Soft General-Limit

[rich ocean]

Since I already had this suggestion prepared and there was a discussion yesterday in that direction, I thought why not post it now.

• What do I mean with “Soft General-Limit”?

Simply put, if you have more than X General-Points (GP), your unit-upkeep gets increased by a factor.
For example (all these Numbers are just for the sake of explanation):

If you have less than 100k GP, nothing changes.
If you have between 100k-200k GP, your upkeep gets increased by +50%.
If you have between 200k-300k GP, your upkeep gets increased by +100%.
If you have between 300k-400k GP, your upkeep gets increased by +200%.
If you have between 400k-500k GP, your upkeep gets increased by +400%.
And so on and so on.

• How would this improve the Game?

Weaken the current Meta of 1-Man-Armies
Weaken the escalated General-Banks a bit
Increase the strategic aspect of Army composition
Increase the importance of allies to fight together
Decrease the escalated amount of Units (General-Banks)
Reduce the length of Battles in general

In short, tons of good things.

• To explain the above advantages:

Right now it just makes more sense for Players with less Upgrades to just sell their Units to the Player with the most Time/Upgrades, instead of fighting themself.
This results in insane 1-Man-Armies and frustrated fighters, because they can't actively contribute, because it would feel wrong to participate with much lower Upgrades.
But if the Army-size of the Person with the most Upgrades is "limited", this would be different.

General Banks with million of Generals would pay much much more upkeep during the short periods where they are open, weakening them significantly.

Army composition would become much more strategic again (is it still worth to have 50k GP in form of killerwaves?), since Fighters would try to get closely under the limit of the next cost-increase.

Army-Numbers would likely decrease, less Units in Wars would result in shorter Battles.

[sharp sun]

I like the idea and the possible outcome

[fickle pier]

I think it's a good idea as it gives players a reason to upgrade the barracks and shipyard to extremely high levels to quickly build units when war breaks out.

[frozen merlin]

Bon.

[blazing compass]

Strong empires should not be limited and punished in favor of the weak player and banks, That wont help against banks since they can always refill the generals even if its less than 100k generals. That suggestion will only punish strong players that have no alliance/play fair/dont deposit their troops in a bank account.

removing black market is the only good suggestion but badidol doesnt want it to happen

[rich ocean]

There is nothing "strong" about winning by sheer mass of units, those who do are punished by this indeed and those are the ones most of the time who use General Banks.

Or do you want to say that "fair Players" who don't use General Banks are the ones who run around with 200k, 400k or even 1mio Generals?... I doubt it.

[blazing compass]

Its possbile to get 500k generals without banks. It just takes time with banks they can generate infinite troops while the person who took weeks or months to build it will get punished.

[valid cloud]

If the problem is ultimately the banks, why not just allow server TPs, but without the generals?

And if there are problems with upgrades, why not allow, for example, 100 upgrades per account? This would allow everyone to specialize and be stronger together.

[rich ocean]

General Banks are an issue regardless of the Server TP, that would fix the "buying Generals from different community"-thing, but not the Banks in general.

Limiting the amount of upgrades was asked for, but apparently goes against what GF / Dev intend for the game (evrything going infinite), so proly wont happen.

[feral quartz]

Finally, someone here who shines with brains. 👌 👍

[last shale]

Actually the people don’t figth to much cause Holy grave is awful in a real war, (give resources to the enemy no make sense ) anyways is another story, but and now you suggest that the players that invest tons of crystal. To make fights and defend himself cause when you have many city’s also is a many city’s to defend, this could be a problem for big accs, so im not agree

[astral steppe]

The upkeep's raising cost limit could take into account the total points of the player, that way big account are impacted but at much higher army points limit than small account, and that would prevent bank account even more (because usually they're relatively small account) and spare normal player within normal range of total point/ army point ratio.

[rich ocean]

Maybe Future Research of Military or f.e Palace-Level or smth. like that, could be reasonable so Players know exactly how to increase the limit for their account.

