This is a question for feedback from you guys - our awesome playerbase - because I have a rule I want to change, but am not 100% sure about the negatives of it (if there are any) and would like your feedback.

The scenario is the following:

When a player stops playing illy, there is an account abandonment procedure that will eventually remove this player's account from the game.  This usually can take up-to 90 days, depending on prestige use etc.  

However - even after 90 days - it is possible that this abandoned player's account can still remain in the game... because we do not abandon an account if it has incoming hostile units.  We check for the presence of incoming hostile units every few hours, and all it takes is for one check to fail and then we abandon the account; however if there are incoming units (and the check succeeds) then we postpone abandonment by another few hours.

If the city disappears mid-siege, then it's a disappointment for the sieger. But them's the breaks. It's not that different from harvesting a pile of hides and skins -- often times, big kills cannot get 100% harvested in time. It's just part of the game.

After 90 days we stick a "long-period new player rainbow" on a city, so no new attacks can come in.  Once all incoming attacks have completed, the player account would disappear as per the rules.  Clearly, if anyone (player/sitter etc) logged into the account, the rainbow would instantly disappear.

Any objections?

SC

Sometimes people use a "holding siege" to maintain such an account (such as for future siege).  Would this mean after a period of time holding sieges would no longer work?  And if so, how would the player know?

It's a good edge case, and we'll test it first before releasing the code so we know what happens.  At this point in time I have no idea what would happen :)

Not 100% sure on what a 'holding siege' is, but guess you mean it's a siege that is in place but chooses not to 'storm'?  In which case, after the max siege day requirement it'd head home automatically (and no one else being able to send any new sieges due to the rainbow protection) then it'd just be a way of extending the timer before ultimate abandonment.

SC

A holding siege is a siege that has no siege engines in it, so it sits outside the city and does nothing until its timer is up.  Commonly used to hold inactive cities for people to prevent others from thinking the city is open for capturing and to prevent disappearance.

I vote for a rain cloud, with a tiny lightning bolt for dramatic effect. 

I kind of like the way things are now, but I can see the other side of the coin too. Not wanting people to exploit the game, and rules are rules (90 days is plenty of time, etc)

If there is a problem with an Alliance waiting for their leader to return, I don't know how else you could address it though.

I Hope this was helpful to at least someone. lol

The problem of an allianceleader not dissapearing is a problem wich doesn't happen a lot ánd can be simply solved by starting a new alliance.

So please do not make the change.

In this case, it wasn't an abandoned account, just an inactive one. Regaining control of the alliance was more important than capturing the towns.

SC, while you are addressing a problem with inactive alliance leaders, which I doubt happens very often, the result of this change effects all alliances and their growth because it effects players well beyond alliance leadership.    Many alliance members have been diligent in placement of their cities in alliance groupings, to change the rules now will, in effect, prevent alliances from taking inactive members cities within that alliance hub.     If an inactive player has real sieges incoming to their cities beyond the 90 day mark, the siege should be allowed to continue and capture the city.    

Real life happens, there a number of factors outside the game that prevent players from logging into the game.   90 days is sufficient to establish inactivity, after 90 days their cities should be available to be seiged and captured.   

This rule change also effects young players who are trying to grow and continue in the game, take away the ability for new players to take built up and researched cities, you limit their growth and their participation in the game.

You and the other Devs increased the number of cities allowed in this game, taking inactive cities is the only reasonable way to acquire additional cities other than being involved in a war.   Not all players in this game want to participate in war to grow.   Yes, I realize, we have the option of using settlers to establish new cities, it is a lengthy and costly option most do not wish to use.

The system is not broken and actually works very well, please reconsider this change as it negatively effects all alliances and players  in this game.   

I am very much against this change and fail to see why this is being considered when their are more important game issues that require Dev attention.

That has to be the way forward. If an alliance only has one power user and they are inactive for a period of time, those rights need to be passed to somebody else, long before 90 days have passed.

