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Evaluation of the Tourny.
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geofrey View Drop Down
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    Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 19:49
My opinion about Tournament mechanics.  

Tournament IV was very fun. It gave me a reason to use my military troops I had built, and presented me a challenge with managing my troop production. 

I believe the tournament lasted a full month. This was a good length as it gave me incentive to alter my military production rates. Long enough to have an impact on the world of Illyriad, evidenced by the increased cost of military goods on the global market. 

I do wish we had headsup on what we would be using to win this tournament. My main army consisted of Infantry when the tournament began. As soon as I had a consistent report of the types of foes we were all DEFENDING against, I quickly changed all of my Sov. to increase archer production and began cranking out crossbow dwarves. too little too late tho, as I was unable to keep up with the demands of the undead. 

I eventually came to the conclusion that I could not win this Tournament based on my pre-existing army. So instead I changed my goals from winning it, to killing as many un-dead as possible. 

The inability to leverage alliances was a bit dissapointing. But not nearly as dissapointing as the inability to leverage diplomats. 

The "warning" before the final assault was badly timed in my opinion. I would of preferred the following order of events to occur prior to the final assault: 

- 3 days prior to the final assault I receive a message from one of my commanders telling me enemy forces are amassing a giant horde at location X:X in a last ditch effort to get to the summoning stones. 
- I have the option to send scouts and spies to that location to ascertain the nature of the assault. Scout's would tell me the numbers, and spies would tell me the timing of the attack. 
- 2 days prior to the final assault I receive a message from the Crimson group, saying they will send forces to aid me in the defense
- At this point I have the opportunity to develop a strategy 2 days in advance. In my case, knowing that I am going up against forces I have no way of defeating, I would of requested aid from all military units in my alliance. We would of rallied on my summoning stone and stood strong against the evil army that approached. 

Instead I had a few hours notice that something really bad was going to happen. With no time to take any action with the warning, I did nothing but wait to see what happens... and as we know, dragons happened. 

Mechanics: The basic mechanics were very simple. Occupy a summoning stone and 3 waves of enemy troops will attempt to attack the stone every night. You must defend against them and fight them off. 

Unfortunately this meant that offensive tactics were useless. 

What were your thoughts?
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Rill View Drop Down
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Points: 2160 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Rill Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 21:37
Great tournament! Awesome way to introduce new content and get a large section of the playerbase accustomed to the way certain things work, such as battle magic and moving NPCs.  (And NPCs that attack!)

Having a tournament that emphasized defense over attack was a nice balance, especially considering that some races' units are a bit better for defense than attack and this tournament allowed them to use that strength.

We got to "exercise" some skills like Force of Will that have previously been mostly useless.

One minor criticism I have was that we all had to defend on the worst possible terrain on which to defend.  I'm not claiming this is unfair or anything, since it affected everyone equally.  However, in some ways it would have been interesting to have a variety of terrain types available to defend so that players could make that part of their strategy.
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StJude View Drop Down
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Great idea to start a thread on what went right and what went wrong with the past tournament.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. This tournament tried to accomplish too many goals in my opinion. It was billed as a tournament, but functioned as a test of AI as well as a "fun" world event.

I think it would have achieved it's goals better if only one of those goals were the focus. I got the impression that the primary goal was the testing of AI for factions in the future. But I can't conclusively say that was the intent, it's obviously speculation.

I really like your idea of employing other aspects of the game, like diplomats. To expand on your idea, it would have been a lot of fun to have to send your scouts to a "Haunted" location, maybe even a graveyard or something similar and get a threat assessment of the kinds of troops you could expect to see rise and attack the standing stones. This could be done with a 48hour advanced warning?

Anyway, as a world event, this tournament was excellent. As a tournament, I am afraid I can't give it the same high praise.


