That's not what this is about and you know it. The stance makes it so that after a certain point the attacking kingdom can not do anything at all. There are no options as it stands. Simply avoiding waving all hybrid kingdoms as an attacking kingdom is not an option.Originally Posted by Bishop
pew pew. Absolutely none of my nubs speak for my kingdom.
Agrees with Pet. Fort needs to be changed slightly to allow for either a reduction of off ops efficiency or maybe simply do no dragons investment/killing while in fort?
I don't think you should be able to enter full fortified immediately after a EoWCF. EoWCF --> whatever should count as a stance swap.
Other than that I would rather fortified remains as it is (it is needed for pumping if you dont have cf's and are small) and can be useful for hybrids which is fine, except that I would like to again suggest that warring becomes easier and running/fighting OOW is costlier to the defending kingdom. I don't think it is fair that you can run from every fight within your nw range (which is what a lot of warring kingdoms do to end up with perfect warring records) and not have a real cost to it other than some land that most warring kingdoms don't care about.
I'd really like to see that the mutual declare option at maxed meter happens at different times depending on relative nw sizes, so at say above 50 meter each = within 95-105% get button on eachother, 100 meter = 90-115%% get button on eachother, 150=75-133% get button on each-other. This would make it so you essentially have to eat the wave of anyone topfeeding a little bit on you if you don't want to give a button away by the second wave (most kingdoms have t/m's).
Edit: I guess you would need to balance it since they wouldn't necessarily have the same meter. Why not say "if they are within 30 meter points" so if one is 50 and one 80 within very close nw they both get button.
Last edited by Mal; 27-07-2012 at 17:09.
Fortified in its current state severely decreases the cost of fighting OOW for the defending kingdom. It is what allows kds to simply run from every fight they don't feel like fighting and lose a relatively small amount of acres in the process. Changing fort would help a lot with the thing you (and I) don't like right now.
pew pew. Absolutely none of my nubs speak for my kingdom.
If you want that as a goal u need more sweeping changes
Buff the hell out of fortied stance and remove GBP, nw range protection on prov and buffing kd nw range protection..
You'd make fortified stance a true defensive/growth stance and let any kd not in that stance be open to hits.
Something like Fort= lower training costs, x% def boost (i always liked that), No incoming/outgoing ops other than intel, reduced explore cost, can dice, -75% gains/losses (including -75 reduced troop losses when you hit/get hit), phase in over 24 hours no time limit. Instant -25%
Then remove prov nw factor (yea yea bottom feeding but you still have attack times to protect you) and all forms of GBP
while uping Kingdom Networth Factor to
rknw < 0.5 = .1
0.5 < rknw < 0.8 = linear line from .1 to 1
0.8 < rknw < 1.25 = 1 (slightly under war declare range)
1.25 < rknw < 2.5 = linear from 1 to .1
2 < rknw =.1
As there's no huge reason why should you be attacking outside those kd ranges, and while GBP is a nice feature it just makes stalling for war/geting wave pre war very underwhelming and removal would lower all the button games as you take damage out of war equal to that of in war, only differnce is honor gains/explore pool. oow fighting is now just as costly as war damage wise but doesnt provide the benefit of explore pool gains so it very much encourages war if you are up for it and provides a easy leave us alone stance that u can sit in forever. You are then either in fort=/=dont war, cant attack/be hostile towards another kd, or you sit in normal via learning/plunders, or u sit in aggressive via I WANT WAR now stance.
Last edited by Persain; 27-07-2012 at 17:56.
True, would there even be a major cost if fortified were removed or changed so it simply didn't affect gains anymore (it is just a training stance like normal that you can't dice in?).
One of the biggest problems right now that I see is that warring quality opponents is often more difficult than warring weaker ones. Quality opponents tend to run because it costs them very little while a solid war takes time and may end up in a blemished record (evidenced by the amount of war win kingdoms with perfect records that never seem to face off even late age). There is no cost to running for warring kingdoms and it is relatively easy to do. Avoiding fights should come at a greater price, if anything. I like OOW honor gains for trad marches coming back into the game like they used to. You used to be able to get to near the top of the honor charts even if you didn't get a fight if everyone ran from you (which is more indicative of quality kingdoms than luck of the draw in a ghetto giving a button/agreeing to war).
Last edited by Mal; 27-07-2012 at 17:59.
Mechanics need to both benefit fun play, and be balanced. Giving 10% free acres for every war win benefits fun play, but it is not balanced. Rage and sanc can war each other back to back all age and end up at 500k acres. My main point is that there's no reason we cannot have balanced top play that also works for the rest of the server. The pool works as a check on top kingdoms to limit their growth while at the same time having no impact on the rest of the server.
