Wise decision. My compliments.

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Zehahaha

I would like to change this to:

• Eligibility Requirements for Merging:
  
  For spots 2-4: The merging kingdom must not be over 1500 acres.
  For spots 5+: The merging kingdom must not be over 1200 acres. . . Down from 1,500 acres.

This will make it so players can create a pack on the fly early game, but also removes the possibility of adding competitive players to the core group of 4 players when the pack size restriction is raised [GT: 240].

Yes.

EDIT: Yes to 080's question.

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The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup

Barren forest, as in no building but just barren land on forest? 50 hunters each produce 5 lumber?

1 Sawmill gives 115 lumber and 20 raw population.
1 barren with 50 hunters give 250 lumber with 10 raw population.

2 barren + 1 home is not equal to 3 sawmills in population. We have to subtract 100 hunters as well...

On top of this Barbarians got a negative 10% population that makes this spell even worse!

with a 160% population bonus(150%with barb bonus) we will need 6 homes with 4 barren forests to match 10 sawmills population and then they only make 4*250/10 = 100 lumber per acre versus sawmills 115 lumber per acre! And you even pay 5000 gold for each barren forest in worker cost...

Am I missing something?

Not to mention the 5% OP that is no longer available and the price increase to sea reavers. This just seems like a joke to me as I have not seen a competitive barbarian in land play in a while. If this was to balance xp it was done quite poorly

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Oh Eighty
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Wonderland says
he is pwning you with a wooden spoon!
Immor says
i use chopstick

Nope, you calculated it differently, but you got nearly the same results as I did. . .

1 sawmill + 50 Workers = 50 woodcutters + 1 Barren land
(.85)*115L + 50*3.5g + 9*2.6 = (.85)*50*5L
97.75L + 198.4g = 212.5L
198.4g = 114.75L
1.73g = 1L

In Bazaar:
5g = 1L

GM vs Sawmill
0.61g = 1L


It's currently only useful if all of the following conditions are met:

1. Your population won't max out for over 12 HRs
2. You plan on building homes or non resource production building (that you do not need the bonus for more than 12 hours) with your barren forest.
3. You have plenty of workers.
4. You want more lumber.

- Or -

1. You plan on being invaded and want to protect your forest buildings with barren forest.
2. You have plenty of workers.
3. You want more lumber.

- Or -

1. You do not have enough lumber to build your barren forest land (how a barbarian could accomplish this, I don't know).
2. You have plenty of workers.
3. You want more lumber.

Increasing the production of woodcutters to a more useful number (i.e. much closer to 10 per woodcutter), would unbalance other aspects of the race. . .

IMO, either barb should have no spell (i.e. this one), or get a different replacement spell.

why not change the the size of the 30 man realms to say 15 or 20? Since you are cutting pack realms nearly in half shouldn't you change the random realms as well? I mean it would allow for more competition at all levels of the game wouldn't it?

I don't like the Barbarian changes.

Why do they need woodcutters ?
my suggestions for possible changes would be :

1. subject longship raids to limitations of raid attacks that is they raid only once you get to 900 land and for targets between 70% and 140%

2. cut their cost such that land players can built enough to reduce return times by 2 hrs without overdoing sawmills.

3. make longships work on raw offense ?
These changes would negate the big early advantage barbs have in both land and xp play while making them more cost effective later

Not to mention this round is almost 6weeks for a race that running 1:1 spec:elite op has 8.25/8 efficiency and almost immortal op elites (immortal at 100% hits). Even with 1.5:1 spec:elite they have a nice 7.4/8 effiency. I believe Barbarians are pretty strong for a long round. Comparable to flameweaver in many ways, with better efficiency but high secondary resource costs.

Reasons:
- We want to remove spells that are always used anyway
- Barbarians in landplay need to be nerfed for a longer round
- Barbarians in xp play needs a general nerf

Removing the +5% op spell is a big nerf. Giving Sea Reaver +.5 op is a buff, and more so to landplay than to xp play, although it is mitigated by the price increase. Giving longships cas is a nerf, a lot more so to xp play.

We discussed the spell a lot yesterday. We realize it is underpowered and only usable in very specific situations at the moment. We felt it was best to start with a weak version of the spell rather than risk anything be overpowered.

Wisdom round 3 was 960hrs, 40 days. That is similar to the upcoming round.

