Balances for July

[Shadow]

Hey guys,

while I was away I got the code bug back so I did some code today aimed at balancing things out after about a year of observation. This was planned prior to TKDs posting frenzy so it may or may not address points in there, which still need argumentation before implementation.

There are two issues this update will address:

First of all, it's clear that cashing is dominant and that farming is terrible. To deal with the first problem, cash output will be reduced 10%. The second one is more subtle, since people are adequately supplied with food, and most people don't run with armies that need food. Increasing demand enough for farmers to find their niche wasn't an easy problem. We decided to combat it by making workers eat more food, and by making it so that the higher your cash settings, the more food both your workers and your leaders will eat. This will mostly affect cashers, who run worker/leader heavy with high cash settings - they will find that they need significantly more food to run. Indies will feel it second-most, since they usually have low worker counts but aren't necessarily making food. Finally, merc prices for food will go up to $20.

My hope is that this will increase demand enough for farmers and agri-indy stategies to become viable. And if the numbers feel a bit off at first, don't worry, it's easy to tweak.

Second, to combat the ease of locking land and by popular demand, murder will be increased to its former glory when done as a standalone mission. 

In addition, there will be a new attack buff available called Pillage. Pillage pits your army against your opponent's army + leaders (valued at 22 DP each). If it succeeds, you destroy (but do not capture) some of their towers, as well as killing some of their leaders. If it fails or if they have no towers, you just kill leaders. The number of leaders you kill depends on how badly you beat them, so it will require a serious troop investment to do damage. The buff does not count toward maxxing, even if it succeeds, since it captures no land. It is essentially a leader suicide that actually requires an investment to pull off, and which has some strategic value for takedowns beyond missions alone. I hope.

This last update is very tentative, and whether or not it stays in the game will depend on a few rounds of observation of the results.

Finally, I am going to try to code the reverse desertions theme for July, and time permitting, take a look at making the market less ridiculous (though don't expect this one for July).

UPDATE: new theme is coded
UPDATE 2: java is hard
UPDATE 3: java can suck it, but this market thing might get done in time anyway

[Sharptooh]

I know I'm a little late responding to this, but better late than never.

There are two issues this update will address:

First of all, it's clear that cashing is dominant and that farming is terrible. To deal with the first problem, cash output will be reduced 10%. The second one is more subtle, since people are adequately supplied with food, and most people don't run with armies that need food. Increasing demand enough for farmers to find their niche wasn't an easy problem. We decided to combat it by making workers eat more food, and by making it so that the higher your cash settings, the more food both your workers and your leaders will eat. This will mostly affect cashers, who run worker/leader heavy with high cash settings - they will find that they need significantly more food to run. Indies will feel it second-most, since they usually have low worker counts but aren't necessarily making food. Finally, merc prices for food will go up to $20.

My hope is that this will increase demand enough for farmers and agri-indy stategies to become viable. And if the numbers feel a bit off at first, don't worry, it's easy to tweak.

Firstly, I think this isn't really a good idea.

There isn't a problem with food demand in turbo, there is very rarely any food on the market at all, any on there is snapped up asap by whoever can get their hands on it first. Food is in big demand for both leaders and indiers.

As far as I can see here the problem is supply, no one in turbo is producing food, literally no one (unless you count the two bots Windy added for this round)

What you're doing is increasing demand from an already incredible amount, and actually reducing everyone's capability to make food (food massers have leaders and workers too). To top this off your decreasing cash production which means everyone has less to spend on food anyway.

As far as I can see the only really sensible change here is that:

the higher your cash settings, the more food both your workers and your leaders will eat.

I think making food easier to make would be the right way to head, coupled with the change above (higher cash = less food) you increase supply whilst keeping demand constant. Increasing the net value of food might also make sense in my opinion.

Just my thoughts anyway, I could be wrong there, I guess we'll see next round.

UPDATE 2: java is hard
UPDATE 3: java can suck it, but this market thing might get done in time anyway

Actual Java!? Or just JavaScript?

