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Post by gerdonat on Dec 14, 2016 6:52:43 GMT -6
Its me again, after playing this age in the shadow side of things, I find that some mechanics in the game, are contradictory for "our" side.
In one hand, we want to rule cities, in the other hand we want to defeat armies targetting all cities, including ours.
So, what happens when a horde is targeting our city? we have 2 options, defeat the horde, and gain light side points, or defeat the army, and not only our city could suffer from it, but we lose Ji on that city.
I get that on the last battle, we may not care anymore about the cities being destroyed, but during the age, you need to control cities in order to get last battle points, and other clan benefits.
So, not sure what is the best solution to this, one possibility is that during the age, if a horde attacks a shadow controlled city, the "light side" is the horde, and the "shadow side" is the army, so fighting the horde in that case would move your alignment to the shadow and viceversa. You dont need to modify the ji losing of the ruling clan in that case.
In the last battle it could work out in similar way, or not, not sure. So depending of who rules a city, is how the points are assigned. That would make all the game more consistent I think...
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Post by King Richard on Dec 14, 2016 8:20:41 GMT -6
This is an excellent point. It's one of the reasons I would have a hard time being a Shadow player. I like building cities too much.
I don't have any suggestions though.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 14, 2016 8:35:45 GMT -6
I've always tended to simplify it a little as a Shadowsider - a Shadow city with a horde thrown at it is either points for ownership, or more points for destroying ... In those cases I actually see it as the onus being on the Light side players to decide whether to spend the turns to take out the horde to save the city, or not, with adjustments made based on the city army types for that particular round, and how many turns needed to take the army out. Shadow does come out with points either way provided they have enough ji lead to cover ownership if the city survives, and that is just one less city for them to factor into their battle equations.
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Post by Jenlyn on Dec 14, 2016 10:31:31 GMT -6
But for an individual player, or at least for me, what matters is the effort that I put into upgrading that city and my surrounding estates. In that instance, I am no different from my Light side counterparts in that I want to protect what I have built and am grieved if it's destroyed, but unlike the Light players, defending those cities and those estates is counterproductive to an overall victory for my side, and it's a huge drawback to playing Shadow that the Light does not have to contend with. The only drawback to playing Light is that one city is destroyed out of hand at the start of the Last Battle, which I also disagree with, but that's a different topic.
There should be a way for the Shadow to protect what they have built without thereby helping the Light to win. Otherwise, there is little incentive to play Shadow beyond schadenfreude, which for me at least, and probably for a lot of people, is not much of an incentive, at least not for more than one novelty round. If we're going to have a strong and consistent Shadow element to the player base, I think the game has to be more fun for the Shadow than the current configuration allows.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 14, 2016 18:57:16 GMT -6
You could look at it this way then ... cities that you form an attachment to, well if you truly want to protect them with some remnant of light blinded affection, then the deal is that you need to truly put the effort in and manage the order/chaos throughout the entire age in those cities such that hordes are least likely to hit there.
Alternatively, you could embrace your Shadow ego, and realise that cities are simply the powerbase you use as a catalyst for bringing about the end, and once the end is here then your elevation is assured and such things as the wellbeing of your peasants are no longer a concern.
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Post by Jenlyn on Dec 15, 2016 11:11:16 GMT -6
The first is exceedingly difficult, and the second is what I believe everyone does, but is is cold comfort. It would be simpler to make the Army be the Horde when it's attacking Shadow cities, so that the Shadow does not wreck its alignment and wrack up points for the Light by defending its cities.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 15, 2016 16:49:38 GMT -6
But you see that's making the assumption that just because the ruling faction is Shadow aligned, that the entire city is thusly aligned - you might have dark proclivities, but the city is still just a city, full of thousands of regular people, with a regular army, and they don't want to die to horde attacks, just the same as people in a city ruled by a light aligned faction.
There are factions within the Shadow, as well, it's not all coombaya and s'mores over there, and those factions are as likely to attack each other as light siders, so it makes sense for hordes to be unleashed against competitors' power bases as well. The only way to 'bargain' with the rest of the Shadow is to control the order/chaos of a given city to reduce or improve it's chances of not being hit.
