Training Troops / Troop Caps

[Reylan Talonspyre]

Long ago, we had kingdoms that had nothing like a “cap” on the number of troops we could buy. This allowed impressive troop build ups far above and beyond what the kingdoms could afford. We termed this “fluffing”. Now we have a cap that keeps us within reasonable limits of our kingdom's capabilities. This was a decision made by the game designers for reasons they will most likely share after this post. My point of debate is that this cap has made training troops from Level 1 through to Level 5 nothing more than a time sink.

If my memory, or at least my recall of other people’s memories, serves me, it used to be possible to fluff a number of Level 1 troops far above the number of Level 5 troops and without the turn cost to do it. All that it really required was Gold. If you could funnel enough gold to that kingdom through your guild, you would be able to build a massive army of green troops that you could launch at your enemy or serve as an ally of impressive power. The losses would be staggering as I believe L1 troops take heavier losses against L5 troops, but the fluffed kingdom would be stronger with a steady inflow of cash. Zerg rush.

This lead to two very different styles of game play from the kingdom standpoint:

1. Our current method of buying and training (with a little more fluffing)
2. Large quantities of untrained troops (L1) being wielded with the support of other kingdoms or through preparation by the individual player

The only reason the cap is being discussed is that it effectively means that no matter what you do, there is no real tactical value to anything but T5 troops. The cap does not take into account the level of the troop type, just the initial cost. So I guess my real question is, why not just have troops, without a training function at all? This would allow us to spend a few more turns on war, sorcery and scumming. It would also create an almost real-time ability for the players to rebuild their defenses in the face of a surprise attack or rebuilding offensive troops when they bounce off an defender's defenses.

It may also be possible to incorporate defensive/offensive bonuses for having troops of two or three different kinds. Imagine if having 10 kobolds, 1 orc, and 2 trolls would double the offensive strength of the 10 kobolds. It could mean a difference in how we build and make it more difficult, but not impossible to calculate defensive value/offensive value. Would that be entertaining?

I look forward to Kaz’s insight into this and comments from the gaming community at large.

I also hope this is the appropriate forum for this discussion.

[Kaz]

In my opinion, taking away training would essentially rid the game of a huge part of the tactical play, and need for thought. Essentially it would create easy mode.

Training is more than a time sink, it's one of the primary 'risks' that an attacking player needs to manage.

When you're attacking another kingdom with war, and start to get towards the end of your turns you have to make a decision. Do you stop attacking, refort defences and train? Do you do a couple more attacks, refort defences and hope that you get the turns to train before you're attacked? or do you use all your turns attacking and leave yourself with offensive troops hoping to get another strike in?

Take training away and it's a huge advantage to the attacking guild. It's also a huge advantage to larger kingdoms who make money significantly easier than smaller kingdoms. Yes a defending player might be able to switch to a different fort quicker, but most of the time a player is not online defending. Even if they were, we're back to 'easy mode'.

In addition.

Take away training and you essentially make the Barrack building pointless. It's primary function is to increase your train-rate and reduce the amount of turns it costs you to re-train. Yes, it reduces troop expenses too, but without training it would be far better to not build barracks and just build guildhalls instead. Yes the guildhalls can be burned, but they increase income more than barracks reduce expenses and that means more cash for instant-swap troops. If there's enough of them, burning them takes up a lot of turns anyway. That's turns not spent on other things.

Combine no training with no troop cap and you've created a system where the large kingdoms are untouchable. They could sit there with 25% guildhalls, 10% hovels, 0% barracks, 25% quarries, 20% temples and 20% forts. They'd make LOADS of cash so could fluff with scum AND defences well beyond the reach of smaller kingdoms.

It would be totally pointless.

I'm more than happy to discuss how we could tweak the system, but ridding the game of training wont be happening. It would mean too much work for too little gain.

Troop Cap though, there's discussion to be had there.

I don't recall the days that you're referring to, that's not to say they didn't happen though. This game existed for 4 years before I first started as a player. But I think it's unlikely that there was a cap that was based on maximum amount of elite troops and no cap on greens. That sort of seems overly complex and I don't see why it would logically progress to the way the cap has always worked (since I've played). It would have been more logical to just introduce a different numeric cap at each training level, than to rework the whole system into the current cash-based troop cap.

