Dominions and Territory Gain

[Darth Bellum]

So it's been on my mind for quite some time, and suffice to say in the 2-3 years I've been on Chaos I've noticed one particular thing about dominions and it is that they can get oppressively dry and boring after quite some time, and they just eventually get to a point where it more or less is the same objectives, different setting and little else.

In order to remedy that I propose perhaps shifting the way territory is gained via dominions. The simplest way for me to explain it is to compare it to the game of Go for those who are familiar with it. For those of you who don't know how Go works or what it is, it essentially revolves around strategically setting pieces across the board. When you remove the PVP aspect of it, it essentially becomes a game of establishing 'territory' by setting up your pieces in a large area without actually filling it out. Once you've completed a zone, everything within that space is considered as your territory.

My proposal/suggestion is to make dominions similar in this regard, where each dominion would be like setting a piece on the map. Once you've outlined the borders and completely closed any gaps, then all the territory within would be considered gained.

A series of diagrams to better portray and visualize it...

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Let's suppose the red circles are the 'pieces' in Go, and the Sith Empire in this scenario were to pursue doing Dominions in this fashion, they would more or less be working to encircle an area of empty space as demonstrated above using two different lines of dominions to flesh out the territory they wish to get. The result once they do complete it will look like below...

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Once this result is reached, all the blank space within would become part of the Sith Empire's sphere of influence like any other territory within their space like below...

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Now this would tremendously ease up the burnout from doing dominions as it would take something that would have otherwise been sixteen individual dominions and made it ten. This also opens up a lot more opportunities to potentially disrupt other Major factions and incentivize more strategic invasions that can pseudo-cloudbreak attempts at gaining more territory.

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As seen above, if another Major faction wished to be disruptive with an invasion they can target one of the 'arms' and break it, thus resulting in the loss of the three dominions on the lower arm and halting progress towards completing the loop and securing a large swathe of territory.

This would likely result in invasions feeling a lot less futile as it would require several consecutive invasions to cloud break most of the Major factions present on the map. It also rewards the Major factions that are bold enough to attempt stretching out large arms in an effort to connect and gain territory. The farther they reach out, the more territory they will be rewarded with if they are successful, conversely, they will lose a lot of work if they are invaded and have their stretching border snipped.

Another potential downside to this system is that the Major faction limits the number of SSD's they can produce over their lifespan. If we were to take the situation above for example, assuming the Sith Empire was pumping out three dominions a month, by the time this is all said and done they would only have been able to produce three separate SSD's rather than the additional two they could have gotten from doing dominions the normal way (Don't count territory gained via the above method towards gaining an SSD).

Just another thought I've come up with in order to perhaps improve the quality of life as well as the interest of the map. It's fairly safe to say that dominions get old fairly quick especially for the veteran writers, or maybe you think every dominion you've done is somehow unique and can safely say that you would/will never get bored of it even after a year or two, in which case my point would be invalid. I'm curious how my fellow Chaos writers would feel about this.

 

[Malok]

Gonna apologize in advance for the lack of elegance in my response, I'm pre-coffee XD

- It falls upon the major faction to make their Dominions interesting and not a grind. If the Dominions are boring to the staff team or population, it's not a symptom of something being wrong with the Dominions themselves. Dominions are just stories where a hex is gained, you can literally do anything so long as its a cohesive plot.

- This system would only make the rich richer. Cutting down sixteen Dominions to ten sounds great to me as CIS owner, but for a faction that isn't pumping out 2-3 Dominions a month the number is still daunting. If this became a thing, you'd just see the big fish get bigger a lot faster and a lot easier.

I feel where you're coming from though. A lot of people roll their eyes when we do our off the wall stories, but don't understand that writing Dominions is as fun as you make it. It doesn't have to be a grind

Edit: Also, SSDs and factory submissions don't win invasions, they're nice set pieces but there's never been an invasion summary from staff that said 'because of the overwhelming SSD presence, the victory goes to XYZ'.

