Exalts

Statler: "Well, what do you know? A treasure map! Finally, something older than we are." Waldorf: "Look at that skull and crossbones. That’s either where the treasure is… or where the last guy who tried to find it ended up." Statler: "I haven’t seen this many bones since your last physical!" Waldorf: "Oh look, a compass rose! That’s the only Rose that ever pointed me in the right direction." Statler: "Yeah, and she still ran the other way!" Waldorf: "I say we follow the map. North, South, East, West—" Statler: "Let’s go nowhere. We’ve been doing that for years, and we’re professionals!" Both: "DOHOHOHOHO!" From Rose, for Team Gardening Grandmas. Making this took two hours of my life.

Best of luck in the coming six months, champ!

If ships can kill ground and air, then people will keep ships in peacetime, and I generally don't think it is healthy for units to kill so much stuff. I have been complaining a lot about tanks killing aircraft before, how it dumbs down a lot of wars to "downdeclare, spam ground, kill everything." Giving them multiple attacks might be a better balance, since ships are essentially useless right now. I see, so everyone will invest in ground and air then. I'm not sure how problematic that would realistically end up being, it depends on the costs I suppose. I think if this goes through, attackers will need to know how much of an advantage (or disadvantage) they are at when pulling off attacks.

Nukes are already quite expensive in my opinion, especially when you are losing. Take a look at some of the defeated EVH nations for reference, where most have stopped throwing nukes entirely to rely on missiles. Missiles have been eating good recently with ID being nerfed slightly, and they are so cheap. Certainly they aren't as expensive as they used to be when everyone was smaller, but it is so easy today to also build a significant amount of infrastructure, I feel that it evens out. As for the declaration range thing, I'm unqualified to state anything on that, since I do not use the upper range at all right now.

Also I was silly and posted this in "game discussion" rather than "game suggestion." I don't imagine any forum wizard can move it over? Thanks. ☕

Heya. This is it, finally I am making a thread to complain about it. Captchas are becoming a constant obstacle for pretty much every action in the game—whether it's trading, declaring war, or doing spy ops. I've gotten to the point where, either because of my VPN or other causes, I trigger challenges basically 100% of the time now. These challenges can be tricky, too. I remember being stuck solving captcha after captcha in the past and not being given the green light. I know of a few others for whom this is a pain point also (hello @Xi Jinping!) Thankfully, the future is now. Introducing: Invisible Captcha v3. This version doesn’t rely on annoying challenge-based tests, but instead, it checks user behavior to ensure you're not a bot. It would save players from having to go through frustrating image puzzles for every little action. As a developer myself, I can tell you that implementing this isn't difficult. It’s a quick change, taking no more than a few minutes. I don’t think even the fabled Alex technical debt should be a blocker for this—it’s a straightforward change, and guess what, it's good for the user experience too! This isn't just about convenience anymore. The current captcha setup feels excessive, and frankly, I’m getting tired of training AI models for free every time I need to perform an action. An invisible captcha would keep the security measures in place but make them invisible to us—no more unnecessary interruptions.

No shame in getting destroyed, happens to everybody sometimes. True lads take their destroying on the chin and don't VM.

There's few reasons to stockpile more than one rebuy of missiles or nukes at a time, as they'll get spied out after day change. Missiles are pretty cheap but don't do that much damage, also ID has a really high success rate. Nukes however are really expensive, and especially once your infra starts going down it becomes difficult to afford them without your bank giving you free nukes, and that's not possible at all if you're being cycled.

You added a project that allows people to buy a second nuke each day, and already then it is very expensive to afford. Now you propose making nukes even more expensive. Nukes and missiles are fine, they don't need to be changed. It will have an impact on regular players, it will make it even more horrible to be on the losing side of a war, and will leave pirates with no good solution to inflict damage once they've been countered.

It's never a surprise when a change rolls out, and it can never be entirely fair. By that point one might argue never to make any econ change because some people are in the know sooner than others. This thread serves as a heads-up to all players that future changes might happen. Whether or not they act upon that information is their problem.

