Prestige is supposed to reward interacting with other players, but it doesn't.

[Strill]

Prestige is the main incentive for players to interact with one another. You gain prestige to gain ranks to gain more tribute...or at least that's how it's supposed to work in theory.

In practice, you absolutely CAN sit on your butt, just by casting Elocution. This one ritual alone will get you more prestige than every PoP on the map combined. In my last game, the two players who used this wound up with 200 more prestige than anyone else.

Dueling also works similarly. Challenging another player to a duel can earn the challenger up to 40 prestige, 60 with the dueling ring. The defender can only earn up to around 12. Even worse, there's little to no cost to ignoring a dueling challenge. If you count the 8 prestige that the defender gains for rejecting a demand, the total cost of no-showing a duel is only -2. That means that there's very little reason to actually send a praetor. Simply ignore the challenger's duel requests until it's convenient for you. That incentive structure, however, just makes the passive strategy even more dominant.

[Mr.Gray]

Vendetta them to death. It is not dominant, it is a question of counterplay i think.

[Ober]

So this is yet another of those posts by the same guy. Salty much? There are many many many other ways to get prestige, and ways to reduce other's prestige.
I think you just need to keep playing and learn the game's mechanics.

Vendetta your enemies, bully them over and over again and you'll see that elocution won't save them.

Prestige won't save them from a blood feud or an excommunication either

[Surge]

Originally posted by Ober:

So this is yet another of those posts by the same guy. Salty much? There are many many many other ways to get prestige, and ways to reduce other's prestige.

I think you failed to see OP's point.

It isn't about not being able to get prestige. It's that the amount for get for certain actions is too low to make said action enticing or worthwhile, so you lose half of the game's viable strategies.

[Strill]

Originally posted by Ober:

So this is yet another of those posts by the same guy. Salty much? There are many many many other ways to get prestige, and ways to reduce other's prestige.
I think you just need to keep playing and learn the game's mechanics.

Vendetta your enemies, bully them over and over again and you'll see that elocution won't save them.

Prestige won't save them from a blood feud or an excommunication either

You're missing the point. I'm not losing, I'm dominating every game. I regularly end up with 200 more prestige than anyone else, using a strategy of not interacting with any other players, simply because of how overpowered elocution and dueling are. Because I know I can skyrocket my prestige at a moment's notice, I just sit on my own not picking fights, until all my stats and order slots are maxed out. If anyone tries to fight me at that point, I just zap their legions down with destruction rituals, or steal them with deceit.

The only ones who can compete are those who use the same strategy, or those who go for the usurper straregy. It shouldn't be so easy to completely ignore prestige, then shoot all the way to the top halfway through the game. Prestige is how the game rewards interaction, but you can completely short-circuit it.

Also, bullying other players with vendettas is a losing strategy. The reward to keep vendettas competitive is supposed to be prestige, but you often end up spending 10 orders on less than 30 prestige, when you could get more from a single action duel. Harassing other players is just doing your other opponents a favor narrowing the competition for them, while wasting all your own orders not improving yourself. Any player who just focuses on maxing out their economy has nothing to fear from you, because they will quickly outscale you.

[Valectar]

Originally posted by Strill:

You're missing the point. I'm not losing, I'm dominating every game. I regularly end up with 200 more prestige than anyone else, using a strategy of not interacting with any other players, simply because of how overpowered elocution and dueling are. Because I know I can skyrocket my prestige at a moment's notice, I just sit on my own not picking fights, until all my stats and order slots are maxed out. If anyone tries to fight me at that point, I just zap their legions down with destruction rituals, or steal them with deceit.

The only ones who can compete are those who use the same strategy, or those who go for the usurper straregy. It shouldn't be so easy to completely ignore prestige, then shoot all the way to the top halfway through the game. Prestige is how the game rewards interaction, but you can completely short-circuit it.

Also, bullying other players with vendettas is a losing strategy. You're just doing your other opponents a favor narrowing the competition for them, while wasting all your own orders not improving yourself. Any player who just focuses on maxing out their economy has nothing to fear from you.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your strategy here, are you sitting on low prestige through the game until you've maxed your stats? And assuming you're investing all your money into stats, then, your opponents don't just wipe you from the game with vendettas?

In terms of the vendetta cost efficiency, it takes one order slot to send out a vendetta, and if you've got your legion parked within striking distance of a place of power or legion that it can capture in one battle, you may be able to end the war with as few as 1 more order slot. And of course all the prestige you get in battles and from completing your vendetta, which may even also complete your scheme if that is your focus, can be put towards ranking up, which is a very substantial improvement to your economy.

