Merging alliances right at the end of a server to take a win.

A couple of comments come to mind here. First, I was on the com2 brought up here. That situation was different from what you are suggesting, however at the time the server ended I and several other like minded veteran players brought up the need to prevent a WW holder from defecting, especially late in end game. This has not been done, nor as far as I know, has any discussion among devs taken place which might lead to any action. I still say a WW should be a team holding and no holder should be allowed to switch alliances taking the WW with him/her.

Secondly, on the subject of "merging" alliances, although it is done differently in TK, it has always been a part of the game. Players who support an alliance faithfully and with dedication deserve to be recognized as part of the team when a WW is completed. We often added players to the alliance who had fought along with us and supported us, no matter which alliance tag they carried during the server - even if it meant booting less deserving players. The principle is the same here.

As to leadership, no one who has not been in leadership can understand what a burden it is (if done right). It is quite often the exact opposite of fun, and it is very seldom that one is appreciated for even the best leadership qualities. I cannot blame anyone who sees a chance to hand over the reins to another capable leader for doing so - and I feel certain that no one else with leadership experience in this game can blame them either.

Ultimately the real point should be that an alliance shouldn't be allowed to hold more than 1 or 2 WWs, this would prevent alliances to have an abnormous bonus VPs compare to other alliances with 1 WW and maybe it would motivate small alliances to give it a try to win. Obviously, they should implement that the WW can't change alliance once conquered by an alliance unless it is conquered again for instance. Also in order to prevent people from dodging this limitation maybe impose a penalty equivalent to the bonus the WW that was switched would give at the end.

@DH: I don't know if you are referring to me or M.E.V, but I clearly remember what happened on that server

@Marius: Yeah, you are right, it's my opinion that actually playing the game rather than doing nothing is more fun. Trying to make people play the game, learn how to play and discover all the possible things you can do in it is much more rewarding and interesting than simming the whole game and give a free win to bored people by doing nothing except showing your wallet.

Quote from Captcavey

It's not so much the merging of the alliances but more the point that it now effects the percentage gain by the merged alliance. For example, going from 50% at first place to suddenly having 175%... that is substantial. For it to be done with hours of the server left just leaves a really sour taste in the mouth so any new players might look at that and say "well what was the point in playing that?!"

You need to balance tactics and "technical knockout" with keeping the game playable for the long term. Yes we all play to win a server but we also want people to keep coming back right?

If a WW was an alliance holding, instead of being held by an individual player, then that bonus would not change so dramatically from day to day with a player leaving one alliance and joining another, king or no king. The WW would belong to the alliance which conquered it, and could not change hands unless conquered. (Not saying that could not be abused, but it would be costly).

Mayo: As I have suggested, only the bonus from an alliance's top WW should give a bonus. If you held, #1, #3, and #5, in other words, you would get a 100% bonus only. At the very least, the bonus should be limited to 100%.

Quote from Mayo

@Marius: Yeah, you are right, it's my opinion that actually playing the game rather than doing nothing is more fun. Trying to make people play the game, learn how to play and discover all the possible things you can do in it is much more rewarding and interesting than simming the whole game and give a free win to bored people by doing nothing except showing your wallet.

Once again "playing the game" This is your way of playing the game. Stop pushing it onto other people. The mechanics are what they are. People use them to win. THey were used in a way you did not use them and you lost. Thats really the tall and short of it man.

Quote from Captcavey

It's not so much the merging of the alliances but more the point that it now effects the percentage gain by the merged alliance. For example, going from 50% at first place to suddenly having 175%... that is substantial. For it to be done with hours of the server left just leaves a really sour taste in the mouth so any new players might look at that and say "well what was the point in playing that?!"

This is VP total without merging. (after calculating ww percentage bonus. Ours is only 25% in this calculation. UNDO 33%)

EMPIRE VP : 10825880
UNDO VP : ‬10037831
BS VP : 8345719

I think its enough proof that we actually have won without merging. Perhaps our victory is more credible if we don't merge at all, but I will never want to break my word with my allies. We can choose not to honor our word and actually still win in VP.

Not to mention we do help Barfight's WW with a great majority of our def, leaving the WW that I hold undefended. If our defence does not exist there, your hammers will have lowered maybe 15 levels and our very own WW will not be so badly damaged. Our WW have helped each other. Our leadership is merged. Empire pour a lot of our time and effort to this.

