Posts by sacroima

Railin Ron® wrote:

Refresh did the trick - all is normal. It is a first though.

Have seen that from a teammate, when she went for the # tracks achievements (have 2000+ tracks at the same time).

That is a good suggestion, but to compensate, shouldn't you extend the time you see future workers ? I mean, the reasoning I have for workers is : "okay, I have 1 slot, this worker is the best of the 3 I can see, let's take him". And then, once I've won the worker, a better one appears 4 hours later (it's the first time I can see him). So I decide to bid for him as well. I've payed for 1 worker to have him only for 4 hours, but I couldn't know when I bid...

With your change, do you want associations to strategically decide "okay, is this guy worth our slot, or should we keep it open for a better one just in case", or do you just want for associations to be able to genuinely decide which workers they want ? In the second case, you should allow corps to see more workers in advance, to be able to choose which one to bid for. In the first case, corps should just think more. But then it would change the workers way of working. We would basically have 2 workers instead of 3, and the 3rd slot kept open for the best worker, just in case he appears.

Overall, 3 high profile associations x 3 workers = 18hours, doesn't surprise me at all that those 3 win all the time. Even with your change, it would probably be the same still. Because there aren't that many very active players. So, it's normal that the 3 associations with the most players bidding win. What is a problem is if 1 association starts winning everything.

Maybe just an option to justify in a few words why you dismiss a worker ? (like "Stephenson appeared, much more useful for us", or "we got Smith, we all invested what we wanted, now he is useless").

The main issue to me, is that a few workers are worth only a few seconds (Davenport in the morning for repairing trains, Roosevelt at recalc 0:00 GMT). Basically, you bid for them, use them, and then throw them away.

Had this issue, especially in era 1-2.

Got used to it, but I remember at first I struggled !

I think you are right, it would not change how the game is played mostly, right now.

Well, apart from making the endgame easier for bigger cities (all corps having the majority > quicker EG for them).

But it removes some strategical opportunities (taking the majority of specific goods in the rival EG city for example). Such actions are, for now, taboo I'd say. But who knows in 6 months, or 1 year, if one team is utterly dominant in all areas, except majority holding. Would it not be an option against them ? Is it worth it to remove it altogether ?

I dunno personnally. I've been used to majorities. I've played entire games without them. I tend to not focus that much on them anymore. But I know it's a touchy subject for a lot of people. They feel it's theirs. Like "their" city. Wouldn't this suggestion remove that appartenance as well ? How would the people react ? Would they fight over having their team's flag over the industries still ?

Seroslav wrote:

There are votes for mayor or president. There can be also votes for players to limitate to take majority or invest in city's industries.

For example:

- Every player based in city for more than 50% of time of the game can propose a person to give a limitation, and every such person can vote

- If proposed player gets vote to be banned by 33+% of players from city, who fulfil the previously stated requirement, proposed player cannot take personal majority in any industry in the city as long as there is this number of votes

- If proposed player gets vote to be banned by 50+% of players from the city, as stated above, he cannot invest in any industry in the city for more than 3 clicks

- Number of proposed players that You can vote for limitation could be as a try limited to 2 for eras 1 and 2, 4 for eras 3 and 4, 6 for eras 5 and 6, 8 for end game

So it would work with really pissing of guys, when big part of city would cooperate to limit their overinvesting activity

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Something like that would be totally stupid, because top PP players generate a lot of undeserved hate. (jealousy, envy, and so on)

And also, if some players from the biggest corp were banned from a city, they would retaliate with all the corp. You would basically allow a game of "I'm stronger than you, try to mess with me and your game is ruined anyway, even if I cannot be the one to do it. I have 24 friends ready for that". And if you increase too much the number of "bannable" players, then the game has 0 interest. Remove the connections between cities entirely at this rate. And make this game something about islands in isolation competing between each other.

What you must understand is : this game is not about isolation. And the majorities are not a given, it's something you have to defend to some extent ! (there is a huge gap between white : 0 invests; and black : someone stole our majority with 20M. Stop trying to remove the latter by giving tools to punish everything that is not the former). A corp that invested 15M in its industry shouldn't lose the majority to a troll (and will never). A corp that cries because they invested only 30k should not be given tools to ruin the game of the guy that invested 40k.

