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Thread: The real story about the changes

  1. #241

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    Hello,

    Making NPC Barbarian cities into Vassals as suggested above is really quite a good idea, and combines the best of both worlds.

    Rather than wearing down an NPC city's loyalty in order to capture it, allow any attack that overcomes the defenses to 'Subjugate' the city. Subjugating an NPC city could cause that city to surrender, say, 20% of its production to the conquering Lord each day until someone else subjugates it. This makes NPC cities into the ultimate 'resource fields.'

    In such a system, we would begin to see players actively fighting for control of NPC cities, with high level cities carrying a premium due to their higher tributes. Each NPC city would only give its tribute to the last Lord to conquer it. Meanwhile, the fielding of large armies only becomes possible with the 'capture' of many NPC cities, all sending you tribute. Each day, a player will have to see which NPC cities have been 'stolen', and launch new campaigns against them so that they can be re-subjugated. If a particular player proves problematic in stealing NPC cities, then you can launch your forces against them instead.

    More warfare is generated by this method, which is appealing.

    I would also eliminate the process whereby abandoned player cities become NPC cities. Have instead a limited number of permanent NPC barbarian cities of varying levels that the players can fight over, just like valleys.

    --Anthony

  2. #242

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    Quote Originally Posted by Valin View Post
    Lack of free tiles my butt. Servers are turning into ghost towns.
    Agreed: plenty of space around me on server 3.

  3. #243

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    I disagree with the analysis in this post. The problems have not resulted from our attempts to balance army size, although these attempts have not worked either. I believe the problems are a result of the fact that right now there is not a good way for players to "spend" troops.

    Our vision for the game is that players fight over limited resources and that most troops are created and used for taking over valleys, attacking NPC cities and attacking each other's cities. Instead, players take valleys and capture resources from NPCs while taking little to no losses and player vs. player events are relatively uncommon between high level players because none of them want to risk their vast armies.

    I think our goal is to create an incentive for player to risk troops. How to go about that has yet to be decided.
    right on!

    =]
    Life is hard.... Life is harder when yore stupid.

  4. #244

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    Blah I was expecting to come back and drop some mathy science bombs, but instead I see the thread has filled up with real conversation about game mechanics. When in rome.

    For DS, there are so many simple remedies it's silly.

    First, you need to up the MINIMUM LOSS mechanics. As has been said, what is the first problem that one encounters in regards to your quandry? It's that either a battle is an insane massacre where you lose everything, or you annihilate the other side with overwhelming force. Fine, great. But if you want people to spend troops engaging in battles, then you need to make every single battle, large or small incur some form of minimum loss. I admit figuring the actual mechanics of that out will be difficult. But even if I attack a standing army of 1million troops with a force of 1000 guys I should be able to at least kill 100-200 or something. It's not realistic but it's what is required for your vision of balance. I've already come up with a method to achieve this of course, but a better thought out more general guide to such things from your end would be superior.

    Second, make... valleys... useful. What is the difference between a level 5 lake and a level 10 lake? I think its like 15% bonus or something? Even with a level 10 Barbarian town producing 37*5500 = 203,500 base food, that's a difference of 30,000 food generation. Or about 3k archers. Am I going to really break my back ****ing off some equal sized player over that? Am I going to station troops in that valley (at double food cost negating any bonus to the valley in the first place) to defend it? No, of course not. So why would valleys ever be a thing to fight over?

    If you made valley levels random function generated, or perhaps weighted to a bell curve, and then made resource production bonuses something exponential like 2^(valley_level)% bonus per level people might actually consider valleys something worth fighting over. Say 1% of all lakes are level 10 on the normal distribution curve and it provides a food bonus of 1000% that would be something rare and awesome to defend. There'd be no wall bonuses to deter attacks and although it provides a huge advantage if you lose it it's not such a detrimental loss such as losing a city for example.

    Last edited by pokey; 06-20-2009 at 07:04 PM.

