Page 1 of 1

Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 10:01 pm
by dirtyrat
1. I attempted to spy another kingdom and failed (several times with increased spies). So is it logical to assume that I could easily fail at other types of scum attacks?
----
2. Does this game show how many turns have been used on each and every kingdom? I tried spying on several kingdoms and it said they were still in a 'player protection zone' (Actually I think it said they have used under 1000 turns.)
----
3. Back to scum questions: Basically scum attacks are meant to prep a kingdom for near future land wins - is this correct? So maybe I need to do scum attacks so I can successfully spy?
-----
4. I am on google chrome but whenever I go to this forum I lose track of the game. I am not very computer savvy but I do know that other online games I have played this problem did not exist. Whats up?

Re: Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 10:24 pm
by Nymphsong
That is because 100 or even 100,000 thieves cannot "break" into a kingdom with over a million...to do any scum action successfully you usually need more thieves than your opponents (what we call a scum wall). When you scout a realm, the turns they have can be seen in the scout information. Scum has a variety of uses, prep for land war or anytime of war...but it is also used to limit the effectiveness of a realm and isolate it.

Are you suggesting a Monarchy Jargon cipher for terms be put up? If so I can write one down for you.

Google Chrome...I am no techie...I will let Kaz speak to that.

Do you live in the Continental US? If so PM me.

Re: Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 10:59 pm
by dirtyrat
Yes I just opened another window (or tab or whatever) and saw I was still ed logged into this game.
---
---
OK major gripe here - To New Players to this game ~ do NOT read below or else you may run quickly from this game!
---
I spent several days messing around with my new kingdom while in player protection. While you are in new player protection you cannot interact with other kingdoms (spying, attacking). So as soon as I left said protection I attempted to spy on a few other kingdoms - to no success. Well ho ho HO! My kingdom was totally destroyed, within minutes, by one of those kingdoms that I tried to spy upon. Good news is I can restart in player protection (with I think a few missing turns). Bad news is I must do this ALL OVER AGAIN. That means I must play ONE THOUSAND TURNS before I can once again join in the fun with the other big boys and girls...and be destroyed yet again. Repeat X insanity. This game has a steep learning curve. (Or is it curse? :shock: )

The only good news is I just tested how to play those 1000 turns. I was unaware that I could use many more turns than the limit the game suggested I could do. Basically saying if the game tells me I can only build 4 building parts per turn then I assumed that meant I was in for tons of mouse clickings.
---
"edit" - Let me give some examples on how other games that I have played are not like this ruthless one;

1. If your enemy has MORE land than you then that said enemy takes very little land away. (And so it is not really worth it to attack a smaller players kingdom)

2. Score range mutiny. Basically saying if a smaller kingdom score is to low then you cannot hit that kingdom - you can only hit those close to your score.

3. If a player goes crazy and attacks 1001 kingdom in a short amount of time then that said crazy player will feel the wraith of all those kingdoms that were attacked. (see no. 4)

4. A kingdom can only receive so many hits with a certain period of time. (Unless a attacker goes crazy - see no. 3)

Re: Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 11:37 pm
by Kaz
1. Yes it is logical to assume that you WILL fail at other scum attempts if you cannot succeed with a scout. All scum options use the same checks as far as determining success or failure. You need to have around at least 95% of their total scum strength in order to be 'seen' doing the scum options, and need over 135% in order to do them 'unseen'. Those percentages vary depending on race, but those are the base numbers.

2. 1000 turns is the New Player Protection (NPP) period in Massacre:Conquest2. Because of how the game works, the vast majority of kingdoms in conquest are dead or in NPP. The Massacre format gives you all the turns in one go, and the general method of play is to kill progressively larger NPC kingdoms and work your way up to as big a kingdom as you can before you run out of turns. For the most part, the only players kingdoms that you will see are those who are online and playing at the same time as you (which can be fun), or the kingdom who's king-of-the-hill. In other game formats, NPP only lasts 150 turns, and so you'd be less likely to be surrounded by a lot of kingdoms in NPP. You'd only be told the turns of the enemy kingdom if they were in NPP or you succeeded in scouting them.

