Agents | Caravans

AGENTS

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In GW5, certain actions are conducted through the use of individual specialists called Agents. These specialists are a finite resource that can be killed or captured, and they'll cost Gold to replace. There are 5 Agents that you can train:



Detailed information on each Agent can be found in the following posts:

• Diplomat: Diplomacy
  
• Missionary: Conversion
  
• Professor: Research
  
• Spy: Espionage
  
• Commander: Battles
  

Agents travel faster than armies: They can move through a single unpaved region and up to 2 paved regions in one season. Travel time will be rounded up in the event that an Agent moves through "half" a paved region. For instance, if an Agent wanted to travel through 3 paved regions, it would take 1.5 turns, rounded up to 2.

CARAVANS

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In order to transfer resources between factions in GW5 - including Gold - Caravans must be used. These are trains of carriages and carts that move from one settlement to another, carrying the goods to be traded.

Caravans travel at the same speed as Agents.

If a Caravan crosses into the domain of another faction, a toll may be applied. This toll will only be charged once: When you enter into another faction's territory. There is no toll applied when leaving. A faction can change its toll rate at any time, but it must announce that it does so.

When sending out a Caravan, include the Gold for all tolls that will have to be paid.

Caravans face some risk when moving so much valuable stock; bandits are always looking for a fat cow to slay. Bandits, who operate with their own mechanics, have a chance of ambushing a Caravan. If their ambush is successful, some of the resources being transported will be lost. As you might expect, Caravans carrying Gold have a higher chance of being assaulted.

In order to thwart ambushes, a Caravan may travel with up to 100 soldiers without being slowed down. Assigning any more than that to a Caravan, however, will cause it to travel at the speed of a regular army.

The bandits work on the following rules:

1. Every Wild region has a chance of spawning bandits each season; Settled and Advanced regions are safe.
   
2. You won't know if bandits are in one of your regions unless they attempt to ambush a Caravan passing through.
   
3. Once bandits are known to be operating in one of your regions, you can order that region's garrison to hunt them down. If the region has no garrison, military troops can be used instead.
   
4. Bandits have a chance to spread to neighboring Wild regions each season.
   
5. A region with a half-garrison (1,500 men in a Fort) reduces the chance of bandits spawning by 50%. A region with a full garrison (3,000 men) also reduces the chance that bandits will spread.
   

One last thing to note about our thieving friends: If bandits are discovered or reveal themselves by ambushing a Caravan, and they aren't dealt with after 2 seasons, Dissent in that region will start to rise. Basically, kill 'em when you see 'em!

Hmm... Actually, I don't want to limit it to non-allied regions. Rest assured, you only have a chance to get ambushed in non-garrisoned regions, that is, regions where no military units are present. Also, even then it won't be in every region, most likely I will inform players that there are bandits festering in region X and then they can deal with them how they wish. Bandits won't spawn in regions with a garrison.

But alliances should also be beneficial, and saying "Oh, it has to be garrisoned" removes that bonus from Alliances.

Lime's right, but I can consider making that change once I write up the Construction post. I do intent to make garrisoning much easier so that, ideally, there'd be at least a couple hundred troops in each region, but it may have to be adjusted once we start playtesting and realizing just how large our armies can be (probably not too large with less income + more overall expenditure).

If we go with William's idea, we'll have to think of another direct benefit for alliances.

I've edited Caravans to reflect tolls and ambushes.

Too many professors to start with, I'd think more like 2 + 2 + 2, for no university, university and tier 2 university.

It's spymaster, your normal rank-and-file spies are crawling all over the other factions lands.

Tolls aren't applied per region, they're applied when you cross borders to someone else's territory. It's like saying that when you're transporting cargo across the United States, you need to pay each time you come to a city.

Also, that post doesn't really reflect the bandit mechanic I had in mind. Each region has a chance of spawning bandits, no matter if caravans are going through them or not. Once bandits have spawned in a region, they remain there. Now, if you don't find out about them, they may spread. But when a caravan travels through a region that is adjacent to a bandit region, they have a chance to be ambushed. If the region doesn't have bandits near them, that chance is 0.

I thought you wanted 4 project slots. I agree it was too many, so I'll be glad to change that.

Why would spymasters do the dirty work themselves? They sound like they'd be busy coordinating, not sabotaging and assassinating.

I misunderstood what you meant about tolls. In that case, I'll make a single charge to enter someone's territory instead of charging per region. 1,000 Gold good to start?

As for bandits, I didn't mention all that because it doesn't matter. The player doesn't need to know that each region has a chance to spawn bandits when bandits will only become known if they ambush a Caravan. If you're going to make bandits like weaker Demon Warbands, then let's expand them beyond ambushing Caravans. I'm not sure we want something like Warbands in GW5, though; I personally think the premise and mechanics were fine, but the demons didn't need to be that strong.

You've gone and listed probabilities of getting ambushed for region types. That already goes against the bandit mechanics.

And no, they're not like demon warbands. Demon warbands are military entities that control regions and posses powerful artifacts, have a paragon-type leader and are in fixed locations around the world from which they expand until are eradicated, after which they will cease to exist, and all their movements are known to the players at all times.

