A number of mechanics suggestions

[jdorje]

Separation is fine, its pretty essential really. We dont have any issues with it. The problem we do have is small kds getting declared on and nailed by massively larger kds, this was quite a common problem.

I had thought it was a pretty rare (once an age) problem where a top kingdom declared on someone tiny. If it is more common than that though, then a 50% ratio is at least playable. Nobody uses multis to trigger farmwars with kingdoms 60% their size. One other idea I had though was that button hostility level could depend on the nw range; i.e., a kingdom 1/2 your size would take 2x as many hits (15 trads instead of 7.5) to go to hostile.

OOW fights massively favor a significantly smaller kingdom, because they get +50% gains on all their hits. It's really as simple as that. When you talk about kingdoms getting chained down in war, they end up with small provinces that anyone can pick on. Other than razekilling (which is absurdly inefficient, at 5% per hit) there is nothing you can do to stop it. It's impossible to explore up small provinces to get them out of range, since explore costs are x2 for chained provinces versus what they were two ages ago and also x2 in postwar. Kingdoms running cows contributes to the problem but since there is no other way to use pool that's not going to stop under current rules. One other idea I had here was to have KNBG (kingdom networth-based gains) by symmetrical, so hitting a kingdom 1/2 your size is -1/3 gains for both sides. That would then favor a kingdom bottomfeeding on one 80-90% their size more than it does now, but in conjunction with fixing province-nw-based-gains to make them symmetrical that could be balanced. Maybe.

Removing GBP oow would be a really, really bad idea. Removal of gbp protection is about 75% of the war effects, so you'd already basically be in war once that happened. Meanwhile raze is available oow (only 5%, but still deadly without gbp) while it is not in war. And the smaller kingdom can chain while the bigger cannot. The result is an incredibly destructive chain/raze/razekill fight, with none of the benefits you get from actually warring.

[Sheister]

my thoughts exactly re: removal of gbp

[Mal]

Oh I don't disagree removing gbp might be a bigger problem than being able to declare, it allows big kingdoms to pick on smaller ones and makes fights destructive (basically the worst of both worlds). You would see a lot of dead provinces in general, but I would be a lot less afraid of a kingdom like Insolence :P.

Removing the range restriction at max meter and kd-nw gains after a certain number of hits would be sufficient. It seems odd that a kingdom should feel strong enough to max out the meter on a kingdom but not feel like they are able to fight that kingdom in war.

[TheRock]

Are we seeing it? I was told the smaller kds got nailed. So yes, i'd like an example showing how the smaller kd abused this and won out in such a way as would have been impossible under the old range. There were several instances recently where large kds used the big range to declare on ghettos for the purposes of FW basically though.

"GBP is substantial OOW, which limits your ability to do damage or fight back effectively. KRNW means the smaller kingdom will always have a built-in gains advantage."
^^ so, why don't you suggest these get removed? Do you actually think a wide open declare range is clever or elegant?

Here's what i suggest.

Remove GBP and kdnw reduced gains when X hostility is reached.
Allow the dual button at max meter to ignore NW.

As previously posted in this thread:

Insolence waving Rage - free wave for Insolence
Psych Ward waving HOH - acres for Psych Ward
Snakes waving Sanctuary - acres for Snakes

I'm open to the possibility that three kingdoms lead by some of the most experienced leaders in the game who have consistently excelled over the last ~10 ages and are generally regarded as some of the top kingdoms remaining today happen to be collectively missing some giant loophole that would allow them to effectively fight back, but as nobody's actually presented one yet, I stand by the standards of The Zebra Theory (if you hear hoofs, don't think zebras, think horses) and think the system is not working.

I agree that the mechanics need changing, but I think it's also clear that the current mechanics do not work to promote a fun environment for the players.

[TheRock]

Removing the range restriction at max meter and kd-nw gains after a certain number of hits would be sufficient. It seems odd that a kingdom should feel strong enough to max out the meter on a kingdom but not feel like they are able to fight that kingdom in war.

Make it half max. Ask Maximouse how much fun his kingdom had flirting with the NW-range line.

If someone is making 100 points worth of hits, they're either the most dedicated multi ever or they want a fight. Once meter passes 100, NW range becomes 50-200%.

