Children, Doctors Appointments, Late Work, Early meetings... these are all of our realities.  In order to invest in any game long-term we need a game to accommodate our lives.  Sooner or later even those people who consider themselves hard-core players will get older and have something else they have to do.  To establish a long-term, loyal community Illyriad needs to consider it's players long-term.

The main area where players with inflexible RL responsibilities are ham-strung is in army deployment.  The build and research queue allows for these players to keep abreast of city development.  And time-based harvesting deployment isn't as critical to success in the game.  However, if your alliance needs you to strike at 3:03am when your kid has only allowed you to sleep for 1 hour and you have a 5am alarm to get to the office - well - then there are some problems.  Either the game will take priority leading to a less happy life, or life will take priority, leading to a lost player in game.

For extended absences the Account Sitter mechanics are great.  They don't deal with the day-to-day realities of a shifting schedule that unexpectedly pulls you away.

A) Army's can be scheduled to leave no more than 12 hours in advance. Rationale: This mechanic is meant to allow players with less flexible schedules and responsibilities to be more involved in the game.  It isn't meant to become a once-a-day-auto-play button.

B) Once an army is scheduled to leave it cannot be aborted.  Rationale: Scheduling your army's departure is meant to be done because you will not be available at the time it is optimal to send them.  So it is as if you gave them the command at that time.

C) Spies sent to a city can determine armies that are preparing to leave, their numbers, and (possibly? with more research?) their destination.

D) Assassins killing a commander of a departing army causes that army to abort leaving.

..and so on.  

Consider the areas in which the game would become more challenging: More people involved in wars (not just those that are able to be on at any point in a 24 hour period).  Tactical victories based on strategic movements instead of "I hope he forgets to send his army."  I see armies as the only in game mechanic needing this delay because of the need to coordinate wars.  I don't see why caravans and diplos would need a "delay" option.  Also, the 12 hour cap on delay would mitigate most of this concern.  More people involved, bigger wars, more strategic and less luck based thinking would (I believe) make for a more difficult game if anything.

Aside from that, if what makes the game "difficult" is the amount of RL you have to sacrifice to make it work then it isn't a game that people will stick with long-term.  If the game is difficult because it takes meticulous calculations and strategy - then that is something that is a foundation for a better long-term game.

Please be gentle with the criticism and lavish in your praise!

The easiest cost is a new building for the city, something like a Military Command Centre. You get 40 mins for every level of that building, and each building is half as effective as the last. e.g.

In the interest of game balance, those two variables (40 mins, and 50%) can be decided to suit.

Diplo and trade would also get their dedicated buildings. This generally forces specialisation upon a city, using up yet more of those specious plots.

Further, let's call it 'preparation time' rather than 'delay time'.

• A gold cost for each scheduled mission, e.g. A one-off extra 4 hours' worth of gold per unit in a scheduled army, plus double the usual rate for the preparation period.
• Cancelling the deployment does not get your gold back, and puts the army out of action for a period of time, being the shortest of: (a) half the time since the preparation order was issued, (b) half the remaining preparation time.
• A 'well prepared' bonus for the army, maxing out at 12h preparation, giving about +10% unit effectiveness for attack and defence.

(I'm done now; that was fun)

Brandmeister wrote: This would make synchronization much easier. But it would also make it much, much easier for sprawling alliances to dominate in tournaments.

I've been thinking a lot about this - back and forth.  Would it?  I mean, everyone on the server would have the ability to do this.  What advantage would it give sprawling alliances that they don't already have?  There is an inherent advantage in having lots of friends supporting you whether this system is in place or not.  That advantage is gleaned from controlling a mass of people.  If everyone has the same access to this mechanic then the advantage of the sprawling alliance should be no bigger than it is already, no?

Consider that the only advantage it gives is to people that can't be on at every point in a 24 hour period.  If anything the "hard-core" alliances probably have less of these casual type of people - given that to-date you needed to be available to send your army at a specific time.  This mechanic allows more casual players to be more involved.

So the hard-core players may initially think "oh, that's not fair - it's too easy for casuals to compete!"  To which I would respond - really?  If the only reason you are able to "win" the game is because you have the RL freedom to set your alarm for 3am maybe the goal should be shoring up your strategic/tactical abilities.  Holding on to a mechanic that allows you to gain an ingame advantage from an out of game reality just seems like a hollow way to win.

Brandmeister wrote: If it were to be implemented, why not go the full way? A set delay still involves player calculation. It would be even easier if they could just select the arrival date and time for an army, and have the system do the dispatch.

Calculating the arrival time or not caluclating the arrival time is inconsequential to the goal of allowing people more leeway for their RL responsibilities.  I don't think it adds anything one way or another.  My goal isn't to make it "easier" it is to make it more accessible.  Setting an arrival time doesn't further that goal so I wouldn't recommend it as part of this suggestion.  Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of excel can set up a spreadsheet to do all those calculations anyways... so for the sake of simplicity I say keep it as is - depart time.  If we keep it simple it will have a better chance of being implemented.

abstractdream wrote: I like this idea, especially the 12 hour limit. Without that time limit, I would not like it.