I think that it's more likely that there was no troop cap at all. The reason that players might have fluffed lots of green troops was probably because the turns taken to train them was too high and the effect on the ratio between income and expenses made it dangerous to risk training them anyway. Running out of cash while training is devistating to troops levels.

So.

The question becomes why was a troop cap added in the first place? I wasn't part of the team that made that decision so can't answer it for sure. But I'd expect it was because no troop cap means richers kingdoms have an advantage. Richer kingdoms tend to be larger kingdoms, so smaller kingdoms were at a disadvantage. Although, that's not to say that a hugely fluffed kingdom wasn't also at some disadvantage. They'd have to be very careful to not run out of cash, and more troops means more turns switching to a different set of troops.

Fluffing would also drastically influence networth, but then as we now rank using land and buildings, I guess that's not really an issue.

The cap serves as a leveller, but - unlike removing training - I'm not sure that removing the cap would be 'game-breaking'. I am sure that there must have been a reason to add it in the first place though. Maybe Mav remembers. Another possibility would be to leave it there and increase the troop cap. It's possible that 'back in the day' they just lowered the cap, rather than added one.

As it currently stands, I think that the troop cap is actually at a reasonably good size (based on turns needed to re-fort). Increasing it might not lead to more use of green troops. It might do, but I think it would ultimately lead to the average player building more barracks so that they could continue to play elite.

[Maverick]

To the best of my knowledge troop cap was always based on gold/land and had nothing to do with Elite/Green.

I could be wrong.

[Gili]

To the best of my knowledge troop cap was always based on gold/land and had nothing to do with Elite/Green.

I could be wrong.

Thats all i remember to.

The multiple levels of training is the only thing that annoys me, and perhaps the entire training screen(cos of that). I'd love to just buy elite troops(costing the appropiate turns to find, and usual cash). Do we really need levels 1 to 5? Surely Green, and Elite is probably enough....certainly all that is usually seen

Not worth changing though as mechanics wise, i think the game is in good shape

[Darnivan]

I started playing the second ever age of monarchy and we had the troop cap then. There was no indicator of it and you wouldn't know it was there unless you hit it which back then a lot of people didn't know how to build and fortify in the brand new game so there was a lot of stuff that didn't make sense going on because people didn't know better.

The only massive over-fluffing I remember was with parking lot kingdoms that had mostly open acres so when they got troops they had expenses millions over their income per turn. Those were used to support allies to break stronger enemy kingdoms that the parking lot itself couldn't hurt because he couldn't really attack without going broke and losing his army.

[Kaz]

Ok, so the general consensus is that the troop cap was always there. Does anyone recall a point where the cap was lowered? Does anyone think that the game would actually be better off with a higher cap?

Gili,

Removing two training levels would be like halving the turns needed to train your full compliment. It would be a step towards easy mode.

Plus, removing two levels of training would be a major overhaul of the code that doesn't really achieve all that much.

Although being able to 'buy' trained troops would be hard to work out the price for. It's not just the cost of the troop, but there's also the money gained or lost during the turn cycle to take into consideration. As you get more troops, 'elite' troops actually end up costing more money each time. Hiring already trained troops would be hire screen stuff though, so I guess the training screen wouldn't change much. You could still hire green troops even if there was an option to hire trained troops.

I've often considered the idea of a more complex hire system. It would require major changes to the way everything works (and thus is not something that's currently on the urgent list), but I'd considered the idea that when you fire troops they go into a mercenary pool. You could essentially use that pool to hire troops that other kingdoms have fired. The way it would become complicated is that a mercenary pool would mean being able to hire troops from different races.

But that's distant future work, if you hate the training screen then an improved functioning training screen would probably be a better thing for the 'wish list'. I'd like to improve the overall look and feel of the training screen, but it's hard to know exactly how to implement something that doesn't require a total rewrite of the whole system.

