Feedback on Domination world

[Odin29]

I completely agree that faith is entirely too plentiful. Faith management is a big part of a normal world, while on this world, as you said, it's not even an issue. The problem is 3 fold though. Firstly, this is a much faster paced world, players rank up and get more villages much more quickly, which allows them to complete all the quests much more quickly, resulting in much more faith much earlier in the game, plus there's no real need for "long term planning" when it comes to faith management since the world will be over soon.

Secondly, without interdiction the uses of faith are much more limited. On a standard world it costs 780 faith points to keep a single village of a Prince under ID for a day. Not the case on this world, so the other uses of faith don't add up nearly as quickly.

Lastly, everyone has a lot more villages, so faith production is naturally a lot higher.

I'm not really sure what to do to provide a solution to this. I think one of the first things to do would be to drastically lower the amount of faith rewarded from quests, and perhaps take faith off the quest wheel. Beyond that, I don't really know. That might actually be enough. If people didn't have a massive pool of faith from quest rewards to tap in to to flip counties or send out a week of excom, they might have to make the decision of whether they want to excom someone or monk a parish / county back.

I also like the idea of monks being used for something other than just votes and preventing others from using them. They don't seem very dynamic anymore. I suggested in another thread giving them a defensive ability that wasn't as silly as the old interdict. Maybe something that just increased the hit points of your castle towers and your archers on the towers and / or increased your chances of stopping an AI attack. Maybe also consider making the buff get stronger if someone is attacked while they're offline. Not a big buff, maybe just something like:

Increases the strength of your castle structures and archers by 15%. This is increased to 25% if the attack is launched AND lands while the player is offline. In addition this spell increases the chances of diplomatically stopping an AI attack by 50% in the targeted village.

Could make the FP cost so that it balances out at about 200-300 FP per day to keep a village under this buff. If nothing else that could give people something else to spend their FP on .

[Odin29]

I actually am torn on the flags thing. On one side it could be a resource to fight over, but on the other it would slow growth and growth is intentionally very accelerated on this world to allow people to be combat ready faster. Having a kingseat be combat ready by day 25 is awesome.. knowing you could be hit by a 900 man army before the world is even a month old really helps to promote the whole uneasy feeling of the domination world.

[metroman]

I'd definitely recommend Taxes bring in more income to the Parishes, as it is now, there is hardly anything that can be done other then just send troops from the villages to stock it up...and that process takes a lot longer when it takes all your weapons so fast (even if production research is maxed out and as many structures that fit are built to make it as fast as possible) Also it still takes forever for the Cats to be produced..would be nice to see at least their production made faster.

[Odin29]

After thinking about it I have to say I'm against the idea of reducing the flag spawn rate, especially if the map is shrank on the next domination world. The main reason is that flags are spawning quickly is because the world is paced to progress much more rapidly. Think about how developed capitals are now, then compare that to how developed they would be on a normal world on day 185. If flag spawns were reduced, then the world would be half over by the time the capitals would be complete, which just goes against everything that makes this world so amazingly fun.

[PsychoticUK]

perhaps just doubling or quadrupling everything instead of a couple things might work better.

well castles and villages build 4x quicker but resource output is still the same, for example catapults produce ~4.5 with research and ~9 with max guild, so ~10 days to make a half decent army per village, but the enemy castle is already mostly built. So if build speed is 4x then production should be 4x as well.

[Odin29]

perhaps just doubling or quadrupling everything instead of a couple things might work better.

well castles and villages build 4x quicker but resource output is still the same, for example catapults produce ~4.5 with research and ~9 with max guild, so ~10 days to make a half decent army per village, but the enemy castle is already mostly built. So if build speed is 4x then production should be 4x as well.

This was left the same intentionally to encourage carding I believe. Besides, production of all goods is perfectly high, except for catapults, and they've always been the bottleneck for making big armies to destroy people. That's always been an intentional feature to make it expensive to kill a smart player. The other bottleneck of course is how rapidly you can get guys into your village. The max is 720 if you're constantly recruiting as quickly as they come to the village. I've considered suggesting that at 200 happiness you get ~8 villagers per 10 minutes, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not. I kinda like the feel of the game as it is.

[Odin29]

I've been rolling an idea around in my head in regards to the tedious and clunky nature of setting up timed attacks. I'm posting it here because I think the next Domination world would be the perfect place to test the idea. It's a rather long read, where I will discuss the pros and cons of the idea in depth.

