Permanent Attack Overhaul

[CobyCopper]

A few ideas I've come up with.

1) Round attacks to 20 on an unclanned warlord
2) Adjust attack ops based on networth change; if someone is maxed and doubles their NW, half their attack ops open. If someone increases their networth ten-fold, 90% of their attack ops open.
3) Adjust sack and capture potential based on OP/DP basis.

Sack = ( OP / DP ) / 50

So, Sack = ( 1000 / 500 ) / 50 = 0.04, or 4% of food is sacked and 4% of cash is sacked. To determine this number, food is valued at $10 each and cash at face-value. So if someone has 10,000 food and $100,000 cash ($100k in cash, $100k in food), that's the total value for the sack. As they're equal, it'd be half in food and half in cash. $8000 worth would be sacked; $4000 cash, 400 food.

Put a limit on OP/DP at something like 4 or 5. A 4 limit would put the limit of sacking at 8% and a 5 limit would put the limit of sacking at 10%. These are fairly large numbers. The other thought is to give Standard Attack the full power Sack and Capture, limiting Guerilla/Bombard/Aerial/Naval to perhaps half-power or less. This will keep sacking reliable and profitable.

Similarly...

Capture = ( OP / DP ) / 100

So, Capture = ( 1000 / 500 ) / 100 = 0.02, or 2% of leaders are captured in an attack.
Put the limit on Capture at something like 4 or 5 again, so that Capture = ( 1000 / 0 (rounded to 1) ) / 100 = 0.05, or 5% of leaders are captured in an attack. This will make defending as a leader much more lucrative. In order to balance this, give Standard perhaps a 50% boost in leaders captured; make it worth your while to use the tougher attack types.

4) Make clans more lucrative; make it an actual player that can be attacked and defended. Bestow something like 1 turn an hour per member in the clan. Stats are made up of all players in that clan.

George: 100,000 rats, 1,000 weasels, 10,000 stoats, 5,000 skiffs, 5,000 leaders, 1,500 land.
Tom: 5,000 rats, 10,000 weasels, 1,000 stoats, 5,000 skiffs, 100,000 leaders, 1,000 land.
Harry: 1,000 rats, 10,000 weasels, 5,000 stoats, 100,000 skiffs, 5,000 leaders, 500 land.

Boys Total: 106,000 rats, 21,000 weasels, 16,000 stoats, 110,000 skiffs, 110,000 leaders, 3,000 land.
Boys OP: 994,000
Boys DP: 1,160,000
Boys Leader Ratio: 36.6667 on 3,000 land


Sue: 0 rats, 0 weasels, 0 stoats, 1,000 skiffs, 100,000 leaders, 1,000 land.
Betty: 1,000 rats, 1,000 weasels, 1,000 stoats, 1,000 skiffs, 100,000 leaders, 1,000 land.
Martha: 100,000 rats, 5,000 weasels, 5,000 stoats, 1,000 skiffs, 1,000 leaders, 500 land.

Girls Total: 101,000 rats, 6,000 weasels, 6,000 stoats, 3,000 skiffs, 201,000 leaders, 2,500 land.
Girls OP: 340,600
Girls DP: 179,000
Girls Leader Ratio: 80.4 on 2,500 land

Now there are two land attacks and a few leader missions. The Boys would be able to do Standard Attacks on the Girls. If they wanted to use Capture, for example...

Capture = ( OP / DP ) / 100
Capture = ( 994,000 / 179,000 ) / 100
Capture = 5.5531 / 100
Capture = 0.05553
Capture = 11,162 leaders distributed evenly to the Boys (3720.5 to each)

Now what if they wanted to use Clan Leader missions?

Boy's Attack Ratio = 40
Girl's Defense Ratio = 84.42
AR / DR = 0.4738

The Boys would be unable to do anything against the Girls, at least as a clan. Now let's look at the inverse...

Girl's Attack Ratio = 73.0909
Boy's Defense Ratio = 38.5
AR / DR = 1.8985

The girls would be able to do anything BUT use Leader Attack.

Here's how leadering as a clan would be different.

