New item! - Stygandr's Banner of the Horde!

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Originally Posted by Septycon

Gatebreaks changed the game by eliminating the ability to add scouts as bomb cover. It also took away bait and switch techniques that attackers would use. Let's be honest, it dummed the game down. The adjustment to counter this dumming of the game was to either use other troops to cover the bombs hoping that attacker is bad or to use floating method to keep troops out of sight until you need them. I would also be lieing if I said many of my biggest hits weren't from using the gatebreaks, but the truth is I only used them 2secs before hits landed to give the person a chance to open. But, I refuse to be blinded from the facts for my own personal agenda like so many of you dorks :P

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The gate breaks are necessary for a vast majority of attackers. Many ‘defenders’ can simply close gates and leave it at that if it wasn’t for the item. Sure, you can try to mix in trans to penalise this act by the defender but then they can simply port or truce. My point is the absence of the gate break item supports the average unskilled player in defence. Sure, it supports the skilled ones too. Let us say it supports ALL defenders.

A lot of what follows the section of your post highlighted above also implies to me that you believe a skilfull, great defender must always succeed in an encounter. I think you can be a great defender and still lose the battle.
Especially if the attacker is clueless. BG or not, FF or not, banner or not – a great defender can still shine. The items stimulate demand for attacking, allowing for more encounters and opportunities for defenders to play their role. Do you think the quality of the defender depends on whether your defence can be breached? I dont to think so, rather its about minimising loses and being efficient.

Without these necessary and game changing items, I think you will see far less attacking game wide, particularly given the bot situation. It is a theory, though.

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Originally Posted by Septycon

Islands are caused by both Gatebreaks and Fleet Feets. Players are tired of having to defend up so close. So the real question is do Fleet Feets help with this? I doubt it. Well actually they don't because hubs or islands are more used now than they ever were before.

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Both, especially FF, enable you to hit/reach people in islands or hubs. Your causation may be correct, but it goes both ways to the point where unless they are 20+ miles deep inside a hub, it does not matter and your point is moot. Those 20+ miles away tend to be cowards, not skillfull defenders that require the distance.

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Originally Posted by Septycon

Don't kid yourself. It's pretty obvious that the game has been being "improved" for the more casual, not-so-knowledgeable player fanbase aka dumming the game down.

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Incorrect. Everyone will have a different opinion on the distribution of the benefits of the items on the various classes of attackers, but the only fact is that it supports all attackers. Including the skilled.

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Originally Posted by Septycon

Banner of the Horde item specifically, allows any player to send too many troops that the defender can effectively withstand without having 10 times more than the normal troop numbers. For example, someone can send a million mechs with layers and a 1k hero... you will try to sacrifice 500k archers so your rams stay up for cover, but nope the mech wave still knocks off 1mil rams (cause 500k archers isn't enough to kill the mechs before they fire on the rams, "but still a bad hit"). So, then attacker sends 2 banner bombs and kills all your ballis and pults so now what. I guess defender sucks...

The adjustments are A) have 10 times the troops or B) try to only leave a 100-200k mechs at a time or C) float everything and let them waste the item

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Once upon a time 1 million archers was an impressive defence, and farm cities with 200-300k were decent. Attackers used 100/125k/156k troops in a wave. I’d say fair.

Now, 100 million archers in a war city. In many, much more. Don’t pretend that it is fair and just that players are confined to 100/125/156k troops. The banners are fit for purpose and changed the game accordingly to changing times. So no, no need to have x10 the troops.

You forgot D. Attack or get others to attack back, a great offense is the best defence. Lose your troops on your terms. A lesson alliance Dacia of ss38 will eventually realise, despite past, current and certain future pain.

While this enables people to attack easier/faster, between broken gates, FF, and Horde waves now the favored defense of HCs in Age 2 is to comfort for weeks or months on end. Because if you can make 15m+ arch disappear in a single wave (I can post reports if needed, we've had plenty of those) then what point is defending if you need 30-50m arch to survive a few minutes? The point of the item is to make it easier to play in the broken landscape of the game, but, in the case of small players who want to learn, it makes small players stay small and large players get bigger. Yes, we have picked apart 500m archers over time with these items combined with Atlantis, but when someone with 200m arch in a city gets to port on a 3m arch city and wipe it faster than he can see it incoming, things have gotten a bit ridiculous past the ridiculous numbers.

The biggest problem on this game with the huge troop counts, is hero capping and releasing, and comforting. Even the Stone of Finding is practically useless because if people are capping heroes then 90% of the time theyre also releasing. With a no hero capping agreement you can kill off 30-40m arch of your own with no extra items (yeah takes forever without FF but still possible, and broken gates can usually be avoided by sending colonize waves, most people dont like being suppressed) and a decent amount of their troops as well. Comforting can last for months, I believe one 16 on ca4 lasted 6 months with not many troops put in after the initial wipe, while the account overall had many many many more. Both aspects are debated. Hero capping is useful on defense if youre getting tons of troops taken out, not so much when theyre killing nothing. Comforting is a good thing to a certain point, you can comfort for an hour or 2 while more troops are coming to play with... but also extremely frustrating when its days or weeks or months that it lasts... and comforting includes using Gov to raise loy, again useful but also frustrating.

Guess some of these are Age 2 specific issues, but its what me and my alliancemates have all seen a lot.

I love the idea of it, just not sure how it would really work with the limitation of our heroes.

Haunted castle banner scmech: 1,445,000 scouts, 120k ballis, 75k pult, layers, big hero. Straight mechwrecker. Only real defense is pult/trans 5k w/ 1 ballista drip reign/march-recall/insta queue. Pretty dangerous, for all 12 people left playing age 1....