I guess by a player who "focuses on maxing out their economy" you mean a player spending multiple order slots on collecting tribute, and little else besides increasing powers. If you aren't getting the prestige to rank up in a decent amount of time you are definitely missing out on a lot of economy, and if you're spending multiple order slots on tribute each turn you are going to be guaranteed to need to consolidate tribute on anything you buy that's even moderately expensive. Not to mention any events or votes that redistribute tokens will definitely hit you the hardest.

And if you're managing to survive to the end of the game without harassment despite your extremely slow playstyle, your opponents really only have themselves to blame if they lose. Are you playing against the AI?

[Strill]

Originally posted by Valectar:

Originally posted by Strill:

You're missing the point. I'm not losing, I'm dominating every game. I regularly end up with 200 more prestige than anyone else, using a strategy of not interacting with any other players, simply because of how overpowered elocution and dueling are. Because I know I can skyrocket my prestige at a moment's notice, I just sit on my own not picking fights, until all my stats and order slots are maxed out. If anyone tries to fight me at that point, I just zap their legions down with destruction rituals, or steal them with deceit.

The only ones who can compete are those who use the same strategy, or those who go for the usurper straregy. It shouldn't be so easy to completely ignore prestige, then shoot all the way to the top halfway through the game. Prestige is how the game rewards interaction, but you can completely short-circuit it.

Also, bullying other players with vendettas is a losing strategy. You're just doing your other opponents a favor narrowing the competition for them, while wasting all your own orders not improving yourself. Any player who just focuses on maxing out their economy has nothing to fear from you.

I'm not sure I'm understanding your strategy here, are you sitting on low prestige through the game until you've maxed your stats? And assuming you're investing all your money into stats, then, your opponents don't just wipe you from the game with vendettas?

In terms of the vendetta cost efficiency, it takes one order slot to send out a vendetta, and if you've got your legion parked within striking distance of a place of power or legion that it can capture in one battle, you may be able to end the war with as few as 1 more order slot. And of course all the prestige you get in battles and from completing your vendetta, which may even also complete your scheme if that is your focus, can be put towards ranking up, which is a very substantial improvement to your economy.

I guess by a player who "focuses on maxing out their economy" you mean a player spending multiple order slots on collecting tribute, and little else besides increasing powers. If you aren't getting the prestige to rank up in a decent amount of time you are definitely missing out on a lot of economy, and if you're spending multiple order slots on tribute each turn you are going to be guaranteed to need to consolidate tribute on anything you buy that's even moderately expensive. Not to mention any events or votes that redistribute tokens will definitely hit you the hardest.

And if you're managing to survive to the end of the game without harassment despite your extremely slow playstyle, your opponents really only have themselves to blame if they lose. Are you playing against the AI?

I only play against humans.

Few players attack me because I rarely have any PoP worth taking, because PoP prestige is largely a waste of time. I might take an unclaimed PoP for the stat bonus it provides, or I might take one early on to hit marquis if it's right next to me, but for the most part I rank up with a handful of duels against players who aren't bothering with praetors, or I rank up steadily with Elocution. As long as you just keep ranking up and don't let your prestige surplus climb too high early on, most players don't really take notice.

Redistribution events aren't really a big deal because you can just dump your tokens on a few big purchases.

And yes, it's not uncommon for me to spend a few turns using 4, 5, or even 6 orders on nothing but gather tribute.

As far as defense from the few opponents who do attack goes, I usually grab a decent praetor early on, like Eligos or Xaphan if I'm playing Lilith. That's often enough to provide a decent military defense, while also letting me get in an early duel to rank up. If there's abyss striders or unclaimed PoPs literally right next to my stronghold I might get an early level on my starter legion, because it sticks around, but otherwise I'll just leave it at that.

If I have destruction 2+ and I'm attacked, I'll just zap them, preferably several turns in a row with the masking mirror while they're waiting for their diplomacy action to finish. Otherwise, spending so many actions on gather tribute means it's very easy to pick up a new legion for defense. Similarly, leveling up my stats so hard means that I'm much more likely to have a solution to enemy threats via a ritual or stratagem.

As far as the prestige gain from vendetras goes, I understand there's prestige from the combat victory, the vendetta victory, and maybe schemes, but you would've had to have spent one, if not two orders on plotting a scheme to get a relevant scheme, and the reward is a measly 15 or 20 prestige. That's on top of three or four more orders to get your armies in position and attack when the time is right. Why bother with that when you can get two to three times that from a single-order duel?

