Messages

1

Game Balance Discussion / Re: High power draw builds, the truth (Poorly camouflaged QQ post)

« on: August 31, 2014, 01:05:05 pm »

I need some sort of irrefutable argument that would show agility's superiority over strength or 1s bow's superiority over 2s bows. You attempted this, but were unable to find an irrefutable argument. If I knew what exactly the argument would be that you could make, I'd have already made a proposal to rebalance archery. Unfortunately, what evidence there has been so far, isn't nearly good enough to justify a balance change.

I recently tested 24/18 and 30/12 on my STF though and I didn't find them to be lacking. Furthermore, I have not only thoroughly tested damages in game, I have also tested accuracy (and not just reticule size) as well. Again, the conclusion I have come to is that when you consider the potential that each build has, the actual potential is higher for str builds, but they're also more specialized, as one would expect under a perfectly balanced setting. As you specialize, you sacrifice, else you gain for free.

Isn't it a bit hypocritical that you ask for irrefutable proof from Algarn that STRvsAGI archery is unbalanced and yet offer no irrefutable proof yourself to show that it is balanced?!

Elerion is the only one I have so far seen even attempt to do this properly but you shot him down with subjective stuff about cavalry and map types.

Personally I believe that class/build balance will always have a subjective element and so to ask people to irrefutably prove stuff before you will make a change is just wrong.  Simply disagree with him and be done with it.

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Game Balance Discussion / Re: cavalry & dropping weapons on impact

« on: August 16, 2014, 12:48:52 pm »

Would love to see this and suggested in the past that it should apply to all weapons....very simply, if you do more than a certain (quite high) amount of damage in a single hit then you drop the weapon.

That would mean
- cav is better balanced and instead has an impact moment
- cav becomes more tactical....when to go for the higher damage charge and who to use it against (why waste a couch on a peasant)
- 1Hs and especially 2Hs are nerfed vs cav as their attacks run the risk of causing enough damage for them to drop weapons
- 1Hs and 2Hs remain as is in normal melee as the threshold should be set too high to really effect them.
- Polearms remain vs cav as they are since they rear horses
- Ranged remain as is

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Faction Halls / Re: [Fallen] - Fallen Brigade - Recruiting EU - NEW!

« on: July 17, 2014, 01:18:28 am »

Okay i think we are officially merging in to Fallen_Roman_Empire so we should make new topic.

Close but we're calling it The Coalition since we used it in the past for Strat.

Only thing people need to do for now is join The Coalition ladder and keep an eye on our forums for further details

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General Discussion / Re: Horse archery is too strong

« on: July 14, 2014, 11:56:42 pm »

This is simply a question of what type of game the devs want to make.

If they were making one that was fun for me then they would always have the following statements in mind
 - I want a skill based game with a strong tactical element that means being able to think is as important as being able to fight.
 - I want real consequences for mistakes (i.e. death) but without having to ever wait more than a minute or 2 to respawn.

The first of these statements means that HAs need to stay in the game as without them we lose a tactical element to the game.  Nerfing them into the ground so they are useless is just as bad.

The second statement meanwhile means that kiting at the end of rounds needs to be abolished and the only way to do this is to either limit ammo so it runs out faster, or to just lock all ranged weapons once the flags are up.  The first is probably easier but may mean a buff is needed to ranged.  The second is probably harder to code but means no re-balance is needed imo.

Now the question is just whether the devs idea of fun is the same as mine and if it is which option do they want to implement.

5

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Epic fail to small clans

« on: March 12, 2014, 08:26:36 pm »

2nd/1st highest renown value in EU last Strat went to Osiris, a lone wolf for most of the end of Strat.

Renown last start was completely bugged and no reflection all of anything.

@Grandmom and Harpag

Nobody should be forced to ally into a huge block just to compete in Strat. But likewise nobody should be forced to split up a successful alliance just because it became too big. 

We had a game that allowed both small and large clans/alliances to compete on a map for over 15months but sadly we threw it away in favour of game where player numbers mean it was over before it even started

6

Strategus General Discussion / Re: Suggestion for Strat 6!

