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Thread: Elven armies

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    Elven armies

    Here is a new rule for elven realms. Every time an elven unit is raised, one population level is subtracted from the elven province it was raised from. The reverse holds true, every elven unit disbanded, raises the province level by one.

    Pros: It is an attempt to capture the feel of the elves within the rules. Every elven life should be extremely precious. War should only be a last resort, not because of moral qualms or fears, but because the loss of elven life on the battlefield costs the elves their most scarce and precious resource.

    Con: it is a very severe limitation on the elves. Someone could use this rule to move populations around. Raise units from several provinces, then disband into one. Could be useful for Tuarhievel should the guilds be developed.

    Other: This also limits the elven military power that was greatly raised under the BRCS, because of their virtual guilds and the huge revenue increase derived from them.
    Their is no neccesity, in my mind, to apply the same logic of exponentially increasing population, with higher province levels found in human realms. Elves are an alien race, and so can be treated as such. This also sets the remaining elven populations at a low level. In the thosands for most evlen realms. I like that feel, other might not.
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    Birthright Developer Raesene Andu's Avatar
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    I think the penalty it forces on elves is far to severe to make it a usable rule, unless you really hate elves. The fact that elven units are already twice as expensive as other races should be enough to reduce the power of elven realms. IMO elven nations only become a problem if you let their wizards run rampant. Some of those elves are fairly high level wizards.

    On the matter of virtual guilds, this is an optional rule I believe, so if it is causing a problem of too much income, then don't allow it. Of course, you could always only allow it for human wizards, as most elven lands don't have guild holdings so why should they have virtual guilds?
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    Senior Member teloft's Avatar
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    I like this new elven feel.

    My imagenation took me flying hig, reading this.

    where the elven population levels are composed of pre-created units, with lodes of experiences and stuff. But to link them with the land, imovable elves.

    so I have a elven provience level 3, it is composed of 3 experienced units. I mobolize thees units by paying the rasing fee, or spending rp. The provience drops down to lv0 temporarly, I would write it, lv 0 (3). The cultural infrastructure is still in plase even thow everyone worthy is off figthing, or hepling the figthing population, working ase page or begin part of the make up team. ..

    the provience is penalized until the units return and are alowed to settle.

    the elves live long lifes and have a lot of experiences, so it would make sence thet thay have a lot of figthing experiences, working much better then other units.

    If unit is killed off, the provience is penalized becous key figures are missing in the economy.

    I would alow increased revenue from newly resetteld proviences, there is a lot more welth flowing around sins all the tribute from the rasing of units.

    the unit is marked by the home provience it belongs to

    if the player wisses to resettle the population in a nother proviance, then the economy structure must be created by a standard build action / rais provience level, but the dificulty will be easy. for part of the compoment the player is using is a unit of experienced population ready to resettle. if unsucsesfull, the unit will remain active and unsettled, but the cost of the action will be lost.

    then the unit will gain a new home provience, but i would keep the old provience name on the unit as experience note. and if the player wants to put the population back to its old provience it sould be easy.

    i would also like to add a new funtion, were the player can spend rp ot gp to influence a unit of elven population to doble its apperant economy activity. so it would count 2 proviences levels in stead of one temporary for x numer of months. giving off more revenues and increasing the active lv of the provience.

    thees rules will not afect any holdings in the provience, so if i have law lv 3 in the provience it will not be reduced to 0 witch then I have to rase back up to 3 with rule action, it sould not be this way. but alternatively supressed only for revenues ofcours, but when the populaion returns, the same holdings and relations return.

    ..

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    Birthright Developer irdeggman's Avatar
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    I agree with Ian on this one.

    If using the virtual guild (variant rule) elves still have in general less income than other domains.

    They have no temples.

    They have limited Law holdings (see the reference to non-lawful alignment for the race).

    They trade only sparingly with other cultures (i.e., limited trade routes) - remember that a trade route must still connect two dissimilar privinces/cultures and be connected via a road or sea trade route. Well most elven provinces are too similar to be clasified as dissimilar and then the ones that are would still need a road "through human or demi-human" controlled territory, almost all of which are "enemies" to the elves - so how long would such a road/trade route be alllowed to exist?

