Game Needs More Good kds Competing

[Palem]

It took BiO 3-4 ages of failing before they got good enough to win.

[Lestat]

To do it I need 4 players with experience in the things jdorje describes. I'll take Syntico first ;)

[Sheister]

I'm not interested in your cries about how the top are mean and how abs will feed on you. If abs feeds off you then you aren't as good at warring than you think you are.

Palem, It is idiotic to think that you are going to just war up to a KD that has been sitting around pumping science and is 5-15% larger than you and knock them off their perch unless you have significantly more game knowledge, activity, and luck than they do. Your entire position is so clearly wrong that I am baffled on how to explain it to you. Seriously, play to actually be able to war and then figure it out.

Additionally, the setups are completely different (as has been explained by others). Why am I going to take a KD full of people who love to play heavy attacking races and FORCE them to play dwarf cleric because that is the better whoring race THIS age. Its just stupid. Your entire argument is stupid. "Stop doing what you enjoy and do it the way they do up top."

NO! I am going to do what I want to do.

Now go away and cry in your beer.

[Palem]

Then don't Sheister. Go and live your utopian life of ignorant bliss.
Leave this thread for people who actually want to improve.


Also, they wouldn't have that advantage if you wouldn't OOP at 415 acres in an effort to avoid them.

[Realest]

why come no one has b2b yet, should be one on average every 10 ages

[Palem]

Flogger gets burnt out. (I presume)
Abs kds don't win regularly enough.
No one else tries.

[Crazy Pete]

Diplomacy is the key to success nowadays, not so much skills. Anybody can pump science and make good coin if you CF most of the server and have a 1/2 good strategy. +22.2% Population Limits. Small kd's or warring kd's that want to compete need to cf early and whore whore whore (smart whoring ofc), once your out of range of most of the Un CF'd kd's you change to an economy/science pump. Super easy but very boring. I wish to see more competition other then Floggers kd.

I was hoping That Meenie and Old School would have brought more competition to the top, not sure of which kd they are or if they exist still or what happened to them. BiO fell of, so hopefully one of those kd's in top 10 now can pick up a couple of good players from old top kd's to help them next age with a good OOP/diplomacy set up, this age is all but over for a non-absalom kd winning. It was nice to see a non Absalom KD win last age.

[Persain]

There are a few reasons why warring kingdoms struggle to compete in top play.

You can look at divinity this age for instance: they have won all their wars, but still were unable to keep up in growth.

Or balance last age: they had some strong play early, but then were caught off guard a couple of times and lost big.

And when you try and fail, it can often be demoralizing and lead you to stop trying.

As for the reasons:
* You war less at larger sizes (purely a matter of available targets), which is less exciting. Top play involves boring periods that still need significant activity. And though some ages you may war 6 times, other ages you may only war once or twice depending how the age plays out.
* Top play requires full understanding of econ during growth periods. This is where warring kingdoms usually struggle the most. Your typical warring kingdom is used to pumping for a while, then warring someone else who's also pumped for a while. But pumping while also whoring 2x a day requires a different approach, in both build and in your race/pers setup.
* Top play can be very brutal, and diplomacy is essential. Divinity screwed this up by falling behind rage, without ceasefiring them under a long enough term to let them catch up. They ended up getting bottomfed-waved by rage. They knew they couldn't win a war and had to give a free wave.
* Even warring strategy is different. Warring for wins, warring for land, and warring for honor are all different. Top kingdoms are expert in maximizing land gains once the war is won. Overall this is minor compared to the other points, though.

Btw jdorje no need to make "war" kds sound bad or imply we are strugling. Even growing "big" not all kds have the same goals, nor does one need to have a desire to "keep up" with the #1 kd to be succesfull. Truth be told had u guys all 100% sucked up top and we been then #1k in the game by a large lead i'd of pushed my kd to open up to free hits to find new war targets. Thats just me though, if u want to say we made a mistake it was waring pewpew, but then again mercy got screwed by TFC and we were smart enough to avoid them. Keeping up whoring or knowing u gimp yourself by exploring a feary 100% up to 14k acres when the "power-gamed" numbers say 16-19 is doable just means u're happy to have fun.

Its what "top" kds miss, the only mistakes WE made this age were lack of willingness to actually bully a kd 80% our size off 20-30% of their acres ASK for wars instead of demand them and to assume a kd that wants WAR would leave us alone when we said no instead of hitting us IN war. But then again those are only mistakes if we wanted #1 or though those things were acceptable. Who knows what we'll do in the future, but for now im happy.

edit addtion.

Just from math alone, it's better to grow and get farmed out by abs than stay small and have a much higher chance of poor science in the long term.

Very much not true. Both honor and science are valuable commodities. Honor gives u no nw boost so u can run a more efficient nw/acre prov with lots of honor than with lots of science. As well you cant stop kds from taking your science via learns since u lose a large % but can only recover a small portion of that when learning back. You can stop them from taking honor, since u lose next to no honor outside war u just pwn another kd in war and you keep your honor.

Honor~science so every "war" kd fights in a way that naturally gives high honor to key players. The issue is u cant grow quickly and keep wpa so using honor to leapfrog up is insanely hard. And one chain renders that honor gone and your age is then over. While if u take science early after geting beat down u dont have honor to fight with. If u cant get in a war quickly to build up some honor and use your science you lose, over time u get learned and its gone. Perfect example is Trollfag v simians theres no love lost between serveral kds and trollfags so when they droped every kd in a stronger position learned them and boom 40 million science gone.

