Implemented - Soliciting Thoughts on Alliance Barriers To Entry

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Soliciting Thoughts on Alliance Barriers To Entry

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: Implemented
Forum Description: Suggestions which have been implemented or resolved.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=122
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 09:14
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Soliciting Thoughts on Alliance Barriers To Entry

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Subject: Soliciting Thoughts on Alliance Barriers To Entry
Date Posted: 12 Mar 2010 at 20:18

NB. We are aware that there is not an "Alliance Guide" available, and so some of the information in here may come as news to many of you.

There will be a guide, but right now I'm asking for sensible, coherent and constructive suggestions from you, the playerbase.

THE MECHANICS

Being in an Alliance grants you certain protection from the world outside.

Neutral (non-Allied) players can attack you, of course, but other Alliances cannot unless they declare War.

Declaring war on an Alliance costs the aggressor Gold to do, which is called the "War Declaration Fee"

The War Declaration Fee increases with each additional, simultaneous war declared or in progress.

The War Declaration Fee is then reduced or increased further depending on the relative size difference (defined as the total Town Population of all cities in each alliance, as a measure of strength) between the Aggressor and the Aggressed. By way of example, a small alliance who declares war against a large alliance pays less than the "Base" War Declaration Fee. A large alliance who declares war against a small alliance pays more than the "Base" War Declaration Fee.

This fee is paid by the Agressor into "Escrow" which means that the NPC Council of Illyriad holds this sum of money.

The "Winner" of the inter-Alliance war is defined as the person who accepts an offer of peace from the other party (or the person who successfully sieges and razes - or captures - the Alliance Capital City).

The "Winner" of the war receives the Escrow amount, paid directly into his or her Alliance Coffers.

THE PROBLEM WE HAVE

The barrier to entry to forming an alliance is very low:

1,000 Gold,
a Level 3 Consulate, and
the Finesse skill

This means, in practical terms, that if there is absolutely *no* downside to individual players forming an "Alliance of One", simply to escape the ravages of other Alliances who prey on Neutrals, whereby for 1,000 Gold they at least get 24hrs notice and protection before an attack, and also force the Aggressing alliance to stump up a committment of Escrow.

We don't want a game populated by one-person Alliances, but we're equally happy to have a non-affiliated Independent Alliance of (effectively) solo players grouped together.

We don't want to set the Alliance bar too high so that people don't think it is achievable if a small group of players want to try it out, and that on additional (new) servers there aren't any Alliances being formed for weeks/months.

We're toying with a variety of ideas, such as :

Raising the required Alliance setup fee (though this isn't this simply pushing the problem to later weeks/months?)

Weekly Alliance Upkeep costs - although if implemented, we would want these to both scale upwards with the size of the alliance, but also to reduce a bit with each member, so that larger alliances get economies of scale and there's an incentive to grow (if this seems confusing, think eg 500 Gold per player per week, reducing by 3 gold per player per week for each additional player or something). This does, however, almost entirely rule out the idea of a large Alliance with zero taxation for a good few months.

Removing the "Capital City cannot be captured / razed" rule from any player in an Alliance, so that a player in an alliance gives up his right to "never lose it all"; although this may seem to provide a big disincentive against one-player alliances (and a big incentive to larger alliances to get well organized defences together) it's not so much the case - as there's still nothing to stop a large siege army sitting outside a fully-protected city and pummelling it every time the player tries to build something

Entirely removing (or greatly reducing) the protection amount provided by the Vault building to people in an Alliance, but increasing this amount back upwards (for every player in the alliance) with every new player the alliance recruits

Something with the Alliance Coffers (not sure what, but could be protection for resources or something else)

Remove the War Declaration fee entirely if it is being made in retaliation to a *known* hostile act from an Aggressor (ie if you capture someone's spies/scouts/burglars then your alliance can instantly declare war, for free, on the aggressing Alliance)

Any combination of the above

Any other suggestions from nearfield, leftfield, outfield or outerspace

Personally I lean towards the Vault option at the moment, but as a team we're entirely willing to listen to other thoughts.

It's something we need to fix sooner rather than later, before it becomes a real issue as the player count expands.

Go for it.

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Replies:

Posted By: bow locks
Date Posted: 12 Mar 2010 at 21:18

scale the deccing fee to the size of the alliance, also the amount of protection.

make alliances of less than 10 people almost free to dec and also with a reduced warning time.

penalise, over time, alliances of less than 5 people - massively.

reward large alliances - give them huge central vaults, where each member can store vast riches, protected by the capital.

i didnt know about this escrow war winning fee. thats a little odd. doesnt this make wars drag on, or do alliances pay weekly for war? war fees should be time based, and increase exponentially.

NO to alliance upkeep costs, unless there are alliance benefits as per the vault.

NO to the hostile act bit - how will you judge it, and hostilities are very restricted now.

Bow

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:19

Thanks for replying, bow.

bow locks wrote:

scale the deccing fee to the size of the alliance, also the amount of protection.

Agreed

bow locks wrote:

make alliances of less than 10 people almost free to dec and also with a reduced warning time.

We're unwilling to do this, tbh - it means that after a certain point (that we might already be close to), new players to the game simply wouldn't form alliances under these circumstances unless they can whip together 10 people straight up. We don't want 1 person alliances, but equally we think a small alliance of up to 10 people should be feasible with penalties.

bow locks wrote:

penalise, over time, alliances of less than 5 people - massively.

reward large alliances - give them huge central vaults, where each member can store vast riches, protected by the capital.

We think the semi-finalised proposal (at the bottom of this post) does both these, to a limited but still meaningful extent. There might be some scope for very large alliances to build special buildings at a later stage in the Alliance Capital city that perform some useful functions like this.

bow locks wrote:

i didnt know about this escrow war winning fee. thats a little odd. doesnt this make wars drag on, or do alliances pay weekly for war? war fees should be time based, and increase exponentially.

Wars dragging on is good, and we like this, generally.

We want people to think carefully about who they wardec, and we want suing for peace / surrender to be a meaningful act. I hadn't, frankly, considered weekly fees for war in this context.

bow locks wrote:

NO to alliance upkeep costs, unless there are alliance benefits as per the vault.

See below.

bow locks wrote:

NO to the hostile act bit - how will you judge it, and hostilities are very restricted now.

Agreed.

CHANGE PROPOSAL

1. Keep the Alliance Foundation fee, but increase it to 5,000 Gold

2. Alliances start with a 50% penalty to resources protected by the Vault, rising by 5% per Alliance member after the Founder. So in a one-person Alliance, that player has a Vault that protects only 50% of normal, and in a 5-person Alliance, each player's Vault would protect 70% of normal. At 11 members, all Alliance member Vaults behave as usual.

