The state of warring in Utopia

[Verminator]

This was posted in our war forums and I thought it provided an interesting look at the baseline state of warring in Utopia. I wanted to share it because, well, I like poking the nest I guess. :)

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I agree that it was a long war, but I am going to have to disagree that long wars are worthwhile.


IMO, this game is designed for two types of wars:


(1) The first type is the compact battle that lasts a maximum of one week, where kingdoms fight with a basic and common criteria. Defeat the enemy in a reasonable amount of time. This type of war is common because it takes a reasonable amount of time to recover from, applies the least amount of lasting damage to the least amount of provinces involved, allowing for both sides to continue to play the game again sooner than later.

This type of war emulates one of the main reasons that "easy province killing" was taken out of the game, because players are having less fun when they see an invested province destroyed and they have to start over. This type of war also helps to prevent lengthy post-war downtimes, because players do not have to spend days upon days trying to get their utterly decimated provinces back into working condition so that they may continue playing the game as effective members of their kingdom.


(2) The second type of war is the drawn out battle that lasts weeks, much longer than it needs to, because one side understands that the game mechanics will never force them to leave the war. It is always a human decision to end wars in Utopia. Even auto-wins require one (equally competitive) side to decide, as human beings, to stop trying as much. Decent human beings know when they are beaten and respect a good battle, while indecent human beings know that they can never be forced out of a war as long as they are simply active and they have multiple mindlessly destructive options at their disposal to prolong any war.

This type of war leaves very little in to be proud of in the end. Both sides have handfuls of absolutely ruined provinces, but one side was simply more stubborn than the other and eventually evened things out and just kept fighting because nothing in-game was forcing them to stop. Their own level of human decency towards their fellow players decided how long the war lasted. There's a lot of smack talk, a lot of skill level insults, a lot of smug behavior, but really nothing worthwhile in the end.

These types of wars leave both sides with long periods of stagnation while recovery commences. These types of wars detract from the actual playing of the game with their long post-war recovery periods. In the time it takes to finish one of these wars and recover enough to be worthy of another war, both kingdoms could have fought one or two more wars of reasonable length and gained much more enjoyment and potential growth/honor/whatever. Instead they just go through the motions of dragging hopeless provinces through an overly destructive war, after which both kingdoms spend too much stagnant time trying to recover enough to be in a position to war again. All because one side knows that they can under-perform in a war for days but there is never any consequence for doing such, and the game mechanics will eventually allow for them to make a comeback if they stay active and go through the standard motions of continued attacking no matter what, something the game also allows players to do with relative ease.


It's all a shame really. There is a breed of player that relishes in the mindlessly destructive war, but you can usually never tell that you're about to fight one until it's too late, and the ages of both kingdoms are needlessly diminished in the end.

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So do you think it's true? Outside of a small number of kingdoms, does warring have no real consequence in this game anymore? Is there ever truly any incentive to withdraw from war that isn't an outright blowout? The game does allow you to simply keep fighting on and on and on, nothing that is effort-efficient stops you from attacking anymore, fights can drag on for weeks and kingdoms can take plenty of stagnant time beyond that to recover.

Does Utopia really benefit from the mechanics of the game as they allow it to be played?

[Thunder TA]

Good monarchs know if they are in a losing war in a short period of time.They also know if they are in a war they can beat down a enemy based on activity or how builds are set up. Some kds are built for short 2 day wars. Some are built for long wars.

Every war is different. Do we have some who despite this still not understand when to end a war or just stay in war for the heck of it,yes. Alot of that falls on their kds tho who let them have control because the players themselves dont know better or because the other kd has made a ass of themselves during the war and have caused the war to not end.

Most older players still know diplomacy can end wars also.

[LCP]

I guess you haven't seen 4-5 days Hostile.

[Verminator]

I'm just positing that the game mechanics don't seem to provide any consequence to lazy warring or less than decent performances in war. What are the consequences in war?

[TommyB]

It is always a human decision to end wars in Utopia. Even auto-wins require one (equally competitive) side to decide, as human beings, to stop trying as much. Decent human beings know when they are beaten and respect a good battle, while indecent human beings know that they can never be forced out of a war as long as they are simply active and they have multiple mindlessly destructive options at their disposal to prolong any war.

OK, I am actually trying to understand what the heck you ('re teammate) are/is saying here. But the result is so bizarre that I must be doing something wrong.

Far as I can tell you think that you have an advantage in war (more acres?!) but at the same time you are unable to profit from your opponent refusing to withdraw (you even call them equally competitive). You mention auto-win but you are not able to force it, therefore you expect your opponent to be a decent human being and roll over to let you hit them down to 50% networth.

