Comments for Announcement 18th June

[Magn]

Personally... I think the KD page delay is much better than real time pages.

Real Time pages is basically free intel, someone attacks, just refresh the page to see whose nw dropped. Worried about a possible soldier block? Just check to see if a prov's NW increased while you were preparing the attack. It's only free intel.

By the same token, they should remove honor charts because it might allow someone to figure out a monarch's actual nobility title.

This 'free intel' should be part of the game.

If you are perceptive and lucky enough to spot it when it happens and capitalize on it, good for you.

However, I assure you that it will rarely play a role in the game (not the scenarios you described anyways).

Lets be honest with ourselves here, the lack of up-to-date info on the KD page screams "We would like to provide it to you, but can't pull it off atm" rather than "We did it deliberately to enhance your gaming experience".

In other words, they are caching KD page results in memory because the database can't handle the load... there, I said it.

[pmyraje]

There should be a new spell (well, ok, so a thievery op as they way things have gone nowadays) that gives you an accurate look at the KD page!!

Can't say it bothers me personally - it's just a game "feature". If people can't understand what is going on because of it tough!

[VT2]

Mana is completely useless this age.
Unless you're playing dwarf, you have very little need for runes or wizards.

[pmyraje]

I'm finding plenty of use for my Dark Elf mana.

[Spiderpig]

Mana is completely useless this age.
Unless you're playing dwarf, you have very little need for runes or wizards.

Completely agree.

I don't want to bash the game devs, but it seems to me that B&S have not played this game enough to understand it. If you don't want to use your own product, then let someone who does give you changes. You make something like a "Suggestion Thread" for Next age changes, and you completely ignore everything there. Then you come up with the brilliant change to shut down 1 aspect of the game, in this age its Magic (not for DEs obviously), with a change that no1 even suggested.

Many great games that are played competitively and stood the test of time, games like Starcraft, are balanced according to top tier play. Why dont you listen to them and implement what they want, I'll gurantee that the changes will be a hell lot better than yours B&S.

[Hallo]

hallo, things like stance change, relations change, monarch change are all important to know immediately. nw changes are important to know immediately as well in order to provide a correct strat.

Stance + Relations should be automatically updated.
The only thing that isn't is the province details... though thats only through the KD page itself, you can still gather intel to get the information.

Lets be honest with ourselves here, the lack of up-to-date info on the KD page screams "We would like to provide it to you, but can't pull it off atm" rather than "We did it deliberately to enhance your gaming experience".
In other words, they are caching KD page results in memory because the database can't handle the load... there, I said it.

Sounds like bupkis to me.

They're dynamically updating everything except the KD pages... now, if they dynamically generated instead of cache'd the KD pages until something changed then yes, that could cause problems... but given how much is already going on, I'd say it'd be a minimal gain.

However, I assure you that it will rarely play a role in the game (not the scenarios you described anyways).

Realize, not everyone is going to play ghetto style Magn. It's VERY EASY to keep an extra tab open and refresh it every tick, or every few ticks. You're trying to act like no one has EVER though about that.

This 'free intel' should be part of the game.
If you are perceptive and lucky enough to spot it when it happens and capitalize on it, good for you.

Luck has nothing to do with it. And free intel only means that those who are smarter than you will exploit it better. Really, all you want is to know who the monarch is without having to take any intel... so why not PM everyone in the KD? Problem solved.

[Magn]

Stance + Relations should be automatically updated.
The only thing that isn't is the province details... though thats only through the KD page itself, you can still gather intel to get the information.




Sounds like bupkis to me.

They're dynamically updating everything except the KD pages... now, if they dynamically generated instead of cache'd the KD pages until something changed then yes, that could cause problems... but given how much is already going on, I'd say it'd be a minimal gain.

Like what?

My province info?

Only me and people who spend stealth can see it and its only one province entry in the database.

Not a lot of traffic there.

The paper?

Only the KD can see it and outside KDs that spend stealth.

Furthermore, its very easy to cache, because past events don't change (so if they cache past events, the player won't be the wiser for it).

Not a lot of traffic there.

KD page?

The entire server can see it at will and it need to fetch the info of 20+ provinces in the database tables.

Thats a lot more traffic.

If I was gonna cache something to save on DB loads, that would be one of my highest priorities.

To make sense of these things, you need to look at them analytically.

Realize, not everyone is going to play ghetto style Magn. It's VERY EASY to keep an extra tab open and refresh it every tick, or every few ticks. You're trying to act like no one has EVER though about that.

When we war, we have 10+ provinces chaining in the same hour every 12 hours. We are not ghetto.

However, in order to notice something resulting from NW fluctuations, you have to be logged in when it happens.

Furthermore, you have to be paying attention to it in a short enough time interval that other factors don't have a chance to play on the data (such as the tick for example).

Thats fortuitous, especially for anons.