3. Alliances will have "token" upkeep costs for each member, payable weekly from the central Alliance Coffer. Such cost would probably be around 50 Gold per member per week, as we don't want to prohibit zero taxation alliances.

4. The Alliance Coffer (where taxes go) is secure, 100%, from Diplomatic unit theft, raids and everything hostile. The only hostile way of getting Gold out of the Alliance Capital's Coffer would be to capture the Alliance Capital City. However, the transfer of Gold to and from the Alliance Coffer to external cities (eg tax collectors etc) are subject to the normal Blockading rules etc.

We think the above 4 proposals cover most everything we are trying to ensure happens with the Alliance mechanics, and we don't get too many one-person alliances (unless they are able to adequately defend themselves!).

We intend to release this proposal in Monday's edition of The Herald, with 1 week notice before the changes come into effect; so that players have a bit of time to adjust their alliance strategy/recruitment/whatever. Any new Alliance being founded from Monday onwards will be made aware of these impending changes on the "Found New Alliance" screen.

This is everyone's last chance to stick their oar(s) into this topic!

Best wishes,

GM Stormcrow

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Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:30

GM Stormcrow wrote:

3. Alliances will have "token" upkeep costs for each member, payable weekly from the central Alliance Coffer. Such cost would probably be around 50 Gold per member per week, as we don't want to prohibit zero taxation alliances.

Quoting myself \o/

To add something here... The "token" cost is to help enourage that a semi-healthy Alliance Coffer is maintained at the capital city, and that "abandoned" alliances ultimately disappear.

If the Alliance Capital City Coffer is unable to cover the weekly Alliance fee when it comes due, the Alliance will automatically disband - scattering the members to the 4 winds, losing all outstanding escrow, and cancelling all diplomatic relationships. This also means that a Sieged/Blockaded Alliance Capital City with low coffers is in *a lot* of trouble.

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Posted By: Wuzzel
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:36

mmm
What if people make alts?
Like i make 2 alts.
I ask my friend to make 2 alts, i ask other friends to make 2 alts.
Total of 11.
Only you are active, the rest are not active.

Like Rescendent proposed, maybe a population requirement.
Dont know what amount would be ok though.

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:40

Wuzzel wrote:

mmm
What if people make alts?
Like i make 2 alts.
I ask my friend to make 2 alts, i ask other friends to make 2 alts.
Total of 11.
Only you are active, the rest are not active.

Like Rescendent proposed, maybe a population requirement.
Dont know what amount would be ok though.

Sure - if a 5 (actual) player alliance makes 10 account between them, then we're not opposed to that.

I never saw rescendent's suggestion. Where would this be found?

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Posted By: Wuzzel
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:49

He said it on IRC.
You should visit there more often :)

Also

4. The Alliance Coffer (where taxes go) is secure, 100%, from Diplomatic unit theft, raids and everything hostile. The only hostile way of getting Gold out of the Alliance Capital's Coffer would be to capture the Alliance Capital City. However, the transfer of Gold to and from the Alliance Coffer to external cities (eg tax collectors etc) are subject to the normal Blockading rules etc.

Capital Cities can be attacked, but never occupied and conquered by an enemy. They may destroy all your buildings, but you will always be able to rebuild.

The second quote comes from the starting guide part one (tried to find part two, but never saw it haha :)).

Doesnt these 2 things contradict eachother?
You saw we can get the alliance coffer by captureing the Alliance Capital City.
But in the starting guide you say that Capital Cities never be occupied and conquered.

ps.
I spammed you with more petitions :P.

Posted By: bow locks
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:49

why is wars dragging on good?

wars drag on because the contestants enter a 'meh' mode (like we are now, h? vs da). ending the war becomes more of a pain than continuing it, which is odd.

wars are a state of unrest and expense - only entered into at great risk for the chance of great advantage.

allowing them to be easy and drag on dilutes this.

Posted By: Diablito
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 20:52

War is pretty f**king boring at the moment.

Posted By: LauraChristine
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 21:06

Diablito wrote:

War is pretty f**king boring at the moment.

Agreed

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Cake

Posted By: bow locks
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 21:12

i'm agreeing with diabolitico again :(

and laura, of course :)

Posted By: Wuzzel
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 21:19

wow 2 more alliance made today...

Alliances

	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance_find.asp?ExcludeOwnAlliance=0&pageindex=1&JumpToAllianceID=7&orderby=1 - Name	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance_find.asp?ExcludeOwnAlliance=0&pageindex=1&JumpToAllianceID=7&orderby=4 - Ticker	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance_find.asp?ExcludeOwnAlliance=0&pageindex=1&JumpToAllianceID=7&orderby=5 - Founded	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance_find.asp?ExcludeOwnAlliance=0&pageindex=1&JumpToAllianceID=7&orderby=3 - Members	Pop
1	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=1 - Harmless?	H?	25FEB10	28	6248
2	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=7 - The White Company	White	08MAR10	42	4300
3	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=2 - Danger	DA	27FEB10	16	2237
4	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=9 - Webfusion Coalition	WFC	12MAR10	13	1035
5	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=3 - Daegutantes	DGTNT	04MAR10	6	778
6	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=4 - Knights who say Ni	Ni	05MAR10	5	591
7	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=5 - chartalliance	cae	06MAR10	9	588
8	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=6 - Illyriads Chosen	Fate	07MAR10	5	412
9	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=11 - WOLVES OF THE PLAINS	WOTP	13MAR10	5	270
10	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=8 - Degeneration X	D-X	12MAR10	3	229
11	http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_alliance.asp?DisplayAllianceID=10 - Saoirse	Sao	13MAR10	2	194

mmm popsize of 1000 is fair?
As requirement?

Posted By: Diablito
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 21:24

The way you spell my name could be interpeted as an act of war, just saying.

Posted By: rescendent
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 21:51

Wuzzel wrote:

mmm popsize of 1000 is fair?
As requirement?

Would make it hard to start an Alliance as no-one has pop 1000 in town yet, and you can only start an Alliance with 1 town (and then invite others)...

But perhaps a penalty based on average population or median population.

E.g. if median town pop < 400

vault effects - (400 - median town pop) /400 %

So if middle population sized town was a 0 pop inactive vault is at 0% effects

at 200 pop it would be 50% effective etc.

Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 21:56

I can see how the aim is for a negative feedback loop on imbalances, but in my opinion the whole system of alliance formation and warfare is seriously flawed. There are more flaws and possible exploits than any number of tweaks could correct. I don't want to proliferate underhanded ideas, but some obvious examples:

- A large alliance wants war against a smaller alliance. Most of its member leave, carry out their war, and return when done...this costs them nothing but a return cooldown, which should be no problem at all. The real spoils of any war are plundered resources/equipment and expanded production capacity--solid growth in capital and revenue...not mere gold sitting in a bank.

- A large alliance wants a war but doesn't want to be hit by individuals (not that that's likely to be a real threat). So they split into smaller alliances, and one of them declares war...the rest heavily equip and reinforce the portion that is at war. Most of the cities involved are immune to counterattack unless the victim alliance disbands or fronts the escrow for war against several similar-sized alliances. For that matter, why not simply remain a coalition of small alliances all along?

Aside from the status label and any trepidation it invokes in individual players, being a member of an alliance offers no compelling benefit beyond what the players can provide for themselves already. External forums and communication/collaboration tools are the lifeblood of an alliance, and who's to say how many parties are subsidiaries of the true alliance? Taxes can be sent voluntarily, if desired. Most roles are social in nature and better supported by external forums providing an arbitrary variety of access rules.

Unless a much more imaginative and flexible system can be worked out, I think we're better off with alliance tags staying as they traditionally are...nothing more than a public statement of allegiance or pride. Otherwise, it all smells like the patent system. I good-intentioned idea that's more useful to the parties it purports to curb.

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 22:30

Wuzzel wrote:

He said it on IRC.
You should visit there more often :)

Partially because I'm not super-interested in handing out my public IP address to people who might have different agendas. Not saying anything about this particular IRC channel, it's just that I'm very familiar with the metagame and I'm too lazy to always use an IP anonymizer when I want to chat with the playerbase.

Secondly, I don't want to make the IRC channel any kind of official channel whatsoever. By all means I applaud (and have done, publically) the IRC channel (and will in the future for other channel, forums, wikis and so on). But not every player will use them - and so, if people have things to contribute that they want to come to the attention of the playerbase, the GMs and the game dev team, then this forum is the appropriate place to do it.

Wuzzel wrote:

The second quote comes from the starting guide part one (tried to find part two, but never saw it haha :)).

Doesnt these 2 things contradict eachother?

Of course they do. Which is why this is a change proposal for further discussion.

bow locks wrote:

why is wars dragging on good?

wars drag on because the contestants enter a 'meh' mode (like we are now, h? vs da). ending the war becomes more of a pain than continuing it, which is odd.

wars are a state of unrest and expense - only entered into at great risk for the chance of great advantage.

allowing them to be easy and drag on dilutes this.

I guess I was mistakenly conflating "wars dragging on" with "long wars with a variety of individual and combined force strategies and tactics, out of which someone eventually emerges victorious, feeling elated at the journey that brought them to this point".

I want the latter, not 'dragging' wars that people see as tedious.

So, it's a fair point, see below.

username wrote:

Diablito wrote:

War is pretty f**king boring at the moment.

Agreed

What can we do to change this from a game mechanic perspective - suggestions welcome!

rescendent wrote:

Wuzzel wrote:

mmm popsize of 1000 is fair?
As requirement?

Would make it hard to start an Alliance as no-one has pop 1000 in town yet, and you can only start an Alliance with 1 town (and then invite others)...

But perhaps a penalty based on average population or median population.

E.g. if median town pop < 400

vault effects - (400 - median town pop) /400 %

So if middle population sized town was a 0 pop inactive vault is at 0% effects

at 200 pop it would be 50% effective etc.

I'm not entirely convinced that making things less transparent and more complicated is the way forward. Convince me otherwise.

HonoredMule wrote:

... lots of considered and thoughtful stuff...

Unless a much more imaginative and flexible system can be worked out, I think we're better off with alliance tags staying as they traditionally are...nothing more than a public statement of allegiance or pride. Otherwise, it all smells like the patent system. I good-intentioned idea that's more useful to the parties it purports to curb.

Exactly the way I'm beginning to think now.

I don't want to introduce complication for complication's sake, and I'd rather cut things we've put in place that are unnecessarily complicated.

So, how about:

Drop the concepts of War, War Pending and Peace
Keep NAPs and Confeds
Allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else, whenever they like without prior warning, making it very much each man or woman for his or herself. People who wish the 'protection' of lots of warning can always settle their second cities far away from the centre.
Drop the concept of Escrow
Drop alliance fees (except maybe a token setup fee)
Continue with Alliance Forum development and Alliance data sharing to provide some ingame benefit for alliances
Drop Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances

ie, return things pretty much to Alliances being a statement of "These are the guys who I hang with, and the game lets us share some ingame data and private thoughts in a forum", rather than trying to shoehorn possibly (and sometimes actually) flawed Alliance mechanics into a workable, non-exploitable structure.

I'm fine with the above (it certainly makes our lives simpler!), and doesn't it clear out all the potential exploits and things we'll fight against constantly?

Whilst we're on it... why exactly do we provide player Capital Cities with protection from being wiped out? The difference to a particular player who is being a) wiped off the map or b) sieged and leveled every time he or she upgrades a Farmyard to start again is fairly illusory...

Thoughts on a postcard!

EDIT: forgot to keep NAPs and Confeds :)

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Posted By: rescendent
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 22:55

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Wuzzel wrote:

The second quote comes from the starting guide part one (tried to find part two, but never saw it haha :)).
Doesnt these 2 things contradict eachother?

Of course they do. Which is why this is a change proposal for further discussion.

I think capital city protection should still be in force; but the Alliance could be disbanded by:

GM Stormcrow wrote:

If the Alliance Capital City Coffer is unable to cover the weekly Alliance fee when it comes due, the Alliance will automatically disband - scattering the members to the 4 winds, losing all outstanding escrow, and cancelling all diplomatic relationships. This also means that a Sieged/Blockaded Alliance Capital City with low coffers is in *a lot* of trouble.

So the Alliance vault would act as the Alliance buffer to stop Alliance being destroyed.

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Drop the concepts of NAPs, Confeds, War, War Pending and Peace
Allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else, whenever they like without prior warning, making it very much each man or woman for his or herself. People who wish the 'protection' of lots of warning can always settle their second cities far away from the centre.

I quite like the in-game formal acknowledgements of states and enforced non-attack etc; if people use exploits to get round it - that one thing and may cause the Alliances to go to war. Dropping it altogether however is just means you can achieve the same without exploiting... :-/

Also the formal states make other Alliances aware of what's going on in the Alliance diplomacy; dropping it might mean it only happens in private - which would me no-one gets a full picture of the "state of play"...

