Troops weren't required to hold a city centuries ago, no reason they should be required in game either.
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do you think that the aim of the game is to so utterly defeat each and every player you attack so that they would quit playing evony?
if comforting is changed so that regardless if i'm on or not i lose my city, even though it took me a month to build, in a matter of hours then there no way to survive against the bigger players
that is not fixing comforting
This. On age1 Big players can afford to lose cities, small players can not. Takes the small guys 2-3 weeks to fully rebuild a 10, I could do it in 2 hours.
Absolutely right they are limited by resources and heroes. But, that isn't much of a limitation when they make it possible to have unlimited resources and insta pult heroes.
http://i48.tinypic.com/mhppg4.jpg
i wonder what this means
Decision made.
I can't believe people dont want a cooldown on comforting and speech texts. Have these people ever attacked a bot?
Waa waaaa i want my cupcake
Morgan,
It's entirely possible that you are much better at this facet of the game than I am, as I have not figured out how to capture a city under the following conditions:
(Age II)
Level 10 Warehouse
10x HNM + Vesta's Blessing
No Troops Inside
Botted
No insta-loyalty dropping Maintenance
Available resource packs
Available resources from truced cities
Available resources from double truced cities
Available resources from triple truced cities
Available speech texts on auto-use; auto-buy
Other than the following methods of capturing, which I am not willing to do:
DDoS attack
Vandalism of electrical/ISP systems
Assault
PayPal Chargeback
Can you at least give me a hint as to my legal options of capturing the city at this point? Assume negotiations are off the table.
Thanks,
Wolf
Y'all overlooking one small detail. A bot is a piece of software, until it's told otherwise it'll do only what it's programmed. Use that against it.
*Hint nearly all players have all their cities on bots. Multi attacking cities confuses the script. If it hides res, watch the timing between it removing the res and returning it back into the city-so time an attack to land when it does.
And lets not forget the massive complaining about broken gates. Here was a god given strat that allowed you (at least temporarily until the script makers over rode it) to force the gates gates open or closed. It'll helped with the bots, but everyone was more concerned about their own accounts rather than looking at the bigger picture.
Sometimes gathering the resources and killing a red's troops can be just as damaging to them as capping a city (with the exception of Age 2's HCs, agreed). So maybe it's time to stop whining about what you aren't getting and come up with a new game plan.
Dear Ms. le Fay,
Your response entirely ignores several of Wolf's conditions.
1. There are already no troops in the city. Broken gates does nothing.
2. Cities are truced, double truced, tripple truced - only the hc you wish to grab can be attacked. All other cities are truced and cannot be touched. For days and weeks at a time.
It is, perhaps, just as damaging to gather a red's resources and kill off their troops, but it cannot be done with nonstop truce. Since other cities cannot be attacked, there is no way to attack multiple cities at once, thus confusing the bot. Do you have any other suggestions?
Thank you in advance for you thoughts.
QT
lol. you think?
naaaaah. that requires THOUGHT. They'd rather take what they've learned from the the multiple guides other people have written and then complain when that doesn't work, rather than attempt to figure out new methods of game mechanics on their own.Quote:
and come up with a new game plan.
Using the evony client you cannot apply more than 1 truce agreement sequentially.
It would be extremely easy for evony's admins to detect when someone attempts to apply a 2nd truce agreement during the cooldown -- which by definition means that person is using a bot.
Rather than demanding Evony change comforting, why don't you demand they enforce their TOS by detecting and eliminating people who game the system using the multi-truce exploit?
Wouldn't that make more sense, and be easier?
Unless, of course, your whine really has nothing to do with the issue you illustrated, but instead you simply want the comforting mechanism changed so you can have your cupcake, no matter what.
Oopsie, faux pas. Meant that it'll work until the botters find a way to override it. Sometimes my fingers runaway with themselves.
My advice, gather the evidence and report them.
It's actually become less common in Age I because more often than not that's exactly how botters have been caught. Reason; unless your're running 3rd party software there's no way you can stack truces.
You and I as well as most of the old honour guard all know that this game evolves all the time. It seems it's time to look at how the game has developed and then play accordingly.
EDIT: Tentpig's right it a darn sight easier in removing the cause of everyone's grief rather than make us all suffer.
