Logistics and Dragons [No Kaeliks]

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 4:55 pm

Sergarr wrote:Yes, I know that, that's why I've put in enemy encounters with CR dependent on your wealth, so that if you have more wealth than you should own by WBL, you get wrecked by monsters which are way above your paygrade. Unless you're saying that powerful items can replace the class levels, that is. If this is indeed the case, then downgrade the WBL table for high levels so that you can't do that.

Rather than multiquote and get into the fine bits (although I will for the Gnolls, in just a bit), I'm gonna take aim at your central premise. While "if you get swag above your station, the DM is going to send gianter monsters to slap you down and take it" may have seemed like a reasonable balancing system when Gygax promulgated it in 1977, it is in fact both insulting and ineffective.

In actual practice, when the DM declares an arms race against the players, it does not inspire the players to back down. They look at the power level their characters have achieved and the power level of the opposition sent against them and they reach for more power, not less. In Call of Cthulhu, if the Keeper responds to the players running around with shot guns by slapping them down with monsters too big for the shotguns to handle, the players will attempt to get machine guns with their next characters. So it is. So it has always been. While the MC cannot possibly "lose" any arms race, declaring one has never and will never inspire moderation on the part of the players. It's a plan which has been tried over and over and over again since the Gerald Ford administration and it has never worked. And it will never work. Because it is a bad plan.

Sergarr wrote:If we're going into high levels, Gnolls with spears will obviously become less effective than level-appropriate magic items, but who said that Gnolls are your only choice? It is very obvious that your dungeon will require higher and higher level guards at higher levels - the same way the NPC dungeons have higher level monsters. After that, it's only a question of balancing the magic items and monster guard costs with each other on every level, which admittedly sounds difficult, but it should not be completely impossible.

Sigh. The problem isn't that one Gnoll spearman is a pretty useful mercenary adjunct at 1st level and twenty Gnoll spearmen is only situationally useful at 6th level. The problem isn't even that a Gnoll spearman is a useful mercenary companion at 1st level and isn't useful at 11th level while a Fire Giant rock hurler is still useful at 11th level. The problem is that while the Gnoll Spearman is pretty useful at 1st level and the twenty Gnoll spearmen is only situationally useful at 6th level, the Goblin Adept with a magic missile wand is only situationally useful at 1st level and twenty of them will turn 6th level into swiss cheese.

There simply isn't a stable relationship between homies and upgrades to your pointy bits, and no price scale incentives can ever create a stable system.

maglag wrote:Step 1: There's no Wish spell, certainly not in CR 8 monsters.

Shut up and walk away. The Wish Economy is not about casting actual wishes, that's just the name. The Wish economy is about things that you have to buy with astral diamonds and shit rather than gold. Any critique of the wish economy that starts off with anything at all about the actual Wish spell is so fucking ignorant that I do not have to read any more of it. Your critique is stupid and you should feel stupid. Your objection has been raised by dumb people who were still smarter than you in 2006, and it was irrelevant and unhelpful at the time. It hasn't gotten any better now that I'm doctor living on another continent.

Stop talking. For the children.

-Username17

Sergarr · Post by **Sergarr** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 5:22 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: Rather than multiquote and get into the fine bits (although I will for the Gnolls, in just a bit), I'm gonna take aim at your central premise. While "if you get swag above your station, the DM is going to send gianter monsters to slap you down and take it" may have seemed like a reasonable balancing system when Gygax promulgated it in 1977, it is in fact both insulting and ineffective.

In actual practice, when the DM declares an arms race against the players, it does not inspire the players to back down. They look at the power level their characters have achieved and the power level of the opposition sent against them and they reach for more power, not less. In Call of Cthulhu, if the Keeper responds to the players running around with shot guns by slapping them down with monsters too big for the shotguns to handle, the players will attempt to get machine guns with their next characters. So it is. So it has always been. While the MC cannot possibly "lose" any arms race, declaring one has never and will never inspire moderation on the part of the players. It's a plan which has been tried over and over and over again since the Gerald Ford administration and it has never worked. And it will never work. Because it is a bad plan.

Since when did I say that I wanted the players to "back down"? I thought that the whole point of the "Logistics & Dragons" mini-game was for your party to expand their influence in the world until they eventually end up ruling the entire country/continent/plane/multiverse? The "wealth-based encounters" are not to make them back down, it's to make sure that they have fun while doing the "conquering the world" part, by providing them with more-or-less challenging opponents.

