SUPPORT!.... And just not making even the gold made but also should even the killing spies with soldiers as in assassination with spies. A new kind of attacking or assault or somewhat should kill the spies.
Support. An added note based on some scant evidence but I've noted that the ally bonus advantage that troop buildings had over spy buildings has been cut/eliminated. This makes hansels even more dominant in terms of their plunder potential. This is becoming a run away train!
This continues to be a problem. Especially as new lands are added and builds become more one sided. The evidence has been there for a long time regarding both plunder and event drops, it can no longer be refuted. It is also very clear to see a change in build type variation across KaW. There will soon be no point offering the opportunity to build different types of buildings. I think it is about the time that the mechanics are reviewed. They were set when builds were a lot smaller, as the game expanded the discrepancies became wider to a point where they are no longer a small hindrance but they are a significant handicap. Please review the mechanics to ensure you keep a variety of players.
My $.02.... I've nothing against ppl building as a Hansel. I do have many issues with the imbalances that r created and exist. If i start with FPBO was a spy clan in its day and we specifically aimed at perms doing resets for EQ then all out build for Spies. Back then we had a purpose but years later with the advent of EE and the endless release of EB oriented events the goal posts have moved too far in favour of Hansels. I like many long time players am losing interest. I am not one to say the devs don't listen or care like so many other ppl go on n on about. What i will say is if fixes/subtractions r not a good option then addition is. Start by juggling the calendar up. Balance is the aim and by that less EB oriented events so more like 75/25 is fine. Continuous 2 week events B2B2B etc make money and i get that but it exacerbates the problem. Do i care if Hansels don't like what tanks say? No cuz its selfish and tuned out. I play for the fun and war foremost and both r fading interests. What i think is needed is the devs to speak up and explain what the point of this imbalance of Hansels over Attack build is. Transparency.
@golthar, from back when, spies earned semi-comparable gold to troops, but they had diminishing returns on steals (like troops do on attacks) but with the trade off of giving better Bonus from Allies gold for attacks(!). This is why the Hansel build was popularized before EBs were even a thing - they had the best plunder. This attribute of spy buildings was to encourage going hybrid. If you consider EBs - you can't even play most of the game without a spy building. That's their role - to be the most agile of the two types, but make worse gold than successful attacks. (However, being a Hansel meant that you were quite vulnerable to attacks from all comers. You could convert to pure spy easier, but then your income is atrocious. ) --- Wholly unrelated though, I find it ironic that this forum post is talking about how in system wars pure spies/spy-heavy builds are the norm. The reason for this are historic forum posts in years past complaining that pure spies were dominating off-system wars, and that everyone was going to become pure spy or Hansel. I do believe stripping was nerfed quite badly, which is why this game is Kingdoms at Events for most, but that's besides the point. --- Now, I can already see a counter-point: "If spies have worse income, why are they making more in war?" The answer is that they aren't - the soldier is just over-compensating on spy-defense towers for redundancy. Compared to highlands spy defense towers (when they were terrible), my understanding is that the current towers are quite good for stats and cost. In fact, the whole idea for tower builds is that your income is so much more secure, but you trade off having lower income yourself to get that security. Towers are great at what they do. What this topic sounds like is that the soldiers want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to rebuff all spy builds that could ever attack them, AND still make better plunder than spy-focused builds - losing only in plunder to troop-only builds. Do you realize how absurd that sounds on paper? Let's assume that happens, what's the effect? If spies are not profitable or winning, then the focus shifts to the new best builds - soldiers with spy defense towers. This makes war a lot easier - Kingdoms at Attacking, but also more boring and even more simplified. Why would you remove dynamic interaction - i.e. spies from the game? Alright, this brings up what someone else has suggested - give troops an ability to "assault" spies and destroy them, similar to assassinate. The coding for the EBs hopefully wouldn't be too hard - it would just work on the same phases that both Assassinate/Attack work in (save Assassinate-only or Attack-only phases), and would offer more counters to the spy in PVP (which has been hit with the nerf bat quite a bit over