Posts by PotassiumAstatide

Sunk cost, I suppose. Presented and set up as EB. Fantastic first few hours of a sure new EB classic then BAM! farmed by 3 tribes and it was totally game legal. Dirty bait-and-switch on the part of devs, that, but I'm not in the habit of letting the "bad guys" win, as it were. Draw in EB fans only to try to either drive them off or suck them into going broke on you? We'll see about that.

And yes, I'm aware of the tactics and fairly competent. Ask anyone who's tried me only to get dodged with 3 secs to go until attack. Now, do that without ever losing (because if you lose you get set back a week), without ever running out of corn with which to walk, and having to plan all of that, on 4 servers, 3 of which have multiple cities, to the minute on the unpredictable schedule of a college student who also works fulltime. Can you see how that's a lot easier said than done even for someone who knows the tactics?

I figure the game makes decent money from all the other servers; PVP aside, there are those who enjoy builder-type games but are so impatient that they will pay money to progress faster, even if they are only competing against the environment. Look at any PVP-optional EB game on the app store and you will see that they make plenty of money through microtransactions. If anything, Lionmoon would probably make more money, since they would retain those types of players rather than facilitate their being driven off by the borderline harassment on some of these servers.

That said, even people such as myself, who don't have the money to spare and only put time into the game, are valuable by virtue of the fact that they will get more people to play, including coiners. The war-heavy nature of the game requires near-constant time; and some of us are full-time workers, students, or both (such as myself) and don't have that kind of time. Not having the option of a server where success is correlated to one's time/planning/money and nothing else is a recipe for a needlessly frustrated and alienated player.

All due respect and all. Not to be rude. But I'm sick and tired of people calling it a war game and using it to justify some of the wanton attacking-as-harassment type stuff that goes on (Not saying you do, just emphasizing that it happens a lot). From the moment I first heard about this game it was advertised and set up as an EMPIRE-BUILDING game. Having played many of those (it's my favorite genre), I know that an EB game is set up to be half and half build and war, AT MOST. Most of the time it's just about all build with just a touch of war. And this is possibly the only EB game I've ever played that actually FORCES the PVP by having quests, etc, where the meat and potatoes of EB game is supposed to be PVE-style. Ofc the playerbase doesn't help, since they all seem hellbent on making an EB game into a war game.

Side note: Barbarian warfare is still warfare. Devs and players want an EB-war hybrid? Barbarian warfare is the option that doesn't run the risk of running players off, and is more standardized so the lowest and highest levels alike have their match. PVE beauty.

Given that, then, all I'm suggesting is a SINGLE server, alongside the many "normal" servers (which actually play like war servers), the war server (I don't even want to think about that one), and the two peace servers (which are more like the 50-50 that pushes the limits of the EB definition), a SINGLE server to actually be a full-on PVP peace server i.e. closer to what an EB game is actually supposed to be.

Not sure if anyone else has already suggested this, but how about an actual peace server? Something like, unlimited barbarian attacks, and PVP is either optional, or disabled? (Would require removing the spy, attack, and probably the tribe quest) Right now PVP is forced even on the supposed "peace" servers, and generally the standard for EB games is that PVP is entirely optional anyway.

Optional PVP: "Soft" option, since so many people in this game seem to really want this to be a war game even though it was advertised as EB. Those who opt out are still vulnerable to being f*cked over by aggro/coiners, but they have the recourse of barbarian farming and can actually rebuild. Deletion of relevant quests means they're not forced to risk starting a war just to progress in the game.

Disabled PVP: Ideal. Barbarian attacks only. People might actually stay in the game on a server like that. Even with the peace server rules aggros find a way to drive off everyone else. Spoken as someone who had to abandon the game altogether for about 6mo because I literally could not leave it for 10 unplanned minutes without risking losing all my troops and most of my resources to an attack from someone who had no business attacking someone with that kind of score differential. That happened several times! I'm only back now because the Christmas truce is actually giving me a fair shot at rebuilding.

