Reinforcing inactives (spiking)

I do agree that it is slightly weaker on speed since there is more troops involved even in mass plundering.

However since crop production is higher you can increase the reinforcement amount to about 3-4x more units than above and you get about the same results.

OFC the losses would be shared across a lot of players so you would not loose everything, but the losses would be sufficiently big that there would be no economic gain from doing it.

I doubt the trades would be favourable for the attacker.

First of all farms are generally very small pop, this means on average they will recieve quite a decent morale bonus up to 50% (at about 8 times more pop on attacker).

Second even though we wont have a lot of wall for most of the attacks the defending force will have a clear troop superiority which will result in really really favourable trades for the defenders since there is no hero or no weapon involved.

This is a pretty realistic scenario of how most of the defences would look like

http://prntscr.com/epyz4i

And as you can see the losses of the attacker is more than twice of the defender. And phalanx+druid composition is pretty close to a balanced deff force so it works just as well against clubs

Quote from Ammanurt

It shouldn't be the case that you have an easy, almost indefinite source of free income while never interacting with active players.

That's the enemy bad for not attacking other people, not raiders problem.

Quote from Diogle

Yeah, it's right, that the effort put into a high quality farm list is kinda high and really time consuming, but it's no fun whatsoever.

That's not up to you to decide or judge it. People have fun maybe doing the maths to see how to improve farming discovery, how to maximise farming, etc.. You may not find it fun, others do maybe.

I agree with what Gaius said. I just find sad to see people spiking instead of fighting. Usually people who are scared to fight do it or they do it as pity revenge because they were attacked or because they think they can't beat the enemy.
You talk about fun, I don't see how spiking is funnier than raiding. It might be fun for the guy who does it, it's not fun for everyone else, while raiding is fun for the one raiding (train more troops, build more villages, etc..) and has no impact on how fun is the game for everyone else. If they are envious of other people raids, they can do it aswell, nothing limits/stops anyone from doing so. Or better you can attack them! Fake them, limit resource income, cata down the farm if you want, you will lose resources aswell by doing so but it's still better than spiking.
The game has to offer a lot more than spiking, doing it is just sad and lame for everyone.

How do you mean? It's the raiders who who are doing the raiding/who could instead be trying to attack other players. It's not the inactive person's (the 'enemy's') fault?

Leave spiking be. Just don't have the inactives pull all of their troops out of oases once they turn gray like they are doing now. At the moment the system spikes automatically more than any player does. That for sure is super annoying and totally unnecessary.

Quote from Ammanurt

How do you mean? It's the raiders who who are doing the raiding/who could instead be trying to attack other players. It's not the inactive person's (the 'enemy's') fault?

They could both farm, or one attacking the other will make him attack him aswell if he attacks well enough no? I mean, raiding is a mean to attack, and attack is a mean to attack, spiking is a mean to nothing, it just frustrates everyone, and you can't counter attack in anyway except spiking aswell. Less raiding, less troops, less possibilities to attack (less frequently), less fun.

Quote from Gaius

Think about it like this:
I could destroy all the hard work of all the plunderers on the server just by spending a few hours of work per week spiking, for however long i want.

This is a baseless assertion. And even if you could find evidence for its truth, then why on earth wouldn't everyone be employing this tactic as a way to whittle down the enemy's hammers? The truth is, that spiking is a minor annoyance and that to use spiking to cause significant damage would require more effort than most people are willing to put into it.

People who are trying to farm up big end game hammers are trying to farm inactives because it is a low-risk activity. Almost a no-risk activity. The rewards are small, and so for it to be really rewarding, you need to be able to do micro-farming with really small troop numbers. Lots of grunt work, but low risk of losing the hammer. 2 or three troops at each inactive is ideal.

When your enemy is using his hammer for farming and otherwise not bringing the troops out to play, there is nothing that you, as a defender, can do about it unless you can get sneaky and discover which villages the enemy is farming, and then spike those farms. I've never seen this done as a team, but it could conceivably be used as a team tactic for evening up the odds with the enemy or gaining an advantage somehow. The problem with this as a team tactic is that there is a high risk of friendly fire if the communication is not great within the team. Theoretically possible, but not worth the trouble. There are just better ways to use your heroes and troops.

As far as problems go, spiking of inactives is a really, really minor thing. Leave it be and focus on bigger problems.

I don't personally see a big issue with spiking as it's still PvP action and this game could always use some more of those. I do like Ammanurts ideas as well but for all I care the system is mostly fine as it is. Even if Spiking is annoying to you to the other guy it's a viable way to cull some of the enemies troops and creates an opportunity for the small guy to fight against the bigger player as well. The horror scenarios some posters are painting here seem to be bit far fetched as well. Sure you theoretically could do it but like some people have mentioned the burned of troop losses is spread around the server while the burden of defensive losses goes solely to the spiker. He even has a good chance of hurting his own teams troops in the process as well. Even if one would start this kind of large scale organized spiking the farming meta would just shift to larger attacking forces to counter the spikes. Spiking to me is pretty standard acceptable risk included in the farming and even when your troops do get sniped occasionally the action itself is very much profitable.

