Stagger Lee

Glory to Arstotzka! Leader Name: Stagger Lee Nation Name: Arstotzka Nation Link: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=9432

ayyyy this is actually pretty cool. Congrats Strum.

Let's have hypothetical wargames again sometime Rose? War with no consequences is more fun.

Good luck.

Welcome to politics. That said, I thought this was hilarious.

And just as soon as she arrived, she was gone. Good luck Rose and VE. Glad we're still amicable.

Steel prices spiking! Sell sell sell!

We will disband these brigands and bring them to justice. Pecunia est potentia.

Global Syndicalism takes another step today.

This is really awesome. Thanks for such a great update.

The biggest issue is that IRC is something that hundreds of members of P&W have used for, in some cases, well over a decade with no issues. It's like Google+ moving into the Facebook market. There's simply no reason to switch when you only need one system and the one you're using is working fine.

50% is the guaranteed success rate. The definition of the Iron Dome in game is: Iron Dome is a national project that gives you a 50% chance of shooting down enemy missiles. That is by definition a 50% success rate. Over time, 50% of all of your missile strikes will get through. That's how probability works. It's like saying if you flip a thousand coins, 5 of them in a row might be heads, but over 1000 of them you're going to be pretty close to having 500 be heads and 500 be tails. Nothing in my proposal "guarantees" missiles to succeed, and this: "However, if all missiles were guaranteed to succeed, just at a lower rate" doesn't make sense. Honestly from everything you've said I can't figure out how you're arguing against what I proposed, everything sounds like you're arguing in favor of my point, not against it, I'm sorry.

All missiles do have a guaranteed success rate, 50%. My proposal is changing the success rate based on city land. Right now the Iron Dome is essentially "negate 50% of missile damage." You can't get much more simple than that. I'm trying to understand your argument but to me it sounds like you think I'm arguing for what the Iron Dome already does.

The Iron Dome is a simple national project that gives your nation a flat 50% chance at blocking missiles fired at it. This coin flip of randomness can be depressingly infuriating when your Iron Dome fails to block 7 missiles in a row, or sadistically satisfying when you manage to land 8 out of 9 of your missiles. I witnessed both of these situations during the most recent global war, and neither of them feel like a fulfilling experience to me. Statistically, the Iron Dome can be reworded as "negate 50% of incoming missile damage." It's quite boring when you think about it, devoting an entire national project for the sole purpose of blocking half of the damage incoming on your nation during a war. True randomness has never seemed like a fun game mechanic to me. Yes, games require an element of randomness in them in order to be dynamic and fun. Having the opportunity to succeed despite all odds or face bitter defeat when victory was in your grasp is nearly essential to compelling game-play, but having a coin toss determine one of the most damaging aspects of a war feels like you've been cheated of a potentially compelling aspect of war. I believe that with a small change in game mechanics, the Iron Dome can go from a boring buy-and-forget project to a fundamental aspect of war in Politics and War. In order to make this change, we merely need to include the idea of fluctuating success odds. I believe that by increasing the rate of success of the Iron Dome as land in a city decreases, a better experience will be had by both sides of the conflict. Randomness can provide more compelling and challenging gameplay. Adams & Dormans in Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Theory explain this by saying, "There are two situations in which adding randomness is a useful design strategy:...to force players to improvise, and...help counter dominant strategies." Currently, the dominant strategy with a missile is to always aim for the city with the highest infrastructure level. This will deal the most monetary damage in the long-run, and therefore is the only thing that realistically needs to be taken into account when firing missiles. This has created a war mechanic in which every player in the game does the same thing over and over, which is needlessly repetitive. As an example proposal, let's say that the Iron Dome now linearly scales in its effectiveness with land size, with 500 land yielding a 70% chance of blocking a missile (lower land = less area to block = higher theoretical chance of success), and something on the upper end, like 5,000 land yielding a 30% chance of blocking a missile. These land values are the caps on each end, where lowering land below 500 and raising land above 5,000 will not further change blocking odds. This adds an entirely new dynamic to game-play, forcing improvisation and changing every player's strategy. Instead of mindlessly firing a missile at a 2,500 infrastructure city because it's the highest your opponent has, maybe now their 2,000 infrastructure city has far more land, yielding a higher chance of success. While it might not do more monetary damage, the higher success chance may cause a player to target the 2,000 city in the interest of a guaranteed hit, instead of the riskier 2,500 infrastructure city. I don't claim that these values are rock solid numbers that I would be comfortable changing the game to, but by making the fundamental mechanic change to what I have outlined, I believe that game-play would greatly benefit and missiles in war would be a far more engaging experience. Instead of the mindless "click the largest number" strategy, players would have to make a personal calculation on risk versus reward, and potentially even build their nations accordingly. While I haven't addressed the Vital Defence System, I hope that it's clear that I would also argue for a similar change to be made for it as well. Let me know what you think and if there are downsides to this that you think throw a wrench in the entire idea, or some other suggestions for how to fix the Iron Dome.

