Suggested changes to Menhir function

    Quote from Pinkguy#NL

    I don't understand why the unit cap is such a big deal.

    If you have a 200 pop limit then the chances are slim that someone can actually train and/or sustain enough troops to cause problems.

    If we add a limit to its usage, 1x, plus 1x every time your king goes inactive, then hit and runs aren't possible anymore. It is already very unlikely due to the 12h no-attack restrictions.

    The 200 pop limit is evadable, just have some 'friend' cata you till you are below 200 pop and move around. These accounts mostly are multi accounts so they wont care the minus crop prod and if the acc gets banned eventually.


    They should also punish the kingdoms/groups who benefit from it.


    Certain ppl will do anything to exploit every little detail that isn't closed.


    What a pixel medal is worth... xD

    Quote from Jak

    For me, I think the 2 main issues around menhir are

    1. It's gets abused in the early game, by players menhiring accounts into their borders, to then kick and farm (to enhance their own/main account)
    2. Later in the game after an account has had time to establish a decent amount of troops to then demo their other villages & jump around the map & attack unprepared kingdoms.

    So to fix the first issue, make either keep the fields and do away with the res packages, then a 400k raid potential between the 2 accounts cannot happen, or make it that if the account menhirs & their fields are lost, then their pop will be under 200 again and the rest of their 7 days BP comes back into play & their res packages are not ever "farm-able income" and can only be invested back into the menhired account.


    the 2nd issue is a more complex, but maybe the cool-down needs to be longer the older the server is? or troop restricted, say like if you are about to have a certain amount of troops then you get a warning "it won't be possible to menhir any more" same as it now does if you're about to reach 200 pop.

    I think an "age of the account" restriction on menhir is also a possible solution for this, if your kingdom falls after 3 months of playing, then sometimes that's the sad reality of War & you just have to accept it and make a new path for yourself from your current position. But it would stop those currently abusing it from gaining an advantage from by doing so.

    1) Menhir has made it too easy for abusers to teleport over their 'friends' that suddenly turn into great farms ( how convenient! ). Also menhir provides for a way for ppl to hunt down certain players/kingdoms if wanted, the amount of 'menhir kings' with low prestige are insane and they're obvious.


    We've had situations where a opposing kingdom landed close to the ww we were aiming for, and when we had some of their key players isolated they simply menhired away... In a game thats about war and fighting, this easy early option to disengage is lame.


    2) That is what happening atm, players build up a accounts with 4-5 villages. Then in 1 night 3-4 villages get all friendly chiefed by prepared multi accounts that 'holds they villages' till they can menhir back and rechief them.


    Not to even mention that on the testx3 that got closed too early, players still did this on ww launch day. Imagine you build up 44 days for a ww setup to find out ppl can just menhir literally next to you when you could be asleep.


    So in my opinion suitable options are :

    - Limit menhir to 1 time, everytime after you get troop wiped.

    - Limit menhir to account age

    - Limit menhir to troop count

    - Limit menhir to pop

    - Limit menhir to BP

    - Make res from res packages not farmable

    - Remove menhir ( i mean you could test it on a server that is specially for testing? Lol )

    - Give menhir a big cooldown

    - Remove the option to send a reinforcement after relocation ( just like you cant attack. This gives ppl 4-8h to freely destroy any abuser).

    - Limit menhir to world age.


    Most ideally would be a combination of some of these things.

    I think these would be my choices from your list :)

    Quote from Pinkguy#NL

    Like that. I interpreted the pop limit as in "once you go over 200 pop you can't use menhir anymore, even if you drop below 200 later on"

    Better to limit at 250. If someone start as king, s/he can't abdicate below 200 pop or before beginner protection ends. A lot of new player start as king and realize the game is only playable for them as a governor in a bigger kingdom. They first have to reach 200 pop, abdicate and ask a menhir.


    Other option is changing this rule to allow them to abdicate whenever they want in the first 7 days.

