Feedback world 103 & The Great Siege

[PatriotStomp]

That's just ended a ten year plus ride for me, this is no longer the simple and superbly balanced game that was as much a classic as chess, time to return to civ and total war....just hope W99 lasts a good while longer, it's far from perfect but also just recognizable as they game I've loved playing all these years.

Dont be salty youre going to lose w99.

 

[DeletedUser97929]

Why does the settings on the website say bp is 6 days and nightmode is activated, but the announcement on the forums say bp is 5 days and nightmode is disabled?

 

[JawJaw]

Why does the settings on the website say bp is 6 days and nightmode is activated, but the announcement on the forums say bp is 5 days and nightmode is disabled?

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, we have made the appropriate changes (bp = 6 days, nightmode disabled)

 

[Mintyfresh]

This part of the announcement would answer that question:

(meaning regardless of where it comes from in the world, it takes the same amount of time to get there. This means that no tribe has an advantage)


As for the question of speed 1:
We use speed 1 for introducing new features and server merges as they give us the opportunity to analyse stats and compare player behaviour to 'normal' worlds. As we have had quite a few of those recently the amount of speed 1 worlds has increased.

Usually we try to do 50/50 speed 1 and speed 1+. Unless something comes up, next world should have a higher speed.

No jawjaw it doesnt, i quite clearly stated i wasnt talking about the location of the 'city' or whatever its called. The fact that you dont see why core tribes has an advantage here is slightly concerning. This win condition doesnt fix any of the flaws that rune villages have. Why arent inno working on improving what they already have made before adding more ill-thought out changes to game mechanics?

 

[JawJaw]

No jawjaw it doesnt, i quite clearly stated i wasnt talking about the location of the 'city' or whatever its called. The fact that you dont see why core tribes has an advantage here is slightly concerning. This win condition doesnt fix any of the flaws that rune villages have. Why arent inno working on improving what they already have made before adding more ill-thought out changes to game mechanics?

I indeed fail to see how it (the new endgame) would show bias towards those tribes. Feel free to explain it however so I can forward the feedback. We welcome feedback, but it needs to be understandable for us to be able to change or explain things. Just saying it is concerning does not help us, and neither does it help you

 

[Mintyfresh]

I indeed fail to see how it (the new endgame) would show bias towards those tribes. Feel free to explain it however so I can forward the feedback. We welcome feedback, but it needs to be understandable for us to be able to change or explain things. Just saying it is concerning does not help us, and neither does it help you

You're right its not a very helpful thing to say....but it is true unfortunately. Part of the problem is the fact that the actual mechanics are incredibly vague:

* "The city can vary in size and consists of several districts" - How much variation
* "travelling to them always takes the same amount of time" - How much time
* "Additionally, the districts have a defense malus (negative modifier)" - How much modifier
* "Influence points are awarded to the tribes for each district they hold" - How much?

Are the boroughs controlled by players or by tribes themselves?

Im not sure if thats intentional to encourage people to join and see for themselves or just an oversight, either way its pretty annoying because personally im not going to risk committing my time or effort making assumptions on various things only to find out they're wrong because inno likes being mystic

The reason why this siege is bias towards core tribes is that its clearly weighted towards the tribes that have the largest amounts of troops at their disposal rather than putting the emphasis on individual and tribal player skill which ideally where you would want it to be (correct me if im wrong here). Generally speaking the core vs rim conflict is one where you have a larger more entrenched tribe against a smaller more dispersed tribe. The core tribe wins by utilizing its troop advantage (because they started earlier and are more established) and the rim tribe wins by more effective troop usage than the core tribe. To boil it down to an essence its brawn vs brains. Core vs Rim - Generally.

Im sure that some radnom nerds are going to pop up now:

"but on world xx, rim tribe yy were bigger than core tribe zz and they lost still reeeeeeee" - thanks for your valuable contribution to the discussion

Anyway.

The main issue here is partially due to the fact that you specifically did not say that there is a delay in the districts being available to hold from day 1 that the core tribes will get a massive advantage here. In a traditional rim vs core conflict the rim tribe usually has a troop deficit. You get around this by smart play and etc. However with this win condition the goal effectively shifts from beating your opponent to holding and stalling for time while you passively accumulate influence points. The core tribe no longer has to actually 'win'. They can just use their troop surplus to effectively negate skillful play because the win condition is completely passive.

Rim tribe goes on the offensive to capture some districts - they now no longer have enough offensive troops to break down the core tribe frontlines, they lose momentum and stall and lose the world

Rim tribe tries to hold onto districts with their defensive troops - they no longer have enough defense to hold onto their frontline villages, they lose villages and lose the world

Rim tribe tries to time large numbers of noble nukes to within 10ms of the exact time that the borough awards points in order to try and negate the troop advantage of said core tribe. Probably the only chance they will possibly have to score influence points - But have fun doing that 4 times a day for several months while at the same time conducting normal ops and everything else against a tribe that has a troop advantage vs yourselves. The onerous of having to find creative ways to outplay a larger tribe causes players to quit and lose the world

Core tribe sits there and enjoys the easiest win of their careers

The problem with this win condition is that it sounds all interesting and exciting on paper but in reality when you're in the world and actually fighting to win it just boils down to the same basic things and thats not going to change. Inno designers remind me of ww2 armchair generals. They sit in the backlines and move troop blocks around and talk about grand designs and battle plans but the reality is that its completely different when you're actually playing

Here are my two predictions for the world.

