NTG Discussion: How to solve the NTG problem once and for all

[SomeRandomPlayer]

While you fixed the NTG University Weight bug on around Dec 16, 2021, the new NTG system makes it more difficult to gain desired NTGs.

This problem is elevated by how NTGs are assigned to war coalitions. For example, Americans+Ethiopians is by far the most popular offensive coalition combination (with Aztec being the 3rd) and they always share a single NTG (assigned NTGs is a 4-week cycle, and these two share scrolls, porcelain, salt, and marble; one per week). This could mean 16 needed per war, and 3 wars during the week means 48. The randomness makes gathering 48 specific NTGs overly difficult.

While I appreciate the desire to solve the difficulty of gathering NTGs for rarer nations (e.g., Japanese, especially in later Ages); this change does not solve the problem. In fact, it can be argued that it makes it worse, especially for pre-Atomic players as they often lose troops during attacks so can't maintain a steady stream of attacks.

So there's a problem but how can we fix it? Some ideas, hopefully other players can offer realistic ideas here too (and not only complaints):

• Stop having the most common coalitions share NTGs. For example, Americans+Ethiopians and Egyptians+Filipino share one every week
• Have a nation guarantee at least 1 or more of its NTG
• Give everyone access to Bjorn, and/or offer more free Bjorn manuals
• Increase storage limits for all goods; so make the Storehouse store more (N)TGs by default
• Allow the Storehouse (or an additional building) trade NTGs rather than rely upon Marco for this (idea taken from linked thread below)
• For community: write a guide explaining how to gather desired NTGs (e.g., what Bjorn does, what NTG museum lines do, mention parliament's NTG thing, and so on)

I strongly feel this is an urgent matter for QoL purposes that'd increase player retention; also to calm down the related P2W worries some have (e.g., pointing out that we can buy coalitions, NTGs, Bjorn, instant retrain blessings) folks have expressed. I personally think the v9.9 goal was to make gathering NTGs easier for all players (not a P2W ploy) and hope this feedback and discussion can help reach that goal.

Lastly, people, please try not to only complain in this thread; ideally provide ideas that can realistically help solve the NTG problem.

For real lastly, a couple years ago folks posted related ideas in this old thread (https://forums.bighugegames.com/for...-national-trade-good-ntg-solutions-discussion)

 

[oddin]

man you couldnt have said it better. It is a major issue for the WW oriented players that needs immediate attention.
I wonder why the players can think of a problem so much better than the devs do?
For god's sake, ask the players for once before you implement something new!!

 

[Dracula3811]

Lots of great points here!

 

[King Crimson]

From Leviathan's announcement:
Nations will now be able to drop 1 of 4 National Trade Good types, with an increased chance at dropping their original "Nation specific" National Trade Good
What is so difficult about guaranteeing a nation's OWN ntg - or 3? Isn't it a no brainer?? Then by all means add a random ntg or 2 on top of that.
I can get 26k oil for a 5star info age victory - oil l don't need - but getting a lousy ntg is a lottery??

 

[GailWho]

SomeRandomPlayer I like what you had to say! Spot on! I’d like to add to your point (and we’ve discussed this on a different server) about the sharing NTG requirements for the popular coalitions. If one of the two NTG required cost for any coalition was players choice that would alleviate a lot of the problem. For instance, American, Ethiopian and Aztec can each have a different required NTG plus an NTG of players choice. That way nothing is doubled up unless the player chooses to do so. We can get rid of our excess NTGs in storehouse more efficiently than Marco’s rotten deals and avoid the headache of playing for hours trying to get the NTG you want. Just my two cents.

 

[theBobNamedDan]

I would also think that if the 1 extra random NTG that we get for completing Moctezuma research were picked based on the one NTG we have the least of then overall it would not be a problem either. I don’t know how they would code that though.

 

[Zaxillaxifrage]

Adding a full range of NTG trading options in the Storehouse or elsewhere would help this problem immensely. The current implementation of only offering one randomly determined trade in Marco Polo is terrible, for three reasons:

1. 3:1 is an exorbitant cost when we might be 10 or more NTGs short of a certain type
2. Offering only one trade combination at a time means players will rarely have that exact combination of surplus and shortage
3. Compounding #2, Marco Polo's trade offers don't change frequently enough.

Put a full suite of 2:1 NTG trade offers in the Storehouse. I will gladly spend down some of the NTGs I have maxed to fill up several other shortages, IF there are enough different trade offers always on display.

 

[Tedi925]

Very simple.
Return everything how it was and add search multiplayer battle by nation (it can be and 5 time more expensive search than regular) .
If you need scrolls you search just Greek bases.

 

[Gishdream]

I'm not sure why no one is talking about the real problem with the old system. There were rare nations that were hard to farm. So instead of doing the proper thing( NATION REBALANCE!), you make farming NTG's even harder buy not even getting the NTG's you are hunting for. This random NTG update isn't the answer, a nation re-balance is so there are an even amount of all nations to farm. Make Japanese a real defensive nation and there will be plenty of them.

 

[KnattyNate]

Personally I think that each three star victory should guarantee at least three NTGs. A four star battle should grant at least four NTGs, and a five star battle should grant at least five NTGs.

This is before Moctezuma or Bjorn are brought into the picture. I think that the nation specific NTG should be included in the amount earned but not necessarily all of them should be the nation specific NTG. I think that it should be broken up into like 1 of several types of NTGs.

