Spiking rework/rebalance

    So spiking has been around for as long as Travian has existed, but it should have no place in the modern version of the game at least in its current state, here's why:


    ☀ 99% of the time it is not used as a "tactical" and coordinated strategy to benefit kingdoms and to give them a slight upper hand of not touching the spiked villages and letting the enemy lose small amounts of troops on it, usually it is some person who is not even in a kingdom doing it, or someone who is, but is doing this in secret.


    ☀ Spiking is done for 2 reasons, to gain easy def points or as a stupid way to frustrate, but not towards specific players, but simply because the cycle of spiking continues and people hold grudges and decide to do so themselves.


    ☀ And most importantly one person can screw the whole server over just because they can.


    ☀ Makes no sense to why troops would be defending an abandoned village with their lives.


    ☀ People are abusing the system by spiking villages and going on vacation, even going on in test right now...

    My suggestions:

    ☀ Limiting how many units can be sent to defend an inactive village;


    ☀ Add a hidden attacker bonus for inactive villages to favour the attacker when small amounts of troops are fighting (5 clubs kill 4 out of 10 phals or something);


    ☀ Have starvation on reinforced troops regardless of crop/h.


    ☀ OR AT LEAST show the name of the person spiking the farms in the report as it would not only make spikers better known targets, but also take away the frustrating way of finding out who it is by screenshotting every fucking top defender page and comparing recently gained defender points, because we ALWAYS find out who it is regardless.


    However, making a change like stopping people reinforcing inactive villages all together would result in EVERYONE on the server farming the same inactive villages, leaving barely any res for anyone to find, this is probably the reason the developers decided not to do so after many people had asked.


    Constructive criticism and other ideas are appreciated :thumbsup:

    Hm, unpopular opinion, which I mentioned somewhere else once: One needs some sort of way to balance gray farming. If spikers couldn't exist, it would be a riskfree and costless way of gaining resources, which looks rather overpowered. Spiking however sucks as a way of balancing, that's out of question.


    That being said, I actually like your ideas. I didn't to the simulator-work, but maybe removing morale malus when attacking abandonned villages would be enough (morale malus is usually quite high, because abandonned accounts are usually rather small) for the 2nd point.

    What do you think about reducing the "sum of losses" to 36,4% instead of 103,2% for raiding inactive villages? I mean, when raiding usually, the losses of the superior side are calculated (for instance 20%) and the losses of the inferior side are derived from that by calculating 103,2% - 20% = 83,2%. When reducing this sum to 36,4%, one could cut the losses for the superior side to a third and derive the losses for the inferior side by calculating 36,4% - (losses of superior). That way, one could lose at most 36,4% of one's farm troops per raid.

    I like your idea, but in most cases that extra 16,4% might not be enough to result in the death an extra troop, but it is certainly a step in the right direction and I would be more than happy to AT LEAST see this next patch

    Be2-e4 wrote:

    Hm, unpopular opinion, which I mentioned somewhere else once: One needs some sort of way to balance gray farming. If spikers couldn't exist, it would be a riskfree and costless way of gaining resources, which looks rather overpowered. Spiking however sucks as a way of balancing, that's out of question.

    I'm really tired of people complaining about spiking. I've never done it but I think it's perfectly valid. If you want to raid resources so badly, raid active villages. If you can't raid, build an economy. This game doesn't need to be scripted and allow only one strategy of raiding+paying to the top. If raiding were significantly hampered on a server then people who adapt would be benefited most. This is supposed to be a strategy game so people need to stop complaining about a tactic and beat it or adjust.

    Where is the fun if we earn easy no risk resources? ?(

    Communities in almost every game always want make things easier, no challenges, no risks... and they don't realize easier games are more boring.

    I like your ideas!


    I always liked how it is in the classic/legends version: the inactive players become Natar.


    Extending this to Kingdoms, they may add the same mechanics, tweaked a bit:


    - If you send reinforcements to Natars, they simply come back instantly

    - Natars could train some troops to make farming a bit "risky"

    Inactive players don't become natars in T:L. Deleted players have a 10% chance, that their capital becomes a natar village. Inactive players in T:L are just like in TK, farmable, conquerable, and so on.

