Messages

61

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: September 02, 2013, 10:12:05 pm »

Tomas, we are not idiots and we truly understand that your intention of making  roster smaller have potential to increase number of sides of conflict (+1), but here is very serious concern that sole and unintended effect will be no space for players with low lewel or less talented. Have you thought about that aspect of this case? That would be a total failure. No, thank you. Too much risk. In other words, fu and -1 

People will miss out no matter what the roster size is.  People miss out now.  Nobody cares though because they are almost exclusively just random pubbers or newbies who don't shout about it on the forums or have the knowledge/ability to do anything about it.

I want more people to miss out because if we can tip it far enough we will cause vocal, competent and established strat players to miss out who might actually go away and do something about it by creating their own battles instead of just being able to idly sit back and let other clan do it for them. 

62

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: September 02, 2013, 08:04:31 pm »

As for incentivizing battles: Fucking silly. How about, instead of making the whole battle process inconvenient, we make initiating battles rewarding outside of the battles themselves, on the Strat map? If you just want to get people to fight battles, then eliminate the Strategus map. Apparently, Strat's not fun enough to justify it's existence outside of the whole battle thing.

So you want in strat rewards for battles, like for instance owning more fiefs gains you more resources and then with those extra resources you can win more fiefs and gain more resources, etc.  We had this, it was Strat 3 and it was horrible with the only thing stopping the UIF steam rolling the entire map being ping. 

Also, since when was an incentive for having battles an automatic dis-incentive for the rest of Strat and why are smaller rosters  "inconvenient"?

As for massive stacks, yes they do hinder battles but it is not the stacks themselves that need addressing.  Changing the 1/3 rule has already been suggested and accepted as a way to negate their influence however we should also look to combat the reason they build in the first place and that reason is mostly fear.  Fear that your enemies have more troops than you do and that by attacking you will leave yourself open to a counter attack.  The fact that any attack on any faction on the map is likely to drag you into the full 2-block wars that are occurring makes it even worse.  Conquistador have over 60k tickets in their 3 fiefs but who can they attack for a fun war?  They have everything they need but if they attack Kapikulu/CotgS/Balde/OdE (all similar sized clans) then they will be considered to have sided with the Apostates. If they attack Peacebreakers/Barabe they will be considered to have sided with the UIF.  And so instead they sit and do nothing.

You also forget the main thing which is preventing battles (certainly on EU) and that is the lack of battle commanders.  There's only so many battle commanders and the burn out is pretty high meaning there's only so many full scale battles that can happen in a given time frame.  Speaking as the Leader of a clan that has actively tried to encourage more people to get involved in leading battles, I can tell you that one of the main reasons people don't step up and volunteer is that the thought of trying to command 50 players from many different clans (with varying languages as well in EU) is pretty daunting.  If on the other hand they were just leading mostly their own faction members, that they know well and are comfortable with, then I know they wouldn't be so reluctant.  Now imagine how daunting this is to a small clan that is going to get at most 10% of the roster as their own players.

63

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: September 02, 2013, 03:15:54 pm »

Really anti reducing numbers. Being able to get a slot in big battles is important because THEY ARE FUN. Why should this be restricted to a smaller and smaller group?

Because so long as small clans have no need to create strat battles then they have no need of active strat players who all just migrate to the already over sized clans that do create strat battles (Coalition included).

Even the bigger clans have no need to do anything so long as 1 big clan is active.  The Coalition has been pretty much inactive in Strat for 2-3 months now with the exception of a few field battles.  However since GO are active there is no shortage of battles for our members that are active and so we can get away with not doing anything ourselves.  Reduce rosters and suddenly even our members will be struggling to always get into our allies battles which will mean we either have to go back to creating our own battles or we lose members.

I know this is counter intuitive to most people however if we want a more diverse Strat then we need more active Strat factions and the only way to get more active strat factions is to encourage all factions to create more battles which will only happen if factions can no longer piggyback of just 1 or 2 active factions by always having space on their rosters.

64

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: September 01, 2013, 05:39:59 pm »

Are you aware that Quincy began as a purely trade-based faction, and got all their fiefs through peaceful negotiations, and have absolutely no interest in making war? Nor have they ever had any intention of making any war regardless of how much land and how many faction members they have at any one time. It isn't due to game mechanics that Quincy don't attack, it's cos they've never wanted to. Perhaps they wanted to prove they could grow like this without fighting, i'm certainly impressed.

Quincy was probably a poor example but you can substitute OdE in for them pretty easily if that helps.  Or Conquistador, Balde, BROs, Companions, Stromgarde, etc

Also there may be an argument for reducing roster sizes if the player base decreases drastically (you did list some interesting reasons also), but in the meantime there are far bigger fish to fry- like the 1/3 rule needs to go/be revised, i think the community has been very clear about that for a long time and we've still seen no change to it.

I'd say that the playerbase has decreased drastically.  Not overall of course but per server yes.  Remember that in Strats 1 and 2 there was no EU/NA split and no nighttimes which meant that effectively Strat had a unified primetime of 18:00 GMT - 04:00 GMT with more EU players staying up late and more NA players attempting to get on early.  Now most players stick to their own server which has decreased the pool of players significantly for each server which is why I suggest this.

