There are a few TOs now running with the new code.
I would like to see numbers. If you don't mind sharing them. I'd like to know how many soldiers you needed to start it, and once a day what the % values have changed like.
TOs are incredibly hard to simulate on the dev server, so I need some feedback for final tuning. If you are willing to reveal more, like how many people worked on TO actions, etc. - everything helps. The more data I get, the better I can tune it.
Quote from: Tom on December 16, 2011, 12:11:31 AM
There are a few TOs now running with the new code.
I would like to see numbers. If you don't mind sharing them. I'd like to know how many soldiers you needed to start it, and once a day what the % values have changed like.
TOs are incredibly hard to simulate on the dev server, so I need some feedback for final tuning. If you are willing to reveal more, like how many people worked on TO actions, etc. - everything helps. The more data I get, the better I can tune it.
Quote
Report from Naoie Ukita (39 minutes ago)
Message sent to everyone in your realm (15 recipients)
Justice is dealt swiftly to those who do not respect the new laws.
Your realm is welcome a bit more warmly now, but not much.
debug: Fear: -1 / Love: 3
This is deal out justice.
The other day i did civil work and it only reduced fear and not increased love. Not worth doing it.
Naoie Ukita (Noble)
Last I checked, he was the only noble currently in the region, though a few more were there I think when he started it, and more should be joining pretty soon to help out.
To be perfectly blunt, I think BM should adopt the old adage, "If it isn't broken don't try to fix it".
The old estate system seemed fine to me. After the change we had tons of bugs going on which had a very negative impact on the game.
I didn't see anything wrong with the old takeover system and I never heard a single person complain about it in the four years I've been playing. Who knows what's going to go wrong now.
Instead of focusing on revamping old systems that work fine why not develop new ones to expand on aspects of the game that have limited possibilities.
Quote from: pcw27 on December 24, 2011, 08:46:55 PM
To be perfectly blunt, I think BM should adopt the old adage, "If it isn't broken don't try to fix it".
The old estate system seemed fine to me. After the change we had tons of bugs going on which had a very negative impact on the game.
I didn't see anything wrong with the old takeover system and I never heard a single person complain about it in the four years I've been playing. Who knows what's going to go wrong now.
Instead of focusing on revamping old systems that work fine why not develop new ones to expand on aspects of the game that have limited possibilities.
Things 'broke' in the old TO system, 'fixed' in the new:
1. No more need for a single massive TO unit. Duke cant use 'TO unit' as the excuse for hoarding all the gold.
2. TO used to take just as long for a region with 5000 peasants, as for a region with 20. With the new system D'Hara did a TO in one day of Sallowwild.
3. A Friendly TO used to fail because of a single act of looting. Under the new system, the progress meter just slides towards fear.
4. Nobles used to just sit and wait, especially for a hostile TO; heroes and cavaliers couldn't do CW for friendly TO's, or looting for brutal TO's. Under the new TO everyone can participate.
As for estates, I think the fact that thanks to the new estate system, D'Hara has added 4 or 5 regions pretty much speaks for itself, doesn't it? Lots more lords and dukes running around now, and lots more space for additional nobles too. Under the old estate system we were stuck with certain requirements as far as nobles per region.
I'm not saying it isn't potentially better, I'm saying there's a fine line between a slight inconvenience and a broken feature. A lot of those problems could have been fixed without changing the whole system, and I'd argue that not all of them needed to be fixed.
The fact that it took months upon months for a region to grow population was a broken feature, especially on Dwilight where most rogue regions had only a handful of people.
I never thought of the old estate system as "broken". I'll admit the new one has certain advantages, but it came at quite a price given how many bugs it spawned.
I really prefer when they ad completely new features, especially ones that let newer players have something more to do then sit at the capital and wait for orders. Adding Stewards was a great idea, that's the kind of updates I'd like to see.
