Colorado Stripes

To those who saw my rant about them on common chat I am sorry but stripes really make me angry.

My first reason to hate the stripes is I feel they penalize a warrior way too much. The main reason for this is that a warrior must always stay an age behind. To me this is totally unfair.  It means all of the higher age gadgets and great gear is beyond their reach. I understand that you want to discourage attacking a lower age player but why can the stripes not be earned by attacking someone of the same age?

My second reason to hate the stripes is that they are tied to the trophy hall. Trophies are very fun to collect. I realize that they are not supposed to be easy but now you have increased the amount needed but make it too hard to get to the point where you can build a hall in time to collect enough trophies.

Take the stripes from the building requirements of the trophy hall but still require them for your victory. Make stripes be a trophy so they can be seen and the amount needed can be worked towards.

So here is an idea I had. Tie the stripes to the construction of army buildings, not to low level but to higher levels. Maybe so upgrading beyond say level 10 requires stripes, and allow stripes to be earned by attacking same age if hero level matches or is higher, but more stripes can be earned by attacking the age above.  I know you had allowed stripes for plunder for a while, but you took that away, I am not asking for that back.

I am just trying to think of ways to make the war victory not be so limiting to warriors and still something to work towards.

I would really like to see others input on this. Maybe some good ideas can come out of it.

I agree with Tuey on many points.

I decided early in the alpha, that staying behind an age, especially stone age was not a good plan. I rush through research (and spend ecash to do it) because I know know that better weapons is key to your safety and your ability to get space. Something that lead hero's desperately need for the later ages.This will be really important when we move out of alpha, then you can be sure that there will be older aged hero's gunning for you.

I really liked Tuey's idea of being able to get stripes for attacking equal aged towns and more for attacking more advanced ages. That would motivate me to attack advanced ages more often, even though it is more risky. The stripe program in it's current form, is just not obtainable and I gave up on it a long time ago. 

I totally agree with Tuey on the stripes not being tied to the building of the trophy hall. Some trophy's take a long time to earn and I know that I will not be able to fill even the 1 level of trophy hall that I have. The thought of having to earn stripes as a trophy is a really good idea. Then I would not object to that being for attacking advanced ages only.  I like seeing those little trophies coming home...lol

Also researching the trophy hall only not to be able to build it, was disappointing. And I bet that even collect players that pirate would love having a trophy hall to see their plunders stacking up. And as they are unlikely to have any stripes, that is not possible in the current system. This may also encourage them to play the warfare a little and maybe make them less fearful of it.

I would really like to try for a war victory, but right now, I can't even get a level 2 trophy hall, much less fill it.

I do not understand your reasoning at all of wanting people to stay in stone age? It only takes a very short while  in research. So why would you then want people to stay there?

Given what you want to encourage, but not apply to all players, why do we need to earn a stripe for Bulat at all?  Especially if you are keeping the requirement to hit an age above you. 

Regular warfare is fun , I agree with you, and I am one of those who enjoy a lot this aspect of the game. BUT, I completely agree with Tuey. I need a Trophy Hall. I started to fill it in A4 and I really wanted to fill it  in A5. For me, the Trophy Hall is the purpose of the war. It is motivating, allowing you to choose different type of targets in order to get different type of trophies. It is a real motivation and a challenge for a warrior player. Put only stripes requirement for the last level, as much stripes as you want. Someone who is already motivated because his trophy hall is half filled will be even more motivated to get those stripes to reach the War Victory. Getting stripes for attacking age+1 player, must be only an option, with higher special bonuses.  I think it will be nice to be able to get few stripes even attacking  an equal age player, I agree once more with Tuey.

 In my opinion, nobody will stay in stone age to get stripes. Units and siege units are really weak, and you take off the posibility to get stripes for plundering.  Greek fires are really powerful against small units and is not possible to upgrade in stone age the primitive rams in order to get them more efficiently. Culture is reduced a lot now, which means it will takes times to built a third town , to increase the number of units. By the time when this army will be "huge" lol, the neighbours will be in medieval . With upgraded cats and rams :-) 

I do not understand your reasoning at all of wanting people to stay in stone age? It only takes a very short while  in research. So why would you then want people to stay there?

Stone Age attacks are also without catapults, so they are not really that devastating, thus will be good for beginners - they will push them into considering defense earlier and more seriously.

I do agree with your point about that Stone Age attacks are not so devastating, and that does make players think about defense early and not to neglect it. Something that is very needed.

But staying in stone age feels like fighting with your hand tied behind your back to us that have been playing for awhile. So little power :( 

Building a large stone age army would be horrible for your town growth with so much negative culture from the military buildings. You would never have any space or globals if you were near a fast researching, collect player.

For me, the biggest concern in being Stone Age for some time is that there will be more advanced armies wanting to annihilate me. This is not a problem when we all start the new alpha together and are all roughly the same age, but that will not be the case when we move out of alpha. And for a lead player to have only stone age towers and army, it would be very, very dangerous to linger there to long.

stone age is suicide for warrior players. walls and towers are weak and collect have too high defense. imo it is best to advance to classic quickly, build, train, upgrade while waiting for others to advance to higher age. since you do not get oil towers til the end of the med age tech tree you have a better opportunity i think. you have the blacksmith and destructive siege... and you can still train those cheap stone age units in classical age. so, rush, train, upgrade, destroy. just my thoughts.

i did suggest equal age stripes a few posts back and still think it would be good, i understand the hard difficulty level but i think it would still be hard. since you will not get the same amount as you would by attacking a +1 or more age hero, the low amount would make any warrior push for more and go to a +1 age imo.

Why not? If you chouse leaderism, you are probably willing to fight, and getting a single stipe is not that big of a challenge. If someone having trouble getting a single stripe as the final warrior quest, choosing leaderism probably was a mistake.

ah. I have not done the new tutorial and quests (I did do the Bulat ones so far as I could at Aeryn though) so did not realize it was just for lead players.  Thanks.  :-)

Don't think - TRY :) Try and share your experience, we will analyze it and make tweaks so it will be hard, but not impossible.

yes, now that you have changed the system a bit i will play for them a lot more next stage. and give more input as i learn.

Well as I said before on cc--Menolly stayed in stoneage to specifically attack someone higher than her. She did manage to kill off some of the army and was awarded about 24 stripes if I recall that correctly. Menolly however died and had to go back to collect those stripes. Because I was in stoneage and my target was in classical --they had greek fire. I could not think of any way to go back and collect them without getting killed again and therefore would still be unable to collect the stripes. Maybe you might reconsider that part----if you get the stripes you should just have them even if you die.