Kingdom member limitation

Deacon Believe it or not I was actually starting a thread about it right now after I posted the another thread for teams starting in new year.

I completely agree, something needs to be done about it. I'd say limiting governor's count to around 50 would be a great start.

In Travian: Legends there is a limit of 60 members per alliance (there are no kingdoms in T:L, but it's the same idea). Unfortunately, that doesn't stop people from making huge metas with hundreds of players. I'd appreciate any effective limits, because it is kinda boring like that, tho.

Right now, there are maybe 40 active players for each kingdom. The rest just plays along, profits from the defense a kingdom gives. Putting limits on the kingdom members will ensure those smaller players (who play just for fun and when they have time) will no longer have a place in a kingdom.

Kingdoms is all about the idea that every player, even the small ones, can play their role in a kingdom and get protection

If you limit the amount of players that can join a kingdom, it means that the smaller weaker players will remain without kingdom, since Kingdoms is based on your location of the map.

Or: people will start wings with those small players, communicating via SS or discord or something else. Move treasures from wings to main kingdom and force a win in this way.

Travian legends: This version fulfill all the criteria about the limitation.

The maximum number of members in an alliance is 60, so when an alliance wants to expand further, it splits into multiple wings. Members in one wing cannot view the combat reports of members in another wing, benefit from alliance-only resource trading, or use the web chat to talk to each other, since the game considers the wings to be separate alliances. In order to solve this problem, many alliances use IRC or Skype, along with an externally hosted forum. (Copied) Travian kingdoms concept is somewhat different. Every players both novice and expert can take a part. The third tier equipment is based on the concept that even a small player with third tier equipment can influence the game. The player can choose travian legends if they are not happy. This version is design made on the theme that everyone can take part.

Quote from Neoflex

Right now, there are maybe 40 active players for each kingdom. The rest just plays along, profits from the defense a kingdom gives. Putting limits on the kingdom members will ensure those smaller players (who play just for fun and when they have time) will no longer have a place in a kingdom.

Kingdoms is all about the idea that every player, even the small ones, can play their role in a kingdom and get protection

If you limit the amount of players that can join a kingdom, it means that the smaller weaker players will remain without kingdom, since Kingdoms is based on your location of the map.

Or: people will start wings with those small players, communicating via SS or discord or something else. Move treasures from wings to main kingdom and force a win in this way.

At least those treasures will be in the "weaker" wings and therefore more vulnerable.

I'm not sold on the fact that this is any sort of solution to any real population issue though.

Quote from Deacon

So thats not an arguments, if you're not active or just a rookie in this game, I'm pretty sure you not going to get a place in a top5-10 kingdom for no reason. Those wing kingdoms eventually would need to start thinking about their position in the main one, for wining this server, not just participating in it, and quite not whole meta community would fill in that 50 or 60 member gap at least.

have to disagree on this one at least for the rookie part. of course if you are showing no interesst in contributing to your kingdom you will get the boot at some point but even people who never played travian before can be an asset to your kingdom (not only for his tax and treasure contribution) if hes willing to lern what the game is about and to work with the kingdom. and ideally if this person enjoys the game and sticks to the kingdom you might have an actually really good player for the next server or the one after.

Also if i had to suggest a soution to mass kingdoms/metas/wingspamming i would rather do incentives instead of limitations. like giving kingdoms a VP generation or resource per stolen good boost depending on their size (smaller = more). feels better to me at least. would not prevent the "veterans unite, noobs get left out" problem tho

Quote from Neoflex

If you limit the amount of players that can join a kingdom, it means that the smaller weaker players will remain without kingdom, since Kingdoms is based on your location of the map.

I agree with this sentence.

We cannot complain about the kingdoms that make it difficult to make way for novice players and, at the same time, complain about the overpopulation of the big kingdoms.

Especially since a successful kingdom will interest new players who will say to themselves: "it's probably there that I'll learn the most". Many good players have been trained by big kingdoms.

Otherwise, the big kingdoms are also a necessity. Let's face it, only 10% of the players in a kingdom are able to build and maintain an off. As a general rule. This ratio is also very different between casual kingdoms and pre-existing groups. A military strategist will want a little more than 6 armies to organize his operations, don't you think?

