Whats with the new SCIENCE

[sexual harassment panda]

You wont get banned for posting with due respect, but you will for flaming people. If you'd like to actually converse then come back when you can post appropriately.

He's been whining on IRC all age. You should have kept that up because it had broken english and was funny.

Anyway, I like the system. It promotes fighting rather than passively pumping between building converts. I would like to see a mechanism where someone who is behind in average scientists generates them more frequently so I get less broken english QQing. I also wouldn't mind laboratories being stronger so they are at least somewhat useful to build. Overall, this is definitely an improvement. Gone are the days of automatically putting all sci to income for protection.

I dislike what's missing from the new science.
I know Zauper says it wasn't a challenge to get science before but there are 100s of people that felt it was. If someone couldn't spend a lot of time in the game and couldn't be pumped to be a great attacker or tm they could still get science. Now they get gold instead but that's far more easily stolen.
science used to increase activity. I know it may sound silly to active kingdoms. but people logged in to boast about their science or at least compare it to their kingdom mates. nobody does that now because it's luck based and instead of a friendly competition between mates it causes a rift because the game favored one over the other.
There were even players whose sole goal was to mass as much science as they possibly could.
It's taken away one form of competition. And even in the very active top kingdoms there was internal competition about science. dead and gone now :(

The thing is with whoring kingdoms you'd spend the overwhelming majority of your time pumping sci and wpa. i'm sure warring kingdoms didn't spend as much time pumping either, but all that prep time makes the age rather dull. I'm glad to be rid of these internal competitions as now there's more external competitions.

[s0830887]

I think most people seem to like the new science concept now that they've had a chance to use it, but dislike the low spawn rate. The low spawn rate was also compounded by having to wait for weeks before abducts were successul. However, it looks like adbucts are working fine now, so that'll help a lot. I agree with most of the comments - scientists are cool, swapping is a nice feature, spawn rate is too low (I don't mind the random feature but I would like a few more than I currently have), and labs could use a pretty significant boost (they would get a small boost is base spawn rate was raised).

I don't mind a tester age at all though. Will be interesting to see what is implemented next age to iron out user issues.

[RattleHead]

Abducts were always working fine, there was just no point in doing them for a short period. You have to be diligent to get gains early, and throughout the Age. I like it all-in-all.

Only suggestion I have seen/made would be something that throttles your chance of Scientist proc up depending how far below the server average # of scientists, and down for those above the average

[HerpNDerp]

I will give my thoughts on this matter from the following perspective: I am playing in a proto-typical warring kingdom as proto-typical honor whoring TM. We are three wars in and have had two fort periods for a total of 80 ish hours sandwhiched around your usual early-age WPA pump.

1- The new science is awesome. I love the bonuses that I am seeing already. I can't ever claim to have pumped to whore-tier science in past ages, but I've seen sci bonuses at 3.5k bpa and I can aaaaaaalllllmost achieve the same bonus modifier in a single category already.

2- I love the fact that we are able to swap science around. It provides a very unique twist to the game. But right now I think it is broken. I can swap 9 scientists to crime, get a 25% boost to my tpa, burn all my stealth. Swap those same scientists to magic, get a 40.5% boost to my wpa, burn all mana. Then I can assign all 9 to military and get +5k defense. All of this in the span of a minute...90 seconds? Broken mechanics are broken.
The solution? One of two things: Have a cooldown on being able to assign the scientist to a category -- say 30 minutes. Or two, I believe Zauper mentioned this: create another 'level' of scientist that is below novice, that requires one tick to become a novice. Lets call it Initiate. This would force a significant amount more planning and strategy to science; you still maintain the uniqueness of being able to swap science, while doing away with the broken 'instantaneous gratification' aspect of it.

3- Something needs to be done about the random spawning of scientists. I don't know enough about statistics (I hated that crap in uni) to tell you what the best move forward is, but through the first couple of weeks of the age, consider the following:

Highest scientist count in kd (0 abducts): 44
Lowest scientist count in kd (3 abducts for 3 total inc.): 28

Thats ~60% more science in favor of the guy who cant even hit anyone. Maybe Mr 44 is one of those guys who should play the lottery, but this is no better (if not way worse) than the old science. At least with old science you could control how pumped you could get.

3a- Put some guarantee for gaining scientists into the game like war wins give victors 1 Novice, every time. Or a max/min on scientists every utopia year. Or simply increasing the spawn rate. At least something that the players can count on.

[Bo To]

Thats ~60% more science in favor of the guy who cant even hit anyone.

Just because someone can't hit doesn't mean he can't op.

[Madchess]

One thing that might shut up the haters is if sci effect gets halved for the exchange of dubble spawn rate, but the page looks confusing already at 51 scientists, and when I hitted 40 I already experienced the duplicate name issue, so that might not be such an interesting thing to do if you are working at the development of the game.

[HerpNDerp]

Just because someone can't hit doesn't mean he can't op.

What does this have to do with anything pertaining to any of the points I said?

[jmiedema]

Yea I personally like the idea of the "initiate" rank that has 0 effect, but becomes a novice scientist after 1 tick.

