The "Value" of Land

[Nuclear Raunch]

I see. Well I have a lot of serious reservations about this, but since you guys seem set to try this I'll just request that you do those to a new server.

[Ruddertail]

Another server is actually probably one of the best ideas we've had. It also saves a lot of theoretical "what ifs?" If it looks good, we throw it on and see what happens. It either gets left, tweaked, overhauled, or abandoned.

[The Beatles]

Yep, Rudder, I would prefer the amount of time the buildings were standing.

Nuke, now's the time to make comments. If you anticipate developments now, saves us a lot of time in trying to test this out in practice, in scenarios such as beta servers that are necessarily artificial.

[Gen. Volkov]

Well, I can see a lot of problems, and I've mentioned them, as has Nuke, so maybe now is the time to just test it and see how it works out. Make a beta server that's open to everyone and just see how it works. Either it will be better or it won't but it doesn't seem either of us is going to convince the other that we are right.

[The Beatles]

Here's an idea. This is a turn-based, not a time-based game. Introducing timing into building is effectively doubly taxing the players -- they've already paid for it in turns. Making it just timed is against the turn-based design.

So why not just up the number of turns required to build or demolish ten times? Not only is that far more trivial to implement, i.e. we can test it tomorrow instead of in a week or two, but it is more in keeping with the game's philosophy. But it has practically the same benefits.

[Ruddertail]

Nuke already mentioned something about that. If it's gradual building (so the buildings don't all take effect at once, but based on turns) he said it kills mage strats. If they do, then it doesn't hurt anything, really. It limits the amount of land you can grab, but doesn't stop the highly unrealistic and undesireable land passing.

How about value of buildings based on number of turns you run with those buildings in your possession?

[The Beatles]

The second hurts the mage strat too.

It's true that this idea doesn't prevent land passing. But it removes the point of land passing. What do you do with the land that you get? And when people hit you back for it, they destroy buildings too. Are you sure it doesn't take the incentive away from land grabbing when you might need to spend 500 turns instead of 50 to build on your gained land?

[Ruddertail]

Not really. If it calculates as if the land were built on for each turn spent building, all I lose out on is the 25% special turn use bonus. I can still land pass with somebody else, and it doesn't unduly hurt either one of us... maybe more then currently, but not enough that we don't have an advantage over not land passing.

[The Beatles]

Ahh; good point. In that case, make effectiveness proportional to how many turns have been spent building. I.e. for the first turn, no effect, but by the 400th turn of 500, 80% effectiveness, etc.

(Not having them take effect until after the build would just encourage people to build in chunks.)

[Ruddertail]

Hrm. I suppose that would work, though I still like productivity based on turns spent with buildings built. For example, this way, I could grab land, spend 300 turns building, and then run on it as normal for 200 turns. The other way, no matter how much or little I grabbed, it'd still be several days before I got the full effect of the land I took.

[The Beatles]

Precisely. You'd be far less likely to do random land grabs: they aren't very short-term profitable for you and they do hurt the other person.

[Ruddertail]

No, all it limits is the size of my land grabs. I can still grab land and benefit from it quickly, I just can't do that with as much as I could before. I still get the benefit from the land as soon as I finish building on it. It's short term profitable, just in smaller quantities...

[The Beatles]

On the other hand, your short-term gain might be less than the troops you lost while attacking.

(If you didn't lose many troops, then the other person obviously does not value their land, so no problem, right?)

[The Beatles]

Note, I don't completely agree with my argument either, but I also vaguely don't like the proposal of productivity based on turns used. Anyone have a better suggestion than these? Or a modification to one of them to make it work?

[Ruddertail]

Not really. Say I go 60% Cavvy, with the other 40% split into defensive troops. Now say Freen goes 60% milita, with the other 40% split into defensive troops. I can break him in cavvy with probably relatively small losses. Some, yes, but relatively minimal.
Now, say I take 10k, and I can build 50 buildings a turn. That's 200 turns to build, after which I get the full boost for that land.

Now, given that I could build 50 buildings a turn, I was probably about 30k - 35k originally. Taking 10k is a pretty significant boost and, with full benefit over 200 - 300 turns (remaining after grabbing and building), plus the graded increase while I was building, I probably pay for those losses several times over. It is, then, worth it for me and Freen to trade 10k back and fourth, we each get a boost...