 

[Darth Bellum]

I don't blame staff teams etc for dominions getting boring in the sense of what to do or what they write about, I'm just saying when you do them three times a month for several years it gets incredibly stale; like having the exact same meal day after day for years on end. At some point a line has to be drawn somewhere where some sort of change needs to be introduced. Like in any game, something different needs to be added to keep things fresh, shake up the meta, keep it interesting so that people will continue to play it for years to come. Games like League of Legends, Overwatch, etc haven't lasted as long as they have by keeping the same cast of characters, kept at their original state without any reworks/changes/new introductions. The same should apply to the Map to at least some degree.

As you said, dominions are a story where hex is gained; you can dress it up any way you like, but it doesn't change the fact that it's still the same point of getting the hex. I don't particularly care if other people wish to write off the wall stories or throw extravagant balls, but some people (Like myself) don't write their characters in such scenarios because it wouldn't be something the character would be apart of (How ridiculous would it be for a 6'5" Sith who sucks the brains out of people because he feels like it to attend a tea party look? Wouldn't make sense).

I don't see the system I've put up as 'making the rich richer' as you put it. It is equal opportunity for all. It's more of an investment of time and an attempt to reduce burnout, both for veteran and rookie Major factions. In the situation I put forth, a Major faction invests 3.3 months pumping out dominions, in exchange for successfully doing that, they gain 2 months of dominions fore free at the end of it, a reward for their hard earned efforts. Yes, larger factions can achieve this quicker, but I think it would do the Map some good to not burnout the newer Major factions so quickly by subjecting them to being expected to pump out as much as the older ones (Like the Black Sun or Brynadul to do as much as the CIS/SJO/TSE/ORC - it's unreasonable). We have had...probably over a dozen Major factions in the last year come and go within the span of a few months of them becoming Major.

And I know the comment 'well if they aren't cut out for it, maybe they shouldn't have gone Major' will come up probably somewhere at some point, hell I've used that comment on numerous occassions before, but I still think it is good to have a little map diversity rather than it just being dominated by the ORC/CIS/SJO/TSE.

Another thing I'd like to point out is that this is intended to open up a lot more viable targets for strategic invasions, thus making the Map game more interesting.

Also, I don't recall saying at any point that SSD's/Factory submissions provided a huge advantage in the judgement of invasions. I only brought up SSD's because they are the only thing associated to Dominions apart from hex gain. It would be neat if there were some other rewards/goals to work towards for writing out dominions, but I don't believe there is anything along those lines in the pipeline.

[member="Darth Metus"]

 

[Cypher Rage]

I

Also, I don't recall saying at any point that SSD's/Factory submissions provided a huge advantage in the judgement of invasions. I only brought up SSD's because they are the only thing associated to Dominions apart from hex gain. It would be neat if there were some other rewards/goals to work towards for writing out dominions, but I don't believe there is anything along those lines in the pipeline.

You're forgetting something. Yes, earning an SSD for completing a Dominion is great but that isn't the purpose. The idea is effectively to do what this boars was created for. Make intricate stories. Tales of Subjugation and Relief. I am just pointing out whereas this system would benifet individual writers. Where would it benifet the board itself?

[member="Kor Vexen"]

 

[Alkor Centaris]

His point is to make the interactions more interesting and increase risk and reward for factions. There's no individual profit involved.

 

[Darth Bellum]

I don't know where you got the idea that this was a system to benefit individual writers when it's specifically geared towards Major factions to make the Map game more interesting and the Map game is exclusive to Major factions and their writers as Minor factions hold very little if any power to make any significant changes to the Map. And as I stated in my last response, SSD's and gaining them was not even a pertinent point with my suggestion, its mention is only there to specify the fact that there is no other incentive for pushing to gain more territory other than make your blob on the map bigger.

As [member="Alkor Centaris"] so eloquently put, this was a suggestion geared towards making potential interactions between Major factions much more interesting with greater risk/reward and making territory gain less boring than just doing a dominion and getting a single hex. The suggestion is to make changes to the Map game which has always been considered as it's own separate entity to story writing, otherwise we may as well just get rid of the Map game in general.

[member="Cypher Rage"]