I don't think it's about the number of agents, per se.. Most wars ultimately get down to a choke point or some place where you will have to fight their army on an OP sometime.. Plus, most alliances tend to have subs and allies that can plant agents as well. Regardless of the number of agents, you are going to constantly be unable to defend yourself from being locked/spied. And that is the core of the problem, there is just no way you can defend yourself from being locked aside from mass nuking, which in most cases just isn't an actual option or slows down wars extremely.

thats not the point there needs to be several changes i've played since 09 and back then the game used to be a blast the resource cap wasnt as low which really helped on faster servers there was only 1 spy per person which which allowed people to just go into a war seeing who has better moves and activity no war is about trapping in spies, xtals were everywhere and when teams saw hey these guys got like 200 xtals we should go and kill them now its meh these guys only got 60 xtals, not worth the effort, the fact is now the game is flat our boring compared to what it used to be. the only reason i play now is because old friends keep asking me to play eras with them (and sadly my buddies are a lot more entertaining than the game)

How about having fewer worlds to fix this?

If there are fewer worlds then there will be more good alliances playing vs each other on the same world.

more good alliance playing against each other, or playing WITH each other?

There actually were MORE worlds 2-3 years ago.. 5 mars servers, 6 fantasy servers and 5 earth servers. Now we have 3 mars, 5 fantasy and 5 earth.

Plus yeah, what Aister says. I don't think it fixes the underlying problems.

No they won't look what we see with the CE, having less worlds doesn't solve the problem.

I've only read Milanos' first posting and i have to say I mostly disagree. I like the new spy system and i think it made Battle Dawn a more interesting game. A more strategic combat system is always more interesting in my opinion. There are tons of other browser games around which are dominated by the most active players, simply because they farm most and build up unbeatable armies. BD is different. It's always been but the new spy system is just another step to improve it. I would love to see even more changes in that direction, making nukes and spies more powerful or even introducing more tactical elements into the game and thereby broadening the possibilities to trap or trick your enemy.
Regarding the stagnant wars, I think there were stagnant wars before the introduction of the new spy system. They occured when both sides in a war were on a equal level in terms of power (and activity of course). And yes, they often resulted in one side suiciding into the other, just as they do now. Nowadays stagnant wars may occur more often, because it has become more difficult to overrun the enemy by pure power. This, however, is basically a good thing in my opinion.
When we were fighting ED on e1, we were outnumbered from the beginning on and it looked like a rather hopeless battle. I could enjoy the era anyway because there was always the hope to lock our enemies down and hurt them at least. If the only thing you can do is run and die, there's not much reason to bother in my eyes.



I dont see how these examples prove that wars aren't more strategic than before. In fact, they show that the opposite is true. SAGE as well as GML made serious mistakes in all those examples. Your side was coordinating better and played smarter. If you couldn't have locked that OP down, which SAGE was attacking with 500 squads, your only option would have been to run away. How could this be more interesting?

I am not saying all these changes don't make Battledawn more strategic or even more balanced.. It for sure does. They make sure that even if you overpower your enemy massively, you will still not be able to actually attack them. What I am saying is that I find that in spite of all this balancing and strategizing, and despite the fact that I have used the spy system in my favor quite a lot, it makes me like Battledawn less. It's not about how much more strategic or balanced it makes Battledawn, it's about how it actually makes it less fun.



We were coordinating better and played smarter, but it wasn't spies that actually killed them. The reason SAGE made a mistake is that I believe they simply got too bored of sitting on the same OP for 7 days and decided to attack for once. That attack immediately showed why you just CAN'T attack stuff with more than a few squads with the current system. I do however think you are confusing strategic with balanced. Calling this spy system strategic is giving it too much credit, you don't need a lot of strategical insight to realise you need to plant as many agents as possible and that you can lock your enemy on every attack. That is all basic. There is no deep strategy in that.