    In Travian Classic there are is no natars at all ...

    Be2-e4 wrote:

    Inactive players don't become natars in T:L. Deleted players have a 10% chance, that their capital becomes a natar village. Inactive players in T:L are just like in TK, farmable, conquerable, and so on.

    In Travian Classic there are is no natars at all ...

    I remembered it wrong then, thanks for clarifying! :D


    Still, it could work.

    Maybe we should remove greys all together? Farming gives so much res it shouldn't be risk free and without greys, if you want that extra income then you have to raid active players.

    That way it might turn into war game as it was advertised, and not 'send farmlists for 5 months so your army can compete with those who do'.

    It might also solve some issues with big kingdoms, if farming actually takes time and skill then those huge meta kingdoms will lose a lot of power.

    Guys, how about we just get rid of the morale bonus for inactives?
    See, someone spikes an inactive and suddenly the raider troops are only 66% as strong.

    This is a pretty big impact. Lets say we have a 3 club raid and 5 phalanx spike, no wall or residence.
    With morale bonus the attacker has 120*0.66=80 power, defender has 200+10=210 power (that 10 is the base power of a village)
    Attacker loses 3 units, defender loses 1.

    Then we keep having raids of 3 cause the attacker probably has sent out multiple waves before he saw the first report from the spiking.

    It will take 5 raids to kill all phalanx and the attacker will have lost 10 clubs.


    Same situation without morale bonus.
    4 raids to kill all 5 phalanx, 6 clubs lost.

    Huge difference.

    If we want to discourage the inactive farming but also want to discourage spikers I suggest we remove morale bonus on the inactive villages and increase the base power of (inactive) villages from 10 to 35.
    This means that players will have to destroy the wall or upgrade their troops if they want to not lose any units in a 3 club raid against an empty village.


    Also keep in mind guys, farming inactives is meant to be competitive. You should at most get 10% of your carry capacity in those raids if enough other players also farm the inactives.
    It is up to the offense players to then kill the farming army of his competitors.

    Back in the day if I was wrecked and people started farming me I would share the reports with the biggest farmer so he would destroy the other farmers, that made things a lot easier. Farming is part of the game and inactive farming is an important game concept that we need to keep. We just need to ENCOURAGE players to farm inactives so that we get some competition going again.


    Wychor_COM wrote:

    It is up to the offense players to then kill the farming army of his competitors.

    And how do you want to do that? You're not gonna find an army of any decent player home. Only way to get rid of it is to level entire village/city and if he is in one of the top kingdoms then you're gonna need to sacrifice a whole lot of more troops for a chance to do that. Any way to weaken someone's army right now is through spiking.

    Bukka#PL wrote:

    And how do you want to do that? You're not gonna find an army of any decent player home. Only way to get rid of it is to level entire village/city and if he is in one of the top kingdoms then you're gonna need to sacrifice a whole lot of more troops for a chance to do that. Any way to weaken someone's army right now is through spiking.

    Thanks for also bringing that up.
    We need to get rid of the ability for govs to hide troops in robber hideouts.
    Other than that, you will always be able to find some portion of their troops somewhere.

    Yeah Teutons won't be able to snipe the really good players cause their troops take too long and the other player will notice, but that is what TT and EI are for, sniping offense troops.
    Teutons have the advantage that they can just raid a lot more than the other tribes cause they just have more units. So yeah, they have higher upkeep but they can out compete the other tribes.


    So no, right now spiking is NOT the only way to weaken enemy hammers. That is if you are a decent player though.

    Baron Max wrote:

    How many people are spiking and how many players use farm-bots? Is that a big problem for 200 farming people with great hammers destroy 1-2 people who are spiking and lose every troop in grey villages? Are you serious?! I remember days when people who were defending grey villages were kicked from alliances right away and were destroyed to 0 population in few hours. But now TOP players are lazy to cooperate, they are just crying to the forums. Bring back good hardcore players who want to cooperate and actually do something about it.

    Well, here goes problem of finding WHO is spiker.