Your point will be valid if WW owners defect, which is not the case. If a WW owner defect, yes, many will be disheartened because all their efforts go to nothing.

With all server results, you can look it in different ways. Some may be disheartened. Some may be inspired. Travian is not really a game for the weak willed.

Quote from Mayo

@Marius: Yeah, you are right, it's my opinion that actually playing the game rather than doing nothing is more fun. Trying to make people play the game, learn how to play and discover all the possible things you can do in it is much more rewarding and interesting than simming the whole game and give a free win to bored people by doing nothing except showing your wallet.

Quote from Marius

Once again "playing the game" This is your way of playing the game. Stop pushing it onto other people. The mechanics are what they are. People use them to win. THey were used in a way you did not use them and you lost. Thats really the tall and short of it man.

This so much, not everyone wants to play like you want Mayo. I like the current game mechanics and getting as many players in as i can. If one can not compete with that is not my fault. If metas beat single alliances metas will always exist. Maybe you should create one to beat them.

About the xTools mess, we were the underdog until day 100. SAMURAI were bigger than xTools since the day 1 and we simply outplayed them using what we could with the gamemechanics whilst protecting United from any enemies the whole server so they could sim in peace. After SAMURAI gave up Swordy started to wage war by telling everyone in United that we broke the peace instead of it really being them. Even Heartagram thought we betrayed United until Ankur told him what really happened (he would not believe me). Then United gathered atleast 5 different alliances and made the biggest meta in the server to fight against xTools, and once again we were the underdogs. We still managed to win the server, that's it. It wasn't xTools who played really dirty, it was Swordy with his propaganga about us. We had the most amazing team in there i have ever been part of. United wouldn't have had even 1 WW at the start of endgame if we knew they wouldn't be allies until the end.

Don't expect us to just accept our loss if they eat their words and stab us in the back first, we had more aces up our sleeves

edit: I weren't even supposed the lead the alliance, i were invited in to build a WW for xTools. I just kept us afloat while other managers got busy with life. In my opinion biggest mistake i did was not being online on last day to invite Badzone (original leader in United) in the alliance. He were in the thing with us the whole time and he got upset because he didn't get onto xTools (I were hoping Knud would do invite him but he forgot).

I think there shouldn't be any alliances in kingdoms ! One king = one kingdom = alliance and than let's the best man/woman win

Quote from PoLo

I think there shouldn't be any alliances in kingdoms ! One king = one kingdom = alliance and than let's the best man/woman win

We're on it.

Aight Eager to see a server with those changes Fortunately it's still a beta and it will evolve for the better

Jallu: I wouldn't agree with most you said, but your truth and mine are obviously different and biased due to opposite camp. Though I will just say that swordy was loyal to BadZone and that I wanted to revive the server, what was propaganda for you, it was the truth for others and at the end the server was fun because that happened.

Jallu:

I don't know whether you are attempting to rewrite history or simply accepting a version of history rewritten by someone else. In the end, it doesn't matter either way. The archived forum threads from that time period tell the story as it happened. And then there were those of us who were there and experienced it first hand.

Quote from Mayo

Jallu: I wouldn't agree with most you said, but your truth and mine are obviously different and biased due to opposite camp. Though I will just say that swordy was loyal to BadZone and that I wanted to revive the server, what was propaganda for you, it was the truth for others and at the end the server was fun because that happened.

Wait, what? Loyal to BadZone? Swordy was the one who removed BadZones manager rights. We used BadZone as a spy to see Uniteds troop movement and WW at all times, i were sitting him myself. Also, a lie can not be truth to anyone. If one breaks a confed and blames it on us it is not a truth but pure propaganda against us. Swordy stated that we broke the confed as a fact and hoped we could not prove him wrong, but i did. Only few people know the real truth about the server, you only know what you heard or felt. I and few others were the only ones who really experienced it.