[TheRock]

I cant believe you can give so simple and smart suggestion :) Maybe its can work best atm.
BTW Rock are you ignoring me? What you think for peace declare?

I like the idea in a vacuum, but it's a very dangerous thing to have. From a diplomacy perspective, it makes a whole new set of issues. If VN waves Mercy and I declare Peace on you, can Rage wave you right away? Can Ghetto Cats wave me right away? It's a serious problem that is usually sorted by diplomacy.

On the other side, if VN waves Mercy and then they declare Peace on me, I got pretty screwed. That would suck.

Can you explain it more?

[Mal]

Make it half max. Ask Maximouse how much fun his kingdom had flirting with the NW-range line.

If someone is making 100 points worth of hits, they're either the most dedicated multi ever or they want a fight. Once meter passes 100, NW range becomes 50-200%.

Agreed, it is actually another example of the range restriction being harmful. They had to work to get into range to declare and won the war, same with ghettocats vs OS.

[Elit]

I like the idea in a vacuum, but it's a very dangerous thing to have. From a diplomacy perspective, it makes a whole new set of issues. If VN waves Mercy and I declare Peace on you, can Rage wave you right away? Can Ghetto Cats wave me right away? It's a serious problem that is usually sorted by diplomacy.

No they cant wave vn or mercy because its still open relation. Peace prevent war but dont stop ppl to attack each other if they want.

On the other side, if VN waves Mercy and then they declare Peace on me, I got pretty screwed. That would suck.

Its wont be possible. For declare peace you need x2 less filed meter.

Any other questions :)

[Sheister]

Make it half max. Ask Maximouse how much fun his kingdom had flirting with the NW-range line.

If someone is making 100 points worth of hits, they're either the most dedicated multi ever or they want a fight. Once meter passes 100, NW range becomes 50-200%.

Ehem. However, why should in this disparate NW situation both KD's get button when they don't until max meter in range. Or do you mean that buttons SHOULD be available to whoever is behind after the 100 point mark regardless of KRNW and then both get button at max? The former, I am not in favor of, the latter I am in favor of.

There is no reason my KD should have been unable to control the button, but we would have appreciated being able to chain with our first 8 hits. It would have made bringing mercy down a lot easier. Instead we were forced to max gain those 8 hits to drop their NW and then declare so it screwed our initial chains. Very frustrating indeed.

[Mal]

Ehem. However, why should in this disparate NW situation both KD's get button when they don't until max meter in range. Or do you mean that buttons SHOULD be available to whoever is behind after the 100 point mark regardless of KRNW and then both get button at max? The former, I am not in favor of, the latter I am in favor of.

There is no reason my KD should have been unable to control the button, but we would have appreciated being able to chain with our first 8 hits. It would have made bringing mercy down a lot easier. Instead we were forced to max gain those 8 hits to drop their NW and then declare so it screwed our initial chains. Very frustrating indeed.

He meant the latter.

[TheRock]

Any other questions :)

Peace prevents war? Very dangerous. Who would ever wave a kd with a bank? They'd just have the bank quad raze your T/Ms and then wait for maxed meters to drop Peace and declare.

Letting people block war is a dangerous move, because it lets kingdoms control when war can be declared. What's the limitation on length of time in Peace?

[Mal]

Yes, allowing the range restrictions to fall after a certain amount of meter is a more elegant solution.

[Elit]

Peace prevents war? Very dangerous. Who would ever wave a kd with a bank? They'd just have the bank quad raze your T/Ms and then wait for maxed meters to drop Peace and declare.

Letting people block war is a dangerous move, because it lets kingdoms control when war can be declared. What's the limitation on length of time in Peace?

Pleas read my explain in page 10 before you comment again. I really hate when people ask me stupid questions and its your second time.

[Elit]

Yes, allowing the range restrictions to fall after a certain amount of meter is a more elegant solution.

Its gave zero protection to smaller kds. You can start hit them and if they retal for few days range gone and you can declare them. How its good?

[Mordrek]

Baaaaah. Long post, but that's the price one have to pay if you miss the beginning of a thread like this...

