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?

I'd love to say that removing city timers up to c20 is a good thing, but the realist in me knows better. This would lead to players being held at low city counts to raid until they can build up to city 20 all at once, which is not ideal for player retention. It's probably a good thing, but I'm not sure whether the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

Some positive, some negative: - Recklessness: Both you and your opponents suffer 25% additional casualties in attacks you initiate. - Warrior Culture: Your soldiers deal 25% more damage. Additionally, each daily reset, 10% of your population joins as soldiers, up to 20% of your maximum soldier count. However, your maximum tank count is reduced by 25%. - Renewable Energy Initiative: Wind power plants now provide power for up to 1000 infrastructure levels, but they now use 1.2 tons of aluminum per day (0.1/turn) for maintenance. - Briberies: Blockades no longer stop you from trading with the global market or your alliance bank, however 20% of everything you trade is shared evenly with your blockaders. - Triumphs: Whenever you win a war, you earn 200% of your next turn of income (expenses excluded) and your approval rating increases by 5%, however you lose 40% more loot upon getting defeated (from 10% base to 14%) - Public Enemy: Every $1,000,000 in bounties against your nation (rounded down) increases your gross income by 1% (up to 20%), however you will automatically set a bounty upon yourself of $1,000,000 every five daily resets. - Bunker Nation: You suffer 5% less infrastructure damage from attacks, but that damage is instead inflicted to your land. - Shared Burden: While your population is starving, you suffer 20% less casualties from all sources, but your gross revenue is decreased by an additional 33%. - Ocean of Men: You can recruit 20% more of each unit every daily reset, but your units inflict 10% less damage. - Tourism State: Your raw and manufactured resource production are decreased by 10%, but you earn 20% additional income from commerce when at peace, or 10% when at war. Only positive: - Quick Permits: Your city/project timers are reduced by 50% - Land Rents: You earn additional gross income equal to your land area every turn. If I have other ideas later, I'll edit this post. I've been here for over an hour now, I want out. Devs, do with these perks as you would. Change them, rename them, add dependencies, I'm just the idea guy, not the smart balancing guy. Cheers~ ☕

If you make the bonus decrease by 10% of the bonus per city after 10, then building new cities effectively makes your revenue not move, and I don't think that's a good thing. Instead, the game should further incentivize raiding. If you really want new nations to catch up, you could tweak the city cost formula instead. I'm no math genius, but here's propositions, if anything. Here's the current formula 50000*(x-1)^3+150000*x+75000 Under this formula, going from c1 to c10 costs $72,225,000, and c10 to c20 costs $1,419,750,000. Here's a proposed revised formula between cities 1 and 19 (included) (10000+x*2000)*(x-1)^3+150000*x+75000 Under this revised formula, going from c1 to c10 would cost $40,521,000, and c10 to c20 would cost $1,204,986,000. After c20, the cost would revert to the current city formula instead. For maximum ease of viewing, refer to this handy-dandy chart. (Red is current formula, green is proposed new formula) Crucially, you may notice that the city cost eventually catches up with the current formula, but getting the earlier cities is cheaper, and helps push nations to the mid-tier quicker. Now, a few things should be taken into consideration with this new formula. Not least of which being, how does this interface with the urban planning projects? Let's look at Urban Planning first ($50,000,000 discount per city, starting at c11). With this new formula, c12 would cost $33,725,000, or $32,038,750 with the Manifest Destiny domestic policy (or $31,195,625 with Government Support Agency). And now, Advanced Urban Planning ($100,000,000 discount per city, starting at c16). With this new formula, c17 would cost $144,225,000, or $137,013,750 with the Manifest Destiny domestic policy (or $133,408,125 with Government Support Agency) . We notice that in both cases, the discount is high enough that cities would hit a negative cost, which is not desirable. What I can propose to counter that is a minimum city unmodified cost of $225,000, or $213,750 with Manifest Destiny (or $208,125 with Government Support Agency), which is the cost of c2. Using Domestic Policy (boosted by Government Support Agency) and both Urban Planning projects the moment they become available, the minimum cost of getting to c20 would become $514,593,400, as opposed to the approximately $609,876,250 (Look, I did a lot of math, let me be lazy and just use the wiki's number and not recalculate for the 7.5% discount provided by GSA this time) that it does now. It would reduce the cost of going from c1 to c20 by 16%. Of course, that's only one proposed formula, it can be tweaked further, or differently if the idea is close to your heart. Anyway, enough math, more coffee. ☕

