Age 49 Suggestions

[Lead Pipe]

Fill up kingdoms faster. Way too many kingdoms with 15ish provinces. At least fill the kingdoms to 20 and then let the last 5 be through invitations.

Don't like the merge conquest & trad march idea, cuz then intel wouldn't even be needed.

Strengthen Dark Elves. One way would be to change the way Tree of Gold works. Have ToG not be based on their current income but on something else (so much per acre or per population) that way it can be useful even at a high draft.

One more thing i forgot. Regarding the dragons, make them stay for a minimum time (12 hours?) after that time they can be killed like normal. Reason being is that the only good dragon is the Ruby. Thats the only offensive dragon, you can time your dragon and send it with your wave. The rest of the dragons rely on your opponent NOT killing it.

[jay1]

carter i would love for them to give orcs 10/1 are u mad lol orcs are not weak with a kingdom set up and organization... all my kingdom did all age was feed on kingdoms of humans... why orc tacts never lose leets... humans cant retrain in war... we nm everyone ns's then we chain a human to the ground rinse repeat... if u notice orc really isnt weak look at all the top kingdoms this age.. if u play a orc on your own they are weak... you play it in a kingdom with a little organization... pretty powerful..

[jay1]

any give a few more invites.. let us fill our kingdoms please!!! everyone has people leave for real life issues... we cant fill a kingdom if we gain one province every age... we need more than that if you ever want full kingdoms again

[IronDuke]

Good idea maiablossom. I actually had the same thought, and I feel it could actually be a real serious game element. What if every so often, through some trigger, a giant monster attacks a whole island! Maybe after enough wars have been fought on the island the monster attacks, punishing the little mortals for their bloodlust!

Heres how it works. EVery tick after it appears the monster attacks on kingdom at random, killing 5% of EVERYTHING in the kingdom (except land maybe?) and no attacks can be made in that tick because all troops are running scared. If it attacks a kingdom in war that kingdom drops out of war straight away and the other side wins but gains no honour.
It also works like double the effects of a dragon on the whole island all the time. Mana recharge increases by 7% though due to it's magical aura.
The provinces of the island can try to hit it with everything they have to kill it, but it has a lot of HP. (1 billion? 100 million? It should be a lot) The idea is to foster better relations and cooperation between island mates, not just kingdom mates. Here's a few ideas about dealing with the monster and putting it in the game. Just a few ideas, let me know what you think, but I feel this could be really exciting!

1) Maybe it can be killed just like a dragon, with troops. But again, it will need a lot of HP.

2) You should be able to cast spells on it, or do thief ops, doing damage like the number of peasants fireballed, or troops NSed.

3)You can add a new science field that opens when the monster begins to attack, research here learns its weak point and adds a up to 37% to the damage done by attacks on it.

4) Attacks done within 5 minutes of another do extra 18% damage to reflect a concentrated effort.

5) You can also as a united island effort summon these onto another island, similar to sending a dragon, which makes for interesting tactics for scoring free war wins! Alternatively you can summon a monster onto your own island for annoying people in your kingdom you don't like, or possibly to fight a monster already on your island! While fighting a monster on your island, their battle will quickly kill them both off, but cause double the damage!

6) Maybe a new race could be added to fit in with the new monster mythos. A race which doesn't suffer the negative penalties from the monster, as they are born from it or something. Going with the Godzilla idea, they could be something like Lizardmen.

7) If it becomes clear you can't kill the monster with the help of your island, you can begin to build boats to leave your island and move to another one. It's a last resort so they should be expensive and only carry a few hundred or so people each.

[Mansoor]

New Thief Op: Snatch Kingdom Intel - This thief op gives you oppurtunity to see how much land your enemy have in their explore pool. This thief is Gnome only.

New Mage OP: Destroy Uncharted land - Destroys 1% of unexplored land, as difficult spell as Land Lust and can only be casted by mystics.

New attack: Capture Uncharted acers. 1 attack in same nw capture some %:age of explore pool acres (maximum 100 acres/attack) and goes into your explore pool. Depending on kd size differense you get less or more land.

