+1 rsjabba
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+1 rsjabba
It looks like people are talking past eachother, so I'll try to summarize the premises of the two sides. Please correct me if i'm wrong.
Shiester, rsjabba and co seem to be saying "utopia is a war game, and anyone whose goal is growth is 'doing it wrong'. The game's mechanics should making warring balanced. If growth mechanics are unbalanced, that's ok because players shouldn't be growing anyway."
therock, dorje, and mal seem to be saying "the growth mechanics--particularly war range and dicing--are unbalanced/boring and we should fix them" I didn't see them acknowledge the effect of war range on people who don't care about growth.
Is there some mechanic that satisfies both constraints? I think some form of "declare peace" would work.
The diplomacy games are a result of unbalanced growth/war mechanics, so there is no choice. If you want to win #1, you have to use the "single growth paradigm". The top doesn't want to just dice, that's the whole point you seemed to miss.Quote:
Originally Posted by rsjabba
But they still CHOOSE to because they care more about #1 than they do about having fun. They are willing to compromise having fun for a meaningless internet title. Then because they are that abusive of game mechanics they need to impose their problem on the rest of the server. Well I am sorry, they can suck it up. Nowhere else is this a problem. There were three examples of the "problem" raised. Two were of dubious character as the "affected" KDs are #1 and #2. The last one picked the fight for alliance or other political reasons and got pwned as a result of that. So in short, even the best examples raised illustrated that IT'S NOT A PROBLEM. Certainly its not enough of a problem to screw with protections for the rest of the server that are in place to prevent these idiots from ruining the game for the rest of the player base.
you do not screw 95% of the player base to make 5% of the player base happy unless you really just want to kill the game.
Fantastic?Quote:
Originally Posted by rsjabba
Rushed science is 2 BPA per hour. If you wave for war, get declared that same hour, take the minimum 12h in postwar, you're at 60 hours. Rushed would give 120 BPA. Staying on Active science through war (unrealistic) and then winning (only one side wins) would give 142 BPA. In a BEST CASE scenario, you come out 20 BPA ahead. This assumes you can stay on Rushed right up until hostile (you can't), you get declared same hour you wave (you won't), you'll leave war 12h after it ends (you won't) and you remain on Active sciences through the whole thing (you won't). 100 BPA is very nice early age, and gives incentives for early warning. As with dicing, timeframe is relative - early age, warring is a good way to get sciences, just like randoming is a good way to get acres. Later, dicing and pumping sci become much better.
You're getting dangerously close to Sheister territory with comments like " if you in the top 10 genuinely want to play diplomacy games and do nothing but dice". We don't. Nobody does. We want to win. You're confusing wanting to win with wanting to play diplomacy games and dice. One is an end, one is a means.
As far as this working for everyone...if you think the suggestions dorje made do not materially improve gameplay for most players, I strongly disagree.
Dorje knows the game better than anyone who's posted in this thread, bar none. I see most people fixated on this War Range issue, most of whom don't even consider the consequences of it. The truth is, you WANT top kingdoms to grow out of range. Top kingdoms are relentless randomers, and do so for the entire age, as long as they are able to. The last time the big kingdoms were forced to stay small was the age dicing took half the acres from the pool. Bishop's stated numerous times that age got more complaints from players than any other age by far, because the top kingdoms just kept hitting everyone. If the current mechanics are left in place, the game will become a game of making friends to have your friends hit OOR kds and big kingdoms razing small ones away. This will be fun for exactly 0 players.
