As it stands in Illyriad, if you send a military mission to a city, if the player is active or has someone actively sitting the account, the targeted player will receive a notice on his military summary page of who is attacking hi, and the arrival date of your army.  You could have clicked *covert* on your military orders screen, but this still shows up as an impending army of doom to your opponent, why?

Why not make the Covert op's a actual skill to be used, perhaps unlocked at level 20 or other, that makes it so the target does not get a timetable of when your attack lands or who sent it at him till he actually engages the target.

Thoughts?

If it would work as you ask for, it would be about impossible to set up any defense against siege.

I can assure you, you wouldn't like it...

As it is I don't *like* people knowing when my attacks will hit. If you scan your towns on the world map reguraly you'd be safe from sieges.

You want path finding- a realistic approach

You want war and turmoil- factions- realistic *war is realistic*

You wanted the fog of war *kind of, can't really track birdies home*

but you don't want FoW for militant, which is realistic.

What a coincidence, we have the ability to send scouts and spies, so are you suggesting to actively send scouts and spies around areas near your towns looking for armies?

Otherwise the scouts or spies are just kicking it in your town at the tavern, waiting for someone to offer a bounty or quest, not keeping an eye out.

and lets not forget what Rill said, they wont have time to build much anyhow, i only have 110% unit production increase as of right now, but it takes a week for me to create 2k t1 kobolds, the fastest production troop in the world, so you think it matter if you see them incoming without any logic?

And no real need to keep sending i would add a feature where you could camp them for a period of time like the armies occupy ability, giving you their vision around that area.

That was something realistic! 

and as stated before, even if you have a week you wont be able to do much about it, and if its a siege its the same thing, and letting AC see sieges i think its fine, they are your alliance and as such should know, but i shouldn't know if you siege someone because that has nothing to do with me.

and with added sitter support which if you leave for 4 days seems to be a good thing to set up, to let you deal with things that comes up.

AND how often do you get incoming armies? unless you are at war that would be never. But if after the first attacks from a new enemy starting a war, you then send out scouts in their direction, by using coordination and such with your alliance mates covering a huge area of land to look for armies will be a extremely easy feat.

How many people do we see on GC?

I can bet that even the usual non talkers will come running for the *crusaders* to save them.

Games are to be fun.

Having a siege army suddenly appear 20 squares from your town is not so fun.

Having 20 armies suddenly appear near your city is a pain in your....

Having 200 armies suddenly appear near all the bigger city of your alliance is ?

ahah, ok, so the attackers have to got all the fun ?

Having a siege army suddenly appear 20 squares from your town is not so fun.  --  makes no big difference, unless the army was 2 weeks away

Having 20 armies suddenly appear near your city is a pain in your....   --  makes no big diffidence, unless the army was 2 weeks away

Having 200 armies suddenly appear near all the bigger city of your alliance is ?   --  makes no big difference, unless the armies was 2 weeks away

and if we go back to the point it was for scouts and such to be able to be used for scouting outside your town instead of us having a million unknown scouts and spies we never knew we had in every town that exists and near every army that exists.

and sending out 10-50 scouts to a location for 2 weeks is such a small thing to do... considering the great cost of being able to see a army incoming the sec it leaves the gates compared to sending out 500 scouts around your town.. doesn't balance out in my eyes

From what I can see it's near impossible to attack a somewhat fair fight anyway, it's no fun being the aggressor already *nor profitable*   because you are dealing with the potential of fifty other alliances popping in for a chance to use their military.

Or are we trying to completely kill the military side of illy?

If it makes no difference, so let it as it is, thanks. ;-)

And no, I don't want to live spending an hour of my time every days doing repetitive and boring things like sending out scouts... 

But this is another argument and will not be solved at all with the proposed change. IMHO Illy has all the military I need, but others can desire more.

Personally I would like to see some "duel" option developed, something like a status where 2 players agree to enter and start fight each other with some sandbox around them, but I am not sure how it could be done and if it would be fun anyway.

do i ever need to say anything since you never care to read?

I have been in a dual war with another player, the set up is easy, you two agree that alliances wont join in and you start fighting once both sides has agreed upon this.

Nah I read, but eventually I don't understand what you mean. I guessed you wanted to track incoming armies in the same way we actually try to track diplo units, sending multiple waves of diplo, like rangers. If you ever did it, you know how much effort is needed, and there is no way to use this method to scout for incoming hostile armies on a regularly basis.

