The Ladon, A Short-Term Solution, the Player's Council, and the Desperate Need For Communication

DeletedUser41523

Guest
I think its time to address Grepolis' new monster...the ladon/Ares in general. Months after release I'm still incredibly confused how this ever got past development as is and how it hasn't been rebalanced. The ladon is a completely broken unit that can one shot mid stacked sieges. That means if just a few people build a Ladon nuke and buffs it properly, they can kill a stacked siege in the last minute of the siege. Flyers as is are widely viewed as imbalanced but outside of the major events such as Easter and Halloween, you can generally work around flyers, their build time is much slower than DLU build times and even just casual DLU reloads will generally outpace the most efficent flyer reloads. This system worked fine...Then this monster showed up. To me its baffling how this got past development because Inno has generally been good at keeping the game balanced the last few years, especially through quality of life updates such as removing LMDs. So how nobody looked at this and thought it was game breaking blows my mind. Which brings me to my next point. Inno needs to improve its communication with its players. A game breaking update that will kill one half of the player base really is the kind of thing that should never get out of development and certainly shouldn't go two months with zero communication about a plan to fix the issue. And make no mistake, this is the top issue in the game right now. Nobody wants to play with this and a lot of people are going to quit after their ladon free conquest worlds end.

My short-term solution to this would be simple. Treat Ares similar to how Temples were treated when they were discovered to be imbalanced. Don't make worlds where Ares is active and advertise that he's inactive in every world going forward until he's re-balanced. This is just as game breaking as LMDs were, only its a reverse where suddenly you can't take many cities and rebuilding ladons will out pace sufficient DLU reloads to hold sieges.

My long-term solution is unchanged. Last year I started a petition to bring back the Grepolis' Player's Council. While that system wasn't perfect and a lot of communications errors and a lack guidelines really hampered the council. This is the kind of update that would have gotten shut down and re-balanced on the spot and if Inno is going to continue to try to release game altering updates such as this, they're going to actually need input from the players. Seeing as how its clear their staff doesn't play the game. There's a desperate need for Inno to actually communicate with its player base before releasing these kinds of updates. I also understand the need to keep the game fresh, but one bad update can do more harm than good. So with this in mind I think a second call for the Player's Council to be remade is appropriate.

TL;DR: Ladon/Ares is broken. Don't release worlds with Ares for the time being until he's re-balanced. Improve communication with player base/bring back the GPC.
 

Jimothy5

Chiliarch
on cq he is broken

on revolt not at all tbh, just my humble opinion
i understand your opinion, but at the same time this is in the same vein of bad development like the olympus endgame. how did the devs create a whole new endgame without even considering if it would function at all on revolt servers. Our game and community has a lot of very loyal players, and we deserve more input into the game development, and more thought out considerations from the devs of the impact these major updates have on gameplay
 

Shuri2060

Strategos
For years I've thought this same thing: I've had enough of the same recurring meta strategy on FL between top alliances - HC frequently until you find someone off, land and stack. How 'frequently' you HC has been controlled by the implementation of the spam rule - before it, you might get hits every minute in the worst parts of a spam war, now at worst, probably ~30 mins.

Either way - I find it just terrible to play like this. We are sitting around unable to take cities until we find someone offline...... just how is this kind of game any fun? Maybe some of you find it to be what Grepolis is all about (in CQ worlds, this has certainly been true for the longest time), but for me no thanks. You see me utilizing this all the same because there isn't much choice about it, but if I could I wouldn't. It is much too time consuming and who the better player is becomes a question of who can no life and respond to alarms 25/8 rather than anything else.

Why can we not just conquer players who are online by timing on them? Because of how powerful flyers are vs no wall. One flyer nuke can take out 3+ DLU nukes, especially if it's a snipe, so there is little chance of landing on someone online, especially during/right after an event. Landing online is pretty much out of the question - yes, doable, but very hard, in the end it's much easier to just find someone offline + stack.

The investment required for a single siege is very high too thanks to flyers - you need like 20++ cities of support tied up for 8/12 hrs just to take a single city. This requirement drastically lowers possible city turnover rate no matter how skilled your alliance is (as long as your enemy is of similar size). This is very different from Revolt and is what sucks most about conquest to me. It matters very much in the Domination game mode where you basically have no chance if you are outsized - you aren't going to push your enemy below 40% faster than they can found or take other cities at this kind of rate.

=======================

tldr the ridiculous power of flyers is bad for multiple reasons, so to release a new flyer that's even more broken just destroys the cq game mode. In my past suggestions I have pushed to balance CQ by weakening the breakers/strengthening the takers.

What can be done -

- Reduce CQ time
- Reduce flyer speed (they would still be v. good even if slower than LS)
- Allow DEF token buffs on sieges
- Allow Heroes in sieges
- Enable some small wall building function (eg. with a research, 1 lvl every hr), reducing the stack requirement as time passes

Introducing the Ladon (and Aphrodite's Narcissism) just does not help this situation in conquest.

