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Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: Tomas on December 02, 2011, 10:11:09 pm

Title: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tomas on December 02, 2011, 10:11:09 pm: So the Great Wall of chadz has been up for over a month now and I think it is probably a good time to see how people think it has changed strat and whether it is for better or for worse.

Happy voting/discussing :D
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Nessaj on December 02, 2011, 10:23:23 pm: It is not ideal but it works, I'd at any time take a split map over mixing NA/EU.

The best would of course be a complete split.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Slamz on December 02, 2011, 10:40:27 pm: I would vote "needs more time to tell". With all the problems, Strategus has only barely gotten rolling.

The line should appear on the main strategus map, btw. I have no doubt that a lot of non-forum reading players have no idea such a thing even exists.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: CrazyCracka420 on December 02, 2011, 10:50:31 pm: Yeah the map line should be on the strategus map. It's the best choice we have right now, ideally I'd also like to see a complete NA and EU strat map.

If there's less people who play on one server, then lower every value in the game (or just troops) by a certain percentage. Or conversely you could leave it default settings, but on a more populated server make it so the NPC controlled villages/castles/towns start with more troops.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Thax on December 02, 2011, 11:06:29 pm: Two maps.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: FRANK_THE_TANK on December 02, 2011, 11:12:35 pm: I'm a forum reader and know of its existence but not where the line is :S

A mark on the map would be a plus.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Osiris on December 02, 2011, 11:14:03 pm: isnt NA the very clearly lighter colour grass? more white then the rest of the map
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Gristle on December 02, 2011, 11:25:30 pm: It let most of the EU clans sit around and be neutral with each other. No real conflict at all down there.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Matey on December 03, 2011, 12:04:50 am: yeah lets just split EU and NA completely so we dont have to deal with the UIF... i would feel bad for all the non-carebear EU players though.

p.s. if chadz had listened to me and gone with the divide that had NA in the south and west... a lot more EU clans would have had to relocate and thus there MIGHT have been some conflict between them.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: RandomDude on December 03, 2011, 05:47:13 am: I prefer the old days with no divide at all. Sure you have to fight on bad pings sometimes but I do that anyway to help people out.

Also I dont feel as close to NA clans as was possible before. It didnt really use to matter whether a clan was NA or EU, but whether they were an enemy or not. Now it just feels like there's some kinda ghostiness in the NE but you shouldnt really go there cos its not for EU.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tomas on December 03, 2011, 03:06:28 pm: I think that overall it is a bad thing.

It has removed one of the main barriers to the formation of carebear alliances, giving over 2/3s of the map to them without any obstacles beyond a few EU clans that are now isolated from any NA allies they used to have. It has also messed up nighttimes, as in the past people would use nighttimes to prevent their opposite server neighbours from attacking during their primetime, whereas now it is used to screw over your same server rivals as much as possible by preventing battles in either of your primetimes.

However I voted for being able to change server once you have captured somewhere (with a 1 month cooldown though to prevent abuse). This would at least allow displaced and new clans to take advantage of whatever unclaimed/untaken fiefs there are on the map, therefore allowing a dynamic repsonce to fluctuations in EU and NA clan populations. On top of this I would say that you should have to wait a week before you can change the server of a fief you capture from a rival clan so as to allow a bit of room for counter attacks and such.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Uumdi on December 03, 2011, 04:30:11 pm: I suppose I can only theorize, since I've been out of commission for like a month now, but I think it was worth trying. I had fun last strat. Playing with people across the world made me feel like I was experiencing the best online gaming had to offer, even though 180 ping on a pentium D taught me otherwise. I think it would work out better now that the pace of strat has been fixed and turned into a game where gold matters, fiefs matter, planning + collaboration between so many clans at once is absolutely necessary to maximize bonuses.

