Domains

General ACKS Forums General Discussion
1

Taking a break from my NPC generator, I started working on a Domain Management Tool (that is still heavily in development, I might add - use that link at your peril, your domain may not work if I break something or you uncover a bug). After scouring the core book for information on domains... oh man. Now, I have questions about domains. There are just a few points that seem a little light on explanation, as follows - the comments in parenthesis are what I've chosen to do, in leu of more instruction:

After your first hex, when settling a new hex, do you roll for its land value, or keep the orignal roll? (I'm rolling a new value on each one)

Do you roll an independant population there, or just spread your population evenly? (I average the domain values, thus spreading the population evenly)

Presumeably, adding onto a stronghold takes time; does it take the same time as building it originally? For example: started with a 40,000gp stronghold, and took ceiling(40,000/500/30) = 3 months to build it; does adding another 40,000 of structures a few months down the road add a further 3 months build time? (that's what I'm doing)

And, assuming it does take time, when does the stronghold become "useful"? If I make a 45,000gp stronghold made of three different 15,000gp buildings in Civilized territory, does it support 1 six-mile hex after a month, 2 after 2 months, and 3 after 3 months? (I say a stronghold doesn't become useful until it's finished)

If I gift a hex to a henchman, does population go with it? Cities? Can/should they? (currently, I optionally allow population, but not cities, which in retrospect is a bit silly)

These questions are important, because they affect my newest project. Please, please give it a try, and see if you can find any bugs; unlike a random generator that I can just spam the "go" button until I find an error, building a domain is a multi-step process that is painfully hard to debug. If you find anything weird (like "You have NaNgp remaining!"), let me know. And, if you find the layout is weird, a button is confusing, a sentence oddly worded, or anything else, let me know that, too! While I'm making this tool for me to use, I want it to be useful to everyone else, too!

Eventually, I'll get it working well enough that I can release it, but I have no idea what that timeline will look like.

2

I have some input, but first i want to alert you, since you appear to not have the patreon tag, that a slightly revised and simplified set of domain management rules were released in Axioms Issue 3.  You may find them useful as I think they are easier to work with and appear to have been almost universally adopted among patreon subscribers with domains in their game.

3

[quote="Arman"]

After your first hex, when settling a new hex, do you roll for its land value, or keep the orignal roll? (I'm rolling a new value on each one)

[/quote]

You are right that the book is unclear on this topic.  I would normally say "each campaign is a law unto itself" but i think the way you chose not only makes more sense but is almost necessary.  The alternative is that savvy PCs will clear the smallest unit of land possible to get a roll until they get a 9, then build out from there.

[quote="Arman"]

Do you roll an independant population there, or just spread your population evenly? (I average the domain values, thus spreading the population evenly)

[/quote]

this seems like a reasonable assumption.  As far as i can tell, nothing cares about the specific population in one hex vs another, just a maximum per hex, which can reasonably be spread over several hexes.

[quote="Arman"]

Presumeably, adding onto a stronghold takes time; does it take the same time as building it originally? For example: started with a 40,000gp stronghold, and took ceiling(40,000/500/30) = 3 months to build it; does adding another 40,000 of structures a few months down the road add a further 3 months build time? (that's what I'm doing)

[/quote]

this is the most sensible interpretation.  if it takes less time to add to than to initially build, a player will build a 1gp stronghold and then add to it.  if it takes more time to add to than to initially build, players will almost always build a new stronghold rather than add to an existing one.  The 2nd one isn't actually too bad since there's at least somewhat interesting differences between one big stronghold and several small ones. 

[quote="Arman"]

And, assuming it does take time, when does the stronghold become "useful"? If I make a 45,000gp stronghold made of three different 15,000gp buildings in Civilized territory, does it support 1 six-mile hex after a month, 2 after 2 months, and 3 after 3 months? (I say a stronghold doesn't become useful until it's finished)

[/quote]

i think either interpretation is fine, but see above: in terms of player options, there's no difference in difficulty between building one stronghold for 45,000gp and 3 strongholds for 15,000gp.  In fact, one could argue you can finish the 3 strongholds sooner, but that's just in the base abstraction.  Domains at War goes into greater detail about the ways in which you can influence the speed of construction by hiring more laborers (to a limit) or buying the materials outright instead of having your laborers gather it.