I don't know if many will agree with me on this, but I find it to be a fundamental balancing flaw in conquest that prevents the game from being fully enjoyable.
 
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DeletedUser41523

Guest
I don’t hate flyers in general. Personally I think they’re okay on conq since in reality for most wars, you end up with one side just running out of flyers and being able to move from 1 or 2 towns a day to 5+ most days.

The issue with the Ladon is that nobody will be running out if a Ladon can murder a decently stacked siege in one go. Assuming everyone builds every Flyer type + Ladons and does so efficiently. There’s a strong chance to hold all opponents to single digits and never actually run out.
 

IDontMainLulu

Hipparchus
- Allow Heroes in sieges
I would love this option, but the italian CM said this before the release of Aphrodite and Ares, i hope they can reconsider the proposal.
Ashton said:
5. Nov 2020
Unfortunately the developers felt that the impact caused by this change would be too important and therefore the proposal was rejected.
 

thunder123

Hipparchus
i feel like persus would be to strong but leonida could be fine.
or, on the other hand, instead of using heroes, just nerf fliers a little bit. im not saying to kill them because the system was "decent" as it was before ares, but weakening them a tiny bit could be helpfull. as time goes on players are obviously improving at everything and discovering more ways to build up flier nukes out of events. i don't really care about fliers on siege breaking stacks because that's "fine". but good players will be online and time perfectly their fliers on your cs so you will simply never siege them unless you send 20/25k dlu same second as cs
 

G-Fight

Chiliarch
A no brainer should be to nerf their speed. Like they're more than thrice as fast as any other flyer. They shouldn't even be faster than Manticores.
 

Darth Akula

Lochagos
:rolleyes:

More and more I keep seeing posts of "make it easier for defenders to defend and harder for attackers to attack"

You people would never survive in any kind of fight, much less a legit war.

*Disclaimer:*
I haven't played with Ares yet but I plan to and I'm excited for it. However, imo, it's posts like this that kills the game - not the unit. "Help me Devs, I can't defend properly and can't figure out how to do war so you gotta change stuff so that the bad player I am can be good and I can feel good about myself". Give me a break guys. "re-balancing" the myths was a terrible flipping mistake. If the Ares unit is that powerful and you freaking know about it - just freaking do better on your sieges numbskulls. Too easy.
 

thunder123

Hipparchus
interesting how you judge something without testing it out... not to mention that this means you don't even know how the world with ares is going.
also funny how you think that "attackers" are those who go full on fliers lol, if you want to conquest enemies you need to hold sieges, do you know that? try holding sieges with slingers/mantis only and let me know how it goes :)
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
@Darth Akula a full Ladon nuke can be buffed to murder about 30-40k dlu in a single shot I believe. So 4-5 Ladon nukes will kill a large stack. So if everyone builds one Ladon nuke, they will almost never lose a town in conquest.

That actually makes life easier for the defending party since they won’t lose cities.
 

thunder123

Hipparchus
i want to point out that ladons can go 6-7 island in 20 or 25 minutes... using urephon to buff them litterally double their travel time
meaning you can have ladons nuke where you please, no real strategy needed, they will always be there in time to snipe cs
 

xFate

Strategos
:rolleyes:

More and more I keep seeing posts of "make it easier for defenders to defend and harder for attackers to attack"

You people would never survive in any kind of fight, much less a legit war.

*Disclaimer:*
I haven't played with Ares yet but I plan to and I'm excited for it. However, imo, it's posts like this that kills the game - not the unit. "Help me Devs, I can't defend properly and can't figure out how to do war so you gotta change stuff so that the bad player I am can be good and I can feel good about myself". Give me a break guys. "re-balancing" the myths was a terrible flipping mistake. If the Ares unit is that powerful and you freaking know about it - just freaking do better on your sieges numbskulls. Too easy.

please stop talking on externals, you legit hurt my head
 

DeletedUser6812

Guest
Few simple fixes they could do in general to help against not just Ladons, but against all fliers especially since Inno thinks the only way they can make money is flier tokens in events.

Generic increase in population size of the OP fliers (+10-20%) - so less fliers per nuke
Slow them down (10-20%)
Reduced conquest time (9hrs?)

Or go down the new unit route, something like Engineers (pop 200) - Temporary field fortifications - Adds 10 levels of wall during a conquest. Something like that would give players a bit of a chance in sieges, but still a) let you Rage it b) let you quake it c) be temp so cant be abused to instant build walls in cities.

Lots of things they can do, even if its slowly rolled out. However we seem to have dev's who only come to the game once every few months, roll out something and then come back months later with something else rather than actually playing the game themselves and seeing whats happening.
 

DeletedUser41523

Guest
For me the simplest solution would be to not put Ares on conquest worlds right now. Or even just making him a conquest type specific setting similar to Olympus Worlds.
 
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