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Thread: A number of mechanics suggestions

  1. #1
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    A number of mechanics suggestions

    These have been in the works for a while. Except where noted, each is a standalone change that would improve the game. I've now sorted them into high priority (should be fixed ***for next age***), middle, and low priority. I am open to feedback on all of these, preferably well-reasoned objections and suggestions. Speaking to me through irc (I am often on #tactics, and always on irc.absalom.info) may be a better way than mass debate on the forums.

    There are several overlying goals (direction) to these changes:

    1. Improve top kingdom play without any cost to regular kingdom play, and most importantly make "top play" something that regular kingdoms and players think is fun rather than something they avoid or get tired of and quit after a few ages.

    2. Improve specific instances of bad mechanics that would be an improvement to all were they changed. Overall - spells, thief ops, and buildings do not have to be equally valuable but they should all be of some use.

    3. Repeatedly remind the developers of bugs that need to be fixed, even if they are minor.

    *** High priority ***
    These changes are either easy and important, or very important.

    Networth of troops needs to remain balanced. The current standard is 0.8 networth-per-offense for ospecs and 1.0 networth-for-defense for dspecs. Elites are stronger than specs and should always have a higher ratio than this. For instance an inflexible 6-point defensive elite should be 6.5 or 7 nw; an inflexible 7-point offensive elite should be 6 networth. Without sticking to these ratios, races can get offenses and defenses that are really out of whack relative to their networths.

    Based on 4-point specs, All races should have their best defensive troop be either 4 or 5 points and their best offensive troop be between 4 and 7 points. Making a race that cannot attack nor be attacked is very bad for the game, as is making a race that cannot run any defense. 4/0+0/4+3/5 is okay. 4/0+0/4+7/2 is okay. 4/0+0/4+3/6 is not okay. 4/0+0/3+7/1 is not okay.

    Being sat should not hide online status. This is a major bug. In a related bug, sat provinces always show as inactive (+) to the monarch.

    The declare range networth limitation needs to be further toned down. My suggestion is to lower the meter cap back to 60 or possibly 100, thus preventing week-long retal wars.

    Exploration cost needs to be balanced. This has its own thread: http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...xplore-formula

    Gaining acres from winning a war should not be optional. Winning should grant 5% acres and 5% honor, not the choice of 10% acres or honor. Both should be clipped at a minimum of 5k and a maximum of 10k.

    *** Middle priority ***
    These changes are either easy, or important.

    1-x mechanics should be changed to 1/(1+x) mechanics, in most cases. This change is rather large, and one paragraph is not enough to explain it, but here goes. Specifically for GS, mills, rax, hosps, tds the current mechanic multiplies gains/costs/attack time by a factor of (1 - building effect). This means going from 15-20% gs or mills gives you a much bigger boost than going from 0-5% does, which is the opposite of how it's supposed to work. Instead change them to divide by (1 + building effect). The bonus value of the building should be modified so that the building remains at about the same strength it is now when at 15% of the building and 100% BE. Similarly with lightning strike, it should not destroy 60% of runes because when you add on +50% bonus now it destroys 90% - much bigger than a 50% bonus. Rather it should destroy 1-1/1.6 of your runes, and with the 50% bonus it instead destroys 1-1/2.4 of them. Thus a 50% bonus to LS gains means 2 ops now does the same work as 3 ops used to - the way it should be.

    Acres incoming at EOA (from attacking) should be added to the provinces. Although this change encourages last-minute waves, the current situation absolutely discourages any last-week fighting, which is no fun.

    Show the target province on all successful offensive ops. Spells like greed, thief ops like night strike, etc - it would be a matter of moments to change the text to add the province in there.

    Make sure there is a link to all pages on the left menu. Currently getting to important pages like your military advisor or the kingdom news takes two clicks from most pages. Utools has a nifty way of adding these that seems intuitive; there's no reason everyone shouldn't have that.

    Votes should be shown on the vote page - that is, which province each player has voted for. This is a strategy/war game, but definitely not a democracy game; we don't need to be worried about intimidation tactics. The ability of kingdoms to work together is much more important.

    Losing wars is still overpowered, despite the changes that benefit winning. Whether it is a close war or not, the kingdom that withdraws first can usually get a 3-5% edge in land, and for good kingdoms with perfectly synchronized waves this can be 10% or more. This proposed change is very simple and small: increase the time needed to withdraw by 1 hour, from 2 hours (3 ticks) to 3 hours (4 ticks).

