DeletedUser53164
Guest
Proposal:
Add a new WW class building to the game called the Watch Tower, which will notify alliances via their forums when members are attacked on an island with a Watch Tower.
Building a Watch Tower would work like a WW, except that it does not count as a wonder for victory conditions, it can be built any number of times by each alliance, it is buildable from the very start of the game, and of course, it costs less.
Reason:
It will provide a better way for alliances to support each other. Currently, dealing with this kind of stuff makes the game take a lot of time and it sometimes interrupts real life in disruptive ways. The game should not punish players for being responsible in real life, and it should not reward players for spending every waking minute watching their screen.
It will help unify alliances. Currently, the only unifying factors for an alliance are a forum shared between members of the alliance and WWs, which is a tiny portion of the game. Alliances can create other means of unification, but they are largely external to the game mechanics. The alliance mechanics don't encourage working together beyond WW. Any players can work together equally well in defense or capturing a city, whether they are in an alliance together or not. The Watch Towers will encourage players to work together to ensure the security of alliance members. The reports will encourage better defensive help.
It will encourage tighter alliances with fewer coalitions. The inability to share the tower report tab will make sister alliances and coalition members truly outsiders. They will not be able to use the level 10 links that allow casting on attacks for reports from other players. In addition, they won't be able to contribute directly to Watch Towers for other alliances. Also, trading players between alliances will become a serious problem, because when a player is switched, the Watch Towers on all islands that player is on will be destroyed.
It will encourage alliances to build up WW areas, though they may not realize it initially. It will discourage sprawling alliances that take up a lot of space without filling much of it. It will also encourage fights over islands for domination. Currently, throughout much of the game, more docile simming alliances often coexist mixed in with bigger, more aggressive alliances. Because a Watch Tower can only be built on an island with only alliance members, multiple alliances coexisting on one island will be viewed as problematic. Coexistence will be less peaceful, because security will require islands to be dominated. In addition, empty slots on an island will become a more serious liability, because it will provide an easy way for an enemy to break a Watch Tower or prevent one from being started. This will encourage alliances to try to fill core islands quickly, so that they can use Watch Towers to increase their security.
Details:
How it works:
The watch tower is a WW class building, only it is not a WW. Each island can have a Watch Tower, which would be built on the WW slot. Building the Watch Tower has the same requirements as a wonder, except:
This does mean that to build one, no slots on the island can be occupied by a city that is not part of the alliance.
The mechanical differences from wonders are:
What the Watch Tower actually does:
The Watch Tower adds a forum tab (all towers for an alliance will use this same tab, so you won't have one tab for every tower). This tab cannot be shared. Whenever a player on the island gets attacked, an attack report is posted to this forum tab. If no thread for the city exists, a new thread is created. If there is already a thread for the city, the attack report is posted there. (Players can post in these threads normally, and those with forum admin rights can delete, lock, or whatever else as with any normal thread. Locked threads will still receive tower reports though.)
At level 1, attack reports will only say that the city was attacked and when.
At level 2, attack reports for cities on this island will also list the attacker.
At level 3, attack reports will display attacking troops, if a normal attack report would do so.
At level 4, attack reports will list everything a normal attack report would. (Perhaps alliance leaders would have the option to make these not display defending troops, loot, and such for the entire alliance, but they would be displayed by default.)
At level 5, reports will also be generated when an attack is sent. (Anything that would set off the attack alarm would generate a report.) This report will only say the landing time of the attack.
At level 6, these attack alarm reports will also display the name of the attacker.
At level 7, these attack alarm reports will display the city from which the attack is coming.
At level 8, these attack alarm reports will display the wall level of the city under attack and whether or not a tower is present.
At level 9, these attack alarm reports will display the god for the city under attack.
At level 10, these reports will also provide a BB code or icon that can be clicked on to view the attack details (like the one you get when you click an attack in the Command Overview). Just like viewing attack details this way when you are the one getting attacked, these will allow players to cast spells on the attack as if they were the player getting attacked. These special links will only work for members of the alliance they were generated for.
This might be too many levels. Perhaps it should be cut down to 5, and the attack alarm reports should come at level 3.
