[suggestion] Make ranking harder

[Akh_horus]

I'd like to open up a debate. We were just talking about this in GC on telegram and I think there's a lot of people who will agree with me that ranking is too easy. I don't have the stats, but I'm estimating the validity of gen* to marshal ranks ends around day 3 or 4 as a large portion of the player base will have reached baron by then.
My suggestion would be the following:
- Make border training harder. We're 15 hours into this age and there's 10 barons. With harder border training the difference would be smaller. The harder border training would also make it much harder to rank up with pvp armies, making the choice of army and hero build more important the way I see it.
- Shorten the CF. Though I agree with the reasons behind the CF, 24h gives too much time. I think 18 hours should be plenty, and I'll explain why:
Say age starts at 0:00 UTC. Assuming everyone who's fanatic about playing the game sleeps 6 hours to maximise their first day, different scenarios would be as follows.
Start of sleeping anywhere between 0:00 and 12:00 UTC takes 6h away from the free training time.
Start of sleeping anywhere from 12:00 to 18:00 UTC takes a bit of free training and a bit of start of war.
Start of sleeping at/just after 18:00 UTC takes away from first war time.
No matter what time you go to sleep, you still have at least 10-12 hours to build an army. Casual players who don't want to take time out of their work to build an army would still have around 4 hours to build an army (8h of work, 6h of sleep).
Starting wars sooner results in rankers not being too far ahead of pvpers already and needs them to be careful earlier.

Thoughts?

[Urcaguary]

+1

[Zen]

18 hours vs 24 hours would be nice to somewhat differentiate in time zones (not age start and war start in same time zone) which would be nice.
Border training can be harder but only if ranker armies get more of a leg up in training then they now have (until Baron pvp armies keep up with rankers which should not happen I think).

Rankers should be able to stay ahead to pvp-ers by at least 2 ranks (also make sure pvp-ers can't win from rankers 2 ranks higher so easily)

Used to be people would rank to marq then rebuild for marq pvp because even a good pvp-er could not touch a good ranker unless caught injured or on bad terrain.
Now a Baron or Count can royally fuck up a Marq with ease.

[Tiralan]

Training is too easy because the xp is raised. Xp is raised because of the agreement that grey/blue ranks are not adding anything to the world of TLK, however, they are needed for new players to learn the mechanics and get a feel on how progression works. Even if its too easy, the success in those first few ranks might get them attached to stay a bit around when it gets harder. I know thats not a solid argument, it might be even false, but lets go with that for now.

I personally do not care about grey/blue ranks being done in 10 minutes for veteran players, no matter if they are ranking or pvping. However, I do agree that atleast border training should give some challenges, especially for pvp armies. That being said, my focus would be on making border training viable and harder. However, we are not gonna create 8 training scenarios, per terrain, per rank, per map. That would equal around 8x7x21x4 scenarios, and Im not gonna do that Thats just not worth anybody's time. So, I like to see a universal training system that works on every map. Now here is where I am stuck at this very moment. I struggle with Africa. The touch of Africa is that every unit is slightly lower in hp. Both ranking armies, but also pvp armies. That makes sense, if you imagine a little bit that Africans were less protected, less trained and had less wealth in general. And with the second argument on that matter: I dont want it to be a copy of europe or asia. Yes, I can give every unit in Africa +5hp, that might do the trick and take the sharp edges off, but that also could make training too easy or pvping too hard. Another option is to take Africa out of the rotation. Believe me, Im not too proud of myself to call that and get rid of it, but I think it still has potential and see it as a work in progress.

So my line of (planned) work in this matter is: First fix african units in a way where they are training okayish. That ranking is slower there is fine with me, but it can't be impossible and the differences between different unit trees cant be too big. After that I like to gradually increase the difficulty of training from VM and up. VM is where T3 units come in slowly, with normally at Marshall having a full T3 army. Exceptions here and there, but on average that should be true. There are several ways to make training harder, I could add a random leadership modifier to scenarios, I could add a random hard scenario into the mix, that will guerantee some injuries, but also very luck based in that case. Im willing to admit that this is a really thin line on what is possible here, given that the training scenarios are already generated randomly, ofcourse within certain lines we set.

Then about the race to Marq and able to rebuild on Marq and rekt rankers. We have plans (or atleast I have.. ) to introduce two more commander ranks. Those ranks would be higher than marq, with both higher exp caps and whatnot. (note: there are votes to leave Marq as the highest rank, since it has always been that way, in that case we put marq on say 75k and put ranks inbetween, but you got the drill here) That also comes with two new unit levels for T3 units. Im thinking about Elite and Legendary for now, subject to change. This will give edge for rankers, to have some more defence for incoming pvpers, especially if they are baron or count. This would also get rid of Marq* which is bugging us more than you can believe. As you might know that virtual rank got hacked into the code, its not even in the database as a real rank, and it annoys us bigtime to work with. We really want to remove it, but till new ranks are there it stays to prevent rebuilding into a pvp army with complete maxed out heroes. But ye, it will be removed, and removed hard, hideous rank

The CF timer. I make no promises on this one. I bet you know my standing in this one. Im not blind to good suggestions, but I just want more data first before we change that, if we change it at all. The 24h CF is a first attempt, not a final attempt, but the first attempt will be tested, validated and be used for the forseeable future. I hear the arguments, I might even agree with some, but it being too long because its gets boring, thats just nonsense, an 24h agebreak is more boring I believe

[Akh_horus]

And how about adding a healing item to heroes in Africa? I don't know the items in Africa by heart but generally it's lvls 5, 10, 15 and 20 for the healing items to come available isn't it? 3rd hero usually is lvl 12-ish when u can buy it, so add one at level 13 and u get extra healing percentage at border training, countering the lower HP compared to other maps.
Increase all border armies by, let's say 5-10% to make it harder. All maps will go slower, but to not make it impossible Africa gets the extra healing item. Committed rankers should still be able to outrank pvp armies.
Numbers are just guesses, and they'd need some testing I suppose.

I really like the extra ranks, although it'd probably need an extra, harder training scenario as well if authority gets increased. I'm sure it's going to need a looooot of testing though. Otherwise we get first age Asia - Ellie type scenario's

[Urcaguary]

Added to all this units should gain more xp from training than from sfs. Ranking up helps your country. Your stronger army lets you lead sfs and help in mvm, among with your stronger heroes. But right now your army doesnt get stronger by training. It gets weaker than your opponents who use sfs. You can compensate this by increasing the trainer stat on your hero, which in turn makes your hero weaker than your opponents. So its actually beneficial not to train currently. People are motivated not to train. The only motivation imo not to train in this game is because you want to pvp on a certain rank a little longer or because its dangerous to train. Sure, maybe sfs didnt give enough unit xp before, but it should never be raised above the xp gain from training

[Tiralan]

To be fair, that statement doesnt make that much of a sense.
Because the ratio Commander exp -> Units exp, is exactly the same in training as it is in sfs.
The only difference is that in a training run, units gets injured ofcourse and can get behind on the exp.
But thats an effect - that might be enlarged by the fast training - that was always there in some form.

[Urcaguary]

So on average units gain less xp in training than sfs. My point still stands.