Earthquake

skigglez

Been seeing a bunch of Earthquakes being thrown around on much smaller kingdoms, so revisited Keeper's post when it got changed and there's definitely a problem with how it's designed. All of the backfire chance is limited to targets ABOVE you in KS - there's no protections for kingdoms lower than you. How does that make any sense? A kingdom 10 times your KS can EQ you multiple times a day and you have no recourse against them (and they gain protection from the EQs, which makes even less sense). Wouldn't it make sense to have the scaling backfire chance go both ways - scaling chance as you go up in KS, as well as scaling chance as you go down? If you have penalties in place for attacking someone lower than you, why wouldn't the same apply to offensive spells? Since we're tossing out changes on a whim when people have complained about large kingdoms, this one seems to be a no brainer to implement as well because it's something that's actually impacting many kingdoms at the moment.

Keeper's post:
Earthquake Spell: Backfire Chance Explained

The Earthquake spell is a powerful ability that can destroy up to 15% of a target kingdom’s basic buildings (excluding castles) when successful. However, if it fails, it may backfire, destroying 5% of the caster’s own buildings instead. The chance of a backfire depends on the Kingdom Strength (KS) ratio, calculated as the target’s KS divided by the caster’s KS (targetKS / casterKS). Below, we explain how this works in simple terms.

How Backfire Chance Works

The KS ratio determines how likely the spell is to backfire, making it riskier to cast Earthquake on kingdoms stronger than yours. Here’s how the backfire chance is set:

KS ratio ≤ 1.333 (target’s KS is up to 1.333x the caster’s):
0% backfire chance. Casting against kingdoms with similar or slightly higher KS is safe, with no risk of backfire.

KS ratio ≥ 2 (target’s KS is 2x or more the caster’s):
100% backfire chance. Casting against a much stronger kingdom will always backfire, damaging your own buildings.

KS ratio between 1.333 and 2:
The backfire chance scales linearly from 0% to 100%. For example:

A KS ratio of 1.5 (target’s KS is 1.5x caster’s) gives roughly a 25% backfire chance.

A KS ratio of 1.75 (target’s KS is 1.75x caster’s) gives roughly a 62.5% backfire chance

jerseyj282

Not totally opposed, but damage is already scaled by amount of land (or buildings?). So it’s already kinda capped for damage unlike a normal attack.

Lord Thane

I think there is already a overall backfire chance that hits all attempts to cast, not 100% sure on the details.

There is a dampener that greatly diminishes the power when casting downward though.

skigglez

Lord Thane the EQ's I've seen were all 15% of buildings done. Sure it's less total buildings for the lower kingdoms, but it's still 15% of their buildings. And getting a retal on someone 10 times your KS is meaningless. It's just a loophole that someone can abuse to gain basically infinite protection while ruining the game for lower kingdoms. If you can't attack someone under 50% of your KS, why can you EQ them (dampened or not)?

Lord Thane

skigglez I suppose if we have a limiter for casting UP, we should put the same limiter for casting DOWN too, only makes sense to be fair with the limiter, if limiter be what we're using.

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