Hinterlands

Hinterlands is a new feature which is not currently in the main game. Hinterlands is only active on the test server. You can find a link to this test server under the "Player Information" section on the in-game account page.

This page still under construction and might include outdated information

The Hinterlands update changes how regions are controlled by realms. Control is a new region stat which represents how much influence your realm has over the region’s administrative bureaucracy, and how much influence the bureaucracy has over the populace as a whole. The realm with the most control in a region is the region's owner; however, a realm needs at least 25% control in order to be able to own a region.

All regions owned by a realm now fall under two kinds of administrative status: Core and Hinterland. A realm's core regions are those which are well-managed and do not suffer from any of the Hinterland penalties. Only the regions which Dukes have invested Reeves in have the core status. A realm's Hinterlands are the regions that have no reeves invested in. Hinterlands produce less gold and food than core regions. More detailed information on the difference between the two region states can be found here.

Realms can affect not only control in their own regions, but also the control of other realms regions. This is accomplished by taking various actions, or passively through Duchy seats and Capitals. A list of actions you can take can be found here, Courtiers also get an extra set of actions only they can take.

The effects on region stats now work indirectly, the actions you preform have a delayed effect by effecting a nominal value. Region stats will slowly move towards that nominal value over time, you can find more information on this here.

What will the changes mean

• You can become Steward of 2 regions. This makes the regions well-managed, while you can keep your current estate.
• You can travel 2 friendly regions at once.
• The realm no longer looses a region when a player leaves. Instead it will deteriorate to Hinterland.
• Realms can effectively hold 2.4 times as many regions as they can now.
• Dukes will have a far more prominent role, since they actually have to ensure their regions are well-managed.

Control and Anarchy

Control is a new region stat which represents how much influence your realm has over the region’s administrative bureaucracy, and how much influence the bureaucracy has over the populace as a whole. The realm with the most control in a region is the region's owner; however, a realm needs at least 25% control in order to own a region. A realm also needs at least 50% control in order to make a region 'core', and appoint a Lord. All regions below 50% control are Hinterlands.

For the regions your character is not a Lord of Control is displayed as a description on the region information pages rather than the actual number. Below is a table of the control descriptors, from low to high, and their value ranges.

Description	Percentage
None	0-4%
Slight	5-?%
Hinterland	??
Heartland	??
Iron-clad	??

Anarchy is a hidden value that determines whether regions revolt or not and has similar effects to how 'independence' works. Anarchy is now the *sole* contributor to region revolts, besides Control dropping too low to hold a region (Morale and Loyalty can help protect against them)

Anarchy is still under heavy construction and will be altered and changed in the coming updates, some effects like region revolts are not implemented yet.

Duchy Seats and Tiers

An example of how tiers are displayed on the Hinterlands information map

Control is primarily determined by duchy seats, a sort of duchy 'capital' which increases the baseline control of the region itself and radiates to surrounding regions, the further away from the duchy seat, the less this effect is prominent.

Cities and Strongholds can be made into duchy seats by their respective duke, and duchies can only have one duchy seat each. By using the 'Hinterlands info map' under information, you can see which regions fall under what tier and where duchy seats are located. The map also shows which regions are core or Hinterland.

Tiers have various effects on regions, control range determines the baseline nominal control value. Control will stabilize within this range. Tiers also determine anarchy suppression, give morale and production buffs or penalties, and effects how quickly recruitment centers and workshops replenish.

Duchy seats takes 5 days to take effect from the moment a region is assigned a duchy seat. There are 4 "tiers" of distance from a duchy seat and realm capital, with 75 miles for each tier, these are the effects of each tier:

 Tier 0 (Realm Capital only): 
  Control range: 50-100
  30% Morale Bonus (up to 100%)
  30% Production Bonus (up to 100%)
  Heavy Anarchy suppression
  Standard RC/Workshop speed

 Tier 1:
  Control range: 40-100
  20% Morale Bonus (up to 100%)
  20% Production Bonus (up to 100%)
  Medium Anarchy suppression 
  Faster RC/Workshop speed

 Tier 2:
  Control range: 25-90
  5% Morale Bonus 
  5% Production Bonus
  Light Anarchy suppression
  Standard RC/Workshop speed

 Tier 3:
  Control range: 5-65
  No Morale Bonus
  No Production Bonus
  No Anarchy suppression
  Standard RC/Workshop speed

 Tier 4:
  Control range: 0-45 (Hinterlands only!)
  15% Morale penalty
  15% Production penalty
  Medium Anarchy increase
  Slower RC/Workshop speed, on top of Hinterland penalties

Reeves

The Hinterlands 'Govern Regions' page

Apart from sufficient control, reeves are needed to lift a region from Hinterland status to 'core' status.

