Age 46 - Suggest changes

[Gringy]

A new age so soon, seriously?

This age has really only just got going because of all the downtime at the start due to bugs and errors, last age died halfway through because of a server issue..

Let us have a full age of at least 12-14 real weeks this age, just like they used to be and use the extra time to fix outstanding bugs/issues..

I agree something needs to be changed with regard to relations and/or a war meter.

I also believe that putting something in place to protect kingdoms being waved.. not all together but back in the day the game was played (by most!) with honour and respect, If my kd chose to wave another kd but the recieiving kd wasn't interested my kd would not wave further than either a full wave or 24 hours maximum.. There are still some kd's who play by the unwritten rule book of honourable play but there are also the 9 yr old monarchs out there who just continually feed from the same kd, wave after wave, day after day refusing several cf proposals along the way. Those recieving kd's are usually the newer, lesser experienced players who we should be trying to encourage into the game, not beat up and beat out.

And yes, they should "learn to play" but at least help them and give them time to "learn to play".. The mechanics of the game are not something anyone learns in a few hours like an xbox 360 game etc that you can plug in and play... have you read the guide recently? wow!.

So.. in a nutshell, if the recieving kd isn't interested and offers a cf, the cf should be a forced cf after 24 hours of no hostile actions by the recieving kd and can only be broken by the less hostile/recieving kd..

I like the idea of pre war terms agreement although atm we war without them, know if we are winning or losing and expect to win or withdraw accordingly.. but again, this comes back to the 9 yr old monarchs who can't accept defeat when its the case and withdraw, spoiling the enjoyment of the kd that has clearly won but has to withdraw to end the war.

Maybe a tick box idea like the current aid system for blocking and unblocking aid? ... Click "war with/out terms" and war term options are clickable such as time limit, dragons Y or N etc etc... At the end of the day the game is meant to have people communicating, the current relations, hostile/war set up encourages non communication.. wave a kd, the kd waves back, war is declared, termless war for 48 hours, loser withdraws, cf for 24/48 hours, wave a kd, the kd waves back....... No outside kd communication needs to take place.. introducing a system that has to be discussed and agreed to by both monarchs (if the war with terms option is chosen) would have communication (it wouldn't if termless war was chosen) ... and once the terms are reached like who took the most acres in the specified time or whatever the terms were agreed on happens, the winning kd gets the win and cf begins so no one is relying on the sore loser to withdraw.

As for race and personality changes.. They were always going to end up being roughly the same as over the ages people complained about how overpowered certain races and persona's were, there are example of it in this thread, the end result was those that were overpowered got nerf'd to balance things out.. so you change them and get complaints, leave them the same and get complaints.. The only viable option (imo) would be to add 1 or 2 new, never heard of before races and persona's with powers also new and unique, just to add a bit of interest and for B+S to show thier imagination and creativity ;)


I realise at this point in time the tick on the hour isn't going to change or be removed but while its still here, can we have any mail/forum posts that are bring written/posted sent to a draft file or something.. its so frustrating to be sending a pm to the whole kd or posting something important to the forum, not check the time, hit send and bang - the game is currently ticking - all the post is gone.. after a few swear words its quite funny but still annoying.

I really don't believe going back to past races and personalities is the way forward, its backwards.. new things need to be added once the current flaws and bugs are ironed out and the ages need to be full ages of consistant, smooth, downtime free gameplay...

[Palem]

*sigh*
age ends and all the people that don't know what they're talking about show up.

[Buk]

@ UtopiaofGreed and Palem

I resent being put down because of the amount of posts I have made in this forum. The question was put out to ALL PLAYERS, not just the elite that have no lives and post here 12 times a day. The 80% of players that don't belong to the elite in Utopia are what keep it running. My opinion was asked, and while this thread was the first to really make me want to register and make my voice heard, I have read much of the forums off and on and my response was thoughtful and balanced. How can you call it radical? The first thing I suggested is that no change is better if they can't deal with the problems of the code. How radical is that? You should be advocating for your own server for the top 10 or 20% so that you can be free of all the ghettos. Then see how you like bottomfeeding. If you don't think I know what I am talking about, then enlighten me. Show me point by point how my ideas are wrong. Don't bother with your inflammatory blanket fluff statements about all the people who don't know what they are talking about. No wonder you got to 2500 posts with useless comments like that.

[Hallo]

Hows this.
Stupidity Deterrent (Monarch Ability)
Give the monarch a button that allows him to prevent wars with other kingdoms.

Individual Provinces can currently "Initiate a War" with a bigger kingdom. Instead of forcing the whole kingdom into war, force the attacking provinces into their own personal hell! As long as only 20% of a kingdom is attacking, every one else should receive "protection status" during this "pseudo" war.

So those who initiate wars would quickly be punished, without punishing the kingdom. (Just imagine it. 3 provinces against an entire kingdom, with war benefits / penalties... what do you think will happen?)