1) Districts will be largely ignored until end-game when one tribe has effectively won under normal dominance conditions in which case they'll just afk and hold all the districts to win in like a month or whatever

Or

2) One tribe will have a commanding lead the entire world from day 1 and make it a redundant mechanic as nobody will be able to catch up with them even if they wanted to.

TLDR - Game metric is weighted towards rewarding troop levels rather than player skill. Also encourages diplomacy towards non-conflict as it can be a completely passive way to win

 

[JawJaw]

Thank you @Mintyfresh , those are concerns I can reply to

* "The city can vary in size and consists of several districts" - How much variation

Size -- # of districts
4x4 -- 16
6x6 -- 36
8x8 -- 64
10x10 -- 100

The option in bold is the one set for 103.

* "travelling to them always takes the same amount of time" - How much time

Battle units will travel at the usual speed for a distance of 15 fields. Scouts will travel at the speed for 3 fields. This means that the travel speed will also increase or decrease depending on the general world and unit speed.

* "Additionally, the districts have a defense malus (negative modifier)" - How much modifier

Ranging from -25% to -75%
Note that the Influence Points gained will be higher for districts with a higher malus. Basically: the riskier it is to hold, the more profitable it is.

* "Influence points are awarded to the tribes for each district they hold" - How much?

See response above as to what it depends on. It ranges from 7 to 25 points per day (per district that they hold). The tribe needs 288,000 points in total to win the world.

The player holds the district, the tribe gets the reward.

As the city is available from the start of the world, players will need to decide how/when they want to start capturing it. Going in early might result in having less competition and scoring some "easy" points, but holding the sectors will also be complicated due to the defense modifier, a loyality of 1 and less defensive troops at their disposal, which will also mean that they are weakened on their frontlines (even for the core tribes as you mentioned).

For the other things, I understand your concerns and I think we will need to see how it goes "in action" to see if we need to make further improvements (which we might do at runtime as well).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts so thoroughly! It is appreciated.

 

[DeletedUser116033]

im just waiting for the day you add a reverse trade option. For example if im wanting clay and selling wood, then i want to search for wood and sell clay. A button needs to be added to automatically switch these values. We been waiting 15 years for just small changes like this.

 

[Mithrae]

See response above as to what it depends on. It ranges from 7 to 25 points per day (per district that they hold). The tribe needs 288,000 points in total to win the world.

That seems pretty low. Assuming an even distribution of low- and high-malus districts (16 points per day average), if a tribe controls the whole city permanently it will take them 281 days/9+ months to reach the victory condition (288k / 16 / 64). If there were three or four main tribes competing for control, it would take two or three years for any of them to secure a victory. Probably much longer, allowing for more competition and defeat/disbanding of tribes which were doing well.

Will disbanding of tribes and unilateral dismissal/demotion of other dukes be disabled? Seems like a necessary precaution in case someone throws a temper tantrum; it's risky enough when the worst a rogue duke can do is force you to reinvite all members to a new tribe, never mind eliminating 100% of your victory progress!

Will a tribe's influence points be visible to outsiders? As a specific number or in vague green/yellow/red terms? The former could create interesting challenges or problems, but at the very least folk should know who they need to try to bring down.

To gain influence points your tribe will need to hold the districts at these exact times.

So there'll be thousands of nobles being launched in the exact latter third of a second necessary to get in before the turnover - hope the servers can handle it - with potentially dozens arriving in the very last millisecond. It'll probably be more luck than skill as to who gets the village.

Knowing how to use Opera T-trains will become essential: Each player will be asked to set up several tabs to send nobles to multiple districts - including those already owned by the tribe - to maximize chances of getting some in the final milliseconds. Pre-emptively stacking a district will be essentially pointless: Either there'll be dozens of nobles incoming and you'll have no hope of holding anyway, or else as the current owner you'll see the land times of fewer incomings and can try to ensure that your tribe has a noble landing after everyone else's.

If you can see that your tribe won't capture a village, sending a nuke to land 0.1 seconds after the turnover time will pretty much guarantee killing the nuke of the last person to capture it (a tactic which will further punish pre-emptive stacking).

Support will always travel faster than the nobles, so I guess if there's only 1 or 2 incomings and/or none of your nobles are arriving last it'll be worth making a quick stack. Holding onto districts will be far easier than capturing new ones as a result of those advantages.

Coplaying will be absolutely mandatory, since everyone will have to be sending nobles to a different borough every six hours (and probably nukes 150 minutes after that). Since the victory condition is to get your nobles hitting in that very last millisecond before turnover, it'll be utterly unacceptable to have accounts idle in those windows of opportunity. Account sitting will not be a way to compensate.

Have I missed anything? Could be fun

 

[DeletedUser656]

im just waiting for the day you add a reverse trade option. For example if im wanting clay and selling wood, then i want to search for wood and sell clay. A button needs to be added to automatically switch these values. We been waiting 15 years for just small changes like this.

Please could you be a bit more specific about where you'd like to see this?

 

[DeletedUser43986]

Hi mods

Please can you let us know how we can simulate the defense malus in the simulator? Other worlds there is the rune village button but nothing here... Maybe a drop down menu instead?

 

[JawJaw]

Hi mods

Please can you let us know how we can simulate the defense malus in the simulator? Other worlds there is the rune village button but nothing here... Maybe a drop down menu instead?

Thank you for the suggestion! We'll bring it up internally.