Yes I guess I could have been more succinct, sorry about that :PQuote:
Originally Posted by Nick_mi
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Yes I guess I could have been more succinct, sorry about that :PQuote:
Originally Posted by Nick_mi
The game should encourage growth rather than wars.
Problems are quality and continuity. There are less than a handful of quality small kingdoms and the game doesn't reward staying small as real world examples demonstrate. I do think small kingdoms could learn from real world examples insofar as alliances go.
For instance, a small kingdom with high science and formidable military with alliance backing is possible in game. The problem here is talent drain. The activity in the lower tier is hit-or-miss and the understanding of how to dismantle larger opponents. There are ways to digest acreage in a healthy manner and develop science to present a daunting threat to bottom feeders, but many players are stricken with terror by larger opponents.
I support diversified cores that lattice capability that otherwise appear as random choice ghetto strats. It's a hobby of mine that I publish as a virtual kingdom because I'm not aware of any examples in game. Judicious mergers with veteran cores willing to phase wave and elliptical ops/sabotage are possible, but unlikely due to egos and instinctive cowardice.
The Utopian world does have a liberal Asian, American and European populace that could be harnessed to achieve viability.
The game is fundementally balanced and developed to incentivize the attainment of a resource(land) that the majority of players now view as superfluous. I think in part because of this, the land based mechanics in game haven't really kept pace with the shift towards war + periods of instituted and time-bounded prep. If people started trying to compete and some simple balance features were made, then the game would flow a lot better and more organically.
This too.Quote:
Originally Posted by topsy's revenge
A big mistake this age is that almost every kingdom elected to stay at 400 acres oop, which is really a bad move for almost every kingdom in the game - ghetto, growth, warring alike. The only kingdoms that benefit from staying at 400 acres are those kingdoms that know they will be hyperactive and that can bait another kingdom that stalled @ 400 acres to war.
The impressionable ghettos bought into the line that war kingdoms like to sell, which basically guarantees that those impressionable ghettos will auto-lose to established war kingdoms every time. Those established war kingdoms would probably win if the warkingdom explored, but since the war kingdoms live off griefing ghettos and making friendships with the top, there is no reason for them to do so.
More acres in the game, in the long term, affects the ecology of the server. There is no reason why a kingdom can explore and fort oop, and wind up in top 10 nw - this despite taking two waves in the first week, and many players mismanaging their oop in so many ways. The ghetto I started with was trying hard to not be big, but due to the stupidity that permeates the game that is what happened.
Right now the game mechanics do (to a degree) encourage growth, and they have encouraged growth ever since easy exploration was a thing. There are still way too many flaws and most kingdoms will never survive in the top echelons, but in general it is better to grow out and get farmed than it is to stay small all age - unless you are one of the hyperactive warring kingdoms that will auto-win at 400 acres and make cfs with other established kingdoms, which happens often due to the incestuous nature of the utopian community.
The game should encourage what the players think is fun, growth as a kingdom is something only a handful of kingdoms manage reasonably successfully, everybody else either runs into an insurmountable concrete wall, doesn't give a f**ck, or they'd rather be doing something entirely different.Quote:
Originally Posted by AquaSeaFoam
Growth as a goal in and of itself is anything but exciting 99% of the time, most people would rather war because wars are fun and exciting when they're tough and even.
war is fun? to me war stance is more tedious, whoever can log their people on all at once and click the rape province button.
most wars are often won by preparation and circumstance, with the actual war being (mostly) a foregone conclusion. sometimes people screw up and some wars are really close enough that the random chance of ops and a few key tactical decisions will change the course of war. mostly in ghetto land it's a matter of who makes the fewest mistakes, because ghettos (true ghettos) make so many mistakes it's not even funny.
the best way for warring kingdoms to compete with other good warring kingdoms is for them to learn how to build up their provinces, accumulate science, and actually play the game outside of war. a "warring" kingdom that can't hold itself together during peacetime and refuses to play more than half of the game, is a kingdom that is only going to win against ghettos by pure activity.
besides, the game is much more fun and makes much more sense when kingdoms play the entire game, not just play in war stance and do jack **** outside of war stance.
@ noobium: Agreed. It's like talking to a wall explaining how important eowcf is.
Few know how to recirculate wealth. Few know how to mitigate learns and plunder. Few look at their province to calibrate vs bottom feeders. Activity is fundamentally low, but it's like pulling teeth to get like GMT to declare their presence.
