Raids should have 1/4th to 1/3rd the time length of normal battles

[BaleOhay]

We should all talk about my great idea...  Sure in a raid the pop would be disorganized... but not forever.. if the army held long enough and equipment was available the pop would turn into a militia and joint to defend their families

[Keshian]

Yes, 29 hours to bring up reinforcements for a 2nd battle.

24 hours between start of attack and actual battle (more if you spotted them approaching), then 5 more hours to reinforce if they launch a 2nd attack instantly. Travelling at 17 metres/min over 24 hours covers 25km, add another 5 hours of quickmarch at 40 metres/min is another 12km = total 37km in 29 hours or over 1/3 of the map.

Where are you getting 40 m/min???  Only 5 hours is quickmarch, the rest is normal or exhausted. You have an army with gear even on quick march moving at less than half that speed.  Unless you think they have so much money that every troops gets a horse.  You don't cover even 1/10th of the map in 29 hours.  Try moving 300 troops with gear for 29 hours and see how far you get.

Also, i really like BaleOhay's idea, though it would have to be something kind of steady and predictable trickle in, like +5% of the population every 2 minutes after the first 5 or 10 minutes (40 additional minutes to get them all, so 45 or 50 minutes total), so that it is still viable to kill them all off if capping the flags is not possible.

[Harafat]

Better option.. at a certain time in the match if raiders have not won pop gets mobilized and joins the fight... have a count down timer if the raiders do not win in that time the pop joins the defenders numbers.

makes.raiding viable but risky at the same time

You sir, have earned yourself 25 internets!

Awesome idea, blast that i didnt come up with it myself!

[BaleOhay]

thanks harafat. Be nice if it was used

[deathawk1]

Instead of getting all gear just for winning i think there should be crates of gear spread around that the attackers have to capture to receive gear. This with a shorter time limit would make raids more like a raid... Also would the population not start waking up when the army of 500 starts fighting? or do they just sleep though the big battle?

[Turboflex]

Sounds like a mario party minigame lol

[Tomas]

The problem of earlier raids is to do with the time slots.  Its very hard to rearrange a full day of battles just for 1 raid.

I'd love to see raids changed though to the following

1)  Raids are always 10 mercs a-side (small and therefore good for small clans)
2)  Raids only use half a players troops and equipment (the rest are covering your retreat) with a min of 50 raiders and a max of 200.  So your army must be 100 to 400 men strong to raid.  Any more of less than this range and raiding is prevented.
3)  The raid ends when all raiders are dead.
4)  After the raid the game calculates the ratio of equipment value used by the defenders to equipment value used by raiders.
5)  The raider gains 1 crate of goods for every 4 covering troops, however this is then multiplied by the above ratio (with the max ratio being 2:1).  Therefore a ratio of 1:1 = 1 crates per 4 covering troops.  2:1 = 2 crates per 4 covering troops.  And 1:2 = 0.5 crates per 4 covering troops.
6)  Fiefs must have enough S&D to cover these goods at a rate of 1 good = 2 S&D and the Fief will lose this S&D after the raid.  This means raiding a fief with 400 S&D will gain you 200 goods at most.
7)  After a raid, the raider gains 2 hours of immunity multiplied by the ratio in #4.  So 0-4 hours of immunity based on how well the raid went

The above is pretty complicated (at least to explain) but what it means is
1)  Fiefs with lots of S&D are great raiding targets
2)  Raiders never gain so many goods they get slowed down
3)  The better the raid goes the more goods you get and the longer your immunity lasts
4)  The emphasis is on the raider to attack and kill defenders.  If the raider doesn't attack they will auto lose at the end of the time limit.  This means they lose troops and equip but gain no goods since they killed nobody.
5)  Factions will have to defend the fiefs with equipment and troops but will know they won't lose this equipment to the raid.  They will have to defend properly though as otherwise the raider will steal lots of goods by killing off a lot of peasants with no losses of their own.
6)  The extra losses in S&D mean it is not an efficient way to farm goods for a faction with lands and it therefore shouldn't be exploitable....I hope

[Lt_Anders]

Assume no army to defend, what happens then tomas?

Also, convince them to implemnet that. That's a significant improvement over the current raid system.

[Turboflex]

I don't get why everyone wants to nerf raids, they are a way for smaller, aggressive factions to punish big-oversized factions who have way too much territory , leave parts of it poorly defended and try to avoid army costs by relying on no-upkeep "population" to defend fiefs from sieges.

If a faction can't properly defend holdings with real armies, they should be vulnerable. This is one of the few areas where strat doesn't come down to attrition of raw #s and power,  where a smart faction can use planning and coordination to poke holes into a larger enemy.

[Smoothrich]

I don't get why everyone wants to nerf raids, they are a way for smaller, aggressive factions to punish big-oversized factions who have way too much territory , leave parts of it poorly defended and try to avoid army costs by relying on no-upkeep "population" to defend fiefs from sieges.

