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After so many unsuccessful trainings at the academy, I marked date in about month and a half ago, for limited tracking.

Now I can see results - in that about 45 days, 4 of my characters had one single successful training, the one achieved ba character whose skill is in range of 15-20%.

My chars are not particularly rich, but not poor as well, and as there are very few interesting events within game anyhow, I tried to have at least some use of available time, only in free time periods, not all days or all turns.

Now I am coming to the point where I feel any new attempt as some virtual slap. Maybe that's only me, but I feel that is one more among the options where everything in mechanics sends you message "if you use it, you are fool", and least that is how I feel it, when there is so little to do anyhow, and when such incredible amount of time goes on absolutely nothing.

How other feel about that?

I must admit that I haven't trained any of my characters recently, but I have previously trained characters up to 60% and my experience has been far different.

I find it is best to train for about 3 to 4 hours at a time when you are at the lower levels and 5 or 6 as you progress. I don't know why you are having such a bad experience but this might help.

Quote from: Igelfeld on March 29, 2011, 07:22:08 PM
I must admit that I haven't trained any of my characters recently, but I have previously trained characters up to 60% and my experience has been far different.

I find it is best to train for about 3 to 4 hours at a time when you are at the lower levels and 5 or 6 as you progress. I don't know why you are having such a bad experience but this might help.

Yes, I have even shown improvement with two hours training, and three hours (when over 60%). I'm still not sure what the optimum training time is, but it does not seem viable to train with the maximum amount of time that they offer as an option.

Academy training is very expensive, especially once you start using the expert trainers. However, I successfully trained a character up to 80/80 swords/infil using exclusively academy training. Took me several months, and LOTS of gold. But I know academy training works.

But if you are trying to track its usefulness for you, then you need to record several things. You can't just say "I had one successful skill gain" without telling us how many sessions you had. Did you only try four 2-hour sessions with the basic trainer when you had 15% skill? Did you do 49 6-hour sessions with the expert tutor?

You need to know:
* Your skill
* How many sessions you had
* How many hours per session
* What trainer was used
* How many times were successful

This is the kind of data you need for a meaningful critique of the system. Not just a vague "I tried every now and then, and I don't feel that it was useful" kind of comment.

It's quite luck-based, but at higher levels it's generally harder it seems. And I have a hunch, but it may be baseless, that there are subtle differences, maybe in the region of academy. Different days might matter, or maybe even the character, which would be something interesting because that would imply some characters are naturally less able to learn. Of course, I rather doubt those actually exist right now.

I say it is all based on how lucky you are. I remember using full hours into training for 4 days without improving. Well my char does have over 70%. I recently improved a little I think. Whenever I check it tells me I have 75% (by spending only an hour) but when I make my char to actually train for full hours (6hours) it says my char has only 70%. Weird.

Those estimates can change sometimes. The range I've observed over a period of three weeks with no advances to swordfighting skill on Iksandros back in PoZ was 65-80. Time could play a role in how "accurate" the estimates are, but I'd say the best bet would be to record every instance of getting the "You have improved your <skill> skill!" and add that to 5, 10, or 15, depending on which character type you started. Also, make sure not to get tortured, seriously wounded, or go without training for long periods of time. Getting into battle can skew leadership, swordfighting, and jousting levels as well, depending on the unit type. Also, who knows what the period of decay is for all skills.

So to those who are really dedicated to knowing exactly how skilled their characters are, stay in your capital, train everyday the academy's open, and record each increase. I know there has to be someone out there who would do that.

The problem is only a handful of people can handle the task. I think only dukes can manage that much spending. 64 gold per turn? that is alot. If you have 12 hours even more (96 gold!).

That's a good thing. Otherwise the islands would be flooded by 25 year old expert swordsmen. Your numbers are off, btw. Expert trainers are 4 gold an hour, so 12 hours would 'only' cost 48 gold.

In reality, since chars get at most 8 hours per turn, training every turn, every day, for a week would be 4 * 8 * 2 * 7 = 448.  Accounting for the Academy being closed maybe at most every other day, you lose 4 hours every day, so that's 12 hours per day used to train, which accounts to 336 gold per week.

Thus, in reality, unless you have 300+ gold spare per week and no duties, unlikely for any apart from Dukes or chars relying purely on family gold, you cannot train daily.  That is a fact that allows skills to have some variance, since otherwise there is no point to anyone not having at least 60%+ skill, which should be at least somewhat rare. ;)

So my point is, the academy is not useful to you if you do not have the gold or time to use it well.  Does that mean that it's useless to everyone?  No.

