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Originally Posted by
Heywatchthisguy
If i may suggest and recap a few possible solutions:
Leave it as is
Currently its a trade off as some of you have suggested - boring pump time vs fun wars. I'm impartial I do believe hard work should be reworded but at the same time this is a game and I rather do well and have fun at the same time.
So to add some content to this... erm... debate, here are a few suggestions followed by my opinion on the subject
Cap each science at a certain percentage
I don't really like this as it takes away from the players who want to pump science. It forces these players to conform to the wishes of people who favor a different play style. In my opinion this significantly makes the game more shallow. By late age we can assume that everyone will have the same science bonuses (might as well be suggesting the removal of science all together), early age its just a question of what science bonuses do you want first.
So what you're saying is some people enjoy pumping science, and we shouldn't make them conform to our wishes. Except, if you can do it, and gain a strategic advantage, all your competitors have to do it. Thus, it causes everyone else to conform to their wishes.
I'll ask it again, since no one seems to have responded: What's the difference between capped science and capped military? Because your military is capped and I don't see anyone complaining about that.
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Cap the total BPA
Mostly the same as above however its slightly less shallow as it gives players variety keeping a portion of the strategy involved with science pumping.
There winds up being an optimal setup for your point distribution.
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Cap the total BPA based on honor
I kind of like this one, it might require some reworking of the honor system but thats a different discussion. If we cap BPA based on honor players must balance between a play style of constant warring and constant pumping. The players who rather science pump now have to war in order to keep pumping likewise the constant warring kds will now have to dedicate some time to science pumps in order to compete with other pumping KDs. It has its flaws, much like capitalism xD, it makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker. It relies on the honor system which, as some would argue, needs some work. My biggest complaint with this is that it forces players to change their play style. I.E. I rather not have to spend weeks pumping its kinda boring.
Terrible idea without substantial honor (and relation system) changes; honor is currently based entirely around baiting lesser kingdoms to war you since you can't gain honor in hostile and can't force a kingdom to fight you to acquire their honor.
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Leave BPA uncapped gain book on war win
This is probably my favorite suggestion if changes have to be made and the one that I would openly support. This would work similar to honor in that science would be taken from the losing kd and given to the victor. I'm not in the mood to crunch the numbers but I would suggest that the BPA of a constant warring kd with a perfect war record have slightly less BPA then a full age of pumping kd. This would allow both play styles to continue to do what they enjoy, granting the kd that put work into pumping a slight advantage over the warring kd. Furthermore prewar target finding will be much more strategic and require even more thought (not sure if this is a good thing though)
Encourages ghetto bashing.
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Leave science as is, Make honor equally significant.
As I said I don't really want to get into this discussion, but this has the potential to be by far the best decision or to fail terribly. It would be perfectly possible to significantly buff bonuses from honor to make a perfect warring kd as equal as (yet different then) the science bonuses. This I believe addresses the fundamental balance between warring and pumping. It would add a whole new degree of strategy making kds decide between when warring is better and when defensive pumping is better. If done correctly the honor system can be used to balance science, attack/defense strategies, and T/M capability (possibly granting more honor for T/M ops reviving the hybrid), and introduce a new personality as well as make the orc's honor attribute mean something. The ideas of what this could do for increase the depth of game strategy is really cool IMHO, but it wont be easy. Went a little to far into this then I would like to have to so I'll leave it at that.
Falls into the other issues with honor -- based on baiting ghettos into war; can't be gained outside of war effective, etc.
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Steal science on successful TM
I don't really support this. On one hand it increases the ability of attackers to gain books, on the other hand though there are multiple problems. First it increases everyones ability to obtain books not really changing much balance wise, perhaps make it only in war. Second it buffs the traditional march, an attack that honestly is far overpowered when compared to T/M land grab capabilities. Third learn attacks would become useless.
It doesn't really work for reasons I addressed in its thread.
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Divide school effect into two separate buildings
Not a 100% fix but it helps and again maybe this is not a discussion for this thread but it would decrease the ability for kds to science pump slightly decreasing the amount of land available or making books easier to grab, and decreasing the benefit of sage a bit. For me the effects of schools would be comparable to combining guard stations & banks or armories and hospitals New defensive science building could be called "Museums".
Note: These are my opinions you are welcomed to yours but treat them as such.
Not an effective solution; then you just run both.
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Science caping/buying will turn science into yet another boring chore that needs to get done to procede with normal gameplay.
It already is.
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You grow fast to 2k, you pump to last you for 5k, you grow fast to 5k, you pump for a week or two and than you make your push for the charts. It's booring and tedious and it has achieved nothing else but allowed you to nap top kd w/o fear of geting outpumped what it seems to be what this thread is all about.
Age long pumps are only possible if you have naped all the threats arround you, I am sorry but that is the case. Scipumping and dicing for growth require you to run full pump/dice build and low draft. This is only possible by outgrowing 95% of the server and naping the other 5%. Top kd's have created the only enviroment in which this is possible to pull off, maybe they should consider the implications of naping every1 rather that trying to change game mechanics to suit them ?