Here's some ramblings of a fool. I am not justifying the behaviour of the less savoury denizens of the forums, if they act like idiots they deserve to be treated as such, but I can put some theories as to why this has become increasingly common. Now, some people will always be inflamatory in those threads, and nothing you or anyone else does will change that. 1- Lack of transparency in decision-making This one should be self-explanatory. Ideas and changes are in the hands of the dev team, and I trust in their expertise, but that doesn't mean they are infallible. How ideas come to be, and the way they should be tackled is a community thing. No ten people can make good decisions for the rest of us and expect it to fit every shoe. In my very biased, incomplete opinion, problems that you think need addressing should be brought to the community first, and you should let them think of possible solutions. Not all ideas will be good, and not all good ideas will be feasible, or be equally good for everyone, so you have the discretion to keep or discard ideas, but this should ultimately make future changes less of a surprise attack, and it should give the community time to come up with adequate (or adequate enough) solutions on their own. This will also help mitigate my second point. 2- The dev team feels out of touch I'm making no accusation here, since we don't get to hear from the rest of the team. I've no doubt that @Prefontaine is the spokesperson for the ideas of the team, and unfortunately bears the load of the ridicule when an idea is unpopular, but the facts remain that proposed changes to existing systems, such as warfare or even spies, seem really deluded, excessively grandiose, or downright bad; and it certainly does not help that Prefontaine himself has effectively retired from the game. This by itself shouldn't be a surprise, once again, not even experts are infallible, but it is happening too frequently, and provoking further distrust in the team. The first point should help partially fix this problem. Transparency is key to carrying your point across, even to people who disagree. 3- Targetted stubborness (Aren't I eloquent...) I've been playing this game for almost 3 years, and although the elders here will still call me fresh meat, I think I've gotten a good hang of the game. In those three years, however, it feels like there's been half a dozen of spy change threads with the same exact key points outlined. And every time, they get shot down. This is more of a "me" gripe than a community thing, but it doesn't look too good. It looks like the dev team is trying to either sneak the change through, or repropose it until people either get tired of saying no, or until someway somehow people reconsider. Stop reproposing changes that people have already shot down, it makes it look like you have an agenda. Now, of course, remember that I'm only one person. This is my own idea of what's wrong based on my observations of the last three years and discussions with involved people of the community and of my former alliance. I am absolutely not infallible either, and I could be wrong here and there, so other people should correct me if they disagree with one or multiple of the points I've made. Either way, it was about time I said something about it. Cheers~ ☕

Counter-counter suggestion, I beat them back.

Counter-suggestion, also. Allow nations to opt out of spawning treasures. I don't want my enemies to negate my damage just because I got good RNG

I mean, I'm definitely not happy about it, but that doesn't mean it needs to be changed necessarily.

If that is the design philosophy that you and your team are pursuing, so be it. I feel this is going to lead to rather toxic changes to the war meta where alliance wars might become endurance races to the first person to finally get tired of back and forths, or might discourage future wars that aren't guaranteed stomps because of the possible risk of taking massive losses through the opponent's spite.

Would this still be a very good thing if you could do the same with tanks and aircraft too? I can't imagine the winning side in a war being very enthusiastic about their opponent printing a full army weekly without any recourse

I'm saying precisely the inverse. It allows for alliances LIKE ROSE to spy blitz you every 5 days, even if it has lost the spy war.