Walls, walls, and more walls

[Davin]

We've got many, many subjects going already, but let me throw in another one (just to overload us)...

There was mention of walls (in relation to to the Imps and to reduced city defenses).  However, I'm none too pleased by the old definitions of wall strength and thought we might discuss reorganizing these.


At the low end, earthworks alone (ditch and/or berm) I would think would make an adequate starting point, perhaps leaving stakes (on both) and/or brambles for level 2 work.  I can see people building sod walls in there somewhere, too.  Then I'd like to add in some options for wooden walls, starting with thin picket-like walls just designed for ingress/egress control and moving up to heavy wooden structures designed for a defense against a minor attack.  (I'm thinking of the movie notion of the "American Old West"-type forts that the cavalry set up to defend against Indian attack.)

After wood we can progress to stone and/or masonry walls of various heights and thicknesses, and perhaps reserve some of the "extra features" for some of the "+0.1" levels?


The classic definition of 10.0 walls is massive, and I think they would be more than enough to top off our scale.  Construction of such levels should be really expensive by then and difficult to work up to.


FYI - Did you know that the classic vision of the "Great Wall" is rather misleading?  It was built in many different sections and in some places not even joined together.  It looks like that classic view for only a small part of its length (and I personally think it's kept up like that for the tourism value).  Some parts of the supposed "great wall" were wood or stone "fences" that were barely able to keep livestock from crossing, even before they degraded to mounds of rubble.


As for restarting Midgard's cities, I think it would be a good idea to knock down everything(?) made of stone or masonry so we can get to a balanced position.  The cities would have had time and resources by now to build back up with earth and/or wood, depending on their populations and financial positions.  So I can see cities starting out as pretty much anything appropriate that's less than stone or masonry, which will require further work (particularly by players) to get back in place.


What does everyone think of those ideas?

[FutureSojourner]

As for restarting Midgard's cities, I think it would be a good idea to knock down everything(?) made of stone or masonry so we can get to a balanced position.  The cities would have had time and resources by now to build back up with earth and/or wood, depending on their populations and financial positions.  So I can see cities starting out as pretty much anything appropriate that's less than stone or masonry, which will require further work (particularly by players) to get back in place.


What does everyone think of those ideas?

Part of me hates the idea of a "restart." If that is the way the game is going to go then so be it, whatever works.

I like to play cities because they are more fun for me to play than a 190 retainer clan! But if all the cities are tiny then they too might not be much fun to play. I kinda sucks to think that the game isn't going to be good for a few years while we build up. I would rather it be fun now, and have some decent cities to work with -- but the restart seems to be the vision that has won out (still not sure why). A lot of what we discuss here seems to be revisioning Midgard, and I'm not sure much of the revisioning is necessary. Midgard wasn't broke, it just died because no one was able to keep it going. Does it really need to be completely recrafted? I think some Factional shuffling doesn't seem like a bad idea, but it seems like we are really trying to reinvent the wheel.

[DreamWeaver]

The past is gone Oliver, what was Zan's version of the game has been lost. Some files were saved, but a lot was lost. Since Davin does not have access to those files, he has to restart the game again from scratch rebuild. I think what he has proposed is ok, give each faction 1-2 declared cities and the rest of the cities are all Independents. Next wipe clear all factional Offices and Temples across the board except a couple in the declared cities of that faction. So you will have to play "Johnny Appleseed" and spread the faction throughout the lands. You will have to play networking and a lot of work to work with NPC ad etc.

Now as to walls and towers, well define what you think would be as it should be. I could really care less, I will work with whatever you come up with, but making everyone to build from scratch seems perfectly fine with me. I am more than happy to rebuild from almost nothing, seems like everyone will be doing that. I too and most of the people I am bringing into the game are City Builders as well too.

All I and the rest of my folks ask is give us a working skill system to start with as this is key to success within the game.

[Davin]

Part of me hates the idea of a "restart."  If that is the way the game is going to go then so be it, whatever works.

I like to play cities because they are more fun for me to play than a 190 retainer clan!  But if all the cities are tiny then they too might not be much fun to play.  I kinda sucks to think that the game isn't going to be good for a few years while we build up.  I would rather it be fun now, and have some decent cities to work with -- but the restart seems to be the vision that has won out (still not sure why).  A lot of what we discuss here seems to be revisioning Midgard, and I'm not sure much of the revisioning is necessary.  Midgard wasn't broke, it just died because no one was able to keep it going.  Does it really need to be completely recrafted?  I think some Factional shuffling doesn't seem like a bad idea, but it seems like we are really trying to reinvent the wheel.

