Gaining terrain XP when fighting

[Nuvelle]

Rasputin >> November 20 - 12:29 At this moment all develop in a certain way, almost every age. Countries with a big terrain bonus on a certain terrain, first take out other countries with similar bonusses in order to gain a certain advantage over other countries.. If they manage, they can become near impossible to beat for other countries on their own terrain. It is however not very realistic. Let's take Desert for instance, ofcourse England would not have a big desert bonus at the beginning of the age, but I've had ages where I fought over 200 citybattles in desertcities with England. In real life, if a country would fight in desert thát much, they would gain experience on that terrain..

My suggestion would be to give all units/countries the bonusses as it is now in the beginning of the age, but use some sort of XP system to have that bonus change very slightly every couple of battles fought on a certain terrain.. That way you can actually train to increase your bonus on specific terrain and it would reflect the experience an army would gain in real life for fighting in different terrains. Ofcourse the gain in terrainbonus would have to be só small that you would need to fight a lot of battles on a specific terrain to actually make a big difference...

[MstCookieKlein]

I would suggest that it apply to only city battles and PvP, this would be an incentive to join SFs. Training battles would just make rankers near untouchable with their already superior heroes. How would these bonuses be displayed when someone spies you though? It would suck as a pvper if your army would normally beat theirs, but a hidden terrain buff causes you to lose.

[AlexanderJansen]

I agree with you on both.. It would have to be added in the spyreport and indeed, only citybattles and PvP would be best and again, the change in bonus should be very subtle, so just 3 or 4 SF's on bad terrain won't make big difference, just like IRL when you'd have to fight a lot of battles in a certain terrain to gain experience there..

ps.. don't forget to vote if you like the idea. . :P

[Lone Wolf]

I do like this idea, but think it should be extended a bit.

If you don't fight on a terrain, your bonus for that terrain should slowly decrease.

[AlexanderJansen]

Sounds interesting...

I do think btw that the changes in bonus should be very very subtle, like 1% in 40 or 50 citybattles or so and that total bonus (unit+country) should be limited. (and if your idea is added Lone Wolf, it should also be iimited to a max -%)

Also maybe make it only for battles in real war? So allies can't fake battles over a city or a couple of cities just to get their terrain bonus on that terrain up..

Just kind of thinking out loud here..

[Thom Merrilin]

1% per 50 sf's? some people do 500+ sf an age :P

It should also only count for successful battles; we dont need people failing on cities purposely just to gain bonus percentages.

I would also set a threshold of joiners required in an SF to count. When soldiers fight together over and over; they become better as a unit. This makes sense to put a minimum number of players required in an SF when a country takes a city.

[AlexanderJansen]

The threshold I don't see the need for that much, but the failing, yeah, might be. Though failing SF's on purpose for gaining bonus,, men, if you need to fail 50 for 1%,, imagine the injuries and deaths you would suffer

The 1% per 50 is just a number ofcourse. That's debatable I quess.. The 500plus SF's are btw not all on the same terrain and if they are, well, that's why I suggested a limit as well..

[Hans]

i think the 1 % per 50 is good,

the way i see it, you start with certain bonusses. and when they all addup you get 0 (atleast that is in Song Dynasty) So when you start SFing, on desert, your desert bonus increases, while the others decrease, but, the sum of all bonus remains 0. Then like currently the max bonus a country has is +2 and -2 so if you reach that, you can't get lower or higher even with 500+ SFs.

[Robin Kleinhesselink]

Maybe someone can come up with a nice triangle when you lose what % from wich terrain if you fight 50 battles on the other terrain. So this way the bonuses dont have to get a overhaul for age starts. Since not all countries actually add up to 0 :(

• How would this work tho would it go into 0.02 % per sf ? i think this would burden the server allot.

Seeing as if you are going to csf someone and you hit a unfavorable terrain and just hit the 50 th sf and you just lost the perfect bonus against the enemy would suck.

[CM Azwar]

over all i like the idea. just a few thoughts from my side. * have a upper and lower threshold like -5 and +5 is max a country can have. * only country bonuses are effected. * if a country is inactive bonuses start to shift toward countries starting bonuses. (0.15 for every 6 ticks :p) * +0.024 for each sf for that terrain and -0.008 for all other terrains. * bonuses get recalculated each merch tick. and if its implemented we do need to have some sort of way to know which country have sfed which terrain how much. may be a add one more tab into rankings :p

[AlexanderJansen]

I think the Threshold is a no-brainer, yes, ofcourse, you don't want to solve one issue by creating another. Whole point is to make an end to countries being unbeatable on their own terrain so you don't want to create a way to become even more unbalanced. I proposed a max of 8 for units and country combined, you propose 5 for just the country. Wich is better is for the developers to decided I quess. I do feel it's better to increase terrain bonus for both country and units, because it will give countries an incentive to leave their own terrain and it will give players an incentive to join SF's. The decrease I don't see.. First of all, it would be counterproductive, because then stepping out of your own terrain would actually mean you'd lose bonus on it, so countries would go terraincamping even more. The same goes for players with units with a good terrainbonus. They would stop joining SF's on other terrain not to lose their edge on their prefered terrain.. Also In real life, If I fight in desert a lot, I will get better at fighting there, but I would not lose my experience I already had fighting on other terrains, let alone the terrain I grew up in. I would just become more versatile. I understand the fear of some countries having good bonusses on all terrains, but all countries can reach that max of +8 if they make the effort and are active enough, and to prevent one country/player to become unbeatable again, the threshold should be implemented with this improvement..

