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Can we add three new Color Trade Blocs? Tiering throughout the game has progressed in the past year and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for smaller AAs to find a settled home without being moved on for damaging the bonuses of larger more established ones. It’s easy to see the argument from both sides on this and perhaps the introduction of three new colors might help all.

Literally the day after Pre gets caught with his pants down for not having tanks, he announces that tanks are getting a nerf. If you absolutely must go down this road, at least reach Alex's minimum standards and post proposed casualty rates. Despite scepticism, they proved to be accurate for those who were prepared to fish out a calculator in advance. EDIT: Here's what I've got. Pre update Post update Pre's update Troops > Ground 80% 25% ? Tanks > Ground 30% 40% ? Air > Airgen 59% 29% 29% Air > Dogfights 83% 53% 53% Ships > Ships 120% 53% 58.3% Air > Soldiers 43% 25% 27.5% Air > Tanks 43% 14% 19.6% Air > Ships 41% 34% 37.4% Tanks > Air 0% 42% 25.2%

First, for those asking about the updates in this thread they are being worked on and will come on the test server first and then will be pushed live as Alex implements them. My hope is that they will all be out in the coming month. Now for the bulk of the thread Game Changes When Alex changed military kill rates he based percentages off of daily rebuys. The changes I'm listing are not changing those numbers, but instead are increased or decreased directly by the listed percentage. So if an attack kills 50% of a daily rebuy by Alex's listing and I say that is decreasing by 20%, then the attack is changing from 50% to 40% of the daily rebuy. Just wanted to be clear about that. Time to dive into it. Spies Spy Casualties reduced by 60% from spy attacks. Losses from failing an offensive spy op are also reduced by 50% Spy Satellite only increases damages from spy vs spy attacks by 20% instead of the base 50%. Spy vs spy attacks are 5% more difficult. If your odds of success were 75%, they are now 70% Spy vs spy attacks are 5% more likely to have the identify of the attacker identified. If your odds of being identified were 70% they are now 75% Soldiers 5% increase is casualties from soldiers fighting soldiers. (combine with tank bonus later) 33% reduction in tanks killed by soldiers. Soldier only attacks/defends kill too many tanks. Tanks Tanks ability to kill planes after gaining ground superiority reduced by 40% 15% increase in casualties to soldiers by tanks 5% increase in casualties to tanks by tanks. Planes 40% 25% increase in tanks killed by bombing runs. 10% increase in soldiers killed by bombing runs. 10% increase in ships killed by bombing runs. Ships 10% increase in ships killed by other ships. Treasures Treasures can be directly traded between players. Treasures cannot be traded while either nation has an active offensive or defensive war. A nation with a treasure already in it cannot trade for another treasure. City/Project Timers New City timers are not effected by projects. New Protects have their own timer of 10 days (120 turns) City timer resets are reduced by 1 credit to 3 credits. Project timer resets cost 2 credits. New Project Someone give a good name for this project Effect: This project provides two project slots. Cost: Cash: $50,000,000 Food: 100,000 Aluminum: 5,000 The cost/concept is focused on giving mid-tier nations an additional project slot. I'm highly open to the idea of changing costs to better reflect this. Whales might buy it, but whales have more project slots than the use in many cases. This one might get entirely shot down by Alex, I've not run it by him yet. Most of these other changes have the green light for Alex, but the numbers can be tweaked still. My plan is have this thread decided upon sometime around the first week of October, so please provide input during these next 10 days or so. These changes are the results of threads like these, suggestions in the suggestion section (like treasure trading and project timers). In addition the new project is due to a desire for more project slots. Attention is being paid and other conversations are being had on discord. Please continue to provide feedback. Thank you.

Need to look at the rest of these and play around but I don't think reducing Spy Satellite down that much is a good idea, especially when it's not even really gotten play time. Don't nerf something before you even get to really see it in action.

