(TFT) Jay ain't the shinest luer...

["maou_tsaou1@netzero.net" <maou_tsaou1@netzero.net>]

The implementation of the artistic medium of War into TFT requires a few points be agreed upon.

First and foremost, and understanding as to the purpose of War must be reached.

The Webster's is clear on this one, though the entomology of the word is interesting.
Basically an armed conflict between nations or factions.

Postulate - if a definition is straightforward, its source term is not, and vice versa.

Compare War to the Webster's Strength definition I've already posted.

Strength is a MUCH simpler term than War.
War involves using a factions Strength effectively to achieve a set of objectives or goals against opposing factions Strength.

Now everything I've ever seen treats War as a separate system from the rest of the game.

This stems from a lack of a Population as a whole.

War, Government and Economics are all expressions of large scale power Actions.
A king decides to go to war, a general commands a force, a gnome reaps the profits to loan to the king to pay the troops that the general...

Of course, screw up the balance and things get nasty.

The simplest way to do this is to keep track of the Population as a whole.
This is simply done w/o rolling a NPC for every single Figure in the Population.
Rather Populations are given as a curve.
Events in the Timeline, like a plague, will reduce the total Population, but over Downtime reduced generations can move off the curve via aging.

RPG's and Wargames in general focus strongly on the War aspect of Population Actions.

A Political system controls things like Law and Government.
A simple despot gets his way as long as the rest of the Population goes along, or until he gets whupped.
The VERY first chief might have had to go into the valley and slay each dragon by hand, giving him enough experience to hold all the Talents that the tribe requires to survive, but even most of the epic Hero's of this time of legend had a companion at arms.
In other words, at some point a despot is gonna have to start sharing out responsibility if he's gonna keep up with the Jones's, a.k.a. other tribes from a Talent/Tech/Jobs pov.
The sharing out of this power (i.e. large scale Actions) is Politics and is built on the New Followers Talent.
Members of the Political power structure are nominally Nomic players in the Political system itself.

If'n ya REALLY wanna make "money" then the Political system capitalizes, or invests in itself.
These are the Builders and Tech-Tree drivers.
A player who's Figure heads the Lockheed Martin Group gets to play with Actions that affect the Tech-Tree for example, not to mention the production issues.
Buildings are major "building blocks" here.
A leader/despot has to convince the tribe to build a Town Hall.
This involves Primary Production, weather it's the ORIGIONAL Warcraft peasant chopping down trees or the Israelites making bricks for Pharos.
The actual use of said materials involves Secondary Production, which is the craftsmanship represented by Talents such as IQ 11 Architect/Builder (2).
Make some aspect of capital actual money and you get to an accounting of wealth system that goofballs of MY generation recognize.
The classic copper, silver, and gold or even TFT's bimetallic systems are pretty much out from what I know historically, but I could be wrong there.
Heinlein had some stuff to say about the Comstock "ripple".

The more large scale Actions that a "faction" or Culture can exercise, the more likely that it's power structure is fairly complex, i.e. a fairly large number of Nomic players.

At the point that we get to what the VAST majority of players seem to consider War, the object of crippling your opponent can be achieved Politically or Economically as well as, or in addition to Militarily.
The most elegant solutions shun direct engagement.

If a player takes a village from me, I punish them by making them the GM of that village.
 
Conquer the world if they want to, technically I still get to write the Timeline, although players don't have as hard a time getting to my notes.
I've got other planets anyway, in my position as a living Mythmaker I'll just step up the Martian timetable perhaps...

Tick me off and I'll hit the earth with a middlin small rock going at bullet speed relative to the size of the earth.

If Disney can do it in Bambi...

Uhhh, that's not the point Jay.
Oh yeah.
CRT's.



So ya had to have SOME kind of idea of the above before ya can see where I'm going here.

