Quote from Hochstedter

ok thanks for input. Your idea also refers to an opposite direction. Lets say a lvl 50 player gets unlucky and get a lower level item then 50 ?

Yes, I was thinking that would be sort of funny, and it would prevent the level 50 player from getting only level 50 items to flood the market with.

That said, there should probably be some benefit in this regard for reaching a high level, so one might shift the probabilities so that the chance of getting a level 1 item is smaller than it would be for say a level 10 knight.

Even if there were no directly calculated benefit for a higher level, there are all kinds of missions with focuses on different aspects (advancement versus Thaler versus items). A level 50 player could still shift the odds in favor of higher level items by having the luxury of choosing those missions, while other players still have to worry about advancement.

Right now the tournament has the same problem that the rest of the game has: a few players have secured a nearly insurmountable position. It's always the same handful of players in the final rounds. About the time the rest catch up, I expect a reset

My suggestion: as long as players can use any level of item regardless of the level of their knight, then also let them find any level of item on a mission.

Implementation: add a new mission parameter: % chance for item level.

Currently we have the following mission parameters to evaluate when choosing a mission:

• Thaler, the monetary reward
• Experience, the rate of advancement
• Find Chance, the % chance of finding an item at all
• Item Quality, % which I assume this is the lower bound of a random value between it and 100%
• Mission Success, % chance of getting or being able to possibly get any of the above
• Duration, how long the mission will take

Currently if an item is found, it is automatically the same level as the knight. I propose to change that. I suggest to add:

• Item Level, % which is used to analog to Item Quality but which determines the item level, likely in combination with some modifiers, such as the knight's level.

The benefit of this would be that a player of any level could get super lucky and find a level 50 item. That would reduce, but not eliminate, the advantage of the players who have the free time to send knights on short missions all day long. There wouldn't be a handful of players dominating the selling of high level items, killing the market for lower level items.

There should still be some advantage obtained by more frequent play, and there would be: more missions == more items found, more Thaler earned, and faster advancement with the attendant training improvements.

In addition, the knight's level could improve the chances. Example: an Item Level of 50% could mean a randomly generated item level from 26 to 50. If a level 10 knight were doing the mission, use the level as a modifier, 50% + 10% = effective 60% meaning a randomly generated level from 30 to 50.

That example of how a calculation might be done assumes a linear distribution with a floor underneath it. Alternatively, the Item Level % could be mathematically used in some other way that would make the results more like a Bell curve, with a small chance to find a really low level item, a small chance to find a really high level item, and a large chance to find an item in the middle (i.e. near the knight's level).

I like the idea of lucky finds introducing some wild swings in the early days of the tournaments, which I think should start already the first day. I want to see a bunch of level 1 and level 2 knights beating each other. Give the slower players a chance in the beginning to win a tournament or two before the players with more free time can establish dominance.

I suggest the following as a solution to two problems, namely (1) inflation and (2) the so-called pushing:

When an item is auctioned, the seller receives 90% of the price paid, and 10% goes to the auction house, i.e. disappears from the game.

Thus, when there is a case of pushing, 20% of the too-high purchase price is removed: 10% on the purchase of the high-level item, and another 10% when the seller buys a low-level item from the purchaser to return the Thaler.

After a few rounds of doing that, the big pile of Thaler that was previously just going around in a circle will be significantly reduced.

Quote from getman

Since being part of the alliance is an important part of the game, can we introduce an option in Guard Marketplace to sell items to alliance only? That way a player can decide if he wants to make money, or help out a team mate.

I think as soon as you do that, the marketplace will collapse.

With the Crusades, we already have seen alliance members 'clearing the way' for other members, giving players an advantage in getting the bonuses.

I like having a part of the game that is independent of the alliances. The alliance members can already help each other by buying items from each other.

I thought we weren't doing this anymore?
This is from May 2, about 10am CET.
Level 50 player buying a level 25 item for 400K?
Note: I am benefiting from it greatly too, he's bidding on many of my mid-40's level items as well, for which I'm happy to be getting some Thaler.
This is basically caused by there being nothing else to spend the Thaler on. He got a lot of Thaler from selling level 50 items, and now what to do with them? He's following in the footsteps of other players like mylovelynightingale who have redistributed the wealth.
I don't consider this "pushing" because I don't know who this player is, I'm not in his alliance, it was never discussed or planned, and he's treating all players equitably.
It's just charity to help get more action in the game.
I don't think this is any different than selling hlgh level items in the first place, when listing them for sale at the lowest price. That is giving some random player a much stronger knight at a cheap price, an item much higher level than that low level player could obtain on their own. Is that pushing?

During the tournament, if a player clicks on a knight, either his or from the opponent, a list of 10 knights with their stats is displayed, numbered from 1 to 10 from top to bottom corresponding to their current assignment in the tournament rounds.

