How good is honour dropping?

[feast]

Yes!

Happening now, why not?

Seems viable. If nothing else the server will have more honor if lots of peeps do it. Then take it from those who don't have good diplo/standing.

Me and my kd probably still won't do it but who knows.

I did play war hero b4 this was brought up :p

[Bishop]

Yes!

Happening now, why not?

Seems viable. If nothing else the server will have more honor if lots of peeps do it. Then take it from those who don't have good diplo/standing.

Me and my kd probably still won't do it but who knows.

I did play war hero b4 this was brought up :p

It's happening with one kd that has CFS with all its competition and is under no threat from the kids they interact with. What exactly do you think will allow other kingdoms to not get farmed out when they try this?

[drkzeraga]

They were Baron's. Ranging from low 2500's to high 2800's....Actually, 3....

Alright fair enough. 30% of 2500x3 is still a bonus of 2250 honour.
Admittedly not as high as I originally calculated but still free honour is free honour.

Also upon further inspection I think that the reset plays a bigger part in the honour boost than I original thought.
Just be reseting and whoring up you basically converted your low honour TMs into a high honour attackers. The gain in honour (mid-baron to low-marquis) is definitely non-trivial and I bet those guys are only going to grow even more.

...shop.utopia-game.com/shop/item/MODIFY_PROVINCE_FULL
This can be done after 24 hours of no agressive action.

Also I think that still counts as using the cash shop right? So I'm still going to stand by my point that this strategy (either defecting or reseting) requires the use of micro-transactions to carry out (efficiently)

So unlike the defect and dump strategy, I honestly have no good solution for the reset and whore one. We could reduce the gains on defected provinces or raise the cost of defecting to deter the former, but for the later I think its just a inherent problem with the efficiency of whoring as a whole. Maybe we can reduce the gains on honour when OOR sure, but I think that like putting a plaster on a open wound. It will only go so far in treating the problem :/

Frankly I just find the decoupling of gaining honour and winning wars to be quite jarring. When any kd can systematically acquire honour without even having to go to war, then thematically honour has stopped being the hallmarks of great waring kds. It has turned instead into mere resources, only to be acquired, hoarded and maybe, occasionally, admired.

Edit. I just realized that even in the top 5 there are those that have never won a single war before. It probably took them a lot of skill to made that happened, but I think they managed to prove the non-co-relationship between winning wars and gaining honour.

[drkzeraga]

It's happening with one kd that has CFS with all its competition and is under no threat from the kids they interact with. What exactly do you think will allow other kingdoms to not get farmed out when they try this?

I get that the meta-game right is to simply CF all your competitors and bottom-feed all the way, but seeing as how the community are unable (or unwilling) to do something about it, maybe its time the devs step in to shake things up a little?

I for one will love to see a little more direct competition among the top tier kds. Even from a bystander point of view that will make the game seems more dynamic and competitive, instead of only ever seeing the big whales avoiding one another to go after the little fishes all the time, if you know what I mean ;)

Maybe 1 possible suggestions could be to set a time limit for CF, with a cooldown between renewals. I think this will provide windows of opportunity for kds to engage one another should they wish to, while preserving the system of diplomacy we have currently in place.

[protector]

Alright fair enough. 30% of 2500x3 is still a bonus of 2250 honour.
Admittedly not as high as I originally calculated but still free honour is free honour.

Also upon further inspection I think that the reset plays a bigger part in the honour boost than I original thought.
Just be reseting and whoring up you basically converted your low honour TMs into a high honour attackers. The gain in honour (mid-baron to low-marquis) is definitely non-trivial and I bet those guys are only going to grow even more.

Knowing how easy honor whoring is late age (since there is a lot of honor in play), it doesn't really surprise me they've already hit a solid chunk of honor. The earlier levels are easy to obtain as you start on 1800. Count is 3751, so you just need to gain 2000. With gains on a lord/baron still rewarding anywhere from roughly 30-70 hp per hit, while multitapping, gaining 200+ honor a day is easily doable. First few hits I saw some double/tripples, now its partially singles and a few doubles. Do that twice a day and you can harvest quite well.
With Marquis at 4500, you can get there within 2 weeks time pretty comfortably. Reaching ranks beyond that gets more difficult as the honor required per level has a steep increase.
Also, doing this as a war hero helps loads, since the OME boost from being Count is pretty significant.

Also I think that still counts as using the cash shop right? So I'm still going to stand by my point that this strategy (either defecting or reseting) requires the use of micro-transactions to carry out (efficiently)

So unlike the defect and dump strategy, I honestly have no good solution for the reset and whore one. We could reduce the gains on defected provinces or raise the cost of defecting to deter the former, but for the later I think its just a inherent problem with the efficiency of whoring as a whole. Maybe we can reduce the gains on honour when OOR sure, but I think that like putting a plaster on a open wound. It will only go so far in treating the problem :/

Frankly I just find the decoupling of gaining honour and winning wars to be quite jarring. When any kd can systematically acquire honour without even having to go to war, then thematically honour has stopped being the hallmarks of great waring kds. It has turned instead into mere resources, only to be acquired, hoarded and maybe, occasionally, admired.

