Pre-Faction AI Launch Guide

That post was meant to be a tongue in cheek way of saying that it will take some time and a lot of effort to work out exactly what is affecting your rankings with each of the factions and by how much. When I was playing one of my cities had a great many attacks by The Tower. While I don't have the exact figures any more I would estimate that I probably lost around 100 units total spread over more than 20 attacks. Not something that worried me in any way and certainly nothing more than a very slight inconvenience. I lost many more troops and harvesters to attacks by the 'standard' NPCs.

I'm a bit confused by your point about the devs not having a track record of sucess and bad community engagement reviews and I'm responding to it only because it is in the same paragraph as the quote from me. How long has this game been going? In my opinion that is a big sucess and early reviews were just that - early reviws. My personal experience of support has been pretty outstanding apart from a couple of my very early tickets being ignored ("I'm trying to do something and it didn't work" style ones with no details of what I was trying to do and what did/did not happen). I'm not talking about since I developed DurcTools but way before that. As I said many times in GC - the more detailed info you can give in a ticket (I appreciate not everyone has the same abilities as I do to grab detailed info) the more likely you are to get a quick response.

Tens

All the information is available for public access.

Illy is a deep and complex game. While other people might get you by - it is usually a good idea to read up on the topic by yourself. All the information is out there - you just have to bother looking for and reading it.

For Faction play that is quite easy - as there is a forum where most posts (regarding rules) are from Faction play: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/politics-diplomacy_forum13.html

In addition there is a forum with the Faction play events/tournaments: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/events_forum49.html

There was a Faction Play Event some time ago that was supposed to test all the ranking algorithms: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/faction-play-event-5-books-of-the-arch-magi_topic10855.html

Jejune posted hints there on where to look - that is in my opinion a good overview of most of the available content (that is probably relevant for Faction AI)

Jejune wrote: Alliances have been given ample clues on how to increase their rankings with Factions. Here are some links to these clues and other guides on how the Alliance Ranking system Works: Alliance racial compositions of the player roster and its leaders. Alliance Capital and “Net Hub Modifiers” Diplomatic relationships between Alliances, or “DiploRels” Purchasing goods from Factions in NPC Trade Hubs Attacking a Faction in order to raise the Alliance’s ranking with its rival Factions. It is up to Alliances to experiment with the algorithm to determine which actions will increase rankings with the Factions they favor.

As an alternative you can find the links in the forums mentioned above or on Jejune's profile. All the information is easily available - you just have to bother with it.

For the event i wrote a summary for my alliance and came up with a (simple) strategy for the event. In case people are interested in that i am glad to post my alliance mail. I can also make a post summarizing Faction Play from my view/experience if people would like that.

BrianN wrote: I am however a little disappointed in the lack of a response from Jejune, but I got enough info from everyone to get by.

He answered your questions and he is active in GC (and reads your comments/feedback there) - what do you expect more?