[[Ψϕ] TheBeautifulVoid]

Originally posted by Strill:

Few players attack me because I rarely have any PoP worth taking, because PoP prestige is largely a waste of time.

That's not why people should attack you. They should attack you to take prestige from you, because short violent wars are a good way to get it.

It sounds as if your opponents are still used to other strategy games which are about claiming land, rather than Solium Infernum's focus on prestige. This is fine! We shouldn't shame players for not being experienced. Perhaps suggest to them that this is something they should do?

[Strill]

Originally posted by Ψϕ TheBeautifulVoid:

Originally posted by Strill:

Few players attack me because I rarely have any PoP worth taking, because PoP prestige is largely a waste of time.

That's not why people should attack you. They should attack you to take prestige from you, because short violent wars are a good way to get it.

Honestly, I think your opponents need some more practise.

How are they supposed to take prestige from me? I lose what, 8 prestige for losing a vendetta, assuming they can manage it? I gain back five to seven times that in a single duel that cost me one order.

Make no mistake, I won't hesitate to buy legions to defend myself. I just don't waste orders moving them around unless it actually benefits me. Each of those orders could be gaining me 3-5 tribute tokens. That's a huge opportunity cost for such a tenuous benefit.

[Valectar]

Originally posted by Strill:

As far as the prestige gain from vendetras goes, I understand there's prestige from the combat victory, the vendetta victory, and maybe schemes, but you would've had to have spent one, if not two orders on plotting a scheme to get a relevant scheme, and the reward is a measly 15 or 20 prestige. That's on top of three or four more orders to get your armies in position and attack when the time is right. Why bother with that when you can get two to three times that from a single-order duel?

Hmmm yeah, I guess if you can get 60 prestige with a single order slot dueling, and effectively guaranteed if you target someone without a praetor, that would probably be the most efficient prestige source in the game, by a significant amount. Is that possible regardless of rank? I know higher rank lets you go for larger vendettas, but I don't know if it modifies dueling at all. Also do you get that full amount if the opponent forfeits?
(I assume 60 here because if you can consistently achieve that in duels with a ring slot, it would probably be the best relic choice you can make in the game)

I was thinking going for a non-interactive playstyle would be too slow without the ability to rank up quickly but that level of efficiency in prestige gain could put you at prince in just a few duels, assuming that's 60 net prestige gained, and you'd be ahead of the other players in effectively every metric quite quickly from there.

Based on that, it does seem like dueling could really use some tuning. A significantly lower base prestige gain, modified by your rank, or possibly your Charisma, might make sense, to scale as the game proceeds? Although the sheer action economy compared to other sources of prestige means you would need to keep the gain pretty low per duel. A cooldown on duels with the same praetor may also help in that respect.

I'm not as sure on Elocution, I won't say I know it's balanced or anything, but at least compared to dueling it seems much less problematic. I assume you are getting the majority of your prestige in your games through dueling?

[[Ψϕ] TheBeautifulVoid]

Originally posted by Strill:

How are they supposed to take prestige from me? I lose what, 8 prestige for losing a vendetta, assuming they can manage it? I gain back five to seven times that in a single duel that cost me one order.

Make no mistake, I won't hesitate to buy legions to defend myself. I just don't waste orders moving them around unless it actually matters.

Ah, if your opponents are letting you challenge them to duels then perhaps that's the problem right there. Never let the person with a good duelling praetor fight a duel. Just give them the tribute they demanded.

[Valectar]

Originally posted by Ψϕ TheBeautifulVoid:

Originally posted by Strill:

How are they supposed to take prestige from me? I lose what, 8 prestige for losing a vendetta, assuming they can manage it? I gain back five to seven times that in a single duel that cost me one order.

Make no mistake, I won't hesitate to buy legions to defend myself. I just don't waste orders moving them around unless it actually matters.

Ah, if your opponents are letting you challenge them to duels then perhaps that's the problem right there. Never let the person with a good duelling praetor fight a duel. Just give them the tribute they demanded.

Perhaps the issue with this, for players, is how little they themselves lose when losing a duel via forfeit. Net -2 prestige is effectively nothing, so they would only be doing it to deny prestige to the challenger, and they may not even know how much prestige the challenger can get from a duel. If the prestige was taken from the loser they would care more, certainly.

