Spiking rework/rebalance

    Quote from Baron Max

    If he sent def to random grey villages without cooperating with his teammates from kingdom who farm a lot, he will have problems with them as well. But if he cooperates with other teammates we can speak about the tactic, not "spiking" as such. In the first case it's clear how to proceed. The second is hard to say, maybe just create a thread on the forum and start crying.

    And how can you know if it's some random kingdom less guy or coordinated effort when first thing people do when they red farmlist icon is to go to forum and cry how much spikers ruin game for everyone?

    On com2 few of our deffers coordinated with our farmers to spike greys around kingdom BM. We lost next to none off/farming units and had great returns on our def, but that doesn't matter cause not even an hour after def landed entire BM kingdom was crying on forum how spiking is a bs and we should be banned for that action.

    It's NEVER seen as a valid strategy/tactic.


    Quote from Be2-e4

    "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 ...

    Sorry, I just assumed we are talking about a decent players and possible strategy against them. Of course you can hope that someone is leaving 50k clubs at home and that might work some of the times but if your opponent is active enough to send farmlists every 10min and experienced enough to feed such an army then I'd doubt he is gonna leave his rams/cata or army at home. And yes, COM is completely different ballgame than some local servers.

    Quote from Bukka#PL

    It's NEVER seen as a valid strategy/tactic.

    Because it isn't. Where's the strategy? Where's the tactic? Do you really see yourself as genius strategist, when you spike farms? You don't need any effort, any skill, any strategy, any thinking, not even time or troops to spike, but do a lot of damage to someone who is putting a lot of effort and time into his hammer, if you do so regularily. People complain rightfully about this, because it's imbalanced and overpowered from the defender's point of view - and uncalculateable, volatile and frustrating for the offer's point of view. Imagine I had a button "kill 100 clubs of mine, but kill also 1500 def from that player, thx" and would press it multiple times a day. Same thing (exaggerrated and not 100% analogue, of course, but the principle stays ...)

    I said it somewhere else, not sure if earlier here or in another spike cry thread, one should - for the sake of less frustrating gameplay and better balancing - prevent spiking but add a calculateable cost to farming, activity and effort should get one an advantage, but from my own experience that advantage is just ... insane, due to lack of concurrence. Maybe com is different, I play mostly de ...

    Quote from Bukka#PL

    Sorry, I just assumed we are talking about a decent players and possible strategy against them. Of course you can hope that someone is leaving 50k clubs at home and that might work some of the times but if your opponent is active enough to send farmlists every 10min and experienced enough to feed such an army then I'd doubt he is gonna leave his rams/cata or army at home. And yes, COM is completely different ballgame than some local servers.

    Can you stop with the arrogance for just a moment?
    You're not talking to a bunch of newbies and you are not a god at this game. So stop the arrogance please.


    There are 2 scenarios:
    1. Enemy farms inactives with farmlist and is thus competition to your farming.
    If the enemy farms then there will be a moment where he is not online and a portion of his troops have returned home from farming. That is when you can make some nice kills. You'll never catch the entire hammer, you'll always catch something if the enemy is offline. I'd say it is safe to assume 5% of troops to be home when you attack. 5% is pretty nice to catch, you do this a few times and you'll really halt his farming, forcing him to be online more or depend less on farmlists to ensure his returning troops don't get caught.
    2. Enemy doesn't farm inactives with farmlist and is thus not competing with you.
    If he ain't competing then who cares? Yeah it can be a dangerous hammer but you are unlikely to ever catch a significant portion of their troops during normal attacks (so not including sniping a returning hammer) cause he'll make sure to always be online when his troops are home.

    How do I get to 5%?
    Well catching (portions of) hammers works best against teuton hammers, which primarily consist of clubs.
    Those hammers easily hit the 999 limit for outgoing attacks, meaning they can't send everything away at all times, AND they will have loads of returning troops all the time.
    To be honest, you can probably catch a fair bit more than 5% from teutons.
    For the other tribes it is a bit different cause these don't hit the 999 limit as soon since they have less troops.
    However, these tribes generally pay for their higher offense per crop consumption (swords/imps) or movement speed(cav) while not really gaining much defensive bonus. Meaning you can still catch quite a bit of value when you attack them.


    In any case, if they compete with your farming then they will have a portion of troops at home at some point unless they have 24/7 online time due to duals and/or sitters.


    Don't try to snipe with walking times longer than 2 hours cause then they have too big of a window to secure their troops.

