Is that a lawgiver in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
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Is that a lawgiver in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
To be fair the introduction given is what would be needed for someone who has ZERO prior knowledge to the game races and personalities. The "insights" is the type of knowledge a typical player would have gained after say 1 age playing. It then takes 10+ages to really see that most of these thoughts fall into outdated thinking and inexperienced game knowledge.
With that said the only 100% wrong things as an introduction for "new" players are that
Merchant is NOT primarily a heavy attacker personality or a once a day personality. Merchant is an economy based personality best used as a secondary option for any role.
And its T/M, NEVER M/T
I'm getting pretty fed up with the plethora of negativity I'm getting concerning this thread, so I'm going to take a moment to spell out a few things. A few particular individuals - you know precisely who you are, so I won't bother naming anyone - need to hear the following, and hear it well!
First and foremost, in the very first line of the OP - unchanged since the very beginning - EXPLICITLY STATES that I've been away from Utopia for a while. I should think that the self-proclaimed deities of Utopia would have sufficient command of the English language (and more than two brain cells to rub together) to understand what that means. I also specifically stated that it was merely a starting point - a work-in-progress, to be sure, and far from being the end-all of be-all.
I would very much thank those who have actually contributed - as much for showing where I'm wrong as for general support. I'm not above admitting when I'm wrong, but such verdicts rely on information. Actually providing information contrary to my conceptions is quite beneficial, allowing all who bother reading this thread to not only understand what is correct, but why it's correct.
Calling my efforts stupid and statements like "this is why we can't have nice things" are about as far from contributing as one can get. Not one, but TWO mods have quite clearly called such posters onto the carpet - and yet they persist.
This is the very attitude which is killing many online games, Utopia included. Even if you truly are as all-knowing as you make yourself out to be, there was a time you weren't. A time when you'd never even heard of Utopia. And, while part of your knowledge of the game was hard-won through experience (more recent than mine), the bulk of it came from others who were willing to come forward and actually explain things to you.
But above all else is the simple, inescapable fact that there are countless posts throughout this forum expressing "somebody should write up a guide about the Race/Class combinations" - either verbatim or in sentiment. While I in no way deny that there are many in these forums better suited to this task, none of these wise somebodies (to my knowledge) has done so!
You want to ***** and moan that the majority of my knowledge concerning the game is outdated? Fine. You're most likely very much in the right insofar as it being true. But not a damned one of you has any grounds to fault me for taking the initiative and actually making the effort to contribute towards a game I care about.
Utopia has been around so long that most players from the early days have kids - or even grandchildren - by now. The current player base is barely one-tenth what it was in the past and the game needs 'new blood' to stay alive. That is unlikely to happen so long as the most these arrogant pricks can manage is to automatically cop an attitude towards anyone they, in their high and mighty opinion of themselves, deem to be of 'lesser status'.
The only one who can change your attitude is yourself. But, should you elect to remain an egocentric blowhard, the only outcome is inevitable - Utopia will die and you'll no longer have a game to fluff your feathers about how many Crowns you have. The very foundation upon which you've built your ego will be gone forever.
Even so much as I despise your attitudes, I still care enough about the game to continue supporting it. Every last one of us was a 'noob' at one point, and no one cares to be assaulted for having faults.
I, for one, celebrate my 'noob self'. That first Province that, no matter how flawed, endured the full length of the Age. First war win. That first time topping 1,000,000gc . That first 1000-acre-plus land-grab. First time as Monarch of a Kingdom. So many firsts to experience - and I want to do my part to help others experience these firsts as well.
So rather than gloating about how many firsts you've had, how about using all that knowledge to help others experience those firsts for themselves?
Newbies would be served well to debunk some of the misinformation on this forum... i.e., that nw-efficiency is a high priority for any province (in fact the only concern about nw/a is having too little and looking like a ripe target to be attacked), or that static province figures can be persistent throughout the age. Teaching new players about the math behind the game helps immensely with province management. Otherwise you have people staying static at 400 acres and wondering why they don't have cash and get hit by kingdoms that don't fear retaliation.
I really think this was supposed to be an attempt at a 'nice and friendly introduction to the game'. The average person that has just created a Utopia account won't know WTF nw/a is anyway. I think the idea of this thread is good - helping new players to make a little bit of sense out of the game, so they don't just leave their account and give up without staying on to gradually learn about the game.
BTW I freely admit I'm a pretty crappy player. The unwelcoming attitude would turn off anyone who wants to start playing this game. It was much different when I started way back in age 8, where the monarch at least took the time to include a thread for advice and gave a reasonable baseline for an OOP strategy.
