AMA & BB ruin the game

You guys are log jammed up there, so unjam it.
Hostile/Fort is a tool that reflects guerilla tactics, good or bad.
Am I worried about being prepared? No. But I look at all the lower tier in compromising positions that most of this would harm. I appreciate attempts at improvement, but they have to serve the casual player. This isn't babying, just like the aggressor doesn't like eating ops.
Hostile/Fort is akin to fighting from cover. War is a diplo mechanic as in colonial times: All you've done is convinced the enemy to exchange musket volleys with banners waving.

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Originally Posted by StratOcastle

You guys are log jammed up there, so unjam it.
Hostile/Fort is a tool that reflects guerilla tactics, good or bad.
Am I worried about being prepared? No. But I look at all the lower tier in compromising positions that most of this would harm. I appreciate attempts at improvement, but they have to serve the casual player. This isn't babying, just like the aggressor doesn't like eating ops.
Hostile/Fort is akin to fighting from cover. War is a diplo mechanic as in colonial times: All you've done is convinced the enemy to exchange musket volleys with banners waving.

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My kingdom of casual players would love to get to push a war button instead of eating waves from larger kingdoms while we try to find someone that wont run from our war.
Maybe you make fort stance un-declarable and drop it to 2 days max, ect something along those lines so fort is still a tactic to prevent war/wave as it is somewhat now. (I don't have the answer for it but this system seems like a much better system for a warring game) It would make the warring kingdoms have a hell of a lot more fun and be mindful of size/pump.

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Originally Posted by Godly

If one kingdom is better prepared, they deserve to be able to wreck face without having to dance around relations for 8 days. Don't be a pansy. Learn how to play and be prepared at all times. If you let a kingdom near your size pump to 4k BPA (I mean that number alone is ridiculous), you seriously did something wrong. This game wasn't designed to have people sit around for 10 weeks pumping science and running from conflicts and have 1 big war at the end of the round.

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Indeed I intentionally exagerated the numbers but I do think that Rage reached numbers pretty close to that the age PewPew reset on them.
I disagree that the better kingdom somehow deserves anything, you're free to initiate hostilities but I do think that the receiving kingdom should have the final say on war and they ought be able to dodge or delay almost indefinitely if they so choose, it encourages you to go after an opponent that is either equally matched or even overmatched for you rather than going for the "sure thing". It's why I think that acres alone is insufficient to base something like forced war on, it says too little about the relative strength between the kingdoms(it determines the theoretical maximum of other metrics, but not the actual metrics themselves).

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Originally Posted by Godly

Also having "banks" isn't a guaranteed win. In fact, if two kingdoms have equal land and "power" (read the former nw/acre metric) and one kingdom has like 1/4 of their land in banks, I'd take a larger core over banks kingdom any day, ESPECIALLY if we remove this retarded nw based ops in war. Keep MS and fireball those banks and you'll see how useful those provs are. After 4 days of war and their core is destroyed, those banks will be completely alone and must surrender.

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Yes I'm aware that cows isn't a blanket "win card", sometimes they can be a liability, most often they're not. I mentioned cows because they're usually seen as a metric that gives a significant advantage and a lot of the top jockeying revolves around them.
And yes if we dropped all range penalties on ops/spells then that would certainly spice things up(it would certainly force you to handle chains differently). I'm not going to argue against that, in fact that part of your suggestion could be pretty interesting.

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Originally Posted by Godly

The current diplomacy system is completely useless. It's basically just a way for big kingdoms to trick little kingdoms into clearing relations only to break it when their provs become fat again. We (top kingdoms) have been doing relations outside of utopia since round 1. Why? How you are arguing this point just further proves to me that you will argue anything just to argue.

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That's partly because the little kingdoms perpetuate that circle of events. They erroneously believe that the empty cf they send means something and that the problem will go away if they just bend over and put their heads in the sand. They think it acts as some sort of shield when it doesn't(cue a lot of whining if you have the audacity to break their blank cf and resume hits with a reset meter). But I can concede that this sort of treatment could be a problem(and maybe some sort of cooldown or other mechanism should be considered, and the hostile meter(if it's retained) should not be instantly wiped but persist for some time).

