Nexus weakenings were great IMHO as a conflict outlet. I know others thought they were an amazing conflict mechanic too. They didn't cause endless grief, they lasted a set amount of time and when they were done everyone went home and that was that. Removing them, again IMO, was a step in the wrong direction for Lusternia.

It was 1) Not used, or 2) Used to the fullest extent possible.

Nothing in between, really.

Long time of no real nexus conflicts, then HG/XI started. Serenwilde and Glomdoring grouped up and tore down every single one of Celest's constructs in a single weakening.

Next weakening, we had bought all the stuff to do the same to Magnagora, were boarding ships, and... new announcement, Nexus conflicts are disabled. Stand down everyone. The timing was amusing, at least, but that's pretty much the player-side of what went on there. They are supposedly trying to decide how to rework it, as a later project once other projects are finished.

Yes, nexus weakenings are on our long list of projects we'd like to get to. Along with the Family and Great Houses system, among other things.

What's the hold up then? Gosh!

"The problem with letting off on villages is that we HAVE been getting them. It's nice to win at something now and again."

That's true. But the reason it's true is the pressure for social respect. "Winning" makes us look good to others, even if it makes us suffer like hell. It's sad that winning the respect of others is more important than enjoying our own day-to-day life. I think that's what drives a lot of people to stubbornly fight to the bitter end (even though there is no end, doing it that way, unless a game mechanic or admin-created event changes it). We don't want to go down in the history scrolls as the "loser," even if the loss is just a temporary part of a strategy. Yesterday a friend of mine was telling me about this book he was reading, telling the history of a war between Celest and Serenwilde long before I joined Lusternia. Long before lots of us joined. It is one of the only accounts available, and it was written by someone very anti-Seren so it's got a lot of spin. Hearing that made me think, "This must be what people are trying to avoid happening again: the history books making us look bad for 'losing'." It's understandable, but personally I'd rather lose in books but not in reality, than the other way around, because losing in reality makes this game hellish, and like Sylphas said, games are meant to be fun. Aubrey's got plenty of obligations, and that's fine, but we need to be able to enjoy things at least some of the time... I'd probably never say this in-game because I'm tired of the idiotic Seren-drama that flares up whenever a conversation is attempted, but I'd rather pursue peace with Glomdoring. They can gloat in history books but the game SUCKS without it and won't change anytime soon, so... But that's just my opinion and God knows it's a minority one.

Broken ranged hailstorm for the win.

Limited duration for conquest (along with buffed up gains) with no avenger sounds like a fine change. Though I am wary about guards, enemy territory, and what or may not happen to transverse.

Or you can just really nerf Conquest down in gains like some of you gods have discussed and really just change transverse, thereby making conquest just another underused facet of Lusternia, like miniatures, because we'll just change to religious if that happens.

Either or, really!

And I really doubt SW will surrender even if we did a little sorry dance right in front of them, there's just too much pride at stake and as people have said, there are big repercussions for the people who do it.

Hey, Eventru; how would raising the points gained from killing something make us raid more?

You'd think that once we got the values up, we'd actually not have reason to raid anymore. Whereas now, when we're not seeing much movement at all, we need to keep hammering those villagers with your so-called iron fist until we do get some movement.

Lower point value == more raiding, it seems to me, because more raids are needed to get to the same place.

I disbelieve that if Glomdoring (or any organization) got to being liked - or even maxed out positive feelings - they would stop, because there's a passive decay (as they hold opposing villages). I would actually consider myself distinctly naive if I believed that. Certainly, if people feel what they are doing is more effective, they will do more of it, not less.

When there are so few ladies (or none at all) in Ethereal Serenwilde, does Glomdoring stop raiding Aspects and for trees, serens standing there, etc?

If you make things more efficient, people do more of it. When the tractor was invented, did farmers just use it to do as much work as they did when all they had was a horse driven plow? HELL NO. They did MORE work.

There really shouldn't be avenger in prime org territories. They have guards avaiable for summon, still has the enemy territory penalty. On top of this permanent distortion totems, statues. Not only all this, but all defenders would conglut in their home territory.