As a best case scenario max roster sizes should be dynamically linked to each servers playerbase so that it can fluctuate accordingly.  I have no idea how this could be accurately done though and so instead have suggested a manual change to a number that I think is more appropriate at this point in time.

65

Diplomacy / Re: What is happening with Hre ?

« on: September 01, 2013, 05:26:53 pm »

I'm not the one with allies in the shitter take a look at Wolves associates, they're looking rather healthy no?
tbh this post makes me pity the Apostates for having allies like you.

Yes, you are right.  We should have figured Dolby would sell out and offered him 10 loom points for Ismirala Castle before he even had a chance to speak to you or GO.  We should also have had 10k troops stationed in all Apostates' fiefs so that they didn't have so many empty fiefs for Wolves to heroically take and sent Coalition members round to every Merc Leader's house to give the hugs and stop them going inactive.

66

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: September 01, 2013, 02:23:12 pm »

for proper attack u need at least 2-3 people (for small clans its a half of active guys who for sure already fief owner)   who will lose 3 days in a way, three days in the fighting, and like 5-6 day for back way to home with shitloads of crates, during all dat time their village will be unguarded  too many worries for a couple of fights

Yes, I agree completely with the high amount of effort that goes into having a war on Strat.  However this doesn't mean I think small factions should be encouraged to just sit around in their fiefs doing nothing. 

Smaller rosters may seem shit for smaller clans on the face of it because initially they will lose out on places in the majority of the battles that are going on in strat right now.  However by simply creating regular battles themselves (even just fun pre-arranged ones against a friendly clan) then smaller clans may actually start to grow and with growth comes the potential to do more.  In addition smaller active strat clans may even become more attractive to potential recruits than large Strat clans since it will be easier for these players to get into strat, easier for them to get into their own clans battles and they won't have to automatically buy in to all the UIF/Anti-UIF or FCC/Anto-FCC crap that every major Strat faction is inevitably forced into.

67

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: September 01, 2013, 02:08:44 am »

I'm not sure about this. On one hand 51 vs 51 battles are much better than 41 vs 41. On other 41 vs 41 is better than 41 vs 51.
Would be great if it was modifiable and you could set preferable roster size in strat info settings. In this case big clans would have big battles(probably it would be better even to increase max to 60 or 70), while small clans wouldn't be spawnraped because of not-full roster.

Anyway it would require some work to balance this and prevent exploits like setting roster size 30 for city with 20k troops inside. And of course it is much more difficult than fixing 1/3 rule, which is still here, so there isn't much sense in discussing it.

I have thought about this option before in the past but always discarded it because as you say it seems really complicated to balance.  I also thought about making max roster sizes different for different fief sizes (60v60 for Towns, 50v50 for castles, 40v40 for field battles and villages.  But again this seems overly complicated

I dont see any problems if quincy will attack Peacebreakers and 1st one make roster from greys and co and the second 1 ask coa help with roster
in prime time its always atleast 70 mercs for hire + 20 randomers who not show up in ts

And yet Quincy (and others) have shown no signs of wanting to attack Peacebreakers (or anybody else) and I'm guessing that part of the reason for this is that doing so is just too much effort for a reward that they can easily get from fighting on other people's rosters.

68

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: August 31, 2013, 06:31:59 pm »

i love how u always use the same shit "it will be good for small clans"
 in 2st strat small clan come to as with 5k troops now they cant farm so many cos they are small
 in 2nd strat they have "shinny" now they cant buy shit cos of awesome economy zystem
 all change agains big clans just ruin strat even more and more
small clans never be so effective as big one

I never said I want small clans to be as effective as big ones.  For a start it is near impossible to do through mechanics anyway since big clans will just split into smaller cells to overcome any malus.

Small clans will never be able to compete against bigger clans toe to toe, however right now they are deterred from even trying to compete against other small clans as well.  They have no choice but to pick sides in the UIF/Anti-UIF war.

What I want is for the likes of Barabe (6.8k tickets per fief), OdE (5.2k tickets per fief), Peacebreakers (5.2k tickets per fief), Conquistador (17.3k tickets per fief), BROs (12k tickets per fief), Guards (5.7k tickets per fief) and Quincy (3.6k tickets per fief) to be able to use those tickets attacking each other without having to worry about Greys, DRZ or Coalition stepping in to protect our allies, or having to worry about putting together a huge roster. 

This will never happen though so long as big clans need small clans to fill their rosters.

69

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Smaller Rosters

« on: August 31, 2013, 04:22:35 pm »

There is some point in this suggestion. But No!

There are already alot of peoples who cannot become a slot in a strategus battle even when they are level 30 and been in ts 30 minutes before the rolecall. Decreasing the max mercenary amount would make even more people suffer and become angry.

These people are generally clanless people who struggle to get into fights because they don't know people.  The answer for them is the same as it has always been....join a Strat clan.  Smaller rosters won't change this however at least if there are more clans making battles then there will be more clans to consider joining.

You will call decline your own suggestion when winter comes, because then there will be some more Coalition players available to strat rosters.