    Really elven provinces having so much GB that they can support vast armies is not really an issue.
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  5. #5

    WHat?

    why in the world would raising 200 elven archers reduce their population by as much as tens of thousands? (ie level 10 population, being taken down to 9, not that there are any 10 elven provinces, but just used to highlight the example) now I realize that a war camp can manytimes be 2 to 3 times the size of the army with entertainers, courts, merchants, and whores but ..... man somebody must hate elves.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thorogood Roele
    why in the world would raising 200 elven archers reduce their population by as much as tens of thousands? (ie level 10 population, being taken down to 9, not that there are any 10 elven provinces, but just used to highlight the example) now I realize that a war camp can manytimes be 2 to 3 times the size of the army with entertainers, courts, merchants, and whores but ..... man somebody must hate elves.
    The highest level elven province is 6, most are 2-3. Nothing even close to a 10, and so no need to consider that extreme. As I said in my post their is no need to assume that elven province numbers represent the same level of population numbers as in human provinces. It does become clunky with the higher level provinces, but they are very few. But it is no less clunky than raising a province from 5 to 6 in a season. Increasing the population by many thousands in 3 months.

    I actually love elves, but would like to see their scarcity in mumbers captured in game mechanics. The elves are very few, and even the loss of a company of archers should be a loss.

    This rule would hit them, but not as much as it would hit a human land, since the majority of elven income now comes from virtual guilds rather than as landed regents.

    Because of virtual guilds, the income of elven regents has more than doubled from 2ed. That is huge, as they can now support more than twice the number of soldiers. When you mix that with their high bloodlines and high magical abilities they do become very powerful realms. This would weaken them, but not necesarily as much as they gained from 3ed. It also better also captures the spirit of a dying race which is being whittled down with every conflict.
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    Birthright Developer Raesene Andu's Avatar
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    Yes the surviving elven realms are fairly powerful, but if you don't use the virtual guild variant rule (which I consider to be unbalanced for elven realms due to their 9th level source holdings) then they aren't more powerful than a similar sized human realm.

    If you look at the Sielwode. It brings in 36 GB/turn (assuming maxed out law holdings, less otherwise), with no temple holdings, trade routes, or guilds to increase that income.

    It's closest human neighbour, Elinie brings in 24 GB/turn from provinces and law holdings, but other regents in the provinces make a total of 26 GB/turn and there may be trade routes as well.

    Elinie has a lower population (in terms of province levels) but makes up for it by having guilds and temples, so in if you compare the two, the elves don't really overwhelm the human nation. Elven units also cost more. Ten units of elven archers, for example, would cost 40 GB to muster, 20 GB/turn to maintain as active, or 10 GB/turn to maintain as garrisoned. For 40 GB, Elinie could must 20 lesser units, or 10 units of elite infantry. I don't consider elven archers to be the equivalent of elite infantry, or 2 human units. This gives the humans the advantage, and they can get the benefit of priest realm spells.

    However, once you add virtual guilds into the equation eveything changes. The Sielwode gains an additional 30 GB of income. This unbalances everything which is why I consider that rule to be unbalanced. It works great for human regents who may only have 1-2 level 5-6 source holdings, but doesn't work well for elves who don't reduce the source levels of their lands and may have several level 9 source holdings.
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    I agree with you, without virtual guilds this would be a gross handicap. I've only played in campaigns where they have used that rule (that I knew of), and quite frankly forgot it was a variant.
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    Shouldn't elves, or at least the remaining elven lands, have that advantage if only to survive? Diplomacy is going to work against them the moment they go on the offensive anyways, right? Heck, even with their bonus to Charisma, they have that racial penalty of -4 for diplomacy. So, fine, they have a nice, big elite army.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Raesene Andu
    However, once you add virtual guilds into the equation eveything changes. The Sielwode gains an additional 30 GB of income. This unbalances everything which is why I consider that rule to be unbalanced. It works great for human regents who may only have 1-2 level 5-6 source holdings, but doesn't work well for elves who don't reduce the source levels of their lands and may have several level 9 source holdings.
    Wouldn't it be better to use something like the rule from the original Book of Magecraft - a source of level 7+ gives a guild (0), and only for the purposes of establishing trade routes?

    That would give the Elves the opportunity to get some additional resources, while removing their huge profits from the current virtual guilds.

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