You dont get the spy satellite for killing units you get it for the spy vs spy effect. This will make a very expensive project almost useless, changes the plane/tank meta yet again after only one 10 day war, and makes needless other changes such as 10% increase in ship vs ship kills However, the project timer and treasure changes are welcome

I think a buff to dogfight kill rates is a smaller and better change tbh. The problem with tanks killing air was that dogfights kinda sucked at it now. Even with that, the two methods were relatively evenly matched, RNG being the god of choice there. A 15-20% increase in dogfight kill rates would've put them easily on par with tanks ability and made decision between which to use one of preferences and strategy, while this 40% nerf is basically just flipping the script. So I mean, at least you don't completely ignore the community, but don't really listen either. I'd prefer the two to be dead even because it emphasizes coordination, preparation and planning and just general skill of the government and membership to the maximum possible degree. These should be by far and away the deciding factors, not RNG deciding if air or ground is better this time. Also the spy changes seem like way too much tinkering at once. The spy kill reduction alone is massive and is more than likely enough on its own. The last time we tinkered too many variables score range was completely borked.

I personally don't think ground units need to take any additional casualties from any source other than planes versus tanks. All these buffs to killing soldiers seems like it would disproportionately harm raiders and literally do nothing to the overall war system for everyone else. Ships probably need more than a 10% bump, they are incredibly bad right now. My navy can't hit another boat to save their lives. Otherwise the big numbers in this post like 40% boost to planes vs tanks or 40% reduction in planes vs tanks should probably be toned down. 40% nerfs/buffs usually just lead to a correction down the line... again. New Project name: Manifest Destiny. We've run a lot of scenarios on the dev team with spy casualties specifically. The spy satellite has been a massive thorn in the side of the discussion on how to balance them. The tl;dr is that even without the spy satellite, spy v. spy attacks can either completely zero or near-zero an enemy's spy count in a single day change. As I'm sure everyone knows. The spy satellite can effectively make it so you can lose your entire (effective or literal) spy count in a single barrage of attacks. The whole mechanic is wildly broken. That being said, I think most of us agree that spy satellites should simply be refunded for those who bought it. As it is a very expensive project and those who bought it did so under the impression it was stupidly OP.

I believe the point of contention is to leave spy sat alone, Like, dont even change it. It hasnt been used much yet like Adrienne said and people who've built it easily have spent a half billion if not more.

Ah, time for the monthly rebalancing of the war system.

The flip side of the current situation is that it creates a reason for drama and politics, a good thing. Making it easy for most colors to max out the bonus kind of defeats the purpose.

Yarr used to be ex-Arrgh mostly until Pre joined I think but regardless Pre himself raided a ton of times and raided Arrgh as well. I still remember Justice League just wiping us out so I think saying Yarr has mostly ex-raiders is accurate. Though I disagree personally that being a raider means you have to support Yarr or something. I was a member of Arrgh for years and raided people endlessly and literally just a few days ago Arrgh raided and looted me and I embargoed them. If TKR would just go to war again I could care less about Arrgh. : P And tbh everyone in Yarr is a massive pixel hugger and deserves to be raided, still love Yarr and all my Yarr buddies. I think you can like the people in an alliance and still attack them because they are fat pixel huggers to rich for their own good.

If we go ahead with a nerf to the Spy Satellite project, I'll offer anyone who's built it a full refund on it.

The spy sat seems to be largely opposed for these changes currently. If that continues to be the case I’ll remove it from the OP, just want to give people a chance to discuss a bit more.

I agree with Adri.Spy sat costs a lot, people invested in it with the intention to use it (i presume, i may never know for sure) and there hasnt been a real global since it was implemented.

Is it possible to add another line there showing missiles & nukes shot down by iron dome and vital defense? it is a fun stat to be aware of.

