A player or alliance decides they wish to win at any cost, both in game and out.

Said player or alliance purchases large amounts of prestige with real world currency.

Having purchased the prestige they then sell the prestige in the form of prestige scraps etc...

Now, having large amounts of gold with which to sustain huge armies city sizes are irrelevant.

So they build huge armies with which to dominate their opponents who, had they had the same real world financial abilities, might do the same.

Here's what I think the should be done.

Limit the size of a cities army to one and a half times it's current population.  This would result in the following:

1) It would limit armies from a single city to no more than  45k or so.  45k is no small number but it also means that all players can reach that number without a lot of out of game financial help. 

2) By limiting the size of armies you would place the emphasis on city growth rather than just enough to raise a huge army. 

3) By limiting the size of armies you lay renewed emphasis on properly equipped armies over more soldiers.  Currently it is not cost effective to use crafted items.  But if my army is as large as it can get and I still need it to be more effective I can use crafted items to do so. 

4) By limiting the size of armies you emphasize a more balanced PVP as no player or alliance can produce more soldiers than another by simply buying the prestige to do so.  Again, if one alliance is bent on "winning" at all costs and has the out of game finances to do so, they will produce millions of soldiers and simply "pay to win."

• can happen
• follow some rules
• can be witnessed/obtained within the limits of an Illy player's lifetime

When I was in college my best friend once said of me that I was always busy "re-supposing what others had pre-supposed."  It's a pretty good description.  I do tend to think outside the box and thus, sometimes make glaring mistakes.  If I were afraid of making mistakes, even glaring ones, I'd probably have missed some of the most important (and painful) lessons of my life.

So when I "re-supposed" the whole sov issue I first analyzed why there was this idea that you could only have 20 sov squares.  I knew from my own discussions and training that the cost was prohibitive once you had a sov square, lvl 3 more than a couple squares from you city, so it was obvious to me that the bases of the objection wasn't in the number of squares but in the cost of those squares, a point several people have made. 

However their assumption that you need to raise the sov to level 2 or 3 to be effective seems to me to be to be in error.  That you can have up to 150 squares is allowed led me to ask why the smart developers would have that level if it were either impossible or outside of the abilities of a person to sustain.  And that led me to do some calculations of my own.  Here they are.

I may have made a mistake somewhere in the following calculations and be wrong entirely.  I suspect somebody will rapidly re-do the math and will, no doubt, reveal to me my errors either in calculations or assumptions. I can accept that.

With a Chancery of Estates and Serjeanty research you can claim up to 150 sov squares.   We start with that assumption being true.  We also assume that if the developers allowed the claiming of 150 squares it could be done effectively, even if not efficiently.   The cost of the Chancery of Estates in basic resources upkeep is 800 wood, 3200 Clay and 1600 stone. An alternative would be to raise the Chancery of Estates to level 10 and do the Burbage research and limit yourself to 100 squares.  That greatly reduces the basic resources needed  to 550 wood, 1350 clay and only 88 stone.  But for now we are assume the full Chancery at lvl 20.  You might note that once you have the  Chancery you get a 40% discount so keeping it at lvl 20 will reduce your level 1 costs significantly.  My  guess is that once the developers realized the high cost of having sov of over 20 squares they put this in as a way to increase the sov squares available and usable.  And since the supporting troop type building only reduces the gold costs, there will be no need for that building since we have unlimited gold.

First what can a 5 square resource balanced city produce?

A plot can produce 2,538 in an hour.  Times 5 plots is 12,690.  (2,538*5 = 12,690).  Add the prestige boost we are at, 15,228. And if we use the proper buildings we get another 40% boost to 20,304.

Further improvements of up to 22% are possible.  For this exploration I assume the 8% geomancy spell is applied to the clay as it's the most used for Chancery building and while not totally eliminating the deficit does make it mostly modest.  (8% of 203045 is 1,624.32 and thus cuts the clay shortage incurred by the Chancery from 3200 to about 1600).

So our basic resource budget tops out at 20,304.  There are costs to this and with those costs the actual number is something around 15,000.  Other costs include the cost of building maintenance as discussed above, which vary from res to resource but which add up to about 8% for the three resources used by the Chancery. 

Now what combination of sov and unit production can be accomplished with that?  If we have 20 squares of level 3 sov the cost in resources is 600 per square per hour: 12,000 total (20 x 600).  For that we get a 15% x 20  production increase of 300%.  Not too impressive but not to bad either.   And if we continue adding level 3 sov squares, each square adds 15% to our production rate.  Since, at maximum resource production is 15,000 we have about 5 more squares we can add at lvl 3 before we outstrip our ability to feed the sov.  A total of 25 sov squares times 15% for a total improvement of about 375%.    Not great,  but acceptable.  And that’s sustainable without importing anything but gold and and books to cover the research points (we'll look at the gold and research points farther down).

