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Domination: Earth

Ruvox

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Posts posted by Ruvox

    Upcoming Rule Changes

    in News & Announcements

    Posted

    Sounds like a great idea to solve all those trade related problems!

    1 hour ago, Mr. D said:

    So we are going to start afresh in a way, but yes, I am hoping that I will never have to do this again.

    Seems like I would be affected by this. Nevertheless I appreciate this step. It just seems fair.

    1 hour ago, Mr. D said:

    Yes, you will receive a number of extra base points equal to the level of the merged land.

    So this will make it a little easier to upgrade remote bases if you find some mergable lands but I guess this is somehow balanced by the much higher costs considering the new TPs.

    12 hours ago, Mr. D said:

    Merging a level 100 land with a level 5 will require 1050 points.

    This somehow changes my current play style. I'd upgrade lands around a 100+ land until all of them can be merged at once to save TPs. Is it right that the magnet button will still act like at the moment? So it will still be possible to merge several lands into a level 100+ land if they are all close enough to the 100+ land?

    1 hour ago, Mr. D said:

    Upgrades will not participate in any part of the algorithm for one simple reason: they can be done remotely.

    I don't really get your idea here. Yes it is possible to upgrade lands remotely but this requires Unobtainium (this is somehow different to regular upgrading) or you are closer than 500 meters to your land. In this case you might get a "bonus" of a half TP which is not really much. 

    This bothers me since I thought about my train trips where I tend to capture some new lands around but upgrade the lands at train stations. I don't really see the reason why this should neither count as a starting nor an ending point considering TP calculation. If you just leave Unobtainium upgrades out of calculation, the biggest "remote bonus" I could get would be 1 TP when upgrading 500 meter before my trip step and after my trip step with two upgradable lands below 100. On the other hand I could loose 1 TP when upgrading in the moment I am on the other side of those lands. What's the point? On the other hand if I capture a land somewhere in between then get to earlier captured land, upgrade this land, proceed my trip and capture again I' loose several TPs since they are calculated in a straight line.

    I'm sure I'm leaving something out so please tell me where I'm wrong.

    After all, it's great that you want to keep the trade system and introduce something actually measuring how much a player is travelling outside his home lands :D

    DE 2.0 State & Progress

    in News & Announcements

    Posted

    11 hours ago, Mr. D said:

    I am currently sitting on a bunch of boxes with all my stuff in transit to a very remote part of the world that I hope to start calling "home" after the 20th of November.

    Are you aware that you fuel our curiosity with terms like that?

    11 hours ago, Mr. D said:

    We've had to terminate our relationship early as I noticed that the product we were receiving was inferior in terms of functionality and contained even more issues

    Better early than lately ;)

    11 hours ago, Mr. D said:

    I am fairly disappointed in the outcome and the amount of time / funding invested into this fruitless side-project

    Very sad to hear. 

    11 hours ago, Mr. D said:

    I got myself a break from development so I'm just going to have to treat this as an "unplanned holiday"

    Which is something you'd deserve one way or another.

    11 hours ago, Mr. D said:

    Yes, this means that you are once again stuck with me as a sole developer

    So what's the point? We were "stuck" with you for a long time now and it was amazing :D



    The new design looks very interesting and is maybe so refreshing thing the game needs. I'm curious to see everything live someday. The new Unobtanium icon remembers me of minerals from StarCraft. Lastly, to be very honest: I don't like how that new green flag looks like but that's just my personal crazy feeling.

    Base construction menu

    in Technical Support

    Posted

    If you merge a land it sometimes takes 1 or 2 seconds until this merge is displayed on the Earth view (you get the confirmation toast but the land is still there shortly). If you use this small moment to tap on the land which does in fact no longer exist and then tap on its construction button you will access a menu I didn't know (still) exists in the game. It will direct you to a menu similar to the construction menu but for all of your bases which are ordered not by distance but by time of establishment (just like the my lands tab an long time ago). 
    I have a video just in case I described too badly. I'm also wondering what would happen if you use one of the other panel buttons on that non existing land.

    no ressources

    in Technical Support

    Posted · Edited by Ruvox

    Hey Momo, conquering lands of other player is indeed nothing which should reward you with resources. Just in case you meat a capture-action (hitting the yellow flag button), this should  neither reward you with resources.