While 3 clicks are fine for some of the latest industries. It's way too small for the wood industry that costs 12k, 24k 36k = 72k for 3 clicks for example.

Actually, I disagree with you on the majority logs :

- if someone invested 3 millions in an industry, and I cannot take 5th spot without breaking with just a 60k investment. I will break the majority. Every single time. Am I responsible ? I don't think so, or at least not fully.

Will the game be better ? I don't know. For me it sure won't be, since I probably break 50-100 majorities / day in 6th era (yeah, nobody invests, it's a shame...). So I think you can guess how my messaging system will look like : "Insert random insult x10" x 20 messages...

Also, the logs don't solve everything, especially in EG. often, the break in EG is the sum of the 15 players investing at the same time. To blame 1 would be ridiculous.

For the majority break thing. Why not, but an option that can be ignored once for the whole game please. I don't have the time to confirm x times / day that I really want to break a majority for X or Y reason, I want to be able to do it without confirming it, as is the case now.

I have no idea, since I don't play USA. But an educated guess I have : the deliveries you made to the 4 cities in question x4 ? and normal for the rest ?

You could check the prestige console (click on your prestige, then you have another tab at the bottom) and look at the detailed prestige gain, to try and figure it out also. In case nobody can answer you directly with a precise explanation.

Hey,

Something I've been wondering right now, preparing for my team's next round, and thought you could have some preferences. What is your favourite landmark and why, (in terms of optimisation, rather than holiday vacations or design). Nevertheless, you can still tell us about which one is the prettiest to you, even if I don't really care ;)(definitely a post you could do Samisu, if not already existing )

In my opinion : I love Vienna's giant wheel. Pretty well placed, with coal and grain 1 track, iron, iron ore and cows 2 tracks, cotton at only 3 tracks, and then for later on leather at 1 track. Flour close by. Meat and paper well positionned for cash. Hardware also being an option. And, well, having Zagreb in the region for the EG is just too good as well.

But well, what about your opinion ?

Since you speak about maths, nothing related to the subject, but I have to talk about it

Yes, math is great, and any math-based strategy is on paper the best. The problem is, you need to craft your team around those math principles. It's very difficult in practice to have 25 players that follow all of it (basically like robots) to achieve 100% efficiency.

You can have examples of it everywhere (landmarks that take too long to fill up because people deliver to cities, 1 majority that can be broken by 1 single player because the corp that should hold it doesn't invest enough (or too few people of that corp do), ... There are many examples. Workers are another, it's very difficult to find a corp in which all players pay the worker its due value.

That's why, in practice, math is part of the answer, but only part of it And more and more, after 1.5 years of playing, I feel you need to be great in social interactions, and social understanding, to perform in RN, math just is a slight bonus.

I've read of this specific strategy somewhere on this forum as far back as last year I believe.
Nothing new invented there. The issue called back then is, if I remember correctly, that the first few levels of HQ pay way too much prestige for the price invested (more than the 1PP for 10k $, that is already a cheap ratio at the end). But since I don't remember the numbers, and don't really care...

I personnally don't like it. I feel like, if I want to claim achievements of greatness, as you seem to Triarius, I should beat the others fair and square, on their territory, so that there is no question as to who is the boss. But I don't know of the history between your 2 teams...

We've done that on a french server, same winner since the beginning of the server, extremely boring. We built a team, we saw a weakness in part of their strategy, we won top corp the first round after the creation of that team, we've won first region, first corp and winning megacity ever since, while changing partners every game.

The problem of the repeating winners is something I don't like either, but at some point, if your team of friends is just too good, compared to the others, what do you do ? split in two ? That's a fair question I've been asking myself, because after my team has won 4 servers in a row, I fear the server will just become dull for everyone. A few active corps already left to a new express, to claim top spot there, as they couldn't beat us. And that is an issue.

I agree with Nerisrath.

Will there be some carrier achievement available, similar to the events / RN masters ?
It might motivate some people to join, despite the gold price. (I, for one, would definitely be playing for some carrier points, while if not, it will depend on if I know of others who will join).

The limits they set up (from what I've seen so far), are :
- 4associations per region
- 2associations per city

until some point ? (maybe once every region has 2 associations, then it's opened up for a 5th).
Also, all regions need to have 80?% (around that mark, maybe 90, haven't really done the maths) of the players of the first region, for the first region to be opened to registrations during the actual game.