As a defender, the most annoying thing is that you cannot stop the people from getting away if they want to. The goal of most defenders minus weird Xenthos, is to kill the raiders or at least some of them before them running (which would be considered driving them off). Without Avenger, raiders would be encouraged to stand and fight and give defenders this chance. Obviously, this could cause defenders to die, but NONE of them would pray and guards could be called if things got too rough. They don't have that Off prime and some of them still end up praying.

I think we would, actually. The raids are a chore, one where we risk dying in prime enemy territory where we can't defend ourselves. We're not over here reveling in village-raiding delight or anything. I'd say the issue is more that it's not really fair for conquest to gain so much without exerting the effort that other government types have to.

You're missing the huge difference here; it is called "Avenger."

When you raid a Prime Village, the only thing you can do is attack villagers. You can't attack defenders or the Avenger tsks at you.

In Etherwilde, however, there is no Avenger... so going there is generally going for the Serens themselves.

Before Conquest went back in, how many village raids were there? None, really. There's no point to them, no gain, except for village feelings. And the passive decay should be counteracted with relatively few raids if the points were notched up, so it still wouldn't take anywhere near as much as now where you have to raid even more just to counteract that passive decay, much less to get the village feelings up past that.

It's not really possible to do "more work" when there are a limited number of village mobs, by the way. With tractors, you can make more ground plantable and thus produce a much larger harvest.

There were village raids before Conquest, but they were just out of boredom or to distract or annoy. Granted, the raids were far fewer, but individually just as annoying.

It is possible to do more than you're doing now, unless you're killing all the villagers all the time.

I suppose we could kill them slightly more often, but making them worth more doesn't lessen the risk of 2,000,000 essence for getting caught; we usually raid them as a group, though now that the guards are gone that's not the same any more (as Serenwilders stated above); with guards gone solo folk can go in and harvest them.

I don't see us raiding a lot more often than we do now even if points are increased. What I do see happening is once we get to a level of feelings we're happy with, we stop having the need to bother as much as we do now and just poke at it now and then for decaying feelings. Whereas now it's just basically a constant assault on villages (leading to the above complaints).

Let's say right now, Xenthos, that it takes the sacrifice of 20 village denizens to your dark spirits to max village feelings. Suppose that this is one respawn worth of denizens. I assume, you come into a village, and BAM! They're all up against the wall.

Now let's pretend each village denizen has doubled feeling gain. Now, all of a sudden, you only need 10(!) village denizens to max village feelings. Would Glomdoring now walk into a village, whack 10 villagers, and then pack up their bags and leave?

Serenwilde does not believe so.

Ladies and Aspects are things that happen almost entirely out of sheer boredom. Village raids are something that generally comes out of a desire to help the commune, and at least in the current implementation, will cease once the goal is reached because they are frigging tedious on the attacking side.

Now, maybe raiding would continue past full feelings if raiders were permitted to kill defenders without risk of Avenger. In fact, I could pretty much guarantee that with villages completely free of Avenger, we would have our entire attack squad camped out in Delport until someone got around to guardspamming us to death. But since the current gameplan is the boring hit, run, and come back at the next respawn, it would only be some truly dedicated griefers who'd try and keep village feelings topped off.

That's another issue... some of the villages are just too hard to defend, relatively speaking. I'd rather set myself on fire than try and defend Delport, for example, because the place has more holes in it than a colander. Might be good to try and equalize the number of entrances and exits from a village at some point.

Given that the reason for us attacking these villagers (and plowing through the guards to do it) is for village feelings; yes.

What else can you do in villages? Again, Avenger.

Actually they are more likely to kill the 10 and leave because they can do that faster and get out than kill 20 and give time for people to show up and possibly kill them.

Also with increased gains you don't have to do it anywhere near as often. You kill 10 and max out, then wait a while before needing to do so again. As it is right now, they have to constantly raid to get points and to stay maxed from the drain. So yes, raids would decline, other than from those few who raid just to raid and in that case it doesn't matter if there is a conquest system or not because they never change.