Appreciate any counters or additions to these ideas.

From FAQ:

- What in-game structures give points for improving the in-game score, and how are they calculated?

In Tentlan, buildings, researches, units and cities give points, they are calculated according to the following rule:

- Each building level gives 10 points;
- each research level - 10 points;
- each unit (incl. damaged units) - 1 point;
- cities: each new city gives 100 points.

Also, the amount of resources spent on buildings/research/units give further points (population and time not counted in):

- 1,000 limestone - 1 point;
- 715 obsidian - 1 point;
- 500 cacao - 1 point;
- 2,500 corn - 1 point.

Quote from Pinkki Barbaari

And when they bully bigger dude its ok. Besides attacking and farming isint bullying in my books. I have been in recieving end.

Well, when it's excessive enough it can drive many of the newer players off. Yet people, instead of "picking on someone their own size" so to speak, insist on continuing to pick exceedingly unfair fights which actively discourage the new, little guys, and ultimately comes at the expense of the playerbase, therefore harming the game. But I guess they like their power trips too much to see or care. Can't make em stop, but making it harder is absolutely ok in my book. And yes I know there's a rule against hindrance of gameplay but there's a lot of gray there and I see a lot of people get away with it.

Quote from Chtulum

a Quad Speed server...

The beta server is also quad speed, just fyi.

Recovering your troops in the Itzamna temple is still faster and cheaper than having to recruit them all over again. And iirc points for building is at least partially if not entirely based on the amount of resources SPENT...so having to rebuild your wall from an attack would actually give you a small boost. And in the case that Itzamna troops still count to score, why then, being attacked doesn't harm your score at all!

Aside from effects or lack thereof on score, the fact is that building is faster as well as fighting, and now I may actually be able to build more than 1 thing in a row without stopping to dodge troops from someone almost 10x my score.

Speed server doesn't inherently make it more war or building friendly. Rewarding level of activity not only is ok, but should be done. Dedication to the game should be what matters. Rewarding only brute force and willingness to bully the little guy should not be rewarded, and it seems this ruleset cuts down on the rewards for bullies.

Quote from Pinkki Barbaari

If anything heavy builders will take biggest hits here.

How so? They get a score boost because building counts twice as much, and they can't get looted by people who are far more powerful nor knocked too far down the scoreboard just by a difference in troops.

Quote from Pinkki Barbaari

Calling this peace server isint really true.

Well I would agree there, I call this "what the game should've been in the first place."

Quote from Pinkki Barbaari

People who want to fight will always find a way.

Never said otherwise. At the same time, you really think the warlike bully types won't find it even a little bit harder to make large jumps in progress by farming the little guys?

Quote from 156gta

We can attack, troops die, resources will be plundered...

Ah, but what this is doing is evening out the building and war sides and maybe even tilting it in favor of building a little bit. In the normal servers, not even the war one, just the normal ones, you can barely even concentrate on building for all the constant attacks from people 5x+ your score who decide that you're a farm and not a player. I think the 2 most important things here are the 100% troop survival and the 2x cap (which I think should have been the cap in the first place). This will ensure that a single attack doesn't set someone back a day or more of progress.

Many people on the other servers forget that it is a war game AND a building game...so nice to finally be able to experience the building side and the war bullies will not be able to flourish here

What, exactly, is meant by "10 [shamans/quipus] per unit"?

Going by the old guide from the FAQ, which I know occurred before the overhaul of the battle system, it looked like it was having 10% of the army each be shamans and quipus.

But what is it now? Is it still 10% each? 10 for each individual?? (That would be crazy)...

And what, then, is the maximum regen and accuracy?

Quote from TigerPig

the majority attack because they need the resources

Again, once you get above about 5x it's chump change to the attacker. Close to 10x? It's not even worth the corn. Literally operating at a loss just to keep the little guy down.
Even 5x might be a little excessive but it's way better than 10x and remove a lot of the "just because" unbalanced attacks.

