Soliciting Thoughts on Alliance Barriers To Entry

Wuzzel wrote: So can capital cities be captured or not? Did you change it? Or does it still stand that you cant capture it?

The current state of play is that Player Capital Cities (ie the first, randomly assigned location to a player) cannot be captured.

bow locks wrote: maybe i cant read - its ealry in the morning.   Can the defender attack the sieger?  surely that must be allowable, and the sieging army pretty vulnerable, especially at first.

Yes, absolutely.

Siege encampments are just like normal "units on a square" and can be attacked by whatever attacks them - although they will build some defensive bonuses over the time that they are in place (with some soon-to-be-released military technologies such as Fortify Position).

The only question (slightly) up in the air is whether Assassins should be able to attack these encampments. My gut tells me not, simply because there is no way of defending against these - because you cannot attach defnesive diplomatic units to an army.  That's deep down in the code, as well as being "thematically distinct" (in our heads at least), and so is not going to change any time soon. 

 I don't want Blockades / Siege Camps / Occupying Armies to be totally neutered by a diplomatic assassination attack as it would seriously change the risk/reward ratio.

KillerPoodle wrote: "Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses.  The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only." Do you mean a player quitting an alliance that is in a NAP or an alliance dropping the NAP.   I think the cooldown should apply to both.

Yes, this cooldown will apply to both individuals exiting an alliance with whom there was a NAP, as well as the alliance itself.

I am welcoming suggestion on the length of the cooldown period though.

I'd suggest 1hr cooldown per day of NAP, though that still only gives a bit over a day for a 1-month NAP in place.  Having said that, extending that time period looks equally peculiar.  Thoughts welcome.

Finally, regarding Alliance Capital Cities (rather than Player Capital Cities)...

The Alliance Capital City, at the moment, is simply the place where collected taxes go to.  It was originally envisioned that they would also be important in "forcing surrender and releasing War Dec Fees / War Def Escrow", but as these concepts are no longer with us (as of next week), this no longer applies.

As of Tuesday next week, the Alliance capital city will protect Alliance Coffer funds up to the total of the Alliance Member vault base, but apart from that it has no real significance (except as a great "Blockade" location for hostile forces wanting to intercept your taxes).

However, we're thinking about some Alliance-Capital-specific buildings that might provide some Alliance-wide benefits, and this might change things in the future.  For the moment, though, the Alliance Capital will simply be a large coffer for protected Gold, and gold distribution.  Again, thoughts welcome.

Hope this answers most of your questions.

Best,

I share KillerPoodle's curiosity concerning non-aggression cooldown for individual players departing as well as alliances dropping, and echo his suggestion that the former be included.

Likewise with Wuzzel's question regarding capital cities...in my opinion it should be possible to capture them complete with the resources they hold, but doing so should allow the alliance to immediately assign a new captial.

I also have a third question:  Alliance unit caps have not been mentioned for some time.  I initially--seeded by the wording of my own arguments--assumed that they were being dropped.  But I now notice you wrote out the new rules each time as a list of changes as opposed to a summary of the whole system.  Could you clarify?  Will alliance size still be capped?

So can capital cities be captured or not?
Did you change it?
Or does it still stand that you cant capture it?

Kumomoto wrote: "So, the modified position is: Drop the concept of War Pending, the 24hr War Pending timer and War Dec Fees Keep NAPs and Confeds, and Escrow can be offered for these Make NAPs & Confeds enforce non-aggression, and make quitting a NAP or Confed have a cooldown timer before the enforced non-aggression lapses.  The enforced non-Aggression applies to military units only. Except as above, allow anyone in game (Allied or Neutral) to attack anyone else without warning. Increase Alliance Setup Fee to 5000 Drop Alliance upkeep fees Continue with Alliance Forum development and Alliance data sharing to provide some ingame benefit for alliances Keep Alliance Taxation, Tax Collection, Alliance Finances for those who wish to use them Alliance Coffer to protect 1K gold per alliance member" I Think this works well...

Well, the final item will probably be "Alliance Coffer to protect gold equivalent to all Alliance members' Vault capacity" as per HM's suggestion, but I'm not promising that yet

Ok, thanks for all your detailed responses, and I look forward to seeing the new alliance plans in action.

I don't claim to understand the issue with calculating more organic values for alliance fund protection.  I figure like I previously mentioned, that it could be "calculated only when theft of alliance property potentially occurs" (a relatively rare occurrence in the event queue) and perhaps when displaying a page that shows that value.  But I don't have to understand, and I'll let it go, as previously promised.

Prosecution rests.



Now go take some time off, already.  Get some beauty sleep.  It's Sunday!
We can't have you burning out on us.


Edited by HonoredMule - 15 Mar 2010 at 02:32