Ok, so I'm gonna try to make this post as respectful as possible given the circumstances. Let's try to keep it civil @Lord Thane , so we can actually discuss rather than fight.

We all know what happened with L19. I still think it was unfair. I wanted to explain the strategy here, and then you can tell us if we were within the rules or not. I'm not talking grey areas, I'm talking about straight up against the rules. Grey areas are there to be exploited, rules are not.

The strategy was as follows:
5 people pass to Isengard. Isengard grows, builds an army to defend himself, and resources to feed the others.
Next, myself (Assassinator or saadht) gets the passes. That's why I was creating an army etc.
After that, GK gets the boost, and finally Jaxx Leo and Elrond.

In this scenario, Jaxx Leo and Elrond were so far away from the jump that they do not need TC and/or armies until much later.

GK had been building an army. He had a tech on. How can it be that he was a functional multi? In actual fact, GK finished a tech while he was frozen, so it doesn't make any sense. Jaxx was the most teched out of all of us. The strategy just didn't require him to currently have army and TC. Leo was busy, his plan was to be last and tech up until then so that he can catch up at the end. How is that not allowed?

How was any of this out of the rules?

As for why CLI made it easier, please listen with a calm mind so that we can actually get somewhere Thane. You say that this strategy was possible even under old rules, and you're only partially right. I'll explain to you why it became more tempting.

Under the old rules, 5 of us would pass to Isengard, Isengard would then need to pass to another of our team members to get protection (15 hours not 24 mind you, so 9 hours less). The kd that received the last castle from Isengard would be vulnerable to our enemies, and probably that last castle would end up in our enemies' possession. Under CLI rules, we got the protection got to keep all the castles and our enemies got none. We got 9 more hours of prot as a cherry on top as well. Can you see how it's more appealing under this circumstance? 24 hours to rebuild an army when you have 5x the land you just used to have, and some of your team mates have already done so (can feed you resources), made this plan OP.

So here are my questions:
1) What was against the rules?
2) GK had an army and a tech on research, how was he a "functional multi"?
3) Why would Jaxx Elrond and Leo need TC and an army if their turn to jump was several days away?

Very calmly, with the intention to debate rather than to fight, I'd like some clarity please.

Thank you.

Edit: We actually made a mistake, the better strategy would be to stagger our castle completions by 2 ticks each so Isengard would hit every 2 ticks and have 34 hours of prot not 24.

    saadht
    Was CLI even active when all of the castles were passed? Don’t think it was, so how does any of what you mentioned expose anything about it?

        saadht
        Interesting, thought it got added in with the techs and wasn’t baseline at the beginning of the round. My bad

            skigglez

            Yes, so now do you understand why it became more tempting to use that strategy?

            Our plea was to do away with CLI. We could talk about pre within the prov only, we could come up with many other solutions, CLI in my opinion did not and still does not make sense. The new changes have made it better, but I still think it's far from a good solution. In extreme circumstances, maybe give CLI for uphits above 110%. This way, it makes sense to afford you protection so that you can prepare for when the larger kd inevitably comes for retals. This is why I say <70% is a step in the right direction, but if I hit somebody my 70%, chances are they'll be less than 50% after the hit. Still the problem remains. I'm only semi-supportive in hope that it will become apparent as time goes by.

                saadht
                CLI is necessary to eliminate the toxic pre-re and castle passing play style that heavily favours the large groups of people. Without it your tactics would have gotten essentially the same result, with one strong guy who’s in protection. I don’t see how that fringe example is a valid criticism of CLI, as many players just want to play the game and won’t resort to such extremes to gain an advantage. The benefits of CLI to the average player far outweigh the downsides that your strategy attempted to expose. Regardless, subsequent changes made by Thane have made that strategy of passing to 1 guy much more difficult, so not sure it’s productive to debate it at this point.

                    skigglez

                    The debate I'm having at this point is trying to understand which rule was broken.

                    This post was not directed at you. It's me trying to understand Thane's perspective. I would like to ask you to wait for commentary until Thane gets a chance to reply so we can analyze this.

                    Unfortunately, you're not well versed in this game enough to understand the strategy, and are regurgitating "CLI eliminates toxic play style" even though you still don't realize CLI doesn't allow any recourse after being bottomfed. No logical reply on that front, not that one was expected from you.

