Quote Originally Posted by TheRock View Post
To your first point...we're already seeing it. Go look at how many smaller kingdoms have waved OOR kingdoms because it's an easy way to get free acres now that the big kingdoms can't declare back. It's not a small number, and this is only the first age with the new changes. The kingdoms doing it now are the stronger kingdoms - Psych Ward, Insolence, Snakes, all full of smart players who've been around at the top a while. Just like chaining started with the best kingdoms and is now widely adopted, this will become a standard play. You say it hasn't happened - I call bull****, it absolutely has, just not to the degree that it COULD happen. As more people see the strength in the plan, it will become more widely adopted.

The argument is not "bull****". The value in declaring smaller kingdoms was building larger provinces and unbreakables, which was always enough to be comparable to dicing while giving a strong strategic advantage. Good kingdoms would even gain acres vs dicing while doing it. Kingdoms REGULARLY declared down on kingdoms 30-50% smaller than them, which was part of the reason you changed the range for declaration. I recall many kingdoms doing it, with the first one coming to mind being Sonata stealing a button from Old School via hitting in Normal and then switching to Aggressive before they noticed. If you don't recall how that turned out, I'll be happy to dig up logs/papers, but it ended up very well for them and they won the age.

The deterrence was in the ability to declare which, as demonstrated above, is no longer there. Raze is a flat kill percentage and 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. This means that when a smaller kingdom waves a much bigger kingdom, the bigger kingdom, due to size issues (bottomfeeding) and KRNW, will never be able to match the hits in individual size. Increasing the volume of hits can provide temporary relief, but only until GBP sets in, which is very quickly. Even if the bigger kingdom is doing doubletaps back
with bigger provinces, they'll be hitting down and hitting into GBP. Raze is an effective means to cut their gains but does not help you recoup acres.

In the old days, you could declare, and your big provinces could gain acres via multi-tap hits. That's no longer available, which gives smaller kingdoms even more incentive to do it. They know big kingdoms are smart and, faced with the choice of fighting for days to hurt the smaller kingdom or just letting a few acres walk, the big kingdoms generally let the acres walk.

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.
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.