The "Value" of Land

[Slasher]

Yeah, true... Maybe make the warehouse stay there sort of thing but say player 1 has a warehouse on 10k land and they have 20k land overall. If player 2 attacks player 1 down to 10k, then they still have all their warehouse stuff. However if player 2 carries on attacking then they could take chunks of player 1's warehouse for their own keeping.

As I said before, it's just a suggestion, someone else must have a better idea.

[Gen. Volkov]

I don't think we should be trying to hold land. When everyone is trying to hold land, it's going to horribly disadvantage anyone who is just starting after everyone else has been going for awhile. The easy movement of land is essential to a good promi experience. Think about it, if you attack 5 different people and can't break any of them, you are going to get frustrated right? If that continues long enough, you'll likely just quit the game.

[Slasher]

That is a very good point...

EDIT: GOOD point not GOD point

[Ruddertail]

That's why we need to, rather then making it easier to hold land, make it less profitable to attack a ton. That way, new people could still attack higher ranked people, some, but attacking isn't the main focus, unless you're trying to hurt someone.

That's Devari's proposition - that the game be redone such that attacks function mainly as part of war, either to hurt someone else or to gain and keep a large piece of land for yourself, rather then attacking back and fourth as an everyday and normal part of the game.

[Devari]

One of my basic points is that I, with around $10 million NW, should not be able to easily nab land from someone at $50 million NW. But, since people purposely leave themselves undefended (because there's no point to actually defending), I can easily attack up the ranks. The point I'm making is that, while attacking around your NW should be doable, attacking at 5x your NW shouldn't really be. In an ideal game, there should be a decent spread across the NW spectrum, so there will always be a group of people around your strength.

Besides which, try as they might, nobody can hold land perfectly or even close to it. The idea is just to give them a reason to, so they at least try.

[Ruddertail]

That's Devari's proposition - that the game be redone such that attacks function mainly as part of war, either to hurt someone else or to gain and keep a large piece of land for yourself, rather then attacking back and fourth as an everyday and normal part of the game.

Or maybe it's just my proposition...

[Devari]

Hehe, no, that's my point.

[Ruddertail]

I think the best way to accomplish this is some combination or selection of the following:

1: Decreasing the amount of land gained from attacks (except in war)
2: Increasing the time it takes to build on land
3: Giving land little value to start with (say, 10% of now) and having it increase the longer you hold it. Thus, attacking for land isn't very usefull, unless you know you can keep it.

[Devari]

One idea Rudder and I came up with was making it so it takes more turns to build. This should achieve the desired effect:

1. It makes it so people will actually try to hold on to their land, since rebuilding won't just take a few extra turns.
2. It provides less of an incentive to attack a great deal, because too much attacking will result in many turns spent building and less turns spent running.
3. It gives non-kill wars purpose again, since you can actually "smushle" someone by taking a bunch of their land. Since land should, theoretically, be better defended (see #1) and it will take a bunch of turns to rebuild, taking land is an effective way to hurt someone. In my opinion, this reintroduces a fun challenge.
(Note: #3 only works with market storing removed, ala post-marketism, so you can't just shove the troops off somewhere else while you recover.)


As for the new player angle, this approach favours slow-but-steady building up of an empire. Sure, the new player won't be able to take a bunch of land (since it should be decently defended and there's no point to taking 30k on your first run), but they also shouldn't get overly smushled (since nobody would want to attack them too much outside of a war situation, which they shouldn't be in if they're new). Besides, it encourages them to get help from higher-ups or hawkers (via intelligence), which adds a fun element to clans.


[edit] Basically, this is an expanded version of point #2 from the above post.

[Devari]

1: Decreasing the amount of land gained from attacks (except in war)
2: Increasing the time it takes to build on land
3: Giving land little value to start with (say, 10% of now) and having it increase the longer you hold it. Thus, attacking for land isn't very usefull, unless you know you can keep it.

I think point #2 might be enough on its own, although your other points are valid too. The increasing land value (#3) would be pretty... different to do code-wise, but would add an interesting element. I'm not sure if point #1 is needed with #2, but it could also be added in if needed.

[Ruddertail]

1 would be good in that it would require open war or significant effort in order to hurt someone. Ie, you'd have to make 21 attacks to really cause harm, not just 5 - 10. 5 - 10 atm is worth about 1/3rd of their land - significant.

3 would compound 2. Even with high turns to build, it's profitable to do some land grabbing at the start of your run - just not as much. This way, it's really not profitable to take land unless you expect to keep it. If you get retalled for it within the next couple runs, it's kind of pointless. Thus, you only grab in war, or from non - clanned.
Now, this sounds bad, but we want to encourage clans, anyhow, right? This will encourage clans and clan alliances, as those perceived as very "weak" will likely have people grabbing off them.

Edit: I'd suggest this be implemented only in the AC. I'd like to keep BFR as much like the "classic promi" as is possible, while Advanced Code is totally different. And better, of course.

[Slasher]

"smushle"

Who came out with that word first anyway?

[Devari]

1 would be good in that it would require open war or significant effort in order to hurt someone. Ie, you'd have to make 21 attacks to really cause harm, not just 5 - 10. 5 - 10 atm is worth about 1/3rd of their land - significant.

3 would compound 2. Even with high turns to build, it's profitable to do some land grabbing at the start of your run - just not as much. This way, it's really not profitable to take land unless you expect to keep it. If you get retalled for it within the next couple runs, it's kind of pointless. Thus, you only grab in war, or from non - clanned.
Now, this sounds bad, but we want to encourage clans, anyhow, right? This will encourage clans and clan alliances, as those perceived as very "weak" will likely have people grabbing off them.

Edit: I'd suggest this be implemented only in the AC. I'd like to keep BFR as much like the "classic promi" as is possible, while Advanced Code is totally different. And better, of course.

I agree with 1, that makes sense. No arguments here.

As for 3, the goal is not really to completely blast apart the old system. Land grabbing at the beginning of a run isn't a bad thing; I more think a compromise between new and old is better. Further, I really don't think any encouragement to pick on people that appear "weak" is particularly a wise idea... That kinda defeats the "friendly to new players" bit that we need.

[maddog]

the only problem i can see with some of the ideas is those which have been playing prommis for years and have a good knowledge of strats to build up good networths would all gain whereas a noob or someone just getting into the game would find it hard to hold on to the land they get due to being inexperienced the trouble with using a warehouse idea is i noticed on ME in AOL that i could make a number of runs by storing troops and therefore not needing to make land runs to acquire my networth maybe one way we could make it worth keeping land is the farms u build acculate a turnover of food when u r not running for example every 30 turns u get ur farms produce say 5,000 food this would make it profitable to hold land however to make it harder for ppl to just food steal have some form of penalty like medium to high troop loss or hawker loss for an attack just for food also have the turnover on food race based so it doesnt necessary give a hugh advantage to ppl who just farm i'm not sure how u could work this in a code coz i aint got a clue about coding but i'm sure the brainboxs here could work something out

[Ruddertail]

I wasn't talking about new people, necessarily. I'm talking about the guy in rank 5 with a lot of land and no allies to back him up. It won't be worth grabbing off new people.

Well, if you want to argue that in real life, people wouldn't be able to recover, you should also argue that, in real life, any grabbing of land is liable to bring on war. And further, in real life, land isn't instantly productive.

Further, without 3, it's possible for allies to get around. Two grab land, spend their entire runs building, then drop troops. The 3rd then STDs them for land, gaining land with mostly structures on it. With war setting, the 3rd, at least, gets boosted land attacks, also circumventing 1 nicely.

We can do without 3, I guess. But I think it might be a good thing.