My Lands: Black Gem Hunting

The game at least on the English server has serious balance issues, the top players have an army that are nearly 200 times larger than the smallest 5 star players that they are completely free to attack and that doesn't include their far superior heroes. An obvious answer would be to add extra levels although since that has been suggested a bunch of times previously it seems you are unwilling to consider that option.

If servers were opened regularly then at least people wouldn't be forced to join a server that is well over a year old but there does not seem to be enough interest to warrant another English server, I have previously made a suggestion of having a European server where everyone logging into it can choose their local language to play in rather than having single language servers so we have a larger single pool of players rather than a bunch of tiny ponds which has led to the English one being virtually empty since very few people want to start a server where they get wiped by someone 100 times bigger than them after having played for a month or two to reach level 5 and they don't have an option to start a recently opened server since there is not enough interest so they go elsewhere which keeps the interest in the game down which prevents a new server from opening ad infinitum. If a new English server was started then it would probably be popular then the existing one although the few newer players who have stuck around on the first server would probably leave so the big players would probably start bitching about not being able to attack anyone due to the new server opening and taking all the easy kills.

Assuming we aren't going to get any changes on the levels or a new server then a suggestion to help balance things a little bit would be to remove healers from the game, Healers basically give the big players complete freedom to hit people about a quarter of their size or smaller with complete freedom knowing that they won't lose a single troop while the smaller player loses everything. Removing healers from the game would at least mean the big players receive some losses, the big players will still get to choose what they hit and will be able to take everything out in one round so hitting low attack troops and avoiding mercs and archers would mean the smaller player is likely to still receive losses that are higher than the attacker even with towers and the defence bonus but at least they will get to inflict some damage and by focusing on high attack troops they may actually be able to create a deterrent whereas the bigger players can ignore mercs and archers from smaller players now since they know they have enough healers to resurrect any losses the smaller player can inflict.

People that already have healers won't be pleased to see them just wiped from the game so some sort of compensation would be needed, giving 1 black gem for every 5 or 6 healers could be reasonable compensation since that would match the typical gold price in the auction of around 35000 gold per bg, an alternative might be to allow players to turn healers into other troops of there choice up to the rating value of the healers, if they could put the rating value of the healers into a sort of bank and draw troops from it when they wish that would probably be more tolerable than having to suddenly convert everything at once. Allowing the healer buildings to be changed to another troop building of the players choice would also make sense.

There would be a lot more turnover of troops so reducing the recruitment time and costs of the troops by about half would balance this out, this would also benefit the smaller players more than the bigger ones since it would allow them to catch up faster whereas the very large players would find the improved recruitment time less useful since more troops would require even more upkeep, in troop number terms they will almost certainly build more but in percentage terms the smaller players are likely to double there army size whereas the top players are far less likely to since it would be harder for them to afford the upkeep costs if they did so in relative terms the smaller player benefits, 200v1500 is better than 100v1000 for example. On the plus side for the bigger players when they do hit someone they would kill more troops and therefore get more hero experience.

How would ruins work? Where you will always lose troops for every ruin you attack....

What you suggest would basically completely break the game.

Actually, it might affect larger players less than you think. As you pointed out, the long standing players have built up their heroes, have artefacts, and a bank of scrolls. With these they could still pump their army to an extent they would have minimal losses when they do attack. But you would make the game pretty boring, with very few attacks ever happening, due to the loss of troops and needing to rebuild them between each attack.

kingkano wrote:How would ruins work? Where you will always lose troops for every ruin you attack....

What you suggest would basically completely break the game.

Actually, it might affect larger players less than you think. As you pointed out, the long standing players have built up their heroes, have artefacts, and a bank of scrolls. With these they could still pump their army to an extent they would have minimal losses when they do attack. But you would make the game pretty boring, with very few attacks ever happening, due to the loss of troops and needing to rebuild them between each attack.

So you are basically saying that people won't be willing to fight if they lose troops which is basically making my point that healers give the big players to the ability to hit smaller ones without any risk to themselves and avoid those of a similar size which is exactly the reason I think that healers should be taken from the game.