If a faction can't properly defend holdings with real armies, they should be vulnerable. This is one of the few areas where strat doesn't come down to attrition of raw #s and power,  where a smart faction can use planning and coordination to poke holes into a larger enemy.

or a big clan can just make a 2000 man army and raid fiefs over and over again while the defense has to obsessively refresh their strat page to see if its a raid or battle to get a 2 hour window to actually put in gear to defend it, get it wrong and you lose, not because of battle or strategy but because you weren't at a computer 24/7 spamming refresh

simply too much of an advantage to attackers as of now

[Keshian]

I don't get why everyone wants to nerf raids, they are a way for smaller, aggressive factions to punish big-oversized factions who have way too much territory , leave parts of it poorly defended and try to avoid army costs by relying on no-upkeep "population" to defend fiefs from sieges.

If a faction can't properly defend holdings with real armies, they should be vulnerable. This is one of the few areas where strat doesn't come down to attrition of raw #s and power,  where a smart faction can use planning and coordination to poke holes into a larger enemy.

How many times do I have to say it Turboflex - its not being used the way you describe it, its being used the way Smoothrich and everyone else describes it.  Maybe because you haven't been raided yet, but its a clickfest gamble trying to not put in too much or too little gear until the last moment because raids are used by large armies in large clans (not little guys) to basically prevent a real standup fight between armies.  The only way to prevent abuse of this feature is to tweak it to prevent abuse/glitching.

[Turboflex]

Pretty simple guys:
-Don't count on population to defend your fiefs.
-Don't put gear on population, only on soldiers.
-Put real armies on the fiefs that are really important to you (btw keeping armies on fiefs is cheaper than on faction members once you get past about 300, and by 600 is over 50% cheaper).

Whatever population tickets actually end up being for you in a siege are a bonus. This is the way it should be, cuz popultion is FREE.

And no, this inherently helps small factions once they figure out how to use it, not oversized factions. Big factions tend to accumulate more fiefs then they can actively man with their big armies able to roll through anyone given enough time with attrition. Without raids they can basically put freebie population into fiefs, stick some gear in, and have it well defended for infinity at zero maintenance cost. With raids, they'll have to keep armies in their rear areas, even during a big war. If they move them to the front, then raiders can get in.

[Visconti]

(click to show/hide)

The problem of earlier raids is to do with the time slots.  Its very hard to rearrange a full day of battles just for 1 raid.

I'd love to see raids changed though to the following

1)  Raids are always 10 mercs a-side (small and therefore good for small clans)
2)  Raids only use half a players troops and equipment (the rest are covering your retreat) with a min of 50 raiders and a max of 200.  So your army must be 100 to 400 men strong to raid.  Any more of less than this range and raiding is prevented.
3)  The raid ends when all raiders are dead.
4)  After the raid the game calculates the ratio of equipment value used by the defenders to equipment value used by raiders.
5)  The raider gains 1 crate of goods for every 4 covering troops, however this is then multiplied by the above ratio (with the max ratio being 2:1).  Therefore a ratio of 1:1 = 1 crates per 4 covering troops.  2:1 = 2 crates per 4 covering troops.  And 1:2 = 0.5 crates per 4 covering troops.
6)  Fiefs must have enough S&D to cover these goods at a rate of 1 good = 2 S&D and the Fief will lose this S&D after the raid.  This means raiding a fief with 400 S&D will gain you 200 goods at most.
7)  After a raid, the raider gains 2 hours of immunity multiplied by the ratio in #4.  So 0-4 hours of immunity based on how well the raid went

The above is pretty complicated (at least to explain) but what it means is
1)  Fiefs with lots of S&D are great raiding targets
2)  Raiders never gain so many goods they get slowed down
3)  The better the raid goes the more goods you get and the longer your immunity lasts
4)  The emphasis is on the raider to attack and kill defenders.  If the raider doesn't attack they will auto lose at the end of the time limit.  This means they lose troops and equip but gain no goods since they killed nobody.
5)  Factions will have to defend the fiefs with equipment and troops but will know they won't lose this equipment to the raid.  They will have to defend properly though as otherwise the raider will steal lots of goods by killing off a lot of peasants with no losses of their own.
6)  The extra losses in S&D mean it is not an efficient way to farm goods for a faction with lands and it therefore shouldn't be exploitable....I hope

Would love to see this implemented. The current system for raiding is 100% broken, it can kinda make sense when raiding a village or a city, but raiding a castle is complete BS. Attackers normally have a numerical advantage or they wouldn't be attacking a castle, especially when its a large clan attacking a smaller one. Population is there to make up for that, but atm if we ever need to take a castle, all we have to do is raid it non stop with no penalties and once we kill off the actual army we'll get shit tons of free undeserved gear because apparently the population was sleeping through all the battles, despite the castle being torn down by catapult shots.