Ok, so let's be honest: at issue here really isn't about Stormcrow's rare scenario, but players' and alliances' desire to hoard the cities of abandoned alliance mates. And let's be even more honest: we're not talking about settlements with populations of 63 that never bought prestige and will be fast-tracked for deletion; we're talking about big, beautiful, shimmering cities with full research and stocked with gold that people pumped prestige into. In these cases, these cities re going to take a full 90 days to be deleted.

Are folks saying that three months isn't long enough for some alliances to be able to reappropriate these cities to active alliance members? That some alliances have such a high proportion of abandoned city inventory that they actually cannot redistribute those cities quickly enough to their small active player base in the alliance to capture the city? To me, if that's the case, and you need to keep putting place-holder sieges in place to keep abandoned cities alive even after three months, there's a bigger problem there than simply limiting the lifecycle of abandoned cities to the "90-day rule." 90 days is a long time, and should be ample time to cannibalize cities of abandoned players.

90 days is NOT a long time when you consider that some players have put years of work and money into their accounts.   

According to what Stormcrow wrote, we aren't talking about players who have gone inactive but whose accounts are still active. We're talking about (abandoned) accounts, and the period of time before these accounts are deleted. So, in this case, RL issues and the prospect of the player coming back to the account are moot -- the account is abandoned.

If Stormcrow isn't talking about (abandoned) accounts but rather inactive yet open accounts, he should clarify.

There is a solution for addressing the problem with abandoned leadership account rather than negatively impacting all players who have put years and money into this game and seek to gain new cities.   

It's a little late in the game to be initiating changes of this magnitude.

Jejune wrote: Are folks saying that three months isn't long enough for some alliances to be able to reappropriate these cities to active alliance members?

if we are speaking of inactive rather than abandoned accounts, alliances don't actually get three months to reappropriate the cities, because some players leave with instructions that they'll be out for a certain amount of time and we generally trust them to return as they've indicated, so no action is taken until that time elapses.

Jejune wrote: That some alliances have such a high proportion of abandoned city inventory that they actually cannot redistribute those cities quickly enough to their small active player base in the alliance to capture the city? To me, if that's the case, and you need to keep putting place-holder sieges in place to keep abandoned cities alive even after three months, there's a bigger problem there than simply limiting the lifecycle of abandoned cities to the "90-day rule." 90 days is a long time, and should be ample time to cannibalize cities of abandoned players.

and perhaps also to GM Stormcrow. but if so, i would have expected him to come to the forum with that problem rather than the one with which he arrived.

now i think you are arguing from what you believe is good for the game, but we are both also aware that your alliance would benefit by comparison if the established, possibly declining alliances that oppose it were to be unable to hold these resources as long as they currently do. such a change might also force more alliances into publishing land claims, as cities on life support may currently be used to mark and reserve territory per the 10-square rule. if we are trying to solve some larger purge problem, i have some ideas on how to achieve that, but i think the larger problem requires a larger discussion. if GM Stormcrow wants that, i hope he will signal it. until then, i am for minimising unintended consequences.

After 90 days of inactivity the account is labeled as "abandoned" or something similar and the population (buildings) begin to decline at a steady rate regardless of whether a holding siege is present.  I would include the (capture-eligible) resources, military, diplos, magic, and research in the city to deplete at a similar rate.

The idea of a "rain cloud" as mentioned in an earlier reply would indicate that the city is starting to vacate.

Since this mechanism is not currently in the game (although not totally different from running out of a resource and de-leveling) it is probably one that requires the most work.

The "abandon" (or other label) would instantly invoke the shift of leadership roles in the alliance.  I don't know how that currently works as I tend to avoid responsibility, both good and bad.

Good luck!

Wartow

Don't make me have to go get ajqtrz to start hurling threats of coercion at you, Angrim. ;-)

I have been investing time, money for years, trying to play even when real life was a bit hard.

