Even when done remotely. Can never be too careful.

We have had several issues at the feet of The Council for quite some time which I believe need to be voted on. I'm opening this thread as a final discussion forum on the proposed changes. I have discussed these changes with u/Reostra, and 2 of the 3 are something which can be changed easily.

The first issue we should decide upon is the swap of the end timers for the battle / skirmish end timers from 30m skirm, 15m battle to 15m skirm, 30m battle. This is a straightforward decision, and most agreed with this swap. The related threads are located here: rock's first thread -- rock's second thread, which also deals with skirm length

The second issue is skirmish length, which has been an item of some debate. 1.5h long skirms are kinda ridiculous, if you ask me, but I am one person. Rock's proposal was for 1h +/- 15m, located here: Rock's second thread

The final issue is whether or not we wish to continue with the math based game which we currently use on Field of Karmic Glory, or the Stratego / Battleship style game which is currently on the Eternal Battleground. Reo has stated that adapting the code from Chromabot 2 (Valkyribot) to Chromabot 1 would be non-trivial.

Chromabot 2 is said to handle batch commands more efficiently by polling the entire thread and updating once per batch as opposed to responding and updating the thread for each command individually (Reo, please correct me if I misinterpreted your response). Granted, this would not directly solve the batch command problem- but it could possibly reduce bot log in highly contested skirmishes.

It should be noted that I was incorrect in my earlier assumption that the Reddit API had been changed to limit bot polling and interaction.

Season 4 is going full-throttle and looks like the first council of Emerald vs Crimson is coming to an end, welcome ladies and gentlemen to the grand tour de la council du karma numero deux.

We're looking to elect three members from both team Crimson and Emerald. For more information on the new teams, click here. Nominations will end in three days.

Reminder: You must nominate another player from your team, you can't nominate yourself. For the complete CoK rules, click here.

List of people active people on each team. If your name is not on the list please PM me and I'll add it on here.

This piggybacks off my previous proposal of reversing the end timers on skirmishes and the overall battles.

This time, I'm proposing that in addition to that change we change skirmishes to have a base timer of 1 hour. With the end window change this will mean skirmishes now end anywhere from 45 mins to 75 mins after they are begun.

I'm proposing this change because this season has mostly seen one skirmish per sector and a few giganta-huge-amariffic skirmishes. This change would incentivize having more numerous, but smaller skirmishes because of the time change. Plus current strategy is to not touch a skirm until you get close to the end window and then everyone beats chromabot like a redheaded stepchild and poor botty just can't keep up. Having this will maybe mean less flooding in the end of the bot.

Ok so, right now the end window for Skirmishes is +/- 30 mins. The end window for the battle is +/-15. I think we should reverse those to make skirmishes +/- 15 and battles +/- 30. Skirmishes are smaller than battles so they should have the smaller window right?

Discuss.

Edit: also I don't know dick about the bot's code but from my limited code knowledge it should be just changing some numbers and not hard to implement.

/u/l_rufus_californicus's proposal here been voted on by the council. The votes were:

This is a vote of 0-6. The motion fails to carry.

Instead the councilors have decided to work on creating a new, abridged compilation of the rules for new players. They will be working on this while the season progresses.

Councilors, if you have any comments, add them below. Chromans, if you have any questions or comments, leave them below.

We should get Crimson and Emerald dots to use for flair. Some people might want to use them. I mean, I wouldn't. But some people might. (Leave Peri flair pls)

After a discussion with the council, I decided to post this to put it out into the open. There's been some sort of miscommunication prior to the Battle of Snooland. At the moment, Snooland is still considered to be neutral. Crimson alleges that the battle counted and that they should have control of the territory. However, Emerald counters that the battle did not count, due to it being referred to as an "exhibition" to commemorate Fool's, and the fact that the council and the format of Season 4 had not been finalized yet. Complicating matters is the fact that this only came up today, weeks after the battle, and we've had another one in the interim.

