April Fool's

Every April 1st, Tom has made an announcement to the mailing list. Usually, at least some people believe him...

For next year, please don't spoil the fun. If you don't fall for it, then don't tip of the others who do, ok?

Unfortunately, not all april fools mails have survived. If by some chance you are in posession of an older one, please add it.

Troops Update (2003)

[BM-Discuss] troops update
Tom <tom@lemuria.org>
Tue Apr 1 10:43:56 CEST 2003

The combat system is still very much unsatisfactory, so I have decided
to implement a major change that I've been working on for quite a while
now:

* Infantry
Grunts are not exactly known for their intelligence, a factor that
desperately needs to be included in the game. Under the new system, all
infantry units have a 10% chance per turn of getting lost during travel
(20% in woodlands, 25% in cities with 3 or more bars).

* Archers
Everyone knows that archers really are wimps, too afraid to face the
enemy in real combat. Archer units engaged in close combat have a
random chance of doing either of the below:
 - fight
 - immediately surrender
 - attempt to bury a hole to hide in
 - offer themselves to the enemy as sex slaves if only they are spared
  (they will then act much like a baggage train)

* Cavalry
Horses really aren't well represented in the game. Cavalry units will
get a random combatstrength increase to simulate horses kicking and
biting, but they will eat twice as much food. However, large cavalry
units will also create dung, which will increase harvest in a region.

* Mixed Infantry
Does anyone else think these guys are sissies? Trying to do both, doing
neither well. Mixed infantry will be booed at when entering any city or
townsland, which will immediately lower morale. However, they will get
another orders option: "Find someone to beat up" which will restore
morale if successful (there is a 25% chance that they will meet someone
who has friends and get beaten up themselves, however).

* Special Forces
Every special force unit will automatically create a lobbyist back in
the capital, who as a representative of the military-industrial complex
can affect diplomacy and other ruler actions. Specifically, 5 lobbyists
are capable of declaring war on a random enemy once per week with or
without the rulers consent.

Combat Free Week (2004)

[BM-Discuss] Combat Free Week
Tom <tom@lemuria.org>
Thu Apr 1 14:56:54 CEST 2004

You may have noticed that the server had some slowdowns, and was even
down for about 10 minutes earlier today.

There is a serious problem with the combat script, that in some
instances runs one battle forever (the others work fine, just one
battle hangs, about every 3-4 turns).

So far, it was manageable, but it is getting worse. Today, it consumed
so many system resources, that I could not even remotely log in to the
machine anymore and had to have it rebooted!

Obviously, that is unacceptable. Until the bug is fixed, all combat is
disabled.

Repeat: There will be no combat until this bug is fixed.

Since I am away over the weekend, this may well last until monday or
tuesday. Sorry for that. Let's all use the time to do some great
roleplaying instead.



Oh, and if you believed any of the above, then you should seriously
check your calender. April Fools! :)))

(please, please! Don't post the above into the game. No need to have
this run around as a rumour, ok? All in jest. No slowdowns exist. And
the short downtime today was because I upgraded the Linux kernel, which
requires a reboot.)

New Class (2005)

[Discuss] New Class
Tom <tom@lemuria.org>
Fri Apr 1 11:05:38 CEST 2005

For a long time, I've mentioned that internal politics and the
occasional power-strife within a realm make the game more interesting.

So I've worked on it, and created a new class: Courtier


A courtier is a kind of merge between bureaucrat and infiltrator. He
travels without a unit and at higher skill levels invisible. He can
engage in intrigue and gossip.

Gossip allows him to learn details about regions and troop leaders,
many of which are unavailable to other classes. Through gossip, he can
also "intercept" fragments of private messages anyone in the same
region sends or receives.

Intrigue gives him manipulative powers. They are not as disruptive as
those of the infiltrator, but more difficult to spot. For example, he
can spread rumours about troop leaders, impacting their honour and/or
prestige values temporarily (they will recover over a span of one
month). He can talk region stewards into handing him gold from the tax
collection (very high skill levels required to do that in enemy
regions). His most important intrigue power is the ability to
manipulate elections.


To give the courtiers some action, they can attend tournaments and they
can fight the - requested before - duels. They can even force other
troop leaders into duels by insulting their honour publicly, giving the
victim the choice to fight the duel or lose tremendous amounts of
honour.


As a final step, there will be a realm-wide "intrigue level" large
determined by the number of courtiers in the realm regions, regardless
of which realm they actually belong to (courtiers can be used as a kind
of ambassadors and live in other realms).
At high intrigue levels, as in real life, only courtiers can survive
the deadly politics and all government members are forced to either
become courtiers themselves or step down from their positions.



Should be in testing with the next update.