Posts by Brum

Remember those two (using script) ?

I don't think they could revert back since they also introduced new building slots. But an alternative to those copy/paste trees should be doable.

In fact, you can even do it yourself if you have the skills to draw a proper alternative. I can provide the code part of it

I cannot wait for them to fix this bug..

Having a hard cap would definitely prevent the apocalyptic scenario of main accounts coming to raid your cities with 10k cargos

You're on streak ! Earning gold as a means to an end would definitely bring a refreshing experience to the game

I'd love to have more gold sink opportunities! As of now, only cargo ships have this role and it quickly become not worth your while.

That's why you see players with billions and billions of gold on less populated server

Your third suggestion is brilliant, since it would completely change the dynamic of combat, without having to rebalance the whole system!

This could make military engagement much more strategic, as you could not just steam roll a large army into a city, and just give up the fight without repercussion.

Same goes for the wall expansion using gold! It could also serve as a passive way to defend against barbarian attacks

However I think the renting of cargo ships could quickly become an issue, since players with multis+VPN could abuse this feature very easily

Well thought out !

I really like the dual aspect of the bonus ; this would finally provide "true choices", not just a meta everyone needs to follow. Not only would it provide a dilemma when picking the miracle of your new colonies, but also on regular basis based on your current dominant playstyle

Would you keep the faith as it is today, or do you also have an alternative in mind ?

Quote from Ikariamer

Quote from Brum

[...]

Since the rewards have not been distributed yet for all servers, we don't know the effect of the level of the hydra. The resources I got was 28 per point of damage but that's for level 6 hydra. I agree that it is way too low, but I think we also need to get more data from other servers that reached level 7 or level 8 hydra and compare the rewards there. If a higher level hydra means higher ratio of rewards, then this would be another logical stimuli for more players to participate in order to get higher rewards at a group level.

If I got 30.5 (resources + gold) for level 6 hydra that would be roughly 5.1 resources per level. So if a server manager to reach level 10 of hydra, it would be 51 (resources + gold) per point of damage, which is already significantly better. Curious to see if this is the case. If it is, then the event would be much better.

badidol are you allowed to share more information on the rewards system?

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Let's hope you are right!

Although it's also good to consider that if there is one multiplier based on milestone, it will more or less always be the same ; since the hydra's hitpoints scales with the server activity.

Most active server I can access finished between 6 and 8 milestone. I've only seen one screenshot of a milestone 9 with very low HP.

If I'm not mistaken, the maximum resources from piracy is 660.000.000 total resources while the maximum resources for Hydra is 10,684,800 total resources using 6,360 ambrosia and 2,671,200 without ambrosia (Note that this does not factor the unit cost).

Piracy

5 warehouses x 480 protected resources x 50 level x 20 cities x 2.75 multiplier from top 1 = 33.000.000

And since this is for each resources type 33.000.000 x 5 = 660.000.000 total resources bonus.

And this is pure profit ; no upkeep/civilian/resources used.

Hydra

Note that this consider you basically use a bot to not miss any attack even by one second + get the prefect damage possible every attack + use ambrosia all the way.

53 hours (duration of the event) x 6 attacks per hour x 1200 damage = 381.600 total damage (=TTD)

You then get the following reward: (TTD x3 stone) + (TTD x2 wine) + (TTD x1.5 crystal) + (TTD x13 wood) + (TTD x8.5 sulfur) = (TTD x (3 + 2 + 1.5 + 13 + 8,5)) = 10,684,800 total resources. if you are always using ambrosia for a total of 53 hours (duration of the event x 6 attacks per hour x 20 ambroisia = 6,360 ambrosia

Now for unit recruitement cost: let's be generous and say you are only using phalanx to score the maximum 1200 damage point on every attaque.

You will have to send a total of 53 hours x 6 attacks x 200 phalanx = 63.600 phalanx.

With a lvl50 carpenter + lvl50 Firework test area, phalanx cost 20 wood and 15 sulfur.

We then get a total cost of: (20 wood x 63.600 phalanx) + (15 sulfur x 63.600 phalanx) = 1,272,015 resources.

That's half the total reward for a F2P player, and only by using phalanx while getting the maximum 1200 damage every run (which is really unrealistic).