Food is not exactly self-correcting much though. It is probably the most controlled market in the game, with prices never being allowed to dip too low or rise too high.

Yeah, fair enough, thinking about it more it's not a bad idea. Other options for power are strictly inferior, so this is not such a bad idea.

Yes to that. Increasing food consumption clearly did not have the expected outcome, this might be a better fit. Unfortunately that's where my approval ends. EDIT: Though this would not entirely solve the problem, the game needs more any food sink, that aren't projects. In an ideal world where the dev team has the means and time to work on one, it would be worth thinking about how to go about introducing a food sink. This might unintentionally lead to people ditching nuclear power altogether for oil or coal power instead, particularly oil, since it allows people to centralize power and gasoline production. EDIT: This might not actually happen. 500 infra/power plant is still really bad. I still don't know whether that's such a great idea. EDIT 2: I think this is a good idea actually. NPP is way above par, and the only use case for another is wind for 2250. I think it'd be even nicer if perhaps coal and oil got buffed to 1000 as well. Not a terrible idea, crime is not high enough to warrant more than 1 police stations until 3k infra, assuming you don't have the police project. I wonder if this might feel punitive though. EDIT: I'm actually okay with that. I would prefer if production was reduced and the max cap was unchanged. This will mess with smaller nations who might not have the slots for 10 mines and 10 production, and pollution will be through the roof for those who do go that route, so this is incompatible with commerce builds. Reducing production instead might lead to a decrease in overall resources on the market, which might have a deflationary effect. Whether or not that's desired, I don't know. EDIT: I stand by that opinion. Currently some manufs are completely worthless compared to their raws, and I believe reducing production of manufs might end up bumping prices, causing people to switch to using that instead. Hopefully. Anyway, I imagine a lot of people will disagree with my views, so be it. I just wanted to share some nuance on that.

Then you must make your peace that it's possible the design team ceases to be. I can't claim to know what specific factors are making it difficult to do anything without a team lead although I get that some members of the team are being difficult. As tempting as it is to simply leave them out of the conversation if they are not interested in contributing, you and I both know it's not viable or realistic. Some authoritative figure may be needed, but I don't think you'll get Alex to cut on that matter, and I don't know if others like @Dr Rush have the authority to do anything about it either.

I strongly believe that in times of stagnancy, waiting for a messiah to bring you out of your dormancy is not the solution. I've already said as much in different channels, but it doesn't hurt to coin it again. What the design team needs is not necessarily an elected, official design team lead, what it needs is someone to step up and take the reins of the team, someone who can talk to both other members of the team, as well as the dev team. That person would have the undesirable albeit essential role of creating necessary discourse, hearing everyone's views, being able to separate personal bias from the task at hand, reaching agreement if not consensus (it seems in this case consensus is not an achievable objective), and discussing agreed upon changes with the dev team. It's a tall ordeal, it's not fun, it's a lot of time to sink into a voluntary project like the design team, but it is essential all the same. You would be very surprised how easily people rally behind others just because they're stepping up when no one else will, even if that person doesn't have the fancy official design team leader title. Be the change you want to see, or don't, you can hope for Alex to get out of hibernation and do something about it also. Don't be surprised if nothing changes if you choose to wait however. Edit: I realize that this whole "step up!" notion is being rejected as a whole, but really, when you've been appointed to the design team, the understanding was that Alex delegated the role of driving the design of the game to you. Similarly to the dev team, they've been delegated with the mandate of pushing updates to the game, that the design team wishes to push through. You don't need Alex, you don't need an official lead. This will fall on deaf ears from some I'm sure, but you've got two options here: do nothing pending Alex doing something about it, which we all know is not happening anytime soon; or be responsible and try to do something in spite of the circumstances. Are you truly okay waiting for someone who may never do anything about it? If Alex doesn't address this until mid-2024, is that truly okay with you?