    I don't think limiting the population will solve anything. People will demolish buildings then will make a resource push, use the NPCs after the merchants arrive, and we are where we were. It also won't solve the pointless spamming for menhirs or making multi accounts for menhirs in the speed settle, or the misuse of multi accounts for farm. I think that 99% of the problems would have been solved if the production fields had not been destroyed after use of the menhir and the players had not received packages of resources and to prevent jumping with hammers just limit the units or age of the account to one week for every rate speed for players to enough time to decision. I think as long as punishment is clown fiesta people will always make a billion kings account to menhir entire kingdom. I saw it on Test where was "Kingdom" (I will not naming) what had like 20+ king accounts with one bronze star and 13 population only for menhirs:D Maybe after using menhir make 24 hours countdown when menhiring will not being available to use, but still... Maybe increase the demands to start as a king to 250-500+ prestige. This will not solve the problem, but at least it will reduce the number of people who cheat in this way.

    Thank you very much all, I really like seeing so many possibilities specially since we have gone back to the "drawing board" with the menhir feature.


    th0mm thank you for adding the list.


    NotSoPretty well thought out! Limiting it to 200 would render some new players unable to use it at all in the circumstances you mention. This is exactly the type of thinking we need... what ever we do, how would it affect new players? Thank you!


    I have never though about limiting Kings to players with certain amount of prestige. Thank you Baron Max.


    Does any of the things mentioned so far strike any of you as too damaging for new players?


    It would be interesting to do an exercise between all of us similar to what NotSoPretty did there with each of the possibilities mentioned to ensure that we don't consider anything that would damage the game, or that we find solutions for it before even we think about implementing anything like that.

    Quote from Unknown

    I have never though about limiting Kings to players with certain amount of prestige. Thank you Baron Max.

    Under the current system, a new account can only become king if they either meet prestige requirements OR if there are govs on the map who are not in the territory of a king. I don't know if it is any amount of govs not in territory or if it has to be a certain percentage.

    Anyway. The reason why the current prestige requirement isn't really noticed is cause starting as a king is just terrible for your growth.


    What if... *drumrolls* nobody could start as king?????

    No I am not serious about that, I just thought it would be hilarious.
    You would have to get to 200 pop and declare yourself king.

    Would people start rushing 200 pop on multis so they can menhir themselves?

    Can you rush 200 pop faster than you can get the fast settle ready? (fast settle without menhir)


    Edit:

    Quote from Tiitana

    I think prestige limit on king accs is good so new players do not "accidentally" pick king and then get annoyed by early game menhir jumping that leaves them mostly alone.

    That also sounds like an excellent reason to force prestige.

    Quote from Pinkguy#NL

    Without gold?

    Honest question, I have no idea.

    I don't think the game will ever be played "without gold" that is a personal preference to each individual & we have to remember Travian needs revenue to continue developing


    It's a game to us, but somewhere in the chain there are staff that need wages


    with regards to the 200 pop, I could probably get there off the startup gold yes

    Quote from Unknown

    I have never though about limiting Kings to players with certain amount of prestige. Thank you Baron Max.


    Does any of the things mentioned so far strike any of you as too damaging for new players?

    Do it! Please, do it! New players can't be kings! I don't want to be toxic, but someone had to say it. King role is the most experienced and most active role in this game. The king, especially a king with huge amounts of governors, who have an unlimited resources income need to be very experienced and active to manage them properly. I am one of players who will probably never play with random/new kings and why? Because I don't want to spend tons of hours and tons of moneys to playing with king who have unlimited resources and will have fewer troops than my robber hideouts and his activity is like when he's no connection to internet for entire year. I don't care if I win or lose server, but at least I want to play with experienced and active kings/leadership. If something strike/ruined this game is not that only few player(by prestige) can be king but that everybody can be kings, and they're destroying by their inactivity and low experience game for everyone who play under these kings. They finish servers mostly like "Greys" or with three villages with full of cranny. Let new players teach what about this game is, instead of ruining other players game because of non-experience and mostly low activity.


