Alliance Strength

Warning: There's some build-up before the proposal.
Here's something about this game's mechanics that slightly doesn't make sense in the scheme of things: your Bonus to Owner. Normally, this is referred to as Bonus from Allies, or BFA, but today I'm talking about it from the perspective of the bonus your kingdom provides to the person who hires you.

When your kingdom is hired, its not your kingdom itself that is hired, but specifically a static 1/50, or 2% of base stats that is hired. Think of it like sending over a mercenary company to work in other kingdoms, but to avoid split loyalties, and to keep your manning up so the guaranteed strength is always there (static), your kingdom only loans out the single company. All of this being said..

What happens to that mercenary company - that static bonus 1/50 of your base combined stats, when nobody has hired your kingdom i.e. you have no owner? The answer? The stats (and plunder bonus) mystically disappear! The argument that they are part of the castle is nullified now that the castle has its own static stats, and pretending they do their own PR campaign to be hired is negated by the fact that your kingdom doesn't appear more prominent when you have no owner.

Proposal below!

When you are un-owned, that static bonus 2% of your base combined stats (and plunder bonus) operates as if your mercenary company is fighting for you - as if you have the bonus. This does two things. One, it makes logical sense from a lore perspective, as well as from the common sense with regards to game-play.

Two, it makes the game especially spicy at the higher end of things. Generally speaking, for the average player, they don't max their ally slots, and while they may not make enough to buy a kingdom of their own combined stats (cs) for a while, we can pretend that such a bonus, when it arises, is like extra random BFA/BFE you come across haphazardly. These people won't mind being owned. Besides, money, right?

However. consider those fighting at the top. Having a build complete (bc) "ally" in stats for free is worthwhile - however, at the same time you want to own other bc accounts for supremacy. There's also the problem of needing to be dropped by someone in order to get to this state for most people. While some would find it fun to engage in wars over the mechanic being this narrow, this leads to..

Proposal Two! If the first proposal is to be implemented, then implement the ability to "buy your freedom" by hiring your own mercenary company as another way to get this "hidden ally" bonus. When hired, your kingdom appears "Independent" and doesn't count against your max ally slots (wording of "unowned" changed to "Independent" when hiring yourself, since there is an owner (themselves)). This second proposal is mainly to allow the shenanigans from the initial proposal to have a "peaceful" solution, stops automatic price-drops from happening due to being specifically "unowned," while still encouraging said shenanigans (osw, skirmishing excuses, and cease-fire conditions) to avoid having to pay your own ally costs.

What do you think everyone? This change obviously doesn't dynamically change the game, but does add to the game-play without going too far. A pet project for a single developer (or two) to work on the side, perhaps. It's not a necessary change, but does fill in a p(l)ot hole in this game while potentially being good fun.

TL/DR: The proposal is being able to get your own bonus whenever you're "unowned" or "Independent", and the ability to hire yourself to make yourself "Independent"

PS: Pardon the wall-of-text, fancy bbcodes and pictures haven't really been my forte.
PPS: I may edit in screenshots to explain things if people don't know what I'm talking about. It happens.
Last EDIT Change: Clarified "unowned" and "independent" to be two separate scenarios rather than just a QoL change to avoid mechanics issue. Added TL/DR at bottom of post.

 

Would you kindly please give an example? The only exploit I can think of off of the top of my head would be getting dropped inside of a war to break out a hidden bonus, but that can just be blocked.

 

@Sasuke_Uchiha

1. I know, don't worry.

2. Yes, I know. This proposal would be to fix a mechanics hole (even if it is rare to actually matter), and give people a reason to not be owned / be independent. My big post gave generalizations of people who would/wouldn't care towards example effects of such an update.

3. The "kingdom squads" bit wasn't part of the proposal. That was just me explaining how the current system already works. The proposal was being able to get your own bonus whenever you're "unowned" or "Independent", and the ability to hire yourself to make yourself "Independent"

Your TL/DR is in my response to 3.

 

True. Somehow I forgot about the automatic price drop over time. Solution then would be that there would be no stat different between "unowned" and "Independent," just that "unowned" would have that defensive mechanism while "Independent" (from hiring yourself) just acts normal (with price increase from the hire and so-on).

@Sasuke_Uchiha , this change wouldn't destroy the system with the above fix. You'd just have a say in owning yourself, the update giving you an extra "free" potential ally slot, and so on. You owning yourself wouldn't change the alliance LB, and most valuable LB would only change towards perhaps the reasoning on over-inflating certain players (i.e. they want to ensure nobody can own them for w/e cause). Yes, people would want to cash in on the free slot, but they'd still have to compete with everyone else who also wants them to fill their actual ally slots. Any conflict with that would be the same as current conflicts on ally hiring (save that the extra slot is locked on owning you).

Yes, it probably would briefly shake up LB ally trading since everyone would scramble to own themselves, but it could also just settle own as everyone mutually agrees to peacefully trade for each other at that level. Would there be potential for wars over such a slight edge? Yes. Is there anything wrong with that? No.

EDIT: Changed main post (and the post of mine you quoted) to reflect my reply here.

 

@ -_-OPTIMAL-_-CHAOS-_- , this would affect more than just a handful, and would change perspectives on the ally market. However, it is a small change, and I never claimed it was a "needed" change. Just because a change isn't needed, if it improves the game it at least ranks above those "gee-wiz" proposals. Notice how I'm not calling for it to be implemented else the world will fall. In fact, in the main post I relegated it to a side project if it even draws interest. This is a refinement proposal, even if it technically does add a new feature. I will disagree with you on this updating not freshening this game up. The ability to own yourself, yet not counting towards ally slots, could shake things quite a bit at all levels because people are dreamers at heart.

EDIT: I kind of want to quote your post to properly reply to it, but I won't for space since I'm long-winded. This change would actually cause an upset in the top levels of the game and mess with the "elistists" you seem to despise initially. Because of this, a notification post would need to be made in advance so they can try to work it out semi-peacefully (though they might not need it). As far as, "How about if you don't like your owner farm them into dropping you," I'm not sure what the different between now and if the update was implemented would be. Yes, you would have a reason to farm your owner into dropping you if you DON'T hate them (not a bad thing), but if you hate your owner right now, farm away. As far as I know, that's what people do right now anyways.

@grizzy, the main point of this idea is just to fix the missing stats that vanish whenever a player is unowned. It being a benefit to all players (if a small one) is a byproduct, as is the ability to "free yourself" (a secondary proposal for a reason since it requires more coding) to make the update worth the time to fix (and keep it from being a confusing fix at that).

Towards your most recent post, they are "missing stats" because you have your own stats AND you have the extra static 2% you give your owner. They are two separate amounts. Pretend each building actually gives 102% of what you think it does, just the extra 2% isn't based on troop/spy levels and is always there (and loaned to your owner). This is actually the case and why I used the mercenary company example to explain current mechanics. This is logical and not ridiculous in the slightest. Were this mechanic fix in the game at the start, or early on, you wouldn't bat an eye.