North King
blech
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2004
- Messages
- 18,165
StNNES IX: For Whom The Bell Tolls
So. I suspect you are suspecting something. Perhaps you are. In which case, you are obviously mad.
In short, Ive returned to the absolute nightmare that is moderating. I will try to update quickly, I will try to make them interesting and fun. The pace will probably pick up during the summer if it gets that far, but so far it will probably be once a week. I know weekly updates arent nice for the quick players, but you know, some just have to write the 10 page orders.
Of course, theyll have to cut down on that, since Im only allowing 2 PM order sets maximum. Silly players.
Rules:
Economy
As far as I know, NES moderators have searched for eons for an adequate ruleset in that area. Well, at least, after we departed from the beloved RTOR system (blame das). Weve always looked for one which will unite the entire thing to be detailed, beautiful, and simple enough to update in thirty seconds for each nation. Well, this is simple. I cant say much about detailed.
Economy is all based around the single stat: Income. Income doesnt really represent income, thats just a nifty term to make you ignore the inconsistencies.
Income really represents the total income, production, and trade of your nation. It represents both money and stuff you produce, then, and overall, what you can put toward projects. So, basically, its a single number.
Increasing your income is as hard as anything else. You either really have to up production (which sacrifices a level of Manpower AND Infrastructuremore on that later), raise taxes (which decreases Confidence and can only be done so far...), up trade (youll have to find more trading partners for that, and it will put great strain on and decrease the level of your Infrastructure), or... find something creative.
Manpower
This trait is one I actually worked out fairly recently. Absolute manpower limits are a bugger to calculate, and they dont really do squat. So this time around, Im trying a leveled thing. The levels represent the spare Manpower you have to invest in anything: the industries (hence why upping production to get more income will cause you great distress), the military, etc.
To increase your spare manpower, you either have to conquer new lands, have some great population spurt, or accept a new group into the citizenry. The thing is, for every level of Manpower you gain, the Infrastructure is strained (-1 level per each level of manpower), the Education is lowered on average (-1 level, unless the new population is somehow more educated than you; it could happen), and Confidence may suffer if your agriculture cant support the new mouths to feed.
On the other hand, sacrificing a level of it can help a lot of things along. Recruiting military will automatically lower your Manpower if you recruit a bit too much. You can also sacrifice a level to help your income (though that will also lower Infrastructure). And you can sacrifice a level of this for a point or two on your projects (which is very important).
Oh, and the lower it goes, the people might grow more unhappy (war weariness), or simply go on strike if its all being used in industry.
Levels:
Bled White, Exhausted, Depleted, Little, Average, More, Plentiful, Huge, Russian Hordes
Military
This is numbered. Youll get a unit for each income point you spend, or maybe a few. Depends on the age. But it any case, you wont be able to build too much without the manpower level starting to go down.
Education
This is, obviously, how educated your folks are. This actually only shows how educated your stable manpower pool is; you wont get to see how educated your minorities are. This falls if you increase Manpower, or if you lose important trading contacts, etc. Its pretty much the education stat you always knew, though.
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Infrastructure
The quality of your nations roads, farms, and stuff like that. Logistics. Will decrease if you have a heavy increase in usage (like many new traders, or Manpower increase), or if you just plain destroy it (like invasion).
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Confidence
This is how much them folks like your rule. Pretty self explanatory: if they like what your doing, it will be good, if not, then bad. However, you cannot increase this via Income points.
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Culture
This is your nations cultural influence on other nations, and it affects how quickly your religion will spread and how much people will accept your rule. Stories help, Income points do not.
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Projects
These things are very different in this NES. Its not worth it to use these to increase normal stats.
The main things youll want to do with these is increase Culture, Confidence, or just plain build something. It wont have some magical spawning generator that gets you dozens more men, or something like that. They wont have a tangible effect, only by displaying your culture and thus making it seem more impressive, or by making people more faithful in your rule.
Or this could be used as a long term project to improve your nations standard of living, or a new, deadly military technology.
Remember, you MUST invest income points, or sacrifice manpower.
Centers of ______
Centers of Economic Activity are represented by a red circle and give an income bonus, one point per turn to the owner of the center; they must be owned officially and controlled by the nation in questionoccupied centers give no bonus to the occupied or the occupier.