[Palem]

Buk - I didn't say anything about post counts

[Ganondorf]

* Raze - only destroys buildings should remain. If it destroys buildings warring won't favour growth. (Even though old raze is pretty fun). Make traditional marches in WAR have a higher max gain cap, or remove gb protection in war to make up for not having raze destroy buildings.

* Libraries - Find a way to make them more useful, so they're not only worth building if you're human at end of age. All races should be able to make use of them.

* Honor - The current system is really boring. Make hits generate new honor. ie a flat number of honor gained generated from the nw of the prov you hit. (In addition to the honor stolen from your target of course). We want to see more Marquis, Dukes and Princes, and make it possible for attackers to obtain them.

* War Meter - Don't bring the war meter back. There will be some childish monarchs that don't want to withdraw, but maybe make an option for the winning KD to "ask the utopian gods" for assistance if their target has dropped more than a certain % of land/nw, so that a 3rd party (omac) can interviene and end a war that has an obvious winner.

* Bottomfeeding - Make this hard and not worth the while. Make people have to search similar size KDs for acres, this will turn to more intrigues and more warring, which is what utopia is all about.

* Races - still think Undead should be brought back, keep Avian, change DEs name back to Faerys (we already have elves). As for changes:
-Avians needs some work. Maybe make them even faster.
-Undead needs to be brought back, REALLY hard core. Maybe make provs have to die again to make undead.
-Dwarves are boring, they have been the least favoured race to play for ages now. Maybe bring back mines, with miners mystique for dwarf spellbook. Maybe make Fog slow for 4 hours.

In general I think all races should have their elite values reconsidered. Radical changes to elite values could bring some great fun and complexity to the game. Like someone mentioned earlier; (Orcs 9/1, Faeries 2/12 etc.)

[UtopiaOfGreed]

@ Buk:
I resent people who never come here and think they know how to magically fix the game. I was one of those people once, and I know in retrospect that my opinions were, for the most part, completely insane.

And you'll notice that neither Palem, nor myself criticized you specifically. But since you asked, I will.

Race and Personality - Artisan IS useless. You're right. But so are Avian and Dwarf. But you essentially went on to encourage them to not listen to our ideas. Which is stupid. We know twenty times more about the balance of this game than they do, because we actually play it.

Honor - Honor is irrelevant. The only people that care about it are T/M whores. I also agree that you should get honor on massacres, plunders, etc. But this is such a trivial matter that they shouldn't even consider addressing this.

As for your comments on War Meter and War Terms, they're getting to the relm of "adding new features". Which shouldn't happen. They need to fix the code.

Province Killing - I agree there needs to be a way to force a surrender. But like I said. they shouldn't worry about this now. They should fix the code. (What you should have done, by the way, was simply surrender... Only T/M whores care about honor. Get your acres, and move on.)

Bottomfeeding - I'm getting bored of saying this. You're right, but the fact that something is a problem doesn't mean you should write a two page post telling the devs to fix it. They have bigger things on their plate. And that is fixing the code.

Forum - This falls under fixing the code. One of your first decent contributions.

Magic - I'm not playing human. I can't testify to this.

Monarch Intel - Quit smoking pot. This is stupid.

Randomness - Agreed. Falls under fixing the code.

Money bonus - This won't happen. I agree, but it's stupid financially to encourage people to NOT log in to their game...

[Palem]

Some "great ideas" from this thread so far...

* paradise takes land from explore pool

remove decreasing building effiency, or building maximums

* Get rid of Building Efficiency

War Meter

War terms coded in-game

* Add some Personalities Combo (one personality beginning of age - one after 1.5k acres)

* Allow Gnomes to have Hospitals or naturally less loses - they have a hard time competing in a long war

*Overhaul of relation systems - should be declarable even if one KD opposes it..this is war after all

- Dwarf, can't keep up with a lot of other races. Strong but slow. Could make them stronger or faster but they could be quickly overpowered.

* Some sort of benefit for killing a dragon (other than a dead dragon), ie honor, spec credits, a $hit-ton of food for the kingdom, whatever

* Give titles based on activity, ie, # of successful offensive spells/ops, # of attacks, etc. .
Id say increase defence and offence specs to 6...Change the elites accordingly

Increase wages with 35% overall

Make wizards a part of the goverment by paying them a decent pay aswell.

Remove science effects

3. reshuffle all provinces and give only 3 move codes

DE:
Change elite to 4/7
remove tog from DE
give DE all offensive spells except PF
+1 stealth recovery
rest same

@buk
there's only one thing that's really wrong enough for me to say anything about it...

Bring back the 12h/20h money bonus. It helps out those average players who have RL 9 to 5 jobs that still want to play. It will also reduce the strain on your server since people will be encouraged to not be as hyper active. Hyper activity will still be beneficial but slightly less so.

Hyperactivity gets more of a benefit from this than casual activity. Hyper-actives can utilize the bonus more effectively. Taking it out is one of the smarter things OMAC has actually done.