So let’s say we attack a German base and five star it and we do not have Bjorn or Moctezuma finished. We should absolutely get at least 1 salt but then the remaining 4 NTGs should be random and only 1 per type. So like 1 salt, 1 tea, 1 cheese, 1 porcelain, and 1 timber. Then if you have Moctezuma go ahead and add 1 scroll, and if you have Bjorn add in a marble or silk or whatever. This way every battle is giving you your nation specific NTG and a bunch of others as well. This would make it much less of a grind to gather NTGs as it would take much less battles.

This concept can be modified to make nation specific NTGs still most important by maybe guaranteeing 3 of your nation specific NTG for each five star victory , 2 of your nation specific NTG for a four star victory , and 1 for a three star victory, then randomizing the remaining NTGs the same way so that you are still getting several nations’ NTGs per battle but getting more nation specific NTGs as well

 

[Uhuru]

All these are certainly good offers, but you forget the key aspect: BHG deliberately creates a shortage of one or another NT to make you PAY! They have no task to create convenience for the player. Therefore, none of the numerous proposals on this forum is being implemented. When you offer this and that, think about BHG's interest, otherwise it's a waste of time.

 

[Zaxillaxifrage]

They have a lot of incentive to implement systems that are not so frustrating or tedious that they make players quit or just avoid bothering with that particular feature. Many of the suggestions made here so far seem very reasonable as they don't just ask for everything for free but still require time spent playing the game, leading to players who enjoy what they are doing and who therefore may continue to spend money at times.

 

[SomeRandomPlayer]

Good ideas here (mostly positive , the simplest quick fix may be to:

1. Increase Storehouse size for all; double or triple the size.
2. Modify the 4-week NTG schedule/rotation to prevent double/tripling up NTGs for the most common combinations.

While not perfect, this would help a lot and they appear simple enough to not require QA (not introduce bugs) but I can't speak to that.

I can help with #2 if you'd realistically implement it. Examples of what'd change: today the offensive coalitions Aztecs/Ethiopians/Americans all share Marble one week per month; and Ethiopians/Americans share an NTG every week; and Aztecs shares an NTG with at least one of those two 3 out of 4 weeks. Russians use Porcelain 3 weeks per month; Maori uses Silk 3 weeks per month. I suspect your data shows the most common coalition combinations but offense is simplest to discern.

 

[oddin]

bump bump !!

 

[theBobNamedDan]

	# Attacks	Tea	Wood	Cheese	Salt	Scroll	Silk	Porcelain	Marble
Chinese	3	8	0	0	1	1	1	1	6
British	4	1	17	0	0	0	1	4	1
French	5	1	3	13	1	3	1	4	0
German	4	1	4	1	19	0	0	0	0
Greek	1	1	0	0	0	6	0	0	0
Japanese	4	4	0	2	0	0	6	0	4
Korean	2	4	1	0	0	0	0	3	0
Roman	4	2	3	1	3	0	0	0	10
Total	27	22	28	17	24	10	9	11	21

This is a summary of attacks by a global age account with about 1/3 of the time using a L25 Bjorn. All attacks were 5 star. Moctezuma is complete.

Bjorn does 100% of the time earn extra NTG for the nation attacked and is NOT random.

statistically 25% of attacks were against Greek, Japanese and Korean yet only 21% of NTGs associated with those nations were awarded. Not good, but also not a show stopper IMO

 

[oddin]

we do not whine, we do not ask for irrational changes. All we say is:
guarantee from 5* battles some NTGs that are specific to that nation (regardless if we use Bjorn or not)

I like that you written down the results from 27 attacks but:
- few people have Bjorn up to level 25
- even fewer people can use him for 27 attacks consecutively
- some don't even have Bjorn unlocked
So, the whole point becomes invalid.

 

[theBobNamedDan]

Bjorn was only used for 9 of 27 attacks. On that account (2nd account) I only purchased the houses and estate for extra citizens. No crown purchases and no speedup purchases. The Bjorn L25 is from free crowns and waiting for 5 manuals for 1000 crowns in the VIP store. I think I did purchase something small extra just to clear the L3 VIP status for the instant VIP retrain but that is all I spent on that account.

 

[Uhuru]

…This is a summary of attacks…
Bjorn does 100% of the time earn extra NTG for the nation attacked and is NOT random

Well, everything has already been decided! Just pay for Bjorn

 

[Zaxillaxifrage]

Bjorn was only used for 9 of 27 attacks. On that account (2nd account) I only purchased the houses and estate for extra citizens. No crown purchases and no speedup purchases. The Bjorn L25 is from free crowns and waiting for 5 manuals for 1000 crowns in the VIP store. I think I did purchase something small extra just to clear the L3 VIP status for the instant VIP retrain but that is all I spent on that account.

Getting Bjorn to level 25 takes at least 30-40 manuals. At that point he has somewhere around a 20% chance to get extra NTGs at all, even if we pretended your whopping sample size of 9 attacks was statistically significant. In most battles he stands next to a tower chopping at a farm, and dies. This is what you suggest players spend thousands of slowly-earned free crowns for, in response to a problem caused and worsened by the developers. Got it. Next, please.

If gaining NTGs isn't an issue for you, great. Wonderful. Glad you're getting what you need without frustration. Sincerely. I have to wonder then, why you're here arguing against people whose experience has clearly been different? If you're doing fine, then go play the game, and let the people who are not having the same positive experience discuss it. Either they will keep it this way, in which case you're fine, or they will listen and make NTGs drop more reliably, in which case you're also fine. So why do you care?

 

[Leviathan1]

Hey all, we have been making sure this feedback is relayed to the team. For clearer tracking purposes, we've put together a short survey, please take a moment to fill it out here https://forms.gle/UsuNFDu47oFAicGY9