I have to disagree though that people won't fight though if the suggestion was to be implemented, in pretty much every other game of this type everyone in the fight loses some troops and there is still fighting, in most of them there is actually a lot more fighting then in here. In here it is pretty much limited to big players catching smaller players troops returning home of players leaving troops out of the sanctuary while not being around, not exactly a good way of encouraging new players to join. Other games tend to have quicker recruitment times for troops which helps rebuilding losses which is why part of my suggestion focused on reducing the cost and recruitment times.

Won`t happen, healers stay.

I think you need to learn how to play the game Atlantis1. You build slowly, you use your temple, return home from a ruin when the gate is closed build your defenses strong, plenty of counterspies and mirrors, choose good allies, be accepted into a decent clan. You can also relocate to a quieter area if your too close to some aggressive players, but on the other hand being close to aggressive players mean you learn to defend well.

Yes there are big players out there, but if you actually spend time to 'learn how to play' you wouldn't be moaning so much and you'd get on your way to become a big player.

ZenZephyr wrote:Yes there are big players out there, but if you actually spend time to 'learn how to play' you wouldn't be moaning so much and you'd get on your way to become a big player.

Actually I do know what I am doing, in every game of this type I've played I've always been around the top of the charts. Most games of this type tend to be close to linear, you hit someone defending with half your attack size and you lose about half your attack, you hit someone defending with a quarter of your attack and you lose a quarter etc, it does tend to vary depending on troop types, you attack or defend with the correct troops you do quite a bit better than average, you attack or defend with the wrong type and you do quite a bit worse than average but on average losses are fairly linear, in here it's exponential, you hit someone a quarter of your size and you lose very little unless you screw up badly, hit someone a tenth of the size and you should never lose anything unless you forgot to send healers.

I've only been playing here for 4 months and my army strength is currently growing around 2 million per day from a current potential of around 2.6 million a day (the deficit is mainly due to lack of food since my army is currently only big enough to hit 1 ruin at a time and has to be moved around my cities so I can only hit 3 or 4 ruins a day on average, I buy up most of the food that goes onto the market near me even though it tends to be posted at 20, unfortunately a lot of the time there is none available.

At the current rate assuming I don't lose most of my army I should be in the top 25 with in a year of starting (losing 50 million when you have 50 million is bad since the 20 million or so from the resurrector isn't big enough to hit a lot of ruins that you find, losing 50 million when you have 200 million only slows you down by the time it takes to re-recruit the 30 million or so losses which is less than 2 weeks). I expect my recruitment speed to at least double as my military buildings increase in level and my army grows big enough to be able to split in 2 raiding parties which could put me there within 9 or 10 months, most of the top 25 have probably been playing 2 years and almost certainly over one year so I think getting 650 million plus army strength in a year should definitely be considered competitive.

I know the importance of military and explorers to find the ruins needed to create it. I currently have 47 explorers which will increase to 50 once I've finished upgrading my explorer buildings in my 5th city, admittedly I can't keep them running all the time since I need the slots for other things but there should always be at least 40 out exploring, I currently have 86 military buildings although they are still mostly at a low level since I've not been around long enough to get them up to level 7. As my army increases enough to bring in the resources to keep them busy I'll increase that number as well as continuing to upgrade the existing ones.

Necromancer's Talisman:40% of killed unites cannot be treated by healers
with this lvl 4 artefact,you get rid of healers somehow

I'm not sure whether this is feasible and I know lack of UK players has been discussed but rather than getting rid of healers which obviously wouldn't work (especially when fighting aggressive lvl 5 & 6 ruins and especially the level 7 ruin) would it not be worth doing a little UK/EU promotion of the game...spend a little time developing the game even further and then setting up a new server every year or so. That way all players would occassionaly get the chance to start on a relatively level playing field.

That said, I agree that a good player can stand up against even the highest level players with careful planning but it makes taking and holding salt lakes for any length of time nigh on impossible without the backing of clans with good guys in it (KingKano..you know what I mean...and polaroid, you mean ol' bugger!!)

Healers are the backbone of this game its impossible