Flame Invoker 3.0 1.0 12.0 9.0 100 435g
Flame Acolyte 3.0 9.0 100 300g
Phoenix 6.0 3.0 12.0 12.0 150 1,300g, 25dm
Magmasur 4.0 8.0 12.0 12.0 100 1,400g, 150r

Very rough numbers then.. If someone wants to correctme, feel free.

FW elite def 8p at like 200gpp - Barb elite def 8p ~205gpp
FW elite op 6p at ~250gpp (immortal) - barb elite op 12.5p at ~200gpp
FW elite+spec 5p op at ~203gpp (immortal elite) - barb elite+1.5spec 7.4 average op at ~190gpp (immortal elite)

So basically then. FW has slightly cheaper def, but more expensive op and a lot lower efficiency, and the need to use a very expensive spell in order not to get a ~10% lower op for consequtive hits. To balance this barbarian have -10% pop and -15% ore/lumber/food. Barbarian also has more flexibility from worker op and possible longships, and very nice spy/mage units with military power.

Edit: Updated with a more appropriate comparison from a round of similar round length.

Edit2: In all fairness it should be mentioned that pretty much no one played FW that round.

Fergy, that is a horrible spell... There is no acceptable situation where it is good! Also assuming 100% peasants is wrong. The 12h to get your population maxed is uninteresting as your building take 12h to build and if we are talking 24h to max your population then you are in a horrible situation where this spell is no real help....
You SHOULD build more sawmills if you want more lumber! It will give your more lumber unless we are talking about the last 2 days and I think it is silly to have a spell that only maybe give you a bit better attack time at the very end of the round.
Keeping barren land as you plan/expect to get hit again would also mean that this spell is rather useless. Why would anyone want a spell that gives a little better attack time later when one just lost out big time? More military would be needed not better attack time.
I do not get this spell at all.

Dante, a barbarian would need a 40.9% population and gold(-10%) bonus to reach a cost of 200gpp of their Sea Reavers. If we give FW that they cost more like 275g per point. Phoenix + Flame Invoker is a 4.5 offense per soldier and costs 231.29gpp(I assume Flame Invokers are trained from peasants). A Barb with 40.9% pop/gold bonus with a Sea Reaver and 1.5 Legion is more like 212.88gpp with a 6.66 points per soldier(negative population also affect points per soldier which is why 1% pop > 1% gold even with pure gold races).
A Flameweaver spec + elite gives a casualty rate of 33.33 compare to 100 as normal.
A Barbarian 1.5 spec + elite gives a casualty rate of 48.64 compared to 100 as normal.

Have anyone played a Flameweaver by attacking successfully to be competing at the end? Looks a lot more like an explorer race for most part of the round, where you would go much more heavy on the specs when/if attacking.

Barbarians does not look like it is built for involved land play (As in "fighting" the competitors), but they are not really comparable to Flameweavers either.

Almost everything you write looks wrong to me. On phone, so will be brief. Fw have been fairly good attacking on long rounds, dont recall any explorers. Fw spec elite average 5, not 4.5. Sea reaver is roughly 2.5k gold for 12.5, so about 200gpp.

If FW average 5 with one spec and one elite then the numbers you gave are wrong.

your wrote that spec is 3 offense and elite is 6.
(3+6)/2 = 4.5 not 5

sea reaver
340 ore/93,5oremine = 3.6363

2100goldsea reaver + 100worker = 2200 gold so you are missing 300 gold

300 gold/3.6363 = 82.5gold

one home is 20 raw pop.

3.15 gold per raw pop is favoring a lot of workers! 3.15/3.5 = 90%workers versus 10% peasants.

82.5/(20*3.15) = 1,3095238095238095238095238095238 pop/gold bonus and here you have to add 10% population penalty.

Fairly good attackers means what? Hitting small guys all around is not "fighting" the competitors, but it can all be void if you gave the wrong numbers on the flameweavers military units.

Read up a bit on fw man.
300g for sr is close to 340r late round barb, a little lower early, not a huge diff to gpp, hence i said roughly.

It was to compare the cost of SR with Phoenixes.

The point was that you said Phoenix cost 250gpp while a Sea Reaver was 200gpp while a Phoenix would be 275gpp(assuming 6 points). Are you saying Phoenixes are 6.5 looks more like 250gpp? You wrote 6.