Continents in Strategus

[Havoco]

My suggestion is this. Make two continents and split them between NA and EU. Allow all players to freely move between both continents- to trade, attack, raid- etc. BUT, while the foreign player is on the other continent, the person gets a HEAVY upkeep increase. Battles while crossing the ocean I really haven't put much thought into, but i was thinking making attacking at sea unavailable, unless you got some boat battle maps you're working on. 
Thoughts, Suggestions, trollposts? Nebun also posted something like this in ToD's thread but I don't see many people supporting a complete split

[Tanken]

Can I still do this?

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[RibaldRon]

You know, I was just thinking about this in the EU/NA split thread.  If they did split it, coastal cities could be used to ferry you to one "continent" to the other.

I had not thought about the increased upkeep cost - that would be an amazing way to balance that idea!

If an opposing side wants to conquer territory in another continent, they'll have to spend a LOT of gold to do so, which might even the odds if a mega alliance is formed spanning an entire continent. 

[autobus]

No. You already have ping difference, that's more than enough to make other continent fiefs the unwanted target.
Having two isolated regions unable to attack each other is no balance and your idea is no more than an attempt to protect weak NA region which has with no unity, economy and skill whatsoever.
You need to overcome the challenge, not avoid it.

[RibaldRon]

No. You already have ping difference, that's more than enough to make other continent fiefs the unwanted target.

Actually, a lot of the EU players we've been facing in NA have VERY workable pings, in the low hundreds.  You can also hire anyone for your battles, the armies are the main problem.

This is, I think, due to the position of the servers.  Meanwhile a lot of NA players will get 200+ ping on EU, especially west coast.


Anyway, the point is that how Strategus has played out, the UIF took control of a large portion of the map and sat, essentially peacefully trading and building up armies.  They could have hired awful players with huge pings and not lost many battles due to the massive gear advantage they had, and they are still producing massive amounts of gold to rebuild and gear out even more armies.

Something has to change in strat,  there's really no arguing that.  The old style of strat where EU and NA can interact without being split into sections seems as though it would be more balanced and fair for everyone, and since nobody wants to fight with people they like, history is going to repeat itself.  The continents idea is a pretty good suggestion, if one continent is captured entirely, they can use their massive gold surplus to invade the other at a high cost, as opposed to having a massive production bonus and the same upkeep as their opponents.


Edit: And since you generalized NA as no skill, consider that EU region encompasses more than 1/2 the map, with the most desirable trading locations.  NA land has coastal regions, and  lots of rivers (and bridges are ridiculously stupidly slow and randomly teleport you) so trade is NOT good there.

What you've seen of our battles were our already weakened armies, we were essentially shut out of the EU side of the map, unlike our NA opposition, who we had been constantly battling with up until the DRZ invasion.

[autobus]

I do understand what you are trying to tell me but
Ron, UIF enemies are twice as much in numbers as UIF. Gather them, make some paperwork, contracts and agreements and you will beat UIF in no time.
I am fighting on UIF side and i support them but seeing you guys turbowhining instead of actually doing something to beat your enemy makes me sad.
We have Strat v4.0 comming and i really hope that there will be an actual Anti-UIF coalition.

[Darkkarma]

I sort of agree with what you're saying , actually. Still, Lets get a few things out of the way first. I'd appreciate it if you'd quit making it sound as if it is a perfectly even split with no side having a more advantageous set up. The EU map has little to no mountain ranges,bridges or any of that foolishness  to deal with when it comes to designing trade routes. What's more, the current set up is just silly, EU eventually always ends up invading anyway due to the fact that most of the major players in EU (save a few) support one another and they alone pretty much outnumber every strat presence on the NA side. The current split really has little to no point. I was more content with the previous set up where the server for battles was decided on an individual basis subject to change depending on who attacked who and what server they aligned themselves with. It also made other factions work with one another regardless of where they were from as opposed to dividing them by either EU or NA. When we made our last little coalition in this round of strat that had some wiped out EU clans involved, other NA clans threw fits because EU were being given NA land, despite it being land we already owned. The tensions eventually led to the whole Green vs Red War. Something like that wouldn't have been an issue at all in the previous version of strat. To be perfectly honest, a big part of CHAOS's success in last strat came from working with European allies. DRZ and it's plethora of allies are some plotting, two-faced mother fuckers, but god damn, they know how to fight and plan for a war and it was a blast working with and against them. The NA community in general is weak, small and largely inexperienced in strat compared to our EU counter parts aside from maybe two or three factions that seem to enjoy fighting one another a great deal. As long as it is EU vs NA, NA will pretty much lose every time due to a lack of numbers,map location,and lack of unity. These problems were less apparent and game breaking in the previous version of strat. This splitting of a map was an interesting way to try and solve alot of the problems facing a community spanning over multiple continents, but it just ended up creating more problems than it fixed.