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Drop Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances

I like the idea of Alliance taxation; with the opportunity of blockading Alliance capitals and intercepting these taxes and collapsing Alliance's by running them out of taxes. Might be something that could go on Alliance "trophies" mentioned in the dev list?

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 23:03

rescendent wrote:

I think capital city protection should still be in force;

But why...? in practical terms there is no difference between a perma-sieged city and a destroyed city.

rescendent wrote:

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Drop the concepts of NAPs, Confeds, War, War Pending and Peace
Allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else, whenever they like without prior warning, making it very much each man or woman for his or herself. People who wish the 'protection' of lots of warning can always settle their second cities far away from the centre.

Sry, I amended my original post whilst you were making this one. There's no reason why we can't have formal "states" of war and peace. They just take effect immediately.

And, as amended above, NAPs and Confeds could remain as is.

rescendent wrote:

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Drop Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances

But that'd happen anyway. ie, as players send stuff around the alliance to each other - stuff they choose to send ie Wood, Iron and Swords rather than just Gold - it can still be blockaded etc.

In many of the other MMO strats I've played in the past, alliances usually appoint an alliance quartermaster, who specialises in "trade and storage", and is responsible for cajoling alliance members into sending him or her resources, which he then distributes out to the "needy" alliance members himself.

It'll happen (albeit it in a more distributed sense) whether we provide an enforced sole-resource-type mechanic or not.

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Posted By: rescendent
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 23:22

GM Stormcrow wrote:

rescendent wrote:

I think capital city protection should still be in force;

But why...? in practical terms there is no difference between a perma-sieged city and a destroyed city.

Would need a mechanic to handle players essentially being townless then. Also since research may be high a perma-sieged could still be used as a diplo intelligence gatherer or "listening post" near that location

rescendent wrote:

Sry, I amended my original post whilst you were making this one. There's no reason why we can't have formal "states" of war and peace. They just take effect immediately.

Ah, fair enough.

Other points you brought me round on :-)

Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 13 Mar 2010 at 23:44

You do your side of the pond credit, Stormcrow, by giving serious consideration for ideas contrary to your own and not falling victim to "not invented here syndrome" or "the engineer's solution" (just add complexity/details).

Of course I'm just one of those insanely nit-picky people, so naturally I have more to say. Smile

GM Stormcrow wrote:

So, how about:

Drop the concepts of NAPs, Confeds, War, War Pending and Peace
Allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else, whenever they like without prior warning, making it very much each man or woman for his or herself. People who wish the 'protection' of lots of warning can always settle their second cities far away from the centre.
Drop the concept of Escrow
Drop alliance fees (except maybe a token setup fee)
Continue with Alliance Forum development and Alliance data sharing to provide some ingame benefit for alliances
Drop Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances

On points 1 and 2:
- I'd like to still see the in-game ability to announce loyalties and enmity...i.e. show non-aggression/defensive/offensive pacts and war declarations, as you do now. They would just be for informational purposes, except that pacts should still prevent non-secret military attacks, again as they do now. Making war declarations auto-propagate to a party's offensive pacts (barring a conflict with other pacts, which should just nullify both) would be a nice touch, and might prevent them from being taken lightly.
- A system that does not prevent any interaction with any player not labeled an ally by some connection should still be safe from exploitation. But there's value in maintaining some protection from people who label themselves your friend. No one should really be able to expect security from effective strangers, but that's why we engage in diplomatic relations. Then, having forged friendly relations, we do hope for some sense of security at least within those relationships. Most of us can never be truly sure of our allies, and the game would be a lot less fun if we all were. That said, forcing the dissolution of pacts to require an early announcement (like the current 24hour war system) alongside inability to openly attack each other would invest just a little bit of commitment and prevent them from being entered into lightly. This would in turn inflate their value and make everyone take diplomacy just a little more seriously. As alliance leaders, such structure also helps make sure members toe the line to some degree, lest meta-game forces have completely free reign to undermine positive relations.

On point 3:
- Yup, I agree. Escrow really looked like a novel and beneficial idea to me at first, but now I don't think it can very easily be made to work at all.

On point 4:
- I'm in favor of a token fee, if only to encourage isolated players to engage others and at least get up to their ankles in the meta-game. Players who never look outside their city walls are really missing out. (And I'm a very anti-social person who's saying this.)

On point 6:
- Alliance taxation is already optional, so I have no problem with it being included so long as the protection of all funds gathered remains limited by some factor that scales appropriately...such as the sum of all alliance members' vault levels. To be honest, I really liked the idea of taxation because it encourages a player to invest into his relationship with the alliance, forging a bond and possibly a genuine symbiotic relationship.

----

While we're talking about exploits, there are a couple other points I'd also like to raise.
- Settlers require population, and I'm under the impression that winning a battle against a non-founding city makes it automatically change hands. The population required for the next settlement increases substantially for each next city. But what about conquering cities? What if one player is being seeded by several others? The others each found a new city...and the beneficiary just conquers them all and becomes a super-player just like that? Will there be a population requirement to conquer a city? Will there at least be a cooldown before conquered cities contribute to that population? I see huge opportunity for a multi scam if these details are not handled carefully.

- The second is of far lesser importance, but I want to mention it anyway. It's the ability to send "unauthorized" attacks. This adds a lot of welcome nuance to the game, but players can just follow attack on the map back to their home or at least to see their direction of departure and start sleuthing from there. Players would usually be able at least to see the attack did not originate from where it claimed to originate. This deceptive capability would be much more powerful if two features were later added, perhaps as new research items:
a) the ability to take a roundabout route--takes longer, but direction of departure is intentionally misleading.
b) the ability to hit on a schedule--leave now, wander about but stay within range of the attack window, land at the specified time (likely alongside others' scheduled attacks as well) but from a non-deterministic direction.
In both cases, the target's ability to recognize the party as hostile could depend upon variable factors such as the presence of scout units occupying the surrounding countryside. And in both cases, friendly forces are away for longer--potentially much longer--so the attacker who really wants privacy takes his chances.

Posted By: GM ThunderCat
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 00:09

This is more GM Stormcrow's area of expertise so I'll let him comment - but just on your point of conquering cities:

HonoredMule wrote:

- Settlers require population, and I'm under the impression that winning a battle against a non-founding city makes it automatically change hands. The population required for the next settlement increases substantially for each next city. But what about conquering cities? What if one player is being seeded by several others? The others each found a new city...and the beneficiary just conquers them all and becomes a super-player just like that? Will there be a population requirement to conquer a city? Will there at least be a cooldown before conquered cities contribute to that population? I see huge opportunity for a multi scam if these details are not handled carefully.