It's easier to report, but I have seen no consequences from those reports. At this point, Evony is offering at least some solution to one of the major problems of the game. Rather than demanding a different one, I am strongly suggesting that some solution is better than no solution at all. Realistically, I think botting has become so common that enforcing ToS would put put Evony out of business. It might be that I am just on a really screwed up server, but in reviewing other people's comments, I think not.
So, on the wild assumption that Evony is not going to suddenly start enforcing its ToS, as they haven't in years....Let's at least fix some of the issues that have made this game boring. Inability to conquer completely undefended cities is at the top of the list. If others, including Ms. le Fay, know of truly effective way of dealing with the issue of undefended non-stop-comforted cities, this would be a wonderful place to share with the rest of us. Otherwise, let's at least fix comforting!
how bout limiting the fix to HC's?
don't see anything wrong with that, most players quit cause their 16 has been taken and they get drafted every day for months.
cynical nonsense, believe it or not but not everyone conforms to your view of whiners, do you really believe all the ppl advocating a change to comforting havent attempted to figure out other methods of beating bots etc?
instead of trolling, why dont you put that apparently intelligent mind of yours to use and come up with some ideas
and stop repeating the whole "evony needs to fix the root problem bots" and "what about the weak players", bots are not gonna be fixed for the reasons i and many others have mentioned, and the change is meant to help the small players yet still prevent the comfort defence from being something a player can use indefinitely
personally as ive seen mentioned, i believe such a change would be best applied to 14s and 16s only, these are elite assets that should be defended properly by the holders and small players arent likely to be holding them
Let's at least add Atlantis to that list :) Folks are now talking about capping Atlantis and not worrying about defending it because they can just comfort it. Granted, those folks rarely have the skills to take it, but that shouldn't be a reason not to make it comfort proof.
Why wouldn't you add 12s to the list as well? Why should a player be allowed to draft his/her attacker from a city they can't defend? What's the justification for that?
sorry yea atlantis too obviously lol, but 12s are small scale and not that important, let the smaller players have em
talk about about pot and kettle pfft
because fixing the problem would be bad and new players aren't needed and oh yeah, that's right, everybody already cheats anyway and it's not in the best interest of the the parent company to enforce the rules... blah blah blah
the most ridiculous premiss i've come across in months
bots can misuse comforting, and multi truce and build and... basically play evony for you
so what to do?????
1. change the game to deal with the bots?
2. deal with the bots to fix the game?
so here's my last thought on this matter
why not instate an evony bot killer NPC alliance
made up of 10 bots
when a player is detected running a bot, evony launches an all out attack on the player 'in game'
the evony server would know every command that the bot was sending and be able to attack appropriately, this bot killer NPC would have barb type heroes and racks
evony could also disable any multi truce applied
that attack would run non stop for 5 days and/or stop at loy 1 for every city, leaving those cities ripe for the picking
i think people would really think twice about running a bot if that came raining down on them and your alt problem would go away and we'd be back to the pre bot days
i guess you'd actually want to clean up the game and have some clever software developers
so nevermind
Balaam, I think your suggestions of how to clean up the bot problems are simplistic. People charge back when they feel like Evony has cheated them (yes, the irony is not lost on me). So if Evony does things such as npc-attacking players or, simpler, banning/suspending them in an effort to enforce rules they had not previously enforced, it's running the risk of not only losing future revenue, but also losing past revenue. I have never spoken to any Evony representatives about it, but I suspect this is the reason for not addressing the underlying issue of bots at least on existing servers. I continue to hope that Evony will address botting on new servers, as they are released, either by creating an Evony-sanctioned bot, or by suspending botters before they invest into the game.
Certainly bot detection cannot be the issue - it seems we can all figure out who bots. Nonetheless, Evony is not banning those players. Let's assume there is a revenue-related reason for that (although it is Free Forever to those players who chose to treat it that way, it cannot be free for the company to maintain and release all those servers, after all). Let's further assume that Evony will continue to desire to stay in business, and thus not ban everyone who bots. Both of those assumptions appear reasonable based on past experiences. Now, with that in mind: what can be done about cities that are comforted 24/7?
Why is it outside your realm of comprehension that you should really be demanding, as a customer, that evony abide by the terms of service they purport to expect you to adhere to?
If you go to the theatre to see Batman, is it acceptable that the theatre play Spiderman instead? Do you just sit and watch it, even though it's not the movie you wanted to see or pay for?
