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[Strategy / Risk] Crusaders?

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I just had an idea of a map taking place during the time period of either the first crusade or Saladin's Conquest, the latter being more ideal to the game-play i had in mind, but it could also be designed to be a FFA where you can chose which faction you want to belong to i guess.

Castles would be the cornerstone of the map, big things with defenders advantage from arrows and what have you. However they need to stockpile food for this advantage to be maintained and the gates be kept closed.

Laying siege to a castle should be done by capturing control points around it. at which point it stops producing food.

As it's in the desert maybe water should be an important resource to sustain your army, but I'm not sure I want to make a system that affects the units health based on resources. Maybe just the above siege/production mechanic is enough to make things interesting.

If it's to be spawn based and historically based then the crusaders reinforcements come from controlling harbors or something like that.

If it's to be an FFA then the castles produce a set amount of recruits, food and weaponry for you to equip your units with.

Each castle will have surrounding resources in form av village-zones, farms and water and or other industry (not sure about including any more resources types). These zones can be developed and destroyed, ruining the supply of the castle. You can also send supplies between castles by caravan or ship.

This is me throwing around ideas, you may throw in your own or say how you would design it if you were doing such a map.

I'm not sure I have enough knowledge about the history to pull it off, I don't know what castles, cities etc to include, their sizes etc.
 
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Supply caravans for the defenders sounds good, letting the attackers gain resources but fear losing hard-to-replace units (either with controllable forces or a percentage-based system). The attackers could also have their own caravans, and risk losing them to neutral bandits (and sacrificing some of their forces to protect them).

Water, food and health should be taken into account. If those drop too low, troops either desert or mutiny (become neutral hostile), and get huge debuffs in combat. You could have a bribing system where you pay food and water to get the enemy's units to desert or mutiny or join you. Disease makes units less able to fight but unlocks plague catapults, letting you spread disease in the enemy encampment.

Maybe a morality system as well: You can destroy the outlying villages for money and to deny the enemy soldiers, or leave them alone and convince them to be neutral (maybe even get a few to join).
 
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Cool ideas, you are always full of them.

What about some sort of reputation system? For example if you don't have any successes your reputation starts to decrease and it effects the amount of recruits rallying to you.

If you are Muslim your troops want to have a part of the gold sacked from a castle, and you can decide how much should be given to the troops. So you can by this way balance your reputation by bribing your soldiers sort of. If you are a crusader you can decide weather or not to "Purge" a surrendered city from infidels boosting your troops but giving resistance bonus to the enemy when fighting you in the next siege. These things can affect both sides.

And then you have the Holy Cross, fighting near it gives your army a buff, losing it to the enemy is a disaster.

There could also be the option to surrender a castle making the units there POW. You can trade them back to the enemy for a price increasing your reputation amongst your enemies or slaughter them, which in turn would bolster their resolve against you. So you would in effect have an internal and external reputation system. The internal one effecting the recruitment and willingness to fight (moral bonus) the external one affecting the enemies moral when fighting you.
 
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The morality and rep system can be combined, maybe with some units/attacks/options enabled/disabled depending on the level.

Low rep ideas:
Enemies are more likely to flee, but less likely to surrender.
Poisoning a well drops your reputation to near-zero, but denies every faction water access (and kills off the village).
Units specializing in pillage are only available to low rep generals.

High rep ideas:
Enemies are more open to negotiations for ceasefires and surrenders.
Sparing villages gets you a smaller amount of money than razing it or taking it by force, but they're less likely to rebel.
Faith bonuses (for both sides) are only given to generals that aren't trying to bring hell on earth.
 
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To get higher quality units (Knights) you need a good reputation, they could be cheaper to maintain as they equip themselves or fight for loot or something?

If there is going to be a moral system, lets say a unit breaks rank and flees i'd like to implement some sort of capture system like Hegemony has where if you catch up to that unit it surrenders otherwise it runs to the closest camp. But the question becomes what's the point of capturing units when all they provide is...?
 
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Since historically most sieges consist of waiting for the other side to starve, how about some sidequests?

Missions to take out bandits/pirates who interfere with your supplies (stealing them or taking heavy tolls). Killing them boosts reputation, hiring them to work for you decreases reputation but increases income.

Retrieving holy relics from less-defended encampments to increases reputation.

Political infighting: On the Christian side, what with Italian, German, French, Byzantine and English troops present, there'll be some amount of backstabbing (and the same for the Muslim side). Not enough that they lose, but to reduce the other's reputation (for example, if there is a finite amount of regular resources and each player gets a percentage based on their reputation). Although this would work better with multiple players, single player could add AI players or use them as random events.