Well, that restart was my idea to begin with.  The way I figure it, the old game was too unbalanced to try to continue as it was.  Plus, the majority of the players aren't around to pick up their clans and cities again, even from my version of the game which apparently doesn't match what most of you were playing in anyway.  I'd rather start everyone out on a relatively even footing and get rid of the big power bases in the game that cause so much difficulty for others.


But the cities need not be virtually empty - they'll have enough people in them to keep things going.  But I don't want to start everybody with artificially inflated positions for no good reason, so my best plan is to reduce things down to a commonness that everyone can live with.  For instance, I could give all the cities high walls or take away the high walls that exist, and they'd be more "even".  But that doesn't mean everything's exactly the same everywhere.  For instance, cities will have variable populations to start, some small and some reasonably populated - maybe even a few thousand people.  But I want to get rid of the multi-hundred-thousand-sized preserves and give everyone something more modest to work with.  And walls won't be reduced to nothing, but I think they should have modest defenses based on the population size and surrounding areas.  The cities of more than minimal size should be able to defend themselves against common intrusions, and clans can help build them up again to something more serious, but I'm not expecting them to have to deal with any serious early on anyway.
Also, I need to be able to rework many aspects of Midgard to allow me to run it on the web with a limited amount of GM time available.  So while it wasn't "broke", I also couldn't keep it going just the way it was.  I'm trying to keep it reasonably familiar, though.

[DreamWeaver]

Sounds like a rather wise direction to take Davin.

[DreamWeaver]

Part of me hates the idea of a "restart."  If that is the way the game is going to go then so be it, whatever works.

I like to play cities because they are more fun for me to play than a 190 retainer clan!  But if all the cities are tiny then they too might not be much fun to play.  I kinda sucks to think that the game isn't going to be good for a few years while we build up.  I would rather it be fun now, and have some decent cities to work with -- but the restart seems to be the vision that has won out (still not sure why).  A lot of what we discuss here seems to be revisioning Midgard, and I'm not sure much of the revisioning is necessary.  Midgard wasn't broke, it just died because no one was able to keep it going.  Does it really need to be completely recrafted?  I think some Factional shuffling doesn't seem like a bad idea, but it seems like we are really trying to reinvent the wheel.

Well, that restart was my idea to begin with.  The way I figure it, the old game was too unbalanced to try to continue as it was.  Plus, the majority of the players aren't around to pick up their clans and cities again, even from my version of the game which apparently doesn't match what most of you were playing in anyway.  I'd rather start everyone out on a relatively even footing and get rid of the big power bases in the game that cause so much difficulty for others.


But the cities need not be virtually empty - they'll have enough people in them to keep things going.  But I don't want to start everybody with artificially inflated positions for no good reason, so my best plan is to reduce things down to a commonness that everyone can live with.  For instance, I could give all the cities high walls or take away the high walls that exist, and they'd be more "even".  But that doesn't mean everything's exactly the same everywhere.  For instance, cities will have variable populations to start, some small and some reasonably populated - maybe even a few thousand people.  But I want to get rid of the multi-hundred-thousand-sized preserves and give everyone something more modest to work with.  And walls won't be reduced to nothing, but I think they should have modest defenses based on the population size and surrounding areas.  The cities of more than minimal size should be able to defend themselves against common intrusions, and clans can help build them up again to something more serious, but I'm not expecting them to have to deal with any serious early on anyway.
Also, I need to be able to rework many aspects of Midgard to allow me to run it on the web with a limited amount of GM time available.  So while it wasn't "broke", I also couldn't keep it going just the way it was.  I'm trying to keep it reasonably familiar, though.

I like the idea of rebuild again from almost scratch. All the former Kalmar players know exactly what this is like as we have been here before and know how to deal with this exact place before. For use we know what needs to be done to make this successful, actually we will have a few pluses we didn't have before and that will make us that much further along. So I look forward to game start again. Heck I am even planning out my Special Actions too. I can't wait for the game to start again.