Player Estates

[Shadowood]

Why couldn't the investment in an Estate wipe out influence loss and actually add to it gradually? Put a max on it of course like 1% (so 2% total. 1% to wipe out daily loss), but this could entice some to invest heavily into a building like this.

[DezNutz]

Why couldn't the investment in an Estate wipe out influence loss and actually add to it gradually? Put a max on it of course like 1% (so 2% total. 1% to wipe out daily loss), but this could entice some to invest heavily into a building like this.

Gain would have to be 1% or X. There would have to be a cap on that 1%. For certain players, they could just sit and increase their influence to astronomical points just on that 1%. As the value would continually increase each day. For instance, if PHX had the Estate max he would gain 1.5M influence every day. That's roughly 10.9M gc (with Tech) on top of the same amount that he would need to spend to maintain it if the Estate didn't exist. That amount would continually increase as the amount of total influence would increase.

[Most Lee Harmless]

So... this is just a way to spend vast sums to achieve what? A minor saving in influence cost which is designed to be an unrecoverable cost. Oh but there will be a top-list.
Sorry but that dont excite me.

hey im pretty sure you were one of the inspiring voices to this idea a few months ago

Link?

I would be interested in an 'estates' evelopment which gave concrete benefits scross a range of concerns... but this proposal offers nothing but the impossibility of recovering the investment via the single pathway of partial mitigation of daily influence loss : a concern not really shared by the whole player base and pragmatically... who the heck worries that much about it that spending millions to not quite prevent it makes sense?

[Captain Jack]

I see multiple posts already judging the feature by its costs and benefits. This is not meant to become an investments feature to judge it by this. Like Banks or Goldsmiths or Plantations.

Estates will add realism to the game. While anyone can sleep on his ship, there needs to be a home for those that don't have one or those involved in politics. For example, a King can sleep in his ship perhaps but doing so consistently is unrealistic and even if one did,it would come with some penalties.

The above can be simulated. We can always be creative enough to simulate it in the right way. The reason I listed influence for a start is because it also combos with Port Acres Expansion issue that the game currently experiences.

Ports need plantations for a lot of reasons. Still, some nations do not want to expand the port acres. One of the reason is the involved risk. A nation might spend a fortune to improve a port only to lose it later during a war. This makes sense so as developers we need to solve the created problem.

An estate which preserves the influence of a single will help every player to define the important port for them. A port where many similar nation players have their homes, will be a more secure port for the long run. This will ease the risk when coming down to decide port improvements.

It is not just plantations though. If port buildings are to come, then the same risk will also be asked. Therefore, giving an actual reason for players to stick to a port, is an avenue we must take, sooner or later.

Now that I have explained the reasons why Estates are required for the game, let me clear some more things relative to profit. Once upon a time, there were no officer requirements when it came to construct and sail ships. Ships also cost like 1000 for Howkers and 75,000 coins for SoLs. Can you imagine the reaction of the playerbase at that time when Officers AND a 10x increase were announced? Perhaps you can discover it at the forums. Surely though, the majority did not really like this. Just imagine, yesterday you could create as many ships you wanted and today Captain Jack requires you to hire captains even for the existing ships. Crazy right? No? I guess it sounds logical and normal for most right now.

One of the most balanced features we have is Skirmish. It was developed in little steps and a lot of revisions. This is what we want to do with Estates as well. Just because we are adding it late, it does not mean that it cannot be balanced.

So, when picturing estates, picture the solution they bring. Now you know it after all. Then picture how we can make them fair. Not how much you will earn through them but how we will make their cost and effect to serve the initial purpose.

They can effect more things of course but I see the influence part as the best, both for realism and necessity. Another similar thing they could effect, would be port transitions:
-I do not really like that some port wars are fought minutes before the update.

There are many ways to solve this and the best would be perhaps to make everything to run more frequently, like hourly. So, instead of collecting the taxes once per day, we will collect them 24 times per day. Instead of paying stipends daily, we will pay them 24 times per day. The amount will be same but it will be divided and distributed by 24. We could have port control to change hands hourly. However, I do not believe that this helps realism.

A port building like a Fort could help this. A Fort could defend the port. For example, it could delay the transition by 1 day. Here is a Fort Functionality in detail:

Name: Fort
Type: Port Building
Description: Forts defend the ports from changing controllers.
Functionality:
For every day a nation holds the port, the Fort defense increases by 1.
Defense cannot be greater than the castle level.
Maximum level is relative to the amount of Villas or greater,owned by the residents of the controlling nation.

For every day that the nation that holds the port does not have the influence majority, the defense drops by 1.

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Then, we change port control to this:
When a nation gains influence majority AND the port's Fort Defense is 0, then the port is conquered.


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So, this is how you can make estates important later on. Just an example. Since we are here, such changes should also come before fleets modifiers to influence. Influence at some point will be affected by fleets (wins at vicinity and blockades) and at a later point by military (foot battles) but the influence part of it in its current form will not change. As influence reflects the political game in the greatest realism: gold wins wars.


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[Most Lee Harmless]

Ah... it still dont enthuse me. Maybe I'm just jaded as I have thrown countless billions into various sinks, holes, banks, mills, fleets, techs, ports, plantations and Uncle Tom Cobley and all... and seen not a lot accrue from all that activity save the certain knowledge that whats left wont fund many estate acres and certainly not if all it does is wag the proverbial banner for me in yet another top-list. It needs more than that now... not pie in the sky.

[Captain Jack]

You actually built a plantation?

[Most Lee Harmless]

Yep.. and mothballed it after it made no kind of sense to me : the lack of feedback as to how where and what to invest where how and when drove me nuts. All I recall now is a sort of shrill echo screaming 'more gold bars!' at me from a stinking great abyss of despair....

I might be a bit weird in this but I struggle with vagueness and ambiguities : invest X at Y and get Z back makes sense to me : just keep putting stuff everywhere and hope something sticks and maybe stuff comes back out again one day... well.. I cant handle that.

[Captain Jack]

But goldsmith worked eventually for you, right?

[Most Lee Harmless]

Its running... another year and maybe there will be a return on the investment and I can think about upgrading it another level... okay.. thats a long-term thing and I can parse the numbers and make my choices : plantations have no means to evaluate progress versus inputs : I doubt anyone has a true notion of how it actually functions tho all have a theory.

Dont knock a seeming obsession with return on investment and making profits : the coin for every sink has to be made somewhere else you know.

PS : I still consider putting so much into developing my hideout and techs to have been a major waste of effort : none will ever pay back their costs so its all best considered a vast vanity oroject... yet another one.

[Shadowood]

I have used every aspect of this game. I have maxed everything I can max and find each a benefit to me at certain times of different game play. Will I recoup a full investment... maybe. I, like other vets, am very wealthy and continue to grow wealth daily.

I tried plantations for 2 days. Not my thing, for kind of the same reasons Danik stated.

I look forward to Estates CJ. Thank you for adding additional thoughts on its future use. I am sure you will make it a feature we will come to love.