Secession: A general with the absolute lowest reputation can secede from his faction and become hostile to both, winning becomes a matter of eliminating both sides.

Random events: Weather (sandstorms, storms, earthquakes...) that disrupts some aspect of the game (for example, if there's a storm at sea, navy units don't move from harbors, while sea-based income and reinforcements are halted until the storm passes).
 
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Crusading armies had to rely on reinforcements from europe to replenish their losses, apart from forcing the local christians(if there is any present) under their banner as ill-equipped undisciplined militia or hiring some mercenary bands with their plunder gold, (trained) troop replenishment was either scarce or non-existant, plus most orders didnt accept outsiders at all, one order was only accepting recruits from certain european lands it had representation in but nowhere else.
Once the initial large army has suffered considerable losses in battle they had to switch over to the defensive, clinging to whatever castle they can manage to hold until the next wave of europeans arrive.
what happens next depends on if those reinforcements actually arrive and then in what strength, if there is any defender left alive in the castle, if the castle did fall and change hands, etc.
The offensive can be continued if both those defending the castle have managed to hold out pretty much unscarred and the arriving reinforcement was around it's estimated strength, otherwise crusade for that faction was a failure and had to retreat to the shore in order to leave.
Crusaders followed a strategy that can be described as "castle hopping",their goal was to secure the holy land so they had to wrestle away control of any stronghold and settlement remaining within that region using their scarce resources.
 
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So a spawn system then. Crusaders get reinforcements by boat (and Byzantine reinforcements by land), Muslims get reinforcements from land.

Contested control points give income proportional to the damage they've taken.

Some ways of upgrading control points:
* Build farms: increases income
* Build housing: increases supply cap
* Build walls: increases control point's life and armor and creates walls around the control point
* Build guard towers: creates towers to attacks enemies
* Build blacksmith/fletcher/shieldsmith: spawns better troops
* Build stables: spawns low-level cavalry (in higher level control points, spawns higher level cavalry, but not elites)
* Build church/mosque: spawns religious troops
* Build harbor (coastal control points only): increases income, repairs ships, Crusader reinforcements will spawn at this control point
* Build mine: greatly increases income (only in some areas)
** Depending on the complexity of the spawn system, either gold or iron mines (increased income / better troops).
* Build well: allows control point to have water in a siege/resist the heat, but can be poisoned
* Build caravanserai: Caravans will head towards this control point when spawned
* Build hospital: nearby units regenerate slowly and only out of combat
* Build siege workshop: Allows the training of siege engines
* Build Krak (Crusaders only, requires high reputation and being part of a knightly Order): Greatly fortifies the control point, giving it all the upgrades, allows training of the Order's knights.

Control point upgrades are neutral (except walls and towers) and can be destroyed by the enemy (in which case they can rebuild them once the control point is theirs) or spared (they stay neutral but give their bonuses to the control point's owner). Upgrades can be instantly destroyed by the owning player, this causes their reputation to fall. Destroying housing causes the attacker's reputation to fall. All buildings give a minor amount of resources when destroyed.

Orders: when at high enough reputation, the Crusader player can become part of a knightly order, replacing his standard knights with knights of that Order (Hospitaller, Templar, Lazarus...). Each order has different units and events. Yes, I know they're anachronistic.

Knights Hospitaller: Knights have higher regeneration. Control Points give regeneration to units even when fighting and don't need a hospital.
Knights Templar: Gain extra income. Knights are cheaper to build. If their money ever rises above a certain point, they are attacked by the French.
Order of Saint Lazarus: Knights have increased armor and Hardened Skin (and Resistant Skin if there are spells in the map). Have plague units available regardless of reputation, with lower reputation penalty.


Haschachin: Mercenaries that can be hired by either side (causing a loss in reputation). When used, a specific target is chosen and a (neutral) assassin sent to attack the target. If the target is killed before the assassin attacks (or the assassin is attacked) it becomes neutral hostile. Assassin has Slow Poison, Critical Strike, Berserk and Taunt, and will automatically use them when attacking.
 
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Greetings CleavingHammer. I must've forgotten to reply to you Eagle, sorry. :p

I’m currently making the fortification System which will allow for the construction of walkable walls, siege equipment and what have you. Also I’m going to use the build system from my last project, the CP will be a capturable building which can build within a limit around itself. If the building is captured all buildings that belongs to the castle changes owner. The ultimate goal is to make the CP be some sort of fortress which units can retreat to as a last defense, giving the feeling of an inner and outer defense. But for now it’ll just be a building. This design will also allow for local production and resources rather than global, but that would add more difficulty on the management.