Well, you don't have to be rich to use it. Over enough timer, you can get to some decent levels. But don't expect to get 80% swords in 3 months if you're only dropping 20 gold a week.

But then again, don't expect to win a Nobel prize in physics after getting a 2 year degree in Consumer Math at the local community college. If you want top level results, you have to make a top level investment.

I don't know why but for some reason I though the expert training needed 8 gold per hour. huh

I am thinking about training other things more useful than swordfighting. Like leadership. much better for being a marshal with it.

Quote from: Foundation on March 30, 2011, 03:31:08 PM
...

So my point is, the academy is not useful to you if you do not have the gold or time to use it well.  Does that mean that it's useless to everyone?  No.

My counter-point could be: if any sensible thing in game can be reached with support of large sums of money only, how many players/chars has any fun in game!?

As I mentioned, my characters are mostly decently above-average funded.

As someone else mentioned, natural tendency of game dynamics balances ability to spend extremely too much funds in training.

If you are sitting in academy for weeks, maybe months, doing absolutely nothing but waiting for more time/funds/opportunity to train more, just in order to make any difference, I would say there is no any flavour and fun in such game. If I would spend say 3 RL months just in training, excluded for any other in-game activity, just to make +15% gain in skills, I would not feel any pleasure, remembering all boredom and passivity that preceded that achievement.

Let us say, in peaceful times, my chars have one or two occasions in a week to train 8-12 hours or so. If I have 4 chars and practice it for many months, never gaining any useful training; I must feel something is wrong.

I also feel that was not alway like that, before, but to prove it, I should probably observe the matter for next RL year.

BTW, in these 4-5 days after original post, I made at least 5-6 more attempts (with different chars), and not a single one was successful.

Quote from: Stue (DC) on April 03, 2011, 12:46:39 PM

My counter-point could be: if any sensible thing in game can be reached with support of large sums of money only, how many players/chars has any fun in game!?

As I mentioned, my characters are mostly decently above-average funded.

As someone else mentioned, natural tendency of game dynamics balances ability to spend extremely too much funds in training.

If you are sitting in academy for weeks, maybe months, doing absolutely nothing but waiting for more time/funds/opportunity to train more, just in order to make any difference, I would say there is no any flavour and fun in such game. If I would spend say 3 RL months just in training, excluded for any other in-game activity, just to make +15% gain in skills, I would not feel any pleasure, remembering all boredom and passivity that preceded that achievement.

Let us say, in peaceful times, my chars have one or two occasions in a week to train 8-12 hours or so. If I have 4 chars and practice it for many months, never gaining any useful training; I must feel something is wrong.

I also feel that was not alway like that, before, but to prove it, I should probably observe the matter for next RL year.

BTW, in these 4-5 days after original post, I made at least 5-6 more attempts (with different chars), and not a single one was successful.

I've always found it is faster to increase skills by using them once I hit about 50%. After that the cost to increase them in the academy is too great for me. The counter to your point, in most cases high skill levels have very little effect on game balance. I've never felt the need to spend large amounts of time training skills to make a contribution at all.

I'm really not sure what is wrong with your training though. I've had spells of getting no results for a few days, but never weeks or months.

Quote from: Stue (DC) on April 03, 2011, 12:46:39 PM

My counter-point could be: if any sensible thing in game can be reached with support of large sums of money only, how many players/chars has any fun in game!?

This is especially true for infiltrators. Initially they can't even hope to gain skills by doing their actions since they risk making themselves..well..dead. They pretty much have to spend a few months at the academy to be of any use.

What is the skill that is desired is the main question when trying to train at an academy. The recommendations that follow reflect the status of a knight with a moderate income (50-100 gold/week). This is not for characters rolling in gold because they can just train everything at the academy without worry, usually.

It is generally not worth it to train the following at an academy: Bureaucracy, Oratory, Trading, Leadership, Adventuring.

The main reason for this is that those skills can be increased, usually at more reliable rates, with much less cost. Bureaucracy is easy, just sit in a region and keep doing Survey Administration all the time. Boring, but you'll get to 100% in a few months easily, and no gold spent if you just sat there alone.

Oratory, same deal as bureaucracy. Either preach as a priest all the time, or keep praising/badmouthing/maintaining/degrading all the time in your capital.

Trading is better done through doing actual trades, as that sometimes nets you slightly more profits by selling exotic goods (hidden normally until you sell).