Balance/Abuse:
There is one potential balance issue with this idea. If every player in the alliance can cast on an attack, we are going to see large scale use of Sea Storm and Zeus' Rage. This would likely dramatically reduce solo and small group attacks, limiting combat mostly to large operations that are able to consume most of the favor of the entire defending alliance. While shifting things a little bit in this direction is probably not a bad thing, shifting it at this scale probably is.
The fix for this is simple: Make these spells block further spells on attacks, like buff and debuff spells already do (Helmet of Invisibility, Desire, etc...). Perhaps also put a 5 or 10 minute delay before new spells can be cast after Purification has been used. That, or increase the cost of Purification to 250 or 300 (to reflect its increased value).
That said, I am not entirely sure this is that serious of a problem. Favor has many uses, and players may be loath to constantly use their favor Wisdoming, Sea Storming, and Zeus' Raging every attack against another alliance member.
Summary:
I believe the addition of Watch Towers that notify alliances when their members are attacked will take some burden off of alliances and encourage more collaborative and unified alliance play. I also believe it will discourage mega-alliances and coalitions and encourage more aggressive play.
With the new Domination setting, this addition will also likely improve the gameplay there. It will orient the game more around actual fighting by making it harder to get cities by just picking off the low hanging fruit.
There are a few questions hanging here:
What should this new building cost? Obviously it should cost less than real WWs. If it supposed to be reasonable to build one on each core island, it should be significantly cheaper than WWs, but as a collaborative building it also should not be too cheap.
Also, perhaps this building should cost a small amount of gold. Somewhere between 10 to 50 gold per level seems reasonable. Most alliances have a few players who can cover the cost, and with the gold trading mechanic of the Market, most players at least have access to small amounts of gold. That seems like a fairly small price to pay, when instantly completing a building with more than an hour left costs more than 100 gold.
Add a new WW class building to the game called the Watch Tower, which will notify alliances via their forums when members are attacked on an island with a Watch Tower.
Building a Watch Tower would work like a WW, except that it does not count as a wonder for victory conditions, it can be built any number of times by each alliance, it is buildable from the very start of the game, and of course, it costs less.
Reason:
It will provide a better way for alliances to support each other. Currently, dealing with this kind of stuff makes the game take a lot of time and it sometimes interrupts real life in disruptive ways. The game should not punish players for being responsible in real life, and it should not reward players for spending every waking minute watching their screen.
It will help unify alliances. Currently, the only unifying factors for an alliance are a forum shared between members of the alliance and WWs, which is a tiny portion of the game. Alliances can create other means of unification, but they are largely external to the game mechanics. The alliance mechanics don't encourage working together beyond WW. Any players can work together equally well in defense or capturing a city, whether they are in an alliance together or not. The Watch Towers will encourage players to work together to ensure the security of alliance members. The reports will encourage better defensive help.
It will encourage tighter alliances with fewer coalitions. The inability to share the tower report tab will make sister alliances and coalition members truly outsiders. They will not be able to use the level 10 links that allow casting on attacks for reports from other players. In addition, they won't be able to contribute directly to Watch Towers for other alliances. Also, trading players between alliances will become a serious problem, because when a player is switched, the Watch Towers on all islands that player is on will be destroyed.
It will encourage alliances to build up WW areas, though they may not realize it initially. It will discourage sprawling alliances that take up a lot of space without filling much of it. It will also encourage fights over islands for domination. Currently, throughout much of the game, more docile simming alliances often coexist mixed in with bigger, more aggressive alliances. Because a Watch Tower can only be built on an island with only alliance members, multiple alliances coexisting on one island will be viewed as problematic. Coexistence will be less peaceful, because security will require islands to be dominated. In addition, empty slots on an island will become a more serious liability, because it will provide an easy way for an enemy to break a Watch Tower or prevent one from being started. This will encourage alliances to try to fill core islands quickly, so that they can use Watch Towers to increase their security.
Details:
How it works:
The watch tower is a WW class building, only it is not a WW. Each island can have a Watch Tower, which would be built on the WW slot. Building the Watch Tower has the same requirements as a wonder, except:
- It can be built at any point in time.
