2 AI village defenses...nobody signs up for defense

[CrazyCracka420]

Even with good XP gains now for your c-rpg char when playing in strategus battles nobody is signing up for AI village defense.  Hospitallers attacked two AI villages, one had 500 troops, the other around 1200 and I think in both battles only about 15 people signed up for the defense...

I understand a lot of people have lost interest in strat, but seriously nobody signing up to fight in a big battle at no cost to themselves?  Both battles were at the night time and were prime-time for people from West to Central time zones.

The big battles are what people play strategus for, and people aren't signing up when they have a chance to fight in big battles at literally no cost to themselves...wtf

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

Very few people actually care about strategus anymore, and the few that do are not allowed to sign up for village defenses cause of affiliations to factions taking the village

[CrazyCracka420]

Very few people actually care about strategus anymore, and the few that do are not allowed to sign up for village defenses cause of affiliations to factions taking the village

So sad...I can understand people not being active in strategus, but even if you're inactive, it doesn't take anything to sign up for a battle.  Hopefully next strategus they implement an anonymous way to fight for an AI village defense to avoid any possible retaliation for signing up for an AI village defense.

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

So sad...I can understand people not being active in strategus, but even if you're inactive, it doesn't take anything to sign up for a battle.  Hopefully next strategus they implement an anonymous way to fight for an AI village defense to avoid any possible retaliation for signing up for an AI village defense.

even if they make it anonymous (which i doubt) it wont change anything

There is no point signing up for a village defense as you will be outnumbered, out equipped and out played as there will be little teamwork on the villages side.

With the huge alliances we have this strat, you can bet that 3/4 of the players available for eu village defenses will either sign up for the defense and not turn up or will just not sign up

[CrazyCracka420]

Well this strategus a lot of the time the village had better equipment than the attackers.  And if you have equal numbers, the enemy will still have better tactics and communication and organization, but that doesn't mean the defenders can't put up a good fight.  It would be cool if there was some "official" teamspeak, ventrilo or mumble server for AI village defenders to join.

And the anonymous piece will help somewhat.  It most likely wouldn't make people who are allies/friendly with the attackers from joining the village defense, but people who were otherwise worried about retaliation would now feel free to join.  I think a lot of clans/factions don't sign up in large numbers for AI village defense because they don't want it to appear like they are the "enemy" of the person attacking.  When it comes to strategy there's no point in making enemies before it's absolutely necessary to make it known.

[Overdriven]

Lack of decent xp probably doesn't help. The fact everyone is allied to each other as well. Village defences also get boring pretty quickly to simply because there are so many of them I think. Without other incentives, they get samey very quickly.

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

you gonna play killing floor tonight over?

[Overdriven]

Haha yeah Dad's on his comp atm so I'll be up for some killing floor later. Probs 10-11ish, and with a new microphone wooo

[Lorenzo_of_Iberia]

win, we'll be on for sure

anyway back to debate

[Canary]

...only about 15 people signed up for the defense.

Amazing, they got quite the turnout.

Shoulda been there at some of our villages. Our most meager opposition consisted of two lonely peasants. Less than ten showing up was practically assured.

[Lepintoi]

HRE, GK Kapikulu and Fallen are only ones available to defend the villages and of those clans no one is bothered to do em anymore

[Sphinxer]

This is so sad ...

R.I.P. strategus ;)

[Knute]

I've tried signing up for a couple AI village defenses recently and never get accepted.  Every time I've applied the villages names haven't been bold even though there weren't many defenders, here's a list and approximate times:

LLJK vs Fisdnar, applied an hour and ten minutes before the battle. 
LLJK vs Fisdnar, applied about 4 hours and 30 minutes before the battle.
The last one was for a village defense last night (Ada Kulun?) and I applied in the morning for the battle which took place around 9:30pm.

[CrazyCracka420]

I think it may be glitched where you can only apply for 0 gold.  Also (not that it applies to you, but to some others), I think the AI only accepts people who sign up every hour on the hour.  So if a battle was at 11:30pm, you'd have to apply before 11pm'ish to be safe.

Amazing, they got quite the turnout.

Shoulda been there at some of our villages. Our most meager opposition consisted of two lonely peasants. Less than ten showing up was practically assured.

Still think the anonymous player names for the AI defenders' side would help a lot.

[Knute]

I think it may be glitched where you can only apply for 0 gold.  Also (not that it applies to you, but to some others), I think the AI only accepts people who sign up every hour on the hour.  So if a battle was at 11:30pm, you'd have to apply before 11pm'ish to be safe.

Still think the anonymous player names for the AI defenders' side would help a lot.

That's weird, I thought it was the other way around where you had to request some payment.  I did a couple villages defenses earlier this round (Vezin, Ambean and Jelbegi) where I requested 1g and was accepted.  If this 0 gold thing is real and new that would definitely explain part of the reason why the village rosters have been so empty recently.