View Full Version : Will there be a "Bad Boy" Factor in the game?
For example, Frujin said in another post that he started off as Aragon, a small province and in a couple of "Real Time" Hours, he had conquered 11 of the 100 provinces.
My question, at what point do the other kingdoms realize that you have gobbled up "X" amount of Europe and start banning together to ward off the imperialistic menace?
This also pertains to AI, if Aragon had conquored 11 provinces, how hard is going to be to take over all of France & England? I want it to be nearly impossible for a small nation to take over Europe, and very hard for a large Kingdom to unite Europe.
If the AI isn't hard, the game won't be worth anything, so I want a definite challenge. I want other nations completely ganging up on me if I take too much land or do too many decitful acts, such as breaking alliances, assasinating rulers, etc.
I think it's not that easy, to make a good aliance with England, from which you get a land in England as a heritage and even more harder to be that strong that king of Italy offers you Corsica to make you to be your ally.
I don't think that can be a big problem to conquere Castille from Aragon. I.e. you have lot of food and whole Castille is in rebelion coz they suffer from hunger. Tke king (of Castille) is tooo weak to defend his kgdm against you.
Just an example. The same can maybe happen to you when you don't have enough food...
Originally posted by Irish
For example, Frujin said in another post that he started off as Aragon, a small province and in a couple of "Real Time" Hours, he had conquered 11 of the 100 provinces.
My question, at what point do the other kingdoms realize that you have gobbled up "X" amount of Europe and start banning together to ward off the imperialistic menace?
If the AI isn't hard, the game won't be worth anything, so I want a definite challenge. I want other nations completely ganging up on me if I take too much land or do too many decitful acts, such as breaking alliances, assasinating rulers, etc.
I think that you forget that this game is not AOK or MTW...... - I don't think that you'll get too many problems IF you play the game of deplomacy and maybe the other "players/kings" don't think that it is such a bad idea that you become the king Europe - I actually don't think that, unless you're a cruel leader and stuff like that then, you won't see a massive uprising against that you become king of Europe.
But ofcaurse all of this remains to be seen ;)
Originally posted by Irish
My question, at what point do the other kingdoms realize that you have gobbled up "X" amount of Europe and start banning together to ward off the imperialistic menace?
Yes...good question....I agree with you that itīs very normal that other kings become *angry* with you when you break too much alliances..and conquer too much provinces....
In Europe Universalis 2 there is also such a bad boy factor....it is very fun when you pay attention to that....
hope there will be such a thing in KoH!!!
:cheers:
ps...maybe an optional option?
Angryminer
22-12-2003, 12:13
I think you'll have to manage a masterpiece of deplomacy to conquer whole europe without being conquered by an alliance of the strongest nations.
Normally every nation has allies - and they won't like it if you attack their weaker buddy. If you don't care about that and attack everything on your borders you're gonna be dead before you can say "ouch" ;) .
Let's use some diplomacy, isolate destinct kingdoms and have all other nations look away while your army raids that kingdom and raises your flag there - much more fun :D .
Hum... I want to play!!!!!! ;(
Angryminer
Originally posted by Henrik
I think that you forget that this game is not AOK or MTW...... - I don't think that you'll get too many problems IF you play the game of deplomacy and maybe the other "players/kings" don't think that it is such a bad idea that you become the king Europe - I actually don't think that, unless you're a cruel leader and stuff like that then, you won't see a massive uprising against that you become king of Europe.
But ofcaurse all of this remains to be seen ;)
How does anything I have said pertain to AOK??? My point is I want a challenge in the game. I think that other nations should be extremely skeptical if a nation the size of Aragon has turned into a Nation the size of England in a very short time. I just want a challenging game, I hope other members of this forum want the same.
One way I see to make the game challenging is to have other nations start to band together and try to deter your growth before you become so big that you steamroll accross the European landscape.
Originally posted by Irish
One way I see to make the game challenging is to have other nations start to band together and try to deter your growth before you become so big that you steamroll accross the European landscape.
As I understand it that is excactly what you should try to avoid that they do by using your deplomacy skills I.e. by marriage arrangement paying tribute etc. And the game should give you a lot of strings to play on, coz according to the devs you have 24 options of deplomacy ( this number may be lowered in the final vesion ) - you aim is to drive a wedge into the coalition of realms which you feel is the most threatning to your position...before they have a change to grow strong.
btw, what i meant when i talked about AOK was that in that game it was almost every-man-for-himself strategy, but KOH should be very different, meaning that in contrast to AOK, KOH has all these diplomatic options for you to choose from.