Edit. I just realized that even in the top 5 there are those that have never won a single war before. It probably took them a lot of skill to made that happened, but I think they managed to prove the non-co-relationship between winning wars and gaining honour.

Defect and reinvite costs an invite though so it is the same :P

[Panthira]

CFs would just be made under the table. FS and I held an unofficial (not game recognized) eoacf for months. No problems. Nice job, Francis.

[drkzeraga]

Defect and reinvite costs an invite though so it is the same :P

Sounds like you're actually agreeing with me on the pay to win aspect of it =p

[drkzeraga]

CFs would just be made under the table. FS and I held an unofficial (not game recognized) eoacf for months. No problems. Nice job, Francis.

Interesting I guess that's true nothing is going to stop the players from performing actions outside of the mechanics of the game.
Maybe we should just incentives kds to get into war then? Perhaps buffing the war win bonus and increasing the rate of recovery post-war (especially for the losing kd) would encourage more kingdom to engage with one another?

[Bo To]

Frankly I just find the decoupling of gaining honour and winning wars to be quite jarring. When any kd can systematically acquire honour without even having to go to war, then thematically honour has stopped being the hallmarks of great waring kds. It has turned instead into mere resources, only to be acquired, hoarded and maybe, occasionally, admired.

Edit. I just realized that even in the top 5 there are those that have never won a single war before. It probably took them a lot of skill to made that happened, but I think they managed to prove the non-co-relationship between winning wars and gaining honour.

I was 'crying' about that for few ages... then I stop. I don't think this particular mechanic will change.

[MyNameIsMatija]

To answer the topic question, I don't think it's good at all as an action on its own, opportunity cost and the resource cost outweighs any sort of gain you might be looking to accomplish. On the other hand, if it lets you position yourself to do better things afterwards like whore up then sure it does look like a sound strategy with a head and a tail.

@protector what's this 10 days marquis talk? That's amateur hour, 1 week ezy pzy.

[drkzeraga]

I was 'crying' about that for few ages... then I stop. I don't think this particular mechanic will change.

Wow I wasn't aware that this have been going on since so long ago. I guess the community have either given up trying to fight it or just came to accept things as they are and work around it?

[protector]

Sounds like you're actually agreeing with me on the pay to win aspect of it =p

If invite/reset didn't exist we'd let it self-PK so it can restart. Sitting is also a premium feature. None of these things give an extra skill or resource, so I disagree that it is pay2win :)
For me pay2win is buy items to have a better character. Sitting doesnt improve my province, a reset doesn't either.

[drkzeraga]

If invite/reset didn't exist we'd let it self-PK so it can restart. Sitting is also a premium feature. None of these things give an extra skill or resource, so I disagree that it is pay2win :)
For me pay2win is buy items to have a better character. Sitting doesnt improve my province, a reset doesn't either.

I disagree. Even if something doesn't benefit the province directly it will still benefits the kingdom as a whole.
If it doesn't bring any benefits there wouldn't be a reason to go through with it now is there?

Also I consider the use of any micro-transactions/premium features to gain any advantage as simply pay to win.
The degree of "winning" may vary but the paying is always there.

[Bishop]

I disagree. Even if something doesn't benefit the province directly it will still benefits the kingdom as a whole.
If it doesn't bring any benefits there wouldn't be a reason to go through with it now is there?

Also I consider the use of any micro-transactions/premium features to gain any advantage as simply pay to win.
The degree of "winning" may vary but the paying is always there.

Its not pay to win, there's a 2 day cooldown on it. It just takes less effort but it is easily reproducible.

[drkzeraga]

Its not pay to win, there's a 2 day cooldown on it. It just takes less effort but it is easily reproducible.

Well fine. Its pay for convenience if we are really going to split hair about it.
But honestly I'm not really concerned about this aspect of the problem. This level of micro-transaction in Utopia is easily acceptable when compared to many many of the other f2p games out there on the market currently..

No instead I'm more interested in discussing about the honour whore problem. With or without premium features, the fact remain that a province can easily whore their way up the honour charts with virtually no resistance. I know there are a lot of factors contributing to this such as the lack of competition among the top as well as the effectiveness of bottom feeding.

But I think with the approach of EOA and the start of a new age, now will be a good time to discuss the pros and cons of keeping such a strategy alive. Even though I know many of the veteran players will not like it, I believe that a shift in the meta will be healthy for the game. It doesn't have to be anything drastic, but even a gentle nudge can have rippling effects.