« on: March 06, 2014, 11:06:31 pm »

What I think: high crime rate makes the the fief undefendable - any troops defenders put there disappear within 24h, i.e. before battle starts . It makes them voulnerable. Then, go get them if you dare! Don't forget to bring loooots of eq with you! After all the idea of the crime was to keep troops in field instead of stacked inside fiefs

Seriously? Give it more time. Things haven't settled yet; it is still the beginning of Strat. We will be able to see how it works when all fiefs will be taken. It is too early for a decent, well balanced suggestions.

That's not true - they are actually the worst fiefs to try and attack since you can't defend them once you take them either.  You can't even hold them long enough to respec them.

It actually benefits large clans to have just 1 or 2 strategic fiefs to keep troops in and then use crime to make the others pointless to take.

7

Strategus General Discussion / Re: We complain about not having good fights

« on: February 26, 2014, 12:10:08 am »

All this was exactly why AI fiefs were taken out of the game in Strat 4.  Its just a pity that people's short memories and rose tinted spectacles have led to them being added back in, making this strat largely pointless imo.

8

Diplomacy / Re: Bubastan a new faction

« on: February 16, 2014, 12:04:23 pm »

tomas wont be in fallen faction?

I was going to stay out but then Buba threw in an extra goat and a Deli Cap so I couldn't refuse!

9

Game Balance Discussion / Re: An autobalance that puts clans together on public servers is a terrible idea.

« on: February 16, 2014, 11:57:26 am »

The banner balance limit just needs setting at the size of the 4th largest clan online.  That means it only really comes into play when both teams are going to have a significant number of clan players online that will try and play together.

This might also encourage people to join some of the smaller clans as in the huge clans you have a lower chance of consistently being on the same team.

10

Strategus General Discussion / Re: New System to Limit Troop Tickets

« on: February 12, 2014, 09:21:17 pm »

Too complicated for me.

Preferred Suggestion
Instead just up the personal troop cap of non-transferable tickets to 200 and make it so that you do not need ticks to get them. Then have a cap of a further 2 troops per strat tick up to a max of 200 tickets for each player however this additional capacity would be applied to a player's faction and not the individual player meaning it does not matter who in the faction has those tickets.

Example
- This means a faction with 10 players, 6 of whom have 100 or more Strat ticks each and one of which had 50 strat ticks, would be capped at 1300 transferable tickets (200*6 + 50*2) although each player could still have a further 200 tickets on them as well.  Whether the faction has 1 player with all 1300 tickets, puts them all in a fief, or spreads them out is up to them.

Additions
- To make this better strat ticks should be gain able from strat battles
- Renown can be used as a modifier to increase recruitment speeds to reward battle active factions.  This would either need to be based on relative renown or renown would need to decay though in order to keep it balanced.
- I'd drop Villages to 200 population maximum in this and prevent topping up of fief populations as this will ensure that active solo players are always a threat with their 400 tickets.  Similarly Castles should have just 500 population and Town's 2000.

PROs
- A simple linear cap based on player numbers.
- Splitting factions gives you no advantage.
- Merging factions gives no non-proportional benefits either.
- No extra micro management, although you still have to ensure your players are passing on their tickets.

Estimate of total troops
- At a guess there were 1000 players in EU factions of which 250 probably had ticks.  This would put the total troops at any one time on EU at 250,000 of which only 50,000 are freely transferable within your own faction.  That sounds pretty good to me.

11

Announcements / Re: Rise and Shine: Strategus 2014, starting 15th February

« on: February 09, 2014, 01:12:22 am »

If you have any *working* suggestion to stop people from creating large factions, feel free to tell me, because I've been looking for a solution for years now.

