Where did the balanced game play go

Now that houses and huts don't add much as far as pop and time savings and towers now gain a pop for each level and we now have 200%, 300% and I'm sure in some cases 400% construction times. Just tis morning I started a 19 hour level 9 to level 10 wall. What did the developer plan to do next in order to maintain balanced gameplay. After all the players that are already renaissance or higher never had to contend with such long construction times to get there. Perhaps if that drastic a change was not made in the middle of a testing phase and done before the beginning of the phase would have been better.

I see you justified balancing armies against towers. So would you mind explaining what the point is of making it well-nigh impossible to get down to par (100%) in building time?

Now that houses and huts don't add much as far as pop and time savings and towers now gain a pop for each level and we now have 200%, 300% and I'm sure in some cases 400% construction times. Just tis morning I started a 19 hour level 9 to level 10 wall. What did the developer plan to do next in order to maintain balanced gameplay. After all the players that are already renaissance or higher never had to contend with such long construction times to get there. Perhaps if that drastic a change was not made in the middle of a testing phase and done before the beginning of the phase would have been better.

Bers has stated that he is still planning on reducing population in other area's. Worker huts population was cut in half this time. We are seeing higher population now than we will later, as a result of this build time penalties are higher now than they will be later.

If your build time is more than you want to deal with between now and then, either destroy some towers or destroy some army buildings. He wants towns to be unique, I don't think this is a bad thing. Eventually it will be balanced out and you can more easily decide if you want to focus your defense on towers or troops; everyone having everything leads to cookie-cutter towns.

My thanks to you both.

And it turns out not to be quite as impossible as at first seemed.

I'm still not following this.  As I understand it the plan is to force players to choose between large armies and lots of towers by limiting the food supply.  Well and good.

But what this also does is give any town with a large number of towers a huge build penalty as compared to a similar town with the same total food consumption but more of it devoted to armies.  That will remain true whatever changes are made to the population of any other building.

This seems to penalise towers more than may have been intended.

ETA: in fact cutting the pop of other buildings increases this penalty.  Suppose Mr Armies has a build rate of 200% and Mr Towers one of 300%.  Mr Armies has an advantage of 3 to 2.  Now halve all the non-tower pop.  The build rates are 100% and 200%, and Mr Armies sees his advantage increase to 2 to 1.

Also, as a defensive collectivist player, I still constantly need to train armies much, much bigger than I need to open chests that require 40 of the same unit. So I'd prefer to just keep my towers up rather than my army buildings, but right now for the chests that I have, I'd have to upgrade all my garrisons and barracks in all my towns.

Once the attacking armies (cause it won't be just 1 army) take out your towers, your build time will decrease proportional to the towers you've lost. At that point the advantage goes back to the defending player.

I'm still not following this.  As I understand it the plan is to force players to choose between large armies and lots of towers by limiting the food supply.  Well and good.

But what this also does is give any town with a large number of towers a huge build penalty as compared to a similar town with the same total food consumption but more of it devoted to armies.  That will remain true whatever changes are made to the population of any other building.

This seems to penalise towers more than may have been intended.

ETA: in fact cutting the pop of other buildings increases this penalty.  Suppose Mr Armies has a build rate of 200% and Mr Towers one of 300%.  Mr Armies has an advantage of 3 to 2.  Now halve all the non-tower pop.  The build rates are 100% and 200%, and Mr Armies sees his advantage increase to 2 to 1.

This is illogical. In your example Player A has a bunch of towers and a smaller army. Player B has few towers and a larger army. You state the towns have the same food consumption. If that is true, they have the same population. If they have the same population, their build time penalties are identical. There is no 3 to 2 ratio, it is 1:1.

In your example Player B also has disadvantages to Player A. Player B has to feed his(her) army which increases food consumption, while Player A feeds their towers nothing. Player B has built more army buildings, reducing culture and resulting in a smaller kingdom reaching less global resources and higher costs to adding additional towns due to less cells.

Serverine, you bring up an absolutely valid point. Chest requirements should not be so heavily dependent on troops as it unfairly penalizes a player deciding to go with towers for their defenses instead of troops. Hopefully this is addressed, and soon.

That's the same food consumption including what the army eats.  Troops eat food but aren't population and don't cause build delays.

if you doubt this, try moving a large army out of your town and see whether the build time changes.

