I appreciate your comments and concerns about this feature being abused for cheating, but I just realized that in order to address your concerns, my arguments have gotten off-track from the original premise and I've gotten bogged down in the nitty-gritty details of a system that doesn't even exist yet.
Let me refocus: The point of this feature is to improve gameplay in an area where I think it is currently lacking; namely, city transfership. My goal is to make it easier to transfer cities between players in the same guild so that they aren't wasting time via the methods that I specified in my initial post. I never conceived of this idea in order to cheat the game or gain points or whatever. But I spent too much time over-thinking things in response to the concerns that have been voiced about fairness, so here is the simple solution that should satisfy THOSE concerns and while still achieving what I originally intended:
TRANSFERING A CITY FROM ONE PLAYER TO ANOTHER PLAYER IN THE SAME GUILD:
- A player can give or accept up to 10x cities per world (e.g., give 7x and accept 3x).
- NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: Just like conquering a city costs 1 scholar, a player can only "accept" a transfership if he has the necessary free/unallocated scholars available:
- Player A wants to give 5x cities to Player B.
- Player B only has 3 unused/unallocated scholars available.
- When Player A tries to initate the 4th "give" transaction to Player B, an error message pops up saying, "The recipient doesn't have enough scholars available!"
- This way, the transfership of a city doesn't incur any negative scholarship costs on the recipient's end.
- NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: After a city is transferred, the player who initiated the "give" transaction ends up loses the scholar within that city, so the requisite amount of scholarships is released back into that giver's queue, ready for reallocation to educate another scholar:
- Player A has 4 cities (1 to start with and 3 that she conquered). As such, she has to have purchased a minimum of 3+2+1 = 6x scholarships and has to have educated a minimum of 3x scholars.
- Let's assume that all three scholars were used up in order to capture those three cities and that she doesn't have any more unallocated scholarships.
- When Player A successfully gives 1x city to Player B, this frees up 3x scholarships in Play A's "bank" of scholarships, so Player A can now educate a replacement scholar at the price of 3x scholarships.
- There is no time limit between city transfership. "Player A" can give all 10x of my cities to "Player B" immediately without delay.
- The transfership is still a two-step process that involves both sides: one person has to initiate the “give” and the other person has to “accept” the offer.
- If a player has 10x “give” offers in their inbox that are pending their decision, then they have to either accept or deny those offers before they can (a) receive more offers or (2) make offers.
- If a player has sent out 10x “give” offers to other players, then that player cannot send out more “give” offers until the recipients make a decision to accept or deny them.
- The transfership process has a price. It’s not tied to gold, because I now realize that it would be silly to force someone to pay when they’re trying to quit a world, so here is the “cost” which I think is fair:
- All troops in that city are destroyed (includes both troops native to the city housed in the city, troops native to the city which are currently supporting other cities, and troops that it received from other cities in support).
- All scholars in the city are destroyed (includes both native scholars in the city and any scholars which might have been sent to support it, but does not apply to scholars which have already been “used up” in the conquering of other cities).
- The academy remains intact. The scholarship count is not an issue because scholarships aren’t housed in any specific city anyway: the academy is just a virtual portal to a “bank” of scholarships that is tied to a player’s buying history.
- All structures are lowered by 5x levels.
- If a structure has less than 5x levels, it is lowered to level 1.
- 250,000 of each resource is liquidated. If there is less than 250,00 of a specific resource available, then that specific resource goes to 0.
- NEW EDIT AS OF 2012-03-02 FRI: The loyalty is reduced to 25.
- There is no limit on how many cities you can turn into Barbarian Cities.
- Upon confirmation of disposing of the city, the following will happen:
- All troops in that city are destroyed (includes both troops native to the city housed in the city, troops native to the city which are currently supporting other cities, and troops that it received from other cities in support).
- All scholars in the city are destroyed (includes both native scholars in the city and any scholars which might have been sent to support it, but does not apply to scholars which have already been “used up” in the conquering of other cities).
- The academy is DESTROYED.
- All structures REMAIN INTACT.
- All resources REMAIN INTACT.
- So it basically becomes a high level barbarian city.
See the following example of how both functions work (EDITED 2012-03-02 FRI):
- You want to give me 15x cities, but I only have 8x scholars available. So I can only accept 8x cities, and all 8x of those cities are downgraded appropriately when I get ownership of them. However, they are devoid of troops and have little to no resources. So I have to spend time building them back up and recruiting troops before they can become functional.
- Because you successfully transferred 8x cities to me, you basically lost 8x scholars, so your allocated scholarships are released, and you can educated 8x more scholars.
- As for the remaining 7x cities, if you still want to get rid of them, you can either “barbify” them so that I can take my chances of conquering them, or you can do what you currently have to do (e.g., send out all troops to support another location so that I can try to conquer your city intact and recall the troops later):
- Afer a while, I've educated 5x more scholars and someone else then wants to give me 5x cities. Even though I have enough scholars to accept all five cities, I can only accept transfership of 2x because I’ve reached my limit of how many cities I can give/accept for this world.
- Someone else wants to give 3x cities and you have the necessary unallocated scholars for it. However, you can only accept 2x of them because you’ve reached your limit of how many cities you can give/accept for this world.
Does anyone see any problems or abuse with this?
-Kaleel