Ata - not quite accurate.Quote:
Originally Posted by ata
Sheister is ignoring everything said by anyone with any real knowledge of top kingdom mechanics and is consequently being ignored by those people.
rsjabba seems to think that growing kingdoms should wave each other more and fight more, and it's their own fault for growing. His comments reflect a belief that top kingdoms don't fight much early on, that CFs are given to allow the kingdoms to "get away" and that they should "wave each other more". I am hopeful that he will read the posts made by other players and come to understand why two kingdoms fighting sets them behind all other kingdoms under the current mechanics, as the war system in place promotes this behavior, and comes to learn that top kingdoms do fight a lot early on, but put CFs up after the fighting is done.
dorje wants comprehensive changes made to the races, both for networth and offense/defense balance. He wants the declaration range limits rebalanced, with limitations in place to prevent the farm warring and bottomfeed declaring issues from before. He wants exploration fixed to allow the smaller kingdoms to use it, as they currently have no good means to do so (to wit - exploring up chained provinces in warring kingdoms is now twice as expensive as before). He wants wars among top kingdoms to become beneficial to those kingdoms, as opposed to the current mutual stalling that they are now. To date, nobody has comprehensively provided real and meaningful feedback on most of these suggestions, but most seem very opposed to some issues, even though evidence strongly refutes them. The proposed changes provide significant improvements to gameplay.
TheRock and Mal fully support dorje's proposed changes and have made limited efforts to engage with people regarding their concerns and issues by providing real examples and reasons. By and large, those have been ignored or overlooked, in favor of people repeating their positions instead of responding to the points raised.
For the competitive field, winning #1 is the fun. The road to get there is just what needs to be done.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheister
And there is no screwing of the other 95%, because most of the things being discussed here doesn't affect them at all. Your argument is basically that mechanics should be based on the kingdoms who aren't good enough to win, and that's as fail as it gets.
Protip - top kingdoms will always find the best ways to grow using the mechanics provided. Double explore costs? Time to run multiple cows! Take away dicing? Top kingdoms hit all the other kingdoms all age! Change the science system to prevent fast pumps? CF and pump for weeks!Quote:
Originally Posted by DHaran
It's amazing how many people confuse cause and effect. CFs, dicing, sci-pumping, stacking gcs, running banks...it's not like kingdoms said "WE WANT TO DO THIS SO WE ARE GOING TO MAKE EVERYONE DO IT AND COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYTHING THAT MIGHT INTERFERE WITH THIS". The top is a jungle - you eat what you kill. All of these things are just what the Alpha Predators do to stay on top because they figured out, quite quickly, that this was the best way to do things. There are always kingdoms that try to get ahead and say "Oh, I'll never CF, I'll just topfeed all age and rob all age and be unreasonable and piss everyone off". Those kingdoms do not last.
well, whatever else is said, it is very obvious that there are two completely different play styles happening ... at the top, and then everywhere else.
i actually like a great many changes listed by dorje. i just don't like that so many people seem to think dice needs to change.
yes, you are absolutely right that warring can set you back. you are absolutely right that pumping on the highest science possible at all times will give you more science than winning a war while maintaining a decend science rate throughout.
i think the most meaningful thing i've learned in and about this game is that no matter what you do, you're taking a chance. there is NO guarantee that you'll win a war. you take a big risk - you could win comfortably, you could come out more or less the same as everyone else, you could get stuck in a pride war and end up behind everyone else... you just don't know, except when you're at the top. behaviour at the top, if i'm reading this thread right, has become too predictable.
i still maintain that this dice issue is a player issue, not a mechanics issue. i recognise that there are probably more benefits to sitting and dicing than risking one's tailfeather in certain circumstances, when multiple kingdoms focus their entire play on it.
my belief is that in utopia, if you want to get ahead without limiting your own options, you need to take a risk. that means waving more. here is a hypothetical: stop dicing. if one kingdom continues to dice, so be it. let them crown at 40mil on their own. they can be bored all age.
alternatively, let them dice, play dirty and break your CF and have your way with them when they don't expect it.
and let me give you a little anecdote.
i used to play company of heroes, lots. i loved it so much that i dissected the workings and came up with foolproof strats to get victory. i ended up being really, really good - but no fun to play against.
all my friends told me to stop doing it, but i ignored them because i wanted to win and be the best.
long story short, now none of us play company of heroes. they quit because it was no longer fun to play with uber competitive people, and i quit because dominating and knowing mechanics wasn't enough. i started making my own mods (i actually got pretty good at modding .lua files and xml arrays and whatnot). i found out that creating a rapid fire 88 and giving it to the basic infantry units is FUNNY but it ruins the game. i got bored of a game that i could change at will and win too easily, and stopped playing.
