It's Just A Game

Yeah, I've been working on getting my writing published--no progress yet, keep it here for any updates--and writing my novel, not to mention working many hours of overtime and devoting myself to that most wonderful of creatures, Mrs Doombreed, so time for posting here has been somewhat limited.

I have, however, been able to devote maybe ten minutes a week to Knighthood and Warbook, two Facebook games that, I freely admit, I'm addicted to.

Well, Warbook is on the verge of going out of the window. I'm getting a little hacked off with having my kingdom crushed every time I leave the computer. I'm a Warmonger. If you play, you'll understand. If you don't, you won't and should start playing as soon as possible just so you, too, can experience the soul-crushing defeat of seeing your carefully-constructed 100,000 acre kingdom with it's magnificent 1,000,000 strong army reduced to three acres defended by a tired old man with a stick thanks to a gang-bang that would make Jenna Jameson flinch.

Warmongers are everyone's whipping boy. Easy target, easy money.

Knighthood, however, is a little more slow paced.

Worry not, there is a moral to this story, you're just going to have to bear with me.

In Knighthood you play by recruiting your friends. You start out as a Knight with two vassals, two serfs with randomly generated names, each at power 5. This makes you power 20. You send invitations to your friends and they immediately become available to your kingdom as handmaidens or squires (depending on their gender), each power 10. Each handmaiden or squire you have adds one to your total power. If your friends accept the invitation and install the application, they become a Knight or Lady (depending on gender) with two serfs, and show up in your kingdom as a Knight or Lady with power 20 and add two to your total power. If they then recruit loads of friends, their power, in your kingdom, goes up. Some players are up in the thousands. And, of course, if their friends recruit, they go up, so causing your vassals to go up, giving you even more power. As you gain power your rank increases. I'm now a Baron.

You can also acquire vassals by seizing them from other players or by buying them.
You build structures and put your vassals to work. Vassals in the marketplace earn you gold, vassals in the workshop increase your structures' effectiveness, vassals in the wall, watchtowers or palisade defend your kingdom against attack.

Simple so far, right? Someone attacks, they send three vassals, each with power 20 against your wall. Your wall, being manned by three of your best vassals, had a defensive rating of 80. They lose. Good eh?

Don't worry, I am going somewhere with this.

Both the attackers and the defenders take damage, a point each, so the attackers are now 57 (three 19s) and the defenders are now 77. But the attacker can spend gold healing his or her vassals and send them again.

And that's what we call a "spam attack". See, your hospital heals your vassals, just not spectacularly fast. If the attacker has enough gold, they can attack over and over again until your defenses are weakened to the point where they break through. After one attack, 77, after two, 74, after three, 71, after four, 68, after five, 65, after six, 65, after seven, 62, after eight, 59 and the attacker breaks through. Now, they might be looking to steal your gold or they might be looking to steal a vassal. Stealing vassals is calculated a little differently, but the same principle applies, an attacker can just keep on hitting until they win. No defense is good enough to resist an attacker with enough gold.

It's not uncommon to log on to find ninety-odd attacks against you from as little as two different attackers.

But then, having broken through, some players just go slap-happy, attacking again and again in order to plunder as much gold as possible, and it is these that prompted this post.

I got so fed up with getting spam attacked that I disbanded my armies and went into peace mode. In peace mode, you can't be attacked, but you can't attack anybody. Your vassals can't be seized, but you can't seize others. You still earn gold, you can still build, and you can still buy vassals. So if you're looking at consolidating your defenses before hurling yourself back into the fray, peace mode is invaluable.

The incident that prompted the decision involved a structure called the trapper. The trapper is a structure that was included to prevent or counter spam attacks. Here's how it works. If an attacker hits with 60, and the defensive structure that they hit has a defense value of 80, then there is a chance that any vassals in the trapper can capture one of the attackers, provided that the vassals in the trapper have a higher score than the attackers. Far from stealing your gold or seizing a vassal, they've lost one! It doesn't always work, but often enough to cause an attacker to blink.

