Conquer Club

AndrewO wrote:Thanks for the constructive criticism andy.

Over the last 10-15 turn I have been slowly manoeuvering myself into a position where I could have a chance of taking scorba out, only to find i was thwarted by a seemingly arbitary limit on the number of armies I could advance.

LOL YW. When this game was put together originally, the designer(s) set arbitrary ceilings to certain numbers which (to them) seemed so unrealistically high that no player would amass anywhere near so many armies for a single move. 999 (three digits) worth of armies seems reasonable, especially considering that it's less than 1024 (requiring ten binary digits). The next base-2 number would be 2048 (eleven binary digits), then 4096 (twelve), then 8192 (thirteen), then 16384 (fourteen), 32768 (fifteen) and finally 65536 (sixteen). So, to be able to handle more than a thousand armies at a time, you'd pretty much have to double the size of the memory containers for army groups from eight binary digits to sixteen, which would, of course, impact the servers. (Just going from eight to nine or ten binary digits would be kinda stupid for a variety of reasons.) Huh, after showering halfway through this message, it looks like I needn't get into the semantics of this shizzle, but I'll leave it in here anyways.

The thing that amazes me is that this is an ESCALATING Cards Game! Usually in escalation games, someone makes a huge breakthrough with a major cash-in and totally overruns one of the opponents, collecting their cards and cashing in again, and the wave of blood keeps on rolling until it runs out of steam....at which point the blitzkrieging player usually either fortifies their borders or ends up overextended.

Okay, here's the main point: this game was designed to force the question on you: "Shit or get off the pot," with the emphasis towards shitting. (OMG, I have to go sledding NOW!) I'm sure someone else can help clarify the argument here, but basically, Conquer Club (and Risk) are not games of placing armies into uber stacks and doing nothing -- they are games which are supposed to be decisive, quick and bloody. A game lasting eight rounds I consider to be long -- a game lasting eighty rounds I consider to be downright epochal.

BTW -- When did this game start? AND.... What is your card trade-in value up to now?!

lol... ok easy questions first. The current cash in value is 765 armies, and it started sometime about christmas!

LOL YW. Wink When this game was put together originally, the designer(s) set arbitrary ceilings to certain numbers which (to them) seemed so unrealistically high that no player would amass anywhere near so many armies for a single move. 999 (three digits) worth of armies seems reasonable, especially considering that it's less than 1024 (requiring ten binary digits). The next base-2 number would be 2048 (eleven binary digits), then 4096 (twelve), then 8192 (thirteen), then 16384 (fourteen), 32768 (fifteen) and finally 65536 (sixteen). So, to be able to handle more than a thousand armies at a time, you'd pretty much have to double the size of the memory containers for army groups from eight binary digits to sixteen, which would, of course, impact the servers. (Just going from eight to nine or ten binary digits would be kinda stupid for a variety of reasons.) Huh, after showering halfway through this message, it looks like I needn't get into the semantics of this shizzle, but I'll leave it in here anyways.

You make a reasonable point about the size of numbers requred. And having not done much web development i wasn't aware that you had so much control over the size of the digits. I had assumed that once you were over 256 (8 bits) that the next logical size would be 16 bits so it wouldn't be an issue. However you do seem to contradict yourself a little saying that there is no point going from just 8 bits to 10, which seems like exactly what they have done if the 999 limit is because of the limits of a 10 bit number. Anyways, if that is the reason then at least it is marginally less arbitary.


Plus, the numbers of armies on each territory are evidently stored within at least 13 bits as it can cope with the 3000+ armies on the biggest countries.

The thing that amazes me is that this is an ESCALATING Cards Game! Usually in escalation games, someone makes a huge breakthrough with a major cash-in and totally overruns one of the opponents, collecting their cards and cashing in again, and the wave of blood keeps on rolling until it runs out of steam....at which point the blitzkrieging player usually either fortifies their borders or ends up overextended.

Again, you make a very good point. However, when you are playing on one of the larger maps, particularly with experienced players, it can get to the point where everybody is trying to block everybody else from being able to kill anybody else, with the result that nobody can go on one of those rampages. In this particular game at almost every turn when the cards were at the 40-80 level I looked long and hard at trying to kill somebody. But the weakest players, who mathematically i could have easily eliminted, were always protected by large armies of other players, which made the total number of armies to kill just too prohibitive to attempt. For example NUKE, who was the weakest player for a long time, always had armies in north america which would have nvolved me having to get through the huge buildups on mexico, greenland or hawaii. I assume everyone else found themselves in a similar position.

And as I have pointed out, when I finally came to make that decisive move I found I was unable!