Simmen: First of all, that pink really does not make it pleasant to read



Agreed, there are way too many subs nowadays. Or well, subs and brothers. Of course I am not clean on this one as I am in VND and we have many allies that many consider subs or brothers as well, and we do indeed need them to win the round. However, I actually mentioned in a post of mine what I think is causing this. You need allies because not only does it provide you with more reliable agents, income nowadays is so low that if you don't have allies and you lose a lot of armor in a big battle, you just can't rebuild fast enough. We just had a big battle with WWE, we killed 300 of their squads. We only lost armor, which is a job well done in itself. However it is going to take us serious time to rebuild that armor. At this stage, we desperately need our allies because we can not do any big fights ourselves and we do not have the income to rebuild our armies fast enough. THAT is the reason many now have brothers and subs, you need them because even if you do all your battles perfectly, you will not be able to rebuild fast enough. The mechanics have balanced the game so much that you simply need more teams on your side.



They are overpowered and they have had a limited impact on the world. And that is because all alliances that are in any way playing seriously KNOW they are overpowered and therefore everyone is extremely careful and wars are stagnant (aside from spamming, of course). Both sides know the spies can be lethal and will sit still rather than risk losing armies because of spies. You can call it strategical thinking.. Sure, it is strategic to try and not lose your army to spies. Of course that's a good strategy. But is it really strategic when you have no other choice?

As for not being able to take the argument of us not being able to attack seriously, it beats me as well. So many of our enemies' squads have died in dumb ways, it is unbelievable. This might sound disrespectful to our enemies, but.. Suiciding your full army with 70 squads nuked? Flying into a lock? Not managing to get your people online to turn? Simply sitting on an OP with 300 squads while an overpowering force comes to kill you. I do not think ANY of those kills were of an extreme quality by us, I would actually say that our enemies killed themselves. We have just so far been smart enough to not trap ourselves, to not make these dumb mistakes.



Glad to hear that at least



I actually like the idea of those garrisons. That both brings back the tension between alliances and players for the crystals and requires some activity. I however don't agree with being able to protect it better at 30 power, because truth be told you WILL have your crystal taken, even if you did it at 40 power.



It was put in place to prevent multies, so why hinder the normal players with it? I can see the reasoning of keepign that restriction for new players, because it both hinders multies and forces newbies to at least get some resource structures before being able to attack guaranteeing them some income. Agree with you, on all those points.

I believe an admin once told me they disliked people continuously making new accounts to get more blues from those, when admins would like them to play on the same account for a longer time. So why not make it so that you both protect newbies, curb multi spamming AND give an incentive for people to use their same account for every world? If you make it so that once you get 5-10 achievements, you no longer need to build all level 3 structures and again only need to build metal mine level 3 to attack, that creates an incentive to keep playing on the same account and it does not harm the serious players.



Yeah, there's obvious reasons. But again it's the normal players that see the game changed in a negative way for them because of cheaters.



I believe the changes in gameplay and the changes in mentality are highly correlated. When taxation was decreases massively, alliances saw their power to do battles nerfed. When you have less income to build and rebuild, you are going to have to depend on others more. If you are in a top alliance you are going to have to keep boosting if you want to in any way keep up your workers, as most worlds sadly no longer have the conquers or outposts needed to be able to sustain a high worker count. Which is why in top alliances you have always had to depend on income from bonuses and taxation. So let's say in a top alliance you now get 350 metal income per tick. This might seem like a low amount, but I know many in VND, which is the leading alliance on E6, have this amount of income. Then you have an ally/sub that is just building up, with no real conquers, no real taxation. From just having their workers, they get 180-200 metal per tick. Add the income from world boosts (which is massive on this E6) into the mix, and you see that you simply NEED to have many alliances on your side because there are so many that can build up that you just can not possibly fight them all, even if you only lose armor. Not to mention overhead also makes it harder for these top alliances to keep building.

And then I am not even talking about agents yet! If you have one active alliance against you with 2 subs, and the members of these 2 subs all plant some agents in your territory, you will have 200-300 agents in your territory vs 120 of your agents planted, max. You are being outproduced, and your enemy has more agents. You can't attack any outposts because you will get locked, you need to add a lot of spy protection to every OP because your enemy has 2-3 times your amount of agents.

With that scenario, which is really what it is currently like, I can not blame alliances for getting allies and subs. It is simply the way you have to play if you do not want to be frustrated by being outproduced, outgunned, and having less agents.