New Overpop/Desertion Mechanic

I'm not sure if I'm the first person to complain about this, but I really dislike the new desertion mechanic (troops that are away also leave, not just troops at home). I think a large portion of the fun part of playing attacker in this game was appropriately navigating overpop too keep your armies moving and keep as much offense as possible. Having troops out also desert completely changes the game, at least in regards to chaining. And it basically removes most of the skill away from the attacker, as if you get chained, you are losing a lot of offense.

For me, this change takes responsibility off of the individual attackers and puts more on the monarch or KD leaders, as the macro view/kd strategy becomes even more important than it already is, and micro managing your province becomes less important. And for me, this is the opposite of what I would like to see happen.

I really hope we can revert this change. I am curious to see if anyone disagrees with me, and if so why.

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Originally Posted by luke3

I'm not sure if I'm the first person to complain about this, but I really dislike the new desertion mechanic (troops that are away also leave, not just troops at home). I think a large portion of the fun part of playing attacker in this game was appropriately navigating overpop too keep your armies moving and keep as much offense as possible. Having troops out also desert completely changes the game, at least in regards to chaining. And it basically removes most of the skill away from the attacker, as if you get chained, you are losing a lot of offense.

For me, this change takes responsibility off of the individual attackers and puts more on the monarch or KD leaders, as the macro view/kd strategy becomes even more important than it already is, and micro managing your province becomes less important. And for me, this is the opposite of what I would like to see happen.

I really hope we can revert this change. I am curious to see if anyone disagrees with me, and if so why.

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I...
I can't even...

I took a 2-3 age break last year, and just came back this age. I did not notice that change, and while things didn't seem *right* when I was last overpopped, I figured I was just crazy. This explains so much. That changes the game entirely.

That said, to answer your question.
In terms of reality, sure...this doesn't really make sense. Housing shouldn't matter to troops away from home.
In terms of game mechanics, this makes tons of sense. Hitting out with all of your offense only to have it come home with acres never sat well with me. The strategies used in that environment were stupid and predictable. This adds a sense of balance, and will require more creativity from the strategists.

This is a radical change, I agree. Same with the soldier-mitigation change(s).

OP made no plea to "reality", no mention of that angle at all.

I think I agree with original assessment, though I have never thoroughly analyzed the pros and cons of the current situation vs the past.

I'm interested in what the warring kingdoms (players and leadership) in general think about this change.

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Originally Posted by luke3

I'm not sure if I'm the first person to complain about this, but I really dislike the new desertion mechanic (troops that are away also leave, not just troops at home). I think a large portion of the fun part of playing attacker in this game was appropriately navigating overpop too keep your armies moving and keep as much offense as possible. Having troops out also desert completely changes the game, at least in regards to chaining. And it basically removes most of the skill away from the attacker, as if you get chained, you are losing a lot of offense.

For me, this change takes responsibility off of the individual attackers and puts more on the monarch or KD leaders, as the macro view/kd strategy becomes even more important than it already is, and micro managing your province becomes less important. And for me, this is the opposite of what I would like to see happen.

I really hope we can revert this change. I am curious to see if anyone disagrees with me, and if so why.

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Personally I vehemently disagree with you. There used to be little to no way of dealing with an attacker who keeps his armies out permanently.
Other than completely chaining him into the ground, which doesn't really stick.
There needs to be some way to stop/disable attackers in a war and this mechanism adequately fills that void. Frankly I find it absurd that it took this long for it to change.

Another bad thing from the way things were previously done is that defence was practically useless for an attacker, once you got chained it was gone, so better only have enough to prevent multitaps... for a time.

"There needs to be some way to stop/disable attackers in a war"

I can't think of any video games which endorse such a perspective.

I see respawn timers a lot, weighted respawn times and things of this nature. This allows the aggressor to potentially "win" the engagement without actually causing the defender to be completely taken out of the overall contest (which is what you are proposing would be good game design).

Then, we also see the new "Battle Royale" game modes popping up and receiving massive popularity. This is perma-death. Great. Love it. But then you start a new game right away with a completely different team and jump right back into the action. This is not utopia.

So.. what's the alternative? Can we come up with a solution that allows for all players involved some sort of "game" to play?

I think the soldier-mitigation mechanic was not implemented?

On OP, though, I think I understand the basic desire for some effect on troops out. It is super annoying that a province can sustain like 20k elites on 300 acres and barely lose any offense because he has decent incoming. But I agree with OP in disliking this change, so I don't know what I want.

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Originally Posted by Andurilas

I think the soldier-mitigation mechanic was not implemented?