I'm pretty sure it has been established multiple times on this forum that the most fun part of D&D is combat, and combat is what these rules provide in ample quantities. So logically you should maximize the fun part of activity (i.e. fighting challenging encounters and using gold gained from defeating them to better prepare for the next ones), and minimize the un-fun one (i.e. counting how much koku a level 3 orc with +10 to Craftsmanship will produce, compared to a level 8 halfling with +4 to Robbing graves).

FrankTrollman wrote: Sigh. The problem isn't that one Gnoll spearman is a pretty useful mercenary adjunct at 1st level and twenty Gnoll spearmen is only situationally useful at 6th level. The problem isn't even that a Gnoll spearman is a useful mercenary companion at 1st level and isn't useful at 11th level while a Fire Giant rock hurler is still useful at 11th level. The problem is that while the Gnoll Spearman is pretty useful at 1st level and the twenty Gnoll spearmen is only situationally useful at 6th level, the Goblin Adept with a magic missile wand is only situationally useful at 1st level and twenty of them will turn 6th level into swiss cheese.

There simply isn't a stable relationship between homies and upgrades to your pointy bits, and no price scale incentives can ever create a stable system.

Okay, now it seems more understandable. The problem here is the lack of proper scaleablility of combat, same reason why there are still no decent mass combat systems for D&D. The only solution I can think about here is to artifically limit the number of mercs you can bring to a battle, but it would not remove the problem completely. Sadly, aside from switching to a system designed with mass-combat in mind, I've got nothing.

flare22 · Post by **flare22** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 5:59 pm

Not really a pressing questions compared to the others but I'm curious whethrr psionics will be used in this setting

schpeelah · Post by **schpeelah** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 6:17 pm

flare22 wrote:Not really a pressing questions compared to the others but I'm curious whethrr psionics will be used in this setting

Well not psionics-psionics because the system has few unique effects and a badly designed power schedule. But ilithids and the like are psychic even when you're using normal casting rules for them, and if that sort of thing counts then yes, psionics is in.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:29 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:I've been told that other people think there are different solutions to this issue, but I've never seen one that actually worked. I've seen people try to argue against the Wish Economy concept for literally ten actual real world years, and not one person has provided an alternate workable model where building a tower and owning some land was neither pointless nor broken. The higher tier currency works, and any other patch you did to D&D to solve those issues would by necessity be much more complicated.

Well there's an obvious answer for this campaign: tower ownership is the same thing as magic sword ownership.

Not in the sense that building a keep makes the owner's weapon attacks be +1. But in the sense that the 2000gp in material components required to construct a +1 weapon are actually "a properly constructed building worth 2000gp built on a ley line somewhere to provide the requisite mana flow". The building can also have other functions (nothing says your 2000gp tower can't consist of a 1000gp combat training area at the ground level and a 1000gp basic chapel on the top floor, as long as the feng shui is right) and it probably should: if someone else seizes control of the building, they can redirect the mana away from your items and use them to imbue their own.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:22 pm

Sergarr wrote:I'm pretty sure it has been established multiple times on this forum that the most fun part of D&D is combat, and combat is what these rules provide in ample quantities. So logically you should maximize the fun part of activity (i.e. fighting challenging encounters and using gold gained from defeating them to better prepare for the next ones), and minimize the un-fun one (i.e. counting how much koku a level 3 orc with +10 to Craftsmanship will produce, compared to a level 8 halfling with +4 to Robbing graves).

The entire purpose of Logistics & Dragons is to figure out how to make the Dungeon Keeper / Orc Caesar minigame fun. If your solution is to simply ignore supply lines and build times and minion production schedules and shit, you're not playing Logistics & Dragons. We know that we can play Dungeons & Dragons with any and all questions of rulership pushed to the side or ignored altogether. But the purpose of this discussion is not whether we can do that, but whether we can take the rulership aspects and put them front and center and make a fun game that way.

I would submit that the answer is "yes," but that definitely such a game is obviously not for everyone. Also too, that I don't think there's anyone who doesn't recognize that there are several pitfalls in making D&D go in that direction. The Stronghold Builder's Guide mostly has pretty solid numbers in it, but the way that building anything at all interacts with the WBL system from the basic system is incredibly destructive at both ends.

