Guild War Limitations (How to make them work)

[Kaz]

A long time ago I added limitations into Kingdoms vs Kingdom warfare. Now, in order to actually 'declare' war you need to meet a certain set of requirements. These look at the recent hits against the kingdom, at networth and at the total land on the two kingdoms.

It was discussed at the time of adding kingdom limitations, but in the end limitations were not added to quad or guild war.

This will now be changing.

In order to make a guild war system that checks for fairness, one advantage that smaller guilds have will need to go. A guild will still only be able to declare one war at a time, but that declaration will have to include all targets involved. This means that small guilds wont have the protection of the dec being made on the bigger guild, but it also means that the system (and all guilds involved) will know who's in the war and who is not.

Like the kingdom based system, there will also be a chance that you will start a strike and then discover that you cannot declare Guild War. This might be due to the damage you have inflicted pre-war or just because the war isn't fair (according to the checks). If that happens you'll be forced to continue using kingdom declares only, add another guild until the system lets you declare, or hope for a political solution.

In my opinion they should be more complicated that the kingdom based checks, I am thinking that there should be a selection of checks, each with some kind of points score, and a certain score would be required to declare.

This thread is not about discussing the merits of guild war limitations because (along with the 72 hour restore feature) they are happening one way or another. This thread is to discus what these limitations should look like.

If nobody has an opinion, then I'll just code it as 'I' think it should go, I'd prefer opinions though.

So.... what should go into the guild war limitation, and how should it be scored/prioritised?

[Rob]

Well back in the day didn't we rank our guilds by average net worth should we go back to that? Then maybe only guild wars be able to happen when the wars are close to each others net worths???

[Gili]

I'm not a fan of the idea of enforced honour, but what the hell....

So i guess possible war targets (aggressors and defenders) should have a score calculated for them. So something like Total_Members x ( Build Land + Fraction of Total Land )

Then i guess its a case of if Attackers < Defenders(+some%)

Obviously a check to see how long everyone has been at peace. I did originally think that perhaps GM's should declare cease fires then the system declares peace after non-violence...but then that is exploitable.

I'd also like to see, perhaps first, that any action done from Guilded kingdom to another Guilded kingdom should take more turns unless Guild War has been activated. That would encourage the declaration of war (perhaps even with a topic being made) being done first of all, given the opposition a chance to defend themselves.

I think in reality that is the key issue with the game, that generally if someone attacks your realm...your many days hard work is smashed up within a few minutes and typically when your not about - thats gonna make people pissy. Changing that isn't really an option as that would make a completely different game.

[Kaz]

Well back in the day didn't we rank our guilds by average net worth should we go back to that? Then maybe only guild wars be able to happen when the wars are close to each others net worths???

Rob, networth doesn't really mean anything. I can very easily set up a HUGE uphit in networth by taking a bigger kingdom/guild, downsizing the troops, noting the now drastically reduced networth, and then declaring war. I implemented the kingdom vs kingdom war declaration checks using land and this worked to a certain extent. But players were confused when they tried an 'uphit' in networth, but were told it was a 'downhit' and unable to declare.

That's why we switched to using land as a ranker. It's simply the fairest measure to compare between two kingdoms/guilds, and also the hardest to twist to make stats look fair. High networth doesn't really tell you how equal two kingdoms are. A kingdom with high networth could be a small kingdom with loads of gold, it could be a small kingdom with too many guild halls, or it could be a forted and defended large kingdom. Likewise a kingdom with low networth could be a small kingdom, but it could also be a large kingdom who has downsized troops to 'look' like a small kingdom.

The primary stat used to calculate how many troops you can hold on your kingdom is land. If you have enough cash, even a parking lot can smash you to pieces if it has enough land to hold the troops needed, and enough cash to deal with the difference in income and expenses. Built kingdoms are obviously better than parking lots because they can function easier. So built land is also another important factor. But in the end, land itself is the most important difference between two kingdoms as far as wars go.

[Rob]

Well never mind my post above that makes more sense
Thanks

[Aeropagitica]

Not a fan of enforced honor either. In the past the community has punished violators of the code and i have no doubt it would have again very soon. This strips away the freedom of the players to be a bad guy if they so wish.
I see the larger problem being the homogenous absorption of an entire faith by one guild. This leads only to painful and devisive faith war for every war! Far better to continue to allow the community to police itself and perhaps put a cap on membership at x%(70?) Of the total faith pool. One macro guild leads to three and that is not the point of guilds.