Of course, if we lower those 25 sov square levels to level II we get a 250% (25 x 10%)  boost at a cost of only 7,500/hr (300 x 25).  Even adding another 10 squares we get a 300% boost at 10,500 per hour. (35 x 300).  And so on.  In the end we arrive at the equation which shows us that with 15,000 basic resources we can sustain 50 level 3 sov squares.  At this point it's just basic math.  The cost of each square does not change with the distance so we just divide the amount of available hourly basic resource by the cost: 15,000/300 = 50. And 50 squares is 500% improvement... quite nice!

But of course, the real costs are not in the basic resources but in the distance from the city and it's growing cost of gold and research points.  So lets take a hypothetical example and see where it leads.

Let's take 120 level 1 sov squares and lay them out around a hypothetical city in the dessert.  A nice balanced 5 food city.  If you have 120 squares of lvl 1 sov it costs 49,436 gold and 4943.6 research per hour.  The farthest you would have your sov square would be 6 squares away, and highest multiplier based upon distance would be 6.08 or 608/hr.  (6.08 x 100).  But of course, distance has no bearing on the amount of the resources needed so you have almost all the resources since the actual maximum production is about 15,000 and the cost of the 120 sov lvl 1 squares appears to be 18,000/hr (150 x 120).  This is, of course, 12,000 / hr above what you can sustain (3,000 x 4 resources) but since you have a level 20 Chancery of Estates you get a 40%  discount anyway and that adds up to far 6,000/hr.  It is unclear to me if the benefits of the Chancery apply to basic resources, but even if they don't a negative 3,000/hr adds up to only 288,000 resources per day (4x 72k), an amount you can easily bring in or have delivered. 

So 120 squares is doable from the point of resource production.  You will have to import at most 96 carts of resources per day to cover the 72k shortfall in each resource ( 3,000/pr hr * 24 hours * 4 resources) but that's pretty minor if you have the prestige to move your carts.  And even if you subtract some resources used to support your city you can still import enough with about two trips to your local hub/market a day.

But of course, it's the gold and research points that have limited sov for the most part.

Since the distance is the crucial factor in calculating the cost of each of our squares we can use the following grid to compute the cost of each square.

When we do that we get the following grid:

The number in the square represents the multiplier times 100, the cost of gold for level one sov square.  Since research points are 10% of the gold costs, we can use both charts to compute the gold and research costs.

Calculating our 120 sovereign square we find at level 1 they cost us 1,186,464 (add up the total of the squares in the second chart) in gold each day and 118,646 in research points.  The gold is no problem as we have that in unlimited quantities.  And as for the research pts, if you use books you can convert them to research points.  Thus, since you get 20 research pts per book it would take just over 5932 of books a day (118,646 / 20).  Of course you can have a building for making some books, but you can also purchase 6k of them at, current value, 410 gold.  But for sake of fluctuation we can bump the price to 500 per book.

But all this is sort of academic and exaggerated because you get that 40% discount so, actually your needs are only 60% of these numbers. The gold output would be 711,878 and the books needed, about 3560 a day, or 1,780,000 (500 x 3560) in gold.  Since you have unlimited gold you can spend about 2.5 million a day and have your 120 squares of sov and your 600% speed increase.  And with 30 more squares you could use to produce even more you can reach a maximum of 750% unit production speed.  I suspect, though I have not done the math, that the 1,000% level is reachable, but doubt that you could do the 2,000% I suggested, though I suppose with unlimited funds even that could be reachable as everything needed can be bought.

In summary, to sustain 120 level 1 sov squares you would need to import at most 288k of basic resources, 3.5k of books (minus what you produce of course), and 711,878 in gold.  And it may be that with a careful placing of other level 2 squares you may actually do even better.  Now here's the fun part.  Once you have that sov with a 600% production bonus, you can produce troops.  How many and how fast you ask?

If you have kobolds at 3 minutes 5 seconds and speed them up by a factor of 6 you get 2802 per day.  At that rate it would take you right at 35.68 days.  In just over a month you could have your 100k army and some fun.

100,000 troops from one city with only modest importing needed.    Yes, the troops will cost you some too, but again, you just buy that.

So it appears to me my first intuitions were correct.  36 days, 100k,  and no limits.

"The point of sovereignty is not necessarily to be able to do something efficiently; rather the point is that you can do more of it, more quickly, at high cost."  Albatross, May 11, 2011, Illyriad forums.

I repeat.  I may be mistaken in some way and have calculated sov costs incorrectly.  You are certainly right that I don't know as much about sov as I would like.  But still it's nice that you all took the time to read my post.

