The "Value" of Land

[Ruddertail]

Maddog: It was really hard to understand that. Mind using paragraphs and punctuation next time?

As best I can figure, you're saying that experienced players have an advantage in that they're better able to hold land.

1: Experienced players always have an advantage.
2: It's not so much about holding land as it is about making it not worth grabbing a bunch of land (or grabbing land at all) at the start of your run.

After that part, I lost the rest.

[Devari]

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.

Ahh, "weak" as in unclanned. Well, #3 isn't a bad idea, but I'm not fully sure it's necessary, given #1 and #2. I'll leave it to the floor on this one; I'm on the fence about it, more or less.

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.

I didn't argue that...? We all know promi isn't real life; we sometimes like a "realistic" bent on things, sometimes not.

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.

This is one of those potential "cheap" cases where I have to sigh and say "Why bother?!". It's a whole lot of effort for very little tangible gain. If people want to coordinate that much and sacrifice two accounts to boost one, more power to them. I really don't think that's gonna be a big problem anytime soon. Keep in mind you have to completely destroy two accounts to do this even once. Repeating it might be difficult, since you'd have to build your troops back up to get access to the land.

[maddog]

Sorry rudder i will try and clarify what i was getting at.

Point one u pretty much got basically i was point out that those of us who know how to make good use of their land would be better equipped to keep hold of it where as a new or inexperienced player would be an easy target.


Point two i was making was having a warehouse similar to ME had would make it too easy for everyone.

Point 3 was an idea of using farms that u built which as u gain turns after so many turns gained the farms could produce food as relatively small amount this would make trying to hold your land more important.

Point 4 was making it hard so that for people who would try and steal that food making it more costly to do so. Tthis is to eliminate people from just food attacking.

Point 5 was also an idea to make the farm idea more balanced as some of the races are better for farming then others. so players using a farming strat wouldnt necessarly gain a big advantage by having more farms.

[ChocoboKnight777]

How about you make land harder to retrieve therefore increasing its value. Maybe you can set it so that you can only grab land through Standard attacks. This makes grabbing land much harder and increases its value. This way being in a clan is beneficial because if you run into an empire with a huge army you can all work together to bring down his forces so you can take some of their land. On the other hand if you are alone your army will be destroyed before you can defeat enough of a strong opponents forces to be able to break through and capture land. It also reduces kills and increases the number of real wars, where clans truly compete for something (in this case land.) Finally you can increase the max attack limit from 21 to 100 so strong empires can be defeated by many small ones working together. I feel this will make the game much more exhilarating because you have to constantly be tangled in war with someone to avoid a potential emperor from taking control of the game. Besides if someone does manage to take control the game resets every month so no one will rule forever.

[Ruddertail]

Point two i was making was having a warehouse similar to ME had would make it too easy for everyone.

Nobody's proposing an unlimited one like ME.

Point 3 was an idea of using farms that u built which as u gain turns after so many turns gained the farms could produce food as relatively small amount this would make trying to hold your land more important.

You're saying they become more productive with time? That was essentially my point 3, but for all buildings/land, not just farms.

Point 4 was making it hard so that for people who would try and steal that food making it more costly to do so. Tthis is to eliminate people from just food attacking.

We don't want people being able to store infinite resources, if that's what you suggest. Sack power will be decreased with the AC, however.

Point 5 was also an idea to make the farm idea more balanced as some of the races are better for farming then others. so players using a farming strat wouldnt necessarly gain a big advantage by having more farms.

Eh? Not every strat uses farms, and we don't want them too. If that's not what you're saying, I'm afraid I still don't understand.

Thanks for being more clear, though.

[maddog]

would that really work if say you had the three best players clanned together plus raising the attack limit could increase the likely hood of weaker clans getting killed off easily

[ChocoboKnight777]

Well, I also forgot to add that it would be favorable if Empires with high net could not attack empires with less than 75% of their net while empires below high empires can hit anyone who has anywhere up to 500% of their net. Also i trust the FAF community to be intelligent enough to try and create balanced alliances.

[Ruddertail]

Raising the attack limit wouldn't have much bearing on the fortunes of clans. However, it may well allow unclanned people to be killed...

[maddog]

what i meant by point five is that races like Egyptian, Gallic and Macedon are better at producing food then the other races i believe most player that farm or indy use these.

with the land producing along with turns these races essentially could produce twice the amount of other races, so i was thinking of maybe making more balanced so ppl using these races dont necessarly gain a big advantage by producing more food.

[Ruddertail]

Right. But not everybody produces food, nor to most people depend on produce significant food. Further, if others have a boost to other stuff that their strat depends on, it all equalls out. I certainly wouldn't like to see a boost to farms without a boost to land in general. That just makes farming that much more powerful then everything else.

[maddog]

thats essentially what i'm trying to say all be it badly. that using the idea of land producing through farms based on the amount of farms built would give farmers a bigger advantage which was y i was saying making the production based on a X amount of turns you get X amount of produce that way no one race gains a big advantage

[Ruddertail]

Land always produces based on the amount of structures - if it's all built on, it'll produce more (as a whole) then if you only build on half the land.

[Gen. Volkov]

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.

I don't think forcing people to stay in the low ranks for a long time is really what's best for the game. So what if people can attack those with 5X their networth? The game is already highly unrealistic as is, and part of the fun of promi is that you CAN shoot up through the rankings extremely quickly. Furthermore, it would heavily still disadvantage those who come in later. The initial players in the game would have no restrictions on who they could attack, once they had been playing for awhile, it would make it very hard for any new players to break into the top ten, because of NW attacking restrictions. I think land use is one thing we don't need to change.

[Nuclear Raunch]

Few points, hopefully I don't forget too many. Considering the time I probably will but o well.

1: By only allowing STD attacks and a 100 hit limit you really put new players at a severe disadvantage. Let's say you come in halfway through the set, everyone else in the game has enough troops to attack you but you can't attack them. So you sign on, scout some land, make some troops etc... The next day you sign on and the guy above you has STDed you 40 times because you're the only person he can attack. Now you have no troops and even less land than when you started, and your nearest enemy is even farther out of reach. Sound fun?

2: Dev: You wouldn't have to sacrifice 2 empires to boost a third. Let's say me and you are working together and we're both farming. One day I could run first, then you could STD me to grab the buildings. The next day you run first and I would STD you to get your buildings. If we trade off then over the course of the set we would end up spending half the turns other people have to.

3: For most of the suggestions it seems like balancing the strats is badly needed to prevent things from getting really out of whack. Look at the suggestions and consider that a farmer can make 2-3 times as much cash as a casher. (rough guess. Okay I'll admit it, a blind guess)

[Devari]

#2 - Remember, I'm assuming that market storing is gone. With no effective way to drop defenses so that another person can take the land (aside from actually selling the troops permanently), it's hard to pull that move off without it costing some troops and leaving you in a weakened state. Sure, you're not sacrificing yourself completely, but you certainly are weakening yourself through dropping those troops/losing them in the attacks. Even if the weaker player got the land first, both parties are still going to lose quite a few troops and, theoretically, a third party could standard that land away. The strategy might work at the beginning of the set, but, by the end, I think the sacrifice in troops to pull this off would be too much.

If it is considered a problem, though, then I can think of at least two ways to deal with it:

1. Drop the extra land in war clause, thereby making it more difficult to pull off.
2. Make the extra land in war clause also mean extra casualties, making it more costly to pull off.