Book 2 – Text Updates 055

[ScegfOd]

Still no.

i lol'd

also i think as much as anything else, Rudolfo's name not rhyming with the other 7 is the joke.

[Beeskee]

Reading another example of infantry viewpoints, and combining it with the start of the prequel, I want to toss out a theory:
Upkeep is a constant cost that must be paid to keep a unit from returning to "0". The more upkeep a unit costs, the farther from 0 it is so it can be more defined. Notice that parson costs over 1k a turn; a high level archon might have been what, 400? This is why even if a unit is fed from other sources, it simply is at "minimum upkeep" instead of being a free unit. Something has to keep it from falling into nothingness, and that is the schmukers burned for its upkeep.

Because the basic infantry cost so little (especially garrison units) there is very little there; some basic impulses, rudimentary knowledge, and that's it.

We do know that units have a 'minimum upkeep' as well as a way to reduce their standard upkeep down to that number: by hunting or foraging, trading move for upkeep reduction; by eating from a chuck wagon, which is either a special unit or special device; or by eating rations provided by another side; and probably other ways related to finding food and/or equipment. Are arrows replenished each turn? If so, finding or making arrows may reduce an archer's upkeep.

I don't think a unit's upkeep directly defines their intelligence/capabilities, but rather, it reflects them. For example, an ordinary archer apparently can't just start acting like a warlord, giving orders to other units, etc. They can probably pass along orders, and other things that seem reasonable, but to suddenly decide what their target priorities are, etc, just isn't possible for them. It's either possible but not in their nature, or actually outside their capabilities.

Basic infantry/archer units do have limited actions they can take. They can follow orders, either by being led directly, or following orders they had been given previously, or auto-attack with a priority based on some presently undefined set of parameters. That's about it. An infantry stack with no orders will just stand there, forever. Even when everyone was off-turn during the night, this group didn't seem inclined to do anything particular such as explore the city.

It's possible there are basic units who are more inclined towards those sorts of things, those are probably the ones more likely to get promoted up to warlord.



Unrelated to the above quote: Potato joke explained:

One potato, two potato, etc...

To Infinity and beyond!

To potato and beyond!


There.

[Saladman]

Questions:
Do volley fire kills give exp to the entire stack, or just the unit that hit, or does the unit that hit get a bonus?

"I even want to hit it!" insisted Rudolfo. "I want to hit it and crit it! And then level up!"

And critting strongly suggests killing it, from past crits we've seen. And "killing blow" xp was established by the Bogroll/Ansom battle, by Crimson's killing blow on Ossomer, the Wrigley spear-man interlude, etc. Simplest explanation is xp by individual kills. And "volleys" has a pretty clear vernacular definition, easily understood by Erfworlders as a round of ranged attacks. There might well (but need not) be a minor bonus to hit from volley fire as well.

[Balerion]

We do know that units have a 'minimum upkeep' as well as a way to reduce their standard upkeep down to that number: by hunting or foraging, trading move for upkeep reduction; by eating from a chuck wagon, which is either a special unit or special device; or by eating rations provided by another side; and probably other ways related to finding food and/or equipment. Are arrows replenished each turn? If so, finding or making arrows may reduce an archer's upkeep.

I would assume finding arrows reduced upkeep. I think there is the "physical needs of the unit" upkeep cost, and then the other, keep me in the world upkeep.

I don't think a unit's upkeep directly defines their intelligence/capabilities, but rather, it reflects them. For example, an ordinary archer apparently can't just start acting like a warlord, giving orders to other units, etc. They can probably pass along orders, and other things that seem reasonable, but to suddenly decide what their target priorities are, etc, just isn't possible for them. It's either possible but not in their nature, or actually outside their capabilities.

Ah, right. That does fit in better with the luckamancy conversation too, where the dice rolls are just representations of what is going on. Important to get the chicken and egg in the right order

Basic infantry/archer units do have limited actions they can take. They can follow orders, either by being led directly, or following orders they had been given previously, or auto-attack with a priority based on some presently undefined set of parameters. That's about it. An infantry stack with no orders will just stand there, forever. Even when everyone was off-turn during the night, this group didn't seem inclined to do anything particular such as explore the city.

It's possible there are basic units who are more inclined towards those sorts of things, those are probably the ones more likely to get promoted up to warlord.

I would be curious to know if there are differences of a few schmuckers between units that would account for more motivation etc. I

[Beeskee]

Probably a minor nitpick on my part, yeah. At any rate, basic units only have basic capabilities, regardless of how the limitation is applied. Your take on the upkeep cost is exactly right, there's a basic cost that needs to be paid no matter what, and then additional costs for food and maybe supplies. We've only had it stated clearly that external food sources help reduce it, as far as I know, but I imagine supplies is in there too.

I'd love to know if there are minor differences in the seemingly identical units. Clearly there's something to make certain ones stand out, with Stanley and presumably others getting promoted up from infantry. I have no idea if that is actually reflected in unit upkeep though.

[Swodaems]

...his very presence 1700 turns ago suggests that Slately only produced 7 more children in a 1700 turn span despite producing 16 over a 800-1799 turn span earlier in life.

It's possible that the high pop rate early on is due to heavy losses while the side expands. Once it becomes a large, well-allied, and mostly stable and non-aggressive side, they would need to pop fewer royals, since fewer would be dying in conflicts and the rest wouldn't have as much to do.