(don't forget to vote if you like this idea..)

[CM Azwar]

first thing is having a combined unit and country bonus is stupid (sorry to be blunt here). that means calculating bonus for every single army? and then a hell lot of calculations for rainbow armies and thn some armies will never get advantage while others will get vast amount of advantage. there is a reason that some armies get +2 while others get -2 or so. if everyone get plus 8 everywhere it will be plus zero for all which makes zero sense . its not real life and yes to get better on one terrain you get to loose advantage on other. (let me put it that way with same equipment and gear you cannot have equal advantage on two different terrains no matter how much experienced or skilled you are). give viking shorts to coup heat n desert and thn send them in same outfit to snow. ridiculous. so if your army is getting accustomed to one terrain it should loose advantage on other terrain. and lets not go to balancing every thing out. balancing alone is reason enough to have a indirect relation between different terrain bonuses. and stacks getting extra benefit is also a huge issue i your proposal . and if u claim every one can get to +8 everywhere why not start with +8 (+0 technically) for everyone? sorry if i was a bit harsh.i apologies .

[Nuvelle]

Pending ingame discussion

[Nuvelle]

Issue #11 was marked as a duplicate of this issue.

[AlexanderJansen]

'Sorry' would imply that you said something you know isn't appropiate.. If you know, why say it, if you know it and still say it, the 'sorry' doesn't come across as very sincere.. Anyway, back to topic

You may not have noticed, but terrain bonus is already calculated for every single army as it is now. That's why in your encampment overview you get your terrain bonus listed and it changes when your units change. And in main army and SF's and taxi's etc each individual terrain bonus gets recalculated again. It's what computers do best. Calculating stuff. I could imagine it may be easier to calculate if the increasing terrain bonus gets appointed to the commander in stead of the units, but basic principle stays the same.

Then your Viking in shorts analogie.. If said Viking would put on shorts to go fight in the desert, would he then throw away his woolen underwear or would he store it to put that one on again when returning home? Besides, it's not called 'gear-bonus', if you check the topic name and my original proposal I'm calling it XP (= experience points)

Then why the decrease is silly and counterproductive : This whole idea started to make an end to terrain camping and reward countries that dare to go out of their comfortzone and dare to go onto other terrain then their natural habitat. These countries deserve an incentive, wich the increase would be, but in your idea of decreasing as well, they would get punished for leaving their own terrain and terraincamping countries would be rewarded by keeping their high bonusses. Bonus advantage of my proposal is that the increase in unit (or commander) bonus would be a nice reward for people choosing to play socially and join sf's in stead of people choosing to captrain to rank. Now let me tell you something about my bonus this age. I've got 7% on plains and desert. If joining a SF for mountains would mean decreasing my lovely huge terrainbonus on desert and plains I would be crazy to do so.. So again, in stead of it being an incentive to join SF's the whole decrease part makes it the opposite, a punishment to join.

Now for the 'all countries can get to +8%' part, yes, in theory they can, but with an increase as small as 1% per 50 SF's, a country with a starting bonus of -3% would need to do 650 SF's on one type of terrain to reach that 8% (about 2200 SF's to reach +8% on all terrains...) so I'm not afraid of all countries getting the same bonusses at all., There would still be a difference. It would only mean countries actually have a chance to make the gap smaller wich in turn would make it less impossible to kill a country with a typical terrainbonus that is just terraincamping (like desert, snow, jungle and wilderness countries often do..)

[Omar Darwish]

The way i see it, is have an overall terrain of 0% like it is for most countries now (for example geece in rome is 0/+3/-3/+3/-3 so overall is 0) the more you SF a certain terrain the more it gets by a certain ratio. Then all other terrains are reduced equally to keep overall country bonus 0 so if a terrain gets a +1 all other terrains are reduced by 0.25. A limit of +5/-5 should be made and when one terrain is on -5. The reduced amount should be devided on the other 3 (so 0.33 each).I think it should be update each +1. HC/WC should have a count of what terrain they SFed too

[AlexanderJansen]

Well.. I could live with that sort of decrease because the negative effect is way smaller that way then the positive effect.. I still think the decrease is unneccesary though because the whole idea is to give countries and players that don't go terraincamping a nice incentive and countries and players that do like terraincamping can't rely on that anymore because their enemies will improve their bonus there and sooner or later catch up.. I don't see why such an incentive should become a trade-off yet again,

On the point of it being neccesary for WC/HC to be able to see somewhere (stats? HC room? fixed topic in CT that gets automatically updated?) I do agree. Also the country terrain bonus displayed when you click on a countries flag should ofcourse reflect the correct terrain bonus and if you spy on a country or a player, spyreport should also mention terrainbonus

[Nuvelle]

This will be reconsidered for V2 due to the work required on the current codebase and balancing.