Am I on track so far?

[LCP]

Consequences depend on your Kingdom's Goal & Objectives when going to war.

Are you warring for land? War bonus? or destroying your Crown's opponent because they are vulnerable (Sage Kingdom at early age).

[StratOcastle]

What if he's(Verminator)being hypothetical?

Mechanically it's somewhat cool with me because there is some real world element to war. Say like insurgence or guerilla type war where the enemy has only land defense.

For game purposes this might not fit the concepts of the player base I understand. In that light I'd like to see more meddling by alliances and such in the game lol. But honestly, the bad part of war is the strain on reasonable actives if it goes long. I'm against negative commentary against an endurance war kingdom as I think it simply feeds resolve. I'd like to think I want to war as long as it takes to win, so I haven't experienced an unwillingness to squeeze the life out of them slowly myself.

But again, I'm a traveller, so I tend to spend a little more time on hiatus during the age. I also do a great deal of restarts so the PK mechanic is virtually in effect for my part. I'm on my 4th province from scratch this age, but 2 war wins with 2 different kingdoms. No losses baby. So it's perspective as to the damage. I sympathize with t/ms though, so I'm not heartless on this.

[Fiskinator]

Hi Verm

[Elldallan]

Hi Verm

Long wars are usually less about laziness(although those cases certainly exist too) than it is about strategy. As said earlier some kingdoms design themselves for a short war, others build their strategy around economy control such as killing off your peasants and making your army die. The latter kind can take a long time to take effect but unless you figure out whats ahead and are able to prevent it it's pretty much inevitable.

Both types of warfare are equally viable. To the typical ghetto the latter kind usually looks like it's loosing until the very end when they decide to reclaim all those empty acres(acres are of zero use unless you can fill them with peasants, troops and buildings and without an economy that is usually a loosing battle). In this case the ones prolonging the war is really the part that thinks they are winning just because they can't see the bigger picture, if they could they would have wd'ed with a lot of acres early on rather than let themselves be hollowed out and taken down one at a time.

[Araqiel]

IMO, this game is designed for two types of wars:

Long wars vs short wars? This is where as a warring kingdom, you failed. No war is ever the same, even if you engage each one with the same plan / tactics in mind. You have to adapt, which is something we had to do a LOT to beat you guys in this war.

(2) The second type of war is the drawn out battle that lasts weeks, much longer than it needs to, because one side understands that the game mechanics will never force them to leave the war. It is always a human decision to end wars in Utopia. Even auto-wins require one (equally competitive) side to decide, as human beings, to stop trying as much. Decent human beings know when they are beaten and respect a good battle, while indecent human beings know that they can never be forced out of a war as long as they are simply active and they have multiple mindlessly destructive options at their disposal to prolong any war.

Wars always last as long as they need to. Of course game mechanics force people to leave war, it is called damage control. Would we have been decent human beings had we withdrawn as soon as you guys had an advantage over us? We won, why the hell would we have given up? Were any of these mindless destructive options we had at our disposal not available to you too?

These types of wars leave both sides with long periods of stagnation while recovery commences. These types of wars detract from the actual playing of the game with their long post-war recovery periods. In the time it takes to finish one of these wars and recover enough to be worthy of another war, both kingdoms could have fought one or two more wars of reasonable length and gained much more enjoyment and potential growth/honor/whatever. Instead they just go through the motions of dragging hopeless provinces through an overly destructive war, after which both kingdoms spend too much stagnant time trying to recover enough to be in a position to war again. All because one side knows that they can under-perform in a war for days but there is never any consequence for doing such, and the game mechanics will eventually allow for them to make a comeback if they stay active and go through the standard motions of continued attacking no matter what, something the game also allows players to do with relative ease.

It's all a shame really. There is a breed of player that relishes in the mindlessly destructive war, but you can usually never tell that you're about to fight one until it's too late, and the ages of both kingdoms are needlessly diminished in the end.

So do you think it's true? Outside of a small number of kingdoms, does warring have no real consequence in this game anymore? Is there ever truly any incentive to withdraw from war that isn't an outright blowout? The game does allow you to simply keep fighting on and on and on, nothing that is effort-efficient stops you from attacking anymore, fights can drag on for weeks and kingdoms can take plenty of stagnant time beyond that to recover.

Does Utopia really benefit from the mechanics of the game as they allow it to be played?

Speak for yourself, we aren't particularly damaged from your efforts, whereas you let yourself get farmed for an entire week. What do you expect? That is the damage control I referred to earlier. If we were in your position, Peppie would have withdrew a long time ago instead of writing the entire age off because of one loss.

