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Topic: Builders

The builder 'strat' is probably the biggest exploit/design bug in IC at the moment. Its somewhat similar to what Starstrike did back in the betas, getting 100% research and making free buildings/units, just on a smaller scale and requiring more effort/coordination to pull off.

For those who don't know what this strategy is, in essence its using high research, low NW people to take planets off the bigger/fatter people in a family, building on them and passing them back up. It has a few variations such as the small research empire adding their own explorations into the 'build' in addition to the planets they take off the big empires. Or only doing the 'build' on own explorations and then passing the built up planets to bankers; especially in early e-phase. This method does leave planets with low defences for a period of time but gives enormous returns in terms of super cheap buildings and growth pace.

This current round in MW, its getting out of control with families hiding behind large number of NAPs and using builders one month(!!) into a two month round. It rewards activity and coordination way too much and massively increases the gap between families. Furthermore, I feel that this method alone is a large cause of the transition from Imperial Conflict to Imperial Infra and its only going to get worse.

Possible solutions I thought of or stole from others:
1) Make NW change instantaneous instead of at tick
2) Make passing of infra on planets impossible. i.e. Buildings get demolished no matter what NW range the target is in. Maybe make this so only for intra-fam and intra-alliance attacks
3) Make planet gain easier and/or retakes harder, so its more economically attractive to fight than to build. Maybe make portal building base time shorter, so its not so ridiculously hard to get portals up in enemy territory.
4) Make intra-fam attacks cost a huge amount of morale

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Re: Builders

I think putting the more organised/active fams at a disadvantage is the wrong way to go about things. They are at the top of the score boards for a reason.

What we need to do is bridge the gap more so that active/relevant/organised fams dont get too far out of reach of the smaller guys cos of it.

"I lie down next to an angel, fall asleep and fly with the demons"
I once prayed to god for some planets, but quickly found out he didnt work that way

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Re: Builders

Moved ---> Ideas

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4 Reply by Render

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Re: Builders

I'm against this 100%, the builders are an important part of the game, when or how to boost cheap infra is a family decision, not your decision, neither mods decision.  If a family wants to infrawhore all the round and make naps all around then it's their neighbours fault for agreeing on those naps.  This leads to Imperial Infra ?? yes, and whats wrong in it when its the players who want to be that way.

Jaguar if you dont want this happen then put the solution yourself by not napping and attacking when your neighbour is on an infra jump, maybe if you succeed other fams will follow your strat.

But those 'enforcements' you're talking about are against many improvements we've done thru the years, plus they only lead to SS rounds where everybody explo and builds for himself, and mods dont want SS rounds.
The research jobs increase family coordination and they are always good for the game.

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Re: Builders

@Poley: I totally agree. My suggestions are meant to help bridge the gap, not penalize big fams for being big. Fixing the builder strat would affect everyone big and small.


@Render: You can still play peaceful and infra whore without builders if you chose to. Fixing the builder strat won't change that. The builders just give too much of an advantage to infra-whoring so even the people who want to play aggressive are forced to infra-whore just to keep up with the competition.

I don't really see how removing or limiting the 'builder' will be against any improvements, please do explain. I also don't see whats wrong with SS. IC had 10k players when everyone used to play SS, now we have 300 with the insane teamwork, activity and coordination required to be competitive.

Family coordination is good, I agree, but up to a certain level. Excess of anything can be bad. Its poor game design if in order to build efficiently, you have to:
Plan ahead for the entire family, taking everyone's production and status into account + save a particular amount + have builder launch fleets at a certain time(as soon as banker explores) + trigger those fleets as soon as they arrive + construct buildings within that tick + have banker launch fleets on that tick + have banker trigger fleets asap once the buildings are done.

Building efficiently should take some thought, but shouldn't be so intensive in demands for activity and coordination.

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Re: Builders

And thats why people who put in the effort get rewarded. Else go play farmvile

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Re: Builders

jaguar.

poley wasn't talking about just bigger fams.

he's saying that the bigger top fams are usually more organised and active.  thus they can use a builder strat effectively.

if you take away that strat you are penalizing the active fams who grew big because of being active and organised just because the less active fams can't use a builder as effectively and therefore don't grow as fast/cheaply.


you are suggesting that a family who uses famchat and has at least a couple of players online every tick of the day and is comunicating/planning all the time should be on equal footing with a fam that has none of the formentioned? that's just rediculous.


there is 1 thing that keeps builder balanced: he has to be 70% of the bigger players af he has built the planets. the further in the round you go the harder this becomes. the builder strat never really becomes ineffective but the further in round you get the harder it becomes to maintain it and that's all the builderstrat needs to be balanced in the game in my opinion.

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Re: Builders

No I'm suggesting that the builder strat is overpowered and imbalanced. It needs to be nerfed or eliminated because it gives too big an advantage. Also its poor design to have to build like this and bad for gameplay.

I don't mean to say that the active fams should be on equal footing with the inactive ones, just that they should have less of an advantage than they do now, in the interest of promoting competition. The active and organized fams have plenty of other game aspects, like infra jumps, coordinating building(without the use of builders) and coordinating attacks, which reward them for being active and organized.

You guys are making it sound like without the builder strat the organized/active fams will completely lose their edge over the others. They will still be ahead of the others just not by as big of a margin as they are now. Before the builder strat came out there were still fair amount differences in family NWs/sizes weren't there?

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  • Rin
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Re: Builders

i agree with jag

<parrot> there is also the odd  possibility that tryme is an idiot
<KT> possibility?
<genesis> tryme is a bit of an idiot
<Torqez> bit?

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10 Reply by RisingDown (edited by RisingDown 03-Feb-2012 00:53:18)

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Re: Builders

"It rewards activity and coordination way too much and massively increases the gap between families."

And activity and coordination should not be rewarded because...?
The whole point of games like these is that putting time into them should = reward (of course not neglecting a slight amount of skill, but with experience comes knowledge).
Why take away something that combines these 2 elements away just to please fams that aren't capable of doing them?

If you dislike the positive points to being active/coordinated that much, go play a single player game or CoD where the goal is not to play as a team.

Maar doodslaan deed hij niet, want tussen droom en daad,
Staan wetten in de weg en praktische bezwaren,
En ook weemoedigheid, die niemand kan verklaren,
En die des avonds komt, wanneer men slapen gaat.

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