3. In order to successful spy on a kingdom you need to do one of two things. Either, get more scum by means of offering or warring for land. Or attack the kingdom using Guerilla Raid. GR uses the T1, T2 and scum troops (in your case Mullo, Lamia and Aswang). The combination of a full troop cap of Lamia (the best strength option for Vampire GR) and the Summon troops spell, ought to gradually take down an opponents scum. Even if you fail over and over, you'll still kill 'some' of them. It might cost you a fair bit of gold though.

4. I don't really understand what you're describing. Walk me through what your doing, what happens, and what you think should happen, step by step.

-------------------

On a related note. I decided to have a look through the Conquest news logs. It looks like you attempted to scout Nymphsong's king, failed, and then Nymphsong promptly killed you. Death happens a lot on Massacre as it's the only way to get new turns (for the killer or the player killed).

The first bit of advice is that it is completely impossible for a kingdom with 638,999 networth to take on a kingdom with 117,893,803 networth. I'm sure Nymph won't mind me giving you a little intel on the kingdom you were aiming for, but you were attempting to defeat 1,400,000 elite scum with just 3,099 elite scum. To give more context to what you were attempting, his kingdom has 2,621,978 acres of which 863,322 are built and you just had 15,824 acres with 9,310 built.

You need to work you way up to it ;)

If no players are out of NPP and in range, you should start by trying to kill the smallest NPC that you can attack. For you, that NPC has a little over 70,000 acres and about 50,000 scum. You need to get a little bigger out of the starting block to take them on.

I'd probably use the Load/Save screen to initially start using someone else's saved build. The Vampire build entitled "Vamp start" looks to be your best bet if you want to start as a vampire. That build will give you a 20k acres kingdom with 18k BRT buildings. Then you spend the next 500-1000 turns after leaving NPP offering for more land, and building the types of buildings that you'll need. Your BRT will be very high, so you ought to end up in the 40-50k fully built area.

A kingdom like that can take down the smallest NPC, then you build a bit more, and work your way up the list of kingdoms. If you run out of turns, go to the bounty screen and claim the turns from the kingdoms that you've killed. You'll get those turns and can use them to continue climbing up towards Nymphsongs King.

----

On another totally different tangeant, while looking through saved builds, I just found a MAJOR exploit. OMG I got some fixing to do lol.

Re: Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2014 11:40 pm
by Kaz
You posted again while I was typing.

The Massacre game format is a different type of game. The only way Nymphsong gets more turns is by killing other kingdoms. You wont ever last long out of NPP, especially if you peak in on kingdoms that can destroy you.

For future reference, Nymphsong couldn't declare war on you, until you got hung by him. He's limited to sitting there waiting for kingdoms to try and dethrone him, with no new turns coming in.

For now, I'd skip the starting process, and load one of the saved builds. It gets you past the boring stages of the building process.

Nymph, are you up for committing suicide so you can show dirtyrat the ropes in a scenario that's a little more realistic for him to take you down?

Re: Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Sun Nov 16, 2014 9:19 pm
by dirtyrat
Yeah I think I need a day or 2 break from game.
---
So you were saying a simple spy attempt allowed for the enemy to crush me? So our scores were so vastly different that he or she would have been unable to attack me because the rankings would have not shown my kingdoms number? And the only way to attack, since the enemy was out of turns, is to war with another?

So this particular sub game doesn't give you turns per hour but instead gives you all of them at the beginning? Wow this is so much info to absorb. I could ask questions all day if i had the endurance to do so. I went looking in more detail in the games various menus and found I have missed much other data; here and there. I don't remember this complexity eons ago. But then again I didn't really play it for very long.

