Ultimatum479
01-29-2009, 04:31 PM
(I'd've liked to add this post to an existing discussion on upkeep/city income/shmuckers in general, but the forums are so ridiculously laggy that my searches get interrupted and I then have to wait 2 minutes for my next search to get interrupted.)
As far as we can tell, Stanley wasn't exaggerating when he estimated a 500,000 shmucker spell (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0005.html) as being able to "literally empty the treasury" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0006.html). Yet Stanley, despite his eagerness to cut corners with the summoning spell in a potentially catastrophic manner (having a Croakamancer cast the Fate spell), was willing to pay Parson's upkeep cost of over 1000 shmuckers a round (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0042.html) even though, from the beginning, he'd never been particularly impressed with Parson. This implies that, despite the cost being high, it can't be ridiculously high. Therefore, most units have non-negligible upkeep costs, and even Gobwin Knob's relatively small army has a lot of units.
Sum the upkeep costs of an entire army, five exceptionally powerful casters (particularly Wanda, whose abilities in virtually every field of casting in addition to her general battle/dance-fighting capabilities and her skill as an advisor cause her to border on Mary Sue -level power), and the expected upkeep cost of the Perfect Warlord, and it's evident that Stanley had a right to worry about the gold remaining in the treasury after the spell was to be cast. Wanda, even though it can be argued that her intellectual capabilities don't give her exceptional tactical knowledge, is still generally smarter than Stanley with regard to pretty much everything except for maybe small-scale battle tactics. Why, then, did she consider an empty treasury to be survivable?
This implies one of two things, perhaps both. Either Gobwin Knob has some sort of income which would've been sufficient to pay the upkeep, or it is possible in Erfworld mechanics to go into debt for upkeep purposes, though new units can't be popped (effectively purchased) until the debt is paid.
The latter is either simple and boring or extremely intriguing. Upkeep debt, which freezes the city's assets with respect to all other purchases until the debt is paid, would imply that a loan of some sort is taken out. But from whom? If Erfworld were being played as a computer game, we'd just see a negative amount of shmuckers in the treasury, shrug our shoulders, and try to pay off the debt. In Erfworld, however, everything exists, as unrealistic as it may end up being. Most likely, the simple, boring answer is that no one can have an infinite amount of shmuckers and act as an Erfworld Bank, and thus we must go to the former option: Wanda expects Gobwin Knob's income to be sufficient to pay the upkeep costs for GK's units. If anyone has a more intriguing answer to the possibility, however, feel free to speak up. I highly doubt it's Charlie, before anyone says that.
The former, however, is interesting. Any major city should have some sort of income, but we've seen no signs of Gobwin Knob having any sort of industry or anything. How does a turn-based game assign incomes to cities? The only ones of which I know relate it, whether directly or indirectly, to territory (be it resources, villages, etc); Gobwin Knob's massive loss of territory (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0005.html) would thus imply a similar loss of income, which would spell bad news for GK's ability to pay its upkeep costs. Anyone have any other suggestions as to how a city's income is decided? It's evident that GK has a fairly large income due, as stated above, to the high upkeep costs that its five extremely powerful casters were likely to have (I say "were" since it's now four due to Misty's untimely demise).
Ansom is cautious above all things. If the Battle for Gobwin Knob fails, could he pull back, surround the city, and not only wait for the uncroaked to die but simply outlast GK's diminishing income? That's the reason I felt the need to post about this idea, despite having it ages and ages ago: it is currently very likely that Ansom will lose this battle in a way that doesn't get him killed.
/me waits for the inevitably incoming "tl;dr"s
As far as we can tell, Stanley wasn't exaggerating when he estimated a 500,000 shmucker spell (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0005.html) as being able to "literally empty the treasury" (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0006.html). Yet Stanley, despite his eagerness to cut corners with the summoning spell in a potentially catastrophic manner (having a Croakamancer cast the Fate spell), was willing to pay Parson's upkeep cost of over 1000 shmuckers a round (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0042.html) even though, from the beginning, he'd never been particularly impressed with Parson. This implies that, despite the cost being high, it can't be ridiculously high. Therefore, most units have non-negligible upkeep costs, and even Gobwin Knob's relatively small army has a lot of units.
Sum the upkeep costs of an entire army, five exceptionally powerful casters (particularly Wanda, whose abilities in virtually every field of casting in addition to her general battle/dance-fighting capabilities and her skill as an advisor cause her to border on Mary Sue -level power), and the expected upkeep cost of the Perfect Warlord, and it's evident that Stanley had a right to worry about the gold remaining in the treasury after the spell was to be cast. Wanda, even though it can be argued that her intellectual capabilities don't give her exceptional tactical knowledge, is still generally smarter than Stanley with regard to pretty much everything except for maybe small-scale battle tactics. Why, then, did she consider an empty treasury to be survivable?
This implies one of two things, perhaps both. Either Gobwin Knob has some sort of income which would've been sufficient to pay the upkeep, or it is possible in Erfworld mechanics to go into debt for upkeep purposes, though new units can't be popped (effectively purchased) until the debt is paid.
The latter is either simple and boring or extremely intriguing. Upkeep debt, which freezes the city's assets with respect to all other purchases until the debt is paid, would imply that a loan of some sort is taken out. But from whom? If Erfworld were being played as a computer game, we'd just see a negative amount of shmuckers in the treasury, shrug our shoulders, and try to pay off the debt. In Erfworld, however, everything exists, as unrealistic as it may end up being. Most likely, the simple, boring answer is that no one can have an infinite amount of shmuckers and act as an Erfworld Bank, and thus we must go to the former option: Wanda expects Gobwin Knob's income to be sufficient to pay the upkeep costs for GK's units. If anyone has a more intriguing answer to the possibility, however, feel free to speak up. I highly doubt it's Charlie, before anyone says that.
The former, however, is interesting. Any major city should have some sort of income, but we've seen no signs of Gobwin Knob having any sort of industry or anything. How does a turn-based game assign incomes to cities? The only ones of which I know relate it, whether directly or indirectly, to territory (be it resources, villages, etc); Gobwin Knob's massive loss of territory (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0005.html) would thus imply a similar loss of income, which would spell bad news for GK's ability to pay its upkeep costs. Anyone have any other suggestions as to how a city's income is decided? It's evident that GK has a fairly large income due, as stated above, to the high upkeep costs that its five extremely powerful casters were likely to have (I say "were" since it's now four due to Misty's untimely demise).
Ansom is cautious above all things. If the Battle for Gobwin Knob fails, could he pull back, surround the city, and not only wait for the uncroaked to die but simply outlast GK's diminishing income? That's the reason I felt the need to post about this idea, despite having it ages and ages ago: it is currently very likely that Ansom will lose this battle in a way that doesn't get him killed.
/me waits for the inevitably incoming "tl;dr"s