Unguilded (and NPC's)

[Dark Horse]

I wonder if it might not be necessary to modify war rules so that Unguilded realms are able to be declared on no matter what. The rationale for this can be seen in the latest catastrophy of my own making. While trying to grow a realm while tithed out you have two options.

1. Go to guild war
2. Hit unguilded

The issue that lies within that is as follows.

AoA was not yet ready for war and any target we could hit, we are not ready to hit. Thereby the next option is to find/hit unguilded. The problem here is that finding unguilded, if there are any, above you is pretty hard considering they likely have more thieves than you and frankly the risk is completely not worth the reward.

So I find myself in this pickle and Is scout around below me to find a UG with some land and I find Calis sitting on 10k land (That's 3k less than I had at the time). His realm is unforted and left completely open. As a veteran player I'm sure Calis knew the danger of this and had weighed it. His gamble = my gain. So I thought. I hit him three times and was unable to declare war because it would seem cowardly.

I can certainly see that in some situations, but this is a guilds game. By allowing Calis' realm to escape I was dealt a very nasty nasty sorcery retaliation. This set my realm back greatly and costs AoA one of their stronger realms to be able to go to war.

If we want people to be in guild and use guilds and have guild war. I personally don't think we should provide unguildeds with the protection other realms receive. There are solo games out there. Calis made a fantastic coutner and he's a great player. It's unfortunate that it's cheapened in it's essence by the fact that rest assured he'd been afforded no such counter were I able to declare on him as I feel I should have.

Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and mine is certainly not the be-all and end-all but I'm curious what you all think.

[Gili]

Just adding don't forget the NPC realms out there, pick on some of those.

[Aeropagitica]

Unguilded already play without the protection of guild support. Removing wardec restrictions would just promote unethical beat downs. As it stands UGs already are at the mercy of larger guilds as they can be fed off of my multiple people 3andand out. Leave UGs alone for rules changes. No need to punish those who want to play a little different.

[Kaz]

Gili and Aero are right.

There is absolutely no reason to take away the protections that an unguilded kingdom has. I've always personally hated the idea that guilds consider an unguilded kingdom to be somehow inferior to a guilded kingdom, and treat them as a source of free land.

It might not be the case at the moment, but UG's for the most part, tend to be new players that need protecting more, not less. Loads of games have a similar issue, but finding yourself destroyed before you've even had a chance to learn the ropes is probably the best way of preventing new players sticking around. I know that if I start a new game and immediately get smashed, I don't tend to log in again.

The NPC's were added specifically to give you kingdoms to attack freely without risk of retaliation. When they die, they come back again within a few hours giving a constant source of kingdoms to attack (while you're small enough to hit them).

[Dark Horse]

i'm not asking to treat them as inferior. I'm saying that it's absurd that you can have a nearly 11k acre realm with 0 troops. Let's all look at that again 0 troops. Had he had troops I could have declared on him. Unfortunately he didn't so therefore I could not attack him.

So if I'm understanding what you're telling me is true then we have rewarded an Unguilded for leaving 10k acre realm unforted. We will celebrate when a ug takes down a big realm that was under forted but we will punish a guilded member for hitting a UG with around 3k less land that has absolutely zero fort whatsoever. By the way I also tried to take out the highest ranked NPC which was, of course also unable to be declared upon due to cowardly restraints.

Soooooo

This is fantastic. My point of view is perfectly valid as anyone's is. I merely asked and the community agrees that I'm a f'n idiot so I shall carry on with my business.

Thanks

[Kaz]

DH, nobody is calling you an f'ing idiot, let;s not go there. But you did ask for a change that would treat UG's as inferior to guilded kingdoms. If a guilded kingdom can declare war on any UG whatever the comparative size, but an UG doesn't have the same option, then they are inferior.

The alternative would be to take away the uphit check for everybody. That is an option, but most people that posted said that they wanted them left in, when I asked what settings to play with.

If the system wont let you declare, then chances are it still wouldn't let you declare if Calis had troops (which he actually does according to the back-end anyway). Unless of course you drop all your troops in order to reduce your own networth and declare at that point. Even that wouldn't guarantee the chance.

There 'is' a networth check, but it's not the primary thing the system looks for. That only kicks in if they have a networth that exceeds yours, which generally would not be the case on a kingdom that has land that's too low to allow you to declare. It doesn't give any leeway for a slightly lower networth because it's already established that the target has less than 90% of your land.

The primary thing the system is looking for is that the target has at least 90% of your land.

The checks work in the following order:

1. Does target have at least 90% of your land? - Yes = can declare
2. Has target recently attacked? - Yes = can declare
3. Does target have more networth than you? - Yes = can declare

-----

On the subject of NPC sizes, I set the size of the NPC's small because that's what people asked for in the thread when I asked what settings were wanted.

You're a little unfortunate in how the NPC's randomised. If you were any other faith you'd have one you could declare on.