    What would lead to you getting resources:

    • Scanning QR-Codes or barcodes at the Scrap Items tab
    • Use the yellow hand button close to resources 
    • Click on "Collect resources" button in the My Lands view once an hour if you have stations (e.g. an oil rig) under your control at the moment
    • Attack a land of the Force of Terror
    • Sell lands of yours to another player
    • Get referred by another player or let a player you have referred establish a base and upgrade it to level 3
    • Buy Unobtainium and exchange it for the resources you need
    • Like 1

    Couch expansions

    in Player Q&A

    Posted

    To clarify some misunderstandings:

    7 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

    1. Everyone would just trade level 99 lands and if you staggered the price.. well not much good still. You would have people just eating the price and/or buying lands at low levels. 

    This was not about getting lands of family members but to prevent "parking" your big land (which should normally be above level 100) by family members to capture a new land. The expensive thing would be to get your big land back/to trade it to your family member.

    9 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

    2. That might work, but as a reminder, Governor has purchased several lands over level 100 in the last 100 days and those were fair and legitimate trades.

    Yes but so what? Those lands were bought once and I meant that "a single land can only be traded every 100 days" not that you can just trade one every 100 days. The counter applies towards the land not the seller/buyer.

    11 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

    3. This one breaks even non-couching trading/and I find super confusing (not to mention hard to teach new players)

    Complicated, yes! But this would require to upgrade a land "the hard way" before being able to trade it again.

    12 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

    4. Yeah, I think removing the ability to trade 1000-plus lands is smart, except what happens if a big player quits? then that land is basically lost forever? 

    No, this only prevents to trade it back to the original owner. Like if you'd ever sell this land you will never be able to get it back but others could still buy it.

     

    Couch expansions

    in Player Q&A

    Posted

    32 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

    Not sure how to even do that without basically breaking the game and making a dog eat dog world

    Just some ideas:

    • A big fee on trading level 100+ lands dynamically expanding with the lands level similar to the merge costs but with the original value
    • A trade cooldown for level 100+ lands like a single land can only be traded every 100 days or something like that (because seriously who trades that big lands more often if not for couch expansion?)
    • A trading charge for level 100+ lands where you needed to upgrade/merge (merge and upgrade equally to prevent just buying an adjacent level 100 land) the land for example 100 times before being able to trade it again
    • Making it impossible to trade a big land back to the original owner starting at level 1000+ lands since I can't imagine an legal scenario where you wanted to sell your big land and then get it back. (I've to admit that this would somehow be the most extreme idea but it's also the only really preventing couch expansion via land swaps and not only making it harder)
    43 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

    If that's the only way to get land

    I don't think/hope Mr. D would just deactivate land trades at all.

     

    Couch expansions

    in Player Q&A

    Posted · Edited by Ruvox

    11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

    I will accept a punishment for my admitting to being a Coucher should one be decided, despite my opinion that would be idiotic. 

    I don't think that this is about punishing someone for doing something which is questionable but about proclaiming the need of restrictions to prevent such strategies.

    11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

    And as someone else mentioned when I have to go 5km to do anything IG then yes, it gets boring really fast.

    Yes, sure. But I don't think that this is the point. Just for fun, let me make a list of game features you can use from your couch and those you can't if there were a restriction about land swapping to prevent couch expanding.
    What you can do from your couch within your homeland:

    • Buy and sell lands 
    • Track other players
    • Generate and collect resources (one of the most important thing in the game)
    • Search for and fight the FoT and afterwards work on your perks
    • Fight other players
    • Produce Items and manage your Warehouse
    • Build or repair defence or other constructables (and delete them on level 100+ lands)
    • Scrap items
    • Merge lands
    • Rename lands
    • Upgrade lands remotely
    • Build, upgrade or delete Utility Structures
    • Collect your hourly resources from your stations
    • Let you show areas around your remote lands to find new players and make alliances (or fight them if necessary)
    • Transfer or recruit new soldiers
    • Use Missile Launchers, Nukes or Guard Towers to damage enemy structures
    • Manage wars (surrender, start them, end them, accept, issue or decline a truce)
    • Higher the defense value of your base temporarily
    • Let your base grow to gain more space for soldiers and resources
    • Upgrade lands remotely via using Unobtainium
    • Exchange Unobtainium for resources
    • Make your inventory bigger using Unobtainium and fill it (if you are within your base) or use the items (if you are without your base)
    • Conquer new lands from enemy players
    • Move your base (depends on the position of your bases)

    Literally everything except the following points.

