"Give/Transfer City Ownership" function within guilds only.

[Kaleel]

I searched the "Suggestions" forum for this and couldn't find a pre-existing post, so here's my suggestion: implement a guild-only "give/transfer city ownership" function. This would also encompass making the city a barbarian city. This would primarily be used by guild members who:

• Want to give away cities as a "boost" to newer guild members;
• Want to dispose of low-ranking cities and turn them into barbs so that they can better manage their high-ranking cities;
• Want to quit a game/world and leave their cities behind to their former guildmates.

I experienced a need for the last two scenarios within the past 48 hours:

• I decided to leave a world and wanted to give all my cities to my guildmate, but it wasn't an easy task. I had to send all the troops to support a faraway location so that they would be away from the city for him to take, and he had to spend a bunch of scholars waves to conquer my cities. That doesn't sound efficient or a good use of gameplay time.

• And currently in another world, my guildmates and I (who are in close proximity in one region) are trying to prep a city for another guild member who is 3 regions away from us. So she has to send her one lone scholar 16 hours away, while we send our own scholars intermitently to the chosen barbarian city target, trying to lower the loyalty enough so that her one scholar can conquer it when it lands -- but we have to be careful not to send too many scholars, lest we end up conquering it before her (which is what happened). So we're now having to quit the guild so that we can send scholars to conquer the already conquered target from a fellow guildmate in order to lower the loyalty, then rejoing the guild after each attempt... it's a hassle and not very fun.

I propose the following conditions to make the "give/transfer city ownership" function equitable and less likely to be abused:

• This feature can only be used if you are part of a guild.
• You can only give ownership to another member of the same guild that you are in.
• The cost of transferring ownership is that all structures in the city are automatically lowered by 5x levels. If there is a structure that is only 5x levels, then it will be reduced to level 1.
• And additional cost of up to 250,000 of each resource will be deducted from the balances already present in the city's warehouse. If the warehouse has less than 250,000 of one type of resource, then that type is reduced to zero.
• The loyalty is lowered to 25.

EXAMPLE:

• I conquer a barb city with LVL 23 on almost everything. I want to give it my guild member who is 3 regions away. I go to the newly conquered city's City Hall and scroll to the bottom below the name, where this is a button to "transfer city ownership".
• It takes me to a list of my guildmates and asks me to choose one name.
• Once I've made my selection, it gives me a confirmation dialog box, asking confirm/cancel.
• Once I click confirm, the city is no longer mine and it belongs to her. Both of us receive confirmation reports that look similar to the ones that we receive when we successfully conquer a city:
  
  • It details the new level standing of all the structures
  • It shows the balance of resources post-deduction
  • It shows that loyalty was reduced to 25.

By doing this, I believe it simulates the conditions of beseiging and capturing a target city, but without the hassle of time. And it would give members with large kingdoms the ability to dispose of cities by transfering them to the game to become barbarian cities.

There is no limit on how many times a city can be "given away", but with each time, the structure levels are dropped, the warehouse emptied by 250,000 of each resource, and the loyalty dropped to 25. Eventually, it'll be a 1,000 point city with level 1 on everything and no resources, just a few stages higher than a noob city.

Thoughts?
-Kaleel

[Orlor]

A very interesting idea. Something like this would be a huge feature to add and I will bring it to the design team for them to see.

[Brendone33]

I just wanted to add my voice in support of something like this. I don't know if 'giving' a city might make things too easy (if a guild member is under siege and about to be defeated another could simply give him a city to save him, alternately, many players could give one player all their cities and have him instantly have hundreds). There has to be some kind of other limitations to it, I think.

I definitely think there should be a way to abandon a city though (have individual cities go barb). Perhaps if there was a way to have this happen that caused the loyalty to reduce to 25 when you did it (that way you could have someone capture it the normal way, but without needing to launch 4-5 scholars) that would work. The biggest thing for me is conquering the smaller cities an enemy has and not wanting to waste time building them up.