Espionage = Shows the sum of offensive points, defensive points, as well as the total networth, total leader count, and total land count. Less information, but more of what "matters" to a clan attacking.
Murder = 3% on all warlords (cut down to 1% when using shields)
Poison = 9.12% food and 12.76% cash destroyed (cut down to 3.04% food and 4.25% cash when using shields) on all warlords.
Steal = 10-15% cash stole (3.33% to 5% when using shields) from the warlord with the most cash.
Open Attack Opportunity = 1 attack opportunity opened on every member of that clan.

Thoughts? Alternative suggestions?

[Shadow]

No. None of that is useable.

Collective attacking is a terrible idea. A clan with one poor member would be dragged way down, so clans would becomes exclusive and new players would be screwed. Also, unclanned warlords would then have massive ratio advantages over a clan of mixed players, meaning that nobody would want indies in their clans. Basically, collective attacking would unbalance and disrupt almost every aspect of team play while providing no benefit. It also means that one bad apple could completely screw over the entire clan with some poorly timed attacks. Plus the amount of coding work that would have to go into this is off the charts as far as cost/benefit goes.


attack op ideas: opening ops for net change is a bad idea because people could just send enemies aid to open them up for more attacks, and it would be especially eay to do to low warlords who you could send a small amount of net while doubling their net, so small warlords would get burned and smashed while big warlords would be more or less immune.

your sack/capture stuff is just overly complicated. There is a perfectly good sack system based on ratios left over from a turbo round that we could implement, and there is no reason to mod captures once we make them a bit stronger. The problem is time, not lack of ideas.

You need to think less about the arithmetic and more about the big picture. Nobody cares about the arithmetic if the idea is fundamentally flawed.
=====================================
Alternative Suggestion: come up with ideas based in the framework that is currently in place, so that there is a small chance they will actually be implemented. Nobody has time to redo the entire game.  And think about how they affect the balance, not how cool the math looks.

Thought: nice to see you using your real account again, zep.

[Juska]

I kind of like the sack/capture ideas.

Would the OP/DP be based upon the defender's DP and the attackers OP or what?

Shadow if the ideas are in place for a fix, then why doesn't someone fix them if it's that easy? I mean someone coded turbo to have an attack counter this round, is the code change that much different for sack/capture?

Oh, and I agree the clan stuff will not work.

[Shadow]

Because translating ideas into game code takes time both coding and testing. I will have some time coming up where I can do the latter when I go home for a few weeks, hopefully we can get some stuff done then. RWL is a hobby for most people, life comes first. And at this stage in most of our lives, that doesn't leave much time.

On that note, suggestions need to be made that don't require completely overhauling anything, because that will never get done. Suggest changes to numbers within the existing logic of the code that will balance the game more.

[Juska]

His sack/capture ideas technically wouldn't be very hard to code into the game.

Honestly, I don't really care I just think you jumped all over him for no reason.

[Shadow]

Maybe not difficult, just unnecessary work. Coding time needs to be spent where it is really needed, there is little enough of it as it is without running around implementing every halfbaked idea someone comes up with. I jumped all over him because it is very obvious he put no thought into how his ideas would unbalance the game. Capping sack at 10%?? Even at 8, you destroy all the stufff a leader worked to accumulate in a single run of attacks. Talk about unbalanced. 3% is even pushing it considering that the person doing the attacking is statistically almost guaranteed to break against a resource masser.

[CobyCopper]

They're just ideas and part of it would cap off the actual damage. I really appreciate you just wanting to write off everything, though. The problem I see with sack and capture (especially in rounds like this) is the land captured versus the resources or leaders taken are minute in the grand scheme of things. There are literally dozens of different ways to "fix" the system. And yes, part of the idea is that those that horde resources will not be invulnerable with a 350% ratio. It'd fundamentally change how this server treats attacks and defenses in multiple ways. Of course I'd expect there to be splashed success--maybe 50% would succeed, maybe lower. One part of this server is, in my opinion, it's too dynamic. There's too much potential for someone to create an account, grab up a few thousand acres from the land farm, and then ruin any indier and half the leaders. Maybe they're a good player, maybe they got lucky, or maybe the code is too easy to abuse in that manner. I've done it before with great ease. There are ALWAYS players making mistakes. One of my favorites last round was a player who horded >$200b cash with 20k leaders and no shields. If you do something stupid like that, I would endorse no less than having all that money stolen. And that was during a first-run too.

