Make gains based on acres instead of NW

[MaximII]

Province A is 7000 acres.
Province B is 2000 acres.
Province A razes 80% of his land so that his NW is now in the 2000 acre range of NW (+/- 100k NW).
Province A, who is 3.5 times the size of Province B, can now hit any province he wants without fear of retaliation because the army he left at home is still way out of the range of attackers in the Province B range.

1. This manipulation of NW ruins the spirit of a fair play game.
2. Gains are determined on the most easily manipulated attribute of a province.
3. It promotes honor farming without impunity.

Switching to land-based gains makes it much harder for both bottom and top feeding gains to be substantial enough to make it worth trying. It would also mean the crowns would have to be earned the hard way instead of growing to be massive till YR 9 or 10, then just continually bottom feeding to get the win.

Thoughts?

[Bo To]

In the current age with high NW values on the elites bottom feeding is easier. Some attackers in 'that KD'(I know for only 2-3) are playing with 100k solds and some off/def specs even as unds to keep low NW but have high(for their NW) off/def.

Switching is not ideal. It will make wars much harder. Chained provs won't be able to grow during the war, grown provinces won't be chainable.

If the problem is oow honor gains there are other ways to fix it:
- bart's idea - protect honor with fort stance(if fort is not changed), RKNW, GBP
- my suggestion - completely remove honor gains oow and make them only hostile/war
- add relative land as a factor(but don't entirely switch the NW gains)
- add building that protects honor.

[beans]

acre manipulation is pretty damn easy too. just sayin

[MaximII]

acre manipulation is pretty damn easy too. just sayin

Yeah well acre manipulation also means you cant have that much bigger of an army because you'll be overpopulated. A 7000 acre province being able to feed off of provinces 1/3 their size because of the NW manipulation is incredibly unfair.

[Ethan]

The 7000 acre prov has 5000*15 = 75,000 k nw more dead land than the 2000 acre province. That's a lot of military you could have that he can't - so why not retal? If it is really bugging you, you can wreck their age surprisingly well just by being a jerk instead of rolling over.

"the army he left at home is still way out of the range of attackers in the Province B range"
- no, if he had that much more army than a typical province that size, he'd have way more NW too. If he got to the same NW size as you, you should have MORE military than him - 75k NW more military in fact. If you don't - that's your failing, not the games. 75% of my prov is military, so if I razed every single acre I had (and was 7000 acres) I'd be the NW size of a 5000 prov... still bottomfeeding down to 40%, which is pointless.


They also must have just spent a massive amount of resources to raze and rebuild all that land. Unless you are claiming they leave it unbuilt, and then they *really* are at a disadvantage.


Further - land based gains is awful and stupid. Whatever you think it might be solving, the new problems it causes are far worse. For one - forget *ever* warring unless you've spent at least 2 weeks straight pumping. Do you like sitting there gaining science all age long and never actually getting to fight? Cause I sure don't.

When "in range" is defined only by land, there is only ever one goal, to mindlessly cram as much stuff into your province as possible. Doesn't matter if it is fun, or intelligent, or anything - just keep shoving military into it until it will die if you don't keep aiding it every tick.



If you (people in general) really think the raze/rebuild for NW changing is that big a deal, maybe make barren acres worth 30 NW for the first hour or something like that. Does slightly odd things to chains with tornados or razes, but not really that big a deal for most people... while it'd add a lot to the nw of these top provs that are fiddling it that far. I don't think it is that big a deal, but if it is, at least target the solution at the actual problem instead of putting in one of the dumbest ideas utopia has ever suffered under. (I played some of those ages - it was as bad as "happiness", if not worse.)

[MaximII]

If the problem is oow honor gains there are other ways to fix it:
- bart's idea - protect honor with fort stance(if fort is not changed), RKNW, GBP
- my suggestion - completely remove honor gains oow and make them only hostile/war
- add relative land as a factor(but don't entirely switch the NW gains)
- add building that protects honor.

Not that I care about honor, but these are some great ideas.

[Zauper]

The 7000 acre prov has 5000*15 = 75,000 k nw more dead land than the 2000 acre province. That's a lot of military you could have that he can't - so why not retal? If it is really bugging you, you can wreck their age surprisingly well just by being a jerk instead of rolling over.

