7.1 LARGE SCALE COMBAT

Will there be a leadership skill that applies to commanding armies?

That, money and buildings you have built in your town/city would be the limiters to how many NPC guards you could hire. If you wanted a large standing army, you'd have to recruit PC's to serve under you. They could then get the guards and add them to the army, though they would need to command them in the field - I can't see the PC's just sitting back and hiring a huge army to go off to war without them.

Would the PC's have to provide NPC's with food, weapons, transportation, etc?

Yes. Support your local PC merchants!

Will morale play an effect?

Yes it is possible for your troops to flee. High leadership skill would help here as well. If the PC's flee, chances are excellent the NPC's would as well.

Can you sack and raze towns?

Yes. I'd like to also have an option for players to mine salt and pour it over the ground (that takes a LOT of expensive salt) so that nothing will ever grow there again (i.e. no resources spawn any more). That is a way of saying 'Fuck off and die' to your opponents. [Note: To completely destroy a town will cost substantially more than building that town did - this keeps PC's from doing wanton destruction.]

How will you ensure that an "Uber Guild" doesn't overtake the World?

Different guilds receive different bonuses toward different things. Not everyone will want the same bonuses. Cities farther apart (due to no in game instant messaging) become harder to manage. The more land a guild owns, the more expensive it is. We at Evil Enterprises don't mind if you take over the world. It has been our goal for years.

Is it possible for two guilds to have an alliance?

If both own a free town (i.e. they own and run a city) or better. If they do, there will be certain (I don't know what) game rewards. On the other hand, their wars are yours. If someone declares war on them, all of their allies simultaneously get the 'so and so has declared war on YOU' message. If your ally accepts the war, you have as well. Alliances can be made and broken once every month. Be careful who you ally yourself with.

Can a city set borders?

Yes. Depending on the number of buildings and population of a city or kingdom they may set borders. If the city has the right building (land surveyor or scouts) they may be informed if someone builds a structure within their proclaimed borders. If someone does do this, then the city/kingdom may choose to declare war on them.

Additional notes on Siege Warfare:

Capturing buildings. Hum. I'm thinking (from the dream FAQ standpoint) that if the person has paid the amount of money etc to completely destroy the building (equal to its worth or double the worth, whatever it ends up becoming) then I'd like to see the effects of 'capturing' the building. It would provide interesting scenes within play. For example: Late at night, the evil French players defeat your AI guards you left to guard the city. The few defenders of the city (PC's) were overwhelmed and slaughtered. The French decide to take over the temple (rather than destroy it) as either way - destroying or capturing - respawning of players at this location is halted. During the day (possibly when the evil French players are all asleep due to the 7 hour time difference) the rest of the US guild logs on to see that their temple has been taken over by the Evil French. Outraged, they will have to either destroy the temple, or capture it back. Now that I think about it, destroying the temple would be a good 'first move' - if the temple is destroyed, people bound in that temple could not respawn there. If the bind stone is destroyed, people could not respawn there either. Aside from making the bind stone well defended (possibly in an expensive building or hidden from outsiders) that would probably discourage monotheism. Polytheism would allow for several temples. I'm thinking that (to imagine the battle a bit further) if your bind stone is destroyed, you default to the temple (unless agnostic) - if the temple is destroyed, you'd revert to the bind stone. If both are destroyed, you'd respawn at either an allied capital city stone/temple or, if none of those either near where 'Atlantis' sunk or at random. For the attackers, destroying (or capturing) the bind stone and temples would be of primary importance to keep players from respawning close by. If the city/nation was not wise enough to have allied cities/nations then you could literally scatter their population to the wind. This would encourage temples to be large garish things and make them of additional importance for the residents. If you could only bind at a temple of your god, chances are good that enough followers of various gods would demand temples be built of their gods as well. All good stuff.

Warfare - what do I think it would be like in the 'dream FAQ'?

