21JUL11 - Mobiles, other
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: News & Announcements
Forum Name: News & Announcements
Forum Description: Changes, patch release dates, server launch dates, downtime notifications etc.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=2210
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 10:12
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: 21JUL11 - Mobiles, other
Posted By: GM ThunderCat
Subject: 21JUL11 - Mobiles, other
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 13:46
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Hi All,
A few things today! BUY PRESTIGE ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE You can now buy Prestige from your mobile phone in 58 countries around the world! Countries covered right now include:                                                          Simply go to the "Buy Prestige" page, and it's a very straightforward process from there, simply follow the instructions - Prestige will be credited instantly and charges will appear on your next mobile bill. ADVANCE NOTICE OF CHANGES TO ACCOUNT SITTING We've said in forum posts past that it's going to happen, and so it is. From 1600 Server Time on August 31st 2011, players will no longer be able to be permanent sitters on another players' account. The way this will work is as follows:
ADVANCE NOTICE OF CHANGES TO NEGATIVE FOOD WHEN YOU HAVE NO FOOD STOCKPILED In order to address a potential exploit, players should be aware of the following game environment change: If you have negative food production AND you have no food left in your city, then your city taxation rate will automatically adjust itself downwards to return you to a state of zero food balance. This rule comes into effect at 12:00 server time, the 31st of August. OTHER CHANGES AND FIXES: COMMANDER RESET Resetting commander skillpoints was providing them with an additional percentage bonus upon reset (on top of their increased maximum level). This has been rectified. For the avoidance of doubt, commanders can specialise in their area up to L15, but do not gain the additional 5 levels by default. FORTUNE TELLER MESSAGE CORRECTION Sending Assassins to the fortune tellers elicited a response referring to Scouts, which has been fixed to correctly read "Assassins". TOURNAMENT WINNER STATUES Have been placed on the world map for those winners who have advised us of their valid statue locations. Visiting the statues gives a message concerning the Tournament and the Winner. Best wishes, TC |
Replies:
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 18:10
oh really? was a game abuse? i have like 3 maxed cities that have -10k food production even if i put em at 0% tax. Have barely no cities on 7 food tiles then... 1 is enough to feed the production of 3-4 maxed cites running with negative food production. Well , my account can go to garbage :/ |
GM ThunderCat wrote:Posted By: Dhenna
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 19:09
This will be harsh on people with an alt account, having to log out and back in everytime they switch accounts.
Is it in any way possible to "bind" your two accounts together - as a form of permanent sitter but ONLY for your alt account, and once it's done it can't be un-done?
For me, personally, it will be a big issue having to log out of Illy and back in everytime I want to do something on my alt - also because if you log out and in too many times the browser starts acting up.
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Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 19:25
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I just switched a bunch of food sovereignty over to stone at a max-pop city to deal with a deficit there, and with the reduced sovereignty controls, I can't cancel the ongoing lvl IV construction to switch back to food, or even see when it will finish. What a pain. /facepalm Does this represent a change of heart regarding intended mechanics? I could swear I checked with devs before starting to use this strategy many months ago, but I can't find such a petition or forum post anymore. Also, this will make achieving city #10 about 10 times harder and more dangerous, and it was close to infeasible in the first place. Which is unfortunate, because I'd otherwise consider destroying and building my unbalanced-plot cities. 3-7 splits have become so ridiculously untenable for long-term growth that I'd recommend newer players intentionally destroy their first cities just to be rid of them and never have fewer than 4 of any plot. It also seriously impacts the value assessment of 7-food plot cities vs 6-food plots. Tera-forming spells/engineering options cannot come soon enough, no matter how expensive. And it seems cruel to still push new players onto starting plots with 7-3 resource splits. |
Posted By: The Duke
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 19:35
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Also as things are now i was wondering if the dev crew has thought of a way that you could incorporate the new magic that is coming "soon" to be able to upgrade adjacent squares. Right now its a fight for food sov squares to make a larger city, if you could build a city next to a food sov that would only be 7 but could perform magic to upgrade it to a 10 and then start a sov there it would be exceptionally convienant. This would also help even out the importance of the other basics instead of everyone going for good food sovs. ------------- "Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives." |
Posted By: The Duke
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 19:37
Keeping in mind that there could be a cap put on how much a square may be upgraded  ------------- "Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives." |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 19:41
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same here for me as with Mandarins... my account will get basically destroyed with this food change, because I built hardly any of my cities on +7 food tiles. EDIT: Infact this impact of this food change will be so drastic for me and many other player that I may aswell completely restart my account on different terrain. You guys are calling this negative food income thing an 'EXPLOIT' in your original post. That if fine, you made the game and what you call an exploit is an exploit. But the fact is that running cities with negative food been such a widespread practice for such a long time (since the first days of Illyriad, more than a year ago) that most advanced players just assumed this was an intended part of the game mechanics. You could have told us so many times that this was not intentional and would be changed, it has been no secret that this has been a common tactic for advanced economies - infact I have seen it in several city development guides. Personally I would prefer to see this planned change cancelled all together, because I don't believe it is fair to a large number of veteran players to suddenly call what was assumed to be part of the game mechanics 'an explot' and shut it down when the ramifications of this are totally crippling for many players. Second to cancelling this intended change I'd like to see a workaround - the fairest one I can think of would be a 1-time reallocation of city resource plots - allowing players who were never informed that 7-food city plots would be absolutely ESSENTIAL to redress their disadvantage without months of rebuilding. I'd be very interested to hear the devs' and community's views on this post. |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 20:00
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That would be great if this release brought a city remove that would allow to have the basic ressource splots that are on the tile we would move the city on. This wasn't crearly specified as game abuse, and that's a big blow for players like Creature or me that built up a settling strategy counting the fact that with a negative food production and 0 food, your city just froze... seemed logic and didnt look like a game abuse... maybe your citizen are searching food by their way, and that's why they do not have time to build army or advanced ressources for you... until you bring food again in the city. and this release mostly touch the high populated players, that spent a good amount of money in the game also. that wont be very nice not to have a compensation concerning this release. and as said above this could be to have a city remove that totally takes the caracteristics of the terrain you move on. without that, i dont know how other players will do, but ill personnally destroy all my cities that are uselesly on 5 food tiles... or maybe make a new account and find a better location. |
Posted By: Sister Nikki
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 20:58
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I don't really know just thoughts passing Major changes that effect players game style I believe that are damaging a game. People that have spend time with certain rules to find a way and analyse what strategy they will follow and afterwards running against the clock using prestige and mostly time to make their own strategy working, comes a day which someone just changes the rules :( All the effort that these people have spend is gone to the waste.. make me wondering if it is valuable ? If the players do count in the game. I have seen that in many games just to show something new they just change rules instead of basically improve the game. So a question comes although Illyriad is still under development things are been under construction and new things have been added and probably will be added which is the reason for major changes that effect players game style? I sure don't count myself as I still believe that I am learning the game but sure it counts for players older than me in Illyriad time I mean :) |
Posted By: nipirt777
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 21:28
| I wouldnt mind if you were negative food that your cows and horses start dissapearing and then why not make it easier for all of us to change the tiles around us (sovs)(better food) and drop the rates of research points per level of sov also. Magic could also throw in a few spells that also increase your production on more than one sov at a time. There should be a better way at going at the people with negative food, just gave a few options to do so. Would like to build past a certain point but running low on food myself. |
Posted By: Starry
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 22:09