[Sheister]

Then don't Sheister. Go and live your utopian life of ignorant bliss.
Leave this thread for people who actually want to improve.


Also, they wouldn't have that advantage if you wouldn't OOP at 415 acres in an effort to avoid them.

The issue presented is not improvement. It is your bizarre view of things. I am defending the other side. I OOP in the top 10 all the time FYI. I just really hate dealing with all the crap that comes with doing that. Much better to simply war up into the top 15 with my saved explore pool, then pump in my last EoW CF, amass huge GC and overdraft, then drain my explore pool and hit fort into the waning ticks of the age moving from 15ish to 8-9 ish as by then I have 70K in my explore pool. Viola!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

and in the meantime I had more fun over the age with less bull.

I stand by the basic statement that the top 5 KDs are basically irrelevant to the majority of the server and only matter to people like you and themselves.

[Winslow]

This thread is actually very flattering for Absalom and there dominance.
Actually when you look at the last 5 ages in overall land rankings you see 3 till 4 abs kd's if you count HoH with them in top 5.
And that indeed means less competition in the top that are really going for land/nethw crown besides Pulse,Inzzolence and Bio who tried and some even succeeded at times,but than one of those kd's falls away for some reason like disbanding,break,different goal than whoring,less activity that age who knows.
And there are no other kd's who will take over and fill in that spot to give some competition in the top charts Land/nethw its either because they are not attracted by whoring and rather war for honor or war wins,or dont got the know how too actually whore on the charts.

[Kern]

Why is it so important to make the kingdoms going for land and the smaller or as you call them "warring" kingdoms interact? Seems that is what the uniformed people are always pushing for.

The good thing about this game is that it is very dynamic/versatile and provides an avenue for players with different goals & different ideas of what is considered fun to compete. If you change the mechanics enough you can have everyone playing the same game..question is would they enjoy it?

Just my (late) two cents - I find it really strange that WWs are less important while Land and NW crowns are given so much more prominence in this game - a game with the basic premise of an almost-dystopia fixated on warring. To me, Utopia was always a warring game. Land/NW are only accessories to that... but to each his own I suppose. We could always start the Great Utopian Tournaments again. Always wondered what happened to them after #2.

I've only read about 75% of the messages here, but what I think people have forgotten is that the KDs here do not live for anyone or anyone else's idea of fun. They/we live for themselves/ourselves. To the majority of KD's or people out there that aren't crowning or challenging for the top because they don't want to for whatever reason, the important thing is to have fun. To bring in a separate quote that is somewhat out of context but seems to have some parallel:

"Our existence does not undermine your democracy or your education system or peace in the Middle East for the simple reason that we do not exist for you. We do not exist for your country, or for your university, or for your ideals of democracy. In fact, we do not exist for "democracy" at all; we exist for real actual people, we exist for ourselves; and that means that our struggles (for democracy/freedom or otherwise) are ours and ours alone."

Also:

I stand by the basic statement that the top 5 KDs are basically irrelevant to the majority of the server and only matter to people like you and themselves.

Furthermore, it seems like the only people accusing Abs of tying up the top are those that can actually be bothered to go for Land/NW crowns (which aren't very many, maybe only 10 KDs, tops?). Many others seem to find it OK playing around down here.

[Korp]

Just my (late) two cents - I find it really strange that WWs are less important while Land and NW crowns are given so much more prominence in this game - a game with the basic premise of an almost-dystopia fixated on warring. Utopia was always a warring game. Land/NW are only accessories to that... but to each his own I suppose.

Its most likely cause the "most warring kd" chart just been introduced while land and nw chart always been around and the competition used to be more fierce. Land is the bestest chart! Its more like its been that warring has been a accessorie to the nw/land chart imo. Cause those two charts have existed.

[Sheister]

Its most likely cause the "most warring kd" chart just been introduced while land and nw chart always been around and the competition used to be more fierce. Land is the bestest chart! Its more like its been that warring has been a accessorie to the nw/land chart imo. Cause those two charts have existed.

Well, the other problem is war wins also do not take into account the quality of wars in any meaningful way. If I spend a 14 day war with ghetto cats and win or MP, I get fewer points than a KD that ghetto bashes for two or three min-time wars in that same time period. So it is difficult to give recognition to wars as a basis for achievment.

[Avenger]

lol. Come on Palem, is this your way to incentivise 'top play'?
T10 is easy to get in? Of course. Until you get farmed.
You should take a break from your self imposed faery-theme kd, and try to step up your game. Like... an age in a t5 kd.

[American Badass]

This thread is actually very flattering for Absalom and there dominance.
Actually when you look at the last 5 ages in overall land rankings you see 3 till 4 abs kd's if you count HoH with them in top 5.
And that indeed means less competition in the top that are really going for land/nethw crown besides Pulse,Inzzolence and Bio who tried and some even succeeded at times,but than one of those kd's falls away for some reason like disbanding,break,different goal than whoring,less activity that age who knows.
And there are no other kd's who will take over and fill in that spot to give some competition in the top charts Land/nethw its either because they are not attracted by whoring and rather war for honor or war wins,or dont got the know how too actually whore on the charts.

That is why top is ruined. The only way the top would ever be competitive is if ABS broke up or another alliance was made with T5 kingdoms to battle it out. That could actually be quite fun.