W9 Siege System

[LadyGoo]

Any movement by the devs to reconsider the ridiculousness of this siege system, in favor of one more accessible?

It feels like they do not realize that no-one will sign up for camping catapults and rams with the current system.
Basically, they have not changed anything, since sieges still require 24-30 hours as in previous worlds. This is the reason why they did not work: no-one will sacrifice that much time to get inside of someone's walls. This is the main reason why people were using pocketed rams (in strongboxes, crossroads, statues, brickwalls) in order to siege someone. The defenders could also resist, spending some materials (statues).

I do not know what they think, really. The only idea devs shared was to have a turn after turn system. But it's quite bad in terms of in-game dynamics, since it is literally the same system as in the previous worlds: spend 24+ hours on camping to get inside of an empty and lootless village. Unless the devs will change their mindset and turn to some other variable, rather than time, the sieges will be dead. People would be up to 4-5 hours long sieges max.

As for my village, early in the world we had an opportunity to fight other big villages/factions. We have stopped killing noobs (or didn't start even) in our area, because we could have had some sort of action elsewhere. However, since everyone are either camping crs, or never leave their walls, the game has become dull and boring pvp-wise. The meta-game should be changed dramatically in the next couple of updates, or we'll face the same situation as in W8, I'm afraid. World 8 was horrible and extremely boring.

Let's compare it to W4, which has lasted only 2.5 months. It had 208 threads in the Congress Assembled (Moot).


Now, let's compare it to world 8, which had only 89 threads in Moot. That was accumulated in 5 months. 17.5 topics a month (W8) in comparison to 83.2 topics a month in W4.

And this is the same for other aspects such as trades and recruiting new people.
30 threads a month created in D&T in W8
100 threads a month created in D&T in W4

19.4 threads/month in AfO in W8
55.2 threads/month in AfO in W4

[jorb]

It feels like they do not realize that no-one will sign up for camping catapults and rams with the current system.

We had hoped that it would make a bigger difference that the initial wait before you can begin dealing damage is significantly lower.

[ven]

It's an honest question: why don't you remove walls entirely?

[LadyGoo]

It feels like they do not realize that no-one will sign up for camping catapults and rams with the current system.

We had hoped that it would make a bigger difference that the initial wait before you can begin dealing damage is significantly lower.

Well, you've proportionally increased the amount of damage that needs to be dealt. The result is the same, really. The only way to siege anything would be placing a vclaim next to the enemy, camp your drying palisade, then place your siege machines inside of it. So you could spend several hours on eating, sleeping, doing something else in haven, rather than standing and doing nothing, before you can proceed to the next stage.

[LadyGoo]

I have also been thinking about the new system in comparison with the old one.
This is the summary:


Siege machine vulnerability is the key issue, which rises all sorts of unintended mechanics usage or destroys any motivation to do anything at all. People were handling this by making all sorts of pockets out of strongboxes, houses, palisades, brick-walls and etc. The defenders could place invulnerable authority objects, counter-rams, alt walls in order to defend. It's not perfect, but hey, middle-sized villages were able to successfully resist big factions, and big villages would be also raided. So it was 50 ot 50% back then. There should be an official way to defend the siege machines. Especially with the current system, when you have to take down the shield. It is morbidly unbalanced right now, if you were to camp the siege machine without using any vclaims and palisades.


Effort/success: the old system was more or less working, since the rams were not that hard to build (w3-6) + you did not have to camp them all the time. In W5 we would come to camp it 1 hour before it would be dry. Despite of the high possibility of the ram being discovered, there was still a chance that it wouldn't be seen. Back in the old times, the visitor buff was not implemented. So your reward could be quite good.
With the visitor buff, plot-based village layouts (they will persist due to socio-economical reasons solely), the time the defenders have to move out all their valuables, cost of the brimstones, the reward/effort ratio is low. Typical case:
1. Spend 2-3 hours to get to enemy village, chose a place to make a village claim or personal claim stake, so that the defenders could not see it. Optionally, build crossroads to get your troops fast;
2. Once it has dried, find out the offline time for the enemy village and build a palisade near an enemy village and put an alt with yeomanry inside it with a few stockpiles of wood. Keep the alt logged on with unkinned character alarm. Most likely, the palisade will gain enough soak to resist the defender's efforts for good 5-10 minutes. You will have that time to repair the walls with your yomanry alt.
3. When the defenders will have to go outside, because their naked alts in miner's gear cannot damage the palisade, your troops will jump in and attack them.
4. Once the palisade has dried, build your siege machines. Don't worry about the enemy village counter-rams and catapults: if you place your palisade far away from their gates, they won't be able to counter-siege your pocket. If they will break their own wall to get to your palisade, you will be able to destroy the freshly built walls by bare hands.
5. Move out and in your catapults to break the shield and keep annoying your enemies.
6. Celebrate, once you will break into an empty village with all the livestock moved out, valuables alt-vaulted and transported to somewhere else. Oh, btw, if they have inner plots, repeat everything listed above.


Effort for defenders: last worlds you would be fine if you would check your walls twice in 24 hours in 1-2 minimap distance from your village. But it was very annoying, boring, and bad mechanic in general. Nowadays you will be warned well in advance, in case you are being raided by checking the village shield. BUT! It does not defend you from ram-pocketing. On the other hand, I doubt anyone will attempt to siege you, if you live on an island, have plot-based village layout, you are a small noob village and etc.

Abusability: Both old and new siege systems encourage abuses of game mechanics. The new system encourages it even more, since you have to camp the ram for 30+ hours now, instead of 8 hours before (after repairing it).

Summing up, the new siege system is worse than the old one. It is less rewarding, more demanding than the old one. There is no palibashing as well. I would say that devs might want to reduce the number of sieges, so they would have more noobs/peaceful farmers playing and paying for subscriptions.

But there was another idea voiced by them: that sieging villages would be too costly to raid the said noobs. But, why to say no to implementation of higher social structures (kingdoms) in order to reduce the motivation to kill the noobs in your territory? Why can't we have more dynamic and less time-consuming sieges?

[jorb]

Nice post. Appreciate it.

[Sever]

Inspecting ground claimed by both a village and a personal claim shows only the village claim's shield. Should somehow show both.

I'm not sure if you're allowed to see someone else's claim's shield, so if not then nevermind?

[DarkHPG]

EDITED: Figured out where it's displaying it, might want to make it somehow show a damaged shield over a full shield?

Or maybe cycle through both.. I do feel a little stupid not thinking to look in system log and seeing both though.

[Sever]

In retrospect I probably should have realized that the corner would only be able to hold one message.

I don't mean this to be a jerk, but when multiple message lines at the same time are possible, good practice would be to allow several messages to stack up in order before each fades away in turn.

[The_Lich_King]

How long does a catapult take to dry? Me and my buds are contemplating using the new siege system just to see how it plays out. Does it take 24 hours like ram, And does it take just as long to repair?