Ever play Age Of Empires II? That goes a long way in my thoughts toward siege equipment. Basically, I can think of three different types of siege equipment:

Short range bash: This would encompass any sort of battering ram, housed or carried. This sort of thing would do well against structures. The disadvantage is that you have to be right up next to it. The defenders typically didn't like this sort of behavior and developed deterrents (hot oil, rocks, etc). As the attackers didn't like the deterrents they would often house the ram. For a computer game, I think it might be a bit more difficult to have people grab an un-housed ram. What could be done is to have everyone who wishes to 'join the ram team' have the cursor on the ram then click a key. This will then cause their character to 'join' the ramming team. The more people on the ram team (after the minimum number, say four) the faster the ram can move and the harder it hits. I'd probably designate the fifth person (or one of the two front guys) as the 'ram leader'. That person would be the one who directed the direction the ram went. When close to a wall/door the ram leader would click the structure to be rammed and then give the batter structure command (click a key). Then, I'd have a sound wave play repeatedly until the 'ram command' was clicked again (terminated). "Heave! (crunch) Heave! (crunch)" etc. This would be a simple loop - it would need to project in a large enough area that people on the other side of the wall would hear it. I'd use a deep bass male voice for the 'heave'. If I wanted to get fancy, I'd also have a female voice in case the ram leader was female. While ramming, the ram would do various hit points of damage to the structure. If it was possible with the programming, I'd have structures layered. In other words, I think anyone can imagine a dedicated ram team working through half a foot of wood or even stone - but if the wall was say thirty feet thick, I don't think a hole should appear all of the way through it. I could see the first half foot or foot of material disintegrate then the people start on the next foot or half foot. Hence, really thick walls would almost have to be tunneled through. This would NOT be a fast process.

Long range bash: Catapults, trebuchets, etc. Anything that hurls a rock, flaming pitch, etc along an indirect path toward the target. I'd like to see these missiles move a bit slower than they did in real life - anyone who was watching for it (who was not lagged out) would possibly be able to dodge this. Reason, I'd like this to be primarily an 'anti-building' weapon - not something you'd go after a single guy with. Plus the rate of fire would need to be low. I'd love nothing more than to see some 'splatter' effects in the game. If the players load the catapult up with burning pitch, I want that burning to 'splatter' realistically. If a player is hit with a big rock from a catapult, I'd like to see their 'death animation' as a splatter - even if due to programming limitations their body then reverted to the normal 'corpse'. These sort of weapons generally would be decent against buildings, aside from the pitch.

Long range spears: This would cover ballista. Although having a long, heavy spear rammed through your house would be annoying and require some money in repairs, I couldn't imagine knocking down any structures with these. I would guess that you wouldn't make a dent in many reinforced wooden buildings and almost no stone structures. This is primarily an antipersonnel weapon.

With all of these siege weapons, I think the important thing is to have them slow and cumbersome. Rather than a DAOC thing of 'stick the pieces in your backpack' I'd rather require wagons to carry these pieces. They should be set up and able to be disassembled unless damaged, then 'scrapped'. I'd like for other siege engines to be able to have effects on them (a catapult war would be exciting) as well as possible effects on the crews.

If the developers wanted to have some sort of 'time line' in the world, they could take it up to medieval cannons - these would operate in much the same way as catapults though they would be more of a direct fire weapon. These (in the early 'medieval' days did have some nice trade offs. The cannons might only fire once or twice a day (or once or twice ever). The cannons would often explode, killing their crews - big fun for the aggressors. Since nobody was quite sure how much powder for how big of ball, this was always a lot of fun. The hand cannons were merely a scaled down version, with many of the same problems.

Magic

Magic in sieges is where we get into very murky ground indeed. No precedent has been set where a character gets blown up by their own spell in a MMOLG. It would be important not to have any of the over the top stupid spells of 'Dungeons and Dragons - like rock to mud. With that one simple spell, entire castles are rendered obsolete. I think I would probably give spells an extremely limited role in siege warfare. Probably something akin to a very weak pitch shot. Sure, you can burn down a building with spells, but I'd want them to be at it for a couple days. That would keep the focus on siege weapons vs. buildings with spells being antipersonnel. The minute you start making spells that can rip down buildings, you have other balancing issues emerge. It would be right to wonder why you can knock down a reinforced oak wall with a 'gust of wind' spell yet have that same spell inflict a negligible amount of damage on a creature. Even the ancient Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (2nd Ed) had no real success in making spells into reasonable siege equipment.

Instead, we could make spells increase (slightly) the effectiveness of siege equipment - battering rams hit a bit harder, flaming pitch burns a bit hotter, etc.

Kevin did wisely point out that it would be OK for magic casters to be able to blow up walls, etc - so long as it took several of them working in conjunction to do so.

Clearly, all of this would have to be sorted out, but these are the rough ideas.