[autobus]

I sort of agree with what you're saying , actually. Still, Lets get a few things out of the way first. I'd appreciate it if you'd quit making it sound as if it is a perfectly even split with no side having a more advantageous set up. The EU map has little to no mountain ranges,bridges or any of that foolishness  to deal with when it comes to designing trade routes. What's more, the current set up is just silly, EU eventually always ends up invading anyway due to the fact that most of the major players in EU (save a few) support one another and they alone pretty much outnumber every strat presence on the NA side. The current split really has little to no point. I was more content with the previous set up where the server for battles was decided on an individual basis subject to change depending on who attacked who and what server they aligned themselves with. It also made other factions to work with one another regardless of where they were from as opposed to dividing them by either EU or NA. When we made our last little coalition in this round of strat that had some wiped out EU clans involved, other NA clans threw fits because EU were being given NA land, despite it being land we already owned. Something like that wouldn't have been an issue at all in the previous version of strat. To be perfectly honest, a big part of CHAOS's success in last strat came from working with European allies. DRZ and it's plethora of allies are some plotting, two-faced mother fuckers, but god damn, they know how to fight and plan for a war and it was a blast working with and against them. The NA community in general is weak, small and largely inexperienced in strat compared to our EU counter parts aside from maybe two or three factions that seem to enjoy fighting one another a great deal. As long as it is EU vs NA, NA will pretty much lose every time due to a lack of numbers,map location,and lack of unity. These problems were less apparent and game breaking in the previous version of strat. This splitting of a map was an interesting way to try and solve alot of the problems facing a community spanning over multiple continents, but it just ended up creating more problems than it fixed.

Yes, NA lands are harder to work with and i'm not denying it but thats not the main problem, you have internal conflicts and you were not ready to face your potential enemy.

No, EU is split and all the huge factions who are against the UIF and the carebear attitude just went inactive this strat but they do exist.

On the 2nd strat i was representing RuConquista, i know what was going in there, Chaos along with Mercs and FCC had a perfect chance to wipe UIF off the map, instead Mercs set up RuConquista which lead in RuC wipe by 22nd while Chaos went alliance with DRZ.

[Matey]

Yes, NA lands are harder to work with and i'm not denying it but thats not the main problem, you have internal conflicts and you were not ready to face your potential enemy.

No, EU is split and all the huge factions who are against the UIF and the carebear attitude just went inactive this strat but they do exist.

On the 2nd strat i was representing RuConquista, i know what was going in there, Chaos along with Mercs and FCC had a perfect chance to wipe UIF off the map, instead Mercs set up RuConquista which lead in RuC wipe by 22nd while Chaos went alliance with DRZ.

so you say NA lacks unity, and use an example of EU clans not working together as an example?

anyways... you say "NA lacks unity" like it's a bad thing: IT'S NOT!
that is why NA is interesting, that is why NA has wars and does fun shit instead of sitting around doing nothing and then mashing some small group into paste on occasion. Also, it was my goal to have all NA clans to be united in defending against any big EU aggression, but that plan failed as NA clans have enough beef with each other that some clans prefer to be minions of the UIF than to fight against them when they come knockin (lookin at you hosp... I got nothing nice to say about hosp.). While NA was busy doing its thing, UIF took all EU lands and then poured enough resources at their NA minions to take about 1/3 of the NA lands... so now the remaining NA factions were that much more screwed and it was obvious how it would play out. but im ok with that, cause at least NA had some wars.

also... strat 3.0 was extremely boring from the get go but there are a couple of events people should remember that really chased a lot of NA players away.
1. Fallen losing a great amount of their best gear and a large number of their troops just before being attacked by their enemy.
this one was done as a result of fallen taking advantage of a bug to delay the enemy army... so maybe they had it coming, but it went too far IMO, and signaled the end of strat.

and
2. When leiknir was having his jolly rampage through FCC lands and we couldnt field a roster at 3am on workdays as 90% of our players didnt give a shit about strat as it had been unbearably boring... we then launched some counter attacks to have a little fun and clear out the rabble in our lands... what happened though? well we had our big conclusive battle with leiknir and every 3 seconds 90% of our roster would get DC at which point they had to rejoin, which means spawning naked, and then getting dc 3 seconds later... while the defending team had 0 disconnects and like the true sporting gentlemen that they are, blitzed our flags and captured almost everything we had. I also feel I should point out that the faction we were fighting consisted of almost all the devs for cRPG. Coincidence? maybe... but they never bothered responding to the bug report, nor did they bother to reimburse FCC, nor did they bother to roll back the battle or take any action at all. That is the moment that killed strategus for FCC and killed the mod itself for a large number of us (though a fair amount of us have returned to cRPG (though not really to strat).

anyways... i guess what im trying to say is.. fuck you.

as for the actual topic about the continents... sure that works for me. I love the idea of NA being able to have fun playing strat and having dynamic ever changing relationships that lead to a ton of big entertaining wars and plenty of rage and drama no doubt, while the EU continent gets swept by the same people who always ally together and after they have wiped out all competition they can then arrange chivalrous battles with each other with proper gentlemanly conduct and agreed upon rules and so on, cause you know, actually fighting each other would ruin the experience.