[Kaleel]

@Orlor: Thanks for the consideration! I know it would be a big feature to add, but I believe it would be a worthwhile one, as empires get large and unwieldy and players want more time to, well, "play" as opposed to micromanage a hodgepodge of undesirable assets.

@Brendone33: Thanks for your thoughts. Limits would be a good thing. How a time limit? A city that was recently transferred may not be transferred again or "disposed of" within 24 hours of the last instance of transfer.

And as for a player receiving multiple cities, well... that's what I kinda was hoping for: I wanted to give away all my cities to single player without hassle in an easy handover. But to address your concerns of abuse and unbalanced play, how about limiting it to the receipt of 5 cities per player per 24 hour period? So If I want to give away 9 cities to one player, I have to do it in batches of 5 at a time, and then I have to wait 24 hours between each batch. And for him on the receiving end, when he goes into "Portal View", he sees a countdown next to each city that he received from me via transfer. In this way, players can clearly tell which cities they received as a transfer and how much time remains before they can transfer again/dispose of it.

-Kaleel

[Brendone33]

I'm just thinking of the scenario... imagine you and I are in the same guild. We each have 50 cities, and I give 5 to you. You have 55, I have 45. I've created for myself extra scholar space (and presumably taken up yours), so I am able to go out and get 5 more. Then I give 5 more to you, and go get 5 more. Soon you could have 200 cities, -150 scholar limit and I'm just rolling through conquering cities for you without ever needing to get scholarships. Not only that, but I could be giving you cities with scholars trained at them, so you could be conquering new cities from your gifted cities. Now what if your whole guild was doing this for you, even 1 city at a time? I give you 1 city with 25 scholars at it, the next day another does the same, and so on, and you are able to capture 5 new cities rapidly from each of those (5 waves of 5). I just think it makes it very open to abuse.

[ramorocks]

this is very unfair and very easy to take advantage of.

say I had two accts, iPhone and iPad acct.
I join a new world with both accts.
I transfer my iPad city to my iPhone acct. and bam! I have two cities on my iPhone.
then I get a new city on my iPad and transfer new city to my iPhone. and bam! I have three cities on my iPhone acct. I could do this indefinitely. and in one week I could have 36 cities. without an academy.

I've always thought transferring cities was a good idea until I thought of the above scenerio. there needs to be strict strict guidelines for this to happen so that someone couldn't take advantage of it.

I guess needing a scholar to transfer city would work. but what if I had multiple cities with scholars, which of my scholars would it take?

best idea would be to abandon city and lower loyalty. this could be done just before your guild mate hits it.

[Vasasalo]

while it does seem great at first i to think this is a bad ideal if its as stated above. The only way i could see it is if you are quitting and it's made an irreversible desicion. I would limit it to 5 cities in the account of the player. This way you would really have to want to take someone elses city, but like stated before this has abuse written all over it.

[Tooltip]

How annoying would it be to have purchased scholarships and then be given a city weaker than your target city.

[Kaleel]

*****SCRAP ALL THIS, SEE RECENT POST BELOW******

Thank you everyone for your comments. I had started writing a reply to address most of the issues but the Forum auto-logged me out after XX minutes of "inactivity" and when I logged back in, my post had been erased.

In future, I will compose my post in MS Word then copy/paste into the body of the forum. In the meantime, here were some of the highlights to address the concerns of abuse:

• Between guild members, there are two types of transactions: give & accept. These types of transactions are initiated by one player but have to be either accepted or denied by the other player. It is not an automatic one-way transfer. Both parties must participate.

• Only 5x transactions (either give or accept) are allowed per 24-HRS period per world. This means that if you give 3x cities and accept 2x, then you are blocked from doing more transactions within a 24-HRS period (counting from the first transaction in a rolling 24-HRS period).
  
  • Day 1, 12:00 PM VT - I successfully give 3x cities to guild member
  • Day 1, 15:00 PM VT - I successfully accept 2x cities from a guild member
  • I have to wait until Day 2, 12:01 PM VT before I can either initiate or accept another transaction.

