Choice of Rebels Part 1 WIP thread

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You misunderstood, I don’t want to kill the psychopathic swineherd, I dont want the game to saddle me with the psychopathic swineherd in the first place when it doesn’t make sense.

We get him because of high anarchy, right? But that still leaves the possibility of a rebellion that isn’t particularly anti-noble attracting a guy who wants to kill every single one of him.

My character? Anti-Empire, not anti-noble. What does my character want to do about the nobles? Well the complete @#####$ can look forward to trials and appropriate justice, the ones left can stay in place after a bill of rights to go back to the good old days before the Empire turned my character’s free men and women into fast food to chew and spit out.

Now between the two followers we can get, the game decides arbitrarily that I’m going to attract someone who is the polar opposite of everything my character and his rebellion stands for.

My argument is that the game is not tracking appropriate things in choosing which new follower we get, the game should be tracking how pro or anti noble we are, not how much chaos we spread.

The other guy, the noble swordsman, from what I’ve seen from the few times the game has allowed me to get him, seems to be 100% aligned with my character’s goals.

So between completely sympatico, and complete and utter antithesis who I'm probably going to have to kill, guess which follower I'd prefer.  :)

As for religion, Mara, I don't feel my character is particularly religious.  Probably more of a deist than anything else, since my character feels the original religion is valid enough, the church with its lies and rubberstamping of atrocities haven't been hit by lightning or eaten whole by those cthonic angels or whatever the appropriate divine punishment is, and while blood magic might be a gift from god, only so much as athleticism or a good singing voice from the looks of things.

So while my character would like to reform the church, he’s of the “god helps those who help themselves” mindset.

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I’d like to see more mention of the other rebels during the feast scene. I’d like to see how everyone’s doing and get a chance to talk to them. If Breden’s dancing with someone else to try and make me jealous I’d like the option to whisk someone else off for some dancing, even if it’s just one of the kids and to have some fun.

@idonotlikeusernames I’m not sure what the game balance is right now. When I first played it was tough to survive the winter without anyone dying regardless of stats. There was a decision of whether I compromised my morals, or if I instead let people die of starvation. I stared at those choices for a long time, trying to decide what the right thing to do was. I’d send my people off on one mission and they’d return with paltry reward and I felt the hardship and the desperation as I tried to balance the risk to their lives of fighting vs starvation vs my own morals.

There doesn’t feel like any of that desperation any more. The tax collector raid doesn’t seem at all ethically grey, and either I got lucky or I found it extremely easy. In that it changes the feel of the game for me. It removes some of what I originally found compelling. And with it there you can avoid the rest of the raiding.

I smuggled goods and I raided the tax collector, without killing anyone, and that was all I needed to do to survive the winter. In doing so I also hit a blow against two noble houses, while assisting a third. I did it with minimum loss of life.

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@stsword: Ah, I get it now. Well said - and your preference is more than understandable. :slight_smile:

The problem is that it isn’t purely your rebellion, and you don’t control the hopes you inspire. Kala explicitly recognizes that you may be soft on the nobles; but because you’ve shown yourself willing to break more than a few eggs in pursuit of your ends, she hopes to convince you of the necessity of breaking the ones she has in mind. And if not you, the rest of the band.

As for Suzane, while what she says may seem 100% simpatico with your vision of a high-anarchy but noble-friendly revolt… the fact remains that anarchy above a certain threshold scares her away. Make of it what you will.

@FG, I’ll see about rebalancing when I’ve written the final battle - your raid take is going to be relevant to that, not just to surviving the winter. But I agree it would be a shame to lose the moral tradeoff.

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984

Just finish my first playthrough and I have to say that I’m really enjoying it so far! The lore you came up with is quite interesting and well thought, I am very intrigued :slight_smile:
I’ve managed to keep everyone alive so far, and I’m not quite sure who the traitor is! Will we be given a chance to find out who the traitor is before she/he strikes again? Or will they strike before we find out? Exciting times!
Really can’t wait to play the rest of this and pave my way with the theurgy!