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Please say this is not so. This change penalizes all those players that started playing pre-sovereignty and pre-map expansion (early in the game). Yes, we got a free move after the world was expanded but we had to carry over the current resources. You are penalizing those that have loyally played this game from the start (or close to it)as most of the cities were built pre-sovereignty and pre-map expansion. If you were going to address a negative food strategy (yes, some have taken that as a strategy) you should have countered with the option to change the resources square type when the cities were allowed to move, not now. Honestly, the only option for some is to raze their own older cities. Implementation of this change handicaps veteran players of this game and I'm willing to be that I'm not the only one upset about this change. I would suggest that adjustment or modification be allowed for those in this situation. Edit: At least implement the option of allowing players (esp Veterans) to move their cities, even if it costs, at the same time you implement this new rule. ------------- CEO, Harmless? Founder of Toothless? "Truth never dies." -HonoredMule |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 22:13
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I have used the 0 food tactic too. However, I always considered it a bit of an exploit and beleive getting rid of it will really level the game out and give younger accounts a better chance. I actually think this will improve the game for all of us in the long run. I am also pleased we have been given warning about this, but hope it does not kick in on the 1st of Aug, as I have a similar sov prob to someone above....  |
Posted By: Starry
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 22:19
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Younger accounts already have the advantage of an expanded world and sovereignty which was NOT implemented when many of us started. For those that did not move their cities out of the original map area, the growth of neighbors and the influx of new players has eliminated many sov squares for old cities. The correction to negative food should have been addressed when sov/map expansion was released, not one year later. ------------- CEO, Harmless? Founder of Toothless? "Truth never dies." -HonoredMule |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 22:45
| hindsight is 20/20 of course |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 22:45
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I'm unsure if it would be considered against the rules to say specifically what this exploit is but given that the update is coming so quickly I don't think it would be of any harm as no one will have the time to take advantage of it anyway. I apologize ahead of time if I'm not suppose to say this and completely understand if my post is removed. I was playing with my taxes a few days ago and I realized that as my cities are already running negative food there wasn't really any incentive to keep my taxes at 25%. I have over 12k+ of each resource coming in and don't need all of that as I'm pretty much done building. When I need to build I simply move some food over to the city, queue up some stuff and then let it run out again. That said, I tested something. I moved the slider to 100% and found I would still get 5k of each resource and already having negative food having more wouldn't matter. Sov is mostly used for stopping your cities from going negative food but since negative food as no penalty, sov is worthless. This being said, in a 22k pop city my taxes at 100% could get me over 84,000 gold per hour at no penalty. Doing this is 4 of my cities I could achieve around 112,000 units (average unit cost is 3 gold p/h) and if I did it in 7 cities (two to supply food) with maxed out population I could support around 200,000 units. All this could be done without breaking any rules or exploiting any bugs but I was unsure of whether or not I should use it to my advantage. I spoke to an alliance member privately about it and they suggested I message SC about it and see where he stood with the issue. It wasn't much of a surprise when he said this was not a desired effect. I didn't realize the update would be made so quickly though it's good that it is being implemented quickly as to stop people from taking advantage of it. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with the update because many people (including myself) are running on negative food to achieve a high population but at the same time, it is a huge exploit. -------------  |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:01
Well said Brids, and good going on bringing the issue up 
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Posted By: Starry
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:11
So by moving the slider to 100% what was your research at per hour? Sovereignty costs research per hour, if you don't enough research per hour, you lose your sov squares or at least a portion of them. For many with large troops who play the military side, sovereignty squares are vital to building, maintaining and expanding armies and related resources; some of us actually use the non-food sov squares and feel they are very important. It's a delicate balance between increasing taxes and having enough research points per hour to support your sov squares. I don't see why a player should have to drop sov squares due to this new rule. It's a step back, a big one. Implementing this new rule quickly will penalize many players, prohibit any future growth and frankly, will cost the game players. ------------- CEO, Harmless? Founder of Toothless? "Truth never dies." -HonoredMule |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:19
42 with a level 13 library. Still lots of room to boost that up. Again, the taxes are so broken that sov is still useless. I could have 6 cities build stuff, 2 cities generate food and one city bringing in over 84,000 gold per hour. In a single that I would generate over 2M gold. So problem solved, you just buy your supplies on the market with your massive surplus of gold. The taxes currently hold no weight and do you really want players running around with armies large enough to wipe out entire small alliances? Not to mention they could sustain armies larger than anyone else while at the same time maintaining godly standards of diplo defense. I understand that people are upset with the update and like I said, I'm running negative food myself but I don't see how letting this go unfixed is taking a step forward. A city simply should not be able to run on negative food with no food at no penalty. There is no balance in that. ------------- |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:27
And by using that mechanic, you need no food sov what-so-ever, so can simply build recruitment sov, and if you have completed the statue mystery you can claim alot of it, more than doubling troop prod. Similtaneously you can have 90k gold with about 14k population (and I'm sure its alot more with 20k pop) enabling you to maintain a massive army and re-recruit loses extremely quickly. This is a vast advantage which completely unbalances the game. However, it does make the 10th city unimaginable, and also makes the 9th city pretty much out of reach for those of us who have not acheived it. So those that have been using this mechanic for long enough to get that 9th city are already at a big advantage to others. Even if it means them having to delete a number of adv resource production structures and increase their sov claims solely for food, so that they can maintain a descent size army. This is what I will have to do myself even with just 8 cities. I hope some extra food prod will be possible soon, and not soon(TM). Yet I still support this decision. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:30
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Getting a 9th city is still easily obtainable with lower taxes and through the use of having one city with high food production (one of my cities brings in 10,000 food per hour) or buying food on the market. Getting 10 cities might be difficult without constantly buying food on the market but getting 10 cities was never practical anyway. If anything, getting a 10th city may require alliance teamwork and encourage the alliance to help it's members out. With the total amount of food a city can hold and running at -6800 a city can run for 112 hour on that food. If you get all 8 of your cities up none of them should have to run that negative getting 9 cities. I'd say 9 is mildly more difficult. ------------- |
Posted By: Rupe
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:35
| Perhaps 10th cities were only ever meant to be for alliance leaders and paid for by alliance Tax |
Posted By: Starry
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:47
No, the 10th city was not meant for just alliance leaders and certainly not on the back of alliance members  Players have been running neg food for well over a year and now it's an issue? I'm just shocked that suddenly out of the blue it is an exploit. I echo Createure's comment, there was plenty of time to raise this issue as an exploit, not one year later after many have neg food thinking it was as the game was intended. For those who have posted about about getting additional food sov, you are assuming those sov squares are available near the city, for some in Middle Kingdom and Lan Larosh the new player placement took out a lot of sov squares (another issues raised with the Devs and still not addressed); if you a still stuck with a balanced resource city you are severely limited on the troops you can build. Btw, you might want to check your math. As for the alternative of starting over on a new account or razing some of my cities, it's not an option for me, I have spent a lot of money on this game building up the account. I'll say no more. Edit: spelling ------------- CEO, Harmless? Founder of Toothless? "Truth never dies." -HonoredMule |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:50
I think you're vastly underestimating the value of sovereignty for things besides food boosting, and its associated cost in research. I have a city that produces infantry faster than any 3 other cities combined thanks to sovereignty. But that means consuming a fair bit of research on sovereignty claims and provides the hard limit and balance point that negative food might seem to avoid. Even if I were running negative food there, I couldn't exceed about 50% tax without running negative research (and thus losing everything). Running negative food is also not without its stiff penalties/tradeoffs already. Such high taxation limits research which in turn limits sovereignty claims which (as described in the example above) substantially limits a city's potential in areas other than simple gold income. A sensible approach to optimize account power/effectiveness while maintaining diversity is to run high tax on one city, high food on another, and high military on yet another (with other minor areas focused on the side). I thought this was just the kind of "specialization" tactic the devs wanted to promote. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:51
