Plantation Battles

[Captain Jack]

I am pretty much aligned with Haron's position here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5414

Plantations initial design had natural disasters. This was never implemented.
The only limit right now in Plantations, is to conquer the port of the player you want to stop and stop giving them operation permissions.
A bit difficult to do in many ports, not everyone's piece of cake and surely you can be stopped.

I am aligning more with a plantations battle feature. Here is a brief overview:

How attacking works
Initially, we will keep things simple.

Choice 1)Type of attack

3 types of attack: Pillage, Regular, Full Out Attack

Pillage: You only loot resources and workers. These are automatically converted to base price. Resources are lost and you gain gold.
Regular: You win some acres / infrastructure from the defending plantation.
Siege: You win more acres /infrastructure from the defending plantation.

Choice 2)How many workers you will send
You choose how many workers to send. Your guard houses at the port grant combat bonuses.
Workers already have some useful stats that can be used. We will simply add one more: Battle Experience.

For attacking, players will need to prepare an army. This will cost turns, relevant to the army size. The workers in army will not work any longer , until army is disbanded.

Choice 3) Orders
You will be given a list of orders to give to your attacking army. Perhaps something along "Fight till death", "Take Risks", "Attack Safely", "Hit and Run", etc. The basis idea is to control your expectations of earning versus your expectation of losses. Fight till death is high reward, high risk while Hit and Run is Low reward, low risk.


Start of attack
So, once the attacking player has made his choices, the attack will start. We are a hybrid game in turns of time management. We got both turns and real time. This is what we will do here as well. An attack here will cost both turns and real time. So, once you set your orders, you will pay some turns and your army will march for some time before attack actually happens. You will need to pay turns to stop the march.

There will be a countdown clock to attack. We need to define times. Since we already have Stamina, we do not need to limit this in any other way. Using your workers to attack will have a bit toll on their stamina. We will require a minimum stamina for any attack to start and stamina will also play a role in the battle engine (details later).

An attack event will be recorded in the Global events and players will be able to spectate its progress. This will be strategic because if I have a standing army, ready to attack, this could be a good time to do it; either attack the same target or the aggressor.

Defending Plantations
Before we get into what actually happens in battle, let's see the options of the defender.

First of all, all plantations will have a passive defense with ALL their workers. So, when a plantation is attacked, the plantation workers plus any raised armies will engage. The workers will still have, utilize and earn battle experience. However, workers in an army will utilize it better and earn a bit more.

Secondly, all plantation will have default strategies that will be relevant with the incoming size of the attack. We will use a simulator that will feed the game engine. The simulator will run a test and determine a winner. The result of this simulation will be used for the defending player.

The scnarios will be:
a)If the army is superior (at the simulation result, the defender lost easily)
b)If the army is similar (at the simulation result, it was a close call)
c)If the attacking army is inferior (at the simulation result, the defender won easily)

For each scenario, the player will choose how he wants to handle it:
a)Bribe (At this scenario, the attacking player will get reduced earnings, but at no battle)
b)Preserve (At this scenario, the attacking player, if victorious will get reduced earnings and the defender will get reduced casualties)
c)Fight (At this scenario, the attacking player, if victorious, will get normal earnings and the defener will get normal casualties.

We can expand these with more options in the future. Or make it more spicey, ie hiring a strategist (who will define the accuracy of the simulation). The better the strategist, the better the results.

Actual Battle

Once all settings are set in and the time comes, the battle will take place. I believe that battles should last. In this way we will be able to add more parties in the ongoing battle (ie allies sending troops to help). Or any other modifications. When I mean last, I mean last for a long time, hours, even a day. Perhaps this should be relative to how big the defending plantation is and how large the facing armies. These will be calculated during battle.

The battles will be bloody. There will be significant losses to workers and this will be the number 1 loss. There will be a handicap to the attacker when it comes to casualties.

To calculate winner, we will use ratios, dependable on size and options. For example, for a full win (siege , fight till death versus fight scenario) the highest ratio will be needed (it could be 3:1 perhaps, we will need to work numbers out).

Besides weakening the opponent (fewer workers, fewer production) , the attacker will stand to benefit from earnings as well. There will be good fame rewards. Then depending on the attack type, they will get extra rewards. When winning acres, these will be removed from the defending player and added to the attacking. If the defender is paying a rent for these acres, he will continue doing so while the attacker will get these for free.

The #1 deciding factor in the initial form of this feature, will be amount of workers able to attack.

I am not much in favor of limiting attacks and such. If someone has came and wrecked your plantation, then no one but you can protect you against a new foe. The only form of protectionism will come from the following sources:
-Allies (this will be coded since start, they will be able to send troops to help you)
-Nations (later on we can allow nations to raise armies to protect automatically - conditions will apply)
-Voodoo (later on we can create dedicated voodoo for this)


These are notes mostly. I am fairly sure I had notes written for this before, but I could not find them. So, I rewritten them. This needs a lot of thought but I am interested in making this a reality. Implementation of this module cannot be before any of the suggested major features here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5873

The implementation will be surely after these. It would be great if we could forward this so it can be the next in line.

[Most Lee Harmless]

I can see this massively favouring the mega-plantation owners with millions of workers being able to steam-roller any smaller plantations. As for the small plantation : you lose your acres, you lose your workers, you lose your income and you get stuck still paying rents on it. Plus you get to write off all you invested to create the plantation :
Gold and credits for permissions, gold bars and coin to develop it, fleets to bring in workers, etc.