Bandits are a (believe it or not) more political than a military entity that may not have a leader that stands out in any way. They do not appear in fixed locations, rather spawning by chance in random regions. Bandits do not require to be directly fought, unlike warbands, merely sending troops with orders to stop them is enough. Their movements and existence is not known until they are exposed. Eradicating them will not prevent bandits from returning. They do not possess artifacts.

As for spymasters, if the specialist was a mere spy, you'd have hundreds of them. Spies also don't carry out assassinations. Spymaster is more like master spy, just sounds cooler when he's called spymaster. Your rank and file spies are crawling from under every table everywhere, how else would you know nearly everything your opponents do?

The point still remains, then (and everyone can chime in on this): If you're going to put so much work into calculating whether or not bandits will spawn in every region, do you want to develop them into a more detailed mechanic, not just something that ambushes Caravans? Yes, they wouldn't have powerful generals, Artifacts, or huge armies (in most cases), but what about bandit raids? Sabotaging Region Improvements, causing them to need repair, instigating trouble and causing Dissent, maybe even attacking towns if they amass the numbers. That kind of stuff.

Spymaster it is... I like how you justify us knowing about the other factions' actions, lol. I can imagine spies of the other factions hiding under a table in Tiberius's Hall (formerly Edgeville bank). I'm going to explain things more clearly in the Espionage section.

I really don't want to pester players with banding crawling out of all their regions and needing constant taking care of. I'd rather keep it as an ambush mechanic, but yes, if you leave your bandits unattended to, your people won't like you too much! Be careful where you start procrastinating.

Alright. How about:

1. Bandits can spawn in any region (do you want Wild regions to spawn more bandits, or is it something you'll just randomly decide case-by-case)?

2. Bandits can spread to other regions.

3. Bandits will be unknown until they ambush a Caravan.

My proposal:

4. If bandits reach a certain number in a region, they'll begin to cause Dissent. The problem is, this would cause them to become known.

How will we incorporate garrisons into this? Like I said, I'm fine with using troops to hunt down bandits once they become known, but I also don't want guards to sit on their asses until they're ordered to do something.

I don't consider bandits to be a numbers matter. I think it's more like "this regions has bandits!" instead of "there are 400 melee bandits in the region."

Now, thinking about it, I would say that only "wild" regions can get bandits. It wouldn't make much sense for a city or a town to house them.

I like, I like. Alright then, I think it'll work well without being overcomplicated (which was my fear, even if I suggested that we develop bandits further. It just sounds like you're doing a lot of work to determine if bandits spawn!)

I'll edit in a minute.

It's not that much work, really. I have my super mathematical methods.

Alright, before I rewrite the bandits section, can a (fully) garrisoned region simply reduce the chance that bandits will attempt an ambush? Or do you want a (full) garrison to reduce the chance that they spawn? I put full/fully in parentheses because we may not require the garrison to be full in order to have that effect. Also, we agree that once bandits are discovered, either the garrison or troops from another region can be used to hunt them down, right?

Let's say half garrison will prevent the bandits from spawning in that territory and full will make it less likely for them to spawn in adjacent territories.

Hm, alright. Might as well think about garrison sizes now, then. Since we're only dealing with Wild regions, the garrison building will be a Fort and I was thinking a max capacity of 1,000 guards. It'll probably be pretty easy to put that many men there, so do you want to keep the bonuses as they are?

Increase garrison size to 3,000. It's a fort, afterall.

Fort: 3k

Guardhouse (Settled region): 4k

Castle (Advanced region): 5k?

We could really increase the numbers so that players would basically be able to garrison all their troops that aren't marching or fighting. That means half the upkeep, too. Do we want to do that?

The problem with this many troops is that I'm not going to be using 3,000 troops to pay to guard a region, even if I only have to pay for ~1,500. That's the main reason I avoid forts in the game: The only real place where a Garrison would be profitable for me would be in Nardah, and I need my army there to be Mobile.

Yes, we want to give the players the option to garrison all their defences. The thing I'm worried about with castle is that many advanced regions already have a castle... Maybe something like barracks?

And Lime, fort is more than just halved upkeep. It's a defensive position for your troops.

Yes, but I'm not going to do such a Defensible thing like that during Peacetime. At most, I'd station maybe 250-500 Troops. And I certainly won't do that at the core of my empire, just the lands at the borders (with the exception, of course, for my Capital. I'm no Toa.)

Barracks is good. I'm using "Training Grounds" to upgrade troops to Tier II... eh, it'll all be in the Construction draft.

Fort: 3k

Guardhouse: 5k

Barracks: 7k?

Lime, I'm not sure you understand the garrison system ;_;.

Damn it, you guys can edit/post before I can on this tablet.

Okay, updated the post with bandit information. I changed the condition for causing Dissent and specified that bandits only operate in Wild regions.

I was thinking, for gifting research/technologies, can we use Caravans (saying they contain a bunch of notes, schematics, models, etc. of what you're trying to teach)? As it states in the Diplomacy section now, "Gifting learned knowledge can be done by any Agent." I think that's a bit odd, though, especially since a Spymaster would not want to make himself known unless he has to, while a Missionary is too busy trying to convert the people. A Commander is, well, commanding, while a Professor is working on research, though he could travel with the Caravan if the gift is particularly complex and you want the other faction to learn it more quickly. The only Agent that could viably do it would be a Diplomat.