    In war, land/nw/honor changes since war start should be shown to the kingdoms. Unlike the old "war meter", this should work by showing the percentage change in land/nw/honor since the instant of declare. The best place to show this is on the kd pages, where it is visible to everyone.

    In war, allow a kingdom with a significant networth edge "claim victory" and end the war immediately at any time. A significant networth edge is a 20% improvement in the nw ratio from war start to end; i.e., "(kd1_nw_current / kd2_nw_current) / (kd1_nw_warstart / kd2_nw_warstart) >= 1.2" allows kd1 to "claim victory" at any time (this shows as a win). This should replace the current autowin mechanics, and would work extremely well with land/nw changes since war start being shown as in the previous suggestion.

    Either remove mutual peace or have it display as a tie on the kd page, and have it grant both sides half of the bonuses of a win (books, credits, land, honor). Currently MP counts as a loss, and offering MP gives the other side the chance to either laugh at you or accept it at a time of their choosing, so there's little reason for anyone to ever use it. Simply having it show on the kingdom page as a tie, would be a big improvement. (Some data on this would be interesting to see. When is the last time any war ever ended in a mp?)

    Trad march gains need to be symmetrical with respect to networth. Currently the gains hitting at 60% are the same as 140%, but this means that someone who bottomfeeds 60% is essentially immune to retal since the attacker has to topfeed 166% to retal you. A very small change to the formula would correct this: treat a 150% topfeed (1.5x your nw) as a 66% bottomfeed (1/1.5x your nw), i.e. invert the networth ratio for topfeeds.

    *** Low priority ***
    These changes are either hard, or not as important.

    Show defense left home on the war page. Currently it shows offense sent; adding on defense-left-home should be easy.

    Bounces should give GBP just as ops and hits can do - an x% chance of a bounce giving the same gbp as a massacre/plunder/learn if x% of the necessary defense was sent.

    Dragons - rather than having dragons fly away after 121 hours, make the dragon strength decrease by (base points) / 120 each hour; this would give partial benefit to kingdoms half-slaying it rather than making that half-slaying useless. Dragons are additionally too powerful - the cost to send a dragon and to slay one (at 400 gc per 5 points) should be the same.

    Rather than make NB randomly cure plague, make it drop the duration. So when you get plague it will be 12-24 hours, and each NB will drop that by 5 hours. And hospitals should be changed to reduce plague duration - every 1% hosps reduces incoming plague duration by 3.5%, subject to DBE. Hospitals and NB thus complement each other nicely as a way to counter it.

    Propaganda should not have its returns be random. This is the only thief op that is random, inexplicably. It is okay to have the troop type taken be random, but the number of troops taken should not be.

    War declaration should be delayed, probably by 7-15 hours. So when a war is declared on February 1, you get a message "Kingdom A has declared war with us! The war will commence on February 12th!". The reasoning for this is to remove the gross overpoweredness of button control and make waving & declaring more desirable. It should make wars more common.

    Monarchs should be able to force their kingdoms to hold hits in order to surrender. This could work OOW too, to enforce hostiles and prevent multis or noobs from being used to give button - a big bonus! The way it would work is the monarch goes to an opposing kd's page and toggles a button to "prevent his on this kingdom". After that no provinces from the monarch's kingdom can hit into the other kingdom. The monarch can go back to the kingdom and toggle it back at any time to allow hits.

    Repeatable spells - specifically paradise, tree of gold, fireball, tornado - should remain as the default spell even after a successful cast. It would be harmless for all spells to behave this way, and would make playing from mobile a lot faster. (Thief ops already do work this way.)

    Super-science should be weakened - slightly. My simple suggestion is to switch to a cube-root instead of square-root formula past 100 bpa in a particular category. So:
    * 0-100 bpa: MODIFIER * sqrt(bpa)
    * 100+ bpa: MODIFIER * cuberoot(10 * bpa)

    Meter decay shouldn't happen until a hit has been around for 24 hours. The best way to do it would be with hourly decay rather than daily decay. Have an array of 24 fields for the hits of each of the last 24 ticks, and another field for the leftover. Each tick move every hour's totals down the line (no decay here), and decay the leftover by a small percentage (around .7% - this field has to be a floating-point). The 0th hour is then reset to 0 and new hits for the upcoming tick are added on there. The total hostility is equal to the sum of all 25 fields (which can then be rounded off).
    Last edited by jdorje; 08-02-2013 at 22:28. Reason: updated

  2. #2
    Sir Postalot Pillz's Avatar
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    The declare range was already changed, 66% to 125%, I think.
    EDIT: I agree with most of your suggestions but those regarding war and plague. I'm on the fence about the dragon change. On the one hand, half killing a dragon does suck, but on the other, people should be made to pay for their mistakes.
    Last edited by Pillz; 06-05-2012 at 23:17.

