MBaku

@Village Now that we’ve seen large scale wars on the test server, I think we can all agree that a beige cap hinders strategic gameplay. @Roberts I agree that fortify should be reworked. It’s horribly useless and the description doesn’t even accurately describe what it does because from what I understand, it only works on ground attacks anyway. if the goal is to prolong the initial phase of the war, then an effective fortify would go a long way to achieve that. It would also add another tactical level to war mechanics game play. IMO Fortify should be most effective before the war is decided. I think the big problem with it is that 3 MAPs is a hell of a lot to use on crappy defense when the opportunity cost is losing the ability to use those maps offensively. You want hunker down and wait for counters, but you also want maps to use when those counters arrive.

I don’t like 1 for a couple reason First, this magnifies the importance of superiorities that are RNG based. People already hate plane casualties. Imagine what they will think when a c40 gets updec’d by some c33s and they all get ITs with a 700 plane disadvantage. Second, I don’t understand all the implications of the math but greater uncertainty in attack outcome doesn’t lead to greater competition. It just leads to a smaller reliance on strategy because a larger portion is chance. 2- I’ve been a fan of nerfing superiorities because they are too powerful in war. I like the plane nerf. Scaling air superiority based on plane differential is smart because it won’t be so powerful at the beginning of the war. This helps achieve the goal of prolonging the deciding part of the war without removing the strategy. If anything it could increase the strategy as the optimal plane buys and ground attacks become very situational. the certainty and incredible effectiveness has given us a meta where Air superiority is everything, especially with how many planes are killed with one attack vs the rebuy rate. This change ensures that ground is still an option early in a war. I also recommend nerfing plane v plane casualties a small amount. Once planes are dead the war is over. If they last longer, the war lasts longer. 3. Punishing larger nations just isn’t a good approach to anything. It’s also not that black and white. Larger nations could be declared on by smaller nations because they’re not milled up. Two phase superiority vs one phase would make recovering very difficult. Additionally, it will be very confusing when you’re in a big conflict where some wars are one phase and others are two phase, some are defensive others offensive etc. can a one phase break two phases of AS that are held in other wars? The possible permeations don’t make sense to me with the current explanation. Proposal: if the goal is to make the opening stage of the war last longer, then reduce starting maps to 4 for each side. Offense attacks are more powerful, particularly with planes. Giving defenders more time to respond would help.

I disagree with your description of large wars. From my experience, blitzing is a massive advantage for a number of reasons. The only time the offense fails is when they hit alliances larger than they are in the hopes that the defending membership will either lay down or can’t counter effectively. Or they knowingly run into an unavoidable war they can’t win because the offensive is such a large advantage that it’s their best opportunity to deal a large amount of damage. Blitzing is easy. But effective, fast counters after a surprise attack is hard. The 5 day cap makes it impossible to dictate your own strategy on defense. It should always be possible to defend well if you’re skilled. And effective defensive strategies shouldn’t be limited to nuke turreting with no mil It takes more than 5 days to get a full rebuild and day buy. This new proposal makes 5 days the max and there are a ton of ways to ensure your opponent gets less than that. In this new meta, what can the defender do strategically against a skilled opponent that they couldn’t do before?

Pyhrric Victory lol… Mfw Locutus accurately describes your entire war effort

I hope this means you guys are gonna keep slotting me, make sure you cleanse the filth from my haram thoughts I write my words from left to right like a normal person

So UU is suicide bombing? How do they expect for us to stop with the stereotypes when they just serve it on a platter like this? I rebuilt at 98 nukes eaten and thought I’d have to wait forever to hit the century mark and then UU goes and sends these glowing presents, I appreciate it guys. Good timing too, right before cities go to 100 score and you guys fall out of range of half of us now that my defensive slots are full, who should I roll? Hmmm…. Any volunteers? I’m the pay it forward type

I like this FA strategy. Just close your eyes and throw darts at a list of alliances and see who you hit. That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. let’s see if it pays off

Imagine if I made a post like this every time I terrorized a micro smh. the ego on this guy smh You value honesty in this game but some ppl enjoy using social engineering to gain the upper hand in a war. You got played and he beiged you, and now you’re running to the forums to cope and seethe. Seems like Yungie is living rent free in your head.