I know full well what this will mean for the Coalition when we are at our most active.  Our record for members on a roster is around 35 from memory and so we will have to ditch some "allies" and downgrade them to merely being "friends".  If they choose to fight us then so be it.  If they choose to do nothing then who cares.  If they choose to get more active in strat themselves then great and they will no doubt get plenty of our players applying for them to help out.  This is one of the good things about Strat 4 compared to Strat 3...we don't need a huge alliance to make money.  Its the roster support and troops that we need the huge alliance for and so these are the thing that need addressing in Strat imo (besides 1/3 rule ofc ).

70

Diplomacy / Re: What is happening with Hre ?

« on: August 31, 2013, 03:47:21 pm »

Then show us a sign of life... something! anything!

(click to show/hide)

no really... anything. You guys are boring

OMG! Only 2 wolves on the UIF roster last night and your last proper assault was almost a month ago!!  Are you guys breaking apart?  Come on, show some signs of life!

71

Strategus General Discussion / Smaller Rosters

« on: August 31, 2013, 03:23:59 pm »

I'd like to suggest reducing maximum rosters sizes in Strat from 51 to 41 and scaling smaller rosters accordingly.  Obviously this will reduce the number of tickets kill-able in the battle times but people will easily adjust once they work out what the new optimum is (currently ~1800)

Reasons
1) Easier to fill rosters in general.
2) Much easier for small clans to fill rosters and more impact from their limited number of players on the roster.
3) Harder for huge alliances/clans to keep everybody happy and therefore provides a natural but flexible cap on alliance size.
4) Less incentive for small clans to simply vassalise themselves to a bigger clan and merely fight in their battles whilst giving the bigger clan troops and gold.
5) More incentive for smaller clans to create their own battles and therefore wars.
6) More people making battles = more people capable of properly leading a strat clan = more diplomatic options and diversity in Strat = potentially more decent sized clans in the future.

Classic example: Quincy.  Sorry En_Dotter but what exactly have you done in Strat since taking over the Yalen area?  However who can blame you when the few players you do have can always get into whatever big battle is going on.  We've already seen that there is no longer any real incentive for big clans to stomp little clans so long as they aren't being annoying, so the only thing i can think of that is stopping small clans from having their own private wars against each other is the lack of incentive to do so.  Smaller rosters would at least help with this imo.

Another example: At the start of this Strat the Eastern block was very active and I remember the difficulty in keeping all the clans happy on our rosters.  We used to have to make sure we always had X Kapikulu, X Guards, X Templars, X SB, X Mercs and X Deserters on our rosters.  On top of that there were always a few key randomers that we liked to include plus 15-35 of our own Coalition players. If one battle we messed up and shorted a clan then they would get upset and complain.  Had the max roster size been just 40 we would have had to turn round to probably 2 or 3 of the clans listed above and told them there was nothing we could do to get them in and they would have to find some other way of getting battle time for their members.

72

General Off Topic / Re: Gaming Expert Pat Robertson: ‘Murdering Somebody In Cyberspace’ same as murder

« on: August 27, 2013, 08:13:24 pm »

How the hell is there supposed to be more than 1 "truth" to things.

Schroedinger's Cat - theoretically the cat is both alive and dead up until it is observed, although the definition of observed is up for debate

Interestingly (and from my limited perspective) quantum mechanics in this respect seems very like religion to me, with multiple "interpretations" that we do not currently have the technology to prove (or disprove) and so various scientists "believe" in whichever interpretation best fits the purposes of their own research.  I'm sure people with a better grasp on quantum mechanics will dispute this though

73

Diplomacy / Re: Dolby the traitor?

« on: August 26, 2013, 07:43:24 pm »

You sit idly in your stinking fiefs, meanwhile we murdering your allies and friends, so who is the biggest traitor here? Fallens... pfff

The only murdering I've seen in Merc battles during the last month was of Greys and Wolves at Senuzgda and Alburg Castles   Mercs don't need our help at this stage, perhaps this is why Wolves felt the need to buy their way to victory instead of fighting 

I didn't notice Greys coming to defend or retake Jameyyed or Teramma Castles.  Does that make you traitors as well?  Greys... pfff

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Diplomacy / Re: Dolby the traitor?

« on: August 26, 2013, 07:06:25 pm »

Dolby = Traitor, but being a traitor is all part of the fun of Strat. The clan bank gold was probably over the line though.
Wolves = Fools for spending cRPG looms on Strat resources that change nothing.  At least we don't pay to sit in our fiefs doing nothing

75

Suggestions Corner / Re: Strat rounds to last 3 months

« on: August 26, 2013, 02:48:29 pm »

but why voting? i dont see the point of it except to remove a large part of the fun when it comes to the AI battles

AI battles were easily abused and were a large part of the issue of steam rolling by large clans and alliances. 

The whole point of voting is to get small clans on the map from day 1 giving them a chance to compete, whilst creating uncertainty for large clans, making them more cautious.  In this voting worked perfectly.  The problem with it was the ridiculous micromanagement needed on voting day.  It would also be nice if clans had a bit less control over where to vote for so that each strat round didn't always end up with the same clans in the same places.