First, I am a big noob and a worthless player according to the limitations several of you in this thread have set up even though I've won crowns in the more competitive ages so those of you who holds the belief that you need to compete for the crown now to have any knowledge of the game don't need to read below this.

Second, even though this was written last, I do have to say that KDRN gains is a great addition to the current game meta since it punishes some of the earlier IMBA-strategies such as cows and province optimization which results in kingdom suboptimization.

Third, the current nw-range for declaration is decent since it prevents small kds from being vultured upon. This is especially true since there are ways a larger kd can take which prevents them from having to give up free waves to smaller kingdoms, but these actions are not something the top kingdoms enjoy since it would prevent them from growing at an optimal pace.

And finally, the main problem in all this is that everyone wants to keep all the advantages from their favourite strategy without having to deal with any of it's drawbacks hence a thread like this will always end up being a list of suggestions that punishes everyone who isn't playing like you do.

Anyway, here comes my comments, and oh boy it's a long list :)

Sheister is ignoring everything said by anyone with any real knowledge of top kingdom mechanics and is consequently being ignored by those people.

As a complete "has-been" and someone who would probably be seen as a n00b by a larger part of the top players if they knew me... TheRock, are you out of your mind?

First and foremost, the conflict between my kd and Mercy wouldn't have degraded into war earlier if there had been a different declare range. I know that you know the game mechanics fairly well since you brag about it in this thread. Given that, you still decided to wave a pumped orc kd about the size of your bulk while you also had a huge cow who inflated your kd nw. Hence, you had the benefit of a cow while we had the benefit of relative nw gains. Your choice and it's more or less a fair deal. You also knew that we would have to hit Mercy down a lot before being able to declare, hence your decision to wave could look more like you hoping that we would give you a free wave because your cow was so large and frightening. However, your objectives with the wave is not important since the result, us finally declaring, wouldn't have arrived earlier had the nw ranges been different. We in Monument had some pre-war goals which included taking down your faes as well as taking control of your bank and the war was declared as soon as our pre-war objectives was reached since we had stripped you of enough nw at that time to declare.

Now, since your wave and our retals have been used by you as a standard for top kingdom mechanics gone wrong then sure - Mercy having a huge bank forced us to make half of our declaration wave as a normal wave because you were out of range but that's about it. However, whining about KDRN gains is just stupid. Why? Because you knew about it and still decided to run a cow hence inflating your kd nw and making it more profitable for other kds to hit your bulk than it is for them to retaliate. There is no hidden mechanics, no unknown factors or nothing except different decisions on a kd wide level and your kingdom decided upon the bank even though the bank also resulted in the other provinces being more vulnerable.

It does sound like you're angry because the current mechanics doesn't allow you to eat the cake and still have it for later. A cow grants your kingdom huge benefits, just look how you aided some of your provinces during the war, but any good game brings counter-play and your bank brings some disadvantages that others can use and abuse. It's called adaptation and is a trademark for good players so just please leave the Mercy vs Monuments conflict out of this discussion and treat Sheister like the good player he is.

That is, unless you want to admit that top kingdom mechanics is different from any other mechanics, and that any disadvantage to the current preferred strategies is illegitimate since it can be used and abused to harm the big egos that inhabit this thread.

Anyway, lets go with the idea that there is a valid point here - the tighter declare range allows kingdoms that are 30% smaller than you to mess about with you a lot. Why are you now unable to deter them?

Because, as stated above by many others throughout this threat the game is currently balanced in such a way that you have to stay on low draft and far away from a war build if you want to have a competitive province during the later stages of an age.

An easy answer to how a kingdom could avoid this is just to tell them to train up and stop using an offensive-heavy draft strategy. Given the right racial setup you could run 90+ dpa with armies home which would prevent n00bs like me being in kingdoms smaller than 75% of theirs to break their provinces. However, being that defensive would yield other problems...

...which is why they could train up and pump like normal provinces. Once a target is 160% your own nw then gains goes toward 0. Hence, a province 60% larger than mine with the same pump will be a worthless target for me (just like Sheister proved when he said that we failed over 90% of our ops towards the enemy bank) because the target is outside of our nw range.

