Realm Blessings Rework

[Yorla]

This is obvious, no need to waste you high iq on that. You better answer my question: are those idols buildable outside kings village or not?

[Necroliter]

Correct me if I'm wrong, please, but right now idols and menhirs can be build in villages whos lawspeakers are sworn members of the kingdom, can they? If so, what's the difference then?

Answer is really damn simple - there is no any incentive/benefit. To the contrary - it is potentially harmful/dangerous to kingdom to do so.

Why would you risk your idol and place it in some other village if you can place it in the capital and it will cover all kingdom anyway?

[Hrenli]

And what would be the point of kingdoms then?

Be an artificial barrier of how far away you can build your idols, block other realms and to provide public chat I suppose. And maybe the way to move buffs underground (i.e. idols affect horizontal range of the buffs and cairns affect vertical expansion)...

I think it really encourages smaller realms and will result with a lot of land being not under any realm at all. Not going to judge if it's a good thing or not, on the surface feels too different from the current system therefore alien.

[Yorla]

Well, that's the answer for the whole topic then. Why would you want to endanger your kingdom? Of course people will try and protect remote idols with teeth, claws and walls. Yay, more walls to the world!

[SaltyCrate]

Well, as i noted - i`d make it more-or less generous area, but not unlimited. That would imply tighter grouping of settlements near the capital (Unless said kingdom is violent and kills any other settlements in it`s buff range). If nothing else it will create more diversity in more-or-less uniform distribution of settlements.

As stated before - this is just one simple idea that probably require discussion, if anything, but not destructive criticism (saying it`s just bad, because it`s bad).

I am saying it's bad not because it just is, but because as far as my understanding of how it would be implemented goes it will simply be detrimental to the general idea of what kingdom represents. I don't mind having discussion about it btw.
First of all, I would assume that none of OP's suggestions are in place. If that is not so, then clarify what parts or all of suggestions you meant with your change. Then let's take as a premise for your suggestion this

From my perspective one positive thing that can be extracted from this post - to enforce creation of idols (and other stuff) outside capital if Kingdom want to provide buff over larger territory.

But the kingdoms, generally, do not want to do any such thing. It is actually opposite. Right now kingdom's reason of providing buffs to non-citizens is (aside of RP reasons and altruistic reasons) the desire to get more authority, generated by other people. It is similar to Mountain Tradition situation, where kingdoms can extend their realm into random villages' mine levels, expecially if asked nicely, but have little to no reason to do it themselves.
Therefore, what I imagine is that kingdoms would put all buff generating structures which are not required aboveground (like Center of Learning, Local Cuisine and Myth of the Bull) into their mine levels, where only villagers would benefit from them. The ones aboveground would be present only in the central village, few lucky nearby villages, and nowhere else. Meanwhile, all of the covered hermitages will still generate authority for the kingdom, without getting anything in return - welcome to complains galore.

There are also couple of other points. First, I imagine that "generous area" of buffs is larger than what current initial kingdom claim area. Otherwise, it is not really generous enough to contain several villages. Therefore it is required to either change initial kingdom claim area to match this buff range area or have this weird situation where you have kingdom buffs outside the kingdom itself. Also, right now Menhirs and Idols are not tied directly to any specific buff, which, if you want them to be source of the buffs, would have to be changed, with proper interface added etc etc. Not a major obstacle, but more work nonetheless.

Another point is about this:

That was the point of this idea. Idols will become (or will be placed in) centers of villages, but not only large central fortress. If it is away in the open - well, people who placed it made a mistake, so it will (eventually) be vandalized.

No, it most probably won't be as described there. Unless by villages you mean 5x5 claimed palisade boxes with bot inside to check for rams, in which case you are correct. Which is btw also stictly more secure than placing all idols and menhirs in the capital. As I said before mostly no one bothers to do it (some kingdoms do this to an extent) because it is less convenient, and not because it is less safe.

[Dakkan]

Just throwing out there that Northern Kingdom did have it's realm structures spread out over many villages (Though the majority were in Aurora. There were at least 5 other villages that also had them inside). This was because it was a collective effort and people would frequently want their contribution to be physically represented in their village.

Edit: Duh, forgot, and my current realm has buffs spread out as well over the two villages that founded it.

[Dondy]

What would happen if certain types of idols could not be build close to other idols? Say there was a new thing you could build "cromlech" which would provide realm-wide bonuses but could not be build within 10,000 tiles of an idol, and another new thing "altar" which could not be built within 10,000 tiles of either a cromlech or an idol and it would supply a completely different sort of bonus.


If cromlech provided 10% reduction in hearth magic cost and altar provided 10% bonus to speed of crop growth they could mostly be written with recycled code and would provide realms with incentive to decentralize and lesser members of realms to provide resources and infrastructure to their maintenance.

Another option would be to provide special danger to these resources, such as a long range magic attack so that people who are not good at fighting and don't want to be good at fighting could instead study magic and try to take down the altar with that so they could build one in their own realm. It should be far more difficult in this scenario to take down the altar and when the altar was under attack there would be notification of the attack, which would require multiple players, the more talented in magic the better to log in simultaneously or in series to defend the altar, also with magic.

I have found that the leaders of realms keep things very secret and there is no role for random players who have settled in the kingdom. they are entirely passive and don't know where the capitol city and the leaders are. They can't provide any assistance since anything they can provide is worth less than the security of the capitol and the leaders are worth. But if they were needed to log in and add to the magic intensity that could provide a non combat role for them.

I am not proposing these things, I am just asking what the results of tinkering like this would be.

[Dondy]

I like the idea of an alternative to the idol being an enormous tree that you have to grow by special means with a special herbalists table and a special treeplanter's pot and then protect from being cut down and it takes hours to cut it down.

[SaltyCrate]

What would happen if certain types of idols could not be build close to other idols? Say there was a new thing you could build "cromlech" which would provide realm-wide bonuses but could not be build within 10,000 tiles of an idol, and another new thing "altar" which could not be built within 10,000 tiles of either a cromlech or an idol and it would supply a completely different sort of bonus.
If cromlech provided 10% reduction in hearth magic cost and altar provided 10% bonus to speed of crop growth they could mostly be written with recycled code and would provide realms with incentive to decentralize and lesser members of realms to provide resources and infrastructure to their maintenance.

I assume you implied that even if cromlechs and altars are far away they still provide buffs for the entire kingdom. In that case what will happen is still the same: a number of 5x5 claimed boxes, underground if possible, no lesser members required.

Magic stuff

Hard to say what exactly will happen without more specifics. However, if the this magic attack requires attacker to be somewhere nearby attacked objects, then the defense will probably be done with mobile death squads, instead of organizing bothersome communal chanting. If it is not required to be nearby and can be done safely from far away, then such attacks would simply never stop and the defense will either turn to be trivial or impossible. Also, the idea of thousand alts contributing to either is everpresent.

[Granger]

A little off topic but if the goal is to increase participation of the peons... I would think more towards giving the kingdom Cairns some upkeep (stone, wood, cloth) to keep them functional. This would add an item sink to the game which could be operated by the local characters in case these are interested in being subjects of the kingdom - or would need to be operated by the kingdom in case they want to subject uninterested subjects.

Result would be a motivation for the rulers to be on a good standing with the ruled (so these do that work) by limiting the ability to maintain control over unwilling subjects through having to feed the structures. Something like this could model the problems of a kingdom that isn't backed by the general population...