And one more... WOK5 V3.30.7 released !!

[gm_al]

Thx for keeping me busy at night now too

Changelog (explanations below):
* DEF of initial Provinces raised to 2.0
* the aim +LVL now adds +0.004 level per worker (up from +0.003)
* Femma Tribe effect raised to increase tax income by 1.75x (up from 1.5x)
* Selfter Tribe effect decreased - it now reduces Troops maintenance costs by -40% (down from -60%)
* failing to pay Troops maintenance costs now produces a series of penalties:
- you lose 5% EFF (down from -12%)
- workers will not perform +LVL aims
- you will not be able to perform upgrades on your Troops
- DEMORALISATION: your Troops lose 1/10 of their Basic Level (applies to all your Provinces)

Comments:
The balancing changes have been discussed before so I wont go into detail there again.
The new Tribe balances reflect the changes regarding Troops maintenance payments - Femma is a bit more useful now to make some Gold in time, while Selfter's power was reduced in order to avoid it being the "new Mbakku" (aka the Tribe everyone uses most of the time).
As you can see the range of penalties for failing to pay maintenance has been quite enlarged. The aim there was to cover all varieties of troop sizes and troops experience levels, while hindering the player to keep raising his military might when he fails to pay for his men. While the EFF hit has been reduced for balancing reasons, the Player will now see his Troops refusing to upgrade while in the same time losing 1/10 of their Basic Level. This can have a major impact on army buildup and really puts maintenance right in the middle of a players interest (one more thing to watch now hehehe)
Players repeatedly (and voluntarily) failing to pay maintenance while pushing on the number of armies will now basically just command an army of peasants that are no match for an army of high-level knights or well-trained archers. It also puts more emphasis on running a "working" economy or having a decent backup in gold when you need it.

As usual I carefully (play)tested all changes. All files have been updated accordingly.

Note to GMs: you can use the Smack Updater from within the WOK5 Manager to download the latest version - I tried it, worked fine for me...

[TK]

* DEF of initial Provinces raised to 2.0
* the aim +LVL now adds +0.004 level per worker (up from +0.003)
* Femma Tribe effect raised to increase tax income by 1.75x (up from 1.5x)
* Selfter Tribe effect decreased - it now reduces Troops maintenance costs by -40% (down from -60%)
* failing to pay Troops maintenance costs now produces a series of penalties:
- you lose 5% EFF (down from -12%)
- workers will not perform +LVL aims
- you will not be able to perform upgrades on your Troops
- DEMORALISATION: your Troops lose 1/10 of their Basic Level (applies to all your Provinces)

Generally, I think these changes are good. DEF, great. LEV, great.

Femma - this was already one of the better tribes, so I dont think it needed any more bonus - and the WOK5 focus group all thought the same. However, its only gold...

Selfter - OK - time will tell how this tribe fits in.

Troop Payment - a whole range of penalties - and exactly the same ideas that Xarfei, Korexus and myself have talked about at home. Lets see how they work out.


Al - the WOK5 Focus Group (WFG?) will be in touch with you shortly regarding our thoughts on the tribes. We are assessing all 20 and we will give you our recommendations.

[Mullog]

Just a quick question. Will the armies level fall below 1.0?

[gm_al]

Of course not. Armies minimum level is always 1.000

[Saladin]

The problem that i see with WOK 5 is that most of the changes made in the last year or so are not very 'noob friendly' or call it less forgiving.

Of course there are a handful of great wok 5 players, but most players (especially beginners) make a number of mistakes during a game. Most because of miscalculations with food or gold (or both). In the 'old' days you would get a 10% decrease in your eff or you would lose pop, both of which sucked but it wasn't the end of the world as you could overcome those things and continue with the game.

Then all the changes concerning the paying of troops started being made (including the reduction of +level) and it all became a lot less forgiving.

Now if you make one of those numerous miscalculations not only do you not get any level (so all those wok are wasted), you even lose level. You also do not get your upgrades and still get a little drop in your eff.

Now the point i'm trying to make is that instead of making the game harder and harder to play, why not look at the problem from the other side. Instead of only increasing the punishment why not make paying your troops a little easier?

How about a sliding scale for paying your troops (numbers are just an example)? The first 50 cost 5 gold per army. The second 50 4 gold per army, etc. Of course these number of armies need to be adjusted to fit the actual number of armies people tend to have.

BTW here's another idea. Why not make upgraded troops more expensive to keep? A knight will definitely want more money than a lowly footman. This will improve the balance again between people who like to level up armies (not very viable now i hear) and people who like to upgrade armies.

[korexus]

BTW here's another idea. Why not make upgraded troops more expensive to keep? A knight will definitely want more money than a lowly footman. This will improve the balance again between people who like to level up armies (not very viable now i hear) and people who like to upgrade armies.

This bit sounds fun but would probably only be viable if a) Basic payments were lower and b) The penalties were still nasty (ie not noob friendly )

The system would also be harder to calculate when planning turns. Again probably not a problem for the people who already play, but yet another thing to remember when first learning...

[Undertaker]

We now have more of a penalty for not paying troops, however it's not any easier to afford them than it was before.

My first thoughts are, that this will slow down the game and return it to the defensive game it was before when everyone slept and worked on level. I mean it's going to be quite difficult to have more than 200 troops (and yes, you need that many troops, minimum, if you going to have any chance of winning), and still be able to make spells and bump up TECH.

While I think I'm one of the better WOK 5 players around, I've never been a number cruncher. And I have to agree with Saladin , that you're not making it any easier for the less expierenced.