  5. #245

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    Eh, my counter Mathy science bombs were better then yours anyway, and came with battle reports, not just made up numbers =P

  6. #246

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    Just a quick visual representation of what I envision as an example of what good numbers for valleys could be:



    Sorry for the crappy quality, I don't have a good spreadsheet program and I didn't want to manually calculate each standard deviation.
    I pegged a normal distributions mean at level 5 and used a standard deviation of Sqrt[5], obviously you mathy devs could come up with your own figures to better suit whatever mechanics you like, but this as I see would work very well as it stands.

    The map is a 500x500 grid, meaning there are 250,000 squares. Each square can be

    1) Lake
    2) Desert
    3) Grassland
    4) Hill
    5) Swamp
    6) Forest
    7) Flat
    8) Player
    9) Barbarian

    I think that's everything? Let's eliminate players as redundant with flats so 250,000 / 8 = 31,250 squares of each type. With the above distribution that would place down ~350 lvl 8 lakes, 100 lvl 9, and 20 lvl 10 lakes (about 1 per state) on the whole map. Perhaps thats too many, perhaps too few, Iunno. It would certainly motivate people to buy AdvTPs to get nearer to them, and they'd be sources of great conflict I'd imagine given their powerful bonuses.

    Or you could do an even gentler curve and even knock back barbs food levels to something like kemp suggested and let people fight it out over the lakes and their farm towns.

  7. #247

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    Sorry if I double post, I got the random moderator approval filter thingy?

    Just a quick visual representation of what I envision as an example of what good numbers for valleys could be:



    Sorry for the crappy quality, I don't have a good spreadsheet program and I didn't want to manually calculate each standard deviation.
    I pegged a normal distributions mean at level 5 and used a standard deviation of Sqrt[5], obviously you mathy devs could come up with your own figures to better suit whatever mechanics you like, but this as I see would work very well as it stands.

    The map is a 500x500 grid, meaning there are 250,000 squares. Each square can be

    1) Lake
    2) Desert
    3) Grassland
    4) Hill
    5) Swamp
    6) Forest
    7) Flat
    8) Player
    9) Barbarian

    I think that's everything? Let's eliminate players as redundant with flats so 250,000 / 8 = 31,250 squares of each type. With the above distribution that would place down ~350 lvl 8 lakes, 100 lvl 9, and 20 lvl 10 lakes (about 1 per state) on the whole map. Perhaps thats too many, perhaps too few, Iunno. It would certainly motivate people to buy AdvTPs to get nearer to them, and they'd be sources of great conflict I'd imagine given their powerful bonuses.

    Or you could do an even gentler curve and even knock back barbs food levels to something like kemp suggested and let people fight it out over the lakes and their farm towns.

  8. #248
    Join Date
    May 2009
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    In a bunker, South Carolina
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dawnseeker View Post
    I disagree with the analysis in this post.
    Fair enough.

    The problems have not resulted from our attempts to balance army size, although these attempts have not worked either. I believe the problems are a result of the fact that right now there is not a good way for players to "spend" troops.
    Interesting... I'm still confused over what you mean previously by "When Evony was conceived, it was intended that large armies would not be able to be sustained."

    Please define: Large.
    Also, can you please elaborate on what you mean by balance army size?

    Please incorporate the use of a lvl 9 or lvl 10 rally point, dispatch limits, and the conception/intention of Evony for applicable army size.

    Our vision for the game is that players fight over limited resources and that most troops are created and used for taking over valleys, attacking NPC cities and attacking each other's cities. Instead, players take valleys and capture resources from NPCs while taking little to no losses and player vs. player events are relatively uncommon between high level players because none of them want to risk their vast armies.
    Come to server 1, look into my alliances war reports on any given day. We are constantly risking troops, losing troops, rebuilding troops and having LARGE battles with some of the biggest names in all of Swabia. My perspective is that war is constantly on the horizon, and players keep a large standing army to deter attacks or to be prepared when war is declared. I don't see anyone failing to use their armies over fear of loss. Our greatest fear is not using them, and watching them starve to death inside our walls.

    I think our goal is to create an incentive for player to risk troops. How to go about that has yet to be decided.
    Thank you for your comments. We anxiously await the incentive outcome/decision announcement.

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