[Age 371] Pandemic changes

[Myth]

While I didn't plan to do any changes to pandemic, as it's "a fun thing on the side, that doesn't need to be perfect", i'm thrilled to see age 370 being such a success. So much that I can't ignore the requests to do some changes for age 371.

By far the biggest issue is the PVP commanders. Even though people are enjoying it, it leads to quite a bit of frustration. People are actively refreshing spy reports of commanders to finish of targets that have been weakened by another player. So much of a frustration it even already got its own verb: sniping. This has been reworked quite a bit:

• Pandemic commanders will disappear after they've lost (they will remain if they win)
• Pandemic commanders will respawn on every pandemic tick (so every 2 ticks)
• Pandemic commander ranks will be more in line with the current player ranks. So no longer will you need to share that single marq commanders with all 30 other marqs of your nation
• Pandemic units are completely changed. So forget all you know. They now have different T2 and T3 versions, with modified stats, etc ... . This should make them more balanced on all ranks, and also avoid the first hit to be a guaranteed loss.

2nd concern was the difficulty. Past few years people found it challenging and had trouble 'adapting' to the spread and different play style when it comes to bordering. For some reason this years planners have gotten used to it or they are on a different level. The complaints these times were the complete opposite: Too easy, no challenge.

1 change is already done for this:
I've created a different/extra 'behaviour' for the fevers which can be enabled/disabled. I'll be a bit vague on this and let you find out. However know that you might find yourself more often in a role of 'the hunted' instead of 'the hunter'. But there are ways to deal with it .

A 2nd change i'm currently thinking about is making the fevers spread every tick. Spreading more than 1mp each time is going to be brutal and will result in a lot of mains and armies being kicked all the time, with no way to defend. If I however make it spread 1 mp each tick you'll also be at greater risk, but you will be able to defend/run. What do you think?

[Myth]

Some additional notes:
People are worried about the game becoming too hard: know that we can of course play with/tweak stats of all fevers to make them spread more or less every time.

2ndly:
The changes to the PVP commanders will impact how many gold/ht's/etc ... you receive. You will have less battles now, but more 'real' battles. This doesn't mean we try to take away the fun and the rewards. So we will need to tune/tweak the rewards you are getting. Raise the ransom of the xmas units, higher the cash rewards, etc ... . Will also need to look at how many commanders to spawn each time, etc ... . and how many 'pandemic points' are rewarded for every pvp. It definitely won't be perfect from the start.

Unit Changes:
The commanders which might show up on the borders of the disease, can have 8 different kinds of units.
Red Firepit Sock (Infantry)
Eggnog Elf (Infantry)
Santa's Little Halberd (Pike)
Gingerbread Guards (Pike)
Rampant Reindeer (Cavalry)*
Soaring Santa Sleigh (Cavalry)
Sugarcane Slinger (Ranged)
Bright Bauble Bombard (Ranged)

*Please Note: Reindeer are no longer Anti-Cavalry.

Form your armies wisely to have a proper answer to these evil units!

[Myth]

15 dec 8:40 CET:
I have disabled the new fever behaviour for now. Removing LD wasn't one of the methods i had in mind to deal with this thing so i will be modifying its behaviour so if it doesn't find an LD, it will target your biggest army.

I will only bring it back after a few more countries have died though. So at least you should have enough activity to deal with it properly.

Furthermore I will also look at increasing rewards for fever pvp slightly. I like what I see about the difficulty of the new armies. You should think a bit more before you act and not just blind hit everything. But the rewards aren't on par yet with the damage you receive. Last age rewards were too much though, sometimes even breaking the game because the country total gold was exceeding the limits of what the game could handle.

[Myth]

16 dec 22:20 CET:
Fevers will be slightly increased from this point, and cap kicking is enabled. +- 12 hours from now blue main will start moving again as well!

[Myth]

18 dec 12:57 CET
Santa is in a good mood: Pvp rewards increased

Santa is in a bad mood: PVP xp for fevers decreased by 50%

Santa hates the Gauls: Bug that made it so you didn't get BP's if you dropped blue main is fixed. But not possible to reward bp's for past battles. Sorry Gauls .