Problem:
With the right setup, a village or aetherbubble may be captured within 1 round of bombarding/influencing, which takes about 10 minutes, due to bombards/village feelings. Stronger orgs also tend to be able to secure these more easily due to village feelings, enabling their stranglehold on such resources.

Potential Solutions (Updated 10-22):

Related to Revolts:
-Have all denizens start off contemplating loyalties (unshuffled).

Related to Aetherflares:
-Necessitate the presence of a colossus at the ring for bombards to work.
-Double the effect of colossi on rings.
-Halve the effect of bombards on rings.
-Destroying a colossus should cause a drop in the opposing org's level of alignment with the bubble (if not two levels).
-Make all 8 aetherbubbles flare at once. Increase the time between flares so that orgs will hold an aetherbubble for about the same amount of time.
-Shorten the time to build up a bombard.
-Put a limit on how many bombards one org can have going at a time.


Related to Village System:
-Have village feelings impact gains from a village's tithes to the winning nation rather than the total amount of influencing needed for a revolt to complete.
-Have a commercial government system improve villages by influencing paranoia in addition to comm quests

-Get rid of the clause that benign conquest generates additional power,
-Bring commercial tithing to about 10x that of religious.
-Conquest needs to not general max feelings unless you are benign with multiple villages, or neutral with four, or never with despotic (max being second level perhaps)
-Have village feelings impact how easy/hard they are to influence, but leaves how many you need to get unchanged. Basically offering a buff/penalty to your influencing attack against those village denizens.

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Please make your suggestions and discuss.

Revolts:

• Have village feelings impact gains from a village's tithes to the winning nation rather than the total amount of influencing needed for a revolt to complete. So instead of high village feelings requiring an org only 50 (fake numbers here) influences to complete the revolt rather than the normal 100, high village feelings will instead determine how much a village tithes in nexus power, commodities or conquest power. Everyone will be at the base 100 influence needed still. What low village feelings will do though is beyond me.
  

Flares:

• Necessitate the presence of a colossus at the ring (at the ring is important or people will just stash the thing in a hidden area and just bypass the fix) for bombards to work. This'll theoretically initiate the dual ground/air control that might balance aetherbubble capture instead of the current 'get 10 ships in the air and win' strategy.
  

Class is soon, but these're just a few things off of the top of my head.

Regarding Flares, I would advocate strengthening the role colossi play also, but I do not think requiring both ships and colossi to win is necessary. An either/or, or both strategy should be possible. Destroying a colossus should cause a drop in the opposing org's level of alignment with the bubble (if not two levels). Also, something like the coloured messages bombards give as they get closer to firing for colossi would be nice. With several people focussing on our colossus in the last round of flares, it felt like nothing was happening and that it was pointless, especially with how slowly the colossus seemed to build alignment in comparison to bombards.

With regards the bonuses controlling aetherbubbles provide, I think removing free distort and having the constructs lessen distort's cost would be better.

Regarding Villages, everyone will agree, the lv3 modifier is too strong. While it has ensured Hallifax has kept control of Rockholm, we really should have lost it before now. There have been revolts where I was one of maybe three influencers, against superior numbers and we still won.

In an associated problem, mechanics also make a commercial government style undesirable. Completing commodity quests to improve feelings in a village held by an opposing org -benefits- the opposing org by increasing their tithes. It also requires that you are unenemied to that org, which is a touch unrealistic for those who would actually do commodity quests enough times for a jump in feelings. Not to mention that commodity quests are quite a time intensive, low reward means of improving village feelings, and as a means of boosting feelings in more than one village, a real pain.

If it could be possible to have a commercial government style improve feelings in villages controlled by other orgs by influencing with paranoia say (make them paranoid that they're not getting the best 'deal'), but maintain the commodity quest aspect for villages already in your control, that might make commercial a more attractive government style.

Flares:
Make all 8 aetherbubbles flare at once. Increase the time between flares so that orgs will hold an aetherbubble for about the same amount of time.
Make colossi build alignment much faster than they do right now.

Xiel:

Revolts:

• Have village feelings impact gains from a village's tithes to the winning nation rather than the total amount of influencing needed for a revolt to complete. So instead of high village feelings requiring an org only 50 (fake numbers here) influences to complete the revolt rather than the normal 100, high village feelings will instead determine how much a village tithes in nexus power, commodities or conquest power. Everyone will be at the base 100 influence needed still. What low village feelings will do though is beyond me.
  