Starting the game
1) Start Strat on Sat at 18:00 EU time
2) When first joining Strat you pick your region (EU/NA), your clan (you can form one if you like) and also you have to tick a box if you want to be a fief owner.  That is all though for 24 hours.
3) Joining a clan automatically registers your vote for your clan
4) At 18:00 EU time Sunday all votes are added up and fiefs are awarded according to clan votes.  This is complicated but should be done as follows 
 - divide Players joined (with ticks) by the number of fiefs
 - pick the largest clan (with an available fief owner)
 - award them a random fief
 - lower their size by the value calculated in the first step
 - pick the next largest clan (with an available fief owner)
 - award them a fief
 - lower their size by the value calculated in the first step
 - continue until all fiefs are awarded
 - repeat for NA
5) Finally players will be spawned spread around the fiefs their faction won.

This will spread fiefs out amongst all factions.  The bigger factions will still get proportionately more fiefs than their smaller rivals - you can't avoid this in any system - however at least now their fiefs will be completely random meaning claims are useless.  Sorry to random individuals here but it is impossible to cater for you without creating loopholes for larger clans to exploit - it has to based on averages

Other game mechanics twists
1) Do everything else suggested in your change list
2) Raise the level of free gear (looking at Gambesons and simple sowrds here)
3) Alter the new price formula to be (Old_Price^1.35)-X where X brings the price of the lower level gear into line with the new free gear level.
4) Give free gear to attackers and defenders

This just gaurantees that ALL battles have reasonable equipment whilst keeping the better stuff as expensive upgrades

Also
1) Split renown so that is calculated per side and not per battle
2) Make sure there are no bugs
3) Create a score board where Score = renown_gained_by_faction / (tickets_created + tickets_received)
4) After 10 months declare the top scoring faction the winners

Since score is divided by tickets (both created and received) then each factions score is normalised according to their resource pool.  You should therefore be able to compare clans evenly regardless of their size.  It also takes full on alliances into account and actually punishes them slightly by counting tickets twice if they are transferred between factions.  IF you want to ally and avoid this, just use your tickets yourself.

Strat 4 had the following main flaws all of which are solvable without resorting to shitty AI Fiefs
1) Voting was a hassle to manage (so take the choice out of it and we get randomised fiefs without the hassle)
2) It was too easy to take over fiefs you didn't win in the vote (this was already solved with free gear so no need to do more, although raising the free gear level makes it an even better fix)
3) Too many plate armies by the end (this is fixed by ending Strat after 10 months - we were still on Black Coat of Plates then, so no real need to change the economy imo although i'm not against slowing things down so long as the free gear level is raised so that we don;t spend months in shitty peasant gear)

Finally
What is the plan for preventing abuse by faction members signing up anonymously for AI rosters and then doing shit or opening gates?  Anonymous rostering only works when players are in charge of rosters and can weed out the abusers

12

Announcements / Re: Rise and Shine: Strategus 2014, starting 15th February

« on: February 07, 2014, 08:01:19 pm »

You were talking about large clans becoming too strong for small clans to do much - and it is a lot worse when large clans start off with multiple hard-to-take cities and castles providing numerous economic and defensive bonuses than if they are only able to take a couple villages earlier than others.  Much harder for smaller clans to get on par when they are in full plate with multiple castles/cities after a short period of time. 

This strat should be more like strat 2 where we start with peasant gear - may take a couple villages but it will be much harder to hold them - even against smaller factions because the gear on both sides will be pretty limited and villages dont give enough of an economic advantage with only 1 pp produced a day that even landless factions can't just buy gear in cities and castles or other villages and come mess up a larger faction's caravans or fiefs far more than in the last round.

From memory Strat 2 consisted of the UIF steam rolling the west whilst Fallen/HRE/FCC steam rolled the east.  Our war with the Eastern Tsardom lasted just days and the same with the UIF vs byzantium/kapikulu war (ignoring bugs ofc  ).  Other than that I remember LLJK wiping some small clans like Camel screamers in the Desert whilst Mercs and CHAOS sat in the middle.

Basically Strat 2 was the start of the UIF/Anti UIF block war and the only reason it was better than Strat 3 was the slower economy and the fact it ended before the UIF realised how much bigger they were than everybody else.

