I posted this on AT as part of larger group of suggestions but I think the concept itself is worthy of it's own thread for discussion.


One of the biggest aspects of warring is walling, but the problem is not everyone can be online 24/7 to wall. I have been known as one of the harder to kill players in the game, but it is very draining in my older age to go without sleep. In fact it is one of the things I dread about the game.

I believe it would be a positive for the game if a player has an option to select an 8 hour period of the day where their country cannot attack or be attacked. That means any player willing to wall have an 8 hour respite and also any player who does not wake to wall has a fair opportunity to level the playing field against the guys who will wall 24/7. There will always be those players who do not take up the 8 hours.

If that player is attacked during this 8 hour period the attacker would be greeted with a message along the lines of "Your Generals refuse to attack due to bad weather. They advise that the weather will improve in ** hours."

You can change your 8 hour period but any changes will take 24 hours to become active.


A further note, I don't think you should be closed off to landgrabs during this 8 hour period because that would have broader repercussions in terms of retals and landgrabbing etc. But I am certainly open to input from others.

I'm in favor of trying to solve the problem of getting woken up in the middle of the night in order to stonewall. Here's what one implementation would look like:

* Players would specify up to an 8 hour window in their game profiles during which the attacks their countries can receive are restricted on clan servers that allow for PvP with FFA excluded. I'm just going to call this "sleep hours".
* A country inherits the profile setting for sleep hours upon creation. In other words, changing their sleep hours in their game profile won't change it for any active countries.
* A player cannot login or perform any action with their country during sleep hours except on the final day of the reset. Countries still gain turns normally and can perform automated market activity.
* Countries during sleep hours cannot be subject to special attacks. They could still be landgrabbed or be the victim of harmful spy ops.
* Countries would appear to be on vacation during sleep hours. This is the only way that I can think of to communicate the new change to third party sites via feeds. As a result, we would remove the current vacation system (currently zero countries are using it).
* Flavor text might be "Your generals refuse to perform cowardly special attacks against a nation whose people are sleeping!"

The problems that come to mind are:

1) War is already difficult between clans that have few members. This would restrict the number of targets available during war chats. I suspect that this would be especially bad for warrers who live in Asian time zones. Would they be able to meaningfully participate in wars?

2) A player couldn't choose to login into the game during an important event or an emergency, such as participating in an FS or responding to a suicider.

Most wars I have been involved in usually vary their chat times between the 3 main zones. I think the timezone most disadvantaged would actually be Euros. But even if you cannot be killed for 8 hours, there is still a huge 16 hour window to kill said country. It would mean tags have to adjust their tactics but overall I think it is fairer gameplay.

In terms of the FS, most FSes these days comprise of at least 2 warchats. If you can't get a target at one you would have to get them at the other. In terms of participation you might not be able to make 1 chat, but you can make the other one.

As a person that turns everything off when sleep time comes, I love this idea, and yes that should only apply to attacks that can kill your country..

GS, BR, and Chems, I wouldn't even worry about Spy attacks that reduce civis or destroy military.



----------Slags concerns----------

The problems that come to mind are:

1) War is already difficult between clans that have few members. This would restrict the number of targets available during war chats. I suspect that this would be especially bad for warrers who live in Asian time zones. Would they be able to meaningfully participate in wars?

2) A player couldn't choose to login into the game during an important event or an emergency, such as participating in an FS or responding to a suicider.

-Possible solutions...

1) allowing only GS, BR, and Chems attacks would make these countries still available for other forms of attacks that will contribute to the war, for example....you can AB and do spy ops to cripple them.


2) If the player logs in during that period it would void the protection and would have to wait x amount of time to activate it again.

There's a few ideas I can think of being a waller myself.

#1
Offer another protection sorta like GDI which allows a user to enter/exit into it which charges them $ per turn in protection. During this period a player cannot be GS/BR and/or AB. Everything else would be fair play. That way war clans would still be able to do some sorts of attacks & at the same time it costs the person offline a penalty the longer they are in it.

#2
One other idea would be to allow a user to set trigger points where if a unit type fell below a certain amount they would auto buy a unit. Or if their population fell to certain amount they would auto-buy a unit. Programmatically this would seem significantly harder to do than #1.