[quote="Arman"]

If I gift a hex to a henchman, does population go with it? Cities? Can/should they? (currently, I optionally allow population, but not cities, which in retrospect is a bit silly)

[/quote]

Why would you gift your henchman a block of land you've already put the effort into population? make THEM do it!   But seriously, I think your answer is the one that makes the most sense.

[quote="Arman"]

These questions are important, because they affect my newest project. Please, please give it a try, and see if you can find any bugs; unlike a random generator that I can just spam the "go" button until I find an error, building a domain is a multi-step process that is painfully hard to debug. If you find anything weird (like "You have NaNgp remaining!"), let me know. And, if you find the layout is weird, a button is confusing, a sentence oddly worded, or anything else, let me know that, too! While I'm making this tool for me to use, I want it to be useful to everyone else, too!

Eventually, I'll get it working well enough that I can release it, but I have no idea what that timeline will look like.

[/quote]

 

my players are just starting to dig into domain management, and we are currently only at the sophistication level of google spreadsheets, so we were still kind of wracking our brains with how to make an easy domain management tool.  We're very much looking forward to what you put out.

4

Thanks! I do actually have Axioms 3... I just completely forgot that it had anything to do with domains. And, of course, those rules are completely different than anything I've written, because that's how programming usually works. Oh well, a later project :-P

I think I'll keep my "building/expansion only coutns when it's complete" rule, but add "you can start multiple expansions as long as you pay for them."

I'm considering moving to a slightly more graphical view, because that at least would give me the ability to lay hexes out on a map; that way, you could select what hex has a city, and see what hexes have high or low land values (and also so players don't always pick their lowest land value to give away or abandon). I'm also wondering if there is a city limit per hex; I can see there being three or four settlements in a six mile hex when they are tiny, but a huge metropolis is going to take up more space... that may be something to leave up to the players/judges. I really should note what rules/interpretations I'm using...

Thanks for the comments - it's nice knowing I'm wandering in vaguely the right direction!

5

you can probably get a way with leaving the "graphical" part up to the people using the tool and just keep a hex coordinate system.  you can check whether hex 04-05 is adjacent to hex 04-06 or not without necessarily having to render it.

6

bugs I noticed:

* when i set taxes to 0gp and garrison to 5gp (1 more gp than normal in a wilderness domain), the summary morale bonuses aren't correct.

* every month taxes reset to 2gp and need to be reduced (maybe this is intentional design)

* after i maxed out my single wilderness hex, i decided to invest in a bigger stronghold before adding a new hex.  I put 30,000 in stronghold investment. it says it will take 2 months.  I hit advance month, my domain fund reduces by 30,000gp. stronghold investment now shows 0 in the box.  I advance month again. my domain funs are reduced by 30,000 again! (i'm now very far in the negative :-P).  For giggles i advance the month again to see if it only happens as often as the stronghold is set to build, but it happens again.

7

I've fixed a number of bugs, introduced new bugs, fixed those, added the ability to switch from simple garrisons ("I'm spending this much a month") to complex garrisons ("I've got 60 light cavalry, 120 longbowmen, 120 dwarven heavy infantry..."), and made cities a little easier to manage. Also, I fixed the quickstart.

I don't know if the new version will work with old save files, but from here on out, I'm going to make sure new version are backwards compatible, at least as far as being able to be loaded. If nothing else, it'll warn you when something goes horribly, terribly wrong!

Again, I'd really appreciate anyone reporting bugs if you find 'em!

8

Finally got a chance to play around with your newer version.  i think i forgot to refresh so apologies if you already caught this, but it looks like if i keep lowering taxes every month the morale bonus for taxes keeps going up and up:

9

That’s actually something I was unsure about - it’s not entirely clear in the book. If I lower taxes one month out of three, or lower then raise, what’s the effect? I made it cumulative; should it be average?

Same goes for garrison; if I have a garrison that’s 10gp/family, is that +10?

Population change, too; if I gain 50 families on top of 100, is that a +10 (one point per 5%)? I’ve also been counting moving population from rural to settlement as a rural loss…

Is there an upper or lower cap for bonuses?

10

since the Axioms article switched to a morale roll every month, I think the orginal intent was probably an average, with the assumption that you wouldn't change taxes or garrison more than once per season.