Reeves are like local sheriffs, that keep order and make a region manageable.

Reeves come from the nobles in your realm and are distributed through the communal realm reeves pool. Each noble provides 4 reeves for the realm, which can be used by the Dukes to assign to certain regions by either appointing a Lord or clicking on the 'make core' button for lordless regions, both under 'Govern Regions'. A reeve can handle approximately 2000 inhabitants at a time, you will need 100% reeve coverage to make and keep a region core. For example, the stronghold of Aja has a population of 20k, and thus needs 10 reeves in order to be cored.

Capitals do not need any reeves and will always be core regions. Since the amount of reeves needed is based on population, it can be a good idea to move your capital to the city or stronghold with the highest population in your realm, so you can use those reeves elsewhere.

A noble can see where his or her reeves are assigned to at the 'Your Reeves' page under actions. Dukes can see more detailed information on reeves under the Govern Regions page, including the total amount of reeves in the realm reeves pool, how many reeves are required for each region in his or her duchy, and how many are assigned.

Upon joining a realm, a noble's 4 reeves are not instantly available for the realm, it takes a few days for the reeves to be trained until they are ready and can be assigned. When a noble retires or otherwise leaves the realm, the reeves that come with this noble also retire, this takes a while so the Dukes have time to adjust accordingly.

Core vs Hinterland

A regions administrative status is either Hinterland or Core. Below are the benefits and disadvantages of these states.

Core

Core regions are your realm's 'normal' regions not penalized in terms of gold or food production, like Hinterlands are.

For a region to become core, its duke will have to invest reeves in it. In order to invest reeves, a region needs to have a minimum of 50% control. Reeves will be assigned automatically when appointing a Lord, alternatively a region can be made core without a Lord by clicking on 'make core'. This can all be done under 'actions' -> 'govern regions'.

Hinterland

Hinterlands regions are regions that are not fully managed by reeves, their production is capped to only 20% of the total gold and food production. 20% of the food production is not enough for most regions to be self sufficient, however Hinterlands also have a modifier in case this leads to a deficit, food surplus will in most cases level out to 0.

Acceptable tax rate

Acceptable tax rate effects what tax rate will be sustainable for all regions in your realm. It is also implemented for Hinterlands, except for number of regions, this only counts for core regions.

Your realm's acceptable tax rate is affected by your realm's population and economy, your realm's population and core region count relative to other realms on the island. Generally, the larger, more populated, and wealthier your realm is, the lower the acceptable tax rate throughout the realm; the smaller, less populated, and less wealthy your realm is, the higher the acceptable tax rate throughout the realm. And every region has an individual tolerance level depending on many factors that change constantly. You will have to experiment if you want to run a high tax rate to find out what your peasants are willing to accept.

Takeover

Takeovers work around two control values, the control of the regions owner over the region, and your realms control over the region. The goal is to increase your realms control over 25% AND exceed the value of the owner's. The game then gives you an estimate of your total progress. Rogue regions have 0% control and are thus generally easier to take over.

These values are displayed like so: (the example used here is for a rogue region)

  Currently, the takeover is roughly 2% complete.

   * You have made 100% progress in reducing the owner's control.
   * You have made 0% progress in raising your control.

Starting a TO

A takeover is started by clicking on start takeover under unit orders, a page will appear stating how many troops are needed to successfully initiate the TO. You can start this process even if you do not have enough troops at that moment, if you do have enough troops at the end of the turn the Takeover will actually start.

Supporting the TO

Once the TO has started you get the option to 'Help Takeover', this page shows you an overview of all the different kinds of actions you can take to help the TO. The most straight forward action is 'help takeover', which raises control for your realm, and can be done once a turn taking 6 hours of time. Other actions either raise control for your realm, or decrease that of the owner's.