"the army he left at home is still way out of the range of attackers in the Province B range"
- no, if he had that much more army than a typical province that size, he'd have way more NW too. If he got to the same NW size as you, you should have MORE military than him - 75k NW more military in fact. If you don't - that's your failing, not the games. 75% of my prov is military, so if I razed every single acre I had (and was 7000 acres) I'd be the NW size of a 5000 prov... still bottomfeeding down to 40%, which is pointless.


They also must have just spent a massive amount of resources to raze and rebuild all that land. Unless you are claiming they leave it unbuilt, and then they *really* are at a disadvantage.

They leave the land unbuilt and use soldiers for defense. A 100-200k soldier ball gives significant defense (and NW) to push you way OOR for retals, while still letting you successfully hit provinces 1/4th your size or less with in-range hits. This sort of extreme manipulation allows provinces to hit for gains (off significantly smaller kds) to 20-30k acres.

The probably honor kd crown this age will be generated almost entirely through nw manipulation and bottom feeding. Every growth kd relies on nw dropping to some extent to get to / past the growth cap, as well.

Further - land based gains is awful and stupid. Whatever you think it might be solving, the new problems it causes are far worse. For one - forget *ever* warring unless you've spent at least 2 weeks straight pumping. Do you like sitting there gaining science all age long and never actually getting to fight? Cause I sure don't.

When "in range" is defined only by land, there is only ever one goal, to mindlessly cram as much stuff into your province as possible. Doesn't matter if it is fun, or intelligent, or anything - just keep shoving military into it until it will die if you don't keep aiding it every tick.

How is this any different from present day utopia? People refuse to war unless they're fully pumped, have equal or better science, wpa, etc. The kingdoms that tend to win (honor/nw/land) are kingdoms that pump deeply for conflict.

Literally, if the complaint about land based gains is 'it encourages pumping', it is no different from how things work currently. Pumped kds are stronger than unpumped kds and will take their stuff. Having less NW is not protection. The best solution might just be a true hybrid system that penalizes based on both land and NW (whichever results in lower gains).

But maybe not -- people warred more when land based gains existed. They did that in part because topfeeding was significantly rewarded and offense values were significantly higher than defense values. You could run a suiciding kingdom and war b2b2b with limited difficulty because all you needed was offense to war. As a reminder, all of the total wars / warwin records were recorded DURING LBG, not NWBG.

If you (people in general) really think the raze/rebuild for NW changing is that big a deal, maybe make barren acres worth 30 NW for the first hour or something like that. Does slightly odd things to chains with tornados or razes, but not really that big a deal for most people... while it'd add a lot to the nw of these top provs that are fiddling it that far. I don't think it is that big a deal, but if it is, at least target the solution at the actual problem instead of putting in one of the dumbest ideas utopia has ever suffered under. (I played some of those ages - it was as bad as "happiness", if not worse.)

LBG was significantly better than NWBG.

[feast]

I believe that a hybrid system is the correct and more balanced response.

Have it based on province to province land and nw as well as kd to kd land and nw.

I think it should lean more toward our current nw system than land for gains as a more pumped province should have better gains against another more pumped province of equalish size as far as province vs province factor is concerned and more kd to kd land size as a factor. Problem I see that most people have is with huge disperity of kd sizes. Why is number 10 waving number 50 so on and so forth.

[Zauper]

Other advantages of LBG:
It's more intuitive, which is attractive from a game growth perspective.

At the end of the day, it just doesn't make sense to have a system that is a function of a resource rather than just having it look at that resource. NW is a function of land -- essentially everything but honor is a function of land. Science you gain at a per acre rate. Acres determine the amount of total population you can have, and thus military. etc.

[beans]

I believe that a hybrid system is the correct and more balanced response.

Have it based on province to province land and nw as well as kd to kd land and nw.

I think it should lean more toward our current nw system than land for gains as a more pumped province should have better gains against another more pumped province of equalish size as far as province vs province factor is concerned and more kd to kd land size as a factor. Problem I see that most people have is with huge disperity of kd sizes. Why is number 10 waving number 50 so on and so forth.

+1 blending nw and land for gains calc would be the hardest system to abuse imo. having to lower both your land and your nw for the best gains if you want to farm a smaller guy is harder than just temporarily knocking down your nw or temporarily knocking down your land.

[MyNameIsMatija]

The probably honor kd crown this age will be generated almost entirely through nw manipulation and bottom feeding.

