed your Defense score.

Does this means that we can have 1 fortification per each 10 lands and these are limited by the defense stat?
I read it has per each 10 defense... so I may have too many forts :(

Oops, me too. I only have 22 land, so I should only have two fortifications even though I have enough defence for 3. Please remove the tower from the inland village in the crown lands. I'll keep the tower at the coastal village and the keep in the capital.

Falconloft explained on Discord that those rules don't apply anymore after all. So you can keep your fortifications :)

...then what is land for? Please don't tell me I placed all my points into a stat that doesn't get used.

It's for how expansive your land is

Which does what exactly, besides boosting my ego?

It does a few things.

1) It's a buffer between your border and your settlements, which means they're less easy to disrupt. It also helps you either keep wars going longer if you want, or end them early.*
2) Your location (determined by your land, or course) decides whether you're affected by any given GM event. (both good and bad)
3) Land sort of helps determine who's in charge in each region, and ultimately in Scymira as whole. The larger you are, the more likely you are to be noticed in hierarchy.

Now, if none of these things are important to you, then land isn't a priority, and I don't mind if you swap up.

* So say you have 50 land, and you're attacking a House that has 20. You want 2 cells from them (That's 10% of their land). They need to either prevent you from attacking their territory for a whole turn, or control 5 of your cells (10% of your land). Now turn that around... Say you're defending, and a house with 20 land wants 2 of your 50. That's 4% of your land. If you occupy even one of their cells (5%), you end the war.

The amount of status you use determines how likely you are to beat the opposing roll. You start of at just over 50% with a one-point spend. Plus, the result is your roll divided by two, so the less you spend, the more likely you are to get the 3 result, which is disruptive, but not actually negative.

I could also have a crisis that only affects small houses, or only large ones. >__>

It says to use the original roll to divide by two, if you keep the status bonus, you would end up with more chance of causing a victory than anything else :p

I guess we could eventually think of how the stats could be interconnected, so that land would produce wealth and status and limit population and so on...
It that is another layer of complexity and would start to look like a computer game ;)

Should there be a consequence or limit to the status move? You could do it once with 10 status, but if you do it 10 times with 1 status you will likely weaken a house 5 times on average, that's -30 points! It seems way better to do it many times as possible unless there's a limit or consequence.

RE: the fact land doesn't "mean" anything and creating relationships between the stats.

I think this comes down to the philosophy of the game. At the moment, the mechanics are good for creating random changes in circumstance to prompt us to generate fiction to explain it. For a truly domain-level "game" you need some sort of economic engine that work like a feed-forward loop (e.g. lands > resources > population > military > more land > etc). If land is limited then houses will come into conflict and with multiple factions you'll get alliances/politics that hopefully balance because if one house starts becoming powerful, the other houses team up to stop them until things even out again. I think we're missing the feed-forward loop aspect in the stats. I'd love to have that aspect in our game, but I think it can be extremely complicated to make in a simple and balanced way and at this point, it would be hard to engineer fairly because we've already made so many decisions to create our houses. Also, the more complex the system, the more of an accounting game it becomes, which might turn off some people if it's too much. I'm happy to try to help with suggestions on how we might try to accomplish this within the scope of the current system and with as few modifications as possible, but it might be tricky at this point. Otherwise, we need to just continue with the game as is and treat it as a way to generate fiction, as opposed to a true "game", if that makes sense.

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.

---

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.

Sorry, I missed the update on wealth until just now. I can see why you thought it was just a redundant stat and wanted to change that, but I think it's been devalued from before. Before it was equal to the other stats (literally), now it seems less than half of other stats: you can't use it for land/pop, for def/status it's effectively 2:1, and for power it's complicated. I might be a bit biases because I had dumped a lot into that stat. To be honest, I sort of liked it as a wildcard stat cause that's sort of the flavor of wealth. It gives you flexibility and the ability to wait to decide what to use it on when the situation/opportunity arises. I understand if everyone would prefer not to change things again at this point, but interested what everyone thinks.

I wasn't really a fan of the first iteration, since it was just a stat point pool. I'm not sure how I feel about this rendition yet. I do see the point about it being about half as useful as the other stats. I still think it has versatility, but it doesn't feel like it's pulling its weight.

Here's an idea. You can use a certain amount of Wealth to boost a roll by +1. This includes events, stat gains, and military rolls. I'm not sure how much Wealth would be a good amount, but it's just a quick idea I thought of that allows for a unique and versatile use.

