CDV18: Clan changes

[Tim]

Limit clan sizes:

I've held off this change as long as I could, but it's been a long time coming. Small clans can't fight against larger clans, so players tend to gravitate to the largest clans. Big clans dominate and if they are lucky the small clans can carve off a small area of their own and stay out of the big clans' way. I'd much prefer many clans on a more even playing field.

Clan membership will now be limited to 10% of the game's current character population (minimum limit of 10 characters). Membership will be first come, first serve, so it will be up to the clan leader to manage the clan members and make room if they want to.

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Clan alignment changes:

When a clan is created, the founder will declare the clan's intended alignment: Light, Shadow, or Neutral. The clan will be treated as such until the clan's actual alignment score forces a change.
-- If a clan declared "Light" reaches a Lean Shadow alignment, clan declaration becomes Neutral.
-- If a clan declared "Shadow" reaches a Lean Light alignment, clan declaration becomes Neutral.
-- If a clan declared "Neutral" reaches a full "Light" or "Shadow" alignment, clan declaration changes to match.

Clan actions will still affect the clan's alignment score the same way, but this will allow clans to be treated as Light or Shadow much earlier on in the Age and therefore affect other game features better.

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Clan Office changes:

When creating a clan, the leader selects a founding city. The clan starts with a clan office in that city. New offices can be build when clan earns enough global Ji: 2nd at 1,000, 3rd at 3,000, 4th at 10,000, 5th at 20,000, and 6th at 40,000. Cost to open 2nd-6th shop equal to 1g per 1k global Ji required.

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Local Reputation:

In addition to Ji, all clans will develop a reputation in each city. While Ji is an accumulation of all the clan's deads so far this age, reputation is a reflection of the recent activities done by the clan lately. Actions performed by clans and clan members effect the reputation of the clan in the cities. The better the reputation, the faster the clan can earn Ji in that city. Reputation in the city defaults at 0 and every hour moves back towards default by 1% of the difference (minimum of 1). For every 10 positive reputation points, actions by clan members earn an extra 1% Ji towards the city. For every 10 negative reputation points, actions by clan members earn 1% less Ji towards the city. Reputation cannot exceed 500 or -500. The following actions affect reputation:
-- Owning a clan office in the city increases the default reputation in a city by 100 (so it resets back to 100 instead of 0).
-- Support from estates increases the default reputation in a city by 1 for every 2 estate levels
-- Adding/Restocking items to the clan shop increases the clan's reputation by 1 for each gold spent.
-- Selling items from the clan shop decrease the clan's reputation by 2 for each gold earned.
-- All business actions that earn the a player gold increase the reputation of that player's clan by 1 for each gold earned
-- Reputation increases by 1 for each win against a horde targeting the city
-- Reputation decreases by 1 for each win against the city's army
-- Completing quests in city increase the reputation by 1 equal to the amount of Ji earned.
-- Reputation increases by 1 for every 1 gold spent at blacksmith, inn, wise woman, tavern, or outfitters (not shop or market)
-- Reputation increases by 100 if a clan member wins a tournament in the city
-- Reputation decreases by 250 if a clan loses a clan battle in the city.

This is the biggest change that will likely need the most tweaking, so all numbers above are subject to change as this gets hammered on.

[Jenlyn]

Right off the top of my head, I see a potential issue with the gold spent in the city, in that it discourages upgrades to the forge and stable, etc. Perhaps making upgrades to the city can carry a big enough bonus to offset the 1 rep per gold spent loss that will be incurred through upgrade discounts?

I think it's great that it will be harder for clans to control a bunch of cities! It is a shame that it comes in part at the cost of clan size, but that is probably best, and most of the size of the larger clans tends to be alts, anyway. I really like the idea of starting out in one city and then having to really work at expanding to others. This should definitely give smaller clans a chance to control a city without having to accept it from the hand of a larger, benevolent patron clan or what have you.

Is it okay to call this the Eddie Murphy rule, in that it is essentially a "What have you done for me LATELY?" sort of thing?

[kaldar]

Reputation seems kinda tricky. the first glaring thing I see is that the affects of battling hordes and armies are fixed, but I believe, based on your other thread, that light and shadow will want to fight sometimes hordes and sometimes armies based on who controls the city?

Also, will a clan's current reputation and current goal reputation be displayed somewhere ? For example, Silver Legion current reputation 50 , moving towards the goal reputation of 275 ....

Clan size changes .... I kinda understand why you want to do it but I think it was more apparent a couple ages ago when SL had twice the membership as Forsaken and rolled over us with city control.

With a total of around 25 active players last age, we will need to see a participation increase in order to notice the effect. Overall i'm not inclined to argue for or against the change.

And Jenlyn, I don't think getting buildings to save a clan up to 10% on repairs and such will not be purchased because of the slight impact it would have on reputation.

[Tim]

I agree that the clan size thing probably should have happened a few ages ago. SL's size was a problem too. The fact that they were a Light clan and that they usually allowed SOME space to smaller clans gave me an excuse to put it off, but I concede that it this is by no means a new problem or that it's worse now than it has been previously.

With hordes and armies, I think it makes sense that the city itself would always want you to attack the horde and not fight their armies, regardless of the alignment of the ruler. This way when Shadow clans defend their own cities, their reputation in that city will increase. I do agree though that this make discourage any clans from dropping armies at it would make it harder for them to take the city in the near future. I'll have to think on that.

As for the discounts, I could make it so the amount the reputation is affected is based on the non-discounted price.

[kaldar]

I stock a bunch of items in the clan shop ... items begin to sell, as a business would hope they would ! Why does my reputation get REDUCED when I sell stuff? Am I automatically assumed to be selling shotty stuff ? what gives ?

Is there a reason you are making it harder to get clan offices? Aren't clan offices required to set up shops to sell items? Without clans being able to set up shops , there won't be the availability of stuff .... or is scarcity what you are going for here ?

[Jenlyn]

I took it to mean selling off the stock of leather jerkins in order to replace them with leather armor instead of adding another slot to the shop. I believe the point of the clan office exercise is to prevent what just happened, where a large clan like ours was able to control the entire map, leaving nothing at all for small clans.

[Tim]

Jenlyn is correct. When I say selling items from the clan shop, I mean going into the clan shop and hitting the "Sell" button. Of course you want people to buy the items. I just figured that if I gave reputation for stocking the shop and on purchases from the shop, it would be too easy for clans to pump up their reputation with their coin.

The reason for limiting clan offices is due to the perk they give for reputation. Getting to the point where a clan can have 3 shops shouldn't take a clan too long. A clan of 10 players should hit 3k Ji in a few days I'd think. If anything it might be a bit low. The hope is with more clans it won't fall one clan to maintain all the shops in the world.

[gerdonat]

The overall effect of reputation seems to be to make harder for a city to change ruler from light to shadow or the other way around. Not sure if its a bad or good thing...

[Tim]

The hope behind reputation is that it will be harder for a clan to take control simply pick a city at random and try to take it over. There will need to be more planning and coordination, but if I want to take my enemy's capital, I still can. Losing a clan battle in a city is even more painful now, as waiting til after the battle to dump turns is a less effective strategy when you'll earn 25% less Ji in the short term afterwards. The change also discourages hiding estate support, as you'll be boosting enemies reputation at the expense of yours.

It's a pretty big change to the city control strategies and while I hope it will be a good change, I've made bad decisions in the past. We'll see how it goes.