Well, "they" is not some anonymous games company, it's people like... Well, the ones you are talking to. :-)
While some of the recent changes introduced new bugs, they were not all for gameplay. We are also replacing lots of code. Yes, the new code has new bugs. But it will have a lot fewer in the long run, because it is cleaner and easier to maintain and troubleshoot.
I understand, and I'm not trying to be mean, it's just the thread asked for feedback that's how I feel at the moment.
New features and refactoring are fine, Tom, but please keep in mind that breaking the game is worse for player retention than any shenanigans us players can do. Quite a few islands were broken for a period of days.
What we really need is a robust testing system, where features can be tested without risking breaking every other island. Maybe the devs can get their own private island to play around in?
Because just "turning on a feature and hoping it works" does not seem to be working. :)
Edit: TOs on depopulated regions worked fine, and were indeed very speedy once the bugs were resolved. We should still see how long it takes to TO a big regions. Taking a large rural region should not take more than 6 days, imho. Maybe 8 to 10 days for major cities. (And of course this is just going to encourage players to completely raze regions, which is fine by me.)
Quote from: GoldPanda on December 25, 2011, 10:02:47 AM
New features and refactoring are fine, Tom, but please keep in mind that breaking the game is worse for player retention than any shenanigans us players can do. Quite a few islands were broken for a period of days.
What we really need is a robust testing system, where features can be tested without risking breaking every other island. Maybe the devs can get their own private island to play around in?
Because just "turning on a feature and hoping it works" does not seem to be working. :)
Edit: TOs on depopulated regions worked fine, and were indeed very speedy once the bugs were resolved. We should still see how long it takes to TO a big regions. Taking a large rural region should not take more than 6 days, imho. Maybe 8 to 10 days for major cities. (And of course this is just going to encourage players to completely raze regions, which is fine by me.)
The Dev's have a testing server. The nature of the game makes exhaustive testing impossible, without quiet serious code changes, which of course would in part invalidate the testing since the testing would not reflect the current code base completely. Most code changes are tested, a lot of these bug sprang from unexpected things, for instance the repair bug on Dwilight was because the realm didn't have a entry in the diplomacy table for its relationship with itself.
Quote from: GoldPanda on December 25, 2011, 10:02:47 AM
New features and refactoring are fine, Tom, but please keep in mind that breaking the game is worse for player retention than any shenanigans us players can do. Quite a few islands were broken for a period of days.
What we really need is a robust testing system, where features can be tested without risking breaking every other island. Maybe the devs can get their own private island to play around in?
Because just "turning on a feature and hoping it works" does not seem to be working. :)
That's not how we work, and we do have a testing server.
The issue we are having now is that we are using an entirely new database layer, Doctrine ORM. It has many "features" that come unexpected to us, such as failing the entire turn on minor errors where the old code only failed that particular update and else continued just fine. Both has its pro and cons. The advantage of the new system is that once we have adapted our code structure to it, turn runs will be monolithic, meaning that it either succeeds completely, or fails completely. Which means in the case of failure we can fix the error and re-run it, something we can't do when the turn was a partial success.
But as De-Legro already wrote, while we try to test changes on the dev server, there simply is no way to test the actions of several hundred players. We push things live when we believe they will work, but sometimes we get nasty surprises.
And yes, I realize that breaking the game sucks.
Quote from: Tom on December 25, 2011, 11:52:04 AM
That's not how we work, and we do have a testing server.
And a testing branch of islands and a stable branch of islands.
Maybe the game needs to highlight that a bit more when you're creating a character. Clearly tell people who are going to a testing island that they'll see new features first, but that they can also expect a larger number of issues due to that. From my experience there are quite a few people who aren't all that clear on that.
Quote from: LilWolf on December 25, 2011, 01:57:43 PM
And a testing branch of islands and a stable branch of islands.