Leadership is somewhat slow on the field, unless you are battling almost every turn, and that carries with it the risk of wounds. For maximum rate of leadership gain one might look into ranged units set to minimum retreat and at a deployment level that would not typically engage in close combat.

Adventuring is only for adventurers. Also, it can't be trained at an academy anyway.

Now for the 50-50 skills, where it's not so clear whether to use academy or field training: Infiltration, Swordfighting, Jousting.

Infiltration is one of the harder choices because on one hand, training can get expensive, and one isn't making any use out of that infiltration skill by just sitting in class. On the other hand, almost every infiltrator action carries the risk of being wounded (possibly every), and every action carries the risk of capture. That means a potential 7-day loss in any skill gain, and a potential 1-day loss at the very least. At low infiltration levels, this risk is significant, so perhaps training with the normal tutor 4 hours a day every turn might work, or 6 hours every turn with normal with two 6 hours every 4th turn. Once about 40% is gained, then maybe go to a rogue region or some region other than one's own, and start messing around.

Swordfighting can be gained, albeit quite slowly on the field by leading infantry, special forces, and I think by repelling infiltrator attacks and duels. The latter two are highly risky and are definitely not recommended methods of field training. The battling method also carries risk of wounds, but much less than the other methods. It is also slow. However, swordfighting is quite useful to repel attacks, but generally getting a high equipment 100% cohesion unit is much more reliable and cost-effective for keeping infiltrators away. One can also train it at a tournament, which is not very reliable, but free. However, this is highly unpredictable as a training method, as there is no "schedule" for tournaments.

Some people go the adventurer approach, where they create adventurers to become ennobled. However, before pursuing this method, keep in mind a few things. First, adventurers can get wounded and even die. This makes the risk of losing all the investment greater than for a normal noble. Also, the wounds are more frequent, and all adventurers start at age 20. While the age 17 start for some nobles, with 5% to all skills might sound bad, those extra three game years can easily translate to a greater than 50% gain in at least one skill. Also, due to the frequent wounds and serious wounds, adventurers will generally age much faster than a 20 year old noble who started at the same time. With the requirements to become a noble, by the time an adventurer actually reaches a high level of swordfighting, say, 100%, he/she might be over 35, in which case it becomes considerably harder (it would already have been hard enough anyway) to maintain anything above 80%. So this becomes a question of how quickly one thinks the adventurer can advance, and how well (meaning minimal wounding, no death, obviously, minimal aging).

Now, onto jousting. This is almost completely useless except for tournaments. This can be gained only in three ways: Academy, tournament, and fielding cavalry. The cavalry one may be as costly than the academy at the early stages. It also is slower, unless perhaps one charges into battle every turn. Nevertheless, this is useful only for tournaments, and while jousting is less common in high levels than swordfighting at tournaments, by the time one actually wins any tournaments that include jousting, the reward gold might not offset the training money. As for tournament jousting training, see the swordfighting recommendation about tournament training. One might gain some skill, but don't expect anything big.

And finally for skills one should only train at an academy, I have none. Maybe jousting if one can't or doesn't want to field cavalry.

Quote from: Stue (DC) on April 03, 2011, 12:46:39 PM
My counter-point could be: if any sensible thing in game can be reached with support of large sums of money only, how many players/chars has any fun in game!?

My chars were only decently funded, and they reached 60% after at most 6 months to a year or playing.  Personally I think 60% is not that low, since all I did was train when the army was not moving, and go to as many tournaments as I can.  One of the char did win a tournament at around 65%, so I'd say that's fun.

There are many other aspects to a character than just his or her skills.  I cannot agree with "any sensible thing" requires "large sums of money".  There are privileges and benefits that can only be attained by large amount of money, just like any other game.  Is it true that unless everyone has all of the privileges and benefits that exists in the game they cannot have fun?  Those without these large amounts of money should be content to train regularly, maybe once every week, and not expect massive advancement instantly for doing so.  If you want skills fast and the ability to train constantly with ample gold, try becoming a lord or duke first, and even then I doubt many would appreciate a char who just sits in a city spending tax gold training skills every day.

Quote from: Stue (DC) on April 03, 2011, 12:46:39 PM
BTW, in these 4-5 days after original post, I made at least 5-6 more attempts (with different chars), and not a single one was successful.

What were their base skills in what you trained?  What level of tutor did you train with?  How many hours did you try for each attempt?  Please record down these things next time you train at the academy.  Thank you.