This could be dealt with by imposing an upper limit where gains got throttled down. However, this would be extremely damaging to the game since there are decent kingdoms out there with 20 provinces or less who would lose a large part of their targets as well as the random biggie in a small kd who would get screwed.

There is also the matter of banks, provinces which brings a huge advantage to the kd while inflating it's size and nw. The the above mentioned matter between Mercy and Monument their bank counted for 25% of their size making them 33% larger than us. Now, Mercy vs Monument is a bad example in specifics but a pretty good one in general. It's sheer existence gave Monument a 10% boost on every hit, not counting racial or sci. Hence any prolonged retaliation war was a doomed endeavour for Mercy, unless they would utilize the bank optimum.

However, it seems that a lot of the people commenting in this thread seems to think that the tactic to run a bank is sacrificial hence the result that it's sheer existence makes a retal war less profitable proves that the game is flawed...

It is not nubery, it is not having no clue. It is the truth. Every thing they say is that they want to do only the most efficient thing in the game, so mechanics must be changed so that war is the most efficient thing and so that they can more efficiently beat on smaller KDs.

DHaran has a point in that anyone not in the top 10 are nubs in the eyes of the top. Just read this whole thread if you are in doubt. However, a lot of the well renown players who said something here thus far have showed that they lack the same ability to understand basic game mechanics as they accuse the average player of not having. Dicing and running low drafts are an efficient way to win the land crown hence they play accordingly. However, when the "average" player gathers intel on these "super provinces" and realizes that a lot of them are just yummie targets then it's the game that's flawed...

...so why not change the mechanics so that a warrying kingdom will stand a greater chance to win something? It worked before, as I should know, so why wouldn't it work now? And you don't have to do it the "hard" way, by switching declaration ranges or relative kd nw.

Instead one should decrease the acres gained on dice (I think it was TheRock that gave the calcs necessary, since all you have to do is make war far more profitable than dicing, so make dicing half as efficient and also that the winning kd get 5-10% of the losing kds acerage). Voil?. The best players who run the most efficient kds will have to war to win the crown and thus the top will be a much more active place to be in.

This will also stop the waves everyone complains about. A fully drafted kingdom with a small acre gap will not be a good target since most if not all provinces will be out of optimum nw range, and the kingdoms doing those waves wouldn't wave unless they benefited from it (which I know from personal chats with several members of the kingdoms mentioned earlier)

The only classic argument happening here is that of the scrub, who complains about how others play to win without really understanding why it's the right way to play given a set of circumstances or mechanics.

The difference here is and always shall be this: players who only know one type of play are arguing with those who knows ALL types of play. It's laughable how sure they are of themselves that they know everything.

And yes DHaran, your comment about the pack being nubs might be right but it's still a bad comment. As proven by many others, even though I highlighted it above in this post, top kingdoms who run low draft and cows will and are getting exploited by smaller kds who wave upwards. This is only a problem because the top kds choose to run low draft and cows hence your classic argument fails.

Most of the players commenting here knows about ALL types of play, but it also seems as if several players want to optimize their provinces as if they played the game in single player mode where they don't run the risk of getting whacked due to poor defences or low nwpa.

But, given your own input then here's the deal. Bad players complain about tactics that doesn't suit their current one. A lot of the top players comments in this thread have been directed towards a problem which isn't a problem if they had been running different strats. By stating that it's laughtable that anyone pointing this out is a nub, you also make a fool out of yourself (and the worst part is that I did like you somewhat earlier since you used to post decent ideas).

A lot of big kingdoms run strategies which encourages OOR kingdoms to hit into them. Is that the game that's flawed? Is it the top players who know everything, and the kingdoms abusing the current system that's scrubs for waving top 10 kingdoms? How can you even state something like that, when there is an efficient way of making those topfeeding waves unefficient? You know what? You are the nub. Thanks.

To review: the two options for deterring were declaring and farming with big provinces or razing. Razing is not an efficient or effective deterrent and ALWAYS sets kingdoms back against their competition. You took away the only "good" play.

I am in a small kingdom. You waved us. We fought back. You had decided to run a cow, hence you suffered from KDRN during the hostile and lost ground even though you did more hits.

