Warband & Scents of War

[AnnaC]

I've thought about a variety of ideas for a little bit about how "warfare" works in the Hearthlands... a lot is discussed about hearth vaults and the issues with them. I was thinking on why hearth vaults exist at all, and my feeling is it's just a defense mechanism against force summoning. I like the scents system in game for moderating PKs and bringing out justice, but nobody likes getting their character's killed while they were offline sleeping; it's even worse since the hearthlands have permanent death. Anyway I think Potjeh made a suggestion about scents interacting with a Village Idol which I thought was interesting and thought of something similar; why not have an authority structure that attracts and is affected by scents? Attach more aspects of warfare to the Village unit and the Authority system?

Have an authority object in a village, that grants the status of warrior to a hearthling, which clears that hearthling of leaving criminal scents, but they leave war scents instead, which can be used against the authority of the village sponsoring the warrior. This would provide an alternative to the dynamics of warfare (as you can try a battle of attrition and ensure safety of your battle champions themselves), and allow lowly oppressed peasants to gradually attack their oppressors (who would normally be untouchable) via authority "attacks".


Warband Standard
An authority structure attached to a specific village. Buildable only by a village chieftain. Symbolic home for any members of the warband (perhaps a fast travel point). Should be a major investment (only one Standard per village), and require a certain minimum authority level (maybe 500k or 1M authority, I don't know the balance of high economy cities). But in any case it shouldn't be able to be used by a single village idol thrown up; it should require significant economy and infrastructure behind it.
It should also be destructable (perhaps take gradual decay hits/buffs from scents), and disbanded easily by the Chieftain or Lawspeaker (for an authority cost of course).
If the Warband Standard is destroyed, disbanded, or decays, then any hearthling in the warband would lose their warband status. Any old war scent (see below) that pointed to the standard would now point to the village idol. An important structure to defend, but also one that attracts attention.

Warband political unit
Warband members appointed by the Chieftain; essentially have this replace the current Hird or improve this with the Hirdsmen being "lieutenants" to the Chieftain, who can also appoint warriors.
Lawspeaker and Chieftain both should be able to disband a member of the warband, and the warband itself (by removing the standard).
Hearthlings in the villages's warband would have their common villager icon changed to a sword icon; and allow warband members to see other hearthlings that are members of a warband.
The benefits of being a part of this warband would be mainly the ability to perform criminal acts and not have scents pointing directly to you, but to the warband itself.

Scents of War
Basically the idea is to replace criminal scents for members of a warband, with special scents symbolizing the act of warfare. These scents wouldn't point to the individual hearths of any "soldiers" but would instead point toward the corresponding Warband Standard (of if the standard was destroyed, to the Village Idol). Similar to force summoning, these scents could be used on authority objects to air grievances against them.

Scent of Battle
This scent would replace criminal scents from hearthling to hearthling interaction; but only if both parties are in warbands. The prominence of the scents would correspond to the severity of the act. Collected, these scents would point toward the warband standards of the enemy. I thought maybe have it so unaffiliated rangers can pick these scents but it would just say "your village is not involved in this battle" -- so that these particular scents could only be used by members of the affected villages; and that Scent of Battle wouldn't have the same grievances as the next two:

Scent of Pillage - property-based criminal scents; prominence of the scent would be dependant on the action (vandalism high, theft less, trespass least, etc.).
Scent of Rape - basically criminal scents against non-warband hearthlings; distinction here is the victim hearthlings were "civilians". Same prominence scale scent to the act.
(Of course these names are just basic conceptual ideas)

Airing Grievances
Similar to force summoning on a hearthfire, be able to interact the same way with authority objects of the village the scents point to. This will cause an authority drain depending on the prominence of the scent stack used (and maybe something linked with the village's authority). But basically draining authority would be the way to enact "justice" for the actions of the warriors' the village sponsors. Perhaps if done with the Warband Standard itself, it causes decay on it (to damage it gradually over time).

As I mentioned with the Scent of Battle, since it involves multiple warbands in the act, that it shouldn't be used to air grievances against an opposing village; unless by doing so you leave another scent behind for the rival village to answer in kind (like a "Scent of Defiance" left behind to let the village know why they have a drop in authority). And perhaps if a village member brings Battle scents back to their own Warband Standard or Idol, it can slightly recover authority (much less than civilian grievances take away else you could just farm battle scents to recover anything your oppressed opponents can do to you).


Anyway, basic idea is to have a village-attached grouping that actually matters in the hearthlands. It would both make a minor distinction between "civilians" and "warriors" in the sense that the warriors are now identified as such, and because of that distinction they are allowed some protection when it comes to criminal scents. The downside to this is that any members of a warband would have to have a good village infrastructure behind them to support the authority that gives them that protection. Hopefully this should make hearthvaults less enticing and put more focus into the real political units of the game: villages.

Of course ideally this would require some of the many suggestions to improve villages; like alliances and shared kin; better track of village roster, and colonies.

[MagicManICT]

Hearth Vaults exist only because you can't bash brick walls anymore. The thought of one in world 3 was having a village with enough brick walls around it spaced far enough apart to make it annoying enough to ram until someone realized that they could actually get to the 4500+ strength needed to break one with a sledgehammer. Now, they provide the protection that was intended. Therefore, one can only conclude that hearth vaults are an intended game mechanic from J&L. (right? right?)

I like this idea, but I'm not sure I can really say too much on it as I mostly play as a hermit. From that perspective, this doesn't provide much, if any, extra protection over the current system, and from what I can tell, it doesn't solve the issue of ramming down HV walls.

[Kaios]

bump

Now that hearthvaults aren't as powerful as they once were, I think this idea has some merit and it did not receive very much attention or criticism. What do people think? I think it's an interesting take on how warfare could work in Haven & Hearth and I'd be more than happy to see something like this or similar implemented.

[AnnaC]

Wow, didn't think I'd see this thread again. My main intention with this idea was to integrate the Village as a game unit, into the PVP/criminal mechanics a bit more. Of course as I pointed out this would require the Villages as they are to be improved a little bit so villagers, lawspeakers, and officials could manage aspects more.