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Strategus => Strategus General Discussion => Topic started by: MrPink44 on August 06, 2013, 05:19:28 am

Title: New Strat reset?
Post by: MrPink44 on August 06, 2013, 05:19:28 am
Is there by any stretch of the imagination going to be another strategus reset within the foreseeable future?

If so are you taking any suggestions on things to change for the next round?

Just curious as I enjoy strat but the NA map is kind of going stagnant. Too many of the castles and towns are beyond impossible to attack. Of the ones that aren't impossible there is a handful that are actually worth defending. The rest of them are just a waste of troops.

So the battles just end up being the same five or six fiefs that are getting really old. Not to mention there is no benefit to being the attacker which makes field battles all the more sketchy to commit to. And castle sieges almost an exercise in futility unless you want to dispense of about 3 times the amount of troops garrisoned.

This is just a few concerns if there is a new strategus on the horizon but if there is not I guess we'll make do.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Gristle on August 06, 2013, 06:02:54 am
If they ever do reset strat again, I hope they go back to having to attack neutral fiefs. Starting with castles and towns was boring. This round didn't have any legendary peasant defenses to remember.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Keshian on August 06, 2013, 06:20:54 am
If they ever do reset strat again, I hope they go back to having to attack neutral fiefs. Starting with castles and towns was boring. This round didn't have any legendary peasant defenses to remember.

yeah it also made the economy rather retarded - far too easy to accumulate massive amounts of gold owning cities and castles from the very beginning.  I loved those village fights - especially the build up trying to accumulate enough gear to even have equal gear with the village or often weaker but attack anyway with more troops.  Lots of fun - missed that with the current strategus.  Also having castles and cities neutral for most of strategus really does a good job of not making clans overpoweringly powerful compared to new factions because they were essentially free trade fiefs.  Had to make some real clear tradeoffs - do you 1. build up to take your very own castle/city or 2. duke it out with your neighbors, knowing that all that gear and troops lost delayed or prevented you from taking a castle or city.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: arowaine on August 06, 2013, 07:10:02 am
totaly agree with kesh and gristle on that one! no sarcasm
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: MrPink44 on August 06, 2013, 09:19:51 am
I totally support that. Attacking neutrals was awesome, except neutral cities were really OP unless you had tons of cash and troops. I do like the current recruitment system and the new troop cap is nice although honestly there should really need to be one. Just a check box or something that says stop recruiting troops. Any suggestions for gold gain? I know that under the current system gold is laughable at best.

I like the idea of trading but it's obviously time consuming and in a set-up like strat it can become horribly arbitrary as it has now. I can sit comfortably in a fief and collect decent enough tax money to build an army with. The economy systems in games like this are always really difficult to balance so I honestly have no real decent feedback on alternatives.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Malgalad on August 06, 2013, 12:37:53 pm
 :shock: I hope make the night darker. then you must fight with torch's lighting at night.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Vovka on August 06, 2013, 12:41:38 pm
:shock: I hope make the night darker. then you must fight with torch's lighting at night.
or just modify some files and cut ur silly blind enemyes  :P
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Zlisch_The_Butcher on August 06, 2013, 01:18:52 pm
What strat needs is a limit on max production points ever spent in a fief at one point (for example 1400 for towns, 1000 for castles, and 500 for villages), and then fiefs being respeced and losing 75% of production points instantly upon any capture. A food system to penalize endless troop stacking, allow for actual starvationbased sieges, and make villages matter (food should die out overtime so it is impossible to save it up for lengthy durations, possibly allow pp to be spent on increasing food output, villages should have way higher food outputs than castles and towns). Massive alterations in the economy (there are plenty of ways to go by this, the simplest being making everything more expensive) to make slightly lower than medium armor the standard, then have lower tier horses being made cheaper so cav still exist. Finally it desperately needs randomized fief distribution to make it less likely that every faction takes the exact land that they always take, and to hopefully cause enough tensions among players to make two megablocs EU style highly unlikely.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Molly on August 06, 2013, 01:22:27 pm
Don't think they consider restarting strat anytime soon cuz of the New Thing.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Butan on August 06, 2013, 02:02:13 pm
Neutral fiefs are cool when you forget people applying to AI side and not showing up/fighting properly.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Tomas on August 06, 2013, 02:06:29 pm
Neutral fiefs are cool when you forget people applying to AI side and not showing up/fighting properly.

