Lets Play - Palem Edition

[Bourreau]

Next, pretty clear that MUGA reversed their decision on forced mid-age mergers, and its clear that their intention was to go after KDs like MEGA. I mean, all of that along with hawk's dismally limited view of mechanics usage (so ironic given he invented a whole new field of bottom feeding via mechanics abuse..)

As such, I think that any action that limits play style is a bad move, and I think that labelling anything 'mechanics abuse' is just a weak attempt to handicap the more clever players amongst us. Nobody gave a **** that MEGA was, for example, sitting on a perfect 5 provs for exploring up a cow, but they did take issue with perceived fws to take advantage of new WW bonuses - which would have been cheating (twice over maybe?).

tl;dr MUGA need to think through mechanics better rather than punish players for using them, and they certainly shouldn't be punishing players because of imagined, possible violations that may, conceivably occur.

Just to be clear, MEGA didn't cheat and didn't have any arranged wars. Now that's clarified, I would like to clarify that the age following the MEGA age, the admins killed any way to reproduce that kind of kingdoms by:

1) Removing kingdom's based explore pool.
2) Limiting WW bonus gains on kingdoms with less provinces.
3) Increasing the penalty to explore for kingdom under 5 provinces to under 10 (iirc)

I haven't followed the whole "force merged small kingdoms" drama, but it's highly unlikely that this change was to kill something that was already dead.

PS They didn't remove #1 because of MEGA

[Pillz]

Just to be clear, MEGA didn't cheat and didn't have any arranged wars. Now that's clarified, I would like to clarify that the age following the MEGA age, the admins killed any way to reproduce that kind of kingdoms by:

1) Removing kingdom's based explore pool.
2) Limiting WW bonus gains on kingdoms with less provinces.
3) Increasing the penalty to explore for kingdom under 5 provinces to under 10 (iirc)

I haven't followed the whole "force merged small kingdoms" drama, but it's highly unlikely that this change was to kill something that was already dead.

PS They didn't remove #1 because of MEGA

Youre cheating is up for debate.

[Bourreau]

Youre cheating is up for debate.

Everything is up for debate : you can argue that the grass is red, that 1+1 = 3, that MEGA cheated, but that doesn't change the truth: the grass is green, 1+1 =2 and MEGA didn't cheat.

[MyNameIsMatija]

What's a shell kingdom?

-DM<3

Seems like one of those low province count kingdoms, usually have veteran players or trolls playing there. That's the shell, sometimes the kingdom fills up with randoms so I'm not sure what you call it after that.

[Korp]

Shell kingdom used to be old disbanded kds with someone had the provinces. Ie, one person keeping a kingdom of empty provinces alive. This new definition is a bit silly.

[Pillz]

Shell kingdom used to be old disbanded kds with someone had the provinces. Ie, one person keeping a kingdom of empty provinces alive. This new definition is a bit silly.

Yes. Originally a shell was the empty proxied provinces of a disbanded kingdom.

The knew term arose in conjunction with people being granted new kingdoms (new loc opened + provs/invites) upon request.

Its been applied more broadly to all intentionally small (# of provs) kingdoms of late as a result.

Admittedly, I think it was Madchess that coined the term micro-kingdom? Maybe I'm mistaken. That is a more apt term for what is being described, but I usually use shell. These modern micro-kingdoms, if you will, are generally born out of the tradition of retired players creating their own small kingdoms and groups like Famous Last Words that seem to always maintain a lower number of provinces. Before the advent of the Wall, these kingdoms got full of randoms which made it difficult to call them micro-kingdoms and they weren't called shells, just ghettos, which in itself is a poor catch all, but it suffices.

Anyways, tl;dr what both Korp and matija said

[makeo]

What's a shell kingdom?

-DM<3

*sniffs bait and leaves thread*

[Elit]

I think Pillz explain is very acurate. If Palem have time here is noting wrong to play in shell kingdom to get used to game before making kingdom.
I think when here is no more gen server having shells where people can try/test new tactics with no harm to his Kd mates is good options.

[StratOcastle]

Precisely. Micro-kingdoms/shells allow players like myself to play in nontraditional styles that might be harmful to traditional kingdom wellbeing. For example, my style is to only but almost always retaliate as my sole source of acre gains. Exceptions are kingdoms that are small and apparently fragmented with randoms by naive players leaving themselves totally open.

My retaliation is regulated by level of competition. I will retaliate the most powerful kingdoms before working my way down to least depending on the number of attacks my province has sustained. When I've encountered cooperatives I'll tend to retal what I deem the beneficiary for the attacks of both. Much of this is based in feel because the environment is decidedly chaotic. This presents the challenge level I find most satisfying without the diplomatic and fear based restrictions inmost kingdoms.

In Pyro we were taxed in an age off. While I'd normally feel the tug of bloodsport I couldn't be fully invested in the top kingdom style of hitting down for gains and accepting non-competitive compromises. I played hard but not with the passion I have independently. I respect the big picture and thus divorce myself from intentionally interfering in crown races. That is, I will back off if it's clear I'm screwing a war build etc.

I come in peace.