time). The issue with this is the balance between the two types changes dramatically. Spies then keep their much worse income compared to soldiers (they even steal less actual gold than attacks do), and their only trade off is that they have the old "Scout" ability, which aids attack(!) decisions. Spy-heavy builds would be the trash can, and ATA would have removed an entire gameplay component from the server. Meanwhile, if the balance of soldiers with overkill spy defense towers actually persisted in an organized fashion, then wars would be fine, and the meta would change accordingly. However, the problem is that people want to be weekend warriors, and only have a war build for war, and a PvE build the rest of the time. In the past, the culture was different - the only request was for PVP to be profitable compared to PVE. --- The issue is, PVE is designed to be the most profitable method of play. If PVP was most profitable, then Epic Battles would be defunct, and we'd go back to PWars, OSFs, and OAFs everywhere - with a healthy increase in botting to run those. After all, if you're getting incoming, that's cutting into your profit margin - best to only hit what will pay the most and won't hit back. Then, if you do get bored, you can do actual PVP by closing clans' OSFs. Epic Battles were introduced to close that loop and make growth more interesting compared to hitting the same Kingdom for infinity, occasionally switching as you get bigger. Events/Legends were (as a byproduct) an extension of that to put PVP under its umbrella. What's the solution? Quite a few various efforts have been attempted over the years, but nearly all are imperfect. For instance - make the teams random to counter PWars from becoming a thing. If it worked, they could boost income. That's not wholly supported by the community, and then you're alienating folks who honestly do want to have actual organized clan PVP in-system. Other partial solutions are why the EE system has had so many War modes since it's been introduced. What the OP wants is for the troop-heavy builds to be more effective in the current meta without trade-offs in PVP, so that the meta stagnates permanently with just a different build. I'm not sure this is the solution. Thanks for reading, and while I hate to disappoint, I'll need more current experience (or just time working on the matter) to possibly provide an eloquent solution. Until then, hopefully you can better understand / appreciate why the status quo is what it is. Who knows? Maybe we'll meet a proper 'Villain in Glasses' to discover the solution. Until Next Time, Corinthian P.S. I don't usually do sign-offs in my posts, but this seemed long enough that it felt like a letter. I hope you don't mind my eccentricity. Also, what did you think about my bolding the first word in each paragraph to break things up? Effective? Distracting? Any earnest feedback is appreciated.
Yes or no would have been good enough imo #hanselsrule I don't know if you even mentioned towers at all (TLR) Get good, go Hansel
Maybe I'm the only one Fossilized enough to remember this, but in the "Beginning" of KaW, Spies were never meant to be a main build, no one assumed wed have even 40% spy heavy builds. However, this changed with time, yet the Devs NEVER accepted or acknowledged it. This means that any pros, along with the CONS, will continue to be ignored by them. You're tired of Spies dominating EE & PvP? I have a couple of tips, follow them in any order you please. 1) Spy Defense Towers. All day. Every day. You eliminate their ability to Scout, Steal, & Assassinate, and that's most their war kit GONE. 2) Scout Bombs bypass _most_ defenses. If you stack proper BFE/A you don't need to be anything special, you'll always go through. 3) I ENJOY AND ABUSE my low gold plundered per hit. Do you know what that does? In War, you have the most chances to KO someone, you take almost no gold (500k-2M) In PvP, I buy one enemy ally and theyre open for me for HOURS. I can sell my only troop building at night just before bed, and bank all my gold, making me IMMUNE to all attacks and steals, as in, they can't until I decide I want it to be that way. But I digress. Think twice before you complain. Instead of crying (no offense meant, just being a realist) why not spin it in your favor and exploit it? Go out and buy so many SDT you can't be so much as scouted, and make your income the silver bars from top 50-100. Start to war. Farm EE5 Permanently. This game becomes a lot more fun when you stop giving a °°°°.
I personally love the change from useless forum clutter to an actually enlightening post. I'm old as dirt (game wise) and even I learned a thing or two. Thank you.
Towers give no plunder thats fine. Increase ALL tower stats in lieu of that. Release new big spy defense pots only. Make plunder in war more relevant. Not to the point it kills spy builds from entering. EE can increase beyond 5 by 5% increments according to plunder to a max of 100%. Ban PS in EE. Why? To encouage ADT no different than attack builds get SDT to fend off spies. Not intended to to alienate PS just an obvious fix.