[Kaz]

I'm not a fan of the idea of enforced honour, but what the hell....

So i guess possible war targets (aggressors and defenders) should have a score calculated for them. So something like Total_Members x ( Build Land + Fraction of Total Land )

Then i guess its a case of if Attackers < Defenders(+some%)

When I was talking score, I was thinking more along the lines of something like the following. What I'd quite like to know is how important each 'advantage' is, in order to give the right 'score'

total members (score 10 points per member) e.g. 10 vs 8 = -20 points
total networth (score 10 points per 5% difference) e.g. 12,345,678 vs 13,121,110 = +10 points
total land ....
average networth ....
average land ....
percentage of target kingdoms that can be `kingdom declared` on by members of guild ....
average time since last attack on (or by) all target kingdoms ....
etc

Obviously a check to see how long everyone has been at peace. I did originally think that perhaps GM's should declare cease fires then the system declares peace after non-violence...but then that is exploitable.

If (or when I guess) I redo the war system it'll most likely be set up like the quad war system (as far as peace requests go). Although there would have to be some form of agreement between guilds in a multi-guild war. Peace in Quad War has two options. Option 1 is offer peace. It's basically saying 'we won, do you want peace'. In order to actually trigger peace the other party needs to agree they lost, or refuse the peace. The other Option generates an auto Peace, but the side that clicks it is flagged as having lost the war.

I'd also like to see, perhaps first, that any action done from Guilded kingdom to another Guilded kingdom should take more turns unless Guild War has been activated. That would encourage the declaration of war (perhaps even with a topic being made) being done first of all, given the opposition a chance to defend themselves.

The auto topic is something that I'd like to set up, but it involves a higher level of connection between game and boards, and requires all players to have a boards account linked to the game account. It's something I'm working on, but not something that's likely to be in place for next age. Implementing it means an entire redo of the website (not the game side, the portal side)

The other suggestion is already in place to an extent. It was rolled out in version 2b (so is active in all games). When not at war, the turns used to attack increases much quicker. Although it 'starts' equal to 'at war' attacks.

Currently - At War increases at target landx3, target land x 6m target land x9 etc, not at war increases at target land x1.25, target land x1.5, target land x2, target land x 2.5 etc

Or.... are you suggesting that a scum at war between equal kingdoms should take 2 turns, whereas one between the same two kingdoms out of war should take 4 turns?

I think in reality that is the key issue with the game, that generally if someone attacks your realm...your many days hard work is smashed up within a few minutes and typically when your not about - thats gonna make people pissy. Changing that isn't really an option as that would make a completely different game.

I'm hoping that the 72 hour kingdom restore option will deal with some of this effect. If it makes a totally different game then fair enough. This one doesn't seem to work very well after all.

[Gili]

The auto topic is something that I'd like to set up, but it involves a higher level of connection between game and boards, and requires all players to have a boards account linked to the game account. It's something I'm working on, but not something that's likely to be in place for next age. Implementing it means an entire redo of the website (not the game side, the portal side)

Easiest would be to just make a bot type account perhaps? "EvernightBOT" would start the topic and include the stats of the guilds involved. If you wanted it more RP friendly, name it a Bard, or Scholar/Historian or whatever.

The other suggestion is already in place to an extent. It was rolled out in version 2b (so is active in all games). When not at war, the turns used to attack increases much quicker. Although it 'starts' equal to 'at war' attacks.

Currently - At War increases at target landx3, target land x 6m target land x9 etc, not at war increases at target land x1.25, target land x1.5, target land x2, target land x 2.5 etc

Or.... are you suggesting that a scum at war between equal kingdoms should take 2 turns, whereas one between the same two kingdoms out of war should take 4 turns?

I didn't realise A large penalty would discourage out of war actions, probably greatly reduce the chance of ninja scum kills out of war to.

I'm hoping that the 72 hour kingdom restore option will deal with some of this effect. If it makes a totally different game then fair enough. This one doesn't seem to work very well after all.

Okies, I look forward to it

[Kaz]

I'm not a fan of the idea of enforced honour, but what the hell.

