The Future of the NA Kingdoms

[Richter]

I say we fight them. I get the vibe they want us to. Might as well, eh?

[Tears of Destiny]

NA should unite and forge a temporary alliance. Fallen, Hate, Chaos, Hospi, LLJK all fighting alongside eachother to drive the EU menace out of our lands. We are better than that, if we are going to lose our lands, then let's go out swinging.

Oh I see, so now we are considered NA  I remember when we were considered "The EU Menace."

<3 you all still.

[Garem]

Penguin, Richter, I like your enthusiasm. However, there are two primary problems:

1. Too Little, Too Late
The numbers aren't there. I'd love to see the full calculation of how many troops and total assets the offending groups have right now so I could calculate how many man-hours it would take to equal that, discrediting the reality that their production won't be reduced but everyone else's will as they continue to steamroll over territory.

2. Addressing Symptoms, Not Diseases
That disease is carebear-ism and game mechanics that empower it. Instead of engaging in fun and competitive play, some of our community has opted for uncompetitive and mediocre (at best) play in order to win. Why? I don't know. But they get real defensive about it, and have the audacity to openly gloat when the myriad of lightweight boxers don't seem interested in stepping into the ring with the heavyweights anymore. If'n you follow the parallelism.


I'd argue that #2 is the more atrocious of the two. If any fun is to be salvaged from the ordeal, it would be at the enormous expense of those willing to attempt to organize the conglomerate resistance. But hell, at some point you just have to ask, "Why bother?"

Until the positive feedback mechanisms are changed, such as this insane trade system that grossly enriches only the largest organizations, then Strategus will continue to make the strong stronger and the weak weaker. Instead of battles depending on skill and tactics, battles are won by simply being bigger (and you don't even have to DO anything but be BIG). That this already clear problem is exacerbated by, at the very least, tacit complicity in movements between the largest organizations boggles my mind.

So to those who see the problem for what it is- fuck it. Enjoy the small victories, the small battles. The only joy to be had in Strategus is in utter spite of these people, certainly not because of them. Although their poor decisions affect us all, they're out of our control beyond our necessarily becoming the very same monster and making those very same poor decisions: wielding mass collaboration instead of the sword.

[Penguin]

Penguin, Richter, I like your enthusiasm. However, there are two primary problems:
1. Too Little, Too Late
The numbers aren't there. I'd love to see the full calculation of how many troops and total assets the offending groups have right now so I could calculate how many man-hours it would take to equal that, discrediting the reality that their production won't be reduced but everyone else's will as they continue to steamroll over territory.

Is it not possible to rally all of our collective troops and steamroll them fief by fief until they are finally out of NA lands? We would have ping and skill advantage! You must not lose hope.

[Tears of Destiny]

Is it not possible to rally all of our collective troops and steamroll them fief by fief until they are finally out of NA lands? We would have ping and skill advantage! You must not lose hope.

I'm not certain you understand the DRZ war machine, nor the power of The Grey Order. I'm certain you will run out of steam long before they or their allies do. Ping Advantage is clearly there, but DRZ has a reputation for archers. If in the past Hospitaller had trouble against Fallen archers, imagine the difficulty you will have against DRZ archers (who we learned from and grew our own tactics from). Grey order has some great shielders too. Not sure where you are getting the "skill" thing from, neither of those clans are pushovers. Say what you wish about them, but they know how to fight.

[Arn De Gothia]

Warriors,

If  you don't play this game for a challenge (even against overwhelming odds), what glory is there? I suggest that a summit is held between NA Clan leaders, in a secure setting, where peace can be brokered, and battle lines drawn up. We may not win the war, but we will gain at the very least honor. And as we know, it is not only the victors of history who are remembered.

The Hot Gates
The Alamo
The Battle of Stamford Bridge
Bunker Hill

Do not occupy yourself with winning this war, instead, think of the progress we can make, by showing that devout enemies can make swords into plowshares, and plowshares into swords to fight a unified enemy!

[RibaldRon]

Is it not possible to rally all of our collective troops and steamroll them fief by fief until they are finally out of NA lands? We would have ping and skill advantage! You must not lose hope.

No.  What's left of green is doing their best against DRZ while hosp armies are bent on assisting DRZ/themselves by mopping up Occitan (their former.. maybe current allies??) LLJK Etc.