On the other hand I don't think that dealbreaks etc should be entirely prevented, the **** that happened last age was spiced things up for a while and we've seen people play the relationship system to win for several ages now. I think that the open and completely trust based diplomacy system is what gives the game a lot of its flavor. If you make cf's etc inviolable then it'd be an entirely different game we'd be playing and if you go down that route then there's no excuse not to make wars and hostiles inviolable(if they're retained) as well and then essentially nothing of what makes utopia into what it is would be left.

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Originally Posted by Band of Horses

Are you against instant replay in baseball too? Purists will always be there. I'd like to see the CF relation thing, especially since it would add another element. Top cant GB a kingdom if they have CF so makes CFs shorter and more action at the top.

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Sorry but I've never watched or played even a single game of baseball so I have absolutely no idea what that analogy is about. I'm not completely against a change to the relationship system(it certainly has its flaws) but I do think that such a drastic change would make the game more boring and there would be less action at the top, not more.
Plus I think that there would be even less respite for the smaller kingdoms because rather than just moving on after a wave or two and resetting the meter the big kingdoms would just keep farming until there's nothing left to take because if you accept their cf and they explore somebody then they'd miss out on those acres which they'd probably want to avoid.
Besides, utopia has always been about the liberty to do whatever you wanted to(within the limitations of the written rules obviously), no matter how nasty, foul or distasteful it is, so I think we'd loose a lot of that spirit if we make cf's or other ingame states/contracts inviolable.

Your opinion on how relations should occur in utopia is exactly that -- your opinion. You haven't provided any facts on why this is detrimental to the game other than "it's not fair." War, like games, is not fair. If you suck, you get punished. The fact that you want kingdoms to be able to dodge indefinitely just further illustrates that you are out of touch with how the game was originally intended to play and still is intended to be played according recent mechanics changes to promote increased warring -- although they totally botched it up, it still proves that their core belief is still that this is a warring game and kingdoms have no right to evade wars (meter cap).

The direction is not up to us. I am only giving the path forward for one direction. If they want to promote increased warring and growth through warring, this is the path -- irregardless of how you feel the game should be played. If they don't want kingdoms to be accountable for their lack of preparation, then sure my suggestion is not valid.

I'll give you a brief history lesson because I'm not so sure how long you've been playing. Wars were instant declare for a LONG time. Kingdoms either put up or shut up. Instant declare was not removed because it was detrimental to anyone's game experience or they wanted to reduce warring, but solely to prevent fake wars 100% which was exactly what was happening every round. Kingdoms were literally exploring and entering fake wars over and over again and it was just too abusable. It came down to not how well you played but how many people you knew. Like if we were noticed, we used to go through a checklist of ICQ contacts and see which of them were currently not in a fake war or were not willing to waste 48 hrs or whatever the length used to be. The minute this administration said that fake wars are an actionable offense, the meter should have been removed that same day.



However since we are giving opinions, and this is just my opinion, my personal game experience is ruined when I contemplate considering playing another round and I see only two paths:
1) YOLO war and have fun, get powerplayed by those who didn't and have no chance at winning the round
2) Secure CFs and afk extreme science for 10 weeks and then have a diplo cluster**** at the end of the round.

Both of those options suck: have fun and lose or not even play the game and win. This is where we currently are. AMA played a hell of a round last round, beat pretty much everyone but yet still would have lost 1v1 to us due to resource/science/land advantage due to mechanics rewarding kingdoms who choose not to fight. On paper, they deserved to win. With my changes, AMA would have won 100%.

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Originally Posted by Godly

I'll give you a brief history lesson because I'm not so sure how long you've been playing. Wars were instant declare for a LONG time. Kingdoms either put up or shut up. Instant declare was not removed because it was detrimental to anyone's game experience or they wanted to reduce warring, but solely to prevent fake wars 100% which was exactly what was happening every round. Kingdoms were literally exploring and entering fake wars over and over again and it was just too abusable. It came down to not how well you played but how many people you knew. The minute this administration said that fake wars are an actionable offense, the meter should have been removed that same day.

