Shogun Blogs

I made an update to raiding parties today that removes the ability to see an opponents gold. The reason lies with the new attack ticker.

Here is why:

First, let me explain why it is was created in the first place.

I think there is a negative attitude that came with the steep decline of players we've had. It is understandable that when people see that number drop, they think that nobody must be playing.

The truth is that even with fewer players, there is still a lot of action going on pretty much all the time. I wanted to show people that, and that is why I created the ticker.

So I believe that the ticker is a necessary and good thing for the game as a whole.

I did receive a concern as follows:
"If someone is hit for a large amount of money, that announces to everyone to send raiding parties to that person."

I replied as:
Good point, it might do that. I had considered it a good incentive to invest in a decent defense, but today I came up with another solution to that particular problem.

After some thought I decided to take the gold reporting section away from raiding parties. It makes more sense that way in even without the ticker. I mean seriously, how would a little raiding party figure out what was in the treasury? To gauge the overall strength of the army is one thing, but showing gold is a little much.

That also means you would risk losing a full 15 attack turns outright or have to be able to spy on them in order to find out the amount of gold on hand.

They could still do a raid, say 5-6 hours after they saw the ticker, and possibly take a decent amount of gold, but it would be a risk... and therefore would be an earned reward should they manage to take a decent amount of gold in the hit.

Everything seems pretty stable on Genshu so I took the time I had set aside for last minute bug fixes and gave the alliance boards and overhaul. Added some bb code features, line breaks, and multiple channels for everyone's chatting pleasure.

Unfortunately on Phoenix things were not so pretty. My tests yesterday apparently did more than give out a little extra gold and peasants. There are still obviously bugs in the Phoenix code that must be found.

As such, I decided to go ahead and reset the game, which was not my original intention, but it had to be done.

Before I am really ready to go ahead with Phoenix as it's own game, I'm going to have to change a lot of things.

My big list right now:
1.) Create more options for moving armies. You should be able to send or split an army any way you choose.
2.) Create the map. I once thought we could get by without this for awhile, but my thinking has changed. We need a map, with distances to calculate army travel times.
3.) Forget the percentage based battle system. They work fine for the old game, but as we move towards realism, they have to go.

Just those three are going to be a lot of work, and there are plenty of other things that I expect to spring up between now and then.

In the meantime I'll try leave things that will require another reset until later so we can have a decent game between now and then.

I think everything went smoothly for once. There, I said it.
(Ok, now the hidden bugs can pop up and make me look like a fool again. :)

Otherwise, welcome to the new season!

On another note:

Phoenix Craziness
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I was thinking about the "too many connections" problem that has reared it's ugly head so many times. I think it should not be a problem at this point, but I also got the idea that we need a safety net if it pops up again.

... so .. I forced the issue on the server by starting up umpteen bajillion instances of the phoenix turn server. I did manage to get the too many connections message, but the script I had readied to handle it fails for some reason.. still working on that one.

I'll probably run it again at some point, but for the moment I'll just let everyone be happy with the new season and extra stuff on Phoenix.

All I've got to say is that it looks like everything is good to go for the new season.

And that scares me.

Unless something changes, we should have this little season finish at 7 pm CDT, another 1 hour Season just for good measure, then the next one kicks off at 8PM, sharp.

In the meantime, I'm looking for whatever is going to jump out of the shadows to bite me this time because surely something is going to go wrong.. X) If you notice a problem, contact me immediately.

Ok... been a busy, busy day.

I'm afraid to say the automated routine is ready to go... so I won't say it.

I will say that if you run into anything out of the ordinary between now and tomorrow 8PM CDT, please message me about it. I can't fix it if I don't know about it.

I'll do some more checks tomorrow after I get some sleep.. then it will be time.. at 8PM CDT.

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The Changes to Genshu are:

Islands are gone, gone, gone from the game

Nightly officer bonus for commanders is reduced to (UP level * UP level)
Instant upgrade bonus for commanders is returned @:
1.8 to the power of (upgrade level +1)
** close to what it used to be, but the difference between 1.8 and 2 is more than it sounds like.

Max officers set @15

Negative honor adjustments are out. If you get negative (darkened) honor, let me know and I’ll repair it. Note that you start with gray honor, this should go away after your first battle.

Turns and covert turns are returned to a static 30 minute interval.

Turn limits are set at 1,000

Casualties on pillages have been tweaked towards favor of the defense

Casualties on Gold Strikes have been tweaked to add max gold and extra casualties when the attacker overwhelms an army.