Link to the lore in question: http://i.imgur.com/Vx7Z1rQ.jpg

In general, I don't really support removing lore, but this piece is too much trouble than it's worth. The Crimson and Emerald factions had agreed on a fairly even split in naval power lorewise, and this lore is incompatible with that. Furthermore, if we left it as is, it might make people think it's OK to destroy an entire side's navy in a piece of lore. /u/4rchim3d3s has also been unwilling to discuss the matter civilly. I am willing to consider other solutions, but it would be easiest for everyone if we made this non-canon.

Chromans! Bluish and Reddish ones alike! The new battlebot is nearly complete! Our benevolent /u/reostra has asked that we stress test the new system over at /r/eternalbattleground and find out what, if anything, we'd need changed about it.

Hopefully you've already tried the new system, and surely you're aware that EB is open 24/7 for you to hone your skills, but we're going to want as many people at the same time as we can get for a passable stress test. Please prepare to join (eternal) battle at 5 p.m. GMT on Saturday, August 27th! I'll get someone to do some notifications or something.

While we're testing the new system, we should also be working on the lore elements/mixed team themes/"banter" fodder. Lots of ideas have been tossed around, some gaining more traction than others, but none of them 100% decided on. Please feel free to comment here and discuss, or join us in the chat where it's been a topic of frequent conversation.

Viva!

Valkyribot is currently running a demo of the new battle system!

• If you want in, the recruitment thread is right there. This is operating under an entirely new DB, so even if Valkyribot already knew about you, you'll still have to sign up. That thread has basic instructions about how to fight.

• Here's what it looks like! That's post-battle so the board is clear, but you can get an idea of what goes on.

This thread is for feedback, suggestions, poking me that the bot is down, etc.

Edit: I absolutely want to hear all ideas. That said, it'd be worthwhile to know your priority on them. Is it something the game needs before it launches, or is it something that could wait?

Currently, the bot randomly assigns players to teams. However, looking at the assignment thread, only 10 of the 28 newly signed up players have been assigned to Orangered.

As a potential way to resolve the problem, I propose a solution based on Tetris' bag of 7 randomizer. Pick a pre-defined number N and have the bot guarantee that out of every N players, N/2 will go to PW and the other N/2 will go to OR, but the order in which this will happen is still random.

So if we were to choose 20, 10 out of every 20 new players become PWs and 10 become ORs. Which will kinda help balance things out, implying the new guys don't quit. Additionally, depending on how it's implemented, we may also have an option to make it more biased towards a specific team and enable it to help them out if the council deems it necessary.

^(PS: The council may be dead, 'cause the season ended. Paging /u/reostra.)

I gave it a while for ideas to gather, now we can discuss. I will post the ideas below, and we will discuss them/ fix them. Try to do more fixing than shooting down,

It has been years since the war ended. I remember the orangereds being slaughtered. The periwinkles focused on war had nothing worse to do. What was known as the Periwinkle empire has become the very essence of oppression. Those of us who still choose to oppose them moved to the North and South poles. Those who follow the Empress' wishes suffer no punishment, but any deviance results in possible torture and even death. Some cities have started to become dissatified with the rule of the Empress. The Orangereds are no more. Splitting up has caused some hatred between some of the old members, not to mention the fact that many believe brainwashing is occuring. Some of the former Periwinkles have joined us and we forgot our hatred for them as our new brethren. With the former Orangered tunneling department we are able to live undetected underground on the poles and conceal bases on the continents. A rebelion is brewing and we must prepare. Since the name periwinkle was not needed, the Empire named itself something that would apeal to all citizens, "The Great Karmanian Empire." We have nicknamed them the Karma Controllers since they control all the positive and negative outlooks on the culture. Even disgracing the Council of Karma and the wonderful free thought that occured in it. They did not attack the Council or destroy its existence, they plotted from before the war ended to disgrace its reputation. To bring back the expression of free though and to restore Chroma to its former glory as a center of culture and free though, we banded together, "The Free Karmanians." With the rebellion to soon be upon us I write this so our causes purpose will not be misinterpreted.