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Bah, message deleted.

Creating some drastic changes would be nice; maybe rewinding the game a bit. Remove meter for an age, and maybe include it again the following age while removing something else. See what fits in with whatever direction people/devs want the game to head towards and what doesn't. Would sure as hell be more novel than what we've seen the past few ages. Game is terribly stale as it is. The only limiting factor seems to be the time/effort invested, but that's neither here nor there

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Originally Posted by Band of Horses

There is no perfect system but Godly has made a very viable option that I BELIEVE would help the game.

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it would help some kds. While in comparison people who arent smart enough to know better

cough

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Originally Posted by Band of Horses

My kingdom of casual players would love to get to push a war button instead of eating waves from larger kingdoms while we try to find someone that wont run from our war.

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cough
think it'd benefit them but the reason kds eat waves is that they cant win wars/arent going to be active.

The only kds that Godly's suggestion would enjoy are those that can pump super fast/hard and every ghetto would lose a ton of wars to those people and cry. For example i'd just need to know the loc of like 5-6 "war" kds to avoid and i could bounce from ghetto to ghetto not even trying since they'd be horribly under pumped compared to my kd. Nice and easy to win wars when you're 15% or more trained than an enemy. Top play probubly wouldnt change much diplomancy to strong.

edit.....when war's aren't the focus of the game having instant declare was fine, because to "win" u had to grow and be big/use diplomacy. In contrast when a WW chart got added "winning" means pwning ghettos and allowing that to increase basically infinitely is gonna suck for bad kds.

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Originally Posted by Persain

The only kds that Godly's suggestion would enjoy are those that can pump super fast/hard and every ghetto would lose a ton of wars to those people and cry. For example i'd just need to know the loc of like 5-6 "war" kds to avoid and i could bounce from ghetto to ghetto not even trying since they'd be horribly under pumped compared to my kd. Nice and easy to win wars when you're 15% or more trained than an enemy. Top play probubly wouldnt change much diplomancy to strong.

edit.....when war's aren't the focus of the game having instant declare was fine, because to "win" u had to grow and be big/use diplomacy. In contrast when a WW chart got added "winning" means pwning ghettos and allowing that to increase basically infinitely is gonna suck for bad kds.

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There are definitely ways to go about this; the old hostile declare and peace block system comes to mind. Wasn't perfect, but it certainly wasn't auto-declare.

A big **** yes to Godly's post. Key points; removal of nw gains, removal of war meter, and removal of the ridiculous nw-range protections on ops.

Don't necessarily agree with having too tight a war declare range, but instant war declarations or hostile declarations are definitely fair.
Personally I find that the immense protections war grants are a detriment to the game, and the core mechanics of the game were never intended for 1vs1 warring to be what it is, so imo the whole business of warring is flawed from the inception. Either fix the mechanics so that the game truly revolves around warring (requires rebuilding the game from the ground up) or shift towards war as a diplomatic option rather than the focus of the game.

I believe it would be far better to give small provinces useful countermeasures against bigger provinces, like removal of op range penalties and bounce/conquest being useful, than it is to have such extreme gains penalties for hitting up and down. The imbalance and irregularities created by a totally illogical mechanic like that also cause a lot of problems with the game's design. Again, this is something that would require a change to the fundamentals...

Even land-based gains are bad, worse than nw gains even. It should be possible to have a game where flat or near-flat gains are possible, without the game turning into a farmfest for every small province. If small provinces have better countermeasures against large provinces, it is less of an issue.

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Originally Posted by noobium

shift towards war as a diplomatic option rather than the focus of the game.

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The problem with this is the "best" people can run a kd with relatively unskilled players if they are good enough at diplomacy. You'd end up with 50-60 leaders doing alot of diplomacy (assume 2/kd) and kds doing not alot of stuff going on. The 750+ other people in those kd end up not mattering much and its boring. It's y fake wars started in the first place its "better" to not be in war. If u make war to important than everyone gets burnt out. Balancing war/pump is supposed to be honor v science but at this point cowing/exploring/wpa/honor just hasn't worked out that way.