I hope this clarify what i meant :)
Well, I think diplomacy can only get someone so far. Play Europa Universalis II if you get a chance. It has a great diplomatic model. Eventually, war must be waged to obtain land. Certainly you can gain a province here or there through marriage, alliances, etc, but the only way to truly gain a large piece of Europe is through conquest. Once conquest starts, its hard to keep all alliances in tact, and alliances during this time period should be pretty volatile.
Chances are, you want some of "B's" land. You are an ally of C, C is an ally of B through royal marriage. Tough decision what to do considering B also has ties to D. So if you do invade B, you break your ties with C and wage war against B & D, and possibly C depending the outcome. Of course if you do gobble up B & D in the wars, E, F, G, H & I are now very leary of you, they won't ally with you and consider banning together to thwart the larger foe. But a royal marriage to E could turn the ties back in your favor, but the next time they hear of you breaking an alliance, you will be attacked by their coalition.
This is the type of model I am looking for. :D
Originally posted by Irish
Well, I think diplomacy can only get someone so far. Play Europa Universalis II if you get a chance. It has a great diplomatic model. Eventually, war must be waged to obtain land. Certainly you can gain a province here or there through marriage, alliances, etc, but the only way to truly gain a large piece of Europe is through conquest. Once conquest starts, its hard to keep all alliances in tact, and alliances during this time period should be pretty volatile.
Chances are, you want some of "B's" land. You are an ally of C, C is an ally of B through royal marriage. Tough decision what to do considering B also has ties to D. So if you do invade B, you break your ties with C and wage war against B & D, and possibly C depending the outcome. Of course if you do gobble up B & D in the wars, E, F, G, H & I are now very leary of you, they won't ally with you and consider banning together to thwart the larger foe. But a royal marriage to E could turn the ties back in your favor, but the next time they hear of you breaking an alliance, you will be attacked by their coalition.
This is the type of model I am looking for. :D
Then i don't think you'll get dissapointed with KOH - I also expect to find a senario like the one you've just discribed ;)
Originally posted by Henrik
I think that you forget that this game is not AOK or MTW...... - I don't think that you'll get too many problems IF you play the game of deplomacy and maybe the other "players/kings" don't think that it is such a bad idea that you become the king Europe - I actually don't think that, unless you're a cruel leader and stuff like that then, you won't see a massive uprising against that you become king of Europe.
But ofcaurse all of this remains to be seen ;)
Quite the oposite I believe. While the pesants didn't much care who ruled them, one master was pretty much the same as another, the nobility felt otherwise.
Imagine yourself in the situation. Your right to rule is god-given, and some realm decides to get frisky and starts looking hungrily at your border provinces. If you have any chance of crushing his attempts at expansion you will. You won't consider the good of the people and try to avoid a war.
While nationalism wasn't really a concept at this time, both lesser nobility and sovreigns were quite interested in hanging onto their land. If you start gobbling up region after region you can be fairly certain your neighbours will start considering you a greater threat than the petty border conflict they had with the prince on the other side of the river. Now they unite, and if you gobble them up as well princes near you will start getting nervous and set their differences aside to march on you. Win again and large parts of Europe will find out that the arrogant lad who controls the entire Holy Roman Empire might just be a threat to their god given right to rule. The pope seeing too much power in the hands of one individual might just decide to excommunicate you, thus making all oaths of fealthy given you void. Now you stand with an uncertain grip on your realm, where ambitious nobles might decide they really would like to govern their own province, and a large army at your doorstep.
Personally I don't think a 'world conquest' is desireable in a game like this. Sure, it might suit the megalomaniac in all of us, but how realistic is it? In this era, and indeed well into the 18th century, central power was generally limited. The king was to be respected, but frequently his orders would be ignored beyond a few days ride from his capital. Nobles would twist the words, delay or even ignore the message alltogeather. To take France as an example. Only the province called Ille de France was really 'France' in game terms. The rest of France was controlled by lords more or less loyal to the king. That is, except for the parts the limeys were sitting on that is.
