I really only have issues with the first and second changes.

"-You cannot use special city/commune influence skills if you are an enemy of that village. Also, you will be enemied to both city/commune and village if you kill a villager. You will now be able to parley for removal of village enemy status at any time (regardless of whether that village is controlled or not)."

For one, this is a drastic change that will have a very dramatic effect on influencing, but at the same time, it punishes players for their past playing styles. Add to that fact the difficulty of being unenemied from villages, and the doubt that reprieves will be enough. Overall though, while the change is good for realism, all villages should really clear their enemy lists, because of the vast change that has been enacted. If thats not possible the village leaders should atleast tell you exactly how much you must pay to be unenemied completely, and it should be a reasonable fine. Maybe make its a progressive fine, that starts off really low, but each time you are unenemied it increases significantly

-Villages will resist influencing if the city/commune controls their natural enemies or competitors. This means that a village could be (relatively) quickly controlled if a city/commune has no control over their competitors or enemies. However, the difficulty will dramatically increase if the city/commune controls one or more competitor or enemy village.

This is another understandable change as far as realism goes, but it seems to be just a method to balance the scales against Magnagora. And punish us for our incredible efforts in the last season of influencing. We worked damn hard for all those villages, dedicating hour after hour to some of the most tedious work, in the game. We suffered through even when we were losing hope, never faltering in our service to our city, hell we almost killed ourselves. And we were drained for days afterward.

Also I want to know how dramatically the difficulty will increase if your city has a opposing village in its service already. Are we looking at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or more hours influencing?

Also I think this change will hamper competition severely in the game for villages. Think of it like this, with Angkrag opposing Rockholm and Southgard, Southgard and Rockholm opposing each other, Stewartsville and Delport opposing each other, Dairuchi opposing something or nothing, and Acknor and Estelbar opposing each other. It will basically turn into a situation where Celest always has Delport, maybe Dairuchi, and either Rockholm or Southgard. Magnagora always having Acknor, Angkrag, and maybe Stewartsville/Dairuchi. Serenwilde fighting Magnagora for Stewartsville, fighting Celest for Rockholm or Southgard, fighting everyone for Dairuchi and Estelbar. It will basically turn into a far more limited competition, and the only organization that will have to fight for every village will be Serenwilde.

I agree with your assessment, actually, but to a certain extent I'd call this a good thing. It didn't really make sense to have Rockholm, Southgard AND Angkrag working for people, after all. I think perhaps this needs a little tweaking though, because as you say, it's going to mean very little option for people, especially given how Magnagora's nigh-guaranteed Angkrag due to Necromancy.

While it will be hard to influence them, It says it is still -possible-, so if you work real hard you can have both Estelbar and Acknor, for example.
It may turn out differntly than you say. Need to wait for a round or two of influencing to happen.

If you have a village, the difficulty of influencing the opposing village will be less than the difficulty it took during the last village influence trial (though granted there were many complaints over the difficulty that time). If you have two opposing villages (only possible with the mining villages), then the difficulty will be about equal or a little more difficult than the last time (so yes that will indeed be a challenge). It's not so difficult that it would hamper competition. Certainly it will be a challenge (but well within the realm of possibility) for Magnagora to maintain its current political status.

We have no plans of removing everyone's village status. There is certainly enough time to parley before the next influence trial. Also, sorry, but the denizens won't tell you how much it will cost to completely be removed from enemy status (there is a random factor involved). I will note that the higher level the village leader, the more costly it will be. Certainly, I suspect that that the more ambitious of you will be able to determine approximately how much parleys cost with a little (albeit expensive) experience and experimentation.

I agree with Daveos, especially that:
-It will decrease competition in the long run as stagnation over which villages people control sets in and it becomes infeasible or impossible to get a village away from someone if you own an opposing village. Add to that Magnagora, if they have 'permanent' control of Angkrag, will have to face constant raids from people who don't care if they are enemied to Angkrag, and in response we raid Southgard or Rockholm and then get enemied so we will have 'more difficulty' getting them in the future...owning a competing village AND having everyone enemied.

I should add one other thing, it doesn't seem these rules fit totally with how the influence abilities are set up. For example, wouldn't you think it more effective if I shock someone into submission with tales of what we do to those who don't cooperate if, in the past, they have experienced said tales firsthand? Now suddenly the only people who will listen to our threats are those we haven't actually slapped around before? Huh?

/edit, erased things Estarra responded to while I was writing.

There's nothing wrong with having a contingent of stormtrooper citizens who do nothing but bash the brains out of villagers controlled by competing cities or communes. Indeed, this will help speed-up the time for that village to reject their city or commune. The question is why would villagers want to speak with the actual stormtroopers who stomped on them? Isn't it better RP that after a city sends in their shock troops to slap the villagers around a bit to then send in their 'diplomats' to influence them with tales of shock and awe? Well, it does to me!