Not a fan of enforced honor either. In the past the community has punished violators of the code and i have no doubt it would have again very soon. This strips away the freedom of the players to be a bad guy if they so wish.
I see the larger problem being the homogenous absorption of an entire faith by one guild. This leads only to painful and devisive faith war for every war! Far better to continue to allow the community to police itself and perhaps put a cap on membership at x%(70?) Of the total faith pool. One macro guild leads to three and that is not the point of guilds.

This game hasn't really policed itself for 10 years or so. That only worked when there were a lot of guilds including guilds that were out of war and big enough to actually do something. When the guilds at the top of the scrolls started being the ones that needed policing it all fell apart.

Your comment on guild caps makes sense, and might be something easy enough to add, but unfortunately policing is not an option until you start proving me wrong. I'm not a fan of enforced honour either, but I'm less of a fan of absolutely no honour at all, and of boards that make me want to pull the plug and let the game finally die. I'm not sure if you were around, but a year before Decae decided to close Evernight, I'd had enough and left. I mean proper left for good. I was working one something totally new. When I heard Dustin had pulled the plug, something in me decided to give it another shot, but I left out guilds for the same reason I quit in the first place.

I wasn't sure that guilds was the answer, it's clearly increased the playerbase, but it's also starting to turn the forums into something I don't want to see. When I said (in the other thread) this guilds `experiment` has 3 chances I meant it.

Chance 1 was attempting to play by the old system. Based on my definition of success being whether or not I want to look at the forums, it's failed.

Chance 2 is a version that has some major changes. They include a form of soft-death with the 72 hour restore idea, and a form of enforced honour.

Chance 3 is complete closure of the Guilds OOC forums and a reinstatement of enforced Roleplay.

You're right in that adding a forum of enforced honour takes away a players ability to create a Bad guild. But the simple fact is that nobody NEEDS or WANTS a bad guild.

Although, even the current implementation of enforced honour in kingdom declaration allows for a downhit of 10%. There would be a similar room for movement, so downhits would still be possible, within reason. Maybe even this last war would have turned out possible under limitation rules, and in that case Devius would have been proved correct in his assertition that the war was fair 'enough'.

[Kaz]

Easiest would be to just make a bot type account perhaps? "EvernightBOT" would start the topic and include the stats of the guilds involved. If you wanted it more RP friendly, name it a Bard, or Scholar/Historian or whatever.

hmm, interesting idea. That would work quite well with regards to changing the war process so that you declare on all guilds at once. Stats and guilds involved could auto populate the field. Could even add a box to allow the person declaring war to add some text. Downside would be that the majority of threads would end up having been posted by the same account, although I suppose that if you've got an Identity selected that could be used instead. I'll have a think on that. Although I wouldn't call it 'Evernight' Bot lol as this isn't Evernight no more lol.

I didn't realise A large penalty would discourage out of war actions, probably greatly reduce the chance of ninja scum kills out of war to.

You realise that a side effect of the bounty screen and kill count score is that ninja scum kills are actually impossible. Unseen scum burns, loots, sabs etc are still totally unseen, kills are also unseen (from a news point of view), but if the kill is actually completed, even unseen, it'll show on the bounty screen.

[Stee Jans]

I think it is very unfortunate that the current state of the game necessitates these kinds of measures. Removing the possibility of free action on the part of the players deprives honorable behavior of its value, in my mind. When I left the game back during Evernight it was mainly due to time constraints. I certainly got frustrated by the actions of the guilds game (hell, given the number of times ISA smeared TFC I definitely was frustrated), but I never really expected anything different.

I don't think the game could bear an ISA-like guild, due to its anemic numbers. But that doesn't mean I don't mourn the fact that restrictions like these would certainly undermine some of the qualities of the guilds game. My suggestion would therefore be to make the restrictions as light as possible, so as to preserve the integrity of free action.

And Kaz, I gotta give you props for sticking it out all this time, but I think you need a different metric than the character of the OOC forum for deciding whether or not you should pull the plug. I have never seen an internet forum, no matter how sternly policed, that is all sunshine and light. Obviously the worst kind of personal attacks need to be curbed via mod and community policing, but there's simply no way those things will disappear en toto.

[Maverick]

Id say to let things play out a little more and give it a chance.

Ive seen a lot of positive responses from people, so maybe this was just an aberration.