But I'm pretty sure that if your plan is to eliminate figuring out whether you have enough supplies to feed your Orcs that you have missed the point of this project. Figuring out whether you have enough supplies to feed your Orcs is this project. That is fun for some people, and those people are the target audience here.

-Username17

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:25 pm

Grek wrote:Well there's an obvious answer for this campaign: tower ownership is the same thing as magic sword ownership.

Hey look, it's my old sword vault you need to keep your sword charged up idea from Barby Mansions and more recently from my home brew rpgs.

Though I do personally use a tiered currency to segregate out the peasant level swords from sword vaults completely. You may find that working with anything resembling 3.x GP pricing is still going to have other major issues.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 11:00 pm

An an aside on what a "Gil" defines; since this is an abstraction of D&D could "Gil" be set to a metric that D&D actually uses? Specifically, I'm referring to the fact that while "100 gold pieces" is a number people can understand, "1 pound" of gold is a more universally understood metric of market value for most people. Which would place the 'value' of a "Gil" at 50 gp. Alternately, a "Gil" could equal a kilogram of gold (i.e. 110 gp). I know that the reason Gil were set to be a hectogold (i.e. 100 gp) was to make things somewhat easier to calculate; but at the same time I feel that maintaining this specific grognardism of D&D (and explaining that it's based Gygax idiocy) will make a player of L&D: A) rightfully resent the stupidity of having only 50 gp per pound and B) be glad that they can describe their value in terms of pounds of gold.

For example:

Gil: A Gil is an abstracted measure of wealth that is equivalent to the market value of one pound of high purity (95%+) gold currency.

In ancient human times this mass of gold was divided into a variety of metrics including: ~19 ingots of 24 grams (e.g. "Alephs"/Oxen, aka pre-Alexandrian temple donation currencies); 56.7 coins of 8 grams each (i.e. the Roman Aureus of 1BCE-4CE); 100.78 coins of 4.5 grams each (i.e. the Roman Solidus).

However, as this is a based Gygaxian setting in the heavy metal post-apocalyptic futures of a Logistics & Dragons; the amount of pieces (not "coins") is approximately 50 pieces of 9 grams each.

Finally, while this has explicitly been described as not being a Dominions influenced game, at a strategic level measuring wealth by weight of metallic trade backing helps to make people think in a more strategic manner.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 11:51 pm

If we're dead set on using Gil as a unit of measure, it should probably be defined in terms of platinum, since that's the next highest value coinage. 1 Gil=1lb platinum=500gp seems like a reasonable exchange rate.

That said, I don't really see a reason not to just denominate everything in gold pieces.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:07 am

Using Gil as a unit is completely worthless unless, whatever it's scale, it at the VERY least is something you work with in whole units only.

If you are ever breaking your Gil to fractions of Gil in GP/PP/CP/Whatever as part of your, apparently endlessly stupid calculations about kobold crafting hammers, then it has not only just short of no value for speeding up your accounting, it in fact worsens your accounting complexity. Having a smaller number to track IS, just a little, better, but NOT if it generates/deals in fractions or change in lesser denominations.

Now, for Gil to have a a reason for being beyond merely being a way of removing the zero's from the end of your GP based numbers on your giant accounting sheet you need to do things which this insane plan is not remotely prepared to do, like make Gil a segregated currency not exchangeable for coins. Ideally your dungeons would be operating on something more like a wish economy currency. But considering the inmates in charge of this asylum that isn't going to happen. So in the mean time, just remember that knocking zeros off the end of your giant numbers is only doable if your giant numbers ACTUALLY HAVE ZEROS ON THE ENDS.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:38 am

I am not dead set on Gil. While I agree that there is value in distinguishing value from metal that has value, D&D already uses "gp" as the former rather than the latter. If you look through price lists, things are not denominated in pounds of gold, they are denominated in what is essentially an arbitrary unit of account. And that unit of account happens to be called "gp."

