Age 47 Changes - comments

[Peto]

You really should try to explain why you think a change is needed (all changes not only this one), your reasoning for it?
Show us that you have an idea about what impact it will have and what your intended goal is?

Otherwise it only looks like a suggestion from a newbie that can't see the whole picture.
You do have a reasoning behind this idea, right?

In what way do you think this will "increase the importance of thievery"?
Importance as in high TPA will be absolutely needed to play the game without having to do blind attacks now and then (this is after all a strategy game not the roulette in a casino)
And your future plan for randomization makes all of this even worse.

"two categories - Espionage and Sabotage"
What would stealing gc be?
Espionage? "I was just looking to see if he had a lot"
Sabotage? "no I don't need any gc, I just want him to be poor"
Or will you remove all possibility to steal?

[Tamer]

The actual consequences of thievery being strenghtened as well as the source of ALL intel is the following;

* Strong thief races or anyone with high enough tpa will be immune to intel gathering from pure attackers or A/m's
* This forces everyone to run high tpa if they don't want to blind hit
* This forces a uniform playstyle across the server, making 2 of the current 3 established attacking combinations have to dedicate a lot of ppa to tpa.

HOWEVER

* That tpa will be less useful than today to harm enemies, since the resource behind thieving damage is stealth. That stealth will now be needed to get all intel. Consider again the first 2 points which basically forces people to run high tpa. Thus, even if you are also high tpa yourself - the intel ops will not be auto-successes.

So what we have is a scenario where most of the server have to run high tpa, but only those with the highest tpa (high enough to get all intel on everyone else easily) can actually utilize it to do NS or other thievery ops that are interesting.

Nothing wrong with adding halflings, but please do not mess with the game mechanics beyond race numbers until someone making changes has full understanding of how the game works in practice. This is not meant to offend, but is AFAIK the reality.

Disclaimer: This is presuming the intel ops will be similiar to today's SoM in difficulty.

Couldn't of said it better myself. I'd also like to add a few things:

Right now, A/M's utilize their mana for offensive/self spells and their stealth for Spy on Military and occasionally Survey, Spy on Science, and Infiltrate. A/T's utilize their stealth for offensive ops and their mana for self spells/CBs. This allows both rolls to use utilize their specialization to the fullest, not having to waste stealth (A/T) or mana (A/M) on espionage.

If this change goes through it would add more for the A/M to do as far as intel. However having such low TPA they would have to blow through all of their stealth attempting to get any information on an A/T. I assume A/M's alone wouldn't be able to get all of the necessary information (as it already takes a lot out of them to get a SoM on an A/T), which would make the A/T's dip into their stealth for espionage.

In the end, it weakens A/T's as they will be using less of their stealth on offensive ops and more of it on espionage. This is during war, of course. They will have it easy oow as it will be easy for them to get intel for random land grabs. The only other thing they would use their stealth for oow is stealing gold from randoms.

[Hallo]

Really, It only CAN be Callled "Spy on Province" and "Spy on Kingdom News" anything else is out of line.

Also, if the Developers renamed the game Flukopiza had Noobs instead of Dwarfs, and elites of Noobzilla... I think someone would be mad.

[maugrim]

Also, if Sean and Brian go ahead with this obvious 95% disapproval rate change, every player in the game is going to lose absolute faith in you. You need to work with us and our suggestions, not come up with stupid ideas yourselves.

[beeper]

another brilliant ideea to destroy the game, you are really good on that
it encourage multi cheaters,with or without payment for sitting, that is what you want ?

[Osiris]

I think they idea that "Attackers will have to have high TPA to get any intel" is a weak one. Do attackers currently have to have high WPA to get intel via CB? No.

The difference is that it's not worth building extra guilds just to get higher WPA to make CBs on you harder, especially when that won't stop intel that thieves get.

It may well be a different story if the changes are implemented, as training extra thieves is far easier and will be far more useful if ALL intel gathering is done by thieves.

[Mansoor]

You run decent tpa and 20% wt:s and people will need to burn all stealth they can to get intel =p

This is good for player base thou, everyone will run one main province and one halfling superthief with max td:s. Multies ftw!

[protector]

You run decent tpa and 20% wt:s and people will need to burn all stealth they can to get intel =p

This is good for player base thou, everyone will run one main province and one halfling superthief with max td:s. Multies ftw!

