City Siege

[Glitch]

That's perfect. And it's not even difficult to do. I love it.

We could do it like this:

Level 1 - 60 upped cards
Level 2 - 90 upped cards
Level 3 - 120 upped cards
Level 4 - 150 upped cards
Level 5 - 180 upped cards

Each city would start out as level 1 with 60 cards. They could then defend the city by building a deck from those 60 cards.

King could upgrade defenses using the treasury of that element.

These city defense decks...who's going to play them?

...the team.

[Glitch]

Real sieges work by surrounding a city and cutting off its resources.

Maybe for every round your team "surrounds" a city, the city loses a bit of garrison?

You need at least three players to do it, making a triangle around the city, but more is better.  For every player over three "surrounding" the city, the city should lose so many upgraded cards per round, until they're all unupped, at which point it starts losing straight cards.

So if it were 10...

A minimum siege would unupgrade an opponent's deck every turn, destroying a minimum fortified city within 4 rounds without a fight.  A 6 man team could do it in 2.  Pretty short, but you have to consider it's a six man operation, and if any of them are fighting, the cards remain.  Plus you can invest cards in protecting your city.  A full team would take six rounds to defeat a fully fortified city, if they were never disturbed, and a minimum siege would take 12 whole rounds!

I think that's a pretty balanced "siege" mechanic.

Of course, you can always go fight the city.  That'd be war style.  Fight to the death, a deck at a time, loser loses all the cards in their deck.  Last man standing gets to salvage 6 cards from each lost deck (including their own).

[homoaddictus]

I was thinking a city could have 100 HP. For every person using "Siege" on a neighboring square in a turn, it loses 5 HP, and it gains 5 HP every turn. So if 4 people are attacking the city, it loses 15 HP. When it falls to 0, the city is captured by the element who had the most people using "Siege" on neighboring squares.

This is very similar to the siege system used by Empire Craft. And it is indeed a very effective system. Additionally they have a limit on the number of siege attacks you can make per day. If I remember correctly, it was capped at 10/day. So you eliminate the possibility of a team sending in dozens of players so you they can capture a city in one day. If for example siege attackers never lose a fight, it will take at least 3 days to finish the siege.

We can play around with the HP gains/losses to better fit our needs. Also siege attackers should get an added 3 discard penalty for losses.

[Daxx]

 Global Moderator Comment Split from the Arena thread.

If you wish to fight an opponent while in a city, you must do so in the arena.

Yes. Other than arenas, there's no fighting inside a city.

Except sieging the city, presumably? How does that work?

[Scaredgirl]

If you wish to fight an opponent while in a city, you must do so in the arena.

Yes. Other than arenas, there's no fighting inside a city.

Except sieging the city, presumably? How does that work?

This topic has something: http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,9253.0.html

There was also talk about siege somewhere else but I forgot where.

Basically we need cities and towns to have so kind of basic defenses. Attacking armies must first remove these defenses before they can attack the city. When they attack, they fight an NPC garrison.

[Daxx]

I'd like to see a "garrison" action, where defending players can put their cards on the line to aid in the city defense (i.e. temporarily increasing the city's card pool).

I think that's pretty balanced, actually. If no player is garrisoning, a couple of attackers could quickly overwhelm the city. If there are defenders, it'd take longer because you have to chew through their cards first (or risk getting attacked by them).

[Scaredgirl]

Also, can your city be garrisoned by people of your own element?

This is what I had in mind. To conquer a city, you need to do these 3 steps, in this order:

1. Destroy city defenses (like wall etc.). Each city has a certain amount of HP. Each enemy that is participating in the siege, will decrease that HP for a certain amount each turn. For example one attacker might damage the city for 2HP each turn. If they have siege weapons, it might be like 10HP or something.

2. Kill players inside the city. Every single defending player must die before you can move to the last step. Note: players cannot resurrect to a city that is under siege.

3. Kill NPC garrison. This garrison has a number of cards. For each 36 cards they have, they have to build 1 deck (and discard 30 if they lose). Once they cannot build any more decks, the garrison is considered defeated. Garrison can be upgraded by paying tons of money. The "level" of the garrison decides the number of cards it has.


If you do those 3, the city is yours.

[Daxx]

Sounds good, but I think steps 2 and 3 can be simplified into a single step if we use the garrison mechanic I proposed above. And simpler is better IMO.

[Scaredgirl]

Sounds good, but I think steps 2 and 3 can be simplified into a single step if we use the garrison mechanic I proposed above. And simpler is better IMO.

Well, "simple" is debatable.

Your system requires a completely new mechanic where players donate cards and NPC's do all the fighting.

What I propose is that players fight like they usually do (like if they were in any other situation), and NPC's fight like they usually do. My system doesn't require any new mechanics which makes it more simple imo.

[Daxx]

Yes, I see what you mean.

For what it's worth I don't think it'd be all that necessary to include a HP system for knocking down the walls or whatever. It's going to take long enough to take down a city if people are defending it.

I do like the idea of Siege Weapons, though. Perhaps they could give some bonus to fighting in a siege, perhaps with extra upped cards or something when sieging.

[Scaredgirl]

For what it's worth I don't think it'd be all that necessary to include a HP system for knocking down the walls or whatever. It's going to take long enough to take down a city if people are defending it.

Without a HP system, it might be too easy for teams to just rush a city using fast travel or something and take it before defenders have time to come back to defend it. I think the HP system is a good way for defenders to buy time without attackers having to do endless battles against NPC's. It's a mechanic used in many games, including Civilization, from where I've stolen lots of stuff. But in Civilization the difference is that you can attack without destroying defenses first, but then then defenders get tons of bonuses. So it's a choice between attacking instantly against a bonus, or attacking later when defenses have been destroyed.

[Daxx]

That's a good point, I hadn't considered fast travel. I guess all that remains is to decide how much HP is reasonable.