[Bjorn]

Did any of these recent updates reduce the troop maintenance cost from 5 to 4? I thought I saw that someplace. It would certainly help in paying troops.

WOK4 is the noob friendly version. WOK5 is supposed to be challenging. I always enjoyed the minor accounting that went on when planning my turn. Unexpected gains or losses in POP can really mess up the feeding level and the maintenance phase. You need to factor in a variance since it is virtually impossible to figure it all out unless you are reasonably sure there will be no combat this turn. A lot of the time I would lose more stuff to the stock limit than anything else.

Not too fond of different maintenance costs for different units. I believe it just adds a minor complication to the turn planning with no real benefit one way or the other. Assume the 5G/turn is an average for all units. I mean, should a spy cost as much as an army to maintain?

[gm_al]

5 posts and 5 different views...

WOK5's primary aim isnt to be n00b-friendly. We have WOK4, and soon WOKON for the n00bs. In fact WOKON, with all the possible different setups, will fill the gap between the "easy" WOK4 and the "hard" WOK5 quite a bit. So it definitely is that WOK5 should appeal to the experienced WOK player looking for some new challenge - its just that right now we dont have enough of those, and it shows.

I am suggesting we keep running a few games with the latest updates before adding even more changes. Only feedback from actual games will give us hard facts, way more then philosophing over numbers and what they might possibly do to the game.

Its quite clear that gold managment and troops paying will now get a lot more attention from the players, and in my view this will make things interesting again. There will have to be more streams of income to sustain a larger army and we shall see how players handle the new tasks. Believe me its much too early to judge all the changes and their outcome, lets get the games rollin' and see for ourselves.

[Allister Fiend]

And I have to agree with Saladin , that you're not making it any easier for the less expierenced.

That's why the saying goes..."Live and learn"

We all were inexperienced at one time and the more you play the easier it is to understand.

Now someone open up a game so we can try it all out,..hughummmmTaker....

[Donut]

Hmmm... Now I'm gonna suck even more at WOK5. But I do agree with AF... someone open a game!!!!!!!

Donut

[Allister Fiend]

Maybe Josh can open one up with all his free-time and what not.

[TK]

My first thoughts are, that this will slow down the game and return it to the defensive game it was before when everyone slept and worked on level.

I dont think WOK5 has ever been a defensive game.

Some games used to last 20 turns, but that was very rare, and it was BETTER! A game with economy and spells - both of which are now absent due the dominance of upgrades.

Bjorn - I suggested that the troop cost be reduced to 4, but it was not implemented.

I agree with Al that WOK5 isnt for n00bs, and I agree with Bjorn that varying troop costs for different troop-types just complicates things for no good reason - they already have different wood costs.


TK

[Saladin]

Ok, maybe i should have called it 'noobs', but more everybody apart from the top 5 or so players.

How many players actually calculate EVERYTHING for as much possible outcomes as they can apart from Eg and me?

That was the main reason that i stopped playing WOK 5, it was taking way too much time each turn. I don't like doing things half hearted so i calculated and re-calculated a lot.

I think there are a lot of players out there that just take an (educated) guess at the numbers and they get caught out on miscalculations more often than not.

Now you can say, we want WOK 5 to be for the experts, but then be prepared to only have a handful of experts play it the way it's supposed to be played. And add another handful of players that just wing it and you end up with only a small group of players that play wok 5 on a regular basis.

That's why i hope that WOK: MW (hi Matt! )will be somewhere between wok 4 and wok 5 in that if you can it can be as interesting and calculative as wok 5, but with when you just wing it you can do reasonably well as well.

Ok, enough of me. I might even start playing wok 5 again...when i lose my job and have enough time for it.

[TK]

I think there are a lot of players out there that just take an (educated) guess at the numbers and they get caught out on miscalculations more often than not.

That would be me.

It would be no fun if I knew exactly what was going to happen!

[Bjorn]

I think there are a lot of players out there that just take an (educated) guess at the numbers and they get caught out on miscalculations more often than not.

That would be me.

And me

I prefer to spend most of my effort planning a military campaign. I, too, look forward to WOK-MW and that is one reason I stop by every so often. I do hope the economic end of the game is minimal and I spend most of my time planning military operations as opposed to managing my economy.

[Donut]

I told ya Matt... get goin

Donut

[Egbert]

Sal has me pegged alright --- I hate doing the calculations, but I do them because I feel that I HAVE to, to have the best chance of winning. I like the general idea of an economy, but my opinion is that the calculations required are way too time-consuming. That is why, if you have not noticed, that I have played in 1 WOK5 game over the past year (other than the Champs).

I agree with Bjorn (and others) that the primary focus of WOK5 should be on military strategy. I would take this a step further and say that Al's idea of introducing all those spells into the game's military strategy was a very good idea, but it is really not getting that much use. WOK5 would be a lot more fun to play if we could make and use spells earlier than we can now. Suggestions for doing this would be: lowering the diamond cost, allowing mining of more diamonds by workers, and increasing the MREs destroyed by some of the cheaper spells (for example, MREs destroyed would equal to double the gold cost). That way, players could use those small offensive spells early on, and incorporate it into their military strategy. Right now, they are really just for the endgame, which most players don't get to experience.

In addition, if you are going to update the spells, a lot of them could use some major changes.

[gm_al]

*runs away screaming*

[Underdog]

Thats what you get for doing all this while Egbert was on vacation.

NOW you can get HIS input.