the moral of the story is... stop dissecting everything. when you know everything about a game, it loses some of its appeal. you become less fun to play with. then people quit. we don't want that, thats why plenty of ghettos are filled with people that don't know the mechanics - its why i dont know the mechanics (and don't want to know the mechanics) even though i've played for about 8 years now.
the game could use some changes, and lots of dorje's are practical. but changing dice from something that most people use for a fast land gand to get into range of better war targets to something that is useless isn't a good idea.
Ok lets explain my idea about "declare peace". Right now all big kds say 25% declare range is very bad and easy for abuse from smaller kds. They can wave out from range and bigger kds have only one effective way for strike: raze/pk. How we all know raze don't give gains for any one and its not fun :) From other Side when range for declare is 50% you can avoid this abuse from smaller kd but big kds (in middle range too) can bully smaller kd and trap him in war. Actually trap in war is most danger when KD A have multie and hit on propose KD B for arrange war. With change in agg stance its not easy to be done now, but still possible. There come my idea. Back declare range down 50% and up maybe not limited? But add new hostile stance.
New hostile option: Declare peace. Results from it:
Affect for KD A who declare peace
1. War declare is not possible for both sides! <--- this way we avoid all trap wars.
2. Kingdom can declare peace only if his metter is x2 less. <-- Goal is if KD A don't want to fight back to declare peace from begin not to stall kd B in retal war for few days and declare after it.
3. When KD A declare peace they loss all hostile ops. <--Its for avoid abuse for keep op KD B and refuse CF.
4. Reduce gains from attack with 10%
Result for KD B after peace is declared:
1. they keep all hostile ops if KD A keep retal.
2. +4h attack time
3. +10% army losses.
4. Kingdom B get option to Force in game CF for 48h. <---good way to move on for both sides.
I think with this kind of penalty no one will keep feed on KD A for long because its not effective. System look to work good for smal and big kds. Maybe its can be tuned. This is just starting point for discussion.
You always gotta keep asking why. Why is it that you'll lose your shot at #1 if you war? The answer is: because someone else doesn't and can freely dice/pump. Why can the other freely dice/pump? Because he's unthreatened. Why is the other unthreatened? Cause he has NAPs with all other potentional threats. Why does he have NAPs with everybody? So he won't get caught of guard/vultured and can thus dice/pump freely till noticed and run low draft.Quote:
Originally Posted by DHaran
There's a big fat loop going on in this system. What would happen if you take away the NAP part?
Would the other still be able to break away? He couldn't affort to run low draft now eh, he'd be immediately threatend by other kd's not in war. He'd have less expenses as the kd at war sure, but he could only marginally benefit from it and the winning kd from the war would have a real shot at gaining more than the other could dice/pump on high draft.
If the top isn't happy with the current system, they may want to look at their own influence on it.
It can be a whole different experience without any game mechanic change. The answer is right there.
Thank you.............
They can sit here and deny it and blame everyone else as much as they want. But as TheRock said, it does not matter what mechanic is in place, the top will still be the top. Stop screwing with everything to try to make it so that you are FORCED to do what you say you want to do. Just DO what you want to do. They are forced to dice? Stop it right there. No one is holding a gun to their heads. They do it because they want to be #1. Clearly though, being #1 is not the fun they thought BECAUSE they are in here trying to make mechanics that force them to do more fun stuff instead of dice.
Why do we need to do things to change the way THEY play? Why, to change the way THEY play am I to be FORCED to change the way I CHOOSE to play? How illogical is it, as a threshold matter, that we need to change a mechanic to make it so that it is more likely that people will choose to have FUN in a GAME (and DHaran, they ADMIT already that dicing is not fun. They CHOOSE, in other words, to use the most un-fun (e.g. to not have fun) methods they can so that they can claim an empty internet title)? If mechanics are changed in some way, the top will still be the top and they will STILL CHOOSE the most efficient (and likely UN-FUN) method trying to get to #1. Because they are people who just can't enjoy a game like normal social people. WHY are only a few of us on this board the only ones who can see that?
