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Alex

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Blog Entries posted by Alex

  1. Alex
    In case anyone is interested, I just released a new podcast. No, I won't transcribe it so you don't have to listen; that would defeat the point of the podcast in the first place. If you don't want to listen to the podcast, that's fine, there's never anything vital in there. Just a sneak peak into my thoughts and possible intentions for the game.
     
    That said, here it is: https://soundcloud.com/alex-winchell-853488732/003-overhauling-the-war-system
  2. Alex
    I just released a new podcast, this one is just me talking about the recent changes and what I may be doing in the future. I talked about some tinkering with military population caps, military score, changing server time to GMT, and making some quality of life improvements to keep people happy.
     
    For the next podcast, I'll try to answer some questions, so if you have any, feel free to ask them here in the comments. It doesn't have to be game related, though I reserve the right to pick and choose the questions that I answer.
     
    Podcast Link: https://soundcloud.com/alex-winchell-853488732/002-reflection-on-changes-and-future-plans
  3. Alex

    Starting a Podcast

    By Alex,

    Hi guys, I thought that starting a podcast would be a great way to keep you all involved in game development. In this first podcast, I'm discussing the high city, low infra problem and how we can address the issue whilst still maintaining multiple diverse strategies for gameplay. I'll be working on getting these podcasts available on various podcasts services, right now they're uploaded on SoundCloud, you can check out this first podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/alex-winchell-853488732/001-war-policies-allowing-more-different-strategies-in-politics-and-war
     
    Let me know what you think!
     
    Podcast Link
  4. Alex

    Heroes & Villains Event

    By Alex,

    I was just doing some brainstorming, and was pondering this idea as something fun. I've been meaning to set up occasional monthly events -- like a Zombie invasion, or a space race, etc.
     
    It occurred to me that we could do something like a Heroes vs. Villains events, where nations and alliances got to align one way or the other, and were pitted against each other. I haven't figured out exactly how it might work, but I thought something like making the alignment be optional (you wouldn't have to pick either side -- you could stay neutral), if you aligned to either side you'd get a significant income bonus (maybe like 10%?) and you wouldn't be able to attack anyone on your side. However, what I think would make it unique and fun would be if you could have like an unlimited number of war slots for the opposing side. And maybe damage would be reduced to like 1/3rd of the normal rate.
     
    Damage would be totaled up on both sides, and whichever side did more damage to the other would all get some sort of award. Probably a nation award image, and maybe some sort of cash bonus or something.
     
    Just thought I'd write up a little blog post to see if anyone was interested in this idea, and maybe one of these months we'll try it out.
  5. Alex

    What's For Dinner?

    By Alex,

    Hey guys, I guess I just wanted to throw up a blog post to let you all know about what I've got coming for you soon. There's a few things that are in-progress, and that I'm excited about.
     
    First, however, I'd just like to let you all know where I am at in life. It's college, the end of the semester, and finals start (today.) I'll be pretty busy the next week or so, and then I'm going home a couple days before Christmas (ridiculous our semester goes so late) and will be spending some family time of course. So for the next 7-10 days, I really doubt I'll be doing much/anything constructive on the game other than general management things. I apologize for this, but I've got some more important stuff in my life at the moment.
     
    That said, after Christmas time I'll have a few weeks of free time between semesters where I'll be putting in overtime on game development. There are a number of things that I'd like to bring to you in the near future, first and foremost: perks.
     
    Perks are still being developed fully before they're introduced to the test server. Right now you can get a taste at https://politicsandwar.com/nation/military/perks/
    What I'm thinking about doing is giving each perk tiers of 5 or 6 that scale the benefits up. For example, when you choose a perk, you'll immediately face the full resource costs, but only a fraction (1/5 or 1/6) of the benefit. You'll be able to spend more perk points to upgrade each thing to it's fully benefit, but of course that takes away from the opportunity cost of potentially unlocking additional perks. I think that'll be the best system, and it's going to take me some time to fully implement it on the test server for testing, but I think I've got a pretty clear plan in mind.
     
