Solution for (dis)advantage when NAP ends

[Maze]

The player that goes first in the turn when a NAP ends often has an advantage over the player(s) that come(s) later in the turn, i.e. the first player can push into the other one's territory and sit at his door(s) until the truce is over and will then have the opportunity to crush the opponent even before he can defend himself. The only solution now is trying to block his road or other access in order to prevent him to come close enough and patiently wait until the truce is over.

I have experienced this on both sides and regardless of my position, I didn't and don't like it, it's a weak spot in the game.

Thinking of possible solutions I have come to one that thematically and game-wise seems fair and easy to implement: a unit or stack that is close (*) to a "friendly" city can get in touch with the people of this friendly city and might abandon the army and choose (**) to migrate (***) to the "friendly" city. End of door-knocking and crushing the opponent on the very first turn after the truce.

How to read (*) close and (**) migrate? Several options for the developers:
(*) close: to be defined as
1. within a predefined distance around a city (which can even be non-fixed but depending on the city level, e.g. the view distance of a city) or
2. closer to the other player's city than to the own city

(**) choose: to be defined as a percentage of chance/risk that a unit/stack/part of a stack "leaves" the player

(***) migrate: to be defined as
1. choose to join the other player (= changes color) at the end of the truce or
2. choose not to fight anymore and becomes a (in the game non-existing, hence disappearing) normal citizen of the other player
If 1. then it's probably easier to do this on a stack level, not partial stack, if 2. then it's possible to do this on stack level or even on unit level, i.e. each unit of a stack risks to "leave" resulting in a reduced stack.

Bottom-line: either fight your co-players or stay out of their backyard if you have a truce with (one of) them.

___
Alternatives:
- stacks that are too close (same definition as above) to a "friendly" player when a truce ends are moved or teleported (duration = same as between cities) to your own closest city.
- combination of "risking" to lose the units and, if not, having them moved/teleported to your own closest city.

[Jeremy]

Personally, I dislike NAPs so much that I'm no longer playing free-for-all games. I'm all for alliances, but the possiblity of betrayal is what makes life interesting!

[LPhillips]

I hate the NAP feature. Any time I try to use it, it just ruins the game one way or another. That's 8/9 times so far; the only exception is when I wanted to guarantee a dead player the opportunity to remain and watch his map play out (it was a test game after all).

I campaigned against the NAP feature before implementing it as it exists today because it's detrimental to the game. It made it in anyway, but I still think it sucks. Nifty programming, but it has been very detrimental to the FFA experience and the actual diplomacy we once had to use there. Worst of all, it can't even be disabled, even for Ladder games.

All NAP's should be word of mouth. If you want to surrender a city to an opponent in exchange for cooperation, then you should have to physically make the transaction. There should be no magical contract that prevents players from violating the agreement. There are just so many things wrong with this feature from a gameplay and enjoyment perspective, even though it's so well well executed from an interface/programming point of view.

LP

[piranha]

One thing we have discussed is the ability to break the pact. For example the agreement can be broken anytime at a cost, if you pay 100 gold per turn left to the other player or something like that. Could that be a good option? We have no plan to remove the NAP feature but it could be improved to be better and the biggest problem is like you say. The second player to move is at a pretty big disadvantage.

[Moonknight]

I would vote for it to be removed from all ladder games myself...

[KGB]

Piranha,

One thing we have discussed is the ability to break the pact. For example the agreement can be broken anytime at a cost, if you pay 100 gold per turn left to the other player or something like that. Could that be a good option?

This is the worst of all. I would abuse this badly by sending in a powerful hero stack into the middle of my NAP partners cities until he reached a point where he could do max damage (reach 2-3 cities in 1 turn). Then pay a few hundred gold and rampage 2-3 cities. A decent pillage would more than make up a few hundred gold I spend.

We have no plan to remove the NAP feature but it could be improved to be better and the biggest problem is like you say. The second player to move is at a pretty big disadvantage.

It's WAY worse than moving 2nd. I've abused NAP's really badly in games. Here are some examples.

1) In one game I signed an NAP with a player. I immediately surrounded his best hero stack with 8 crows like this
XXX
XYX
XXX
leaving him completely unable to move until the NAP ended. By that time he had lost a couple of cities because he couldn't use his hero stack and I was able to expand and conquer so that by the time it ended we went from being even to me being nicely in the lead and able to conquer him.