The concept you fleshed out with spawns arriving from the coast and possibly resources too is one way, the other one being all castles are their own source of production which allows more sandbox play. But since you both seem to be in favor of supply routes from abroad I'll see what I can do.

I’ll not touch on the resource topic for now, because I haven’t given it much thought more than what’s already been mentioned.

Oh lord… Factions… Have mercy on me. ;P I was thinking that orders would be a special building you gain access too with enough reputation and lose access to if you fall below a certain threshold.

I don't follow your idea for assassins and mercenaries, you target what exactly?


I want to bring up another concept though, that is the ethnic diversity inside each control point and how it will affect the game.

- If a castle is taken over by Christians, the Muslim population starts to dwindle (they migrate to nearby “friendly” cities and vice.

- I would like to implement policy options which speeds up or reduces this migration and that there should be a tradeoff between more gold if they stay versus more unrest in the city.

- Also you gain less gold from t he opposing religion, so you want to "make room" for friendlies, but how?

Not sure I like the current concept of diversity.

Unrest could have effect by reducing production output and even stalling production
 
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As I see it, Control Point spawns only produce generic militia with different levels of upgrades, the elites are the ones sent from overseas/overland.

Assassins: from their fortress/emissary, you select an enemy or allied unit (a hero, an expensive unit, etc.). The gold is deducted, and an assassin is created at the fortress and starts walking towards the target (remaining neutral the entire way). When in range of the target, he turns neutral hostile (or a different player if the target is NH), casts Berserk and Taunt, and attacks the target.
The Hashashin could double as a spy network, give them money and they reveal part of the map or enemy info (income, plague, who owns what), hire cloaked spies (spy on enemies, poison wells, incite rebellion...).

Managing diversity:
* There's an SC2 map that handles this by using their religious units to convert enemy cities to their faction's religion (Catholic, Orthodox, Islam). Owned cities of a different religion give less income and sometimes spawn rebels, the conversion itself costs money and tends to fail.

Some ideas:
* Control points are Christian, Muslim, or mixed.
* Leaving both sides unharmed (mixed) leads to unrest (spies can trigger rebellions in mixed-religion control points).
* Unrest can sometimes cause slightly lower production (income is a percentage, one or two units don't get spawned...), greatly lowered production, blocked prodution, and rebellion.
* Kicking out the other side causes lowered production for that income turn but removes unrest, nearby control points' population increases and become mixed if applicable.
* Slaughtering the other side gets you money and loss of reputation but causes one income turn of blocked production for that control point.
* Slaughtering both sides gets you twice the money but you lose all reputation and force you to secede.
* Special transports or caravans of settlers can be called in to repopulate taken cities, they come with the regular spawns and need to be escorted to the control point.


Secession ideas:
* When the general secedes, he joins a third faction hostile to the others.
* He loses access to elite units but gains banditry units (like generic units but with less armor and have Pillage).
* His buildings and units in the main bases are given to other players, keeping his army in the field, which he can use to conquer control points.
* While neutral hostile bandits can be attacked for money and experience as normal, their bases (which can only be destroyed by other players) can be captured by the rogue general and the bandits now work for him.
 
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Wall: Normal Range damage bonus and armor, gives to both enemies and friendlies alike.

Watch Tower: Armor and range damage bonus slightly greater than that of the wall, only buffs friendly units. Is Capturable by the enemy.

Grand Tower: Greater armor and range damage bonus, only buffs friendlies. Can mount siege equipment on it. Is capturable by the enemy.

Gates: Gives same defense as that of the wall. Is capturable.

I was thinking that the capture system should work like this:

* Contested: Enemy units are inside the building and the building turns neutral passive (you lose the bonus)

* To capture the tower you must slay all defenders.

I also need to decide pretty soon if siege ram/tower/catapults (on and off towers should be manned or not) if i should copy crusaders or allow other unit types to push rams and siege towers as well.

What do you think?
 
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The buildings are completely walkable as such it will be regions which units enter and exit. I posted a WIP-map in the request forums you can check out for a better perspective. (Haven't done any work on the capturing yet.)

Still some pathing triggers to do, to help wc3 pathing issues on invisible platforms and a few bugs to weed out and features to add.
 
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