Improve guilds

Hey all,

So as a kingdom we've been thinking on how to reduce the time between wars, so that we can fit more into the age. The think we figured was slowing us down most, was wizard pumps (which we countered by using more mystics this age). For future ages however, I'd like to implement a change in guilds.

In general, science pumps arent slowing us down a whole lot. Guilds however, are a whole different story. It takes ages for our provinces to get any sort of WPA. I'm curious to see if people agree with me on this. My suggestion would be to 'simply' increase the base guild production to 0.04 / tick (mystics 0.08 / tick).

It'll massively reduce pump times. For those of you worried about running too high a wpa --> stop wizard training. Perhaps add a feature that it'll stop wizard training once at XX raw wpa.

Main think I'm hoping to solve is to reduce pumptimes needed. AW runs / massacres are just far too brutal for future wars.
Regards,

NighT

If you improve guilds, you just increase the wpa needed to be safe, thus you're not accomplishing the goal of reducing pump times.

I dont follow your logic. Against a properly pumped TM, an attacker can never be save. Yes, attackers would probably run higher wpas, they are however limited by population.
An attacker who attempts to block enemy mages via raw/mod wpa is highly unlikely to succeed.

Also, a TM isnt in pump strat forever, at some point that TM would be satisfied with the WPA achieved. I'm just trying to reach that point in time faster.

The difference is that instead of 2-3 raw being normal, 3-4 is the new normal, and space for non-wizards is tighter; t/ms would have to train more wpa to compensate as well.

Yes it's possible that attackers would run a slightly higher raw WPA. However, in doing so they'll be eating into their offense/defense/tpa (or econ). It would not be sustainable for the average attacker to run a much higher WPA. Each +1 wpa is like -10 OPA?
I dont think the per-acre numbers will change much. Attackers would subconsciously run a slighly higher WPA. Other than that I dont think it'll have much effect.
It would still halve the pump time needed WPA-wise. I think that is an effect we're looking for / is needed.

The lack of response here might be enough of an answer for me though ^_^

I see what you mean and don't necessarily see a huge problem with it...yeah people might run higher wpas in general, but just like you said - it would take away from their other numbers to do so.

The only other way I could see is to have an alternate way of accelerating your wizards production (one way to do that would be similar to how you can increase draft rates and science research).

Maybe have an "accelerated" wizards training option that costs a significant amount of gold/runes but double the production?

EDIT: I've also made suggestions to race/personality changes including another form of obtaining wizards. Right now, it's only guilds (mystics doubled) and propaganda (rogues only and war only). I suggested a Necromancer personality or maybe just give it to the Undead race as something like each successful offensive instant grants a bonus 1/2 tick of wizard production. (So if you're making 2 wizards per tick, you'd get 1 wizard per successful offensive instant spell)

@ Night the everyone runs higher wpa argument is stupid, on pure attackers i still wouldn't have them go much over 1.5-2 wpa even if wizards were trainable like thieves. Heck if other kds ran like 3 raw on their attackers i'd just dump wizzards and go nuts with offense and use the extra offense to massacre the hell outa their chains. The reason guilds wont do better is simply "magic is different than thievery." Your not supposed to have an easy time reaching goal wpa's and a damaging war via massacre/aw is supposed to either hurt you in your next war or require you to figure out how to run a setup with slightly lower wpa than is optimal.

While thats not really a satisfactory answer for a lot of people all i can do is tell your that i'd design my kd around knowing wpa is hard to pump and when in war try to minimize damage done to your casters best you can.

I'd gladly trade wpa for tpa or dpa on most races. Some like dwarf or human I'd be fine with taking an offense hit for wizards, and could see trading offense for wizards on undead too so long as they're breaking what they need to break. The limiting factor is that pumping wpa takes time, and it shouldn't be too easy to gain 1 wpa/day.

Hey Persain,
Please note that I said attackers cant/shouldnt run higher WPA numbers (although because people are lazy/mis-manage they would probably run slighly higher wpas anyway).

To counter your points:
"not supposed to have an easy time reaching goal wpa".... why not? Why arent we supposed to have that? What's the point in making us work (wait) for it? There is no way to speed it up, other than perhaps pumping BE sciences. It's just going to make us hit fort and wait it out. What's the point in forcing us to wait?

Also, massacre/aw is supposed to hurt is in our next war? I doubt that really is the intention of massacre/AW. It's to help you win your current war. When people dont withdraw the massacres are nice to give them some longterm damage. But intially I always use massacres / AW only to win the current war that I'm fighting. My goal is not to give any future enemies of my enemy an easier time. That really doesnt make sense.

