All your base are belong to us... or
Expand your cabals influence.

I know someone mentioned this (or something like it) but I'd very much like to see something added to the CTF cabal wars. What I propose is a way for each cabal to earn points toward expanding their cabals influence on the areas around them.

For instance, battle might earn points by killing mages (PC and NPCs) destroying magic items, holding enemy cabal items, and that sort of thing. The benefits would be multiple in both RP and PK areas. For instance, battle would be motivated to go kill NPC mages (if they're bored or no one to hunt etc), which they have little reason to do at the moment, thus furthing the rpness of the cabal and in return they might get expanded influence around their cabal hq, like the ruins of ostil becoming no recall or somesuch. Since Valg says we should put numbers, I'm trying to convey general idea without going into specifics.

I was thinking it would be best to test the idea out with Empire, since they would have the most straightforward points system... namely, donations = points. They could expand their influence, and tax and whatnot. It could be a trial basis just for them, to see how feasible such a system would be going forward.

Things get a little murky on how say Scion might earn points, but I have ideas for most of the other cabals if anyone is interested.

Obviously this would be a system that would get increasily difficult to maintain, so one cabal couldn't come to power and hold areas idefinitely because it would be impossible to maintain etc.

Also, to minimize the neccessary rewriting of areas, it would be best to add little tags where appropriate as an added description to rooms, ala signs and whatnot. Like rager controlled areas might have a flag added that says "This area seems devoid of magic, and the weave is weak all around you." or something similar. Might also only be detectable by those with detect magic. Empire might have centurions at exits entrances, outlander might turn areas wilderness etc.

asdf

This isn't something I'd personally be interested in working on.* It's a lot lot lot lot lot of work for something that I'm not convinced makes the game better.

*There's something that I might be interested in working on that could be seen as a variant of a subset of this theme, but let's not go into that. :)

The strong get stronger, the downtrodden are trodden down more. Bandwagon hopping is bad enough without additional incentive to be on the "winning" team.

And I'll outline why. The way I envision it, with the Empire since thats my "test case" would be that the emporer and perhaps sect leaders would recieve some sort of message when a points threshold is reached... Like "Sizing up the treasuries you feel you have enough influence and money to raise an army." Then you go, and claim some area, perhaps with some sort of conquering deal I dunno. Now, the Empire owns this area. They impose some sort of tax upon all the merchants, so they get some gold coming in, but the overall donation depreciation increases. Now in order to hold this area, they have to keep centurions stationed at strategic points. So long as their gold remains above a certain threshold they can continue to replace centurions that get killed, but it costs to rehire them. Now maybe they can afford to hold Balator, more or less indefinitely, but it costs money per hour to maintain (centurion salary) and money to set up (army raising costs and replacement cents). Now a really powerful empire might be able to maintain a few areas, but once you extend to far, they wouldn't be able to protect all the cents, and a smart and quick group could kill them off, costing the empire loads of cash. Now once they drop below the threshhold, there is a rebellion, which costs them cash to suppress so it doesn't spread. Like if they were holding hamsah and balator, but hamsah was attacked and the power undermined, they'd not only lose those points for cents etc, but also a quelling cache that makes it so it is that much easier to take the next area. (BTW I use centurions to mean normal guards, because unless the tolls were seriously relaxed, it'd make these areas unpassable.)

You said that Empire was your "test case". But I claimed that you chose a test case in which your situation is most convenient and sensible to implement, as Empire is the only cabal that is based on conquest.


Fortress conquers: all evil mobs are gone? Guards will autoattack evils?

Where will goodies rank?

Outlander conquers: all merchants and guards are gone and area slowly turns to wilderness?

Where will people buy potions? Eastern road as wilderness is fun for newbies.

Outlander: Earn points by killing cabal enemies, vandalizing shops, burning towns, destroying adamantite/coins, etc.

They may not be based on conquest, but they certainly aren't fans of towns, so when they "take over" an area, presumably, they burn it to the ground, and wild plants begin to grow, turn the area into wilderness while they hold it. Presumably, spreading your cabals influence would have to be area by area, so "taking over" Eastern by Outlanders would be difficult to the point of being nearly impossible. They would have to spread over the ocean and through Hamsah. Say they spread to Arkham, and it's wilderness. Perhaps the only major change is that guards don't auto attack criminals. But tribunal and certainly the empire is going to work to undo this sort of thing, burning the foliage, that sort of thing, so I think turning Eastern into wilderness is a little beyond what Outlander could hope to accomplish. The points neccessary to spread that far would be presumably (for the very balance reasons you cite) too much for them to maintain, or even get to.

Mostly I see this as a cabal holding a city (or turning it wild in this case) so perhaps Eastern wouldn't even be an option for an cabal to "hold".

For the fort, they could claim Voralian, guards could bar entrance to evil chars, shoppies refuse to sell to them etc. Hold Tir Talath, perhaps have patrolling guards along the road, that sort of thing. It isn't like ranking areas will go poof... Restricting it to cities and towns might make it more consistant, and perhaps just having guard types roaming major roads between held cities to aleviated the OMFG Eastern is wilderness fear.