    PLEASE INCREASE THE DEMANDS OF PRESTIGE FOR STARTING AS KING OR BEING KING AT LEAST TO 250++++ X(

    Make king's role to motivation to gaining experience in this game and as very prestigious role for active, experienced, and responsible players. king-angry

    Nobody wants to go into war when his mates-in-arms does not know how to shoot.

    Quote from Unknown

    I have never though about limiting Kings to players with certain amount of prestige. Thank you Baron Max.


    Does any of the things mentioned so far strike any of you as too damaging for new players?

    Yes. If you don't allow brand new players to play as kings, they won't be able to menhir and join up with their friends. And that is, according to you, the purpose of menhirs. If you take that away all that's left is... a way to burn 60 golds in the first 11 hrs to settle faster

    You are right Xayira if a group of new players start together they would not be able to choose a king and join using menhir... but at the same time... will they know that before playing for a while?


    That is something we have to think about, does anyone have an idea how to avoid that potential issue in case something in the lines of needing xxx prestige to be king would be implemented?

    Quote from Unknown

    You are right Xayira if a group of new players start together they would not be able to choose a king and join using menhir... but at the same time... will they know that before playing for a while?


    That is something we have to think about, does anyone have an idea how to avoid that potential issue in case something in the lines of needing xxx prestige to be king would be implemented?

    Yes, of course, playing active, finishing server and gain prestige :D

    Totally agree, a new player (zero prestige) should never be allowed to choose King, it's such a fundamental role in the survival of a kingdom in the big game.

    It would stop abuse around making temp Kings just for menhiring, but also so many people underestimate the commitment involved in being King & then very quickly ruin the game for a lot of Govs because they quit too easily


    The only time it could be an issue is if a player has lots of knowledge/experience but always played a dual, I guess this is when having prestige for duals integrated would be a vital thing too.


    Also on a side note I think sometimes Kings spawn too close to each other & wondered if making treasury locations fixed locations at startup would help give "new legit kingdoms" a bit more space to develop & grow would be better? The map hardly ever expands now, so spreading everyone out further could help trigger this too

    Quote from Unknown

    You are right Xayira if a group of new players start together they would not be able to choose a king and join using menhir... but at the same time... will they know that before playing for a while?


    That is something we have to think about, does anyone have an idea how to avoid that potential issue in case something in the lines of needing xxx prestige to be king would be implemented?

    Players who are completely unfamiliar with Travian should really learn the game by playing gov first.

    The main audience who would like to start as a group but wouldn't have any prestige would be Legends players.

    However, if they have some experience in Legends then they will know how important it is to learn the game properly.

    Quote from Unknown

    Does any of the things mentioned so far strike any of you as too damaging for new players?


    It's always the same "new player this, new player that" pardon my french but why on earth you don't give a flying fuck about your existing player base? Most of the "new players" are multis anyways, this is really fucking frustrating.

    Quote from kicke

    It's always the same "new player this, new player that" pardon my french but why on earth you don't give a flying fuck about your existing player base? Most of the "new players" are multis anyways, this is really fucking frustrating.

    Most of the times these multis are obvious as its the same accounts every server, alot of servers i write tickets about certain accounts being prepared as menhir jump accounts and usually they get banned 1 day after they hit ( despite my tickets a week before the jumping warning about them ).

    Not sure where to post this & probably going to get grief for suggesting it (maybe I'm just having a blond moment) ... But here goes anyway


    Following on from not allowing zero prestige players to be Kings

    I also think sitter functions should be disabled for zero prestige players too


    Having the "sitter" function enabled makes it much to easy for people to make Multi accounts & then run them mainly as a sitter, just logging in occasionally if there are actions needed by the account holder, with very little risk.


    The downside is "new players" wouldn't have sitter access, but is that really a negative?

    It would encourage more to ask questions & be more interactive, rather than just have someone sit them & do it for them.

    In the early game it's all a learning curve, but if player is going to survive they need to learn how not to just be a farm. This game demands quite a bit of activity & a lot now think logging in once or twice a day for 10 minutes is enough (they rely on sitters too much)