I'm betting that hosp already allied themselves with DRZ, judging by the amount of trash talk on their end.  Or maybe some of their members are just THAT stupid though I find it hard to believe.  Anyway they won't work with us GG them.


^^^ completely my view I know for a fact a lot of the leadership doesn't agree with it blah blah blah ^^^

[isatis]

well, you wouldn't have all this problem if you hadn't destroy Zagush Chaos guy! we were the main defense of NA side and now? Zagush is to a strange clan who let everyone pass by!!!

accept your faith!

[Tomas]

For Garem - some numbers

Say there are 1500 Strat Players
- 750 of them are in Alliance A
- 250 of them are in Alliances B, C & D respectively

Example 1:  Each Alliance gains their own fair share of the map and then trades within it
- Alliance A will get max goods prices of approx 85 gold (travelling 75km).  With 750 members that is 1,500,000 gold per day at max efficiency
- Alliances B, C & D will get max goods prices of just 38 gold (travelling 25km).  With 250 members each that is only 300,000 gold per day each at max efficiency

Result:- Overall Alliance A has a 600,000 gold per day advantage over all the other alliances combined.  Even if Alliances B, C & D combined later to match Alliance A in numbers, they would never make up this lost gold and will always be behind

Example 2:  Alliance B and Alliance C get into a war from the start
- Alliances B & C spend their resources on attacking each other instead of taking fiefs.  They therefore only gain half of their fair share of the map.
- This limits Alliances B & C to max goods prices of just 30 gold = 180,000 gold per day
- Due to Alliance A's far superior number they are able to grab all the unclaimed lands giving them more than ther fair shar of the map.
- Now Alliance A can trade over 98km giving the max goods prices of 112 gold = 2,016,000 gold per day
- Alliance D meanwhile continues to get 300,000 gold per day from their fair share of the map

Result:- Alliance A now makes 1,356,000 gold per day more than the other alliances combined.  Alliances B & C have also been spending their gold on a war making them extremely weak targets.  In the space of just 1 week Alliance A will make nearly 13 million more gold than Alliance B or C on their own which is enough to equip an extra 40,000 heavily armoured troops with plenty of cash left over to pay for their upkeep. 

Naturally this makes it easy for alliance A to stomp either alliance B or C and take their fiefs.  What makes it worse is that due to the nature of the goods bonuses, every km of trading distance gained for Alliance A is worth far more to them than the same km was ever worth to Alliance B or C when they held it.  In other words the 99th km of trade distance is worth more than the 24th km, so being big enough to get 98km and then capturing another km of trading distance makes a larger faction even more powerful.


Obviously these number are somewhat exaggerated as my figures are based on maximum activity of players and maximum crafting efficiencies.  The 40,000 troops will also take much more than 1 week to equip and will require people to be crafting things other than goods.  However even halving my numbers (which imo would be an under estimate) the numbers are still a galling illustration of a highly flawed economic system.  Remember that I have also ignored inter-alliance trade deals and the non-uniformity of the map which allow Alliances to gain greater goods prices than those I have quoted.

Finally a point on Mega alliance strategy.  Once you know that you control half the map and half the playing population it is very easy to split off your opponents and in the long run weaken them even further.  Offering them trade deals greatly improves their economies without ever letting them surpass your own economy.  The cancellation of those trade deals however is only detrimental to the smaller opposing alliance and not to the Mega alliance since the Mega Alliance will loose far less gold from it than the opposing alliance.


Please note - this is not a criticism of those that have managed to achieve and sustain a Mega Alliance in Strat - it is a criticism of the short sighted game mechanics that promote Mega Alliances. 

[Garem]

Please note - this is not a criticism of those that have managed to achieve and sustain a Mega Alliance in Strat - it is a criticism of the short sighted game mechanics that promote Mega Alliances.

Using a clearly broken game mechanic is an abuse of a system, a flaw in character in collusion with the flaw in design. You're nicer about it than me.

Thanks for the detailed examples, those were exactly the points I was trying to make. Strategus is currently based on two flawed theories, one of human behavior and one of the game mechanics.

The human behavior theory is that everyone will fight, since that's what the game is about. This failed because it didn't take into account what I'll politely call poor sportsmanship, the desire to win no matter the cost.