Centers of the Arts are represented by a blue circle and give a cultural bonus, either a level per turn of culture or education, or certain other bonuses, randomly decided, to the owner of the center; they must be owned officially and controlled by the nation in questionoccupied centers give no bonus to the occupied or the occupier.
Nation Template:
[Replace this text with your nation name, whatever you want your full nation name to be. Other than that, do not put anything in front or in back of it; if I wanted Nation: Blah blah blah, I would add the Nation: part myself, thank you. This is a pet peeve of mine, so please dont.]
Ruler/Player: [put the ruler of your nation in character, with a slash after it, then your CFC name]
Age: Early Bronze Age
Religion: [default is Animism]
Government: [default is Despotism]
Income: 1
Manpower: Average
Army: 20 hundreds
Navy: 10 ships [if your nation is landlocked, exchange these for 10 hundred men]
Education: Horrible
Infrastructure: Horrible
Confidence: Horrible
Culture: Horrible
Projects:
Some more stuff...
NO starting as a steppe tribe; those will appear on their own; if they develop into a united empire you may play them. But not start as one. Sorry, oh ye Connecticut Yankee whos name starts with C.
Order sets, as mentioned at the beginning, are a maximum of 2 PMs long. No more, no less. If you forget something like a map, an extra PM is permitted. If you forget a bunch of internal things, then resend the whole set.
Get your order sets in on time. Otherwise, youre screwed. I know that it might be not nice, but Im writing the update when I write it; Im not waiting for you. You can still send in orders while Im writing the update, but they will be counted as late, and as they are late, your military will start mobilizing later in the turn, your economic orders will be slow to come into place, etc.
This IS BT/IT, and therefore the first update will be one covering the initial years, then moving on.
I do have civilized zones map to be posted below; red is, as standard, a place where developed civilizations start, green is where civilization is a newer concept, and thus nations there are more robust and welcoming to this whole civilization thing... Gray is areas where tribes are starting to get organized... dont think that youre going to get much of anywhere if you try to start there. Quickly, at least. I dont want to discourage you, I love creative nations... but you cant expect to be an ultra ubercivilized power.
Oh, and dont post before I tell you that you can.
So. I suspect you are suspecting something. Perhaps you are. In which case, you are obviously mad.
In short, Ive returned to the absolute nightmare that is moderating. I will try to update quickly, I will try to make them interesting and fun. The pace will probably pick up during the summer if it gets that far, but so far it will probably be once a week. I know weekly updates arent nice for the quick players, but you know, some just have to write the 10 page orders.
Of course, theyll have to cut down on that, since Im only allowing 2 PM order sets maximum. Silly players.
Rules:
Economy
As far as I know, NES moderators have searched for eons for an adequate ruleset in that area. Well, at least, after we departed from the beloved RTOR system (blame das). Weve always looked for one which will unite the entire thing to be detailed, beautiful, and simple enough to update in thirty seconds for each nation. Well, this is simple. I cant say much about detailed.
Economy is all based around the single stat: Income. Income doesnt really represent income, thats just a nifty term to make you ignore the inconsistencies.
Income really represents the total income, production, and trade of your nation. It represents both money and stuff you produce, then, and overall, what you can put toward projects. So, basically, its a single number.
Increasing your income is as hard as anything else. You either really have to up production (which sacrifices a level of Manpower AND Infrastructuremore on that later), raise taxes (which decreases Confidence and can only be done so far...), up trade (youll have to find more trading partners for that, and it will put great strain on and decrease the level of your Infrastructure), or... find something creative.
Manpower
This trait is one I actually worked out fairly recently. Absolute manpower limits are a bugger to calculate, and they dont really do squat. So this time around, Im trying a leveled thing. The levels represent the spare Manpower you have to invest in anything: the industries (hence why upping production to get more income will cause you great distress), the military, etc.
To increase your spare manpower, you either have to conquer new lands, have some great population spurt, or accept a new group into the citizenry. The thing is, for every level of Manpower you gain, the Infrastructure is strained (-1 level per each level of manpower), the Education is lowered on average (-1 level, unless the new population is somehow more educated than you; it could happen), and Confidence may suffer if your agriculture cant support the new mouths to feed.