This isn't entirely true if you are referring to Unnamed kingdom. We kept ending up #1 in honor simply from hitting people (since start of age, we haven't used up pool early, even our faeries were hitting for land, coming oop during the server meltdown I was the #1 honor elf for a while simply due to hitting for land), nobody would war us for a while (not without harshly deal breaking arranged war terms) until our 1st war with Civil Disobedience, when we ended up #1 honor after that war yet again it was like damn we could actually honor crown if we could somehow keep getting gains, then at some point after the whoring caps you mention were reached there was only one way to keep up with smaller KDs that have plenty of wars in range. So no, it's not possible to just honor crown by simply NW dropping all age in my opinion, unless you get free EoACFs with all the top KDs for no reason (usually you have to be in a presentable state for the other KD to even consider not just taking everything you have). One of the flaws of the current system is the fact that our 2nd war with Pandamonium only delayed us even though we won it, in addition to all the other flaws already mentioned in this thread.

[Skank]

Matija I don't understand? Are you trying to justify Honor whoring smaller KDs? Unnamed is not the only offender. Some biggies go for science, acres, whatever. You guys are just the most notorious. Its in the game so it must be Feyr?


- add building that protects honor.
- protect honor with fort stance
good suggestion, is Science protected in fort?
I don't see honor as more important than science, but I am a Skank. I suppose the difference is you cant purchase Honor.
This a slippery slope.

make a new SCIENCE. Call it Skanking. Protects honor from hits, disabled in WAR.

[MyNameIsMatija]

I'm saying you can't gain honor due to NW range based gains whole age. You could try honor whoring whole age I guess (doubt it would work for the same reasons I mentioned in the previous post - you have to consider your surroundings), but obviously you have to do it without manipulating NW range first. People mostly complain about NW range based gains in this thread, honor whoring altogether is a broader term, basically any non-anon, non-ambush hit for land could be classified as such I guess. I do justify honor whoring (hitting someone for honor), size doesn't matter as long as you are not ruining someone's age (an example of this would be hitting into an active hostile). I'm neutral on the NW range issue, as long as it's in the game it's what you can do if you put yourself in that position, you have to deal with the pros and cons of it. Nobody is defending the system itself I think. Mostly everyone is calling the NW based gains system flawed in its own right from what I've seen. People in my KD have actually told Bishop that the system might benefit from some changes as a general suggestion. I have yet to see anyone say that NW based gains don't have flaws, it's just that this is a core mechanic of the game and changing it isn't as trivial as changing a race's food consumption rate for example.

[Zauper]

I'm saying you can't gain honor due to NW range based gains whole age. You could try honor whoring whole age I guess (doubt it would work for the same reasons I mentioned in the previous post - you have to consider your surroundings), but obviously you have to do it without manipulating NW range first. People mostly complain about NW range based gains in this thread, honor whoring altogether is a broader term, basically any non-anon, non-ambush hit for land could be classified as such I guess. I do justify honor whoring (hitting someone for honor), size doesn't matter as long as you are not ruining someone's age (an example of this would be hitting into an active hostile). I'm neutral on the NW range issue, as long as it's in the game it's what you can do if you put yourself in that position, you have to deal with the pros and cons of it. Nobody is defending the system itself I think. Mostly everyone is calling the NW based gains system flawed in its own right from what I've seen. People in my KD have actually told Bishop that the system might benefit from some changes as a general suggestion. I have yet to see anyone say that NW based gains don't have flaws, it's just that this is a core mechanic of the game and changing it isn't as trivial as changing a race's food consumption rate for example.

Except the game used to have LBG, and people like Ethan are ardently defending NWBG :)

Your kd has probably gained 50% of it's honor via NW dropping. Yes, whoring (land or honor) is broader than just NW dropping, but NW dropping is an important tactic used for both.

It is, however, an irrelevant conversation unless Bishop has changed his mind, as the gains system is not up for change.

[MyNameIsMatija]

One way to fix the NW based gains issue could be a sort of a workaround if you don't want to change the system itself. For example, upwards NW manipulation doesn't work because attacks are impossible when you overpopulate your lands so maybe if an analog mechanic of attacking being impossible while underpopulated were to be implemented most of the issue regarding NW based gains would be resolved. I have not however put too much thought into what other issues would arise if this were the case. I'll let you solve that mystery, I'm just presenting a possible solution.