Players repeat it to each server: the mass does not do everything, far from it. Moreover, wouldn't size also be a means like any other to achieve its goals? Compensating for its lack of experienced players or a larger population is a strategy like any other and can be viable.

While the possibility of creating wings makes no sense to me. Why create a system of wings that will do much the same as the current kingdoms ? If not to divide the groups, without bringing anything more in return ?

Quote from Neoflex

Right now, there are maybe 40 active players for each kingdom. The rest just plays along, profits from the defense a kingdom gives. Putting limits on the kingdom members will ensure those smaller players (who play just for fun and when they have time) will no longer have a place in a kingdom.

Kingdoms is all about the idea that every player, even the small ones, can play their role in a kingdom and get protection

If you limit the amount of players that can join a kingdom, it means that the smaller weaker players will remain without kingdom, since Kingdoms is based on your location of the map.

Neoflex you are right in many ways. it's kinda true that not everyone will ever be equal and we need bad players to make good players good. If everyone is good then no one is good.

Also who are we to decide who plays and who not, we cannot be travian gods.

But on the other hand , now when we have 150-200 players in a kingdom, there are numerous unheard voices, and usually metas play with same core leaders all rounds and maybe just 1-2 promotions every round, which is very small percentage of 200 players. If we have a limit on kingdoms size, these players will just play in different kingdoms and hopefully will be more proactive and involved with the true nature of game. The coal only becomes diamond under pressure and playing with a big meta kingdom, many players will never have this pressure.

Also, wings are not really a solution, you might have few loyal players running a wing but players will always have a voice to say no if they get no prestige out of it.

As an off player, I can assure you that yes, I play the travian gods. In my immediate environment I decide who lives or dies. It's not a shame, it's the logic of the game that is like that. If the players around me are profitable to loot and don't have the strategy to get by, then they don't get by and end up disappearing after fattening me up. The looting is based on that.

Beyond that, does a player with a few hundred inhabitants after several months of play really deserve a special place in the kingdom and to hinder sites for more invested players? No, I don't think so.

I say all this and yet I am committed to helping those who wish to master the game and accept the advice. But someone who doesn't have player time in Travian has to play another game. Because on Travian, space is a resource and wasting it is a luxury that we cannot always afford.

I have said this one before that I am against player limits and other such things you would call "hard" limits. They ultimately don't work, end up making the game worse and if anything they limit the small and middle sized guys more than the big metas.

Story time: One of the big things that did draw me in to kingdoms from legends was the fact that there weren't any member limits. In games that do have hard limits on members as a member I'm always bit stressed by the fact that I could get replaced at any moment be it because i'm not good or active enough or because I hurt the kings feelings or maybe because he needs space to bring in a tactical merge member or his buddy. Meanwhile from the leader side I don't like the fact that I gotta pick the members based on merit. If I got a guy I spawned next to and helped build my kingdom (let's call him Bucky), and bucky always responds to my messages and defends where he can and sheeit but is never truly a top tier player. Then later on my kingdom fills up and now it's time to go for the win. I'm presented with the opportunity to take in a super defender from the kingdom that collapsed next to us, he did nothing wrong and wasn't the reason why his kingdom collapsed (let's say his king left) and he would clearly be a top 5 player in our team. Meanwhile our lowest performer is Bucky but hes always active in chats and been there from the start. Do I do the right thing for the lets say 58 other players in the kingdom and pick up the new good player and kick bucky or do I just stick with what I got and lower our chance of competing. That's the sort of thing I would hate to do.

Now while that is all emotional but still quite valid reasons why member limits are bad, there's also the thing that they simply don't work. Not only will the guys who really want to play together (be it because they are scared meta wuzzies that just want to 5:1 their enemies) or simply group of friends just bit too big for what ever the limit was set. They will just create wings and effectively play together even if it's penalized a bit. If anything splitting like this could make you stronger in current kingdoms since you could funnel all the treasures to just one kingdom hence putting the defense power and treasuries of 2 groups behind just one sets of doors making it much more difficult to attack. Also when the end game comes someones gonna get cut because the best buddy of the king who was set to lead the wing aint staying without a medal so off you go linemember#55 and thanks for your service. Also stuff like the beginner problem and then elite players all pooling into one kingdom are issues that are just made worse by a hard member limit.