    Quote from Be2-e4

    Because it isn't. Where's the strategy? Where's the tactic? Do you really see yourself as genius strategist, when you spike farms? You don't need any effort, any skill, any strategy, any thinking, not even time or troops to spike, but do a lot of damage to someone who is putting a lot of effort and time into his hammer, if you do so regularily. People complain rightfully about this, because it's imbalanced and overpowered from the defender's point of view - and uncalculateable, volatile and frustrating for the offer's point of view. Imagine I had a button "kill 100 clubs of mine, but kill also 1500 def from that player, thx" and would press it multiple times a day. Same thing (exaggerrated and not 100% analogue, of course, but the principle stays ...)

    I said it somewhere else, not sure if earlier here or in another spike cry thread, one should - for the sake of less frustrating gameplay and better balancing - prevent spiking but add a calculateable cost to farming, activity and effort should get one an advantage, but from my own experience that advantage is just ... insane, due to lack of concurrence. Maybe com is different, I play mostly de ...

    You mean to say that if I time my troops to arrive at the same time to 40 different greys with crop supplies so they don't starve, and pull them out before enemies can clear it somehow takes less effort than clicking a farmlist?


    I'm sorry, I am not a god, I'm at best decent. I never meant to imply otherwise, but if we want to talk about strategy then we can't base our assumptions on enemies making bland mistakes, ex. "Average people don't level their wall, so rams are useless."


    About catching farming units at home, I agree, you're gonna find let's assume 5% of their troops but there are 2 scenarios:

    1. Enemy is kingdom/friends less (or very weak ones): If he is building off units then he is not gonna have any decent def, therefor it's easier to clear/cata his village and turn him into farm.

    2. Enemy is among top5 kingdoms: If your TTs walking times is even an hour (good luck), then you're gonna find just how much def can be amassed during that hour, and since you have no rams, and TTs aren't that strong, I doubt you're gonna have any decent returns on those troops.

    In 3 years, the discussion is still at the same point and the developers have never given their input on this topic (correct me if they have).

    1. Remove morale from grey farms
    2. Make visible name of spiker/defender
    3. Make raids on grey villages cancellable in case of spiking on targets >20 squares from farming village (this one might a bit op, but it would make a big difference between people farming manually and the ones using a clicker).

    With this it would be balanced between attacker and defender.

    PS: Bukka/Flint you might need to try a bit harder to understand what we complain about (not cry, its quite different), maybe you should start farming and experience it for yourself.

    No, Mayo/Pob, I understand what you complain about, you want to have more free income for those who are online the most. Maybe we should just remove greys and have res production halted when you are offline, would that satisfy you?

    Besides, as always you just pasted your opinion on spiking, completely ignorant of discussion.

    Quote from Bukka#PL

    You mean to say that if I time my troops to arrive at the same time to 40 different greys with crop supplies so they don't starve, and pull them out before enemies can clear it somehow takes less effort than clicking a farmlist?

    Yep, exactly. You might be busy for an hour or two once (why crop supplies tho, 1k units -> 10 per hour starve, who cares) and another 5 minutes for recalling all reinforcements, but a farming offaccount is busy 24/7 sending farmlists every few minutes and has to keep their farmlist updated on a daily basis, which takes 30+ minutes per day aswell, depending on map size, used methods, and so on. Like the other guy said, play a farming off account yourself to see how much effort and time one has to invest to farm decently. Clicking farmlists on a high frequent time - which you need to get a decent amount of resources - is more time consuming than one might think. TK farmlists are better than T:L farmlists in that regard, because the time consumed per farmlist click is less, but if you don't have the luxury of having a monitor more than you usually need, clicking farmlists takes maybe 20-30 seconds per village, for 2-3 villages you're at 40-90 seconds every 5 minutes, depends highly on the situation. Maybe a bit less, but it's an unexpectedly high percentage of your time.

    Quote from Be2-e4

    Yep, exactly. You might be busy for an hour or two once (why crop supplies tho, 1k units -> 10 per hour starve, who cares) and another 5 minutes for recalling all reinforcements, but a farming offaccount is busy 24/7 sending farmlists every few minutes and has to keep their farmlist updated on a daily basis, which takes 30+ minutes per day aswell, depending on map size, used methods, and so on. Like the other guy said, play a farming off account yourself to see how much effort and time one has to invest to farm decently. Clicking farmlists on a high frequent time - which you need to get a decent amount of resources - is more time consuming than one might think. TK farmlists are better than T:L farmlists in that regard, because the time consumed per farmlist click is less, but if you don't have the luxury of having a monitor more than you usually need, clicking farmlists takes maybe 20-30 seconds per village, for 2-3 villages you're at 40-90 seconds every 5 minutes, depends highly on the situation. Maybe a bit less, but it's an unexpectedly high percentage of your time.