Not only do we need waaaaaay better reward for the upcoming event, but it only seems fair to me to also rework the rewards for this first event.

Quote from Chuck "Bee" Bashlick

I think everyone who posts in the "Abyssal Ambush Questions" thread should get together and either create a "What If... Abyssal Ambush" thread where they write about how the event should actually be built, or a "Abyssal Ambush Fun Thread" where they explain how they make fun of the event (like the one I made for Soft Merge).

I actually made a thread hoping to generate such response: If you're interested: Abyssal Ambush feedback

Quote from Quartz

Fourth, why do naval units need to load? The lack of loading time would be balanced by their increased cost.

To me it seems sent troops and ships, aren't actually sent the way they are in the rest of the game.

Like a parallel system which do not make use of existing mechanic like loading speed based on port, port being blocked or like your said ships not needed to load to depart.

I'm guessing it is there way to introduce more balance into the event

Quote from Rastan

I personally didn't find it challenging, it was just a fire pit for units.. it was boring.

if this game was chess (and im not saying it is) the ambush event was like playing checkers.

I cannot agree more. I've also given some feedback on this particular matter, aka adding depth to the event: Abyssal Ambush feedback

Hello everyone,

First let's say that the event was a fantastic addition, and it generated a lot of excitement and enthusiasm among players.
It’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into creating it, and the community has really enjoyed the new challenges and opportunities it presented. The buzz around this event has been palpable, and it’s been great to see everyone so engaged.

Now let's take the bull by the horns.

Rewards

I won't directly tackle the subject of rewards. I think the players have made their disappointment clear enough already.

Gameplay pitfalls

Rather, I'd like to speak of the event itself, which in some aspect seems lacking in design, but the potential is there. First I'll go through aspects I feel need improvements, and then I'll propose some more or less basic solution to solve those issues.

1. Non-cohesive experience 🔗

Similarly to pirates, the event is disconnected from other game mechanics unique to Ikariam. It does not take advantage of espionage, morale, research, miracle, workshop, military tactics, alliances, garrison/occupation... the event exists by itself, and for itself.

As of now, you could pretty much add it to Ogame, Gladius, Kingsage.. and it would work exactly the same.

2. Poor gameplay loop ➰

The gameplay stays the same from the first minute to the last. Their is some mathematic formula to discover to reach the maximum damage output, but that's it.

There is no strategy to apply beside spamming the same units for hours on end.

Note that the novelty and possibility of unknown reward made this first run quite enjoyable. It's been 10 years since I felt such engouement in the game. However you can break down the event to a simple gameplay loop: sacrifice unit to see a score go up.

3. Not a multiplayer activity 💔

Their is no possible teamwork beside trading units. No coordination server-wide is needed or encouraged let alone inside an alliance. This a purely solo experience in a multiplayer game.

4. Monster's HP / milestones 💹

The hydra's HP will scale based on some server activity based esoteric formula, but for not apparent reason. Milestone do not affect the event itself neither does it affects the rewards.

5. Server wide event 🏝️

While this is a server wide event, nothing represents it beside the progress bar. Their is no flavor added outside the dedicated panel, and again, the milestone reached do not affect anything.

6. Low exploit 🐒

People abusing existing game mechanics are at an advantage. Specifically, military banks and non declared multi-accounts.
No need to start debating the legitacy of such behavior, the reality is that players are willing to spend a few hundred dollars and buy accounts full military units. As such, those players have access in large quantity to the most efficient units possible for a given milestone.
While there is no way to easily and systematically get ride of such abuse (and this is not the subject of this post), the event could be designed in a way so everyone would benefit from such behavior.

7. Little incentive to spend ambrosia 🤑

Even more so now that we know the reward for reaching top 3, there is no actual benefit of using ambrosia during the event. While this isn't an issue for players, it certainty isn't ideal for GameForge.

Gameplay suggestions

In this section, I will prefix each suggestion with the icons corresponding to the problem it tackles.

