Pre-Announcement: Siege Changes

[Kaios]

If you wanna play peacefully and etc. don't make people angry. Don't go to the mountains, forage on quality swamps, try to claim quality nodes and stay behind of your walls. No-one will be bothered to do anything to you.

"don't play the game"

[Jalpha]

I think it's a step in the right direction, it makes weekend raids kindof viable. It seems a disproportionate trade to exchange 12hrs for months of mind-numbing labour but I'd rather see raiding possible tbh than be safe forever.

The brimstone spawn rate seems like a massive increase, maybe unnecessarily so. Some effort should still have to go into collecting and storing brimstone and I think brimstone spawns could be a viable method of reducing catapult spam to levels manageable for defenders. Even without drying time for catapult.

[wolf1000wolf]

You guys keep discussing rates and shields without discussing the more fundamental issues of why raids should happen and the appropriate effort/rewards for them. =/ At this point, we have a siege system that is costly to engage in and on success seems to result in all out destruction.

The devs should have the data of how HnH is populated. They should know the % of population that are not in a village, in a village <5 ppl, in a village 5-20 ppl, in a village >20 ppl. Perhaps design your mechanics to allow for more of your population base to participate in?

Do you want sieges to be limited to bigger factions? Does no one want options that are less total than complete destruction and pillage of a base?

[MightySheep]

Raids against major factions would be near-impossible, or at least definitely not worth the effort. You have to build a lot of catapults to deal decent damage to the shield, but leaving them out in the open for 2-3 hours means there's a HUGE risk of them being destroyed. And they're pretty expensive to build.

Agreed, you would need a ton of resources and the defenders have all the initiative in the fight.

The attackers will need to maintain their numbers and be on their guard for the entire duration of the siege. The defenders on the other hand can engage battle at any moment, using walls for cover and call in as much backup as they need to. In other words, the level of organization and no-lifing required to pull off successful raid means you basically need a faction full of autistic unemployed basement dwellers with no real life obligations (its a bit like a high level WoW raid in that regard). Wizards immediately come to mind but I think even they will struggle because raiding is like sending a signal to all your enemies saying "we are out in the open, vulnerable, with red handed, come get us" and they sure do have a lot of enemies.

[jorb]

Again, one hour? 30 minutes? Does coles not have some sort of point?

[ven]

Feel free to opine.

Haven't you tried to balance this wall and ram thing for long enough? And yet this system has always made people either too vulnerable or too unraidable, it's too binary no matter what you do.
You could consider completely removing walls from the game and reworking the siege system around other means of attack and defense, each with varied effects and maintenance costs, in a way that would hopefully make the raiding game less linear and final, and more like a progression of overcoming barriers and countering your enemies' moves.

[DanteThanatos]

If you wanna play peacefully and etc. don't make people angry. Don't go to the mountains, forage on quality swamps, try to claim quality nodes and stay behind of your walls. No-one will be bothered to do anything to you.

"don't play the game"

Ninja'd.

Wrong. Why would I spend my precious brimstones on some filthy nab who has not done anything to me? I would rather use them to take over some resource nodes.

[*] Geysers now spawn 500 brimstone globally per day, rather than 100.

This.

A little note, my faction came back in the middle of W5 and fought against Pandemonium, who had better stats than us. So yeah, there is no such thing as "drag a little behind", especially with the current system, where you can make a stat-caped character within a day, if you work hard enough.

So, where are everyone's stat capped armies? You can't possibly tell me that no one is working hard enough. Either way my point isn't to debate if there is no drag behind or not.

[Jalpha]

Again, one hour? 30 minutes? Does coles not have some sort of point?

He does, but I think the problem isn't necessarily the drying time so much as the amount of catapults an attacking force is able to build before running out of brimstone. I think the problem with siege now is the slow pace, it's a lot of waiting around. A small drying time like 1hr is a token gesture without any actual effect I think.

I like the idea of defenders and attackers actively seeking to destroy and protect catapults, it places the emphasis on character combat rather than time-gates. Really the success or failure of a raid should be about the character combat, not who is determined to camp a catapult for the longest period of time. The raid is won or lost with the character combat, but a losing attacking force shouldn't be able to just endlessly spam catapults with alts or something.

[wolf1000wolf]

Feel free to opine.

Haven't you tried to balance this wall and ram thing for long enough? And yet this system has always made people either too vunlerable or too unraidable, it's too binary no matter what you do.
You could consider completely removing walls from the game and reworking the siege system around other means of attack and defense, each with varied effects and maintenance costs, in a way that would hopefully make the raiding game less linear and final, and more like a progression of overcoming barriers and countering your enemies' moves.

+1

Ppl have suggested systems that result in raids that aren't about the destruction of the walls and then complete pillage.

[Sever]

However, if you can't dedicate 12 hours to raid something, then I'm inclined to think that you don't deserve it to begin with.

I'm inclined to think that is deeply stupid. When did you forget how time works? 12 consecutive hours, even just being available rather than actually playing, is a long enough time to be unfeasible for people.

I'm even considering than you mean 12 consecutive hours across multiple people. Just... what. WHAT.

Does no one want options that are less total than complete destruction and pillage of a base?

That would require nuance. Do you see any nuance around?