How to help Dwilight.

[GundamMerc]

Well, this is meant to be a player driven game so it really comes down to players utilizing their characters to change things. I do not thing that this game was ever meant to be controlled and molded by the devs to constantly ensue equal footing for all realms. If Cagilian Empire and Arcea happened without the devs stepping in, I doubt there is a really valid reason for the devs to step in here.

The only arguable reason I can think of is that Luria's strong position is a direct result of the changes made by the devs to increase player density. While it is true that Luria was not greatly impacted by this change I am willing to bet that one or two of the nations who are fighting against Luria also suffered little from the monster invasion.

You're seriously going to make this argument? Do you even know how many nobles Barca had at the beginning of this war, before the monster invasion occurred? We had at least 40 nobles, and were still on an upward trend in population. Do you want to know how many nobles Luria had at that point? 35, and they were likely losing players before the invasion happened and forced Asylon to merge. Do you know how infuriating it is for you Lurian players to flaunt how you have such a "large playerbase", when the same could have been said of Barca and Asylon before the monster invasion? The latter of which make up nearly half of your population. The reason you have so many nobles isn't as you believe, that you see a lot of action. It's because many of them came form elsewhere and are trying to create their own realm when this war is over.

As to the nations fighting Luria that weren't affected, there was only one, Morek, and it is collapsing from lack of nobles anyways. Astrum lost the majority of its realm, was forced to literally cannibalize Corsanctum, and also had to recover from a war it lost to Niselur and Asylon. The Astrum you see now is where Corsanctum used to be almost entirely, except for the northernmost regions. Barca is dead. Completely dead. So that's 40 nobles and at its height a 20 region realm, gone. D'Hara lost two cities and almost the entirety of its food production. Fissoa lost the regions on the southern tip of the western continent, so any regions it has taken now have had to be done in the face of Lurian armies.

Yeah, the coalition against you was "hardly affected".

Also, I have not said that devs should directly interfere with a realm that is dominant. Where have I said that? The suggestion I gave would give the Lurians a direct overland route to D'Hara! That's hardly what the D'Harans want, they're like Britain in that the sea between them and their enemies makes them hard to invade. And this is where we get to your point of players utilizing their characters to change things. There is a reason that whenever I want to bring up an example of an overly powerful realm that is bad for the health of the island, I bring up Atamara's CE and not FEI's Arcaea. From what I've heard, Arcaea is already planned to fragment so that new realms can form and the island will return to a healthy state of conflict. CE, on the other hand, just sits in the middle, together in their alliance with all but one realm on the island, squashing any chance of conflict just by its sheer presence. The status quo is the order of the day, and currently peace reigns over the entire island (the sole realm at war has lost its capital and all its regions). The power to make an island healthy or not falls squarely in the hands of its strongest realms. It is the choices of their players that tend to shape the island, for better or worse.

[Eldargard]

I never said, "Yeah, the coalition against you (Luria) was "hardly affected." I did say say, "I am willing to bet that one or two of the nations who are fighting against Luria also suffered little from the monster invasion." I am not at all sure how you managed to get one from the other.

I get it. Barca was an active realm with a high noble count before the invasion. Check. No disagreement and the numbers speak for themselves. I never said that Luria suffered just as much as Barca and managed to overcome it all so you Barcans should just shut up and move on.  Why would I? I also get that Asylon suffered just as badly as Barca, that D'hara took a serious hit and that Fisoa lost some land too.  I had no idea what impact the monster invasion had on Astrum and never pretended to.

It must have sucked for the players of these realms (especially Barca and Asylon). I have little experience in this game that compares. I can totally believe that a lot of players quit the game because of these changes and their effects. After playing the game for the first time back in 2004 I also ended up quiting when something outside my control ruined a long standing plan and a lot of effort. I have also played a lot of ether games, some of which involved years of investment, that went south due to factors outside my control. I know the feeling of frustration, at least to some degree, that some players must be feeling.

Regarding my 'bragging' about Luria's huge player base, I apologize. I never intended my statements to come off as bragging. I honestly do not contribute much to Luria's success and have no place to brag. The point I was trying to make is that a large part of Luria's success is a direct result of the whole island (minus Swordfel last I heard) ganging up on Luria and that a direct result of you all attacking Luria is making Luria a more attractive realm.

The fact that a large portion of Lurian players might be refugees is not really all that telling to me. When refugees are made, they get to choose where their characters go. When new characters are made, they get to choose where those characters end up. Likewise, when characters are a part of a realm they decide if they will stay or leave. The fact that Luria has so many players and that the players are staying (for the time being at least) means that Luria is offering something to these players.

Despite all of this, I only wanted to voice few points:

1. This is a player driven game and I want it to remain that way as much as possible - things are still in a flux but the players will and should determine the course of the game.
2. The reason why Luria is doing so well is because (based on present circumstances) a large portion of the player base wants it that way - for the time being at least.
3. All the stuff that happened in the past that made some players feel screwed over is in the PAST. Let us, as PLAYERS, reshape Dwilight to better fit our needs!
4. Sure, all these points are generic and idealistic but I don't rightly care.

[Chenier]

I do concur that Luria has it "easy", or at least much easier than other realms.

Firstly, they are the target of the war, so travel times are short and battles are abundant. This is a lot more fun than for most other realms' nobles that need to march for a long time to just have one battle.