    You can read all pages of defender points to try to find who spiked, but other than that, you have no chance to find spiker. Even then, sometimes you cant be completely sure you found right player.

    Baron Max wrote:

    Maybe for one man, but for a group it's easy to find him and punish him afterwards. Everyone can screenshot each page of defenders and send attacks to villages with the spike. Every time we find spiker, we punish him right away. This game is about cooperating. It is hilarious how people are sending farmlists 8-16 hours per day in 10-30 min intervals and have a problem find one or two people who are sending def to grey villages. Very impressive. :/

    Sure, if it's a single disgruntled guy with 100 pop then that's easy, what if its one of top players from top kingdom. Are you gonna try to zero his villages? Cause sure as hell his kingdom is gonna stand behind him and it will be VERY costly for you.


    Wychor_COM wrote:

    Thanks for also bringing that up.
    We need to get rid of the ability for govs to hide troops in robber hideouts.
    Other than that, you will always be able to find some portion of their troops somewhere.

    Yeah Teutons won't be able to snipe the really good players cause their troops take too long and the other player will notice, but that is what TT and EI are for, sniping offense troops.
    Teutons have the advantage that they can just raid a lot more than the other tribes cause they just have more units. So yeah, they have higher upkeep but they can out compete the other tribes.


    So no, right now spiking is NOT the only way to weaken enemy hammers. That is if you are a decent player though.

    I didn't mean hiding troops in robbers. I mean that if they are sending lists every 10minutes then how can you hope to catch them with army home? Even with TTs at best you're gonna find few minutes of troop production and you risk running straight into wall.

    And even if you catch them when they are asleep, their army wont be home, only whatever troops was produced and whatever came back from farmlist. And same story, with TTs/EIs you're gonna run into roman wall and then you can forget about seeing your horses again.

    Bukka#PL wrote:

    I didn't mean hiding troops in robbers. I mean that if they are sending lists every 10minutes then how can you hope to catch them with army home? Even with TTs at best you're gonna find few minutes of troop production and you risk running straight into wall.

    If that were true, just kill the rams and cats and voilà their hammer is useless.

    But it isn't. A teuton hammer with 75k clubs won't even come close to having none at home ... don't forget, that there's a 1k outgoing attack limit, ergo max 2k raids on their way. You usually don't have an average of 38 clubs per farm. Also, farming with TK isn't the best way to go (speed low, cost high when spiked), so you can kill at least them. Did you even ever try to kill a hammer at home or are you just assuming stuff without any knowledge and experience?

    Be2-e4 wrote:

    If that were true, just kill the rams and cats and voilà their hammer is useless.

    But it isn't. A teuton hammer with 75k clubs won't even come close to having none at home ... don't forget, that there's a 1k outgoing attack limit, ergo max 2k raids on their way. You usually don't have an average of 38 clubs per farm. Also, farming with TK isn't the best way to go (speed low, cost high when spiked), so you can kill at least them. Did you even ever try to kill a hammer at home or are you just assuming stuff without any knowledge and experience?

    No, you are right, it's best to leave troops at home whenever you're not at pc. What are you even saying?

    When I know that I won't be available for X hours, then I'm sending away whatever I have left. As I assume every decent player.

    And I'm talking from perspective of having a hammer, but if you wanna kill the hammer of some inactive then sure, everything works.

    Bukka#PL wrote:

    No, you are right, it's best to leave troops at home whenever you're not at pc. What are you even saying?

    When I know that I won't be available for X hours, then I'm sending away whatever I have left. As I assume every decent player.

    And I'm talking from perspective of having a hammer, but if you wanna kill the hammer of some inactive then sure, everything works.

    "I mean that if they are sending lists every 10minutes then how can you hope to catch them with army home?"

    Where did you refer to saved troops in your posts? Twisting words =/= having a good argument. You said when someone is sending FL every 10 minutes, you can't catch their off, because it's not at home anyway. And that's just nonsense, like I said. By the way, many players don't save their troops correctly. Many don't save at all (even decent players), many save them in oasis, and so on. Maybe com is different, but when I recall how many troops we killed at home, because nobody saved them ...