So, whilst a mega-plant owner can probably sustain themselves through a campaign of attacks/defences, a smaller plant owner will be effectively wiped out with one loss, and vulnerable to repeat losses whilst still weak and rebuilding.

Not a good prospect when considering starting a plantation nor even when calculating the benefit of keeping/investing in any you may already own.

I do think the idea is a good one but think we need to be very careful not to discourage new entrants into plantations. The entry level costs are way too high already. If survival becomes economically unviable then, why will anyone bother?

[Lil Lola]

Yeah but with all the costs it may be more profitable to hit the mega plantations. lol CJ should implement a mutiny feature for both the attacker and the plantation worker. if you abuse the worker, they join the attacker and if you use them too much to plunder with no rest in between the rise against you lol.

[Vane]

I im in agreement with Danik on this. If the attacking army is determined by selecting from the players work force size there is a massively clear advantage to those holding the largest plantations. Im not clear of a solid fix but perhaps a limit on the size of the army and or how it is established. The goal shouldn't be to demolish another players plant, but rather disrupt it. Also it doesn't seem strategic in its current form. Straight up profit shouldn't be the goal per attack but rather long term profit through advantage.

Off the top of my head im thinking..

- Cap the army size to a reasonable amount most can attain through some prep.

- Consider capping the total amount of resources a port buys per day based on stock. A low stock port buys more that day, high stock buys fewer. (if one player were to meet this cap it would provoke others to come together against them in order to avoid a monopoly. Further this would help with the games resource inflation.)

- Allow other plantations to join the attacker and/or defender as suggested in port blockades (Their armies would have to meet the attack deadline but perhaps have an emergency option like "Make Haste" which would decrease their overall performance but allow them to arrive in a shorter period of time in support.)

- Defenders need a cap on army size as well which should involve the guard force, this way smaller plants and the potential cap on attackers is still sufficient to get attacks through to some degree and cause disruption. (maybe something like a cap slightly larger than attackers. Defence should be easier than attacking.)


A few things to mull over.

[sXs]

I im in agreement with Danik on this. If the attacking army is determined by selecting from the players work force size there is a massively clear advantage to those holding the largest plantations. Im not clear of a solid fix but perhaps a limit on the size of the army and or how it is established. The goal shouldn't be to demolish another players plant, but rather disrupt it. Also it doesn't seem strategic in its current form. Straight up profit shouldn't be the goal per attack but rather long term profit through advantage.

Off the top of my head im thinking..

- Cap the army size to a reasonable amount most can attain through some prep.

- Consider capping the total amount of resources a port buys per day based on stock. A low stock port buys more that day, high stock buys fewer. (if one player were to meet this cap it would provoke others to come together against them in order to avoid a monopoly.)

- Allow other plantations to join the attacker and/or defender as suggested in port blockades (Their armies would have to meet the attack deadline but perhaps have an emergency option like "Make Haste" which would decrease their overall performance but allow them to arrive in a shorter period of time in support.)




- Defenders need a cap on army size as well which should involve the guard force, this way smaller plants and the potential cap on attackers is still sufficient to get attacks through to some degree and cause disruption. (maybe something like a cap slightly larger than attackers. Defence should be easier than attacking.)


A few things to mull over.

1. What about defender? If the attacker can recruit other plantation owners to join in then the defender she have the same option.
2. What does the defender get from a successful defense. There needs to be equal risk on both sides or this is nothing more than a way to destroy a plantation owner.
3. I disagree with a cap on defender army size. This should be part of the strategy planning in order to attack. Are you expecting an attacker to bring 1 mill solderiers against a plantation with 20 million workers and have 19 million sit on the sidelines eating popcorn and watching the show? Capping defense eliminates the advantage of size. You should need either an equal or greater force size or a better trained army to succeed. You dont take a single cutter up against a fleet of MOW..... without voodoo

This is just a few of 100s of questions that need to be addressed/

[xPROx]

Yea I disagree with cap on army. I have spent time and alot building my plantations. The attacker should have to put in the same time on building and upgrading.

If there's a cap. And the defender no matter what size plantations he has got to use same number of workers as attacker. I will just run all tiny plantations and sell acres from bigger players with nothing to lose and way more to gain. I pay less and if I win I get free land the defender still gots to pay for.

And if the attacker loses does the building down drop in%

And the defender has so much more to lose land,time,gold,gold bars and so on.

Hell if that's the way. A attacker should have to pay 100 credits to attack everytime or some how make it worth it.

[Lil Lola]

Maybe their can be an addition to hideout for training for defense and offense. Or the ability to building a catapult or a stockade or a moat.

[DezNutz]

Plantations should not spawn armies. Armies should be built under its own building. I would suggest the Hideout. Players would have to deploy their armies to attack or defend plantations. The guard house at the plantation should be reworked to serve two functions, maintain the army in a defensive position and qwell rebellious/lazy workers.

[Lil Lola]

And here comes the reason for my suggestion for the ability for workers to mutiny. Hey Dez

[Magnus the red]

Plantations should not spawn armies. Armies should be built under its own building. I would suggest the Hideout. Players would have to deploy their armies to attack or defend plantations. The guard house at the plantation should be reworked to serve two functions, maintain the army in a defensive position and qwell rebellious/lazy workers.

+1 I like the idea of it working with hideouts