I don't see a problem with diplomacy becoming a thing, as long as more kingdoms are playing rationally.

There is plenty to do at ghetto tier besides war. Right now the war focus in ghettos is at poisonous levels, to the point where so many ghettos flat out refuse to play the game oow. A lot of that is cultural degradation, and after several years so many ghetto players literally don't know how to actually play the game and build a province. It's not even a mechanics issue, it's a culture issue.

noobium the problem is everyone who plays utopia has been playing for multiple ages. The crapy play in the gheto can be turned into gold with minimal leadership & experience executing that strategy. For example dont run an undead on 7 leet/acre and 12 dspec/acre. Heck average/above average kds can get beat in war make friends to bounce ideas back and forth with other leaders and go on to do things like honor crown and win lots of wars. but the core idea of the game is to compete somehow and unless u are going for top land/nw the only real way to compete is via X vs X battles. Those battles will involve engaging another kd somehow. Making diplomacy to avoid war needed or making to to easy to get into a war w/someone who stands no chance against you is kinda dumb.

Even intra kd battles that my kd has requires us to engage with other kds. For example i'm feeling like a failure this age as we had a pre age t/m gentleman's battle thats placing me 3rd. i just cant keep up with the em and im top 25 for honor...its soo annoying. but it'd be an impossible thing for us to do if we couldn't turn down wars when we simply dont have time for them.

The problem with a war focus is that kingdoms have no incentive (or so they think) to improve their gameplay beyond warring, and most kingdoms in utopia suck bad so many kingdoms learn the wrong lessons; furthermore, established kingdoms with better activity auto-win most wars because of how easy it is to press the rape province button for an active kingdom, and most ghettos cannot do that no matter what strategy they devise. The result is that the average ghetto runs into a brick wall, or winds up having to purge and recruit from established kingdoms to compete effectively; or they just continue to do what works for them, because 80% of their opponents don't give them a reason to step up their strategy beyond the very basic level.

It would be a different story if the community weren't such a toxic wasteland.

I'd be fine. Me. With instawar I guess the game would be better for a few kingdoms that play where you play.
noobium points out the essentials:

1- Home strats work in the lower tier because the activity levels aren't high enough to force overpopulation. Knowledge wise, many waste resources trying to shell them without follow up and they simply regenerate.
2- Waves are nearly impossible to arrange to counter organized kingdom tactics. I'm a strong believer in crippling actions vs bullies, but many fear retaliation. Unjustified IMHO if you aren't charting. But you can't change minds.
3- We are talking about rules that we don't have problems with. We aren't having problems finding war or getting past hostile except for activity to move the meter.

Sympathize or not the game works down here. I say organization and meta-gaming are as much a prison. I don't like doing super waves, being told what to build or hitting down. If it weren't for current mechanics my kingdom would be at war with 2 mil higher nw kingdom. I'd be fine with it, but kingdoms are about we.

You guys give any thought to mechanical ranking curves(higher meter yields/attack/op as ranking ascends)? Or approaching your diplo to force war? I'm still not onboard because I see it crushing the casual player base. Keep thinking and I will to.

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Originally Posted by Godly

Your opinion on how relations should occur in utopia is exactly that -- your opinion. You haven't provided any facts on why this is detrimental to the game other than "it's not fair." War, like games, is not fair. If you suck, you get punished. The fact that you want kingdoms to be able to dodge indefinitely just further illustrates that you are out of touch with how the game was originally intended to play and still is intended to be played according recent mechanics changes to promote increased warring -- although they totally botched it up, it still proves that their core belief is still that this is a warring game and kingdoms have no right to evade wars (meter cap).