Sadly 90% of the nubs never step into these forums to begin with.
which is y u have to find a "good" kd to play in, and avoid #strategy and #tactics in irc at all costs your first 3 ages or so in utopia. A lot of "top" people brag about "winning crowns" as if its some big achievement when in fact there is so much more to the game and those crowns have very little meaning to the game overall (importance put on them always turns away new people as its impossible to win them/come close unless your kd has a plan from day 1 and is uber active for the first 2 weeks ). The game is so much more fun when u are learning/teaching new people or taking an age off to play in a kd that would kill for even 20 players, i.e. just messing around with race/personality combos in a kd that only plays for the social aspect.
That whole heartily ties into
Something along the line of the original post is decent enough without talking about the nuances of the game. Dated or not its a good intro i personally addressed the specific issues i had, it'd be nice if others did the same.
again i point you to the fact i have 2 threads combined at 36k views aimed at helping the less fortunate. I know what i'm talking about, and if you would stop pretending you have a grasp on gameplay, then maybe u can learn something.
also I just recruited 10 new bodies into my kd to teach them how to be great, since they dont pretend to know it all (like the OP). therein lies the difference. It's ok to be a nub, but be a nub who wants to learn, not a nub who pretends to know what hes talking about.
I point to the fact that that just because u are somewhat intelligent and have a big mouth it doesn't make your opinions 100% true it just means people are willing to listen to what u have to say.
I point to
There are very much "norms" across utopia. The average t/m doesn't run 70-80 DPA and that was a VERY common number way back when. Same goes for an attacker, most attackers have at least 90+ opa when way back when 90 opa would of been insanely high.
Perhaps instead of You could actually post what is inherently wrong with that intro because for a new player who has had zero introduction to the game i would much rather they have read the original post before they join my kd than coming in as a blank slate. At least having read that they would have a grasp of the basic concept of the game such that if i was talking about kd race/pers combination in all chat they wouldn't ask "why are we not going feary clearic?" because "that combo seems op".
no, there are no such things as a norm. you sir, also don't know what you're talking about. Numbers like "dpa" don't mean much. I've played ages where I ran 30 dpa and never got hit. Why? Because my kd was 7/7 in war wins and ran 120 opa. A lot of people played the same that age. Another example, top kds routinely run 20 dpa as they dice. This is again a norm, but you don't see it propagated as a "norm".
Learn to play utopia and maybe you can understand a norm is only a "norm" because you choose to pigeon hole yourself into playing that way. A "norm" doesnt describe anything beyond a meaningless number to shoot for. Dpa is not reflective of how good your province is by any means. The key to ANY utopia strategy and concept is to be flexible and adaptive. Trust me, I'm not only "somewhat" smart. My track record alone should tell you that. When you decide to take off your dunce cap and check your attitude at the door, then maybe you can learn something. Again, no one is gonna laugh at you for being stupid if you strive to improve your game. It's only stubborn know-nothings like you but believe you are worth something who are comical.
There IS a normal-prototypical range that attackers and T/M tend to run. All you have to do is take 100 SoTs in of 100 random prov mid age to see that attackers run more than 70 opa and t/m run more than 80 dpa. Fact is that i can look at the 300 or so sot's stored in my kds' shrimp to see that the average attacker on the server ran something on the order of 70% draft 100+ opa and between 40-60 dpa. These numbers dont set a standard "good" prov and in fact they mean very little when looking at a SPECIFIC person. However when looking server wide and talking to someone who isn't familiar with the current state of the game its important note that it isnt okay to think you can be an "attacker" with 50 opa. There are plenty of kds where constant irc communication isn't typical and knowing things like the server norms for attackers and t/m is important as set minimums dont occur in every kd.
To that end
There IS a norm server wide, while SPECIFIC kds may run say 20 dpa (top) or 30 dpa (high ww) that doesnt indicate what MOST of the server is tending towards. I for example ran times this past age where i only had 15 dpa but had 140 opa as i had been chained down and either learned at that size or grew and didn't train defense initially. Your right that meeting the "standard" is useless measure of "good" that doesn't mean it doesnt exist or is an important to know when determine the specific opa/dpa/tpa/wpa..... that you need to run.
As for your track record, i stand by "somewhat smart", this game isn't theoretical physics, it doesn't require a PHD in materials research (See AquaSeaFoam's interview) to be good at. Just becasue a lot of smart people do well doesn't mean that doing well means your smart. You for example have lots of experience in the game, have "crowned" becasue u felt it was important and have been able to get a good group of 25 people around you to support your goals, that doesn't mean you are right 100% of the time or the arrogant attitude helps those who have a basic understanding and ask questions to that end. Is it that hard to say that most provs when they war are looking at 40-60 def, 90-120 opa, 2ish tpa, 1.5 ish wpa, do you u really have to act all full of yourslef and say "take off your dunce cap" or "no such thing as norms...thats crazy talk" when someone provides a generality to the game to help others. How does it help anyone to say It doesn't, and this is the exact reason that its hard to get new people to join the game when the go to the forums and general concepts that are easy to understand are called stupid becasue there is a small nuance that makes a tweak slightly better. For example I have had multiple arguments with my kd over the past 4-5 ages both for and against the mass use of avains or undeads as the war race of choice. undeads=nm chain, avains= 7 hour attack times, BOTH are by far amazing strategies for war and if we had 25 people that could be loged in online all day im sure we would use them. But avains lead to burnout (i left for an 1.5 ages because of that) and perfect nm chains require 25 people who can log on at once. In those cases avain/undead usage IS a better strat but it may not be the right choice for the kd. I'll admit i dont know everything about this game becasue i dont spend my entire life on it, but i will point out it seems like you blow of valid questions and strategies becasue u find them beneath your inflated understanding of the game.