I posted a simple method earlier for bot detection... When receiving a truce command at the server, have the server check to see if cool down is in effect. If it is, you know the player is botting, because the client will not allow you to apply a truce in cool down. Then, ban the player. End of problem.
If you pay for the movie knowing full well that sometimes, or all of the times, this particular theater plays Spiderman rather than Batman, then yes, I do believe it would be acceptable for the theater to play it. Most of us started newer servers knowing how the dice really roll and chose to pay for the movie nonetheless.
Losing cities is supposed to be part of the game. Getting banned, by definition, is not. Therefore, I do believe that folks who lose a city in the normal course of the game are less likely to lash out at Evony than people who are banned from playing the game.
Looks like we just lost our only chance to atleast have a chance against botters.
Evony is never gunna rid themselves of botters, new ones will always be made.
Our one chance to beable to cap botted cities is probably lost now because of the players who feel they should be entitled to keep a city without having troops in it.
When I first started playing Evony people lost cities all the time, If an alliance crossed you you had the ability to smash them to pieces by capping all their cities, we almost got that ability but I doubt we will now.
Someone already said how comfort cant be miss-used by the bot, something about its cooldown being server-side rather then client-side.
Increasing comfort cooldowns would have atleast given the honest players a chance to cap enemy cities without relying on power outages or user/bot error.
:(
if evony remove comforting it is not for the reason that they want cities to change hands. its because they want to make more money. they most likely see a major increase in revenue for teleports and speech texts if comforting is removed.
for me the biggest root of the problem is account sharing. if evony could somehow make it so people need to use some kind of bank details or credit card details to login to their games then i predict a massive drop in account sharing and endless comforting. after all, who is going to give their bank details out to what is essentially complete strangers, no matter how long you game with people, nobody is going to risk handing over their bank info to someone. don't ask me how it would be done....i don't know, but i do know it would work.
as far as the botters go i don't really have an answer, only that evony must surely know who these people are but only ban the ones where they think they won't take tooo big a hit in there revenue stream.
comforting should remain i believe, i would be interested in looking at proposals for a longer cooldown on comforting but i think that's as far as it should go.
I think making a revision to the comforting action will be generally good. There's no point holding on to a city you can't defend. If you can't fight against someone who's bigger than you, then take a step back and plan to move a step or two ahead some other time. Regroup. You have an alliance to work with. Don't be a nuisance player like most botted accounts. This is a war game. There are risks that you are expected to face when playing. If you just enjoy the social side, no need to keep more than 1 city. If you rely on warehouses, you need to improve your game skills. If you value the city so much, move it to some other spot. If you can't in the absence of a teleporter, move out the heroes then abandon it. You can even opt to plead to the attacker. Cities are very easy to have especially if there's someone big in your alliance. If you have very little time, then accept that this game is not for you. I'm not saying those concerns against the revision of comforting are not legitimate. They're legitimate in their own right if you ignore what I stated above. Since we all know that Evony can't sufficiently address all the concerns (e.g. botting, account sharing), why not consider the small step towards making this game enticing to play again.
I haven't read all the posts here so I don't know if there were already suggestions on how this revision will be made but here's one of mine:
Implement a cooldown say 10mins from last successful attack. This will fast track those who are unfortunate to have cities under refuge but are not under attack. 100k archers, a few layers with a decent hero plus any range setter if you know can defend almost any attack. I'm sure an alliance can provide that. Unless the attacker spams with mech waves (which is very unlikely), you have your window of comforting there until sufficient troops arrive in your city. You don't necessarily have to defend all attacks. It takes time for mechs to be launched and with turn around time, you have more than enough to play with the attacker if he sends loyalty waves. This way, the bot or the account sitter has to work harder. Make it's more challenging to play rather than dealing with someone who acts and thinks like a bot.
Also, if botting can be solved, account sharing is a different and will almost be impossible to fully addressed.
Yes we sure can. When somebody attacks from 2-3 accounts every few seconds 24 hours a day for days in a row in example?
You have a lot of nerve coming here and complaining about bots. But then you already showed multiple times you consider yourself above the rules you so desperately want to enforce on others :rolleyes:
With the greatest of respect Jeff you are an excellent player. However, reading your post your're telling everyone how they should play their game. Changing the comfort isn't going to solve the underlying problem. All it's going to do is encourage even more account sharing and botting. The comfort system isn't broken it's been abused.
