It would appear you are assuming that each player controls only a single Unit (As explained by Jade303). The way I see it, guilds simply spend resources on Units and assign the units to players. In your example, SRC3, SRC7 and SRC13 could all be controlled by Flax. If the guild has more Units (and thus more moves), it is because they had more resources to spend, not because they had more players to assign the Units to. I think the referee should be software. I don't have a lot of experience in web developing, but if I could get some help from people with actual experience hosting websites, I'd be willing to spend some time on a web-based board , including the timers. Automating the board positions is in my opinion quite essential for the enjoyment of the game. People will get confused if their reference doesn't show the last known position. Even if moves happen simultaneously at a set time, I don't think it is reasonable to expect someone to update the board every 1~2 days without fail. It would also put constraints on the scale of the game, as the more players are active, the more difficult it will be to update a board manually, even if it is just a matter of providing new coordinates for a software program of some sort. As for cheating/making mistakes, the rules should be as simple as possible for individual players. The things we have to keep track of (Or the things people could cheat at) are, so far, as follows: 1) The board lay-out (Possibly with dynamic resource locations and/or guild territorial borders) 2) Army locations, owners and size 3) Accumulated resources 4) What moves/battles are occurring when. If the input for (1) and (2) is constraint by software, players are not likely to make mistakes. (3) Is not relevant for players other than guildmasters, who in my opinion should know the rules well. Regardless, if we have a web-based board anyway, might as well include a system for tracking resources automatically. (4) is more tricky. Especially because we have no clear vision for how battles will proceed yet (See Jade303's post for a couple of options) Ideally, we would use the web-based board system again to warn players that a battle will be fought, how it is fought and how much time they have to do it.
Yes, I was assuming that. Players controlling multiple armies would make things much more fair for small guilds. I know nothing about web design, but if someone can make such a site (for free) it would solve many of the issues I was seeing. Such a site could even get the battle results from the API. Let's see... each participant would need an account on that site, and one person would have to set up who belongs to each guild and who the principles, are and starting locations. Principles can give funds to each guild member, and each member can hire mobs, split and move their armies, and if they move into a location controlled by another guild the website will provide a link to the map and a list of your forces and your opponent's. Tonight I'll play with the API to make sure it can verify each side's forces. Before this goes any further, can I suggest a change in terms? To me, "unit" is a single thing, not a group of groups. How about these terms: Mob, Squad (group), Army (up to 5 Squads), and Total Guild Forces. Are you thinking of actual two-player battles? I didn't think we'll have much luck trying to schedule that, even if there's an hour of the day that most participants are usually online. It may be simpler to just ignore MP parties completely and just fight mob vs mob against the AI. Attacker can retreat through disconnection timeout.
There is no way I'm going to be participating in this just to fight the AI. No freaking way! The whole point of the guild wars is to bring players together into a tactical minefield. It should be about strategy on the battlefield and in individual battles. Alright, so I'm going to stop using Unit from here on. It changes from meaning, a Unit which is positioned on the battlefield map (like in Advance Wars/Fire Emblem) to a unit (as in a single character, such as one Cockroach or one Ogre).... even though it confuses the heck out of me! So let's get this straight: World Map: Contains every guild in Cardhuntria. Has yet to be mapped or seen. Battle Map: A grid (like my 7X7 example) where 2 or more guilds fight over territories. Battle square/Fighting map/something: A custom map where two squads will fight it out, just like we all know and love! Guild Commander. A member of the guild put in charge of leading their allies in a Guild War. The guild principle does not have to be in command themselves but may appoint a member of their guild with this position. The Commander is in charge of some very important things. (EG resources, assigning new units to Mobs) Mob: A group of identical NCC (Non-customizable characters) Squad: A group of up to 5 mobs (Can't use more than 5 mobs in a battle anyways) OR** a 3-character level 18 MP party. Annnnd from here we have work to do. -Having 5 squads in an army, IF that army is placed into a single square on a board, would be madness. -Having 5 squads in 5 different squares on the board, with each squad controlled by a particular player (a player *May* control more than 1 squad) would be fine. So you can call all squads on the board belonging to a guild their army. So a Squad can refer to a NCC group, however I would still like to consider that in a single square on a board: -Can there exist a NCC squad AND a MP group? (This I have been referring to as one *Unit*, EG M1, M2, M3 in my examples) -Or should each *Unit* contain a single squad OR a MP group? And what do we call them if not a Unit? A Regiment? Er... I'm sorry, I'm used to calling things Units. It's a normal militaryish thing...