you write a lot, i skimmed it, but its the same conclusion.
you have no idea what you are saying and you want to steadfastly believe you have a clue.
I hope for your sake you get one eventually when you start asking questions instead of blindly believing.
Well like i said there are things i dont know and im happy to ask about them, there are also generalities that i can see have formed in the game after 20-30 ages playing. One generality is that when the most vocal players are the ones that arent friendly u dont see completely new players. Its the same concept as goodz raze killing the prince last age, you loose people 1 at a time when that kind of stuff happens and at this point we arent geting alot of replacements for those losses.
At least Realest is honest.
we can be nice when it matters. The problems arise when nubs like tywla want to propogate falsehoods, we need to stamp it down. When you see that she can oop at 600a, with 6k troops trained at 0.5 wpa and 100 books per acre, is that really something you want to defend and get behind? The amount of misinformation being written hurts the game, when the blind leads the blind.
I don't have a problem with you disagreeing with me. If you want to be wrong, go ahead, doesnt hurt me. However, if you're gonna turn around and continue to tell people this garbage, then do you truly feel you're helping the game grow?
Again, people don't come ask me questions because I ridicule them. The thread would have been deleted or died already if thats the case. Feel free to read all the pages of it to prove this to yourself.
As someone who admittedly is not a big fan of Realest (based solely on forum interaction) and even as someone who in a fit of rage told him that the more he posts the more he looks like an idiot (or something like that lol), I will say that he knows his stuff.
At best, Realest is rough around the edges but he is a very good pool of knowledge, when he's not being rude and/or trolling.
I had a chat with Bishop and we agreed that it is impossible to make Palem mad. What is this fit of rage, do elaborate.
I have read your thread:
An ill-toned 'guide to bottom-feeding' and a number of posts saying it's the best thing since sliced bread...
A couple pages worth of exchanges bragging about being superheroes...
Several pages simply reminiscing about past glories as if Crowns are the ONLY measure of success...
You sidestep a fair number of questions by just saying "look at what the top KDs are doing" rather than actually provide an answer...
A fair number of legitimate questions, you either flame, insult, or simply ignore (even when others point them out to you)...
More "max gains is max gains" responses inbetween a few individuals simply saying how great you or Godly is (with no rationale behind them)...
Several pages of you flaming suggestions by others - again without offering any explanation as to WHY that information is bad or suggesting alternatives...
At least two pages worth of post from Mods warning you about various things...
Another page worth of racist comments and the resultant flaming...
Several times, even you flat-out state that most of the posts are spam...
So, with 30 pages and nearly 350 posts, less than one tenth of them - apart from those which actually ask a question - are actual answers. And most of those are offered by people OTHER THAN YOURSELF. And, with very few exceptions, their answers are several orders of magnitude far more informative than your own. Barely a dozen of them are useful answers you've provided, and even those only apply to the absolute upper echelons in pre-existing top-notch Kingdoms. The sum statement made by all your other posts to anyone who doesn't meet this elitist criteria is "Go &^%$ yourself!"
Those are the cold, hard facts your ego has blinded you to.
As a relatively new player, I actually found Realist's thread(and his comments in strat) pretty helpful when I was starting to play again. The game is almost entirely situational, and the only way to get better is to understand how mechanics interact at different levels of play(intra-province, intra-kd, inter-kd, in hostilities, in war, in protection, ect.). Having something like "OPA" is worthless if you don't know what OPA does, how offense and acres interact, what you would do with that in any given situation with relation to the rest of your KD, ect. Similarly, the things about race/pers that are in the guide are only interesting/worthwhile if you can think about them mechanically. Most questions that aren't answered with questions can be answered in the game's guide, or are only useful to know insofar as it helps to explain different interactions. Unfortunately, discussions are almost always better had on IRC where you can ask questions, and respond to questions more fluidly, so getting a quick orientation here of "just do more damage to them then they do to you" is actually pretty solid advice.
Maybe it's just my age showing, but I deem the quote above to be extremely wise. Sure, you can tell a new player "Roll an Avian Warrior and use [such and such] build" and they may wind up as a reasonably effective attacker...Quote:
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish, he'll never go hungry again.