I am seriously concerned at the developers and mods lack of care for the quality of top play. The purpose of games is to compete, but in Utopia the trend over 5 years has been to make competition less and less fun. By marginalizing the top kingdoms, you only ensure that there are fewer and fewer top kingdoms, retroactively justifying your marginalization of them. Even a few years ago, when utopia had no more players than it has now, 10-20 kingdoms would compete for the top every age. Now that number is 5. Improving the quality of top play will filter down and kingdoms in the 5-20 range, who are almost as good but currently try to avoid competitive play because "it's lame", would step up. Instead of 2% of kingdoms competing for the crown, it should be 10%. By using the 2% number to justify ignoring or worsening top play, you only ensure that that number drops and that more and more top kingdoms and players leave the game. It makes me weep for the greatness that could be utopia; not many games have top play that can be both balanced and fun, but utopia is one of them. It should be encouraged, not marginalized.
Now, about dicing. Doubling dicing (with it coming from the pool) does not benefit skds, because they have no trouble emptying their pool. Doubling dicing benefits ghettos, because they can have their t/ms grow faster; since t/ms can only grow by dicing this is a very big deal. Top kingdoms must of course decide how to use their pool, and pool use costs need to be balanced (it should be possible for an average province to explore about twice as much an hour as they can dice, but at an even greater land/economic investment than dicing takes).
In short:
* Double the returns, and the guild requirements, of dicing.
* All dicing comes from the pool, and kingdoms get 125 pool acres per hour.
* 10% pool gains comes from your own pool. Or if you insist, the pool gains could be added on at end of war, or even left off entirely. But it shouldn't come from the other kingdom's pool.
* Lower the cost of exploring, such that an average province with 10 peasants an acre can explore 20 acres/hour. (Exploration gives twice the acres of dicing, but at about twice the economic cost.)
In addition to being better than the war/pool changes already proposed, these would be easier to implement. No new interfaces are needed, only a few numbers need to be changed.
I have a more general point. It looks like you are implying that you shouldn't design the game around growth because very few KDs care about growth.
No, growth mechanics affect as many KDs as want to grow. Right now, only ~8 KDs want to grow because the growth mechanics lead to stagnant, boring play (dicing, pumping, CFs). The problem is with growth mechanics. They need to be fixed.
If we fixed growth mechanics by making conflicts better for growth, then growing would be exciting instead of stagnant. Good warring KDs would grow. They would end up in range of other good war KDs. They would fight them. They would end up in range of KDs who wanted to win the land crown, and fight them. There would be lots of exciting wars to post about in the forums. Unicorns would ride rainbows. Players old and new would flock to utopia. The devs would get rich from in-game purchases. They'd donate their fortunes to early-childhood education and fighting malaria.
Growth mechanics do matter. Warring is fun. Let's align everyone's goals: people should grow from wars and war for growth.
That number dropped because its more fun to war due to how you grow. To balance out competition for the top which i agree should happen, sever things need to happen.
1. science pumps need a nerf, as much as i like the current formula as its easy to follow, having the most expensive science at a level that REQUIRES one to be low draft means top kds have to sit all age at low draft to pump (win science should be dependent on war length and equal to a normal out of warscience rate....if you can win war u get the same science as if you didnt war at all). Also perhaps adjust the formula to be less dependent than ^.5 at some point.
2. explore costs need a nerf again, if you have to be 30% drafted as a cow to explore only top kds can do it, who cares if the top builds a cow if you force war kds to grow with them in acres you might as well make it feasible for every kd to try to cow.
3. war must be equal to no war as far as acres go. If war is more profitable then u get burnout if war is less profitable then u get stagnation... war should be a if i think i can get more acres than him i war, if not i can just dice. An acre bonus should provide at a minimum a few 1000 acres bonus on win such as win= explore pool growth of max(2000, loser-winners acres), then you choose war win is X% honor bonus or X explore credits/prov (expire after eowcf)
I like your idea double dicing, dicing comes from explore pool, with a greatly expand rate of explore pool growth that grows during war.
In Addtion i would up the % of land you gain from the explore pool during a normals during war so the average waring kd grows during war. Note explore pool gains via our armies gain X acres during the battle and are expected to find Y acres when coming home from war taken from your own pool. Total gains =x+y, kd news only shows X.
Right now my kd has Available Uncharted Acres 28,477 acres, thats alot of acres even ifyou tripled the acres gain from explore pool there'd be enough acres to grow smallies after war.
4. Intra kd razing returns acres to explore pool...edit and new provs stall pool growth by the new prov acres (raze kill one guy over and over =cheating)
Last edited by Persain; 27-07-2012 at 18:38.
1. Science costs do not need a nerf. Science is very expensive. The only problem with science is that kingdoms pump it for months at a time. I proposed a slight weakening to super-science, but overall there is no problem.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by "nerfed", but: explore costs need to be lowered, across the board and not just for "small provinces". The more expensive you make exploration, the more kingdoms will "be forced" to cow to use their pool, and the fewer ghettos are able to explore. Ghettos should be able to explore. And there's nothing wrong with cowing, it just needs to be balanced. The beliefs that "cowing needs to be nerfed" and that "raising explore costs will nerf cowing" demonstrate very common misconceptions of how game mechanics work. Kingdoms cow because cows run lower draft rate, not because costs are cheaper for cows. I am not positive on this, but I suspect that cowing would be killed by the larger pools/lower explore costs that I've proposed, due to the larger number of provinces in range.