Well, its kind of hard to do that if alot of us are enemied because of the prior tactics. We used what worked, and now we are being punished for it. And not knowing how much gold I will have to pay to be unenemied, is quite annoying.

Anyway I just think this change is far too drastic for there not to be a general amnesty for everyone. This is similar to changing all the races, without letting people reincarnate. Especially when you consider that I heard that Visaeris had to spend 175k to be unenemied from Celestia, and I doubt the villages will be that much cheaper than that, since he is trans, and 10k only got me a two month reprieve in Stewartsville, when I had another trans influence do diplomacy for me.

So.. What are you playing this game for, Daevos? Are you just hoping to be the first to level 100? Because from when I'm hearing, you're clearly not looking for RP.
You killed their people, you can't expect anything short of a memory wipe of all those in the villages to remove enemy status, and if you did that, then everyone with an honours line for quests would loose those. It just doesn't make sense for everyone or anyone to be unenemied just because the way the game works changed.

Getting unenemied to Celestia is considerably more expensive than the villages. Anyway, the logic of your argument breaks down (in my opinion) by the fact that there are ways to get amnesty WITHOUT spending any gold, and for those without that particular influence skill, there are ways to have others who do have a high influence skill to give get amnesty on your behalf WITHOUT spending gold.

I don't see any problems with the new changes..

I play the game to have fun, and this change drastically changes the dynamics of the game. In a way, that seems to be specifically made to punish Magnagora for its tactics in the past. And using the RP argument is poor, because how do you explain the villages' sudden change in who they will be willing to talk to for a alliance, as well as the fact that they were 100% unified in that decision.

But on the matter of amnesty, that has totally different problem. For one, there is I think only a small chance that you will be unenemied from a village, it is much more likely that you will be given reprieve. And since I'm not sure if having reprieve will be enough to be able to influence, and doubt it because of the wording on the announce, I cant depend on that. But lets say for argument sake, that reprieve will not be enough, that then means that you cant argue your case again during the time of your reprieve, meaning you will be stuck as a enemy.

Also there may be a bug with diplomacy, I had someone use it for me twice, gaining reprieves both times, that didnt register in my status.

I tried getting someone to seek unenemying on my behalf and it didn't work. Has this been fixed?

Simple enough. A God, or one a representative of a god spoke to them as a go between, and between all the villages, they came up with and agreed upon these changes.
There are Guild Envoys who talk to the Gods about the state of things. Why shouldn't NPCs ICly be able to do the same thing?

One difficulty:

Summoning all your powers of negotiation, you entreat Yojimbo Buntz, the
alchemist to forgive Arilyon's trespasses and grant amnesty in the Village of
Estelbar.

Yojimbo Buntz, the alchemist spits in his palm and slaps his hand into yours, sealing the pact.
"Arilyon may peacefully conduct business with the Village of Estelbar for 6
months," Yojimbo Buntz, the alchemist says to you.


(The Iron Council): You say, "Arilyon."
(The Iron Council): Arilyon says, "Hm?"
(The Iron Council): You say, "Did you get 6 months amnesty?"
(The Iron Council): Arilyon says, "Nay."

You only think that because Magnagora was the only city good enough to influence multiple villages. We'd still have changed things if there'd been an equal balance between cities.

Here are the reasons for the change. The hampering of enemies was done for realism. Using the real world, suppose that US troops end up withdrawing from Iraq because of Syrrian terrorists blowing up so many soldiers, and Iraq rejects the US as an ally because it failed to stop the terrorists from blowing up tens of thousands of citizens. Why would Iraqis then want to swear loyalty to those Syrian terrorists that had just genocided their people? That's absurd there and just as it is absurd here. So it's just realism.

For the change related to competing villages... Excepting the opening chaos when they were all initialized as free, normally a village goes into play by itself. Thus if a city is only slightly better than its competitors at gaining a village, it will win that village. Repeat for every village, a city can only be mildly superior to win a monopoly. This change creates a more graduated scale. An above average city should be able to get most of the villages, but your city now needs to be much better to gain all of the villages. Thus this system should be a better reflection of a city's influencing skill. If every village went into play at the same time and you had to fight for all of them at once (like in opening day) then this would not be needed to measure a city's skill; obviously winning all the villages in that scenario would take greater skill than winning half of them. This change should bring us closer to that sort of skill measurement.

Those are good changes but i wouldn't mind more rewards, something fun and spicy that would be a great encitive for aiming global domination, at an individual level and at a social one.

Tons of commodities, power, gold and quests becoming available isn't enough?

On an OOC level, I completely 100% understand and like the changes.

I just wish the high level Influence skill were fixed .

I believe they were fixed a few weeks ago...