There was never a picture here to begin with.

The islands on the top and bottom are the poles. The circle of clear things are ships, which would be the rebellions base of old warships. This is intended to be a globe, but I just gave up.

I realize this is absolute crap. The lore is terribly written and the image... is a basic idea. I wanted to put this up so that it could invoke discussion on the background of the revolution and the next map our war will take place on. This map also brings the possibility of interesting mechanics such as sneaking behind enemy lines.

This is not meant to be a proposal, just the start of a community wide discussion.

The last idea thread kinda degenerated into shooting down ideas as they popped up, so this thread will be a little different.

According to Icy, brainstorming should be throwing out ideas first, then cutting out ones that won't work. So this is a thread to throw out every single idea you get about Chroma.

Again, don't berate any ideas in this thread, because they could lead to a better idea.

Another thread will be created for idea discussion in a few days in which we will cull the less plausible ideas. After that, I will likely create a strawpoll for our final ideas.

(Any and all final votes will be made by the council, not a poll)

The following is proposed by /u/a_flock_of_goats:

• Create new classes... Periwinkle X and Periwinkle Y and Orangered X and Orangered Y. Everyone keeps their original designation, but they get a new designation as well. We can make X and Y whatever we want for story elements. Then, all the Periwinkle X and Orangered X are going to fight the PW Y and OR Y in season 4 (we can set up a great story to kick it off and explain it like we did with past seasonal events). This keeps people true to their PW/OR past, but they can balance around their X/Y nature now. In order to sign up: Sign up again for chromabot, using a random number generator, each team will be split up similar to the Battle of Fools.

The following councilors have voted:

This is a vote of 9-0. The proposal passes. If any more councilors choose to vote, their vote will be added.

Councilors, if you have any comments, add them below. Chromans, if you have any questions or comments, leave them below.

I'm not sure if I am overstepping here, but many of our more active EB testers don't have access to the council chambers, so I figured it ought to be out there. We received this from /u/reostra earlier today:

Two new things on Valk:

• As I suggested here, I've expanded the JSON reporting. Take a look at it here. Well, first, I fixed the JSON reporting because it's apparently been broken for a long time, and then I changed it to have more info. Included now is:

  • Every player who's signed up

  • What team they're on

  • Whether or not they have leader powers (e.g. invading.

• As a solution to this problem I have now implemented the stop command. PMing the bot with stop will halt all movement and leave you in whatever sector you're currently in when you issue the command. I've changed Valkyribot's travel times to 10 minutes in order to test this.

I'll leave this up for about a day and then push it over to Chromabot if there are no objections.

I went ahead and stickied the Season 4 discussion thread. There are a lot of things we need to get straight so we can avoid a big lapse in the game, but here are my $0.02...

Our issues are 100% down to team balance. We can go over and over what should and shouldn't be permitted tactics in battles. People will still find ways to get an edge. We can, and should, work to fix how troop gains affect the game. But you could give me unlimited troops and it wouldn't improve the odds I'd beat five opponents who are fighting me three different ways. We can change the map, or add buffs, scenarios or bosses. All of those things are fun. None of them, however, are going to fix the fact that one of the teams stands no chance of beating the other if both teams are focused on the fight. Losing isn't actually that bad, but having no path to victory is awful. I showed up pretty early on in Season 3. I've seen good, dedicated OR "retire"--some due to uncontrollable personal issues or life changes, but some because the fight isn't worth it. We currently have more OR soldiers with histories of consistent participation publicly talking about quitting. The point I am trying to make is that since I have arrived, this has gotten worse instead of better.

If we want to preserve the game as it stands, or even as something similar, we must fix the teams somehow.