[Strill]

Originally posted by Valectar:

Hmmm yeah, I guess if you can get 60 prestige with a single order slot dueling, and effectively guaranteed if you target someone without a praetor, that would probably be the most efficient prestige source in the game, by a significant amount. Is that possible regardless of rank? I know higher rank lets you go for larger vendettas, but I don't know if it modifies dueling at all. Also do you get that full amount if the opponent forfeits?
(I assume 60 here because if you can consistently achieve that in duels with a ring slot, it would probably be the best relic choice you can make in the game)

I was thinking going for a non-interactive playstyle would be too slow without the ability to rank up quickly but that level of efficiency in prestige gain could put you at prince in just a few duels, assuming that's 60 net prestige gained, and you'd be ahead of the other players in effectively every metric quite quickly from there.

Based on that, it does seem like dueling could really use some tuning. A significantly lower base prestige gain, modified by your rank, or possibly your Charisma, might make sense, to scale as the game proceeds? Although the sheer action economy compared to other sources of prestige means you would need to keep the gain pretty low per duel. A cooldown on duels with the same praetor may also help in that respect.

I'm not as sure on Elocution, I won't say I know it's balanced or anything, but at least compared to dueling it seems much less problematic. I assume you are getting the majority of your prestige in your games through dueling?

Actually, I get most of my prestige from Elocution. In a 6 player game it typically gives between 5 to 15 prestige per round. I typically end games with at least 300 prestige. My record is around 650.

I agree with the cooldown on choosing the same praetor. That would definitely bring dueling in line.

[Strill]

Originally posted by Ψϕ TheBeautifulVoid:

Originally posted by Strill:

How are they supposed to take prestige from me? I lose what, 8 prestige for losing a vendetta, assuming they can manage it? I gain back five to seven times that in a single duel that cost me one order.

Make no mistake, I won't hesitate to buy legions to defend myself. I just don't waste orders moving them around unless it actually matters.

Ah, if your opponents are letting you challenge them to duels then perhaps that's the problem right there. Never let the person with a good duelling praetor fight a duel. Just give them the tribute they demanded.

Oh absolutely not. Why would you sacrifice your own tribute, when just no-showing the duel costs you nothing?

You gain 8 prestige from refusing the demand.

You lose 10 prestige from no-showing the duel.

Net prestige loss: -2.

Since ignoring duels costs you nothing, there's no reason to bother slowing down your economy by giving into demands.

[Valectar]

Originally posted by Strill:

Actually, I get most of my prestige from Elocution. In a 6 player game it typically gives between 5 to 15 prestige per round. I typically end games with at least 300 prestige. My record is around 650.

I agree with the cooldown on choosing the same praetor. That would definitely bring dueling in line.

Interesting, are the prestige wagers required for good returns too large for you to duel more often? If you can net 60 a duel consistently then even kicking off a duel every 3 rounds on average would be 20 prestige per round.

Although in terms of elocution I guess the action economy is even better. And hypothetically, for balance I think it should probably bring in less than the ritual that increases your prestige gain from PoPs, as that at least requires you to gain and hold PoPs to benefit. Whereas Elocution is an entirely passive prestige source that effectively just scales with the number of players. Perhaps it would work better as a modifier to prestige gain from other sources that actually require interaction with other players.

[Strill]

Originally posted by Valectar:

Originally posted by Strill:

Actually, I get most of my prestige from Elocution. In a 6 player game it typically gives between 5 to 15 prestige per round. I typically end games with at least 300 prestige. My record is around 650.

I agree with the cooldown on choosing the same praetor. That would definitely bring dueling in line.

Interesting, are the prestige wagers required for good returns too large for you to duel more often? If you can net 60 a duel consistently then even kicking off a duel every 3 rounds on average would be 20 prestige per round.

Although in terms of elocution I guess the action economy is even better. And hypothetically, for balance I think it should probably bring in less than the ritual that increases your prestige gain from PoPs, as that at least requires you to gain and hold PoPs to benefit. Whereas Elocution is an entirely passive prestige source that effectively just scales with the number of players. Perhaps it would work better as a modifier to prestige gain from other sources that actually require interaction with other players.

No, the prestige wager for dueling isn't too high, it's just that there's typically no one who can challenge me on prestige, so I don't bother with raising it any higher. In lategame it's better to focus on grabbing titans, zapping other players legions, and preventing an usurper victory.

There was one guy who posted an 800+ prestige victory on the discord, so that shows you what's possible when you really focus on maxing out prestige.

And I agree, the one that boosts prestige gained from PoPs should absolutely be better than elocution. The counter to Elocution is for everyone to gang up on that player, but that's the prisoner's dilemma. Betraying the group and not ganging up on the Elocutor benefits you individually, so everyone ends up betraying the group. And that's assuming everyone even realize they need to gang up at all. They might just have no idea what Elocution is or how it works.