This turned out to be a rather long post, if you want the summary check the bottom of the post.

In this Champions Era there is one thing I am noticing above all, and it is how stagnant wars are. We have been sitting next to SAGE for ages now, with none of us really able to pull off any attacks. There is a simple reason for this.. The new spies. It is quite guaranteed that on any attack you do, you will be locked, perhaps spied, and if you get locked you can expect an ion showdown. Either way, the ions are not what I want to discuss.

What I want to discuss is this agent system. It has made wars so incredibly slow that if you want to play it strategically (e.g. don't lose squads), you are going to sit on OPs all day long, adding tons of spy protection because the hostile alliance will have several spies on it. You can not attack the OP your enemy is sitting on because you will get locked and spied, they can not attack your OP because they will get locked and spied. You can try spamming, but of course you aren't going to take the OP by using a spam. You can try nuking, but if you send just 1 odds are it will be ioned, send more and your enemy moves to a new OP and the process repeats itself. On top of that, continuously nuking OPs takes quite a huge toll on (already depleted) energy reserves, and is hard to keep up.

Of course it can be said that this new spy system is more strategic. But I do wonder, how IS it more strategic? The current strategy for agents is simple, you have your team bring their agents to the frontlines, and plant agents all around. If you are fighting a war with allies, then your allies do the same. Result: All OPs are infested with spies and you can not send any actual army at it without risking losing it completely.

So what DO we see? Well, let's just go through what has decided wars so far. CBop we have managed to lock on an attack once, which I believe was about 40 squads. After this they of course stopped attacking outposts all together. Mind you, this was still early game so there were less agents around. Eventually that war was decided by them sending full army at us, no spies involved there because we just hopped from one new OP to the next and it was still early game so there was less to worry about.

Then the GML war. The turning point in the war, I would say, was GML locking LOST on an OP and then sending 120 squads into their own lock, after which we managed to damage them and kill that army. Yes, this kill was done with agents but only because GML was dumb enough to fly into their OWN lock.

Then the war with SAGE. SAGE got trapped on an ETA 6 move, II got themselves trapped, EVIL were mostly killed in colonies, I killed themselves by suiciding into BEER. Again, no spies involved. Since then we have been sitting next to SAGE for what, a week? Neither of us can attack, as SAGE demonstrated by sending one attack and immediately losing several armies in a lock.

My point is that because of the agent system it is simply becoming impossible to attack. Defenders have such a huge advantage by being able to lock their own OP and then being able to spy/ion that it is just too risky to attack anything.

I don't know how others feel about it, but this is making Battledawn a lot more boring for me. Perhaps it IS more strategic, perhaps it is more balanced as smaller alliances can now defend themselves quite well too and you can't afford to go anywhere without your fully army.. But it is making Battledawn boring for me personally. And I am not just talking about the new spy system here but about BD becoming more balanced and strategic in general. Where are the days of charging into wars with your 1 tick immunity, snowballing your conquer income because taxation actually meant something, the days of nuking relics, only taking 12 ticks to raze an OP, the days of newbies spawning crystals at 20 power, the days of a lot more people playing actively on worlds..

I might be completely alone in this regard, but I am putting it out here anyway. I believe that the older version of the New Client, despite it being less strategic and less balanced led to more wars, more competitiveness, more activity from players and a more fun gameplay in general. Higher conquer income meant competing over conquers leading to tensions between alliances and snowball effects, crystals at 20 power led to more crystals being spawned again leading to more clashing between alliances, leading to more wars and a much more intense gameplay in general. You could get started with a lot of resources because you didn't need to have all resource structures at level 3, you could build up your buildings faster. Defenders did not have such advantages, you could attack OPs in relative safety because spies were not as abundant and you could not lock your own OP before your enemy landed.

Perhaps all these changes that I have listed seem like small changes that have been made, but for me they have compounded and have made Battledawn a much more boring and stagnant game. There are few tensions between alliances, crystals aren't that abundant anymore except for with garrisons. There isn't much incentive to being superactive anymore when there is no reason to go around conquering and you can't attack any hostile OPs as you will get locked and killed. I find myself adoring the old Battledawn where fighting was abundant, people were more active, you would have tensions over crystals every few ticks, and where you could charge into wars.

Either way.. As I see this has become a relatively long post, here is a short summary. I believe that while changes that have been made to Battledawn might have made it a more balanced and strategic game (24 ticks for OP razing, longer build times and needing level 3 resource buildings to attack, the new spy system, conquer income being nerfed extremely, 30 power for a crystal), it has also made Battledawn a more stagnant game in which wars are all about waiting and defending, and a more boring game with less tension between alliances and less FUN.

Anyway, that's the short summary. I know that many that share my opinion will not see this as they have already left, but that is okay. I would very much like to hear what everyone thinks of this, and whether you agree or disagree. So please, do post.

tl;dr u want the spy system to be tweaked?