They can kill roughly as many planes as planes do on a dogfight, given full complements. The issue is that they can do four attacks per the three that airstrikes can do (with 12 MAP's), kill tons of tanks in the process (which dogfights don't), and also can loot cash, which has the potential to negate part of the losses. And also have the occasional imp kill for the little extra on top. This is assuming you IT GA right away, which may or may not happen. But th same argument can be made the other way. Airstrike tank kills were so bad that people unironically preferred to just GA them instead during the last global, given the option, because those killed more tanks, could also kill planes, and didn't have to deal with trying to grind the other guy's air down to have more than twice the planes than they did, because trying to airstrike any sooner incurs the same amount of planes losses to you as it does the other guy (if not more). Not to mention that the amount of tanks killed if attempted that early was also poor. 'Nerfing tanks = planes OP again' is an overreaction. It depends by how much it is tweaked. And since I'm already posting... If a spy nerf is taking place (which I think is a bad idea, but I quite frankly can't be fricked to waste time delving into it when it's already been elaborated to death), it'll also be necessary to readjust the cost of running ops. As is, it's already often the case that you're spending more on EC 60 spies than the value of spies killed, which is okay since the difference isn't that high, and the benefits you get in turn. However, the ratio will be much worse if more of your ops are failing and if you're killing less than half that you usually were. It'd also be necessary to revisit the defensive bonus to missiles and nukes sabotages in particular, given that it's taking longer to get to that stage in the first place. And regarding soldiers, @Roberts they die quickly(ish) to airstrikes, which costs the guy airstriking millions to kill values which will seldom go above the 1m mark (or even the 500k one). It's a very cost inefficient exchange. They don't die that quickly (if it can be described as such) to tanks, and that's still a cost inefficient exchange if the other person doesn't have cash at hand (which is often the case with good raiders). Killing soldiers with soldiers is a pipedream and you'll never go anywhere with that, unless if you have a ridiculous ratio of like 10:1 or something. While you're right in that it'd be largely inconsequential during a war, I think that you were exaggerating how quickly a quickly recruited meatshield unit dies, and had made no mention on the cost behind killing it in the first place, which is also a factor. I think that just reducing the amount of tanks they kill is good enough a nerf.

Just like private banks should not be bailed out for making terrible decisions on loans, I would be against bailing out players who invested in projects like Spy Satellite. There is a really bad road ahead with doing things like that. Projects like ITC take a long time to recoup the investment on, as do some others. All the people who bought land ahead of the reductions in land cost will want their money back, and have a justification to ask for it if projects like Spy Satellite are refunded. I even spent hundreds of millions myself on it, and while it is disheartening to see that money be blown up, it is a decision I made and one that should be dealt with. The meta of the game changes constantly, which is probably what it needs to stay somewhat balanced overall. Project slots should be a difficult choice for nations to make. It would encourage diversification in playing styles. I do not really like the bonus project suggestion, but most of the other tweaks here are okay enough I would think. The real thing in the meta is that aircraft do not have a viable counter from another unit directly, whereas aircraft themselves can hurt other units. Until that is addressed somehow, there is not much overall that will change.

