Like Tortanick, i think it's not necessary, if you're are online less then other player, probabily you will grow less then him.

I think it's not necessary.

Penalizing is hard. But while playing other games (anyone play Utopia?) i've thought about how to 'protect' new players who dont put in as much time. Simply put, its a 'cap'. Players can only attack other players who are between 75% - 125% of their networth/size/whatever. This would mean that new players would be vulnerable to players who started recently, but this could easily be countered by having the new player build up their defense while in a protection phase.

There will be extremely active players, and they will fight amongst themselves for the most part. Add to that the cap and new players should be safe from these active players. Bonus can play a big part. Login every 12 hours and your people will give you extra money for having faith in them. Log in every 2 horus and your peasants give you nothing...

well it seems that what people are worried about is if everyone is gone but the guy who plays almost non stop that he will try to conquere everything in one night while no one is playing. i have an idea on how to stop this. If you attack the empire of someone who is not logged on you face massive unrest in your own empire. just imagine you attack a player who is not logged in and half of your citizenry take up arms against you. I know that there are probably holes in this but plz point them out. i also understand that there are other issues like advancement, but those may not really be issues. If they are then in the area of research the player can que up the techs before they log off. I am assuming that time for resaerching techs will be standardized, if so then it does not matter if you are logged in or not your people just continue to research along the oath that you have chosen. Also to aid this you might could have some AI governors to build things that you need that you acuired through research while you where gone. I know it is a shot in the dark but it may actually balance things out a bit.

well it seems that what people are worried about is if everyone is gone but the guy who plays almost non stop that he will try to conquere everything in one night while no one is playing. i have an idea on how to stop this. If you attack the empire of someone who is not logged on you face massive unrest in your own empire. just imagine you attack a player who is not logged in and half of your citizenry take up arms against you

Good idea there, I like that one alot. Atleast players will be able to defend themselves when offline. And discourage other players to attack offline players so you can defend yourself.

This doesn't solve the problem of more active players advancing quicker than the less active players though. And again, it's a penalty. I still wish to urge that penalising players for simply playing the game is very unnecesary and should NOT be done.

As far as time expenditure 'imbalances' are concerned, I think the only solution is a 'natural' one. Citizens are only born so fast, wood is only chopped and collected so quickly, yes the ability to make more real-time decisions can and SHOULD matter but it will not be the end-all be-all difference.

The reward that makes each bit of a less active player's time more valuable, is that they'll have more people, resources, and (I think) buildings that have been produced in their absence. Their time spent in game will involve way less waiting and way more decisions.

I think as far as protecting offline empires goes, we're just going to have to hope the AI has no exploitable weaknesses. It should be very competent and if your province is well defended it should keep the other player busy for hours and hours-- some player staying up all night and taking over a huge chunk of provinces will simply be impossible because by their 3rd or 4th major battle somebody's going to wake up and hit their flanks! It might be possible to send troops to fight and then not actually take part in the battle yourself, but I'm sure the attacker would need even more numerical and logistical superiority to win in such a case and there's probably a softcap on how many battles abroad you can have at once.

Exploits are a bit more worrisome, AI's tend to be more vulnerable they're just another game system that in some way or another is predictable. 'Kiting', 'pulling', 'aggro', MMO players have no problems taking advantage of predictable factors to get ahead. Hopefully Stardock will stay on top of things and exploits will be shored up constantly. Inbetween patches when exploits are recognized they might even punish people for using them, maybe block offending empires from starting battles for some period of time.

I also wouldn't disagree with offline empires having a lower proportion of attackable provinces at a time.

edit: oh and another thing, in direct response to the subject of this thread. Players will see a reward as a punishment if they aren't getting said reward, ala the whole 'rest system' whinefest when WoW added it. You can't trick people into seeing it otherwise the only trick is to ignore the whining, ultimately it turned out to be nothing. I don't actually suggest Society take any tips from WoW granted since that game only succeeds by being, for one, a good game, secondly and more importantly by a massive marketing and distribution blitz. Not really Stardock's style nor does it need to be if GC2 is any indication.

Another factor that has to be considered is player skill. Specifically, a player's society's rating (or effectiveness or what have you) should be a corrolary of his expertise at playing the game. If a system is implemented that balances players who play the game a lot and players that don't, this will probably affect, to an extent, relationships of one society to another in terms of power. This could potentially lead to all societies being "equal." If the goal of the game is to create a superior society (I assume it is, since most games have similar goals), then players who play frequently and well could find that their efforts are in vain as their all-night sessions lead to their society being about as strong as a casual player's who plays a couple hours a week. Just something for Stardock to watch out for.

~Nero

While playing Mankind i saw many of the same problems that you all are talking about here.

The idea of capping targets to within 25% of your strength is something we did ourselves (in different terms) outside of the game rules and it works. That didn't stop griefer/pkers though.

Now, the predominance of players simply becuase they've played more/longer is a problem unique to persistant RTS games. The end result is a few powerfull individuals owning the prime real-estate with no room for others to expand without confrontation. The only answer i've ever seen to this is the community killing world reset. On the other hand, why should someone who has not dedicated the time and energy into a game that someone else has reap benifits that the hard worker doesn't get. Stromko made that point adequately enough.

I think i have an alternative. The game Age of Empires 3 featured a 'home city'. A persistant resource that could be upgraded and customized and was always safe from attack. This gave me an idea. New before i go on i want to emphasize that i know nothing of Society's mythology, thusly i don't know if this is feasible within the game's story setting. Each player could be granted, upon entrance into the game world for the first time, their very own territory. Separate from the rest of the game world, growable and customizable, eternal but effectable by other players or circumstances. Some of you may be thinking, 'great, now the ubers are untouchable by the very game mechanics.' The effect the outside world would have on these 'shards' would be direct. Something like, with each battle won the shard would gain some kind of resource used to enlarge it or upgrade it whatever and with each battle lost that resource would be subtracted and the benifits it granted along with it. Combat is the only event i can think of right now but it should not be limited to just military strength by any means.

Thats my half cent.