Raise control for your realm

• Organize Repairs - aid the local rebuilding: For Courtiers only
• Survey Administration - find and eliminate red tape: For Courtiers only
• Streamline Administration - make the local bureaucracy work better: For Courtiers only
• Assign Administrators - improve the regional bureaucracy: For Courtiers only
• Civil Work - help repair infrastructure: Available if production relative to population is low enough to improve.
• Aid with Harvest - help bring in the harvest: Requirements unknown
• Rebuild from Looting - help to repair damage: Available if production is low enough after looting
• Police Work - help the local constabulary: Only for police units

Decrease control of the enemy realm

• Attack Administration - damage local control: Depending on the method used you also negatively effect other region stats (not available in rogue regions)
• Release Prisoners - This currently only affects commoner NPC prisoners—that is to say, it decreases Control. It does not allow early release for player characters in prison.
• Looting - this will also lower morale production and loyalty of the regions owner, looting has been reworked, for more information check looting.

All of these actions can be taken at any time, even without an active TO; however, an active takeover increases the control effects of the relevant actions.

The actions taken during—and recently before—the takeover are remembered by the peasants, and will affect the status of the region after the takeover is complete. For example looting the region will help with completing the TO, but also effects loyalty production and morale over time.

Decreasing control can also happen passively through the effects of Duchy seats and realm capitals radiating their control to nearby regions as described under Duchy Seats and Tiers.

If control drops below 25% and anarchy is high enough a region can revolt and join a realm with more control in the region then the current owner.

Colony Takeovers

Colony Takeovers (CTOs) will be added back into the game, but they have not yet been added. When they are added, there will be a 15 noble requirement to perform the CTO. The "colony" will be an actual entity within the realm that can have people joining it before the actual CTO starts.

Looting

Looting has been completely reworked. All looting now targets specific estates within the region. Looting has also been simplified down to: Steal Gold, Steal Food, or Pillage and Maraud. There is still an option to attempt to slaughter peasants, but it is only available for realms you have declared Hatred against.

Looting will decrease the region owner's control, while raising your realm's control on the short term. However it makes it harder for your realm to keep control up in the medium term, especially after the TO is completed.

Peasants (and minor nobles) will now keep small amounts of gold and food for themselves. The two most important effects of this will be:

• Looting will now target the gold the peasants hold, rather than the tax vaults (which should really be better guarded than they have seemed in the past)

• The food the peasants eat is the food that they hold. This means that starvation will not hit quite as quickly, but it also means that there is a limit to how fast food can be distributed once they have been starving.

Food and Gold

An example of the new food page showing the effects of Hinterland status on food production and the difference between local food stored and food stored in the Lord's storage (granary)

As mentioned above, food and gold are now both stored locally among the peasants AND in storage available to the Lord and realm.

The higher your tax rate, the less gold is stored by peasants themselves, the more gold they have the happier they are.

Food stored in the local lord's storage (or granary if that's been build), is distributed among the peasants based on the distribution levels (25, 50, 100, or 200%), and can be bought or sold by the local lord or banker. Food that is stored locally cannot be traded, peasants will eat their own food if the Lord's food is not sufficient to feed them.

The food page also shows the effects of Hinterland status on food production and net surplus. The value before the slash is the amount of food produced when core, the value after the slash is the amount produced as Hinterland. (like so: Core/Hinterland)

Region statistics

The detailed region statistics page, example region used here is Brackhead a tier 1 region

Region statistics are Morale, Loyalty, Control, Production and Anarchy and work a bit different with the Hinterlands update. The various effects on region stats work indirectly, the actions you preform effect a nominal value. Region stats will slowly move towards that nominal value over time, thus the effects of your actions manifest with a delay. This means that if you hold court, or do police work for example, the effects of these actions are no longer instantly visible on the region page but become visible over time as they start to take effect.

Anarchy is an invisible region stat, you wont be able to get a hard number for this stat, but it does work in a similar way, with a nominal value determined by various modifiers.

A detailed report for your regions nominal values and how they are determined can be found | here. You will have to adjust the region id in the link to see other regions, this page is for Barad Lacarith which has region id 68. You can see the region id's on the normal region pages, by clicking them on the map or in the region list and checking the link. (which is: https://hinterlands.battlemaster.org/region/2/68 for Barad Lacarith)

Base line values for control are the effects of Tiers, upon which the other effects are stacked like in the example here.

  93% Final value for nominal control (40% baseline + total control buff) 

It also shows current control, the difference between current and nominal control determines whether control will increase or decrease over time.

  Current control is 91.2%
  Nominal control is 93%, so control is expected to increase next turn.