Is it bad that when we found out that we can use our blood to perform theurgy, I immediately thought “Good! Maybe my monthly suffering is useful for something now!” Becomes my character is female and yeah…? :-"

Edit: was kind of hoping for a Got “Winter is coming” reference.

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@Havenstone Yeah, best to wait until it’s done before working on the balance issues. I was actually surprised by my reactions to the tax collector raid, and that I ended up agreeing with your initial assessment of it.

The whole raiding segment is one of my favourite moral dilemmas in a choice game. Especially since it’s not blatantly stated to be that way. It’s implicit in what you’re doing, but at no point are you given


*choice
    #Refuse to compromise your ethics and let everyone starve
    #Murder people for their money and food.

It’s more subtle than that. I liked the desperation of that first winter. The struggle to keep everyone alive. The feeling of futility when my raids were coming back with so little, my people were sick and starving, and slowly those nobles in their fancy houses, with far too much, were looking an oh so tempting target. And would it be possible to steal from them, without killing them?

I think that first winter should be tough. It should give some of the gritty reality of taking a large group of people, untrained in wilderness survival, out in the harshest months of the years, and trying to keep them all alive. With no fires, scant food, one healer.

Speaking of that one healer, I would have liked to have assigned some helpers to them, even if it meant those people couldn’t raid. Just one healer is nowhere near enough, we need others to learn.

I think it should be a struggle, especially for those of us who don’t want to compromise our morality. We shouldn’t be able to walk away with a large sum of money. The more comfortably off, with the larger sums of cash, should be for those who’re less worried about killing. They make their own trade offs.

Incidentally, that option to give away the rest of my money should likely have a warning of some subtle kind, or at least someone asking if I’m crazy, that we may need the money in the future.

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So out of curiosity how much gold do you have to give away to get the “they’re starting to sing songs about you” ala robin hood?

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i wanna kill my rebel leaders soon, what i could do to piss them off rebelion? Also why they dont hate me more? I am good with troops my 40 soldiers i got 3x food and money i give to farmers. I respect city and help merchands dont killing anyone. I just want kill the stupid and dangerous helots leaders substituting them with nobles. I want a noble rebelion using a trope of slaves , i mean helots returning all Shayard kingdom laws.

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Epic can’t wait to see how it unfolds if you want inspiration for the game I suggest reading Rise of the Harold I can’t believe I forgot the authors name I loved the book though then theres also the half orc series which is a bit out of the realm of this tale but they are amazing books all in all

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You have to give away at least 80 thaums to get the epithet of “the Open-Handed,” which is very easily possible with nice charisma based sweet talkers or martial minded raiders. As to more int focused builds, they just seems to have more trouble in general, even if Theurgy is cool.

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I have to say that this game is grand and i especially like the new choices in regards to leading more of a nationalist noble uprising, i just wondered if romancing breden was excluded to those who keep there place as an aristocrat. As on a play through where you chastise her much at all it appears to be excluded, and if you romance her before the second scene you appear unable to lead ‘as it is your right’.

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I don’t know about it being possible or not, , but if you genuinely are of the mind that the helots need to be kept in their place, elavating one to the status of a lover in spite of all restrictions seems to cut against that grain. Unless it’s all more of a power thing as with that unfortunate series of helots and their noble ‘lover’, but Breden seems very, very against that kind of relationship.

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I was more interested in whether it was a possibility for the theoretical restoration oriented rebel, aiming to perhaps create a Kingdom again, with freemen rather than helots. While ensuring the power of the hereditary nobility. Though that is a fair point for a rebel after a change in ruling class from foreign to native, while keeping to system in place, that any cross class relationships would be moot.

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I disagree with FG. If that tax collector raid he’s talking about is the one where I had to kidnap a family, then I don’t think it was easy money. In fact, that’s where I got my title “Child-Killer.” Then again, I didn’t raid merchants or nobles, and I didn’t see any IAP stuff when I tried it, so it may not be the same one, in which case fair enough. But if it IS the one where I had to kidnap a family, that was perfectly fine as is.