    What you can not do from your couch within your homeland:

    • Expand your homeland (as soon as it's too big)
    • Establish new bases
    • Capture new lands

    I just can't go with the idea of nothing to do from your couch actually you can do nearly everything possible in the game from your couch as mentioned above.
    One of the reasons you might not see collecting new resources as that important might be that you

    11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

    have 160,000 in the bank

    But why do you have that much? Amounts like that jut melt away if you travel around establish new bases and capture new lands so you have the need of building new constructables and lots of defence. As soon as you get around a little bit you'll find new players and have an even bigger need of resources to trade with or support them (especially as a high level player). 
    So one of the main reasons you might think you have nothing important "normal" to do from your couch might be that you spend too much time on your couch ;)  And why don't you travel around (besides the fact that you just might not be able due to real live reasons like time and money)? Because you have no need to it since you can accomplish so much from out your couch especially expanding your lands with your swapping tactic. Do you see the vicious circle?

    11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

    I would love the chance to upgrade distant lands especially at a 10:1 ratio

    Oh, what a coincidence, a further reason to stay at home making traveling even less valuable in the same run xD
    Honestly, just think about how many remote land level you would have already got that way? It would completely reduce the reasons to travel around to capture initial lands somewhere. Imagine upgrading four lands remotely everyday, this would totally shift the main focus to staying at home rather than travelling around. 
    In a travel based game it should always be easier to accomplish the same during a trip than from home. That's the idea behind it. Why should I spend hours of time and lots of money to go out and upgrade some lands if I just could stay at home on my couch and get a remote land level every 2.5 hours?
    I'd go with the 1:100 ratio but 1:10 would shift the games focus too drastically!

    11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

    We *DO* need to break it, I just don't have any ideas on how too.

    Great that we share this opinion!



    Lastly, I will just leave this here ;)

    On 19.9.2017 at 6:29 PM, Mr. D said:

    Common sense
    We do rely on everyone's common sense when playing "Domination: Earth" or using this forum and will refrain from listing rules that are too obvious 

    11 hours ago, Republic of America said:

    First off: it is not really fair to those who are stuck going through life with no friends, family or Spouses. Many of your players are stuck without this (the FA) and thus it creates an unfair environment within the game. [..] there are players that don't choose to use this system and feel that if unfairly leaves them out of the loop and at a severe disatvatge. [...] I can understand how this would not be well accepted and leave players like the FA players cheated.

    • Like 2

    Couch expansions

    in Player Q&A

    Posted

    8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

    Thus, you may be right with putting the issue up for discussion until it is still early and the rift among players is still not wide

    I'm afraid it's already very late... Back in the days where nested lands were allowed, I also did it to don't fall behind and had at least one level 100 land to merge in a week sometimes even two. So especially the "ultra-couchers" will already have gained many hundred land levels making every singe land level I capture outside my big land nearly worth nothing. This leads to me loosing interest in capturing when leaving my home land since it just has no impact in contrast to the "couchers" work. So the current situation lets "anti-couchers" loosing interest and in worst case abandon the game since their work looses value day by day. So sorry but I see the need of restricting this as by far more urgent than introducing new things to do from home.

    8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

    To be clear, under "couch-enabled" I think of:

    • primarily, the ablility to play around your neighbourhood and town, with your actions having some real meaning despite the lv1000 land hovering above the player,
    • to some extend, as explained before, the true couch play, that still does keep you in the game, but does not affect the game environment significantly.

    Actually couch-play is already a big part of my everyday gaming. Especially since I travel and want to trade and hold remote locations I have a gigantic need of resources. The easiest way to get resources is to capture every 15 minutes within my home land. Doing this also slowly expands my base which is great to higher my maximum storage for resources and soldiers and keep me high in the leaderboards. Furthermore, while building and upgrading the already existing Utility Structures helps to improve the gain of exactly the resource you are lacking of the most or defending your land. So the game is already couch-enabled and without the already existing couch gaming it would be nearly impossible to pay my growth on trips and trade and support smaller players. I couldn't just not do it without loosing many benefits. But it's not exactly that stressful as capturing is if you expand your land at the same time.

    8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

    but only if a decent solution to playing inside one's own "backyard" is provided.

    As already mentioned there are already so many benefits on couch gaming. But I see that it would be easier for "couchers" to come back to the normal kind of gaming if they would have an opportunity like your lately suggestesd Utility Structure. But again it shouldn't be too valuable. Being able to upgrade a land remotely every 10 captures would not be at all comparable to travelling there which might reqcuire lots of money and many hours of driving etc. Every 100 captures is something more comparable. And again this implementation would require land swap restrictions beforehand otherwise your "land exchange" idea would just make no sense at all. (But sorry for changing the topic to things which belong into the other thread).