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But how many players have brought up the possibility of supporting massive armies using this? As far as I can tell I'm the first one to realize that you can do it or at the very least, the only one who brought it up. This is more about the excess gold and less about the large cities. I bet if someone got hit with 80,000 thieves and had literally EVERYTHING stolen with no way to defend against it or were being sieged by a single player with 150,000 troops defending people would quickly change their tune. Besides, since when does an exploit going unnoticed for a year mean that it's suddenly no longer an exploit or no longer something that needs to be fixed? ------------- |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 22 Jul 2011 at 23:54
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I think you guys are missing the point here. No one is saying that this thing shouldn't be changed. However you look at this - if the devs say it is an exploit to be closed, it is an exploit - this is their game, and they design the game play. What people are complaining about is the fact that this change gives some people (who built on all +7 food square) a large advantage and puts those people who only built on +5 plots a large disadvantage - The fact is we as a community were given no information about this and many veteran players have invested alot of time and money into the game while persuing a strategy that is now pronounced 'an explioit'. This change will effectively turn Illy into a single strategy game (in terms of economy) - build on +7 food squares always, or you will not be able to support as big a population, you will not be able to support as big an army and you will not be able to keep as much military/adv.res sov squares. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:00
How is that any different from what people are doing now? As I said, I haven't seen a single person mention the idea of building massive armies and running them on negative food. Everyone was grabbing food sovs and 7 square spots to sustain a higher population without running negative food longer before I brought this exploit to the attention of the devs. Besides, you can still run on negative food just as I said, you need a city or two to supply it with food to stop it from running it. It just means you can't effectively run on -14,000 food anymore. Edit: I should add that this seems like a great time for people to start mentioning alternatives on how to fix this issue. I can't really think of any other way of doing it without severely changing the way taxes work. ------------- |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:12
As HM has illustrated above - currently there is a wide diversity in city strategies - and veteran players will utilise a mixture of different cities to maximise their overall troop production. The devs have already stated several times how they were looking to promote a variety of strategies and specialisation. This change destroys alot of potential for specialisation in economy. HMs post above discussed every so better than I could exactly how there is still balance in the game, and pinch points, without messing up many veteran players' accounts by changing the rules. Birds, you mention how it is wrong that players should be able to support huge armies? Well I have 2 points for you. 1. This change does not prevent huge armies - they are still easily possible through shipment of gold from other cities or players - huge armies never have been possible and sustainable through the use of only 1 city, but have always required many cities/accounts to support them, with negative food or not. 2. I can find a quote from SC approving of the idea of 'huge armies' gleefully when someone raised the idea in a thread months ago.
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Posted By: Anjire
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:12
Please explain your math on 90K gold with 14K pop. I always thought that at 100% tax your gross income is calculated as 4*pop which in this case would = 56K gold. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:17
How is that any different from shipping for to cities to support a high population? You contradicted yourself. The point is that you would have to spend something to maintain something. Currently you don't have to spend anything to maintain something. As a side note, perhaps with this change the devs should make food work like gold in that there's no cap on food. This would make it easier to run on negative food but still mean it would be costly and require constant micromanagement to maintain it. ------------- |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:19
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Also I think a more important point is: How could negative food have not been an exploit before but is an exploit now when the dev team was already aware of the issue and introduced game mechanics to provide a disadvantage to cities with negative food (not being allowed to start any research or production). Why did they write this code for part of the game that they were clearly aware of that is now suddenly "an Exploit"? |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:23
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As I brought up before, I believe it's because no one brought up the idea of using this to maintain huge armies. Judging by the response I got from SC, it doesn't sound like he had thought of that. I don't think they mind high pop cities running on negative food I think it's that it allows players to have armies so large it would imbalance the game in it's current state. That's just my opinion on things however.
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Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:29
So players using a game mechanic that the devs 'hadn't thought of' is now suddenly 'an exploit'? Again, correct me if I'm wrong - but I always remember SC mentioning about how part of the joy of the Illy 'sand-box' experience was seeing the ways that the community played with the tools the devs had given them in ways they hadn't imagined. Again I can find you a quote relating to this somewhere if necessary. |
Posted By: fluffy
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:33
| Oh, I like the idea of getting rid of the food storage cap, Would at least make it easier to manage - food flow in cities. |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:33
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i agree with Creature, if Gm's are say that's an exploit, that is... but well, and now, is having negative production of basic ressources and suffering nothing but losing a producing city a game abuse? let's put everything on the table as we are doing so: i personnaly have a city running out -12k of basic ressource/hour because of a very high use of sov structure for Cav production... this city can produce nothing but soldiers, at a high rate of course, but it can't really produce advanced ressources (would ask too much time, that's too difficult). and the gold is given justly by the cities that are running out of food. all the advantage i have on other players that use the usual way of playing, is that i can produce a big single army, while they produce medium armies, and if they do well, they produce soldiers faster , over their cities, than me, with my single big army... than has no overpower bonus. so, if all that is game abuse, well that's hard to hear that suddenly, but ok. Maybe GM's also do that, because we will soon be granted of a new way to specialise our cities. But that's a bit too sudden, this negative food prod issue was known by players for a long time ago as some discussions about that are the forum: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/food-attack-and-defence_topic962.html?KW=" rel="nofollow - http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/food-attack-and-defence_topic962.html?KW= GM's were certainly aware about that a long time ago... and if so, that would have been a good idea to write clearly that this wasnt expected, and that this would be changed one day... but i cant find it on the "todo" annoucements. Well, i agree with this change if it must be, but there must be a compensation for such an unexpected, sudden and hard release. Maybe leting us more time and giving a general city move (city taking the total caracteristics of the new tile) when arrive the very big release like specilised buildings, Factions, water warfare... would be wiser... Illy doesnt need to loose more Veterans. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:37
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So if I found a way to duplicate items without exploiting a bug but simply using an ingame feature you would defend it? No, you wouldn't because that's broken. As I said, since when does something broken going unnoticed instantly make it ok? And please don't start bending quotes to try and make this ok. It's something that poses a large balance issue and I highly doubt SC meant that regardless of what a player found that they were joyful is seeing it being used. ------------- |
Posted By: Anjire
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:42
Over the last 2-3 months I have made roughly 30M selling food. My opinion, is that it is a decent fix but the role out is sadly ill conceived especially without a way to make cites with 5 food squares more equal to 7 square food cities. Some math with my cities: Duncton Woods is at maximum population 14003 that it can support with 100% tax rate running a surplus of 800 food. Gross tax = 56012 an hour. I do not know where you are getting you 90K number from Brids17. Compare that with Daily Clicker's Solace, whose max population will be close to 20K with all farm sovs and 800 food surplus. The gross tax = 80K The difference is huge in the amount of forces the latter city can support and that is using only farm sovs. The difference only increases if you utilize sov squares for increasing production/recruitment. The devs should have giving longer warning before rolling out the fix. Further, they should have also rolled out a method to ensure cities that where built on 5 farm squares are more viable then they have not made them. The best course of action for starting players is to have their starting city razed once they have built a new city on a 7 farm square. So, while the fix is good in the long run, the manner it which it is being implemented is very dissappointing. They have always been good at listening to the community and I hope they see that they have now rendered any city not on a 7 farm pretty much obsolete. (i.e. every starting city) The buildings they have hinted at can not come soon(TM) enough now. |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:47