Things that made me laugh hysterically:

There are 50,000 of us (users) and 2 of you (developers)

[Hallo]

"High post count" posters have played the game longer than you, and are thus more knowledgable about pwning provinces 1/50th their own size. But when they meet resistance, they'll often scream nerf because they get owned by another province. Of course, these "High post count" posters fail to realize that some races are just better at something than others... nor do they realize that there are others better than them. But, in accordance to Rule 8 of the "forum posters handbook" post count determines uberness, and uberness is the most valued stat of all.

So please, before posting a suggestion, consider your post count. You may either be too uber to suggest, or not be uber enough at all.

Money bonus - This may happen. I agree, but it's financially smart to encourage people to NOT log in to their game...

Corrected for Stupidity.
The smaller the server load the cheaper it is to maintain. (Ad revenue is minimal, at best)

Honor - Honor is irrelevant. The only people that care about it are T/M whores.

So having more OME and population (which you can turn into military) or being able to reduce the number of T/M's needed for defense... (thus more military)... all of this is irrelevant?

I resent people who never come here and think they know how to magically fix the game. I was one of those people once, and I know in retrospect that my opinions were, for the most part, completely insane.

Thus, since everyone is a copy of you, anyone who comes here with a single post count inherently suggests ideas that are completely insane. QED. (Do you see how arrogant that sounds?)

Elf and Orc need nerfing.

Well, not too terribly much.
No access to Hospitals would fix elves up fairly quickly. If they still need nerfing, give them the human elite.

Orcs?
Whats to nerf? They're attackers. If you insist, science effectiveness penalties (instead of cost). Increased losses to ambush, if you really want something.

[UtopiaOfGreed]

Hallo, everything you said in that post was so laughably stupid that I'm not even going to point out how wrong you are. This is why people like you shouldn't be allowed to speak.

Edit: That was great Palem... A true show of all of the stupidity in this thread so far...

[hellbound]

Please fix the bugs before thinking of ways to mess the game up further.

[UtopiaOfGreed]

Wow. A forum newbie who knows what he's talking about...

[AppleAssault]

* Big changes in race numbers - both number of available races and benefits/drawbacks
* paradise takes land from explore pool
* remove random factor
* fix SoM to how it was in old code
* increase protections when hiting a smaler KD
* MS for all races in war

[Hallo]

Hallo, everything you said in that post was so laughably stupid that I'm not even going to point out how wrong you are. This is why people like you shouldn't be allowed to speak.

I do recall a famous mathematician who is responsible for this quote "I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain."

Obviously Fermat could "prove" his theorem, but simply didn't have enough paper to write down said proof.

[dgood1]

I'm not one to complain but seeing all these posts got me to see how unstable the new Utopia is. Although I don't see the need of a new race/personality, I did find some in-game details that could need work.

Bugs
1. The NEW! marker for the Province Mail is STILL ON when you are reading the message.

2. In ALL instances of Text box items, instead of saying there isn't enough, input is altered to reach the acceptable. This causes a single typo to affect the whole. If this is a feature, can we get an option that disables this?

Comfort:
1. Do people REALLY need multiple Provinces? That's one extra window each time you log in.

2. Can we put all News in one page? Unlike the Spells, there is only one reason why you need to separate this and that's the land exploration. (See Strategy 2 for thoughts on 'spells on one page')

3. Like in other forums, can we get a link to the thread pages on the main forum directory? ex. KD plan [1][2][3]

4. Ticks don't affect the Forums, do they?... If not, Could you separate or ALLOW access to the forums during ticks? I know the one minute wait isn't that much, but posts disappears if it is done on a tick.

Strategy:
1. What if effectiveness and/or success rate of Spells or Missions are affected by Mana or Stealth percentage used and remaining? (Think like ATTACK, only with the energy and stealth.)

2. Would it be okay if we could cast Support spells on allied Provinces? This would lead to the spells menu to be in one page.

3. ANTI-Bottomfeed. I believe gains should be adjusted through this: (Def Prov / Off Prov)^5. Values are NW. This means a 10% NW difference results into gains reduction by 45%.
5 in the equation is negotiable but should still be a high number.
(See Content 2 for more on Anti BottomFeed)

4. Anti-Turtle. Why not increase the military wages based on Defense units and decrease on Offensive? Defensives are active all the time while Offensives aren't. This makes it more profitable to be an attacker and more costly to defend.

Content:
1. Raze should be for Province destruction while Trad march is for Province Gains. (You can't kill provinces using Trad March) In addition to this, Razing should be faster(-2 days like plunder or more).

Attacks will require about 16 days to complete -- this includes time spent attacking, resting, and preparing your new land or other resources for use.

What resources, right? hehehe ^^

2. A province who is Marched by another province larger than itself by 50% would go under [Dictatorship]. The defending province would have a 10% decrease in incomes but the armies would return in the NEXT month + the allocated returning time. The income decrease ends at half that time. The Attacking province does NOT get addition gains from this. This is a double edged sword that not ONLY prevents chained attack, it also causes discomfort on the next attacker.

To all the people offending others:
PLEASE, the threads says SUGGESTIONS. A person's freedom to speak shouldn't be forfeited simply because you have your own idea.