Sees spy update Sh*t, how am I gonna kill Firwof's spi- I mean what

Name idea: Community Outreach Project

If you hit someone whose single buy is enough to offset it, chances are either you hit an AA with a ground MMR on the higher end (admittedly, more common now due to ground's greater importance), couldn't declare that much lower for xyz reasons, or airstrikes were used to bring the soldier count low enough to where it'd make a substantial difference. If you're going with a double buy to offset it, the defending party would be exposed to as much as six GA's until that went in (assuming you either dec'd right before or after a reset, assuming standard), which can then be potentially translated into 60 res damage, which in turn makes gunning for a beige much easier. It'd obviously depend on the other means by which you could shave off the remaining 40, but it's still a consideration. Ground of your own is less effective at removing soldiers than air, and arguably less efficient if no cash is looted. It's a very good deterrent/shut-down to keep you from being GA'd further, but the soldier casualties, which is what you were concerned with and is what I was addressing, aren't actually that high. Wars should be a resource sink. (Counter) raiding, however, isn't war (at least, not conventional one). Raiding and war are fundamentally different practices, with fundamentally different priorities and goals Cue soldiers being much better for raiding than war, and beiging someone being a priority in raiding but something to be avoided in war. Resource efficiency is one of those parameters which are more relevant for countering than for full-blown wars. The game has far more resource sinks now than it's had, due to the ultra expensive projects which are both desirable relatively early on (A/UP) and for whales (Telecom) and in between (SP/SS). The market has only now crashed after a period of very high costs, and that can be attributed to people liquidating stocks as war is not expected for a while. Resource cost shouldn't be a secondary thought. For example, it's a main contributing factor for which ships are garbage at actually killing ships, and their lack of use other than as a last resort or for blockading (or racing beige, but for that resources used doesn't usually matter since it's often done with one ship). The other reason being that they're also, in terms of total units killed, worse at it than planes, provided a sizeable enough plane advantage exists. Those sorts of costs should be adjusted at least to some degree relative to the reduction in casualties so to at least make it easier to make these attacks cost effective, and making it an incentivizer for carrying these out in the first place. Soldiers are more relevant than ships, so far conventional controls go. Ships become an argument once you factor in blockade (which mainly matter for securing loot; a proper alliance won't have someone run out of resources R1 due to a blockade), beige and loot. The issue being that beiging the other guy is not something that you want to be doing in proper war in the first place. At least, not indiscriminately so. So it becomes far murkier and complicated a conversation than presented it as being. I don't know if raiders are being targeted directly by it (though yes, a party which makes a higher/more predominant use of soldiers is going to be affected more by it); however, the argument that people suggesting it because they are upset that plane-only isn't enough to deal with it (and it'd never be, because if they sat with 0 ground then the raider could just get a fraction of a single buy in and GA to burn resistance) is contradicted by part of the suggestion being to increase casualties taken from other ground units as well. In fact, the suggestion is for tanks to have it increased by 15%, in contrast to planes' 10%. If I had to guess, people took a look at soldiers' casualty rates compared to their recruitment rate and expense, and thought that they were a bit too tanky relative to that. They're certainly much tankier now than they used to be, both due to the direct reduction in casualties taken, and due to the max hangar capacity being reduced to 15 instead of 18, which was an indirect (and frankly, unintended because Alex certainly didn't think that far ahead) nerf to their gross killing potential simply because the current max is only 83% of what it used to be.

You don't know what you're talking about or know me but as usual, trying to string together a false narrative.

If you're relying on airstrikes to zero soldiers then you are doing something wrong, and your lack of planning is your own doing.

Is the air - ground casualty change the result of pre not able to kill mythic soldiers fast enough...? Anyways, ground casualty rate to air is increased despite there being no objections over it. On the other hand what's the point of having ground control if we cant even kill 30 planes with our 5 k or so tanks..? I mean, ground control shouldn't be a thing now as far as the updates goes (ps: i rarely use tanks and i am talking for the general). Looks like the numbers are made off the top of the head.

The current spy sat would be equqtable to nerfing the CP and ACP because the advantage is too big and throwing away everyones recoup plan. Milcom projects can only be recouped during a war, and the point where a spy project recoups 700M worth, takes, a really long time, certainly if that time is spend at peace.

There's a lot of good changes here, but I really disagree with nerfing Spy Satellite. I think it's in a good place now, considering how expensive it is to build. Echoing what everyone else said, it'd be best to wait for a proper war to see if the current version of it ends up being problematic, rather than severely nerfing it before its seen any real action.

Mega resource sink.

Copy. Deleting all treaties for the alliance "TheNorthWesternSouthRegionofthefarEast".

I cried a little bit when reading the spy updates. I feel bad for those who bought spy sat

mfw bad raider tries to tell #3 raider how2raid

Without trying to be rude, why is that a problem? From my perspective: 1. Soldiers don't win wars. You can achieve effective ground control on people relying mostly on soldiers very easily with a single daily rebuy or doublebuy of soldiers & tanks. I know this as a pirate, most people know it as counters. It takes very minimal coordination to ruin someone's ground control, the only barrier is tank cost (which literally just got cut in half in the last update.) and cost is a part of war. That's called a strategic decision - spend the resources to flip the ground war or save the steel. That is a good piece of gameplay. Leading me to... 2. Wars should be a resource sink. As unpleasant as it sounds, resource efficiency is not the first consideration in war balancing. Airplanes should have a cost to use, wars shouldn't be exceedingly cheap. The economy of the game already struggles with resource/cash sinks as-is. We can agree to disagree on economics but the bottom line is that military units, casualty rates, and warfare needs to be balanced within itself as a priority. Resource efficiency is a secondary thought, at best. 3. These changes disproportionately target raiders. Soldiers aren't a very "meta" unit. They're primarily utilized to bolster tanks in normal warfare. Tank count and plane count, even arguably ship count, are all much more important in warfare than soldier count. These changes seem to be actively targeting raiders because people are upset planes-only isn't enough to defend themselves with. See point 1 for why this isn't even true. Soldiers already net-die quickly enough to zero someone in a single round of wars, just like any other unit right now. It's disingenuous to try and mask an attack on raiders as an argument for better resource efficiency or worry about soldiers somehow being too strong when the same people are literally calling them "meat shield units." Sorry if this isn't the most eloquent post, but I hope this gets my points across. At the end of the day, this feels like a spiteful addition due to Mythic's recent raid on Yarr. Changing soldiers only truly harms one group, the rest of the game may not even notice. I feel like affecting a group's gameplay experience negatively to a complete lack of benefit to anyone else is selfish and stupid.