First, we need to start with a census. I guess we could do this by measuring participation in S3, but that might not accurately reflect what the teams are like now. Otherwise, we've got to run some kind of signup or questionnaire I guess.

After that, it seems like there are three general ways to pursue rebalancing. I'm not saying any of these are likely to be popular, or that they would be a surefire success. I am only saying these are what I see.

The first possibility is we find out how big the gap is and see if there are any PWs bored enough of winning without resistance to come over and establish a closer headcount That sounds crazy, but if there were three or four PWs that were tight and wanted to flip over together, it might make a big difference.

Alternatively, we could turn on one way defections (towards OR) and funnel new recruits our way until enough stick. It'd take time, and be "unfair." People would complain about not getting to pick their team. But hey--People do that already. Eventually something like this would have to work. We could count players toward the census after they had participated in something like three battles, and then restore balance to recruitment and make defections both ways. If the new players gained by OR still wanted to flip to PW at that point, they could.

The third path is full on indiscriminate shake up. Both sides, completely redrafted or otherwise mixed. I don't think most of us would like this, and it would certainly cause issues. But one of those issues would not be crippling imbalance. There have been ideas about this that involve people choosing sides based on some kind of theme or argument?

I don't know. I don't know about any of it, really. But I know that this is the conversation we need to be having if we want season 4 to work. So let's discuss!

Members of Periwinkle and Orangered have made it clear to me that the Super Bowl is fairly sacred to them. As such I feel a battle on that weekend would be most absurd. So starting on February 5th and resuming on February 8th, an official Cease Fire will be in effect.

Hi, I'm Reostra. I made a bot you may somewhat familiar with! You can see everything I've done at it (and things I plan to do) on this list. When I say "It's on my list", this is the list I'm referring to.

AMA about the bot, life in general, or the 12" of snow I'll soon be buried in :)

The basic idea of this proposal is to bring mercenaries in the game that will switch side as they wish or as they are conquered to implement some balance or wild things. This create as sort of third faction but doesn’t change the game mechanics that will remain with only two teams.

After the season, all the former neutrals will be back to neutral and moved up; they will form the free territories. There will be a direct connection between periwinkle kingdom and Kingston (New Peripolis/O'Shaugnessey). Mozter Island will be connected to New Peripolis and to another PW territory of their choice. Anglona will be connected to O'Shaugnessey and another OR territory of their choice. The connections might be changed by the rebels.

All the governors (and maybe Lt Governors) of this neutral territories will be the rebels, making them the wild card. How that might work:

• They can cross any territory (Neutral/Orangered/PW), rebels are known to be expert at smuggling. But OR and PW can’t cross neutrals anymore.

• I know this give an advantage to rebels, but it’s on purpose as they are limited. If the CoK think it’s too unfair maybe making it 45 minutes instead of 30 can be done.

• They can defect as much as they like and will be back in their capital which will be their territory (Will need a special command for them as >defect isn’t available for regular players). Rebels each choose their allegiance at each battle and can be in opposite teams, and switch from one battle to another.

• Neutrals are captured by successful invasion (if there is an PW invasion in the neutrals, all the rebels will act as OR to counter it (=only two teams mechanics needed), if the real OR can as well reach it and win the fight, the territory will remain Neutral as they only helped the rebels staying free).

• When their territory is under the control of one team they have to fight for this side for invasions (if Orangered capture one neutral for example, the rebel will have to stay Orangered for PW vs OR fights).

• Rebels can riot, which mean if a territory is under a team control they can fight to liberate it and reverse it back to neutral. In this case it will be a battle of all the rebels against the team (so they pick the other side, they can riot and switch side even if their territory is under the team control, they can as well take the team side and fights the rebels).

  • Same as invasion a missed riot will lock the territory and so can’t be tried again before a certain time.
  • Riot can only be launched in the neutral territories and not in PW Kingdom or Kingston.
  • If during a riot the other team can attempt it they will be able to fight (=helping the rebels freeing themselves) but not to win the territory.