The map is very cramped, especially with large clans and alliances. I like the seperate maps idea, or a bigger map with a similar divide to give smaller clans somewhere to go. I don't know how realistic that is, and it would be a shame to seperate the two communities like that, because I agree with RandomDude as far as that goes. Ping and Paranoia are people's problems I suppose.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Shadowren on December 03, 2011, 05:16:11 pm: Quote from: RandomDude on December 03, 2011, 05:47:13 am
I prefer the old days with no divide at all. Sure you have to fight on bad pings sometimes but I do that anyway to help people out.

Also I dont feel as close to NA clans as was possible before. It didnt really use to matter whether a clan was NA or EU, but whether they were an enemy or not. Now it just feels like there's some kinda ghostiness in the NE but you shouldnt really go there cos its not for EU.

I Agree with your post but ill say the split is kinda nice
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Lt_Anders on December 03, 2011, 06:19:45 pm: I love the split. I only have to deal wtih NA groups and never bother with EU mercs and any(possible) miscommunication. In addition, we all play on the same servers, so we can even talk in game if we want. It also means, that i know 90% of all mercs are NA guys and i know their names and styles.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Kalp on December 03, 2011, 07:54:50 pm: Larger map.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tristan on December 03, 2011, 08:09:32 pm: Larger map indeed. It's too crowded. Even reasonably large clans have no chance to become fiefholders.

Split completely. Add capitals and corruption based on fief distance from capital.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Knute on December 03, 2011, 08:09:53 pm: Quote from: Matey on December 03, 2011, 12:04:50 am
yeah lets just split EU and NA completely so we dont have to deal with the UIF... i would feel bad for all the non-carebear EU players though.

p.s. if chadz had listened to me and gone with the divide that had NA in the south and west... a lot more EU clans would have had to relocate and thus there MIGHT have been some conflict between them.

Isn't there roughly the same percentage of clans either allied or not fighting each other on the NA side as compared to the EU side? Based on conquered or claimed areas at least.

Map
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Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tomas on December 03, 2011, 08:40:46 pm: Quote from: Knute on December 03, 2011, 08:09:53 pm
Isn't there roughly the same percentage of clans either allied or not fighting each other on the NA side as compared to the EU side? Based on conquered or claimed areas at least.

Map
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As of now and only including the factions that have actually fought major battles themselves

NA Wars
UKC vs HATE
HRE & Fallen vs Hospitaller & Occitan
FCC vs ATS

NA Passive (externally at least ;)) factions
CHAOS, LLJK, Acre, NH, LL

EU Wars
Wolves vs Nords
Wolves vs Kapikulu
BashiBazouk vs Kapikulu
Raven vs HRE
22nd vs ANT
and now DRZ vs Mercs

EU passive factions
Grey Order, Wolpertingers, KoJ, Risen, GK, Union, Guards, Templars, Pecores, CotgS (the last 3 have always fought through the wolves afaik)

NA% = 8/12 = 67%
EU% = 10/20 = 50%

When you consider that DRZ vs Mercs only started today and had I done this yesterday the % would only be 40% then it is actually pretty telling

I've ignored Byzantium and the Camels who are gone from Strat. HRE are counted on both sides as they have fought in both EU and NA wars

EDIT: Added a few more clans in and changed %s
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Slamz on December 03, 2011, 08:51:07 pm: Quote from: Aemaelius on December 03, 2011, 08:09:32 pm
Larger map indeed. It's too crowded. Even reasonably large clans have no chance to become fiefholders.

Whatchoo talkin bout, Willis?

There are a number of uncaptured villages even now, well over a month into it, on both sides of the map. You could probably capture one with 100 troops right now the way so few defenders have been showing up to defenses. I'm surprised nobody is trying to take castles with 500 troops on the same basis! Run in, overwhelm the 8 people who show up to defend it, knock all the flags over and it's yours.

NH has about 12 active players and we captured a village early on.

Unless your idea of "reasonably large" is two people, you're smokin' crack by saying we need a bigger map.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Keshian on December 03, 2011, 09:00:49 pm: You guys are msising on some of this:

Quote from: neupreis on December 03, 2011, 07:53:25 pm
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Targets 1, 2 and 4 are the only EUs not in the mega coalition.

