Part one: There was a bloodbath right afterwards for miners, though that's not directly related.

Part two: not everyone who can hold a sanctuary can influence. For a while you had more influencers than Celest did.

Part three: as has been said a number of times already, if you don't like it, use the people holding sanctuary. Don't drop monos at them, teleport to them, and hold denizens just like the enemy. Move with crusade when you hunt and kill the people who sanctuary while they try to put it up under your crusade. What's so hard about that? There are other ways to win other than "kill everything." One thing that might make that harder is fewer numbers. Well, just like Celest had to work with it against Magnagora, Glom will have to work with having, yes, weaker strength from fewer numbers for a while.

On sanctuaries and demesnes: Make sanctuary force break a demesne IF it is at the edge and only after, say, 60 seconds of it being held over it. Thus, you can crusade over your demesne edge to protect it by fighting if that's what you want, or cut it near where someone might be trying to (very slowly) chew through it with sanctuary. If you want to really try to hedge on chewing the demesne with sanctuary this way, you'd probably need to use a few people to protect it and hop sanctuaries before the enemy fighters defend, which really pulls your influence or fighter capable people into a demesne war without a direct impact on influencing. So, demense fighting might be more normal, since demesne wars would then reduce your overall fighting or influencing ability, unless the people you had hopping sanctuaries protecting the demesne were quite weak, in which case a lone crusader could take them down anyway.

Everyone who can sanctuary can influence.

2 First of the village influence skills.
3 Campaigning rights in village influencing.

um. Have you tried, without looking like royalty and without skill in influence, to influence anyone with a name?

Even with looking like royalty without skill in influence?

And you realize it's much more effective to use... not just the first skill in influence, right?

1) I don't have skill in influence.

2) I successfully influenced them in Southgard. Ask Shiri, he watched.

*snap*

I forgot, your charisma is good, AND it doesn't matter as much as your speed which is sufficient enough to avoid the denizen's influence attacks if you get to it fast enough, isn't it?

alright, the affable tae'dae stand alone as the least capable. Fine...

perhaps we can fix that too?

I don't have an equilibrium bonus. So most of the time their return attack gets me. It just doesn't do enough to counter either a chanter or sipping bromide (I don't need both, as it doesn't hurt that much for some reason.) My charisma is 13, not that great, just one over the "standard" 12.

Edit: Nor should I need both. A forest commune shouldn't HAVE to rely on a city to chant so they can influence, in general.

right, but it's still possible for a faeling to beat the counter if they do it fast enough (so, that goes for most then). Not a difficult thing to set up, anyway.

as a tae'dae, when I had no influence skills, influencing took so long the best I could do was hold for a diverter before the denizen started getting bored and shooing me away.

I don't need to argue that tae'dae become the kings of influencing, but perhaps it could be made so that standard equilibrium doesn't make it possible to get past the ego counters? Tae'dae would still be poor at it, if, that's what was intended...

also, the "not everyone in a sanctuary can influence" was more of advice than an argument I was trying to make, since not everyone did or will necessarily know how, and some might be very slow (and thusly not difficult to take the denizen from), if you use the sanctuaries yourselves (and eventually get more numbers).

I think the answer is to do the following:

1. Change debating. This has been covered a hundred times. Debating needs to be a viable OFFENSIVE tactic. Right now, the best strategy is to not debate them back and randomly change mindsets. I'm literally surprised we've been complaining about the inanity of this system for so long and seen no (noticable) changes. This makes no sense.

2. Make Sanctuary/Crusade only usable and holdable if you do not have a shattered ego. They are influence skills, you should not be able to use them if you would otherwise be unable to influence. This would stop people from camping a mob with sanctuary who aren't even influencing (but maybe are also protecting a demese) like Nejii last time. (I'm not picking on you, just an example). We can debate him, but so what? Even if we win (see #1 above :S), he can still hold the sanc. What do we do, leave one random person there to analyze the mob? SO that as soon as we're 10 rooms away Nejii could drop the sanc, pwnd the random dude, and put it back up before we can respond?

Lastly, I do not think it is true (and if it is true, I do not think it should be true) that village influencing is meant to be entirely non-violent. It is WAY WAY too important to our cities to make it only viable for the pacifistic section. We've, in fact, seen a number of changes that make it easier to PK in villages, like auto conglut and no avenger protection. In my mind, the arguments that 'village influencing is supposed to be non-violent' are nonsense. There is supposed to be non-violent action, and non-violent ways to do things.

I do not think it is too much to ask that those who are using influence skills like crusade and sanctuary are able to influence (ego>0, do not have shattered ego).