[Palem]

Also what does it matter? If the owners or moderators think every shell kingdom is full of toxic people or they are just out to abuse mechanics and therefore should be forcefully merged, then they really have not interacted much with people in most shell kingdoms and I would love the possibility to show them something else.

I'm not going to speak on behalf of the owners or anything but I really don't think the attitude is that shell kingdoms are worthless entities that should be scrubbed from the game. As I understand it, there's two big problems with "shell" kingdoms

1. There legitimately are kingdoms of bad players that have been left behind from the random allocations. These kingdoms would like to play with others so it benefits them to just get merged with another kingdom in that situation

2. The kingdoms that sit on a very small amount of players tend to have ways of exploiting the game mechanics in unintended ways. The game pushes kingdom vs kingdom interaction and when your "kingdom" is just 5 people, things that were balanced in the name of fairness are no longer fair.

So I really don't see how the devs are coming across as "hating" she'll kingdoms when they're just trying to solve the two above problems. That's quite literally their job.

[khronosschoty]

I'm not going to speak on behalf of the owners or anything but I really don't think the attitude is that shell kingdoms are worthless entities that should be scrubbed from the game. As I understand it, there's two big problems with "shell" kingdoms

1. There legitimately are kingdoms of bad players that have been left behind from the random allocations. These kingdoms would like to play with others so it benefits them to just get merged with another kingdom in that situation

2. The kingdoms that sit on a very small amount of players tend to have ways of exploiting the game mechanics in unintended ways. The game pushes kingdom vs kingdom interaction and when your "kingdom" is just 5 people, things that were balanced in the name of fairness are no longer fair.

So I really don't see how the devs are coming across as "hating" she'll kingdoms when they're just trying to solve the two above problems. That's quite literally their job.

Can fix most of the issues or at least curb them enough so that it would /not/ be required to remove "shell" kingdoms. That is the best route for the health of the game.

[Korp]

I'm not going to speak on behalf of the owners or anything but I really don't think the attitude is that shell kingdoms are worthless entities that should be scrubbed from the game. As I understand it, there's two big problems with "shell" kingdoms

1. There legitimately are kingdoms of bad players that have been left behind from the random allocations. These kingdoms would like to play with others so it benefits them to just get merged with another kingdom in that situation

2. The kingdoms that sit on a very small amount of players tend to have ways of exploiting the game mechanics in unintended ways. The game pushes kingdom vs kingdom interaction and when your "kingdom" is just 5 people, things that were balanced in the name of fairness are no longer fair.

So I really don't see how the devs are coming across as "hating" she'll kingdoms when they're just trying to solve the two above problems. That's quite literally their job.

You should come and play with us Palem, would change your point of view a bit and open your eyes. :)

1. Merging them with one kingdom or two or three wouldnt change the fact that they still would be bad players. They would still be bad players but in larger quanties. You dont solve the problems with shoving bad players toghter when they need good players to teach them.

[Nim]

TFC! I'll join up again!

[Elit]

You should come and play with us Palem, would change your point of view a bit and open your eyes. :)

1. Merging them with one kingdom or two or three wouldnt change the fact that they still would be bad players. They would still be bad players but in larger quanties. You dont solve the problems with shoving bad players toghter when they need good players to teach them.

Very well said.
Problem when you merge bad players with bad players is they become kingdoms with more provinces and in range with better kingdoms. So they end in wars destroyed.

[Madchess]

Well I got the impression that because that 5:12 guy went ham on coss they was pushing for the merging of loners like him, I know you probably have not been ingame for years, last age almost all who started out requesting a shell got only a handfull of players, this age since the number 10 was brougth up those kingdoms went from mostly 2-5 people to exactly 10.

My experience is that most such kingdoms are low activity ones that do not play with a team to not drag down the performance of a team, some take an age or two of from the requirements of a strong team, others just like being their own masters or might be in a situation similair to mine where I might end up having to drastically reduce my activity or stop completely with a short notice, I've also found that this way I can play the game together with my brother who would have much trouble making any wave date since he is working 24 hour shifts as an ambulance driver.

There are bad kingdoms as well in this segment of the game for sure, but they are not a good representative for the big picture, you just tend to hear more about them than all the others combined.

I would much rather discuss what the owners think the kingdoms in the second group of your examples are abusing rather than discuss merging kingdoms midway. As already pointed out the explore mechanics was changed thanks to kingdoms like MEGA, but you kind of had top kingdoms nw dropping for ages before something was done there, if there is other mechanics that feels to strong then bring it up and weaken them appropiately.

I know I considder myself playing the game as intended. I do not get a kick out of beating senseless a kingdom with twice as many players but less than half the size of my kingdoms provinces, I do not run bait provinces or offer war to such kingdoms and in fact I had 0 wars for two + ages of playing in a small kingdom player wise. I also never looked at median acre if I decided to explore. I know how to take advantage of gb protection, but still getting hit up to 4 times a day on a decent sized military is not really something I prefer over seeing a smaller number of hits that I can retaliate, you can't run a fancy strategy when your entire build is dedicated to sustaing you against 4x hits, I could drop out of growing and some of those hitting would soon be to big, but I prefer challeging myself a bit more so I try to outgrow them insted.