Allow me to preface by saying that this game is amazingly fun, especially with the new domination world rule set. However, I feel that the attacking side of this game can be very clunky and tedious when it comes to fighting some of the bigger, more active players. Personally I have only had 2 villages on this world razed, and I've made a point to anger the heaviest carder on this world. The only 2 villages I had razed were villages that I had just capped and didn't have a very built castle in yet. nor did I care very much about. I feel that by day 65 of a domination world, I should have lost at least 10 villages by now. Furthermore, I haven't done a ton of razing myself, simply because of the tedious nature of setting up timed attacks. I don't know if there's anyone who finds it fun to stare at a timer for 30 minutes to an hour, or have an alarm go off and run back to the computer to hit send. It just isn't a fun portion of the game. In my opinion, this makes setting up timed attacks less a test of skill and more a test of patience and tolerance for tedium.

With that being said, I suggest a feature is implemented to allow attacks to be slowed down to land at a selected time after when they would land if they are launched immediately. For example, if you're launching an attack that will take 35 minutes to reach it's target, and it's 9:20 server time, but you want the attack to land at 10:00, instead of waiting until 9:25 to launch, you could simply select "land at a later time" and select "10:00 server time" then press launch. The attack would simply move slightly slower and land at the selected time.

Now, before you tar and feather me for this idea, let me explain my rationality behind the suggestion and the pros and cons, especially in a domination world. Firstly, anyone with a stopwatch (available for free online) and a 4th grade math education can set up a timed attack, but as I mentioned it's just tedious and clunky. Secondly, for the dedicated fighters, the limiting factor isn't syncing up timed attacks (especially not on the domination world where you can have so many villages and vassals,) it's the catapults. So the limiting factor stays the same, you simply remove the tedium of doing it. You also remove the frustrating possibility of something outside of the game preventing you from launching at the correct time, such as latency / internet issues or your kid asking you for help with their homework 30 seconds before you're supposed to launch. Lastly, people who feel that a domination world would be just too brutal for them might change their mind, thus bringing new players to this amazing world. Let's face it, when us none carders first read the post about the domination world, it seemed very intimidating, but if more casual players knew they could still contribute to their house without having to treat it like a job, they would undoubtedly be much more inclined to play on this world type.

Now, let's look at some pros and cons:

Pros -
-Significantly reduces the boring / tedious / clunky portions of fighting so more attention can be spent doing the fun things, like watching the reports of your armies decimating your enemies or building another army to attack again.

-Makes the world much more appealing to more casual players, which is helpful all around. More players is always good for a world, especially one that seems somewhat scarcely populated like the current domination world.

-Encourages more fighting on a world designated entirely for fighting.

-Gives even the hardest players that uneasy feeling, like they could be razed at any moment. Exactly the point of the Domination World

-Reinforces the bottleneck for battle being catapults, promoting the purchase of cards.

-Easier to set up timed attacks with allies, promoting team work and cooperation with your faction / house.

Cons -
-It requires less work to raze a village, which will undoubtedly result in more of the "hardcore" players getting razed. I do not view this as a con, though others might.

-Might make the game too "casual friendly" although I personally think this world needs more casual style players.

I really can't think of any cons beyond that. Other than the pride hit from a hardcore player who gets razed by someone he views as a "noob."

What do you guys think? Let's discuss this .

[Odin29]

I should also add that if the idea I just listed is implemented, another idea should be implemented to help counter it for the heavy carders. I'm not a heavy carder, but I've talked to people who spend a ton of money on this game. When being attacked, they're forced to "spam" their knights or castle repair cards. This is also a system I feel is clunky, tedious, and not fun. Instead, allow cards like "knight charge" or "desperate defense" to stack. As in, if you have 10 attacks incoming, you can play 10 desperate defense cards and they will simply trigger in succession, one for each attack. The same could go for the knight cards. This would allow the hardcore / heavy carders an advantage to help counter balance the advantage the more casual players would get from the idea above.

[countjimula]

Odin29 I am with kwud and think that idea will kill a lot of the fun in this game to make it a little easier.

-It will in no way balance the power, the players with the most vassals and allies will be even stronger than they are now.

-It takes out almost all the skill required to send effective attacks

-attacks would be so easy they would become far more common making the game frustrating, and building a castle almost pointless.

-Right now a player can only use about 1/3 of their vassal troops for any one attack due to their location, what will happen when they can virtually use all of them for any attack.

-no fun in getting the attacks times up right

-no fun in wondering if the enemy would ID, or if you will be attacked between sending armies

-almost no time to ID before the enemy sends out all their attacks

-If you are fighting an enemy that is just too lazy to send out attacks, or has no idea how to send them effectively, the way they have to be done now, I think you deserve to win.

I can go on but I think I have made my point

[AuKhan]

The real issue is that castles need to be stronger, so that razing and capture are not so easy.

Now, people either ID for complete safety, which takes their castle out of play,
or they go fully exposed, making their cardboard castle an easy instant raze when offline.

Stronger castles would make the game more interesting as people would use less ID, making combat targets more available.
The war would shift to prolonged slugfests between castles, using ransacking to wear an enemy down.
And you could go offline with greater confidence of having something still there when you return.