Maybe the game needs to highlight that a bit more when you're creating a character. Clearly tell people who are going to a testing island that they'll see new features first, but that they can also expect a larger number of issues due to that. From my experience there are quite a few people who aren't all that clear on that.
Yes and no.
testing and stable used to be very close together a long time ago. They have seperated more and more, but we plan to bring them closer together again. So yes, new features will be on testing first, but the plan is to have it ahead of stable a few days or so (or weeks for large changes), not months like now.
The Doctrine conversion is affecting both stable and testing, I think that's annoying the players more than the things that only affect the test servers.
Quote from: egamma on December 25, 2011, 05:25:13 PM
The Doctrine conversion is affecting both stable and testing, I think that's annoying the players more than the things that only affect the test servers.
Yes, I know. We are trying to isolate it to testing as good as we can, but there is quite a bit of shared code. Really, moving forward and finishing it is the best thing we can do. But it is a LOT of code.
Takeover Initiated (just in)
message to all nobles of Riombara
Yosef Ishimu has initiated a takeover in Villriil. The region currently belongs to Netherworld.
Everyone in the realm can aid the takeover by going to Villriil and using the takeover support options available there.
Takeover in Villriil (just in)
message to everyone in Villriil
Yosef Ishimu of Riombara has initiated a takeover in Villriil. The region currently belongs to Netherworld.
----
an instance of redundant message. the people who received the 1st one already shouldn't have to receive the 2nd one too. (noble in question is in the TO region)
Wait. Do we still have the RTO option?
don't think it works? or at least it didn't work before for a while i think (or our priests would have been doing it) no idea if it's working yet or not.
Quote from: fodder on January 03, 2012, 06:53:20 AM
an instance of redundant message. the people who received the 1st one already shouldn't have to receive the 2nd one too. (noble in question is in the TO region)
Yes, there are many cases of redundant messages right now. That is because there is a major change coming for the message system. For the moment, redundant messages are better than missing messages.
"There is a little bit less fear in the eyes of the peasants now. Riombara is welcome a bit more warmly now, but not much."
should it be "welcomed"?
Quote from: fodder on January 03, 2012, 06:58:01 PM
"There is a little bit less fear in the eyes of the peasants now. Riombara is welcome a bit more warmly now, but not much."
should it be "welcomed"?
better to say "received", I think. English majors, feel free to correct me.
Old Grehk is currently running a Takeover in Wudenkin, a rogue region, but:
QuoteBattle in Wudenkin (just in)
Old Grehk vs. (rogue)
Estimated strengths: 760 men vs. 70 men
The Grehkian Legion (Old Grehk), sponsored by Askarn Iltaran, Duke of Ossmat, Ambassador of Old Grehk, were led into battle by Vice-Marshal Zyrthos Sarracenia.
Sir Michael T. Turner, King of Old Grehk is spotted wearing the Elemental Band of Freedom.
Kyler Despina (Noble) is spotted wearing the Blessed Belt of Lezzel.
QuoteThe region owner (rogue) and their allies defend.
The Old Grehk troops attack because they are at war with (rogue).
Strong winds and gusts are making ranged combat a game of luck.
The defenders take up positions inside the Fortress (5).
It seems like the battle didn't account for the running Takeover. Shouldn't Old Grehk have been Defenders in this case? Unless it's already on the TODO list :P
depends.
what kind of unit was the enemy? units that "pop up" in a region will always be defenders of it's a rogue region, because they don't count as "freshly arrived".
Undead that popped in yes. My apologies in that case, I thought the Takeover would overrule that and force Old Grehk to be Defenders. :)
There are reports of armed men in the emplocy of Folcard Cuvelier executing administrative clerks.
The peasants seem a little more fearful, but not much. The locals don't seem to like Riombara as much as before now.
typo... employ?
Attempting a CTO on Dwillight
I click : Take over this region... (adding it to your realm)
I then get the message : You can not take over a region that does not border your realm.
Other information:
The region has 533 population. We are 5 nobles. The largest unit is 142 men.