There is a looong history of representing two opposing forces in arms as actual duelists.
I've looong been of the mind to simply represent this pretty literally by representing combat Units on a TFT character Sheet.
So what this is saying ultimately is that a Unit can be considered like something of a large scale Figure/chit that can perform large scale Actions, mainly focused on combat or in support of combat. (Medic!)

This is as silly as the scenario where the Political characters are "gray cells" (how many New Followers, i.e. synapses?), the NPC's are the "red cells" and the players are "white cells" fighting the "invading cells".
I don't have to tell them it's a transplant do I?

So in lack of a player to hear it, can statically determine how many NP-trees fall in the woods of battle?

< sighs >

This is the "insurance" route, but the bloody (and I DO mean BLOODY) thing works.

I'm going to point out here that we as a culture seem to pretend horror at the, Maya "sacrifice" stuff.
For generations, this was "noble" family vs. noble family.
For the farmers who supported the "theater of the absurd" that all cultures are, this was entertainment.
Entertainment keeps the plebes happy.
This was "ritualized" combat.
Eventually a little guy says, "screw THAT!" and "cheats".

Things "devolve" from the ritual.

The Lions start to jump into the crowd after Achilles slaying their champion doesn't quell the opponents "will" to fight, either/or the allies thirst for blood.

Vlad stood on point.

Okay.
Nuff of my guilt.
I intend to SHOW what war does to a Population.
Maybe if'n ya can SEE it then you'll realize that I don't want this stuff to be a roadmap but a warning.
  
Postulate - a Units Statistics are determined by the mean average of the Units members.

Postulate - a Unit may list a Talent when ALL (exceptions here like english grammar) members know that Talent.

Postulate - a Unit Trains/Studies analogous to a Figure to gain a Talent/Order.

Postulate - a Unit drawn from the Population "at large" will represent the Joe Average of the Population at large.

So...

The C.F. thing.



It goes like so...

I accept the Melee Sim w/o seeing the code, (I never asked) and pretty aware of it's limitations.

The Joe Average thing makes this a "Tool" of "root" developmental value.
To the schizo Jay at least.
This may not be considered as worthy praise, but I offer my allocades nonetheless.

Look at it like an agent.
It's a numbers game.
Like singing "You've Lost, That Lovin' Feeling" at girls on Myrtle Beach strip in the mid-late 80's.

I can make a strong argument for Joe Average of the Population Group.
Next is Tactics.

THIS has to do with my "reach" and "speed" obsessions.

Regardless, Mr. C is still valid here because, MUCH like the first Melee battle-map, the actual "flanking" movement as a Unit in battle is pretty much like "tic-tac-toe".
Or maybe Gavin "fencing" vs. his munchkins. (WATCH OUT!)
Anyway, ESPECIALLY on a 'Lords of the Underearth' scale, a member of a phalanx doesn't get much more freedom of movement than that.
Once opponents agree to "join" combat, the "movement" as far as "I wanna get a modifier on my opponent via "facing" or "initiative"" is over.
(This is the OPPOSITE of sex, i.e. gene's are being REMOVED from the "pool".)
(One of the early "edicts" against the Jews from the Nazis was something summing up to "no Jews in public swimming pools")
(Fwiw)

 Now C.F.'s "Sim" assumes IQ 8.
(Correct me if I'm wrong please, though I'm not sure how just yet until I start reading my mail again.)

"I" assume those 2pts exp equal a little bit of training for these Units.
In other words, these aren't full blown Mobs.
THAT is under "civil unrest" stuff.

Uhhh...

Nevermind.

No argument at this point.
THIS is how it is.

If you put a bunch of semi-competent Joe's beating on each other, then the weapons are gonna come out "TFT style" as C.F.'s spread defines.
"Front hex" to front hex so to speak.

Postulate - the Tech-Tree defines what Weapons and Armour are available to the "faction"/Culture.
Don't forget Primary Production.

So your "troops" average "casualties" are gonna come out "pretty much" the way Chris shows.

I "type" too much.


I'm not gonna even read e-mail for a bakers dozen or so days.


The Schiz deal scares the doodie outta me!



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