Strategus Reset?

[Keshian]

Some fiefs need to have their maps changed to something a little more fair or just be straight up removed.  All of the "untakeable" castles or cities only help to create gold and stagnation.

yeah, Dhirim, Narra, Uxhal, Tilbaut Castle, Durrin castle, and Alburq castle all need to be looked at again in terms of balance in relation to other cities and castles - unless the owner is completely mentally incapable these are all untakeable fiefs.


And Matey's idea for a time limit with rewards would make strategus far more dynamic and enjoyable for everyone. 

[CrazyCracka420]

Rindyar is fucking terrible too...

[Real_Dece_Guy]

Actually those were fixed in the last patch, which we found out when we capped flags on lost legion who were attacking it.  Not sure if Dhirigh Aban, which had the same issue, was fixed in the last patch too.

Did this just happen?  I was going on the battle two weeks ago where the flags at New Ayyike were inaccessible and the defending team got to play firing squad for 300 tickets.

[Spurdospera]

Not sure if Dhirigh Aban, which had the same issue, was fixed in the last patch too.

Forcefield was there last time I checked, could some Wolves confirm this since you attacked it quite resently?

[MURDERTRON]

And which village is it where attackers have a forcefield around some of their flags? Or are there more than 1? Cos that kinda takes the piss.

Well those are easier to fix, and some have been already since the start of this strat.

[Tomas]

Where will people put the extra troops on ? On themselves with crazy upkeep ? 

I don't know what you are trying to get at here?  Where do solo players keep troops now in order to avoid upkeep and how will a troop cap change this?

It will be just a "urgency" method when besieged but the first waves of attacks will be on fiefs with crazy amounts of troops in 
Not to add that lowering the garrison to avoid the possibility of "flag cap" (which is extremely low in castles/towns) calls for a Lord that is active 24/24 7/7.
Without the 1/3 above 1800+ troops, some sieges may well fall by flag capping if the lords arent there to avoid item bombing, it will call for more reasonable management of the land.

Again not sure what you are saying here - the 1/3 rule is changing and people change to adapt

And most factions doesnt "releases" fiefs pre-emptively, for fear of losing them. They all wait for some invaders to take the cautious decision to let small factions take over here and there, where they couldnt manage fiefs efficiently. Then when the big ones falls back, they all get crushed mercilessly (losing villages is as easy as taking them back).

Greys released a load of Apostate fiefs after capping them so that's not always true.  Also what's the difference? You either defend a fief or you don't.  It doesn't matter whether you actively give the fief away or wait for someone to grab it.  Although perhaps with the first you may get a deal out of it.

Not sure what you meant with decrease of overall tickets, you meant the fact that less people actively play cRPG, so less troops being recruited? That may be true, but still :

Reduced overall tickets means just that.  How many properly active cRPG players do you think there are in EU?  I'd say 400-600 so lets go with 500.  If all of them play strat then that means 500k tickets is the max that can exist at any one time.  500k is obviously far less than the 1m we have now

As for turtling being over.  If you had screenies from before and after the Coalition assaults on Uxkhal you'd be able to draw the same conclusion and yet we all know turtling was really just paused.  I'd say turtling is back again now and I fully expect that total tickets figure to start growing again.

[Butan]

I don't know what you are trying to get at here?

I meant that the 1/3 tweak will not change the Coalition defense situation in your examples (except if you have no gear inside some fiefs). And by extension everyone's defenses.

(click to show/hide)

The number of troops in garrison will still be useful, because its too hard to dispose troops everywhere. Good luck having just the perfect number of troops inside each fiefs at all times, knowing that there is nowhere to put them except in other fiefs that would also be attackable.

No strat leader worth its salt will put fief's garrison at +/-2000 just for this, or it would mean those are fiefs that deserves to be lost, and not actively protected from flag capping with 1 to X players on maximum alert (except if thats a last stand).

In conclusion, I dont believe there will be much pre-emptive troops movement to protect from 1/3 tweak, except in some situational cases.



And about the turtling, I dont think that the overall troops power will grow. You said it yourself :

- player decline = less tickets generation
- ease of attack = more attacks = more deaths

=> less garrison over time



Even if you all retreated into your most boring core fiefs, this time people will be able to besiege you and use up ALL their tickets in each sieges.
Not to add that you better have a proper lord in each fiefs or it will get automatically item-bombed after 2 waves.

In those circumstances, I believe we could very well see at least one important battle a day (not from the same faction all the time) and the deaths from those battles will probably decrease the overall garrison by a lot, until we reach a "beginning of the round" state where people had only minimal defenses and were always on the lookout.



Then we will need to find a tweak for the economy so every fiefs arent +9001 prosperity and people drown in silver and plate, and everyone will be happy (at least I will be  )

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

Best possible way to get people to stop turtling up is a time limit on strat combined with rewards for achieving things. I'd say 5 month round followed by 1 month break. The rewards could be things like 1 loom point for every 10million renown a faction accumulates or 1 loom point for every 1000 troops they kill or 1 loom for every X number of fiefs a faction owns when strat ends... But ultimately there needs to be a time limit so people will know that if they mess up and get wiped out then they will know when it'll reset and they can either come back then or try something different for the remainder of the current round then regroup for the next one. That combined with cRPG related incentives will get people to actually do shit in strat instead of lounging about stockpiling troops. I do think that capping how many troops can be put in a fief isn't a bad idea either or at least allowing 1500+ troops to attack any fief/player regardless of how many troops they have thus negating the advantage of having a horde of troops.