                        saadht
                        My perspective is from someone on the outside of the large alliances. There was never any recourse from getting bottom fed on, because any attempts to pre-re from a group of 5 vs a group of 20+ just results in our group losing 2 castles for every 1 we take. Eventually it gets to the point where we either farm exclusively or just quit the game because it was designed to favour numbers and there was no strategy involved outside of joining the alliance. You might think that a large group doing the pre-re castle pass thing was strategic, but it’s just purely a numbers game. Individual kingdom management wasn’t relevant, if you had more people you would win.

                        With CLI we actually can prevent getting bottom fed on by being aggressive and maximizing protection windows through attacking. In some regards it will actually be a benefit to not be allied with 50% of the player base because it will open up more targets for us to hit to gain protection. It might even cause the alliances to get smaller, time will tell. Certainly a much better experience overall, and one that’s more likely to retain new players.

                        Instead of being salty that your experiment failed, just play the game without looking for loopholes and exploits. You’ll have a much better time.

                            skigglez

                            Last "beta" round, with 7 people, we fought a group of more than 40 kd. Why? We limited the retals we gave out, we strategically killed other armies. We sometimes retalled with pre, sometimes without pre since retals don't give retals. We sometimes hid our armies, other times we defended to bounce. We made the enemies focus on one target, and others fed off of that target.

                            It's called a "multiplayer strategy game." If you suck at the politics IE making friends, and you suck at the strategy since you think it's all a "number's game," not much I can do for you buddy.

                                saadht
                                Sure thing bud, make some more posts crying to Thane about your botched experiment. Maybe the 5th post will get you the response you’re looking for. Have a good one!

                                  Are you fucking serious?

                                  saadht The strategy was as follows:
                                  5 people pass to Isengard. Isengard grows, builds an army to defend himself, and resources to feed the others.
                                  Next, myself (Assassinator or saadht) gets the passes. That's why I was creating an army etc.
                                  After that, GK gets the boost, and finally Jaxx Leo and Elrond.

                                  Sure this isn't against the rules but you know damn right this would be frowned upon by the community and is bending them in a U shape. This is a ridiculous dishonourable strategy. There are like 89 active accounts playing and you seriously thought this would be the best way to win with the most enjoyment? Touch Grass....

                                  I honestly lost all respect for all who were involved. No idea how the hell anyone else is supposed to keep up with this strategy without bending the rules themselves.

                                  Seriously I am in fucking awe of how stupid you look on this post.

                                      saadht sounds like manipulation. We should be playing more so as individuals rather than looking for ways to blast past.

                                      Honestly it sounds like the round was going to be really fun with 3 kingdoms being super huge and then BFing anything that came into range.

                                      Super fun!

                                        Mack10 I agree, it reminds me of Billy Madison.

                                        "Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it."

                                          Mack10
                                          Haha glad to see I’m not alone here. I tried to not respond to him but had to because of the sheer stupidity on display and the mental gymnastics to blame it all on CLI.

                                            saadht I've already posted a few times about the specifics, which I'm sure you've seen before, so I'll try to keep it brief because this is a busy day for me.

                                            I believe your so-called "strategy" of "planning" to boost/feed other kingdoms of the conspirators came about as a lame excuse for inactivity. I first saw some players proposing that "maybe this is the plan", then slowly but surely it became "this was the plan". Yet, your "plan" doesn't make any sense.

                                            What's the point in halting "the plan" for days and doing nothing? No login, no building anything, no techs, no troops. Those kingdoms had 500k to 1 million gold just sitting in them, totally abandoned.

                                            And yet, we're to be led to believe "this was the plan"... The plan is to have a highly coordinated plan that's strategized down to the tick... And then walk away for 2 days - we can come back and finish the plan some other time, maybe next week, or next month, or who knows.

                                            Not only that, but at least one of your conspirators was on the forum from day 1 complaining about what I said "as long as they're real players", saying he is not planning to play because of work... Well, I guess it was a bad idea to employ someone in "the plan" that only planned to play until protection was over and then quit - don't really care what the excuse is, facts is facts.