On idea #1 you could make the penalty get progressively higher per turn offline (or per turn in this new protection).

This would make the importance of market spying more important to clans and bomb banks more useful.

I like the idea of not having to be available 24/7. Setting up notifications while you sleep and having your phone or laptop by your bed is a bit much for me these days.

I would agree on anything that can improve that for QoL.

That does suck for the people who can and do go to the lengths it takes to wall 24/7. I'm not sure what to give back to them for their dedication.

Tbh., lots of sets I don’t even play because of the dedication it takes to maintain it.

I’m all for it.

This is the type of change where it would be very helpful to receive feedback from players in a variety of time zones.

I would create an in game poll to get that info. Lots of people who play don’t even know about these boards.

Maybe add an extra in game bonus for players who answers these types of questions.

That's a cool idea and I'd like to do something similar one day, but there's too much other work to be done first.

Maybe a few warring clan leaders can poll their members for their opinions?

Will do

There is strategy on when to take your 8 hours window. For many vets, it's likely going to be the time clans are most likely to fs; as we can get alerted instantaneous when we are hit already. It would make sense for an entire alliance to black out a certain time range as a group to gain a tactical advantage. That would cause its own challenges and pivots, where clan A is zoned out from 00:00 to 08:00 by. Clan b is zoned out 08 to 16:00 gt. Making where you can only really fight from 16:00 to 24:00.

I think 2 days out of the week would be more beneficial to gameplau, but they can not be consecutive days. This would allow for more robust counterstrikes.

I would think there should be either less turns accumulated for your country if you choose the eight hours, or extra bonus turns for those who don't take the eight hours- or both. Just my opinion but it adds incentives to risks

I can tell you that most people would simply select when they are sleeping. I have no qualms in walling any FS, I have survived chem rushes from 60+ countries hitting me which would normally result in a 10 second death. What I don't like is not being able to sleep.

Any updates regarding this?

This is roughly fourth on my list and would probably be included as part of change set 25 but I can't give any specific dates.

Sounds good

Any update?

This is still planned for the future but no update to share right now.

Some questions as per below:

1) How frequent will you allow players to change their 8 hours of sleep time? Allow to change it anytime daily?

2) Let say war is on going and my clan needs my helps to finish off a low pops country asap. I happened to be still awake and want to help but my 8 hours of sleep time is activated. Is it possible for me to void it and hit directly?

3) Is there any way for me to track the timeframe of the 8 hours of sleep time for each country? Or I have to do it manually by checking whether the country is in vacation mode on every 1 hour gap?

Sov

you are already one of the hardest player ever to be kill on this game. I can personally attest to that fact.

I think this change will be a tricky one, since it will make you from "hard to kill" to "unkillable". I can see why you would want this sugg.

Because, now we will have to find a demographic of players that can accumulate over 1000 turns that lives in the same timezone as you to be able to do a run on you.

There's just not many players in the game left to have this kind of diversity. I like to sleep too but I will wake up at 4-5 am in the morning to wall and I will make sure those countries are dead when it is my turn to attack.

On the contrary, there are times I am more vulnerable when I am awake than when I am sleeping. When you guys run me it is always when I am sleeping but I wall faster because I set myself up for it. Even in the times when you do get me it is usually because I can't buy any more troops or am out of turns, hitting me at sleep time didn't really help lol.

But the reason why I am advocating for this change is because it is a massive deterrent for some people. I know for me I was in no hurry to come back because I dreaded going to war and being sleepless for a few weeks.

I believe this change is a great equalizer. A lot of people want to wall but due to family etc cannot wall when they are sleeping. Some people don't like the idea of just being targeted when they are sleeping.

We need changes like this that make it easier for people to come back and play and also be competitive.

Sov

Like seriously, if this was implemented.

We’d need increase count of basically another 20 members collocated in your region to kill you. I say 20 but realistically only 10 will show up to a warchat because that’s how it goes.

We’d need to buy out the market, and have enough turns leftover to kill a second target.