-Username17

Sergarr · Post by **Sergarr** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:15 am

FrankTrollman wrote:
Sergarr wrote:I'm pretty sure it has been established multiple times on this forum that the most fun part of D&D is combat, and combat is what these rules provide in ample quantities. So logically you should maximize the fun part of activity (i.e. fighting challenging encounters and using gold gained from defeating them to better prepare for the next ones), and minimize the un-fun one (i.e. counting how much koku a level 3 orc with +10 to Craftsmanship will produce, compared to a level 8 halfling with +4 to Robbing graves).
The entire purpose of Logistics & Dragons is to figure out how to make the Dungeon Keeper / Orc Caesar minigame fun. If your solution is to simply ignore supply lines and build times and minion production schedules and shit, you're not playing Logistics & Dragons. We know that we can play Dungeons & Dragons with any and all questions of rulership pushed to the side or ignored altogether. But the purpose of this discussion is not whether we can do that, but whether we can take the rulership aspects and put them front and center and make a fun game that way.

I would submit that the answer is "yes," but that definitely such a game is obviously not for everyone. Also too, that I don't think there's anyone who doesn't recognize that there are several pitfalls in making D&D go in that direction. The Stronghold Builder's Guide mostly has pretty solid numbers in it, but the way that building anything at all interacts with the WBL system from the basic system is incredibly destructive at both ends.

But I'm pretty sure that if your plan is to eliminate figuring out whether you have enough supplies to feed your Orcs that you have missed the point of this project. Figuring out whether you have enough supplies to feed your Orcs is this project. That is fun for some people, and those people are the target audience here.

-Username17

Okay, then.

Wouldn't it then make sense to start with delineating the economy structure of typical overland stuff like villages and cities, first, to make sure that the chosen system actually works for the world-at-large and is stable in the long-term, and only after that start to think about the "dungeon economy"?

I don't think I've yet saw anyone discussing L&D in this thread talk about how cities function in their system, which seems like a major missing point .

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 10:02 am

Surface civilization exists in two forms: Farms and Towns. Farms produce Koku and consume a portion of it. Towns produce Gold and consume Koku. Each Farm is 20 acres, and produces a number of Koku equal to the hex's fertility. The base fertility of a hex is 20. Koku trade with gold at the rate of 1 gp per month up to the trade limit of the region (and the number of Koku and Gold available for trade, obviously).

Each Hex can support up to 1000 Farms times the arability coefficient (which is normally less than 1, but can be higher if you have levels of underdark and cloud islands where you are also farming. Base Grasslands have Arability of 0.8, meaning they can support 800 farms.

There are two things about Koku that you care about. The first is the total amount that is being produced, and the second is the amount that is paid in rents and taxes to you personally. The region's Koku total is the population cap. The amount you get is how much you can spend on hiring laborers, soldiers, and monsters that will work for Koku (or ship to other regions in exchange for gold). It is assumed that the invisible hand steps in and all the laborers who aren't working for you are working as valets for clerks for day labor for farmers or whatever the fuck. Food gets to them somehow and they don't do any work for you personally.

Every Farm eats 5 of its own Koku one way or the other (and adds five to the population count). Also it provides 1 draftable person. You can double the number of draftees per farm or have them eat less than 5 koku by being "cruel and unreasonable" to your subjects. The amount of taxes you can squeeze out of your farms is up to the fertility minus the amount the people eat. Morale effects are handed out based not on how much you take away in taxes, but on how much you leave behind. Slaves, for example, are allowed to keep zero Koku (everything past what they eat is given up the chain as taxes).

Towns are generally one hex big and don't farm. They make 1 gp per person per month times the development level. The base development level of a Town is 5. Taxes, like for farms, generate discontent based on how little you leave behind, not on how much you add. Thus, bigger and more developed cities are generally happier (though the temptation to squeeze extra gold out of them is obviously higher because there is more to take). Towns have to buy all their Koku from the surrounding Farmlands unless other arrangements are made, and that money is lost before calculating how much money is being left behind for purposes of happiness.

So for example: a D&D "Large City" has 21,000 people in it. That means it needs 21,000 Koku. In the surrounding hexes, there are 1400 Farms, which produce 28,000 Koku and consume 7,000 Koku. So the total population is at cap, and if any more people want to move in you're going to need to set up more farms or start buying food from overseas. Every month, there are 21,000 Koku up for grab for taxes (which must be spent in town, or the city will starve), and the city produces 105,000 gp, of which a high tax rate would fork over 42,000 gp to the ruler. If the city had increased the development level to 8, a high tax rate would give out 105,000 gp. Per month.