Most troops consume more food themselves than the military building that supports them.

The real calculations get much messier than the simplified version I used in my post but the underlying principle I was aiming to convey holds good just the same

Also, have you tried building or promoting a tower since the upgrade?  There's a whole new set of building requirements.  A newbie trying to build a level 5 tower now first needs to build Hut of the Brave-15 (!).

Then Player B has a much weaker defense than Player A, and would naturally have a lower build time. I couldn't even imagine how small an army/army buildings would need to be to have identical total consumption.

If you honestly think it's easier to have troops instead of towers, then have troops instead of towers.

The total food consumption, from all pop and troops, is precisely what you need to be able to cover with production.  (With, of course, a surplus for any building or recruiting.)  If you can't do that you're in trouble whatever your strategy.

So what, exactly are you complaining about? That you can't use your multiple horses and your wine for even more troops along with a bunch of towers without a massive build time? Your kingdom is set up as troop heavy. Use them, and reduce your tower levels or numbers, or remove them and keep your high number of towers.

The concept behind the update is good and  there are some tweaking that will need to be done. New updates are patched in and it's our job to give input for those fixes. 

That being said, I think most are having issues with the implementation timing. Some who are collectivism learned to build towers and max them out to defend their areas (Thank you Bers ) At this point they have as many towers as allowable as well as maxed and are now facing super long build times when most are already facing longer build times with their current progression. 1 hr build turns into 2hr + for small things and the longer builds are looking crazy. This gives leaderism an advantage of increasing to push against already tight spacing while collectivism are moving slower as it's not only about military/towers but space. 

Yes, towers can be destroyed. Take a minute and think about the loss of time and resources that are lost and will be lost on rebuild. Take into consideration that those items to destroy are not plentiful and if you have used them to remove irrelevant buildings then you are faced with purchasing more. Last but most certainly not least, most of those towers are promoted from watch towers. Those become unavailable in later ages giving any newly made towers less strength than a promoted one. A good strategy for sales however might frustrate others who are unable to spend the cash. Holidays limit extra expenditures as well. 

I noticed the discussion about what was destroyed when attacked and build times lessening with towers damaged. If a strategic attack is made, which at this stage I have seen quite a few large scale attacks and with this expect to see more, it's not always the towers that are damaged. When you consider a tower is taken down one or two levels and it's only one or two towers but several buildings/resources are damaged or destroyed the  build time reduction doesn't equal to any loss of tower levels if there are at all. 

Maybe create an item that increases build time in cities for a period of time. Yes, both can still use them but it dose offer something to help with those huge build times. 

The concept behind the update is good and  there are some tweaking that will need to be done. New updates are patched in and it's our job to give input for those fixes. 

That being said, I think most are having issues with the implementation timing. Some who are collectivism learned to build towers and max them out to defend their areas (Thank you Bers ) At this point they have as many towers as allowable as well as maxed and are now facing super long build times when most are already facing longer build times with their current progression. 1 hr build turns into 2hr + for small things and the longer builds are looking crazy. This gives leaderism an advantage of increasing to push against already tight spacing while collectivism are moving slower as it's not only about military/towers but space. 

Yes, towers can be destroyed. Take a minute and think about the loss of time and resources that are lost and will be lost on rebuild. Take into consideration that those items to destroy are not plentiful and if you have used them to remove irrelevant buildings then you are faced with purchasing more. Last but most certainly not least, most of those towers are promoted from watch towers. Those become unavailable in later ages giving any newly made towers less strength than a promoted one. A good strategy for sales however might frustrate others who are unable to spend the cash. Holidays limit extra expenditures as well. 

I noticed the discussion about what was destroyed when attacked and build times lessening with towers damaged. If a strategic attack is made, which at this stage I have seen quite a few large scale attacks and with this expect to see more, it's not always the towers that are damaged. When you consider a tower is taken down one or two levels and it's only one or two towers but several buildings/resources are damaged or destroyed the  build time reduction doesn't equal to any loss of tower levels if there are at all. 

Maybe create an item that increases build time in cities for a period of time. Yes, both can still use them but it dose offer something to help with those huge build times. 