    8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

    As for simplification, If you turn to simplify the game and turn away from Civilization-style gameplay, it will become just a differently painted conglomerate of Strava and GPS-oriented social media, social-part excluded. I believe that the only right direction is the Civ one, and if followed by proper UX softening whatever complicated mechanisms the game hides in the trunk, and new gameplay possibilities that encourage interaction, then with introduction of UI 2.0 it has a huge chance to repopulate and keep running well :D

    I totally go with that!

    8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

    You have few lands abroad, you can fight more FoT and find more players to talk to via Discord, but other than some rare situations that allow for some growth or action, these visited lands are as good as a numb limb.

    Now think about how valuable those remote lands and bases will be if Domination gets populated more and more :D

    8 hours ago, Олег Поленин said:

    I feel all you need is just a proper balancing, promoting "davids" in ther local area against remote, imperial "goliaths"

    At the moment this is given since it is pretty hard to grow bases remotely and local players can easily grow theirs pretty fast reducing the influence of the imperialists very easy. For example it took only weeks for a small player on one of my remote level 1 bases to have its own 13 levels beyond mine ;) Considering your suggested Utility Structure this would still be given if this does not affect your remote base (which you also already suggested).

    Couch expansions

    in Player Q&A

    Posted

    25 minutes ago, Mr. D said:

    I'd also like to disclose some surprising/shocking stats about "Domination: Earth" in general: we've been a lot bigger and had more active players when the game was simpler 8-10 months ago.
    In fact, our growth was phenomenal and we've almost reached 10,000 concurrent active players in January 2018. However, once we've added the trade system, high-level land restrictions based around couch expansion and all the "civilization-like" features things went downhill!

    That's very sad to hear but at least for Germany I have the feeling that we are a growing community since those players who find their way into the Discord (which tend to be more in the last time) mostly stay within and get all their questions answered. 
    I like Domination like it is today, of course there is always something to be better but I think having less features is not the right way. Other games are also complex even much more complex but don't have a problem about loosing players because of it. I think one of the biggest problems is that while the game evolved, gained more features and became more complex, the "tutorial" stayed simple and small as it is not even noticed by many fresh players, additionally there is still the lacking community/chat option since as already mentioned as soon as the players get in touch with others (the Discord at the moment) they tend to understand and like the game. I honestly think that it's not the complexity but the lack of explanation what "scares" off some players. If you focus on that two parts (a discord ping and a more "forced" tutorial) you might not higher the stream of new players immediately but extremely higher the rate of those fresh players staying active leading to a growing community.

    Couch expansions

    in Player Q&A

    Posted

    Today I'm very concerned and just had to write this statement. I know that this will offend many player and that it's just my personal opinion so please see it as such. This is not meant to insult anybody and I hope we can discuss politely here.

    I've recently noticed that it is a very common practice to just sell your big home/work land to a friend/partner/relative to build a new land from your couch/desk and afterward trade your big land back and merge them. That way players can keep expanding from their couch bypassing the restrictions you (@Mr. D) made this February (making nested lands no longer possible to prevent couch expansion). As long as I remember couch expansion is something you always wanted to prohibit and Utility Structures are something made to be a compensation to have something to do at home/work.

    Clearly the current situation divides the players into two groups. Those who bypass the restrictions meant to prevent couch expansion and those who don't. The first group is expanding very fast, climbing leaderboards and leaving the second group behind which focuses more on capture land outside their home land every now and then and planning trips for new bases our lands on remote locations. If both groups proceed to play as they do we'll soon have an elite much more powerful than the second group and the second group having no chance to ever catch up again.

    So I see the need of you deciding into one of both directions. You could either allow couch expansion (nested lands) again once and for all so everybody can do the same and nobody is heavily disadvantaged or implement some sort of restriction to prevent couch expansion via trades (for example huge fees on trades including big lands of level 100+ or something since they should be something which is not traded often/usually) 

    I'm an "anti-coucher" and would have to change my style of play hugely if you decide for the second direction since if I would then just proceed playing as I do now I'd be far behind everybody else very fast. I also think that the "couchers" would at least have a reason more to play as I do if you implement the Utility Structure suggested by @Oлer Поленин. As you might have noticed I prefer the second direction.

    "Settlers Expedition" utility structure

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    I'm on a trip at the moment so my answere has to he short and a little pain with my stupid German autocorrection... Will edit it, explain it further and use quotations asap.