I did claim that Swordy were lying on old threads and i believe i proved it to DanielHart and others in skype. 50 Calibre and others were also on the skypechat that Swordy just pushed his lies on. I know it's not cool to have someone change alliance in the end, but that's the only bad thing xTools ever did. That is nothing compared to the backstabs or other coward moves that happened on that server. I even got death threats during the ww-phase

swordy as in Sorin was loyal to BadZone and didn't want to try to go against BadZone and United, after a bit of convincing and reasoning they were on board, shortly after Sorin left and Abhinav took care of the account basically until the end. Yes I asked them to remove the manager power to BadZone because he mentioned that in case United were in a position to win he would have dismissed United, it was obviously for the good of everyone wanted to try to win against you to prevent the possibility of this happening and yeah you obviously have no idea of what you are talking about either Jallu since I was behind all of this aswell. There was no confed aswell with United it was a NAP. Also as a manager of the alliance if all your governors and teammates don't like how things are and would like to try something else why would one person be able to stop them from having fun? I also apologized to BadZone at the end because he's a great guy and he wouldn't have swapped alliance betraying his governors. What we did by removing his manager rights was a sad and unjust move but mandatory seen the situation. I mean if it happened, all the work of 150 players would be destroyed in one second?

You won because you had some important friends too high ranked and we trusted them to do the right thing at the end, unfortunately it didn't happen. No one knows the full extent of what happened there, not me, not you, not anyone.
You can blame me aswell for your so called propaganda, convincing Deviath, swordy, Armory, etc.. to fight you and give the server a proper endgame fight, but that propaganda was based on the experience as a former xTools and it might be a bunch of lies for you but it is the truth for many others.

Quote from Jallu

Wait, what? Loyal to BadZone? Swordy was the one who removed BadZones manager rights. We used BadZone as a spy to see Uniteds troop movement and WW at all times, i were sitting him myself. Also, a lie can not be truth to anyone. If one breaks a confed and blames it on us it is not a truth but pure propaganda against us. Swordy stated that we broke the confed as a fact and hoped we could not prove him wrong, but i did. Only few people know the real truth about the server, you only know what you heard or felt. I and few others were the only ones who really experienced it.

I did claim that Swordy were lying on old threads and i believe i proved it to DanielHart and others in skype. 50 Calibre and others were also on the skypechat that Swordy just pushed his lies on. I know it's not cool to have someone change alliance in the end, but that's the only bad thing xTools ever did. That is nothing compared to the backstabs or other coward moves that happened on that server. I even got death threats during the ww-phase

Jallu, the only thing I can remember you proving to me was that Swordy was a liar. (I will say here that Swordy helped me deal with a different situation with an overreaching king who happened to be in the same alliance with Swordy at the time, and that Swordy kept the agreement he made with me as to non aggression afterward. He did not lie to me about that.) I changed alliances a few times during that server, but was in United for most of it. As a king, I ended it disgusted and feeling I had led my governors into failure like lambs to the slaughter, thinking they were minutes away from a server win when their heads were chopped off. There is no way you can dress it up to make it palatable.

The WW you are saying you spied on during end game was the WW brought to your alliance with about an hour left on level 100, right? And when the holder defected to xTools with minutes left on level 100 - after the members of another alliance had built, defended and supported it to near completion of the final level, you are saying that is the "only bad thing xTools did" and that was "nothing" compared to what was done before by others? I am sorry, but there was no mention of "death threats" by you at the time or even afterward until this time.

There was a great deal of discussion in the forum about the way that server ended, and all those threads should be available in archive. Nevertheless, all that is history. That server showed that steps needed to be taken to ensure the same thing could not happen again, however the devs did not see a need to take any of the suggested steps - and so TK lost players because of it. Some of those players were, in fact, xTools players who felt as strongly as I did that the alliance which actually built and defended that WW were cheated when their WW was stolen away at the last moment. One answer I kept getting after the fact - though I don't remember whether you told me so yourself - was that it had been xTools' plan to take the WW at the last minute all along by having the holder join xTools. Which part of xTools leadership made that secret plan with the traitor? Since the rank and file had no knowledge of this plan (as evidenced by attacks from xTools) who, in the new leadership was the plan passed along to when the original leadership deleted? Who was it who kept arguing that, since it didn't violate any rules, that was a valid and legitimate way to win the game?

You cannot change the facts, you cannot change history. Let it rest.

Obviously we have different views and it is not going to change. I'll agree to disagree, i can't go arguing any further with not having any old conversations saved due to my hdd breaking on my old laptop. Some people said we had admins help us win and some people said we were the one that were unfairly treated. In the end we fought around +1000 players with around 400 players (max) allied to us. In the end it was around 300 vs 150 of us.

Quote from DanielHart

Jallu, the only thing I can remember you proving to me was that Swordy was a liar. (I will say here that Swordy helped me deal with a different situation with an overreaching king who happened to be in the same alliance with Swordy at the time, and that Swordy kept the agreement he made with me as to non aggression afterward. He did not lie to me about that.) I changed alliances a few times during that server, but was in United for most of it. As a king, I ended it disgusted and feeling I had led my governors into failure like lambs to the slaughter, thinking they were minutes away from a server win when their heads were chopped off. There is no way you can dress it up to make it palatable.

