Game Needs More Good kds Competing

[protector]

I don't buy it Prot ;). Sitting yes I can understand that. I don't buy that top KDs would recruit someone who said they may or may not be able to army in/army out during war as their standard activity.

I've done that a few times myself. I preferred someone that was a friend with another player in the kingdom over a totally unknown guy even if it might end up having required sitting in times of hostile/war.

I'm amused at how many people want to come in here and tell me about my own kds shortcomings or make up pointless excuses rather than accepting my challenge and improving on something they're bad at.

You're contradicting yourself.. you keep telling others to accept your challenge and improve, while at the same time you decline that same challenge and hide behind a "TFC is meant for fun" excuse, gg.

[protector]

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.

You mean we can now officially say HoH = Absalom? :D

[protector]

Case in point, BiO last age, chose the dwarf cleric and similar whoring BS. They got RUINED by ghetto cats and later by monument because what they chose could not stand up to real wars. (though to be more fair, monument rode the ghetto cat's coat tails on that one....AW takes way to long to recover from).

Perhaps it is possible BiO lost because they where outmatched in activity/strategy rather than setup? Dwarf cleric was hands down the best pick last age but just because you pick dwarf cleric it doesn't mean you'll auto win your wars.

[protector]

Abs is such a pathetic alliance. You'd think they would feed on other 25 man provinces, instead of 20 man provinces who just left the ghetto.

No, they're pathetic. They couldn't fight for honor if they tried to, because they don't know how to.

There's your answer. They fight for land and networth because that's all they know, and that's all they can do.

They're good at that to the point where warring KDs don't compete for land or networth, because there just isn't any point competing with a KD that has 5 Human Merchants, and 20 Dwarf Merchants. Like really? Merchant? Our ghettos don't allow attackers to be merchants, because it's such a piss poor choice for one.

But they aren't really into warring or WWs. The most reknown KD with the worst WW ratio. Thumbs #*$&ing up. (Y)

Any of the top kingdoms can compete on the top honor charts (if they would want to).

[protector]

Edit:
@Persain - This is nothing like world of warcraft. Everything on utopia is connected, not so much in WoW. You want honor? You need to war. You want to crown? You'll need to war. You want to win wars? You may need to engage in a war or two. As far as your race setup and competeting. You have 1 more war win than Rage and you are 62% of their size.

So if I sum up, for anything you want in Utopia, you need to war, right?
TFC is sitting on a solid record of 0 wars so far. Having fun are you? ;)

[Retailer]

Divinity tried this age to war a few abs kd's. Mostly POLITICS is what has stopped us. Getting caught in a bad war and PEWPEW not wanting to backoff has lead to a huge acre-gap which makes warring them near impossible.

That said and staying top 40-50 in size and warring 5-6-7 times was more fun. Not cause its ghettobashing but cause it was more warring less politics and ALSO more challenging. AND usually the wars are around same size +-5%.
Top 3 most challenging and difficult wars and close-calls we've had is from "down in the ghetto levels" for example vs Freeakstyle.

The SKILL required to play top level is not that much greater compared to the time it drains.

[protector]

This is false. Winning wars is a wonderful tool for growth. I believe Beastblood's biggest growth spurts were due to winning their wars. It's only when you can't win your war that your growth stalls.

You need to win by a large surplus to make it worthwhile. If ya don't, you'll be wrecked from a war with barely preparation for another fight against a kingdom who had plenty of time to prepare.
Even with the big acre gain vs Rage, we had money issues for our fight against Mercy EOA. Mercy had more than twice the amount of gold we had for dragons/wages etc. And we where lucky Rage didn't chain any of our provinces deeply.

If you add the fortified time, the war and the eow cf all together, you need to win quite a bit to make warring worthwhile. Most of the times it isn't more profitable then whoring (as whoring allows you to be in a pumpbuild for wpa/sci etc)

[Hurlin]

Want more kingdoms to compete? Fix the game. It sucks for new players/kingdoms at the moment and everyone is too blind to see it. Having new players land in the worst kingdoms available where their provinces are raped by slightly less sucky kingdoms simply because they are in a kingdom that can't protect them is not the way to attract new players to the game. Any player, how bad or good, will suck when landing in a ghetto and shine when playing in a top 10 kingdom, the experiences are so different they are beyond comparison.

Also, the whole "but we aren't active and don't demand 24/7 activity" ruse, is nothing more than that, a ruse, or maybe a deliberate pretense to claiming a "real life". In the top kingdoms most players can get online any time of the day/night. That their provs claim to do so voluntary (peer pressure works wonders) doesn't change the fact that the level of activity in the top is rather intense. Lesser active kds are only in the top because they're allowed to be. Still nothing wrong with that, in a similar fashion top sport also requires top activity, nothing wrong with the athletes that train hardest being the best, same with utopia, the more you put into it, the more you get out.