Basically HRE and Fallen fought Hospergllers and Occitan, FCC fought ATS, TKoV fought Hate, - these are all medium to large factions and they duke it out in NA turf, stopping too much of a circle jerk from happening, probably would be a lot more, but with practically all of EU working together it puts a damper on our fun NA wars as invasion imminent. Most of the wars you listed in EU is basically 1 war, where a giant allaince is attacking the few small clans not in that giant alliance (except HRE, which is the only decent sized clan they have fought so far). Trying to go by number of clans atatcked and doing percentage doesnt tell you anything. For example Byzantium is completely inactive.

Under chadz's calcualtion 64% of players are EU, so with msot of EU and Hospergllers and Occitan working together its essentially 70% of the player base circle-jerking each other about how they can take out other clans 1 by 1 with 20x the resources. It gets boring how uncreative these European players are. You have all of this land dedicated to EU ping and they cant even fight each other but have to go invade the only area of the map where factions fight each other - NA land.

Part of the problem was that chadz drew the line out ion the north and didnt really displace any EU clans other than 1 or 2, whicha llowed all of them to go back to their old claims and kiss each other's asses and talk big as they never had defending them as most of eu allied with each other. Ousting them form that area with NA ping would have POTENTIALLY made infighting possible, but chadz said he oesnt make decision based on taht, never mind that it basically is 1/3rd the reason the current start version has been far a and away the most boring and pointless.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: SHinOCk on December 03, 2011, 09:42:37 pm: Kesh I really can't seem to find why you hate big alliances to overwhelm the opposition so much when that's the same shit that happens on our NA turf as you say, you've been doing the same crap yourself, time to look in the mirror
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tears of Destiny on December 03, 2011, 09:58:06 pm: Well at least the NA big alliances are against other big NA alliances. When the NE was ganked, it itself was formidable and was a force we were told was to be reckoned with.

With EU (for the most part), it is a massive horde threatening to club anyone senseless and attacks just one clan at a time. At least with NE we get fights and not a total massacre, and are not afraid to pick fights with one another. Even right nnow it is a large alliance against a large alliance (though a bit lopsided).

Diplomacy is one thing that I understand is important, but I vastly prefer the bloodthirsty and NEVER dull NA side of things, where action is always to be found. It is a lot more fun for the common soldier.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: SHinOCk on December 03, 2011, 10:12:43 pm: Tears the thing is if you look at last strat, at some point, 1 alliance was so big (dont need to call names...) that we were on the verge of being massacred and im not exaggerating one bit there and this is why we had to bring EU clans into the fold via diplomacy for our survival. It always happen like that, it's always a race to get bigger than the enemy and the NA side is no different it starts small and then more and more ppl join one side until shit hits the fan
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Matey on December 03, 2011, 10:15:04 pm: Quote from: SHinOCk on December 03, 2011, 10:12:43 pm
Tears the thing is if you look at last strat, at some point, 1 alliance was so big (dont need to call names...) that we were on the verge of being massacred and im not exaggerating one bit there and this is why we had to bring EU clans into the fold via diplomacy for our survival. It always happen like that, it's always a race to get bigger than the enemy and the NA side is no different it starts small and then more and more ppl join one side until shit hits the fan

heres the thing shinock... you guys were allied with wolves and them before 3.0 even came up.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Dehitay on December 03, 2011, 11:31:59 pm: So by NA/EU divide, I guess we're referring to alliance relations rather than the ping border. In that case, it failed. Clans like HRE are on the NA side and clans like Hospitaller and Occitan are on the EU side. And this is ignore the fact that Fallen is a wildcard that can be played as NA or EU. Not enough NA/EU segregation. Try harder next time, guys.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Keshian on December 03, 2011, 11:38:11 pm: On eof the biggest problems is that EU got more land, so with UIF all not tatacking each others caravans they could safely bring caravns from Kulum to Shariz all the way across the map and sell goods for 140-150 gold each, which NA could never come even close to without going into eu territory. So inevitably EU will always make a lot more gold than NA adn wina war of attrition, doesnt hurt that most of EU refuse to fight agaisnt themselves because theya re too cowardly to attack any faction that isnt 1/10th their alliance's size.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tears of Destiny on December 04, 2011, 12:30:47 am: Quote from: Keshian on December 03, 2011, 11:38:11 pm
doesnt hurt that most of EU refuse to fight agaisnt themselves because theya re too cowardly to attack any faction that isnt 1/10th their alliance's size.