The WW you are saying you spied on during end game was the WW brought to your alliance with about an hour left on level 100, right? And when the holder defected to xTools with minutes left on level 100 - after the members of another alliance had built, defended and supported it to near completion of the final level, you are saying that is the "only bad thing xTools did" and that was "nothing" compared to what was done before by others? I am sorry, but there was no mention of "death threats" by you at the time or even afterward until this time.

There was a great deal of discussion in the forum about the way that server ended, and all those threads should be available in archive. Nevertheless, all that is history. That server showed that steps needed to be taken to ensure the same thing could not happen again, however the devs did not see a need to take any of the suggested steps - and so TK lost players because of it. Some of those players were, in fact, xTools players who felt as strongly as I did that the alliance which actually built and defended that WW were cheated when their WW was stolen away at the last moment. One answer I kept getting after the fact - though I don't remember whether you told me so yourself - was that it had been xTools' plan to take the WW at the last minute all along by having the holder join xTools. Which part of xTools leadership made that secret plan with the traitor? Since the rank and file had no knowledge of this plan (as evidenced by attacks from xTools) who, in the new leadership was the plan passed along to when the original leadership deleted? Who was it who kept arguing that, since it didn't violate any rules, that was a valid and legitimate way to win the game?

You cannot change the facts, you cannot change history. Let it rest.

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We moved Heartagram to United from xTools so they can help him defend the wonder. Our plan was all along to have every single WW in the server to join xTools. It was Swordy that didn't swap instead of Heartagram stabbing anyone in the back. He was the only one holding on the the original agreement. Every manager in xTools knew Heartagram was going to move back to xTools eventually even if United kept the war not so "friendly" as they stated. Including CreecK, Ankur, Knud, me and other kings and even dukes. I was the one putting it to action in the end when everyone else were inactive. United shouldn't have expected us to just let them have our player give them a free wonder in the first place.

And yes, the death threats did not come from United but from SAMURAI which is why i did not mention it in the United vs xTools drama before. It's just a game, if you want to win you need to do anything that is allowed within the game mechanics and without breaking the rules. I tend to play games competitively, i love plot twists that turn the game really around. Also, i do not think Heartagram joining his own alliance is a bad thing. We didn't know the whole server would ally against us, and we got him back to xTools when he felt safe doing so. We wanted him to actually change earlier but he was scared to do it until level 99 WW and we respected his request. You changed alliances too during the server. Mayo was part of xTools wing also. Changing alliance does not make you a backstabber.

Quote from Mayo

I also apologized to BadZone at the end because he's a great guy and he wouldn't have swapped alliance betraying his governors.

He got really upset when he did not get invited to xTools in the last hours, he was the one who helped Ankur to get Heartagram back to our side and what he wanted in return was a spot for him and his friend in xTools (Imran Palash was it?). I were supposed to invite him in but i were at a cabin with no electricity so i asked Knud to do it and he forgot. He was on our side until the end, he jumped back to United boat as soon as he saw that he did not get the invitation. Ask him yourself. I can try asking if Knud has BadZones messages on his computer still to prove this claim even if you can't contact BadZone.

I can't bother arguing with you guys about this old event, all i'm saying neither sides were acting really gentlemanly. I would do some stuff differently if this were to happen now, most importantly give 0 players to United. It wasn't fair to hide under our wing against SAMURAI and then turn against us with all our enemies as soon as you see an opportunity to do some damage. Whatever, it's in the past and we have new servers to come. Sadly i have finished 2 servers after that one and neither of them were as interesting as this one we're still talking about.

Wow, you certainly have a malleable memory there, Jallu. "A free WW", you say? Of all the things you misrepresented here, I will respond only to this one. We built the WW with resources we sent, we defended it against countless attacks (some from xTools, by the way) with troops we trained and sent, we fed those troops with crop from our granaries. Heartagram represented himself as a loyal United team member - we had other hammers with which we could have taken the WW. So what was "free" about the WW we took, built, fed and defended? Your claim that it was planned and desired earlier than last minute only reinforces the fact that it was intended to cheat us of the win. The information I was given at the time was that it was planned by xTools leaders to occur exactly as and when it did. Whether it was in violation of any rules is not the point - it was an exploit, and remains a possible exploit which has absolutely NOTHING to do with playing the game. It cost TG players, and some of them were xTools. It cost xTools any respect the tag might have earned before com2 and the possibility of ever earning more. As far as I am concerned, and as far as many who played that server are concerned, United won fair and square. xTools stole the credit, but United and those of us who supported them did the work.

