issue Trade offer disappeared along with 15k Personnel

[Олег Поленин]

Hi,

Several days ago, during the trip to Spain, I have sent an offer of 15k Personnel to @Ruvox for one of his lands.

Now I found the offer disappeared without trace.

Ruvox neither accepted nor declined the offer, and I neither saw the resources returned nor the land being transferred.

@Mr. D I'd be really grateful if you could take a look on this issue, any logs, tables etc., and it would be awesome if, when confirmed via logs, a refund could be applied.

Ruvox mentioned same problem has occurred to him some long time ago, and thus there might be some bug behind it, that affects trade heavily. It's, well, not a problem if we're talking about small, three-digit trades, but losing 15k Personnel is a huge problem

[Mr. D]

Hi!

Argh, this is a bit awkward, but I don't think it was a bug, rather an undocumented feature.
Combat involving the traded land does invalidate its offers, so the Force of Terror has the ability to intercept and steal your offer with the associated resources (this is one of the reasons why using trade offers as a "bank" for storing superfluous resources isn't safe).

I apologize for inconvenience this has caused and will add a task to my list to "de-confuse" this feature; it was originally introduced as a hotfix for an abused trade exploit, but another solution is clearly needed (plus a notification for when this happens; it's clearly missing).

I have refunded part of your lost resources, but cannot return the full amount as it wouldn't be entirely fair to those who suffered from this game element and didn't receive anything back!

[Irrelevents]

Does this mean that we could, in theory, bolster the FoT by baiting them with flag trades? Do they enlist soldiers that they "capture"?

Not to detract from the unfortunate circumstances that started this topic, but it would be interesting if we could effectively propagate some really nice sized battles  while we're waiting for updates

[Олег Поленин]

@Mr. D

Thanks for at least partial refund!

The idea sounds quite fine and surely needs some warnings but I wonder it could use some tuning along a following line:

1. Calculate the "overall" value of transaction (let's say: $value = $gold + 10 * $personnel + 10 * $supplies)
2. Assign a "chance" of offer invalidation that varies on value, either by fixed threshold and 0/100% chance or a variable chance, let's say: $chance = min( 1, max( 0, ( $value - $minthreshold ) / $maxthreshold ) ) based on two thresholds:
   • $minthreshold - any value equal or below has 0% chance to be intercepted;
   • $maxthreshold - any value equal or above has 100% chance to be intercepted.
3. Display the risk in warning message upon offer commission.

This way relatively standard offers will be safe from FoT while the feature would target the more abusive trades.

This could be of course bypassed by abusive side making lots of small offers, but:

• there is an offer limit,
• smaller offers are more risky, eg. colluding player might change his heart and accept a trade to the mishap of offering player,
• it would take a lot of effort to store lots of resources this way.

I'm throwing this idea because I'm often sending some smaller offers for lv1 lands to not very active players, especially those that don't use discord, and would hate for these offers to disappear accidentally due to FoT. Not for the sake of resource value, but just the lack of tools to monitor these events and reapply offers

(sidenote: if possible to add to any todo list, it would be awesome to have access to some long-lasting message log regarding most important events, like information on non-FoT attacks taking place, rejection or acceptation of trades, alliances and truces etc.; current message log has very short history and dies on restart, and it is very easy to actually miss out an attack and hard to track trades and other events)

[Eerienkah]

No offense, but I think it's a bit of an overkill 😂

You got robbed by the FoT, more incentive to get rid of them 🙃 

[Mr. D]

On 14/02/2019 at 11:04 PM, Irrelevents said:

Does this mean that we could, in theory, bolster the FoT by baiting them with flag trades? Do they enlist soldiers that they "capture"?

Sorry, missed that message somehow.

I am afraid the size of FoT does not change depending on the amount of trade offers nearby, so if you have eliminated the nearby FoT base your trade offers will be safer!
It is an interesting concept though that I'll keep in mind when building new features.

@Олег Поленин thanks for the idea!
I have to agree with @Eerienkah on this matter though; as of last year I am trying to make things as simple and straightforward as possible, with no overly complex formulas or game mechanics that a new player may struggle to understand in less than a minute. My golden rule these days is that any individual feature should be possible to explain with a single sentence (and if it requires a spreadsheet then I am doing something wrong).
Having said that I am positive that there will be some sort of a change to the trade offer system, but I haven't worked out all the details yet.

On 15/02/2019 at 11:23 PM, Олег Поленин said:

(sidenote: if possible to add to any todo list, it would be awesome to have access to some long-lasting message log regarding most important events, like information on non-FoT attacks taking place, rejection or acceptation of trades, alliances and truces etc.; current message log has very short history and dies on restart, and it is very easy to actually miss out an attack and hard to track trades and other events)

That sounds useful indeed, agreed!