I'm glad you like it.  I have been thinking about it for a while now (probably too much thinking!).  And I agree, the 12 hour limit (or some kind of limit) is essential so that it doesn't allow one to put the game on autopilot (which inevitably gets boring).  I don't know if 12 hours is the best but I figured that, based on an 8 hour sleep schedule (do people get that still?) with 2 hours on either side 12 hours seemed a good starting point.  A healthy gamer is a long term gamer! :)

Besides - the ability to get a regular night sleep leads to better employment opportunities.  Which leads to more disposable income.  Which leads to more prestige purchases.  Fostering a healthy play environment has all kinds of benefits.  Requiring your players to halt all aspect of their life to fully engage a game seems like an antiquated way of doing things.

As with many good ideas like this, they could become great if the advantages come at the right cost.

I've batted around a lot of ideas about cost.  Currently I'm against the idea of it costing much - because that doesn't fit with the spirit of what the mechanic is trying to accomplish.  It penalizes people for having well-rounded healthy lifestyles.  On the other side - what is gained by having it cost something?  If the system is set up properly it doesn't dissuade players from using it - it just makes those players less effective.  I think a good end goal is to have players compete on a level playing field with only their wits, skill, strategic ability, and diplomatic prowess to determine outcomes.  Currently the game is slanted so that anyone that can be available 24/7 has a distinct advantage.  This almost makes their winning less satisfying, no?  I would prefer to know I beat an opponent because I executed the war strategy better rather than knowing I beat him because I have no RL responsibilities.  Anyways, food for thought.  If some kind of penalty was to be put in place I like yours - I just wonder if it is making it unnecessarily complex while losing sight of the end goal.

Albatross wrote: I would also suggest:

I really like the idea of preperation times which give bonuses to armies before they move out.  I hadn't thought of that.  It's more realistic in my opinion.  An army should even need a minimum amount of prep time based on the number of units before it can move out.  The army can be rushed - but then they should have a penalty.  All that said, I think that this would too radically change the way war currently works.  There are a lot of players in the game that enjoy the way it works now and making a change as small as delaying an army deployment is usually met with all kinds of rabble rabble rabble.  So why take a big step when we can take a small one?  In my experience Devs really like simple systems that add significantly to game play and adding bonuses and penalties for preperation times seems like it may be too big of an initial step imho.  So I would try to get the base system in of simply delaying armies for the purpose of player availability rather then adding a bunch of features to it.

That said - down the road once the system is in place and tested - I really like the idea of preperation times, bonuses, and the like.  That whole system is actually really exciting to think about.

This is fun!  I wonder how difficult it would be to implement this system from a programmatic perspective?  Afterall it would require a city to update its army counts/statistics with the player offline.  I don't think the game does that in any way right now.  Sure your resources are updated - but adding a whole other system to check if an army is leaving in between server ticks may just be too much with the way the game is written.  If this idea does get buried I'd be interested to know if it is because of a technology limitation, or a "vision for the game" issue.

Not the obstacle you might think it is. The server looks after timers; the client is simply made aware of them, so that you see them counting down. Some UI is changed when timers expire, but when they expire, the client asks the server for an update of the current state, rather than the client triggering an action. So, it's all looked after by the server.

Albatross wrote: Always the danger :o) Half the fun is designing stuff, but it's only 10% of the real work.

Spoken like someone who knows what they are talking about!  Damn designers throwing out random ideas without any concept of how difficult they are to implement.  How dare we! :)

Albatross wrote: Game balance.

Yeah.  I hear you.  Game balance is always the most subjective thing that arm-chair designers like us can tackle.  So in the case of a delay/prepare armies perspective I will give you my current thinking (and I reserve the right to change my mind fickly and often at this point!)

All this is based on the assumption that the goal is to provide a game where players match wit, diplomatic prowess, and strategic skill against each other -- where your out-of-game schedule doesn't affect your in game ability to compete.

Current Imbalance: Players who have less real life responsibilities are able to micro manage their army depart times by being available 24/7.  This gives them the option to hit targets in a very coordinated fashion which is difficult to compete with.

Goal: Introduce a system that mitigates the advantage that micro managing your army departure times has.

Penalties: By adding more penalties on the use of the delay/prepare army mechanic I feel that the devs would be undoing much of the work that introducing the mechanic is designed for: providing a balanced game experience/opportunity for all players, casual and hard-core, now and in the future, regardless of their out-of-game schedules and responsibilities.

So if the goal is to provide a game where players match wit, diplomatic prowess, and strategic skill against each other -- where your out-of-game schedule doesn't affect your in game ability to compete -- I don't (currently) see why penalties to the delay army mechanic are needed.  The Delay Army mechanic is just a way to level the playing field in itself.

All imho, which is subject to change wildly, rapidly, and without apology :)

What if we had some type of crafted commander steed that allowed delays.  How much you wanted to delay could be based on what item was crafted.  easy craft 0-1hr, very difficult craft item 0-24hrs.  We could also do it via magic spells but I think crafted items would work better.

It would be a cost and additional planning is still needed but not so much that you have to be online 24/7.  

Also we can already send 1000 siege engines to  hit a city all within 5min of each other.  This simply makes it where players don't have to wake up a 3 am to do it.  And your example of how to change times doesn't work for siege engines like it does for other armies.