Ahahahaha
Ahahaaaaa
haaaaaaaaaa

...

+1 dammit, dying from laughter.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Vovka on December 04, 2011, 12:48:02 am: Quote from: Keshian on December 03, 2011, 11:38:11 pm
On eof the biggest problems is that EU got more land, so with UIF all not tatacking each others caravans they could safely bring caravns from Kulum to Shariz
Yes, all EU clans grow rich from the sale of 1k goods per week from Kulum to Shariz :lol:
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Tomas on December 04, 2011, 01:21:50 am: The fact is that Strat is not a stable entity. Clans are able to conquer new lands, knocking other clans out of the game and all without any kind of penalty that makes them weaker. Constant wars of annihilation are not nice and are not going to keep people interested. You would have to restart Strat on a regular basis just to let new/displaced clans back in but even then we're seeing that that doesn't really work as previous alliances will still hold.

If Strat is to survive as a long term war game then clans/alliances need to become weaker if they over expand so as to allow new or displaced clans to come into the game at any point. Furthermore, the very definition of over expansion need to be dynamically linked to the population of the game so that what a clan can hold is percentage based. As it stands we are about to see 50% of the total Strat population (approx 2/3 of the EU pop) take over half of the strat map without any effort at all. I'm not even sure that the NA border will slow them down that much given the amount of gold/troops the carebear clans are producing. So we are heading for 50% of the Strat population in control of 100% of the map. Do people really think that the other 50% are going to hang around and continue to play?

Strat needs to change, that much is obvious but the changes needed are not going to be liked by many. The main change that is needed is the complete removal of semi-active grinders from the game. If all you want to do is fight the battles for your clan then that is fine and should be allowed - but combining that with logging in once a week to transfer goods/troops to someone more active should not be a valid way to play Strat. The simplest way to bring about this change is to cap the number of troops an individual can lead according to the fiefs they own. More fiefs = more troops. This change would immediately prevent the easy transfer of 1000s of troops between carebears and slow down the conquest we are seeing. On top of that, the fact that clan members will have to actively equip their own troops and then march them around the map in support of their friends will limit clan expansion/conquest to what is achieveable by the active members of the clan. Basically, make Strat more like Native single player which is great game if you can put up with the monotony of the quest lines and the serverely limited AI. Mechanically, the game actually works very well and Strat should take a lot more from it than it does now.

But this is massively digressing from the top at hand :D
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: Erasmas on December 04, 2011, 02:30:23 am: I hate to quote myself, but this is my post from August when split was considered:

Quote from: Erasmas on August 25, 2011, 12:06:23 pm
I am against dividing the map into continents. The community is too small for that, and the quarrels between NA/EU/(even maybe ASIA and AUS) clans add some flavour to the game.

On the other hand, a mitigating factor - like sensible economy - could limit the ability of large clans to overpower small ones. One more thing could add to versatility of the game - much bigger map, with larger number of locations. Even a large clans cannot hold too many fiefs safely, so the there would be some room for medium small ones. The gameplay would be more interesting as well.

Clearly, I was wrong about economy part. But I stand by the rest of it.
Title: Re: NA/EU divide - success or failure
Post by: VVarlord on December 04, 2011, 02:42:37 am: Quote from: Keshian on December 03, 2011, 11:38:11 pm
doesnt hurt that most of EU refuse to fight agaisnt themselves because theya re too cowardly to attack any faction that isnt 1/10th their alliance's size.

Quote from: Tears of Destiny on December 04, 2011, 12:30:47 am
Ahahahaha
Ahahaaaaa
haaaaaaaaaa

...

+1 dammit, dying from laughter.

This. So much this my palm cant hit my face hard enough.