Quote from TigerPig

If you restrict the pool, you'll also restrict growth and so ultimately the number of people who can attack you will end up being similar just with higher stakes.

I think you might have misunderstood me here -- I don't want to restrict the pool. The current state of the game is keeping the pool small. If protections were increased, more people would stay, and it would increase the competition while actually lowering the stakes for a single attack to a more reasonable level.

Quote from TigerPig

you might cause more damage back to them but they will still bully you

I'd actually bank on the extra damage as a deterrent. Bullies bully because they can. Just like in real life, many stop the second they get actual resistance. It's the only argument people like that listen to.

Quote from TigerPig

the harsher the truth they will face once they are no longer under protection

I think the whole idea is to make that truth a little more...reasonable. It's not like new players don't know that, at current time, it's possible to lose all their troops and half their resources because someone 9.9x bigger just had to have 2k more resources right now. It's just too much and is probably a huge part of the reason new players don't stick around.

It's not always 100 pt beginners deciding they don't have the patience. When I was starting out, one of my nearest neighbors had gone inactive and actually taken the trouble to change their name to "Inactive" and their city name to "Attacked too often to progress."

Going off of that, another possible change is to make that "same player can't attack too soon after attack" expand to everyone. That way people can't be the recipient of 3 DIFFERENT ATTACKS IN THE SAME HOUR BY PLAYERS OVER 5X THEIR SCORE (yes this happened to me and if I hadn't recently learned that walking was a thing that would probably have been the moment I left the game).

The low protections don't exactly encourage bullying, but they make it a little too easy. What possible reason would someone have to attack someone 10% of their score when they could attack someone with 70%, still lose no troops, and get a lot more res? I can only imagine it's just to keep the little guy from climbing at all, just because they can ( = bullying). Try explaining the logic to people who do this. The playerbase shrinks, and everyone loses, even the bullies, they get a smaller victim pool. As for everyone else: people who are big on the team playing lose potential tribemates/allies, people who are in it for a HEALTHY competition lose some of the field, and people who just mind their own business have a higher proportion of bullies to deal with.

That would depend on whether city size was uniform and based on player score, or individual. Bigger city based on player score wouldn't do anything except make available information more obvious. the latter would take away from espionage though. As it is, it keeps people guessing about which city is actually the most advanced.

As of right now, amber stones are needed for each level of the Quetzal Palace, even if that level has already been reached in another city. But it would seem that the spending of amber stones is meant to be associated with the size of one's empire, rather than a mere building level. To preserve that, I suggest one of the following:

1. If building a Quetzal Palace in another city, remove the amber portion of the cost for any levels that have already been achieved.
or
2. Base the max number of cities on the sum of all QP levels in all cities, not just the highest level in a single city.

In addition to making more sense (correlating amber stones to the actual size of the entire empire), this would make it easier to rearrange the importance of the cities. (For instance, if a player wants to treat a city other than their first as their main one, they can upgrade it beyond the first city and include the QP in that without spending amber for nothing.)

That's unfortunate, one would think the amber stones ought to be associated with the size of the empire rather than just levels of the palace. Another possible way to do that would be to have possible cities be based on the sum of QP levels rather than just its highest. I think I'll take that to Suggestions.

If I want a Quetzal Palace in a city other than my first (so I can treat a different city as my "capital"), will it still cost amber stones, because they're associated with the palace itself; or will it be the level cost minus amber stones, because they're associated only with the number of cities?

In addition, perhaps some sort of appearance change for allies/enemies on the map, similar to how tribemates currently show up with red decoration.

It would be useful to be able to control the order in which posts in tribe chat appear to people. Pinning one or more posts in a certain order, having "move up/down" buttons for posts, etc. That way the most important posts could be kept at the top even if they're not the most recent.