Yes AW/Massacres are supposed to hurt WPA. But they should only screw you up during the war that you're fighting. Looking at my Elf Mystic from last age, who got his nub-ass broken and chained to 200 acres (and then massecred down), it took him weeks to get back up to reasonable numbers. 200 acres --> 3K acres and 9 raw wpa. It was a pain. Right now guilds just work too slow. Doubling their effectiveness should reduce the pumptime needed. It's just something slowing us down, for no reason.

Regards,

@Noobium,
I've currently got my TMs on 100% guilds (lots of food aid). They're gaining 0.5 wpa/day (non-mystic). So yes, technically they could gain a WPA per day with the changes I'm suggesting. And why not? Why are you opposed to people reaching their target wpa in a timely manner? What's the point in having people (wait/)pump weeks for it?

Regards,

running 100% guilds = not easily. (i know it's not difficult to click "build guilds" but it presents a tradeoff when wizard pumping).

the point is that the game shouldn't encourage people to hit a set target wpa in the first place. there are cases where i don't bother with wpa on attackers, usually for orcs.

if guilds were twice as effective, i'd be aiming for 3-4 raw wpa on human, dwarf, halfling, and undead, rather than accepting that 2 is the practical limit of what i have time to pump. it's mostly the same if they were 50% more effective.

this early in the age i wouldn't be surprised to see mystics with only 3 raw, because they really don't need the wpa this soon. likewise, by late-age 5 raw is a bit too low, not good enough to target other t/m and some sages will repel ops frequently enough. an elf prince can certainly keep better wpa than 5, but it also time-limited in attaining it.

the biggest change though would be for growth kingdoms and cows, who will have the time and space to pump even more wpa. what implications this has, i didn't work out fully, but the cows will almost always choose wpa over a lot of things.

@Noobium,
Of course there's a lot of tradeoffs when Wizard pumping. And that's fine. If someone chooses to pump at 100% guilds, then he/she should accept the no econ, and rune/gc aid.
However, even with 100% guilds it'll take 10 days to reach 5 raw wpa. And that's assuming next max BE.

That would mean that if two kingdoms war, and a TM is massacred/AW'ed down to 1 raw WPA (which isnt too difficult to accomplish), that TM has to re-pump for 8 days just to get back to the 5 raw WPA he was on. At 100% guilds.

I have no problem with how easily WPA is lost throughout a war. I do have an issue with how difficult it is to regain after a war is won/lost. Every single time a TM is taken down, it forces the kingdom to wait at least a week (and probably more due to no econ on said TM) until they can consider warring again.


The growth kingdoms may or may not have an advantage with this. Because yes, their cows could potentially reach higher wpas faster. However, those 10 provinces on the server should not influence something that's slowing entire kingdoms down.

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Originally Posted by NighT

Hey all,

So as a kingdom we've been thinking on how to reduce the time between wars, so that we can fit more into the age. The think we figured was slowing us down most, was wizard pumps (which we countered by using more mystics this age). For future ages however, I'd like to implement a change in guilds.

In general, science pumps arent slowing us down a whole lot. Guilds however, are a whole different story. It takes ages for our provinces to get any sort of WPA. I'm curious to see if people agree with me on this. My suggestion would be to 'simply' increase the base guild production to 0.04 / tick (mystics 0.08 / tick).

It'll massively reduce pump times. For those of you worried about running too high a wpa --> stop wizard training. Perhaps add a feature that it'll stop wizard training once at XX raw wpa.

Main think I'm hoping to solve is to reduce pumptimes needed. AW runs / massacres are just far too brutal for future wars.
Regards,

NighT

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there has been a lot of suggestions with reducing wizard pump time in mind, but apparently its against the game design and none of those suggestions ever got implemented.. im not against this idea, or support it - because it has too many side effects ranging from war strategies to choosing kd setup.. you should adapt your game strats with current wizard training mechanics though, and instead of pumping all the time while you wait to get to your planned wpa, you can work out a strat that lets you function with the wpa you can pump in a shorter time frame..

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Originally Posted by LoRD_SaMPuaN

there has been a lot of suggestions with reducing wizard pump time in mind, but apparently its against the game design and none of those suggestions ever got implemented.. im not against this idea, or support it - because it has too many side effects ranging from war strategies to choosing kd setup.. you should adapt your game strats with current wizard training mechanics though, and instead of pumping all the time while you wait to get to your planned wpa, you can work out a strat that lets you function with the wpa you can pump in a shorter time frame..

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It's probably a limit on effectivness of spells, if one was able to pump WPA too quickly a Circle of Fae could probably do more damage than a balanced KD could recover and win the age in the first 5 months.

