A NEW SCORING PARAMETER?
Currently players accumulate Experience points and Dominion points which in turn lead to Player and Dominion Levels. The two go hand-in-hand and always go up. Is this enough to justify and encourage game activity? Does it reflect player’s actual ability or just the amount of time he has spent on the game?
I would propose a NEW third parameter that I would call “morale” or “reputation”
This parameter would be started as neutral with a value ZERO and either go positive or negative depending on in-game activities.
Associated with it would be a bonus or penalty on all offensive/defensive unit stats maybe in the range +/- 20%
This is a realistic feature as real winning armies had high morale and armies with high morale would typically over-perform while defeated armies had low morale and would tend to under-perform.
Scoring/losing points:
Losing a player-vs-player battle or having one’s city sacked or besieged would cost morale/reputation points.
Winning a player-vs-player battle, sacking or besieging enemy cities would add morale/reputation points.
To make it very difficult to cheat the +/- points assigned would be a function of the player’s relative levels. High level player would gain nothing by raiding puny neighbors and puny neighbors would lose nothing if raided by much higher level players.
However low level player managing to defeat a much higher level player would gain a lot. The relative strengths of the forces and total size of the battle should also be used in the equation, for example raiding a nearly undefended city would yield very few points as would smashing 2 swordsmen against 2000 defenders. Big battles of near equal forces between same level opponents would yield the largest point shifts. It would also be designed to turn off bonuses for inactive players to prevent abuse.
Some fine tuning touches like gaining/losing points gradually for the duration of a siege and losing points for “treachery” (Attacking an Allie, using Assassin units etc.), gaining points for “Valor” (defending city of lower level player, breaking sieges) could be added to make the feature even more interesting.
I have always thought some incentive to win battles and hold cities against attackers should exist.
The points could be represented as a Legion Standard on a special screen (Yes I know it is Roman but there is already plenty of historical inaccuracies in the game). As points go up features are added to the Standard like tassels and gold eagles or crossed swords on the other hand when morale/reputation drops below ZERO the Standard starts to deteriorate, holes are torn in the banner, rust appears on the metal etc.
What do you think?