NA/EU divide - success or failure

[Tristan]

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.

[Knute]

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.   

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[Tomas]

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

[Slamz]

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.

[Keshian]

You guys are msising on some of this:

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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.

[SHinOCk]

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

[Tears of Destiny]

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.

[SHinOCk]

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

[Matey]

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.

[Dehitay]

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.

[Keshian]

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.

[Tears of Destiny]

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.

[Vovka]

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 

[Tomas]

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

[Erasmas]

I hate to quote myself, but this is my post from August when split was considered:

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.