Its stupid. One day the stupid kids at the top will grow up and stop playing this like a video game where they can get the cheat codes (no, I am not saying they cheat, I am saying it is the same mentality) so they can get the highest score EVAR and learn to just enjoy the game. Those are not necessarily the same things.
While I can understand the general principle of the arguement of stop playing that way and it isn't an issue I also fail to understand quite the level of vitriol that seems to be associated with such a stance.
The 'Top' players (or at least those posting here) seem to be saying if you want to win you have to play a certain way which is boring. There are always going to be some people who choose to do that, so if we don't as well then we have no chance of winning. It seems to me to be pretty poor game design if your choices are play to win in a boring and mechanistic fashion or play for fun with no chance of winning.
What they want is to be able to play for fun and still have some chance of winning. I don't see how you can argue with that as a principle... And it also has a very negative connotation for the rest of the server if true, because the vast majority of players will not want to play at the top and learn and improve and hence improve the level of competition simply because they don't want to play in a boring way.
It seems to me that the situation is like that faced by an addict who wants to give up but can't. You may say 'hey just stop doing it' but sometimes they need to be forced to make a change and adapt...
For a few questions, and hopefully someone will indulge / educate me:
1) Is the aim of the changes to bias gameplay such that warring is preferable to dice / eplxore? Or to simply balance the two? (I ask because it strike me that given two situations with equal possibl benefit where one involves a risk (war) and one does not (explore / dice) people would simply still choose the risk-free option and play the percentages)
2) If my assumption above is correct (which it may not be) how much bias do you need to give in favour of warring generating a better return than explore / dice for it to become a risk the top will favour?
3) If the Top always plays in a way that results in maximum benefit is there any practical difference between a mechanic change that favours warring over explore / dice in comparison to a change that actually forced people to war? (i.e. limited explore / dice acres in relation to acres taken in combat so that no more that no more than x% of total land acquired come come from explore or dice)
4) If you favour warring as a means of growth, will that not lead to less 'seperation' between KD's (early age as people will choose to war instead of explore / dice and late age because presumably even average kds will be growing more) thus leading to a situation where the top is closer to everyone else and more able to smack them about leading to them complaining about it?
5) Is it genuinely true that all top players view warring / combat as more 'fun', as that's surely a subjective concept, are there not some people who actually enjoy the explore / dice approach?
6) I don't get how making the acres come fro your own pool during war as opposed to the oppositions favours warring vs not warring?
You make several sound points. I am going to break this up to give some explanation of my perspective.
The vitriol (at least to the extent that I personally have such) stems from the idea that I am sick of being forced to change how I and the vast majority of players choose to enjoy the game for the benefit of between 5-8 kingdoms in this game. Less than 5% of the game is dictating how this game should be played and enjoyed by the other 95%. I am sick of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by AlphaWaveCascade
As they themselves note, they are at the top because they are the most experienced and claim to be the most innovative. Further they will put the time in to find the most efficient and mechanic abusing mechanisms to get ahead in this game. So no matter how much this game gets tweaked they will likely always be at the top because they have an inherent sickness in them regarding this game. You comment below about addicts is exactly on point. So, because they are addicts it does not matter what is done, they will find a way to ruin the game. Well, at present the mechanics prevent them from ruining the game for everyone else. Let’s keep it that way.Quote:
The 'Top' players (or at least those posting here) seem to be saying if you want to win you have to play a certain way which is boring. There are always going to be some people who choose to do that, so if we don't as well then we have no chance of winning. It seems to me to be pretty poor game design if your choices are play to win in a boring and mechanistic fashion or play for fun with no chance of winning.