I'm just positing that the game mechanics don't seem to provide any consequence to lazy warring or less than decent performances in war. What are the consequences in war?

The consequences were that you lost everything and have given up on the rest of the age, whereas we benefited massively from your incompetence. Also what does he mean by lazy warring?

OK, I am actually trying to understand what the heck you ('re teammate) are/is saying here. But the result is so bizarre that I must be doing something wrong.

Far as I can tell you think that you have an advantage in war (more acres?!) but at the same time you are unable to profit from your opponent refusing to withdraw (you even call them equally competitive). You mention auto-win but you are not able to force it, therefore you expect your opponent to be a decent human being and roll over to let you hit them down to 50% networth.

Am I on track so far?

Sounds accurate to me.

Anyway to the OP of the forum post, FREE has lost 1 war in about 20 or so. Instead of crying about it on the forums, it was analysed why we lost and what we could do to prevent that from happening again. Maybe you should do the same.

[slayer001]

verminator, you should play in a REAL warring kd first. A kingdom wins a war when the other kingdom surrenders or is at 50%, until either of these conditions are met, the war can still go either way depending on the strategy and endurance of the players :)

[Verminator]

I think I'm being misunderstood. I took a post that made me think and shared it mainly as a segue, but the points I'm trying to get at are...

What are the realizable consequences of being on the losing side of a war?

What is the incentive to leave a war when you can fight endlessly and just try to wear out your opponent with the passage of time?

Why are there no real consequences of releasing all your defense? Shouldn't there be?

What is the point of chaining when an active player's province can survive on no defense without any real fear of being destroyed?


Wars in Utopia are too predictable. Chain a bunch of provinces down so they all fight at the bottom without fear of losing their province. Race to see who can take down more unbreakable provinces first. The only thing that ever changes is the how, and even that is becoming limited in its effective options and methods.

Instead of changing numbers every age, change more mechanics. Change strategies. Change options. Change outcomes. Not to the extent that the game looks or feels too different, but at least to the extent that there are consequences to reckless actions like there used to be. If you're too afraid to allow provinces to be destroyed easier (ie: removal of land raze in war), then try something less permanent but equally as dangerous to risk. Make players think about their actions, not just read them out of a very short handbook on "how to war in Utopia" like we have now.


And to the eager users of "QQ some more" and "you n00b", I am not complaining about a specific war. I'm talking about war in general. The post simply made me ponder it, and I figured some context would serve better than just coming out of the blue offering up the thoughts. There's no need for the superiority complexes to go on red alert.

[noobium]

Wars can be dragged out for a long time, but a kingdom with economic and t/m superiority will usually hold on to it for however long that war is dragged. It is very rare for two kingdoms to remain evenly matched after a week of war, and during that war it is likely that two decent kingdoms would have trashed most provinces with less than unbreakable defense. There are alliance or spite reasons to drag out a war indefinitely in order to block a growth kingdom.

Right now it is entirely too easy to destroy provinces, so it's hard for provinces to hold on to significant economy - hence, it takes exchanging a ton of hits before wars are decided. The solution to make destruction stronger just makes it easier to swap hits and wear out a kingdom's morale, before any lucrative gains can be made. Also, offensive buildings are so powerful compared to defensive buildings that there is not a lot of variety in what building strategies are viable. I put forward a rough and not-terribly balanced list of building changes that were intended to address the imbalance of building types and give more weight to defensive buildings in addition to making infrastructure more useful in general.

Under current rules, losing all defense is more devastating than you might think, but a lot of kingdoms don't maximize the value of damage they inflict on 0 defense provinces, especially since those provinces lack thieves most of the time as well. Massacre in ghettos is underutilized, as is the t/m strength of attacker provinces or chained provs. A lot of kingdoms make up informal rules against Learn attacking in war which is just bull****. Learn attacking from a dominant position can raid so many books that it isn't worthwhile for a kingdom to stick around for the ww reward, and kingdoms that are behind cannot afford to use hits on Learn.

The asinine behavior in this game is a whole other matter. That usually starts before war (and in growth kingdoms these days, it's starts with the ****ing pre-notice or whatever the hell they're using now). Is it really too much to ask people to not be ****heels? Probably. That's why I don't play any more and just ***** on the forums. It's much more comfortable to write about the game than to actually play it.

[KuhaN]

Everybody in the game needs to play for land. War should only happen if you get more land from it than not going to war.

[Liswat]

Not a fan of long wars.