The problem is that determination of the cause of the discrepancy is a exercise left up to the reader and we're often to lazy to do that kind of work. I would be more willing to do it if I was sure of being proven right or wrong, but Erfworld hasn't really been doing as much World-building as my inner fantasy fan would like. The story has decided to focus on the question of 'Try to guess what happens next?!?!' instead of 'try to rationally piece together how we got to our current situation."

This one humanized the lesser Units a lot. The Stabber-spearman text entries dehumanized them, I thought.

I have to disagree with you on this. (At least in part.)

Wrigley's first update showed us a man suffering from shock and trying to come to terms with things. Despite using fewer words than this update, we got a very good sense of how Wrigley stood in his side and who he was. The information contained in the update was presented in such a way that it seemed rational for Wrigley to have it and made him seem like a normal, situationally-aware, human who was not in a good place mentally or physically. The mentions of Wrigley's assumpution that he would one day get to do things and his training suggest that Wrigley had goals and was trying to pursue them as best he could. We could connect with Wrigley as a person because we actually had enough information about him to get in his shoes.

That Wrigley's second update was somewhat dehumanizing is a point I will not argue against. The thoughtful Wrigley presented earlier seems to become a simple device being used to convey the attitude of a generalized group of soldiers. Worse yet, it's an attitude that is considered decades, if not centuries, out of date here and is something the comic seemed unlikely to put in the heads of soldiers on our protagonist's side. Wrigley and the other soldiers aren't acting out of pragmatism or hatred. They're trying for personal fun and glory. (As a side point, giving Wrigley the Bolivian Army ending was a bad idea. It simply doesn't fit with the tone established everywhere else in Erfworld up to that point. In the previous named character deaths, all deaths were either shown on panel, the aftermath was shown to us, or the exact details implied with no great subtlety.)

This update presented Mary and her stack in a way reminiscent of a high school based 'cliques, freaks, and geeks' sitcom. They felt more like stock characters than people. We had 'picked on pretty girl', 'the gossipers', and 'the bashful stoic'. (I would search TVtropes and find more common names for those characters, but I'm too lazy.) The story about the stabber named Dodge shows us that these 8 characters likely had free nights. (They weren't ordered to do nothing but go to bed.) Despite this opportunity to regularly meet and talk with units who might have a better idea of how things are, they are all shown as still sticking to only really talking amongst themselves while being ignorant of the side at large. This changes their situation from being 'kept in the dark by superiors/circumstance' to 'willingly ignorant group of outcasts'. This makes them extremely hard to relate to. While I will never think of myself as the most social of people, I would be lying if I said I didn't know anything about the state of society at large. It's like these 8 units have decided to try and form their own very small, isolationst, Amish commune.
(These 8 also have the same personal fun and glory attitude that Wrigley and his bros did during their charge, but it's forgivable in them as they never actually make decisions or act based solely on it.)


One of the problems I have with Erfworld is that it sometimes seems like Rob is just throwing out random numbers when he refers to the dates of historical events as they relate to the characters' pasts, not placing them somewhere in the existing timeline. Other updates tell us that there are significant events unrelated to the main storyline events that these archers lived thru. A few one line mentions of Mary and her stack's reactions to things like Forthewin's fall, the campaign against the ad council, the parades for Holly Shortcake's demise, or the increases and decreases of the number of troops in the city as they related to Jetstone's various military endeavors would have made this update feel a great deal more complete to me.

Also, the confirmed ability of Jetstone to keep their capital from even being attacked for 1700 turns without hiding it suggests that they may actually be correct in their assessment that they have the highest amount of military acumen in the world. It's actually somewhat of a shock to me that the side that produced Prince "Generate an incredibly expensive plan, then abandon it the moment a piece of tail gets in danger" could actually be competent. I was thinking that they were just a bunch of foolish blowhards with a decent mouthpiece.

[Saladman]

Other updates tell us that there are significant events unrelated to the main storyline events that these archers lived thru. A few one line mentions of Mary and her stack's reactions to things like Forthewin's fall, the campaign against the ad council, the parades for Holly Shortcake's demise, or the increases and decreases of the number of troops in the city as they related to Jetstone's various military endeavors would have made this update feel a great deal more complete to me.

Adding those though would weaken the moral of the post. "To be a garrison unit in the capital city of Jetstone placed you farther from the goings-on at Court than if you were a warlord twenty turns' ride away." Mary and her stack aren't consulted, they aren't briefed, they're just left alone on the wall or in their tower, and only spoken to when their post is changed from one section of wall to another. They aren't trained or drilled so I don't imagine they paraded, and likely didn't even get to watch. They're zero-move, level 1 garrison units born solely to get a Noble idiot to shut up.

I imagine gossip did filter back to them about some of that, but from the sound of it they don't have the experience to distinguish between what we know were important historical events and "saw an extra flight of orlies today" or "gumps marched through" or whatever. Just 1700 turns of limbo, and at most 2 out of 8 of them have any intelligence or curiosity. (And for all we know, 2 of 8 may be uncommonly gifted for a stack of infantry.) Its like Waiting for Godot as staged by wargame units.

[Oberon]

It's actually somewhat of a shock to me that the side that produced Prince "Generate an incredibly expensive plan, then abandon it the moment a piece of tail gets in danger" could actually be competent.

Ah, oh. You were expecting a story with no imperfect characters. So sorry. Those are rather dull pieces of tales (sic).

Read a bit, you might find that classic literature disagrees with your expectations. Much less a web comic.