A Better way to Conquer Regions

[Anolytic]

Two major issues with the current way regions work in the Frontlines system is that:

A. Big nations are able to go to every freeport and ports close to their starting territory and immediately capture the 3 closest Counties everywhere. Allowing just a few nations to grab an enormous amount of territory already on day 1, securing frontlines and laying the grounds for further occupation of territory.

B. Besides the County Capital the other ports of a region are utterly unimportant and once you occupy a County Capital, you can take your leisurely time capturing the other ports - if you even bother to. Instead it is better to jump from one County Capital to the next, to secure control over another county before thinking of consolidating control over the ones you already have access to. On top of this, in the future once a nation looses the county capital of one of their Counties, they will have little incentive to defend the rest of the ports in the County, and we will see conquest focused only on County Capitals while other port battles will be undefended, abandoned or half-heartedly defended. Making most of RvR just about grinding rather than the battles.

My suggestion is to involve whole regions in conquest, rather than just the capital. In my proposal, the next Region can only be attacked from the outer ports of a Region, and after capturing a County Capital, you need to progressively expand outwards in the region to control it before being able to capture the next one.

Others I have discussed with, such as El Patron, would favour the inverse of my proposal, that in order to attack a County Capital you first have to capture all of the other ports in the region.
Another option is to lessen the significance of regions and simply have conquest move from port to adjacent port, without the need to capture capitals first or last, but rather as you get to them.

In this topic I will however use as premise the current model of capturing regions as a whole.

Imagine that you seek to conquer Hispaniola, starting in this case from the freeport of La Mona. You would first have to attack the County Capital of Santo Domingo. After capturing it, you could not directly attack Les Cayes or Puerto Plata. If you wanted to attack Les Cayes, you would first have to take Bani, then Azua, then Barahona, before being able to attack Les Cayes County Capital. If you wanted to attack Puerto Plata, you would similarly have to make your way to the border port Higuey first.

My proposal is illustrated below:

I would pair this system with proposals I have made elsewhere to limit the number of Regions that can be simultaneously engaged to 2 per day (EU-time) and 2 per US-time day.

And with a remapping of what constitutes adjacent regions. Ideally I would also move away from freeports as "jump-points" and to using captureable ports instead as jump-points between different parts of the map.

Edited April 28, 2019 by Anolytic

[Powderhorn]

22 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

I would pair this system with proposals I have made elsewhere

If you link them, I'll merge them all into one topic, but I doubt anyone is going to hunt them down to try to get the full picture.

[Eyesore]

I'm in favour of having to attack the capitals last (so first capture the surrounding ports, as some sort of blockade or siege).

I would also not let bonusses (production/docks) come into play as long as the nation/clan doesn't control the whole region. A bonus comes from stability, if the whole region is in turmoil (hampered trading/supply, upset/divided populace, refugees and malcontents and saboteurs, etc) ... this does not induce good circumstances to make a region thrive? (in history, wealth/prosperity ussually comes with stability and 'peace' (may be forced)) This would make defending backwaterports also important?   The order in which ports are captured doesn't really matter in this case (capital first or last ... you'd need the whole region to get the bonus anyway).

[Hullabaloo]

A much better way of doing it. NN essentially hold nearly the entire Gulf and Brits have most of Central America already. We've already had a hotfix to increase number of Ports that can be reached and then a route from Marsh Harbour to Bermuda, meant to patch up obvious defects, but just throwing up more. This entire patch seems half-arsed and rushed to me.

[Havelock]

I dont really understand why we go for capitals first and then the small ports. It just feels wrong. Why dont we go for the small ports first and to attack a capital you have to own at least 50% of the small ports in that region?

The current system has nothing to do with frontlines, everyone just tries to grab as many capitals as possible. I dont think all of this works without someone putting some thougts into the map and drawing some connections for hostility missions.

E.g. the 3 closest capitals to Santo Domingo are Cap Francais, Port au Prince and Puerto Plata; but geography wise Ponce, Les Cayes and Puerto Plata would make WAY more sense. Im also not sure if hostility orders from Free Towns actually do more harm than good. It exposes a lot of capitals and works against the frontline design.

[znôrt]

1 hour ago, Havelock said:

The current system has nothing to do with frontlines, everyone just tries to grab as many capitals as possible. I dont think all of this works without someone putting some thougts into the map and drawing some connections for hostility missions.

maybe if county ports were somehow necessary to fortify the capitals, and important to keep them so?

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, znôrt said:

maybe if county ports were somehow necessary to fortify the capitals, and important to keep them so?

I brought up that you should be able to get a bit of the tax's from the regions port paid to the capital, but to get them some one in your nation has to own them.  This means that they can't just take capitals and not take the regions and leave them neutral.  That or if they are nuetral the capital has to pay the maintenance instead of getting sub clans to own them.  If it's neutral you pay but you don't gain the taxes.  

This would force nations to capture the ports of a region instead of just capital hopping.   Could also have the region revolt and kick you out if you don't capture them returning the capital back to neutral and able to be attacked by any one in range.