I've put quite a bit of thought into the "average player's experience". The numbers can all be tweaked, but something needs to be done about grabbing 300k food when you consume 5m food per attack and the target has 2b food. That's just stupidly low numbers that make using the mission entirely pointless.

I personally think that the capture should at least roughly follow the average land gain per attack. If you can take 5% of the land from a single attack with 1000 Rats, I fully expect to be able to take 5% of the player's leaders instead. Frankly, the idea would far from suit my style of play. In some ways, yes, it'd be better. But in quite a few other ways I'd be shooting myself in the foot. Discuss it and keep the personal attacks to your head. This is a dev forum.

[Shadow]

Zep, in order to get the resources required to win a set, the leader player has to work all round, storing bit by bit. With 5% sacks, a month's work could be destoyed overnight with ease. Now, I acknowledge that it is possble to do the same to an indier, but the difference is that an indier can recover ALL of that net within a run or two as long as they keep getting comparable amounts of land whereas the leader player is screwed. Sack should never go much over 1% at the outside, and even then a month's work can be destroyed in a few days pretty easily, or at the very least progress halted, which is what happens to an indy when they cap out land. Capture is a little bit different, and I agree that it needs fixing, but the fix should be a simple a) increase of the success rate and b) increase the percentage taken each time, not some redoing of the logic that the code uses now. That's just make-work.

Also. 5% capture? maxxing someone takes 70% of their leaders? Capture should not be a ratio-killer. I think it was somewhere between 2 and 3% before it got broken. 

You (and everyone else who keeps coming up with balance ideas) are thinking too much that these strategies are essentially the same. They are not. Indy and resource massing are fundamentally different in ways that make simple equality of destruction even less balanced than the current setup.

And there is nothing personal about it, they were just bad ideas. I jump all over anyone who spits out an idea without thinking it through.

[Holby]

The sack and capture thing is ridiculous. I'm not entirely opposed to revolutionising the game, but those changes would just ruin it. It makes Leader and farmings strats completely obsolete. There's just no way to defend it, and little reason to try when the losses are so devastating.

The clan thing is silly. The open op thing doesn't work, either. And what's the point of rounding down attacks to 20?

[CobyCopper]

And you think I haven't thought it through? I've said two things now. Cut the personal attacks; this is a dev forum. And the numbers can all be tweaked in multiple ways.

The clan-attack idea was just something that popped into my head. The idea is that they have greater power on a whole but very limited turns; something like a max of 24 and stored 6 or something. In some ways, it'd be a war-game-within-a-war-game. If you really don't like it, please point out how it's so pointless or useless to even discuss the concept. You say, "No. It's not usable", but quite a bit in my concept could be used. Explore the idea yourself and multiple people can knock heads about what the best number is, but the current count of having .03% of food sacked or .15% on a good day is simply NOT ENOUGH. Capture is actually on better terms now-a-days, but there comes a point that it's not worth running because of the splashing and the fact that 2/3 of the people maging don't end up with enough to make it beneficial. Increasing sacking to even 1% will begin to have an effect on the majority of the game. My thought is firmly that those with networth should have more land and more troops to protect said networth. An alternative idea to protecting their networth would be to have troops individually "guard" supplies; say $100 and 10 food each. If you manage to kill 1m of their troops, you get $100m and 10m food OR you get as much as half your army can "carry". There are so many different ways to balance out offense and defense. I don't think it'd be half-bad to entirely remove many of these indy missions either.

Oh and the point of rounding to 20 is to make it easier and more linear. 20 or 21 has very little difference on the big picture. And the open-op thing really isn't silly; maxing is often intentional. I've used it as much as the next major holder in keeping my net protected, but getting maxed at $200m and being pumped to $2b makes it rather pointless.

[windhound]

There's a reason max attacks was made 21, lots of things in the game are based on the number three, not two or ten.