So... is the CTO broken?
Quote from: Dragon on January 09, 2012, 07:19:18 PM
So... is the CTO broken?
Not so much broken as not yet added back into the game.
The number of troops needed to do a takeover seems a bit high. Tindle, Beluaterra was needing 489 troops. The region population is 6524.
It depends on a number of factors. For this high number, I would venture they absolutely hate you, are loyal to their current realm, still have high morale (i.e. they are happy and see no reason for change), have a low desire for independence, etc. etc. ?
Many factors influence this number, and it changes when they do. But yes, 500 men seems high. I have since adjusted it a bit lower.
On testing, ambassadors are able to perform diplomacy actions while a takeover is running. I remember that this wasn't allowed before.
I should point out that the ambassador is from a third party, i.e. the TO is neither from nor against his realm.
Quote from: vonGenf on January 24, 2012, 11:15:31 AM
On testing, ambassadors are able to perform diplomacy actions while a takeover is running. I remember that this wasn't allowed before.
I should point out that the ambassador is from a third party, i.e. the TO is neither from nor against his realm.
Actually the realm doing the TO can perform them as well. I would guess that the TO code simply hasn't had that limitation added in yet, or perhaps it is intentional.
It is intentional. At least until diplomats get specific "help the TO" actions. For now, they can help (or hinder) it by doing the proper regular actions.
Quote from: Tom on January 09, 2012, 11:43:46 PM
Not so much broken as not yet added back into the game.
Do we have any estimation of when the colony takeover will be restored?
Quote from: Faulcon_deLacy on January 25, 2012, 01:36:19 PM
Do we have any estimation of when the colony takeover will be restored?
Not really. There are a couple issues with the concept in the new system I have to work out first.
I'd like to point out that it's taking days to take a region that is worshipful towards up with a takeover using the friendly actions. Is this normal?
Quote from: Gustav Kuriga on January 25, 2012, 05:47:34 PM
I'd like to point out that it's taking days to take a region that is worshipful towards up with a takeover using the friendly actions. Is this normal?
It totally is. You don't conquer a place in a lazy afternoon, and their love of your realm is not the only factor that counts - they might be happy as they are, they might *also* like their current realm, etc. etc.
their current realm is rogue...
Quote from: Gustav Kuriga on January 25, 2012, 06:11:04 PM
their current realm is rogue...
Which makes it easier, but they still won't fall at your feet the second you plant your flag in the market place.
Then they like being 'independent' (i.e. in anarchy), silly!
Quote from: Tom on January 25, 2012, 06:21:57 PM
Which makes it easier, but they still won't fall at your feet the second you plant your flag in the market place.
Tom, is rogue sympathy supposed to be capped at some number?
It can't be intentional the way things work right now... I hope. The TO of Dantooine, Dwilight is progressing at 1% for each individual support action, and most nobles have 40 men or more, which are quite large units for our budget, and use all their hours every turn. Solaria has 16 nobles, even if all of them are in the region spending full hours every turn, it'd take 7 turns for the region to flip. Since ideal conditions like that barely happen, we'll say 8-9 turns. Sure, we could use fear options and speed things up a fraction (or so I assume) but that makes no sense, nor do we want it. The region was fully devoted to Solaria when it was taken away by its lord, and sympathy is at worshipful.
If this is how TOs are supposed to work, then small realms, especially those with few nobles are at a HUGE disadvantage.
Quote from: Sacha on January 26, 2012, 08:09:37 AM
The region was fully devoted to Solaria when it was taken away by its lord, and sympathy is at worshipful.
The region was also fully devoted to Pian en Luries at this point. It still is as far as I know.
Quote from: vonGenf on January 26, 2012, 09:53:18 AM
The region was also fully devoted to Pian en Luries at this point. It still is as far as I know.
