every flavour of server has its dedicated forum and dedicated team of ops and mods;
and it really does impact the way question/info/feedback on the forums are handled, answered too, and dealt with;
I remember a time when the .en forum for FoE was under tight control : every time someone did express some negative comment regarding whatever was inno-related, they had to face consequences : post deletion, remarks about uncorrect behaviour; there may even have been bans;
just for expressing dissatisfaction in terms that were not accepted by the local team (and those were mild terms most of the time, but... );
so what happens on a forum for these games is tightly related to the way the team handles it
so far the team here is nice, and they better be, because this is beta, and this is where s..t happens first and foremost
but I digress
we were talking about orcs, orcs being required to negociate provinces from a point that has obviously been chosen by throwing some dice (I have been a role player and I know how stupid things may turn when you use dice to make a decision)
here I just wish to express my dissatisfaction when I discovered - while having not yet completed the squad size upgrade research at the beginning of the orcs chapter) that I could not negociate an encounter that I wanted to negociate, just because orcs were now required to do so;
and huge was my frustration, because I had to complete 2 more researches before getting to starting to research orc-breeding armouries;
and I was just one of those beta players who had reached the end of the fairy chapter a long time ago;
our cities were well organised, with some space on the side for a soon coming guest race, and our inventories were stuffed with goods for future researches - and the odd negociation, from time to time;
and BAM ! all of a sudden, I am denied the right to negociate;
everybody heard the devs in the latest episode of Innogames TV ?
"fighting will always be optional"
this is a lie, and damn lie for one;
because wherever you are in the tech tree, as long as you are not near ressearching orc-breeding armouries, you cannot negociate beyong ring 10 and fighting is your ONLY option;
I will stick to my original advice : the introduction of orcs as a good to pay for negociation must not be related to the ring of the province - which is arbitrary and inherently unfair, because every player advances at his/her own pace - but tied to the moment in the research tree when getting the opportunity to upgrade an armoury and turn it into an orc-breeding facility;
orcs should not be required for negociation as long as the "breeding grounds" research is not completed
you are able to change the looks of a city on the world map by checking that the newer squad size upgrade has been researched
you should be able to introduce orcs into the negociation process when and only when breeding grounds have been researched
I described above how I felt when I was denied the right to negociate, that moment when fighting was not anymore an option;
now I understand wholly how a player may feel when facing this while still in the dwarves chapter ...