The game mechanics theory was that positive feedback mechanisms (more territory -> more production) will drive people to war and reward them for conquest. This didn't take into account carebear-ism, which gives the same rewards for the exact opposite- peacefully doing NOTHING at all.

To be totally fair, I must admit that independently, a single one of these issues alone doesn't cause nearly the amount of damage as these two problems do in tandem. If players played this game in good faith with motivations to have fun over simply squashing the competition, the broken system wouldn't matter. And if the system weren't broken, their bad faith efforts would not be rewarded by the game mechanics.

For the record, I'm not the type to just bitch about a problem and expect others to find solutions. I've got a 14 page long proposal written on how many of these issues could be fixed, along with a myriad of other Strategus issues. I hoped to work with several other people on the subject of overhauling Strategus, a prospect that still interests me, although I couldn't motivate interest in a sizable team. If anybody wants to read it, at this point, what the hell? Send me a PM and I'll distribute the proposal. I'd do it publicly, but an extremely vocal minority of this community are awful human beings and I don't feel like wading through the filth.

[RibaldRon]

The human behavior theory is that everyone will fight, since that's what the game is about. This failed because it didn't take into account what I'll politely call poor sportsmanship, the desire to win no matter the cost.

The game mechanics theory was that positive feedback mechanisms (more territory -> more production) will drive people to war and reward them for conquest. This didn't take into account carebear-ism, which gives the same rewards for the exact opposite- peacefully doing NOTHING at all.

No I'm pretty sure Strategus played out exactly as the developers intended.  One side conquered lands and was prosperous for quite some time and now they are sweeping across the rest of the server with their surplus.

I wish that it was faster paced with more room for competition but unfortunately, many even matches spread over time is not how you win.  You can win a conflict but not the entire game this way.  Ultimately it comes down to controlling the largest portion of the map for a long time and that comes down to diplomacy and forging mega alliances.

This is the problem with having the map broken into two segments - one will inevitably become stronger than the other, and there are no restrictions (a la travian) such as attacks coming from, and returning to, a point of origin inbetween waves.  With a faster pace, this would be less of an issue, as an army coming from one side of the map may actually be met with some resistance.

I am not opposed to the free XP we're getting from DRZ (18k exp ticks?!?! that's more than NA vs NA!!!) but I wish that the battles could last longer, and were more fun.  That said I am not personally invested in Strategus other than a means of fun, and I will obviously hope for a reset if/when it turns into a simple stalemate, as fiefs are production hubs and one side will seemingly soon lose their productive capabilities.

[Abay]

Well, I just see that signing any pact with any NA kingdom doesnt make any other clan convinced cos there are 2 civil war in last 2 strat versions. We trust someone in Na and their idiot civils betray our agreements. So NA clan must keep their stability at first. They must not sign any pact without it. We cannot be sure about future unless you do that. Damn rebels!!!

[BADPLAYERold]

Well, I just see that signing any pact with any NA kingdom doesnt make any other clan convinced cos there are 2 civil war in last 2 strat versions. We trust someone in Na and their idiot civils betray our agreements. So NA clan must keep their stability at first. They must not sign any pact without it. We cannot be sure about future unless you do that. Damn rebels!!!

We supported BashiBazouks all along, I kapikulu üzerine cihad çağrı!

[Tomas_of_Miles]

All is not lost.

[Tomas]

Using a clearly broken game mechanic is an abuse of a system, a flaw in character in collusion with the flaw in design. You're nicer about it than me.

I wouldn't say the mechanic is "broken".  It works just fine and therefore cannot be "abused" imo.  You can't expect people to go through Strat saying to their friends "I'm sorry we can't ally with you because that would give us 3 more fiefs and 20 more members than the faction we are currently at war with, which is unfair on them."

It is the mechanics that need to change so that you can make whatever deals you feel like without being restricted, but those deals will not automatically give you a significant advantage over your smaller enemies on their own. 

The first 2 simple steps in this are to link crafting more closely with activity and to make it so the maximum trade bonuses are achievable at much shorter distances.  This first change will mean alliances beyond a certain members size will lead to your own players missing out on rosters and therefore limiting their crafting output.  Meanwhile the second change will mean alliances beyond a certain territorial size will cease to gain further trade bonuses.  You are still free to make these alliances but they will not benefit you beyond a certain point.