10% rule and stupidly indestructable traps are poor changes
In addition to the buggyness since last patch, there seem to be two changes slipped in which, imho, change the game in a very poor way:
(1) the new 10% rule -- where you need to kill at least 10% of opposing forces to get information -- and
(2) traps, abatis and other disposeable defenses seem to have become ridiculously indestructable and hard to trigger. (not sure if this one is intentional)
These may be well intentioned changes, but they make an already sometimes tedious game pretty much unplayable -- for reasons I'll get into later.
To illustrate what I mean here, I'll be using reports from an attack on a similar strength player I've been going back-and forth with for the last month.
All relavent techs are 10 on both sides and his wall is 10. Attacking heros ranged from 129-164 attack. Defending hero was at 155 attack.
1) The 10% rule is flipping aweful. To get any information in a battle report now, you need to kill at least 10% of opposing troops?
While this may seem like a good idea to prevent "warrior-worker" scouting, given Evony's combat dynamics it pretty much ruins the fun of any PvP that doesn't invlove simply bullying weaker players.
Consider this 5-wave attack group (2 second window):
99.9k arch wave w/ layers, no info
99.9k arch wave w/ layers, no info
99.9k arch wave w/ layers, Got a report back
99.9k arch wave w/ layers, no info
100k cav wave, no info
Note that all fights started at 5k range, so unless combat is even buggier than I think, the 1 round "your troops were anhilated in the first round" messages are all false.
(And for now, please ignore strategic role of the uncleared traps/bats -- which probably saved him -- that's a seperate issue.)
The first two waves cleared his cav, cats, pikes, and maybe a few swords, each killing 10-50k enemy troops. Wave four presumeably finished off his 17k remaining swordsmen, but that's not enough to get an action report back? (Wave 5 killed nothing, getting chewed up on the run in from 5k range.) The game's layering mechanics make it literaly impossible to have gotten the 60k kills needed for the 10% threshold on any of those waves. Too bad, huh? Sucks to be me.
Well, yeah. It sucks. A lot!
This is a slow and tedious game. The only real payoff is to look at the action reports to see how all your time and preparation turned out, for better or for worse.
In this case, the prep was well over a week to train, feed and house the ~1.2mil troops used in the overall raid -- 500k arch, 200k cav, 100k swords, 100k war, 50k pike, 10k cats, and 150k scouts (for scouting not bombing). (His initial defenses included 15k AT, 2k traps, 1k rocks, 4k abatis, and 110k scouts. Obviously, the sample above is from pretty late in the fight.)
And for that, I'm rewarded with what? A bunch of blank flipping reports at the end? I'm not complaining that I lost, I'm complaining that I dont even get to see when, how, or why I lost. No information I might use to learn from next time I try and hit someone in my general weight class? No reports unless I confine myself to running around beating up on people who have no chance of fighting back or defending themselves?
Ugh.
I can see the justification for cutting out info on a few hundred troops sent in tfor a lark, but 400k+ troops just dropping into a black hole? With absoloutely nothing I could have done to prevent it, given the way the game is set up?
More Ugh.
I'll gripe about point (2) and the new seemingly untriggerable traps and bats later. For now I can use a break.