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Post by ourjake on Jun 11, 2011 14:26:50 GMT -5
I like gambling. it's fun, but the odds have to be good enough that you think you can win. thanks for the lurker watching. now we have time to be intimidated first
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Post by succat on Jun 14, 2011 20:22:49 GMT -5
And in case anyone is wondering, I have not changed the gambling system. Even though one player got lucky and nearly wiped out the whole board, I have not changed anything. I like to keep it simple: You have a 49% chance of winning on every gamble, simple and plain. No need to add any crazy calculations to the mix, like... if it's your 7th straight gamble win and you're currently at 10,000 gold, now make the next gamble percentage a 29% chance of winning or something like that. No, no, no, I refuse to do something twisted like that. That's just wrong!
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Post by Dubber on Jun 15, 2011 15:04:24 GMT -5
Meaning you really did just implement, right?
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Post by mikeEB on Jun 15, 2011 22:27:08 GMT -5
Mike, it's true you can abandon a square right before another player can take it by force, but I think that if another player will go through all the trouble of invading to get a square they'll probably pay up $100 as well if they want the square bad enough. This is now a bigger issue since multi-farm squares cost lots to annex.
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Post by succat on Jun 15, 2011 23:15:40 GMT -5
Mike, it's true you can abandon a square right before another player can take it by force, but I think that if another player will go through all the trouble of invading to get a square they'll probably pay up $100 as well if they want the square bad enough. This is now a bigger issue since multi-farm squares cost lots to annex. Yep, I know. I'm thinking of maybe at least 'halving' the cost of farm-squares. That way if you do abandon them, yeah, someone else will have to pay to annex them, but they won't half to pay full price at least.
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Post by ourjake on Jun 16, 2011 23:23:32 GMT -5
somehow there is an engine there...i don't know where yet, but cut-price fams sounds abusable...
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Post by Dubber on Jun 17, 2011 8:22:54 GMT -5
Has anyone scripted a client to monitor the "awake" status of their opponents and which will either alert the player or auto-defend while the player is offline? Seems like a worthy project...
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Post by mikeEB on Jun 17, 2011 13:17:00 GMT -5
I seem to have encountered a bug. My farm at square 60 is losing units at happy hour rather than gaining them.
P.S. You really seem to hate large empires.
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Post by succat on Jun 17, 2011 20:11:58 GMT -5
OurJake, yeah, at the moment I don't see it being abused by cutting abandoned farm squares to half their value, but I could be overlooking something.
Dubber, No need. I'm going to be doing some sort of 'fortify' feature really soon so that offline players being attacked can't easily be wiped out like they can now. I mean, NOOBS, who sign-up and then quit playing after a minute should not be able to 'fortify', but players who are playing all the time need this kind of protection so that we don't have any more Ellipsis-Nawglan-Deleted wipe-out scenarios (and anyone else I might be missing).
Mike, it's not really documented at this moment, but the old 5000 / numOfSquares rule is stagnating your units at 83 per square (since you have 60 squares at the time of this writing). The farms don't affect that rule, you just can't let your units be more than 250 * numOfFarms on a farm-square if you want the gold to come update time. Again, these kinds of rules have gotten out of hand and should be better documented, but the idea was to put caps on players so that they couldn't grow too large too quickly.
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Post by mikeEB on Jun 17, 2011 22:30:58 GMT -5
OurJake, yeah, at the moment I don't see it being abused by cutting abandoned farm squares to half their value, but I could be overlooking something. It doesn't break anything, with one exception: If a large player pays a small player to build discount single farms, they can no longer do so purely through annexing said farms. Also, the cost of annexing should be lower in general. Again, these kinds of rules have gotten out of hand and should be better documented, but the idea was to put caps on players so that they couldn't grow too large too quickly. Quickly has nothing to do with it. You are punishing large players, period. And given the amount of punishment one takes for spreading out, and the number of active players, and the size of the grid, it's not surprising to find half the grid abandoned.
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Post by succat on Jun 18, 2011 0:58:33 GMT -5
Feel free to offer some helpful suggestions at any time other than just stating the obvious flaws in the game It's easy to say that the cost of annexing is too much right now, or that large players are penalized too harshly. I'd like to hear ideas on how to fix those issues if you really want to contribute.
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Post by mikeEB on Jun 18, 2011 1:23:31 GMT -5
With regards to general game health: 1)Shrink the board somehow; there are more squares then everyone combined wants, so most of them are abandoned and nobody fights. I'd suggest a 'tetris' rule where rows of abandoned squares are removed from the grid. 2)Lower the price of annexing. You shouldn't make it difficult to move into an abandoned area or else you end up with large swathes of abandoned territory. This also partly solves the issue of players using abandoned territories as investments. (really, this could be free for non-farms!) 3)Lift the restrictions on donating and lower the fee. Right now, it's more practical to find convoluted side-channels to transfer money along than to use the built-in transfer money function.
With regards to large-player balance: 1)Replace the 5000 / numOfSquares rule with a total unit limit of (say) 3000 + 2*#squares. That way a large empire can still strategically defend their farms, but cannot stockpile a massive amount of reserve troops in their extra squares. 2)Replace the limit for reinforcements after 38 squares with a decreasing probability of each 1-unit square receiving a reinforcement (rather than no reinforcements at all with 100% probability). This solves the 39th-square poison without giving sufficiently large players an overwhelming advantage.
With regards to someone else's complaints: 1)Rewrite the Rules section to explain how the game works. Cryptic hints are not helpful enough. The rules also contain some information that is false and/or outdated. 2)Mass Invade option that operates similar to Missiles but doesn't cost gold. Combat between large stacks can take literally hours.
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Post by succat on Jun 18, 2011 10:46:57 GMT -5
Excellent. Very helpful. I'll look into how I can implement when I get back from vacation. Also, what do you think about the 'offline' problem? Putting players on a sort of auto-defend or making them select a 'fortify' option when they go away seems good, but then there's the problem that they will always go offline whenever they get attacked (like a turtle retreating into its shell) and then they can't be conquered by online players at all. Maybe the fortify option should only last for a day or so, or maybe it should last depending on how much they can pay for it. Rough example: 100 gold per day fortified. Maybe fortify shouldn't make them indestructable, but just raise their odds of winning by another 50% or something. Any ideas?
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Post by ourjake on Jun 21, 2011 9:50:33 GMT -5
i don't think that it should be another 50%. maybe like 25ish? you already get a boost just for being on defense, and if they have significantly for clout than you, you are fighting a very uphill battle. perhaps fortify should only work for farms?
the tetris-style removal of squares would be kind of cool. and it would keep things moving. you would have to trust your neighbors to go offline for very long, which makes it much more social.
i don't mind the price of annexing, and i like the idea of using the extra squares as a bank. if the tetris-square removal is implemented that would also make it a little risky.
i do think that the donate tax should be lowered, and possibly the restriction on having more gold than the receiver. if it were put around 10-20% it would also remove the necessity of annex/abandoning or warp/abandoning squares
it would be cool if the larger players still got reinforcements. even if it was just 1 a turn or so. or if not that, then remove the restriction on farms giving their minimum after a certain point, and make bigger players bankroll their own armies (but make it possible). right now you hit a wall on reinforcements and lose all your money shortly after
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Post by mikeEB on Jun 21, 2011 16:48:39 GMT -5
At minimum, you should not be able to spend money or invade while fortified, except maybe for buying fortification.
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