When this list is displayed on my laptop, with the browser full screen at normal resolution, I can only see the first 7 knights. I have to zoom out the browser to see the entire list. At which point the text for the stats is so small that I can barely read it, even with reading glasses. If I don't zoom out the browser, the text size is easily readable.

It would be great if the list was shown in a vertically scrollable pane.

What would be even better is if the own knights and opponent knights were BOTH shown at the same time, side by side. It would make it much easier to decide whether to move a different knight into the current round.

trounament reward place #11

Ich hingegen finden nicht fair, dass die Versteigerungen als solche nicht funktionieren. Es sind meistens die Spieler, die in der letzte Sekunde ein Angebot machen, die gewinnen. Das Resultat hat gar nichts damit, wieviel ein Stuck Wert wäre, sondern nur damit, wer Zeit hat, am Computer zu gewisse Zeiten zu hocken.

Ich kann nur vorherige Vorschläge wiederholen:
- Ein neues Angebot sollte das vorherige um ein Mindestprozentzahl erhöhen. Zum beispiel 10%.
- Wenn die 24h Endzeit sich nähert, soll es nach jedem neuen Angebot auf eine Mindestzeit verlängert werden, z.B. einige Minuten wenn nicht gleich eine Stunde.

Nur so haben alle eine faire Chance das Angebot zu erhöhen und wirklich zeigen, wieviel sie bereit zu zahlen sind, und nur so kriegt den Verkäufer den maximalen Wert.

Sonst ist es eher sinnlos überhaupt ein Angebot zu machen, man wartet selbst besser zur letzten Sekunde.

Quote from Chemilla

cheating is security your guards
...
2- I spotted a lot of cheating on the purchase of an item, the most evolving players sell their item at very specific times so that players from their alliance can buy them but its items are very expensive so in return the player who sold an object of nivo 50 buys an object at the moment the player to whom he sold it is at the same prices while this time the object is level 10 so the weak player buys an object of nivo 50 at 0 thaler is the same for players who in Damoria trade resources

cordially

As mylovelynightingale wrote, he has been buying items from any players who bought items from him.

I can attest to this, as I have been one of the beneficiaries. I am not in the same alliance and had no previous contact.

How it started was this: I saved up my Thaler and starting bidding a significant amount to acquire a good item, which I did. Later I was quite surprised to see that I had sold an item for a too-high price, and immediately realized that it was deliberate. Then I noticed that it was not just me, it was happening with other players too.

Now I must go back a step and describe the conditions under which this happened. At the start, many players made the decision to NOT sell any extra items, on the basis that they would be helping their future competitors.

Instead, they either sold everything to the merchant, including very good items that they no longer needed, or else, after the ability to buy storage slots for 1,000 was introduced, they hoarded them.

I, on the other hand, had no inhibition against helping random other players by selling anything I didn't need or had outgrown. I offer them on the market at a minimal price. If no one offered any good items, then the market would be empty.

There is no drain on Thaler at the moment. They only accumulate from missions and change hands, but never leave the game. As the total supply goes up, but the number of good items on the market remains constant, there is inflation.

So contrast the actions of players who are selling good items, even if the prices are going crazy, with the actions of other players who are accumulating L40 to L50 items, but not selling a single one. Which do you prefer?

Another reason for the high prices, apart from the normal inflation, is what I call "stealing". A seller sets an initial price. Most of these are low, the base item price or slightly more. We have fixed 24h auction times, and when the 24h is up, whoever has the highest bid wins.

In a real-world auction, the auction would continue indefinitely until the highest possible price was reached. We all know the guy at the podium with the hammer yelling "Going once.... going twice.... sold!" No one can get the item if anyone else is willing to pay a higher price.

In this game that is not true. Example: there is an item for which I would be willing to pay up to 500K. Currently the highest bid is 200K. I can wait until 23h 59m 59s and bid 200K + 1 and get the item, saving almost 300K over what I would have paid. The seller is deprived of the income that should and would have been received, if it were a "real" auction with no time limit.

So what is happening is that some players who want a really good item don't bid on it, they just wait until the last second and try to slightly outbid the price that sat there for the previous 12 hours.

That makes it impossible for players like me, who would bid based on what the item is worth to me, from ever actually getting it and in the process establishing the real value. My answer to that is to look at what I think the item would be worth, and bid a high price to start with. So no one can get the item cheaply at the last second. They can make a last second bid, but the price will be at least closer to what the item is really worth.

Quote from Juflo

Hahaha, Cheating in a tournament that represents the chivalric honor.

I'm pretty sure we've all seen Game of Thrones

My reasoning is that in games where once a player gets ahead, he/she has an insurmountable advantage and is destined to win, are boring. There needs to be a way for the underdog to come back.