[huliotkd]

20 hours ago, Anolytic said:

Two major issues with the current way regions work in the Frontlines system is that:

A. Big nations are able to go to every freeport and ports close to their starting territory and immediately capture the 3 closest Counties everywhere remeber that is temporary, devs will revert back to only 2 closest Counties . Allowing just a few nations to grab an enormous amount of territory already on day 1, securing frontlines and laying the grounds for further occupation of territory.

B. Besides the County Capital the other ports of a region are utterly unimportant and once you occupy a County Capital, you can take your leisurely time capturing the other ports - if you even bother to. Instead it is better to jump from one County Capital to the next, to secure control over another county before thinking of consolidating control over the ones you already have access to. On top of this, in the future once a nation looses the county capital of one of their Counties, they will have little incentive to defend the rest of the ports in the County, and we will see conquest focused only on County Capitals while other port battles will be undefended, abandoned or half-heartedly defended. Making most of RvR just about grinding rather than the battles.

My suggestion is to involve whole regions in conquest, rather than just the capital. In my proposal, the next Region can only be attacked from the outer ports of a Region, and after capturing a County Capital, you need to progressively expand outwards in the region to control it before being able to capture the next one.

Others I have discussed with, such as El Patron, would favour the inverse of my proposal, that in order to attack a County Capital you first have to capture all of the other ports in the region.
Another option is to lessen the significance of regions and simply have conquest move from port to adjacent port, without the need to capture capitals first or last, but rather as you get to them.

In this topic I will however use as premise the current model of capturing regions as a whole.

Imagine that you seek to conquer Hispaniola, starting in this case from the freeport of La Mona. You would first have to attack the County Capital of Santo Domingo. After capturing it, you could not directly attack Les Cayes or Puerto Plata. If you wanted to attack Les Cayes, you would first have to take Bani, then Azua, then Barahona, before being able to attack Les Cayes County Capital. If you wanted to attack Puerto Plata, you would similarly have to make your way to the border port Higuey first.

My proposal is illustrated below:

I would pair this system with proposals I have made elsewhere to limit the number of Regions that can be simultaneously engaged to 2 per day (EU-time) and 2 per US-time day.

And with a remapping of what constitutes adjacent regions. Ideally I would also move away from freeports as "jump-points" and to using captureable ports instead as jump-points between different parts of the map.

this is a correct 'frontline' but it is still too easy.

- you are considering it by Impossible Nation starting view, and Impossible Nations must be a secondary choice after 30 days in a regular nation start.  this is the most important point

- free towns must not drop hostility. full stop. it's too easy to start close to important port while regular nations players are fixed in their capital.

- taking the example of La Mona, just to talk about the frontlines progression, you can take hostility only for Higuey...from Higuey you can take hostility for Macao or El Soco (choosing the county you want to invade,Domingo OR Plata), from El Soco to Domingo and so on. after you cap Capital, you must cap all region ports to unlock the points of that 25BR capital. so , for example, you capped Higuey (10 points), El soco (10 points) , Santo Domingo (5 point) and you have now only 25 points of 55 of Santo Domingo. if you want all the points, you must cap all the region ports.

IF, a big IF , the next capital port is already national (Les Cayes is GB while you are capping the last Santo Domingo port, Barahona) you cannot go on capping the first port of next region, Sale-Trou in this case, but you have to use your mechanic so you must cap Les Cayes first and then cap all region to go to next County capital (Santo Domingo or Port au Prince)

- ''how i can switch to Impossible Nation after 30 days if Free Towns can't drop Hostility Missions?'' - when you change to Impossible Nation you will find on the map 3 RANDOM Hostility Mission already set.  do you organize your nation change at Aves? you can find 3 Hostility Mission at Sisal or Philippsburg...you must do it. stop.

if you switch to Impossible Mission you are supposed to be:  - Skilled player - full of resources - full of money - full of ships - full of organization  so you are perfectly able to survive this new Impossible Nations difficulties, otherwise you should stay national.

 

[Ligatorswe]

The other ports in the region has to be more important. I agree with Anolytic about that. 

[SantaRoja]

11 minutes ago, huliotkd said:

''how i can switch to Impossible Nation after 30 days if Free Towns can't drop Hostility Missions?'' - when you change to Impossible Nation you will find on the map 3 RANDOM Hostility Mission already set.  do you organize your nation change at Aves? you can find 3 Hostility Mission at Sisal or Philippsburg...you must do it. stop.

can't agree, an impossible nation to be really impossible must be limited to attack just national port.

so russian,polish and german must wait in free and opened town until the "easy" nation cap the map and than they can start RvR.

[OjK]

7 hours ago, SantaRoja said:

can't agree, an impossible nation to be really impossible must be limited to attack just national port.

so russian,polish and german must wait in free and opened town until the "easy" nation cap the map and than they can start RvR.

And what are we gonna do before that?

[Hullabaloo]

On 4/28/2019 at 1:44 PM, Hullabaloo said:

This entire patch seems half-arsed and rushed to me.

....and now....alts can set hostility missions and other nation can join the mission to run hostility. So the whole 'front lines' system is broken anyway. I rest my case.