Not the kind of reply I was hoping for. Partly, it is not just the spy system. The spy system is just the latest addition, and the part that is most noticeable on the Champions Era at the moment. I think you can ask SAGE and they will say the same, it's just.. Sitting and sitting.

as a watcher, I can say that the CE is like this

- too many allies and subs, I'm not saying this against anyone though, as said several times, it's numbers vs numbers so I have no complaints. However, the fact still remains that there are too many allies and subs. Make me wonder is this CE or Friends Era

- too less alliances going for the win. We only have GML, SAGE, VND, CBop, and if u count Fear, that's only 5 alliances (that are worth mentioned). And 3 of them have tons of subs and allies.

the sit and wait is also a part of this, there are too many allies on both side, which made the defense more powerful, as one alliance can get 10 OPs with 12 agents each, and each side have at least 10 allies helping them, that's 100 OPs, or focusingly 10 OPs with 120 agents each.

Not to mention the huge amount of ion cannons were fired by the allies, say each one can fire 2-3 shots in average, that's 24 shots for an alliances, and for all allies, 240 shots and more is pretty possible.

Totally agree. I don't like it either. But again, it is harder to have an ally empire/sub empire when you are fighting over conquers/crystals more, that is the tension I was talking about. Plus, this has nothing to do with for example the agents.. Regardless of how many alliances are with either side, neither SAGE nor us can attack each other's OP.



Yep. I'm going to out on a limb here though.. Total resource income has been drastically decreasing over the years, considering both the amount of conquers has dropped rather extremely and the income from conquers has been more than halved. When you don't have that much income, you can't afford to lose that much armor. Let me put it this way, if I knew I could rebuild in 1 day we would be able to take on SAGE's full army and then go for DR (just an example). Reality is however that if you lose your armor, you just don't have the income to rebuild it and will be forced to go out of battle for a few days and will need your allies to advance.

I couldn't be bothered reading it all. But after the first paragraph I have to disagree. If they are adding spy protection to the op then once you manage to capture the op the spy protection stays so they can't use their spy anyway. (Halved I know but so are there spies) A way to check for this is to use your spy and check whether it was caught in a spy battle or by spy protection (or somehow manage to actually do damage :O).

If they decide to lock down before you land then it's down to whether you see it or not and pull back in time.

I find spys more useful when landing on random ops, because placed ops where players stack units have so much SP spies will never work on them so you shouldn't have to worry about getting spied taking that op.

Of course, unless they planted their own agents or some sub/ally planted agents.. In which case it can't get caught in a spy battle.



Oh great, a refresh battle! Because that's what good stuff is made of I don't think you are playing the CE at the moment, but the time it takes to refresh is quite high. Plus I would like to not depend on last minute frantic refreshing, that really has very little to do with the spirit of battledawn.



You do realise they can ALWAYS lock, no matter how much SP they have? Meaning you simply always need to have your full army around and send with your full army because otherwise you will simply be picked off at every attack. Then when you DO send full army you have the risk of being spied, because unlike what you say, it's easily possible to overcome some SP on your own side if you just have some agents on there too.

suprisingly i read the whole post
i hav 2 dissagree with u at most points

20 power crys, no way, more farming, rank 1 allaince will just get more stronger (as i asked joe y he didnt release garrs), and very easy

agent thing, dude u cant say that allies will hav tons of agents and complain about it as u urslef with your *so called allies* fired 125 ions -_-, move by new ops and add sp as u go no need 2 change the spy system it is good as it is

lvl 3 struc bad, wtf u serious i completly disagree, more farming, easier for boosters, etc etc

conquer res increase, though i am a conquer whore i still say that 20 metal 25 metal a tick was 2 much, i can still eaily rebuild with abt 100 conquers at the cureent income, though can increase 2 10 or 12 but 20/25 is 2 much


thats it

Then should we not try and do something about the farming rather than changing the power needed for crystals? But you are saying that by using garrisons rank 1 alliance will just get stronger? I don't see how that is an argument here at all? The point about crystals at 20 power rather than garrisons is that this way there will be many crystals spawning leading to tensions over these crystals, as always was the case.



Again, you are missing the point. You can hardly expect me to play E6 without using agents, now can you? The point about it is that you just can't attack armies on outposts anymore, because you will get locked and potentially spied/killed. That has NOTHING to do with what I am doing this era, it also has nothing to do with moving to new OPs and adding SP, as that is of course always the simple solution but does not allow you to actually attack.



Huh.. What? o_O

It would help if you actually read it correctly. I want to make it so you DON'T need the level 3 structures anymore, as the only way you can have units initially now is by boosting.



It was never 25 for a conquer. Right now the maximum amount of metal you can get from one conquer, IF they are at 1000 workers, is 8 metal. However, most conquers tend to give 3 or sometimes 4 metal. Before this change you could get up to 20 metal per conquer, and an average income from one conquer was 8-9 metal.

But yeah India, if you can get about 100 conquers you'll still have about 400-500 income from tax. Great, but if you as a single player manage to get 100 conquers on an era considering most eras nowadays hover around 900-1000 players, I'd say you control the entire map already anyway. The reason you can get so many conquers is that because of this nerfed income from them, most people simply don't care too much for conquers anymore. Which was my entire point, people are not going for conquers much anymore, so there is no tension, no activity there.

the point of 30 power for crystal is to have the new player having a good enough amount of units before being attacked the second time (the first time is him being conquered)

I do agree that it did make a crystal shortage, and garrisons have to be added in order to counter the shortage.