I hate myself for it but the jihad I quoted is right :[
hi Mansoor!

[FireBones]

The difference is that it's not worth building extra guilds just to get higher WPA to make CBs on you harder, especially when that won't stop intel that thieves get.

It may well be a different story if the changes are implemented, as training extra thieves is far easier and will be far more useful if ALL intel gathering is done by thieves.

I think people are really having some issues with the logic here. Do you really see people piling on a ton of thieves just to make "Spy on Province" hard? It still won't be worth it because the benefit of having a bunch of people in unorganized KDs get data on you will be less than what you lose by having to train the extra thieves.

Just think of how many wizards you have to have before CBs become exceptionally difficult to attain. Are you really going to raise your Modified TPA to 15 just to stop random hits by heavy attackers out of war? Inside war it won't matter since their thieves are going to be able to get the intel anyway.

Just think through the basic math here. Let's say that someone with 1 WPA can get CBs reasonably easily on people with 4 WPA [just as a ball park estimation]. Most people in warring KDs already run about 2 Raw/3 modified TPA, meaning you would be able to get "Spy on Province" on people with modified TPAs of up to 12 without breaking a sweat. Just training one more RAW thief per acre would bring that up to around 4.5 modified TPA for most folks, bringing the scope of "reasonably easy CBs" up to about 18 TPA [modified]. So, assuming attackers go up to 3 Raw/4.5 mod TPA you would have to push your modded TPA up to nearly 20 just to cause significant problems.

But how much of a gain would that be? A/t s would have modified TPAs of 10 [easily], and they could still get your intel, so you've used up a bunch of thieves trying to push up your TPA, and you are still vulnerable in all the following cases:
A. You are in war.
B. Your predatory is a A/t, A/T, T/A, or T/a
C. Your predator is in a KD that is organized to get someone to help with CBs on out-of-war hits.


In other words:
People will likely get about 1 more TPA raw and it won't be worth trying to get a bunch of thieves just to cover yourself from out of war random hits.

Math, people...it's your friend.

If you want to use 20% of your acres on WTs and the necessary 10-12 raw thieves per acre just to stop out-of-war randoms, go ahead...if you are an attacker, your army will probably suck...if you are not an attacker then these measures shouldn't be necessary and will make whatever inter-war pumps you are doing rather inefficient.

[Mansoor]

Hi Prot!

It is sad indeed. Even I know that this weakens thievery.

Scenario:

In war:

Kingdom with decent tpa and lots of watch towers will catch lots of ops. First you need CB, then you need som...damn can't break. Cb again....som...damn can't break. Cb again---damn out of stealth...can't hit...can't even try to blind hit as I cannot get an som and I am a noob that doesn't use mirc or msn for utopia so cannot contact anyone in the kingdom. But I have 100% mana, I fire ball instead...damn no runes. I can steal runes!!! YAY! oh wait, no stealth...bummer! I quit this game!!

I would sacrifise 15-20% of my land for wt:s, saves me from getting NS:d.


I can tell you that when randoming, mana is always near empty before you find a decent target. If you go out of mana you start to SoM. Now when you shifting both to the same you will incurage bottomfeeding even more as people won't dare to intel provinces their size and risk going out of stealth. This might not be a big problem for the 10 organised kingdoms left in the game but the ofter 40 kingdoms that are left, for them it is harder.

Main problems are still multies. Everyone, including me will make a halfler thief with max td:s for intelling. You are incuraging going multi!

[Hallo]

The game used to have 70,000 players back in the day when people had to use intel ops and show at least some kind of attention to details - it didn't put newbies off back then. And to be honest the game doesn't need the kind of new players who can't even be bothered to get full intel ops before making an attack. Utopia has always been supposed to be a game in which you need to apply at least some element of maths to make an attack.

The idea that it increases the reliance on Angel is erroneous. If you attack someone with their army home then it is so trivial we might as well not even bother playing - i.e. just get the CB and send the right offence. If you attack when their army is out then you now have to work out what their defensive modifiers actually are from the mod def on the CB which places at least as much reliance on tools like Angel.

It is very likely this will be lost in the ensuing onslaught of posts... irregardless.