There is also a region buff page with some more detailed information for your region only, you can access this page on the command page.

Other Changes and Misc Info

Damaging & demolishing recruitment centers now works differently: it’s much harder to do permanent damage, but much easier to disable them for a short period and clear out the recruits currently in them.

Travel time is reduced by 2/3 within your own realm, and increased by half in realms you are at war with (including rogues). We recognize that this may cause some issues on Dwilight; we plan to be conducting a review of travel times on Dwilight some time during the Hinterlands play-test, with the intention of ensuring that they are not too great a burden. Within your realm, you can take special advantage of this speed boost by moving up to 2 regions in a single turn.

Region Lords can "Hand out food..." via the Command menu. This can be done once per day, with a limited amount of food, at a cost of 2 hours. This allows Lords to manually distribute more food from the granaries.

There is no restriction on moving the capital to a Hinterland city.

Test Server

The next major feature package for BattleMaster, named Hinterlands after its most prominent new feature, is complete in draft form, and needs play-testing to ensure it won't cause an undue level of disruption when it is brought live to the main game. Because of this, a special, temporary, play-testing server is available where you can help to make sure it gets a proper level of testing. This will be a much more volatile experience than the game as a whole, with major balance-changing updates potentially coming frequently and with little warning. All players who have been in the game at least a month are welcome to join the play-test.

Please be aware that as this is a play-test, there are some differences between it and the usual way the game works.

• First of all, the play-test will be temporary. Everything that happens here will be completely wiped away once I have enough data to feel reasonably confident that the balance of Hinterlands won't massively wreck the game on the main server when I send the code live there.

• The play-test is completely separate from the main game. Nothing done here will affect the characters, families, or continents in the main game in any way.

• Because this is a play-test, while I do want to see more or less "normal play", there will also be things I specifically need tested. As such, I may sometimes ask particular players or realms to do things that aren't particularly beneficial to them militarily, so that I can get better data.

• Depending on my available time, there may be certain time windows where I run several extra turns on the play-test in order to get faster feedback on particular features. I will try to announce these clearly, along with what I want tested, ahead of time.

• While the rules of the main game all apply here, and we still won't allow "names" like @@DragonSlayer782@@, or characters roleplayed as being non-human, we will be somewhat less strict with the level of silliness allowed in the play-test.

• Delvin has stated that eventually the playtest server will turn into a free for all, with all realms locked at war with each other like the war islands, in order to thoroughly test warfare and how the new mechanics work under these conditions.

Sources

Apart from in game sources and discord these sources where used:

• https://hinterlands.battlemaster.org/news/2
• https://battlemaster.org/news/17
• https://battlemaster.org/news/16
• https://forum.battlemaster.org/index.php/topic,8425.0.html

Update November 2023: STEWARDS replace REEVES

I believe I have the code for the system to replace Reeves ready to go. There is a caveat, though: Reeves are not simply being removed; they are being replaced with a different (simpler, I hope) subsystem.

The basic rule of thumb for the new subsystem is this: Each duchy is expected to have the regions in the tier closest to its Duchy Seat at least 80%* "managed". (*The 80% figure is subject to change based on how the balance and fun look.)

What does "managed" mean? It means that the region has either a Lord or a Steward.

Now, two pieces of better news:

• Any noble in the realm can be Steward of any region in the realm. It is no longer limited to knights of that region.
• A noble can be the Lord of one region and Steward of another, or the Steward of two different regions.

In addition to this, there is one other piece of "bookkeeping" you will need to do to transition to this new system. Once I have put the code for it live, Rulers will have the option to set a Duchy Seat being supported for each existing Duchy Seat (including the capital) that meets the 80% threshold above. Once it's all set up, it should look like one big chain of duchies supporting each other. Because of the complications of doing this during the transition, I am also willing to take care of this manually.

The capital absolutely must have managed regions around it, too. Nothing is (currently) changing in the tier system: the capital remains tier 0, regions around it tier 1, and duchy seats also tier 1. That's why I used the wording I did: for the capital duchy, the regions you need 80% of managed are the tier 1 regions, and for other duchies, the regions you need 80% of managed are the tier 2 regions for that specific duchy seat. Being well-managed is only determined by having a Lord or Steward, but being a Core region is a requirement for both of those—as soon as a region falls to Hinterland status, it will kick out the Lord and Steward. Once again, as I have stated on numerous occasions, and made clear with various of the extra bits of information on calculation of tax gold, Hinterland regions do not count in any way toward the calculation of acceptable tax rates. I really, really don't want to have to fight this bogus idea any longer.