• Because they have to know how to battle independently and choose by themselves which side support each time, the rebels should only be former mods from PW or OR, they will have a special command that only mods know like “>join the rebellion of [name of the territory]” providing that the territory isn’t already occupied by more than two people.

• If a Rebel want to resign from his functions and come back to his former team he should be able to do so.

• To prevent all the rebels to acting in the same interest, 5 of them will be former OR and 5 of them former PW (or 10 with Lts). If a team can’t appoint 5 rebels, the other can fill the empty spots to ensure that the free territories remain used (as it is not an advantage to lose players to the rebellion it should be a problem if it isn’t 5/5…)

I hope this will bring some fun battles as well as strategic challenges for the future of Chroma!

TL:DR: this create ten rogue players that can switch allegiance as much as they like with the purpose of staying free and protecting their neutral territories.

EDIT: The Rebels win if they are still neutral at the end of the season (i.e the capture of one team capital or maybe a specific numbers of battles for a scenario) So their collective purpose is to help each others to stay free as long as possible.

Rebels can't occupy CoK positions (avoid this specific bribery) or be a general in one of the team (double agenda+bribery).

Let's be honest, having to wait until your troops have already stopped moving to be able to lead them again is kind of dumb. From personal experience, it's frustrating moving to a sector only for the skirmish to end before you get there and still having to wait until the 15 minutes are up to be able to move to another sector. And if someone accidentally moves to the wrong territory, they have to wait until they land before moving to the correct one.

I propose we allow >lead all commands to be used whilst your troops are already moving and the movement times reset once you send the new movement command

With a vote of 8-1, the counter-invasion has been canceled and postponed.

I've received word that multiple people will not be in attendance for this counterattack and move to postpone it to January 2nd under the newly ratified Holiday proposal under Council.

In conjunction with my other proposal. I would like to propose something that may be easy to add to the bot. Paging Reo. The current issue of Dumping is coming to a head and to come out with a positive possible mechanic to avert players from dumping I would like to see a castable buff for either sector or team that effectively removes the caster's troops from the remainder of the battle. Something similar to FFTB but a smidge more permanent for that particular battle. For example:

Spam has to hop on a plane bound for Key West's Marriott and wants to battle but doesn't want to dump a ton of troops. So he uses

cast Fortune Favors the Infantry

Which causes all infantry commands by his team to be buffed at 1.25 like FFTB (or some similar number or even a randomizer with a value of 1-2. So there's a chance for the buff to do nothing.) for his current sector. However since Spam casted the buff, he is no longer able to use troops for [X amount of time].

I'm opening the floor for possible discussion on this matter. What do you guys think?

Dumping has only recently been viewed as an issue. With the extensive number of battles in S3 and potentially in following seasons, I hereby propose we immediately move to a Flat 5% increase of total committed troops with a maximum cap of 400 troops per player with a starting troop count of 100 troops per new player. I also move that we immediately reset the troop counts of everyone in the game to implement this change as soon as possible. Currently one Maxed veteran is worth 7.5 new raw recruits, and the data has been shown that a standard 25 troop gain per battle to 300 is pretty outrageous. THEREFORE, Bring back the old, percentages and lower the gain. So why keep any troop gain at all? This is a game, each player should feel some form of progress as they contribute to their team. Maps and charts for me personally don't give me the same satisfaction as watching my army slowly grow.

TL;DR: Reset troops to 100 RIGHT NOW. New troop cap at 400. 5% troop increase for committed troops regardless of win or lose.

Further reflection has caused a number of Councilors to withdraw support for a recent proposal that came quite close to passing, myself included (although I did not take the time to officially change my vote). The basis for this change of heart is the notion that we ought to have the details of such a proposal figured out before we vote on them, rather than later.