I have been helped by my alliance and helped my alliance members to grow, share lots of things, create a community, give life to a "family".

When in RL people close to you die , you want to protect their memory, "inheriting" the knowledge and experience all the alliance members have contributed to raise.

There is already a mechanism in place on the server for moving alliance cap (and alliance rights I believe) to next player down in an alliance if alliance leader's account gets deleted.

Just make that mechanism work if the alliance leader's account hasn't been logged into by account holder for 90 days and problem solved. No need to touch the current arrangements on account deletions at all.

Leader is inactive for 30 days - a member can hit a button to initiate a vote, which sends an alliance mail, and the membership has a week to vote in a leader (a button on the members list only visible to members). That allows a majority vote to continue with the inactive leader if they feel trust the person will return, and allows a faster method than waiting for deletion, while sidestepping the controversy around players being artificially held in the game - which to my mind is a completely different issue. 

In other games, alliances have an "impeach" function.  When the super-users of an alliance have been inactive for a period of time, a quorum of the next level of leadership down can initiate an "impeach" action to remove those players from leadership.  That action is then put to the alliance for confirmation by the majority of active members.

In that game, alliances have designated "leader" and lesser roles, so it is easy to identify who can impeach.  This is more difficult in Illy.  However, as long as the "impeach" function were only available when the leader had not signed in for 60 days or 90 days or something like that, and required consent of 50% or more of the active membership, I think it could be made to work.  (Although it might be complex to code and the developers might not be willing to make the effort.)

So basically what I am proposing is:

Anytime after all superusers in an alliance have been inactive for 90 days (or possibly 60 days, if people want to argue for less), a person or people in the highest level of alliance roles in which there is an active player (within past 60 or 90 days) can initiate the impeach process.  This would generate a mail to all alliance members asking them to confirm or object to the impeachment.  If the majority of ACTIVE alliance members (who have signed on within 60 or 90 days) agreed to the move, the super-user powers would be devolved to the next highest ranking member.

There is some possibility for abuse of this process by nefarious second in commands, but this could only happen with the consent of the majority of the members AND if ALL designated super users had been inactive for at least 90 days (or possibly 60 days if a shorter time period is desired).  In my mind, if an alliance leader has been absent for that long without contacting alliance members, those alliance members deserve to be able to pick another leader.

This process would also allow alliances to muddle along without a leader if they believe their superusers are coming back or were willing to wait indefinitely, IF they so chose.

/me awaits all of the reasons this is a terrible idea and/or could not actually be coded.

If an alliance is controlled by a single powermonger then it risks becoming a 'headless chook'.

Solution = Have several super-users or better still, make everyone a super-user.

Yes, because liberally handing out superuser rights worked swimmingly for RE and SITH.

The other issue discussed in this thread, of holding sieges being used to preserve the existence of inactive cities beyond 90 days is perhaps an opportunity to create a bit more "friction" in the game. If a player's account is publicly labelled in some way, as (inactive) perhaps, after a period of time, then this would widen the knowledge of who has gone inactive beyond alliance membership.

If Pico/Le Pue had merely gone inactive, rather than abandoning, it wouldn't have been obvious to other players immediately that his cities were now up for grabs, and that would have been less interesting for many other players. So I think widening the knowledge of inactivity a bit would be helpful. Of course, one can already find this out by checking the growth charts, but that would be laborious to do, and having an (inactive) label would make it easier.

Also, if cities that would be wiped off the map without a holding siege were labelled as (abandoned), then that would open up an easy way for people to raze those cities if they wished, by attacking the (presumably normally small) holding siege.

I would imagine the reason for this to be that in some cases the "next highest ranking member" would be EVERYONE IN THE ALLIANCE.

Does anyone really want a case of 'first come, first served' when it comes to the Alliance Prestige pool?

