Earthquake

Enphetamy

Makes sense. If you're going to limit the targets to within acceptable range, let's remove the protection removal. If CLI was implemented to prevent 3rd party interference in a kingdom vs kingdom situation in attacks, then magic casting should follow same principles. It already gives retal rights, and there is an inherent disparity between caster ks and army strength (having to sacrifice buildings AND subjected to inflated ks). Making magic remove protection is no longer necessary.

Lord Thane

Enphetamy that sounds fair too, piling on more nerfs should be balanced so offensive magic isn't made completely useless. Losing protection is a pretty classic rule though, maybe instead it should be something else like take away the retal right that's granted?

Enphetamy

Lord Thane While I personally endorse taking away the retal right, I can see how it can quickly devolve into an untouchable caster when you pair it with castle passing. I think it is a bit much, the retal, but I think the situation is infinitely worse without it.

Lord Thane

Enphetamy yeah I guess a retal is more valuable to the victim than knowing the caster lost their pro - caster can always use other means to get protection if that's what they want to do. I wonder what other people think about removing that age old rule.

But also, even if a caster went with giving themselves protection via castle passing to allies, it's not a good long term strat for them since they burn so many buildings and also wizards die. If we took away the retal, how many times could a caster blast EQ and then pass to hide in protection? Seems like they'd be doing as much damage to themselves, maybe enough to make that strat unappealing.

trupheus

Make EQ like the old days and every cast destroys some of the target's buildings and some of the caster's buildings.

There's so much dumb thought in this game right now it hurts. You've already taken away the ability to retal on anyone that EQs you that's less than 70% your size. The juice isn't worth the squeeze. Picture the scenario, you make a hit and win, get retal'd immediately and lose. then you get EQ'd by someone who is barely above half your size, they wipe out 15% of your buildings, you're still greater than 70% of their size. does it make sense to drop KS and hit them to get CLI? does it make sense to hit them and break your prot while also preventing yourself from reentering CLI for 12 hours? Sure I guess you could just castle pass to an ally, but that's like riding a moped, if someone else is doing it they're a loser but if you're doing it there's no problem with it. You could do the vengeful thing and purposely drop even more KS to take the retal, but that is expensive trust me I know I've done it a couple times. Now, if you do get EQ'd and then as soon as the caster leaves prot (why is this even a thing? let's not even talk about the toxic behavior this enables, we will), you catch a pre and uh oh, dang it, they're no longer inside 70%, guess you need to let that go or engage is castle passing behavior that is OK for others to do but definitely not OK for you to do it. shame on you, 10 hail marys for even having the thought of castle passing.

little baby kingdoms that just can't find a way to break the big boys complained so much that now you can line up kingdoms at 50-65% of someone's size and have them suicide their armies to weaken the big guy and they get off scot-free because after killing off their army they're going to be too small to retal.

now, because i didn't do it last round so it didn't get changed. you can just EQ some tiny kingdom every 4 ticks to catch protection. why is this even a thing?

QUIT TRYING TO BUILD MOUSE TRAPS. THEY SUCK. AND PEOPLE JUST FIND WAYS TO ABUSE IT.

end rant.

Enphetamy

If you wouldnt take a retal at 68% KS, what reason is there to believe you would take the one at 35%?

All of this is to assume there is 0 risk to a caster. Ask Thane how that went. There's already a progressive fail chance in either direction of KS. And the failure isn't just an oh well. Its an open invitation. It's the harbinger of calamity headed straight for the caster. Not to mention every cast is rolling out the red carpet straight to your kingdom.

trupheus

Enphetamy

C L I for most that very effectively moves the line to hit to 70%. Too much is risked. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. But applying that to retals enables little kingdoms to not have to pay the full price. It’s a hell of a tool imagine if the #1 guy fed some little kingdom that’s at less than half the KS of a rival to be able to have an army big enough to break or severely hurt the army if the rival.