The ablity to seize a city has the same population requirement to settling - doesn't mean you can "raise it to the ground" though [weird phrase]

Also the newly seized city won't be fully operational at first - as clearly the population won't be fully on your side to begin with and you'll have to crush those resistence cells; also they may be emaciated from the seige etc.

Naturally we will put a more detailed guide to seige mechanics in the help which will reveal all

Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 04:54

GM ThunderClap wrote:

The ablity to seize a city has the same population requirement to settling - doesn't mean you can "raise it to the ground" though [weird phrase]

I think you mean "raze" - http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/raze
/pedant

GM ThunderClap wrote:

Naturally we will put a more detailed guide to seige mechanics in the help which will reveal all

This is going to be very important very soon - so the guide will be much appreciated.

Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 05:08

With regard to the alliance mechanics, some thoughts:

I actually liked the idea of needing to declare war, etc and the idea of needing to pay for such a declaration especially in the large alliance declaring on the small alliance situation. Ofc that leaves some incentive to form conglomerates of small alliances rather than large ones. So you need sufficient reason to declare confederacy and then the capability to declare on an entire confederacy to reduce the escrow fee paid.

You can quell the exploits to some extent by increasing the personal cooldown timers such that leaving an alliance takes a full 24 hours to become effective and that this action is visible to other players.

So, if the war is already hot the player leaving is still attackable for the next 24 hours, and they cannot attack if their alliance cannot (during the 24 war warm-up timer for example) until they are completely out of the alliance.

Messing with the vault level for small alliances is fine, as is instituting a hefty fee for alliances below a certain membership threshold (>2 at least).

Being able to have one city on the map that is not able to be taken is good. being wiped off the map completely is unlikely to persuade someone to stay in game. The city that is "invulnerable" to conquering doesn't need to be the original one though it could just be whichever one is left till last.

After all if they want to start again they can always quit and re-roll with a new name.

Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 05:27

Psst. The phrase "Raise it to the ground" probably sounds weird because of the replacement of "raze" with "raise." Wink

And it gets worse...after that unfortunate homonym, there's still the redundancy of "to the ground." Raze means to level, demolish completely, bring to the ground.

Anyway, my concern isn't about the outcome of legitimate conquests, but rather what happens when a player has a bunch of sock-puppet accounts that want to hand over cities, possibly already built up, with as little resistance as possible.

Posted By: Diablito
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 08:43

Then my pipe smoking companion will ban their asses faster than you can say "tobacco is good for you".

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 10:35

Ok all, I've slept on it a bit and this is now the modified position I'm considering:

HonoredMule wrote:

On points 1 and 2:
- I'd like to still see the in-game ability to announce loyalties and enmity...i.e. show non-aggression/defensive/offensive pacts and war declarations, as you do now. They would just be for informational purposes, except that pacts should still prevent non-secret military attacks, again as they do now. Making war declarations auto-propagate to a party's offensive pacts (barring a conflict with other pacts, which should just nullify both) would be a nice touch, and might prevent them from being taken lightly.

I agree (with NAPs and Confederations), and there's no reason why we can't keep a state of war as well. I think you meant "war declarations auto-propagate to a party's defensive pacts"? Again, which I support. Or do you mean both ways? ie One member of a Confed declares War so all members do, and similarly if one member has war declared on him then the aggressor effectively declares war on the whole confederation.

HonoredMule wrote:

But there's value in maintaining some protection from people who label themselves your friend.... forcing the dissolution of pacts to require an early announcement (like the current 24hour war system) alongside inability to openly attack each other would invest just a little bit of commitment and prevent them from being entered into lightly.

Again, I agree with this.

HonoredMule wrote:

On point 3:
- Yup, I agree. Escrow really looked like a novel and beneficial idea to me at first, but now I don't think it can very easily be made to work at all.

I think we can keep Escrow simply as an optional offering for sweetening eg NAP and Confed offers.

HonoredMule wrote:

On point 4:
- I'm in favor of a token fee, if only to encourage isolated players to engage others and at least get up to their ankles in the meta-game. Players who never look outside their city walls are really missing out. (And I'm a very anti-social person who's saying this.)

Me too.

HonoredMule wrote:

On point 6:
- Alliance taxation is already optional, so I have no problem with it being included so long as the protection of all funds gathered remains limited by some factor that scales appropriately...such as the sum of all alliance members' vault levels. To be honest, I really liked the idea of taxation because it encourages a player to invest into his relationship with the alliance, forging a bond and possibly a genuine symbiotic relationship.

You're, again, right! If the collection mechanic is there (and now appears to be working Wink

) there is no reason to get rid of it as it is already optional for Alliances to participate in - but we need to find the right level of protection. I want it to be simple (and CPU cycle efficient), and getting every member of alliance's vault data does the former but not the latter. So I'm considering a flat protection amount of around 1,000 Gold protected per alliance member.

HonoredMule wrote:

Will there be a population requirement to conquer a city? Will there at least be a cooldown before conquered cities contribute to that population?

GM ThunderClap wrote:

Also the newly seized city won't be fully operational at first - as clearly the population won't be fully on your side to begin with and you'll have to crush those resistence cells; also they may be emaciated from the seige etc.

ThunderClap is spot on.

The population requirement for conquering a city is the same as for settling a new city. If you don't meet the pop requirement you will only have the option to raze.

Conquered cities will contribute to the overall population level of the Conqueror, but will be severely damaged during the Conquering phase (ie large population reductions via buildings levelling down).

Essentially, conquering a city has the advantage that you do not need to produce time- and gold-consuming settlers, but you do still have to meet the population requirements, and you do have to win the battles. You also get a head start - with existing buildings remaining in place but substantially levelled down. Of course, this might not be much of a head start if the buildings built here are not what you want (ie if you have a specialist purpose for the city, and so need to demolish some stuff. Whilst it is the case at the moment that there is a plot for pretty much one of every building you can build, this won't be the case for long).

The Population requirement for each new city scales geometrically, and we think that about the maximum number of cities an end-game player will be able to reach is around 12-14.

KillerPoodle wrote:

You can quell the exploits to some extent by increasing the personal cooldown timers such that leaving an alliance takes a full 24 hours to become effective and that this action is visible to other players.

So, if the war is already hot the player leaving is still attackable for the next 24 hours, and they cannot attack if their alliance cannot (during the 24 war warm-up timer for example) until they are completely out of the alliance.