well about that, think about the lvl 1 structures on lv 5 sov squares... just a different point of view |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:57
Yes but with this exploit, you're still producing a lot of resources, more than enough needed for producing advanced resources. The only thing you lose out on is some extra speed you would get from sov. I should point that you even with 100% taxes you could still manage sov, just less of it. So you'd build armies a bit slower. Ok, sure, that would suck if we were playing evony. However the majority of this game doesn't take place in a hostile environment. If you were using your army constantly maybe speed would mean a little more but current many players rarely use their armies and are at no disadvantage at doing so. So once I build my 100k troops and 500 siege engines with threat of being attacked, how is that balanced? I got my big army built up now I'm going to siege you. How long does it take 500 siege engines to bring down a city? Especially with 100k troops defending it, all from one player might I add. Sure, when they lose those troops they'll be at a disadvantage but are you seriously saying that by the time they lose all those troops, the damage they've done is still balanced out? I just don't see it. Perhaps instead arguing as to why this isn't broken we should be trying to find a way to fix it more equally? As I said, perhaps making it so that food is no longer capped would help with managing cities running negative food. Edit: I should point out that currently a city with no good sov is always going to be at a disadvantage to any other city with good sov. This is really no different. Settling cities in spots with good sov has become a must now because if you don't your cities are thus at a disadvantage. This update really wouldn't change anything in that aspect because good city spots and good sov spots have always made other city spots obsolete it comparison. ------------- |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 00:58
Its got nothing to do with Math its just what I have. Simple fact. |
Posted By: Torn Sky
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 01:25
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I dont mind the Devs calling this an exploit and removing it, but can we have a bit longer to readjust our cities and troops than Aug 1. Also i have talked about running 4 cities with 25k pop with 100k kobolds(for cheap grins) in each with my other 4 cities supporting with resources as far back as the White/H? any way all im asking is a bit more time to let the vets change their cities since it will take some major rearranging on some parts and lots of sacrificing of buildings and troops to get cities to the safe limits, |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 01:32
i think many players wont be agree with you...
if you sent 500 siege engines, only 30 would hit the buildings, 30 of the other type of engine will hit the walls. with coordination, a siege can alreay end up within a bit more than 1 day.
that's a good idea... but it doesnt solve the problem, just allows not to lose exeeding food... personnally idk care, before i can have an exciding food, i need to demolish things and lose 10k pop per city. i calculated already... i could have -5k food per hour at 18k pop and 80% (to have some kind of decent gold unkeep). this in the 3 actually maxed cities would make a -15k food per/ hour to feed. i would feed it with my food city at 0% tax... of course all that with sov focused on food production... losing 30k pop, a gold producing city, some production speed,... and the best would just be to destroy everything an rebuild from the start... one year ago. |
Posted By: Kamakik
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 01:46
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A way to sort of fix the food issue. From what I'm hearing, there is a conflict between Food and Gold. If you lower taxes, you get enough food. If you raise taxes, you don't get enough food. So I'm going to suggest that we be able to build structures within the city that produce "Consumer Goods". Here is my suggestion: 1) Rename the Carpentry building to a Saw Mill 2) Add: Carpenter, Potter, Tinker and Tile Maker as Structures that convert basic resources into an advanced consumer good resource. 3) Based on the level of your market place, a certain amount of "Consumer Goods" will be converted to gold every hour if they are available. This allows you to still lower your taxes, but maintain your gold costing units. It also partially negates the importance of the 7 food cities and provides use for extra resources. Yes, you'll have to sacrifice an empty lot (probably the Vault, which in my opinion is pretty worthless) to build this structure. Yes it will take some time to adjust. But everyone will be able to adjust fairly. |
Posted By: Starry
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 02:02
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The Devs have been aware of the negative food issue for a long or should have been. When there was a rush of new players, their new player place program began clumping new players right on top of existing players cities and sov squares, as a consequence, many players were claiming all squares surrounding their cities in addition to the sov squares they desired. Yes, the Devs were aware because I told by a Dev that was one way of preventing new players being placed directly next to my cities. Increased sov squares equals higher taxes and lower food, with current game mechanics claiming that many sov squares leads to neg food consumption. I like the idea of elininating the food cap but I don't believe that solves the problem for veteran players and I don't like the idea that have fewer options to play this game. Perhaps another solution is to release that mysterious Sov building now or allowing members to move their cities to new locations (whether they choose a 7 food square is their choice). You can't eliminate one aspect of the game that has been in place for over a year without penalizing very large group of players. ------------- CEO, Harmless? Founder of Toothless? "Truth never dies." -HonoredMule |
Posted By: Sister Nikki
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 02:09
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I told it , you don't wake up a morning and you want to change a game mechanic !!!. Sorry but in a game which could be in "B Beta" trying to be better than other games in same type and in 8 months on which I play still is trying to find its own way through the game industry and that I consider it "good try" you don't make steps back. Food perhaps some are using it, as strategy point and use some cities to fill the one that they produce armies, it is a strategy view which you may find in a lot of games. Others may use gold or other mechanics for the same results. But all are based in the Mechanics which the game has. Players are free to find out which solution they prefer. You don't change the mechanics because it is like playing chess and in the middle of the game you are changing the rules how the queen will move. If you are free to change it as developer ... yep Sure you may change it and sure you may win or loose players - clients. LOL you don't play free although the game in this stage is better than the most games giving prestige and having a mechanic which helps people to even play it without spending money. So consider how many people are spending real money for a game and just make any calculations and check if it is a cheap game. Just go to a store and buy any game for multilayer online gaming and check the price about 49euro. Buying a game and playing it, as long you like :) I have spend about 150 pounds in prestige for helping the "good team" and i can say as i am average player probably others have paid much more!!. So sorry it isn't a cheap game :( and people that are playing more than a year they have deposit real money and sure will not be happy if a developer wakes up and change the rules ....... Just think that players above a year playing this game have done everything to give to this game soul and helped it to grow. |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 02:20
I like this idea quite a lot. It gives viability to imbalanced locations for a much more palatable tradeoff of losing some building plots. |
Posted By: GM Gryphon
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 02:23
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Hi all, The GM Team had implemented production penalties for running negative food balances. We certainly never intended running a negative food balance to become a City advantage; Especially an advantage that increases with an increased negative food balance. This is clearly unintended behavior, and having recently been made aware of the potential advantages of extreme usage of it, we have deemed it an exploit. We appreciate that the 1st of August may be too tight a deadline for people to re-balance their cities, and therefore are extending the deadline for this change to take effect to 12:00 server time, the 14th of August. We do intend- Perhaps in light of this change, with increased priority- To allow players to move their cities to other squares of their choosing and take on the underlying terrain of their new square. This will, however, incur a very significant one-off penalty to the city that moves. We have, in the past, discussed terraforming magic, and do intend to release this in the more distant future. GM Gryphon |
Posted By: Anjire
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 02:42
It has everything to do with math. Simple fact. If you are claiming that you are getting 90K gold an hour on a 14K pop city, then 34K of that gold has to come from other sources besides tax. The max amount of income from 100% tax that you will have with 14K population is 56K. (unless there is an alternative exploit going on) With that said, the rest of the income can be made up from trade items but then the disparity between a 5 farm city and 7 farm city becomes that much greater. Since, you can support a higher population which converts to greater production and a greater amount of resources to sell. Using your math a 19K (a typical population a 7 farm city can support) population city would be able to support an army of 122K. Which is a great disparity between the two cities just for setting up shop on 7 food squares. This is not an argument against the proposed change (I think everyone agrees that it is a good long term idea), it is merely an argument against the manner in which it is being rolled out. Without an alternative to make 5 farm (starting cities) competitive or at least nearly on par with 7 farm cities then all starting players should look at having their capital city razed the moment they build a second city. That is the simple fact that math now suggests with this roll out.