QuoteThat means a potential 7-day loss in any skill gain

I believe the main loss as Infiltrator is the Ban you get on your head. Means one less enemy you can sabotage in without the danger of deportation or execution. You used to train up till you went invisible (No longer happens), but getting a certain Infiltration skill trained at the Academy allows you to do the safer Infiltration options without all too much danger in quiet regions (Burning food etc.), allowing you to train much easier and safer.

Perhaps it has changed recently, but my infiltrator found it impossible to get any Infiltration gain from actually using the skill. He committed dozens of minor acts of sabotage against enemy realms (signs, burning warehouses, etc) at a low skill level, but not once did he ever get a skill increase.

Quote from: De-Legro on April 03, 2011, 01:18:23 PM
I've always found it is faster to increase skills by using them once I hit about 50%. After that the cost to increase them in the academy is too great for me. The counter to your point, in most cases high skill levels have very little effect on game balance. I've never felt the need to spend large amounts of time training skills to make a contribution at all.

I'm really not sure what is wrong with your training though. I've had spells of getting no results for a few days, but never weeks or months.

Gaining skills through practice is clearly stated in game as much more effective option than academy. In that respect, most of purpose related to academy I see in acquiring some skills that I have no option to practice for whatever reason.

Currently, most of my attempts are tied to skills of about 20%, but it does not work.

I also remember that  such "spell" did not exist before. Several months ago I noticed that no single training ever proves useful, and it is two months since I am tracking it in details. :-[

Did you train at the Academy afterwards to get an indication of your skill?

Quote from: Artemesia on April 03, 2011, 01:59:25 PM
It is generally not worth it to train the following at an academy: ... Adventuring.

As an aside, one cannot train adventuring at an academy.

A speculation on maintaining skills: if you are trying level swordsmanship, would each battle leading infantry give you practice and stop it from degrading? This is the viewpoint I tend to hold, because if you are able to improve your skill from a battle, you should also be practicing it at the same time.

A second speculation: would only killing militia and assassinating nobles maintain sword skill for an infiltrator while in the field? This is assuming that they are not near a friendly academy and do not command a unit.

Yeah, I guess my recommendations were pretty long...

Here's the section where I talk about why one would not want to train Adventuring at academy:

Adventuring is only for adventurers. Also, it can't be trained at an academy anyway.

Seventh paragraph, in case anyone wanted to know for reference.

It is my understanding that having none of those "You have improved your swordfighting/jousting/leadership skill!" in battles does nothing to the skill. There are also skills that don't give the "You have gained X!"

Quote from: Velax on April 03, 2011, 02:31:52 PM
Perhaps it has changed recently, but my infiltrator found it impossible to get any Infiltration gain from actually using the skill. He committed dozens of minor acts of sabotage against enemy realms (signs, burning warehouses, etc) at a low skill level, but not once did he ever get a skill increase.

Where have you been trying it?

Infiltrating against your own realm, you get no experience. Ever. You have to go against an enemy to get full experience from it.

Quote from: Artemesia on April 03, 2011, 03:07:32 PM
Yeah, I guess my recommendations were pretty long...

Here's the section where I talk about why one would not want to train Adventuring at academy:

Adventuring is only for adventurers. Also, it can't be trained at an academy anyway.

Seventh paragraph, in case anyone wanted to know for reference.

Ah, my apologies. I read some sections and skimmed others.

Quote from: Stue (DC) on April 03, 2011, 12:46:39 PMMy counter-point could be: if any sensible thing in game can be reached with support of large sums of money only, how many players/chars has any fun in game!?

"any" fun in game? So the fact that academy training is expensive means you can't have any fun in the game at all? Having played the game for over five years, only one of my characters has ever done any real academy training, and that was in the last six months. Personally, I had a lot fo fun playing the game without academy training.

QuoteIf you are sitting in academy for weeks, maybe months, doing absolutely nothing but waiting for more time/funds/opportunity to train more, just in order to make any difference, I would say there is no any flavour and fun in such game. If I would spend say 3 RL months just in training, excluded for any other in-game activity, just to make +15% gain in skills, I would not feel any pleasure, remembering all boredom and passivity that preceded that achievement.

If you think a particular style of play is boring, then don't do that.

Also, "3 RL months just in training, excluded for any other in-game activity, just to make +15% gain in skills" is flat out wrong. I can practically guarantee that if you spent three straight months doing nothing other than academy training, you would get well over 15% skills, unless you were the unluckiest person in the entire world.

