Game Concepts

[Persain]

^^ yup. Theoretically in a war game given enough time you'd have kd's organized largest to smallest best to worst. You'd be at the point where every time u want to war u either fight a bigger kd and lose or a smaller kd and win. Now no one wants exactly that but building in WW's and mechanics such that over time w/out land dropping this would occur is a fine mechanic. Right now thats not the case as its very easy to win & end up smaller than your enemy, and the distinction between the skills of kds at say rank 20 and rank 90 is almost nothing.

[Elldallan]

Complete list of game suggestions: http://pastebin.com/YEAfhLdi

War Part:
War

*Chaining and over pop need to be far more damaging over short term, and far less damaging over long term. Raze needs to be reinstated in war to make chaining more damaging with an automatic 72 hour protection mode enacted once a province reaches a bottom cutoff acre threshold (50% or 210 of a regular province OOP. To make is less damaging long-term. Prewar size and acres traded by the chained provs should be used to calculate an EOWCF acre credit returned to the province to make it viable to future of KD.

One thing that should be added is that wizards stop attacking past 15 or 20% overpop, that way you can't LL a few mins before your army returns for a whole bunch of acres and when army returns thats a whole bunch more.
That would make it a lot easier to keep provinces down.
I don't think we need razing back because I don't think we should be removing acres from the game, if it happens in normal relations thats fine but when razes were allowed in war it was pretty much the exclusive strategy since for several waves and then 1-2 max gain waves because it allowed you to disable(pk) provs and still maintaing tpa/wpa.
But yes I agree that acre bonuses should be biased in favor of provs below kd median size. Bigger share of the bonus the farther from the median you are etc, no acres above median.

Instant war and CF stuff, see original post for full details.

Absolutely horrible idea that will only lead to massive bullying and promoting bottomfeeding even more than it already is. Dodging and retalwarring needs to be a reasonable and functional response as long as it's possible to declare a weaker opponent and there is no 100% way of determining the relative strength of kingdoms.

CF's have always been part of the game as has dealbreaking to some extent.
I don't think CF's needs to be changed, they're fine as they are atm.

*Stuff about gains scaling, see original post for full details

As I said earlier I don't like the instant declare stuff but this part has ome merits, scale the gains over a few hours, 5-6 or so to lessen the button advantage.

Withdrawal stuff, see original post for full details.

I disagree with this, half avg attacktime is much too long. maybe increasing it by an hour or 2 but no more than that in my opinion, tactical withdrawals is and should remain a viable strategy in my opinion and we shouldn't stack penalties on the looser, it will do the opposite of promoting wars.

Stuff about spells/ops at eowcf, see original post for full details.

I agree that all hostile spell/op effects/plague and preferrably dragons should be removed at the start of eowcf.

[Elldallan]

But isn't this how its meant to be, bar the having friends downsize you part. You war and if you win you get into a new bracket. if you win you keep growing, and if you loose you get temporarily set back to square one, where you can fight equal kds again and in the end get better as a kd. It helps provide more targets/wars for the middle tier.

In theory it's a good concept but I don't think it'll work in practice.
Having your kingdom get absolutely and completely dominated is demoralizing and leads to people leaving which is the last thing we need. And because the only kingdoms who are likely to grow is the ones that lack the skill/contacts to get themselves hit down to size I think it's the likely outcome of such a mechanism.

The problem here is kingdoms that wants ww's for the sole purpose of ww's or honor.
ww's are easier and faster to gain if you keep warring people with significantly less skill/coordination.
Same thing applies for honor, it's easier to take from someone who either doesn't know how it works or doesn't care that you take it.

^^ yup. Theoretically in a war game given enough time you'd have kd's organized largest to smallest best to worst. You'd be at the point where every time u want to war u either fight a bigger kd and lose or a smaller kd and win. Now no one wants exactly that but building in WW's and mechanics such that over time w/out land dropping this would occur is a fine mechanic. Right now thats not the case as its very easy to win & end up smaller than your enemy, and the distinction between the skills of kds at say rank 20 and rank 90 is almost nothing.