However, I don't think top competition is what the game needs, all it will lead to is keeping the same maybe 500 players (20 kds) entertained. Utopia should be a rewarding experience for those other players as well. The answer to, for example, the whole landdrop debate shouldn't be "You must get big, if you can't get big you SUCK" it might be valid that those kingdoms suck from a top kd perspective, but that is irrelevant to those kingdoms; from their own perspective these kingdoms have no way in hell to preserve their acres, so the option they get is lose honor landdropping, or be fed on by better/pumped/more ready kingdoms while taking well over a week (or worse, weeks) to build up, either way they get weaker/punished for doing well in war, it's plain weird. Simply getting the bigs to be small would only take the 4 days eow protection. That really is a sucky choice to give. (true, there was abuse as well, but that could have been dealt with in another way)

But even that is minor to the real problem i started this post with. Currently the gap between the have (kds that have 20 (yeah, plenty kds keep 20 players it seems) to 25 reliable players) and have nots (kds with a solid core of 10 to 15 players, desperately waiting for fresh blood) is gigantic. New players tend to land in the have not kds, they are confronted with the worst that the game has to offer without any guidance or assistance from the game or game mechanics.

Bottom line: The game will die not because it doesn't cater enough to the top, it'll die because the top will be all that's left while time passes by. Not everyone can afford to be a top "athlete", for some the game is just a means to pass time. The game is setup great for casual play like that (apart from lacking guidance and such, at its base logging in a few minutes during the day is enough), the game (mechanics) just got perverted (landdropping is such a perversion) as the majority of the players are hardcore athletes willing to go to extremes to squeez out those few percentiles of better performance, making the game not very enjoyable for those lost casual souls. I feel a full reshuffle of kingdoms/provinces would work wonders. I also know this would be impossible as most of the kingdoms are established in one way or another, no one wants to lose their friends to a reshuffle, and one way or another, people will trade back to play together.

Boing

Lol. And lol.

People gave up long ago because Absalom were invinsible.

People gave up a long time ago because Jolt ground the game into the ground with idiot decisions and criminally corrupt management ....... Blaming Abs is ridiculous

Could blame HaLL for starting the rot with their target sharing forums and "we don't give a **** how badly we wreck your ghetto Kingdom to protect our bad boy image" attitude, you blame Abs for power playing Kingdoms when HaLL did the same thing ....... stop throwing stone in this glass house stoffi and grow up

[TeddybearSTHLM]

Which they've never won. If they were the best warring kingdom (possible), and that crown was relevant (it's not), don't you think they would have won it at some point?

War win crown is just a competition to see who can get the most wars.

SPGC cant win ww crown because we cant get 8 wars in an age. simple as that. Now, that doesnt mean we are the best warring kd, which I hope we aren't, and I certainly dont think we are either :)

[TeddybearSTHLM]

Perhaps it is possible BiO lost because they where outmatched in activity/strategy rather than setup? Dwarf cleric was hands down the best pick last age but just because you pick dwarf cleric it doesn't mean you'll auto win your wars.

I'm not gonna hint at the reasons as to why we beat bio, but I can tell you I think dorf cleric is silly :)

[American Badass]

Realest, guys who stop at nothing at getting attention towards how good and skilled they are, going their own ways in everything(lol, his post above mine shows exactly what I'm talking about. A need to point at how good and "veteran" he is by mentioning that he is offered having no peers).

Nevr heard of the guy. I've been here since 98 also did he play under a different name?

[flutterby]

Nevr heard of the guy. I've been here since 98 also did he play under a different name?

You've been living under a rock.

[GotCha]

There are plenty of great warring kds out there, such as mine and a few we have fought over the past ages (not naming my kd/isnt important) that are not really known for the simple fact that the "popular" or "top" kds get all the coverage and war stories. Maybe if the utopia news team would get off utopias "popular kds" n**s and search out there for some talent that is indeed there. the kds would have better recruiting and would then get the respect they in fact deserve.

[Bishop]

There are plenty of great warring kds out there, such as mine and a few we have fought over the past ages (not naming my kd/isnt important) that are not really known for the simple fact that the "popular" or "top" kds get all the coverage and war stories. Maybe if the utopia news team would get off utopias "popular kds" n**s and search out there for some talent that is indeed there. the kds would have better recruiting and would then get the respect they in fact deserve.

Were one of your 3 posts contacting the news team so they could cover your war?

[GotCha]

I believe my monarch tryed to get your news team, to cover 2-3 wars last age. One wich we were told they would and saw nothing. And bishop i wouldnt smack talk to someone unless u know who they actually are or how long they have played. I usually just read and not post. That is what my monarchs job is (such as asking news team to cover wars)