Castle Passing
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I can confirm we have absolutely nothing going on in L7 lol. Actually feel sorry for Lord Eagle since he's very active and posts in our forum - but I don't ever login to my account anymore unless I'm running a test 
Lord Thane and how about the rest that im talking about?
KingLear idk, I'm not sure if there's something to be done about people making alliances. I would just hope that by now we're all old enough to try playing less toxicly than we did 20 years ago. Plus we don't really have a big enough player base where big alliances can even afford to exist really - they'd just be ruining the game for themselves.
For castle passing tactics, I'm still looking to see what kind of creative ideas people can think of.
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Had they tried improving on this?
In my head we could further this by checking the value of army left behind at the time the army was sent, and then use that value instead of the instantaneous value of army currently at home. For as long as that army is out. So if you get hit by a shitter first it wouldn't matter.
Darteye Based of recent interactions that my province has had with several others, I think you might be wrong on this. Either there is an elaborate web of alliances, unbelievable coincidences, or what I'm thinking is more likely multi-accounts due to the coordinated efforts against my province mates at the moment.
MithicYort which kd are u? Like I said it could be happening with people multiing I just haven't seen it blatantly yet
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This is going to be a long one sorry for the English up ahead.
Well, people are always passing castles basically. Because when you are in mid ranks there is not much you can do to defend when someone 2x KS attacks you while your army at home. In late round with gate they can send almost full force, so basically you pass your castle to them. In my first round gate was not breaking protection and i was into seeing how much Caragous can be strong. Playing Elf running full ATC and Caragouses i used to watch KHoF, find few targets who gained castles, attack/gate/attack/gate... then sell my castles to happy buyers from above. Get protection gate back army to defend any possible retals and use the payment to feed my army which was not possible with normal game economy.
Castle passing is also most effective strategy for mid-rank players to annoy and keep top players on their toes.
Without changing too much about the game, best can be done about this issue is to promote province success which still needs few comprehensive coding:
- Increase province capacities to at least 10 (or to 15-20 if the player base in enough)
- All provinces are multi-race.
- Round does not start right away after sign-ups. A player or a group of players can assign a password to a province and share with people they want in.
- After 3-7 days for a province forming phase, players without any province are assigned randomly to empty spots or together to a full province.
- Disable inter-province attacks.
- Introduce a feature to retreat (send) army to mountains with half travel time as attacks. Still spends a general.
- Remove KHoF and only list PHoF (this one will not be popular amoung community) KHoF can still be reported at the round end.
Below two are double edged suggestions that can go either way. But, needs to be allowed in such concept.
- Enable players to switch provinces (members in the new province need to vote for the new joiner with a 70% acceptance )
- Enable province members to kick a member with a vote that needs no less then 70-80% to pass
Well these are just basics. If the concept is codeable and community find it interesting more ideas will be found to promote provinces.
No suggestions yet for allied provinces to pass castles to each other. But, the main reason for castle passing is to go under protection. With a better engine where losses are manageable and new/ enchanced strats it can lose its popularity. If we find a way for the game to discriminate real battles from castle passing battles to punish with a little protection time that also helps.
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Well, bring in ideas to promote province success if you are not happy with this. I am guessing NAPs will be more common than Alliances with above improvements.
If two province alliance takes the lead then a 5 province alliance could take'm down. Not seeing too much problem. Enable the game to have active provinces and find everyone a home. Things should get much better.
Excuse me sir. I have. I've had tons of idea's floating around, a few of which specifically on this topic. Scroll up? Doesn't matter if they are NAP'd or allied, a pass is a pass. It's a test round and people are having trouble not resorting to n+1 warfare already lol.
There are just no good idea's to these social problems, castle passing and massive alliances. Until we render it inefficient to pass, there will always be passing. That's why I believe a modified CTA rule will work best(so far). But how do we help the middleman? By allowing them to keep their army out safe without being destroyed. An idea i've had on a separate thread was by selecting a substrat of 3(?) options. Aggressive, normal, Guerilla. Everything would be as normal except with aggressive your sent troops(remember 70% sent only, you need to leave some behind for full prot) fight to the death(I think this is where we are now), normal--idk maybe something like 50% losses? and Guerrilla where all troops losses are only 15% of normal, unlikely to ever win and does not generate a retal. This would allow mid players to keep their armies out and even potentially chip away at larger players. I haven't though about this too much but my mind keeps roaming to it. I prefer to empower the user with choice. I'm sure there's a balance/idea in there somewhere.
