Balance suggestions

[Wirewyrm]

I want to make balance suggestions, and everyone agrees Chaos is unbalanced and abused. I have several ideas about how to balance Chaos within the current framework of the game. These ideas can be used together or separately to achieve the desired direction of game balance.

1) Reduce commanders-per-city to between 5 and 10.
This has been suggested by some other players, and it is a very reasonable and easily implement-able change. 10 may still seem like a lot of commanders, but it will effectively double the number of cities required to chaos 1 city, and that may reduce the number of chaos-ed cities by half. It's a good start, and will be very effective if combined with one or both of the next points.

2) Set a maximum attack range limit.
Setting an attack range limit of something like 12 to 24 hours encourages more dynamic play. Currently the dominant strategy is to turtle up and farm barbarian cities until the player gains a critical mass of fully loaded cities in a tight ball, then launch long-range attacks and chaos out the conquered enemies from even longer range. This might be fun for some people, but it is generally very boring for most others because the barb farming takes a long time, the long range attacking takes a long time, and the chaos protection is the biggest waste of time. The war then boils down to a contest of who has the most cities before the war started, and whose chaos support is further away or more active. Limiting attack distance will increase the variety of viable strategies in the game, because then there would be a point to surrounding an enemy before attacking, or gaining ground by attrition, or burn-and-retreat strategies to slow down enemy advance.

3) Set attack priority to favor faster attacks.
What I mean by this is to allow faster attacks to override and cancel slower attacks. For example, if City A is under chaos from 40 attacks, it should still be possible for City B to attack City A, if City B can send an attack that will reach City A earlier than at least one of the 40 attacks. If that happens, then the attack which would have reached City A at the latest time should be cancelled, and the attack from City B will be slotted in among the other 39 attacks. (Note that the determining factor is the time at which the attacks will reach the target, which has nothing to do with the time at which the attacks were launched, nor the total travel time required.)

Now, to prevent allies from protecting each other by using scouts or knights to cancel slow enemy attacks, 2 or 3 additional requirements should be set for this "Chaos Cancel" mechanic. Firstly, the new "canceling" attack must have a higher point value than the attack that is about to be "cancelled". The point value can be calculated using either pre-existing army values such as food cost or attack strength or resource cost, or a new point value can be attributed to each troop type, specially for the purpose of "Chaos Cancel". Secondly, the "canceling" attack, once launched, cannot be cancelled by the player who launched it. Just throw in a couple of "Are you sure?" warning messages so people know that "Chaos Cancel" is a special type of attack and cannot be manually cancelled once launched. Thirdly and optionally, some attacks or troop types can be made to be "un-cancellable", such as attacks with 1 or more scholars. Or it can be made such that to cancel an attack with scholars in it, you must launch an attack that has more scholars.

In the case of "un-cancellable" attacks, or attacks which have insufficient point value, it can be made such the "canceling" attack will cancel to the next latest-arriving attack instead, if it can arrive earlier and satisfy all the other requirements. If all the attacks arriving later than the "canceling" attack are "un-cancellable" or have higher point value than the "canceling" attack, then of course the "Chaos Cancel" attack cannot be launched, as there is no viable attack for it to cancel.

This 3rd suggestion might be a nightmare to program, but I believe it will ultimately make the game more fun and vastly more strategic. It might even present a new (ahem) business opportunity in the game, but I thought of it first (ahem) so you'd better not charge me gold coins for it.

And while we're on the topic, please make the gold coins more affordable, for crying out loud. No sane person would shell out 50 quid for just a few weeks of Aurora's Blessing, although I might be inclined to part with said cash for several weeks of Aurora's Undressing. XD

[Wirewyrm]

And there's more! Just 2 more points.

4) Make Chaos-ed cities unable to attack, support nor trade resources.
Seriously, what kind of chaos affects people living 2 weeks away from the chaotic city to the extent that they can't even roll their wagons out the door in the general direction of the chaos, but doesn't do a darn thing to the citizens living in the midst of it? Yes, offensive abuse of Chaos is very annoying as well, but at least it makes more sense than the current version of Chaos.

5) Reduce warnings of incoming attacks.
Simplify incoming attack warnings to one of the following:
a) Incoming attack! Arriving in xx:xx:xx hours;
b) Incoming attacks! Next attack arriving in xx:xx:xx hours.
There. It's a done deal, no need for Chaos, no computers crashing, and no need for any more balancing!

So, what do you guys think?

[PwnLaw]

Excellent points. Well thought out and communicated.

We're taking a very serious look at chaos right now. Input like this is extremely helpful.

[Tooltip]

Thatll lower the number of cities we can support or tripwire.

[Rekasand]

Just get rid of chaos all together.

[Wirewyrm]

Please fix chaos soon. An interim fix of any kind, while you're working on a permanent solution, would be great. The game is near unplayable now. Just reduce commanders per town and/or enforce attack range limit, anything!

[Vasasalo]

It's not a switch they can just throw. The entire game is woven around chaos so just dele letting it isn't an option. They've been looking at this for along time. Try using the search if you want to see the other ones. Chaos can work both ways though. If you are being attacked your fellow guildies can put you in chaos and if you want to attack you can put your own attack in chaos. Yes is sucks at times but if someone or a guild is coordinated enough chaos isn't needed and won't help.

[Vasasalo]

That being said I do like some of your suggestion about the canceling the closest. The problem with this though would make a close city untakable. If someone was chasing mine I'd just send enough attacks to cancel out all their attacks or get my guild mates to help.

[RumatO]

2 and 4 are really welcome

[Destroyer75]

I say just leave stuff alone I like it how it is