RWL 3.0 - Shoot's Thoughts and Suggestions

[Shoot]

Though I only came here a few months ago, I have played reg and turbo a pretty good deal in that time to get a pretty good feel for both games. I'm not completely against 3.0, but I'm sure everyone knows it's far from perfect, so I'm here to give my thoughts on certain aspects of the game and where I feel they could be improved.

1) Attack Limits - I understand that not much has actually changed in this regard, but with how the game is played out, the attack limits put a serious damper in gameplay. For one, the limits are rather low given then pace of turbo (21 hits), and the limit is released quite slowly (2 per hour). With 21 hits, you're probably only going to get about 50% of somebody's land, and there is a good chance that once you've reached the limit on the main land holder at the time, that everyone else with a decent amount of land has also had their hit limit filled recently, only allowing a very small number of attacks before they are maxed again and limiting how much land you're able to get. Busting a land locker under the current system is not very rewarding, as you're only going to get about half of the land before filling their limit, and unlikely to recoup the losses sustained breaking the land lock as a result.

I have also noticed that failed attacks, and missions do not count against the hit limit. Given the current hit limit mechanics, this is a sensible decision as it does prevent land locks due to their hit limit being filled by failed attacks and missions by another player, however, this does allow the possibility of somebody inflicting extensive amounts of damage with spamming leader missions as there is no limit in this regard.

My proposal - Rather than limiting the number of times players can be hit in a period of time, limit the amount of attacks a player can make, lets say 50 attacks with 1 refreshed every 10 minutes and when struck by another player. A player can use their 50 attacks however they want, whether it is all on 1 person, or a combination of several players (war slots ignore attack limits as they do currently). Regardless of what everyone else did immediately before you run, you have a fair shot of getting a good run without encountering hit limits on every worthwhile target. Missions would count against the limit, and failed attacks as well, punishing players for failing as they'd have 1 less shot to get land with. It would also make unclanned players killable (and unclanned could kill clanned), as several players could use their attack limit against 1 person. If mindless killing is an issue, perhaps the use of standard attacks (which are forced below 500 acres) could count double on the attack limit.

Alternate Proposal - Raise hit limit to 30 with 3-5 hits removed hourly, and add a separate hit limit for missions (so someone can't just spend an entire run to murder/poison/rob a person 100 times). It's a quicker solution from a coding perspective, though I feel the above would be significantly better. Bringing back the 'make attack opportunity' mission could be nice here as well.

2) Overhaul of Forage/Loot/etc. - I like the concept here, but it appears you get better overall production by completely foregoing the use of leaders and just stacking the building relevant to your strategy. Maxing out leaders on about 20% land being huts seems to yield 30% production bonuses on turns you spend boosting income/food production/etc. The problem with this is, you've given up 20% of your land to huts (which are eating a good deal of food), and only left with 80% of your land producing, so with the 30% bonus, you're looking at production equal to 104% of somebody who just stuck their land entirely on their primary production building. Worst of all, you can't even get those bonuses all the time, as loyalty is consumed at a pretty quick rate. Sure the leaders help protect you from missions, but theres nothing stopping somebody from just stacking 50%+ leaders and murder/poison/rob you 100 times in a row anyway if they felt like it so you're really not protected at all here.

Proposal - Production bonuses should be increased, perhaps to 50% maximum, making this system have more meaning. Someone devoting 80% of their land to production getting a 50% boost would produce at 120% of the rate somebody dedicating 100% of their land to production and not utilizing it for those turns.

3) Missions as a special option during land attacks - Again, I like the concept here, but personally I think this is very imbalanced in its current state. From what I understand, you can either spend 2 turns and do the mission alone, or spend the 2 turns land grabbing plus a mission at double the strength of the standalone version. Even if someone has defenses up, if they get poisoned on all 21 land grabs before their hit limit, you've still effectively wiped out half of their food and cash stores plus received the land for it, and the damage is dramatically more if they didn't raise defenses. The ability to be sacked for a small percentage while being land grabbed was bad enough, but getting slammed for up to 15% of my cash or food in a single hit while losing land is excessive.

Proposal - I would say weaken these to the same level as their standalone version and make attacks with these options selected consume an additional turn (so 3 turns for land grab + mission combo, or 2 turns for standalone mission). EDIT: Perhaps increasing the health loss while doing mission+grab combo a couple of points or so could be good too, making it take more turns to recover from the attack.

4) Market Tax Overhaul - From what I understand, the current market tax penalizes you greatly if you are significantly above the average networth of the game. Reading back on other threads, the idea here seems to be that the market was being used to circumvent aiding restrictions of not being able to aid more than 3x your networth, so the tax is there to punish that. If that was what it was intended to punish, then I can see the heavy tax on obvious cash transfers (like $1000 rats) but if somebody puts units up at a fair market value in an attempt at a legitimate sale, why should they get nailed for 25% or more just because they're doing well?

EDIT: To show an example of this, in the current round the leader with just over 1 billion net was taxed 49% for selling rats below fair market value ($330). I received a 12% tax at below 200m net for selling units at fair market value which is still quite a bit.

Proposal - Impose higher taxes based on selling price. If somebody sells rats at $1000 (merc base price is $550) and somebody actually buys, it's most likely a deliberate cash transfer as opposed to a legitimate sale. If that person prices at $400 for rats, it's probably a legitimate attempt to sell goods as opposed to transferring cash.

5) Food / Forager Strat - Anybody can buy all the food they need to run from mercs at $10 each if they clean out the mercs every few hours, with exception being no merc rounds. This makes a forager strat not very competitive as theres little demand for food as a result.

Proposal - Increase the price of food from mercenaries to $20. This would give some reason for foragers to actually exist outside of a no mercenaries theme.

Might have more to come as I think about it. Sorry for the really long post.

EDIT:

Minor Gripes:
-"Alert" status should refresh to 12 hours when used with less than 9 hours remaining, rather than adding 3 hours. Currently the game refreshes to 12 hours if you have less than 3 hours remaining and use it so this should be a simple fix.
-Too much randomness in land grab gains. This wouldn't be so bad if the hit limit were higher (as it would average out in the long run) but getting a bad streak of really low gains before hitting someone's hit limit kinda sucks.

[Shadow]

Thanks for your thoughts, and I agree with a fair bit of it. You've caught me at an extremely busy time, though, so unfortunately I will likely not be able to code much until summer time. I hope you'll be patient until I do get some time to devote to this.

I'll address the ideas in detail when I can commit to actually acting on what comes out of it. Until then, I encourage everyone else to weigh in with their thoughts.

[Ian2424]

Watch out, we got a smart person over here.

[Shoot]

Thanks for your thoughts, and I agree with a fair bit of it. You've caught me at an extremely busy time, though, so unfortunately I will likely not be able to code much until summer time. I hope you'll be patient until I do get some time to devote to this.

I'll address the ideas in detail when I can commit to actually acting on what comes out of it. Until then, I encourage everyone else to weigh in with their thoughts.

That's fine, I totally understand. And I do agree, it would be good to see things from other peoples' perspectives as well.

Watch out, we got a smart person over here.

  :blush: