The Hill Strategic Forum Game: Development Thread

[Phoenixguard09]

Heya guys,

Well, as a lot of us know, Dimos' Hill RPG has been running for a while now. It has had its fair share of highs and lows and I commend Dimos on his efforts. I'll just begin by saying now, well done Dimos! Round of applause people! 

EDIT*

Now this has been inspired by Dimos' game. IT IS NOT A CONTINUATION AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS SUCH.

As far as features go, they will be forthcoming but I think how this should work is a simple vote to see what ideas are liked. Simply post your idea in the thread and a poll will be put up to determine the public opinion on the idea.

For starters, let's kick it off with the big one. Who wants armies?

I will put together a trial rules set for everyone to pick over and suggest changes to soon. Then this project can really begin.

Cheers,

[Captain Carthage]

I would love to take the games master role next time.

I hate competing with you guys.

[Ladyhawk]

Yay! Thanks Nightangel XD

[Phoenixguard09]

Thank you NightAngel. I may be an egotistical prick but I did predict that you would have a hankering for it.

The idea of this thread is that suggestions can be made here so that the next game can be run like a democracy with a fair and equal say as to the rules and such for everyone.

[Jubal]

I think I might be more tempted to play a game-mastered version of this, potentially...

[Gen_Glory]

saves a lot of time and accusations

[Cuddly Khan]

So will there be extended stuff. Like my ideas of a horse and fishing in the dark waters is 3 coins and farming on land with a house owned by you is +1 coins each turn. Sorry, that last one was Dimos idea. Castles need to be fixed as well. Chainmail and a Castle both have +4 resistance. I think a castle should be three times better that Chainmail.

[Death Nade]

Even having it 3 times better is ridiculous. Its a big stone wall, whereas chain-mail is a piece (lots of pieces ) of metal. I reckon a castle should be measured about as strong as a small cliff

[Phoenixguard09]

Which is why I'm suggesting a completely different system. It's IMHO a bit silly having a bunch of kings running around whacking each other. On the other hand, we should have armies. So I'm suggesting get rid of the axe-sword-chainmail system and go instead with a basic scissors-paper-rock combat system.

Say we have archers-infantry-cavalry. We can get more complicated. My original write-up had blackpowder, artillery, differences between light cavalry and knights etc. but for now let's keep it simple.

An "army" can be made up of one troop type, infantry, archers or cavalry. This army is trained in any territory where you own a castle. (One thing I'd suggest is a considerably larger map coincidentally.) Following the scissors-paper-rock logic, archers beat infantry, infantry (think pikes) beat cavalry and cavalry beat archers. (Let's just forget Crecy, Agincourt etc. )  If two armies of the same type come up against each other, both would retreat to a free adjacent square. If unable to do so, the army is destroyed. You'd be allowed more than one army, but that's ok because we'd have a GM who can keep track of it all.  Armies would be expensive to prevent it from getting overboard.

In addition to this, all troop movements would be submitted to the GM through PM. One can post troop movements on the thread, and keep them public. This would be the honourable thing to do. However, you could feed false information too. This would mean that other kingdoms can initiate spying and such. Anyway, these two suggestions I feel would bring back the feel of the old King of the Hill.

I have more but I'm in a hurry at the moment.

Cheers,

[Captain Carthage]

A goal other than last man standing would be nice you could quest to find the Holy Grail, that would be cool.

[Cuddly Khan]

Sounds so awesome. Don't make it too complicated though.

I don't really like the scissor, paper, rock thing. One solder/archer should cost 0.5 coins and a knight 1 coin. It would make more sense. You could have mixed armies and armies of different sizes. You could have it so they all do different damage (Archers would have times 2 damage to Infantry but divided by 2 for Cavalry.) that way you would need more than 100 Archers to defeat an army of 50 Cavalry.

More buildings would be cool too, with each building having an ability. (Stable for Cavalry, Archery Range for Archers and a barracks for Soldiers. It would keep people from building an army right at the start.)

[Phoenixguard09]

Yeah Khan's idea there with the armies is pretty similar to my original thoughts regarding them. You can have magic users, handgunners and the like that way as well. On the other hand I think it should work more like 10 Coins for a "unit" of archers, 14 for a "unit" of knights, etc. armies should be really expensive, meaning that unless you want to bankrupt yourself, armies should be disbanded fairly quickly. I also reckon there should be upkeep costs.

More buildings would be good as would more quests as NA said. Dimos' plan to create a knightly order could be followed through with knights being sent out to procure the Holy Grail. In addition, I PM'd and idea to Dimos about having an invading force come in, a la Mongols in MTW. Not necessarily Mongols but in the same style. (Come from the East, let's rape everything.)

[Death Nade]

I like how this is sounding

[Cuddly Khan]

So do I. I think you would have to extend the map a bit. Maybe if you just left it where it is but made more Rectangles. I would be happy if the island had 12 Rectangles instead of 3.

[Phoenixguard09]

Yes, extending the map is a must. In addition, I think we should look at multiple resources. It could get complicated but hear me out.

Gold
Food
Building Resources

Gold can be used to buy stuff, be it technology or other resources. It can be gathered from mountain regions. (ie. mining)

Food is used to feed your armies. Armies consume for instance 1 unit of food per unit of men. Higher quality men might consume more food. It can be gathered through farming in a castle region (you'd need to build the farms) or fishing in a coastal region (you'd need to build a harbour/dock/whatever, I don't know I hate fish)

Building Resources are used to build things, ie addons to your castle, new farms etc. They can be gathered in mountain regions (quarrying) or forest regions (lumber)

All of these resources could be traded with the other players.  It would be a little complicated, so this idea could probably use some streamlining.

Cheers,