Think how this is done in the game "Risk", or in German, "Risiko". You collect a card on your turn when you win a battle to take over a neighboring territory. You can cash in 3 cards at the start of your turn to get some free army tokens. But the amount you get rises continually. So near the end, a player can cash in 3 cards, get 50 extra armies, and go on a rampage taking over multiple territories, and possibly overcome the leading player. The game become more unstable the longer it goes on.

Once a player has all level 50 knights with the very best level 50 items that it is possible to get, then the players that have a chance to beat them in a tournament are ones with similar knights and items, at which point it is random chance. Since there is a maximum level for knights and items, eventually we will reach the state that all the knights are the same. Until then, whoever spent the most time doing missions will be ahead, but other players will slowly catch up. That means that once the novelty wears off, there isn't even much incentive to bother playing in the tournament until you've got your knights to level 50. It will be boring for the first person or persons who got ahead, and uninteresting for the rest to play knowing they are destined to lose.

Therefore, I suggest a game mechanic which adds the ability for surprise upsets, something which no amount of time investment or money spent can stop. It adds an element of strategy and tactics, because you have a few one-use items, and you have to decide when to commit them to a fight.

Here is a suggestion to add some (more) variability into the outcomes of tournament battles, so that it's not always the same players winning:

Give the knights one more equipment slot, for a consumable.

Players should be able to find and collect consumables on missions, and of course sell them. They should be uncommon.

Possibly you could tie this in with the Mage somehow, as if your Mage created you an alchemical item.

The consumables would have a one-time use.

When you equipped your knight with one, it would not be visible to the opponent, it would be a surprise weapon. If equipped, it would automatically be expended during the fight.

The player would be able to add or remove them from an knight during the time the knights can still be moved, i.e. up to the start of the fight.

The items might be something like a vial of poison, flask of acid, banana peel, etc. Examples:
- The vial of poison would be applied to the weapon and would lower the opponent's health a certain amount every round.
- The flask of acid would be thrown and rust the opponent's armor and/or weapons and reduce the attack or defense (just for the duration of the one fight).
- A banana peel would have a % chance of the enemy stepping on it each round, making the opponent slip and for the next couple of combat rounds after that not be able to do damage and/or have a a reduced defense.
- There could also be a chance that you step on your own banana peel, for extra fun.
- A Holy Hand-grenade might do a significant health damage.
- You could have very rare item that knocks a knight out of any further rounds (limit one against a player for a tournament) and the player would have to play final rounds with the 9 remaining knights.

Thus, a weaker player could still introduce the occasional havoc during the tournament.

Quote from Dschibait

Das Dämonische Pferd fehlt aber noch

Ja, aber ich habe eins ausgesucht mit der Lila Farbe, damit es wenigstens so aussieht

I found a small bug in the tournament.
In the quarterfinal I had 3 knights, call the A, B, C in that order.
For the semifinal I had 3 knights, call them D, E, F, in that order.
I moved A down, down, down, until it went into the semifinal and D went up into the quarterfinal.
So now it was B, C, D in the quarterfinal, and A, E, F in the semifinal.
During the quarterfinal, the order in which my knights fought was D, B, C!

So the bug is that when it swapped A and D between quarterfinal and semifinal, for the purpose of fighting, it had D fight in the position originally held by A, rather than last.

UPDATE:
Although, now that I saw the order in the semifinal, that did the same thing, the knights were arranged A, E, F, but the order in which they fought was F, A, E.

Ich hab mir ein Demon-Knight zusammengestellt, nur aus spass.
Immerhin gewinnt er in der ersten Runde.

Es wäre interessant War Knights, Iron Knights und sogar Black Knights zu haben, wo es irgendeine spezielle Eingenschaft oder Bonus geben würde. Die entsprechende Gegenstände würde auf dem Markt mehr Wert haben.

Quote from mylovelynightingale

Ich habe mir gerade das gestrige verlorene HF gegen Hochstedter (0:3) angeschaut. Dabei fällt einiges auf.

1. Den 1. Kampf gewinnt mein 1. Ritter, dennoch lautet die Wertung 0:3!
2. Danach wird ein Gefecht angezeigt zwischen dem, was von meinem 1. Ritter noch übrig ist, und dem 2. Ritter Hochstedters.
3. Der 2. Ritter Hochstedters schlägt dann noch meinen 2. Ritter.
4. Der nur leicht demolierte 2. Ritter Hochstedters wird anschließend in seinem 3. Gefecht von meinem 3. Ritter geschlagen.
5. Die Reste meines 3. Ritters werden schließlich von Hochstedters 3. Ritter zerlegt.