Secondly, their geography is overpowering. People join Luria because they know that Luria will have the might to push their agenda, be it to (re)form a (new) realm or to otherwise influence continental politics. All they have to do is convince the leaders and the rest pretty much falls in place. If they picked a realm like Swordfell or Fissoa, then they'd not only have to convince the leadership to go along with their desires, but then they'd have to fight hard as hell to achieve what they seek. It takes the whole continent just to arrive at a stalemate against Luria. Set aside history and current diplomacy for a moment, and just think... if Fissoa wanted to create a colony, how the hell would it achieve it? It couldn't. Not on its own. The monsters in the West are too numerous for them to take on alone, every other realm is both too far and too strong for a colonization attempt to succeed. Same for pretty much every other realm on the continent.

These two factors are largely independent of Luria's player base. Even if D'Hara had Luria's number of nobles, we could never achieve their might, because our cities are nowhere near as rich. Morek only achieves an appearance of strength and wealth by being ridiculously large, which is plenty compensated with resulting costs in militia and the like. Not to mention that our cities seem to take forever to recuperate from any population loss. And I think the players of the various non-lurian realms realize this, that the game is rigged against them, and that no amount of effort would be able to turn the odds.

[Antonine]

Perhaps the single biggest imbalance at the moment is the vast size of LN's cities. If their population and gold was reduced then it would go a long way to creating more balance on Dwilight.

[De-Legro]

Map changes to "balance" the current situation are very very unlikely. None of the maps are balanced, partly because realms come and go as do their position and lands, thus their relative strength. Secondly it has always been a design element of Tom's to have areas that are preferable for realms to control, in a effort to create a carrot to drive war.

[Chenier]

Map changes to "balance" the current situation are very very unlikely. None of the maps are balanced, partly because realms come and go as do their position and lands, thus their relative strength. Secondly it has always been a design element of Tom's to have areas that are preferable for realms to control, in a effort to create a carrot to drive war.

Sure, but right now, I know I feel "Damn, I invested all of this time and energy in the wrong place, this is futile".

Some imbalance is inevitable... but the amount of it is perhaps too much. Mind you, region stats were changed dramatically since I joined Dwi too, perhaps things weren't the same then. I know I used to think that the D'Haran cities were pretty rich. Paisly was an important part of that, though... All I know is that back then, I used to swim in gold, and nowadays... for a realm that is mostly cities and townslands, sure feels poor.

[GundamMerc]

Map changes to "balance" the current situation are very very unlikely. None of the maps are balanced, partly because realms come and go as do their position and lands, thus their relative strength. Secondly it has always been a design element of Tom's to have areas that are preferable for realms to control, in a effort to create a carrot to drive war.

My suggestion at the beginning of this thread was more in line with the latter than the former kind of change. I was seeking to create more areas, so that it would be easier for competing realms to be formed.

[De-Legro]

When you start talking about adding regions, I personally think you are spending time on a proposal that simply won't be implemented. Region tweaks, well we do have a precedent of that.

Personally what I would like to see is a system that allows for the lost lands to be reclaimed. I've not come up with a system though that would only allow this to be achievable if we also increase the player density of the island, which I would assume would be a requirement since their loss was meant to address this.

[Indirik]

A dynamic based on overall noble/region density could be devised without too much difficulty. It would be hard to tune, and would probably cause problems when it had to shrink again. Not worth the hassle and frustration for the players.

[Sacha]

So now we're embarking on a slippery slope where enough complaining will result in your opponents regions getting tweaked

[GundamMerc]

So now we're embarking on a slippery slope where enough complaining will result in your opponents regions getting tweaked

Maybe they were, I don't care about touching Luria's regions. I'd rather make the rest of the island more hospitable for independent realms.

[Wolfsong]

Perhaps the single biggest imbalance at the moment is the vast size of LN's cities. If their population and gold was reduced then it would go a long way to creating more balance on Dwilight.

There was a continent wide region rebalance done not long ago. It increased the population and gold of all of Luria Nova's cities, and increased the food output of nearly all their rural regions, while most other realms saw a large nerf across the board. More rebalancing like that would turn 99% of every region outside of LN into a wasteland.

[Eldargard]

So now we're embarking on a slippery slope where enough complaining will result in your opponents regions getting tweaked

This is exactly what I have been most worried about...

[Chenier]

This is exactly what I have been most worried about...

As Wolfsong stated, the value of areas of Dwilight was significantly altered after most of us picked our realms.

D'Hara, the city realm, was actually wealthy. It ran a crazy food deficit, but it shat gold. Luria was borderline for its food supply, and moderatly wealthy.

Now, D'Hara almost runs a surplus, and outputs little gold. Luria produces a food surplus and !@#$s gold.


Back in the first war between Kabrikskia and Asylon/Terran, I remember I was D'Hara's Prime Minister, and I secretly funded the war effort with tens of thousands of gold, because I didn't want to risk the war escalating by taking direct action. And that was just a small part of D'Hara's wealth. When I look at our tax figures now, there's no way anything like that could be done again.

I think the situation we have today is an imbalance of unprecedented nature.

[Sypher]

I have a character in LN (not that it matters for what I'm about to suggest).

My thoughts for helping Dwilight are to improve travel times by sea and reduce/modify the winter travel penalties. The long travel times on Dwilight have been brought up here and elsewhere. It is a change that doesn't favor any specific realm.

Sea travel: There are many sea zones that take 13-14 hours to sail across and you can't auto set your next travel like on land. I would suggest increasing the travel speed so that most can be sailed across in 12 hours or less. Adding the ability to set your next destination would also be appreciated.

Winter travel: It takes a ridiculously long time to travel between regions in winter. While it might be realistic, it also isn't fun. Perhaps the winter penalties could be adjusted to not be as harsh.