For long we have received ideas and suggestions to incorporate somehow warfare into port control.

It is a fact that we do not want to change Influence and how it works. Generally speaking, we hate nerfing anything and we steadily believe that solutions are easier found in new concepts rather than old ones.

One concept we could add is Port Traits,

Traits such as:
1)Loyalty
2)Corruption
3)Happiness
4)Population Growth

can be elements of a bigger expansion for the game, called Ports Expansion which could include other ideas such as Port buildings ideas we discussed earlier.

All traits will be affected by players through fleet actions, market actions, port buildings and port control.

We should avoid using any specific voodoo cards at first (although we can always think of some later).
We should avoid any direct change through gold spending (there is influence for direct change and we will have port buildings as indirect gc sinker).

All these three traits will be in direct relation to each other; if one collapses the other two will be damaged as well. In how they will recover though, it will be different.

For example, Loyalty could mainly be affected by Port Control and how many days a nation has held the port. The particurlar trait must be country specific too. Which means that each nation will now hold a loyalty level with each port. Starting at 0 if you never held the port and maxing at 100% if you have held the port for a whole year in a row. This will be easy to define too: Loyalty rises by 0.2739% per day for the nation that holds the port and drops by the same amount for all the rest nations. This will be the basic growth.

More ways to affect this can be added. Perhaps, sending your fleets to hunt down enemies of your country (fleet action) for a prolonged time, could speed it up. The more ships a country could put to this chore, the higher the loyalty would rise. In the same time, other nations that would want to contest the port, would be able to counter this. This could end up in real battles when more than 1 sides collide or simulation battles where simply the strength of each ship entering the war would matter (better scenario for us as it would be an entirely new concept which would make it worthwhile for big players to have big war fleets).

Moving on, Corruption will be created for anything bad that happens to the port. From the simple cast of a single Black death or even worse, for declining trade incomes, corruption will find way to rise. The more it rises, the less taxes the country will rake in from the specific port while it could combo with ship forthcoming taxes in shipwright.

Happiness could be a way to contain corruption, but certainly not the only one. Happiness would too be affected by corruption though. However, it would be perhaps easier to make your people happy than to combat corruption. Certainly, we will take in mind various parties hold by other players in the port (so, perhaps it would be a bad idea to constantly hold your major parties to hostile ports) but more direct ways can be added. Such as donating resources to the port? We will see.

Finally, all these traits will play a role for population growth which will also have an innate rating. Expect it to be negative when population of a port grows after a billion and positive in the lower populations to extra positive in very small populations. There are some other ideas about this already.


There... food for thought for a feature that could add many interesting factors in the game for all.

Very interesting ideas Capt Jack.

I will wait for smarter players like Haron and SHM to post on pros and cons before I put my foot in my mouth with what I have to say.

CJ can you elaborate on the extent of the effect events will cause corruption or happiness?

Captain Jack wrote:For example, Loyalty could mainly be affected by Port Control and how many days a nation has held the port. The particurlar trait must be country specific too. Which means that each nation will now hold a loyalty level with each port. Starting at 0 if you never held the port and maxing at 100% if you have held the port for a whole year in a row. This will be easy to define too: Loyalty rises by 0.2739% per day for the nation that holds the port and drops by the same amount for all the rest nations. This will be the basic growth.

My idea

I think it would be a good idea to take a small step back and look at what you want to achieve, before discussing actual "traits". I'm partly guessing here, but I think it is desireable to have:

A) More options in the game (more things to do for players)
B) More fighting over ports
C) More ways to fight for ports

I assume this is more or less correct. For A, sure, anything that is added will achieve this. However, it should be considered if such options will actually be used, and if they will make other things irrelevant (like banks almost made treasure hunting extinct). Also, these "traits" need to come with a purpose. I think other things with ports should be in place first, like other ways to fight for them and more benefits given to those holding a port, both through things which require votes, and things which only requires you to be duke. An easy thing to implement, which would make fighting for Duke rank more worthwhile, would be to give the Duke bonus also for party cards.

If there are to be more fighting over ports, it must be more reason to control ports. Duke bonus for party cards would be one way to achieve this, but there should be more. I think trade should play a larger part in port income, for instance. Also, I fear that the concept of "port loyalty" will cause less fighting over ports, since ports will be more valuable, and perhaps also easier to defend, for the nation who already holds it. The concept may seem nice, but if, like I think, it will actually cause LESS fighting over ports, the idea should be abandoned. It should at least be considered very carefully how it should work. Perhaps after more port buildings are added, this can, in some form, be added.

Ports are controlled through influence. Therefore, there should be more ways to affect influence in order to fight for port control. I suggested one alternative in "Wars and Blockades", but there are other options. The point is that it should be possible to gain, or make opponents lose, influence through other means, preferrably through naval combat of some sort. It could be as part of existing combat, or new alternatives could be added.

I think there are other things that needs to be considered before "Port Traits" are needed. The idea is good, but more reasons to hold ports, more ways to fight over them, and more options for ports (perhaps through various "port buildings", or player generated goods) should be added BEFORE port traits, in my opinion.

I am going to agree with Haron on this who says it much more eloquently than I am capable of.

Stan Rogers wrote:I am going to agree with Haron on this who says it much more eloquently than I am capable of.

Slindur found and drank Stan's secret brandy stash... thus Stan is rendered speechless... sober, but speechless...

I do not think that adding other ways to effect port influence beyond just gold coins and voodoo cards represents a "nerf" - Especially If a proper balance is found with new features to effect influence versus the existing features.

Port buildup represents a baseline value to influence and the value of the voodoo cards is determined by the market... it actually shouldn't be very hard to design something new in that space. I think most would agree that the current method of stacking %increases via voodoo so that the only way to beat it is to counter with voodoo is a bit boring. Gold coins almost don't even matter in the current meta of ports having individuals with 10M+ influence.

Lockreed wrote:I do not think that adding other ways to effect port influence beyond just gold coins and voodoo cards represents a "nerf" - Especially If a proper balance is found with new features to effect influence versus the existing features.

Port buildup represents a baseline value to influence and the value of the voodoo cards is determined by the market... it actually shouldn't be very hard to design something new in that space. I think most would agree that the current method of stacking %increases via voodoo so that the only way to beat it is to counter with voodoo is a bit boring. Gold coins almost don't even matter in the current meta of ports having individuals with 10M+ influence.

Agreed with this!

i a have to agree with lockreed on this you can deposit 10 mill into influence and then use voodoo to jump to 200-300 mill in influence easily