I feel like reparations in this case were probably more for making a point that entirely unprovoked aggression shouldn't be met with acquiescence, rather than trying to ruin Mensa economically. Congrats on peace.

Relativity usually makes things more fun and meaningful for everyone. It also solves problems with needing to scale everything correctly for micro nations and massive nations. If things are based on fractions or percentages, the same impact is made regardless of the scale.

So far I like the idea of having 'the Great VE War' be more of a subtitle, with the conflict listed under a category of 'the Marionette Wars' the best.

The discussion for what to name the current conflict was posted nearly immediately following the war's inception. While most realized that it was far too early to determine an accurate name of a hardly finished war, I believe that it would be good to begin a dialogue on war naming conventions, and give general talking points or thoughts on the process. After all, this is near the beginning of a game that most of us hope has a long future ahead of it, and this will almost certainly not be the last war that does not have an unambiguously accurate term. When considering naming a conflict, there are a number of factors that contribute to the final term the community uses. The most straightforward approach is: What was the Casus Belli, or who were the direct belligerents? The second instead looks at the reasons the war has come to be in the first place. What prompted the declarations of war from the so-called 'Axis Powers' upon VE? Finally, a more organic term may be used, if there is a single person, event, statement, feeling, or alliance that totally encapsulates the aesthetic of the war. It is because of this natural final name potential that naming a war before its conclusion is premature. One would be quick to point to VE's rising power and influence and the desire to halt their growth as the central reason. As such, many have referred to this conflict as "the Great VE War", a name that seems to be popular. It's not unreasonable speculation to assert that the 'Axis Powers' declared war on VE first in order to gain as much of a military advantage as possible, given the fact that they had knowledge that VE received the leaked war planning screenshots and had a Casus Belli. Giving all of the attention to VE, however, ignores the fact that VE was merely the catalyst for a larger conflict. As we saw from the screenshots, VE was to be used as a pretext to weaken Rose for a subsequent conflict. This tension began at the conclusion of the Marionette War. Ignoring the implications from the end of and period following the Marionette War ignores much of the reason behind why the current conflict was orchestrated. It can then be attractive to then call this war the 'Second Marionette War' as many have done, as the cause was intertwined with the conclusion of the first. Despite this, the 'Second Marionette War' ignores VE's presence, potentially downplaying the larger perceived threat the 'Axis Powers' saw in VE, and the way in which they were planning on weakening Rose. Another name may surface that better describes this conflict than the two listed. We shouldn't be quick to name the war before we see it fully play out. What I hope I've done is provided some thought behind how to name wars in the future. Although fun and propaganda can be had from trying to find clever or silly names for conflicts, the names that are likely to be easily remembered and descriptive are those that follow one of these criteria, not names that are shoe-horned into fitting. Thanks for giving this post a read. My hope is to delve into P&W a bit more than the typical superficial nature of forum posts. I believe doing these sorts of thought experiments is entertaining and enlightening, even if they don't lead to any conclusion at the end of the day.

There is already a VIP-section. Why should that keep extending?

I don't know much about neutrality but I know a lot about blowing things up.

Honestly that's a really boring reason for war.

Can't a way to provide less of a loss for winning a war against someone simply be to install a bonus you receive for winning one? X%+ production of resources/income for Y amount of days? Obviously there are issues with rebuilding fast enough to actually make use of it, but providing some in-game bonus for winning a war would fix the alleged problem. Of course, I'm sure one of the chief reasons for not having a system like this already in place is the reality that if one alliance/group of alliances wins wars continuously to reap this benefit, they can quickly grow out of control and make the game unwinnable for anyone else.

I haven't been to war yet. Do you receive anything for winning a war against another nation?

I received the Warhammer 40k 7th Edition rulebook as a gift last week. Before that the most recent one I was playing was 4th edition. 7th edition rulebook has a pretty extensive history section about pre-Heresy. If you're ever interested in wasting thousands of dollars playing/painting the miniatures let me know and I'll help you pick an army.

The only issue I'd see is whether or not they'd be dynamic enough to provide differing affects for nations of the same size. In the example, "Hospitals' effect on disease is doubled, and Hospitals' upkeep is tripled," there is a 'right' answer depending on your nation size. For a lot of policies, the element would be more fun if there weren't right or wrong answers but rather differing paths to build your nation.