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Tournament Terrain

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Gry View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote Gry Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 Feb 2022 at 19:53
There is already a weighted advantage to cav and to humans. It's huge. It also permeates all aspects of the game, if you consider the terraforming efforts over the years, and all guides to combat and city placement. Plains and cav, ergo humans. Some of us still make accounts in other races, and attempt to employ different troop types. But the motivation for this is limited.

One of the best things about the regular tourney implementation is that it provides a chance for smaller alliances to participate (especially with regional medals, though that's another topic). And it also gives a chance to experiment: with gear, and with different strategies against different opponents, using different troop types. Plains combat is unique, rather tedious, and almost exclusively cav. There is little chance to defend.

Buildings are the only terrain that really excludes cav. Note there are only a couple of Mountain squares this tourney as well. I think placing a limit at 1/4 of the total tiles for any terrain type, plus a requirement that all terrains have some minimum representation, should help a lot.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote eowan the short Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Feb 2022 at 02:13
What about, for each region, something along the lines of the electoral college in the US? (does this count as talking about politics?)
Each terrain starts with a weighting based on the number of tiles of each type within a region, then a flat number is added to each region to level out the weighting a bit.

To give an example, let's say in Middle Kingdom there are 20 plains tiles, 15 forest, 5 mountains, and a levelling constant of 5 is used. The weighting for the probability of each region would be 25 for plains, 20 for forest, and 10 for mountains.
If there are none of a tile in a region, then they don't get a boost.

The most common terrain in each region would still be the most likely, but the difference would be reduced. 
This is the thread that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. Some person started it, not knowing what it was, and we'll continue posting on it forever just because...
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tensmoor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 Feb 2022 at 10:12
I've updated the Terrains By Region page on IllyStuff to give a count of each of the combat terrains in the selected region and also removed any of the 'Unkown' regions that have no tiles in them.
This should help folks to get a better picture of what terrains are available in each region and why sometimes it seems that all the Tourney Squares are plains. Note that only those combat terrains found in the region are listed.

Hope this helps folks come up with some suggestions for SC on how the Tourney Square selector could be updated.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hyrdmoth Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12 Feb 2022 at 11:24
I think an advantage of the tourney square selection being entirely random is that, if there are lots of plains squares in Illyriad as a whole, then lots of tourney squares will be plains, and this means people get to practise on the tiles that PvP combat will take place on.

If you bias the selection of tourney squares away from plains, then this means it becomes a type of combat even more different to that in the rest of the game. Not sure if that is a great idea.

So, if we think that there are too many Plains squares in the tournaments, and that plains combat is not so much fun, then maybe there is something that needs to be done about plains combat across the board?

One tweak that might make Plains tourney squares a bit more interesting, and would change the dynamic on tourney squares more generally, would be to change the calculation of occupation time so that it only counts occupation time after the first x hours. This mirrors the experience of running a siege, where it takes some number of hours before the siege engines start firing at the city, and it would mean that the tactics for tournaments would have to change away from the Clear Square -> Occupy with nominal force paradigm.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Thirion Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Feb 2022 at 16:00
Originally posted by Hyrdmoth Hyrdmoth wrote:

I think an advantage of the tourney square selection being entirely random is that, if there are lots of plains squares in Illyriad as a whole, then lots of tourney squares will be plains, and this means people get to practise on the tiles that PvP combat will take place on.


Most of the players that actively participate in tournaments do not want to do PVP. Tournaments are an alternative to PVP and hunting - thus in my opinion tournaments and PVP should be balanced each on their own.

Originally posted by Hyrdmoth Hyrdmoth wrote:

If you bias the selection of tourney squares away from plains, then this means it becomes a type of combat even more different to that in the rest of the game. Not sure if that is a great idea.


Tournaments are by design different to PVP and hunting. In tournaments your region gets a random square. In PVP and hunting you know the terrain in advance and can act according to that. In addition the distance is random and the timeframe is a lot longer (~1d for a siege compared to 30d tournaments).

In my opinion having different options or even different ways of combat is a good thing though - as long as it is balanced decently well. You do what you enjoy most.

Originally posted by Hyrdmoth Hyrdmoth wrote:

So, if we think that there are too many Plains squares in the tournaments, and that plains combat is not so much fun, then maybe there is something that needs to be done about plains combat across the board?


I think the developers designed Illyriad to be played for a long time (in contrast to other browser games with servers). Thus they made defending a city easy and attacking a city hard. Which is in my opinion a valid design choice - but it should not affect tournaments as much as it does (and at the moment it does).