Well... a little more information in that area. Even if I trigger regaining equilibrium to influencing again, a bit over 50% of the time the denizen will still get a counterattack in. So if there's no trigger, that number goes up quite a bit.

And remember, not having influence makes it difficult to divert, so even if they are slow I can't steal it from them

Olan puts my point across much better. And I like his reasoning. Sanc and Crusade are meant to be used in influencing. Therefore it should be just available to those who can influence (ego>0).

And...

Back when I used to have inept influence, and was CR2, I could influence the lesser ones, and some middling ones. I had to admit I was probably at LEAST opulent, maybe royalty but that isn't very hard to achieve. If your influencers are running around half naked... well......................

If your influencers are running around half naked, CLOTHE THEM for the love of decency! I mean, especially in Magnagora. I do NOT want to see half-naked undead tae'dae. I just don't. It's gross. Half-naked merian with angel wings? That's just weird. Honestly. Get some pants, people.

EDIT: This line of discussion lends a whole new meaning to the subject, "Offensive Debating"

About faeling influencing, unless villagers counterattack faster than when you're normal influencing (i.e begging. I havn't influenced for my commune yet but I've done plenty of begging - sidenote, bring those archons back Celest, your current guards aren't friendly enough for this poor faeling): it IS possible to always beat the counterattack, but it won't work with a trigger since there's a slight delay between the command entering and the actual action. If you enter the command JUST before balance, they can't stop you. Also I sware if I mess up and influence before balance they counterattack early.

But yah, it can be done, but it's NOT easy.

As for village influencing, I'm voting for it being heavily pacifist. Pkers can already weaken a village and make it revolt faster by raiding the village when it's already owned. Can't SOMETHING be left where just killing the enemy isn't the final answer? Just make Debate more useful in offense and have Sanc drop if the one holding it is ego dead and there you have multiple ways to steal a villager away: Divert, Debate down the influencer, or debate down the sancer then kill the influencer (if the two aren't the same person).

It would also mean a way to get to demesnes if you can get into the sanc room.

But let's leave the swordplay to the planes, and raiding, and anti-questing, and the other reasons people have for killing each other.

I believe this is because every 'You must recover equilibrium first.' message you get increases the time it takes for equilibrium to return. They don't attack early, you recover slower. It's irritating because I'm in the same boat, where you have to try and enter the command just before you get eq back.

As for sanctuaries going down, I'm still at a loss to see why they interfere with your influencing at all.

If someone's ego dead, they can't influence ANY denizen. You've taken them out, why do they have to die?

If someone is camping at a denizen, send one of your own allies to camp with them. If they move to kill, get your ally to sanctuary in its place.

I haven't seen any good reasons yet at all for sanctuary falling (other than those held at demesne break points, which would be fixed by allowing force-environment to go through).

Because when a crusader is taken out, crusade breaks, sanctuary can be put in its place.

When a sanc'er is "taken out", sanctuary doesn't break, crusade CANNOT be put in its place.

Balance.

If one can be removed, so should the other.

Can you honestly say, with that in mind, that crusade and sanctuary are balanced?

Besides, like Elryn said, if someone's ego is dead, they can't influence ANY denizen, therefore sanctuary, which is meant to be used for protection while influencing, serves a different purpose now. It does not protect while influencing, which I believe was the original intention, because well... he/she can't influence with 0 ego, no? Instead, it is used to stake out mobs and key spots and prevent them from being killed, which, mind you, is as valid a tactic as using sanctuary to farheal your enemies' blindness so dazzle goes through. Before, it was used for demesne people to sit in so they can play with affects without ANYONE able to get to them. It's changed now, but yeah.

You'll still be able protect them, just not the way you are now. Right now, it is impossible to break that protection. It's like indefinite 1p serpent/trueheal that extends to the mobs. When you kill mobs, they come back and you can sanc them. When you sanc mobs, you can't kill them at all. I believe there should be equal opportunity for both.

Influencing, as Olan said, is far too important to cities/communes for it to be heavily pacifist. It is securing a source of power and commodities. If it was meant to be heavily pacifist, there would be no crusade. Just sanc, and... sanc. Either that, or village-wide sanc, which would most probably make most of the combat-oriented people grumble, and I don't mean just Mags.

Also, again like Olan(?) said, there have been changes to influencing that attest to the fact that combat is an equal part of it, like the conglutination and absence of Avenger protection.

Sanctuary was inteded for you to "battle" over influencing without using real attacks that cost you your "life" so pacifists could be involved.