Well that's is part of what I was getting at is the timing of the implementation. With the 3 toons I have most of my military structures and buildings were only level 1's and 2's. AS I built them as they became avilable with research. The buildings that made archers were level 10's and I had 1 garrison at around a level 7 and one siege shop to make balistas in one city of my oldest toon. Hardly a force to be attacking anyone's cities. Primarily for questing and killing the various monsters and critters that would show up. With this sudden change with no warning as a collectivism player and the new build times I haven't played anymore. No need to or I can come on once for 5 min a day cue up a new build and leave. Not much questing to do as don;t need to develop the military anymore. In fat why spend money on stuff to demolish buildings or shorten times. on something that is so apparently temporary it can change over night on Bers whim. I don't know of any "alpha testers" that have no idea of what the testing objectives are for that phase. In fact why not change my toon to nothing more then glorified NPC's like you find in all the other construction and conquest mmo's that I've played and tested. I quit.

So what, exactly are you complaining about? That you can't use your multiple horses and your wine for even more troops along with a bunch of towers without a massive build time? Your kingdom is set up as troop heavy. Use them, and reduce your tower levels or numbers, or remove them and keep your high number of towers.

I haven't been talking about any of my specific heroes here but about the general game balance.  For a specific example, my hero Astrophel is set up with towers for defence and a small but perfectly formed army to tackle monsters and cave dwellers.  She's following a strategy described in the FAQ as a possibility - collectivist, concentrating on the story and character development, opting out as far as possible from the power struggles.  She's in mediaeval and has been hit much harder in terms of build time than my more recent heroes.

Ambrosius, the hero you seem to be talking about, is an a different situation.  He's in classical, and happens to have a port which is being raided by a fleet from a medieval player (I forget who) some way to the east who started earlier in the game.  The usual advice in such cases has been to use large numbers of archer towers for defence, and it's not clear to me that there's anything else a classical player can do.

Another situation is the newbie player who comes out of the starting truce and immediately finds they're being raided by a neighbour with archers.  The usual advice is to build walls and towers.  Build time isn't so much of a problem here - but the new player will find they cannot build towers of high enough level to be effective, because those now have a prerequisite of quite a large Hut of the Brave.

In fat why spend money on stuff to demolish buildings or shorten times. on something that is so apparently temporary it can change over night on Bers whim. I don't know of any "alpha testers" that have no idea of what the testing objectives are for that phase. In fact why not change my toon to nothing more then glorified NPC's like you find in all the other construction and conquest mmo's that I've played and tested. I quit.

I understand why it is disappoining all of a sudden, but you are problably expected from this game too much at it's currentl state. Here is a quote of the warning you've read prior to trying ALPHA version of the game.

http://www.totemtribe.com/alpha/

Important Note about Progress

Your progress in Totem Tribe II: Jotun ALPHA could be altered or wiped completely from time to time in the process of testing the game as we fix bugs and install improvements.

We will try to avoid such extreme situations as much as possible, but due to early version of the game this is still possible and you have been warned.

Never alpha tested before as most of the larger companies normally do that in house. It surprised me when I got the invite. Did a good bit of beta testing a couple of games and reviews for a few game clubs I've been with. When you have a bit more stability with regards to construction times, pop, etc. and changes aren't so extreme give me a shout and I'll be back. The short time I was playing I found the over all game play good.and most of the players friendly and helpful. I also found a few players that seemed quite knowledgeable as well. I would also like to see more of how the story line with regards to the RPG quests turns out or develops as well. With regards to the construction and conquest aspect I also like that you can follow it through the ages and that to a certain extent the buildings aren't limited to just level 10,  12 or 15 as found in some of the other mmo's of similar genre out there.  I think where part of my misunderstanding with the tower and house pop change was with regards to military buildings researched while playing collectivism. If I wasn't supposed to rely on a large army and primarily towers or primarily large army in lue of so many towers perhaps a selection screen or path selection in the research tab would have been helpful as well. If collectivism is not going to be attacking much perhaps less selection of seige. I just mention that as an example. If collectivism politics aren't going to be taking out towers does it really need battering rams. Another thing you could look at some point down the road is for the players that want to use towers and a small army it would be nice for city defenses if obstacles could be researched and added as well as pikes to counter calv. When I mention obstacles, things like spiked logs, caltrops, pits and a few other early history and medieval obstacles that were used to counter siege engines and troops. I only mention it as food for thought for another game dynamic that may be interesting to add a some point