In the best of worlds thats how it would work yes, problem is as you say that it doesn't work that way and just tacking on more acres is only going to make the problem worse

[Persain]

@Elldallan, Very few WW kingdoms war specially to increase the # of wins or accumulate high amounts of honor. Most do it because its fun to fight someone and test kd skills/coordination/planning against another target. The problem has arrisen that in the past 4-5 ages thers been so few race/mechanics changes aimed at the war tier (constant explore formula change as almost zero impact, as did the change from 5->4 specs/leets revalueing) that all the war kds know the concept of how to fight and win with a given setup. This and the fact that kingdoms know the reputation of the kd they are about to war means they end up dacing back and forth as to how much of an advantage are you willing to give your opponent..and ultimately unless your 100% active more often times kds wont fight the really hard battle ( or they assume the other kd will be 100% activity and wont fight a winable fight). Look at FS for example 4/4 RNW of 95%...fighting against their setup would seem like suicide unless you have 100% activity given all those fearies. Yet who knows if u could auto declare maybe they'd declare on a kd and bite off more than they could chew. Or maybe their direct counter would come along and declare. Makes for a more dynamic fight if you HAVE to fight every fight.

[Elldallan]

@Elldallan, Very few WW kingdoms war specially to increase the # of wins or accumulate high amounts of honor. Most do it because its fun to fight someone and test kd skills/coordination/planning against another target. The problem has arrisen that in the past 4-5 ages thers been so few race/mechanics changes aimed at the war tier (constant explore formula change as almost zero impact, as did the change from 5->4 specs/leets revalueing) that all the war kds know the concept of how to fight and win with a given setup. This and the fact that kingdoms know the reputation of the kd they are about to war means they end up dacing back and forth as to how much of an advantage are you willing to give your opponent..and ultimately unless your 100% active more often times kds wont fight the really hard battle ( or they assume the other kd will be 100% activity and wont fight a winable fight). Look at FS for example 4/4 RNW of 95%...fighting against their setup would seem like suicide unless you have 100% activity given all those fearies. Yet who knows if u could auto declare maybe they'd declare on a kd and bite off more than they could chew. Or maybe their direct counter would come along and declare. Makes for a more dynamic fight if you HAVE to fight every fight.

Well a lot of them are honourable no doubt but then there are the likes of Debauchery/Strippers and their ilk who will apparently do anything for a ww. Then I've also see ghettos get threats like push button and war us or we'll keep up razing you until you do. That sort of message is not somebody out for a fair and interresting war, they're there for either farming honor or ww's.

Sure instant declarations could lead to some more dynamic gameplay but it would also lead to an exponential increase in bullying and bottomfeeding.

[Persain]

Oh i get your point on the strippers part, you'd definitely have kds who fight below skill level over and over making the game less fun. Similarly i have my share of experience with Ghetto kd threats about war. However annoying stuff like that will always happen but for the vast majority of people ghetto to crowning kds the most fun you normally have is waring. Its like a struggle back and forth and you feel accomplishment when you win, it'd feel awesome to have 10+ wars an age and you'd cherish that one win u never thought u had a shot at even if you end up in war once every 8-10 days. Think constantly 1-2+ days war, 4 day eowcf, 4 day fort....

There's solutions to make instant declaring viable (think adjusting instant declares declare range) or stop bullying/bottom feeding (harder gains curve? maybe 50 meter points=reduced gains when hitting a kd?) even if we haven't thought of them all. But increasing the viable of waring towards crowning or making kds who win wars grow (land-drop=honor loss saw ALOT of war kds average kd size increase as top attackers no longer shrank post war) are probably both good goals to include in the game.

[goodz]

If you change science to sliding and put in a concept to pump wizards faster such as paying wizards wages (youll have more cash if not buying science) and then allowing an increase to the wizards wages to increase production speed.

Then you could put min gains on trad marches and make war less destructive as you would green some provinces rather then mass AW/Massacre/Learn. You would also shorten wars by preventing provinces on 0 def and low acres but 200 opa from living ;).

IMO the above would make honor bonuses more valuable since everyone has the "same" amount of science, you would probably have to nerf honor bonuses a little bit though.


War bonuses of land and honor at 10% total land or 5k whatever is less! (currently its whatever is more) Combined with 5% of the enemey kingdoms honor. (currently you also gain honor based on your own honor so it multiplies pretty big even if your warring a low honor kd)


The ability to declare war on anyone within 5% LAND and NETWORTH with a 12 hour delayed start to war. (they can hit during that time until meter is even to prevent a wave and then declare and be safe) (you cannot declare on a KD in fortified via this method, fortified is nerfed to -30% gains in/out with a 5 day max time)


The normal meter still exists to deal with waving etc.