Edited by StJude - 20 Jan 2012 at 22:07
I will adjust your unjustness and you will be readjusted to be one with my justness, I call it justice. - AnalrotsAnIStinkAlot
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Anjire View Drop Down
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It was an okay tournament I would give it a 5 out of 10.  

While the new content is intriguing, I feel the new content smell will quickly fade in much the same way as it did for tournament II.  There was much hype about the use and the soon(tm) to be released content around the harvested parts that has yet to materialize.  

I did enjoy the fact that they introduced a new tactical element into the tournament having it focus on defense rather than offense as the prior three have focused.  However, this quickly turned into monotony for 29 or so days competing for a lottery of attacks based on how lucky you were with the standing stone placements, number of attacks on those standing stones and the strength of those attacks.  To me it became much like the old Dunkin' Donuts commercial - "time to make the donuts" day after day.  

The last attack was very bold and innovative but I truly wish they would have actually built up better for it to allow for more world/alliance/confed cooperation rather then a lucky you were on and active at the time hurrah.  
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Createure View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

One minor criticism I have was that we all had to defend on the worst possible terrain on which to defend.  I'm not claiming this is unfair or anything, since it affected everyone equally.

I disagree - Orc specialist unit takes a greater penalty on plains than the specialist units of any other race - and hence were put at a considerable (up to -30% defence penalty) disadvantage.
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Aurordan View Drop Down
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Points: 204 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Aurordan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Jan 2012 at 23:42
Yes, but spearmen are far better at defending in general.  If anyone was disadvantaged by that logic it was the races with attacking specialization, though anyone could pretty easily switch if they wanted too really.
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Points: 64 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote LordBliss Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 02:30
The division of players was awesome, allowed participation by all.  There had previously been suggestions for tourneys designed for newer players, and i think the devs went one better and gave us a tourney that everyone could participate in.

I would have preferred that the undead armies grown larger faster, causing more people to have to scramble to get armies out, keep commanders alive, etc.  It kinda became a little tedious.

I also think the whole standing stones thing was a minus.  players whose cities just happened to be near standing stones could get more attacks in than those without close stones.  so a significant advantage based on something that no one ever cared about (proximity to standing stones) before the tourney.

eh.  just me griping a bit.  sounds like a lot of people competed and had fun, players of all different sizes, nobody lost an eye, so have to give the whole thing an A minus.
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Points: 44 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Gaia Nutella Tulips Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 08:44
The tourny wasn't half bad, it let everyone join in and destroyed half the armies that were around! It was a nice change from being at war with people and listening to them complain, I am sure all of you can relate to that.
 The only minus in this game was the final warning mail, there was no way that the army I had standing on those stones for the last 3 days could survive that onslaught, given a longer preparation time like the 48 hours Jude suggested or even 24 hours would have been more than sufficient for me to pull all my troops off the stones or shove more on the stones.

 I'd rate this tourney an 8/10
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I decided to step back from the tournament in the very few days, mainly because I realized I could not compete. While the tournament is something we all enjoyed a lot, even me, I have a few reasons to dislike the way it was planned and developed. Just for future reference and feedback.

1) Limiting undead activity to night (server time) severely impaired European's ability to compete. Should I explain why?

2) Some races had advantages. Races with strong and cheap defending unit on plain had an advantage. 

3) Standing stones are not equally distributed. A few cities had big advantage from standing stones distribution.

4) Last wave was too big, compared with the rest of the tournament. Would be better to raise the attacker numbers steadily in the last week or so... I can think a lot of other way to manage this, but surely the "low attacks all the time and big punch" is only good to flat the competitors.
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Senza View Drop Down
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Points: 3 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Senza Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Jan 2012 at 13:03
1) Limiting undead activity to night (server time) severely impaired European's ability to compete. Should I explain why?

This time constraint was difficult for us on EST as well.  The troops had to be at the stones at the preset time in order to activate them. Unfortunately, it was during my work hours so I missed entering more days than not. 
I did have fun killing off some troops on the days I was able to play though :-)
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