I will interpret your statement in two different ways;

1.) You had a huge prov. That province could raze or farm us in war. Hence its bare existence would deter us from retaliating your wave because it would be unbeatable. In the same way, it would deter anyone from waving into your kingdom, given that you played a strategy involving low draft (which you didn't do since you were out looking for a war). However, the game is flawed since that province became a liability instead of an asset and thus something has to be done since you want that big fancy province.

2.) War is not as productive as it should be. At least not if you are the winning part. The problem is that provinces not in war will gain far more than you can expect while fighting a war. Hence the benefits of being at peace should drop and/or the gains of war should increase. Potential suggestions to this would be lowered dice gains once X amount of acres had been diced as well as your province being above Y amount of acres as well as a %-age of enemy acres being given to your kingdom to disperse as the monarch prefer upon a WW thus promote wars for everyone.

There is also a third option which you forgot to mention being keeping your provinces pumped and ready for war. It's simple - GB protection is huge when not at war. That protects your smallest provinces from being vultured on by a waving kingdom. Meanwhile you can protect your middle sized provinces by sheer nw due to nw related gains. If there is no profit in hitting larger kingdoms then most won't. Simple as that.

However, the third option is not a viable one since it makes you lose ground against the other kingdoms your size. So, how do one encourage it?

Removing KDRN gains, or increasing the declaration range, will not fix this. Gearing up for war is not profitable since wars are not profitable. jdorje tried to address the issue, but I'm not sure he dragged it far enough. The solution should be to increase the risks of war while making them more profitable. That would make the third option viable and the problem with extreme topfeeding waves less of an issue.

Remove GBP and kdnw reduced gains when X hostility is reached.
Allow the dual button at max meter to ignore NW.

I really hope you intended to miss the point xD GB protection is there to protect a province from excessive targetting prior to war. If you want to chain someone then raze is still pretty powerful albeit with no gains for the province chaining. And making the dual button at max meter to ignore NW leaves smaller kds completely without protection especially with reduced KDNW gains since that would only promote prolonged hostiles.

What TheRock, and a lot of others, have been saying is that it's boring to be waved by smaller kingdoms and being unable to fight back. This is due to the game being balanced in such a way that dicing is more profitable than conflicts at any stage of the age except maybe in the latest stage. The above suggestions would maybe promote some bottomfeeding but it would not target the core problem - that of conflict not being profitable enough.

So why not make it profitable? Why not make it so that you gain a huge amount of the enemy land upon getting that WW? Meanwhile drop dice gains or increase the difficulty of the dice spell so that dicing at larger sizes gets unprofitable?

Suggestion:
1.) Upon WW, the winning size gains 10% of the enemy kds total acreage, removing acres according to how large someone is. These acres is split into two pools where 50% lands on the provinces directly in even terms (hence a 100 acre pool gives every province 2 free acres). The other 50% is given to the monarch, to divide as he pleases (so that he can either help chained provinces or feed his cow or whatever). Since KDRN gains comes in play as well as the declaration range the game will sooner or later land in a situation where the largest provinces will have to battle each other if they want to win the land crown thus making war a must do even if you're aiming for the size crowns.
2.) Provinces below the kd average will be able to explore according to the old formula during postwar cf. This will make it easier for organised kds to regrow their chained provinces and return to fighting shape.
3.) Upon reaching a size above 2k acres and having diced at least 2k acres the gains on dicing throttles down towards 33% of the original gains. This should not have an impact on the smaller provinces but will make dicing a no-go if you're aiming at the very top. However, faeries who are unable to attack (more or less) should have the throttle decreased a bit so that they can keep up with their kd once the kd grows large enough. This will also make the explore pool more important, since that will be the only efficient way to grow unless you win wars and/or can attack.

I like your solution but would also like to see a move towards a more conflict oriented top (actually your solution helps there too since it removes the incentive to fight OOW for long periods of time ala Snakes vs. Fury currently). This combined with something like extending the surrender time by 6 hours (let the winning kingdom get the last wave thereby causing proper separation based on who is stronger/make war more beneficial to winning kingdoms) and making it easier to explore chained provinces during the EoWCF would make the game a lot more fun from my standpoint.