Trouble is that we already have exploits going the other way.

ie. Player A (not in an alliance) uses his neutrality to attack Player B (who is in an alliance)
Player A then immediately joins (or forms) an alliance, forcing Player B to declare War, pay escrow to do so, and giving Player A 24hrs of protection before war commences.

Changing the cooldown timer from 6hrs to 24hrs etc also doesn't really alleviate the problem very much. We're all thinking in terms of 6hrs at the moment because that is the time fairly much set by the military troop distance between all the current player cities.

There will come a point where 2 players are 12/24/36/48hrs away from each other, and there's (especially with the Stealth / Covert Ops skills) ample exploitable opportunity for one player to heavily kick another player and be out of whatever anti-exploit timer we have put in place before the retaliatory troops arrive to extract vengeance.

KillerPoodle wrote:

Being able to have one city on the map that is not able to be taken is good. being wiped off the map completely is unlikely to persuade someone to stay in game. The city that is "invulnerable" to conquering doesn't need to be the original one though it could just be whichever one is left till last.

Is what we originally considered but is too exploitable given that Siege Encampments & Blockades need to be set up on an unoccupied square next to the city being sieged or bloackaded. ie you could make a 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 block of cities, with all the outer cities being "semi-throwaway" alt cities as invulnerable capitals, thereby making all the cities inside the ring unsiegable and unblockadable.

I'm not against leaving the "your first city is unconquerable" rule in place if people still want it, and I guess it does provide some sort of protection in that a player who want to force you out of the game would need to permanently maintain a siege camp next to your city (thereby using up at least one army slot, and having his troops committed externally). So I was wrong when I said there was no difference between being razed to the ground and perma-sieged. There is a difference, although it might seem slightly moot to the targetted player.

So, the modified position is:

Drop the concept of War Pending, the 24hr War Pending timer and War Dec Fees
Keep NAPs and Confeds, and Escrow can be offered for these
Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses. The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only.
Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning.
Increase Alliance Setup Fee to 5000
Drop Alliance upkeep fees
Continue with Alliance Forum development and Alliance data sharing to provide some ingame benefit for alliances
Keep Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances for those who wish to use them
Alliance Coffer to protect 1K gold per alliance member

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Posted By: rescendent
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 11:29

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning.

Maybe have it so initial state between Alliances is neutral as no diplomatic relations exist and you have to actively declare peace? Like actively declaring war?

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 15:49

rescendent wrote:

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning.

Maybe have it so initial state between Alliances is neutral as no diplomatic relations exist and you have to actively declare peace? Like actively declaring war?

Think that's covered by NAPs.

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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 16:41

rescendent wrote:

GM Stormcrow wrote:

Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning.

Maybe have it so initial state between Alliances is neutral as no diplomatic relations exist and you have to actively declare peace? Like actively declaring war?

That sounds to me essentially like what a NAP (non-aggression-pact) does--actively declares peace and then enforces it so long as it's in place.

GM Stormcrow wrote:

I agree (with NAPs and Confederations), and there's no reason why we can't keep a state of war as well. I think you meant "war declarations auto-propagate to a party's defensive pacts"? Again, which I support. Or do you mean both ways? ie One member of a Confed declares War so all members do, and similarly if one member has war declared on him then the aggressor effectively declares war on the whole confederation.

The particular terminology was meant to imply different levels of commitment in assistance. A defensive pact was meant to imply that promise was being made to reinforce each other's cities or provide economic assistance during wars in which only one of the parties was directly participating. Offensive pact was meant to to imply a promise to attack the other party's enemy during war, meaning both parties would have to be at war with that enemy. For this reason I suggested that war declarations propagate for this type of pact only.

All this is moot if diplomacy does not support these two agreements distinct from one another--if they are lumped together as "confederacy." For that reason, you could really treat this section as a separate feature request, and not a high-priority one. However, regardless of any other game mechanic built or rebuilt, one thing should remain constant: Military forces, once launched, if not recalled by the player that launched them, should not turn back for any reason other than diplomatic subterfuge (i.e. some future tech that allows creating falsified return orders). Once the chips are on the table, they should play out their hand. In real life, war is easy to start and hard to stop. Modeling real life gives us all much more predictability and safety from surprising exploits.

And it was probably rather straightforward, but I'll provide an example just to clarify how I meant for conflicts to be resolved. Suppose A and B have a defensive pact, and A and C have an offensive pact among others. B and C have a non-aggression pact with D. A declares war on D:

B's non-aggression pact with D holds, and so does their defensive pact with A. B is expected to reinforce A's cities against D, or equip A's war against D...whatever they agree amongst themselves. Neither B nor D are considered to be "attacking" each other.
A's war against D propagates to C through the offensive pact. But C has a non-aggression pact with D. C cannot both fight and not fight D, so it becomes Switzerland. All C's diplomatic relations between both A and D are canceled. Even though A had other agreements with C, they put C in an impossible position, and because of this all bets are off. Consider it a boilerplate breach of contract.

On the other hand, if D declares war on A:

B's defensive pact with A holds, and B's non-aggression pact with D holds. B is expected to assist A's defense or economic output, and B and D are still unable to directly attack each other without first removing the NAP and waiting on its true expiration time.
D's war against A still propagates to C and C is now expected to attack D on A's behalf. The same conflict exists, but this time it is not A's fault, so the offensive pact, being stronger than a NAP, holds. D forfeits their NAP with C. It may also be prudent in this scenario for D's NAP with C to truly expire immediately--in other words, the war-propagating pact overrides both weaker agreements and the cool-down from recently canceled weaker agreements.

Regarding Escrow: I had forgotten how it could be used to just strengthen the level of commitment being shown in diplomacy. Escrow in war mechanics is broken, but I agree that escrow in actual agreements between parties is fine, and after all, people can either use it or not.

Regarding vault protection: You'd think being agreeable with so much that I say would make me happy. Well, I'm very happy, but there's still "one more thing." Sleepy

What about using a cache table that only sums vault levels per alliance once per few hours or day? Using a hard per-player value is ok, but not great...it infers extra protection to undeveloped masses and demerit to small, mature alliances. It's not a big deal, but I just can't see it putting that much strain on the event queue. The values could even be maintained as just a hash table in memory, or could be calculated only when theft of alliance property potentially occurs. I won't presume to know what kind of architectural constraints you're having to encounter (I'm a LAMP guy, personally), but if it could be managed, it would be nice. If there's another value more easily accessible, such as sum of player population (already maintained on the alliance score listing), that would also work.