[Elldallan]

Well you have a point that it would be different and probably exciting :)
Maybe with some tweaking it'd be possible, one of the suggestions I'd like to see added is the gains scaling over the course of ~6 hours, that'll make buttonkeeping/giving less powerful than it currently is which in my opinion is a good thing.

And you're correct that wars is usually the most fun most people have in an age, pumping/dicing is very unfun, I've tried it often enough.

I think your point about making gains decay after 50 points is a good one and I think it should be implemented even in the current system.

Well warring is already pretty crucial to crowning today, even for land/nw, you can't get a bank advantage without them, I think the single biggest growth factor for acerage kd size was the removal of raze in war, the problem is that this also meant that intra kd size differences increased by a lot since you'll usually come out of war with a few incredibly bloated provs and several provs that were chained to oblivion with everyone else spanning like beads on a string in between the two extremes, but yes landdrop= honor loss means you can't landdrop intra kd anymore afaik but you can still get a friend to do it for you and loose 0 honor. This is difficult to counter unless you make honor loss/gain outside of war a significant factor and there's a reason that was removed from the game.

[Persain]

mhm...goodz has a few good ideas too. Point of the thread is how does waring consistently v cfing everyone and pumping compare. i personally think its pretty balanced due to the need to war and build banks. However if u want those who naturally war & win to compete against those whose goal it is just to be big (and by virtue of the game they must war and be good at it) then there needs to be mechanical changes to the game. Simple race tweaks no matter how wacky/unbalanced that are made just means it takes a bit for people to figure out best kd mix and then its back to the same issues we're seeing right now.

[PhoenixScorpion]

mhm...goodz has a few good ideas too. Point of the thread is how does waring consistently v cfing everyone and pumping compare. i personally think its pretty balanced due to the need to war and build banks. However if u want those who naturally war & win to compete against those whose goal it is just to be big (and by virtue of the game they must war and be good at it) then there needs to be mechanical changes to the game. Simple race tweaks no matter how wacky/unbalanced that are made just means it takes a bit for people to figure out best kd mix and then its back to the same issues we're seeing right now.

Persain see me pastebin....

[Spahrep]

But isn't this how its meant to be, bar the having friends downsize you part. You war and if you win you get into a new bracket. if you win you keep growing, and if you loose you get temporarily set back to square one, where you can fight equal kds again and in the end get better as a kd. It helps provide more targets/wars for the middle tier.

That sounds about right to me.
Everything possible needs to be done to de-incetivise land dropping or artificially staying small.

[StratOcastle]

I'm pretty happy with game mechanics. I simply see these things as game character. - Don't screw up my Virual Kingdom.

[mjm334]

Seems silly to me to try to force smaller KDs to grow. There are 5 or 6 KD perched at the top of the nw chart who value nw greater than wars, while the rest of the game stays smaller and fights wars among themselves. Why should mechanics be changed to promote the view of just a vocal minority? If most play the game for the wars, get rid of nw and land crown and you will once again have the active warring KDs competing with those concerned with crowning. As it stands now rising to the top just gets you farmed by potential crowners, which is considerably less fun then fight people your own size.

For those that say the top is all about warring, compare amount of wars in top KDs to random nontop KDs. Much less. And the average nw suggests that those "wars" were more often the not lopsided beatdowns on smaller KDs. The amount of CFs around the top demonstrates the length they will go to not war. Its absurd to consider how upset some people got when pewpew and strippers organized a war rather then just rolling over for a farmout. If more KDs organized bilateral dissolving of CF to dacilitate more wars that were even, you've have a much more exciting age and wouldn't have to rely on who "noticed" or declared on random smaller KD to farm out first

[Topsy]

I think the first 5 suggestions in this thread would best do what you want:
http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...ot-suggestions

if you wanted it a bit more flexible you could make the honor bonuses a bit more meshed with current science ones(since you'd be removing science) and allow a little custamizability as to which are weighed more heavily.

[PhoenixScorpion]

Topsy you should add that to the pastebin I made...