[Aeropagitica]

I must contend policing has and does occur. Last year in the quad game, Mickal 's quad attacked an angie quad (clobber fish) and thinking to be neighborly we counterattacked on him. Apparently we chose poorly as in his following board raging and threatening to quit, all the other quads, leto and barny both, beat us into submittion. Obviously we were in the wrong as satre and the angies we defended, nor the other angie quads came to our defense. The community had spoken.
As you probably know too, secret councils were also forming here to '"correct" the leto problem.
Do try to have a little faith in this community!

[Gili]

I must contend policing has and does occur. Last year in the quad game, Mickal 's quad attacked an angie quad (clobber fish) and thinking to be neighborly we counterattacked on him. Apparently we chose poorly as in his following board raging and threatening to quit, all the other quads, leto and barny both, beat us into submittion. Obviously we were in the wrong as satre and the angies we defended, nor the other angie quads came to our defense. The community had spoken.
As you probably know too, secret councils were also forming here to '"correct" the leto problem.
Do try to have a little faith in this community!

nicely put

[Kaz]

Stee, believe me when I say I know what you mean, I have no expectations to make Monarchs Glen full of fluffy bunnies and butterflies. It's a war game and will generate a dodgy thread every now and again. However, you've also got to appreciate that these message boards are probably the primary recruitment form we have.

Games with thousands or millions of players can look to thier forums as a small less significant factor when it comes to recruiting new blood. Games with loads of nice artwork and graphics can fall back on knowing that players will stick around because the aesthetics are pleasing to play with. We on the other hand don't have either of those going for us. Therefore our community needs to be the driving force of recruitment. Our main attracting factor at present appeals to returning vets and we are working activley on appealing to new roleplayers.

I'd guess that returning vets will visit the boards before they visit the game. Seeing a positive community is more likely to make them consider creating a realm, than seeing a hugely negative thread appear almost immediately. Likewise any new roleplayer we get in via my attempts to try and rejuvinate the roleplay on the boards, are likely to make the desision whether to step into the game based on what they see on the boards.

The simple fact is that something needs to change. We've tried the same thing for years and all that we succeeded in doing was keep shrinking and keep becoming more bitter. I'd hoped that we'd get at least one age in before things starting becoming negative, but that's not really been the case. This last war was just the tip of the iceberg, at present we also have a shadow guild and a guild that kills randomly regardless of war. These are both completely valid methods of play, but are not really conducive to keeping a happy playerbase.

Aero, yes the occassional form of policing occurs, but it was by no means the norm during the final years of Evernight.

Lets not delude ourselves.

As for any restrictions, they'd still allow for a bit of negative play. Otherwise finding a war will just end up almost impossible.

We'd be thinking about things like

- 50% of the attacking guild needs to be able to kingdom declare on at least 50% of each of the target guilds. Basically if there is no way the war could occur using kingdom declares, then it cant occur. For the most part, the lower end of your guild ought to make this possible ragardless of the higher end.
- The total combined land of defending guilds needs to be at least 90% of the attacking guilds land. This is the requirement for a kingdom declare.
- The total combined built land of defending guilds needs to be at least 85% of the attacking guilds built land.
- The total number of members in the defending guilds needs to be at least 90% of the total attacking members. So an 18 member guild needs to at least attack 16 members or more.
- The total (and average) networth of the defending guild needs to be at least 90% of the total (or average) for the attacking guild

You do that and these wars are all still acceptable to the script as long as the 50% of member from the attacking guild could declare kingdom war on 50% of the members from each defending guild.

attacker 20 members - total networth 8,000,000 - avg networth 400,000 - total land 400,000 - built 300,000
defender 18 members - total networth 7,200,000 - avg networth 400,000 - total land 360,000 - built 255,000

attacker 20 members - total networth 8,000,000 - avg networth 400,000 - total land 400,000 - built 300,000
defender 19 members - total networth 7,200,000 - avg networth 378,947 - total land 360,000 - built 255,000

attacker 20 members - total networth 8,000,000 - avg networth 400,000 - total land 400,000 - built 300,000
defender 20 members - total networth 7,200,000 - avg networth 360,000 - total land 360,000 - built 255,000

attacker 20 members - total networth 8,000,000 - avg networth 400,000 - total land 400,000 - built 300,000
defender 21 members - total networth 7,560,000 - avg networth 360,000 - total land 360,000 - built 255,000

attacker 20 members - total networth 8,000,000 - avg networth 400,000 - total land 400,000 - built 300,000
defender 22 members - total networth 7,920,000 - avg networth 360,000 - total land 360,000 - built 255,000

Do we really need guilds having the ability to hit down below this?

