A New History of Midgard?

[DreamWeaver]

This was from 'Davin' within the Imperial Redesign thread....

Ok, I'll buy that.  Though if I were the Imperials and the families left me, I wouldn't give them any seats at all.  I can see the families wanting to split off because they want to rebuild control themselves and didn't like having to subjugate themselves to group control.  And I can see the Imperials wanting to maintain overall control and not cooperate with the renegades trying to take it away from them.

I think that maintains a good balance between the factions without having any one of them overpowering the others or a special need for cooperation to eliminate a common enemy.  And yet it also provides a competitive relationship between them all, providing a reason why they wouldn't want to cooperate much with one another.  I think it's a good design!

Now, for the religions...

I can see them being independent of the Imperials and families from before the strike and continuing to do so afterwards.  But they'll surely need some competition between one another, ostensibly to garner all the worshipers over to their own side.  This part shouldn't be too difficult, as long as we declare their methods & purposes of worship to be somewhat less than tolerant of one another, but short of outright violence.  That gives them a religious version of competition to deal with.

However, we need to go back to some of the stuff we were discussing before, where certain religions cooperate with certain families and/or the Imperium for various purposes.  And it need not be strictly one-for-one, either, or else we'll end up with fixed "teams".  Instead, I think I'd recommend a division of cooperation for such purposes.  For instance, one (or two) of the religions might cooperate with a family in terms of construction, and one (or two) of the same or other religions might cooperate well with a family that helps with markets.  And perhaps they all might cooperate with the Imperials with regards to maintaining local law and order in the cities and surrounding areas, especially where they have temples.  Surely non-violent religions want peaceful relations between neighbors where they're trying to entice worshipers over to their side, would they not?

What do you think about approaching things from that angle?

(I think this whole issue might make a good example for the general "good game design" discussion people were trying to have elsewhere.