Concede-stats

[Negern]

Hate it when people join games just to concede in a couple of turns, so i thought maybe you could add "concedes" next to the other stats, like 1vs1-wins and enable the game host to choose maximum percantage of concedes for those who are about to join. If one has twenty percent concedes he can't join a maximum of ten percent-games.
Maybe not all concedes should count, but early (less than ten, fifteen turns) concedes in FFA-games feels like a good idea.
Can't remember one single FFA-game without someone conceding. According to me it's a big problem.

[zorro]

what you mean? people surrendering?

for me that means as much of a problem as alliances, CFs, NAPs mean. The game just isnt fair to you!

[Negern]

Not people surrendering. It's understandable that someone drops out when the other player has twice the castles, troops, etc. To me the problem is when someone drops out just in a couple of turns, giving some of the players much better chances to expand than others. It completely ruins the overall balance, often reassuring one players win and the other one's losses.
You've never seen this happen in FFA-games?

[ezras]

But again as has been stated before, are we talking about those that quit (perhaps because they lost a few early battles), or those that miss the first few turns and are booted. Ultimately this can be avoided with game invites and password protected games. In the FFA games you are playing you could invite the reliable players that are left to a password protected game....

But it would be nice if there was also a power-ranking so those that make it to the top in a FFA game that was also taken into account. Then you could use the power ranking rather just the concede stats.

[kenc80]

Yes early game concession is an issue. However, I dont really fault players for not fighting it out if the game turns against them, even early. If I am in an FFA with Zorro, KGB, LP, Steff or some other good players and I lose my hero and first 2 or 3 battles then yeah Im probably "conceding" early too.

I think the bigger point is what to do with castles that have been surrendered. This point has been discussed and the idea that if the castles are razed that would solve a lot of the balance problems. I cant remember and am too lazy to look it up but I'm almost certain thats what was decided.

Kenneth

[LichKing]

I agree it's a problem. Imho the best solution would be: if a town has been conquered by a player who then surrendered (it doesn't matter when or why) it is treated as a city-state, and continues to produce units until it reaches its maintenance limit. F.e. a town which can produce heavy infantry and has an income of 20 x turn, will continue producing HI until 10 units are produced, then stop. If it can produce HI and dragons, maybe 5 HI first and then a dragon. And so for each town that has been owned by a player at any time of the game.

[ezras]

I think I remember a setting like that in Warlords2. Neutral cities are active or something. But from a programming stance I think it would have to be all neutral cities or none.

[piranha]

I think we are going to do something like lichkings idea. Its really boring when all cities are razed when you struggled to beat a player and you finally break through his defense and all his cities are destroyed. It may cost you the game because you invested everything you had without any return.

We talked about having a city produce until it reaches 8 units. Using the income from the city might be a even better idea.

As soon as the player give up, all his cities without any units can have 1 unit placed in them so they can't be captured with a crow.

[KGB]

Piranha,

What are you going to do with existing units that may be in a city? Leave them there and count their upkeep against the income (and reduce units if it exceeds)? One issue with producing units in neutrals like that is it makes cities with 1 turn units much harder to capture than those with 2-5 turn units because a city will quickly fill with masses of armies.

The big problem here is players dropping on turns 1-5 where they sign up for a game and never play a turn or maybe play 1 then don't return to the game. So what you propose won't help because they won't have any cities to turn into active neutrals. So players next to those who drop will benefit with easy areas to expand into. Unless of course you are planning to literally make every neutral city produce armies which would drag games out interminably while players struggle to capture neutrals filled with 4-8 men.

Plus in Beta4, if I am actively resigning instead of dropping out, I'm going to self-raze every city I have. So there won't be any of my cities to turn into these active neutrals.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

Im currently working on the Active-Neutral functionality, so here is some feedback so far

Not all cities will be Active, only cities that belonged to a resigned human player will be set to Active.

Units left in the city will still stay there (same way as it works right now)
If the city is empty, some units will be auto-produced to make sure it is not empty.

Units will then be produced in the Active city until one of two criterias is true:
1. The city holds X or more units (currently X is set to 12)
2. The city upkeep limit is reached (for all the units in the city). Might be upkeep*0.5 though, if upkeep is a too high value.

As for people dropping out early in the game, thats a problem we know, and in beta4 it will mainly be addressed by extending the instantjoin time to the first 3 turns (still working on that one though). In long term we are looking into the AI solution, but it wont happen for beta4 for sure.

As for self-razing all cities when surrendering:
Most players will probably not bother with this, and also there is a cost involved, so you wont be able to raze all your cities unless you are very rich