They are also cool when you forget that it is the bigger clans that gain the resources to attack neutral fiefs first and that once you have a fief it is then easier to cap the next fief. 
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Vovka on August 06, 2013, 02:19:11 pm
They are also cool when you forget that it is the bigger clans that gain the resources to attack neutral fiefs first and that once you have a fief it is then easier to cap the next fief.
Big clan always >>>>>> small clan
if small clan will be better than big
big clan will split into few small and again

bunch of "small" clans >>> small clans

Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: dynamike on August 06, 2013, 03:51:21 pm
totaly agree with kesh and gristle on that one! no sarcasm

If that does not prove that a Strat reset is at the order, then what does  :?:
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Turboflex on August 06, 2013, 04:43:41 pm
Only worth it if the devs have a major patch.

Economy needs fixes (too much gold, no limits on 'prosperity')

Issues with castle walls need fixes (unbreakable sections, wooden walls)

Would be good if they could address troop stacking too, I think a siege mechanic to starve out too many stacked troops, forcing them to relieve, surrender or sally.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Aderyn on August 06, 2013, 05:12:52 pm
They probably took out the neutral fiefs because it was getting abused heavily with signing up for defenders or dumping stuff into the fief to give them less armor/weapons.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: njames89 on August 06, 2013, 05:36:33 pm
Quote
castle sieges almost an exercise in futility unless you want to dispense of about 3 times the amount of troops garrisoned.

I don't really see this as a problem as its realistic to need a much larger force to attack a garrisoned castle. I however agree that a strategus reset sometime in the near future could be interesting/.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: CrazyCracka420 on August 06, 2013, 05:47:43 pm
Yeah they took out neutral fiefs so they didn't have to deal with all the "problems" of people stacking troops in the fiefs (giving the opposite effect intended, which made it so the AI tried to buy gear for the 20,000 troops and ended up with peasant gear for 20,000 troops, rather than having expensive gear for 2500 troops).  Also the problems around getting people to signup for AI battles was numerous.

**I personally would like to see a return to neutral fiefs.

**Also some system (as discussed here and other threads) where you can't have an unlimited amount of troops/population in a fief.  The surrounding villages should be needed to provide food to the castle/cities (or the castles/cities would have to spend PP on producing food rather than on trade goods or equipment). 

**If you didn't (or hell even if you did) go with the food system, you should also make it so that you can attack any fief if you have over 1,000 (or 1,200, or 1,500) troops, negating the 1/3rd rule.  So that way if someone has 30,000 troops in a fief, you don't need to attack with 10,000 (which would be a waste of 8200-8500 troops, since you can't use up more than 1500 or so in a battle). 

**Fixing wooden walls so catapults can destroy them. 

These are all common sense most people can agree on.  One that is going to have split opinions, would be to bring back one map for EU and NA, and do it like strat 2 or 3 (either defenders/fiefs get to choose where battles are fought, or have a line going through Calradia determining where EU/NA split is).  I personally would go for the artificial NA/EU split.  I think having 2 maps is way too many fiefs for the amount of people playing strat.

Would be cool if we got a 2 week notice before strat ended, but I don't think they've ever done this, and I don't anticipate they will start any time soon.  That being said, I don't think we'll see another iteration of strat.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Harald on August 06, 2013, 05:51:01 pm
A reset will most likely come, but we don't have a date yet. First we need to finish the site integration/refactoring old code, then if there is time we can think about adding new features/improving existing mechanics. New stuff would most likely be tested on current data before doing the reset.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: njames89 on August 06, 2013, 05:58:46 pm

**If you didn't (or hell even if you did) go with the food system, you should also make it so that you can attack any fief if you have over 1,000 (or 1,200, or 1,500) troops, negating the 1/3rd rule.  So that way if someone has 30,000 troops in a fief, you don't need to attack with 10,000 (which would be a waste of 8200-8500 troops, since you can't use up more than 1500 or so in a battle). 

**Fixing wooden walls so catapults can destroy them. 


Agree +1

A reset will most likely come, but we don't have a date yet. First we need to finish the site integration/refactoring old code, then if there is time we can think about adding new features/improving existing mechanics. New stuff would most likely be tested on current data before doing the reset.

Thanks for the info Harald great to hear!
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Turboflex on August 06, 2013, 06:11:08 pm
They probably took out the neutral fiefs because it was getting abused heavily with signing up for defenders or dumping stuff into the fief to give them less armor/weapons.

Yes it was a mess, lots of shenanagins.

Asides from what you mention there was also situations when defenders had very weak or incomplete merc rosters because of sign up abuse and no-shows, or just players in general not wanting to sign up against powerful factions because it would be seen as a hostile act, so they got easy flag captures.