I went to check on COM 201 Big Ben. RN say 2900, there are way less in practice (most regions 85 to 90). 5 associations means 125 players. How is it fair to the others, that have to play with 80 players ? It is not.

changing region during the game still would not be okay, because if everybody chose the same region to change into during the game, there is still no fair competition.
Well, actually, there still isn't with how you are playing, because you basically regroup 2 regions into 1, which destroys the actual goal of the SoE server (playing for your region).

Yeah, we never will be in agreement, because you want to play with your friends over everything, even game sense, and I despise these groups that regroup 50% of the server in one city/region.

Your move of "starting in another region to "sabotage"", IMO, is the worst. Especially when done on purpose. I could understand 2 regions teaming up during the game to beat a mega-region such as the one you are creating, but doing it from the start ? It's unfair, ridiculous, and typically what would get me to leave the game, should that happen to my server.

Well done for your server win, hope you enjoy it. Wasn't too difficult ? I'll let you tell me in 3 months. Should be fairly easy by the looks of it. That, the free-win from the start, is what is killing RN. And it happens on more and more servers.

Happy new year too !

Well, the thing is, there already is a 4th association in the South. The perspective you should take is : why would it be acceptable for a region to have 5 associations pre-registered, when all the others won't have more than 2 ? You realise you would be 100 active players, out of the 500 to 700 the server has ?(not sure which server you play in, so not sure about the number of active players you have in it, but I think it's around that number for most servers EDIT : nevermind, realised you stated you play in COM 202).

I personally am very grateful for this limit that allows me to have a shot at winning a round with my region, whitout just joining the best group of assocations, but by having my strong association, and then building relationships during the game in the region I happen to be.

You can also wait and hope that enough associations pre-register in all regions, so that South gets opened again for a 5th team to join. Or you could try all the regions you deem acceptable 1 by 1. But for that, you need to have the 4 association chairmen trying at the same time.

I don't know about you, but I sure won't play anymore if I'm told the only way to win is join the winners in their new region, because they have 50% of the server with them. That's why I don't play classic in the first place. And that's what would happen if there is no limit to the pre-registrations. As to the limit number, if 5 is now acceptable, why wouldn't 6 be ? and then 7 ? and so on. You need to have a limit, RN chose 4, I think it's too much already for most servers and would love a flexible limit implemented.

What could be an idea is a grouped pre-registration maybe ? You state to the system that you are 4 associations (the 4 chairmen should do that), and then it gives you all the available regions with 4 slots empty ? That way, you don't end up with 1 association left behind, and none of the issues I raised happen. It's basically what people do anyway, when the 4 associations pre-register in the first 2 minutes of EG.

Yep, it's a shame the associations that are closed down at the beginning of EG aren't opened again after the end, for this reason and others (people that want to change association and so on). Right now, since it's so expensive to start a new association, you just stick with the old one, even if you are not fully dedicated to it anymore.

Quickly responding, I'm running late.

In low populated servers (basically everything except .de and russia I think), there is room for 4 associations per region for pre-registration, and that's already too much, because there are at most 20 associations pre-registering.

20 associations, 10 regions. Quick maths.

So, while I know it might be frustrating for you guys to not be able to preregister the 4 associations in the region of your choice, I'm sur you can find 1 of the 10 regions that is empty still, so that you all can fit in it (e.g East, since it's a crappy region no sane person would pre-register into).

What happened is : somebody else already pre-registered into your region, not from your group of 4.

I also hate mean trolls (we cannot really call them players, since they don't want to play, but just destroy the play of others). But there aren't that many. I have met maybe 1 or 2 in 1.5 years.

And, well, they aren't very discrete about their play. It shouldn't be a problem to localise those. No need for the system to point them out. They are even proud of causing harm sometimes.
Also, when I play for Prestige, although I don't mind people knowing if it's me that broke the majority or not, if someone else invested 2M and I cannot click even once because of that to gain PP without breaking, I don't consider myself actually breaking it. Sometimes, the system saying "he broke the majority because he invested 30k" might be wrong, because the one that actually should be held responsible, is the guy having invested 3M earlier.