I do think both PVP and tournaments need balance improvements. Doubling the movement speed for all units would be a good start in my opinion.

Originally posted by Hyrdmoth Hyrdmoth wrote:

One tweak that might make Plains tourney squares a bit more interesting, and would change the dynamic on tourney squares more generally, would be to change the calculation of occupation time so that it only counts occupation time after the first x hours.


In my opinion this would be a horrible idea. Currently small players or players with little troops can make a difference by sending small attacks and getting time this way - which is good. That would be gone. In addition it would make tournaments a lot more dependant on luck - wether you catch a timeframe were the enemy is sending enough clear/attacks or not.

Defending is really expensive - thus your suggestion would probably have the opposite effect. You make one big defense to get some time and send big clears else to keep the opponent from getting time.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Thirion Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Feb 2022 at 16:27
In my opinion plains should be removed from the tournament tiles and buildings should be added.

Cav in tournaments is by far the most powerful attack unit (because of its speed) and it is already good on at least hills (and usually forest and small mountains too - depending on whats there).

Defense in Illyriad has 2 major disadvantages compared to attack: First the enemy usually knows what troops are used in big defenses and can send a counter unit. Second you do not know what attack units are coming - thus its a lot harder to skill commanders (in contrast to the heroism+division+Prestige attack for attack commanders).

In its current state it is expensive to defend on all terrain and it is hard to get efficient combats as defender.

Removing plains means the best case for attacks gets removed and with adding buildings a defendable (against cav) terrain is added. I would not completely change the current state but weaken the advantage the attacker has a bit.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tensmoor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Feb 2022 at 19:14
If plains are removed from the equation then there is a very real risk that tournaments will become the plaything of the large players only.

I agree that buildings would be a good adittion to the tournament terrains. The danger of any occupying force being destroyed by NPCs spawning on the tile would add a certain amount of random danger to the play.

Currently small players can capture a tile and start to accumulate time on that tile. The chances of them being able to get enough time to win a region on their own is almost non-existant however a small alliance will be competing for bragging rights against other similar sized alliances.Perhaps the devs could implement some sort of ranking system to win medals that would allow those small alliances to get a medal however such a system is not easy to design as I learned when trying to design the hunting tournament system.

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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Thirion Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Feb 2022 at 23:22
Originally posted by Tensmoor Tensmoor wrote:

If plains are removed from the equation then there is a very real risk that tournaments will become the plaything of the large players only.


Why?

I completely disagree with that statement and in my experience i would even say that it is the other way around.

You win plains (and most other squares) by sending cav clearing armies at regular intervals and small holds in between. The more attacks you can send the more time you get. Thus the limiting factor is usually the amount of commanders and clearing armies - more cities makes a huge difference there. You cannot occupy/attack when all your commanders are dead.

And yes, defense on non-plains is a bit less expensive - with good play (counter elite units) you can break those though. I have been sending to a lot of squares over the last years and when 2 alliances are fighting for squares big holds rarely hold longer than a few days. In my experience squares are usually decided by how many attacks were sent.


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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Tensmoor Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Feb 2022 at 16:42
I'm not talking about small players WINNING the tile. They do however have an opportunity to sneak in the odd few minutes of occupation by defeating a very small occupying army. By changing the structure of the tournaments so that it becomes more usual to hold a tile with larger armies you greatly reduce the chance for small players to do anything but send their troops to die with no chance of being able to get any occupation time. That in my opinion removes one aspect of the game from small players.
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Thirion Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15 Feb 2022 at 22:54
This tournament there are 2 (!) squares that you can defend with only slight losses as a defender (Small Mountain). Most of the other squares are "spam" squares that usually only have a small amount of troops on them or get cleared fast.

Originally posted by Tensmoor Tensmoor wrote:

By changing the structure of the tournaments so that it becomes more usual to hold a tile with larger armies


That would not be the case though. Instead of maybe 2-5 (out of 68?) defendable squares you would have probably around ~10-15 (out of 68) defendable squares - there would still be enough squares you can attack as a small player. A lot of small players participate in SMA/ITG - and there is a lot of other stuff to do (training commanders, getting military experience, scouting, reporting, ...)

Defending Forests and Hills is still inefficient and expensive. Just not as crazy bad as on plains.

I would even argue it would be the opposite. At the moment some players stack Plains - as there are not many good alternatives for defense troops. Giving some good alternatives would focus more troops on those squares and would probably reduce the numbers of big armies on inefficient terrain.


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