But before I get entirely off the topic and turn this into a rambling on all things medieval...*drags self back on topic*
I hope there's a Bad Boy value, or something similar in the game. To me it's inconcievable that the rulers keep squabbling with eachother when an expanding giant is on their door. This era isn't known for benevolent lords who promoted peace and democracy in europe. Even kind lords would have made many modern day despots look like an example of humanity.
An additional reason to prevent it has less to do with foreign lords, and more to do with your own. Communication in this era was slow, and cumbersome. Grow too large and your lords might easily decide to go more or less independent. Try to rein them in and they might rebel as they like to consider themselves masters of their domain. Keep in mind that the feudal pyramid was often more theory than practice in this era, of which the Holy Roman Empire is a good example.
In theory the princes of the area which the HRE consisted elected a new emperor when the last died. Basically they elected their new liege whom they were to obey. In practice HRE was a bunch of duchies, kingdoms, princedoms, braonies and whatever else they named them, which did pretty much what they wanted to. The only uniting factor was that they were all ruling over 'germans'.
*drags self back again*
I seem to be getting off track a bit. If anyone managed to follow my ramblings so far I'm amazed and impressed :)
Zak
I completly agree with you, Zakath. I find the idea of conquering the europe entirely a bit silly for this time. When a ruler get too power hungry and feel the need to conquer the whole europe, others countries team up to defeat him. See Hitler and Napoleon. They are the two who got closest to this. And they had a much better control over their countries that any medieval ruler ever had.
Of those two I'd say that Hitler was the only one to have any chance of keeping an empire like that under control after a war. Even under the napoleonic era getting a message from Paris to Moscow required riding all that way. Of course just 50 years later holding a united Europe togeather would have been feasible, if you could only take it. Here I'm thinking of railroads and the telegraph appearing.
But I'm bringing the discussion quite off topic. Moved a couple of centuries too far ahead :)
Zak
I don't think a fast communication system is mendatory to rule a great empire(but I agree, it helps). The chineses and the romans did it long before the invention of the telegraph. Most importantly, it requires a proper structure and organization.
Roman communication was not always particularly quick.
Sometimes it was very quick. For instance (Jones, Later Roman Empire, pp 402-3) Symmachus wrote a letter to emperor Honorius concern a disputed papal election on 29 December 418. Honorius replied on 3 January 419 - only three days laters. Another letter in the correspondence was dated Ravenna 3 April and reached Rome 8 April. Another example was a law signed in Milan (capital of the west between the forth and early fifth century) on 11 April and given before the senate of Constantinople on 9 May.
Usually not. Generally an item of imperial legislation given at any place where the imperial court was based (Jones gives Milan, Paris - a favourite of Julian the Apostate afaik, Trier or Constantinople) in Autumn rarely reached Africa before the following Spring or Summer (Africa because the surviving law texts were in Jone's examples communicated to the prefect of Africa or equivalent official once it was abolished cf. Jones p 103).
I did read somewhere that Tiberius kept in contact with Rome though a relay of mirrors. Roman signal towers on a frontier - for instance on the Limes Arabicus watchtowers - kept fortresses set away from the frontier aware of possible trouble through fire signals with perhaps one small fortress acting as a signal relay station (Southern & Dixon, The Late Roman Army p 146) for the main fortress.
But only a few of the Roman roads and none of those watchtowers survived to aid medieval communication. The slowness of communication should act to punish the megalomaniac. If a ruler wants a large kingdom he would have to be prepared to disperse his forces throughout his castles and not amass his forces for some sort of world conquest. Perhaps there could be some wastage factor for taxes in large kingdoms to account for tax farming, few officials and other inefficiencies that hampered medieval kingdoms. So a large kingdom would have to raise taxes still higher making size even more of a balancing act.
Richard Plantagenet
23-12-2003, 04:36
Originally posted by vanedor
I don't think a fast communication system is mendatory to rule a great empire(but I agree, it helps). The chineses and the romans did it long before the invention of the telegraph. Most importantly, it requires a proper structure and organization.
Using the Chinese to compare against HRE or France during medieval is like comparing apples and oranges.