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Originally Posted by ChrisCP

It's probably a limit on effectivness of spells, if one was able to pump WPA too quickly a Circle of Fae could probably do more damage than a balanced KD could recover and win the age in the first 5 months.

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i dont see how that happens, but lets agree to disagree..

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Originally Posted by NighT

To counter your points:
"not supposed to have an easy time reaching goal wpa".... why not? Why arent we supposed to have that? What's the point in making us work (wait) for it? There is no way to speed it up, other than perhaps pumping BE sciences. It's just going to make us hit fort and wait it out. What's the point in forcing us to wait?

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The point is supposed to be that magic=/= thievery. By limiting the speed at which you train wizards you allow magic to be extra strong and dictate a tempo/breakdown in the game.

Now PERSONALLY i disagree with that concept, but geting wpa pumped quickly would allow for people to have "new" interesting concepts. For example noobium saying that his dwarf core would be on 4 wpa, i'd laugh at that with a high wpa mystic to cast ops and a low wpa core that can massively out-chain him. Dump on the correct dragon and his whole kd becomes insanely weak. My only suggestion to you is when you build a setup make sure it works without needing 1-2 key people on really good wpa or your going to have a hard time.

Why would I run Dwarf core this age, let alone mystic? If guilds are as effect as mystic guilds are now, I'd hit 3-4 wpa easily without mystic. That opens another issue with this, that it cuts into Mystic's double guild bonus.

Given a choice though, hell yeah I'd run more wpa on attacker types if guilds were twice as effective. The limit of 2 wpa isn't usually due to space constraints, but the time required to pump wpa on a core attacker takes away from other stuff an attacker would want to do. If I had a choice between 2 wpa/2 tpa and 3 wpa/1 tpa, I'd usually prefer the wpa. If I had to pull 1 mil/acre for wizards I could live with that too... being outchained and outhit doesn't mean much if it's not followed up to kill the wizards or otherwise stop that core from spamming ops, and that is not an automatic thing if the wpa advantage is effectively exercised. Sending a sapphire as a defensive dragon is not the best idea unless defending cows, a halfway competent kingdom would slay before blowing their mana or account for sapphire's wpa penalty when selecting ops. If my core had a wpa advantage and I had to tank, tanking a Sapphire is easy enough for the core provs - much better than tanking something like Ruby or Gold which the other kingdom can exploit better.

Of course other attackers increase their wpa to follow suit for the most part, and subsequently t/ms need to run slightly higher wpa, which was my point - 3-4 for core and 6-8 for t/m becomes the new normal, and the reduction to wizard pump time is less.

Would it be a bad thing? I dunno, increasing the weight of wpa on most provs does have an effect on everything else, but it won't be something that stops pumping either.
Maybe nerfing AW and massacre against wizards would be a better solution, given how both were recently buffed and wizard generation has remained constant for many years.

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Originally Posted by noobium

I'd gladly trade wpa for tpa or dpa on most races.

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Originally Posted by noobium

Given a choice though, hell yeah I'd run more wpa on attacker types if guilds were twice as effective.

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Huh? Which one is it?

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Originally Posted by NighT

"not supposed to have an easy time reaching goal wpa".... why not? Why arent we supposed to have that? What's the point in making us work (wait) for it? There is no way to speed it up, other than perhaps pumping BE sciences. It's just going to make us hit fort and wait it out. What's the point in forcing us to wait?

Also, massacre/aw is supposed to hurt is in our next war? I doubt that really is the intention of massacre/AW. It's to help you win your current war. When people dont withdraw the massacres are nice to give them some longterm damage. But intially I always use massacres / AW only to win the current war that I'm fighting. My goal is not to give any future enemies of my enemy an easier time. That really doesnt make sense.

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I don't think the game play was originally intended to be jumping from war to war all the time for no other reason than the war win itself, like so many warring kingdoms do. If your goal is to have the biggest and baddest kingdom at the end of the round then you have to consider more carefully who and when to war and what will happen after the war is over. So WPA is just one of those considerations, but if you could always replenish 100% during the 4-day EOWCF then it wouldn't be a consideration at all.

Well that's just my interpretation, but I think if the game was only about warring then it would be better to just give everyone a fixed # of points to setup their kingdom before war and then war. Maybe add a handicap system based on rankings or something. But I think it would become boring quickly because people actually do want to take more from their wars then just a number on the kingdom page.

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Huh? Which one is it?

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I didnt know guilds were twice as active as they were last age. When did they implent this TommyB?

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Originally Posted by Korp

I didnt know guilds were twice as active as they were last age. When did they implent this TommyB?

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I have no idea what you are talking about Korp. And what does twice as active even mean?