If we have the bonuses dependent on city count, there will be a range of city counts that are absolutely useless to be at because organic income is less than the daily bonus. Making the bonus depend on city count just encourages growth stagnation. if we give new players more money, they build more cities and more infra and become juicier raid targets faster after they quit two weeks in. C3 is optimal because people that quit early generally don’t build past c10. Maybe this will move the optimal raiding point to like c10 or something as ppl build to into the c-teens relatively quickly before they give up on the game. At some point, I think the starting point of the game should just be c20. Let’s be honest, anybody below that point isn’t even playing the same game. They’re just training to play the game or intentionally avoiding being involved. Only problem is multi-farmers but that will always be a problem. And any solution aimed at faster growth will benefit multi-farmers so I don’t think that’s a good reason not to do something.

I can’t believe you.. you just believe the worst in people. Not everyone just sits around trying the game the system. Admin has way more important things to do than worrying about this anyway. nothing to see here, just move along

TLDR; The beige cap will make beige cycling worse than before. It needs to be removed entirely to ensure a defensive coalition rebuild isn’t compromised. I don’t see beige cycling going away. I just see it looking different. Beige cycling will still be achieved by the tactic of racing beige for one half of the alliance and sitting on the other half until expiry to create the military rebuild offset and maintain the advantage. If the defender declares wars and they lose the first round, they probably can’t win their offensive wars. This means their offensive wars can sit on them until expiry while their beige clock ticks down and compromise their rebuild. This encourages downdecs for the defending alliance to minimize the danger of being sat on. To avoid this, defenders might be better off not declaring any wars at all. That way they can try to ensure a full rebuild. But without counters, the race beige vs expiry offset will still cause a compromised rebuild. Option 1- They declare offensives but lose the military battle. The 5 day cap means an offensive war can sit on them for 3-5 days after all defensives expire and their offensives beige them a turn before expiry for a minimal “rebuild penalty” of 5 turns. option 2- They declare no wars but lose the military battle. Imagine the alliance has four people. Two defenders will get beiged in two days and start to rebuild. They’ll come out in 5 days or sooner with near max mil at 7.5 days into the war. The other two defenders will get beiged the turn before expiry, starting their rebuild and finishing 10 days into the war, when the first wave are already half way through their second round. in either scenario the whole alliance will never get fully rebuilt at the same time which is the effect of our current beige cycling. To make matters worse, the inability to farm and stack beige makes it functionally impossible to get the whole alliance rebuilt at the same time. The new meta makes it impossible to beige cycle a single player, but it’s definitely still possible to beige cycle an alliance and effectively only fight half of them at max mil at a time. At least in the current meta, if everybody declares wars to farm beige, some can get 6 days, others get 9 days, and others get 12 days for example. they can find a 5 day overlap to get rebuilt together and break beige together. They also have the element of surprise. under the new meta, breaking beige to surprise your opponent will be all but gone. that’s how I see the new meta of large scale wars looking, and it could be potentially worse than what we have right now. potential fixes? 1.) A project for greater daily rebuy could help. Just plugging this again. 2.) The beige cap is the fundamental problem here. the simple fix is to remove the beige cap and allow beige to stack. Offensive wars are only 6 turns of beige anyway. 3 defensives give 90 turns of beige. Then it doesn’t matter if the defensives try to offset the war endings. Either way the defender gets a full rebuild that will coincide with alliance members that were also blitzed. It also allows alliances to break beige at a turn if their choice and keep an element of surprise. 3.) beige countdown doesn’t begin until the nation completes all wars. But with the 5 day beige cap, alliances will still coordinate when wars complete in order to create the offset. And it’s simple. The offensive wars beige first, then the defensive wars beige in unison. I don’t know if this will fix the problem. But since the losing alliance can choose when they declare their offensives they can try to minimize the offset by declaring offensives right on the end of the second day of war before the beige window opens. But that just opens them up to being sat on by their offensive ear. 4.) nerf the resistance damage of every attack. That way it’s impossible to finish wars in two days and each war completes closer to five days, This just makes an offset smaller and more difficult to achieve, but the wars will be such a slog and impact income for raiders.