    Then why do you do it? Why send farmlists if it takes so much work? Cause it generates so much res its mad and it's virtually free. And you want to make it even more available? Currently all greys do is generate resources for people who are online, it takes no skill, just some minor work to maintain those lists. What it also means is that if you want to create a big army then you are forced to send those lists, as you cannot generate enough res to feed them otherwise.


    What I propose, is to remove greys all together. How I think it will impact the game:

    - Active and experienced players get to fight with other players for resources.

    - End game armies will be on average weaker, but so will def due to early/mid game fight for resources.

    - Big armies will be harder to create, but will be also much more impactful and impressive, as it will require some heavy teamwork to pull off.

    - So called 'meta' kingdoms, whose main strategy is to generate as much treasuries as possible via inviting as many govs as possible will be much more weaker due to having harder time fighting for resources.

    You're correct, I didn't take the proper time to read it all, apologize, the discussion for once seems to be rather interesting.

    About your arguments to remove greys all together, I don't particularly agree, most armies on tk can be done with a proper account built decently.
    I don't really get your point on metas, whether there are greys or not it won't change them.
    If anything, removing greys will be a loss for governors and a win for king and dukes who don't need to raid/farm to have insane armies.
    Then again, if you think about it, farming a guy who hasn't grown in the past 5 days, or a guy who has become grey for a day is rather similar.. it just means its harder to spike cause you don't know who is afk for real or not, while farming becomes safer since most people check their targets if done properly.

    Also, if it is so easy to be top raider, why aren't you up there? It's easy to say it requires no skill and little work, but there is actually a lot of work put into it that is needed in order to be at the top. And even without farming you can build 100k+ armies if you have some good account economy and logistics.

    Quote from Bukka#PL

    Then why do you do it? Why send farmlists if it takes so much work? Cause it generates so much res its mad and it's virtually free. And you want to make it even more available?

    Quote from Bukka#PL

    just some minor work to maintain those lists

    Please read my posts again, apparently you either didn't read them or didn't understand them. Or didn't want to understand. :)

    Quote from Bukka#PL

    How I think it will impact the game:

    Mayo made perfect points about why you're wrong.


    A few additional ones:

    - If players don't generate resources, if they're offline, nobody would fight about resources, because either one is online or ones warehouses are empty --> nothing to fight for

    - Kings/Dukes can't farm --> they invite even more people to ones kingdom to gain even more tributes, nobody in big metas cares about governors

    - Deff won't get weaker at all, they usually don't farm and aren't affected by this. Good def accounts weren't weak, if they would use their deff more often. Production speed is key, not current deff amount.

    Quote from Mayo

    1. About your arguments to remove greys all together, I don't particularly agree, most armies on tk can be done with a proper account built decently.
    2. I don't really get your point on metas, whether there are greys or not it won't change them.
    3. If anything, removing greys will be a loss for governors and a win for king and dukes who don't need to raid/farm to have insane armies.
    4. Then again, if you think about it, farming a guy who hasn't grown in the past 5 days, or a guy who has become grey for a day is rather similar.. it just means its harder to spike cause you don't know who is afk for real or not, while farming becomes safer since most people check their targets if done properly.

    5. Also, if it is so easy to be top raider, why aren't you up there? It's easy to say it requires no skill and little work, but there is actually a lot of work put into it that is needed in order to be at the top. And even without farming you can build 100k+ armies if you have some good account economy and logistics.

    1. Then why is an argument 'they need farms to feed their armies' is being used over and over again? Without widely available income (greys) average army size will go down and will allow those who can farm up and feed big armies will stand out more.

    2. Maybe, my reasoning was that since those metas invite everyone, most of their players hold next to no troops and most play simcity. And what happens is that kingdom is not being attacked since there is no incentive to do so - it keeps producing def and can defend those players. If those troops were needed in early/mid game to fight for resources, perhaps those semi/inactive players would be left defenseless.

    3. Sure, but I treat kings/dukes and their govs as a single entity - a kingdom, so a divide between gov and king doesn't matter in a scale of a kingdom

    4. Yes, but it requires a lot more work to find, scout, and clear them than to look at the map and add to farmlist greys with notifications above them. Besides, if game turns into a fight for resources early/mid then I'd expect that a lot less players would quit due to boredom (like you guys keep saying).