Perhaps a little tweak allowing total and average networth to drop to 85% might work too.

[Darnivan]

Will this work also with multi-guild attackers?

I know you said you can make 1 guild be able to declare on multiple guilds but what about multiple guilds declaring on one guild?

For example: if guild A and B attack guild C do they make a single war declaration (by some sort of sending a war pact to the allied guilds that once accepted by them or whatever finalizes the war declaration) or individual ones?

I ask because if this is intended to prevent blatant unfair wars it needs to include wars by multiple guilds attacking as well as a single guild attacking. If guild A+B fail all those test by far they could still likely declare just fine as single guilds bringing us back to another thread like this

And if it didn't allow for more than one guild to declare war on a guild and didn't have a system to combine guilds declaring it would be difficult to combine guilds to make a legitimate fair war.

[Kaz]

Darnivan, that's a good question, and it complicates things. Not really sure how to deal with that scenario, which means the current suggestion contains a major flaw.

[Necro99]

so, my thoughts on all of this.

first of all, as those who know me know, I haven't been around in a long, LONG time. thus, I don't expect my opinion of how things ended to hold much weight since, yknow, I wasn't there. having said that Braggarts Hall was the playground of my internet adolescence. it was the first forum I ever posted on, and while I was there I saw what I feel is, to this day, the best community I have ever been a part of. during the years between the time I stopped playing/posting and now I have been to an awful lot of forums, some decent, some not so much, some totally free to do/say whatever twisted freakshow bullshit ive ever seen, some so Nazi that the word "shit" is **** and anything remotely resembling a slight to someone's delicate sensibilities is dealt with ruthlessly.

having "grown up" with Decae (from whom I learned the gems "you are the result of a coathanger abortion gone bad", and a certain rant about not giving a flying fuck about what the "ball-gag wearing internet bitch-slaves" thought), Neurosis, Souldemon, and all of the other "Old timers", I was well prepared for most of the things I ran across. today, Braggarts Hall is STILL the standard by which I judge other forums.

having said that, I can exist in any forum culture. I prefer more freedom, fewer rules as personally im not a fan of folks who cant handle being chewed on a bit. I do think there should be limitations and that there are (a very few) things that should flat out not be allowed, but in general I have always had a place in my heart for the community policing itself.

as for the game itself, enforced honor is not honor. if there is one thing I learned from Shred(prior to his ... shall we say "freak out meltdown fake-suicide" incident) its that every conflict needs a bad guy. if everyone is an upstanding opponent, there is no reason to hold a grudge. if there is no reason to hold a grudge there is really no satisfaction in hammering said opponent into the a pile of pulped shit and bones. I would much rather have someone I WANT to beat down ingame than there be nothing but friendly contests and backslapping happiness. I had kind of hoped that Masta would be my grudge holder. I felt it as soon as his "monies" thread was posted. it was exactly the kind of thing I can sink my teeth into.

but, i'm just another guy and really don't expect my opinion to matter much. do what you like as far as your game. it is, after all, yours to do with as you please.

[Cru]

I'm a bit late to the party and have just returned to the game in the last few days, but my feelings on enforced honor haven't changed.

I don't like it. Let's just say I still believe in the "all is fair in love and war" theory. Too much regulation stifles the game play and contrary to what you say, a "bad guild" is not a bad thing. Every game, every story needs a villain or two and without them, the story or game will fall flat. I am in total agreement with what both Stee and Necro have written.

Btw... roleplay.. it's really why I'm here for guilds. If I wanted to just create a kingdom and shuffle numbers and attack and be attacked and post ooc occasionally, well, I wouldn't be here. I play other games. The Guild RP forums/boards do play an important part in my decision to play. I haven't seen .. forgive me if I have missed it and point me to it/them... rp threads.

[Maverick]

Look in the stories of tonan, role play forum. There is a general forum and a forum dedicated to each faith.

Glad to see you back!

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

As for this, you cant force honor. No matter what you code, people can figure out ways to get around it. The most important thing is that the general population of the community seems to be on the same page about things. Just cant let a few rotten apples spoil the bunch.

Its different now. The old game was founded on terribleness and meanness I think a lot of us grew out of that.