    The next thing I'm going to have to clear up is Colors/Treasures. This will likely be postponed until after Christmas as well, but I'm thinking about just adding the extra colors I proposed, as with no Color Stock Bonus it doesn't really matter how many colors we have. Changing colors means I'll have to change some of the treasures as well. I'm thinking about perhaps making all treasures a 3% Nation Bonus (some are 6% and 9%) and making each one Color dependent. 30 isn't divisible by 13, so I'll throw the extra treasures on the less popular colors (according to the polls) to encourage more use of them.
     
    Another thing I'm planning on doing is getting rid of the pre-approval for national anthems and backgrounds, and letting players choose their own in-game portraits (without pre-approval.) This will cut down on my daily workload significantly, so long as it's not heavily abused.
     
    With that reduced workload, what I'd like to do is allow players to buy credits with Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Litecoin. I've become more interested in Cryptocurrencies lately, and I think this would be a great way to promote them and give you all (the players) more options to donate. I know there have been complaints about PayPal in the past. This will probably take manual confirmation, and won't be instant like PayPal (but I'll try to do it within 24 hours.)
     
    Oh! And lastly, I'm working on reforming our admin/mod team. Malone is being removed as an administrator, and he's been pretty busy with RL stuff lately, but I expect he'll return as a player at some point. We've talked about it and he said he's fine with being removed. You should all thank him for how much he helped the game and community this summer, his efforts were truly invaluable.
     
    With our moderators, I'm planning on trimming down the team that we do have, and then adding some new moderators. I'm also looking at tightening down on how moderators operate, and implementing a system like needing agreement by at least one other mod when warning points are issued, threads are locked, etc. I'm looking forward to bringing a better experience to you guys on the forums.
     
    Magicboyd25 has also stepped up to be a moderator of /r/politicsnwar and if you're interested in being a part of the game's subreddit, I suggest you check it out. There's not much on there now, but hopefully we can make some use of it.
     
    Thanks everyone, and happy holidays!
  6. Alex
    So, I was just thinking about the game like I often do, and had an idea for what I think would make a neat feature. We've talked in the past about "Services" (a sort of project/perk mix, where you could enable something like "Free Healthcare for All Citizens" that would have some tradeoff type effect, and it would be advantageous for some nations and harmful for others). I thought this was a good idea, but I was trying to think of a better way to implement it than simply an "on/off" switch for a bunch of options. Nation perks are also something that people are constantly asking about, and today I finally mashed the two together into an idea that I wanted to suggest to the community.
     
    How about a system of Laws that functioned as a mixture of both "Services" and "Perks"? I'm thinking it goes something like this: each nation would have some sort of legislature that would have to pass laws. You (as head of state) could push for laws to be passed or repealed, once per day. These laws would have effects that could help or harm your nation, depending on your building style. For example, let's say there's a Universal Healthcare law:
     
    There'd be a number of laws, this being just one example, and each nation would have the ability to try and sign one into effect or repeal an already passed one per day. Whether you were successful or not would be a random chance figure, maybe 33%. So, let's say you think this law is going to benefit your nation (you can afford the extra upkeep, or maybe you just need extra slots so you want to cut down on hospitals), you click a button and attempt to pass this law. The dice are rolled, and 67% of the time you'll fail (meaning you can try again tomorrow to pass/repeal a different law) or 33% of the time you'd succeed (the law goes into effect, and you can try tomorrow to pass/repeal a law).
     
    It's a pretty straightforward system, and I think that players who enjoy the roleplay aspect of the game (think NationStates) would enjoy this feature a lot, and players who want nation perks (diversification of nations) would enjoy it as well. Laws could be stacked so that you'd need to pass one related to, perhaps Military, before you could pass another, more influential law, etc.
     
    It would also provide a platform for fun events, like April Fool's jokes, some sort of Zombie Apocalypse (you could pass laws to react to it, or something, etc.
     