Constants trouble me, because we ~~always~~ often end up with problems around factors of 0, 1, and arbitrarily large n. For example, for a static 1000 value one-man alliances still gain substantial protection for the one-time cost of alliance setup, possibly funded by a friend. This becomes a bigger problem if you ever want to allow alliance protection to cover equipment as well as gold. Alliances consisting of many sock-puppet accounts would become someone's personal Cayman Islands, and even real alliances may be tempted to stuff the roster a little. Trying to root out cheaters is a necessity no matter what, but rooting out motive to cheat is more thoroughly effective. Anyway, if you still disagree, I'll shut up...I've made my viewpoint sufficiently clear, and I'll know you've given me as much consideration as you can.

Regarding conquering cities: Maybe I'm missing something. Every response so far has carried the implicit assumption that conquered cities must be severely damaged husks. Does that mean that they must be conquered via siege, or reduced to a certain population level? Or maybe the original population migrates out and some other factors force the rebuilding process to be slow? Because my concern is over a well developed-but non-defended city. For example, someone builds up a city to about 500 population but does not defend it, and an all-out attack by a handful of first-tier military units gains the city. Can someone clarify whether this is a possibility in any form?

The upper bound placed on growth by number of cities is a very interesting factor, and I look forward to seeing how it affects gameplay. I don't think that is something that can be accurately predicted at this time, but there are a lot of possibilities both good and bad. I suppose that at least a player who peaks early (whether by cheating or just clever dealings), will have to find some other means to expand his influence if he's to stay interested in playing at all.

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 14 Mar 2010 at 22:33

Firstly, I like the idea of a distinction between what I guess are "Offensive Pacts" (ie Confederations) and "Mutual Defensive Pacts", but it's a further down the line idea.

Seondly, I think we're largely done on the original point of this post, regarding alliances, as we're now moving on to some unrelated issues (ie Siege mechanics). Please correct me if I'm wrong on this, but generally I'm taking my last proposition as what should happen with the changes.

HonoredMule wrote:

Regarding vault protection: You'd think being agreeable with so much that I say would make me happy. Well, I'm very happy, but there's still "one more thing." Sleepy

Well, I misspoke a bit.

It's really no real overhead at all (we're talking the difference between a tiny fraction of a ms and 2 tiny fractions of a ms).

Without going all techie, the general concept of the programming design is that the server doesn't know anything it doesn't need to know until it needs to know it. So with every server tick that goes past I'm afraid to say it doesn't recalculate how many hundredths of a decimal place your wood level has gone up by. It just knows what your wood was the last time it checked, and how much wood you produce. And so, when something 'initiating player active' happens (eg you refresh your screen), it does check to see whether your wood level has increased, or if something 'initating player passive' happens (eg some thieves arrive to steal your wood) then it similarly makes the calculation.

But generally the DB holds concepts of things, but doesn't calculate unknown-knowns unless they're demanded to become known-knowns, by the act of observation.

I'm not sure who would be more proud: Donald Rumsfeld or Schrodinger.

So, the overhead of this would be tiny, but we're equally determined to eke out every single piece of overhead saving we can. This server is designed to hold c. 110K active players with a concurrency of about 50K, and we'll throttle / release growth as necessary at various milestones we reach.

HonoredMule wrote:

Regarding conquering cities: Maybe I'm missing something. Every response so far has carried the implicit assumption that conquered cities must be severely damaged husks. Does that mean that they must be conquered via siege, or reduced to a certain population level? Or maybe the original population migrates out and some other factors force the rebuilding process to be slow? Because my concern is over a well developed-but non-defended city. For example, someone builds up a city to about 500 population but does not defend it, and an all-out attack by a handful of first-tier military units gains the city. Can someone clarify whether this is a possibility in any form?

It's a few questions at once, so I'll answer as best I can, and forgive me if I've posted this elsewhere (and am repeating myself).

A city cannot be conquered unless it is first sieged.

A Siege Encampment must be set up in a neighbouring square to the city under siege.

The Siege Encampment, once arrived, takes a minimum period to setup. Once setup, it starts Sieging at a very substantial penalty. During this period the Sieging party can choose to use Siege Weapons to attack but suffers massive penalties to doing so.

Over time, these penalties are reduced by x% per hour. The actual percentage they reduce per hour will depend on the size of the city being Sieged. The larger the city, the longer till the percentage reaches a tipping point. As a general guideline we're definitely talking hours and in the case of large population cities, days.

With every passing hour, the Siege camp gains strength and does more damage with the siege engines, as they bed in / find range etc. Equally, every passing hour means the defender has a chance to organise a defence of the besieged city (be that bringing in reinforcements or returning armies from abroad).

Once the Siege Penalty timer reaches a certain point, the city can be Stormed.

The Sieging party can choose not Storm the city at this point, in which case the Siege Penalty timer continues to tick upwards and ultimately into the positive, meaning that the Sieging party actually gains bonuses to their encampment's bombardment of the city, and indeed the ultimate attack.

The Sieging party does not need to Storum the city with the same army. Any allied army may, in fact, Storm the city coming from elsewhere if the attackers so choose.

If there are no defenders in the city at this point, the city will be taken.

If there are defenders in the city at this point, the city will be fought for, and the winner will hold the city.

One decision we haven't yet decided upon is whether:
a) Defending Siege Weaponry in the City should be able to used to target the Siege Engines of the Sieging Army
b) Defending Assassins should be able to attempt assassination on the besieging army, thereby killing the commanders and actually potentially forcing the siege to end (as you can't do anything with an army without commanders). Given that armies cannot (currently) use diplomatic units as reinforcements to defend, I am against this option.

The mechanics favour the defender enough as it already is (Terrain choice, city wall, etc), so I'm still trying to decide on the above 2 items, and would welcome some thoughts.

History favours the defender of a fortified and guarded city - so much so that armies of many, many multiples of the defensive strength have smashed against the walls of various strongholds and still failed. Illyriad is not quite so forgiving to the defender, but the defender still has a goodly advantage.

I haven't run too many iterations of the numbers, but think an attacker (or multiple attackers) with less than (a combined advantage of) 2.5-3x the force might actually not win against a properly defended city - which makes timing of the attack, feints, other strategic opportunities critical. Whittle them down, draw them out, choose your timing, etc will make the difference here.

To specifically answer your questions, HM:

Yes, an undefended city will be taken fairly swiftly after siege begins, and the time depends on the size of the city.