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Posted By: Starry
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 03:03
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Thanks for posting GM Gryphon, however, for veteran players than have several old cities "
a very significant one-off penalty to the city that moves " is VERY much a concern. For those that have been here from the start and hopefully helped the Devs to improve the game, a significant penalty does not solve the problem if it involves gold. As I've stated several times, many of us have old cities that are 5 food squares, we don't have huge stores of gold as we've had to make up the food shortage of not having a 7 food square by claiming sovereignty squares. Whatever the penalty, it needs to be reasonable for the "exploit" you are fixing and the consequences that we as players will incur for this taking so long to identify. ------------- CEO, Harmless? Founder of Toothless? "Truth never dies." -HonoredMule |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 03:13
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I think the penalty will likely mean losing building levels. I don't know what thread it was discussed in but there was a lot of talk about it and it was suggested that to balance it, it would de-level buildings. ------------- |
Posted By: Kamakik
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 04:50
| GM Gryphon, why is food gimped? All of the other resources follows a standard curve, but food is on a lesser curve? Why? |
Posted By: KillerPoodle
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 05:00
| As long as the one-off penalty is not permanent (e.g. you lose a bunch of build levels which can be rebuilt) then I'm happy. |
Posted By: WarePhreak
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 05:55
| Either I am missing something or else. It was stated negative crop production AND no food supply. You can run negative production on food as long as you don't run out of supply. I suspect the exploit might actually have been with what happened when you hit zero supply with negative production. If it was, then this fix is appropriate as it means something actually happens when you run out of food and don't have any production. |
Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 06:20
| The food thing is about tying unit levels to food...not just gold. |
Posted By: The_Dude
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 06:20
| The sitting thing bugs me. :( |
Posted By: gigi
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 07:56
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Changing the negative food rule now, changes the dynamics of the game completely and penalizes those with many cities who have built them around this strategy. THIS IS VERY BAD FOR ILLY - why alienate your most loyal people, who have been in the game from the very beginning? The one thing that sets this game apart is that it is truly long-term. Such a change is a game changer and breaks long-term strategies. You may just as well spawn everyone on a 7 food tile to start with as everyone will be doing this from now anyway.
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Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 08:01
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For cities above 20K pop, maybe they could give an option to convert a level 20 lumberjack to a level 1 farmstead? (to a max of 7 farmsteads in total). Capital cities could be excluded for this option so that people without genuine concerns doesnt take advantage of the situation. And the option may be made available till August 14th so that this doesn't become botheration later on? |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 10:09
The devs were already aware of this aspect of the game mechanics and already wrote code to deal with this exact situation. The penalty was that you cannot que anything in the affected city until food balance is above 0 again.
I take your point - but the fact is the dev team were clearly aware of this game mechanic LONG AGO because they wrote the game code for dealing with this situation before, the the existing penalties. What was before simply a 'game mechanic' is now dubbed 'an exploit' because some players are now complaining of 'inbalance'. Correct me if I'm wrong... but how is a game mechanic unblanaced if EVERY player is able to use it? Besides as HM pointed out several pages back - there was still in-game balancing mechanisms to limit growth in the form of basic resource income required to support sov squares - and research upkeep for sov squares (which drops as people put taxes up, hence preventing people from running huge gold income and huge sov bonuses.)
Reading that makes me feel pretty sick - do you really want to encourage people to sit passive with no action even more than they already do? If the dev team thinks this the same way as you then I have lost all hope for Illyriad - but I think the dev team is better than that.