Oh I see, so ground IT just drops opponents ground IT in all wars like the others do.

How does a ground IT break AS for all wars? I don’t see that in the update. I know an air IT already does. Under the new system, will an air IT drop IT down on the opponent one step in every war? Same question for blockades- a naval IT breaks blockade in every war, does it just go down one step?

I heard there’s a bank called The Foundation that gives loans. Apparently, they have $4.5b of equity on hand. Ask Krampus for deets

I would much rather see balance changes and QoL stuff than another set of useless projects. Only projects I want to see are advanced Pirate Econ, some type of military rebuy boost like an advanced Propaganda Bureau, and advanced metro planning. advanced surveillance is the only decent project on there The only way I see adding extra projects as a benefit now that we’re getting to a point where it will be difficult to have all the projects in the game, the projects start becoming mutually exclusive and you choose a project development path that will make your nation better at something than other nations. ex: a project makes aircraft deal 5% more casualties, if you get it then you can’t get the project that makes aircraft 5% more resistant to casualties

-Brought to you by my burning desire to do anything other than study for finals right now - 1. Which alliance fought the best this war? Why? Obviously, objectively KT. This isn't a question about who surprised you the most or performed better than previously. We're hardly a top 20 alliance in size but are second in net above way larger alliances despite fighting an entirely separate war against a larger alliance by ourselves and clapping them too. I know stats don't tell the whole story, but I would wager that if you ask t$ and Eclipse who's been killing them in the most competent manner it would be KT. I think unit kills is a more objective measure of success. We're 8th overall, but have a nearly 3:1 KTD ratio while every other major alliance is at or below 2:1. 2. Which alliance fought the worse this war? Why? T$ may not be the worst because micros exist, Afterlyfe and Strickland Propane have been particularly atrocious. It's not that we've come to expect more from t$, because we're getting used to horrible performances when they're on the wrong side of the dogpile. It's that the lack of effort/competence just resonates as stunning and spectacular for an alliance of T$'s size and influence. The Immortals also get a special shoutout for a remarkably forgettable war performance but I haven't fought them so my perception is based on the them losing horribly to what seemed to be the smaller half of Midgard and failing to recover any significant net even after Florida rolled their opponents for them. 3. Did any alliance improve this war or perform worse? Shout out to LoD for coming out of beige in Round 2 with almost 50 offensive wars declared. It's so rare an occurrence for an alliance to fight with full military and some semblance of coordination even staring down a dogpile. Even though LoD outnumbers KT, we have TFP and some Arrgh raiders that made it all but certain their blitz would fail. In the end, Denison smacked them down before any of TFP or Arrgh could really get any slots, but putting up a competent fight when you're outnumbered is probably the most commendable thing you can do in this game. So I'll ignore their inevitably atrocious net and tip my hat to Kan. I'm looking forward to seeing if you guys implement any changes if we get to round 3 4. Who was the biggest winner out of the war? aka who gained the most? Grumpy of course, but lots of winners - TFP, Rose, and Paradise came out looking strong. HS war performance I think is underrated. And LoD's performance can probably help put themselves as one of the best treaty candidates coming out of the crumbled Midgard sphere. Guardian jumped into a low risk dogpile and might get a chill rebuild period where they'll get ROI way faster than most others. 5. Who was the biggest loser out of the war? aka who lost the most? That's more of an FA question, and I don't know enough to give a good answer. Wana's implosion was pretty fun to watch. Grumpy might yet be a loser down the road with the whole world taking notice that they sat this one out. Mayhem came in with a lot of infra, but their unit kill to death ratio is remarkably low for being on the right side of a dogpile and having someone as experienced as Boyce at the helm. And shoutout to Strickland propane for getting pretty much singlehandedly rolled by Voidtree and posting an RoH against our whole alliance in response just a grand total of four wars against us (which might have been all against just Voidtree) lol

QoL improvement suggestions: 1.) Add seconds to the in-game clock and to denote when attacks/war decs etc. occur 2.) Add more statistics to war battle logs - A lot of this stuff is already captured in the action log it just doesn't populate in the battle log. It may seem superfluous to include troop changes in every war timeline across potentially 9 different wars - but it helps understand how things unfolded without opening up every single war history. 4.) Add more achievements/badges - maybe open this up to the community for ideas. A badge for 1 million tank kills, maybe one for holding a treasure, etc. 5.) Create exclusive alliance badges in-game - There are small badges that alliances can win on their alliance page, and players can pay for. But there should be badges that alliances can create that people can add to their nation profiles.