My thoughts have always been to add a little bit of change when working the individual screens, but not a huge amount. This is a layout idea, it uses an old theme, but it's the 'screen' content that's important rather than the layout surrounding it. I'd thought to add a choice where you can manually enter numbers like now, or instead select a percentage of the train rate. That would remove the irritating need to open a calculator when you want to train 1 turn of green troops to elite.

http://monarchygame.com/reskin/training.htm

I was waiting for the troops artwork before implementing these kinds of changes, but a half-way (no art) variation could be a feasible addition I guess.

[Gili]

I didn't mean that it should be edited, its in place and works. Just bugs me that there are 5 levels of troops and generally only 1st and 5th level really get put to use.

[Maverick]

There was not a troop cap to start in the game. Im pretty sure the troop cap came because Remo figured out a trick where you could get like 30k scum on 500 acres.

Over the years troop cap has been reduced, the primary reason is that it is a way to keep the game competitive.

[Kaz]

Gili,

However the division in training rate works there will always be mostly green and elite troops on peoples kingdoms. Reducing to 3 levels would still leave that effect. I personally train up 1 level at a time so there are often times when I might have a selection of troops at levels other than 1 and 5 (if I run out of cash or turns for example). But the norm is to sit at level 5.

The only way you could ever actually change the norm so that players used a variety of training levels would be to implement an additional cap that uses the Train-Rate giving barrack numbers additional tactical sense.

For example

You'd have a basic cap that says how much money can be spent on troops, like the current setup. You'd then have additional caps that limit the number of troops that can exist at each level, a bit like the organisation of a real army.

For the purposes of this example lets say that level 5 was limited to 1/4 of train-rate, level 4 was limited to 1/2 of train-rate, level 3 limited to 1x train-rate, level 2 limited to 1.5x train rate, and level 1 unlimited.

Cap of 25,000,000 gold
Train Rate of 4,000

Train Rate limitations suggested in example would mean

1,000 level 5
2,000 level 4
4,000 level 3
6,000 level 2
any amount level 1

1. Human - Hires 50% cap in Knights and 50% cap in Thieves

Knights@ 4500 gold each - 12,500,000 / 4500 = 2777
Thieves@ 1800 gold each - 12,500,000 / 1800 = 6944

1000 level 5 knights
2000 level 4 thieves
1777 level 3 knights + 2223 level 3 thieves
2721 level 2 thieves

2. Human - Hires 100% cap in Thieves

Thieves@ 1800 gold each - 25,000,000 / 1800 = 13888

1,000 level 5 thieves
2,000 level 4 thieves
4,000 level 3 thieves
6,000 level 2 thieves
1,888 level 1 thieves

It would certainly add additional need for tactical thought when hiring troops.

[Darnivan]

I think the turn cost of elite troops is a vital part of the balance. Personally I think the current increased turn cap for guilds is pretty imbalancing already and reducing training turn cost would make that worse. We can't really have good wars with such high turn caps because the first strike is so devastating. Some try to counter the effect by hitting much stronger targets but it is still win or loss in a couple days because you either broke them and won or failed and lost.

The old 125 turn cap could still be pretty devastating with a well planned attack but it was still a significantly less first strike potential that let wars continues for a week or more with the difficulty of breaking/killing all the enemy kingdoms with the limited turns and fort up against their retaliation. This factor is a major factor why I don't plan on playing past this age. It doesn't seem possible to have a good long war under these conditions.

The effective war turns have gone from like 75-95 to 100-120 (depending on training and if you need to inspire for cash, could be a bit more if you have tons of cash and go the expensive all t4 route). Take away the training turn cost and that become 135-150 turns...enough for each attacking kingdom to take down 1.5 to 2 equal sized enemies without a strong war defense and enough to take down 1 with a strong war defense. With the old values full turns was enough to take down .8-1.2 kingdoms with moderate defense and only partly break a strong defense.

Scum and sorce kills are also easier with the higher cap, though the lack of need to swap to offense and defensive troops lessens the effect of any possible training change.

Any reduction in training turn cost would make that imbalance even worse making how big the uphit for a war to be actually "even" larger and well as unknowable. Like POO's attack against Gatekeepers, it was suicidal but with the higher turn cap it was hard to know how suicidal it was until they tried.

[Kaz]

Darnivan,

As I mentioned, reducing the amount of turns needed to train equates to easy mode and as far as I'm concerned is not an option, so I wouldn't worry about it. My last post was pointing out a theoretical possibility to satisfy a particular post. Not suggesting it as an idea I'd really like to impliment.