    First of all I like your Idea in general. Sounds like a nice way to keep a little bit more control over remote areas you visited and an extemely valuable new utility structure.

    But that's also part of my problem. I know that others appreciate couch expanding but I still think this is not what Domination is meant to be so my feeling about the value of such utility structure might differe hughly from others. Take me as a "hardcore" player for example. I have already deleted about 4 or 5 fully upgraded utility structures. If a utility structure like your suggestion existed I'd only used this one which means I already had upgraded remote lands by up to 500 levels which is a very huge mass. This had also allowed me to get country leader much easier in smaller  (domination vise) countries and gain many base levels. This would just be much too valuable. 

    At the moment I'm very slowly expanding my base from my couch which gets slower ans slower due to the growing need of base points for the next level. Of course I'm also restocking on  resources that way. It keeps me in game but still motivates me to plan tours to acquire lands in remote locations. For me a utility structure like yours would lower the actual value in travelling to remote locations to an initially land and a base. 

    If it would be the restriction of 100 utility levels to exchange one "home" land level for an remote one I'd like it. But again the "level exchange mechanism" you supposed would be not very restricting for players like me and only a joke for those "couch expanding via wife/Girlfriend/relative/second account" Players. (Which one way or another will very fast go beyond anything players like me can accomplish but that's another Story...)

    • Thanks 1

    Сбор информации и взаимодействие

    in Technical Support

    Posted · Edited by Ruvox

    I also see a little problem in the current war mechanics there. 
    Imagine you have a base of level 1 or two somewhere but with some smaller lands in it's radius. Now I could also have a base in range and decide to attack you when you are asleep. If I really time it well and you have only 100 soldiers there with not too many defence (many players have lands without defence on it and not the perk) I could easily kill all of your soldiers in maybe an hour maybe less. Then wait an hour and capture one land of yours every 70 minutes (60 minute attack cooldown, 10 minutes to conquer an undefended land). I could do this until I see that you are awake/reacting which might take a few hours in which I could have conquered a bunch of lands of yours, then I directly surrender. 
    After that (if I neither issue a truce request neither accept one of yours) You'd never be able to get your lands back or take revenge. That's a problem and I can understand this.

    This is hypothetical, I'm a peaceful player and only want to provide an example :D

    • Like 2

    Sandbag walls maintenance

    in Technical Support

    Posted · Edited by Ruvox

    Seems like I messed something up again, will explain later including a video but don't have much time right now ;)

    So I wanted to upgrade my base in Bochum by packing a level 100 land full of Sandbag walls and afterwards merging it. So I had 65 Sandbag Walls and 1 Guard Tower which all in all should reward me with 653 base point when merging. That's a lot.
    However, it turned out I was gaining much more base points than expected. Here is a video showing what I did: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fpHQz3DBWVb-NzLhLqHZnCVfCaHkBsAD Give it a second to load it's quit big.

    Just to clarify everything, I now have:

    1. A base which should be level 16 with 78 additional base points but is of level 47 with 3 additional base points
    2. 3100 too much recruited soldiers and so used 3100 more Supplies and Personnel than I should have
    3. The wrong biggest army leaderboard place with 20400 soldiers which should only be 17300 soldiers (in global, Polish, Czech, Swiss, Dutch, German, Danish and Spanish leaderbaords)

    Feel free to reset/correct everything as soon as you can, I will not perform new merging actions which skip one level or are related to the Bochum base until you call everything OK again ;)
     

    Capturing at Air Travel Speed

    in Player Q&A

    Posted

    Congratulations on your new bases!

    I not really sure if it's not too easy to establish new bases that way but on the other hand it's pretty expensive (Unobtainium for remote upgrades plus wi-fi costs), not very efficient/accurate basebuilding (I always try to establish them as close together as possible) and somehow a lucky coincidence (flying with an airline which provides working wi-fi which not blocks any service necessary for Domination in an area where you have no bases yet).

    ... I think I'm gonna search for cheap flights now... My last base-trip was by train and needed 41 hours and 2621 rail-kilometers for 12 more or less efficient established bases. So the plane way would be much more comfortable but has the above mentioned disadvantages. Maybe I'll find something cheap for an area where I've not planned to establish bases efficiently :D.

    Even if it's unlikely that the same Airline operates in both US and EU, may I ask with which airline you flew and what the price for what wi-fi conditions was ? 

    • Like 1
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