I actually quite like this, though will there be an effect to other orgs doing their thing in your village. Or do we just delete that portion.

Also negative feelings can just lessen the commodities and power the village provides.

This still leaves commercial in an undesireable position though. For those that have recently been in a commercial government: will tweaking the number of commodity quests required for an increase fix it, or does it need another approach?

I was told to post here about my thoughts on Conquest Vs Religious Vs Commercial. Hallifax is one of the few orgs who have recently been every type of government. Some numbers for you would be these comparisons

Power Per Village Per Weave for Benign
Commercial: Between 8 and 50
Religious:Between 300-400
Conquest: 1000 even Conquest Pool*

*Conquest pool works as a pool of power where any discretionary powers (distort, ripple) or guard charges (15, or 25 per weave) will be taken out of the power pool first if there is any in it. This means that as long as you have at least 16 guards per village, you will be getting more power with conquest (on the tune of 600 power) per weave with benign. Conquest pool power also never decays or disappears even if you change government and change back.

In addition to this information, it was found that our revlogs were mostly the same going from commercial, to religious, to conquest in that the amount we were tithed remained within 10. (I will note that at the time I reported this and there was a change to it, but we were the last commercial org so nobody has seen how much the tithes have changed)

As a conquest benign city, if you have one village you will reach max village feelings guaranteed without working towards it at all. It is believed that benign feelings also gives you the most conquest pool power out of all of the styles (based on Help Government the last statement in the benign section If said nation is a Conquest Nation, the people of the village will make larger donations towards the Conquest Pool." So not only does it guarantee max feelings if you have a single village, but it also appears to generate the most power ((this does not come from personal observation, just from a conversation I had with Akyaevin and Ixion when we were discussing changing to conquest, and then the information in that help file))

Between Religious and Commercial, religious appears to take significantly less effort to influence up to max feelings than it takes Commercial. Religious also kills two birds with one stone in that it generates more experience, more gold, and and requires a skillset that is used in a wider aspect of the game than Commercial


In conclusion, there is no mechanical reason to be anything other than Benign Conquest unless you have no villages and need to get feelings up, and there is certainly not a single reason to be commercial.


I believe the first way to fix this is get rid of the clause that benign conquest generates additional power, second I believe you need to bring commercial tithing to about 10x that of religious as that is the power difference at present. Third, commercial government needs to be brought in line (again) with the ease of gaining feelings of religious organizations. Fourth, Conquest needs to not general max feelings unless you are benign with multiple villages, or neutral with four, or never with despotic (max being second level perhaps)

Anisu:



I actually quite like this, though will there be an effect to other orgs doing their thing in your village. Or do we just delete that portion.

Also negative feelings can just lessen the commodities and power the village provides.

This still leaves commercial in an undesireable position though. For those that have recently been in a commercial government: will tweaking the number of commodity quests required for an increase fix it, or does it need another approach?

Negative feelings working that way won't make sense since villages won't be tithing to orgs with negative feelings typically anyway. The effect will have to be different.

It would probably be too hard to code, but I recall somebody suggesting before having village feelings impact how easy/hard they are to influence, but leaves how many you need to get unchanged. Basically offering a buff/penalty to your influencing attack against those village denizens.

A buff in whose favour? The current benevolent organization that's protecting their village, or the new masters who are trying to take over?

Vadi:

A buff in whose favour? The current benevolent organization that's protecting their village, or the new masters who are trying to take over?

What? Was this at me? I was suggesting if you have high village feelings come the revolt you have a slight buff on your influencing attack against them (maybe it takes 5 hits instead of 6), but the total number of denizens needed is the same. Likewise if they hate you, your village influencing is a little less effective (7 hits instead of 6). Something along those lines.

In the most recent Mountain Wars / Undervault Struggles revolt, Glomdoring managed to take Angkrag without influencing all of the village. We didn't have any positive feelings; we just relied on CAMPAIGN CRUSADE... considering that, how revolt influence works should really be looked at.

Turnus:

It would probably be too hard to code, but I recall somebody suggesting before having village feelings impact how easy/hard they are to influence, but leaves how many you need to get unchanged. Basically offering a buff/penalty to your influencing attack against those village denizens.

I really like that idea. I can't see any reason it would be difficult to code, since we already have boosts to other types of influencing.