But probably I misunderstood your proposal...

and Jimjams, yes i think you did, i said in a previous post that they should in this case add a occupy ability to scouts, so that you can plan them around your borders and by so they will keep an eye on that area for as long as you say before sending them out

oh AND NO FREAKING FUSSING DUAL SYSTEM, open world PvP is why we are here, anyone who tries to undermine this gets my spears in painful places...

Open world Pvp, by the way, is basically all the Pvp in Illyriad, and the only kind that could reasonably work in a sandbox game like this.

Sieges would have more equipment with them then Raids,  so i can see covert raids working..

Calico_Jack wrote: oh AND NO FREAKING FUSSING DUAL SYSTEM, open world PvP is why we are here, anyone who tries to undermine this gets my spears in painful places...

Open world PvP is part of the game, yes - but not the only part of the game.  You speak for yourself, but you project your own reasons for playing upon others.  Some are here to develop and become masters of trade . . . others are more inclined to secrets, misinformation, and deception . . . others lean towards the diplomatic aspect . . . some like the strategy . . . some wish to become masters of a territory, but have no interest in total domination . . . while still others are happy and content with "medieval farmville."  War and PvP is one of many ways to play.

Now, with that being said - If two consensual players wish to engage in a PvP battle / duel without anyone from the outside interfering, then I 100% support this and wish them luck.  Likewise, if two alliances wish the same, I applaud them and will happily stand on the sidelines cheering them both on...  I only hope their playing isn't to completely remove the other from the game...

Calico_Jack wrote: i said in a previous post that they should in this case add a occupy ability to scouts, so that you can plan them around your borders and by so they will keep an eye on that area for as long as you say before sending them out

I couldn't agree more with being able to set scouts to occupy a space!  I would love to see a whole thread on this!  Imagine occupying 50k thieves into one city to ensure it could NEVER be thieved!  Imagine sending scouts to occupy a spot with troops and the opponent not being able to scout unless they have a greater number.  There are so many possibilities!  (please start a thread about this if you feel it's worth discussing further)  However, I would not want to have to ship out 50+ every few weeks just to know if I am about to be sieged.  Whats more, new players who are not in an alliance have no way to set up any detection for an incoming attack - and this is unfair to those who are just starting out in the game.


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"Side? I am on nobody's side because nobody is on my side" ~LoTR

on the issue of sight range of cities which right now are infinite, maybe a compromise on this, longer sight and if someone in your alliance sees the army you get the report and "hidden" scouts following it.

I just think the infinite range to see armies are too much and leaves Scouts less useful then they could be, (still very useful during sieges)

Also on new players seeing them far away or not, dont see how that matters, as a new player it takes even longer to raise troops, but on the other hand getting 100 scouts is quite easy.

lvl 1 Consulate building

super cheap tech

1 gold per hour upkeep

and for just having a look around i would think you dont need more then 10 per location to be useful

But i can see how with the current map and the way armies can move that a compromise would be needed.

But as in your situation you brought forth.. well maybe you should have thought about that? :P

Your choice of alliance and if you want a sitter or not is up to the person but as with anything you will have to accept the consequences, same if you join a alliance that goes to war with H? or Crows that is your choice and so you die

But raids and normal attack i think should not be seen until inside range 

So what you said sounds good to me

need to capture a dev and make him/her start working on it 

Um, or they are the people that know if they *pretend* to be scared on gc the crusaders will pop up and kill their enemy. We could test this out by getting a few people to have secret newbie accounts then randomly popping up on global in the next few months complaining of big bad players when in reality they just want to start some trouble by killing someone.
 

Not sure why people find this sort of behavior amusing, but it takes all kinds, I suppose.

I agree diplo would deserve some changes, making them able to reinforce a city or a standing army is one interesting option.

I still don't like the option to use them to discover incoming covered armies. It could be done the same way it is now for diplo attack, you get the advice when the unit is within a certain range without the need to send around units every now and then. As I said I don't like to do repetitive  meaninglessness action. And I still believe the way it is working now is fine.

If the range is big enough to give people time to prepare for defense (from a slow siege army) it would ok to me too.

They have the code already (about). It is used to spot diplo attack.