Collecting Questions and answering them below, just trying to keep myself organized here while they come out.
After I read the FAQ and the all the answers I understood that 1 Lord = 1 Player but it's not clear at all in the rules and description of the game.
Especially since you said 1 clan member can direct everything. So, you should state somewhere that 1 lord = 1 player for all the battle that this lord will have to do.
Ok I will update the OP in the next week or so. Lots of FAQ info and other stuff I need to add. Just trying to answer questions as they come in for now and then will update official rules probably a week before any official start for sure. (or as I have time)You spoke about bannerman but you didn't explain how that would work ( or I missed it ).
You're correct, its covered very briefly in the "Diplomacy" section of the OP but definitely needs more detail.
Essentially its a method that other clans can declare themselves as a vassal state to another. Requesting protection from everyone, protection from a specific enemy, etc. If you declare yourself as a bannermen state to another clan, you "fly their banner" and as you travel the map, can fight for or with them instead of on your own. Usually, there is an exchange of gold from the smaller clan to the bigger in exchange for this protection or help. It can be indefinite, or gold per turn, or for a fixed period of time. I'll make a bannermen update and provide all the details but thats the general concept ther.e What if I move on a square and there is already 2 lord on this square ?
If you move to a square and there are two engaged Lords already there, you will just be a third occupant. You will be able to see the battle (I will provide you the info, such as Lord X is Bruceswar of House Stark and Lord Y is hjelp of House Antrax). You can decide to stay in the square, which if you stay in the square when their engagement ends would result in a direct assault by you, or you can choose to continue on after learning your intel and leave the square. If those two parties are neutral or friendly, and sharing the same space and you are not neutral or friendly and normally would be an ambush, then you will still get ambushed per the normal rules. "Vanquished" Clans
Clans are out of the game (vanquished) when they lose all of their Lords, and original Castle.
If I have no more lords, I can't get anymore GP, so even if I still have my original Castle, unless I can recruit another lord, I am defeated anyway, right ?
From your perspective, you would essentially be out of the game yes. However, you can still influence the game if you have gold left in your castle, whether by declaring yourself a bannermen to another clan in order for them to take their revenge on your killer, or I suppose if you can convince someone to be your bannermen etc...But for the game, you wont be completely vanquished until you are completely removed from the board (and thats when someone will earn the fame from your vanquishment) not just killing of your Lords. Or as you said, if you haven't used your maximum 15 Lords and have enough gold, or can get enough gold somehow, to get another Lord on the board. If a Lord is in a city or a castle, and the city/castle is attacked. Can the Lord decide to retreat and abandon the castle/city ?
No, the defender is being attacked. So its up to the attacker to start the engagement or not. If you want to retreat, you'll have to leave the castle prior to the engagement or use diplomacy to delay until you leave.When the actual games are played, how do you prevent it being obvious who a Lord is? Are the Lord names actually used as the player names in the games? That would be SO awesome!
Well, the two who are engaged will learn who each other are. This is part of the way to gain intel (by engaging other clans in battle). You'll learn at who the Lord is, and by process of elimination you will now know all his clan mates (though you still wont know who the active clan mates are...you'll be able to recognize them by "Lord X of Castle Antrax" and you know you just beat Lord Y of Castle Antrax, and Lord Y was IcePack, so anyone under Castle Antrax banner is a Fallen member, for example.if losing a castle deprives a clan of all of their gold, how will anyone accumulate enough to score an economic victory? It seems like the structure incentivizes teams to spend (almost) all of their gold every turn, especially since castles don't seem too hard to capture. Other than the possibility of having multiple lords in a castle (and thereby increasing the number of wins required to capture it) there don't seem to be many advantages to the defender.
Yeah, the economic victory is meant as a way to speed up the games end eventually. It will be difficult to achieve, but you are correct here. Perhaps consider spreading the gold out among the Clan's various castles/cities? That way, for example, with 2 castles and 3 cities a clan that loses a castle would only lose 1/5 of its gold reserve.