Well, the idea is that a person keeping up Sanc is using their influence to pacify the surroundings, adding a bit of Nexus power for good measure. As such, defeating the sancer should end their pacifying influence. It still keeps most of the focus on non-PK since they would have to be good influencers to get the sanc down. Also I imagine there will be people who will want to use Cruadade to speed up an influence.

Besides, if the enemy is being able to cut down your sancs enough to kill the mob/yourself then they have already proven themselves by winning the pacifist side of the coin and now converting the battle to their side. If it's to the point where the only way to get around their Crusades is by killing them, you've already lost the debate-wars just as well as a bunch of PKists would've lost if the entire area was Sanced.

Again, this requires a better Debate system, perhaps based in part on high influence (while it'll mean that a lowbie with low Influence and combat would be weak in all areas, a person could decide to go pure Influence instead of Combat and be as powerful if worked right). Perhaps even include more methods of fighting. Blah, make the Debate system as complex as the Combat system: instead of dodging a Lunge, healing paralysis and attacking with Hexes, you dodge a lecture, recover from faulty logic, and attack with propoganda.

I know if that were so I'd probably only use my athame for cows (and the occasional Glommy)

unfortunately, like most people here, you really miss one very important point. The most effective influencers in Magnagora == the most effective combatants in Magnagora. This isn't the case elsewhere. So here is what will happen. I state this unequivocally because I've seen what happens if they catch you without sanctuary and I think its not a huge leap.

Daevos + three others enter. You're there, alone, or with a second person. Daevos debates you down to 0. Not difficult to do with the current debating system if you, like me, take part in debating. But since y'all are talking about "fixing" the debating system TOO, you want offensive debating to matter? Well, Daevos gets you to 0. Before he regains equilibrium, his teammates start in on you and kill you. Next sanctuary.

Everyone who is arguing for sanctuary loss at 0 ego are completely missing the point of sanctuary. Its there because people DO NOT WISH TO FIGHT. Let me say that again just in case you're suffering the fnord syndrome and just don't seem to read certain words. PEOPLE WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN INFLUENCING IF THEY WILL DIE. Ok, thats off my chest. With this in mind, how do you propose to "fix" debating and influencing in general?

There exists a perfectly good tactic which, if Mag+Glom employed, you'd have kicked our asses. This tactic is "look at how stretched thin the people holding sanctuaries are". Go and figure out how to win with that. Hint. Fighting isn't how you win.

But if you fix debating, then it's -easy- to take down a sancer if you just have laetitia. (Serenwilde get no such thing, remember, they get cruddy moonlight and Glomdoring gets -nothing.-) And when you do that, you can just crush the sanctuary-er, because it may well be someone completely combat-inept that wanted to get involved. See what I mean?

Welcome to Lusternia, where things are structured ABSOLUTELY SPECIFICALLY so one group CAN NOT EXIST WITHOUT THE OTHERS. Now, this might be really difficult for you to grasp here, but its very important to understand how this keeps the realm from being dominated specifically by one side that can say WE DO NOT NEED ANY HELP.

Get an enchantment to regen charisma. There's a skill low in highmagic to raise charisma by one. Get to city rank 6. Look like royalty, it isn't difficult with a cloak, 5 rings, shoes, pants, shirt. Real easy. See if there's an enchantment to help you with ego regeneration and raising your charisma by one. Use what you have available - skills and people. Thats what they're there for.

The most effective influencers in Magnagora are the most effective combatants because we reward service to the Empire, so they rise in cityrank, making them viable candidates for influencing. Also, they got to where they are precisely because they are willing to jump in to defend or help advance the city, meaning they will most likely be willing to learn to influence and debate.

That is a city system, I don't see what that has to do with it. That is saying sanctuary should be left the way it is because Mag is better.

Morik, Daevos + 3 others enter. Sanc'er calls for backup. 2-3 others with sanc teleport or run in. Daevos debates sanc'er down to 0 and you're off equi and sanc breaks. Sanc'er number two sancs immediately, buying time til good debater, if hasn't arrived already, arrives. Debates Daevos, maybe defeats Daevos, maybe not. Either way, sanc'ers have a significant chance.

Those who want to crusade, obviously DO NOT WISH TO BE PEACEFUL. There are 2 sides to the coin. You argue for the pacifists, but you fail to understand that combat is equally as important.

Also, PEOPLE CANNOT PARTICIPATE IN INFLUENCING IF THEY ARE BURNT OUT.

And, that tactic... Morik... your people are stretched thin, but in sanc they are INVINCIBLE and IMMOVABLE and UNKILLABLE. You give me a viable tactic around invincibility, and I'll consider your argument.