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Dann sollte das Resultat eher als 3 : 2 angezeigt werden? Anzahl Ritter besiegt?

Once the tournaments get going, the auctions might heat up.

What do you other players think of a currency exchange, where players can bid Thaler to buy Gold or bid Gold to buy Thaler, similar to the raw material exchange?

I'm thinking that Gold gets removed from the game by being spent on various things, like Troop Master, Trade Master, production bonuses, etc. Allowing players to sell their Gold for Thaler would mean that some players wanting more Thaler would have an incentive to buy some Gold, and thus support the game financially.

Meanwhile, active players with more Thaler than they know what to do with would be able to trade them for something more useful to them.

It doesn't solve the Thaler problem though, since as long as the only way to use the Thaler is at auctions of player items, they just get recycled. The supply is going to continue to increase, until the merchant starts selling something to remove them. We would still need some kind of sink for the Thaler, to remove them to counter inflation.

You could have a 50% chance of either.
If you have a good roll, they reveal some additional information.
If they start reveling, instead they get drunk and reveal who sent them, and you the sender loses a couple of units of wood per spy, paying for new barrels of ale.

Ich denke, es geht um eine Überschrift ins Spiel, nicht um ein Kommentar.
Software-Entwickler sind eher froh, wenn jemand hilft, Fehler zu beheben.

Dementsprechend...
"I am sure to sell this!" heisst "Ich werde dieses (Stuck) bestimmt verkaufen!" was eher auf die Meinung über die guten Marktchancen deutet, als auf eine Bestätigung, dass man es wirklich verkaufen möchte.

Es sollte wahrscheinlich sein: "I am sure that I wish to sell this!"

>> if you want to reach anything ... you have to build 100 castles

Funny story:

I started playing on one server not long after Big Point launched the game. At that time, there were no gems, no Deeds of Conquest, no Baldur's Fortresses (golden castles). There existed only regular castles. The resources needed for construction wagons increased exponentially, to the point that they became effectively impossible to pay for, once you had a couple of dozen castles.

Many new players joined for a day or two, created some low point castles, and then lost interest. After a couple of weeks, those tiny castles dotting the map would turn grey, and then a week or two later disappear off the map.

The active players ignored the tiny grey castles, in favor of using construction wagons (choosing their preferred locations) or else conquering larger already built-up castles. Nobody wanted to spend the time to build up some tiny castle, probably created by a novice on a bad square to start with.

But I and one other player looked at the cost of construction wagons and realized that the only way to get a lot of castles was to conquer them, that there would be a lot of competition for the larger castles, and that if you used a construction wagon, you'd have to build them up anyway, with the disadvantage of spending a fortune in resources, better used for troop recruitment.

So the two of us started conquering every small grey castle we could find. It was a race. Building them up was a time-consuming chore. When he had about 150 castles and I had over 100, we had the highest point totals, and other players began to take notice.

So did Big Point. They totally panicked, thinking that we would consume the entire map, all 100 continents, not leaving any squares free for new players to join.

So Big Point initiated a 20 castle per person limit, forcing players to choose which 20 they wanted to keep, and demolished all the rest. That was a lot of work down the toilet. Not all of the 100+ castles I had were built up, but I had way more than 20 good castles, at least 40, probably 60.

In the years after that, they introduced gems, Deeds of Conquest, and the Baldur's Fortresses with the aim to give the players a chance to obtain more than 20 castles again.

The result, as you can see now, is a handful of dominant players with hundreds of Baldur's Fortresses

Even with that, and after combining several servers worth of castles onto one world, the space still didn't run out either.

I only played on one server, so when other players who did play on several servers got to take all their castles from multiple servers onto one world when Bitmeup took over, I had comparatively few castles, only 72. I didn't choose a great location, and I ended up demolishing almost all of those to prevent them from being conquered. I lost a couple of billion troops in the process, and the attackers never ran out of troops. That situation was subsequently rectified, but the damage was done, which is why I'm happy to play now with just 6 10 castles. (I just built 4 more in order to be able to have 10 knights.)

So I was the second person on my original server to have over 100 castles, I don't know about the other servers.

Well, this is embarrassing, I only have 6 castles and therefore only 6 knights

If it were merely the 10 vs. 10 fights I suppose I could just send 6 vs.10 (if the software allowed it) and hope for the best. But obviously that won't work if I must choose in advance 3 separate groups of 3 for the quarterfinal, semifinal and final 3 vs. 3 rounds, assuming a given knight can only be used in one group.

I haven't been using the simulator until now (since I didn't realize there was one), but I found it now and gave it a try, putting my best 3 knights vs. my worst 3 knights. The best knight by himself slaughtered the other 3.

Sigh. I'll have to build 4 more castles and recruit 4 more knights.