Making a clan attack would need to be smoothed out a whole lot more, it would need to be integrated not bolted on.  There are ways to go about this, but well.  I'm not really sure I see the benefit.
I played a game a few years back, I think it was Utopia online or some such, where you were assigned to a group on signup.  The group did coordinated attacks against other groups, A would attack B, C attack D and so on.  There were also things like spells or something that you could cast over other groups.  Stuff like drought that would effect their food and cash production, and the more expensive Dragon that would raid/burn their food supplies. 
Basically, when war was declared it was -declared- and it was an allout fight until a truce was declared or there was nothing left of one side.  That's an area I'd like to see improvement on, instead of people being able to flip the war status at will.  Casting spells on other clans would be an interesting addition as well.

Returning Sack to its original level would be enough imho.  Many rounds back, when sack actually worked, Firetooth decided to take me out shortly before the reset.  And he was able to, as we were both clanned.  Quite a bit lost in a very short time.
FAF's version of sack is/was waay overpowered, to the point where you cant keep 2 bil cash on you.  I dont want to see that here.

Capture could be cranked up just a little from its original level, but not much.  After being captured 21x I still lost leaders when I used turns (at the original strength).  Reduce the amount of land taken per capture and increase the leader gain to match the amount of huts lost or something.

Just be careful when planning ideas not to make it too complex.  We've been there, done that.  Complexities are nice for veteran players but our new players still need to be catered to.

BTW, I really haven't seen the personal attacks... 

[Firetooth]

I guess referring to him as zep is personal enough...

[windhound]

Er.  That's like me saying you're Freddy Mercury is a personal attack. 

Its a rather known fact by now, pretending otherwise isn't going to make a diff.  I can list anyone's alias, you and Sharptooth have quite a few.

Also, the attack op code -does- need to be tweaked, as it favors leader players too much for my liking.  It'd be nice if there was an indy version, somehow.
Having attacks open by networth change is a horrible suggestion though, and there's nothing you can do with it other than throw it out.  Soo easily abused.

[CobyCopper]

There are more ways to restrict it fairly that a normal player won't run into the problems. A second thought I had was each doubling of NW opens 2 attack ops. Yeah, it's quite possibly abused, but do you really want to aid your enemy $400m NW to open 2 attack ops? Another thought is you can't attack anyone you've aided in the past hour and also can't aid anyone you've attacked in the past hour.

And the reason I see behind his brainless bashing is the typical "omg it's zep/bob/coby/5/kapitan/...." that I've come to expect. So Shadow and quite a few other people, politely, get the hell out of my thread if you can't contribute anything positive to my concept.

[Shadow]

Your idea wouldn't be an issue really to players with 200m net. ut what if a new guy with like 40m net has finally got the hang of scraping? Any indy who logs in could just keep trickling him troops and smash him into the ground. The problem with your idea, as I stated before, is that it favors big players while harming little players. And that is not something we want to promote here.

The clan thing is just not something that I think would add anything to this game other than another layer of complexity and would require a ton of balance testing that just really isn't worth it when there are so many other things to test and so little time to do it.

but the current count of having .03% of food sacked or .15% on a good day is simply NOT ENOUGH.

I completely agree, I just don't think that your suggestion is the way to go about it. Your suggestion heavily favors non-massing strategies. And because massers rarely keep a standing army, OP/DP ratios are almost always going to max out, so that isn't a good measure either. The defense ratio system has the advantage of giving leader players a choice between defending against indy or defending aaginst other leader players, but not both, so they would no longer be the invincible tanks they are now. Plus that system has the added advantage of already being tested.

By indy missions do you mean "enslave" and "drive" and all those? I agree, the only 4 needed are drive, sack, capture, and attack, the others are useless code.

I've used it as much as the next major holder in keeping my net protected, but getting maxed at $200m and being pumped to $2b makes it rather pointless.

That's not really that much a problem. Because if you max them intentionally without taking land you get disabled, and if you take land, then who cares how much net they have? They'll go down sooner or later, but for now, they aren't locking. The unmaxxing by net is simply too unblanced and easily abused to make avoiding this rare situation worth the change.

So Shadow and quite a few other people, politely, get the [haties] out of my thread if you can't contribute anything positive to my concept.

Watch where you are going with that line of thought. I am contributing something positive - realism. If all you want to do is argue hypothetical situations then say so so that we can stop wasting time explaining why these ideas won't work. If you want your ideas to get facetime in development, then accept the criticism and modify your ideas accordingly.