 AJ

In a recent post on “Unintended Consquences,” after a long discussion of my claim that one could use prestige, and thus unlimited gold, to make Illyriad into a “pay-to-win.” The scenario I presented was pretty clear, but, after quite a lengthy discussion, was wrong. Just plain incorrect.

I looking back I’ve pinpointed the process by which I wasn’t getting the message that it wouldn’t work and my interlocutors were frustrated (if I interpret the tone of their posts correctly), that I just didn’t believe them.

Here is a bit of analysis and some quotes by which you might see better how easily, in this case, things fell apart.

In my initial post I laid out the following scenario by which a person could pay-to-win:

“A player or alliance decides they wish to win at any cost, both in game and out.

Said player or alliance purchases large amounts of prestige with real world currency.

Having purchased the prestige they then sell the prestige in the form of prestige scraps etc...

Now, having large amounts of gold with which to sustain huge armies city sizes are irrelevant.

So they build huge armies with which to dominate their opponents who, had they had the same real world financial abilities, might do the same.”

Nothing in this says the armies would be dependent on sov, but of course, that is rightfully implied.

So one of my locutionors responded with:

“You clearly don't understand how sov works.

You can only build 20 structures. The basic resource consumption for 1-5 doubles at every level: 150, 300, 600, 1200, 2400. Even at 0 taxes, you can only produce a certain maximum amount of basic resources for production sovereign structures. So no, even with infinite gold, your production rate cannot be unlimited. You are limited by the practical aspect that if any of your basic resources run out while you are negative in that basic, all your sov structures will instantly fall apart. Above a certain consumption, it would be exhausting trying to ship in sufficient resources, although I know a few people who did it one month per year for tournaments, long before prestige sales were possible.

If you don't understand how sov works, I fail to see why anyone should take the rest of your P2W argument seriously. There is a practical amount you can boost even given limitless gold, which many accounts already had due to permasats. “

And he was fully correct.

But....

Notice that the needed information that I missed, “You can only build 20 structures” is sandwiched between an initial claim that I “don’t understand sov” and a whole paragraph stating that nobody should take my arguments seriously. The twin sweeping claims overshadowed the needed information because they were, I think, not really attempts to clarify but to clarify AND undermine the speaker – myself. And the second was the message I got. A much exaggerated example might be “Your’re an idiot for thinking that cars don’t need fuel and I don’t pay any attention to stupid people like you,” which might result in an argument about the intelligence of the person in which the person misses entirely the point that cars need fuel.

That, I think, is the first mistake. But of course, the real mistake at that point was on my part as I pretty much ignored the very next sentence, “You can only build 20 structures.” If I would have read that carefully, I would have re-worked my argument and not spent the next few days building an argument on an incorrect premise.

The was reinforced by twin uses of “sov.”  One was literal, the other metonymic, used to represent the building of buildings on sov squares, a related process. In other words, literally understanding sov is understanding the in’s and out’s of claiming sov and of putting buildings on some of the sov squares. The building of structures is a part of the whole sov process, but not a necessary part. So a literal “you don’t understand sov” would mean the claiming of sov with it’s costs, and not necessarily a claim about also not understanding structures on sov squares. That I took “you don’t understand sov” to mean I don’t understand how to make sov claims and the costs of those claims, is obvious. That the poster meant “you don’t understand sov and the use of buildings on that sov” is obvious. He used “sov” as a metonymy (a part to represent the whole) and I more literally. And from that my mistakes in my scenario piled up.

I could have done it better. I could have read more closely. And, if I may be bold enough to suggest that the poster may have himself improved his communication by simply not starting out with a broad and all-encompassing statement that would put any player on the defensive. He may, of course, disagree. All of which shows how difficult it is, once you take an adversarial stance against another person, to hear them.

In the end it was when another poster repeated the key fact that you can’t have more than 20 buildings, that I retracted my statement about the scenario. The second post, the beginning of which reads:

“It really doesn't matter whether your math for the sov costs for 120 squares is correct or not.  You're confusing being able to claim sov claims and being able to make use of those claims through the construction of structures on your sov.  You're only allowed a maximum of 20 structures, period.  It's why most do not claim more than 20 sov squares as you can not make use sov squares above 20 to boost production ….“

This was instantly heard because it made a claim I could verify when it said, “Your’re confusing being ble to claim sov claims and being able to make use of those claims...” and wasn’t preceded by a sweeping statement about my lack of ability. It enabled me to go back and re-interpret “you don’t understand sov” as a metonymy and then to actually get the correct statement “you can only build 20 structures.”

In summary I believe the lions share of the blame is my own. I should have been calmer and received the correction with a more generous spirit and I certainly should have read more carefully since what was needed was always there.

AJ