There is a big difference between these 2 cases though. The sov thing was clearly contrary to the dev team's intentions. When they released sov they said it would behave in 1 way ("Sov structures will delevel as a claim's level decreases") when infact it was discovered that these structures did not behave like this - so clearly part of the game code was broken and this was an exploit. Also patching this glitch caused very little disruption to people who might have thought this was a viable strategy, although I haven't actually heard of ANYONE who was using this well known exploit in any alliance, even though it was open for a long time, over 6 months I think. This food thing on the other hand has long been held as a standard strategy by many of the veteran community for a very long time. Nobody ever called it an exploit before yesterday. It is difficult to call this game mechanics a contravention in the way the devs intended things to be when they had already written code to penalise cities in this situation (so they were clearly aware of this more than a year ago). Patching this will cause total disruption for many established accounts that didn't build on +7 food plots, potentially losing the dev team a number of paying accounts and veteran members of the community. Patching the sov thing Mandarins mentioned was the dev team restoring the game mechanics to the mechanism that was originally intentioned when sov was released - as dictated in the sov release notes. Patching this food thing is basically completely changing the rules of Illy's economy, when people have already spent up to 15 or 16 months building up their accounts in a certain way - without giving them any prior warning. |
Posted By: Smoking GNU
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 11:09
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Only thing i have a comment on is the prestige buying on mobile phone YAY! Except, i don't see Namibia on there ;_; |
Posted By: JohnnyBravo
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 11:18
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I second Killerpoodle's sentiments. If it's a one off, one shot penalty of pretty much anything then i will be happy with it. Also, good to see the Dev's listening to community concerns. While i never used this strategy myself, i can see where it causes problems for those who have! I do think that this clipping of food "exploit" should be combined with either an increase in the food storage cap or abolishing it all together. |
Posted By: Sister Nikki
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 11:59
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The main problem is that a mechanism of the game suddenly changes. The food balance it is just an excuse, You don't have to produce food in your city as you have Stores full of it. The game system right now which allows you to do anything unless you get out of food is correct. How can anyone think that a town must produce the food that it needs ? Just take an example from real world. Also if we have to speak about food then we can criticize all the research page for sovereignty which although it is a great tool for people making different strategies with the main bottleneck of the research points and food production are almost useless except some fields for speeding up unit training. The game provides a great number of alternatives but in practice the most of them are frozen because of the research points and the food needed. It is not wise to open a Pandora's box by making backwards steps. Sorry to say but the game is already limiting the freedom of strategies which by the game have been introduced and afterwards frozen. You are making a great game in compare with "Travian as example" and many more others but there must be a way all the possibilities to be also workable. |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 12:24
First off, no-one is saying that a town must produce its own food, you will still be able to ship in food to meet your requirements. You say look at the real world... OK lets do that. Can a city whose population require 2 Tonnes of grain a day, survive on 0 Tonnes of grain a day? This is the RL equivalent of what is happening with the current mechanics. Perhaps you would rather the fix be that when you hit 0 food your population starts dwindling rather than your tax rate? All that is happening is that the Devs are making it a requirement that a city must have food supplies at all times, I personnaly will loose out from this, but see nothing wrong with it as I beleive it will in the long run improve the Illyriad gaming experience for the majority. I disagree with you on your veiws of sovereignty and its usefullness, although in the past I had similar views, I have learnt that non food and non recruitment sov can be very usefull. Also would you care to provide an example of how this update will limit our strategies. Personnaly I can see it doing nothing but increase the variety of strategies used by inventive players. It is essentially just getting rid af a tactic that dominates the game for veteran players, and will therefore force us to come up with new ones of our own, rather than all heading down a very similar path. |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 12:55
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I have no problem with game strategies changing. Sc warned us of this long ago - that changes would come along that will affect the way we all play - infact I consider this a celebrated tradition of Illy development. I just hate that you let us get so settled into a strategy to do with building city's which can take many months or even years without alot of prestige when you could have told us this wasn't going to be allowable a year ago before many players wasted their time and money raising cities on 5 food tiles up to 20,000+ population. This change will certainly add an extra limit on the variety of strategies - it means that players who don't build on +7 food squares can no longer compete with players who built on +7 food squares - effectively reducing us to a single correct strategy: - Build on +7 food or be happy with a smaller army that trains more slowly. And you guys who are supporting this change strongly: Please stop saying "you can just ship food in from other cities"... because that does not solve the problem - it shuffles food about, at an enormous amount of effort when it requires daily attention over many months - but you are still producing less food and hence gold across your whole account than an all +7 food plot account and hence everyone with +5 food cities is still at a double disadvantage (much more micro management for non-selfsufficient cities & less overall ability to support troops + sov squares). |
Posted By: Sister Nikki
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 13:07
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1. In Real world the most towns produce 0 food but their storehouses, supermarkets are always full. The food comes across the whole countries. . 2. It may effect you but not me as I am not using this strategy and have food production in all my towns perhaps I am newer player than you :) . 3. Everything that makes more borders reduces the strategy limits. I believe and that is my opinion that the game needs more freedom than more control whenever you agree or disagree with this. . 4. So food isn't the real problem but the sudden change of a basic rule in which most of people have invested their effort to play the game in certain strategy view. . 5. "It is essentially just getting rid af a tactic that dominates the game for veteran players" Is it a Veteran hunting season do we need to get rid of them ? Are they dominate the game ? Sorry I don't think so I have seen them 8 months now almost all of them helping and securing new players and I respect them because of their love for the game without them Illy could not be exist or could be a new game in which everyone with power would attack all the time new players a phenomenon that overwhelms the most browser games. . and sorry to ask by the way are you an Illyriad player ? if so why you are hiding your Illy id? I don't want to offend you just I didn't knew that you could registered with a different name than your Illyriad one. |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 13:13
I actually agree with you on most of your points createure, however due to how quickly this has occured I do not beleive that the Dev's realised to what exxtent the 0 food mechanic was adding extra strength to large cities, therefor they could not pre-warn us as they did not see it coming themselves. They for some reason do not keep track of what goes on in player cities, else the multi commander issue would also have been picked up long before it was. This change will be a MAJOR pain for all the larger players that will be effected by it, as you say (myself included). But if anyone can afford a knock back like this I guess it is the big guys. I dont see it limiting strategies at all, I see it descimating one strategy. And I hope we are creative enough to come up with others to counter-act it. However, you are spot on regarding the 7 food spots in relation to city builds. Someone earlier said about an ability to convert resources types, by being able to swap a lvl 20 lumber yard for a lvl 20 farm. And capping the number of farms at 7. I feel this is a good idea and would even things out for us, however I think a straight swap would be too easy, perhaps we should be able to demolish down a resource square to 0 and then rebuild as whatever type we like. I can only see outright chaos and a mad rush to the jungles, if they go ahead with the city relocation as Gryphon stated. |
Posted By: Iduna
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 13:19
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I have been considering destroying 1 or 2 of the 5 food tile cities I have for some time now to rebuild them on more bountifull lands. 2 main issues are holding me back : 1. it would mean giving up on some very high lvld commanders. 2. I would have to start all over again gaining enough pop to meet the requirements for even building a new city. Considering the time/effort and money I spent getting to 10 cities I dont think it will ever be an option to rebuild 2 cities entirly. Now seeing that I am gonna loose my carefully fine tuned city mechanics is just hard to take. Surely there has to be another way around, I very much like the idea of a one time relocation of resource tiles in order to compensate the many players this will effect.