Finally a decent comment. Yes there is a problem that you can abuse the KDNR relative gains (even though some people amplified this problem by running cows, a legit strategy even though it does have known drawbacks such as other kingdoms getting better gains into yours) and the problem should and could be addressed by making the game more conflict orientated both in the top and in general.

I do also believe that the option to gain a free max gain waved if timed properly is a strong incentive for the surrendering kd and shouldn't be removed. However, pushing that surrender button should hinder the own kd from making any more hits while starting a fixed 2 hour countdown until an automated surrender. Meanwhile a huge bonus for the winners, such as potentially 10% of the losing sides total acreage, would cause both proper separation and an incentive for good kds to war.

I'm not a fan of punishing the loser more, I would like to see winning kingdoms be able to choose their reward, building upon the current system. Being able to select bonus land, honor sci etc would make winning a war profitable with direct rewards for your current kingdom requirements.

Risk vs reward someone? You risk a ton by taking a conflict to war and your gains could be monumental. Just make the other options, dice and explore, less profitable and even the losers won't lose too much compared to the dicers and explorers.

Make the losers lose land, just as they lose honour today (even though that part could be throttled some more), and the winners gain all that. The result will be more fights and a better dispersion in the charts since winners grow and losers stay small.

This will also give you the separation needed to make the game fun for everyone, without the need to remove some of the basic parts that protect smaller kingdoms from bottomfeeding, since good kds will automatically be up there (just as several already pointed out) while it would make it harder for small kds to exploit their efficiency vs weaker players due to their kds growing a lot from the victories.

It's impossible to explore up small provinces to get them out of range, since explore costs are x2 for chained provinces versus what they were two ages ago and also x2 in postwar.

Yay! A serious problem with an easy solution. Make it so that provinces smaller than half your kd average can explore given the old formula during postwar cf. Problem solved.

I'm open to the possibility that three kingdoms lead by some of the most experienced leaders in the game who have consistently excelled over the last ~10 ages and are generally regarded as some of the top kingdoms remaining today happen to be collectively missing some giant loophole that would allow them to effectively fight back, but as nobody's actually presented one yet, I stand by the standards of The Zebra Theory (if you hear hoofs, don't think zebras, think horses) and think the system is not working.

Back to basics, right? The current strategy employed by those kingdoms to reach the maximum possible amount of acres encourages them to just eat the wave hence they eat the wave. I agree on The Zebra Theory with the addendum that the extremely experienced leaders are intelligent enough to realize that they can afford to lose those acres but they cannot afford the time off dicing that a conflict forces them into which makes them prioritize the CF.

Why say that the system isn't working just because the top players can't sit and dice alone and untouched?

Make it half max. Ask Maximouse how much fun his kingdom had flirting with the NW-range line.

If someone is making 100 points worth of hits, they're either the most dedicated multi ever or they want a fight. Once meter passes 100, NW range becomes 50-200%.

And we're back to you showing that you indeed are a nub. The war between Mercy and Monuments wouldn't have started earlier regardless of the current NW-range since Monument controlled the button during the hostile up until the end and Monument had no interest of pushing it earlier even if we could have.

Also, you knew about the current NW-range and still you waved. As stated above you either knew that we had to hit you down 1.5 million nw to get in range for war and was planning for that or you hoped we would give you free acres and now you're pissed because you didn't get them... Regardless of which we in Monuments where the ones losing out on the current declaration ranges since we had to waste a half wave to get you in range when we wanted to declare and still we don't complain.

But if you want to discuss ranges then why not complain about the dragon send range that prevented your sweet bank from showering us with dragons until you sacrificed ospec to get into dragon range? Same deal there - you decided to run with a bank which gave you a lot of advantages without thinking of all the disadvantages...

Agreed, it is actually another example of the range restriction being harmful. They had to work to get into range to declare and won the war, same with ghettocats vs OS.

Yes, we got lucky. We got Mercy in range just as we achieved our pre-war goals hence we could declare when we wanted (or after half a wave being done pre-declaration but still). But still, we don't complain since we neither used the system nor abused it. If you aim at making it easier then increase the smaller kingdoms declare range once the button is maxed out to 200% and everything will be fine :)