Maintaining a city of that size requires patrols. So you'll need to hire several hundred soldiers at a cost of 6 gp per month each. But you'll note that it's still an income that is heuge like X Box compared to the cost of a magic item or a war griffin or something. Owning a city is a big deal and allows you to get pretty much anything you want from the gold economy up to and including outfitting armies to go fight other cities.

-Username17

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 11:51 am

Dungeons meanwhile can recruit a minion for every Koku they bring in, with minion quality being determined by the amount of surplus. If you have a whole herd of oxen just sitting around, a dragon might seriously just turn up and join you in exchange for the right to eat them. Gold meanwhile can be spent to improve your dungeon, buy magical swag or to hire personally selected mercenaries. Undead get a special call out here: while individual skeletons and zombies consume 0 Koku, vampires often expect lavish accommodations while necromancers will expect you to sell off all that useless grain and buy them some more onyxes. This can end up being cheaper than living minions, but doesn't mean you get to opt out of the economy entirely. You can gain both Koku and gold via banditry, pillaging, plundering or trade.

Banditry works just like taxation, except that it requires that you devote minions to it. If your minions beat the local town's soldiers in battle or evade them via stealth, you get to set a "banditry rate" for that month and extract that percentage of the Koku and gold being produced in or traded by that hex. This will in turn lower happiness and possibly inspire local rulers to intervene by increasing patrols if your banditry becomes disruptive enough that doing so becomes more economical than just absorbing the losses. After all, soldiers cost money and a limited amount of slack is left in most tax systems to account for unexpected famines or bands of kobolds roving the countryside with short swords and santa sacks.

Pillaging destroys Farms in a Hex, but gives you their entire Koku output for that month directly. You need to send in at least 5 minions per Farm you want to pillage (any less and they can't carry it all) plus however many (more) you think you need to defeat or evade the patrols. Again, if the patrols defeat your raiders, you don't get anything. A hex repopulates a number of pillaged Farms equal to its Arability each month, which comes out to 1.2% of the Hex's maximum each year.

Plundering is the same basic concept as Pillaging, except you're attacking a Town instead of a Farm. Doing so requires at least one minion per 25 population and decreases the Development level of the Town by 1. In exchange the raiders get 1gp per population if they survive against the guards. If the Development of a Town is reduced below 1, the entire place is razed and there is no longer even a Town there. Refugees scatter to nearby Town Hexes if possible and/or die of starvation if there aren't any Towns that can support them within a month's travel.

These first three options invite reprisal from the local authorities and any adventurers who they choose to sponsor. These attacks on your Dungeon are collectively referred to as "Incursions" and are the major reason why you shouldn't devote all of your minions to banditry and raiding. If an Incursion is successful, you lose all of your accumulated gold (the adventurers pocket it) and half of your minions abandon you on top of any who were killed.

Trade lets you peacefully exchange Koku you have on hand for gold and vis versa. Normally this is done at a 1:1 ratio just like between Farms and Towns, but the local ruler can elect to impose legal obstacles to this via questing and politicking on their end in order to make the ratio become as bad as 5:1 against you both ways. That said, if you haven't been actively robbing and murdering their people, most rulers won't bother. And in order to get Koku and Gold without robbing or murdering anyone, you need to plant fungus gardens to grow your own Koku or dig mines in order to give your Dungeon a Development level that lets it produce gold like it were a Town.

Sergarr · Post by **Sergarr** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 12:51 pm

FrankTrollman wrote: Towns are generally one hex big and don't farm. They make 1 gp per person per month times the development level. The base development level of a Town is 5.

-snip-

So for example: a D&D "Large City" has 21,000 people in it. That means it needs 21,000 Koku. In the surrounding hexes, there are 1400 Farms, which produce 28,000 Koku and consume 7,000 Koku. So the total population is at cap, and if any more people want to move in you're going to need to set up more farms or start buying food from overseas. Every month, there are 21,000 Koku up for grab for taxes (which must be spent in town, or the city will starve), and the city produces 105,000 gp, of which a high tax rate would fork over 42,000 gp to the ruler. If the city had increased the development level to 8, a high tax rate would give out 105,000 gp. Per month.