[lmtdconv92]

As already been said, an op to see how many wizzards someone has, very nice info to know. And maybe make it so all gnome intel only costs 1 stealth.

[Magn]

This thread derailed quickly. It's already full of self serving, "make utopia easy for me" suggestions. Not even gonna bother reading it anymore.



That's gotta be the one of the top 3 worst serious suggestions I've ever seen. Wow. Thanks for that laugh Magn.

Why do you jump the gun and go straight down to personal attacks?

The suggestion was intended to serve someone, but it wasn't me.

Having to decide whether to send a TM or a conquest doesn't add much depth to the game as its obvious in each case.

If you can calculate your hit properly, you TM if you can break and conquest if you can't. Then, you are left with the fascinating task of choosing the proper obvious option on the menu (this is the kind of depth this game could really use).

However, the suggested change it might help out people who have a hard time calculating their attacks a bit (which as you might know is not me) by reducing the penalty somewhat for not breaking (there is still a penalty, just not a total failure).

Removing complexity (ie, making things simpler) is not necessarily a bad thing if the complexity was not that interesting to start with.

[moe]

maybe instead of merging TM and conquest like Magn said (because as annoying as bouncing is, its still part of the game), make conquest a bit stronger so ppl actually use it in war to bring a bigger prov down. does anybody ever use that attack? at least I havent seen it being used, instead ppl go attack another target they can break, or even leave the army home before doing a conquest hit.

[Landro]

Why do you jump the gun and go straight down to personal attacks?

The suggestion was intended to serve someone, but it wasn't me.

Having to decide whether to send a TM or a conquest doesn't add much depth to the game as its obvious in each case.

If you can calculate your hit properly, you TM if you can break and conquest if you can't. Then, you are left with the fascinating task of choosing the proper obvious option on the menu (this is the kind of depth this game could really use).

However, the suggested change it might help out people who have a hard time calculating their attacks a bit (which as you might know is not me) by reducing the penalty somewhat for not breaking (there is still a penalty, just not a total failure).

Removing complexity (ie, making things simpler) is not necessarily a bad thing if the complexity was not that interesting to start with.

I could live with this suggestion if not being able to properly break the defenses automatically reduced potential gains by 50% and maybe disable any gains modifiers (Orc, Sci) if you fail to break. That way you still get something even when you bounce but actually breaking somebody would be much more rewarding.

I agree that Utopia has a very steep learning curve and that this suggestion might make things a little easier for new players. Top players will still prefer to properly break their targets.

[Landro]

Create a sandbox environment for people to practice with. It could be a flash based app that doesn't connect to the main server but which would allow new players to try out some things like building, attacking, etc. A virtual tutor could guide them to calculating attacks for example. Options would include fast-forwarding the game and players learning to gather intell, attack, ambush, perform ops, etc.

[kisame35]

Iron Duke, an unusual idea which is interesting (call it the Kraken or something). But seriously wtf is with the if your at war, and it attacks then there's an instant forfeit. Most of us utopians want to war instead of exploring an entire age, if this monster just comes and cancels wars it'll just be taking away one of the most fun aspects of utopia.
And bugger relationships with other KD's, just send them mail asking for an alliance sort of thing or whatever. You could also keep improving your KD communication.

As for changes I'd like to see:

A couple tweaks to dragons would be nice. I'd like to see some different varieties of dragons in use other than ruby dragon.
Reduce the population bonus of shephards, they've already got enough abilities and make them immune to vermin.
All intel should cost 1 stealth instead of just SoT, don't put CB back, SoT is fine

Elves should be able to cast self-spells on KD members.
Avians (perhaps make these guys weak attackers but can tank hits and ops)

Avians
Def Spec - 5
Off Spec - 5
Elites - 6/5

-20% Attack Time
-15% Damage from ops
Immunity to ambush
No Stables

[maiablossom]

Thanks IronDuke, I'm pleased to see that other have had the similar ideas.