On the other hand, sacrificing a level of it can help a lot of things along. Recruiting military will automatically lower your Manpower if you recruit a bit too much. You can also sacrifice a level to help your income (though that will also lower Infrastructure). And you can sacrifice a level of this for a point or two on your projects (which is very important).
Oh, and the lower it goes, the people might grow more unhappy (war weariness), or simply go on strike if its all being used in industry.
Levels:
Bled White, Exhausted, Depleted, Little, Average, More, Plentiful, Huge, Russian Hordes
Military
This is numbered. Youll get a unit for each income point you spend, or maybe a few. Depends on the age. But it any case, you wont be able to build too much without the manpower level starting to go down.
Education
This is, obviously, how educated your folks are. This actually only shows how educated your stable manpower pool is; you wont get to see how educated your minorities are. This falls if you increase Manpower, or if you lose important trading contacts, etc. Its pretty much the education stat you always knew, though.
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Infrastructure
The quality of your nations roads, farms, and stuff like that. Logistics. Will decrease if you have a heavy increase in usage (like many new traders, or Manpower increase), or if you just plain destroy it (like invasion).
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Confidence
This is how much them folks like your rule. Pretty self explanatory: if they like what your doing, it will be good, if not, then bad. However, you cannot increase this via Income points.
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Culture
This is your nations cultural influence on other nations, and it affects how quickly your religion will spread and how much people will accept your rule. Stories help, Income points do not.
Levels:
Horrible, Pathetic, Bad, Poor, Average, Decent, Good, Excellent, Fantastic
Projects
These things are very different in this NES. Its not worth it to use these to increase normal stats.
The main things youll want to do with these is increase Culture, Confidence, or just plain build something. It wont have some magical spawning generator that gets you dozens more men, or something like that. They wont have a tangible effect, only by displaying your culture and thus making it seem more impressive, or by making people more faithful in your rule.
Or this could be used as a long term project to improve your nations standard of living, or a new, deadly military technology.
Remember, you MUST invest income points, or sacrifice manpower.
Centers of ______
Centers of Economic Activity are represented by a red circle and give an income bonus, one point per turn to the owner of the center; they must be owned officially and controlled by the nation in questionoccupied centers give no bonus to the occupied or the occupier.
Centers of the Arts are represented by a blue circle and give a cultural bonus, either a level per turn of culture or education, or certain other bonuses, randomly decided, to the owner of the center; they must be owned officially and controlled by the nation in questionoccupied centers give no bonus to the occupied or the occupier.
Nation Template:
[Replace this text with your nation name, whatever you want your full nation name to be. Other than that, do not put anything in front or in back of it; if I wanted Nation: Blah blah blah, I would add the Nation: part myself, thank you. This is a pet peeve of mine, so please dont.]
Ruler/Player: [put the ruler of your nation in character, with a slash after it, then your CFC name]
Age: Early Bronze Age
Religion: [default is Animism]
Government: [default is Despotism]
Income: 1
Manpower: Average
Army: 20 hundreds
Navy: 10 ships [if your nation is landlocked, exchange these for 10 hundred men]
Education: Horrible
Infrastructure: Horrible
Confidence: Horrible
Culture: Horrible
Projects:
Some more stuff...
NO starting as a steppe tribe; those will appear on their own; if they develop into a united empire you may play them. But not start as one. Sorry, oh ye Connecticut Yankee whos name starts with C.
Order sets, as mentioned at the beginning, are a maximum of 2 PMs long. No more, no less. If you forget something like a map, an extra PM is permitted. If you forget a bunch of internal things, then resend the whole set.
Get your order sets in on time. Otherwise, youre screwed. I know that it might be not nice, but Im writing the update when I write it; Im not waiting for you. You can still send in orders while Im writing the update, but they will be counted as late, and as they are late, your military will start mobilizing later in the turn, your economic orders will be slow to come into place, etc.
This IS BT/IT, and therefore the first update will be one covering the initial years, then moving on.
I do have civilized zones map to be posted below; red is, as standard, a place where developed civilizations start, green is where civilization is a newer concept, and thus nations there are more robust and welcoming to this whole civilization thing... Gray is areas where tribes are starting to get organized... dont think that youre going to get much of anywhere if you try to start there. Quickly, at least. I dont want to discourage you, I love creative nations... but you cant expect to be an ultra ubercivilized power.
Oh, and dont post before I tell you that you can.