Maintaining a city of that size requires patrols. So you'll need to hire several hundred soldiers at a cost of 6 gp per month each. But you'll note that it's still an income that is heuge like X Box compared to the cost of a magic item or a war griffin or something. Owning a city is a big deal and allows you to get pretty much anything you want from the gold economy up to and including outfitting armies to go fight other cities.

Okay, so what prevents the biggest city in the world from putting all its spare gold into improving development level, creating a positive-feedback and thus allowing it to eventually dominate the whole world's gold economy part? There should be something that prevents the biggest city from getting bigger faster than every other city, otherwise the whole system is going to eventually result in Mega-City 1 dominating the world.

Also, from where does all that gold come from? The total amount of gold in the world should be a constant, or a relatively slowly changing number, otherwise you would have to account for inflation of prices, and I'm not sure if your vision of Logistics & Dragons allows for that.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:06 pm

Gold is a measure of value, not pieces of precious metal. It's possible to increase value even if the metal increases slowly. Most paymental end up being notation on account, with only small transfers.

Regarding koku, what is the time value? Is it considered steady so farms produce just as much in the winter as summer?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 1:50 pm

Sergarr wrote:Okay, so what prevents the biggest city in the world from putting all its spare gold into improving development level, creating a positive-feedback and thus allowing it to eventually dominate the whole world's gold economy part? There should be something that prevents the biggest city from getting bigger faster than every other city, otherwise the whole system is going to eventually result in Mega-City 1 dominating the world.

Regularly scheduled apocalypses.

mlangsdorf · Post by **mlangsdorf** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:24 pm

The largest city in the world needs the largest set of controlled farms in the world, and may have to go to war in order to secure more land. Also, neighboring cities may decide that instead of joining The World's Largest City Development Race, they may want to invest heavily in armies and get some of that large set of controlled farms for themselves, or decide that the World's Largest City would spend its income better under their control.

Seerow · Post by **Seerow** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 2:46 pm

I'm having trouble understanding the Town development levels and how that affects costs. Is the development level just the track from Village to Metropolis, and each step up modifies the income? If so does that mean that there's no granularity between each town size and any two small cities have the exact same income? What about Metropolises? A Large City is 25,000 while a Metropolis is 25,001+, how is that handled? Are there any situations that would force a city to level down? Are there any incentives to having two smaller towns over one larger city, such as being easier to defend or being more efficient economically up to some point?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 4:59 pm

mlangsdorf wrote:The largest city in the world needs the largest set of controlled farms in the world, and may have to go to war in order to secure more land.

To my knowledge, no large city in history has ever produced enough food from its local farms to feed itself. All the big ones sat on trade hubs and imported heavily (or received imperial tribute, etc.).

Sergarr · Post by **Sergarr** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:31 pm

deaddmwalking wrote:Gold is a measure of value, not pieces of precious metal. It's possible to increase value even if the metal increases slowly. Most paymental end up being notation on account, with only small transfers.

That would still cause inflation, though.

mlangsdorf wrote:The largest city in the world needs the largest set of controlled farms in the world, and may have to go to war in order to secure more land. Also, neighboring cities may decide that instead of joining The World's Largest City Development Race, they may want to invest heavily in armies and get some of that large set of controlled farms for themselves, or decide that the World's Largest City would spend its income better under their control.

That just changes the scenario from "The World's Largest City peacefully dominates everyone with extra-large heaps of gold" to "The World's Largest City uses it's not-extra-but-still-pretty-large heaps of gold to hire The World's Largest Army and go conquer everyone a la Carthago". There would still be a positive-feedback of "more soldiers => more conquered income => even more soldiers".

If I was (hypothetically) doing this, I would try to imitate the physical constraints that limited the development of large cities in our world and world-sweeping armies, i.e. infrastructure and logistics. Supplying people takes time; supplying twice as many people takes more than twice as much time, since the average distance between people and the supply source increases. If the average distance doubles, the amount of supplies required per each act of transportation more than doubles, because you'll lose more of the stuff you're transporting on the way due to inevitable fuckups. Then add in that each person involved in this whole process can't produce their own supplies and thus needs to be supplied, too. And everyone needs to have their salaries paid, too.