If spiking was truly annoying or made farming stop being profitable the farmer can always just choose not to farm but I'm pretty sure all of us still do it so clearly it isn't as big of a problem as some might claim.

I would like to see what Jallu suggested to be made true though as it's more of a Player vs Nobody annoyance than anything else. With this the "winner" is an inactive player so it's obviously a net loss of enjoyment.

Quote from paulc_COM

2 or three troops at each inactive is ideal.

Yeah ideal if you are playing the first three weeks of the server

Quote from Curtain

The horror scenarios some posters are painting here seem to be bit far fetched as well. Sure you theoretically could do it but like some people have mentioned the burned of troop losses is spread around the server while the burden of defensive losses goes solely to the spiker.

As Gaius mentioned, with morale bonus, we would bring down the whole servers troop in one night, and no we wouldn't have any friendly fire We will never do it because there is absolutely no fun on doing that. It's just really broken that it can happen and that people have to fear to raid because of it.

Quote from Curtain

If spiking was truly annoying or made farming stop being profitable the farmer can always just choose not to farm but I'm pretty sure all of us still do it so clearly it isn't as big of a problem as some might claim.

So you are limited after a while? Governor don't get to have the same mean as dukes and kings because we cut the only income that they can have a bit safely? I mean it's the single most annoying thing there is on travian and it's completely pointless.
I've lost 20k troops in the past weeks from spiking only, just like most top raiders. I understand why it doesn't look like a big deal for people not raiding like the top10, but it is a problem.

Also the fix is pretty easy, just like you can't reinforce natar villages, we shouldn't be able to reinforce grey villages. You guys talk about low risk activity, doesn't require skill, etc.. 1. It's not true and 2. some people don't have time to scout and attack right away active people every other day of the week.
Also before judging badly, I have never seen any kingdom be as active as ours off wise in any server. Farming is just a mean to be more active, it's up for the raiders to decide what to do afterwards.

Quote from Mayo_COM

I've lost 20k troops in the past weeks from spiking only, just like most top raiders. I understand why it doesn't look like a big deal for people not raiding like the top10, but it is a problem.

I completely understand where you are coming from but you have failed to convince me of why this isn't actually acceptable gameplay.
Granted I'm not a top raider myself but like I said if the troop loss wasn't worth the resources then one could simply do some less risky farming. For me farming is essentially always positive income and I would bet it is for you too even if you have lost 20k troops doing it. I'm sure you have taken spiking losses into account and decided farming is still worth for you, on the other side of the coin who ever is spiking you has decided that that's what they want to use their troops for to chip your army down a bit. As far as i see both parties are doing something that benefits them and see as worthwhile action.

I don't want to get pulled into into any arguments just sharing my thoughts on the subject. I still feel that if someone bothers to snipe then that's their thing, it's still PvP fighting even if it's bit less "honorable" than attacking someones village directly. The most annoying thing is when inactive accounts recall their oasis troops instead of leaving them where they stand and I think everyone can agree on that one.

Spiking is really broken tactic. Spiker has too much advantages against raiders. If dev dont want remove reinforcement to other inactives should at least discourage/balance spiking.
There are many and many things they can do.

The first one that i thought was to introduce an item thet gives 100%-200%-xxx% bonus to attack strenght when you attack inactive villages with less tot units, like 500 for example. (It would help to clear inactives too in early games.)
I dont know if is simple to introduce, but could balance a little this rat tactics, and gives to raider a chance to avoid many losses when he has many attacks that will crash due spikers. I suggest Attila's horn for this item XD
Maybe devs do something if they'll earn some more golds from auctions...

Second one is to remove morale bonus for inactive villages, but it will not be so effective.

BTW something has to be done to balance this broken system.

Mayo, 0omph
Who defend spiking dont know what true Fun is in travian. Dont expect they understand.

Quote from 0omph_RU

One more time...plundering is the the way to build and feed hammer to fight your enemies to have fun, no plundering = no war = no fun

Curtain has spoken well. Spiking farms is simply one tactic among many when it comes to competition between players in Travian. When you're trying to farm, it's annoying. But if one player could figure out how to take a nice dent out of his enemy's hammer by spiking a few farms, and had some decent assurance that he wouldn't be killing his own team-mates offence troops, I think that would be acceptable gameplay.

In the end though, I don't spike farms because the benefit I perceive (killing enemy troops) isn't worth the cost (hassle factor and risk of accidentally killing friendly troops).

For this reason I stand by my statement that the claim that "one could do massive damage to all the offensive troops on the server by spiking a few farms" is baseless. Evidence to support this assertion has yet to be provided.

Friendly-fire and immature farm spiking happens too, and I think the appropriate response to that is to figure out who is doing it and kick them out of the alliance and farm them so they have something worthwhile to defend. Maybe cat their villages for good measure.

Personally I think that inactive accounts should be removed far sooner after going inactive. I would love to see less interaction with the computer (inactives, adventures, and robbers) driving more interaction between players.