[Shadow]

just javascript. But I'm trying to do mySql queries inside javascript and I'm just getting buried in syntax errors. I think I found a way around it, but if the changes stay I might revisit it to make things prettier.

anyway, I was under the impression that it was really easy to make/buy enough food from mercs to find the run yourself, hence no demand. At least when I play casher, I never have any food demand at all.

But yea, it's all easily adjustable if things got tweaked to heavily.

[Sharptooh]

The entire round I've always had a problem with food, last run I literally got to 8 mil food and had to build 40-50% foragers to fund about 4 mil leaders and a few mil stoats.

If you're on lots of net you can buy a fair bit of food from mercs, but I've not been able to buy more than a couple of hundred mil thus far in one go (which doesn't go too far). Increasing the price is probably a good idea though.

Then again, I guess my food demands might be skewed a bit by passing net around a lot.

Also, MySQL queries aren't possible in JavaScript, you can do ajax request to PHP files and use the response text/array (JSON) though, I can talk to you more on Skype if you want (I'm not great with JavaScript, but I know a little)

[Shadow]

in other news, the new market will also be going in for tomorrow, barring unforeseen bugs.

and yea sharptooth, if you like the new market, I'd appreciate your help making the UI more dynamic via the magic of javascript.

[Shadow]

also going in:

heal buff is getting nerfed to combat solo kills

[Firetooth]

That will also mess up leader takedowns even further. :\

[Shadow]

I could do standards under 1000 instead, if people prefer. I just don't think solo kills should be possible.

[Firetooth]

I'd rather that tbh, nerfing heal will make running more difficult for everybody and further weaken the offensive power of leaders. I'd also kind of like original heal to be bought back alongside current heal. You'd still need a 100 ratio to cast it, and tons of loyalty, so it'd only really be plausible for leader takedowns.

[Shadow]

fair enough. I'll do standards under 1000. I think sharp is probably also right about the casher nerf, so I'll leave that out until we can see what the new market does to things.

[taekwondokid42]

I couldn't find the post where the changes to 'murder' were mentioned, but I'm proposing a nerf:

murder shouldn't kill leaders. Right now it kills leaders. What it means is that after suffering this impressive takedown, and I can't afford to drop land to ratio because I still have a ton of troops. I also can't prepare raiders because I don't have the ratio; I need to wait until I drop land. So my best shot at recovery (it's the end of the round, so I'm not going to bother) is to sell a bunch of troops, spend 15ish turns demoing huts, prepare raiders, and _then_ aid whatever is left.

Granted, I have other options in front of me, and I could have a clanmate prepare raiders for me.

But it seems imbalanced that murders would also kill leaders, especially if shielded murder is now going to deal 3% damage.

[Firetooth]

If the pillage buff is implemented for July, then I agree murders may no longer need to kill leaders.

[taekwondokid42]

ah, was this a feature added to enable a way to kill leaders?

After some more thought, I don't think it's actually that imbalanced, but when you lose leaders you basically become a shop with no security - people take what they want. A proper takedown should have this effect anyway. The key to balance is to make sure that a proper takedown cannot happen against a defended warlord without coordination and planning (aka skill).

Murder just allows you to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

[Shadow]

I couldn't find the post where the changes to 'murder' were mentioned, but I'm proposing a nerf:

murder shouldn't kill leaders. Right now it kills leaders. What it means is that after suffering this impressive takedown, and I can't afford to drop land to ratio because I still have a ton of troops. I also can't prepare raiders because I don't have the ratio; I need to wait until I drop land. So my best shot at recovery (it's the end of the round, so I'm not going to bother) is to sell a bunch of troops, spend 15ish turns demoing huts, prepare raiders, and _then_ aid whatever is left.

Granted, I have other options in front of me, and I could have a clanmate prepare raiders for me.

But it seems imbalanced that murders would also kill leaders, especially if shielded murder is now going to deal 3% damage.

shielded murder will deal 1% damage... currently it deals 0.5%

[taekwondokid42]

oh. it looks like I'm wrong on many accounts then.