- Any number of alliances can have one or more each at the same time.
- Any player on the island can start it building, if the conditions are met.
This does mean that to build one, no slots on the island can be occupied by a city that is not part of the alliance.
The mechanical differences from wonders are:
- If a player outside of the alliance takes a slot on the island, the Watch Tower is destroyed completely, instead of just halting the build process.
- During WW, alliance leaders must be able able to start a wonder on an island with a Watch Tower, destroying the Watch Tower.
- Watch Towers are built collaboratively like wonders, but once a Watch Tower has enough resources, the upgrade phase starts automatically.
What the Watch Tower actually does:
The Watch Tower adds a forum tab (all towers for an alliance will use this same tab, so you won't have one tab for every tower). This tab cannot be shared. Whenever a player on the island gets attacked, an attack report is posted to this forum tab. If no thread for the city exists, a new thread is created. If there is already a thread for the city, the attack report is posted there. (Players can post in these threads normally, and those with forum admin rights can delete, lock, or whatever else as with any normal thread. Locked threads will still receive tower reports though.)
At level 1, attack reports will only say that the city was attacked and when.
At level 2, attack reports for cities on this island will also list the attacker.
At level 3, attack reports will display attacking troops, if a normal attack report would do so.
At level 4, attack reports will list everything a normal attack report would. (Perhaps alliance leaders would have the option to make these not display defending troops, loot, and such for the entire alliance, but they would be displayed by default.)
At level 5, reports will also be generated when an attack is sent. (Anything that would set off the attack alarm would generate a report.) This report will only say the landing time of the attack.
At level 6, these attack alarm reports will also display the name of the attacker.
At level 7, these attack alarm reports will display the city from which the attack is coming.
At level 8, these attack alarm reports will display the wall level of the city under attack and whether or not a tower is present.
At level 9, these attack alarm reports will display the god for the city under attack.
At level 10, these reports will also provide a BB code or icon that can be clicked on to view the attack details (like the one you get when you click an attack in the Command Overview). Just like viewing attack details this way when you are the one getting attacked, these will allow players to cast spells on the attack as if they were the player getting attacked. These special links will only work for members of the alliance they were generated for.
This might be too many levels. Perhaps it should be cut down to 5, and the attack alarm reports should come at level 3.
Balance/Abuse:
There is one potential balance issue with this idea. If every player in the alliance can cast on an attack, we are going to see large scale use of Sea Storm and Zeus' Rage. This would likely dramatically reduce solo and small group attacks, limiting combat mostly to large operations that are able to consume most of the favor of the entire defending alliance. While shifting things a little bit in this direction is probably not a bad thing, shifting it at this scale probably is.
The fix for this is simple: Make these spells block further spells on attacks, like buff and debuff spells already do (Helmet of Invisibility, Desire, etc...). Perhaps also put a 5 or 10 minute delay before new spells can be cast after Purification has been used. That, or increase the cost of Purification to 250 or 300 (to reflect its increased value).
That said, I am not entirely sure this is that serious of a problem. Favor has many uses, and players may be loath to constantly use their favor Wisdoming, Sea Storming, and Zeus' Raging every attack against another alliance member.
Summary:
I believe the addition of Watch Towers that notify alliances when their members are attacked will take some burden off of alliances and encourage more collaborative and unified alliance play. I also believe it will discourage mega-alliances and coalitions and encourage more aggressive play.
With the new Domination setting, this addition will also likely improve the gameplay there. It will orient the game more around actual fighting by making it harder to get cities by just picking off the low hanging fruit.
There are a few questions hanging here:
What should this new building cost? Obviously it should cost less than real WWs. If it supposed to be reasonable to build one on each core island, it should be significantly cheaper than WWs, but as a collaborative building it also should not be too cheap.
Also, perhaps this building should cost a small amount of gold. Somewhere between 10 to 50 gold per level seems reasonable. Most alliances have a few players who can cover the cost, and with the gold trading mechanic of the Market, most players at least have access to small amounts of gold. That seems like a fairly small price to pay, when instantly completing a building with more than an hour left costs more than 100 gold.