QuoteLet us say, in peaceful times, my chars have one or two occasions in a week to train 8-12 hours or so. If I have 4 chars and practice it for many months, never gaining any useful training; I must feel something is wrong.

Extremely unlikely. With four, six hour sessions a week, for four months, you will gain training.

QuoteBTW, in these 4-5 days after original post, I made at least 5-6 more attempts (with different chars), and not a single one was successful.

Give us full details. Your skill level, number and length of sessions, trainer level used. Also, when reporting this stuff, only report for one character. If you spread the training over 4 characters, then only 1/4th of the data you're providing is useful.

Quote from: Velax on April 03, 2011, 02:31:52 PM
Perhaps it has changed recently, but my infiltrator found it impossible to get any Infiltration gain from actually using the skill. He committed dozens of minor acts of sabotage against enemy realms (signs, burning warehouses, etc) at a low skill level, but not once did he ever get a skill increase.

I trained up to 30% as a infil. After that my only source of training was actual infiltrator actions, usually simple things like sabotage production or burning a warehouse. I managed to get up to 60% doing this over the course of a year.

As a new character on a modest knights income, I generally expect to gain maybe 5% skill for a weeks worth of training.

Quote from: Anaris on April 03, 2011, 05:51:18 PM
Where have you been trying it?

Infiltrating against your own realm, you get no experience. Ever. You have to go against an enemy to get full experience from it.

It was against an enemy realm. This was a couple of years ago, though, so perhaps it's changed. I remember it being very annoying at the time, though.

Where you checking the skill gain? I've never seen a message about infil skill improvements from performing actions, but checking in at the academy I can see the improvements.

Oh, there's no message? That could explain it then. I didn't notice his skill going up at all, but if there was no message for an increase, then it might have been.

Ah, infiltrator. I've recently come out with an infiltrator with I think >80% skill, and I might be able to talk about my findings.

As De-legro said, you do not get skill gain messages when performing actions for infiltrating skill. Also, skill gain is not always guaranteed. Performing on (rogue) works as well as any other realm with which you are at war, and the bonus of that is no one can ban you when caught by (rogue) and no one will complain to your ruler/judge/whoever.

Quote from: Artemesia on April 07, 2011, 02:42:25 AM
Ah, infiltrator. I've recently come out with an infiltrator with I think >80% skill, and I might be able to talk about my findings.

As De-legro said, you do not get skill gain messages when performing actions for infiltrating skill. Also, skill gain is not always guaranteed. Performing on (rogue) works as well as any other realm with which you are at war, and the bonus of that is no one can ban you when caught by (rogue) and no one will complain to your ruler/judge/whoever.

really? I had an infil tell me about a month ago that you can't gain skill when training against rogue.

ok, i am glad to announce one single useful training that happened!  ;D

after so much time it still means there is no total cursing (if such academy is not some kind of curse by itself  >:( )

if i can recognize well, queue of repeated training increases chance for success.

would not the opposite be better balance?

i mean, if you don't train at all for say one month, you should have somewhat better chance to excel, pause of three months would make much better chance etc. on the other side, repeated and frequent trainings should lower chance of success.

that way amount of available gold would not proportionally increase chances, at least. there is nothing more boring than idea that two times more gold gives you two times more chances. and it is not realistic as well.

Huh? That's an awfully different take on learning. So...not studying at all for months means one learns faster? Well, it would certainly mean one would learn more things quicker if only because there is so much less one would know than a student who dedicates a lot of time to studying daily.

Realistically, that's how it works as well. Maybe you're a genius who picks things up in minutes, but for the vast majority of students, both current and former, in order to excel at any subject, they had to put in the effort. That meant that they spent a lot of time studying. If not that, then they gained experience in practical settings.

In translation to BM, that means that right now, more training frequency leads to more success because of the higher frequency of attempts. Yes, that's expensive. Ever try paying tuition for a high level private university? Why should an academy for the elite among nobility be any less expensive? Actually, the rates aren't so bad in BM's academies.

Now, if paying gold to study up isn't your thing, then leading infantry can keep your swordfighting handy, leading cavalry, jousting. The other skills have already been explained as to how they can be improved on the field. And that's also realistic. If you don't have the money or don't have the motivation to stay in school, you gain experience in the world.

So in short, it seems very counter-intuitive that staying away from the academy would give a better chance to improve skills. If anything, it should decrease the chances as one has to get reacquainted with the tempo of studying.