  3. #3
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    I can get behind most of these, except the last one. I feel like...

    -dice acres coming from the pool is just a bad idea. Less acres in the game is not a good idea. Separation is a good thing.
    -having the explore/dice acres being your own "explorer pool" it just seems like a work around to having free exploring/dicing during war.
    -this would discourage wars for kds who have a cow and discouraging wars doesn't seem like a direction that's good for the game.
    -This would make exploring pretty useless outside of trying to grow a bank.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Palem View Post
    I can get behind most of these, except the last one. I feel like...

    -dice acres coming from the pool is just a bad idea. Less acres in the game is not a good idea. Separation is a good thing.
    -having the explore/dice acres being your own "explorer pool" it just seems like a work around to having free exploring/dicing during war.
    -this would discourage wars for kds who have a cow and discouraging wars doesn't seem like a direction that's good for the game.
    -This would make exploring pretty useless outside of trying to grow a bank.
    It's not less acres. If you're dicing, it's the same amount of acres. 125 acres/hour for 24 hours = 3k acres/day, approximately what you get from dice+explore now. If you war, those acres continue to pile up (or get used, if hits are big enough) at 3k/day whereas currently you would only get 480/day in pool growth.

    I admit, I am unsure all the ways this could shake out and the new strategies devised. The reason cows are so powerful these days is that it's a cheap way to use your pool and leaves you with a topfeeding core. But bio has shown that if you use your pool elsewhere you can do just as well, with a nigh-untouchable core (compare bio and sanc kds now...sanc with the cow would have no chance head-to-head). The reason cows are preferred is that non-cow kingdoms find it very hard to use their pool, without tons of cf's. The proposed changes make it easier to use that pool. Even so, I anticipate different strategies being run, with balanced-core or multi-cow setups possible. I do not know which would prevail. And while cow kingdoms might prefer to put all 30 acres/hour on their 4 cows, the non-cow kingdom that waves them will have exactly the opposite inclination.

    The key in the explore cost formula is that it does not blindly make exploration harder at bigger sizes, the way this age has done. This age doubled explore costs at 2k acres compared to last age - making it extremely hard for core provinces to explore in any top kingdom. By relaxing the size limitation as the age goes on, cows are made possible but expensive. Still, if it's felt that cows might be overpowered - simply increasing the scaling of explore costs will help that (i.e, square that multiplier).

    Oh, and as for your fourth point - that is extremely wrong. At 2k acres later age, explore costs would be significantly reduced and exploring would be much cheaper than dicing. It would be quite easy, after a war, to double your chained provinces up from 2k to 4k. This is something that cow kingdoms have always had to give up, to their cost - except for this age, where it was too expensive for anyone to do.
    Last edited by jdorje; 06-05-2012 at 23:59.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pillz View Post
    The declare range was already changed, 66% to 125%, I think.
    Yes, that's a very bad change in the wrong direction. Now you can play even more button games, abusing knbg and hitting kingdoms 180% of your size with no fear of reprisal. All they can do is raze and what good does that do them? The limitation needs to be removed completely, not tightened. If you're worried about kingdoms forcing war at 200-200 on the meter with kingdoms half their size...well, when's the last time that actually happened?

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    Sir Postalot Pillz's Avatar
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    I agree its a bad change, but that should give you some indication of the direction theyre moving towards.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    It's not less acres. If you're dicing, it's the same amount of acres. 125 acres/hour for 24 hours = 3k acres/day, approximately what you get from dice+explore now. If you war, those acres continue to pile up (or get used, if hits are big enough) at 3k/day whereas currently you would only get 480/day in pool growth.
    You can get 3k acres a day with dicing alone. Either you didn't account for the possible explore acres or I missed something :(

    I admit, I am unsure all the ways this could shake out and the new strategies devised. The reason cows are so powerful these days is that it's a cheap way to use your pool and leaves you with a topfeeding core. But bio has shown that if you use your pool elsewhere you can do just as well, with a nigh-untouchable core (compare bio and sanc kds now...sanc with the cow would have no chance head-to-head). The reason cows are preferred is that non-cow kingdoms find it very hard to use their pool, without tons of cf's. The proposed changes make it easier to use that pool. Even so, I anticipate different strategies being run, with balanced-core or multi-cow setups possible. I do not know which would prevail. And while cow kingdoms might prefer to put all 30 acres/hour on their 4 cows, the non-cow kingdom that waves them will have exactly the opposite inclination.