The way I think it should work is more or less like this:

• You take a new city that is at least tier 3.
• You make sure that the previously-set-up duchy has 80% management in its closest tier.
• The Ruler specifies that that duchy will now support the newly-taken city as a Duchy Seat.
• Control is brought up above 50% in the new city (at worst, this should be possible with Trained Administrators assigned by a Courtier).
• A Lord is appointed and the Ruler declares them the new Duke.

From my previous checking, I believe that in most places, there will be at least a path to taking any given city from other nearby cities and ensuring it will be tier 3. Bear in mind that a) it uses distance, not number of regions, and b) I am planning on making some map changes on live before Hinterlands hits, to ensure that any significant exceptions to this (and some other issues) are addressed. If it proves to be a problem even here on Atamara, I may be able to adjust the tier distance to compensate for that.

Assigning a Steward does not, in and of itself, increase Control. Adding more cities to a realm should be a major undertaking. Once it is well-established within the realm, then it should be a significant benefit—but having to make strategic decisions like "should we go for this city now? or will that be too much of a drain on resources while we do XYZ?" is exactly the sort of thing I want to encourage more of in the game.

Update April 2024: PROXIMITY replaces INDIVIDUAL designation

First and foremost, I'm now pretty firmly convinced that several of you were correct, and a proximity-based system for determining whether a given City/Stronghold can be a Duchy Seat is a better system than the current individual-designation system. Once I have a little more time for Hinterlands, I will work on shifting the system over to that.

Relatedly, the way the 80% threshold works is a bit too strict, and I think I'd like to change it from, effectively, rounding up to rounding down—so that if you have 4 regions surrounding the capital, rather than needing all 4 (because 3/4 is only 75%), it would only require 3. This will necessitate clearer communication about the precise amount needed, so I'll have to add a display of that somewhere—not sure where just yet, whether on an existing page or a new one; open to suggestions.

Now, secondly, I recognize that the way well-managed duchies currently work—only providing the ability to support another duchy—is both counterintuitive and less fun and rewarding to work with than it should be. Given that, I've been considering how I can make it feel better to improve your own duchy. The conclusion I've come to is...potentially controversial, which is part of why I definitely want to talk about it before I try doing it.

I'd like to change how duchy membership works. Rather than being completely free-choice within the realm, each region will belong to the duchy whose Seat it is closest to, rounded to the nearest Tier. Regions that are the same tier away from 2 different Seats can choose which of those they want to belong to, but otherwise Lords can no longer leave one Duchy and join another.

The reason for this change is to grant bonuses to all regions of the Duchy based on its level of management. (Which would not be feasible with fully-unrestricted Duchy membership—you could just put all the regions except the Duchy Seats in the Capital Duchy, load it up, and get bonuses everywhere. As a nice extra, the change should reduce the cognitive load of the new system by ensuring that "the regions affected by Duchy Seat Keplerville/using it to determine distance tier" and "the regions of Kepler Duchy" are the same, unlike now.) I haven't yet figured out just what those bonuses will be, but while there will probably be some that are direct stat boosts, I'm thinking others will be related to the still-forthcoming changes to how Anarchy and revolts work, basically providing some more protection against revolts for duchies that are better-staffed overall.

Third: I'm concerned that the way I've got takeovers designed now is code-wise too simple, to the detriment of the fun of the mechanics. As it stands, it's purely a matter of raising your Control above the greater of (25%/the owner's current control); I'm strongly considering making it, instead, take those Control levels as a baseline and using them to calculate a "takeover strength" necessary to finish conquering the region. Then the more-generic "help with the takeover" would increase the amount of progress—but if you wanted to, you could also continue to do actions like Aid the Region or Terrorize the Peasants, which would reduce the threshold of victory while also affecting how the region would feel about you afterward. This would a) make takeovers feel more like the old style, b) make it much easier to communicate clearly what the takeover progress is, and c) allow me to adjust the power of the Aid and Terrorize actions independently from the ease of actually completing a takeover.

I think it would also let me add something that I've felt was missing for a while, though I'm still not entirely sure how well it would work: a distinction between a quick & dirty takeover that's nearly guaranteed to lose you the region again in a few weeks, and a longer but more reliable takeover that will let you keep the region without heroic measures.