This is false. Ezzerland's kd did it without naps by running 120-150 DPA and being low enough in NW that no one could effectively hit them for gains or interrupt their pump. They certainly were not a top kd.
It can also be done in the middle of the pack; it's easy to disappear among numbers.
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They way things are now works pretty well on every other level. Disregarding comments with "full sot/sos pls before i take your word on it" like some ppl have been disses in this thread is jus redicolous. For what it's worth I warred swagger's kd and what he says is truth.
Getting science through plunders/learns is valid choice and ppl who are constantly in warring builds can do very good between wars science wise.
If you're a static province (don't grow; probably land-drop either explicitly or implicitly), it works fine, but you are also getting pumped by virtue of not growing. Which only demonstrates my point that you're engaged in an age-long pump.
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That beeing said I see no valid reason to NOT cap science as long as curent science curve stays in place and cap is set high enough for science not to become booring chore that you gotta max to be on the same playing field like every1 else.
But you already have to max it as much as possible to be competitive.
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Definitelly no purchasable science though, current system works and its possible to acieve very strong science w/o any pumps whatsoever through reasonable long term investment and learn attacks. If we go back to purchasable science we will see again stocking of dosens of millions gc in fw's only to be dumped into science minute we go oow.
And being static, eh?
You also haven't addressed my solution to buying science from FW.
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To everyone proposing a cap... I make the following chain of reasoning.
If the cap is low enough to matter, then it will stop pop well short of the "break even point". Thus being at cap is a large advantage vs. not being at cap. By mid-late age, there are two groups of provs - those that are capped, and those that are "teh suck". To help people, especially new(ish) players, we should prevent them from making that mistake, so we should force everyone to the cap. But now it's just a sustained gc loss for each prov, so we can remove it and lower income instead.
I know it sounds silly... but I'm actually serious about this: How is capped sci better than simply removing science entirely? All capped sci becomes is a check to see if you are in danger of becoming stupid soon - if not, you don't care, if yes, you have to beg your king to stop so you can mindlessly pump for the next few weeks.
How is capped military better than removing military altogether? What's that, you're telling me that people don't actually sit at 100% draft rate? Weird.
Capped science was effective in the past. There is no reason to believe it wouldn't be as effective in the future. Additionally, because of how capped science scaled, it was actually literally impossible to reach the cap, while reaching 85% of it was easy, so there was room to improve compared to your competitors (i.e. you could be at 95% while they were at 85%). See Ironballs' posts earlier in the thread for an explanation of the curve.
Additionally, are you implying that science is not currently mandatory? Because if you are, you're wrong.
The soft cap is irrelevant. It doesn't have any consequences when you can pump as much as you want with no real danger due to your defenses/deals.
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Right now, at least for those that can't FW/NAP their way to safety, sci takes resources away from war prep. Especially if you lower DR to "pump"... anyone wanting to drop in for some free land/sci can probably pop off a free wave.
Unless you're setup to pump effectively. So it's a stupidity check, amirite?
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Also, sci is already just as "capped" as DR - soft cap of the "Break even point". In most cases, for example, it isn't worth getting more than 100 bpa farming - the NW hurts more than the land saved. Around 500 bpa for crime/channeling. In the 2,000 bpa ballpark for Tools/Income. Up to about 10,000 bpa housing for sage.
So the "soft cap" in your mind, is at ~15k bpa? You're wrong, btw -- NW is largely irrelevant. All that matters is offense and defense, and more science let's you obtain more.
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The fact that you never get there isn't that big a deal - it stops being worth the effort long before you get to those types of numbers. It's just like the fact that normally you need to stop drafting if you are under 25% pop as pes... you *can* draft more, and maybe with a wave it even will "help" to overdraft past static optimal that much (grow into the first hit). But training those troops takes forever when your income is so low - so why bother for a .1% increase?
Now you're just being silly. Why would you get to that point without having the extra money sitting around (or lol, plunders/rob) to train the rest of the way? When you're pumping, like we're discussing for both sci and military in this case, why wouldn't you overpump, since you have the time and ability to stock extra gc.
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If the problem is that sitting around is too rewarding compared to fighting, we out to be looking at fixing that problem. I think it's a lot worse for the troops/wpa front - someone who is an A/M and fights 2 wars in an age is going to have a far, far higher WPA than someone fighting 6 - you know that mass wave is going to get you eventually. Science isn't the issue there - it's the rewards system in general. Science is just the spot you can park the biggest chunk of the advantage in because parts of it cap out so high.
You can gain WPA while fighting wars. In fact, you generally would want to. And you just agreed that the science system is particularly problematic for people who tend to war. Do you not think that people would engage in conflict more often if they didn't have to be concerned about giving up a substantial advantage (science) to their competitors by doing so?
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And a last comment - this only applies to some of you (I don't note which):
Quit whining cause someone else figured out how to run their econ better than you. If you stopped drafting to 75%+ and learned to play well you might get some decent sci too. It's not like it takes much to get most of the way - ^2 curve assures that.
Let's suffice it to say that I know how to run my economy.
