Networth Adjustments

Post by **Ruddertail** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 6:34 am

Networth Adjustments

We have a problem here at FAF. Namely, the way networth values are set creates emps that cannot be taken down in any way other then massive numbers of murders. You see, the only way to achieve a high net is through troops. This means we have people who market store, then pull their guys, and jump to 1.2 billion dollar networths in one day, often on low amounts of land. Because of this, the only way to drop them is to kill their troops, or kill them. Neither is something that is exactly great.

On the other hand, these emps also cannot do anything but sit there. The whole idea of emperorship is not only to hold the top spot with a massive net, but to be able to control the game by smashing anybody who opposes you. An emp that cannot even support himself for a run is not exactly capable of controlling the game. All he can do is sit there until he's murdered or passed by another guy pulling the same store, store, store, jump strat.

One possible way to combat this would be removing the capability to market store or stock store, possibly replacing them with other features that allow for much more limited storing. However, this then risks removing the possibility of anybody being able to surpass anybody else by a great margin. After all, the amount of troops you can have is now limited by the amount you can support, people cannot get too high without killing their economy. It will prevent impotent emps, but it may also prevent any emps. It's a good idea, and should be done, but it won't accomplish our goal: Emps who actually control the game, rather then sit on it.

Therefore, after much thought, I've come up with an idea I think will create strong, game controlling emps, who can also be toppled. In short, when there's an emp, it's fun to be the emp, and fun to try and take down the emp. That idea is adjusting networths.

Troops:

First off, troops. Troop networth will be decreased, drastically. 50% ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å“ 75% reduction. As I see it, troops should be a means of gaining and protecting networth, not a source of networth itself.

Yes, I know this goes against traditional promisance wisdom, but it makes sense, both based on the game, and in respect to real life. The idea of networth is to indicate which warband is the most powerful warband. Massive numbers of troops don't really provide power; they just provide an economist's nightmare. So what if you have this many troops? If you can't even provide for them, they'll all leave soon, anyway, unless you have people, many people, feeding you resources. It's not the person with the most troops at the start of the war who wins a war, it's the person who can generate the most troops, and the most supplies, for the duration of the war, that wins the war. Both in game, and in real life.

Take WWII, for example. More specifically, the Pacific war. In the beginning the Japanese had superior troop numbers and supply numbers and scored a number of major victories. However, as they failed to deliver a knock-out blow (a kill, in FAF terms), the United States had time to bring her massive production capabilities on line, draft and train an army, and bring her massive resources to bare against the Japanese. Once this happened, the end was inevitable. The Japanese were defeated, soundly. *

It works roughly the same way in FAF. Unless the person with superior troop numbers is able to either kill the person, or take and lock away a major portion of the land, they will eventually be defeated, despite their initial advantage.

Therefore, number of troops does not equate to power, and it is silly to award such an overwhelming "power rating", which is what NW essentially is, to troops. Yes, they certainly contribute to power, and are a pivotal part of any warband, but not, by far, the most important factor in a warbands power. Troops can be easily gained by someone with resources and land. Land and resources take more work to garner.

Land:

Land is the base of every warband. Without sufficient land, a warband cannot prosper. Therefore, land is the most important factor in the game. The warbands who can get land are the ones who get strong. Those who fail to gain land, however, sit around in the lower ranks.

Then, if land is the factor that contributes most directly to the power of a warband, and too it's worth, then it should have a very high value in the "power ranking", the NW.
I would recommend a 200% increase in NW, bringing the total value of an acre of land to $2,000 dollars of NW. This would mean that every 1,000 acres of land equals $2,000,000 (two million) dollars of NW.

This seems a rather drastic change, yes, but it also seems one that makes much sense. If I have not made it clear yet, he who controls the games land, and can support himself on it, controls the game. Therefore, land is of critical importance, and should be given a high value.