• 💔🏝️ AGORA
  Add an agora like interface to the event to let the player coordinate themselves.I've contact and been contacted by many players during this event, but having a centralized place to communicate would boaster the participation and subsequent interaction. I know it's hard to moderate, but this is supposed to be a comunity event
• 🔗➰💔🏝️ GROUPED ATTACKS
  Make it possible to have grouped attack and/or alliance based attack. Each added player in a group would increase a coefficient which then increase damage output.
  For exemple: total group damages * (1 + 0.1 * nb players in group). You could also have the coefficient be different for alliance based group and public ones.
• 🔗➰💔🏝️ PREVENT HYDRA ATTACKS
  Prevent attacking the hydra if the port of a city is blocked. This, paired with the group/alliance attacks would create awesome conflict specifically nearing the end of the event.
  With this, players could work together to reach the top, but also could turn on each other to snatch the best possible places.
• 🥀💹🐒 IMPACT OF MILESTONE ON FINAL REWARD
  To avoid alpha alliance from just constantly blocking the participation of weaker players, increase the total received reward based on the milestone reached by the server as a whole (milestone would need to have consistent fixed HP, and the dynamic scaling would be applied on the final reward).
  This would mean that early on during the event, a wave of cooperation would be seen, and as we near its end, more and more conflict would erupt.
• 🔗➰💔🏝️ 💹🐒🤑 MULTI TARGET MONSTERS
  Split the hydra into different body part, each having its own effect on players while the part is still alive and provide bonus once it is killed. Once destroyed, a body part would go on cooldown, and will respawn stronger later.
  
  Let's take the Hydra as an example:
  • X heads: each heads representing 1/X of the damage output done to players' units. Once a head is destroyed, the cooldown would start before it regrowth, and during that time, 1/5 of the damage output will be deduced from players' units.
  • 4 legs: each legs destroyed provide -25% traveling time for all players
  • 1 tail: reduce damage from players' units when alive, and bonus damage once killed
  
  It would also incentives player for using ambrosia, as a server could organize itself to take down multiple body part at once, thus players would want to take advantage of the different bonus as much as possible. To prevent the server from attacking the parts one by one and keep them low health such as destroying them all at once, a body part with little to no damage would start to recover HP over time.
  Also this would help introduce diversity into this event, as different monsters could have a wide variety of body parts.

• 💹🤑 REWARD DURING ONGOING EVENT
  Provide smaller incremental rewards for defeating a milestone and or a body part. It could be prowess, items, resources...
  This would help to keep players engaged with the event for its whole duration.
  It doesn't have to be an addition to the existing reward system, be be deducted from it ; the idea is just to help keeping the engagement up, and this is a proven method
• 🔗➰💔🤑 DAMAGE BONUS BASED ON MONSTER'S STATS
  Have the % bonus damage of units depend on the attributes stats of the current monster (e
  For exemple if the hydra has:

  
  

  
  

  • high robustness: bonus to balloon and mortars
  • high agility: bonus to gyro, archer
  • ...

    
    

    
    

  Each monster type (hydra, gorgon, siren) having its stats randomly generated but always inside a pre-defined/static range. This would help to hype up upcoming event, by letting players prepare the necessary units to take down the monster the most efficiently possible.
• 🔗🏝️ SERVER WIDE DISTURBANCE
  There is not incentive beside the reward to take down the monsters. While adding malus on resource production would be a bit much, having cosmetic changes could do the trick.
  For example, once the event starts, all the cities could be invaded by Vermin.

Quality of life improvements

Small (I believe) changes to enhance the overall experience :

• add the possibility to search for players in the score board
• add the possibility to hide the main banner
• Replace the bonus to travel + loading speed with a one that boost damage done to the monster. With the same 20 ambrosia price tag, the outputted damages would be identical. The only change is that players using ambro won't have to be 4x more active than F2P one

Bugs

Finally, this section is about bugs, or what looks like it.

• the main event bar is only partially responsive. Element's position adapt but not height and width
• no military notification is received for army an reaching the hydra
• cannot attack from an occupied/garrisoned town. If it's intended, we do not have a pop-up explaining that the action is not possible
• incorrect message when trying to send a second army against the hydra (only Access Denied)
• one can still attack the hydra even with a blocked port
• no achievements reward for Abyssal Monster Hunter level 4 & 5 of attack >50 lack rewards

Final thoughts

Once again, it is awesome to see the game I grow up with receive updated and new content. Specifically when the new content has some much untapped potential.