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Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 13:33
As I have stated I am one of those veteran players that has taken advantage of this mechanic sister, are you honestly thinking I would support a witch hunt against my own kind...  As you say, you have not used this tactic, so how do you know if it is good or bad? Personnaly I think the veterans like myself have too much military strength in comparison to smaller accounts and I think changing this will keep the veterans at the top, but help level it out a bit, thus making the game more interesting. Yes many of us have put ALOT of effort into this game and have become somewhat dependant on this mechanic for our growth, however despite this having a huge effect on my account I still support the decision to change it. P.S. Its not that I hide my ID, I just registered on here with a different name because I could. My in game friends and allies know exactly who I am. |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 14:32
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As always - I really like how both sides of this argument (and the shades inbetween) are all giving well thought out and balanced opinions on this issue. It is VERY important that we discuss this imo it will have an effect on every single Illy player's strategy at some point, and a very profound negative effect on many veteran players' accounts, causing a very large amount of rebuilding/rebalancing that many of us were extremely glad to have considered "finished" to a great extent - so we could just concentrate on the stuff we enjoy (fighting/tournaments/mysteries/politics/trading etc.) without all those tedious months of micromanagement. Dark: I absolutely agree about creating new strategies - every change to Illy adds an new dimension for us to explore - and I enjoy that very much. If the ability to change resource plots (to different standard allocations) is not allowed with this change I'm not going to quit or make a scene or cry about it, I don't enjoy watching watching other people attention seeking - but I certainly will not be participating or enjoying this game to the same level that I used to - I just don't have time or money to rebuild 7 out of 9 of my cities and I don't like playing a game at an inherant disadvantage to other people outside of my own control. Anyways I guess I'll likely make this my last longish post on this issue - you've all seen my opinion enough by now. At the end of the day I think Iduna has it spot on - the easiest way to enact this change fairly is to allow reallocation of city resource plots at the soonest convenience - even if it is just a "one off spell" rather than a change in the game mechanics for now. |
Posted By: Erik Dirk
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 14:53
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I think all the vets would agree with creature, re-starting half of our towns really doesn't sound like fun, further i'd like to point out that under this system food is always going to be the most important aspect of choosining a square which ultimatly means if we have no way to change our resource allocation then no experienced player will ever settle on a 5 or 6 food square unless this is accompianied with changes that make terrain modifiers very VERY noticable. GM's either let us use magic to change resources or change it so that all tiles have 7 food so a total of 27 (players currently on a 6 or 7 food tile could choose which of the other 4 they'd like to increase) |
Posted By: Erik Dirk
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 14:59
| And/or if soverenty was chaged so that each level 5 sov square produced as much food as a level 20 farm then this would solve many complaints and have the added bonus of making turf wars over soverenty very realistic |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 15:20
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Well, ill moderate it a bit. Im pretyy sure GM's didn't expect as many players using this strategy. That's why the change was that sudden. Now, things can't stay like that. That's just inimaginable, while they will know the important use of this strategy by the Vet group that are highly supporting the game from the begining, that they do nothing to balance it. Im sure a balance like the "change ressource splot" idea will come. Also i think this change may be necessary for the future prosperity of Illy. Because i also think of the other ways of specialisation that will be brought by the ingenious Dev Team. Real Diversity, Complexity, all day Learning and Freedom are the words of Illyriad. Im convinced we are doing 2 step back to advance 3 steps forward. And as we said, other major release will happen, and will change everything. Each Vet player knows that, and we already had to adaptate while new players had all the tools in hand plus our help. The only important thing is the link there is between GM/Devs team and us, the players. GM also are players; and they understand what that kind of big change could bring in bad feeling and frustration if things doesn't come like knife in butter. Illyriad is just so wonderful because it always improves, and it's not a beta game. Hard working GM/Devs will continue to surprise us with big release that change the view we had on the game, the strategies, etc... All the thing is in making these big release come wisely, naturally, easily; without forcing the players to spend again too many time and money to readapt. |
Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 15:31
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What about the prestige invested in upgrading buildings. Will this be replaced if buildings need to be demolished? The resources lost if troops die. Will they be returned? What about the time invested in city growth. This will affect the way vets view new players as many of the advantages of being in the game for a long time will be negated.
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Posted By: GM Gryphon
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 15:44
That is the vision, KillerPoodle. The idea is that you lose a bunch of building levels when you move, but you can then rebuild them (so that folks are discouraged from having nomadic cities). |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 15:59
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@Canesrule: I completely understand the sentiment. Some veterans will have a legimate right to be frustrated at potentially losing much of units/buildings that they invested alot of time and/or prestige into improving. Having said that, I , as possibly the most voiciferous objector to this proposed change (currently) and as a player that stands to lose ALOT from this change, have absolutely NO desire to see any prestige restored or any kind of compensation paid - I do not see that as constructive to the community or players as a whole - and completely impossible to implement fairly (as well as extremely time consuming to attempt). This change needs to be made, I think everyone agrees to this. But the WAY it is made needs more consideration IMO - at the moment the biggest problem I can see is that anyone (from the top veterans to absolute newbies) who has built on a +5 food square is ALWAYS going to be at a disadvantage to +7 food square players through no fault of their own (since most of us can't predict the future or read GMs' minds.) leaving +5 food plot people a choice between starting an extremely time consuming and costly rebuild, or destroying alot of their population (for veterans with large +5 food cities) and having accept that they will never have be able to match the total food production (and hence gold income, and hence army upkeep+sov upkeep) as players with +7 food cities. And again I'll reiterate, because I've seen this on the GC alot: YES - you can still have large +5 food tile cities running after this change by shipping food in from other cities (or building ALOT of food boosting sovereignty squares) - but this DOES NOT negate the disadvantage of +5 food plot cities - because while +5 food plot people might have the same total population as +7 food plot people - they will have to spend their gold on food on the market, or they will have to build farmstead sov (that costs gold upkeep) so the +7 food player will have more gold and hence more army or sovereignty overall. |
Posted By: Anjire
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:07
I think what would be helpful is perhaps a better understanding on how, in the future, the Devs plan to deal with the disparity this creates between your starting city(or any 5 farm plot city) and a 7 farm plot city. Is there a way or is there any thought to decrease a cities size limit solely on its food production? As it stands, what incentive is there for a new player to continue to invest in their starting city once they've established a second one?
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Posted By: Erik Dirk
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:10
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I'd also like to re-iterate that when the change is implemented all 5 or 6 food tiles become pointless except as a means to create distance between players. A one off change to underlying tiles is not enough. We either need to be always be ablet to change underying food with magic (epic mana cost and a good way for the GM's to destroy vets mana reserves before new spells come in), or homogenise food plots for all settleable terrain types. |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:20
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@Erik: I like the idea of destroying vets mana reserves. How about saying you can change resource tiles under a city (to maximum of +7 in any basic resource) - but there are 3 conditions to make casting this spell painful: 1. You are ONLY allowed to cast this spell once per month (in each city). And each time you cast it only allows you to change 1 plot at a time. 2. Your resource structure (farm/lumbercamp etc.) must be completely destroyed before you can cast the spell. So players with level 20 resource buildings lose a large chunk of resources and likely a bunch of prestige rebuilding. 3. You MUST have at least 100k mana in reserve to cast this spell (not out of the reach of newer players). And when you cast this spell you lose a percentage of you mana reserve (rather than a fixed amount of mana). Say 50% - then using this spell is going cost MUCH more mana for players that have been saving up mana for the last 20 months and having no use for it. This will very quickly cut back mana reserves on older accounts which kills 2 birds with 1 stone - giving mana much more valuable when future magic updates are added. |
Posted By: Nesse
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:28
| Having read through this thread I find it strange that nobody has really summarised the change as preventing clipping an large negative number to zero, while fully utilising the positive numbers created in other commodities. I agree with GM's that that is an undesirable effect and an "exploit". Having 7 towns of which none is on other than 5 tile squares, I guess I should be upset with this change as it will probably mean I will not get 10 cities. But I approve, and actually think that most will be happy about it after allowing enough time to adapt to the change. maybe the change cold be made gradual, somehow? |
Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:29
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I understand that it would be difficult if not impossible to return prestige. But look at another problem. Troops. Lets say for example one has to lose 7000K troops in a city in order to remain in positive wheat. That's a lot of time and resources that will be lost. Why should we be the only ones to lose out. In my case I am trying to gain pop to build 10th city using the same tactics used by previous players. Why should I and all future players not be allowed the freedom to use these tactics. If all players were in the same situation there would be no problems, but for those who have built their 10th city and have since reduced their pop. there is an unfair advantage. Will we be given a credit to replace lost troops or have the resources returned. Again almost impossible but not impossible. This new rule targets certain players and makes victims of them. It does not level the playing field by creating victims.
