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Domination: Earth

"Settlers Expedition" utility structure


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Thinking again about providing players with any decent incentive to keep clicking while in school/work, and also about somehow easing growth for lategamers and keeping them in game.

Let's say we could implement an additional, special utility structure. I will call it "Settlers Expedition" (SE), and describe it's features as follows:

  • SE will behave as any other utility structure. Grow 1lv per capture up to lv1000.
  • SE has special feature, unlocking at lv100, called "Send Settlers Expedition":
    • upon activating this feature, you may select any land that is within any remote* base radius (ie. other than the one that is linked to the land the US is built in),
    • upon activating this feature, SE is discarded (destroyed)
    • the selected land gains levels equal to the SE level, divided by 10 and rounded bottom; this makes it minimum 10 levels and maximum 100 levels
    • surplus levels (over lv100) should still count, given the amount of effort one needs to build up SE, but should still require additional resources to complete (as in merging lv100+ base with other bases),
    • land level gain should increase the remote base level points the same way as local upgrade would do (or perhaps with some modifier, if it would otherwise sound too powerful).

Such feature will offer players additional possibilities and game choices, especially to those players that are otherwise covered under their lv1000-or-so home land:

  • sufficiently grown players would be able to expand remotely, yet still only within areas that they have previously visited,
  • players could spend the SE right away or could store them for emergencies, like when being attacked over remote territories, since this would allow several offensive options, like:
    • growing the land that is adjacent to enemy lands, dealing damage,
    • growing the land further by takeover of intersecting enemy lands and merging them into own,
    • growing base capacity and thus the amount of soldiers that could defend the remote territories;
  • players would have a larger variety of choices when settling remote bases:
    • they could, as they used to, build lands in constellations that allow them to merge them with highly evolved buildings, and thus rapidly upgrade remote bases (focus on expansion),
    • they also could focus on building single strong bases and build up SE to spend on growing their main land in their home base, that is otherwise really hard to grow (focus on home strengthening), such players would be encouraged to settle and travel to remote bases to grow their own, and given the statistical distances, it will much more likely be some interesting city, not dangling in a middle-of-nowhere for several hours on the edge of their current land :D,
  • remote trading players would have an additional incentive to trade, as this will give them a better possibility to merge the traded lands in future and also to have some gain over remote base lv.

This feature could also benefit from the one discussed before, especially if the radius of remote utility structure were adjusted enough to allow for a maximum of 2-3 structures being grown in parallel.

This is by far a wild idea and I will off course fully understand if it gets discarded :P especially since it would likely require quite a lot of UI improvements (to make remote land selection easy enough).

----
*) This is to still encourage players to move - they will not be able to indefinitely grow their base while sitting home.

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I'm surprised nobody's replied yet, I certainly won't be so shy.

Personally, I'm a fan.. For several reasons

Firstly: its expensive. A 10:1 reduction in time and effort sounds reasonable to me if your wanting to improve a land in another state (or country for you European types =P )

Secondly: The trading aspect is also very appealing. Handing someone a lvl 100 land from thin air should curry quite a bit of favor.. Or make amends after a brutal war

But mostly I think I find it attractive because of another ethical argument that I'm having with myself. It's not against the rules to have multiple accounts, and most everyone on discord is actively engaging in land swapping. Which is making for some truly absurd flag levels..

The problem here is painfully simple.. We all know that Mr D doesn't want any kind of remote land acquisition. We've thought of 16 different ways we could implement it.. Most of them being fairly expensive. But in truth, I don't see a difference at all between remote land building and flag swapping. I mean seriously, who cares at this point if your able to go flag across town or hundreds of miles/km away when you can put your territory on a mule or give it to your S.O. Or a friend or whatever.. LoL KEEP FLAGGING! eventually your land will get there anyway!

I understand Mr D's position and I'm playing within those parameters.. But I would also like some remote building lest I get tempted by the cheese.