[fast onyx]

It just makes no logical sense to me, if I'm being completely honest. Why would upkeep incoherently increase depending on the amount of troops you have in that particular way? It already naturally and logically gets more and more the more troops you have, but why would more troops increase the upkeep per unit? That just makes no logical sense to me and thus makes it hard for me to follow the logic of the suggestion.

Sure, I get it, general banks suck and it sucks that there are a lot of players who are just too lazy or incompetent to play the game themselves/in a fair way. And we are going to make life harder for them. But I am not sure making arbitrary changes like this is the right way.

Sure, it's a game, not reality. But I personally just can't wrap my head around the idea of "If you have 500k troops one unit will magically all of a sudden now eat more and therefore cost more than before, when you had only 300k troops.". That simply makes no sense to me whatsoever, sorry.

Long story short: it is my personal firm belief, that this suggestion would not really prevent or even kill the general banks issue in its current shape and form while effectively putting a big dent in the fun of players who just grow and grow and grow and thus get and maintain bigger and bigger armies. I can also not 100% follow the argument that size of army does not consitute a factor of strength. It does. Sure, a zerg rush will always be an "easy solution" and doesn't really do anything towards making people think you're a big magical strategic genius wunderkind. Strength in numbers may not be smart, it may not be the weapon of choice of said magical strategic wunderkinds, but....it exists. It is a factor. And rightfully so, simply by pure merit of reality. You can be the smartest super genius in the history of super geniuses but ultimately, if your idea can be thwarted by sheer numbers, it ultimately isn't really effective, now, is it?

Ok, long story really short: I am unsure how to proceed with this suggestion. It's controversial and I personally can't see the benefit outweighing the disadvantages and the risk of killing the fun for far too many players.

[sharp sun]

I know how to proceed : denied. Next ?

[fast onyx]

Yes and no. There's a lot of merit to the basic idea/thought process. And it ** IS** a fact that general banks as they are used these days ARE a problem. Something needs to be done. I am just unsure, whether this really is this something.
Need to let this stew for a while longer, but unfortunately, as it stands right now and for the reasons I think I made clear above, I am leaning towards declining this one, yes.

[astral steppe]

why not just increase the tax rate in the black market ?

Bank account with the new workshop, they just store army and sell them, they don"t fight with it, since they have most likely weak upgrade.

If you put some restriction on the total army I'm just gonna store the whole army on 2 or 3 accounts so i'll always be under that limit, since they are in vm it's the same for me.

But if you increase the tax rate, it'll cost more gold to sell/buy them, so you'll directly hit their gold reserve no matter where it's stored. It will impact a bit the normal player, but far less since they buy/sell far less unit.

That and a 24 or 48 h selling troops ban for account getting out on VM, will most likely kill army bank (since you have to endure 24 or 48h of upkeep).

[rich ocean]

I think its quite realistic that the bigger your army already is, the harder it becomes to increase it even more.
If you want to increase the amount of soldiers you have, making the job more appealing by increasing the wages seems only reasonable (and ofc you'd have to increase the wages of the soldiers you already have aswell).

Linking this with the overall Population you already have (so instead of a fixed limit of 100k generals, making this limit dependent on the population) would just be another way of making it "more realistic".
Though I'm personally less keen about the "realism"-part, that's imo a detailed thing that can always be adjusted by Dev hence I focus more on the overall issues.

General Banks are just one of the many issues we have right now, please dont reduce this suggestion just on that, I named several of them after all.

The last changes resulted at making the strategic aspect of battles less and less relevant, there needs to be smth done against this, otherwise one of the biggest strengths of ikariam (the unique battlesystem) will be gone and mass (of both upgrades and units) will continue to dominate battles in the most boring way, which can be found in other games aswell, dont need to play Ika for that.

