Last knights Forum

Currently it is:
- 528 hours (22 days) after the age has started.
- 7 days after only 4 countries are left
- 3 days after only 3 countries are left.
- 12 hours after only 2 countries are left.

I feel that the duration of 22 days is to long and suggest that the maximum duration of an age is shortened by 7-8 days to a maximum of 14 or 15 days. To me this feels like the maximum amount of time people generally speaking are willing to play the same age before the longbeards start grumbling.

From my experience 12 hours after 2 countries remaining is fine. It should be 24 hours when 3 countries are remaining and not three days. I feel 3 days is way to long. If you can't kill the third country within a day, then they deserve to survive the age i.m.o.. Likewise I feel the timer should be 2 or 3 days with only 4 countries remaining. 2or 3 days should be enough to kill a country under most circumstances. These changes make a lot more sense. Last asia we had a 7 day timer due to the fact that both sides were more or less equal. Due to this neither side lost a country and due to this both sides had to sit out the entire 7 days. Now this doesn't always happen, but it happens more then enough to warrant a shortening of the 7 day timer. It should at least be half of what it is currently. So around 3 days max. 2 or 3 > 1 or 2 > 12 hours.

This is a topic that has been discussed a million of times.
That doesn't mean it can't be touched at all, but there are enough counter-arguments to leave the timers as they are.

First, The Max Age timer I dont reaaally care about, that can be shortened by a few days if you ask me.
However, lets have a look at the last 20 ages, lets call it a perk from the database to create some overview

Age 375: 18 days
Age 374: 16 days
Age 373: 7 days
Age 372: 14 days
Age 371: 11 days
Age 370: 13 days
Age 369: 5 days
Age 368: 12 days
Age 367: 10 days
Age 366: 9 days
Age 365: 15 days
Age 364: 6 days
Age 363: 12 days
Age 362: 7 days
Age 361: 17 days
Age 360: 11 days
Age 359: 11 days
Age 358: 12 days
Age 357: 7 days
Age 356: 9 days

So, lets first conclude that only 4 ages out of the last 20 went over 2 weeks. Its worth to note that the two last ages were both quite lengthy. So that might be something you feel at this moment, and doesnt have to be entirely true in other ages that progressed more swiftly. This age is likely going to be 12 days, which is from an admin-stance ideal.

Basicly, WE feel (and more than welcome to disagree, but atleast you know where my argumentation comes from) that ages should atleast be 10 days. And that ages shorter than that were lacking challenge, balance and most likely fun to people that were not involved in the winning country. So we will always aim for the avarage age to be atleast 10 days, ideally 12 orso. Lets calculate the avarage of the last 20 quickly and we see that that evens out at about 11 days, which is completely fine with us.

From a business standpoint: Agebreak is a waste of us paying the server. I guess everybody understands that. Now, we reduced agebreak to 12h (instead of formely 24h) but still that argument is valid. You guys are not paying for the game to watch an agebreak screen, most likely and our systems still need to be paid aswell. On annual basis thats just a waste of money. BUT, that will never be THE argument to shorten or stretch out ages and/or agebreaks.

I'd like to approach it better from a gameplay standpoint. Because in my eyes 8 day-ages and below are just squash-ages where 1 or 2 stacks dominate the entire map and eliminate one country a day, if not two. Fun for them, not so much for the rest.
Then again, 15+ days ages are in my opinion a lack of diplo OR bad diplo afterall. In too many occassions two nations commit to eachother at day 2 or 3, then to be stuck with eachother till the end of times, while they are either missing one important terrain in their arsenal or lacking decent planners to get them through wars or whatever reason there might be that two nations can't get a job done in an endwar (2v2 most likely). I can tell from personal experience that thats exactly what happened last age (age 375) where I played as HC for a nation myself and seeing that poor diplo gave a boring and stalemate endwar.

Now, this is not rare, this happens now and then, and it is up to the HC's of the nations to either change the endwar. But mostly people accept the rankings, stay true to their alliances and sit out the age timer. Now for those people we are not gonna shorten it. It's a war game, where your nations finds glory in warring, fighting and conquering. We are not gonna give players, that think that they finished their job at day 6, with 4 nations remaining, with the age end so they can reap their rewards, while the age is potentially far from over.

My advice: Make ages exciting till the last day (as HC) or revote another HC if your HC is unwilling to. Break alliances, come up with other ideas to make ages more fun. We will not provide easy wins on day 6-7-8 as of now, as long ages (14+ days) are somewhat rare, as there are plenty of short ages and there is an avarage of 11 days per age over the last 20 ages.