Revised for readability:

Firstly I suggest that troop production be landed. I.E. gem ponds equal more troops, castles give more troops. barracks become just a door for your troops to pour out of. the distance formula would work without this, but only on gold and tribute, which wouldn't be as fair.

Now, the brunt of the suggestion:

Distance based upkeep. a way to make everything farther from you decrease in value to you, and so rein in the overwhelming power of the big guys. Simply speaking, this table shows about how much power you'll have based on how many kingdoms you've conquered.
(power = production of: troops + gold + tribute)

# kingdoms / Linear growth / Exponentially decreasing growth
1 kingdoms /1 power/ 1 power
2 kingdoms /2 power/ ~1.4 power
4 kingdoms /4 power/ ~2 power
8 kingdoms /8 power/ ~3 power
16 kingdoms /16 power/ ~4 power

I believe this is more fair than current, as somebody with 4 kingdoms is likely to have about 2 power worth of opponents, not 4. A person with 16 kingdoms currently would be unstoppable. with distance upkeep, it would seem unlikely for anybody to ever achieve that large an empire.


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The specifics of the suggestion:

Each goldmine, castle, gempond and tribute building will have a distance from your castle. Each of these buildings gives you a number, I.E. 500 gold. 50 tribute. 50 troop points.


I suggest putting a multiplier on each building to reduce its value, reducing it more for the farther away it is. Everything you start out with should be full value, say within 15 hexes. but after that, should depreciate, based on distance away. specifically, I think a halving of value for each kingdom away from your own the building is would be best.

Now, I don't know if this is true for all maps, but for the camp I just started, The ten kings - castles seem to be approximately 40 hexes apart. Lets use that as the basic distance between castles.

So, to make that multiplier based on distance, with a half-life for each kingdom away from your own, the formula would look something like this:

y = output multiplier, x = hexes away from home castle.
for x < 15, y=1
for x > 15, y = 1/(2^(x/40))

of course, the formula could be adjusted, but this does two very important things for the game:

1. it depreciates the value of each new conquest for a big guy exponentially, so the little guy will have more of a chance, heck, a real chance I think. (can I get some NEB approval here? )

2.[VERY IMPORTANT]
It causes people to want to fight there neighbors, since neighboring lands will be more valuable to you. this will cause weaker alliances, no more "I've got your back for the whole game, buddy" alliances when that guy is your closest neighbor. sooner or later, you'll realize that the best chance you have for gaining more strength is to fight him, the next guy over wouldn't maybe give you half as much extra strength.

Last Edited : Thursday, 16 October 2008 - 01:53