Luck has nothing to do with it. And free intel only means that those who are smarter than you will exploit it better. Really, all you want is to know who the monarch is without having to take any intel... so why not PM everyone in the KD? Problem solved.

Ops are random as far as the players are concerned.

RL events that will affect players' ability to login & attack are sometimes random from the players' perspective.

When various KDs decide to wave another is in great part random for the KD eating the wave.

I'm sure I'm forgetting many other things that players cannot possibly plan ahead for with certainty.

This is a far cry from a chess game. If thats what you are looking for, keep looking cause you won't find it here.

[Hallo]

*excessively double-spaced paragraph*

To summarize "The KD Page is requested more often." That is true, but you're ignoring that pesky aspect about updating the fields that are changed. It's a minuscule load we're talking about, especially given that the KD pages ARE updated several times a tick.

However, in order to notice something resulting from NW fluctuations, you have to be logged in when it happens.

No you don't. You just need a semi-recent KD page.

Furthermore, you have to be paying attention to it in a short enough time interval that other factors don't have a chance to play on the data (such as the tick for example).

No you don't... you just need a semi-recent KD page.

Thats fortuitous, especially for anons.

No it isn't... the cached pages are fortuitous for anons... you have to wait longer while other people are "doing things" to get your free intel... it can be done, but it would be easier with dynamically generated pages.

*excessively long rant about randomness*

Really... all you're doing here is trying to say "Luck exists" and "people win because of luck."

The only difference between a good KD and a ghetto is that a good KD will have generals monitoring the battlefield. They will stay on, they will organize, and they will have their subordinates obey. Thus far, you've given me the impression that you have "experienced players" in your KD... but they only go through the motions of war and you have no real strategy or structure... and that, no matter how you put it, is ghetto.

[Luth]

Posted by Hallo:
Stance + Relations should be automatically updated.
The only thing that isn't is the province details... though thats only through the KD page itself, you can still gather intel to get the information.

the only thing that isn't? what are you talking about? NOTHING on the kd page updates real time. NOTHING. N O T H I N G.

and how do you get a prov nw from intel? it's not included in any intel op to my knowledge...

[Magn]

*excessively double-spaced paragraph*

Spaces paragraphs and punctuations are important because otherwise you end up writing a lot of argumentation that looks like this and that is obvious and infinitely readable I assure you both my French and English teachers were extremely pleased with my proper usage of punctuation and paragraphing to separate my ideas in a more legible manner and hence my high marks in both of these topics Really I'd like to accomodate you by structuring my text like an illiterate but I suffer from a proper education that makes me cringe whenever I write in such a manner and read myself

To summarize "The KD Page is requested more often." That is true, but you're ignoring that pesky aspect about updating the fields that are changed. It's a minuscule load we're talking about, especially given that the KD pages ARE updated several times a tick.

WRONG! The KD page is not updated when something change in someone's province. The fields in the database are updated.

When someone looks at a KD page, the info needs to be fetched from the updated database entry.

Its not a direct process.

Province updates are not inherently more expensive than access (creating a new province is more overhead, but thats another story and it doesn't happen frequently).

Furthermore, province updates occur in smaller chunks (op-by-op, attack-by-attack on a single province and only as fast as the player can input it) and the province row for those events will be fetched by ID which makes it quick (if the programmers indexed the table by province ID which is a reasonable default assumption).

Comparatively, fetching province info from a KD page request requires that all the provinces in question be fetched by KD ID (which requires a join on an unordered set and therefor inherently more expensive) and that all that be done in a single operation (single larger operations tend to choke the DB more).

Add that fact that province updates (from ops and attacks) are more likely to clash with KD page requests (by far the most frequent select requests on province rows since the select is made on all the KD's provinces at once and its free so its done frequently and by everyone) and you have even more overhead if the KD pages are not cached.

No you don't. You just need a semi-recent KD page.

No you don't... you just need a semi-recent KD page.

And now, we delve into the fascinating aspect of the http protocol.

The server doesn't instanciate "automatic" updates on your browser.

Rather, it sends updates on a "per request" basis from the client (you).

This means that if you leave your browser open with a KD page view, it won't get updated unless some fency client-side AJAX scripts force frequent update requests (which there aren't for this game).

That means that if someone made an anon 3 hours ago and you have an KD page from 6 hours ago and a fresh KD page, you have 6 hours worth of noise to mess up your NW data.

Ops will have occured, some people will have built some acreage, trained some troops, sent AID to each other, sent troops away to kill the dragon, etc.

All these events will influence the NW.

Under such circumstance, trying to trace the anon by NW fluctuation is imho, retarded. You'd be better off looking at the gains made, looking at the target's NW, extrapolate the attacker's NW from those data and go from there.

*excessively long rant about randomness*

Yes, clearly, you've gone as far as you are capable for this part of the discussion so we'll leave it at that.

[uhum]

Nice fixes. also like to say that the speed is really nice these days, we get often enogh <1 minute ticks. GJ!