Here's the problem: vassals caught by the trapper automatically get sent to the court, a structure protected by the watchtowers, so the attacker knows where they are. So they can spam attack to get them back. Sure, they may lose another vassal, but eventually, their spamming will reduce the watchtower to the point where they can attack and rescue with impunity. It would look something like this:

Knight Fred (we'll call him) attacks in order to seize Lady Betty (for example), who is currently stationed in the axeshop, a structure that is defended by the watchtowers. My kingdom is called Dunny On The Wold (after the rotten borough in Blackadder).

10:18a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:18a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:19a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:19a As your defenders fended off the weak attack by Knight Fred, your trappers managed to restrain attacking Knight Jim!
10:20a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:20a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:20a As your defenders fended off the weak attack by Knight Fred, your trappers managed to restrain attacking Knight Bob!
10:21a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:21a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:21a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:22a As your defenders fended off the weak attack by Knight Fred, your trappers managed to restrain attacking Knight Charlie!
10:22a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:23a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:23a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:23a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:23a As your defenders fended off the weak attack by Knight Fred, your trappers managed to restrain attacking Knight Charlie!
10:23a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!
10:24a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold but did not seize anyone!

Now, at this point, your watchtowers become too weak to defend adequately;

10:24a Knight Fred's soldiers invaded the Watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold and seized Lady Betty!

Now all Knight Fred has to do is rescue his trapped vassals by attacking the already-weak watchtowers:

10:25a Knight Fred's soldiers stormed into the watchtowers region of Dunny On the Wold and rescued Knight Jim!
10:25a Knight Fred's soldiers stormed into the watchtowers region of Dunny On the Wold and rescued Knight Bob!
10:25a Knight Fred's soldiers stormed into the watchtowers region of Dunny On the Wold and rescued Knight Charlie!

So, you lost a vassal and your trapper was completely ineffective. And, as if that wasn't bad enough, Knight Fred now knows that your watchtowers are screwed, and can raid for gold without consequence:

10:26a Knight Fred's soldiers raided the watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold and looted 102 gold coins!
10:27a Knight Fred's soldiers raided the watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold and looted 101 gold coins!
10:27a Knight Fred's soldiers raided the watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold and looted 99 gold coins!
10:27a Knight Fred's soldiers raided the watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold and looted 96 gold coins!
10:27a Knight Fred's soldiers raided the watchtowers region of Dunny On The Wold and looted 90 gold coins!

So, you lost the vassal, your trapper was completely ineffective, and you paid for the privilege of getting shafted!

It was an incident similar to this which prompted me to move to peace mode, but what prompted this post was the exchange that I then had with "Knight Fred" (names have been changed to protect the idiot). I sent hims a "terse" message, to the effect that the game was called "Knighthood" and that, maybe, he could benefit from looking up the meanings of the words "honour" and "chivalry" and that he could possibly use a refresher course on "Knightly virtues". I grant you I probably didn't use those exact words, but that was the gist of it.

Knight Fred wrote back with a few lame insults and the phrase "it's only a game". That phrase, in that context, says a lot about Knight Fred, and little of it good. And the fact that so many people would agree including, I'd bet, many reading this post, says a lot about humanity, and little of it good.

The notion that boorish behaviour can be excused because "it's only a game" is simply ridiculous. If Knight Fred were stealing gold from me to feed his starving family, to pay for little Tim's life-saving surgery, to save his family from homelessness, the attitude of "I'll do whatever it takes" would be justifiable. But that fact that it's a meaningless game makes that attitude reprehensible. There are virtually no real-world consequences to the game. People do not live or die based upon the actions of this or that player. The gold in the game isn't real. We are all playing for the fun of the game, so the only thing--the only thing--that can come from playing the game like a jerk is that you'll ruin it for others.

If "it's only a game", why are you playing like an arsehole?