• Pending transactions will prevent either the giver or the receiver from initiating their own transactions.
  
  • EXAMPLE:
    
    • Tom has City #1 and City #2. Jerry has City #3 and Mike has City #4.
    • Tom wants to give City #1 to Jerry, so Tom initiates a "give" transaction of City #1 to Jerry.
    • Tom is blocked from initiating a "give" transaction of City #2 to Mike until Jerry accepts/denies Tom’s outstanding "give" transaction.
  • EXAMPLE:
    
    • Jerry wants to give City #3 to Mike.
    • Jerry receives notification of a "give" transaction of City #1 from Tom.
    • Jerry is blocked from initiating a "give" transaction of City #3 to Mike until Jerry accepts/denies Tom’s outstanding "give" transaction.
  • EXAMPLE:
    
    • Mike has City #4 and wants to give it to either Tom or Jerry, but wants to receive cities from Tom and Jerry first.
    • Mike receives notification of a "give" transaction of City #2 from Tom.
    • Mike is blocked from receiving any further "give" transactions from either Tom or Jerry until Mike accepts/denies Tom’s outstanding "give" transaction.
    • Mike is also blocked from initiating any further "give" transactions to Tom or Jerry for the same reason.

• The first 5x "give" transactions are free overall (just like how new players get free gold when they first start playing Valor). This is tracked across worlds so you can give 3x in World A for free and give 2x in World B for free.

• The first 5x "receive" transactions are free overall (just like how new players get free gold when they first start playing Valor). This is tracked across worlds so you can receive 3x in World A for free and receive 2x in World B for free.

• After that, each transaction becomes a premium item at 5x gold. The cost is assessed upon the initiation of the offer, but the balance is not deducted until the offer is confirmed/denied. Also, only the affected party will be charged.
  
  • EXAMPLE:
    
    • Tom has 5x free "give" transactions but Jerry has already used up his 5x free "accept" transactions.
    • Tom can give City #1 to Jerry for free, but it will cost Jerry 5x gold to accept it. Jerry can either choose to deny the request or purchase gold and accept the request.

• Each player is limited to a total of 10x give/accept transactions per world. Leftover give/accept transactions cannot be transferred between worlds.
  
  • EXAMPLE:
    
    • Tom is active on 3x worlds, so he can give/receive up to 30x times altogether at 10x times per world.
    • On World A:
      
      • Tom gives 1x cities for free
      • Tom accepts 4x cities for free.
      • Tom has a total of 5x transactions remaining on this world
    • On World B:
      
      • Tom gives 3x cities for free
      • Tom accepts 1x city for free
      • Tom pays 10 gold to accept 2x more cities
      • Tom has a total of 4x transactions remaining on this world
    • On World C:
      
      • Tom gives 1x city for free
      • Tom pays 5 gold to give 1x more city
      • Tom has 8x transactions remaining on this world.
  • Tom is not allowed to take the unused transactions from World A and World B and use them in World C.

Converting Cities to Barbs

• The restrictions above do not apply.
• When you choose to abandon a city, all troops are wiped out (including scholars) and the academy is demolished.
• The structure levels and resources in the warehouse remain unaffected!

... I'm starting to think that players would get more mileage out of the "Convert City to Barbs" function than the city transfer function at this point. So even if someone wanted to quit the game but didn't want to spend the money to give away their cities, they could at least convert the cities to barbs, then everyone in the area would get a fair chance at conquering it on their own.

In any case, do these changes make it more equitable? My worry is that in trying to make the function equitable, we don't make it usable, and that would defeat the entire purpose.

-Kaleel

[Conan94]

Good ideas but no good ways of making them without a loop so people can "cheat". The 5 gold thing would be like paying 5 gold to convert the nearest barbarian city into another city of yours. I think you need 5 scholars and it takes 1 and ties the other 4 for the amount of time it would take to reach the city and return... This idea also has loop holes. I will try to think of a way to keep people from cheating and post it here but don't hold your breath... By the way I'm in no way connected to Valors company I'm just a gamer and like the idea.