Thats probably a fair idea, let me check how it works during a play test and ill get back to you. Based on my play test experience, I think this will probably get implimented. Watchtowers will not count towards "spreading the gold" out though, as their mainly an additional look out venue as advanced warning system etc. The history buff in me is coming out a bit for some suggestions on some of the gameplay. The major one that stands out to me is sieging a castle historically was supposed to be hard. There's a reason that 9 times out of 10, the besieging army would attempt to starve out the defenders rather than attempt to directly assault the castle. The walls themselves were considered a force multiplier, and the castle usually had multiple layers of defense that the attackers had to systematically assault and overcome, often at a high cost. The defender normally had the advantage in this case.
I really like the choice of the Siege! map for these battles. Thematically, it fits perfectly. However, the map itself is fairly neutral, and I don't see game knowledge or choice of settings really favoring the map either way. It seems more like map drop could easily decide the outcome from the start, so there's not really any sort of defender's advantage. A lord could easily lose his castle due to a bad drop and bad luck, regardless of skill or choice of map rules.
Yeah, i dont disagree with the historical comparisons etc. or the fact that theres only a minor benefit to the defender for selecting Poly (2) (3) or (4) plus settings etc. The main defensive benefit here is, having multiple defenders a attacker must string together sometimes two, three victories in a row on a neutral (ish) map in order to possible gain the castle. (maybe even more, depending how many defenders they've stacked there). With being restricted to 15 Lords, this difficulty level can come at a pretty big cost if you can't string this wins together. A loss of even one Lord is a major feat. What I'd propose for this is having a 2-part battle. Use the Castle Lands map as the first battle. Historically, there were often skirmishes outside the walls, often with further fortifications that extended outside the walls that attacks would have to move through first. If the attacker won, they then pursuing the defenders who are retreating to the inner keep and play the second battle out on the Siege! map. Both maps are pretty neutral, no real advantage to either side, but the fact that the attacker would have to win 2 battles in a row but the defender only needs to win 1 would give an advantage to the defender.
To better balance this in the case where there are multiple lords defending the castle, there would need to be only one victory from any attacker on the Castle Lands map and then each subsequent battle would be on Siege! So if there are 3 lords, the attacker would have to win once on Castle Lands and then 3 times on Siege! to successfully take the castle. Defenders would fight but ultimately abandon outer defenses during sieges which were then either occupied by the attackers or destroyed and made unusable. To keep this from making defending overpowered, if the defender lost on Castle Lands but managed to win on Siege!, there should be a number of turns required for defenders to re-establish defenses outside the castle, and re-instate the Castle Lands map in any future defenses of that castle. This way, if one lord were to successfully attack and win on Castle Lands, but fail to completely conquer the castle, a second lord waiting to besiege the castle would not have to fight on Castle Lands the next turn.
I honestly really like this idea, my main concern is with time. Sieges did / could take a very long time (usually months) and in game that same length on siege potentially could take weeks of the game, if not a month or two (possibly). But potentially adding anothe rbattle taking place before hand, and the possibility of having to defeat 1,2,3+ defenders back to back. This could potentially drag a single assault on a castle for 3+ months I'm guessing and really, really slow the game down? While I love it for the realism, I am questioning whether or not its practical in this type of setting. Its not like these are speeders getting played out for instant results. (though it will be interesting to see if any sides do some Real time games, which would cause some significant intresting thigns to come up potentially for others).
As I said in an answer to someone else, I think this is kinda a clan area experiment. IF its really popular and people really enjoy it, there will probably be more of these to follow and will see quite a bit of "tweaks" based on lessons learned. Now, if the castle sieges end up being a funky situation in this first edition, I could definitely see implimenting something like this in version 2.0 if it came to it. Also, I have a quick question for clarification on battle outcomes. You state the results if the attacker wins attacking a city or castle. They capture the defending lord and decide what to do with him/her. What happens should the defender win. Do they capture the attacking lord in question? Or does the attacking lord retreat with their tail between their legs?
The defender gets the same decision, at the end of engagement one of the Lords will end up in custody of the other and a decision will be made.
In my first edition of the draft rules, I actually had ambushes a little stronger in which there was a 1/10 chance that the ambush was so successful you kidnapped the opposing Lord without a game battle. However, I deemed it to strong due to the other rules that go timplimented regarding the limit of how many Lords per game (15). In just one of my play tests, i actually landed x3 ambushes this way and realized while that was very lucky and unusual, it could really impact the game to much. The pro to idea was that less skilled clans would have a 1/10 chance to possible kidnap a very valuble Lord that the other clans would be very keen on seeing returned and have negotiating power.