                                            As for "why cli made it easier", we discussed all those points before your stunt, we discussed those points during the cli vote. You kept saying you had "some big point to make", NOW after your stunt was blown to shit you're just reiterating the points that we had already discussed weeks ago? That's pretty dumb, big waste of time. Obviously you could get an inconsequential amount of more protection time with cli in place, and it would inconsequentially reduce the difficulties of setup by -1 castle pass. Does that negate the benefits of CLI in any way? No, not at all.

                                            1. The functional multis, as already covered extensively in other threads. I don't care if the rule isn't written, there's such a thing as the spirit of the law.
                                            2. I doubt it. It's more likely he logged in and started activity after the hammer dropped. In any case, I don't feel sorry for a conspirator of multi activity getting swept up in multi punishment. You're lucky your own account didn't get wiped.
                                            3. Why would they need huge stockpiles of resource accumulated from inactivity, and why wait several days after castle boosting 1 player, why not continue the chain ASAP which makes more sense so you can gain more of a lead over other players? Why stop researching tech, exploring lands, building the kingdoms? Why, why, why.

                                            Ultimately, you guys had the choice to just play the game and try to have fun and continue helping the growth/development of Thardferr. Instead you guys chose to throw a fit, I guess thinking if you cried enough about it you'd get your way? Everyone involved did a huge disservice to Thardferr, wasting so much time, and look - it was all for nothing.

                                            On the plus side we did learn one very important thing from the fiasco = if we ban trolling/disruptive players, the remaining player base and forum turns into a very positive and welcoming environment 😉

                                              @Lord Thane that is some bullshit and you know it. All the kd had logged in. All the kd had some tech going. Only Leo was doing techs and waiting for later in the round to catch up, others were all regularly playing and following that strategy. I call misinformation.

                                              I’m done on the forum. Please ban me again, there’s absolutely no point.

                                                saadht I looked directly at the database and saw zero activity. If they suddenly logged-in after the admin action was taken to try cover up inactivity, it wouldn't make any difference.

                                                I had also created a novel new activity monitor before all this, as was requested by players in a thread about clearing inactive kingdoms - and even that new tool showed zero activity on 3 of the accounts (I think 1 of the accounts activity was a login, and that's all).

                                                Anyways, it's fine if you disagree, don't really care about it. It's funny you say "I’m done on the forum. Please ban me again, there’s absolutely no point.". You mean there's no point in participating if you can't manipulate and complain your way to get what you want? Sorry about that, it seems someone lied to you about how to contribute properly here.

                                                  saadht you know, in my opinion, feeding your crew mate to reach on top is a form of cheating already. Even if those kingdoms shall we say they are not multi account. So how much more if they are multi account of someone.

                                                  And other thing is.. since im on top. What i feel is that it is very boring here on top. I cannot hit my enemies anymore. And then seeing my allies got gang banged is a bit frustrating. I cant do anything rather than sending aid and trying to find someone who can do a pre for them.

                                                      saadht the last thing I want you to know is I really do value your opinion on things, that's why I unbanned you in the first place, even though we disagree on things often. I also respect your passion for the game.

                                                      If you choose to not participate in the forum, I think it would be a detriment to the game development to lose your voice/perspective.

                                                      I hope you do continue participating, understanding things won't always go your way, and there's limits to how far you can push back on disagreements.

                                                        KingLear Yes it can be boring at the top, however, of the 6 targets that you have available, only 1 of them is in your province. The rest are all fair game for you to hit. You choose not to because you're in an alliance with them. Which is absolutely your right to do! I'm not complaining that you have a large alliance, that's how this game works. It's social, and these alliances will likely shift as they always do. But I am pointing out that you are making the game boring by yourself by not participating and attacking.

                                                        And no one can convince me that if I'm in first, or take Lear for example as he currently is sitting at the top, that I or he should get protection for successfully winning an attack.

                                                        I can get behind CLI working to help people who attack upwards, but I can't get behind the part of it that helps the biggest get further ahead. That sounds counter productive. The player in first should never get these kind of catch up mechanic aids. They should have to be skilled to stay at the top.

                                                        And I can also see how CLI would make people attack more often (when the player base gets larger) and of course I'm always willing to try new changes and test them out, so long as reason and logic is used to make sure that these things become fair but also balanced. Fair is everyone gets CLI on every attack, balanced is only the people who deserve and need it get.