I think there have been situations where ppl gain a war advantage with no city timer by jumping up cities. Maybe just make the timer one turn per city to avoid that loophole, but otherwise i'm in favor of getting rid of it entirely.

Forum post about one war. Micro moment

first

I think there should be a project after propaganda bureau that boosts daily buy and/or max troops

I totally agree, I've been saying that planes are broken since TLR. I think the other problems are the massive effect of blitz advantage and the inability win a military war when outnumbered. The broken war meta has a secondary effect. It is cheaper to not fight. If you lost the initial stage of the war, there is no incentive to spend money building troops. If we want changes, I think we need to agree on what the problems are and what we want our user experience to be like - or else we will disagree on the necessary changes. What I want to see: Competitive wars that reward fighting, encourage activity, and are competitive after the initial blitz. War should reward activity, planning, teamwork, knowledge of game mechanics, and the will to fight. How do we achieve that? Here are a few proposed changes: 1. Begin wars with 4 MAPs instead of 6. Removes the possibility of the double ground, gives the defense more time to react. Fortress would drop it to 3, making you wait a turn to open with airstrikes. Wars are still 5 days. This will make the overall war maps 64/63 instead of 66/65. 2. No war expiry. This removes the need for a beige rework. When turns are exhausted, the combatant with the highest resistance left is the winner. Equal resistance becomes a truce. It also creates some additional game theory around how wars should finish - last minute attacks with stacked MAPs can snatch victories. 3. Increase the rebuy rate for tanks, planes, and ships by 5% of max troops. 6.25% with PB (I think). Which brings me to a second idea - what about a new project that builds on PB? Conscription - When your overall militarization is under 10% of max possible military you get an additional 5% (of max troops) rebuy boost. 4. Nerf Air and ground superiority. Space superiority just creates a bigger gap between winners and losers and that is contrary to the user experience that people want in war. Superiority should provide a small strategic advantage. We want competition not domination. I would nerf AS and GS by half as a starting point. 5. Rework Fortify The current fortify is useless. A useful defensive option will help wars be competitive after/during the blitz and rewards defenders that are on during the blitz and are fast enough to defend before they're hit. Proposed rework - 50% chance of reducing the victory type when attacked. (still doesn't stack). Fortify is effective for one attack each time its used. If successful, an IT becomes MS, MS becomes PV, PV becomes UF. The problem with a defensive option is that the benefits have to outweigh the benefits of using those MAPs for offense. For that reason, I think Fortify should either cost less of maybe even be 100% for reducing attack success.

Congrats! Cheers to more to come

Reducing the impact of infra on score seems to be a much easier solution. They already increased score for mil. The problem you speak of is usually because folks believe it frugal to build 3k infra cities. I think exposing yourself to larger Downdecs is an appropriate risk for building so much infra. Otherwise, in “fixing” downdecs we give a massive buff to econ and probably alter the standard infra build meta

Just re-posting this since we're now on page 5 plus a full blown "Dear Horsecock" letter in response. As i read through all these WoTs all I can think is the T$ propaganda machine is out in full force proving HC right. You just love to see it. All jokes aside, in the midst of the WoTs I also see a lot of T$ self-reflection going on and I think that's a positive. But it's almost easy to forget there's an actual war going on in the background of all this. T$ certainly finds itself in a disadvantage this war but I respect an alliance that nevertheless fights back competently and vigorously... in-game.. with actual troops. Maybe I'm in the minority but I'm still interested in seeing how the war continues to develop, where will T$ find some on the ground spots to salvage some wins other than dropping into nuke turret strategy and turning this into a drawn out boring slog like duck hunt. To the extent that war performance is still an element of one's reputation and a symbol of power in this game, I think some analysis on that front bears some consideration. But I'll leave that to the big brains and their WoTs to show that they indeed do more than "little else."