On OP, though, I think I understand the basic desire for some effect on troops out. It is super annoying that a province can sustain like 20k elites on 300 acres and barely lose any offence because he has decent incoming. But I agree with OP in disliking this change, so I don't know what I want.

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Well, soldier mitigation would make it all completely meaningless, so yeah it shouldn't be implemented and it wasn't.
I would perhaps slow the rate that troops leave at some, which would allow you to retain some more troops if you have incoming acres
Another alternative would be to instead do the reverse, speed it up some but still allow an overpopped province to attack. That way the decay still happens over time but you're not forced to just sit and watch it happen or bite the sour apple and release in order to attack.

Maybe the compromise is make troops away desert at a much slower rate. It's a fundamental mechanic of the game that taking 80% or more of a province's land should significantly impair that province, so I don't know about letting overpopped provinces attack. I think I like the old system most of all, though perhaps we could add some additional overpop mitigation measures. Simplest of all: allow wizards to be released to the wild and not require them to be converted to peasants.

Or, BETTER YET, let them be IMPRISONED! But, since they are frail old men, like 30% of them die in the process.

Holy moly.. allow overpopd provinces to attack? Allow releasing of wizards 'to the wild'? I think this is a reasonable discussion on a very specific thing. You must be trolling.

Although, deserters becoming prisoners is a neat idea.

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Originally Posted by Elldallan

Personally I vehemently disagree with you. There used to be little to no way of dealing with an attacker who keeps his armies out permanently.
Other than completely chaining him into the ground, which doesn't really stick.
There needs to be some way to stop/disable attackers in a war and this mechanism adequately fills that void. Frankly I find it absurd that it took this long for it to change.

Another bad thing from the way things were previously done is that defence was practically useless for an attacker, once you got chained it was gone, so better only have enough to prevent multitaps... for a time.

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Can I ask what you mean by "no way to deal with an attacker who keeps his armies out"?

You can op an attacker, no? You had a whole host of options on how to disable an attacker. Its just easier to do it now via chaining than it was before... which was already, prior to this change, a main way attackers were disabled. Why did it need to be stronger... how easy should it be? I'm fine with not being able to keep other stuff from leaving via soldiers, but I don't see why this was a positive change in any way. How easy should it be to remove all the offense a province has? And before you were keeping your offense with the trade off of loosing everything else (or make choices about what to keep and what to lose), and having to be active and keep yourself alive and manage your province appropriately, which has become extremely dumbed down. It takes little to no skill in comparison to manage overpop now.

One of the main reasons I dislike this change, I'll say again, is that it puts more burden on the leadership running the war (chaining/target selection is even MORE important) and less burden on the individual province (to manage overpop appropriately). I think this is the opposite direction this game should be going.

mm i'd agree with mr luke3. Orcs humans avains, all are pretty bad to run simply because they will all go to zero def in any reasonable war, and once zero def its 24 hours till u are on no offense. im not saying u cant be successful with them just look at pladovia this age, however if two kds are at nearly equal nw/land the kds that cant turtle hard with leets via those 3 races is going to be at a major disadvantage. the new desertion mechanic is almost sole responsible for that and it makes things annoying at least.

Avians also have an advantage under the new mechanic. Their fast attack times means less time for your troops to desert.

To be honest, after having it around for 2 ages now, playing attacker - an orc and a dwarf - and implementing strategies as a leader, i think the new overpop mechanic actually requires for you to plan more strategically and utilize buildings or race/pers combos better. I mean the old attacker gameplay was essentially armies in armies out and you're good (a bit more to it but we're talking basics here). With the new mechanic, per hit gains mitigation (GS), prevention of intel plus the utilization of LL (mtpa, mwpa and TDs) and massive attack time reduction (rax or racial) are all viable strategies. At the moment, i think those three strategies are not balanced as well as what they could be, but being that i played dwarf i could use them in combination with the usual stacking of huge attacking power. I think that for this mechanic to work well those strategies for mitigation should be tuned into attacker personalities or races.

But as the question posed by the OP was whether it was good or not.. i dont know. I think its different and in some ways that's better even if it ruffles feathers. I also think that with this mechanic, Undead could return as a race and not be overpowered (but thats a different discussion). I think simply say orc and avian have the advantage is not quite correct. There is also Tact and gains science, as well as to a lesser degree BE, Tools sci and Thievery sci. I think i like the mechanic... but i also think that other parts of the game work against its potential, and that the strategies for mitigation (not just soldier aid) should be explored a little bit more before the whole thing is rolled back.