Until next Age, when Avian might not even be IN the game.
Now, they're out on a limb and pretty much as clueless as they were on day one.
Instead, take a few moments to explain WHY Avian Warrior is a good option and WHY a particular build makes it all the better - they may well notice something in the coming Age that YOU have overlooked so you can both take advantage of it.
Hel of Dim Forest wasn't the only top player in the game back in Age 10, and not many of the other 'top players' even noticed the Honor loophole. Even without that edge, half the top finishers that Age were other Races and a lot of people who tried to take advantage of it didn't succeed. Sure, one Race/Personality combo may have a decided edge during an Age, but there are countless other factors which can cause even 'the ultimate exploitation' to fail miserably.
Utopia is a complex game, and it takes far more than a few casually tossed bromides to actually learn anything.
"Just do more damage to them than they do to you"?!? Given the nature of Utopia, that's pretty much a given - hardly 'words of wisdom'. How about a few specifics (or even generalities) outlining how this is to be accomplished? Does kidnapping all their pezzies and emptying all their stores "do more damage" than razing half their buildings into the ground? Is capturing 15%-25% of their land "more damage" than either of the first two?
How, precisely, does this constitute 'solid advice'?
Because it leads to those questions. But including some of the stuff that you say is good, aka not making it just an elaboration of what is in the guide so that its useful in future and more informative as to the game, would be a good way to improve your intro guide.
Im not saying overall anything he has said is bad advice when people ask, like is this a good build. Ne says no it sux learn to play. which honestly is probably true compared to how he runs a prov but when someone makes a guide or asks a general questions like what dragon should i use in war, saying the guide is bad because a noob made it or saying the most powerful dragon, is hardly helpful. Its not that hard to say something like ruby dragons are usually used the other dragons are more situational. It takes no more effort to type and it actually answers questions to those who are asking.
Its a matter of him talking down to new players like hes better than them, Twyla is a great example
anyone who has played an oop knows that those are off numbers but instead of approaching it nicely as, 100 bpa would require X science and thus leave Y money so it seems unlikely as a post he simply flames. when simple questions are asked or a basic utopia virgin guide is written there no point to flame we dont have the people left in this game to do that.
Yes, and Realest wasn't the only one to question/flame those numbers. If it was merely rounding up a bit, I'm sure this wouldn't have mattered, but when you start trying to pass up exaggerated numbers as legit, you deserve a bit of flaming.
I appreciate the effort of trying to write a newbie guide. By all means.
But when the creator of this Guide is someone with outdated knowledge and understanding, who firstly promotes an utterly useless race/pers combo and then follows it up by showing off false numbers (Obvious or not) to show how good her prov is/how good she is - I am no longer so certain I want to have new players reading this guide.
Of course this guide can be a great source of information - granted it were updated with the input from the community.
But like it is with any researcher caught providing false numbers to support their results, one would really start to question the creditbility of that researcher when reading another of their reports. (If they'd ever get to publish another)
I like the idea of golfer's/tywla's - his/her post but for a noob to enter this forum and read this thread, is does not read nicely. I think it is quite an accurate introduction into the social world of Utopia, if not the finer game mechanics...
No undead rogues? I believe that UD/rogue still gets all thievery operations, effectively removing the penalty. But I might be wrong. Nice post!
After coming back to the game from a very long break, it wasn't a bad read, somethings were outdated and the OP admitted that.
BUT it was intended for the new players who wanted a more in depth overview. Sure it wouldn't get you into the elite level, but it would get you through an age a bit more wiser. Besides its a work in progress as well since the OP is willing to take construction.
Welcome advice.
I believe it is too constraining to lock a province into a set role... obviously certain races are heavily favored or disfavored at certain things, but there is a lot of room for flexibility when considering things like a/m or a/t, and how a kingdom goes about making those strategies work. It's entirely possible for a race to do things it's not necessarily good at, and a mistake to think that humans never mage, or dwarves never ns... they just should expect to be able to pull them off without some serious gaping holes in their targets. Still, playing a good hybrid-style province is hard... I've seen too many Human/Rogues and the like fail their ops and fail as attackers because they think they can do both things well, but without a good kingdom behind you hybrid play is almost always futile. Picking Hu/Rogue and expecting to be an awesome a/t can burn someone once they realize this, since the Rogue personality is tightly locked into a particular play style...
But anyway, even among attackers there are a variety of approaches someone can take with regards to how they manage their province, and what they want their province to do.
A guide like this would be helpful for new players, but it should go into more detail about the strengths and weaknesses of each race, beyond their statistical factors. Like, how should you approach playing them, how they function as a kingdom-wide strategy, common pratfalls of people who play those races, and so on. I've seen too many dwarves build homes, which they should almost never ever do, because they think that having perfect BE is a necessity.