Also, while a challenge is always desired, I do NOT think lots of money should only be associated with morally questionable acts. Lack of morals and wealth are not mutually inclusive, nor is poverty and being moral. If anything, I think that’s a reductionist generic view that video games use a lot, and the whole thing becomes rote.

The only way I was able to survive that winter was by raiding a tax caravan that I had to kidnap a family to find out about and kill a kid. It’s at a good enough level as is.

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You kidnapped a family? Did I somehow hit easy mode with it? I went, said hello to my cousin, she said hello back, told me when the tax collectors would be. I took a trip out there, took care of everyone, no more killing than necessary. I even let the main tax collector go away with a message. Then I threw a bunch of coins around and headed back.

Now, I was playing a character friendly with merchants. I didn’t raid the market. The only other action I took before going off to collect taxes was to set up the smuggling.

I never made the argument that morality and wealth were directly related.

I am speaking solely of this game.

I think that if you’re a band of rebels, in the woods, starting off with absolutely nothing, the only way you’re going to start amassing wealth is by engaging in even more questionable activities. For me it was a hard moral dilemma. It was the game’s first moment of the harsh realities of what the rebel leader needs to face. Can you lead the cause without resorting to worse atrocities than the current system?

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@fairy I never kill someone lol, i only say poor peasants stop adoring that false god ant they give money.I ask for money to farmers and they helped i also helped them back due i have too much things, i help merchants. I dont drop blood noone die. so i dont see the moral issue due all of this before even tax mission.

In first game in my rebelion only plain kill all helots leaders , and imperial soldiers none inocent people at all.

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@FG, if you’d had a 0 INT (or a 1 INT and had done more to lower your credibility with your fellow nobles) the chat with your cousin wouldn’t have gone as well.

It is “easy mode” in the sense that most of the raids are easy when you’ve got the right stat for them. Only a few of the more elaborate raids rely on finding your way through a more tangled web of choices.

The family-kidnapping path is much the most elaborate way to go about the Architelone raid, with greater risk and (if you make the necessary trade-off) greater reward, not just in this section but later ones.

In my final rebalancing, I’ll do my best to recover the genuine suspense and moral trade-offs involved in surviving the winter. And I like your idea about dedicating more outlaws to the healing tents – I’ll think about how to execute that. But not until I’m done w Ch3. :slight_smile:

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@Alexi_Reynov, you wrote: “I was more interested in whether [romancing Breden] was a possibility for the theoretical restoration oriented [noble] rebel, aiming to perhaps create a Kingdom again, with freemen rather than helots. While ensuring the power of the hereditary nobility.” It doesn’t take a whole lot of insistence on the power of the hereditary nobility to turn Breden off. S/he may have a bit of a thing for you, but there are other attractive people in the band, after all. Like Ciels.

At the moment, your reading is correct: you have the choice of being a traditionally minded noble (and thus not a romantic interest for Breden) or an open-minded one whose bland liberal piety means you don’t think obnoxious things like, “there’s a reason I’m leading the band, after all.”

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@Havenstone one thing that I have been thinking of being add to the game, is map of the land, as I find it hard to picture maps in my head, not sure how hard that would be to do however. also thank you for the time and effort put into this game, I love it!!

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Seems like I’m playing well to my strengths then. I actually do like that I can do that. Here I am, Robin Hood, setting up a trading empire. I’ll free all the helots, set them to work and make sure they pay their taxes.

Yes. Finish the next chapter, please. This is all just idle chat as we wait for you to get it done.

I like Breden a lot. Breden’s charming but flawed, and can be annoying at times, but that makes them oh so human. It’s nice that they’re not perfect. Of course Breden’s probably a kryptast, but I’d like to think, if they are, it’s because they were forced into it.

@Marajade The first version I played the winter was extremely harsh. I suppose it’s not as bad now, which is good. But balance shall be struck.

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@Lexlexx A draft map that was posted earlier in the thread. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88501596/CoRTest/web/mygame/karagond.png