It's a good idea.

Have a whole raft of incentives visitors can't see pics , please register or login
 

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It would be a good idea to break it up into tiers as well, so that small clans can still "compete" and not feel that if they don't want to miss out on the opportunity to "win" loom points or what have you. I personally think that having a lot of smaller player in amongst the big clans really livens the thing up and makes the map less stale.

[Flans]

Forcefield was there last time I checked, could some Wolves confirm this since you attacked it quite resently?

All flags went down village is totally fine.

[Butan]

The problem with the idea of rewarding gameplay in strategus with goodies, is that it would give a big incentive to cheating and metagaming.

Not to add that most of the rewards you will think of will also most likely re-create a bipolar world where people will group up to have the biggest renown meter or something. And god knows everyone hated the UIF - anti-UIF shit fake diplomacy and grinding fest. Well, maybe Hetman and Rogue likes it, the two masters of the world  (sorry Vovka!)



I also disagree about the "time limit" thingy. I love the way this round seems to last forever, it means you have the time to get wiped 7 times, and get back up a 8th. The history of that round is the best of all strat round in terms of world/region/local events. If it had a better balance and gameplay, and if it didnt need any big patches (breaking balance) it could BASICALLY go on forever. That would become real history, where people remember what you have done before and can interact in the same world, not in a different new one.

[Matey]

The problem with the idea of rewarding gameplay in strategus with goodies, is that it would give a big incentive to cheating and metagaming.

Not to add that most of the rewards you will think of will also most likely re-create a bipolar world where people will group up to have the biggest renown meter or something. And god knows everyone hated the UIF - anti-UIF shit fake diplomacy and grinding fest. Well, maybe Hetman and Rogue likes it, the two masters of the world  (sorry Vovka!)



I also disagree about the "time limit" thingy. I love the way this round seems to last forever, it means you have the time to get wiped 7 times, and get back up a 8th. The history of that round is the best of all strat round in terms of world/region/local events. If it had a better balance and gameplay, and if it didnt need any big patches (breaking balance) it could BASICALLY go on forever. That would become real history, where people remember what you have done before and can interact in the same world, not in a different new one.

I don't think a reward system based off of total kills or even renown (however that calculates) is likely to be abused in the way you think. Say 5 actives get together and recruit 120 troops a day and launch a 1200 man attack every 10 days and do 1:1 in each fight. all the kills/renown are divided by 5 and they would likely get quite a bit. On the other hand... a clan with 100 members of which only 60 are recruiting troops at all and of which only 10 are actively doing stuff and they are so worried about keeping their lands and such that they play defensively so they only end up sending out 1200 troops every 10 days... now you have all the renown and kills of those 1200 troops per 10 days being divided by 100... no one gets shit. Even if the bigger faction uses its troops up at a better rate than 1200 every 10 days they would still be dividing everything by 100 and wouldnt be able to outperform the 5 man group... the best they could do is match the 5man group. the only advantage the 100 man clan would have is the ability to hold more territory and amass more wealth and gear their troops better. but if the 5 man group really has its shit together they could probably get a decent fief and make enough money to gear their troops well and hold out for a long time. or just go hang out in a friendly factions lands and take up contracts or something.

If there were cRPG incentives to strat youd get more people playing it actively and i really think you would see a lot more small active groups just seeking profit through mercing and such.

[Butan]

Not sure how the renown work anyway  Is is just a matter of troops lost/killed ?

[Tomas]

I don't think a reward system based off of total kills or even renown (however that calculates) is likely to be abused in the way you think. Say 5 actives get together and recruit 120 troops a day and launch a 1200 man attack every 10 days and do 1:1 in each fight. all the kills/renown are divided by 5 and they would likely get quite a bit. On the other hand... a clan with 100 members of which only 60 are recruiting troops at all and of which only 10 are actively doing stuff and they are so worried about keeping their lands and such that they play defensively so they only end up sending out 1200 troops every 10 days... now you have all the renown and kills of those 1200 troops per 10 days being divided by 100... no one gets shit. Even if the bigger faction uses its troops up at a better rate than 1200 every 10 days they would still be dividing everything by 100 and wouldnt be able to outperform the 5 man group... the best they could do is match the 5man group. the only advantage the 100 man clan would have is the ability to hold more territory and amass more wealth and gear their troops better. but if the 5 man group really has its shit together they could probably get a decent fief and make enough money to gear their troops well and hold out for a long time. or just go hang out in a friendly factions lands and take up contracts or something.

If there were cRPG incentives to strat youd get more people playing it actively and i really think you would see a lot more small active groups just seeking profit through mercing and such.

What about a 100 man faction where 60 of them recruit troops and then the faction hands over all those troops to a 5 man faction who do the actual battles?

Any score we give to factions needs to be divided by the total troops created by the faction plus the total troops received.  That way scores are always normailsed by each faction's true resource pool.

As for incentives - I would prefer them to be visual but these days with armouries, looms are completely devalued anyway so that won't make much difference.

[FRANK_THE_TANK]

I agree Thom.

I would also add (think I've said this else where...) that there should be tiers to promote competition as widely as possible.