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Post by Jenlyn on Dec 16, 2016 0:45:52 GMT -6
No, once the Last Battle begins, the Shadow is united. We see that in the books.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 16, 2016 1:21:13 GMT -6
But doesn't change the fact that cities are cities of people ... our characters are single people with influence in those cities, but just because a Shadow clan holds the most sway in a city doesn't automatically mean that the entire populace is held to that same alignment ... the city itself is still mostly 'light', still has an army that needs to be defeated, people to be enslaved etc ... as agents of the Shadow, you are simply acting from within a mass of citizenry, and when you control a city you are operating iwthin from a position of extreme power is all. You may well to choose to save the city you hold influence over, or want to at least, but that's not following the Shadow doctrine.
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Post by Jenlyn on Dec 16, 2016 11:42:03 GMT -6
Well the point is, this is why people don't play Shadow round after round. If the game wants a consistent Shadow contingent, something needs to be done about saving Shadow cities and estates, and walking a chaos/wall strength tightrope is not going to fit the bill. I am not, by a longshot, the only one to complain about the counter-intuitive and counterproductive nature of playing Shadow.
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cast
Recruit
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Post by cast on Dec 16, 2016 21:18:04 GMT -6
schadenfreude... I like that. For me that's what it's all about.
When you add in that it's tougher for the Shadow to be victorious, and I'm a happy fella.
There are so many instances in the books where the Shadow is doing things that are counter productive to each other and any thought of an allied Shadow. The Forsaken are constantly trying to one up each other at the others expense and gain favor with the Dark One. The Dark Ones plans aren't to take over Randland, but to break it completely.
I'm not looking to win. I just want to see the Light loose.
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Post by kaldar on Dec 18, 2016 11:31:43 GMT -6
I don't think we take issue with all the elements of the Shadow vs. Light penalties , what we take issue with is that as Shadow clan we are "supposed to" defeat the armies attacking cities, even ours. Yet, if we control a city, by defeating the army, we lose 3% of our Ji, thus making it easier for the light side to take the city.
Things like that are what doesn't make sense.
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Post by King Richard on Dec 18, 2016 11:46:04 GMT -6
One thing to keep in mind with some of the proposals, how will the game know you're a Shadow clan if you haven't budged your alignment yet. You might not even be lean Shadow the first month of the age.
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Post by Seitaarin on Dec 18, 2016 17:44:27 GMT -6
And if you are in control of the city, you are able to not destroy it and accept the ownership points instead. That's an option that's not available to the light side - which is why I said in my first post that the onus of decision lays more on the light side of the scale. Shadow just has to realise that, and make the Light's job as hard as possible. Light has a game defined vested interest to protect all cities, Shadow actually does not have the opposite position - Shadow can take the lesser point option - which is still points to their side - but the real power there is that the Shadow is able to ignore certain armies if it suits them to do so - the light cannot afford to do that. They can choose to, but it costs them no matter whether it's a Light or a Shadow city that is being hit.
In addition to this, Armies are a fixed type for each city (and hordes are random) - the entire age leading up to that is where the game of chaos and order is played to set the stage for where the LB hordes actually land. There is a set formula for this, it's public. So there are more advantages to disadvantages in the grand scheme of things when it comes to hordes vs shadow in the LB. Just on the whole hordes being random thing - there's only a couple of city armies that are a bit of a pain, it's almost a deadset guarantee that there will be more horrible hordes to deal with than armies. RNG dictates of course, but some of the worst NPCs to hit aren't even listed amongst armies, but they can certainly pop in hordes.
About flipping horde/army type against cities - there are a number of reasons this won't work in the GoS world - Already stated, a CLAN alignment does not reflect a CITY alignment ... I mean sure, if some city alignment mechanic was introduced as a separate thing then that would pave the way ... but cities are big groups of people ... the 'ruling' clan is just the most influential group in the city at any given time, the populace doesn't magically switch their alignment, and the standing army would not accept a couple of fists of trollocs to share-house within the barracks with them to defend the city - that just doesn't make sense. The Ruling clan can be switched with a quick jig of support values - which means players can switch any calculated ruling alignment at any given hour change, which not only supports the fact that clan alignment != city alignment, but I'm sure could be abused by some clever folks, especially during the LB. KR's point is solid.
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Post by gerdonat on Dec 19, 2016 9:25:15 GMT -6
One idea, you should be able to control cities because you have the highest ji (light side) or the highest fear factor (shadow side) if one clan fear factor is highest that the other clan ji, the shadow side controls it... All clans will start accumulating ji as usual, and when a clan turns to shadow, all his ji points gets transformed to fear points, and from then on, they get fear points instead of JI, when you defeat an army, you could get fear points which makes your hold of the city stronger... Obviously its a raw idea, and maybe really complicated... just to throw it there, maybe something good comes from it...
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