I just dunno how feasible it is to make an already hard person to kill and make you unkillable. And I say this as a compliment. Maybe if there were thousands of players available, I can see this is a good addition. Right now, it will give Wallers way too much unfair advantage.

I know u bro, don’t pretend to tell me you are vulnerable when you are awake. :0

If we don't add this, can we at least make kills longer? I don't want to be in a position I have to get into my country in 10 seconds or less, and that is if my notification isn't delayed for any reason, LOL technology.

It takes days, weeks, and sometimes a month to build; it should not be lost in seconds. Some of the hardcore guys might disagree, but the majority of players are more casual.

I'll let you in on a little secret Coalie, there is at least 10 hours per week when I cannot wall at all. I just make sure I look online so you don't know when... but none of those hours are when I am sleeping lol

For example, I catch a 2 hour plane flight at least once a week ;)

Bro the last time we were only able to kill Celphi was when he was on a plane. Any other times it would’ve been impossible. We literarily need almost active 15 guys online to kill him at any given time. We just don’t have the player base.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the 2 best wallers, Celphi and Xyle wants this.

Your walling already literarily runs players off the game!

Confirmed on this part.
It's really a nightmare to kill the hardcore wallers like Xyle and Celphi.
We barely able to kill their countries during their sleep time last time as they always gets online and wall instantly.
And with this 8 hours of sleep time feature, you expect we can kill their countries when they are awake?
Going to need lots of miracles to kill them online.

I tend to agree that making it easier to wall is a good idea, but perhaps there needs to be a tradeoff where it's easier to set up to wall, but harder to actually pull off even when you're online (limiting purchases? nerfing pop regrowth more?). I will ponder this and post suggestions when I can think of more than one or two that seem ok.

Ok, full circle here... We don't need to make kills slower, given what Coalie says. Cannot buff celphi/sov/dragon/{all epic wallers}

Suggestion:

New military action - Embargo - can dramatically increase the cost to buy off public and private markets. Multiple attackers can perform this attack with results adding; it acts like a PS (your military is gone for some length of time that the embargo is active - possibly requiring much more oil to "patrol"); and adds cost (like a tax, no players get the money) proportional to the power of units sent divided by the defense (capping out at some to be determined value - maybe like up to 5x the cost for 10x the power of attacker / defender?). You could make it use tanks or something to help provide more meaning to those units in a war while helping to provide a larger need for oil. It could also be used in non-team servers to help outgrow an opponent (but treated as a special operation for GDI purposes on primary and express). I'd imagine FA would not be impacted, mostly to reward team play (and it already has a time limit).

This does nothing to address the super fast kills - but maybe if it's prohibitively expensive to wall indefinitely, other ideas to slow down kills would be more practical (like the old idea of just limiting attacks per second/minute).

this might also make netters not hate wars that much

This just makes war worse in my opinion. So if my sleeping time and their sleeping time is blocked that means that I can only attack during work hours.

That’s not ideal for me as I am a high IQ surgeon and I can’t be pausing an open heart surgery to run turns to kill a country

Weird flex, but OK. I would have thought there were rules and regulations that require breaks for these high IQ surgeons operating on people.

I can assure you that this feature will not make me harder to kill, but I don't intend on telling you how and why because then you will be able to kill me much more easily ;) But I wall faster with less distractions during sleep time. You guys are talking like this is 2020 and we are home everyday.

But this is not about just me, there are far more players who cannot or will not wall while sleeping who are totally disadvantaged in war time. If you want to make warring more attractive to others players and not just the hardcore few, then this feature really needs to come in.

Now forget Celphi and I for the moment, think about other people who war... will this benefit them? Will it make warring less daunting for so many? Warring well is a massive time-sink, and it should not be that way.

Interesting idea, be helpful to the likes of me who ain't waking up at all hours to play these days

I didn't read every post but there 100% needs to be a rule about attacking before you 8 hr period, otherwise suiciders gonna have so much fun and ready to wall when their 8 hour period is over.

Like vacation mode. If you activate the sleep protection mode you do not earn turns while you are protected.

Ohh ya that's a great dynamic. That way it still pays to be insane