Very rarely are you countering pirates at your same city count or remotely close to it. 50k per airstrike means 2 airstrikes cost 3,600,000 in munitions/gas to kill 500,000 worth of soldiers. Additionally, if all the units you build are soldiers and are complaining that you lose all your units in 5 minutes, then that sounds like your own doing; Pirates are not the center of war changes, nor should they be. For those that build normal, diverse armies including planes, soldiers, tanks, and ships, it will take 2-3 defensive wars fought over several days to zero them out, even in harsh downdeclares, source: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=177550&display=war

Killing 50k per airstrike means 2 counters zero out someone's soldier buys in the same range for the day. Doesn't sound exactly balanced, does it? The point of war changes isn't to match kills with gasoline and munitions invested, the point is to make sure that all the fighters are able to fight fairly and not lose all of their units in 5 minutes.

What about the pirate slots. Is that still a thing?

Just to echo because my post might've gotten lost in the sauce: Please do not increase casualty rates of soldiers from any source. They die fast enough and are countered easily enough with tanks.

Raiding is supposed to be fun. Arrgh is supposed to be fun. PnW is supposed to be fun. You youn'uns sully the good name of raiders and Arrgh and PnW. Just have fun. As much as I like you, I also like the idea of retireing to Yarr or going back to Arrgh one day, so I guess I'll have to stop you

The entire reasoning behind making the informed decision to grab an expensive project is that you can anticipate how long it would take for it to pay off. If the spy satellite gets degraded from where it currently is to where it'll be post-proposed changes, you're no longer making informed decisions, you're simply gambling.

Mate you were raiding people and then abandoned your alliance and hid in vm when CotL came knocking, and you wanna call yourself a raider? You're pathetic, a disappointment to pirates, raiders, and your alliance. Check yourself before you start slinging mud again bud.

You're talking about nerfing everything else on spies already. If those go through, there's no reason for nerf Spy Sat. Don't over-correct everything in one go. ^ This

I was about to go on a long explanation on why I think that nerfing a project that costs upwards of 700 millions (with space program) was a kick in the shins, but it seems the point was already raised. Either tune your numbers so spy sat doesn't get neutered, or refund spy sats to those who request it.

It's done on the test server, and should be live next week

Raider rule number one is to have fun.

Wait, the blitz is today? I thought we were hitting t$ on Saturday...