The Chinese ran a very different system of control during the 'medieval' period. All 'Barons' are related to the king by blood, local authorities are appointed by the king himself and were brought up throught the training and idology of confucious. The control of army is totally seperated from that of local authority and supplies.
so imagine this. The Chinese case of control is (in a euro sense)
The duke of Normandy is brother (by different mother) to the King of France. He has full control of local affairs, enjoys a part of the income and is in charge of raising enough levy to supply the king's demands. However the Army in normandy is under control by a different general who could be in charge of security of Normandy and Anjou. And neither this general nor the Duke has control over food rations which is needed to raise any army and march onto Paris.
I hope this (albeit absurd) example is of some clearifying value.
greywulf
23-12-2003, 06:04
Actually, the Chinese system cannot be generalized like that. "Medieval" China went through many changes. The nobility's powers were limited more and more over centuries with the Han introduction of a Confucian exam system which was then continued in all dynasties except for the Mongol Yuan.
Local authorities were only really appointed by the emperor in Han and Tang times, after which the exam system was developed to replace the king's overseeing of the candidates. I think it depends on which period you are refering to as the "medieval" one for China, but standing armies were not always adopted, and even then, local rulers or generals still had many powers over their own troops. Take the Song general Yue Fei for example who controlled a large force of semi-independent men who defended against the invading northern Jin. And corruption within the bureaucracy continued from the Qin dynasty of 221 BCE to the fall of the Qing in 1912 CE.
So while there are obvious cultural differences, the feudal system in China shared many characteristics with that of europe. I think though that the exam system in particular helped to bind the Chinese people of various dynasties together, at least for the nobility and bureaucratic literati. With a similar system, perhaps europe could have developed into a large empire as well... but there was none.
Richard, I was just pointing out that the chinese and roman emperors were able to rule large empires long before the invention of modern means of communication, so it wasnt that absurd that Napoleon could have maintained his empire. And means of communication are far from being the only aspect that help to the etablishment of a large empire. As I said, and as your explanation told us, Organisation is most important.
I could also have named the Inca empire, Persian empire, and the different european empires(mainly french, spanish, english and portugese) that existed during the XVI, XVII, XVIIIth centuries that etablished themselves on a large part of the world without the aid of the telegraphy.
"I hope this (albeit absurd) example is of some clearifying value."
I thank you for the chinese history class, but really, as far as I'm concerned, there was no confusion between the HRE, France, and China.
Richard Plantagenet
23-12-2003, 07:05
vanedor, no hard feelings :cheers:
I wasn't trying to correct you on you statement, but rather trying to elaborate further on why that was the case. In principal, I was merely trying to expand your claim of the united Chinese empire further (if anything).
no need to thank me for the history lesson, I think Greywulf did a much better job than myself. ;)
Thanx, guys. Now I know much more about China's system... but back to Europe and bad boys.
I think Hitler was really perfect example of good diplomatic job(maybe more his diplomats than he himself). With only few allies (e.i. Italy, Hungary) and some neutral countries (Spain,Sweden, Switzerland) He finally rule whole continental Europe and if "the battlefield" was only Europe, be sure, he would defeat both Russia and UK (I'm glad it wasn't like that).
Just to find some silly foreigh partners and good diplomats for you and it's not that dificult.
But, true, it's 20th century, far from mediaval times. But as I hate this man, I must say, his diplomatical tactics was very well prepared.:(
If Hitler's diplomacy had been brilliant, he'd have stayed out of war till 1943 so that the Kriegsmarine could be completed. That or he'd have found a way to get his Lebensraum in the east without getting the western countries involved :)
Now back to the earlier times. To stay in europe, the English, French, Spanish and Portugese empires didn't conquer another similarly advanced people, they subjugated a less developed people. Of course, the real drive towards colonisation didn't come until the 1880's, a time period when both the Telegraph and railroad existed :)
But I think the most important reason later empires could have survived better than pre 19th century empire is where the loyalty lies. In the Dark Ages your power came from your liege lord, and in general he held your loyalty. If he was a strong man, he garnered respect and his nobles were less likely to rise up. A weak ruler had greater problems.
Later on the loyalties were given more to institutions, and less to people. In addition power was spread out more. No longer could an ambitious noble grab his troops and march on the capital. Now he'd have to talk with the commander of the local garrison, who in turn had to convince his men that doing so was a good idea.
Of course, having the Telegraph and the Railroad doesn't hamper control of an empire. Suddenly you can be certain that within hours your troops know their orders, and sould a neighbour get frisky you'll have news of it in hours and troops there in days. During this time period it'd take weeks or months before troops got to their destination :)
Zak
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