In the end, I would get a functional relationship between the total number, type and the overall size of the area with people I need to supply, and the total amount of people, supplies, money and time I need to make it happen. Then I would make a table out of it, use it to make sure that existing cities and villages can maintain themselves logistics-wise, the biggest city can't get much bigger and can't maintain a world-sweeping army by itself, and then feel incredibly stupid because actual logistics are incredibly boring and no one would play such a game. The end.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 7:35 pm

Advanced armies don't find distance much obstacle

K · Post by K » Sun Oct 11, 2015 7:39 pm

Sergarr wrote:
mlangsdorf wrote:The largest city in the world needs the largest set of controlled farms in the world, and may have to go to war in order to secure more land. Also, neighboring cities may decide that instead of joining The World's Largest City Development Race, they may want to invest heavily in armies and get some of that large set of controlled farms for themselves, or decide that the World's Largest City would spend its income better under their control.
That just changes the scenario from "The World's Largest City peacefully dominates everyone with extra-large heaps of gold" to "The World's Largest City uses it's not-extra-but-still-pretty-large heaps of gold to hire The World's Largest Army and go conquer everyone a la Carthago". There would still be a positive-feedback of "more soldiers => more conquered income => even more soldiers".

Only if you never lose.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 7:59 pm

Some unit movement speeds, converted to "hexes per day":
[/td][td]Unit[/td][td]Hexes per day [/td][/tr]


Breathing Heavy Infantry	3
Breathing Light Infantry	4
Breathing Heavy Cavalry	5 (50ft movement speed -> 35ft in heavy armor
Breathing Light Cavalry	8 (60ft movement speed)
Zombie Heavy Infantry	9
Zombie Light Infantry	13
Zombie Heavy Cavalry	16
Zombie Light Cavalry	27
Skeleton Heavy Infantry	27* (Heavy armor impairs running)
Skeleton Light Infantry	55
Skeleton Heavy Cavalry	48* (Heavy armor impairs running)
Skeleton Light Cavalry	110
Adult Red Dragon	27
Old Red Dragon	40
Young Adult Gold Dragon	40
Old Gold Dragon	55
Lantern Archon	Infinity

EDIT: Forgot about armor.

Sergarr · Post by **Sergarr** » Sun Oct 11, 2015 8:26 pm

K wrote:
Sergarr wrote:
mlangsdorf wrote:The largest city in the world needs the largest set of controlled farms in the world, and may have to go to war in order to secure more land. Also, neighboring cities may decide that instead of joining The World's Largest City Development Race, they may want to invest heavily in armies and get some of that large set of controlled farms for themselves, or decide that the World's Largest City would spend its income better under their control.
That just changes the scenario from "The World's Largest City peacefully dominates everyone with extra-large heaps of gold" to "The World's Largest City uses it's not-extra-but-still-pretty-large heaps of gold to hire The World's Largest Army and go conquer everyone a la Carthago". There would still be a positive-feedback of "more soldiers => more conquered income => even more soldiers".
Only if you never lose.

1) It would still work if you're able to win more income than you lose at the same time. It would be slower, but it would still be a positive-feedback loop.
2) The World's Largest Army has a distinctive advantage in "not losing fights" part, due to being supplied by The World's Largest City w/ its conquered territories. Which means that not only it's the largest army, it also has the best stuff that gold can buy.

RadiantPhoenix wrote:Some unit movement speeds, converted to "hexes per day":
[/td][td]Unit[/td][td]Hexes per day [/td][/tr]
Breathing Heavy Infantry 3
Breathing Light Infantry 4
Breathing Heavy Cavalry 5 (50ft movement speed -> 35ft in heavy armor
Breathing Light Cavalry 8 (60ft movement speed)
Zombie Heavy Infantry 9
Zombie Light Infantry 13
Zombie Heavy Cavalry 16
Zombie Light Cavalry 27
Skeleton Heavy Infantry 27* (Heavy armor impairs running)
Skeleton Light Infantry 55
Skeleton Heavy Cavalry 48* (Heavy armor impairs running)
Skeleton Light Cavalry 110
Adult Red Dragon 27
Old Red Dragon 40
Young Adult Gold Dragon 40
Old Gold Dragon 55
Lantern Archon Infinity

EDIT: Forgot about armor.

So I guess Skeletons are the best non-flying troops for an Evil Empire, then? High mobility means that an army composed of skeletons can chose its battles and force the opposing side on the defensive. Though that "infinite" speed Lantern Archon is kind of worrying - it seems that distance starts to become meaningless once casual teleport comes into play.