But then, what about the ones that make a mistake, because they were tired, or didn't know, or because they invested at the exact same time someone else did (happens a lot during EG) ?
The fact that someone can see "X broke the majority" will cause A LOT of verbal abuse to those players. Even though they might not even realise they did something wrong.

All in all, what's the point of your system ? What will you gain by knowing who did the investment ? If you have an harasser playing in your city, you know plain well he will be to blame every single time, and otherwise, mistakes happen and you should not blame your fellow players for mistakes but rather keep working on increasing the cooperation so that those mistakes are avoided. Some players are too hot headed, for this system to be a good idea.

Hey,
If you wish to maximise the points for your region, the best is :

- level the landmark. Only level the city one level for each landmark level (it's a requirement, otherwise the landmark doesn't level up) but not more (as otherwise, you will have to deliver more goods, taking more time).

- once you reach landmark level 14, or at the end of era 5 - beginning of era 6, stop paying for the landmark (the current level should stay at 0$ / a few hundred millions). You will pay for it at the end of the game, when you get so much money out of the wagons that is otherwise useless.

It might have changed slightly with the new big update and the changes to trains. But before, the idea was that levelling up a city prior to the thalos was a waste of time and resources.

Of course, this is the basic strategy. You have more refined ones that adapt to the specifics of : the layout of the city, the implication of your association, and so on.

Also, you should try to have at least one association on each city of the region. It is an incredible waste of ressources to have 2 associations on a city, and none on another.

For the cities leveling : all cities can get to level 30 quite easily, even in era 6 only. Going further than that truly depends on the strategies of the 9 other regions. Sometimes, you want to get all your cities very high, other times you wish to keep 1 city 32 and the 4 others below, to just stay in the top10. Really depends on which server you play, with how many active players, and their own strategy.

As always with those kind of suggestions :

Yes I like it, but...

and the but is : you need fail-safes, to ensure that the people that can benefit from this pool of RP, are not active people that use it to get the best trains at the beginning of each era more quickly, but really your teammates in need at the end of an era. And there arises the issue. How to separate automatically who can benefit, and who cannot.

But I like the basic idea, it's always painful to finish all researches and have that one teammate that couldn't finish the full olympus in time for X or Y reason, and it's a team game, so why not.

Enekini wrote:

AH, so I get an extra $500 in my restaurant and they take the free cars, big bucks, etc worth far more. Seems like they are stealing from me more than helping...

Depends. When you have a high level restaurant, you are happy to get 40k more, while they can earn between 0 and 400k for watching 2 videos (we love those 20gold tickets...).

Nevertheless, I can understand some people really want their videos. In my association, we create a topic at the beginning of each server where people can write schedules where they want to keep their videos. Usually, it works very well.

I believe it is level 5.

My lottery level 4 still gives me some.

+1 to driver's comments.

To add on Nerisrath's proposition, that or a limit on the amount of goods you can buy every hour, or something.

And yeah, not sure of the relevance of the PTR server, I'm happy to test some things, but I never go to that PTR server because I don't have time to play an entire server for nothing, and I don't like playing for just 3 days and then quitting. So I do my testing on a regular server. But if I came up with a rough idea of how to gain coins exponentially in 10 min by reading the description of the event and 15min of doing it when it came online, I'm sure quite many people understood how to maximise gains way earlier (it can be seen easily by checking that most servers have the same range of rankings).

So basically, if the most involved players are not on the PTR, it's difficult for you guys to get adequate feedback as well I'm sure.

For the adjustements, they had to be made, but I would probably have balanced them a bit differently (like, allowing everybody 20-30 tickets with the normal gains, and then removing the gold part for example). But yeah, something had to be done. Otherwise, people would have reached 100k gold + easily, and the game would have been broken for 2 years minimum, at least competitively.

I personnally liked clash, but prefer the in-game game ! And would love to see new events like this winter market. Maybe an event that forces you to cooperate with "opponents", because people tend to stick with each other game after game, and it could be fun to have a 1-week event where you have to help each other with people you always had in an opposing city

EDIT : not sure the patch was enough though. I've used 1/3 of my coins I guess, (95'000 left), and I have that :

I guess, at least, it only affects the current server... And I should have all the bonus engines for once.