I know of a town in Iowa with 70,000 people. 70k is a small number, a very small number... and people had problems with inactives just as they do now. The fact is, the harder it is to get into a game, the less people will try to get into it. There will be Die Hards, people who love the adversity... but more and more people are turned off by games that require significant outsourcing and references... even when it's as simple as calculating an ambush.

And furthermore, most newbies don't comprehend the very calculations behind those that Angel currently calculates...

[Gilga]

stop whining, no change is ever bad, adopt to it, exploit it.
play DE and ToG more instead of waste precious mana on CB.
play Halfer kd and let the other kd sacrefise their theif aspect to get your intel in war needing both CB/SoM to attack, will make anon hits stronger preheaps.
play powerhouse attacker and gamble on low wpa if you don't war much, you can afford more troops, and don't need wizards.
play elf and use reflect magic as your only wizard defense. without keeping any wpa (more pop, deacent protection.)

I don't know tons of possible ways to benifit from this new change, utopia is a game of adjusting what I like in it is that the rules are constantly changing, (and I wish they'll change even more. benifit creativity, force us to rethink everything we know every age. keep us interested.

about name:
CB: Bribe Ministers. (bribing a high ranking minister will reveal the papaers.
CE: Steal Province Logs.

[Ethan]

Was thinking the other day how I'd be impressed if they could mess things up bad enough I'd quit (seeing as I'm here, it'd hadn't gotten there yet). Concluded it was almost impossible.

Least I had enough sense to think "almost" when thinking it.

[NoseBlood]

Okey, so next age there will be lots of gnome/halflings kd's running 30+ mod tpa suiciding all over the place? Gl getting 'cb'+som from those mofos

[Hallo]

I think people are really having some issues with the logic here. Do you really see people piling on a ton of thieves just to make "Spy on Province" hard? It still won't be worth it because the benefit of having a bunch of people in unorganized KDs get data on you will be less than what you lose by having to train the extra thieves.

Just think of how many wizards you have to have before CBs become exceptionally difficult to attain. Are you really going to raise your Modified TPA to 15 just to stop random hits by heavy attackers out of war? Inside war it won't matter since their thieves are going to be able to get the intel anyway.

Just think through the basic math here. Let's say that someone with 1 WPA can get CBs reasonably easily on people with 4 WPA [just as a ball park estimation]. Most people in warring KDs already run about 2 Raw/3 modified TPA, meaning you would be able to get "Spy on Province" on people with modified TPAs of up to 12 without breaking a sweat. Just training one more RAW thief per acre would bring that up to around 4.5 modified TPA for most folks, bringing the scope of "reasonably easy CBs" up to about 18 TPA [modified]. So, assuming attackers go up to 3 Raw/4.5 mod TPA you would have to push your modded TPA up to nearly 20 just to cause significant problems.

But how much of a gain would that be? A/t s would have modified TPAs of 10 [easily], and they could still get your intel, so you've used up a bunch of thieves trying to push up your TPA, and you are still vulnerable in all the following cases:
A. You are in war.
B. Your predatory is a A/t, A/T, T/A, or T/a
C. Your predator is in a KD that is organized to get someone to help with CBs on out-of-war hits.


In other words:
People will likely get about 1 more TPA raw and it won't be worth trying to get a bunch of thieves just to cover yourself from out of war random hits.

Math, people...it's your friend.

If you want to use 20% of your acres on WTs and the necessary 10-12 raw thieves per acre just to stop out-of-war randoms, go ahead...if you are an attacker, your army will probably suck...if you are not an attacker then these measures shouldn't be necessary and will make whatever inter-war pumps you are doing rather inefficient.

Your "math" isn't math at all... it's blatant assumptions with little empirical evidence.

A) A person with 2 raw wpa still has a problem CBing a person with 8 mod wpa. When your province news is full of spell ops, you KNOW it's a CB / CE.
B) A person with 2 mod tpa still has a problem getting an SoM on someone with 8 mod tpa.

What I speak of is fact. There is a random factor that occasionally gives you the CB anyways, but you can't rely on this when you "need" the intel... and your ability to get intel is diminished by the limited availability of stealth.

Also, you speak of such horrid mod tpa's such as 10 mod, or even 15 mod. Try 30 mod. Easy as hell to get with gnome sage.