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In terms of limiting what has been called as "couch expanding", I think the outlined idea leaves quite a lot of space for additional restrictions. To think of few examples:

  • limiting the distance between SE structure and land center (eg. 750m), this way even if you were to plan the land in such a way, that a future SE structure lies within a couch range, then you would not be able to couch-upgrade it to the required level in the first place,
  • limiting the settlement action to apply only to the lands originally founded by you (ie. you could not settle the lands that have been traded to you, but you could still buy such lands and merge them with yours),
  • adding additional resource cost to trigger the settlement action,
  • adding the need to sacrifice home land levels - such that the home land will shrink equally to the growth of the remote land - this will be quite an emotionally wrecking cost for some :) but... the shrinked home land will be just get a little bit more easy and joyful to expand again!

The last one seems quite interesting, it sounds a bit as in Civilization games, where training settlers reduces the size of the home city :)

Edited by Олег Поленин
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12 hours ago, Republic of America said:

 I will be back

And I'm back. 

- So putting a range limit? I hate it. If we are going to allow couch upgrades I think we just reevaluate whether we really want this. A 750m minimum range with remove the whole point to do it at home (as most of us grow tired of home builds. ) 

- great idea.

- I think a heafty fee is perfectly reasonable. 

- This. This is phenomenal. I couldn't say I like this enough. It's perfect bc it already has so devalued the land that this is barely even efficient but I know for one I would absolutely love the chance to range upgrade a flag *that I already have built* at range and at approx 10x the cost and time investment. 

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25 minutes ago, Republic of America said:

- So putting a range limit? I hate it. If we are going to allow couch upgrades I think we just reevaluate whether we really want this. A 750m minimum range with remove the whole point to do it at home (as most of us grow tired of home builds. ) 

I wouldn't like this idea to be just about coach upgrades. There are still many places we visit every day that are outside the 750m range, and it still sounds way funnier than doing 15km outside a city to some middle of nowhere field, with nothing else to do but waiting.

Think of it as a same effort that was fun to commit to where you were growing your land in lv150+ range. It was still rather rapid and enjoyable :)

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That's true, but whereas I would happily lose 10 of my precious land levels in my Death Star III land, I would not be willing to level up a land 100 times that is far away from home. Especially when the reward is actually non-existent, I'm not adding levels I'm just moving them. At a cost of 25 perfect hours of gameplay that can't be near my land. 

Disclaimer: part if my adamant fight against the 750 is both my job and my house are within 700m ~ of my land. So it would srsly be disadvantages to have to get a new job. 

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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...)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I like the idea. It would give me motivation to play again at home and work, both of which are within my main land.  I recently moved, and am still in my main land by about half a block.  Now I'm in the process of planting as many new flags as possible within 500m of my current residence so I can get a nice boost a few months from now, after they're all fully upgraded. 

And after that...  Boredom again.  Unless I go on a business trip.  

This idea would give me a reason to capture as often as I could again; a few extra resources an hour and the base points just aren't cutting it any more. 

As for the objection regarding gaining 500 levels in a remote location...  Wouldn't that be mitigated by the current land merge mechanism?  To gain that many levels in one land you'd have to spend time planning out your land placement/acquisition so that you could merge 5 separate L100 lands, or many sub-L100 lands(the option I would choose).  Months of play and careful planning/placement seem like a fair trade for one remote L500 land to me. 

The remote merge cost could be more expensive than the current merge cost, which would help too. 

And even if you do get a L500 land in a remote location, that's only one base getting those points.  Personally, I would attempt to level bases up equally, spreading my land levels around.  Seems like a more useful strategy, barring an active war with anyone. 

 

As for couch expanding with a 2nd(or wife/girlfriend/sibling/parent) account, I haven't participated in that.  From all the decisions regarding gameplay changes I've seen, it's against the spirit of the game, and Mr. D's intentions for how the game should be played(and maybe even against the rules; I'll try to find what gave me that impression).  Although if I was, I would definitely be playing alot more.  

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Well, I caught up on the thread about couch expanding in the Q&A forum.  Guess we have the answer. 

Also, I found the section in the CoC that gave me the impression that "couching" was against the rules:

"

  • Multiple accounts
    Use of multiple accounts for one person is not prohibited as long as it is used for legitimate purposes (i.e. not exploiting the trade or resource sharing mechanics) and does not affect other players." 
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  • 3 weeks later...

 

13 hours ago, Republic of America said:

is still simply the best. 

... better than all the rest!!!


Sry but I just had to...xD

 

But he is right even if I still don't like the ratio, but we really don't have to discuss that again. 

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