    5. I never meant its easy to be top raider, but to get enough res from farmlists to outclass any res production from village. I was playing off when I had a lot of free time and was spending most of it in front of pc, so I didn't count sending farmlists as a work, since i was doing it by the way. But you are right, if you need to go out of your way to send those lists then it requires a lot of work.



    Quote from Be2-e4

    A few additional ones:

    - If players don't generate resources, if they're offline, nobody would fight about resources, because either one is online or ones warehouses are empty --> nothing to fight for

    - Kings/Dukes can't farm --> they invite even more people to ones kingdom to gain even more tributes, nobody in big metas cares about governors

    - Deff won't get weaker at all, they usually don't farm and aren't affected by this. Good def accounts weren't weak, if they would use their deff more often. Production speed is key, not current deff amount.

    1. It was an exaggeration.

    2. Number of people isn't what is limiting their tributes right now anyways, it's treasury area.

    3. Of course it would, perhaps not at the same rate as off, but it would anyways as without extra income from greys, they would have to choose between economy and troops.

    1. Because average player doesn't have a good account and therefore needs to compensate it by raiding. Remove greys will give an harder time to new player rather than experienced player who know how to farm active/build self sustainable account. It will only widen the gap between good players and new/average ones.

    2. I get it but it's not removing greys that will create enough incentives, maybe even the opposite, if people are in danger they will look for metas to play it safe and sim happily. Whether a kingdom is aggressive, attacks, defends, its the kingdom choice, not the game, so that has to come from the players to start with.

    4. That's not how top raider farms at all, not even close. Our raiders spend lots of time on their farmlists to make them efficient and we fight cause we play the war game whether it means losing and having to delete cause the other ones destroy us.

    5. On this matter too, not really, a village produces with all lvl 10 res fields and res bonus 3750 res/ hour. No kingdom on COM2 farms on average that amount (at the end of the server I will release statistics on this, I kept track of raiding since the first few weeks). Also to take COM2 still has example, its really competitive in terms of raiding and the efficiency of raiding is really low due to a huge quantity of good players farming the whole server.

    Quote from Mayo

    1. Because average player doesn't have a good account and therefore needs to compensate it by raiding. Remove greys will give an harder time to new player rather than experienced player who know how to farm active/build self sustainable account. It will only widen the gap between good players and new/average ones.

    Wait what? I thought experienced players widen the gap with new players due to their skill in raiding . New players generally struggle with the concept of raiding. As for me and maybe new players, I found it bullshit to buy plus to have a farmlist bigger than 10, instead of the usual 50-100 gold payment for gold club to have bigger farmlist for the whole server duration. Generally the early raiding is one of the most important things in order to make an army to clear out your area against other players, as for mid/late game you only see experienced players farming up 95% of the resources (I spiked, so I know who farms in com2).



    You don't have to remove greys village, devs can simply turn off resource production if your villages turn grey, since they're basically abandoned. So the player still has time to return to the game, without being deleted from the game immediately. I must say I prefer to raid active players, which is quite discouraging in TK, and in particular I'm in a kingdom who is friends with everyone in my area hahaha.

    Take def points away from grey village spiking and you would probably see a drop in their usage, a lot of spikers just do it as some form of "stat padding" for easy points


    they call it an act of war and using tactics ..... when in reality it's just an easy way to kill small quantites of troops and create some drama.
    Bukka#PL you didn't really damage us on com2 though did you? so it wasn't very effective


    Strategic#EN it's true raiding does make your account bigger/better sometimes although it's not essential as you spiking/clearing and hitting walls/residences/troops etc will create many losses compared to a player like me who normally doesn't farm and so has more troops alive to help defend the places where they are needed

    Take away def points and it's gonna be a lot harder to find who is spiking.

    I didn't really do damage to you, cause I didn't spike. I don't have time or care to do it.

    And while that op it didn't do much damage alone, just as a single raid doesn't help much, but imagine if it kept happening every day?

    @Strategic:
    Not really many farms a lot and still have shitty troops cause their account doesn't allow to have more than a certain amount of troops due to feeding so raiding allows them to have more troops but they won't ever have the troops a good account will have. Also raiding is easier for a new player rather than having a good capital or learning/understanding long term investment vs short term investment in terms of economy and troops.

    @Bukka: If continuous spiking would happen, the server will end up with good players still having large hammers (100k+) and new/average players with small hammers

    Quote from Mayo

    @Strategic:
    Not really many farms a lot and still have shitty troops cause their account doesn't allow to have more than a certain amount of troops due to feeding so raiding allows them to have more troops but they won't ever have the troops a good account will have. Also raiding is easier for a new player rather than having a good capital or learning/understanding long term investment vs short term investment in terms of economy and troops.