Its not quite anymore, but yes this was affecting the rate of our take over. I guess the problem is that often in war the case will be the take over force will have rubbish sympathy and the owners will have good loyalty, which would make the TO even longer then what we have experienced.
Lets see how the Madina situation works out. Taking over a city, but with a significantly larger force will give some food feedback.
performing a fto on a region with a very high loyalty to the current owner (my very personal rule of thumb was if the loyalty is similar or more than the sympathy towards the taking over realm) has always been a long and difficult process, so I would say that how things are going in dantooine shouldn't be a surprise.
for example when Libero empire declared war on Morek (dwilight) they started a friendly takeover of a Morekian region on their border (bohai) which was worshipful to Morek and I guess with pretty high sympathy towards Libero as well. The morekian army had the time to come back from Fatexna to Donghaiwei, refit and then smash the Libero army in Bohai before their takeover was completed. I think the friendly takeover failed at least twice and then they decided to go for a hostile take over, in total the region resisted for something like 5/6 days and could have resisted even more perhaps.
With the old TO system in a situation like the one in dantooine I would have advised a hostile takeover. Is something like that still possible with the new TO system? Something in between super friendly and super brutal?
Quote from: Peri on January 26, 2012, 11:46:45 AM
performing a fto on a region with a very high loyalty to the current owner (my very personal rule of thumb was if the loyalty is similar or more than the sympathy towards the taking over realm) has always been a long and difficult process, so I would say that how things are going in dantooine shouldn't be a surprise.
for example when Libero empire declared war on Morek (dwilight) they started a friendly takeover of a Morekian region on their border (bohai) which was worshipful to Morek and I guess with pretty high sympathy towards Libero as well. The morekian army had the time to come back from Fatexna to Donghaiwei, refit and then smash the Libero army in Bohai before their takeover was completed. I think the friendly takeover failed at least twice and then they decided to go for a hostile take over, in total the region resisted for something like 5/6 days and could have resisted even more perhaps.
With the old TO system in a situation like the one in dantooine I would have advised a hostile takeover. Is something like that still possible with the new TO system? Something in between super friendly and super brutal?
We could have done a fear TO sure. For RP reasons we went with a Love TO. There are only the two options now. However, the Fear TO would not have been that much faster from what we can see.
Quote from: De-Legro on January 26, 2012, 11:55:47 AM
We could have done a fear TO sure. For RP reasons we went with a Love TO. There are only the two options now. However, the Fear TO would not have been that much faster from what we can see.
the lack of a middle way can be a bit limiting in my opinion. and I thought fear was supposed the quick way to take regions, with the drawback of having them in bad conditions afterwards, is that really not so? (I have yet to join a single TO with the new system)
Quote from: Peri on January 26, 2012, 12:11:11 PM
the lack of a middle way can be a bit limiting in my opinion. and I thought fear was supposed the quick way to take regions, with the drawback of having them in bad conditions afterwards, is that really not so? (I have yet to join a single TO with the new system)
Eventually you are going to want to balance both factors during a TO. A region with 100% and no fear, or the other way around is going to have some sort of issues once you take it. The other thing to understand is their is no real Love TO or Fear TO. When I say love TO what I mean is that we have every noble performing certain actions, that only raise love and lower fear. TO's are now just a collection of actions that will determine the outcome.
We took about 2-3 days with a rogue region only using friendly options and having much less nobles (Kabrinskia, have an army of 12 nobles, and only about 9 of those have units). So I think it might be balanced on that side. Still a pain in the ass, but what can you do?
Quote from: Gustav Kuriga on January 26, 2012, 09:36:26 PM
We took about 2-3 days with a rogue region only using friendly options and having much less nobles (Kabrinskia, have an army of 12 nobles, and only about 9 of those have units). So I think it might be balanced on that side. Still a pain in the ass, but what can you do?
Rogue regions are considerably faster, for a few reasons.
yes, which is what I was saying.