    The key in the explore cost formula is that it does not blindly make exploration harder at bigger sizes, the way this age has done. This age doubled explore costs at 2k acres compared to last age - making it extremely hard for core provinces to explore in any top kingdom. By relaxing the size limitation as the age goes on, cows are made possible but expensive. Still, if it's felt that cows might be overpowered - simply increasing the scaling of explore costs will help that (i.e, square that multiplier).
    Admittedly, I'm not all that experience with trying to dump out the explore pool, but I don't really see the issues with the explore pool and trying different ways to utilize it. Running cows has been the 'go-to' strategy for while, but there are kds who can properly utilize their pool without building cows and instead distributing it. I see it the same way I see warring. Chaining is the strategy of choice, but every situation is different and may require some different approach.

    Oh, and as for your fourth point - that is extremely wrong. At 2k acres later age, explore costs would be significantly reduced and exploring would be much cheaper than dicing. It would be quite easy, after a war, to double your chained provinces up from 2k to 4k. This is something that cow kingdoms have always had to give up, to their cost - except for this age, where it was too expensive for anyone to do.
    I doubt exploring would be much cheaper than dicing. Without mills, exploring is typically pretty expensive when you take into account the cost of everything whereas dicing only costs runes, which you'll most likely have anyway, and some mana. Not only that, but rune costs per acre decrease the larger you get where as exploring gets more expensive.

    I'd be curious for some numbers to show that it would actually be much cheaper...

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    4+ acres an hour of dicing = 100 acres/province. 2500 acres + 480 of pool = 3k acres growth currently. You can possibly get slightly higher than that but not to 3500 (that'd require 100% dicing success).

    And, exploring has always been cheaper than dicing, prior to this age. Of course the "cost" of exploring decreases with lower pumpedness while the cost of dicing doesn't as much. And the numbers are a bit imbalanced since you wouldn't really want mills to explore 5 acres/hour. Of course the real advantage of exploring over dicing is that you can choose which provinces to put the acres on. Historically this is either chainees or top-end provinces (cows or killers).

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    I support the Propaganda overhaul. I've seen ops in the range of 30 to 1,4k specs(lol) on the same target at ~2k acres.
    Plague stacks could work.
    Exploration costs don't scale very well atm.
    Mystics/thievery page 'keep op' change is needed, current mechanic annoys the hell out of me.
    Keep dragons at full strenght!
    Last edited by Avenger; 07-05-2012 at 11:07.
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    GA 'keep building type' would be helpful as well.

  11. #11
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    I agree with most of these changes, but not the removal of war range or the instant return of EOA acres. I like the idea of limiting farm wars, and I don't worry a bit about 180% topfeeds and ghettos retaling (if you have THAT much trouble with smaller kingdoms, you're doing it wrong). As for instant EOA acres, if you can't get them in before time ends, I see no reason to make them count. Forcing a mad dash for every kingdom to wave someone with 1 minute left in the age seems like a pointless change to make.
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    I disagree mainly with the wd penalty. The rest seems ok but i dont dice so i m nt sure whether it is op or not.

    Firstly, it is alrdy quite hard to persuade some kd to w/d and this will discourage them to w/d even more

    Secondly, if i m alrdy losing, I dont think it is fair to penalize me even more. Kds alrdy have to halt all attacks for 3 hrs before w/d anyway,

    Lastly, The winning kd alrdy have such a huge benefit next age and u could always hit other kd for more land so even if they w/d, u still stand to benefit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Atdy587 View Post
    Firstly, it is alrdy quite hard to persuade some kd to w/d and this will discourage them to w/d even more
    If you are winning by enough, they don't have to withdraw.

    Quote Originally Posted by Atdy587 View Post
    Secondly, if i m alrdy losing, I dont think it is fair to penalize me even more. Kds alrdy have to halt all attacks for 3 hrs before w/d anyway,
    In most top wars, the losing kingdom gets a big acres advantage. In mid-level or bottom wars, the 3h wd penalty is a nonfactor.

    Quote Originally Posted by Atdy587 View Post
    Lastly, The winning kd alrdy have such a huge benefit next age and u could always hit other kd for more land so even if they w/d, u still stand to benefit.
    They've given winning a big boost economically, but the losers still have a big land advantage. Where's the sense in that?

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    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    If you are winning by enough, they don't have to withdraw.



    In most top wars, the losing kingdom gets a big acres advantage. In mid-level or bottom wars, the 3h wd penalty is a nonfactor.