Also the big bad meta players are more likely to abuse wings and such to bypass the limitations while the "honest" small guys are punished by not being able to match the big guys in numbers. That is not to even say how big a kingdom should be. 30(60) you suggested in OP is probably suitable for some but many would complain it's too small to house all their friends AND at the same time there would be mid size kingdoms and players who would rather have it be even smaller. Increase it to say 150 and it wouldn't even do much, drop it down to 20 and now all but the most elite members are getting a boot from the "serious" kingdoms. Hard balance to make even without considering premades and different sized servers like national and just quieter coms.

I too would want to see ideally 7 medium sized kingdoms in a slugfest for a win but instead of making limitations (these will only really hurt the guys playing by the rules) you want to switch up the core systems to favor the small guys over the big ones. You want your change to be something that doesn't outright prohibit adding a new helpful player to your team but one that discourages it (especially in the case of non contributing players) and gives rewards for doing thins in a small group

Let's take few examples.

A mechanic that favors the big and creates snowballing is how treasures are generated:

Governor creates treasures -> more governors is more treasures -> more treasures is more VP -> more VP is more attraction to new governors.

No matter how you look at it it's a vicious cycle that means if you are trying to win (which most players are) it's individually the best choice for them to apply to the strongest kingdom making it stronger and for the kings it makes sense to accept every applicant because that leads to more applicants.

A hypothetical (and actually quite bad suggestion) that would favor the small would be something like

Treasures are generated 10 per day at kings capital village -> each kingdom has the same potential to generate VP -> only those kingdoms that fight to steal treasures from neighbors get more VP generation

This obviously would be bad because small kingdoms would just get farmed for their VP (lets not even talk about multis) and people would still apply to the big kingdoms. On paper and in vacuum this a very neutral mechanic however compared to the current system.

Another approach to this could be that each kingdom generates 100 VP per day directly and you need to steal it but you can only steal up to double what the other guy has meaning you can't endlessly bully the small kingdoms for their VP. This would already solve few of the issues with the previous suggestion though generating couple new ones as well.

Another example could be a member tax (lets say at the wonder so the early game is relatively unchanged). There could be a button in the kingdom menu aimed for this and each member could contribute (let's call it decorations for the wonder). The more members you have the more it costs, let's say 50k per level of each + 5k for each governor of the kingdom. This way you could still add more members but each new member would make the decoration cost higher. It's not back breaking high so each new member would be profit so long as they contribute but at the same time it incentivizes the team to stay as small as possible. Legends had something like this in a special server I think, gave bonuses to troop production (or something like that can't remember) so a tax system like this can be literally anything and even hidden behind a buff or a bonus you have to pay for

Hopefully you see my point however. So long as massive cooperation and adding more members is the logically the easiest and most straight forward way to win then that means folks will keep on doing it.

Introducing mechanics that systematically favor smaller teams over biggest ones instead is a way for a truly more balanced game.

Totally agree Deacon! This needs to be in the next TEST server!

I am not gonna extend myself too much, I do not want to depreciate a player opinion.

But I do not agree with it, In main Kingdom or not, the coalition players would be playing toguether so why not just allow them to be in the same Kingdom? to deprive them to get a medal?

If this ever goes to test it would just be one more nerf in Kings/Dukes, and teams/unions that play with multiplication and I may be wrong but I think thats what Kingdom I always advicing, "multiply".

Players would just all be in a SS and chat there instead of the Kingdom.

And In the end game it wouldn`t be the best players on the main Kingdoms but the ones who would support the WW`s most, is a simmer more important than a true soldies? Does a Simmer deserves a medal and the true soldier don`t?

Dont get me wrong, I get your point guys perhaps something should be made about this but just a member limitation would never do, for sure that for the problems you described there is another solution much more

viable to be done.

Just pls admins dont rush it xD Think it trough

How would this be good for the new players? The "noobs" you call them?

Not being with the best players but in a side Kingdom or chat where they would have no one or only a few players to advice them?

I believe that having numbers and instructing players on how to build their accounts is the Key to sucess, would I able to do it better with your change suggestion, no.

Sorry mate, I feel you I really do, but I cannot support it.

The only way to beat metas is to become one somehow, adding numbers and improving, in one round or round to round