My opinion on revolt speed is that it should only be possible to win in the first round if you're completely uncontested. 100% of the villagers won over to your side. As long as the ease/difficulty of getting to max feelings under the different government types is equalized, it might be okay to keep the current effect. Which, if I'm remembering right, is lowering the number of points needed to win, yes? The magnitude of this boost should be lessened, though. As has been pointed out, it's far too easy for some governments to reach max feelings. It's always bothered me that we don't have to do anything, and Rockholm will be at max well before it revolts again. Commercial, on the other hand, was a constant struggle up until the very end to get to max for -one- village. And the rewards are meh. Do any orgs really need more commodities? Hallifax is a bit low on non-mining comms, but when I've made the effort, I've been able to boost our stock significantly just by buying in other villages, no commodity quests required.

Without knowing exact effect of a colossus (how long it would take at max focusers to win uncontested), I would say double the effect of colossi (at least) and halve the effect of bombards. Maybe shorten the time to build up a bombard. Put a limit on how many bombards one org can have going at a time. My suggestion would be, without changing the effect of bombards, three, with a change in effect, four. I do like the idea of requiring both a colossus and bombards, but I'm not sure how feasible that would be. With an entrenched ground force from one side, and a superior air force from the other, would all progress for both sides simply stop? It takes a -long- time of not being able to do anything, sipping, talking, eating, looking, to activate a colossus or beacon. I have yet to fight against a manned colossus, so I can't comment on survivability there, but a lone pilot should only be at a slight disadvantage to one with backup; if he can activate it and get in safely. It also takes a very, very, long time to finish a bombard, during which the ship can't move away if it's being attacked. Therefore, once control of either the air or ground is established, it's very hard for the other side to make any progress in that area.

That's because you're benign. Being benign will bring your village to max village feelings if you're holding it.

In regards to my earlier idea of village feelings impacting something other than revolt results (eg. if positive, direct correlation to tithes given by the village), negative feelings could be spun in a number of different ways:

• A scenario where if Glom had negative feelings to Rockholm, Rockholm 'invader' mobs could ravage one of Glom's holdings (or the forest itself if it had no villages) and if not all bashed out in say, half an hour, the invaders would pull out and give x commodities to whoever Rockholm is loyal to taken from the village/org. More invaders with stronger negative feelings, maybe.
  
• Or simpler, mobs in the village become inherently aggressive to people with negative feelings. Starting with just the named ones at level one to everyone in level three?
  

I dunno. Maybe I'm reaching a bit with the complexity of the ideas, but I'd think they'd be neat. :|

The problem with increasing tithes with positive feelings is that Benign, which gives passive positive feelings, is supposed to be balanced against a lowered amount of tithes. Which is one of the reasons why Conquest is so weird.

Conquest should be changed somehow, as in its current state it is the personification of the "org momentum" complaint. The more villages you have, the more passive positive village feelings you gain with villages not under your sphere of influence. Changing feelings so that positive doesn't make it easier to get the village will remove it as an issue though.

Kiradawea:

Conquest should be changed somehow, as in its current state it is the personification of the "org momentum" complaint. The more villages you have, the more passive positive village feelings you gain with villages not under your sphere of influence. Changing feelings so that positive doesn't make it easier to get the village will remove it as an issue though.

This is not true anymore. Conquest governments gain positive feelings on the villages under their control, while they have to actively weaken (influence) foreign villages to gain feelings. Furthermore, a lot of village denizens are intimidating (thus, immune to weaken influence), so Conquest organizations are actually shafted when it comes to gaining feelings outside their sphere of control.

Yes, the help file is outdated.

Last I heard, actively weakening foreign villages actually doesn't work anymore when I typo'd that that bit wasn't included in the HELP file and Iosai responded. Unless I misunderstood her anyway.

Word from on high says that 1st round victories are part of the Vision, but they didn't say we couldn't make it a very long 1st round.

Keep going, will summarize ideas on the first page soon.

All right, now that I've finally summarized things...

What if all denizens started off contemplating their loyalties (nonshuffled) when a revolt starts to prevent quick 1st round wins, then have village feelings impact their ease of influencing during a revolt / increase tithes - for revolts.

Then for flares, what if we increased the impact of colossi and reduced the impact of bombards. I don't think we need to make it so you need both to win, but it sure would speed things up a lot. Also have colossus destruction improve ring feeling and lower enemy feelings.

What do you guys think?

Sounds interesting, but if org A bombards and org B controls the ground at roughly the same time, wouldn't that equate to a stalemate?