As for the turn cap, it is set at the level people wanted, a choice was given, admittedly only a few bothered to post their preferences when I asked, but everybody asked for 150 turns. There are two threads asking what settings you want, they are not locked against furth opinions.

That said, first strike has always been devestating whether the cap was set at 125 or 150, although this age I'd argue that first strike has - for the most part - been a negative for the attacking guild.

Thus far, the defending guild has won virtually every war since guilds returned. Much more so this age than last. That's partly to do with the continued increases in the use of forts. POO's hit on G was always suicidal ;P It was pretty obvious how it was going to go based on how the SW vs G war went.

The reason why wars have been over quick is more complex though. Partly it's due to smaller numbers, partly it's due to unevenness in guild sizes making choices hard, partly it's due to a general move in the direction of banner strikes rather than warchats. Partly it's due to rusty players.

It is odd though that in some threads people are arguing that Restore is going to lead to never-ending wars, and in this thread I'm hearing that it doesn't seem possible to have long drawn out wars. I'd argue that it's MUCH easier to have long drawn out wars now than it has ever been before.

There has been a thread posted each age asking what settings people want. If you want to start a thread to argue a case for reducing the turns, go for it. A fresh thread would be better though, discussing it in here is likely to not be noticed as easily cos the thread is about training/troop cap.

[Darnivan]

All the wars the attacks lost were attacks made with pretty heavy disadvantage with restore making the war even harder since even if they broke the kingdoms they could just come back. It is like how killing my kingdoms would mean I come back stronger than any enemy kingdom is right now.

But that doesn't change the easy with which wars are made. My kingdoms kingdoms had great profit in our war, because I actually reforted a defense and wasn't easily sorced like some others...a lot of people have been skimping on defense so far making loses higher than they should be but even with solid defense I can break 1-2 kingdoms with my goblin with 150 turns plus cash.

This is probably why the restore hasn't made the wars go on and on...they are just already over. Right now FEL can't do anything how the ranks are...I was thinking of possible ways to change that and I thought I could make my own guild but even by myself I could probably do enough damage with a first strike to beat most of the guilds without them having a chance...unless they reset and waited for the resets to come back up before striking back...Either way there is no real war potential.

So I just build and wait for the age to reset...

[Reylan Talonspyre]

When you're attacking another kingdom with war, and start to get towards the end of your turns you have to make a decision. Do you stop attacking, refort defences and train? Do you do a couple more attacks, refort defences and hope that you get the turns to train before you're attacked? or do you use all your turns attacking and leave yourself with offensive troops hoping to get another strike in?

This is one aspect of strategy I hadn’t considered. Good point.

I didn't mean that it should be edited, its in place and works. Just bugs me that there are 5 levels of troops and generally only 1st and 5th level really get put to use.

That too is something that bugs me.

That said, first strike has always been devestating whether the cap was set at 125 or 150, although this age I'd argue that first strike has - for the most part - been a negative for the attacking guild.

Honestly, I am going to blame forts on that one. The propensity to use them and the fact they don’t count against the cap make them pretty devastating. I know for a fact that something had been done from one age to another back in Evernight that changed forts. I believe Elementals even gained an ability related to forts in particular.

All the wars the attacks lost were attacks made with pretty heavy disadvantage with restore making the war even harder since even if they broke the kingdoms they could just come back. It is like how killing my kingdoms would mean I come back stronger than any enemy kingdom is right now.

Wars last about a 3 to 5 days. I think we should take a look at POO and see how they are doing or possibly even SW. Yes, taking out a bigger kingdom, like Sideons or one of FEL’s kingdoms, would mean that with a restore, the big kingdom could come back, but it also means that if you break him and eat him … you have roughly 100k of land divided as your guild pleases. I don’t think the rules of the game are harming this age and I think Restore, like many new improvements are good for the game as a whole.

With all that being said and after reading all the posts, I concede my argument on training levels as Kaz has convinced me of how this will turn into easy mode.