I said after that server, and repeat here now that the possibility of such an exploit needs to be removed from the game. The subject of this thread concerns the same principle. No team should ever be able to take a server win by simply adding players in end game, nor should a WW be allowed to move from one alliance to another by any means other than conquest.

Most of the forum discussion was in this thread: http://forum.kingdoms.travian.com/com/showthread.php?t=1332 Read it from the first post

Many of us were there and read Swordy's lies. The thing was that we didn't know Swordy had a dual, and it wasn't the account owner doing all the talking (where he agreed with BadZone to disband United) but the dual. I wasn't in xTools but felt that United acted dishonorably first and that xTools reacted with dishonor. Those on opposing sides (including me) will never agree as we are all biased to some extent. We need to use what we've learned from this and keep the conversation with TG going to remove the possibility of this happening again. Team, rather than individual, ownership of WWs might be the best solution.

Wait how did United act dishonorably? Better "lying" and have a fun end game for everyone rather than shut up have the whole server allied and waste 4months of playing//simming to do nothing at all at the end. xTools leaders were so focused on winning by all means that they killed all the fun on the server for everyone else.

Seems to still be a lot of words being spoken about what took place so long ago. Many called it unfair and many others say the game should be fixed so that WW can't change hands after a certain time.
Many blame xtools for all that happened during that round. Everyone blames everyone but take a look back at the steps you took as well.

- Many followed Alb and Samurai blindly based on Alb stating he could do it all and win the server just because he was some kind of Travian god.
You did not take the steps to secure a WW and instead of doing research on the taking of a WW, you all followed advice that was not true.
Many had already known that you did not need to send catapults to the WW and if Alb was so great he would have known that. So he waited till the time when WW's were released and settled a village near it cause he felt he was the great Alb and everyone else would just cower in his presence. Then when no one would give or let Alb take a WW without a fight he raged quit. Many will call me a liar but I know Alb. I am the one who introduced him to Kingdoms and I was the one who removed him from my alliance when he stated this fact..."I am a better player then anyone in Kingdoms" Then he started going off with death threats against some of us so we parted ways.

Now some of you may say I have an ax to grind but those who do know me know I do not lie and only talk facts when it comes to Travian.

Now let's look at the tools of war.....
-Spying
-Deception
-Passive force
-Aggressive force
-Strategy

During that server and in every server these tools should be used when they can to help you achieve victory. These same tools are used in the real world military's and have achieved success and failure thru out time.
The debate still goes on here how those tools should be removed from a WAR GAME. Big question for me is why? This is supposed to be a real time strategy war game played by people from around the world.

As someone had mentioned in another post, I was in the main skyp chat that held the leaders of Xtools, United, The Colony¿³, Amory and I think there was another but can't recall.
It was those on the Swordy account that began talks about having a "friendly war" with xtools. However as it turned out it was only United ways of saying they wish to break the agreement they had with xtools and win the server.
I was never a big fan of United as they used peace agreements only to full fill their agenda. Again though that is part of the tools listed above (deception) and they played it well. I would have to add that Xtools played it even better.
We also had an agreement with xtools but ankur also understood that we would not defend xtools or their ww and that we as an alliance would be going for the win as well. We did absorb a wing of xtools that was more closely related to our alliance then xtools so that one wing did get our help at the end and to this day most of them still fly our flag and not xtools.

So all sides used all of the tools that are available. As leaders or players you either learn from that or you beg the game designers to change it so it cant happen again. So when does that stop? If everytime you lose a server you make the developers change it and soon you have a game where we all get a trophy for participating.

If the art of war is taken out from a war game then there is no point in playing it any longer. So for those of us who like war and all the good and bad that go with it, I beg the developers to do more to put the fight back in the game and let us humans be human in a GAME OF WAR

I am sure I will get blasted for this but to me many are missing the whole point of a war game. Everything that is being discussed are possibilities that can happen and has happened in real world politics and war.
If you are not fond of it then maybe a war game is not your cup of tea and I mean that in no disrespectful way but it is a war game