Strategic Fantasy Crossover RPG

[Setzer]

So what is there to buy, and how much does it all cost?

[SisterMiriamGodwinson]

Well, I was thinking untrained, militia armed with pitchforks, rocks and sticks would be 1 point per 100 of them. While 100 swordsmen armed with their bronze swords, and armor would be 50 points. So.. that would be standard. Iron swordsmen would be 100 points.... Mithril would be 200 points....

You could also spend points on the economy.. I'm not sure how that would work.
What we could spend on with our points...
Army...
Infrastructure(including economy, food production and industry)
Research(including the arcane and technological research I mentioned.)

[PeZook]

The militia is way too cheap: one can get 5000 militiamen for the price of 100 bronze-armored swordsmen. More than enough to absolutely murder them, even with just pitchforks and simple clubs.

[Darkevilme]

Hmm, yes i was looking at that comparison as well. I was pretty sure that the militia to swordsmen ratio was less than that but i wasnt sure how much less. I reckon a nations army will be between 10,000 and 60,000 men.
How many peasants could 100 swordsmen kill do you think Pezook?

[Setzer]

It's not just a matter of numbers. You have to take morale into account. Men aren't robots, they aren't going to just surge forward until their enemies are overwhelmed.

[Norseman]

It's not just a matter of numbers. You have to take morale into account. Men aren't robots, they aren't going to just surge forward until their enemies are overwhelmed.

Indeed, that's how the Greeks could so utterly massacre lightly armoured Persian units. Basically unarmoured peasants are in deep, deep do do on the battlefield. Many times they are worse than useless.

[PeZook]

It converts better on larger scales due to command and control problems, sure, but the ratio is still pretty ridiculous. It doesn't take much to train those peasants to move in formation, after all. Give them even simple wicker shields and suddendly they turn into deadly soldiers by virtue of sheer numbers. Unless those swordsmen get turned into a spear-armed phalanx

I'm not gonna take a stab at actually creating a point system, but a 10:1 ratio would seem about right (to me, at least). And the units shouldn't be rated as much by armor and weapons material, it feels to simplistic and primitive. We'd need some sort of "block" system based on entire units, like what Coyote made for SD.net world. So that I can, for example, made highly trained and motivated light dragoons, or Italian-style heavily armored crossbowmen, or maybe have a smaller army, but where every single infantryman wears mail?

Indeed, that's how the Greeks could so utterly massacre lightly armoured Persian units. Basically unarmoured peasants are in deep, deep do do on the battlefield. Many times they are worse than useless.

Greeks used spear-armed phalanxes, not swordsmen. Against 100 spearmen working in close formation, sure, I could see 5000 men breaking. Swordsmen? Not so much.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Fantasy-themed STGODs have been toyed with in the past, but not much has come out of those attempts.

That said, I'd be interested in participating.

[Darkevilme]

Okay so do we'll soldiers in units of 100. Special units can be bought individually for those who want artillery, heroes, mages, airships or giant walking statues of Chuck norris with lightning shooting eyeballs.

I earlier had the ballpark figure of 60,000 soldiers per nation. If 100 soldiers come per unit then 40 points per unit gets around 60,000 soldiers for 25,000 points unless i tripped up on the maths somewhere. If people want bigger armies now is the time to say.
But 40 should probably be the average soldier unit cost if people are happy with armies this size.
Peasants at 5 points per 100 maybe.

[PeZook]

That means you can recruit 8 peasants for every trained warrior, which seems about right. Add modifiers for equipment and training, hammer out the special units and we're set. If I may suggest, "special units" should be simplified into categories, so that a battlemage and a cannon would be pretty much the same thing pointswise, with similar capabilities (this is an example, of course, if people want Epic Battlemages then so be it).

Then comes the difficult part. Figuring out an economy

[Norseman]

Medieval economies were fairly simple and based on agricultural land, I don't see any reason that ours should be more complicated.

[Darkevilme]

Like i said, points per province. So you get X number of provinces and Y number of production levels to distribute amongst them, course you also get a maintenance fee for your existing troops equal to 1/5 their value. Resulting in you getting at the end of each year (sum of the production levels for provinces you control*A)-maintenance=income that can be used to buy new troops and whatever.

A represents some easy multiple so if A = 500 then a level one province produces 500 units of production. You need a minimum of ten production levels scattered however amidst your provinces just to pay the upkeep of a 25,000 point army. Naturally we'll have more than this, fifteen perhaps?

How does fifteen production levels to distribute for each players sound?

So a province based distribution of fifteen levels could look like this.

3 Fertile valley
2 Northern plains.
2 Southern plains.
2 Western plains.
2 Capital city
1 Somewherenotveryimportant
1 Nowhereland
1 Happyville
1 Fishermans wharf


Though if anyone has a problem with this idea now is the perfect time.

[Setzer]

Something like that would work with the map I posted. It's split up by provinces, after all. Perhaps the terrain types could be based on points. That way, a wide steppe empire would be bigger then a small fertile valley, since the terrain costs fewer points. Also, the terrain could have a rating based on the number of people it could support.

[Darkevilme]

Or we could limit the maximum level of production per province. So steppe empire cant have provinces above level 2 where as fertile valley gets provinces up to level 4. If we want to use mechanics for this of course.

[Setzer]

Then I'm sure we're going to get a bunch of people arguing over historical crop yields, and more people arguing over the veracity of any mentioned sources. This way, it's up to the player, and no one argues about it.

[Darkevilme]

Self imposed limits sound good to me. But then i think that's what you meant initially and i misread it, my mistake.

[SisterMiriamGodwinson]

I agree with Setzer.(Note: Homework until a few days from now. Will post slowly.)

[Dark Hellion]

My life has stabalized since I dropped out of STGOD 2k8 so I would be interested in helping with this if it looks like it is going to go anywhere.

I would recommend that we take the STGOD system and modify it. There is already hundreds of hours of work put into the system, and it is fair if the players within the game follow the rules well.

[Akhlut]

How much time investment would this represent? It sounds like a wonderful idea, but I don't know how much I could play if it required, say, an hour or hour and a half per day.

Also, if we're using the map of Europe that Setzer put out there, I'm totally calling dibs on Crimea and as much of the north coast of the Black Sea as I can.

[The Romulan Republic]

If we are reserving territory on the Europe map, may I have a Mediterranean Island such as Sicily, Crete, or something like that?

Sicily would be nice, if its not to big for one player.

[SisterMiriamGodwinson]

I'm. I'd like the Nordic lands.... So, why not Iceland? As for how long you would have to play a day. Probably no more than 40 minutes.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

If we're already calling territory, then I'd like to have dominion over a good chunk of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Scotland and Northern Ireland can be left to their own devices.

[SisterMiriamGodwinson]

Hm.... Prepare for gnomish neighbors for that "devices" comment.

[Setzer]

Hmmm... SisterMiriam asked for Iceland. That's 39 little pieces it's split into. So I think 40 counties per player is a fair starting territory. Any objections?

[SisterMiriamGodwinson]

Not here.