But if I may interject, what if we added bonuses, across the races, for different configurations of troops as pointed out in my first post? Maybe that would be easier to code? I honestly don’t know as I don’t code anything ever.

[Ostro]

Regarding mid-level training, I know as a dedicated scouter years ago I kept my scum at veteran levels. Green scum were not ideal for the purposes I used them, and elite units took up too much of the cap and too many turns. Training to level 3 took fewer turns than training to max, which meant I had more turns to spend on updating the faith database Failed scouting attempts were frequent, as were successful ones with casualties. It was more cost effective to replace a small number of dead veteran troops versus a large number of green troops on a daily basis.

With a smaller number of players, specialized scouting kingdoms aren't as necessary as they used to be. Just one highly ranked kingdom set to 100% scum could scout every opponent in one full day's worth of turns. It used to take weeks with many players actively working together to achieve that goal. I don't know that there is an active need for mid-level training with this few players.

[Gili]

Ostro i think we already established that the troop cap has always been on the number of troops, not based on their training. Expenses was obviously a difference.

I didn't mean to spark a debate about the training levels, i know its an integral part of the game. But for waht its worth, what i meant was....

Lets say my training rate = 5000. Under the hire screen i could buy the following...

1250 Elite Dragons for 8,000,000 cost and 1 turn
2500 Veteran Dragons for 16,000,000 cost and 2 turn.
5000 Green Dragons for 32,000,000 and 0 turns.

My main issue other than the useless aspects of the different levels is the icky hiring screen. I know this is something Kaz has inherited and wasn't suggesting he work on it, as he has already done a shit ton of work for a relatively small audience.

----

Glad you appreciate how suicidal our war was. We didn't really have any war choices but wanted to do something, so what the hell Both my realms (40% of our initial strike turns) had to react to G's online activities rather than in a coordinated strike. To be honest thanks to the restore process we aren't building up from 0 again, althuogh have obviousl funded another big Anglique.

[Igneous]

So I realize Kaz's sig line would come in handy here, but how about self lvling troops though use.... Like an added troop xp dimension to all this? Probably too much work, but a thought, anyway.

[Dauthi]

So I realize Kaz's sig line would come in handy here, but how about self lvling troops though use.... Like an added troop xp dimension to all this? Probably too much work, but a thought, anyway.

This would require a HUGE amount of coding. When I created my clone of this game I did something like this were you just entered turns and the system auto trained ALL troops not just specific troops. Another way of doing this is, each time you use a turn to build, attack, sorc, scum what ever, you troops get "trained" all on their own. If that was the only way to train troops it would make it so you would have to keep troops on hand at all time instead of down size, build, refluff. It would also make first attack harder because you would have to keep offensive and deffensive troops on hand, and as you build up you would slowly get more and more expensive(assuming you have troops).

/shrugs random thoughts

[Reylan Talonspyre]

You made a clone of this game?

SWEET!

[Igneous]

Yes Dauthi! That is exactly what I'm talking about. I think it would be an amazing improvement. It would change a lot of code and game dynamics as well though. It would encourage troop diversity as well. Yes.

[Dauthi]

Yes Rey I did... almost 9 years ago now the reason I know its been that long is I did it in the 6 months I was unemployeed before getting hired at the company I work for now. 8 and half years ago.

The reason I call it a clone is because it had the same basic ideas this game has, but it also had some very crazy concepts that made it its own beast. For example. You picked the main race and you could customize your realms racial break down. So if you wanted the main race to be Vampire and you wanted 25% human and 10% goblin and 10% Elvin and 5% Element you could set it up so that was your racial break down. What that meant for you is that your troops attack/defense score was 50% of the Vampires, and 25% of the humans, and 10% of the goblins, and 10% of the elvin, and 5% of the element score. The idea behind is in a world that is mixed up in races to get a one race realm would be uncommon, but not unheard of.(if you wanted prime race vamp and put the other 50% in vampre you could do that.)

Each of the gods had differnet spells for magic, some were only offensive some only deffensive.

You had to have temples to get mana, and Mages to perform magic/spells against others/defend.

training was done differnet as seen above.

some random things like that to make it differnet, but overall it played the same. Get a job and lack of interest by player base I ended up shutting it down... and 1-2 computers ago I lost the game code.