Even if the Sieging party has not used Siege weapons to destroy the city first, many of the citizens of the recently captured city will attempt to deny the invaders a very good proportion of their wealth and buildings, by setting fire to lots of things in their rush up into the hills to live as outlaws and bandits. ie, taking off the RP hat, regardless of the offensive tactics used the city buildings will self-destruct themselves to a certain extent, to help ensure that "domino-effect" growth by a single player is curtailed.

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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 15 Mar 2010 at 02:31

Ok, thanks for all your detailed responses, and I look forward to seeing the new alliance plans in action.

I don't claim to understand the issue with calculating more organic values for alliance fund protection. I figure like I previously mentioned, that it could be "calculated only when theft of alliance property potentially occurs" (a relatively rare occurrence in the event queue) and perhaps when displaying a page that shows that value. But I don't have to understand, and I'll let it go, as previously promised.

Prosecution rests.

Now go take some time off, already. Get some beauty sleep. It's Sunday!
We can't have you burning out on us. Wink

Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 15 Mar 2010 at 15:14

"So, the modified position is:

Drop the concept of War Pending, the 24hr War Pending timer and War Dec Fees
Keep NAPs and Confeds, and Escrow can be offered for these
Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses. The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only.
Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning.
Increase Alliance Setup Fee to 5000
Drop Alliance upkeep fees
Continue with Alliance Forum development and Alliance data sharing to provide some ingame benefit for alliances
Keep Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances for those who wish to use them
Alliance Coffer to protect 1K gold per alliance member"

I Think this works well...

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 15 Mar 2010 at 17:14

Kumomoto wrote:

"So, the modified position is:

Drop the concept of War Pending, the 24hr War Pending timer and War Dec Fees
Keep NAPs and Confeds, and Escrow can be offered for these
Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses. The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only.
Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning.
Increase Alliance Setup Fee to 5000
Drop Alliance upkeep fees
Continue with Alliance Forum development and Alliance data sharing to provide some ingame benefit for alliances
Keep Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances for those who wish to use them
Alliance Coffer to protect 1K gold per alliance member"

I Think this works well...

Well, the final item will probably be "Alliance Coffer to protect gold equivalent to all Alliance members' Vault capacity" as per HM's suggestion, but I'm not promising that yet Tongue

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Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 15 Mar 2010 at 19:40

"Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses. The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only."

Do you mean a player quitting an alliance that is in a NAP or an alliance dropping the NAP. I think the cooldown should apply to both.

Posted By: Wuzzel
Date Posted: 15 Mar 2010 at 20:03

So can capital cities be captured or not?
Did you change it?
Or does it still stand that you cant capture it?

Posted By: bow locks
Date Posted: 17 Mar 2010 at 07:32

maybe i cant read - its ealry in the morning.

Can the defender attack the sieger? surely that must be allowable, and the sieging army pretty vulnerable, especially at first.

Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 17 Mar 2010 at 19:50

I share KillerPoodle's curiosity concerning non-aggression cooldown for individual players departing as well as alliances dropping, and echo his suggestion that the former be included.

Likewise with Wuzzel's question regarding capital cities...in my opinion it should be possible to capture them complete with the resources they hold, but doing so should allow the alliance to immediately assign a new captial.

I also have a third question: Alliance unit caps have not been mentioned for some time. I initially--seeded by the wording of my own arguments--assumed that they were being dropped. But I now notice you wrote out the new rules each time as a list of changes as opposed to a summary of the whole system. Could you clarify? Will alliance size still be capped?

Posted By: Wuzzel
Date Posted: 17 Mar 2010 at 20:51

HonoredMule, i wasnt mentioning about the alliance capital city.
Your first city is also a capital city.
Everyone's first city is a capital city --> http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_player_profile.asp - http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/view_player_profile.asp
Check player locations

Posted By: GM Stormcrow
Date Posted: 18 Mar 2010 at 01:07

Wuzzel wrote:

So can capital cities be captured or not?
Did you change it?
Or does it still stand that you cant capture it?

The current state of play is that Player Capital Cities (ie the first, randomly assigned location to a player) cannot be captured.

bow locks wrote:

maybe i cant read - its ealry in the morning.

Can the defender attack the sieger? surely that must be allowable, and the sieging army pretty vulnerable, especially at first.

Yes, absolutely.

Siege encampments are just like normal "units on a square" and can be attacked by whatever attacks them - although they will build some defensive bonuses over the time that they are in place (with some soon-to-be-released military technologies such as Fortify Position).

The only question (slightly) up in the air is whether Assassins should be able to attack these encampments. My gut tells me not, simply because there is no way of defending against these - because you cannot attach defnesive diplomatic units to an army. That's deep down in the code, as well as being "thematically distinct" (in our heads at least), and so is not going to change any time soon.

I don't want Blockades / Siege Camps / Occupying Armies to be totally neutered by a diplomatic assassination attack as it would seriously change the risk/reward ratio.

KillerPoodle wrote:

"Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses. The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only."

Do you mean a player quitting an alliance that is in a NAP or an alliance dropping the NAP. I think the cooldown should apply to both.

Yes, this cooldown will apply to both individuals exiting an alliance with whom there was a NAP, as well as the alliance itself.

I am welcoming suggestion on the length of the cooldown period though.

I'd suggest 1hr cooldown per day of NAP, though that still only gives a bit over a day for a 1-month NAP in place. Having said that, extending that time period looks equally peculiar. Thoughts welcome.

Finally, regarding Alliance Capital Cities (rather than Player Capital Cities)...

The Alliance Capital City, at the moment, is simply the place where collected taxes go to. It was originally envisioned that they would also be important in "forcing surrender and releasing War Dec Fees / War Def Escrow", but as these concepts are no longer with us (as of next week), this no longer applies.

As of Tuesday next week, the Alliance capital city will protect Alliance Coffer funds up to the total of the Alliance Member vault base, but apart from that it has no real significance (except as a great "Blockade" location for hostile forces wanting to intercept your taxes).

However, we're thinking about some Alliance-Capital-specific buildings that might provide some Alliance-wide benefits, and this might change things in the future. For the moment, though, the Alliance Capital will simply be a large coffer for protected Gold, and gold distribution. Again, thoughts welcome.

Hope this answers most of your questions.

Best,

-------------
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 30 Mar 2010 at 21:09

I hadn't noticed ongoing activity in this thread. Sleepy

An hour per day of NAP for cooldown sounds decent. It could be more, but if it is, perhaps there should be an upper bound, like perhaps 3 days. You wouldn't want cooldown to last so long that people feel they can't change direction at all, or find themselves pigeonholed come final chapter.