I'm more than happy to debate whether NPC size should be increased or not, it's an easy change to make.

[Aeropagitica]

Dh
I think you are merely approaching the problem from the wrong angle.

[Kaz]

The Current NPC settings are as follows

Max: 20,000
Avg: 10,000
Min: 7,000

The system then rolls a 1 to 7 random number.

1 = random acres between min and average
2 = random acres between average and max

The other 5 chances pick between medium+(medium/3) and medium-(medium/3) although it'll replace with minimum or maximum if the result ends up too low or too high.

Depending on the tithe score of the NPC's race, that amount might be multiplied by as much as 1.2 times the random pick.

Basically that means the following settings are in place

1 in 7 = 7,000 to 12,000 acres
5 in 7 = 7,000 to 16,000 acres
1 in 7 = 10,000 to 24,000 acres

You could bump the average to 12k and you'd end up with 8,000 to 19,200 for the main set
You could bump the max too, but it was set low because people said they didn't want the NPC's too high.

There's enough info on the system to discuss though. I'll add a few more NPC's per faith. Maybe you'll get a large one in Leto or Barnabas. But you might not. Only 1 in 7 even have the chance of being large enough for you to attack.

-----

Added the following NPC's, they ought to come to life and get a random build over the next hour or two.
Angelique: 10034,10035,10036
Barnabas: 30042,30043,30044
Leto: 50038,50039,50040

I also offered the option of connecting the NPC's into some NPC guilds. That would have made declaring easier. But that was another option people didn't seem to want.

[Jokingjoe]

DH, you can always land tax the soft targets--3 and out is still legal every 24 hrs.

[Dark Horse]

OK let me be clear I'm not saying anyone else's POV is incorrect, and yes Calis does now have troops. When I hit him he didn't. I think, perhaps, some type of warning when you go to hit a realm for the first time that says:

"Declaring war on this foe would seem cowardly Do you still wish to do so"

And then if you continue more power to you. And I'm certainly not at all against wars being fair. Honestly my thought process was hey it's Calis he's as vet as they come and I hope he'd handle me the same way. But then things went south as i've been PLed. In the reverse sense I had no means to know how/what he would do and i'd already run a fort and changed it back in waiting so I was out the turns.

I honestly felt that with similar land totals and built land % i'd be good. If there were some warning that "Hey if we do this it would seem cowardly" I'd not have wasted the effort to hit.

I also would say that do "just try to declare" and see if it would help you might be a stretch.

What if we had it so that it was a part of scouting. Maybe when you scout it could perform the checks and also give an indicator in that "hey this realm is too small it's not worth our effort my lord" or something like that.

Is that articulated better?

[Darnivan]

You can also just tithe for land. I don't know exactly what you mean by "thithed out" as I just tithed for 3k more acres today with extra cash left over after building and testing things (wasting like 40 million and like 40 turns...which could have bought another 2.5k-3k with just the cash or like 5-6k more if you count if I hadn't wasted the turns so I can tithe for way more land a build cycle than I could possibly build) putting me at ~36k acres. If I'm still not yet at a point that tithing isn't worth it then no one is as only one other person has as large a kingdom fully built and needing land in the game.

Granted attacking can be more efficient and fun at higher land amounts, but not to the point that we would need desperate down-hits on unguided.

[Kaz]

You're suggesting adding down-hit checks to the actual scum, sorc and war actions? Rather than just checking on the alliances screen when a war is declared.

Adding a 'your can declare' message on a scout, would only make a difference if you declare war immediately. If you take land during those 3 hits you might 'start' in a declarable position and then be unable to actually declare because you've taken too much land during your three-and-out.

Adding an are you sure message could have the same effect. Hit 1 'no message', Hit 2 'no message', Hit 3 'are you sure'. You can see how much land they have on the scrolls, I could add an indicator to kingdoms which you can declare on to the scrolls easy enough.

I'm not sure that an 'are you sure?' message is even possible with the way the system works.

[Dark Horse]

I mean downhits on UG are part of the game. I Really think maybe adding the check to scouting would not only fit the RP theme of the game but also allow any realm (even a big UG) to know whether a realm is work their time. Maybe a message like:

"My lord, our peers would think it silly to wage war with such a realm"

At the bottom of a scout.

Then I know that "hey, I may want to just leave this one be as it's not within the sphere of what I am allowed to hit. I think that would help everyone universally and also add a little robustness to the RP element of a scout.

[Kaz]

Why would you need to add a scout check? Just look at the scrolls, if they have less than 90% of your land chances are you'll fail to declare. If it's close to the 90% mark then taking land 3-and-out might push you over the limit. If it's over the 90% mark you can declare. This info is always visible regardless of how much scum they have, a scout is not.

[Dark Horse]

Yeah I guess that's true. I'm still not used to the land total being available without a scout . I need to remember that haha.