3. War must be equal to no-war, yes. 10% free acres for a win doesn't accomplish this however. At small sizes it's useless for countering dicing, and at large sizes it may be overpowered. Acres should come from attacking and from capped, persistent sources - aka the pool. Making dicing come from an expanded pool solves this perfectly.
4. Abusable. I did consider a monarch option for land dropping: the monarch (maybe he needs every kingdom vote on him to do this) chooses to give up x% of his kingdom's land, science, and all population. A percentage of that (probably 75%, but maybe 50% or 100%) goes back into the pool. This provides a mechanism for land dropping in the game, but allows it to be made balanced (currently it's imbalanced because no science and minimal troops are lost, leading to superpumped provinces after the drop). Without testing though there's no way to ensure it is balanced. Also unlike the changes I proposed above, which could be done in just a few minutes by the developers, this one would take some work.
Last edited by jdorje; 27-07-2012 at 18:47.
Disagree with 1, the only reason that science pumps are imbalanced is a combination of factors namely so few kingdoms want growth (bad growth mechanics), war is bad for growth (conflicts hurt growth) therefore top kingdoms cf and drop drafts. This can be fixed indirectly by making growth mechanics better and conflicts better for growth. No kingdom can drop draft if they don't have the required cf's = no Extreme science pumps.
2. Explore costs should be much much lower for small people. The definition of small can be relative to the point in the age and the kingdom. E.g. 10% kingdom median is "small" as is below 5k acres by late age.
3. War doesnt need to be equal, there is still a risk/reward factor in play. It should be a lot better than dicing if you win and a bit worse if you lose.
4. Abusable.
you can either hit the power of super science (it will still be pumped untill its no longer nw efficient) or limit the rate/cost of science. if the top level of science only requires a 60% draft rate then all kds can compete with the top.
i worded that poorly, yes it needs to be cheaper, much cheaper. i'd even be willing to say it should be so cheap that every kd can cow if they want to with minimal effort. Would it really be a bad thing for kds to have 24 attackers at 1000 acres and 1 cow at 50,000 acres because exploring is so cheap. Kd wide strategies would be the same its just any ghetto could cow. and if you limit the Rknw gains a bit more than you wouldnt have the ghetto cows being slamed constantly.
:D.... i like the idea of war=fixed acre gain if u chose it over honor but it SHOULD be so small that its only a benefit to those kds that really push for the top. i mean 2000 may be more important than say 2000 honor but whose say either way. In all honestly based on bio's win last age i very much feel that winning kd should get acres=max(0,lossing- winning kds final acres) it completely screws over the hit and run tactic which is just stupid.
land droping only seems op because super pumped takes so long if you could get to that state MUCH faster (like 1/3 troop costs, double wizzards, free draft in end of war cf) and then forced every waring kd to grow with LARGE pool gains no kd would land-drop expect to even out prov sizes.
Edit there has to be a way that doesnt remove acrs from a war kd that land drops that isnt abuse bale by the top. if a war kds enda with one person at 5000 acres and one at 300 they need to even out yet if you want them to compete with the top they cant just loose 2-3000 acres out of the game when they land-drop, however it happens a mechanism for this will help keep war kds up in size such that at a later date those acres go back onto the kd someway.
Last edited by Persain; 27-07-2012 at 19:19.
If fort stance made it so meter decays more quickly (for instance 2 points per tick), then the people switching into fort to run can be protected (less gains on them) and they can op for only a short time. For instance, let's say you hit someone 40 points, they immediately turn on fort, and in 24 hours they have the protection, but can no longer do unfriendly ops on you.
This and reduce the max meter to 100 from 200. This way, it is 48h of free ops at worst case (which is still a lot of LL).
edit: nvm just realized how abusable that is. Hit fort and hit someone once per tick with no relations.
Last edited by Petrified; 27-07-2012 at 19:53.
pew pew. Absolutely none of my nubs speak for my kingdom.
I suspect super science comes from top KDs being forced to dice/high explore costs. If you have all the CFs to explore/dice you might as well pump super science. Let's try fixing growth mechanics (explore/dice) first, and see if science solves itself.
No, explore costs should be lower, not higher. Right now, exploring is so expensive that you need CFs to explore. If exploring was cheaper, CFs would be nerfed. Making CFs weaker should be the goal, imo.
Yes, I agree that war should be equal to non war. War should not make you lose *or* gain dices or pool. Right now, even with the proposed 10% acres bounty, you will lose dices if you war unless you are huge (150k+ acres on KD).
In dorje's proposal, every KD has their explored *and* diced acres banked in a pool. The can choose to use however and whenever they want, or not. This solves the "war makes you lose dices+pool" problem. It also allows lots of choices about when and how to use pool: should you collect honor early and use pool late? or use pool early and collect science? should you put the pool on cows, on chained provs or spread it evenly?
Last edited by ata; 27-07-2012 at 20:16.
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