2) In many other games I've learned that AS SOON AS YOU SIGN THE NAP you must rush to cover every port, bless site, 1 wide passageway, ruin etc to deny the other player/team in the NAP the ability to move/expand. In a team game I am in with Smursh on the Midguard map we signed an NAP with another team and I told Smursh to immediately seal off all ports/bless sites etc. We completely hosed the other team preventing them from entering the water and expanding. They were left with 8 stacks that could not enter the water or reach neutrals because they were blocked by 1 unit. When the NAP ends in in another 4-5 turns we will have double the cities the other team has and they will be toast.

And you can't just solve it by allowing stacks to pass through NAP armies because the biggest reason I block is I don't want NAP player stacks sitting outside my cities waiting for the NAP to end so they can attack and I can't do anything about it.

What I am saying is there no good solution to the NAP issue as LPhillips notes. If you sign one you really have to be prepared to do #2 above to prevent it being done to you. Or just not sign an NAP or only sign one for 2 turns (maybe we need to be able to sign them for that short a time) and keep renewing it so cheap tactics will be less viable.

KGB

[Chazar]

I like the NAP mechanism for FFA games pretty much as it is, except for the silly road blocks.

The solution would be to allow firendly stacks to move through each other (and possibly through friendly cities). So if a stack has enough move, the stack may move over spaces from other NAP partners.

Another option ought to be to alter the pact in mutual agreement. Just like when offering a NAP, the same mechanism could be used to offer a cancellation for an existing NAP by giving/demanding money/cites. Easy enough.

Furthemore, conditional durations would be helpful, i.e. the NAP last until Player X was eliminated, or until city Y was conquered, etc. This would relive the problem that the NAP lasts accidentally too long, when players participating in a pact have achieved their mutual goal and then want to go for each others throat.

[LPhillips]

In Warlords, I believe one simply cancelled the alliance, effective on the other player's turn, thereby ceding first move when cancelling "NAP"/alliance. Also not effective at solving the problem, as you'd have indefinite NAP then.

The NAP system is well programmed, and a neat feature. But I don't see any way around the caveats. Just removing it from ladder play, so serious players don't have to worry about it, would be enough for me. Even the ability to set it as a pregame option would be nice. The trouble with controversial options like that is that they fragment the community (I would likely refuse to ever play a game with the NAP feature again).

LP

[Moonknight]

1) In one game I signed an NAP with a player. I immediately surrounded his best hero stack with 8 crows like this
XXX
XYX
XXX
leaving him completely unable to move until the NAP ended. By that time he had lost a couple of cities because he couldn't use his hero stack and I was able to expand and conquer so that by the time it ended we went from being even to me being nicely in the lead and able to conquer him.

KGB

I have had this tactic used against me a couple of times, I think it should be programmed that if you are in a NAP then you can pass through the opponents players in non-cities.

[Maze]

Diplomacy is a nice part of the game imho. The question was raised a couple of times whether this should be structurally designed (like it is now) or "unsigned / word of mouth". Both should be possible I think:
- unsigned cannot be prevented anyway
- signed: pros and cons:
>> cons: see above:
- blocking a "friendly" player's (hero) stack
- blocking a passage/dock/...
- waiting at the doors of a city until the NAP is over and attack (especially bad for second player)
>> pros:
- "Oops, I didn't realize it was you, thought it was another player"
- "Sorry, I have to capture that city/... because ... but you can take/get/..."
- New players can rely on this truce without having to be worried of making mistakes or whom to trust or not or what could go wrong. This would cause too many frustrations (incl. of experienced players towards new players). (And this can also be considered an argument PRO "no NAP's for ladder games" (= "Do not play ladder games before you have gained some experienced, you would end up being crushed by the top anyway.")

The cons can exactly be countered by allowing stacks to pass friendly stacks and if this would make the issue bigger of players waiting at the other player's cities (which is a con anyway)... tadaaa, that's exactly what this thread's suggestion is about:
When a truce ends, all stacks that are close to the other player's cities have x % chance to "migrate" to the other player = you better stay away from his territory (or leave it by the end of the truce) and start your journey towards the other player's city when the truce is over. Basically if we consider two opponent cities with a truce, they can both sit and wait somewhere in the middle between the cities.
(Kind of feels like Warbaron's equivalent of the off-side rule in soccer .)