    They've given winning a big boost economically, but the losers still have a big land advantage. Where's the sense in that?
    What do u mean by if u r winning by enough they dont have to wd? U can farm them but it is pretty boring imo.

    For the 3 hrs, r u referring to the 3 hrs no hit penalty before w/d? I m nt from a top kd so i cant say much abt their wars but from the mid range, i can say that the 5/6 hr penalty u r imposing is pretty harsh. It is effectively a full prop run which can destroy a province honour among other things.

    And whats the point on penalizing those who r alrdy losing and r gracious enough to admit their defeat. And if u give the losers such a huge land advantage, it means that u r doing smth wrong like nt being able to tell that the opposing kd is abt to wd. If u r talking abt chain timings, u shld noe that most mid to low lvl kds do not have chain timings where everyone comes on so it is easy to tell when some kds will wd esp if they add extra times to their atacks and start to harvest some of the fat provinces which u have.

    And as u said, this problem is mainly faced by top kds which does nt affect 3/4 of the players.

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    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    Acres incoming at EOA should be added to the provinces. This should definitely include attack acres and probably also explored acres.
    I disagree, it serves to help balance war spoils, but I do not think it is a good thing. Last minute waves causing huge swings FTL.

    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    Bounces remain poorly designed in that they don't move the meter - one recommended change is that a bounce that sends x% of the target's offense should have x% chance of moving the meter by a full hit (in this case, a raze so it'd be 1 hit); bounces should probably also give limited GBP just as ops can do (perhaps an x% chance of a bounce giving the same gbp as a massacre/plunder/learn).
    Bounces should not give provinces GBP, (unless GBP no longer effects TAX, in which case this is not abuse-able)

    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    Being sat shouldn?t hide online status. This is a major bug.
    I agree, but then again the only thing this really effects is target finders and occasionally in war, but it should not be considered a huge issue. Would be nice to see it fixed tho.

    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    Losing wars is overpowered. Whether it?s a close war or not, the kingdom that withdraws first can usually get a 3-5% edge in land, and for good kingdoms with perfectly sync?d waves this can be 10% or more. People use it to justify losing a war, but the real problem is that losing shouldn't give you that advantage. My suggestion: change withdrawing. The monarch can "surrender" at any point after min time, this halts hits from his side but the other side gets to continue for 6 ticks (5 hours instead of 2); really the "surrender" should be effective the following tick so that if you "surrender" during the 2nd your kingdom can no longer hit after the end of the 2nd and the other kingdom can then hit from the 3rd-6th (until end of the 6th) freely. Allow a kingdom with a significant networth edge "claim victory" and end the war immediately at any time. A significant networth edge is a 20% improvement in the nw ratio from war start to end; i.e., "(kd1_nw_current / kd2_nw_current) / (kd1_nw_warstart / kd2_nw_warstart) >= 1.2" allows kd1 to "claim victory" at any time (this shows as a win). Either remove MP or have it count as a tie on the kd page (currently it counts as a loss, and offering MP gives the other side the chance to either laugh at you or accept it at a time of their choosing, so there's little reason for anyone to ever use it).
    I disagree with this, some steps were made to give more bonuses to rebuilding and the winner, I believe they were more then enough to make war profitable enough. A close war should not result in huge gains...

    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    Repeatable spells - specifically paradise, tree of gold, fireball, tornado - should remain as the default spell even after a successful cast. It would be harmless for all spells to behave this way. (Thief ops already do work this way.)
    I agree, i hate casting spells on my cell phone, and usually just don't bother.

    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    Thief gains capping should be done before bonuses or penalties to thief gains. Specifically this applies to the bonuses from watchtowers (-x% losses on successful ops) and some race bonuses (+40% thief sabotage gains). Currently these mods are applied pre-cap, meaning that the maximum amount of sabotage gains is unchanged by them; +40% gains just means you need to send fewer thieves while opping into wts just means you need to send more thieves, to get maxed gains. This is basically a bug that makes such mods nearly worthless.
    I look at this mod more as a decreased losses because the bonus is fairly lame. It would be nice if it increased cap damage. Especially since halfling is so lamesauce.

    Quote Originally Posted by jdorje View Post
    The 50-200% declare range limitation needs to be removed. This was added solely to prevent fakewarring, at the cost of worse gameplay. Fakewarring was removed but this limitation was left in by accident. This qualifies as a bug, and should take just a few seconds to fix.
    I don't think this was added just to prevent fake warring. I think this is one of the worst suggestions I have read.
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