I understand where you're coming from with this. What I want to stay away from is just dumping all your bonuses into Wealth because you can then use them as anything else. However, I don't want it to feel undervalued. How about this?

In addition to the other ways of using Wealth, you can spend 2 wealth to gain a temporary bonus equal to the ten's digit of your wealth score (minimum 2) to any other score. The bonus lasts until the end of the week.

If that's not a good idea, I'm open to suggestions.

Fair enough since I definitely took lots of wealth for that reason, ha ha. So if you want to discourage that we should change the rules.

I think the thing that I don't like about the feel of the wealth right now is that it depletes over time because you "spend" it, as opposed to stats like defense, land and pop. For example, you don't "spend" your defense to get fortifications, you have fortification equal to your defense. It's perhaps an issue with status too. I'm just worried that wealth/status will deplete over time while the other stats don't.

Here's an idea to avoid the depletion issue. Wealth gives you an amount of bonuses per season. You can spend those bonuses in the various ways you've described, but it doesn't deplete your wealth. For example, for every 10 wealth you get 1 wealth bonus per season. You can spend those bonuses on various rolls. Exactly the value of those bonuses, I'm not sure about, but this would avoid the depletion issue that isn't a problem with some other stats. I think it might be good for status to work that way too. What do you think?

Otherwise, I would think stats that deplete should provide more powerful bonuses/effects than non-depleting stats. Instead, I feel like wealth feels less powerful than the non-depleting stats.

Just my two cents. I don't want to be too picky, so I'm happy with whatever you think is fair. I promise I won't complain if it turns out that wealth is a bit under powered once we start playing ... at least not too much, ha ha. I think it is really hard to predict these things. We won't know for sure until we actually play. Thanks for being open to adjustments and trying to make it all work!

Yes. This is a good solution. I hate that I didn't think of it, especially since it's so close to what I suggested.

I like that solution, it fits in better with how the other stats work.

Would wealth bonuses be to rolls or to stats? Personally, I think bonuses to rolls would be more useful.

Rules updated. 0.5.0

Will 10 Wealth give 1 point to spend each? Or maybe it's 1 point per 20.

each 10 gives one point, yes.

0.5.1: Clarified 10 Wealth per 1 bonus point. Also added ability to purchase more bonus points at the cost of wealth.

Is there a word limit requirement for action posts? Sorry if already explained.

I'm not going to do that this time around. HOWEVER... The more detail you give me the less I get to fill in myself, and if I fill things in, they will be both interesting in the chinese sense of the word and probably not what you wanted to happen, so detailed posts are your friends.

About land stat, rule says You'll also gain +1 Status each turn for every 10 Land, up to a maximum of 50.

Is the maximum of 50 about land, making the max status bonus to +5 or is it about status, status not being raised above 50 by land stat?

And do you apply this bonus at he beginning of the turn, at anytime during, or at the end of the turn?

Question about the amount a positive event adds to the stats that are picks. For example, I rolled a glory for my first event which adds a +1d6 to 3 stats. So do I roll 1d6 and add that single roll to three stats of my choice or do I pick my three stats and roll a d6 for each of them? Or a third option do I roll 3d6 and assign each dice to a stat of my choice?

That's an interesting question. I think it's one of the second two oppositions, but I just realized I did it the third way for setup and the second way for this first event.

I did the second during my setup but that's a good question

I did the second one for my stuff.

Yes, roll a die for each stat.

Will do!

How exactly does warring work?

The whole "declare location to move army" thing is very vague to me. What consititutes a location? Is it a specific cell? Are there any limits to what location that an army can move to? What happens when you send an army to a location where there is no opposing army?

So first, you need a goal for a war. (So a war isn't just moving into empty territory, for instance. It'd be something like, 'I want all the land along the river', or, 'Those three cells make my border look better, so I want them.'

Once you do that, you move your armies to specific cells. The enemy does the same. Once that's done any armies in the same location fight. You can move all your armies once each season unless they're retreating or abandoning a territory at the end of a season. In that case, they just move back to your capital.

Since there's just one battle per season, there's no cell limit or anything, although if you plan to move through someone else's territory, you may want to get their permission first...

So say my goal is to crush another house. So what would I have to do for that?

make sure you have enough forces to do it, or find somebody you could pay to help (wink)...

That sounds like an occupy all territory type of thing.