They say that, but they won’t. Time and again they admit that here. They will always seek the most efficient means to win and that will mean bug abuse, exploits, mechanics abuse, etc etc etc. I am all for altering mechanics when it involves these people abusing kingdoms that DO NOT make a habit of exploiting the game and other kingdoms. I do not support altering it so that people who abuse the game in an irrational quest to ruin their own fun for a farcical and empty internet title can then change/alter/potentially ruin everyone else’s fun.Quote:
What they want is to be able to play for fun and still have some chance of winning. I don't see how you can argue with that as a principle... And it also has a very negative connotation for the rest of the server if true, because the vast majority of players will not want to play at the top and learn and improve and hence improve the level of competition simply because they don't want to play in a boring way.
Yes! You are precisely right that they are addicts. However, it is not the job of the rest of the server to suffer for these people. We do not need to have a mass intervention for them. We are not here to make them feel better about their obsessive compulsive disorders.Quote:
It seems to me that the situation is like that faced by an addict who wants to give up but can't. You may say 'hey just stop doing it' but sometimes they need to be forced to make a change and adapt...
The only possible way is to bias the game towards warring as you already note. The game is already moving in this direction on its own naturally without the need to remove mechanics to protect smaller kingdoms from these predatory addicted people at the top.Quote:
For a few questions, and hopefully someone will indulge / educate me:
1) Is the aim of the changes to bias gameplay such that warring is preferable to dice / eplxore? Or to simply balance the two? (I ask because it strike me that given two situations with equal possibl benefit where one involves a risk (war) and one does not (explore / dice) people would simply still choose the risk-free option and play the percentages)
TheRock already calculated that for you. He set up how most of these people run, with sufficiently low draft that they can run rushed science (which the game is not intended to do all the time) and so on and so forth so that you gain more books and acres from war than you could outside of it. This is an illogical extreme to take this system to and really guts part of the spirit of the game (imho). But as The Rock and others point out, they are only happy warring when they get fully pumped and prepared provinces, so they will not do anything anyway until they have so abused game mechanics that they feel “ready”.Quote:
2) If my assumption above is correct (which it may not be) how much bias do you need to give in favour of warring generating a better return than explore / dice for it to become a risk the top will favour?
Theoretically yes. The argument is you need to let the predatory top get away so that they do not abuse newer players. Recall that their ego is such that they need to get to #1. Therefore they will seek out the weakest kingdoms, the newest players, the most vulnerable in the player base to strip out all their resources and land and ruin their game so that they can have an advantage over anyone who would have picked a more challenging war and thereby have slower or lesser gains. You see, they will do whatever they can to ruin this game for others in their quest to get #1. That is all they want or care about.Quote:
3) If the Top always plays in a way that results in maximum benefit is there any practical difference between a mechanic change that favours warring over explore / dice in comparison to a change that actually forced people to war? (i.e. limited explore / dice acres in relation to acres taken in combat so that no more that no more than x% of total land acquired come come from explore or dice)
Yes this is the argument that was erected to prevent early age limitations on dice and explore and was proven valid in a few ages. Thus it is best to just let them go off into their top 10 world and disappear. They are only whining now because recently there have been kingdoms with enough experience to recognize that when they are randoming and hitting into smaller KD’s they can use game mechanics to punish them and thus discourage them hitting into smaller kingdoms. While the top likes to CLAIM that smaller kingdoms are hitting up into them for gain, every example they have erected of this has proven to be false.Quote:
4) If you favour warring as a means of growth, will that not lead to less 'seperation' between KD's (early age as people will choose to war instead of explore / dice and late age because presumably even average kds will be growing more) thus leading to a situation where the top is closer to everyone else and more able to smack them about leading to them complaining about it?
Maybe, but the plurality acknowledge that warring is more challenging and therefore more fun.Quote:
5) Is it genuinely true that all top players view warring / combat as more 'fun', as that's surely a subjective concept, are there not some people who actually enjoy the explore / dice approach?
Exploring comes from your own pool. If wars and exploring both exhaust your own pool keeping it perpetually low, then the only option to continue growth at a competitive level is to take land from outside your own pool.Quote:
6) I don't get how making the acres come fro your own pool during war as opposed to the oppositions favours warring vs not warring?