Telling someone who can't afford to coin heavily or at all that they should have one city isn't fair. Yeah it'll be easier on them and everyone else but who am I to say you don't coin and only play for a couple hours a day so therefore don't have more than one city. It's ridiculous and unrealistic.
To reiterate the point, if you don't have a truce, in a cooldown, have no speech texts or don't coin so can't holiday. Porting isn't an option because you haven't had the foresight to keep an emergency flat and the server is locked, or out of ports anyway. Changing or removing comforting is simply unfair. I mean you log on and even though you had a full battalion of troops stationed in that city they've been wiped out. Your're waiting for reinforcements and low on resources (they've been plundered too) and all you can do is watch the loyalty drop because you can't defend your city. So that's just hard luck is it? If your loyalty is very low you stand a real chance of losing your city just to keep people who think they should cap cities when it suits them.
Some people also use the comforting to help train troops. Don't forget that you can raise your population as well.
Those people who have said that changing the comforting to stop botters will not work are right. We know that smoking is bad for us. We know drinking and driving is stupid.. but how many people do them? You don't stop crooks and cheats by beating up on the victims. You nail the wrong doers.
Singapore has no graffiti problem. Canada and the US do.. major ones. You cannot drive down the Trans-Canada without seeing tags even 100's of miles from the nearest town. Why?
You get caught tagging in North America ... you get your paint taken away and told you are a BAD person.
You get caught tagging in Singapore .. you get canned in public...
Which one is working people?
Want to stop botting? Don't say NO AMULETS AND NO COMFORTING. Find a couple of trustworthy people on each server or send in some employees to play. Watch and see who is botting. Then ban their sorry sad sack selves. Do that on about 5-10 servers. Let it be known that this is going to happen to EVERYONE caught botting.
When you have banned some of the big coiners who were cheating it caused ripples on most servers.
But when you have people posting here about how they couldn't sign on with their main account but their alts could... well... that's the problem. Not comforting.
As has been stated.. you cannot comfort if you have no resources left... even if you have a bot.
Ban the bots and cheaters.. not take away things that make the game playable and enjoyable....
A game is normally limited on how one should play it and if I happen to enumerate almost everything, you shouldn't put it out context or in a manner that appears to be bad. This may be a semantics argument as I view that if it's easily abused, then it's broken. Let me draw a parallel to an incident in the current Olympics.
This is an Associated Press report. In badminton, Four badminton teams were kicked out of the women's doubles at the London Games on Wednesday for trying to lose on purpose, conduct that a top IOC executive said strikes at the heart of Olympic competition.
The eight doubles players from China, South Korea and Indonesia were cited by the Badminton World Federation for "conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport."
There is no rule against intentionally losing a game just to gain a better draw in the latter rounds. I would say this directly if the comparison is not too obvious: 'comforting-happy players' are in my opinion not in keeping with the spirit of the game. Evony plans to change it because it's not how they initially intended it to be used in competitive play especially. I don't speak for Evony but I read some of Dave's comments regarding this matter.
To say a change is going to encourage more botting and account-sharing is ridiculous. You tend to make it appear like it's going to be a lot worse. Players are already accustomed to it whether big or small. It already reached almost saturation point that any increase whether by natural course or by instituting a modification (who in your opinion will encourage) will not make a dent to the percentage who already do. These days, most players are content to killing enemy troops and plundering.
I do believe that changing the comforting (I think the change/s are limited to praying and disaster relief) will cause a more active playing environment as most servers are dead. Some players only start getting very active when they know that certain players are banned. Players (botters and non-cheater alike) will lose cities more often that it's now. If a certain true non-cheater plays the game 2 hours a game straight daily (as oppose to 20mins every 4 hours), comforting or not, he's bound to lose a city in an active server. In a very active server, comforting can't save an honest player (whether big or small) from losing cities even if he play 16hrs straight a day. This isn't even suppose to be an argument. A change will have a clear impact on alts. I don't know why some tend to voice out the contentions of an honest player in order to gain a moral victory on their side. We just need to Get Real. Have a pragmatic approach. Bring back the competitiveness of the game. A game for the real people. I can't tell for certain if Evony is getting the feel of this because of the decreasing player base or less activity which results to poor income. But let me tell you this, I don't buy a package every month. And I haven't receive a chest for quite some time now even though I have plenty of friends on the server who do. I'm pretty confident that I'm not the only who observed this. Real players are leaving the game. Even the botters.