With the recent firestorm of beige under some form of control I'm shifting some focus towards content that was being discussed in the earlier part of this summer. Quality of Life Changes: Alliances have the ability to create up to 8 alliance positions, 5 more than the default 3. All alliance roles will come with a check list for which powers those positions have. Bank Access Changing Roles Ability to see spy counts Ability to see daily reset timers (time zones) Editing Tax Brackets Accept new members View member caches Notification when a war expires Alliance Trades offers also show in the global trades. These trades will show in a different color Alliance tax brackets can be changed in bulk (multiple members added at once) Alliance leaders (with appropriate access levels) can see the time zones for members. Ability to sort members/applicants by “Last online”. Move expired treaties to an “Archived” tab. Treaties can be extended rather than deleted and resent. Allow for alliances to issue embargoes for other alliances. The embargoes auto activate but give a notification to the member with the option to remove the embargo. Add a mass buy feature to Land, similar to Infra. Added Allow players to send direct trades of resource for resource New Domestic Policy: Rapid Expansion - 5% discount to land purchased - Added Additional Project Slots: At 50 wars won At 50 total won or lost, gain a project slot At 200 wars won At 200 wars total won or lost, gain a project slot At 100 wars total won and/or lost, gain a project slot. Raw Resource Project increase: Coal, Oil, Uranium, Bauxite, Iron, Lead production rates increased from .25 per turn to .30 per turn, giving a total increase of 3.0 per day to 3.6 per day. Production is increase by about 16.7% without factoring in the bonuses from multiple mines. Having max mines would net an additional 8.3% ish increase. New Project: Terra-forming Money: $3,000,000 Coal: 1,500 Lead: 1,500 Effect: Reduction in cost of purchasing land by 5% Note: Costs similar to CCE project New Project: Medical Breakthroughs Medical Research Center Money: $10,000,000 Food: 100,000 Effect: Hospitals disease reduction increased from 2.5% to 3.5% each. You can build an additional hospital in each city. Note: Costs similar to Recycling Initiative project. This project is more focused to tie into future changes. While it might not seem very relevant now it will have more importance in the future. New Project: Specialized Police Training National Policing Academy Money: $10,000,000 Food: 100,000 Effect: Police Stations crime reduction increased from 2.5% to 3.5% each. You can buy an additional police station in each city. Cost of each police station is increased from $750 to $1000. Note: Costs similar to Recycling Initiative project. This project is more focused to tie into future changes. While it might not seem very relevant now it will have more importance in the future. New Project: Advanced Engineering Center Requirements: Center for Civil Engineering, Terra-forming Money: $50,000,000 Gasoline: 10,000 Munitions: 10,000 Uranium: 1,000 Effect: Reduces Infra Costs and Land Costs by 5% All projects added. Spy Reserve System: Outlined in this thread: Currently on hold

Yes and they're also saying (hi I'm right here) that nerfing tanks is the wrong change. Infact I don't think I've heard anyone in the actual leadership of anybody I worked with during the war disagree that a buff to dogfight kill rates is preferable, as it's smaller change and because (we did extensive simulations btw) they're already pretty closely matched and a dogfight bonus with tank bombing casualty increase would make the two nearly dead even against each other. It doesn't screw people over trying to be aggressive, but it also means a skilled and organized defender is very much still dangerous - without necessarily (as is required now) having to call extra alliances in. 20% increase to dogfight kills, go 30% if it makes you feel better because ground kills tanks and takes money. The two forms will be nigh perfect counters to each other, perfectly balanced as all things should be.

Game balance should not be centered around realism either, but even as a counter point: The AC-130 gunships "Angel of Death" are fantastic at destroying enemy soldiers I honestly don't think you have a clue what you're talking about; "Aircraft are currently the best unit in game to destroy infra with and it should stay that way." This is simply wrong, firstly because naval units do the most infrastructure damage as mentioned earlier in the thread, and secondly because the primary use of aircraft in this game has never been to destroy infrastructure. Aircraft destroy units, always have, and although they have since been nerfed in that regard, they still serve that purpose, and should continue to serve that purpose, you would be an idiot to think otherwise. Aircraft are not a jack of all trades unit anymore, ground forces kill tanks and aircraft better and faster than aircraft kill tanks and aircraft as mentioned earlier in the thread. Additionally, a buff to soldier casualties would hardly tip the scales to make planes unbalanced because soldiers serve the purpose of being a cost-effective, fast-conscription unit, and are not all that powerful when it comes to winning conventional warfare which is what matters. There are times when you have to airstrike soldiers, that's what happens when pirates do harsh downdeclares at max soldier capacity. However yes, you don't rely on airstrikes to zero soldiers, but the soldier casualties from tanks should be increased to make airstriking them less necessary 😛

"Think Tank" or "Research & Development"

Mythic be like:

Neat anthem. Ripper turns out to be the true capitalist here, always looking for a reason to extract more funds. (Have fun guys)

Mine is pretty boring. I just took the state I live in PA and put a lefty theme on it.