Alliances are their own beast of a problem, much more difficult to tackle than castle passing, if possible at all. "If two province alliance takes the lead then a 5 province alliance could take'm down". How can you say that sentence and in your last breath you were talking about inter-prov stuff to eliminate alliances? Were we hoping they'd just be good-faith participants? 5 prov alliance, fucking barf bro lol. Even 2 prov alliance makes me want to barf tbh but I acknowledge this isn't living in reality. BUT whomever makes the 2 prov alliance starts the n+1 warfare, and the 5 provs will come quick. This is what we get when dealing with humans, we band together lol. I just don't see a good solution to this other than some kind of rigid war system that I don't particularly enjoy.
From another thread: Only other idea i've had to get people to flee their safety in numbers is to offer small incentive. I suggest creating incentive for winners. ie; top prov gets a 1-2-% production bonus next round. But will that only matter for the last week of the round? Probably. Just thought now... what about monthly(yearly in game) ranking snap shots for production(or other) bonuses? Top prov gets 2%, second place gets 1%, just for the month and then new production champs are crowned. Some goal worth fighting over.
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Leo i actually like some of these, i feel like there should be incentive like a badge or something for top prov etc that would make people want to actually have their prov win. hell top KDs as well (top 10?), i just dont know if we have the playerbase yet to not have some pre drawn alliance lines. Alot of us know eachother from OG Thardferr days, well know/acquainted with.
@Jules i dont like adding buffs to players/provs who win the round cause in theory they already are your "better" players and the last thing we need is to giver them more of an advantage
The sending army to the mountain thing has been talked about in another thread to "hide" ur army...I said i am ok with this as long u still lose some army when they take land (the find them in the populace).
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Without alliances it is a world of chaos. Who wants to be in a all-hostile enviroment. It is only wise and basic sense to sign a NAP as many province as you can while waging a war against another province. A few consequent hits for easy castles from uninvolved province usually results in signing a NAP with the province you have been fighting and waging war with that nosy one. At early round you may get yourself against 1 vs 2 provinces and seek for an alliance to counter. Once you come on top of that struggle it is both provinces' achievement and expecting them to also fight each other is a serious misjudgement of human behaviour.
Even without fighting together at early round if two province fights different provinces and ends up getting the top 2 outgrowing, it is still not logical to expect them to wage war against each other. It is the mid-provinces job to bring them down. If the mid-provinces can't come up with a strategy to change the leaderboard then this means they already accepted that current top 2 deserved it. Whining about them not fighting each other to a no-gain war is same as complaining about someone else not doing your work for you.
I had rounds mid suiciders bombing top province members one-by-one every 2-3 days and keeping the fallen ones down. Since the allies were outgrown they could only help economically. And once enough of them are down then they bite back. Even some destroy buildings or disband army to lower KS to help for pre etc.
A last note: In the rounds where we played as province and had allies fighting some common enemies we almost never passed castles outside the province or get castle passes offered from outside allies. Disabling inter-province attacks and putting everyone in an active full province could solve a lot of issues. Still CTA method can be improved and adjusted or even a better one can be found. I already suggested that here:
With a better engine where losses are manageable and new/ enchanced strats it can lose its popularity. If we find a way for the game to discriminate real battles from castle passing battles to punish with a little protection time that also helps.
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Agreed. Win-more isn't the great, but it's all I got. As long as there is a meaningful goal it's fine.
I'll reply to this later as i'm heading out to Lacross/Soccer. It's difficult though because I don't necessarily disagree with this, you're just stating how current Thardferr works and assigning more faith than I would to the average player/prov. I've already stated my theoretical view is unobtainable because humans will be humans.
@KingLear You took 4 retals on 4/26 from attacks I made when it was bugged out on 4/22.
I’ve made it publicly known that my game of Thardferr is now Lear’s max KS is half of whatever mine is. If I’m looking to make a hit you’re the first kingdom I check. If you’re below half I wait. I don’t need to force it. I’ll catch you when I do. If a provmate needs help the army goes out but only after I check to make sure you’re in protection.
I’ve done the testing I want to do for now.
I just checked now. You’re still in prot. Guess I’ll keep waiting.
Leo I've added this suggestion to the suggestion board, if you want to edit it, feel free to post your own version and I will delete the one I placed.
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Currently it is possible to gain a castle from retalling a Kingdom under 1/2 of your KS. That is abusable by passing castles from multi accounts. Any hit under 1/2 KS should only provide some small land.
the bully who allied everyone is talking.. trying to act tough but the truth is you just want to farm and bully the small ones. 
Leo good way to get protection and not lose castle then is to pass up especially if it gives same protection and if it doesn't give same protection then always have someone over twice size lead for you then have another finish and then take retal. abuse everywhere.