Why does it always have to come down to diplomacy? it is a game after all :)

This would have solved the problem of alliance leadership being in limbo in every situation mentioned so far in this thread :P

Pico/Lepue was mentioned earlier.. Slowly but surely, his cities are being captured by other players, which is how it should be. 

Eventually he will have no large cities left to his name and there will be no interest in his accounts. 

Would removing his cities from the game earlier have significantly helped anyone in any situation other than if he were an alliance leader? (Would it even have helped if he were?)

SC said this new rule would not stop incoming at the 90 day point, just new incoming after that point. So once an account hits, say 89 days, what's to stop an alliance from sending that siege to take the city, both giving the account owner a reasonable amount of time to return and the alliance a shot at the cities? That seems good enough to me. 

I suppose an alliance might not have enough active, siege capable players to take 30 cities but in that case, they can pick the best ones they can get and that, again seems good enough. Why is it not good enough?

but I also think that game mechanics shouldn't be exploited/used in order to keep a hold over territory whether it is for personal gain or not.

Game mechanics have been put in place for those who have "RL" situations or unexpected things come up by leaving someone to sit the account for a maximum of 90 days and they also have another 90 days before their account is listed as abandoned, so considering those numbers thats upto 6months, if you add on the game mechanics of fake seiges that can drag out that period even longer.  

As for sole leadership alliances, there could be an option listed under "Petitions" for inactivity leading to an Abandoned status in place for the alliance if the leader has failed to log in during the 90 day period, this option should be available for all active members in the alliance to be able to lodge but only the three most active players would get a temp super-user (30days) So once the "petition" is lodge a "new leadership mail" with the three most active players as the choices for new leader/s would be sent to all active members to vote in the new leader/s of the alliance with the "majority" rules regardless if they vote or not or If no vote is lodge then all 3 will win by default

Despite how long a person has played or put money into an account, the decision to leave was the owner of the account, there are options already in place if the owner needs time to do RL stuff, the account can be sat for upto 90 days, if more time is needed, Not sure if this is possible but the owner could appoint another sitter.  Alliances also have a policy on being active

Just some suggestions, I know most alliances claim all their players cities but an Abandoned account is an Abandoned account

 

+1

The game mechanics are in place to prevent this issue, multiple superusers are allowed in the game, which would prevent this issue.  I'm going to suggest that an alliance leader, who does not avail this alliance of these options, either did so intentionally or did not understand the game mechanics of alliance management.   KP's suggestion would resolve this issue without impacting other areas of the game.

For Abandoned accounts, Delete the account after the allotted time regardless of incoming military units.

For Suspended account (by the DEVS for breaking rules etc..), Delete after the allotted time regardless of incoming military units.

For the unfortunate circumstances - e.g. car accident. health problems, small-scale invasion by another country, large-scale invasion by aliens - at the start of the game you are advised to look round the forums and at the game website, where it tells you about the deletion protocols. If you aren't willing to live with the fact that your account may one day be deleted due to unforeseen RL circumstances, either don't spend money on the account or don't play the game. 

I myself am coming up on my 2nd Illyversary, and if i get incapacitated for three months, I wouldn't have much of a problem. Firstly, my account isn't the most brilliant, and i haven't spent a lot on it.

Secondly, I have left notes for people to read in various situations so my account would be taken care of by my family until such time as I recover or die. i have listed who my cities would be taken by and how long to wait for this to be dealt with.

I'm sure there are ways to deal with any situation that comes up, so Don't Panic, and make sure you have your towel.

 

Assuming a small-medium alliance have about 30 players, you can get a lot more than 90 days to reallocate 10 or more cities. Players have to grow to get another city.

So, let's say the truth, this is all over forcing people to buy prestige, so they can grow faster and take the cities. 

My call? Make the game working well and quicken its neverending nevercompleting nevercommiting development if you want more money from us.

Or just continue with BS and deal with people abandoning or virtually abandoning this game, as it is happening in the last 2-3 years.

Don't call me rude, I was kind.