[fast onyx]

Can't really follow that logic. If feeding one unit costs 10$ per day when you have 300k units, why would it cost 15$ per day when you have 500k units? All that gets more expensive or requires more effort is logistics. Which isn't a micro-management factor in Ikariam in THAT regard so far.

[rich ocean]

There already was a much less controversial taken suggestion about the General Vault, that wasn't forwarded either because of arbitrary reasons.
But obv. suggestions in these directions will always be controversial to some degree, simply because some people prefer to keep abusing in the current way.

I'm rly curious about what your perfect masterplan is gonna be on how to solve all the issues, I rly am and I rly hope you guys are going to make it happen, to get rid of abuses and make the battle-system enjoyable again.

[fast onyx]

Who says I have a masterplan? If anything at all, I am the one constantly pointing out, how difficult this topic actually is.
Your suggestion has the benefit of being a fairly simple "solution" at first glance. At second and third glance: how would that bother those who already employ the bad general banks? I don't see it. I see, however, how it would bother a bunch of folks who just have huge armies.

[rich ocean]

Thats both explained in the suggestion-Post, it wouldnt shut down General Banks completely, it would stop the escalation of those and stop the escalation of armies in general.

And yes, reducing army-sizes is one of the aims after all, that's not a "disadvantage", it's on purpose.
Players continuosly complain about Battles being too long (which they are because Players have much bigger armies nowadays).

Whether it would bother "normal Players who just so happen to have big armies" is debatable, because at the end it depends on where/how you set the limit.
And also because those Players would usually have these big armies precisely because of those who abuse General Banks and escalate army numbers.

[fast onyx]

Both complaints coexist, though. Those who love bigger fights and those who hate that fights get so long by default these days. Part of my job - which you very well know - is to see all parties and try and find options to somehow accomodate both in a way that doesn't anger one over the other too drastically. And that is my difficulty here right now.

I did read your initial suggestion post. Several times even. And personally, if it was just about me, I would say "Heck yeah, make it as expensive as possible. I don't care about fighting anyway.". But it isn't just about me. And, disregarding motivation and personal intent for a moment, the simple fact is: there are 2 main opposing sides here and they are almost equal in number.

You see my dilemma there, don't you?

[surreal gale]

I disagree with the desire to reduce army sizes. If you want battles to be shorter, increase the battlefield size instead.

[feral quartz]

Gold is the easiest way to achieve something in the game.
Therefore, your suggestion would only further weaken casual players and strengthen large multiplayer players.
The building must be completely removed to restore the old balance in the game.
As it stands now, there are no more wars or appeal in the game because these banks are only used to boost accounts.

[little hill]

As ACID EU said, if this gets implemented, it won't get rid of the banks, it will just even further advantage older players who each have 10+ accounts. They can just keep the upper limit in 10 develop accounts. Right now, if you levelled up fast, even if you don't have many accounts, you can still dominate through upgrades, high Town Hall level and high Gods' Shrine (gold). Yes, you need to make at least one "bank" of your own, but that's not very hard, even for a small alliance to do. Now, with this suggestion, you will need multiple high-level accounts to be competitive (upgrades, army cap, etc.) while playing with just one single strong account (if you didn't start the game in 2009 and thus don't have many) will get punished heavily.

In short, this will hand over the servers to old players with established empires, who will easily skirt over the gold-cap rule.

I am in favour of an earlier suggestion, which bans generals from being transferred across servers. Yes, you can still build up a bank on a new server, but that AT LEAST puts everyone on an equal footing in terms of the arms race.

[broken jolt]

I think a maintenance strategy would be welcome, but based on the score, for example, if 50% of your TOTAL score exceeds the normal score (excluding Generals), you get +100% maintenance and scaling.

Generally, the generals bank has very little points, usually enough to complete the server entry score. Therefore, 100k points without generals and 900k generals.

If this discrepancy is >
50% - +100
100% - +200
200% - +400
...
900% - +1800% maintenance

[little hill]

Man, if you wanna do all that, might as well make it a hard limit