I like the changes of moving CLI to only applying to hits greater than 70%. But removing it from retals and completely eliminating retals below 50% is damning to big kingdoms. Someone wants to fuck with me and find out… they’re never fully finding out. Probably never finding out because they’re most likely suiciding and passing immediately.

I have no doubt that after a 99% send this morning the kingdom that hit me would have been in prot from either CLI or an ally of theirs tagging to put them in prot.

skigglez

trupheus the direction the game seems to be going is to severely punish those who rise to the top, all to cater to the complaints from bad players. If that's where they want to take it then all the power to them, but don't be shocked when people leave the game and never come back. When a strategy game is designed to punish those who figure out a better strategy than the rest of the pack - what's the incentive for those players? I get it - runaway kingdoms are hard to catch up with, but that's why all parts of the round matter. If you don't want someone to become a runaway kingdom, deal with them early in the round and prevent them from doing so. Building in punishment for that runaway kingdom is nonsensical - but in today's day and age of participation ribbons for everyone, I can see why the bad players want the game to be designed that way.

FriendsInSpace

skigglez

No we should listen to everyone. Especially shin and haybols complaints from last round, undead is clearly the worst race and needs more buffs. 10x iron production and make legion a base 10/10 with 20 LR please.

skigglez

Another note on EQ - remove the 4 hours of protection it grants when it's used on targets below 70%. Make it more in line with CLI rules for consistency and to prevent the current abuse on kingdoms significantly lower than the caster. Having it designed to be beneficial on kingdoms so low is just toxic for the game in my opinion.

Enphetamy

"Good at the game"

Lmao, my braindead neighbor can make two troops and pass castles back and forth with his other braindead buddy every 23 ticks too champ. 😂😂

skigglez

Enphetamy what are you talking about lol - who said anything about being good at the game? My post was referencing bad players, which there clearly are. And they are the ones who are the loudest asking for changes to limit stronger kingdoms. Where did anyone insinuate they were one of the "good players"?

I assume you're the one abusing the EQ on lower targets judging by the emotional reaction in this thread. Shame on you.

Lord Thane

"Building in punishment for that runaway kingdom is nonsensical"
2 hours later...
"remove the 4 hours of protection it grants when it's used on targets below 70%"

You're really going to complain that we're buffing smaller kingdoms too much while you push to have more buffs for smaller kingdoms in the next breath? Lol, this is why we can't have nice things.

On that note, I think the casting block <50% is a good idea - all the rules EQ has for casting UP makes sense that it should apply when casting DOWN too, which should I would guess eliminates that "EQ a little guy for infinite protection" deal.

skigglez

Lord Thane this complaint has nothing to do with runaway kingdoms at all - I think it's horrible game design to be able to endlessly EQ people 1/10th your KS and also gain 4 hours of protection from it. None of the runaway kingdoms this round or last were using that tactic, but there is someone doing it this round and I know of at least 1 player that's quit the game because of it. By all means leave in the horrendous game design and keep bleeding players, just drop the ego and try to think of these things objectively at least.

One can be in favor of both not nerfing larger kingdoms and also implementing common sense fixes to game design flaws for this beta test round. Fixing game design flaws that just so happen to be abusable by large kingdoms is not a punishment to large kingdoms, it's just fixing an abusable game design flaw. You should be thanking the people who are actually trying to think of ways to make the game better and taking the time to put forth suggestions. Your ego causes you to immediately try and find a contradiction in what I said (which isn't there) and dunk on me in the forums instead of focusing on trying to fix the game. THAT is why we can't have nice things.