Food:

Food is also a very important resource. Without food, your troops will soon desert your warband. Moreover, food is highly expensive and in limited supply on the bazaar. Thus, unless you can find a steady supplier who will sell you food cheaply over the public market, you must always produce your own food. Food value should thus be increased to $.01 NW. This would lead to a Billion Food having a value of $10,000,000 NW (Ten Million Dollars of Net Worth).

Now, I know there is some concern that giving food a high NW leads to a HPR game, where people are more interested in sitting and farming then they are in attacking. The high value of land would counter this, to some extent, as it would be harder to exceed with large amounts of food and little land the NW of someone who medium to large amounts of land. Sack will also help counter this, though if it is de-powered as I hope (mentioned later), it will not provide a completely effective counter. If, between sack and high land values, it is not enough to counter a trend toward HPR-ness, a possibility that could be considered is a "food cap", a cap on the amount of NW from food. It would not affect the amount of food a person could have; it would simply prevent food from counting for more then $200 Million Dollars (not a definite amount). That way, food could not be used to provide an infinite NW.

Another possibility for the cap would be to have a % cap, not allow food to be more then a certain percentage of the total NW of a warband.

Cash:

Finally, we have cash. Cash is the less important of the two resources, as it is much easier to turn food into cash then it is cash into food, especially with our high sell prices for food.

Nonetheless, cash is an important resource, and thus should be given a good value. I would recommend giving it a value of $.001 Dollars of NW, so that $1 Billion Dollars of Cash equals $1 Million Dollars of NW.

That, then, is the adjustments of NW, and the most important part of this plan. However, there are several other things that need to be adjusted if this plan is to work as I intended.

Sacking:

Sacking needs to be de-powered, and majorly. It's much too easy to take all of peoples resources. If we want people to be able to keep resources out to provide a NW boost, and, indeed, if we want to force people to stop the excessive storing, we also need to reduce sack power. I would recommend making sack about 10% - 25% of what it is now, maybe even less, based on what the current value is.

Stock and Market Storing:

Stock and market storing needs to be done away with. The proposals for doing so will be detailed elsewhere, as some have already been proposed, and some proposals are in the process of being worked on, and adopted.

Guards:

Finally, Guards need adjustment. They are quite useless currently, at 500 Def points a piece. I would recommend doubling this, to 1000 Def Points a piece. This would make them much more useful, without making them overpowered. The reason they must be made more effective is that part of gaining an emperorship is being able to hold land. That is very hard these days.

You may be concerned, thinking "But, if that happened, maybe some people would become totally unbreakable, and dominate for years". That's unlikely. You see, with this new system, 100k Land in Guards would give 100 Million Defensive Points. 100 Million Defensive points is enough to stop about 50 Million Mice, or 20 Million Hares. If a person is able to get enough land to put 100k into Guards, people should have no trouble generating the troops to break them. Indeed, maybe Guards should be strengthened even further, to 2000 Def Points, require 100 Mil Mice or 40 Mil Hares to break 100k worth of guards.

Also, I would give all buildings 100 Def Points. This would add a minimal defense to all warbands, making it slightly easier to hold land, at least against those of much lower rank.

Final Thoughts:

There you have it, folks. My plan to adjust NW's and make many other changes that will greatly alter the game play. I have thought about this extensively, and talked to others about this plan as well. They have also thought about this, and found it to be a good idea.

For those of you who haven't heard this yet, please consider it WELL, and mull over it LONG, before making a decision, either up or down.

For those of you who have heard the general over view, please also read and consider carefully, before making a decision. What I have told you over messenger is by no means complete, and was spoken before the complete plan was written, so things may have changed.

Finally, no adjustment amounts are final. Do not discard this plan simply because you would like to see values adjusted more or less then I proposed. Simply mention that, and we will take that into consideration.

Thank you for taking time to read all this, and even more for taking the time to consider it.

-Ruddertail

* Though the atomic bomb ended the war, there is no question that the US would have won, even without the bomb. The bomb was simply used to spare the lives of millions of U.S. and Japanese soldiers who would have undoubtedly perished in the event of an invasion of mainland Japan.