The enemy who killed me has already been very thoughtful to offer assistance through the kingdom PM format. "I can teach you to easily kill others.." I know this is a war game but as I said before there is that ruthless element that might not agree with my inner being. I like to be able to enjoy something without the dreaded fear of logging into game and witnessing it all shot to hell. In a simple game of online Risk that does indeed happen but it usually takes awhile.

Insight gives me this: the more complex the game the better the skilled ones will be. And so where does that leave us new ones? A VAST difference I'd say. Perhaps the game needs to create a better handicap than a saved kingdom, however how big, that is still run by a fake king. "Your general suggests that you do not spy on that kingdom or you will be quickly slain.." - is a start.

Re: Game Questions For the New Ones

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2014 5:46 pm
by Kaz
When you create a kingdom you get to chose - currently - between two different formats:

Massacre and Classic.

You picked Massacre, and that means that you picked a totally unique game format, that is 'nothing' like the normal browser-based game, at least in the method of how it works.

With browser-based kingdom games there is always a stress inducing death scenario. So far I have thought of two different ways to improve the process of discovering you've been killed.

1. Create a game where you expect to die a lot, and that doesn't invest you in months of slowly building up the same kingdom.
2. Create a game where there is a method of restoring yourself back to a previous state, and therefore undoing much of the loss.

Most browser-based games don't actually implement either method, and when you die, you start over losing everything.

The Massacre concept is based on method 1, and is specifically designed to be high in kills. Normal expectations would be to log in to a dead kingdom, but that doesn't matter, because being killed gives you a whole load of turns to play with again. This game was specifically designed so that you get killed a lot, and therefore feel less stressed about the loss of a kingdom. Players 'want' to be killed because when you run out of turns, that's the only way to keep playing, there is even a turn bonus granted for killing real players instead of NPC's, in order to ensure that players don't get left in limbo without turns.

It's not designed to be a game where you slowly spend turns over the course of several days/weeks/months, that's what the classic games are for. Massacre is a game type where you spend all your turns in a single sitting, because you know that as soon as you leave NPP, you're a target. This is why the game description states you can "spend thousands of turns in one sitting" and also asks "Can your kingdoms stay alive for long?". The game is not about 1 kingdom surviving unkilled for months at a time and ending up ranked highly at the end of the age, it's all about the score board, and how you perform 'during' the age.

For example, when I play Massacre, I am looking to score highly on the Kill/Death Ratio scoreboard. Every time I leave NPP I know I'm going to die after I leave NPP, and my aim is to get in as many kills as possible, so that I end up with a good ratio of kills over deaths. Other players aim for other things, like getting the most points by staying out as long as possible, or trying to achieve the biggest kingdom during the age.

This format is great for learning how to build because you get 1000 turns of NPP and can restore to a 0 turns build and keep practising over and over. But when you leave NPP it's also a great format to teach you how to fight (and how to defend), because that's what you'll be doing. War, Die, War, Die, War, Die.

But if you're wanting to play your turns slowly over a set period, and gradually improve the same kingdom, then it's completely the wrong choice. Massacre also isn't about little kingdoms being safe from big kingdoms, it's about constant warfare and death. The main protection a little kingdom has from a big kingdom, is that it costs a LOT of turns to attack them, but if they are sat undefended and offline with a large bounty of turns, having just told a much larger kingdom that they are there, then they are going to be a target.

The 'Classic' games (Guild, Bloodbath, and previously Domination), utilise method 2. Turns are distributed slowly over the course of the age, and you can never hold more than a set number of turns at any one time. This in itself reduces the amount of damage that one kingdom can do to another.

There is a limitation in place that prevents a kingdom from declaring war on a smaller kingdom, unless certain criteria are met, and there is a restore mode that allows you you revert back to a version of your kingdom, minus land/building tax, whenever you get smashed or killed, putting you into a new protection period.

Personally I think that you an learn a lot from Nymphsong, which I why I suggested that he get in touch to teach you the ropes. Killing other players isn't really being ruthless, when that's the context of the game. Nobody else playing massacre is expecting to survive. You might actually find though, that Guilds is more your sort of thing.