I also think that the majority of people don't think the spawn rate needs to be increased, but rather the spawning needs to be normalized, and moved away from a pure random generation. Where every tick that you don't generate a scientist you % chance to generate a scientist increases, then resets after you get one.

Labs are tricky. As they are right now they are rather useless, however if you make them too much more powerful then once again the balance of science power moves in the favour of whoring kingdoms that can sit and pump for weeks with 20-30% labs (of course it is better than before, since science is capped now). It will be a very tricky balance for labs I think. I almost feel we should do away with labs the way they are now, and not have any building increase scientist spawn rate. Maybe have Labs work like old libraries to increase science effects.

[StratOcastle]

You can appreciate a dwarf sage in this new system. It compliments their build speed, allowing them to explore the full potential of labs. With scientists that can be mobilized and building changes within 6 ticks(3 in fort) they have a wide array of possibilities.

[Andurilas]

I'm pretty sure the solution to the psychology of this problem is to increase the number of scientists but decrease their individual effect. If people were not going 4, 7, 12, 18 days without a spawn, they would cry less.

[jmiedema]

Yea, science in this game is more or less where people like to think they have more of it then others. It's a socio-economic issue like that most people would rather make $40,000 a year if everyone else makes $30,000, rather than making $50,000 a year and everyone else is making $60,000. It's trying to "keep up with the jones' " Nothing more, nothing less. The upset people are just because they are used to seeing themselves with more science than their kingdom-mates (most times because they are investing gc into science at times they aren't supposed to) and like the idea that they are "better" at the game than someone else.

Those people now have a system that is less in their control as to the number they get in comparison to their teammates.

[Bo To]

What does this have to do with anything pertaining to any of the points I said?

You are implying that provs who can't attack are worst than provs who can attack - I correct you. Attackers should be better with the current system because they do can abduct and catch up(there is a max) while t/ms must rely on luck. If you are screwed attacker you can catch up if you are screwed t/m you are screwed a lot...

[HerpNDerp]

You are implying that provs who can't attack are worst than provs who can attack - I correct you. Attackers should be better with the current system because they do can abduct and catch up(there is a max) while t/ms must rely on luck. If you are screwed attacker you can catch up if you are screwed t/m you are screwed a lot...

You should go back and re-read what I wrote since you clearly did not comprehend it :P A TM with literally 0 offensive power in my KD has ~60% more science than an attacker who has abducted 3 times. The discrepancy is entirely due to random spawn rate, which in my opinion, is the biggest (and only real) issue with the new science.

[Ethan]

... most times because they are investing gc into science at times they aren't supposed to...

If I'm war ready at 65% DR, and putting out as much OPNW as you with far better econ... why do you care if I'm still pushing sci until we get an actual target? My last 12 hours will make more gc for the dragon than you put in from your 2 day stockpile anyway. I've *always* fought from pump "build", cause I've always pumped (except in EOWCF) assuming I need to be ready to start retaling on my next login. None of this 40% DR stuff over here... I'm holding at 55% even when nothing is on the horizon and am always over 60% and ready to go once we start looking.
All that extra sci pumping I did means that my 60% or 65% *is* as strong as your 70-75%, 0 income prov. And you don't dare ignore me with my strong econ, so you either chain me anyway or op though my extra T/M defense.

I don't doubt there are selfish players out there doing exactly what you describe, but some of us were doing it right.


Also, relating to your point about "keeping up with the Jones'" - only partially true. I, for example, haven't even bothered with an abduct because the science *max* values at 1/2 to 1/3rd the values I was able to put out. Sure, I could go grubbing for that last scientist, but when they are so weak in absolute terms, why take the risk of being caught army out (and suffer troop losses etc... which, now, with garbage econ due to low sci, it'd take like 2 days to train back). Training them via buildings is even worse, since the building's rate is so much lower on top of giving a much weaker reward.


@Bishop - what on earth do you think I ought to be using econ on? Cause my best plan is to fund gratuitous dragons to try and bully free abduct waves on people, which is even stupider than it sounds, and it sounds plenty stupid. Maybe the CF 20% DR games at the top made econ irrelevant, but it sure never was down here in the warring tier, so I have *no clue* how you think econ helps science.
(And yes, this is a real question, I almost made a separate thread for it. But I've seen a few others asking here as well, so unless it'll be a multi-pager we'll keep it here. I know I'm lame this age compared to my normal standards, and I'd like to fix it.)

[Earth]

Zauper it takes skill to get to the numbers you got, unless you think you could do that in a ghetto :) no offense, but i don't think you could.

I agree the caps seem a little low..last age I had 200% magic after our second war win and 20% BE towards EOA....couple that with low spawn rates, the poor abduct rate, poor labs and revelation, it really devalues something that has been a huge part of the game since I can remember, it just seems "meh" but I still agree that its a step in the right direction, albeit a flawed one.

"try staying out of fort" is a frustrating answer for alot of people. It benefits the whore tier cause they naturally spend more time out of fort.....and what are t/ms supposed to do suicide for 0 scientists? With defensive values already less than offensive values to require t/ms to attack to max out scientist or "stay out of fort" isn't a practical function of science for the future of utopia

Ethan I encourage you to stay, i don't know what kd your in but I believe mine has an open spot, maybe you might enjoy your lackluster science over here more :)