Defenders and looting

[Chenier]

Well, following the puppy-kicking that just happened in Taop, FEI, where the whole continent ganked on a one-city realm (essentially over 30000CS vs 4000CS). feels like the looting mechanics ought to be tweaked.

A few nobles would loot, you'd get a peasant horde form, and then the rest of the 2000 soldiers couldn't do squat. The attackers could have less than 10% of their current forces present, and the looting would go on at exactly the same speed.

This feels wrong. Either the peasants are gatherered in one spot, which should mean that the army can loot everywhere else without problem, or they are scattered, which would make them incredibly easy to crush for the seasonned soldiers.

I therefore propose a tweak to looting: when there are forces defending, but the attackers control the battlefield, looting is no longer prevented. Rather, there is a warning about local resistance and that looting may be risky. People can choose to loot anyways, if they do, it checks how much CS the region owners have, how much CS the invaders have, and how much CS the looter has. It then proceeds with the looting, inflicting immediate losses to the looting unit and the defending units. If the looter has a large elite troop, the invaders are many, and there are just 10 peasants defending, the effect of the looting would basically be the same as if there was no peasants at all. If there are just few invaders, the looter has a small and cheap unit, and there are thousands of defenders, the looter might come back with equal losses to the defenders and no opportunity to loot.

It would make things  more realistic and, especially, more fun. It sucks to drag things on because of meaningless peasant units. It especially sucks that they few turn junkies who log in at TC are the only ones who ever get to loot, while everyone else just sits in these regions with absolutely nothing to do.

[Anaris]

I am (still) working on the Looting Overhaul, and this is one of the things I'm addressing.

First of all, peasant militia popping up will be much less common, and much, much more dangerous.

Second of all, I will be using a calculation of how many peasants the active defenders can realistically defend, and use the ratio of that to current population as the % chance to fail at looting.

Third of all, I kind of like your idea about not preventing the looting, but making it more risky. I'm not sure how easily it can be integrated, but I'll definitely give it a try.

[Indirik]

Well, following the puppy-kicking that just happened in Taop, FEI, where the whole continent ganked on a one-city realm (essentially over 30000CS vs 4000CS).

Gotta love that puppy-kicking.

I therefore propose a tweak to looting: when there are forces defending, but the attackers control the battlefield, looting is no longer prevented. Rather, there is a warning about local resistance and that looting may be risky.

That's the way I thought it was already supposed to work. Seems like something is broken with the current mechanic. I can't remember the last time I've seen someone able to loot through the militia, like you're supposed to be able to do.

Besides that, though, I think you're description is pretty much perfect.

[Ossan]

Whatever's going on with the looting changes on Dwilight is crazy and really screwing with the game. More peasants rose up than there were men, women and children in one region and it seems that (from reports I got) that you do not even need to do any looting for a few thousands peasants to arm themselves.