Post by **Ruddertail** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 6:37 am

Whew, that's long. If it screws with the page lengt, let me know, I'll edit it into several posts, instead of just one.

Just a quick thing to add:

NW "ranges", the distance up or down the NW scale you can attack, may need to be adjusted if this proposal is adopted, since NW will aquire a tendancy to fluctuate. If someone grabs 70k, and then gets nocked down to 30k, that's an $80 Mil change in NW, affecting who can attack them, and who they can attack.

Post by **Devari** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 8:30 am

One issue - imbalance of races. Mole, for example, can gain NW easier.

Otherwise sound ideas...

Fresh Water Fighters · Thu Jan 05, 2006 1:44 pm

I think we should test it on Dev.
It sounds if it might work.
~FWF

Post by **Ruddertail** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:25 pm

Devari wrote: One issue - imbalance of races. Mole, for example, can gain NW easier.

Otherwise sound ideas...

Through food, yes. On the other hand, you still need a lot of food to get a decent NW (1 Bil only gets you $10 Mil NW, for example.) This could be easilly compensated for by adjusting the range to which one could attack, as with the cap, the only problem would be people jumping quickly in a new game to get out of range of others.

FWF: Not many people play dev, and with the multis allowed, things like this might be harder to test. We're not just looking at "bug or no bug", we're looking at game balance/game play issues. About the only way to test that is under actual game conditions, at least to my knowledge. People can do things with 5 multis that would be impossible under normal game conditions, for example.

Post by **Freenhult** » Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:07 pm

These changes make more sense... i know i'm a newbie but still...it is way to easy to build up large amounts of food and sell them for money. So...I'm in favor.

Nohc · Post by **Nohc** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 6:11 am

I support them all, and think that they will create much interest and excitement.

Honest Killer · Post by **Honest Killer** » Sun Jan 08, 2006 7:04 am

I think, that these changes should be tested on a dev first. but then i like the ideas. *laughs*
and yeah, it'll be very interessting

Nuclear Raunch · Post by **Nuclear Raunch** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:26 am

Quick comment on sacking, I would suggest that it requires at least a STD attack to sack, and quite possibly needing 2-3X the number of troops required for a STD attack. The amount of cash/grain taken I'm not really sure about, but I do know 1 unit attacks shouldn't be able to sack.

Post by **The Beatles** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:51 am

Sound idea as an addition. Ruddertail, thoughts?

Post by **Ruddertail** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:31 pm

I'm not sure. You see, some strats depend on being able to sack, and, idealy, they would be able to sack food and cash off people without standard attacking them, as a standard attack is normally seen as intent to harm, and causes more damage to the player attacked.

Thus, a sack would be seen a intent to harm, not as a small incident, like a landgrab, which would be expected by those who leave food/cash lying around.

Post by **The Beatles** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:29 pm

Not if it were necessary to use STDs to sack. Then everyone'd understand.

Post by **Ruddertail** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:56 pm

It'd still cause the same amount of damage, though. Even if I understand someone needed to STD, I'd still be mad at them for killing all those troops. And it'd still hurt me a lot.

Post by **The Beatles** » Tue Jan 17, 2006 8:17 am

This is our next priority. I plan to work implement the proposals on BFR first, try them for a round, and only then merge them into WOA.

Some suggestions need to be worked in parallel with others in Suggestions & Bugs, for instance, Stock Storing.

Thus in the next few days I will detail the exact changes that will occur in BFR on Feb. 1. So hopefully the new gameplay will come into effect on March 1, at which time I think a release -- perhaps 2.6 -- would be appropriate.

Post by **Urran Voh** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:46 pm

Don't take away the Market Store, or if you do, make troops cheaper to maintain. A decreased Market Store wouldn't be bad, say maximum storage 40% of your troops?

Frost And Flame Forums

Networth Adjustments

Members connected in real time