    @Bukka: If continuous spiking would happen, the server will end up with good players still having large hammers (100k+) and new/average players with small hammers

    What are you basing this on? I think your out of touch with non-elite players. I and others in kingdoms I've played in have had to ask specifically how to farm, how build large armies, etc. Average players have no idea how to take the next step to becoming great because raiding makes all the difference. You can't just decide mid to late game to start raiding. You have to start early because the only way to raid a significant amount of resources to build a strong hammer (ie run a GB/GS) is to raid millions (be a top 30 raiding), which requires having a large number of raiding troops to begin with. Building a strong economy provides marginal resources compared to raiding, which requires an investment in a large number of horses that most people do not realize is worth it.


    Large hammers only exist because of raiding at least 5 M resources per week. And if you don't believe that we can start getting into the math. Nobody but the top players raid that many resources per week because it isn't easy and requires a large time investment. All of this I've learned in the server I'm on now because I still am a good/average player but not great. See my post history if you need evidence of that.


    tl;dr - I disagree spiking has a negative effect on new/average players. It reduces raiding which large accounts rely on, not small ones.

    Hmm leo#EN(19) i disagree with your disagree'ing


    spiking affects all..... not just large players, It affects smaller players too, it's just larger players can recover easier from it and usually have a way to counter it, so in reality the smaller players are hurt more by losing the few troops they have & usually means they will delete rather than recover


    I don't farm, I'm not here to rant about it. But I still don't agree with it, there is little to no skill involved in sending a few troops to a grey village and feeling accomplished at killing troops in 1's & 2's, if you find pleasure in doing this then travian probably isn't the right game for you.


    As for not being to possible to have a decent account without farming, I disagree with this also. true i play as King atm, but even as a non farming part time Gov I still had a decent enough acc to be able to be in the HoF and support the kingdom and the WW in a massive way, you don't need to farm if you have good eco and infra.


    I think Activity is the main difference between what you would call "elite" and "average" if you are active enough you can also become a top player (being given the right guidance and advise from a good kingdom also has a big impact)

    Quote from leo#EN(19)

    What are you basing this on? I think your out of touch with non-elite players. I and others in kingdoms I've played in have had to ask specifically how to farm, how build large armies, etc. Average players have no idea how to take the next step to becoming great because raiding makes all the difference. You can't just decide mid to late game to start raiding. You have to start early because the only way to raid a significant amount of resources to build a strong hammer (ie run a GB/GS) is to raid millions (be a top 30 raiding), which requires having a large number of raiding troops to begin with. Building a strong economy provides marginal resources compared to raiding, which requires an investment in a large number of horses that most people do not realize is worth it.


    Large hammers only exist because of raiding at least 5 M resources per week. And if you don't believe that we can start getting into the math. Nobody but the top players raid that many resources per week because it isn't easy and requires a large time investment. All of this I've learned in the server I'm on now because I still am a good/average player but not great. See my post history if you need evidence of that.


    tl;dr - I disagree spiking has a negative effect on new/average players. It reduces raiding which large accounts rely on, not small ones.

    Mh, there are a few flaws in your arguments.

    1) You don't need to farm at all to pay the training cost of gb/gs, it costs only ~75k for teutons and ~77k for romans per hour. A very good capital can produce this alone, but the more realistic case is that capital + 7-8 side villages produce this amount. Upkeep is where it gets tricky, not training cost.

    2) You don't need that much raiding troops. I don't think that I use more than 30k clubs for farmlists at once usually, if so much at all. If you raid with roman EIs, you need way less, because they're twice as fast and carry double the resources. Every (even non farming) offer should have these amounts, if he doesn't, raiding won't help him either ...

    3) Depending on how good of a start you have you can very well have 80k+ capital production. I can't really come up with com numbers, because I usually play de locally. But 130k+ production in an average account, that keeps an eye on economy is easily possible in the mid game. A economally good account can easily have 200k+ production in the late game. That's about 33 million per week. I really don't know com numbers, but I doubt that they are so much more in top10 raiders lategame? I mean, you talk about 5 million per week, no offense, but your account shouldn't have a smaller production than that anywhere midgame.

    4) Most people just farmlist with their hammer, no need to train additional troops, just farm with the ones you already have.

    5) It is easy in terms of it is not complex at all. But it's a repetitive and time consuming task. Yet any new player can do it easily.


    Also experienced players have a much easier time to farm not-so-experienced (but active) players, smaller kingdoms, and so on, the last 2 off accounts I played I would say it was about 50 : 50 in terms of farmlists and other farming.