Is there going to be any form of negative feedback introduced into the village influencing of Lusternia besides the little bits (incompatible villages) already there? As it stands, because Magnagora is clearly the strongest at village influencing (and just about everything else), it is quite clear that, before too long, they will have eight of the ten villages (should they want them). New Celest, on the other hand, has little chance of expanding past Southgard, since whenever they try to influence a village, Magnagora beats them down quite violently. I think it would be balancing if each village one controls make it more difficult to influence the others, thus adding some negative feedback to the village influencing game. It doesn't have to be a huge effect, but any effect at all would help the weaker cities/communes (ie: everyone but Magnagora) hold at least one village. It would mean that if Mag was slightly stronger than the Serenwilde, they would have slightly more villages than the Seren. If Mag was much stronger than the Seren, they would have many more villages than the Seren. It would also mean that, no matter how weak a city/commune is, it is easy for them to hold a single village.

Just an Idea.

It's a good idea, but where do you draw the line? If a sudden influx of credit spending players suddenly join Celest, the tides will shift in their favor along with the negative feedback, making them the strongest now. I have to agree - Celest needs help and more power. But if you look at it from a long term perspective, it will probably be unfair more than anything. The idea is still a good one - a different solution needs to be offered in my opinion though.

I think you misunderstand. Having negative feedback (the stronger you are, the harder it is to get stronger) helps bring balance to a game, regardless of who is winning or losing. This wouldn't target specific groups or people (in general, though right now we have a clear strongest, and it would make them weaker, so it targets them in a way), it would make those with five villages have a harder time influencing a sixth than those who have one village and are trying to influence a second, or keep that one village. As it stands, should Magnagora decide to take the Krokani village, there isn't much Glomdoring can say about it - they are weaker, they lose, even though Mag has five villages and Glom would have zero at the time (their one in the middle of revolting). What I am saying is, in that case, Glom should have an advantage in the influencing over Magnagora since they have so many fewer villages. Not a gigantic one, but enough to give them a chance at holding the village.

It will just make it take longer to conquer, Magnagora gets villages because we work at it harder, and more organized then any other city. Regardless of how much "more" difficult it would be. You are trying to address Magnagora being able to chase people out of a village by making it take longer to influence denziens(Or atleast this is my understanding) which wouldn't even address the problem you are talking about. Anyways I see no problem with the way influencing works currently, if Serenwilde and Celest could ever get their act together they would be fine.

Seriously, as an ex-Mag, the -only- reason Mag won villages. Is because there was no giving up. that was it. When they first implemented the harder to influence villages, Mag still went out, and won, after 24 hours of conflict, or more. Only because they didn't give up.

Make Village Influencing Less One-Sided in Three Easy Steps:

1. Destroy all demesnes, flood, taint, forest, and taintedforest when a village enters play.
2. Do not allow flooding, tainting, foresting, or taintedforesting when a village is uninfluenced.
3. Do not allow melding when a village is uninfluenced.

Yes, it's nerfing Mages/Druids massively concerning influence, but I think it'd be a vast improvement.

I totally agree. Or perhaps demesnes were allowed, but the "villagers" so to speak, passively removed it. Or perhaps if you demesne a village during play, it cannot extend outside of the village, and can be broken at ANY point.

I would say, just remove all demesne's when it goes into play.

Does Ankgrad count as tainted environment? If so, I believe that would be the only village that has mage/druid-ready environments. And even though no other organization in their right mind would ever try for Ankgrad, there is that advantage to be considered on the no-demesne plan.

I like the sound of the scaling difficulty idea, though I can understand many magnagoran players' objections.

I was speaking from a purely game-theory point of view, not thinking about the specifics of implementation. *shrugs*

Ohhh so I get it. Basically, the more villages you have, the harder time you have influencing another village. I suppose that would give the other cities a small upperhand, but it all falls back to what Nayl said - don't give up. I'll bet you the Magnagorans will probably keep at it despite the negative feedback.