I see this as the reality, not a point of complaint. The reason I exclaim these factors is for those that want change to understand what they're asking for.
It's one thing to tailor the game for the enthusiast, but the foundation of the game is built on casual players. Any desired changes have to have a degree of slack to be worthwhile for the good of the game.
Merges seem like a good idea on paper, but I see the majority turn into mass exodus due to egos. Thus kingdom building is always an arduous task dealing inactives and trolls.
Egos also stand in the way of learning. Many losses are written off as the other guy had better activity. I've been criticized for siting good strategy on the enemies part by the same guys that don't want to war good kingdoms to see competent tactics. I'm not talking about where I am now, I've spent several ages traveling to many kingdoms and see the same problems everywhere. T/M roles held by semi-actives, attackers who can't perceive campers, mindless chaining against foes that read intentions and aid crucial targets. I could go on.....lol
not true at all, my kd benefited from staying at 400 acres. we went 5% draft 40% schools and pumped at incredibly low nw/acre for a week and got a nice science advantage early age. after a week we trained up and war-ed the leftovers of those that still remained at 400 acres. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by noobium
The only kingdoms that benefit from staying at 400 acres are those kingdoms that know they will be hyperactive and that can bait another kingdom that stalled @ 400 acres to war.Quote:
Originally Posted by Persain
Please tell me your location if you do that next age, because I like free acres and money, and any attacker worth their salt can exploit that setup oop and suffer minimal risk.
I read this statement a lot from you. I don't know what leads you to believe this, but it's not as black and white as you make it seem. I'd even say that's it's not true. Most people don't want to grow. They want to war. The minute a KD starts growing straight in protection, they make the mistake of being top 10-20 oop. Once you're there, you get less wars. That is almost a guarantee. Once you reach that plateau, and you do end up warring someone, you'll end up staying in the top NW tiers (by the simple virtue of exchanging land at higher sizes) and in the league of KDs that have tailored their setup for that specific purpose. You'll end up in conflicts you don't want to participate in because you're just chilling after a hard war. You'll be in the midst of KDs that will keep waving you (or ask for free wave if you play your cards right) or play the diplo game until your KD starts to fall into a lull of inactivity. There are exceptions to this though, and some warring KDs do pop up there every now and then, but in general, people -do- benefit from staying smaller because it allows them to have more wars while also giving them the ability to dictate when they want to be active or just relaxQuote:
Originally Posted by noobium
With this in mind, while what you say makes sense on a conceptual level, it doesn't hold true in practice, because there are barely any KDs that grow in protection now. The game has two different visions and refuses to align them. Playing for NW is reserved for a select few, and most don't even want to venture into that territory. If people actually want to fix this, they have to start with the current design of the game itself and not what others are doing in response so that they can have some fun and avoid participating in aspects of the game that they regard as boring, stale, or too complex to buy into (mainly because playing for land requires a more different style of play than people who haven't done so previously are used to)
The principle isn't to go for nw in the long term, but to gain early wpa, science, and elites that are not practical to attain at smaller sizes, before islands open up and it becomes far harder to benefit from growth. It doesn't matter if those acres are farmed out a week later, and it doesn't matter what the long-term goal of the kingdom is... early growth and converting that early growth to resources is just economic sense.
in the long term acres don't matter for warring kingdoms early, except as a container for troops, econ, and eventually elites and wizards. if those kingdoms were trying to compete for long-term growth, they would be using different strategies, but for a kingdom looking to war relatively early, if some kingdom takes more acres in the initial wave it doesn't matter... the only thing that should be important is how quick the explored acres pay off in added econ and troop strength. eventually stagnation will hit, and maybe the kingdom that explored isn't in range of some kingdoms, but taking the time to build up science and wpa early is better than taking the time later. eventually, those kingdoms that stayed small will have to grow out, or the kingdom that grew to 600-700 acres per province will lose acres to growth kingdoms and other situations.
choosing to let provinces grow organically is a lot better for the individual kingdom in almost every circumstance, unless it is known that a particular target can be baited to war, or you have absolute confidence that you will win a pure activity war oop.
Well
if we all agree playing for growth makes the game better
and AMA and BB are two of the handful interested in playing for growth...
>yfw AMA and BB fix the game
>thread needs new title
P.S. are you still in top10 nooblet?
On his island? Yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by tetley
#rektQuote:
Originally Posted by Band of Horses