Academy Usefulness

[Stue (DC)]

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?

[Igelfeld]

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.

[Bael]

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.

[Indirik]

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.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

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.

[Zakilevo]

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.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

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.

[Zakilevo]

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!).

[Sacha]

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.

[Foundation]

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.

[Indirik]

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.

[Zakilevo]

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.

[Stue (DC)]

...

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.

[De-Legro]

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.

[LilWolf]

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.