In a sense, there is negative feedback already in that villages are organized into groups which oppose one another, and if you hold one, you have a disadvantage in the others. I think the dial on that disadvantage might need turning up a little, but it's hard to gauge, because so much of village influencing is opaque -- we never even know if we're close until we're there, for instance, and can't gauge how big the advantage is. (It's not like you can go into the arena and test influencing a village a dozen times to see how things affect it.)

Frankly, while I agree with the general principle of negative feedback (see my comments on the Battle for Faethorn concerning the same subject, and my sense that Lusternia has a little too much positive feedback and too little negative feedback in general in the game of nations), I think we could do it by adjusting what we have. It has the advantage of making some RP sense.

(One could justify both positive and negative feedback from an RP standpoint in village influencing based on the number of other villages -- "We're getting worried that you're getting too big and we'll lose our individuality as part of your Empire" vs. "We're convinced that you have persuaded so many other villages and protected them, and we'd rather be part of that than against the juggernaut" -- so it kind of cancels out.)

I don't think we need to 'turn up the dial' on the current negative feedback, I'd say that's working just fine. We can't get all the mining villages, we haven't had estelbar and acknor. I'd say its doing its job. I think on the other hand that the number of changed already to villages have disadvantaged players who are smart and organized in favor of making things more random, and changes like these have made it realistically impossible for anyone to hold them all...at this point, why do we have to make it harder on an organization just because they're good at it? We don't do anything that everyone else can't do if they try.

Making each village harder would just be stupid.

Its a good setup the way it is now.

The only problem people have is the ability and interest to get educated and organized.

Daganev makes a good point. I actually think a lot of people are interested in and want to get educated though. They're just intimidated to ask their elders because it will be a burden for the elders. They shouldn't be intimidated though. The inexperienced people need to speak up, and those in the leadership has to lead more - forcefully teach the inexperienced the material they need to learn.

The decimation of certain Magnagoran skills in the envoy changes is help enough.

I agree with this, and also don't think mages should be nerfed with regard to influencing. Except perhaps for Nayl's suggestion of only removing a demesne when the village revolts, then it better comes down to comparable city/commune responses, rather than days of putting a demesne in an area that no longer wants any influence there anyway.

In exchange for all of its villages, Magnagora suffers from an increased risk of dangerous alliances, for one thing. If at any time that's not true "because they have three times the manpower of everyone else" then... well... yeah. If your army is made up of stock that's better material than conscripts and outnumbers everyone else three times over, maybe you should have most of the villages

People say Magnagora are overpowered in all respects but is genuinely because they work the hardest for it. Where's the realism in stripping easily the greatest power in the game of it's power?

Then again, as Thorgal says, balance > realism

To a certain extent Thorgal is right. But the fact that Magnagora is very strong and Celest very weak is primarily due to player influence, not the mechanics that needs to be balanced. Magnagora simply has more experienced, credit-loaded players than Celest. For example, today when Southgard revolted, the only inexperienced, low-credit people were Crylia and I. That's about it. Alger, Ravin, Ixion, Jadryga, Thorgal and everyone else that were there were much more seasoned and credit-loaded.

Celest also had a number of players in Southgard though. It's not like they're lacking manpower, they're lacking firepower. They got the bodies, but the bodies ain't strong enough. Except for Rhysus and a few others, most of the paladins and aquamancers were about 50% of my might. Gerald's might. Gerald is not very strong people. Those paladins and aquamancers were willing to fight (until they sanctuaried), but frankly, they didn't come to par with the monsters of Magnagora.

The motivation is partially there, but not the credits or the experience. As for a solution, trying to balance the game mechanics to tip the favor to Celest isn't appealing to me. As for a solution, there's only one I could really suggest, but it'll probably be offensive to a majority of the Celestians so I'm not going to say it.

experienced, okay. Credit loaded, negative. You all some big spenders there too. Lazul Amaru Thaddues Geb come to mind