    Potential drawbacks are that some people are undoubtedly going to be luckier than others, some people are going to think it's just another hoop to jump through to getting your nation "ideal" (in terms of numbers, min-maxing, that sort of thing), and other people will probably be disappointed it's not Nation Perks in their simplest "pick and choose" form.
     
    I think, though, that limiting it to 1 law action per day, and having laws that are situational (peacetime/wartime, commerce/resources, etc.) would create the diversification that perks would add but in a very limited, roleplay oriented way. For example, if your nation had a bunch of laws that were great for peacetime but bad for wartime, and suddenly you go to war, it's not going to be easy to magically flip all of your laws. It would make you think twice whether you want to invest too heavily one way or the other, and keep people from being able to just react immediately to changes in min-max situations, which essentially nullify any sort of optional mechanic.
     
    Anyway, there's my rambling thoughts on what I think would be a neat feature for the game. This is totally just me making a post about an idea, don't expect this to be happening overnight. Also, I don't really need any "law" suggestions, for the aforementioned reason. Just give me some feedback on what you think. Good idea, or no?
  7. Alex

    What's In The Works

    By Alex,

    Just though I'd write a little blog post as a teaser, illustrating a number of things that could potentially come as updates in the near future, along with what I'm actually working on.
     
    1. P&Wpedia
    I want this to be a very useful, accurate collection of information about the game. I've been writing all the articles myself, and trying to include lots of information (and your beloved formulas) so it's a bit time consuming, but eventually I'll have a nice encyclopedia of information like I once dreamed of having on the wiki.
     
    2. National Project Additions
    I'm looking at developing a new component to the game, additions to national projects. Aimed specifically at some of the cheaper Econ projects, the ability to add an "Addition" that gives you some related or unrelated benefit. There'd be two choices to each project, mutually exclusive, that come at a large cost and provide some benefit to your nation. Would be a way to further specialize nations, and make econ projects a little more viable.
     
    3. Perks
    I know. We've talked about it for forever. But I think sometime soon it'll finally happen.
     
    4. More Ways to Redeem Credits
    I'm kicking around the idea of being able to redeem a credit for 50 infrastructure in a city of your choice. It would count towards your monthly limit when you spent it, and might incentivize more donations from larger nations, or at least increase credit demand as a whole.
     
    5. A New NP for Wind Power Plants
    Looking at adding a project that could make Wind Power Plants more viable. Probably something that lets them power 1,000 infrastructure, instead of just 250.
     
    ---
     
    There's no ETA or guarantee on any of these, and that's why this is a blog post. Enjoy the read, though!
  8. Alex
    Today we reached 2,000 players logging in per week, which is a huge milestone. We're at over 17,000 nations simulated to date, and more and more people are signing up every day. A large part of this is due to online advertising, that has brought players from other communities which has enriched our own.
     
    I've been working on encouraging this sort of growth, and increasing the entertainment value of Politics & War. I invest more time than you can imagine into development of the game, as well as management, administration, etc. It's been a great experience, being in charge of this whole thing, and doing my best to steer us towards prosperity.
     
    I made this blog post so I could ramble on about the game, and talk about the challenges that must be overcome and the amount of effort I've put into trying to do this thing right. What inspired it was that I just upgraded the server's resources, we're now running on 2 more CPU cores and twice the RAM we had previously. This should make a pretty significant difference in terms of how things load (especially during peak hours) and making sure that you guys can access pages quickly and reliably.
  9. Alex

    Blogs on the P&W Forums

    By Alex,

    I'm happy to announce that we now have blogs available for all of you players who use these forums.
     
    With great blogging powers comes great responsibility, and I trust that everyone will use these appropriately. Should you fail to meet my expectations of appropriate blog use, you shall be smitten with a warning point.
     
    Enjoy.
     
    Tl;dr - Be nice with the blogs. Enjoy them, and follow the forum rules apply here as well
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