To that end, I propose the following:

So the gist of this idea: Somebody is accused of dumping. Post-battle the CoK gets sent a link by a disgruntled player; this group decides whether it was dumping or a legit large-scale attack (since large numbers are sometimes needed to reclaim sectors). If it is a dump, the offending player gets a written warning. Subsequent infractions will result in the player being banned from Field of Karmic Glory for 1 battle. This ban length ramps up in increments of one week if they continue to break the rule on no dumping, until the person is banned from fighting altogether.

Two specific problems that came up last time were who the panel would be and what would be defined as a dump. For ease of implementation, I am recommending this be the Council; if someone came with a proposal for an independent panel that would work, I would likely support it. As far as what constitutes "dumping", I propose the following: Any maneuver or set of maneuvers made over brief amount of time, that expends all or almost all of a player's troops, and holds little to no apparent strategic value or planning. Yes, this is still not hyper specific, but I am not sure I see how to reign it in further without having to make a rule for every single scenario.

Finally, I am proposing this as a temporary measure, until the toxic relationship between troop gains and participation can be addressed more effectively. There are good ideas out there about this, by my estimation, notably this one by Cal/Abe , this one by Lolz, and one DB made in the modmail that he can make public if he'd like to. Should this proposal pass, it would be rendered null and void by the proposal and enactment of any measure that would address this issue more permanently.

My personal position on this issue and the need to address it can be found here or here and in a couple of the battle threads as well. I'm going to leave this here for a day or so, and then take it in for voting. I appreciate any discussion, and will make any changes I make to this proposal public before I put it up for vote.

##Edit and Final Proposal to be Put Before Council##

So I think this is where I'm at: after conversation with some of the opposed parties, opinions from others, and some personal reflection, I vote we leave it where it's at. Generals should be free to sort out whether it is appropriate to have a battle on a given day between themselves, and if for some reason they cannot, they can bring forward an appeal the way Spam did here. The way I see it, this is just the "gentleman's agreement" that has allegedly existed the whole time, only we all actually know about it now and it has the council's support behind it. I'm going to ask the council to affirm this with a vote, and my vote is Aye.

When we first voted on this thing, what I had in mind was more in line with this idea. I never imagined trying to come up with an inclusive list to be recognized. I see the logic in avoiding battles on days a significant number of players are indisposed, but at this point I find myself unwilling to codify which ones have a significant enough following. There is a list in the council modmail as well as a list that was cobbled together here. Obviously another councilor could also call a vote on one of these, but I will not. If we are to vote on one of these lists, my vote is Nay.

Thanks for your participation in our fine democracy, everyone.

##Original Text##

The council has recently indicated its support for observing the holidays that many in Chroma, Periwinkle and Orangered alike, observe in their ordinary lives. We have done so, however, without first discerning which holidays specifically we are talking about. The following list has been compiled as holidays likely to interfere with the ability of many Captains to join battle:

Easter, Independence Day (U.S.), Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve. Edit: added Memorial Day and Veteran's/Armistice/Remembrance day, Rosh Hashanah, Passover, Yom Kippur, Purim, Boxing Day, Bonfire Night

As it stands, this is obviously not an all-inclusive list. To better serve Chroma, I would appreciate if you would comment with either a holiday you think there is sufficient reason to observe, or a reason you think one or more of these ought not to be included. As this thread evolves, I'll edit this post to reflect what I judge to be most suitable. It's not like I'll be single handedly railroading whatever holidays I want down your throats or anything, but I will hold final say over which ones I include in my proposal. Sometime late tomorrow or the next day (I'm thinking 24 hours, but I'm also lazy/distract-able), I'll take this proposal to the council.

Thanks for your participation. Please be constructive/kind.

The proposal by /u/Remnance627is linked here.

The following councilors have voted:

This is a vote of 7-0. The Proposal to restrict battling on holidays passes. It is up to the Council of Karma to determine what a holiday is.

Councilors, if you have any comments, add them below. Chromans, if you have any questions or comments, leave them below.