Megagame

Good morning! 

I've been working on a Risk-style play-by-email Megagame. The format will be thus: Twelve nations on an island that is Not Japan, with a total population around 7 million. Centuries ago, five demon princes came to the island and set up their own domains, and forged their own demihumans, before disappearing. Now the fantastically powerful Pearl Crown has sat unworn in the Green Tower for as long as anyone can remember, for only a united island can perform a coronation. 

There's good reason to think the island may soon be united, as a cataclysm on the far side of the world has awakened ancient powers, and unleashed a vast armada towards the island!

Each of the 13 factions (12 nations and Armada) will have at least three leadership roles- an overall Ruler, plus masters of the military, domestic, arcane, etc. My 23 PCs will fill these roles as I see fit. They will not share their identities and will communicate only via in-world messengers and meetings. Thus, they will not be aware which of their comrades and enemies are "real" and which are NPCs! Each "turn" will represent about a week ingame, and I'll try to process a turn a week. 

I'm planning to use ACKS and Domains at War: Campaigns as my starting texts, but as previous posts suggest, I find a lot lacking about these books and am using it more as a baseline than a guideline. 

First Project:

How do we make a Domain Game, such that after The Army Leaves, the player who stays behind still has stuff to do? 

So, one option would be to say that The Army expects stuff to flow from the homeland, and producing that stuff is a game. Let's say- 

1. Supply

2. Money

3. New Troops

A. Where do these things come from? 

B.What obstacles and limitations have to be solved?

C. What ARE the solutions? 

A1. We might imagine a general split between two main options: Lords vs Cities (with Abroad as a bonus, but that's just someone else's Lords/Cities). The king can say "I expect ten horse archers from every Baron" or send men to ride around hiring/pressing Horse Archers, or find a king who already did. In my mind I'm imagining two neat columns on my DM sheet with FEUDAL andCITY with numbers showing how much exists. 

B1. The downside of using cities is that it's expensive and will become more expensive. The downside of using Lords is that it "costs" loyalty/morale, and both will have diminishing returns. Negotiating with a foreign power means meeting THEIR demands, and risking scandal depending on the national relationship. Let's imagine a second statistic, called FRICTION, expressed as a percentage, that represents the difficulty of acquiring the full amount; probably with a baseline value of around 75%. (That is, if the King wakes up in the morning and says "This week we will buy all the horses in the country, and that's my big project" he can probably get about a quarter of the horses in that time. 

C1. Friction fades naturally over time, so one tool is to simply rotate between tough venues as the "natural" supply replenishes. Also, building up supply through targeted projects (Irrigation Upgrades mean more grain on the market) and grinding down friction through laws/infrastructure (wiping out the Thieve's League means they stop competing with you on the thug market)

EXAMPLE: 

The king of Renraku wants more crossbowmen. There are currently 20,000 crossbowmen in his domain, but Friction is at 70% for Lords and 95% for the cities, so a demand would get 6,000 and recruiters 1,000. He doesn't want to issue a demand because he's planning Demands for Supply and Gold soon and wants Lord Friction low

Instead, he founds the National Crossbow Association, which costs GP a month to upkeep, but boosts supply and immediately lowers Friction as it both trains users and registers them.