The voting system is much better.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: Keshian on August 06, 2013, 06:48:13 pm
Yeah they took out neutral fiefs so they didn't have to deal with all the "problems" of people stacking troops in the fiefs (giving the opposite effect intended, which made it so the AI tried to buy gear for the 20,000 troops and ended up with peasant gear for 20,000 troops, rather than having expensive gear for 2500 troops).  Also the problems around getting people to signup for AI battles was numerous.


Simple solution - don't allow transfers to fiefs without "allow incoming transfers" by the fief owner and with neutral fiefs that means not allowed at all.  Also, rosters n ai fiefs were ine, actually allowed people that normally wouldn't get hired to actually have a chance to try out strategus battle and it worked really well where in strat 1 the AI would hire 75 player roster against 60 and even with no shows it still had about 50ish - I think something similar with the current 50 man rosters - AIs get up to 70 or 75. 

The issue with pissing off a faction wasn't that pronounced - many people just wanted xp anyway - but if you are really concerned there was talk before about making mercs hired on roster have their names removed so merc 1 etc. - can set this up only for neutral fiefs. 

Overall, neutral fief fights were actually some of the best fights strategus had and put a significant damper on over-development by factions since villages only did so much and it took a lot ot get a castle.
Title: Re: New Strat reset?
Post by: MrPink44 on August 06, 2013, 08:38:15 pm

**I personally would like to see a return to neutral fiefs.

**Also some system (as discussed here and other threads) where you can't have an unlimited amount of troops/population in a fief.  The surrounding villages should be needed to provide food to the castle/cities (or the castles/cities would have to spend PP on producing food rather than on trade goods or equipment). 

**If you didn't (or hell even if you did) go with the food system, you should also make it so that you can attack any fief if you have over 1,000 (or 1,200, or 1,500) troops, negating the 1/3rd rule.  So that way if someone has 30,000 troops in a fief, you don't need to attack with 10,000 (which would be a waste of 8200-8500 troops, since you can't use up more than 1500 or so in a battle). 

**Fixing wooden walls so catapults can destroy them. 

These are all common sense most people can agree on.  One that is going to have split opinions, would be to bring back one map for EU and NA, and do it like strat 2 or 3 (either defenders/fiefs get to choose where battles are fought, or have a line going through Calradia determining where EU/NA split is).  I personally would go for the artificial NA/EU split.  I think having 2 maps is way too many fiefs for the amount of people playing strat.

Would be cool if we got a 2 week notice before strat ended, but I don't think they've ever done this, and I don't anticipate they will start any time soon.  That being said, I don't think we'll see another iteration of strat.

Thanks for the info Harald! Always nice to hear from the powers that be on these types of things. So I think I'll edit the OP with some of the things Huesby mentioned above. Not really a hard and fast list of wants but more of a wishlist/idea board.

As far as neutral fiefs were concerned I think we've pretty much covered the bases there there was a lot of potential for slowed growth but yeah the way the AI handled things was a bit screwy. It's an idea that has some grounding and doesn't really need expanding on any further than it was cool, but there were problems that need to be addressed before returning to it.

I like the idea of villages contributing more to the whole fief structure rather than being useless throw-away's that don't really mean much. I think Sandersson and I actually had the same conversation about the villages actually producing the required resources to sustain a military. Towns should really be the cultural production centers with a minor focus on the ability to train and equip troops where as castles had almost no food and trade goods production and were more of a focus of garrisoning and training troops. So maybe a troop recruitment bonus while stationed in a castle as well as moving around the map. I don't care for the whole we have a castle, just turtle it out mentality that has become popular in late strat. I prefer the idea of people having to move around and conduct trade/recruit troops (as if in actual medieval times where recruitment was a campaign in itself) but there is so much crap on the strat map it's a mess. Just delete the inactive players please so our map isn't littered with white useless dots.

As far as starting a new iteration perhaps the castles and towns can start as neutral but leave the villages open for factions to at least have a starting point. I enjoyed the start of this strat where you could at least start with a home rather than just being a ronin clan. But try to limit it to just 1 maybe 2 villages per clan (probably a pain in the ass to achieve but there was a lot of chaos at the start of last strat with people just being randomly assigned fiefs. Also the clan system in strat is a bit convoluted so my question is, is there a way to associate it with the ladder and or streamline it? '

Wow that post ran a bit longer than I wanted but just some points of interest for me personally.