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Yes it's only my opinion but the other side is also only "your opinion" I wouldn't mind more wars, in fact I agree that it should be encouraged, I just think that your suggestion is going about it the wrong way because it encourages bottomfeeding and bashing people you know to be weaker rather than seeking a war that would be challenging and difficult.
Yes I think that the weaker kingdom should be able to delay for a very long time and certainly dodge indefinitely because I dislike the idea of encouraging people to go for someone that is obviously weaker than them.
If a kingdom is of the opinion that they don't stand a chance against an aggressor for whatever reason, whether it's because they have a weaker playerbase or because they're less pumped or simply that their setup has no chance I think that they have every right to be able to avoid that conflict because forcing somebody into a loosing conflict over and over and over again will just make them quit.
I think a better way of going about encouraging more wars would be to reward both participants in a war rather than just the winner.
Warring is much less profitable when compared to pumping or randoming(unless you're all out of target which happens mostly only to the top few kingdoms) oow so loosing a war means that you don't just loose the resources that the opponent took and the troops lost in battle, you also loose out against everybody else who didn't spend that time warring.
So my suggestion would be to award all current ww bonuses except for the land/honor bonus to both sides instead of just the winner. That way it's still somewhat unprofitable to war and loose but it's a a lot less unprofitable than the current situation which punishes you doubly for loosing.
The rewards may of course have to be adjusted but I think that it would be a better path to choose because it would encourage you to take a risk and go for a war you might not win. Your way would only mean that kingdoms will always go for the safest win they can find which is quite bad my opinion because the only thing that will succeed in is driving people from the game even faster, hell even the current ****ed up system is better than instant and unblockable wars because at least the receiving kingdom can elect to go fort, turtle up and refuse to war.

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Originally Posted by Godly

The direction is not up to us. I am only giving the path forward for one direction. If they want to promote increased warring and growth through warring, this is the path -- irregardless of how you feel the game should be played. If they don't want kingdoms to be accountable for their lack of preparation, then sure my suggestion is not valid.

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It's not the path, it is a path and in my opinion it's a pretty bad one for the following reason.
While it might make people more accountable for their lack of preparation that's about as unconstructive as you can possibly get because stacking punishment on punishment will only succeed in one thing, driving people from the game even faster.
As opposed to punishing people for being unprepared it would be better by far to reward people for taking the risk and declaring a war with an uncertain outcome, if they loose they still get some reward for trying and they will have to spend less time recovering so they can be ready to try again faster.

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Originally Posted by Godly

I'll give you a brief history lesson because I'm not so sure how long you've been playing. Wars were instant declare for a LONG time. Kingdoms either put up or shut up. Instant declare was not removed because it was detrimental to anyone's game experience or they wanted to reduce warring, but solely to prevent fake wars 100% which was exactly what was happening every round. Kingdoms were literally exploring and entering fake wars over and over again and it was just too abusable. It came down to not how well you played but how many people you knew. Like if we were noticed, we used to go through a checklist of ICQ contacts and see which of them were currently not in a fake war or were not willing to waste 48 hrs or whatever the length used to be. The minute this administration said that fake wars are an actionable offense, the meter should have been removed that same day.

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I've played roughly since 2k1 or so, not sure I remember instant declares(I think it was the time of the old hostile meter but I'm not sure) but I do remember peaceblocks, hostileblocks, scouring your contacts for someone willing to FW and all that stuff.
Yes those were different times but we can't just rewind the tape and go back to those days because there's a lot less players now compared to then, and these days new players are a lot more fleeting, rather than trying to figure what went wrong and improving they're just as likely to just drop the game and try a different one. That is something we have to work within not against, if we are to have any chance to slow or even reverse the decline of players in the game.

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Originally Posted by Godly

However since we are giving opinions, and this is just my opinion, my personal game experience is ruined when I contemplate considering playing another round and I see only two paths:
1) YOLO war and have fun, get powerplayed by those who didn't and have no chance at winning the round
2) Secure CFs and afk extreme science for 10 weeks and then have a diplo cluster**** at the end of the round.

Both of those options suck: have fun and lose or not even play the game and win. This is where we currently are. AMA played a hell of a round last round, beat pretty much everyone but yet still would have lost 1v1 to us due to resource/science/land advantage due to mechanics rewarding kingdoms who choose not to fight. On paper, they deserved to win. With my changes, AMA would have won 100%.

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I think that fundamentally changing science, for example by putting some sort of hard cap(or drastically strengthening the soft cap) on it would be a better approach to nerfing pumps rather than punishing people for not being 100% ready every second of every day.

These are some novels written in here.