@Curtain: It's not whether I can afford the losses or not.
Example:
I have 50k negative, I raid 80k resources/hour, I'm left with 30k resources to queue troops. Little by little and pretty fast either I increase the raiding/hour or I will stall.
Now, if I lose the equivalent of what I raid farming becomes a way for feeding the troops and that's it, if I stopped farming I don't have tributes or crop coming from treasuries like dukes or king and robbers hideout aren't a solution to feed hammer. Wasting troops on robbers is stupid, a lot better to use them on enemy.
Now you could argue that we should use them against real people if I can't feed them. I do, I still have the problem and having the army stalling or starving because someone spikes and not having the same advantages dukes and king have seems a bit unfair.

Quote from paulc_COM

For this reason I stand by my statement that the claim that "one could do massive damage to all the offensive troops on the server by spiking a few farms" is baseless. Evidence to support this assertion has yet to be provided.

Maybe you never played with a team that could do it? It's even quite easy to do

Quote from paulc_COM

Curtain has spoken well. Spiking farms is simply one tactic among many when it comes to competition between players in Travian. When you're trying to farm, it's annoying. But if one player could figure out how to take a nice dent out of his enemy's hammer by spiking a few farms, and had some decent assurance that he wouldn't be killing his own team-mates offence troops, I think that would be acceptable gameplay.

Yeah but here is the thing im trying to explan, this tactic is not balanced. What im saying is that this tactic is OVERPOWERED for the following reasons

For spiker:
Very easy to do
takes very little time
very efficient trades
Friendly fire can be avoided by targeting specific areas with spiking and by warning alliance members of when spiking happens (or just ignore, the enemy vastly outnumber friendlies after all)
Does not require significant amount of troops to do a lot of damage (heck if you spike 10-20 villages per day that requires very little troops but will case significant damage to plunderers)

For plunderers:

Is extremly time consuming due to:
farm scouting (to find farms that does not give losses)
Farm tuning (to optimize the amount of troops to send on each farm)
required to send regularly throughout the day

Also doing this in an efficient manner while keeping losses as small as possible requires a lot of knowledge and commitment. If you think that all you need is a lot of time to reach top 5 plunderer on a server you are very very wrong. It requires significant skill.

And how are the results?
Basically the spiker will do huge damage to the enemies economy with no risk of counter.

How can you call a tactic balanced when it does huge damage to your enemy with great trades that also does not have a counter tactic? Thats like text book definition of something that is overpowered

This is the reason why plunderers are so frustrated about this

It fucks all our hard work COMPLETLY for almost no effort while there is no possible counterplay. The only thing we can do is stop plundering to avoid the damage. But that isnt an option for people who dont have huge tributes since plunderers are typically dependent on this income and stopping plundering will cause our que to dissapear and our troops to starve.

There is basically no way to win for us and you are saying thats fine? Either the difficulty of spiking needs to increase significantly or there must be some kind of counterplay plunderers can do to avoid spiking. Currently we have nothing

Quote from 0omph_RU

Spiking = less troops = less attacks = less interaction between players. You contradict yourself.

Spiking doesn't equal to less attacks. If i'm building a primary hammer it'll be used 1-3 times the whole server no matter does it get spiked or not. Secondaries i don't give a shit about losing and spiking doesn't make me use it any less.

Quote from Gaius

Dont you realise this is the reason why us plunderers are so increadibly frustrated about this?

it fucks all our hard work COMPLETLY for almost no effort while there is no possible counterplay. The only thing we can do is stop plundering to avoid the damage. But that isnt an option for people who dont have huge tributes since plunderers are typically dependent on this income and stopping plundering will cause our que to dissapear and our troops to starve.

There is basically no way to win for us and you are saying thats fine? Either the difficulty of spiking needs to increase significantly or there must be some kind of counterplay plunderers can do to avoid spiking. Currently we have nothing

I have been top-3 robber multiple times and i'm seeing spiking as a viable strategy. I don't spike myself, but i see why some people do it. That way you see who is raiding it and maybe bully your enemies a bit. It has been even used to catch botters/autoclickers (It's a bit suspicious if top robber attacks only after x time, and doesn't vary at all).

If someone spikes something, i clear it. If one can get to the other side of the map in 2 hours there's a good chance the spiker will lose more than the raider. What i find so much more annoying is that people defend straight after chiefing and doesn't message you to stop raiding. (and the inactive oasis thing i mentioned earlier)

People want to remove gold, spiking, vp, wws, dualing etc etc, i would much rather keep the game as is, except fix the broken VP-system of course. There has been even talks about a server with attacking disabled at night, i have no idea what this game is turning to This used to be a game that required time and skill, not a farmsimulator. Spam some random button every 30 minutes and have no worries in the world.

tl;dr don't raid if you can't deal with the losses.

Quote from Gaius

For plunderers:

Is extremly time consuming due to:
farm scouting (to find farms that does not give losses)
Farm tuning (to optimize the amount of troops to send on each farm)
required to send regularly throughout the day

I don't scout, i just open some inactive finder and list them all, and send 2 horses to each. Remove red reports and proceed with the farming. It's really easy, and sending raids every x minutes doesn't really take much effort at all, especially with duals. Tuning doesn't take almost any time at all either.

I do that sometimes as well when im lazy, its less costly to scout but a lot less time consuming. It's a bit to expensive for my taste most of the time