Though i think it SHOULD destroy some land. Beasts make earthquakes when they attack, which would sink the cliffs into the sea. Or maybe that depends on which monster has attacked? Godzilla for example could sink land, but not be able to find the wizzards towers/guilds, while an alien invasion could find the wizzards, but have no interest in land.

The +7% mana recharge is good, though maybe it should be extended - after the beast is killed the bones are shared amongst the wizzards making them more powerful for the next 2 years by making each wizzard worth 1.5 wizzards??? Or if it is an alien invasion it could be the tech that helps the theives guild similarly?

Though i don't like the doubling of any dragon already on a kingdom. I think any exsisting dragons should have 50% death rate, and the other 50% turn around and attack what ever kingdom sent them as they were not paid a danger bonus.

The attack bonus for co-ordinated attacks is a good idea, but perhapps it shoudl be extended so that +10% for attacks made within 5min form the same kingdom, and +22% for co-ordinated attacks with other kingdoms from other islands - that will foster an interkingdom co-operation nicely.

Perhapps there could be 3 kinds of island beasts/invaders, that work on a rock, paper, scissors rotation. So Godzilla beats the aliens, and the aliens beat King Kong, and King Kong beats Godzilla.

[Zermoid]

In response to Blip,
MS is long lasting and high return because it's hard to cast, often over 50% fizzles.
If you do nerf MS I'd suggest also easier to cast, or it's going to become like Arson and Greater arson, not worth the time to use it.

Also Arson and Greater arson need a boost, neither are worth the stealth used to do them.

I also would like to have the old, non NW based Raze attack back.

[Zermoid]

Create a sandbox environment for people to practice with. It could be a flash based app that doesn't connect to the main server but which would allow new players to try out some things like building, attacking, etc. A virtual tutor could guide them to calculating attacks for example. Options would include fast-forwarding the game and players learning to gather intell, attack, ambush, perform ops, etc.

Or they could just bring back the Genesis server idea, a separate, sped up version of Utopia running on either another server or a separate database on the present server. (assuming that wouldn't slow down the Main Utopia game anyways)

Or as you suggested.

Another thought, which would probably be more work for them to do, would be to borrow the "Tutorial" style of play like many video games have to get you used to the basics before playing the actual game. Suggestions offered along the way and all. It should also be an option so returning players who know the game can skip it or go thru it as a refresher.

[path]

The exploration system should be looked at. Back when Mehul still cared about the game, he was constantly monkeying around with exploration system. Unfortunately the final incarnation was the current one we still have, dirt cheap exploration costs capped only by the kingdom exploration pool. The result of this is the game has become less about kingdomwide team effort to succeed, and more about who can feed up their bank and/or killers the best. Your kingdoms success is more or less based solely on the effort of a few individuals and the sacrifice of others giving away tons of aid straight oop. Even still, individual skill in managing these banks and killer provinces can easily be overcome by alliance actions.

I could talk about this for paragraphs and go into the reasoning behind this suggestion, but first of all I don't have much hope that the game will be fixed, and secondly, anyone who has played the game knows that exploration costs are too low. I haven't even played in ages yet I can just look at the top 100 rankings and tell. It looks like there is 10 banks (maybe a few might be successful bank killers?) taking the top 10 places and the rest of the top 100 is of really no importance in the big scheme of things. The top ranked player is nearly 10 times the size of the provinces at the bottom of the top 100. Look back in time to earlier ages, nothing like this ever happened without some type of glitch or exploit.

Simply raise the cost of exploration, AND raise the cost of exploration based on how many acres that player has already explored. So a 10k acre attacker who never explored could explore for much less cost than someone who explored all the way to 10k for instance. Personally I would like to see the costs drastically increased, but realistically it'd probably make sense for you guys to marginally increase the costs and just see how it goes before taking it further. Keep low acreage exploration costs reasonably cheap however so that new players and casuals can still inject new land into the game. Before the kingdom exploration cap was put into the game, people would explore to 3000 or 4000 acres and convert to attacker because beyond that exploration costs were just too steep. It would be nice to have a return to those days when hundreds of people were trying for #1, not just one selected person (the banker) per kingdom.