Climber: I think allowing caravan expanding border within others’ claimed territory is a mistake.  That should be disallowed.   Caravan should only be able to expand border on wild spaces, or when dipo is in conflict and war.   I don’t want micro caravan.

Climber: I’ll be happy if there is only empire-vs-empire level RoP.  Location specific RoP is a bonus, if devs has time to make it good.   Location specific RoP seem to be quote a different thing to rally points.

Climber: I’ve no intention to spend my life in that huge thread.  I know there is good stuff there, but someone pls summarize it.   I’ve exactly the opposite opinion.   Caravan can trespass borders inappropriately even when they are using a merchant guild.  The only exceptions are if the caravan itself is invisible, bribing the merchant guild to smuggle stuff for you.

Climber: Scoutdog, if you have to always push that button, you’ll be annoyed.  Why not make it automatically pushed?  In that case, it will be very similar to the Neutral diplo state.
Another use for the border.  If there is an event log, the log should keep track of all opponent units that get in/out of it, including caravans.

Agreed there are lot of fun stuff can be done with border.  The question is how to draw the border elegantly.  What is the simplest & fair rule for your border?  Now we have a few choices, distance from your settlement, essence revitalized hexes, Civ4 style cultural influence, caravan routes, and population.   How the border is drawn should base on a combination of some these factors. 
Border can make cross border trade important.  Say if an empire happens to have 80% of Iron on map (maybe it is from RMG, maybe the map designer wants that), a proper border mechanism can make the iron trade interesting.  Say if that empire happens to be at one corner, its more central neighboring countries should get some trade route revenue.  But anyone who wants to rob these caravans has to be in conflict with these countries.
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Border has little effect on prolonging the game.   If there is ‘conflict’ diplo status, it only delays your invasion a few turns.   Eternal game is something related to the birth, death & succession of the Soverign (or other characters) as I’ve mentioned in the “Dynamic History” thread.

Yes. That's what the big map settings are for.

I see international trade functioning differently. I imagine foreign trade being accomplished by essentially commissioning an independent trader (a member of a 3rd party trading guild or whatnot) to carry my stuff to somewhere else. Any sensible trader would try to maximize his profits by filling his caravan with however many goods he can to sell along the way, thus generating trade income for nations he passes through. Even if a nation were to charge tolls, it'd be something paid by the trader, not your kingdom. Now, if trade is done by me building a caravan, filling it with stuff and sending it marching across other kingdoms' territory escorted by my own armed troops - then explicit tolls would be a little more sensible. But that kind of trading would sorta stink.

And honestly the prospect of setting toll rates seems a little daunting to me (especially if you want to set different tolls for different people). And having to keep track of which nations have what tolls would kinda suck. Too much blah for too little gain.

 

 

Hmm, I think I would also like to play a never-ending sand-box fantasy TBS game, where your channeller eventualy becomes a being like the Witch King or Cirdan the Shipwright from LoTR, with a rich history behind him or her.  Especially if there are interesting random events and quests to do.

But, back to borders, I think they are important to this game, but I would like to see a break from culture or influence defining your borders, but allow diplomacy to make a difference as well.  For example, channeller X negotiates with channeller Y that X's borders will extend to Mountain Range A, while Y can have River Valley B.  This would actually make a naming mechanic for territories and terrain features important in the game, maybe to further refine, there could be some sort of map plot coordinate system so that players can fine tune their borders.  I think this might make the game fun if you prefer diplomacy as well.

Edit: Sorry, didn't realize this was buried a little deeply when I replied, nor that there was more than one page.

I wasn't saying you were wrong, I was just saying that the mechanic I described above would be interesting.

I'd like borders to affect an army's ability to supply. Within your borders, supply is easy. The population helps you out, helps keep you fed, and makes maintaining that army fairly painless.

Outside your border, no such luck. You've got to bring supplies or forage. Go inside an enemies border and it gets even tougher, foraging isharder because you need protected patrols or guerilla forces try to sabotage your supply trains. Abstractly of course, just as some +/- to supply which in turn affects the number of troops you can keep in an area, or their battle readiness, or some such.

I don't see borders having much impact on small groups. A patrol, or spy, etc, would be mostly immune to effect of borders.

Exactly. Nice term, heart-ripping . It'd help prevent that and the related uber-stack issue. You can't just drag 10 gazillion guys and their horses through leagues of enemy territory. The supply logistics would kill you. Putting in an entire supply chain, disruption, etc mechanism would be overkill, but it might not be to hard to essentially have a supply rating that's based on your armies relative position to friendly territory vs. enemy territory.

I remember Kohan had army healing rates related to that kind of relative territorial distance.