Lord Thane

skigglez I just wanted to point out the irony of you lambasting admins for buffing smaller kingdoms while simultaneously asking admins to buff smaller kingdoms :p

I already said I agreed with the ideas for updating EQ to help prevent abuse on smaller kingdoms, not sure what you mean about thinking about it objectively. I think we should add the same restrictions for casting upwards to also apply downwards as well, is there some other change you think would work fairer than that? The upward casting restrictions go like this: from 1.3-2X your KS the risk of backfiring EQ rises linearly until reaching 100%, guaranteed backfire when you reach 2X your KS. So if we applied that to casting downward, it would be like 80 to 50% it increases the chance to backfire until it reaches guaranteed backfire at 50% the casters KS.

edit: thank you for trying to think of ways to make the game better and taking the time to put forth suggestions 😘

skigglez

Lord Thane I just wanted to point out the irony of you lambasting admins for buffing smaller kingdoms while simultaneously asking admins to buff smaller kingdoms :p

There is no irony though - they are separate issues. The EQ issue isn't a nerf or buff to anyone - it's just a game design flaw that only exists because the previous EQ changes weren't given more thought before implementation.

skigglez

Lord Thane edit: thank you for trying to think of ways to make the game better and taking the time to put forth suggestions

you don't have to worry about that going forward, trust me

Lord Thane

skigglez not really, it's all in the same wheelhouse of trying to balance and make things fair and enjoyable for everyone. The retal rule was just a loophole used by alliances to pass free land to larger kingdoms, bypassing ks restrictions and protection, and kept the biggest kingdoms in a safety net where any attempt by even moderately sized kingdoms was a moot castle/land donation. A 1k kingdom shouldn't be able to bypass ks restrictions to funnel land/castles to a 100k kingdom just by sending a 1 unit attack on them. The removal of the 50% retal closes up many loopholes, and makes king slaying feasible at all levels where it wasn't before.

Lord Thane

skigglez oh come onnnn, why you gotta be like that? Too much time in the instant chat making you soft, old man? You know your contributions are always appreciated.

I put the same scaling backfire deal for casting up to also work casting down, it's live now - figure might as well plop it now and we can always change later if the consensus on what to do changes. I did it starting at 80% ks, and it worsens the odds down to 50% ks where it's guaranteed to backfire.

trupheus

Lord Thane king slaying feasible at all levels where it wasn't before.

Kingslaying is no longer feasible because of the removal of retals giving retals. Does retals giving retals also enable easier protection passing? Yes. There's pros and cons to everything.

Earlier this round it took 6 (maybe 7?) hits to break Chaos who at the time wasn't even #1. But after those mass hits, he took 5 retals and was a lucky SOB to take 5 castles. instant propulsion up the KHoF where he than became too large to hit. Retals giving retals would have given the opposite side more ammunition for a second go around. he was able to take those retals for a myriad of reasons, but one of them was because he knew he need not fear being hit in return, and at the conclusion of the retals if he needed to pass to get protection while giving up a little bit of his spoils of war he would have. if he had to manage his retals he would not have been able to take them all to mitigate the risk of the people he did hit being able to come back and pop him again with whatever he had left. or he would have not been able to take them all and keep army in reserve to defend the potential retals.

I called this out months ago, large kingdoms benefit greatly from the removal of retals giving retals.

Enphetamy

There's making genuine callous for improving the game, and then there's throwing a fit because the game isn't favorable to your current situation. I've attempted to cast on kingdoms substantially lower than me 3 or 4 times, and only in one of those instances did I actually manage to do more than 10%. The dampening effect works, trying to cast that low is futile. I had to learn it the hard way.

Remember the uproar about fireball yesterday? Absolutely mum about it today when he's using it. This guy is grade A crybaby material, really. Spellcasting is absolute dogshit right now lol, and when it becomes even remotely viable, here comes the wahhmbulance. The only reason he's even remotely capable of spellcasting is because he's running zero troops and religiously castle passing to be completely insulated from the rest of the game. Honestly, I've been smoked twice now for being overly exposed by casting 3 spells in 1 day. And all it took was a single instance of failing to destroy 10% buildings for it to catch up to you.

The changes you made makes sense. But while we're at it, can we make attacking below 80% have a chance to instantly kill a % of your troops, increasing linearly up to 100% at 1/2? Does that mechanic sound familiar?