[Kaz]

On the NPC front. Of the three per faith I just added, there's still 1 new Leto NPC left to pick a random build. But it looks like the only big 'New' NPC ended up Angelique like the other one lol.

[Calis]

Gee, maybe I should check the boards more often - seems like I'm quite the topic of conversation...my ears should have been burning!

First of all, let me apologize to DH for ruining some of his fun - it wasn't my intention to piss anyone off. Now, let me clear up a few things.

When you hit me, DH, I'm pretty sure I was sitting on maybe 5k scum, forts, and possibly some t4 but I'll concede them if you say I wasn't. I didn't make a "gamble," by doing that...my build and fort was pretty standard for my turns used. The problem was, I caved in to Devius and joined his guild (he used to play for my guild in Maxim) and then promptly forgot I had kingdoms and didn't log in for a week (damn Valentine's day). So first of all, that's why I was sitting on what I was sitting on.

So I log in to see that I'm now UG (didn't take long for DevZ to blow everything up huh?) and someone made a typical 3-hit landgrab on me. I scout him, it's DH - tsk tsk. An old ally, I doubt I would have hit him myself, but whatever...I know he's got another kingdom, I know he can hit me 3x every day, I get a scout on his kingdom (with the realm he hit!) and no way I can break it, so I figure well, let's cut him down to my size instead of being his bitch for the next week. I looted him seen, tithed the cash so I could buy more scum, burnt his temples, downsized my land to get a better BPT, built 20 turns worth of temples, declared on him and nuked his realm. If I really wanted to be vindictive, I could have used both of my kingdoms and sorc-killed him. In retrospect that's probably what I should have done ;>

---

I do agree with you, DH, that you should have been able to declare on me in the very first place (if that had been your intention). I'm not sure I follow everything Kaz has said in this thread, but if I can declare on you, you should be able to declare on me. Why didn't it allow you? Because you had that much more NW on me? If that's the case, you could have just dropped your troops, waited for the scrolls to change, declared, and then reforted. At any rate, by declaring on you myself, I kept your war dec open and myself vulnerable to unlimited attack from both your kingdoms.

I really don't see anything "broken" in the system in light of what I did. You decided I was a weak target and took advantage of it, without removing my ability to retaliate (hello, elven kingdom!). I took advantage of your mistake. We both lose a kingdom. If you really think I'm such a great player (thanks for the compliment!), did you expect anything less?

If you did intend to declare on me with your bigger realm but were unable to, why not declare with your smaller realm? Or at least burn my temples, or hire more scum? Either avenue would have accomplished what the lack of a war dec did not...

blah blah blah, I forgot how much time it takes to post!

[Aeropagitica]

Good post Calis. I was a little curious about the details...

[Kaz]

I'm not sure I follow everything Kaz has said in this thread, but if I can declare on you, you should be able to declare on me. Why didn't it allow you? Because you had that much more NW on me?

DH is talking about his largest kingdom and your largest kingdom. Rather than the two kingdoms that are war. He wanted to smack your 'other' kingdom.

When the 'upthit-only' option is set (like is currently the case) it doesn't go that if you can 'declare' on a kingdom then that kingdom can 'declare' on you. You can chose to make a huge uphit and 'declare' up the scrolls, but one of the game options that is currently in place prevents much larger kingdoms from making a huge downhit and 'declaring' down the scrolls. They can still chose to attack you three times a day, but they cant go to the alliances screen and 'declare' a war.

If you've 'declared' war already then the kingdom you've 'declared' on can freely attack you, but they might not be able to 'declare' war on you. Not that they'd need to because they can make use of your declare.

In this case, DH wanted to attack your biggest kingdom with his biggest kingdom. As his kingdom was vastly bigger than yours the system didn't let him 'declare'. Had your biggest kingdom attacked his biggest kingdom in some way (other than scum attack that don't fill warmonger slots) he'd have been able to 'declare', had he been able to reduce his networth to lower than yours, he'd have been able to 'declare'.

His irritation was that he couldn't work out if he would be able to 'declare' or not. I pointed out that to 'declare' the target needs at least 90% of the attackers land, and that you can find this out freely from the scrolls. He then realised that he should have thought of that

[Dark Horse]

Calis, you're right I typically wouldn't have hit you, but I promise your realm was like wide open and I assumed you'd tried to play and were AWOL there was limited selection so I decided to hit you. Having it all back I wouldn't have done it, but I assure you the state in which I found your realm was as indicated because i didn't have to for to hit you.

After talking to Kaz he reminded me that acreage is actually listed on the ranking and I didn't even have to scout you to know it wouldn't let me hit. So I withdraw my complaint entirely. It's just a learning curve for me again. I hope i get better and I hope you aren't offended by my hit. I assumed you'd come and left and hey i'd like to go to guild war one day and we can't handle anyone without some bigger realms. Nothing personal I promise.