[Nebun]

oh come on Matey NA got only 2 sides right now, those who with Chaos and those who is with Hospitallers, and bunch of smallers clans that switch side from time to time

maybe at first they was separate but now i doubt there will even be 3 separate powers on NA

[Lordark]

If we have 2 Na's the EU side will stop playing and so would I. So in the future maybe but for now no.

[Matey]

oh come on Matey NA got only 2 sides right now, those who with Chaos and those who is with Hospitallers, and bunch of smallers clans that switch side from time to time

maybe at first they was separate but now i doubt there will even be 3 separate powers on NA

hard to say for sure. there has been tremendous pressure for NA to unify in order to have a chance at surviving against the UIF which control the entirety of the EU map as well as the steppes part of the NA map. I realize you count Hosp as the other side in NA but really they are just an extension of your own power, even so, like you said, there are a bunch of smaller NA factions causing shit here and there, that kind of warfare is what makes NA more fun, smaller clans are able to make a go at it here and there. as for "doubt there will even be 3 separate"... well if strat were to reset tomorrow, it is possible that NA would unify a bit more to prevent UIF from being able to launch successful invasions again... but more likely is that people would rather just have fun fighting NA vs NA wars with good ping and good time slots until you guys had farmed for a few months and were ready to end strat again. at the end of the day, for all our bitching, i bet most NA players fought in more battles with good ping and good time slot and had more fun than 99% of UIF members. it's just a shame that we have the giant coalition that comes by to stomp all over our lil game of RISK whenever he gets bored.

[Havoco]

No. You already have ping difference, that's more than enough to make other continent fiefs the unwanted target.
Having two isolated regions unable to attack each other is no balance and your idea is no more than an attempt to protect weak NA region which has with no unity, economy and skill whatsoever.
You need to overcome the challenge, not avoid it.

Unable to attack each other is not what I said. With my suggestion their would still be plenty of workarounds for EU incursions into the NA continent.
ie. An Eu player handing an army over to an NA player then attacking a fief. After the fief is conquered the NA player could hand the army and fief back over to the EU player and go back to the Eu continent, etc.

You propose that there should be one large NA coalition against one large EU coalition. What would happen would be the exact thing that happened first strat with Northern Empire and UIF. Neither attacked each other because neither wanted the ping disadvantage. and from my knowledge Northern Empire viewed Fallen and UIF as pontential enemies in strat, which also led to us "defending against Eu incrusion."

IMO strat shouldn't be about who makes the largest alliance and builds up the most materials, it should be about fighting lots and lots of battles. As matey said, people would rather like fighting in a server with good ping than a series of Eu vs NA battles.

[Matey]

the ping isnt even the worst of it... the ping does suck, and as someone mentioned earlier, it sucks more for NA than EU as the NA server is east coast and many EU players get 100-120 ping whereas only NA players on the extreme east coast can get 100-120 to the EU server, most get 130-180 and all the west coasters get 180-250 or so... hell i get 80-100 in the NA strat server... ive seen EU players with the same ping as me!

but anyways, as shitty as the ping is... its the time slots that are the biggest issue. it is impossible to keep people interested in strat when they know that they are going to miss 95% of the battles because all the battles happen between 4am and 4pm est... so everyone is either sleeping or at work. the FCC vs Merc war in 2.0 was an absolute nightmare for both sides and most of the people involved have no interest in fighting a similar conflict again... we have fond memories of that war, but it was miserable at the time and no one wants to skip sleep like that again.

tl;dr: people can play with bad ping and bitch about it, but people cant play when they are at work or sleeping because they have to get up in the morning. so time slots mean more than ping.

[Lemmy_Winks]

If strat 4.0 was to start due to DRZs invasion as some believe, it would just be a repeat of what is going on now. The exact same factions would allign with chaos/hosp and take the exact same lands and fight the exact same war that had been going on until DRZ stepped in. DRZ might even invade again. This last strat was kind of bad in that Hosp used the strategy of mass recruiting to try to get more money and troops to beat out Chaos who generally had better players, and once Chaos started to lose becuase of this they too started mass recruitment to try to compete with us as well as getting all the allies they could.

So now you are left with these 2 super factions with nothing to do but fight each other as none of the few small independent factions left could possibly stand against them for long. I preferred it when there was alot of small factions fighting each other and alliances and stuff changed all the time, there was more variety there. Also liked guilds being smaller tight nit groups instead of massive conglomerates whose sole purpose is strat dominance.