Support all the way Max !! I too have sent feedback about this a few times and am reminded there are pros and cons to all builds.Like so many lately I'm struggling to see what the benefits to being a tank are?! I personally would like to receive the same plunder from my few spies as a hansel gets with their few soldiers! I don't think that's too much to ask. In EE their attacks is as much use as my spies so that is fair but why on earth in ebs should their one attack build provide that much plunder its ridiculous! So even it out devs give us tanks the plunder our puny spies deserve! Tanks for life! Toffinator i'm stealing that
Full support.... tanks continually get the shaft in plunder ... while all the "no support" on this thread comes mainly from huge hansels that are reaping the benefits of this exploit ... of course they don't want things to change , why would they? .... they make 2-4 times the gold as their attack build counter parts and greed always plays a part . How about just make things fair ?
1) For the suggestion to buff towers since they award no plunder: They are as high as they currently are because they award no plunder. I'm not sure what ratio you're going for in a game-design sense. 2) New Spy Defense potions is an interesting one, as long as they introduced New Defense potions also. For ages, the soft deterrent to attacking has been for attack/spy attack potions to be much more expensive than their equivalent counterparts, but otherwise they cancel out (and if they use defensive potions, then you get bonus gold to help offset that). However, if you assume nobody Wars until they have that stockpile set up, that soft deterrent is wasted - only for lightly discouraging PVP. If you brought Attack/Spy Attack potion prices down to the defensive costs, but gave the spy defense/defense side one extra potion, then the attackers would always be at a disadvantage as long as the defender had potions - it'd be like giving everyone a small amount of towers for "free" - passively killing success rates for everyone. As long as escalation (from new releases) doesn't keep the 1-potion difference too insane, it's interesting. I'm not sure how that would impact PVP with everyone fighting at a disadvantage. My gut tells me the status quo would not change. However, from old mechanics testing, towers have diminishing returns on reducing the success rate of incoming actions. This would allow more unit-producing buildings / less defensive towers to hit a critical mass of defense - slightly boosting plunder from before when you do find soft targets. However, the bonus potions at the same time could be backbreaking to small units builds. Pure spies and Very Troop Heavy builds might be the only victors here (ignoring broken leveled equipment or BFA of course). Alternatively, dedicated PVP warriors will just take the 20+% success rate on attacks and steals, and go all-in on both towers and skim from the top. That may be more effective than currently, since their current levels would already be so low that the bonus the potion gives would be negligible. // Of course, if everyone has worse stats, then the status quo mostly stays the same, which is why the person I'm quoting suggested only Spy defense potions being boosted +1. Incidentally, this makes strips even worse, so that could be well received (by everyone who doesn't actually want to PVP). Funnily though, the devs could just background nerf spy success rates, and mechanically the effect would be the same. The only difference is that the community wouldn't notice and would keep complaining unless it was noticeable enough to kill spies entirely. I know I haven't been keeping watchdog-levels of testing going in the recent past, and I bet few if any are. This impact makes me think that maybe there are holes in this solution to introduce an extra potion - I'd just have to work on it more than just in an on-the-spot forums-response. 3) Towards banning pure spies from war, you'd have to introduce a new mechanic in the background for this ban. Additionally, the complaint here are that hansels and spy-heavy builds are too strong in PVP - not just pure spies. This would be a slapstick solution that would just make some of the community angry without fixing much of anything. Additionally, such a patch would probably also disallow switching buildings during war - removing gameplay interaction / response ("choice") during a war and making the battle even more binary - an unpopular solution for most. ---- Still, at least one of your solutions showed a little bit of promise, with some slightly tweaking. At the same time though, another dominant build will emerge, and complaints will shift to that instead. The developers are incentivized to make all builds have pros-and-cons: for the ideal clan to have a mixed composition where everyone has their role, but not where all builds are viable (because then build choice is moot). It's possible that there's a way to do this admirable goal, but the issue of not being able to control aggression might be too much - maybe I'll dedicate some thought to this instead. Until Next Time, Corinthian