Strat 4 meanwhile saw small clans like KwsN grab and hold land all the way through the 14(?) month round.  Had it been a village and not a castle the KwsN took in the voting then they wouldn't have lasted 2 weeks.  I know which I'd prefer as a small clan

13

Announcements / Re: Rise and Shine: Strategus 2014, starting 15th February

« on: February 07, 2014, 06:57:48 pm »

Yeah the cascade effect was far more dramatic having large clans vote multiple cities and castles under 1 clan with all their clan members voting and with all the massive amount of PP per day not available when owning a village.

That's not a cascade effect and i think you'll find that the larger clans wasted far more votes than necessary in gaining those castles/cities.  Had it been a cascade effect then the largest clan at the start would have gone on to steam roll the map but that never happened.  Even at the end it was boredom and incompetence that gave the UIF their victory - not numbers

Strat 3 meanwhile was over inside 3 months and we'll be back to something similar now that its just a numbers game again. 

14

Announcements / Re: Rise and Shine: Strategus 2014, starting 15th February

« on: February 06, 2014, 11:51:12 pm »

I really hope there's more changes under the surface, otherwise for me this is a huge step backwards for Strat.

1) AI villages mean the biggest clans will gather the required resources to take their first fief quickest
2) Production points mean that taking a fief gives you an immediate boost to your economy
3) Large clans will already be the ones who will have the tickets to take their 2nd fief quickest but combined with with the economic boost from PP this will be even worse than before and cascade exponentially with every successive fief
4) Since Castles are now off the table again at the very start of the round the big clans will instead try and grab as many villages as they can and without the defensive capabilities of a castle to even the odds, small clans will just get quickly wiped by larger neighbours
5) Without the economic boost of owning villages it is extremely unlikely that a small clan would ever have the resources to take a castle or town that they would have a hope of holding on to

Whilst voting was shit it did at least prevent the domino effect on taking fiefs which can only ever benefit the largest clans. 

15

Game Balance Discussion / Re: Crossbow Skill Requirement Suggestion -- "Steady Hands"

« on: January 30, 2014, 07:36:44 pm »

Pretty much. A shielder/xbow hybrid that tries to do both at the same time is at a disadvantage vs a pure shielder or xbow or even a hybrid shielder/xbow that is just focusing on one or the other. So I don't see why a shielder/xbow hybrid is such a big deal.

Just because a pure build is better does not mean the hybrid build has a con.

I don't consider 140 1H wpf, 5PS, 8Ath and 5Shield (@lvl 31) to be disadvantaged enough to be classed as a con.  Yes, its not the strongest but its definitely not weak either.  Likewise, I don't consider 130 xbow wpf to be a con either.

I didn't know that with a shield a crossbowman is protected from range and doesn't need cover while reloading vs without a shield. 

Since we are deliberately misconstruing what other people write, I didn't know that a thrower's shield was active whilst they were aiming either.  Alternatively if it wasn't deliberate and needs explaining here you go......

Xbow runs into open field -> HA comes along -> xbow fires and misses or fails to kill -> HA torments xbow who never makes it back to cover (unless the HA is utterly crap)

I run into open field -> HA comes along -> I fire and miss or fail to kill -> I pull out my shield and simply walk back to cover where i can reload and continue fighting

Throwing + 1h/shield is an excellent combo and in NA, the ravens did a great job of combining the two (as did NH in their day, which was basically ravens anyway). I'd rather go throwing/1h shield than use a 1h/shield with a xbow. Its much more fluid and effective imo.

Throwing isn't comparable - It has a skill associated with it to make a significant enough difference in melee build when using a shield so that it has a con - but throwing doesn't suffer from poor reload times and so the skill is justified in my opinion.  Adding a skill to xbows would definitely unbalance them compared to throwing in particular as they would have similar melee capabilities but still have way slower reload times - another reason not to have an xbow skill although if throwers were more realistically limited with ammo then i guess this point would disappear.