Quote from: Gustav Kuriga on January 26, 2012, 10:10:02 PM
yes, which is what I was saying.
Rogue regions, with the exception of Dwilight are rare. I don't see how the speed at which you can TO rogues would balance the system in general?
I would to have the turn-change realm-wide TO status message back.
Quote from: Indirik on January 27, 2012, 02:29:52 AM
I would to have the turn-change realm-wide TO status message back.
The realm does get a "the TO is still continuing" message, doesn't it?
I'm still tuning things, and with the next big update, the time required will go down by about 20% (this also affects all TOs that are in progress already - a benefit of the new system).
Quote from: Tom on January 27, 2012, 10:33:55 AMThe realm does get a "the TO is still continuing" message, doesn't it?
No. Astrum has been running a TO for three days, and the realm has not gotten any messages about it.
The take over of the Tower in Madina has been going on for 1 day and has reached a 20% favorability for the occupying forces. A very intense "get friendly with the locals" campaign has been going on with about 15 messages per turn appearing. Some of the occupying forces did not get the message and tried forceful methods initially but that seems to have stopped now.
On another note, I as Judge of Madina have been able to hold court in the Tower. Not sure that this is intended to I thought I should point it out.
Darlor
Quote from: Indirik on January 27, 2012, 02:30:42 PM
No. Astrum has been running a TO for three days, and the realm has not gotten any messages about it.
Which realm? Astrum or the target realm?
the target realm is rogue
Quote from: De-Legro on January 26, 2012, 10:15:41 PM
Rogue regions, with the exception of Dwilight are rare. I don't see how the speed at which you can TO rogues would balance the system in general?
Funnily enough, I was speaking about Dwilight. So it might be rather important there. Plus you only have to look at the East Continent to know that what you say is false. There's rogues everywhere because of the wars.
Quote from: Gustav Kuriga on January 27, 2012, 05:12:16 PM
the target realm is rogue
Yeah, the realm doing the TO does not receive reports - but everyone inside the region does. Don't you have enough of your people there?
I kind of liked that as a nice touch - localize information a little. I can change it to be a realm-wide message, that is literally a one-line code change. I just kind of like it to not spam everyone with everything.
Quote from: Tom on January 27, 2012, 05:22:12 PM
I kind of liked that as a nice touch - localize information a little. I can change it to be a realm-wide message, that is literally a one-line code change. I just kind of like it to not spam everyone with everything.
Please do change it. There are plenty of people in every realm that stay at home to keep things running etc. They're already largely cut off from a lot of the talks due to the army system so even an automatic message about take overs helps keep them in the loop on what's happening.
Quote from: Tom on January 27, 2012, 05:22:12 PMYeah, the realm doing the TO does not receive reports - but everyone inside the region does. Don't you have enough of your people there?
I kind of liked that as a nice touch - localize information a little. I can change it to be a realm-wide message, that is literally a one-line code change. I just kind of like it to not spam everyone with everything.
Well, the TO was successful, so I suppose we had enough people there. But I really don't think that we have to worry about too much realm-wide spam. And this just seems like something that a lot of the realm would be interested in knowing.
QuoteTakeover (just in)
message to Everyone on Dwilight
Asylon has taken control of Barrow Peaks. The region used to belong to (rogue).
It would be nice if the Region Name could be a clickable link that leads you to the Region Page.
The Tower take over in Madina is now at a day and a half and has proceeded to 32%. This is a TO of a countries capital. Are all regions using the same code or are there a modifiers for different types of regions?
Quote from: roland.walters@abbott.com on January 27, 2012, 06:34:25 PM
The Tower take over in Madina is now at a day and a half and has proceeded to 32%. This is a TO of a countries capital. Are all regions using the same code or are there a modifiers for different types of regions?
All regions are the same. This TO just happens to have a much larger force, which will accelerate the work. There may also be some region stats affecting things, I can't say without knowing the status of the region and what sort of TO actions are being used.