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Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:38
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I can't see the GMs returning resources and prestige lost. That would open a flood gate that I think no developer wants. Then every time someone loses something due to an update, they're cry "refund". I suppose to those you need to reduce troop numbers should at least use them rather than simply disbanding them. Better to kill a bunch of NPCs and level commanders than to simply lose the units altoghter. Though I would recommend not making any extreme decisions just yet, the GMS are obviously reading this thread so probably best to wait a few days and see if anything changes. ------------- |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:40
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@Nesse: I totally agree - this change needs to be made, I don't think many people are disputing that But we need another change on top of it or every player who has cities on +5 food tiles will be at a disadvantage through no fault of their own. Some methods for reducing this unfairness are discussed above. No amount matter how long the devs delay this change - or how gradual they make it - will change this inherant flaw. |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:41
| Exactly and why compensate a player that you feel has exploited the mechanics |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:43
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I think guys who think they'll end up disbanding troops should just all have a huge pile up on one of the tourny squares the day this change is made. That'd be a pretty fun way to kill of the excess. :D |
Posted By: Olek
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:43
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I'm only new so this won't effect me much, but I can see the reasoning behind it, how can you have a thriving city without food for the people?, it looks to me like the price of food will take a hike and new cities will spring up specializing in food production. I'll admit that if I was a long time player I would be pretty pissed, but the game is all about challenges and to me this is just another.
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Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:45
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Nice first post Olek. ^^ I'm all for challenges. Though I'm not for challenges that are inflicted on some people and not others. (those with 5 (or 6) food cities as opposed to those with 7 food cities) |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:49
BTW - has anyone congratulated the Dev-Team on giving us all so much... food for thought... today? |
Posted By: Darkwords
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:56
I like your thinking  |
Posted By: Kamakik
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 16:58
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The devs were already aware of this aspect of the game mechanics and already wrote code to deal with this exact situation. The penalty was that you cannot que anything in the affected city until food balance is above 0 again. I think the exploit the Devs are fighting against isn't what Creature stated above. It is where you can't build because of negative good production and negative food supply. So you buy/ship some food to your town. You store it in your market place by placing it for sale at a very high price per unit. Then when you want to build, you simple cancel the sell. Using temporary influxes of food to allow growth past the food supply is a serious exploit that needs closing. Now if players hadn't found a way around the no growth when you don't have food, I don't think Illyriad's developers would be trying to change it now. I strongly believe the issue is with people getting around the food capacity rather then the no growth because you can produce any more food. And it will be the people who manipulated things to get way too many people that would be hurt the most.
That being said, and looking at the way this new proposed change can be exploited. What happens to people who have a city with so much population that even having a 0% tax rate still can't balance their food requirements? Do they go to a negative tax rate? Do they lose gold to buy food? |
Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 17:00
Posted By: Canesrule
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 17:04
| On further reflection I agree with creature. The Devs should wait till after another tourney where players can dispose of excess troops in a gainful manner. But the issue of 5 and 7 tiles needs to be resolved. |
Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 17:06
The exploit is about raising taxes to 100% for massive gold gain while running on negative food. By reducing taxes to 0%, even if it doesn't rebalance your food it will result in the loss of all your troops and thus correct the exploit. ------------- |
Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 17:09
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Sure thing is that, as soon as we find something "suspect" in game mechanics, we will have to report it fast, not to be surprised one day... but running with negtive food and 0 stocks wasnt suspect to me... citizen are trying to find food in the surrounding nature, so they dont have much time to spend in helping you producing armies, casting spells, producing adv ressources or building structures... sounded ok for me... and i read somewhere long time ago an explaination gave by SC about how the attitude of your citizen, externally to your town/knowledge, was acting on gold/food production or something i cant remember. we are talking about cities lost in a vast nature, not countries... so it didnt shock me. |
Posted By: Berylla
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 17:55
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I'm confused. It said that if there was negative food and no food in a city taxes would be adjusted. Then people start talking about just negative food production not being allowed. If a new city has taxes set to 0% and is building on different plots, there will always be at some point negative food production. That doesn't nessessarily mean there is no food at all, of course. How will the game adjust taxes then? If this has to do with no food in the coffers, then most if this discussion is moot. If it only has to do with negative production of food, then what happens to all the new players?
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Posted By: Mandarins31
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 18:00
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Has to do with negative food production and 0 food stockpiled at the same time |
Posted By: Berylla
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 18:07
Then what is the problem. If I have negative food production and 10K food stockpiled, nothing happens. I just make sure, as I already do, that I don't run out of food. Just like I don't run out of gold for my army and diplos.
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Posted By: Mr Andersson
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 18:09
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I'd like to add some thoughts though I'm not affected by the change. Several good idea have been put forward above and I like to add the release of factions and trade hubs as a really important functionality to introduce before or with the current proposed changes of the food/tax functionality to minimize the consequences of the change for MANY of the established players. Moreover, though I don't disagree with the need for this change I do find it a bit worrying that the dev did not know about how and to what extent this mechanism was used and that the elimination of the mechanism is not introduced with any alternative solution to balance the consequences of not being on a food 7 plot.
------------- MrA |
Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 18:15
Excellent post. I have several cities with almost maxed population and only 5 food plots, most of the time these cities have a negative food production - and quite often they will run out of food completely and I will be unable to do anything with them until I ship some food over from other cities to start production again. This is the game mechanic that I believe was widely recognised by the veteran community and widely utilised by players who did not wish to have self-sufficient cities (with 7 food plots). But I never thought of this thing you mentioned about storing food on the market at high prices and then cancelling the shipment to get instant food in the city - to restart production ques. If I had thought of this I likely would have petitioned for it to be disabled aswell. Edit: And here are the current abusers of this exploit:
That is just for interest - I don't think anyone deserves any penalty for this because it was only named an exploit by the dev team yesterday... |
Posted By: HonoredMule
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 18:34
If this were the case, then the fix would be to cancel or at least halt all recruitment and equipment production in a city with 0 food. No, I suspect that from the start this was about fixing a market imbalance. Gold is worth much less to a person who can produce 50k surplus per hour than to someone whose gold supply barely more than covers their military and production needs. I'm not entirely sure this is such a bad thing, since it generates incentive for trade with people who are happy to spend and others who are eager to profit. But the real change that's happening isn't fixing a broken penalty. It's increasing the scarcity (and thus value) of gold. |
Posted By: Tanis
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 18:45
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The best option I read was to be able to change 1or 2 (depending on how many food plots your city has)of the basic resource plots to food plots, so that we could have 7 food plots. This would eliminate the need for mass city moves , and even the playing field for the many vets who had settled on +5 food plots pre sov, and map expansion release. I for one dont want to move my cities , and IMO feel thats the best choice I've read. |
Posted By: Kilotov of DokGthung
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 19:03
| this is a good thing |
Posted By: JohnnyBravo
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2011 at 19:08
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Tanis, i like that idea (whoever said it first i don't know) of changing res into food with a max of 7; if allowed for a period of say 1 week just to address this overhaul. Mr Anderson makes a key point however, I have been hanging out for faction trade hubs since they were announced. Amongst the countless numbers of cool things this could lead to, it would certainly inject volume into a market place that is crying out for it. It would enable players to sustain their cities via trade alone if desired. No economy in RL can survive from taxation alone, external trade is mandatory for economic expansion. Faction trade hubs, other than having the potential for taking the game to a new level of NPC interaction, should be able to open new avenues for strategic thinking and allow players that nurture their trading links to support huge forces if they so choose. |