Okay, here's the main point: this game was designed to force the question on you: "Shit or get off the pot," with the emphasis towards shitting. (OMG, I have to go sledding NOW!) I'm sure someone else can help clarify the argument here, but basically, Conquer Club (and Risk) are not games of placing armies into uber stacks and doing nothing -- they are games which are supposed to be decisive, quick and bloody. A game lasting eight rounds I consider to be long -- a game lasting eighty rounds I consider to be downright epochal.

Not entirely sure about the sledding bit, but the rest of this statement is a purely subjective opinion. I generally like to get my games over with quite quickly, but some of my most enjoyable and memorable games have been the ones that have gone 80 or 100+ rounds (although none of the others were escalating!).

IRL i would never expect (or want) a game to go that long, but when playing with faceless strangers it is often the longer, more tactical games that stand out from the rest.

Part of the issue in games like this is binary thinking... an attack must result in a win or a loss. There are plenty of places you could "fight until I lose 10" or some other such arbitrary number, whittle your enemies down and keep their armies in check without the need to crush them or die trying...

And the crap with leaving 1 army countries around to farm cards is just stupid. Fortify them and make your enemies take them by force.

Well I found a bug:
when you take a territory from a territory with 1000 + armies you can only advance as much as 999 armies. (there is probably the same bug with fortification, don't know for sure but I will try it out.)

Yep, it's a known issue. I believe Lack has commented on it before, but as you were too lazy to use the form, or even search for it in the first place, I'm too lazy to go find it for you. Check out the SEARCH button up top and you'll probably run across it.

im too lazy for that, sorry.
I will just assume its being taken care of.

umm, don't think so.
You know what they say about people who assume.

how in the hell are you ending up with 1,000 armies?

wtf n00b?

deathscythe30 wrote:how in the hell are you ending up with 1,000 armies?

wtf n00b?

Noob?

I think there is no doubt who the NOOB is here!

No Cards games can well turn into "build" games. I've also seen Escalating games do something similar (easiest way to create an actual build game).

I've heard tell of 30,000 armies on a territory before.

http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=290735
If you feel like counting up the armies from all the turns, you will see that at one point every country had over 1000 armies on it

well i actually never had a build up game (luckly me those takes years)

Yeah, we had a freemium player in ours, so he asked if he could deadbeat to get his extra game open

Big Yuma Ripper wrote:

deathscythe30 wrote:how in the hell are you ending up with 1,000 armies?

wtf n00b?

Noob?

I think there is no doubt who the NOOB is here!

i am

Just received this could a mod please look at this and get back to me or Loudawg asap.

Loudawg wrote:hey I need help in a game standard map game number 207959 ... I have taken over the Ukraine and now it will not allow me to advance my 1128 armies into it, what gives??? I only have like 45 minutes left, I really want to go squash LazLong

advance 999 then the rest. you can only move 999 at once

Once we get to 1000 troops or more we can only advance 999.Is this a glitch or a setting...If its a setting why?

KoE_Sirius wrote:Once we get to 1000 troops or more we can only advance 999.Is this a glitch or a setting...If its a setting why?

This is not official, but it could be to deter build games?
It's definitely a setting though.

It's a known "bug," but it rarely happens...and isn't extremely detrimental in some way, so it's a little further down on Lack's To-Do list I believe.


--Andy

One more thing with this bug,When we attacked a large army of 3000+.The server was timing out.Is this happening,because of a strain on the server or was we just unlucky at the time.

KoE_Sirius wrote:One more thing with this bug,When we attacked a large army of 3000+.The server was timing out.Is this happening,because of a strain on the server or was we just unlucky at the time.

If you autoattack, it's because the server has to pull at least 1500 dice rolls all at once. If you're just regular attacking, it could be that the large game log was putting strain on the server and your computer, especially if you have greasemonkey.

just wait until the spamalot build game tests out 100 thousand vs 100 thousand

or even 1 mil vs 1 mil.

How long would the server be down for?

I remember a 15,000 vs 13,000 downed the servers for 15 minutes, but that was at least two server updates ago, so i have no idea for right now.

I'd let lack know beforehand.


--Andy

AndyDufresne wrote:I'd let lack know beforehand.


--Andy

LOL.

if/when we choose to autoattack, we will be giving lack a 24 hour warning on it.

But that won't be for a long time, cause our game is only up to around 3000 armies...

Giant autoattacks tend to crach the attacker's browser. I autoattacked 2000 vs. 2000 and it almost broke my computer.

But it would be nice to eliminate the 999 ceiling. If for no other reason, it might lead to some change in long build games.